Disclaimer: Sadly, I have no claim on Doctor Who and make no profit from it.
Some plot points and bits of dialogue respectfully borrowed from the episode "Partners in Crime" by Russell T Davies. With apologies to Donna Noble, who I'm sure will find the Doctor someday, just not today.
The Doctor parked the lift just below Miss Foster's window. He tried the window latch with the sonic screwdriver and gave a groan of frustration when it proved to be deadlocked. He was just about to press his face to the glass to see what could be seen, when suddenly the office door flew open and the lights came on. He dropped to the floor of the lift. There were voices, but they were too muffled for him to know what was said or even who was talking. He fished his stethoscope out of his pocket and carefully placed it at the very edge of the glass. And then he could clearly hear the voice he had been longing to hear, dreading to hear. "My name is Rose Tyler. Who are you?"
"I am Miss Foster."
Rose snorted. "Not sure I believe that one, but we'll go with it for now. So tell me, Miss Foster, are you an alien? Or are you just working with aliens?"
The Doctor had to choke back a laugh. That was his Rose, brave and defiant through and through.
Even Miss Foster sounded reluctantly impressed. "Well, you are a bit more clever than the average human, aren't you? Fine, you are correct, that is not my real name. But I did choose it well: Foster, as in foster mother. And these are my children." The Doctor risked a quick glance over the windowsill and saw, as expected, a little white blob standing on Miss Foster's desk. "My name is Matron Cofelia, Five-Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet, Intergalactic Class."
"Nursery Fleet? Your children? So you're what, some sort of space nanny? And you are using humans as hosts for your breeding program?"
"My, you do catch on quickly. See, the Adipose Industries promotional literature is mostly correct. The pills do bind fat together. But rather than flush it from the human system, they galvanize the fat to form a body. These dear little creatures are Adiposians. After their breeding planet vanished, the Adiposian First Family contracted with me to ensure the birth of a new generation. I've traveled far and wide searching for a planet with as much fat as this one."
"Humans aren't your own personal incubators, Cofelia. I'm sure there are, I don't know, intergalactic laws or something against that. You nearly killed a woman last night."
"Yes, going to full parthenogenesis was a sad necessity once the birth had been observed. But as you are obviously aware, it was not successful. Actually, I am very interested in learning how exactly it was that you interrupted the process."
"The Doctor interrupted it," Rose replied, and this Doctor could hear in her voice the fierce pride in the other Doctor. It may not have been exactly directed at him, but it warmed his hearts anyway. "And he will dismantle your whole operation – that's putting it mildly. I already told you, you don't want to make him angry. One warning is all he'll give you, so you'd best take my warning and walk away right now. Take whatever babies you've already gotten – we won't try to take them from you – and head back to your home planet."
"Oh, my dear, you are in no position to be making either threats or demands. You don't seem to understand the gravity of your situation." And then the Doctor heard a sound that made his blood run cold: the cocking of a gun. Without even thinking, he jumped to his feet and slammed the sides of his fists against the window. It had no effect on the window, but it did have the effect of making every head in the room swivel toward him.
Matron Cofelia recovered quickly from her surprise. "After him!" she shouted to her cohorts, and led the charge out of the office.
The Doctor hesitated only a moment to make sure that all the threats to Rose had departed, then shouted through the glass, "I'll come back for you!" and hit the Up button on the lift.
His pursuers were faster than he had expected. He had just climbed back onto the roof when they came bursting through the stairwell door. Deciding that down was his best escape route, he jumped back into the lift. "Come on, faster, faster," he urged the mechanism. But then he saw Matron Cofelia leaning over the parapet, the blue light of some sort of sonic device in her hand, and suddenly he was in free fall. "Not that fast!" He caught a glimpse of Rose's pale face as he flew past her window, just before he finally managed to aim the screwdriver steadily enough to activate the pulley breaks.
He had only a few seconds' grace to catch his breath and try to slow the pounding of his hearts. Then the intergalatic nanny applied her device to one of the cables, severing it. The Doctor grabbed onto the railing just in time, his feet scrabbling for purchase on a surface that was abruptly nearly vertical. He watched in horror as she reached for the second cable. The primal part of his brain was screaming at him not to loosen his death grip on the railing, but the rational part knew it was his only chance. With a convulsive effort, he lifted the hand holding the screwdriver, flipped the setting, and shot a sonic pulse at her. She screamed, and the device flew from her hand. The Doctor watched his salvation falling towards him, arched his back, reached far backwards, so far that he could feel his grip on the railing starting to slip, and caught the sonic… pen, he decided it was. Object in hand, he embraced the railing with both arms and gave himself a moment to recover.
He was directly below Rose's window. And with Cofelia's pen, he would be able to override the deadlock and get in. But the thought of seeing Rose face to face was almost as terrifying as his near-fall. He needed a bit of a pep talk. She doesn't know about regeneration yet – he may have forgotten this adventure at Adipose, but he certainly hadn't forgotten the shock on her face when he stood before her for the first time in this body – so there is absolutely no way she will suspect that you are anyone other than Martin Jones, sales rep. As long as you don't do anything…Time Lordy. You can do this. For her sake, you have to do this. He took a deep breath, reached overhead to unlock the window, tucked the two sonic devices in his pocket safely out of sight, and then pulled himself hand over hand up the cable until he was high enough to climb in.
Matron Cofelia had been gazing down beatifically at the Adiposian child when a face briefly appeared in the window, so she missed it. But Rose caught it out of the corner of her eye. It was gone in an instant, but an instant was all she needed. She nearly laughed with relief. Finally, after the years of waiting, after the days of searching and hoping, she was back where she belonged. Well, not exactly where she belonged – there was still a wall and several gun-toting villains between them. But now that there were two Doctors on the case, all the villains in the world would only amount to a minor inconvenience. Her fear at her current predicament melted away.
The joy bubbling within her made her feel particularly magnanimous, and she tried, Doctor-like, to give the nanny an out. But Cofelia reacted about as well as the bad guys usually did in these situations, and then one of her thugs decided to show the iron behind the velvet threat by cocking his gun, and that was when the Doctor put in a sudden appearance.
In a flash, she was alone, except for the Doctor outside, staring at her, palms pressed flat against the glass. She silently cursed the bonds that kept her from reaching out to him, but tried to let her face radiate her happiness. He yelled that he would return for her – as if she could possibly doubt it – and then ascended out of sight.
But Rose was never one to wait passively for rescue. She rocked herself onto her feet, awkwardly bent double by the seat, and staggered over to the desk to search for something to cut her restraints. She glanced up at the window just in time to see the Doctor plummet past. Her heart leapt into her throat, and then threatened to climb out of her mouth a few seconds later when the frayed end of one of the cables shot by. So help me, if she has hurt him, she will learn that the Oncoming Storm has nothing on the Bad Wolf.
She had just gotten her hands on a pair of scissors and was awkwardly attempting to saw at the ropes around her wrists when the window opened and what was surely the most glorious sight in the universe – in any universe – climbed through. "Oh thank God, you're alive!"
He gave her a familiar cheeky grin. "I'm a bit harder to kill than that. Told you I'd come back for you. Let's see what we have here." She expected him to sonic her bonds, but instead he took the scissors from her hand and cut through them. It was a slightly longer process. "You're Rose Tyler, I presume?" he asked as he worked.
The question was so unexpected, she had no idea what to say, so she said nothing. He continued, "I heard you saying that to Miss Foster– well, Matron Cofelia, I guess I should say. My name is Martin Jones, by the way."
Of all the surreal things that had happened to her since she first met the Doctor, this had to be right up at the top. "Wait, you're Martin Jones? The whistleblower? The one that talked to the Doctor this morning?" she asked incredulously, as she felt the ropes give way.
"Oh, John Smith is a doctor, is he? Yep, that was me. We can chat later, but for now I think we'd best run before the thugs get back here." He made an abortive gesture, as if he had started to reach for her hand and then thought better of it, and then turned and ran.
Her body followed him out of long habit, but her mind was racing in another direction. Why hadn't he used the sonic screwdriver? Why had he given her an alias? Why was he acting as if he didn't know her? And then it suddenly hit her. He had seen three faces that he recognized from his past, and assumed that they were his past. Of course, why wouldn't he have done? And being the Doctor, he was trying his hardest to protect the timeline, to protect her.
She opened her mouth to tell him the truth. But before the words could come out, Matron Cofelia was standing in front of them, flanked by her guards. "That is far enough."
The Doctor skidded to a halt, Rose nearly crashing into him. For once, he had no babbling speech designed to delay and confuse his opponent; he just reached into his suit pocket, and an ear-splitting noise filled the air. Four of the five people in the room doubled over, clutching at their ears, and this time he did grab Rose's hand, pulling her after him with a cry of "Allons-y!"
"What was that sound?" she gasped as they ran.
"No idea," he lied glibly, "Maybe we set off the burglar alarm. Listen, we need to get down to the basement. There's a utility closet down there where we can try to gain access to the computer system. Now that her cover has been blown, she's going to try to birth as many of those babies as she can, as quickly as she can. And according to what you said, when she tried that last night, someone nearly died."
Rose hesitated, once more about to tell him the truth, but then decided that trying to explain who she was and where she had come from would cause confusion and take precious time that they didn't have. Better to stick to the urgent matter at hand, and clear up misapprehensions later. So she said only, "My friends are already down there, trying to hack in."
"And how's that going for them?" he asked dryly.
"Not so well, when I left."
"Oh, but wait!" he said, as if a thought had just occurred to him, although Rose was pretty sure that was not the case. "I caught this thing when Cofelia dropped it. Maybe he can use it." He pulled something from his pocket.
She peered at it as best she could while at a dead run. It looked almost like the sonic screwdriver, but not quite. "What is it?"
"Not sure," he lied again. "But she used it to manipulate the lift controls and sever the cable. If I were a gambling man, I would be willing to bet that your Doctor could use it to override the security on the computer."
Rose bit back a smile. From Martin Jones, sales rep, that would have seemed an absurd leap of logic. But from the Doctor, it was certain knowledge.