It was strange how two worlds, so similar in nature could be be so very different.
It wasn't just the major differences. To Pete, the fact that Mickey's world still had a monarch wasn't all that strange, considering how recently his world had gotten rid of theirs. A lot of obvious differences made a strange sort of sense when you thought about it. It was the little things that boggled the mind. The fact that a familiar street existed in one world but not in another, or that telephone boxes in one world were seen as tourist attractions, while in the other they'd phased out long ago with the advent of earpods. Technology in Mickey's world wasn't nearly as advanced as in Pete's, but then they didn't have annoying zeppelins floating everywhere in the London skies.
And in one world, Pete Tyler had died twenty years before, while in this, it was Jackie who was the one who was gone.
He had tried to ignore this fact as Jake and Mickey submitted their report on Torchwood in the other world. Of course, he should have known that there would be a Torchwood there too, and was only minimally surprised to know it was Yvonne Hartman running it. He was even less surprised to put together that it was Torchwood there who might be encouraging the rift that had formed between the two worlds.
"Yvonne always was ambitious, and if there was something she thought could protect Great Britain with a bigger, shinier cannon, she'd do it," Pete muttered, not happy with the news "Does she even get what she's doing?"
"Not if you ask me," Jake replied darkly. He'd manage to get on at Torchwood in the other world as part of the maintenance crew, Mickey had been clever enough to get himself into the computer support side of things, giving him access to all of Torchwood's files and the ability to wander throughout their building. "They are getting deliveries in, big ones, parts from places all over the world, especially this place in America, somewhere near Las Vegas."
"Area 51," Mickey pipped up.
Pete didn't get the reference, and apparently neither did Jake, who only shook his head in exasperation. "Something they get on that side, I guess. Anyway, they are building something there, something big."
"And we think it's to open that hole wider, let the Cybermen through," Mickey clarified, passing over a thumb drive that Pete dutifully plugged into his tablet. "They have this room at the top of the building that's been hush hush, no one is allowed in, but the energy readings up there are crazy."
"I know the room," Pete replied after pulling up the schematics. "We have it at the top here."
"How much you want to bet that's about where the hole on this side is too," Mickey offered. "What if that's what is connecting the two?"
Pete had no doubt that the young man was more right than he wished. "I'll have Singh look at it. In the meantime, you two have an hour to kill before your jumpers are ready. Why don't you get out and grab something to eat, on me." He tossed a couple of bills on the table, ones Jake readily grabbed with a cheerful whoop.
"Looks like steak tonight, Mick!"
"Yeah, great!"
Pete turned sharply to the young man, who was busying himself with his knapsack. He'd never known Mickey Smith to ever turn down free food, especially not the kind Pete could afford.
"Yeah, I'll be down in a mo', Jake. Want to talk to Pete about something, right?"
A whole silent conversation happened between them, as Jake finally shrugged and nodded, and shot Pete a final thank you, before wandering out of his office.
They both stood in awkward silence as light began to fade over London below.
Pete figured he might as well be the first to break it. "Something you care to chat about, Mickey?"
"Maybe," Mickey replied, shoving hands into his jean pockets. "You know, these ghosts they are seeing over there. They are talking about giving them rights and stuff."
"Sounds like a familiar conversation," Pete muttered, recalling all too well the very same debates in this world.
"I went and saw Jackie!"
Mickey blurted it out so suddenly that it took Pete a moment to process what he had said. "Oh...yeah?"
What else could he say? It wasn't as if he had gone to see Pete's dead wife.
"I just, you know, wanted to check on her. I didn't talk to her or nothing, though, I didn't know what Rose might have told her about me, you know, but...I heard her on the phone to Bev, talking about her seeing her Dad, right."
"Jackie always did love her father. He was a good man." That took effort for Pete to say. He knew Jackie's father had never liked him much and the feeling had been mutual. "She's lucky to still have him in your world. He died ages ago in ours"
"That's the thing...he died ages ago in ours too."
The penny dropped. Pete stared at Mickey, who nodded his head solemnly. "A ghost?"
"Yeah. They are everywhere."
"And so they are. The Cybermen are disappearing in droves. Jakes been noting that."
"This is Jackie, though. They are showing up at her house, and she's okay with it, cause she's got no one else."
"And that's sad, but she's still not my wife, Mickey!" Pete's voice rang far more loudly than he had ever intended, taking them both by surprise. With shaking fingers, Pete ran his hands across his closely-cropped hair, spinning to face twilight London. "Look, I know you were close to her, but she's a stranger to me. Your whole world is...strange to me."
A world where he'd once existed and now he didn't. That was perhaps the strangest part of all in Mickey's world.
There was a long pause and a silence. He could hear Mickey shuffling on the carpet behind him. "You know, you could...come and check it out. Come see it with your own eyes."
"Really? Go sight see another universe? Take pictures to show around, like on holiday?"
"Rose would," Mickey replied, half-laughing. "She'd have thought it all a grand lark.
"Yeah, well she's barely more than a girl, isn't she?"
"Jackie never got into those things, adventures," Mickey continued as if Pete hadn't spoken. "I always assumed Rose got that habit off of you."
"Not off of me," Pete hissed, turning over his shoulder to glare at him. "Off her Pete, her father."
"That Pete, this Pete, you're all the same Pete in the end, right? Whatever the Doctor or Singh say about it. I'm just saying, if you just wanted to go and see her...just check in on her, don't even have to let her see you, she's there."
"And what would your Doctor have to say about it?"
"That it's bloody stupid and like to cause a paradox," Mickey shrugged blithely. "But hell, he ain't even human, and he doesn't know what it's like to miss someone the way we do."
Pete wasn't so sure about that. He'd seen the aching pain of loss reflected in the Doctor's eyes that night as Pete had agonized over Jackie. It had been what had convinced him into that van so long ago. "I have a feeling your Doctor knows more about what he's talking about, Mickey, than you do."
"Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, but the offer is there. Me and Jake leave in a couple of hours." Mickey hoisted his backpack over his shoulder. "And you could come with, just to see it. Don't say the thought hasn't crossed your mind."
The thought had. Mickey was far too perceptive by half, more than he realized, likely. And it was true, he was curious about that other world. What would a world where he had died long ago be like? Would Jackie have ever changed? Would things between them have worked out, eventually, if he'd never gotten rich...or never died.
"Just, think about it, right? Be back in an hour."
Pete didn't even watch Mickey leave. He stood at his window and watched night crawl into London. He shouldn't contemplate it, not even in the slightest. He had a company to run and a secret research/protection...whatever he called it to manage. And the last thing he needed was to entertain fantasies regarding a wife he'd been in the process of divorcing at the time of her death...a wife who he missed every, single, goddamn day since.
It would be reckless in the extreme.
Not to mention dangerous.
And what if Rose's mother saw him, noticed him?
What if it made the universe implode?
That was silly, Mickey hadn't made the universe implode by coming over here, but still...he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't!