It was a scene straight out of his nightmares.
Over the last three years his guilt-ridden brain had envisioned scenarios very much like this one, all on the darkest of nights, in the deepest of sleeps. Jackie, caught between silver bodies, fear in her wide, frightened blue eyes as she looked for anyone to help. And Pete wanted to reach for her, to snag her out of harms way, but at the last moment, his fingers failed to grasp her, his feet tripped and tumbled him before he could even scream her name, and she would disappear, vanish into a faceless wall of identical, robotic faces.
He had failed her. He had let her die.
Pete's heart failed, his mouth dry, as he whipped around the corner of the stairwell marked N3. He'd recognized the sign. He skidded to a stop, the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey nearly barreling into him as he turned to the Doctor with triumphant glee. Without a second thought for the other three, he threw the door to the stairwell open, hurtling down the concrete steps, to find the woman who looked exactly like his late wife crouching between Cybermen on either side of the narrow stairwell, begging for her life.
The tang of fear and adrenaline filled his mouth. He took his weapon and fired.
Like tin cans they toppled, falling over before Jackie's startled face. It only occurred to Pete vaguely that he'd actually never really shot anything before in his life, as he stared at the silver bodies that had once been people in his world. Standing up from the wreckage, Jackie stared at him, her face pale under her thickly caked make up.
"Pete?" His name was barely a whisper out of her.
Behind him, he thought he could hear Rose gasp. But he couldn't help the smile that ghosted across his lips. "Hello, Jacks."
Tears welled between her mascara caked lashes, disappointment glittering as she shook her head. "I said there were ghosts, but that's not fair. Why him?"
Her anguished question nearly broke his heart. "I'm not a ghost," he tried to assure her. That pronouncement only confused her further.
"But you're dead. You died twenty years ago, Pete."
It wasn't Pete who answered her heart-wrenching question, but the Doctor. Pete hadn't even noticed the other three following him, and now the other man tentatively stepped forward, desperate to explain. "It's a Pete from a different universe. There are parallel worlds, Jackie, every single decision we make creates a parallel existence, a different dimension where…"
"Oh, you can shut up," Jackie snapped. Clearly her shock and wonder had worn off, and she only glared at the Doctor, perturbed, before turning her frown on Pete again. "Oh, you look old."
"You don't," he shot back with a smile. And she didn't. She didn't look any different than the woman he'd last seen three years before. And it crushed him that this wasn't even the same woman.
Clearly, Jackie struggled as much with this as he did. Her face crumpled, he could see her trying to wrap her head around it. "How can you be standing there?"
"I just got lucky," Pete shrugged, thinking of what he knew about her husband, of how he died. "Lived my life."
It hurt, seeing the flicker of pain in her eyes as he pointed out that he had survived when her Pete had not. "You were left on your own," he pointed out awkwardly, trying hard not to sound so blatantly speculative. "You didn't marry again, or…"
"There was never anyone else," she piped up quickly, perhaps a touch too fervently. "Twenty years, though. Look at me. I never left that flat. Did nothing with myself."
Her regret tugged at him far more than he would have expected.
"You brought her up," he offered sincerely, glancing towards the blonde girl eyeing the pair of them warily. "Rose Tyler. That's not bad."
Jackie glanced towards her daughter, pride pulling evidence by her small smile. "Yeah."
Pete thought of Jackie's apartment, covered in photos of the daughter who didn't exist in his world. Not a single sign of Pete left there, not even his trophies. All his mad schemes tossed out, and perhaps with good cause. Jackie had bigger things to focus on, and she'd done all right.
"In my world, it worked," he murmured, knowing it was a non-sequitur by the confusion on Jackie's face. "All those daft little plans of mine, they worked. Made me rich."
"I don't care about that," she sniffed dismissively, before pausing. "How rich?"
Same old Jackie, he thought with a smile. "Very."
"I don't care about that," she repeated, before raising one canny eyebrow. "How very?"
She was so very Jackie...his Jackie. Her earlier words echoed. It was so not fair, finding her here like this, knowing it was her, not his real her.
"Thing is, though, Jacks, you're not my wife." As gently as he said it, his words were harsh. And he could see the faint glimmer of hope fade quickly in her bright, blue eyes. "I'm sorry, but you're not."
She nodded shortly, agreeing with him as she desperately tried to hide something vulnerable, and Pete felt himself stumbling to make any of this better. "I mean, we both...you know, it's just sort of…"
God, were those tears forming in her eyes? He hated it when Jackie cried!
"Oh, come here." He put his gun down as she ran into his open arms, softer and warmer than he remembered, but oh so wonderfully alive.
"Pete, I hate to ruin the reunion, but we've got to go." The Doctor tugged as his sleeve, earning a watery but murderous look from Jackie as she spun away from Pete's tear stained shirt to glare at the other man.
"Look at you, get us into this mess, and now you want to drag me off on your madness. What if I don't want to go!"
"Jacks," Pete soothed, out of habit really. "We can't stay here. We've got to get you out."
"Before that, I need in that factory," the Doctor muttered, dragging Pete and Jackie along, Rose and Mickey in step behind. "Torchwood this side collects so many rather nifty things. Is that what your Torchwood does, Pete?"
He blinked, holding desperately to Jackie's hand as they ran down the concrete stairs, trying not to trip at the Doctor's brisk pace. "We gather things, usually stuff left behind. Space junk, really, tourist rubbish. Aliens come, they leave stuff behind, we take it. We have contact with a few races, there is trade of a fashion, mostly raw materials for information on what we have, or perhaps useful things we can benefit from."
"All for the glory of the British Empire?" The Doctor shot back, eyes dark as he glared at him.
"We don't have a British Empire," Pete gasped out.
"What's all this about aliens, Pete," Jackie heaved behind him, breathless as they continued down. "I thought you said you were rich? You made all your stuff work?"
"That part is true," the Doctor clarified, as he came to a dead stop finally at the bottom of the stairs. "In Pete's world, he made a go at Vitex. He's rich. But he also became head of a secret organization named Torchwood. On this world, it seems, their entire reason for existence was to capture anything alien that might be a threat to the British Empire. Seems Rose and I peeved good Queen Victoria just a tad, and she felt anything alien, even when helpful, was either a danger to her vision of "normal" or a tool she could use to exploit. And here we are now, in our current situation, Torchwood ready to bring only the single most deadly race ever in existence into this world, because they were too stupid and blind to really think this through. So my question to you, Pete Tyler, is if this was your Torchwood, and this happened to you, what would you do?"
The Doctor whipped around, ancient hard eyes boring into Pete, and in that moment he remember that the Doctor wasn't a human man at all. "I'd not endanger my world, my people, for this, no matter what it was. We already made that mistake once. I can't do that again."
Whether it was the answer the Doctor wanted to hear or not, he couldn't tell. The man stood tall, cocked his dark head at Pete, and nodded. "Right. Well, I have a plan to get us out of this. But I need in that factory. Pete, you stay with Jackie, keep her safe. And if you need...you know what to do."
"To do what," Jackie squawked as the Doctor threw open the doors, ignoring her. Pete merely shrugged and smiled, tugging Jackie on with him. He knew what the Doctor meant. If shit was to hit the fan, he wanted Pete to get Jackie out to his world.
"What's going on?" Jackie spun on him, annoyance clear in her tetchy tone, as Rose and Mickey sidled up to the open door, both eyeing the Doctor and whatever it was he was up to.
"Nothing, Jacks, Doctor wants to make sure you're safe."
"It's him that got me into this, now how's he going to get me…"
But before she could even finish her demand, the Doctor was back through, Rose slamming the door behind him. Wildly, he spun around, panting as he shoved a hand into his jacket pocket.
"Full on battle in there, but never mind. I think these will do the trick."
Pete never had a chance to ask how a pair of 3D specs from back in the day would do the trick for anything. Before he could, the Doctor was diving back into the fray, Rose protesting in a tone much the same as her mother used a moment before, standing at the door with confusion and worry.
Beside him, Pete could feel Jackie tugging at his hand as she called to her daughter in a stage whisper. "Rose, get out of there!"
Rose only turned to glare back at her and wave her off. Before Jackie got any bright ideas, Pete tightened his fingers around hers. "Oh, no you don't. Rose iis fine."
"But they are shooting, and she's standing there, and…"
"She knows what she's doing, unlike you." He hated to say it, as he wasn't entirely certain Rose did know what she was doing, but he at least he knew Jackie didn't. It earned a mutinous glare from her, but he remained firm in his resolve, holding her hand tight. "Get mad all you want, but I'm not letting you get killed."
A retort was quickly brewing on Jackie's lips, but it fell silent as out of the doors the Doctor returned, running full tilt and shouting. "We've got to see what it's doing! We've got to go back up." They all stared at him blankly as he drug them along. "Come on, all of you, top floor!"
Jackie dug her heels in, protesting wildly at the Doctor. "That's forty-five floors up! Believe me, I've done them all!"
Doors near them opened, and blessedly, Jake Simmonds head popped out, regarding them all matter-of-factly. "We could always take the lift."
They all stopped, blinking at him in mild shock. Jake only managed to smirk, tapping his earpiece and nodding at Pete. "Could hear you all squawking. Better hurry up, then."
Without another word, they all piled on, the Doctor herding them in as behind them, the double doors burst open.
"Quickly," he hummed, slamming a forefinger against a button as the doors slid shut, and they began zooming to the top. Jackie watched it all with wife eyes, fearful and confused. So unlike Rose, who looked to the Doctor as if he knew what he was doing. Pete certainly hoped he did. Because as things stood at the moment, he wasn't so sure.
The doors opened to the topmost floor again, everyone spilling out and rushing to the window, just like the one in Pete's Torchwood. It had been little more than an hour since he stood at it with the Doctor, convincing him to help them. His London was peaceful calm, people going about their business. This one was madness. Below them on the streets, Cybermen streamed toward the building, there silver, blank faces horrifyingly stoic as they made their way towards it, all the while, a blanket of Daleks flew through the London skies, blanketing the city. Already, they could see fires and explosions in the distance, as hapless people scattered from the warfare threatening to break out around them.
Pete felt something snap. Perhaps it was the terrible memories of so long ago, perhaps it was the cold, pragmatic realization that this wasn't his world and really wasn't his problem. He turned, his jaw firm with resolve as he pushed away from the window, back to the white room with its strange levers. "I'm sorry, but you've had it."
Jackie followed, clearly confused as to what he meant as he snagged the extra jumper, the one he'd given the Doctor. "This world's going to crash and burn. There's nothing we can do. We're going home."
Home...his home. Not this world where madness reigned and he didn't exist. And this time...this time Jackie Tyler got to live.
"Jacks, take this." He tossed the yellow jumper at her.
Even as she caught it, she glared at him, glancing wildly at the scene outside. "But they're destroying the city!"
He sighed. She never had been able to take a simple order, had she? "I'd forgotten you could argue." Shaking his head, he couldn't help the small smile as he moved to place the device around her neck himself, securing it there.
"It's not just London, it's the whole world," he said simply. Gently, he lifted his hands to her face, turning it from the death and destruction to look at him. "But there's another world, just waiting for you, Jacks. And it's safe. As long as the Doctor closes the breech."
Jackie Tyler, who never left her little flat in the estate. Never once dared to dream there could be anything bigger or better. He was asking her to take his hand and follow him to his world. It was mad. He knew it was. But he really didn't care.
"Doctor," he called as she watched him, indecision in her bright, blue eyes. The Doctor turned from the window, the strange, red and blue 3D specs on his face again, a grin from ear to ear splitting his face.
"Oh, I'm ready. I've got the equipment right here. Thank you, Torchwood.," he crowed, spinning madly to a computer.
"Mad git," Jackie whispered, as Pete turned, smiling down at her and her dubious frown. "Wonder we aren't all dead yet."
"He's mad, but he's all we got," Pete replied, dropping his hands as he watched her uncertainly. "Will you do it, Jacks?"
She swallowed hard, wrapping arms around her middle. "Pete...I can't, this is my home."
"The other world's just like it. Better even."
She didn't appear so sure.
"Rose is here." Her gaze flickered to her daughter as she chatted with the Doctor. "She's all I got, Pete. I can't just walk away from my daughter."
His heart lurched as he wanted to tell her that she could have more than just Rose...she could have him. But he couldn't bring himself to say it. Around them, the ghostly sound of a computer called out it was rebooting, as the Doctor pressed his 3D specs onto Rose's face. Immediately the girl began to turn her head this way and that as the Doctor waved about.
"I've been through it. Do you see? Void stuff!"
A grin spread over Rose's face. "Like, um...background radiation."
"That's it," The Doctor crowed. "Look at the others."
Rose stared at all of them now, glancing from Mickey and Jake to Pete and Jackie. It was her mother the Doctor pointed to, and both Pete and Jackie glanced down at her track suit involuntarily. "The only one who hasn't been through the void - your mother. First time she's look normal in her life."
"Oi," Jackie bellowed, as Mickey snickered. Even Pete smiled as she glared at the alien.
The Doctor ignored her as he dashed into the white room, Rose close behind. "The Daleks lived inside the Void. They're bristling with it. Cybermen...all of them. I just opened the Void end of the verse. The Void stuff gets sucked back inside."
"Pulling them all in," Rose grinned, triumphant. What the Void was, Pete couldn't understand. Thankfully it was Mickey who asked the question.
"Sorry, what's the Void?"
"The dead space," The Doctor replied, suddenly very serious, a hint of something terrified flickering across his thin face. "Some people call it hell."
Pete felt a shiver run from neck to spine. He'd always heard of hell as a place of fire and damnation. That's not what dead space sounded like. He glanced to Mickey who already was looping a jumper around his neck.
"So you are sending the Daleks and Cybermen to hell?" A cockeyed grin broke on Mickey's face as he nudged Jake. "Man, I told you he was good."
"But it's like you said," Rose piped up behind the 3D specs. "We've all got Void stuff. Me too! 'Cause we went to the parallel world. We're all contaminated. We'll get pulled in."
The Doctor grew very still. His dark eyes flickered, just once, to Pete, and he knew exactly what the insane alien was up to. Quietly, he squeezed Jackie's hand, even as she looked puzzled between him and the Doctor, clearly not getting it.
"That's why you've got to go," he replied simply. Around them, the ghostly computer droned in the ringing silence that followed.
Rose's cinnamon eyes were wide as she stared at the Doctor.
"Back to Pete's world," the Doctor continued before pausing, a flicker of amusement as he pointed his direction. "Hey, we should call it that! 'Pete's World'! I'm opening the Void, but only this side. You'll be safe on that side."
It was so matter-of-fact, so logical. And, if it was true and this all worked, it was bloody brilliant. Something only the Doctor could think of.
"And then you close it? For good?" Pete couldn't understand much of it, but all he needed to know was that this would stop it all, that this would finally bring their long nightmare to an end.
"The breach itself is soaked in Void stuff. In the end it will close itself. And that's it. Kaput!"
Something finally roused in Rose, as it occurred to her what this would really mean. "But you stay on this side?"
Mickey too became alarmed as the full weight of it became apparent. "But you'll get pulled in."
For a long moment the Doctor met Rose's increasingly agitated gaze, before spinning to grab giant handles that Pete had seen him grab from the warehouse below. "That's why I got these! I'll just have to hold on tight! I've been doing it all my life!"
His joke fell flat as Rose simply stared at him, looking as if he'd slapped her. "I'm supposed to go?"
The manic energy in the Doctor faded. Pained sadness filled his bottomless eyes as he looked at the hurt and confused young woman. "Yeah."
"To another world? And then it gets sealed off?" There was a threat of hysterics just on the edge of Rose's tone. Beside him, Pete could feel Jackie tense at the sound.
"Yeah," the Doctor nearly whispered.
They all stood then, staring, not sure what to say. Pete glanced to Jackie, who had eyes only for Rose. Mickey and Jake both looked to him. And the other two...Rose merely watched the Doctor, her mutinous expression torn between aching and angry. And the Doctor looked as if he would rather be anywhere other than there. Silently he turned to one of the computers, busying himself with whatever was on there.
"Forever," Rose finally muttered, laughing bitterly at the world. "That's not going to happen?"
Whatever that statement was supposed to mean, they had no time to hear the Doctor's response. Outside, a crash rumbled, shaking the building as Pete finally remembered that technically it was him, not the Doctor, who was in charge of this mission. "We haven't got time to argue. The plans works. We go in."
He turned pointedly to the woman who might have been his daughter. "You too. All of us."
Rose reacted much as he would have expected, being Jackie's daughter. "No! I'm not leaving him!"
No surprisingly, the moment those words left her lips, Jackie finally woke from her stupor, digging her heels in just as firmly. "I'm not going without her!"
Pete resisted the urge to swear, loudly, and chose instead to pin them both with his best, Torchwood director glare. "Oh my God, we're going!"
He should have know that whatever world she was from, Jackie Tyler was not going to give into him without an argument. Blue eyes blazed up at him, irritation flaring. "I've had twenty years without you, so button it! I'm not leaving her."
That hurt...more than Pete wanted to admit. In the heat of the moment, he'd not considered how she'd take it. Twenty years without him, and she'd done just fine.
But it was Rose who came in to save the day. She turned her mother around to face he. "You've got to go," she told her firmly.
Rose was clearly not going to be much more successful than Pete had been. Jackie's chin jutted as she stared at her daughter as if she'd asked for an extra pudding at dinner. "Well, that's tough!"
"Mum," Rose protested as Jackie's voice rose over the faint voice of the computer's warning. She heaved a great sigh, meeting her mother's anger with a determined look, voice trembling with tears. "I've had a life with you for nineteen years! But then I met the Doctor and...all the things I've seen him do for me. For you! For all of us! For the whole stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, Mum!"
Just over Rose's shoulder, Pete could see the Doctor watching. His great, dark eyes were so sad, filled with hurt and loss, as he watched this girl speaking about him. Even so, he fumbled in his coat pocket, the impossible thing, pulling out of it a jumper on its chain. Pete watched it, knew what he was doing, and wondered vaguely where he'd nicked the spare one, and how he'd gotten it in there.
He also knew exactly what the Doctor was going to do, and he prayed to God it worked.
"But not anymore," Rose continued with more confidence as she backed away slowly, her chin lifting. "'Cause now he's got me!"
In one, swift movement, the Doctor had the jumper around Rose's neck. Even as the girl turned around to protest, Pete snagged Jackie's jumper and pushed as he pressed his own.
The world faded away to nothing. When Pete blinked his eyes again, he stood in the same room, or nearly so, but this one clearly not in the other world. The clutter and mess, the silence of it, all spoke to it being his own world, his own home.
And there stood Mickey, Jake, and Jackie...and with her Rose. And the young woman was furious. She took one, quick look around.
"Oh no you don't," she muttered to no one there. Clearly she was muttering it to the man who, till just a minute ago, was standing beside her. "He's not doing that to me again."
Before either of them could stop her, Rose pressed her jumper and was gone.