**Notes: I apologize for the long wait on this, but I needed it to be edited before I posted any more. I hope you enjoy it and I really appreciate all the follows and favourites along with the reviews! Also, a huge thank you to Elensari for beta-ing for me right after her extremely busy schedule! You are awesome!

Chapter Eight – Wandering

Rose could feel her Doctors trying to reach her mind. It was fuzzy and quiet, but she thought she could hear their voices overlapping each other in a faint shout, ~'Rose, love/darling! Can you hear me?'~

She focused as hard as she could to send them the strongest thought she could manage. Along with a wave of intense love, she thought to them, ~'Just barely! I'm alright, but trapped!'~

~'We're coming to get you, Rose! We'll find a way!'~ came the dual voice of her Doctors.

She wasn't sure if they had heard her or not. This communication was obviously difficult if they had to work together to get through to her. She was reassured to hear the words of her first Doctor in their message. The same words he said when he rescued her from the Daleks during the events of the game station. Of course, she wouldn't sit around and wait for them. Waiting for him didn't get her back after he sent her away from the game station and it didn't get her across the void when the darkness was spreading through the multiverse. Rose was a woman of action.

Studying the game board in front of her, Rose was determined to find a way of helping them get to her. She presumed that she was being held in the place marked by the red cube or that was where the controls for this little game were located. In either case, it seemed to be their goal. She had already learned that she couldn't move the Doctors' pieces. Could she move the red cube? She grasped it firmly and tried to lift or slide it, but found it securely attached to the board. Rose sighed as she continued to consider her options.

She watched her Doctors make their way through the maze slowly. The walls hadn't shifted again, but she wondered idly if she could move the walls. Choosing a spot that was far away from her Doctors (just in case), Rose grasped one of the little wooden squares that made up the walls and tried to move it. She smiled when it lifted up easily and thought about just removing a bunch of the walls to clear a path for her husbands. Panic, however, quickly set in when not only did the wall reappear, but another game piece as well. It was orange, shorter than the Doctors' pieces, but much wider than them. The piece also seemed to be moving significantly faster than her Doctors and directly towards them.

"Shit!" Rose exclaimed and tossed the little wooden square aside. She sent her husbands feelings of intense worry as a warning that something was on the way. She couldn't get a direct message to them and she wouldn't even know what to tell them was coming anyway, but felt that this was as much warning as she could give.

The Doctors listened carefully for a response to their mental shout to Rose. They received a faint wave of love and the sense that she was alright, but her mental voice wasn't even a whisper in return. They hadn't really been working with her on strengthening her telepathic abilities. Well, they had been making plenty of use of them, during various... activities. But they hadn't been formally training her to strengthen her sending and receiving or her shields. They realized now that they had been rather careless in that regard. She could be vulnerable to a psychic attack and they had just assumed that they would always be close by to protect her.

~'We're coming to get you, Rose! We'll find a way!'~ they shouted to her as strongly as they could.

They disconnected from each other physically and found that the dampening field reestablished its fog over their connection again almost immediately. The Doctors stuck close together as they made their way through the maze, just in case the walls decided to move again and separated them from each other. They hadn't felt a need to rush and cover ground more quickly yet, so they felt it would be safer if they didn't part company at this point.

So far, they tried to make their way in the general direction of where they felt Rose was located. They continued scanning the walls and floors for any signs of writing or clues as to who might be behind this or what they wanted. After several minutes of working their way towards their wife, the Doctors felt a tremor in the ground and heard a low rumbling sound. They looked at each other confusedly for a moment and their eyes both widened when they heard a piercing roar.

"That sounds, definitely not good," Alex said nervously.

"I think that is probably a rather large understatement," Evander replied and they both started to move more quickly towards Rose while listening for the approach of whatever creature had been released.

They felt Rose's worry and Evander deduced that she must be aware of what was happening to them, somehow. "She knows what's happening. Can Rose see us?" he wondered aloud.

"You're right! Her mood shifts have corresponded with things happening to us. The question is, can that help us somehow?" Alex replied.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" Rose cursed her own stupidity. "Ok, removing walls is not an option. I have to be able to do something! I wonder if I can slide them without making it worse again?"

Rose grabbed one of the little squares and turned it so that the orange piece would be blocked into a corner and desperately hoped that this would work. The wall that she moved did stay in place, but it triggered the rest of the walls to change position as well and she grumbled as it seemed to close off her Doctors' area just as thoroughly. She decided that she needed to be extremely careful in the changes that she made to the game board. The problem was that she didn't know how the changes she made would affect the rest of the walls when they moved.

Rose eventually decided that the best option was to gradually herd them closer to the red cube so that there would be less walls between them and their destination that needed moving rather than trying to plot a course through only to have it foiled by an unexpected change along the way. She also needed to keep an eye on the orange piece to try and keep it away from them. She had felt a wave of panic from them shortly after the orange piece had appeared and they had been moving more quickly through the labyrinth until she had shifted the walls again.

Trying to muster as much confidence as she could, Rose took hold of one of the walls near her Doctors and turned it so that they could move closer to the red cube. She directed feelings of confidence and encouragement towards them as strongly as she could and her hearts leapt with joy when the two pieces moved in the direction she wanted. This could work!

Rose happily grabbed another section of the walls to move, but this time, when the other walls moved, a hole opened in the board and one of the Doctor pieces fell through it. Rose's hearts almost stopped as she felt Alex's terror and pain from falling. But the fact that she could still feel him, meant that he was alive, but probably injured.

Not forgetting that she still had to help Evander get to her and avoid the orange thing, Rose looked for a way to access the level below to find out what was happening to him and if she could help. Rose tried to lift the top of the game board and discovered that the whole box unfolded with X-shaped supports between the layers. There were four levels to this game board, she discovered and her hearts suddenly sank. On the bottom level, in the corner below where the red cube sat at the top, there was a picture of a red rose.

All three of the upper levels had a red cube, but it was in a different corner on each one. How could she direct them towards these things if it meant moving away from her? She still presumed that these were their goals. Either the way to the next level or a short cut to the end of the game, if they could make it there. Adding to the difficulty of directing them through was the fact that they were now separated from each other.

Rose suddenly felt like her task of helping them was impossible and tears started to leak from the corners of her eyes. She knew they would feel her despair, but couldn't hold back the feeling of hopelessness that threatened to overcome her completely.

As the Doctors made their way towards Rose, they found that the walls were moving again and stopped running until the changes ceased. They felt their wife's emotions shift from panic to relief and looked at each other curiously.

"She is definitely aware of what's happening," Evander insisted.

"Rose will find a way to use that and help us get through this," Alex replied with a nod.

The walls shifted again and opened directly in front of them in the direction they had been trying to go. Their vague impressions from Rose seemed confident, so they tentatively moved in the direction that had just opened to them. They abruptly felt a wave of giddy joy from her and smiled.

"She's helping somehow," Alex said and Evander nodded in agreement.

They kept moving towards her and the walls shifted again to clear a path for them, but suddenly, the ground beneath Alex's feet shifted and he was sliding along the stones that were now closer to vertical than horizontal. He landed with a painful crunching sound in his shoulder and winced as he sat up. Looking up at the inky blackness above him, he couldn't see where he had fallen from, but he could feel Evander, and sensed his shock turn to determination. Alex knew what that meant and decided it was time to assess the damage.

Alex quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver with his good hand and scanned his shoulder. Dislocated, damn. He would heal quickly, of course, but he needed to get it back in place first and that was difficult to do by himself. Bracing his back against the wall for support, he grasped his upper arm with the opposite hand and quickly wrenched it back into its proper place. Alex yelled loudly as he did this and hoped that it hadn't attracted any unwanted attention, but he certainly couldn't leave it the way it was. Panting a little from the residual pain, he reached deeply into his bigger-on-the-inside pockets and found a string of handkerchiefs all tied together. Using several of these, he fashioned a sling for his arm and immobilized the damaged shoulder.

Finally taking the time to examine his new surroundings, Alex found himself in a similar set of maze-like hallways. However, the walls here were wood panelled instead of stone and there were lamps spaced periodically along them. The ceiling looked like a black abyss where he had fallen from and the floor was hardwood. Had the floor been stone, like where he had just been, his shoulder could have been worse than just dislocated.

Trying to decide which direction to go, Alex suddenly felt a wave of anguish and despair from Rose that nearly brought him to his knees. She must have discovered something about their dilemma. He knew she could still feel him, so she couldn't think he had died or anything. Maybe she blamed herself for his fall? They had figured out that she was trying to help them somehow, perhaps she felt that what she had done might have triggered it.

Trying to focus his thoughts towards her as strongly as he could on his own, Alex sent feelings of love, support and his desire to hug her as tightly as he could at that moment. He was unsure how much of those sentiments would make it through to her with the telepathic dampening field in place, but he had to try. He knew from the intensity of her emotions that Rose was crying. She was giving up and he couldn't let that happen.

Alex pulled out his sonic again and tried to scan the area. He checked to see if he could read the area well enough to get a layout of the labyrinth, but it seemed that he could only get a few halls over before the readings died off. Next, he scanned for life signs. He could still get a reading from Evander above him, as well as the creature that they had heard chasing them. Oooh, it was a Hoix. That might prove difficult to deal with.

Alex was beyond thrilled when he got one more life sign reading. It was Rose! Of course, he could feel, generally where she was, but this was far more specific and gave him more information about her well being. He could tell now, from the distance readings that she was in the direction that they had been heading, but looked to be at least one or two more floors below him. Why hadn't they felt that she was below them before? That was odd, of course the whole place was odd. Other than the sounds of the Hoix earlier, the place was absolutely silent. It was almost as if sound couldn't exist here, except that it did; he and Evander could hear each other as well as the Hoix, but no other sound at all. The impression was very disconcerting.

Checking Rose's readings again, he could see that she wasn't injured at all, just upset. He thought hard for a moment before a brilliant idea came to him and he got to work on his plan.

Doctor Evander Tyler stared in shock at the place on the ground where Alex had just disappeared. It seemed as though the stones just opened up and he fell through before they closed behind him again. His worry only increased when he could feel that Alex was in pain afterward. It would take a fair amount of damage for one of them to feel it so strongly, but he was alive and while he was hurt, he didn't seem to be afraid wherever he was now.

Squaring his shoulders, the Doctor prepared himself to rescue both of them now. After all, that was what he always did. It was time to save the day again. Checking around the corners for whatever creature was hunting him as he moved, Evander made his way towards where he felt Rose again.

He didn't get far, however, before the breath was nearly knocked out of him by the intense wave of despair he felt from his Rose. He immediately leaned his back against the nearest wall and tried to breathe normally. She was crying, he knew and couldn't help but wonder if she would have felt this bad if it had been him that had fallen instead of Alex. He quickly tried to squash that thought. Rose had made certain at every turn, that he felt equal to Alex. While he may have been jealous of the life he had given up to the other Doctor for a thousand years, it had only been about one year for them and they had been looking for him during most of it. Of course Rose would have been just as worried about him. There was something else that was upsetting her, he just couldn't think of what it might be.

Evander could just barely feel Alex trying to calm her and did his best to add his love for her to Alex's telepathic push. He wasn't the best at being reassuring in this incarnation, but he definitely loved her and could send those feelings if they would help. If there was one thing that he wanted from the first day he ever met her, it was for Rose Tyler's happiness.

While he tried to send his wife calming and confident thoughts, he kept working his way through the maze in her direction. His mind raced with thoughts of who might be behind this abduction. While it was possible that this was someone completely unknown to him, it all seemed too well planned and tailor made. Taking his wife as soon as they left the TARDIS, the telepathic dampening field, the giant puzzle without any instructions were all things that seemed very deliberate. Who was left after the war that would want to do something like this to him AND had the means to do it? Missy should be dead after that shot from the Brigadier (although, he knew that the Master had come back from what seemed to be his death too many times to count). The Black Guardian? The Eternals? This was far too complicated and indirect to be Daleks or Cybermen. He would find out eventually. Especially if this was some sort of revenge, since they would want him to know who it was that was going to defeat him once and for all (or thought they would).

He was interrupted from his musings by a sudden beeping sound coming from the sonic screwdriver in his pocket.