Chapter Text
The TARDIS fades from sight, and he takes her hand. He looks at her, and finds that she is already looking at him.
Her eyes are wide. “He’s really gone? Forever?”
He nods.
The sunlight turns her pale hair to gold, and Rose smiles. “Well,” she says, “that’s a fucking relief.”
The armoured trucks arrive a few minutes later.
++
Clever people make mistakes just like anyone else.
This is something the Doctor would do better to remember.
++
“What,” he says, “no chains?”
She sits in the chair opposite his, the table between them. He is not restrained, and she is unarmed. The door is locked. She laughs a little – a sweet, familiar sound. “Like we have any that could hold you.”
His nose wrinkles. “Is that flattery?”
“Sort of.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I admit, I expected an escape attempt or two by now. It’s not like you haven’t got out of worse scrapes.”
He shrugs. “No sonic screwdriver.”
“Yeah, right. As if that’s ever stopped you.” She leans forward, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. “So why are you sticking around? Curiosity? Apathy?” She grins. “Misguided affection?”
“How about muscular young Torchwood security personnel with very large guns?”
Her grin disappears. “They wouldn’t shoot you. I gave the order myself.”
He inclines his head in an ironic nod. “Commandant Rose Marion Tyler, ever the gracious host.”
“I do what I can.” She sits back and folds her hands on the table in front of her. “You must be very angry with me.”
“I’m worried.”
She touches one hand to her chest, over her heart. “About me? How sweet.”
“I know you, Rose. You wouldn’t do this.”
“And yet, I have. It’s really quite the puzzle.” She looks down, and he sees the dark circles under her eyes, almost hidden by makeup. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong. This is really me, in my right mind, perfectly aware of what I’ve done.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know why you’re surprised. You know what Torchwood is like.”
His lips twist in distaste. “If it’s alien, it’s ours.”
“I see you’ve read our brochure.” She crosses her legs and rests one elbow on the table. She studies her fingernails. “You haven’t asked yet what we plan to do with you.”
“I can guess.”
“Yes. Well, you’re very clever.”
“Very. And yet, there’s still something I can’t quite explain.”
She looks up. “Oh?”
“Torchwood knew when and where the TARDIS would land on this side of the Void. They were waiting.” He gives her a polite, thin-lipped smile. “You were expecting me.”
For a moment, her face is pale, expressionless. Then she laughs. “You know, in some ways, Doctor, you are entirely predictable.” She stands. “You’ll be taken back to your cell now. I’ll come down to visit again soon.”
“I look forward to it.”
If she recognises the sarcasm in his voice, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She smoothes her palms over her skirt, gives him a small nod, and turns to the door. He stops her with her name.
She turns back, her hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”
“What did you tell your mum? About where I’ve gone?”
She smiles crookedly, and he sees the girl she was in her eyes. “I think,” she says, “that after the last few years even my mum has learnt not to ask those sorts of questions.” She knocks hard on the small window in the door; a moment later, the door unlocks with an audible whoosh. “You should try to escape. It might make you feel better.”
She leaves, and the door locks behind her.
“I feel fine,” he says to the empty room. “Just fine.”
++
His cell is almost comfortable.
White walls, white chair, white bed with white sheets and a white pillow. His suit and hair and skin lend the room its only colour, and there are no shadows.
He watches the white of the ceiling, eyes open wide, and thinks of absolutely nothing as one heart beats in his chest.
Two days pass before he sees her again.
++
“No one’s tried to dissect me yet.”
She can’t hide her wince, but she tries. “The dissection comes after the interrogation. Obviously.”
“Obviously.” He leans forward, letting his hands slide past the center of the table. Close to hers. “No one’s interrogated me yet, either.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”
“Oh, of course. Silly me. You’ve been – well, on the job, let’s say – since our oh-so-dramatic reunion.” He sits back in his chair, scratching his neck. “Though, strictly speaking, that was him, not me.” He smiles. “Did he spill anything juicy to his long lost love?”
“That information is classified,” she says, returning his hard smile with one of her own. “Sorry.”
“You make a terrible bureaucrat.”
“You make an excellent prisoner.”
“Well, I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“I remember.” She looks down at her hands, at the table. “You want to hear something funny?”
He stares at the top of her head, her pink scalp and the pale roots of her hair. “Absolutely. I’m dying for a good laugh.”
She curls her fingers, lacing them together. “I thought it would be impossible, lying to him. To you. I didn’t think I’d be able to go through with it.” She looks up. “It was so easy I nearly laughed myself sick.”
There is a long silence. He clears his throat. “You didn’t come find me because the stars were going out.”
She shakes her head. “It’s complicated.”
“Rose. Remember who you’re talking to.”
“Like you’d let me forget.” She sighs and looks at him with old eyes. “There were things that needed to be done. Pulling Donna out of that parallel world, making sure you were both in place on the Crucible. I didn’t know about the meta-crisis, not exactly, but I knew how it would end.” She gestures to the table between them. “You and me, like this.”
“How? How did you know?”
She shrugs. “It was in the memo.”
“Rose.”
She chuckles. “You seem to think that I owe you an explanation.” She leans forward. “I really don’t.”
He reaches across the table and takes her hand. “Rose, listen to me. I can help. Whatever’s happened, whatever’s made you do this, you know I can stop it.”
She stares down at his fingers curved around hers, her face empty. “I’m sorry,” she says. She pulls her hand away. “It doesn’t work like that anymore.”
“How does it work?”
She won’t meet his eyes. “I do what needs doing, and I do it alone.”
“Well,” he says through his teeth, his temper beginning to fray. “That’s very John Wayne of you.”
“I like to think so.” She stands. “I have to leave the city for a few days. I’ll be back before it’s time for your transfer.”
He drops his hands into his lap, his fingers curling into fists. “My transfer?”
“We’ll talk again soon.” She nods to him, the very picture of curt professionalism. “Doctor.”
He has seen her face still and trapped in stone, has carved it himself with a hammer and chisel and chipped away at pale marble until her eyes stared back at him.
He has never seen her look so cold.
“You know,” he says, “I’ve only just realised.” He sits back and folds his arms over his chest. “I have absolutely no idea who you are.”
A slow, sad smile spreads across her face, and she holds out her hand. “Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. Nice to meet you.”
++
She’s gone for two weeks.
They let him out of his cell for brief periods, for walks up and down empty corridors and showers in the abandoned employee gym. One of the guards sneaks him a stack of paperbacks – murder mysteries and Regency romances with broken spines and tea stains. He reads them all in half an hour, and then he reads them again.
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon on his eighteenth day held prisoner in the Torchwood Institute when his guards lead him to the interrogation room in handcuffs.
He sits across from her empty chair and waits.
++
“You’re not Rose Tyler.”
The little bearded man in the white lab coat laughs and shakes his head. “You must be horribly disappointed; I certainly would be.” He wipes his hand on his coat – smearing a bit of raspberry jam across the lapel – and offers it for a handshake. “I’m Simon. Well, Dr. Price. Dr. Simon Price. But you should call me Simon. Such an honour to finally meet you – I’m absolutely over the moon.”
After a moment’s hesitation the Doctor reaches to take the man’s hand, but Price startles at the clink of the handcuffs. He strides back to the door and presses his face to the small window at its center. “Morrison, you blockhead. You forgot to remove his restraints.”
The door opens with a pneumatic sigh and Morrison pokes his head through. “Ms. Tyler’s orders, I’m afraid, sir. While she’s away—”
Price dismisses this with a wave of his hand. “Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I know you have your duty, Morrison, and I trust Ms. Tyler’s judgment to the utmost, but I think on this one small matter we must find her to be somewhat overcautious.” He points to the Doctor. “Now remove this man’s shackles at once.”
The guard sighs and pulls a key from his belt. He steps over to the table and unlocks the handcuffs. “They’re not really shackles, sir. Technically speaking—”
“That’s enough, Morrison, thank you. I’ll let you know when we’re done.” The guard leaves, and Price takes the seat at the other side of the table. “Well, that’s that taken care of.”
The Doctor stares at him. “I’m sorry, but who the hell are you?”
“Didn’t I introduce myself? My goodness, what a doddering old fool I’ve become.” He takes the Doctor’s hand from the tabletop and gives it a vigorous shake. “Dr. Simon Price, head scientific advisor here at Torchwood London. Our young Ms. Tyler’s second in command, one might say.”
“How nice for you. I’m the Doctor.” He pauses. “Though I get the feeling you already knew that.”
Price laughs. “Yes, quite. Been hearing stories about you for years – it’s always ‘the Doctor said this’ and ‘the Doctor blew up that.’” He gives the Doctor a grin. “Don’t know if you ever noticed, but the lady in question once fancied you something dreadful.”
“Really. Did she.” He folds his arms. “Must be terribly awkward for her, having to imprison me like this.”
Price’s good humour evaporates, and his round face is suddenly solemn. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You make an excellent point.” He leans forward. “Why don’t you enlighten me?”
Price shakes his head. “It’s not my place, and it’s certainly not the time.” He sweeps one hand over the table, as if brushing the subject aside. “No matter. I’ve not come to indulge such morbid thoughts; I have a happier mission before me.” He smiles beatifically. “Our Rose once told me that you were in possession of – wonder of wonders – a screwdriver designed to emit high frequency sonic waves.”
The Doctor opens his mouth, then closes it again. “You want me to tell you how to make a sonic screwdriver?”
Price raises his hand to his heart. “Heavens no! Perish the thought. Rose assured me that you would never tamper with human technological development in such a reckless fashion.” His smile turns hopeful. “But maybe just a hint?”
The Doctor blinks, twice. “Dr. Price—”
“Simon.”
“Simon, you are either the worst interrogator I’ve ever met or by far the very best.”
Price chuckles, but there is little humour in it. “You are not here to give us information, Doctor. If you were, we would have finished with you on your first day.” He sits back and scratches his chin, running his fingernails through his short, greying beard. His eyes are large, red-rimmed and sad. He smiles. “I think I’d like to make a screwdriver. I’m tired of weapons – cannons and poisons and detonators. I’d like something small, something useful. Something...innocent.”
“Quite.” The Doctor taps his fingers against the tabletop. “And how long would it be, do you think, before you tired of innocent toys and started to churn out sonic explosives, sonic blasters, sonic cannons—”
Price closes his eyes, shaking his head. “No, no, no. It’s not like that at all; you have it all wrong.” He folds his hands together and rests his knuckles against his chin. “She told us that you wouldn’t understand. She told us, but we couldn’t begin to imagine what it must have been like, a world without—” He stops. “Your universe must be so different.”
“It’s only parallel.” The Doctor frowns. “And I’ve been to this universe before, you know.”
“Yes, during the Cybus incident. I remember.” He studies the Doctor’s face for a long moment. “Mickey Smith told me you were with my wife when she died.”
The Doctor’s response is blankness, an empty stare. Then he understands, and he cannot hide his flinch. “Mrs. Moore. Your wife was Mrs. Moore.”
“Angela Price. Yes.” He looks away. “Mickey and Jake Simmonds found me not long after. That’s when I quit my job at Cybus Industries and came to work for Torchwood.”
“Trading the devil you know for the devil you don’t.”
Price laughs softly. “More like jumping from the frying pan to the fire. But at least these days I know why I’m burning.”
The Doctor drops his hands to his lap and brushes his thumb over the fading pink lines left behind by the handcuffs. “Your wife was a remarkable woman.”
“She was.” Price smiles, a fond, absent expression. “An absolute fiend for gadgets, my Angela. She would’ve loved a sonic screwdriver.”
“Now, now, Simon,” the Doctor says, not unkindly. “We both know you’re not here to ask me about a screwdriver.”
“Oh dear. You’ve seen through my clever ruse.” Price stands and reaches into the pocket of his lab coat. “While I’m afraid, Doctor, that I cannot tell you why you were brought here—”
“Because it’s not your place.”
“Because Rose asked me very nicely not to, and she never does anything without good reason.”
The Doctor has to tilt his head back slightly to meet the other man’s eyes. “You trust her.”
Price nods, slowly. “With my life. With the lives of my children.” He pauses. “With every terrible weapon and instrument of destruction I have ever designed.”
“What has she done to earn your trust?”
Price pulls a small silver tube from his lab coat and slips it into the inside breast pocket of the Doctor’s blue suit. “And what exactly,” he says, “has she done to lose yours?”
The Doctor reaches for the tube, a question on his lips, but Price stops him with a shake of his head.
“Not quite sonic, but one of my more successful prototypes. It’ll open any lock in the building.” He winks. “I was hoping you might give me some feedback for further improvements.”
The interrogation room door flies open and Rose stalks in, her heels clicking against the floor. “Simon, have you lost your mind?”
Price steps away from the Doctor and raises his hands in a gesture of innocent appeal. “You’re back early, Director Tyler. I do hope nothing’s gone wrong on—”
She grabs Price by the elbow to silence him, her expression fierce, almost frightened. “Are you mad? I can’t even begin to – have you gone absolutely bloody insane?” She reels on the Doctor. “What did he tell you?”
Price steps between them. “Rose, I sabotaged the security feeds. No one is watching.”
Rose pales, and for a moment the Doctor thinks she might slap the other man. Instead she pulls Price to the door, steps in close and says something low and heated that makes him close his eyes and take a deep shuddering breath. He leaves the room without looking back.
The Doctor swings his feet onto the table. “I like him.”
She laughs, somewhat shakily, and sits on the edge of the table. Her suit is rumpled, her expensive shoes coated in a thin, white dust. “Why am I not surprised?”
“You should give him a raise.”
“If he hasn’t just signed his own death warrant, I might.” She rubs her hand over her face. “Sometimes I think I’ve become too much like you. Telling people only what I think they need to know, and nothing more.”
“I’ve never really been known for my management skills.”
“No kidding.” She stands, running her fingers through her hair. “You were a leader once, though. A general.”
There is an airless silence. “How do you know that?”
She meets his eyes, her expression unfathomable. He rises from his chair and takes her hand. Her fingers are cold in his.
“Rose, tell me. Who’s watching?”
She pulls her hand free and raises it to his chest, to his single heartbeat and the small silver tube waiting in his suit coat pocket. Her fingers follow its outline, and she smiles. “No one you need to worry about.” She steps back, and he sees something like relief in her face. “Goodbye, Doctor,” she says, and leaves.
When he is escorted back to his cell, there is no mention of handcuffs.
++
He hadn’t been in the Torchwood building for more than ten minutes before he’d come up with an escape plan.
It’s simple enough, really. Locks are just locks and doors are just doors, and he is, after all, the Doctor. He can leave any time he wishes.
But first he has to know why.
++
He’s lying in bed two days later when the security camera overhead explodes in a shower of sparks. A small puff of smoke follows, and when it clears the camera lens is little more than a black smudge on the ceiling.
The cell door opens with a hiss. “Uh oh,” Rose says. “Looks like someone overloaded the security system.” She closes the door behind her. “We’ll have to get a man in.”
He sits up, and the tile floor is cold against his bare feet. “You people spend an awful lot of your time sabotaging yourselves.”
She laughs. “Oh, you have no idea.” She leans back against the door and for a long moment they watch each other in silence. Her suit today is simple grey wool, her hair pale and pinned neatly back. She looks like money.
She looks tired.
He nods to the chair beside the bed. “Are you going to sit down?”
“No.” She steps away from the door and crosses her arms over her chest. “Doctor, why are you still here?”
He scratches at the stubble growing on his chin; he hasn’t shaved yet today. “Where else would I go, exactly?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere.” She frowns. “And since when do you hesitate to wander off into the unknown?”
He shrugs. “Since when do you pay two hundred quid for a pair of shoes?”
Her expression softens somewhat, and for a moment she looks like she might laugh at him. “Not even close. But thanks for noticing.”
“Well, I notice all sorts of things. For example.” He stands and slips his hands into his pockets. “Those are the same shoes you wore two days ago. Only – and this is the part that you’ll find particularly impressive, I think – two days ago I noticed that those stylish yet practical heels were coated in a fine white dust. The sort of dust one finds at construction sites where extremely high-density metals are manipulated by extremely advanced equipment.” He steps closer, leaning in. “Now, I know this universe runs a few years ahead of ours, and so some discrepancies in technological advancement are to be expected, but still I wonder: what kind of world is it that can build void hoppers and cybernetic men, and yet still travels by zeppelin?”
She takes a stumbling step back. “I don’t—”
He grips her arm. “No, Rose. No lies. Your Dr. Price is a clever man, no doubt about it, but for him sonic tools are the stuff of science fiction. Do you really expect me to believe that he and his crack team of Torchwood scientists designed that dimension cannon of yours?”
Her eyes are wide. “I—” She swallows. “I expected you to be gone by now.”
His hold on her arm loosens; he steps back. “Well,” he says, “I’m sorry to disappoint.”
She shakes her head, and a note of desperation enters her voice. “You don’t understand – you shouldn’t be here.”
“I hate to reduce these things to cold, hard logic, but if you didn’t want me to stay then you probably shouldn’t have locked the door.”
She laughs, a sharp, startling sound, and then she kisses him. Rises up onto her toes, cups his cheek with her hand, and presses her lips to his. There is something fierce in the soft, merciless pull of her mouth, in the brush of her thumb against his face. His eyes close, but he doesn’t return the kiss. His hands stay at his sides, curled into fists.
She pulls away, and her palm lingers against his cheek. Her eyes are bright. “When I—” The words catch in her throat and she stops, looks away. Breathes. “When I first came here, I couldn’t sleep. The doctors said it was depression, or stress, or – well, you know the ridiculous things clever people say when there’s a problem they can’t solve. I tried pills and psychoanalysis and acupuncture, but nothing helped. I went for runs late at night, alone, and Mum was sure she was going to wake up one morning to hear that my body’d been found in an alley somewhere.” She chews on her bottom lip, staring past his face. “And then I got this machine. I keep it by my bed at night, and it plays the sound of the ocean or rushing rivers or whales singing. Rain against tin roofs, that sort of thing. And one of the settings, one of the sounds is just this deep, thrumming sort of white noise.” She meets his eyes. “It sounds like the TARDIS.”
He nods. “And now you can sleep.”
“No,” she says. “Now I don’t even try.”
She is not the woman she was. He can see that now, can read it in the steadiness of her hands and the hardness in her eyes. He looks at her face and sees his own, and he begins to understand. “You’re at war,” he says. “You’re at war, and you’re losing.”
“Close,” she says, and gives him a broken smile. “But not quite.”
He takes her hands, her skin cool and soft against his. “Rose, I should tell you: you’re not half so good at enigmatic as you seem to think.”
She laughs, and a strand of pale hair falls into her face. “But I’ve been practicing.”
“Takes years to perfect; don’t be too hard on yourself.” She is not the woman she was, but the changes are themselves familiar. She is capable of a coldness he could not have imagined in her before, a coldness that grew in him over centuries, in war after war and loss after loss. There is anger behind it, an echo of his own, and he finds comfort in their complicity. Comfort and something else, something sharp-edged and new.
He drops one of her hands and steps in close, half-hoping she’ll back away.
She doesn’t.
His single heartbeat sounds impossibly loud in his ears as he reaches for the silver clip pinning back her hair. He opens it with a soft click and her hair falls, brushing her shoulders, the skin of his hand. She smells clean, like soap and shampoo and fresh, cool water and he wants to slide his cheek along hers, to breathe her in. Instead, he waits.
There is a moment of hesitation, a slow swell of possibility. Then she lays her free hand against his chest and pushes, moving with him as he moves back toward the bed. His legs hit the mattress and he sits, staring up at her. Their hands still linked, he tugs her forward until she stands between his legs and for a moment his vision blurs, overwhelmed by the reality of her, of her hips and waist and the soft curve of her breasts beneath her suit and blouse. His eyes move again to her face, and she is smiling.
“What?” he says, a little hoarsely.
“Nothing.” Her smile widens. “It’s just…surprising. That you can be such a bloke.”
He isn’t sure whether he should defend his blokeness or deny it vehemently. He frowns and settles for sliding his palm along her thigh, past the hem of her skirt.
“Oh,” she breathes. Her eyes close, and he feels her muscles tense under his touch. Her grip on his fingers loosens, and soon both his hands are beneath her skirt, his fingers brushing her arse as he traces a path from her hips to the waistband of her nylons.
“Take off your shoes,” he says, voice low and unfamiliar to his own ears. She rests one hand on his shoulder and, leaning into him, steps out of her heels. She is suddenly smaller, closer, and her thumb brushes the skin of his neck. He remembers when she used to straighten his collar, her fingers lingering over black leather until he could find some excuse to move away, to gain some safe distance. Now he follows her touch, hungry for it, and his fingers slip within the elastic waist of her nylons.
She squeezes his shoulder. “Are you going to give me a hand with those, or do I have to do everything myself?”
“You’ve learned to delegate. Lovely.” He eases the nylons over her hips, his fingers brushing bare skin as he pushes them past her knees and they pool at her feet. He traces the curve of her right calf with one finger, and she shivers. “Why do you dress like this, Rose?”
“I don’t.” She glances almost self-consciously down at her suit. “At least, not when I’m in the field.”
“And here?” he says.
She meets his eyes evenly. “Because it makes me look like something I’m not.”
“What’s that?”
Her grin should have been a warning; she pulls her knickers down and straddles him, leans in close and touches her lips to his ear. “Harmless,” she says, and he feels her teeth against his skin as she smiles.
Before Canary Wharf, before the wall between them and the betrayal that followed, he touched her (never like this, one hand smoothing over the bare skin of her arse, the other fumbling with the buttons of her suit jacket, her blouse) and took her hand as if she were something fragile, something he was bound to lose. It was true then, and he thinks (her moan against his throat as he slides a hand between them, her heat pooling around his fingers) that it might be true still.
And yet, when she lies back against the white sheets of his prison cell bed and lets him touch her until she comes (her fingers shaking and soft against the back of his neck while she begs him not to stop, or leave, or be lost) he can’t remember why he denied them this before. Why he held himself apart. She reaches for the zip of his trousers with a breathless determination and he knows: she is fragile, and he may break her.
But she will almost certainly break him.
He doesn’t last long after he sinks inside her. His heart burns in his chest – dying a little, it seems, with every thrust – and she is beautiful, watching him. Almost smiling, almost not. She tightens around him (almost smirking) and he cannot help but say it, just before he comes.
“I love you,” he says, and her smirk disappears.
After, she is quiet. They lie together, sticky and cold and still half-dressed, and he watches her stare at the ceiling, at the dark smudge where the camera had been. She clears her throat. “What if I told you that I planned this? That I fucked you just so you’d be easier to manipulate?” She turns her head and meets his eyes. “Would you leave then?”
“No,” he says. “Not even if I believed you.”
She kisses him, angry and bruising, and he can hardly keep up as she slides on top of him, her hair falling around her face. She stops abruptly. “You’re a stubborn idiot,” she says, “and sometimes I hate your guts.”
“Sometimes I hate yours,” he says.
“Not enough, apparently.” She brushes her mouth over his and whispers, “Remember this and don’t repeat it, not to me or anyone else: seven, seventy-nine, sixty-four, twenty-four, thirteen.”
He sits up a little, pushing her back. “Rose, what—” Her fingernails dig into his chest, and he shuts up. He doesn’t look at the burned security camera on the ceiling, but he remembers Price’s face after Rose had whispered in his ear. Someone’s watching, camera or no camera. “Well,” he says. “That’s creepy.”
She climbs off him and off the bed, buttoning her blouse. She finds her suit jacket on the floor and shakes out the wrinkles. “We’re covered, by the way. I take an oral contraceptive, and I’m clean.” She pauses. “I assume you are as well, unless you’ve had unprotected sex with someone else in the fortnight since you grew from a disembodied hand.”
He does up his trousers and tries not to look like he’s just been slapped. “Well, Prison Guard Morrison and I have grown quite close, but we’ve always been safe,” he says. She doesn’t even smile.
She slips on her heels and then sits primly on the edge of the bed. If it weren’t for the mussed halo of her hair and the pink stubble burn around her mouth, he might wonder if he’d imagined the whole thing. “When was the last time you slept?” she asks.
He frowns at her. “I don’t know. Why does it matter?”
“You haven’t since you’ve been here, and I think you might need to.”
“Rose, you know I don’t—”
“I know. But things are different now.” She pulls something from the pocket of her suit jacket, a tiny jet injector with a syringe full of pale amber liquid. He watches, stunned, as she pulls up his sleeve, presses the injector against his skin, and pulls the trigger. “There,” she says, laying the injector aside. “I told him you wouldn’t fight me.”
The room is hazy at the edges, and her face blurs. “Rose—” As he falls he can feel a hand against his cheek, cold and solid and strangely real, but if it is her hand it must be a dream, mustn’t it, because he lost her years ago and dreams are cruel that way. He opens his mouth to tell her this, but no sound comes out.
“I’ll be there when you wake up,” she says, and she sounds so sad that he thinks it must not be her after all. He wishes it were.
“I miss you,” he says, and sleeps.
++
Seven, seventy-nine, sixty-four, twenty-four, thirteen.
He remembers.
++
He wakes up in the back of an armoured truck, slumped across a cushioned seat. His hands are bound.
“Uh oh,” Morrison says. “You aren’t supposed to be awake yet.”
The taste in his mouth is absolutely revolting, and he grimaces. The leather cushion is sticky and hot under his cheek. “Note to self,” he mutters. “The only safe sex is no sex.”
The young man’s eyes are wide and puzzled. “I’m sorry, sir?”
The Doctor pulls himself upright, swaying in his seat as the truck makes a sharp turn. “I’m the prisoner, Morrison. You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. In fact, I would rather you didn’t.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He tugs at the sleeve of his uniform, and there’s a pregnant silence. “Mickey Smith told me that you were a good man. That you were there when he and Ms. Tyler stopped the London cyber-conversions.”
The Doctor smiles thinly. “You might say that.” He pauses, watching the other man’s face. “Did you lose someone?”
Morrison swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “I did.”
The Doctor nods, looking away. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” He shifts uneasily, colour rising in his cheeks. “That’s why we’re doing this, you know. We’re not bad people.”
“I know.”
Morrison shakes his head. “You don’t know anything. She didn’t want you to, was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to control you if you did. She thought you might jeopardize everything.” He leans forward, and his voice begins to shake. “We never asked for this, I swear. If it weren’t for people, for monsters like John Lumic and those other greedy – all they cared about was the technology. They said they could make the world better, that they could end poverty and hunger and war, but now they’re all dead and it’s just us, just Torchwood, and if it weren’t for Ms. Tyler I don’t know how we’d—” He stops short, breathing hard. “It was a devil’s bargain, and now she’s going to pay the price.”
The Doctor nods. “I understand now,” he says gently. “You’re doing this to help people.”
Morrison rubs his hand over his face. “Of course. Christ. We would, I would never—”
“Didn’t think for a moment that you would. I’m an excellent judge of character, you know, and I could spot your pure intentions from a mile away.” He shifts to the edge of his seat. “Now here’s my only question: what exactly are you doing?”
The truck stops, and a moment later the growling engine falls silent. There’s a sharp knock on the back door, and Morrison flinches. “He’s awake,” he calls out, freeing the Doctor’s hands. “The tranq wore off too soon.”
The Doctor shrugs. “Aliens. We’re tough to prescribe for.”
Morrison’s eyes go huge. “You’re – what?”
“Well, only half-alien these days. Still, that makes me even more unpredictable.” He grins. “Wow. She really doesn’t tell you guys much, does she?”
The truck door opens and Morrison leads him out into a vast, empty warehouse. Their footsteps echo across concrete as they walk to a rusted service lift. Morrison pushes a button, and the lift grinds to life far below. They wait.
Morrison gives him an uneasy look. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking—”
The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Oh, go ahead.”
“What kind of alien – half-alien, I mean – are you?”
The lift arrives with a screech of metal on metal, and the Doctor slips his hands into his pockets. “The stubborn kind,” he says, and steps into the lift.
Their descent is long, silent but for the mechanical rumblings that surround them. The shadows grow deeper, and when they reach the bottom the darkness is nearly complete. Morrison fumbles with something – a circuit breaker, maybe. The room stays dark.
The Doctor takes a breath of cool, stale air. “What is this place?”
“I don’t know. The R&D blokes call it the Stairway to Heaven.” He coughs. “I think that might be their idea of a joke.”
The lights come on.
++
It is possible to be in two places at once.
The Doctor stands in an underground Torchwood lab, but memory – living, seething memory – overwhelms the present and resurrects moments dead and gone. He is half-human, trapped in a parallel world, but tinny voices echo in his ears, the voices of friends lost to a war he’d ended over and over again. Their voices, and the smell.
He was a general, once.
++
“Huh,” Morrison says. “I thought it would be bigger.”
The Dalek transmat platform is crude and absurdly simple, obviously built by human hands. The Doctor approaches it slowly, still dazed. “Where did you get this?”
“We made it.”
The Doctor’s temper snaps. “Yes, I see that, thank you. But how did you get the design? How could you possibly—” He stops, drags the back of his hand over his mouth. Stares at the transmat with wide, blank eyes. “It’s never going to be over, is it?”
Morrison takes a hesitant step forward. “Sir?”
The Doctor turns back to the other man, suddenly grinning. “Morrison, what’s that phrase people use when they’re about to do something they’d really rather not do, but that they’re going to do anyway because they don’t actually have a choice?”
“Um.” Morrison frowns. “Bite the bullet, sir?”
“That’s the one.” He hops onto the platform. “See you in hell,” he says, and activates the transmat.