The Woman (5/7)
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
Rating: M
Features: Rose Tyler, the 11th Doctor, Amy Pond, River Song, Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Ianto Jones, Lois Habiba
A/N; Nothing you recognize belongs to me! This was supposed to be the last part, followed by an epilogue, but then it just GOT LONGER and as I was sitting at 10,428 words (unfinished) I decided to split the chapter up so you can have an update now and it's a little more manageable for me. I'm still trying to post the last parts tonight, but if I don't look for them on Wednesday night. And as always, enjoy! Thank you to Riona for taking a look at this chapter, especially because it was super frustrating for a while!
Summary: She is 'the woman' to both of them.
The ride back to 221 b Baker Street is tense. They take Mycroft's car, of course, and Rose sits across from Sherlock. No one speaks as the driver navigates the streets of London, but Sherlock stares at her for the entire ride. There is desperation in the clench of his fists and the way his lips pull into thin lines across his face. John watches Mycroft. He's harder to read than his brother-damn near impossible usually, but John thinks he detects a hint of discomfort from the man. Good. They only reason they took this case in the first place was because Mycroft insisted. Was it worth hurting his brother and endangering national security? The case itself seems to have been a terrific failure.
Mrs. Hudson is waiting for them when they arrive.
"You've got a visitor," she confides in a loud whisper. "I put her in the sitting room, if you boys would just tidy up a bit…" She wrings her hands. "Oh, tea! I'll bring up some biscuits too."
John at least has the presence of mind to thank her. Mycroft twirls his brolly absently as he peruses messages left on his mobile and Sherlock stares at the wall as if it holds the secrets of the universe. Rose watches Mycroft, but John catches the way her eyes dart to Sherlock every few seconds.
Sherlock catches his arm as they climb the stairs to the flat. "Something's not right here," he murmurs with a pointed look in Rose's direction. "She's lying."
"She's been lying," John shoots back under his breath. "Everything about her is a lie; why are you surprised?"
"Why would she say that she doesn't care?" his friend continues, heedless of the interruption. "It doesn't make sense."
Oh. There's a sinking feeling in John's stomach. He really cares for her; Sherlock Holmes, the man without a heart, has fallen in love. Or the closest approximation he has. "She was using you. Sherlock-you can't trust anything she says."
"Yes, thank you John." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I don't-but I took her pulse and it was elevated, her pupils were dilated, respiration increased and that's chemistry and chemistry doesn't lie. There's something else going on here." He growls, frustration coming off him in waves. "I hate having a mystery at both ends of the case."
Mycroft slides a key into the door and John would be surprised, but the elder Holmes is the power behind the presidency and John has learned not to underestimate his reach. He and Sherlock are last to enter, and when he does he has to pick his jaw up from the floor.
Jackie Tyler, wife of President Peter Tyler, is in their living room. Rose shoots a look at Mycroft, and John is just a bit surprised when he doesn't spontaneously combust. "Don't think this changes anything, Mr. Holmes."
Mycroft remains a strange combination of menacing and bland. "This was not my idea, Miss Tyler. Your mother is-quite persuasive."
"You'd better believe it," Mrs. Tyler snaps. "When my daughter disappears for five years and I find out she's been-selling herself you can bet your arse I'll be bloody persuasive!"
"Hello mum," Rose replies calmly. "How's Tony?"
Jackie glares at her. "He misses his sister."
"You kicked me out, Mum." The edge is back in her voice, just beneath the surface. "Remember?"
"You were spouting all those mad accusations, Rose, what was I supposed to think? I mean, mind control? Really?" Jackie holds out her hands imploringly.
Rose remains unmoved. "Yeah, mum, mind control. Alien mind control-although it didn't start out that way. An' I know because I found it." Her control is slipping-the carefully constructed, posh accent she's used since John found her basically in Sherlock's lap gives way to a well-worn South London drawl.
"Honestly, Rose, I know it's been hard, but your dad-"
"He is not my father," Rose snaps.
"Would you like some tea, Mrs. Tyler?" John asks, to defuse the tension. He is distinctly uncomfortable, caught in the middle of a family drama wrapped in a national crisis.
"Call me Jackie, love," the older woman says. "And that would be lovely." Her gaze rests on Sherlock, finally, who has been uncharacteristically quiet. Her eyes narrow. "Oh, I know you."
"I highly doubt that," Sherlock replies, sarcastic as ever. "I don't have much occasion to meet the President, although I did waste a great deal of time at the People's Palace recently."
"You've got a clever mouth." She strides forward and Sherlock takes a step back, almost unconsciously. She examines him like a slide under a microscope and John can't help the little surge of hilarity that accompanies the slightly panicked look on Sherlock's face. "Pretty," she continues, "and a genius with all the emotional awareness of a dead fish, and a complete git to boot. Oh, I bet she loves you." Sherlock opens his mouth to reply with something undoubtedly witty and condescending, but her palm against his cheek cuts him off and his head snaps to the side. "That's for seducing my daughter you pillock!" Jackie shouts.
"Mum!" Rose pushes her away from Sherlock, who has one hand pressed to his cheek and is working his jaw experimentally. "Stop it!"
"I know he's gone and it's hard but you can't replace him, Rose," Jackie pleads. "You've got to let go of this obsession."
"Oh, like you replaced dad?" Rose snaps back. "Settled down with a man that looks just like him and everything! But he's not, mum, he's not dad and he never will be!"
"Rose Marion Tyler!" Jackie practically shrieks.
John holds up a hand. "Wait, wait just a moment. You think he," he points to Sherlock, "seduced her?" He points to Rose.
Jackie folds her arms over her chest. "I don't need to think! I know!"
John tries to hold in the laughter, he really does, but he fails. It's so impossible, so completely wrong and the affronted expression Sherlock has plastered on doesn't help at all. Jackie is glaring daggers at John by the time John manages to stop. "I'm sorry," he says but he's not and then Sherlock is glaring at him too.
"It's true." Rose shifts just enough to redirect her mother's attention. "I seduced him because I needed him to solve a puzzle. Biggest security leak in the PRGB, and it's your golden boy's little brother."
Mycroft is still on his phone, clearly disgusted with the triviality of the drama unfolding around him. Jackie shakes her head slowly; her forehead is wrinkled and the fine lines in the corner of her mouth deepen her frown. "What happened to you, Rose? You were never this cold."
"I grew up." Rose turns to face Mycroft, who snaps his phone shut and slides it into the pocket of his trousers. "Like I said before, Mr. Holmes, this changes nothing. The cannon, or every dirty secret you've ever pushed under the rug will be on tomorrow's news."
"Rose." Jackie lays a hand on her arm and though her daughter tenses she doesn't pull away. "What are you doing?"
When she looks back at her mother there's something like hope, a light that John hasn't seen before and it threatens to blind him with its brilliance. "I'm going home."
In the end Mycroft agrees and Jackie leaves. There's nothing else that he can do; Rose remains firm in her demands and no amount of shouting from Jackie will dissuade her. Sherlock's brother blusters like a champion but she cuts through his façade with the sweet suggestion that the Republic's citizens should decide who to trust. John isn't sure who taught her how to haggle, but whoever it was, she did him proud.
Sherlock vanishes shortly after Mycroft, leaving John alone with Rose. She sits next to the window, her eyes fixed on the night sky. It isn't much to see, in London; light pollution drowns out most of the stars and Zeppelins block most of the sky from view. John usually avoids looking up. It's much more productive to look down, as Baker Street is notorious for puddles and hidden ice patches in the winter and the last thing he needs is to land on his arse on his walk home from the tube station.
She doesn't speak and the silence between them stretches into something rigid. There are questions he needs to ask her, about her intentions, about Sherlock, about what the hell is going on, but the words stick in his throat. He turns to leave.
"Please don't think poorly of me, Dr. Watson." Her voice effectively shatters the silence. Rose glances back over her shoulder and offers him a small smile. "If there was another way I would have taken it, in a heartbeat."
"Just-was it really mind control?" It isn't the question he wants to ask but he'll work up to what her relationship with his friend is.
"It didn't start out like that." She strokes her phone absently, her eyes still on the few stars strong enough to pierce through London's airspace. "It's a telepathic wave modulator from Entuuri-their equivalent of a cell phone. The Entuu are highly telepathic: it's like sight or smell or taste or touch, for them, just one more sense and when they travel through space the distances involved disrupt their telepathy." She pauses and her hands clench for just a moment. "It's-distressing. Imagine realizing that you're the last human being in the entire universe and you're stranded millions of miles from home. Imagine you wake up one day and you're blind, or deaf. That's what it feels like when their telepathy cuts out."
"Sounds like you've had experience." It's impossible, of course, she's human, after all, and humans aren't telepathic-are they?
"I had a friend," Rose acknowledges. "It happened to him once. It-wasn't pretty. He isn't Entuu, but the principal is the same. The modulator boosts their signal, lets them remain in contact when they're millions of miles from home. A ship crashed just north of Ystradgynlais, Wales and I was called in to consult. I've got-unusual experience and I've encountered Entuu before." Her lips curls and her fingers tighten around the phone. "When Pete found out about the modulator he had me dismissed from the project, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I found the Entuu in one of the holding cells; they were terrified, almost out of their minds with panic, and they told me what happened. Pete took the modulator, had Torchwood scientists reprogram it so that it didn't just enhance an already telepathic signal, but broadcast one of its own. The Entuu gave them the specs, they trusted me and I let Pete take away their only connection to their home-to their families. He was going to take something precious and turn it into a weapon."
"You could have gone to the Yard," John suggests.
She laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. "No one would have believed me, and if I told anyone I'd be more likely to be thrown in gaol than he would. He had me disowned, fired, and nearly committed to a mental institution. My own mother turned against me, my friends thought I was barking; the Preachers were the only ones who believed me. They made me an offer: they would help me get the cannon if I disabled the modulator for them."
He blinks. "You made a deal with terrorists?"
Rose scoffs. "What makes a terrorist a terrorist, Dr. Watson? You fought in the Cyberwars; the Preachers were the ones who stopped Lumic. But it was easier for Pete to brand them as rebels and anarchists than to acknowledge the flaws in his system."
John stretches his leg; he'd been in Afghanistan, destroying one of the last of Lumic's factories when he'd nearly died. That was what brought him back to the PRBG, which led to meeting Sherlock, which governs the whole of his life now. And she's right, he has worked with the Preachers before; they knew the cybermen best, knew how they operated and how to break through the nearly impenetrable armor in which the cyborgs encased themselves. They were good, special ops good and ungoverned by any sort of military discipline outside of a loose hierarchy. "So why didn't they just destroy the machine themselves?" he asks and rubs his leg. "Why did they need you, specifically?"
"One," Rose rests her head against the wall. "They didn't have the machine's location. They didn't even know it existed until I told them about it-they just knew that Pete Tyler was toying with the same path Lumic walked down. And two, it's a telepathic machine. Torchwood had it broadcasting a signal that would cause immense pain to anyone who wasn't expressly excluded from the range; it's amazing what you can do with a brain scanner." She grins and taps her forehead. "But I traveled with a telepath for two years; I've got the best shields this side of the galaxy, maybe the universe. No one gets in or out of my head unless I let them."
"Alright, so they needed you," John allows, "but what about Sherlock? If you could just waltz into that bloody room and shut the damn thing off why involve him?"
"We needed the key." She crosses her legs and runs her hands down her thighs, smoothing away the wrinkles in her trousers. "That room has several unique properties, one of which relates to the doors: they're not always in the same place. It took me months to get the map, but it was encoded. I couldn't go to Mycroft for obvious reasons, so it had to be Sherlock."
It's the wrong answer. A fire has been building in his chest since he saw her at Battersea and it roars into life. "Do you have any idea what it's been like?" he demands, voice tight and sharp. "He thought you were dead. He mourned you! He pretends to be cold and nearly inhuman but he's not, you know and you broke his heart so you could get a code solved. How, in any universe, is that justified?"
"I'm protecting him!" she hisses back, teeth clenched and eyes burning. "D'you think Pete would take kindly to finding out that your friend was a willing participant in the end of his political career? How long d'you think Sherlock would last if Moriarty came after him with a purpose instead of this cat-and-mouse they've got going on? I've seen him, John, I know what he's capable of."
"Sherlock can beat him." John isn't sure exactly where his confidence comes from, but it's there, just as strong as the anger. He's seen Sherlock Holmes do impossible things, what's one more?
"You think so?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.
John rolls his eyes. "Why are you telling me this? Why bother to justify yourself to me? You got what you wanted. Why warn us? Why bother?"
Rose is silent for a long moment. Her eyes stray back to the window and the cloudy London sky. For a moment the mask slips and she looks ageless with half her face in shadow and the light from the streetlamps lending her eyes a strange, golden glow. "When you're in school they tell you about History like it's some immutable fact, like anyone can really know what happened and how and why-but I've been to the past and I've learned that in the end, it's just a story written by the winner. Most of it is lies, justification and national mythology written to bind people together and make them more malleable. But you, you tell stories-his stories. I'd like you to tell mine so that when I'm gone what really happened is remembered, and not the lies Pete will spread. Will you do that for me? Will you tell my story?"
It's a last request, of sorts, and he is honor bound to take it. "Let me get my pen."
She hands him a CD in a thin black case. "It's all here." Her lips quirk. "I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to say."
Sherlock Holmes does not sleep. He does, most nights-well, some nights-but not tonight. He studies every action, every word, every piece of the puzzle he has collected and he comes to the same conclusion time and time again: she is lying, but why? What does she gain? What are her motivations? It's a riddle he can't solve and it drives him up the wall. Her story checks out-mind control and supposed terrorists and hiding and running and all of that, but he can't understand why. There are the usual motivations of course-money (but she doesn't want any), power (but she already has it), love (or conviction) and the last one is the strongest, but it's not love of country because this isn't even her world, and it's not for her family because Mr. Tyler's fall from grace will most certainly impact them negatively. It could be love of justice-she's like John sometimes, firm in her convictions and convinced that 'right' is some sort of incorruptible truth instead of a construction and imposition of society. He runs his hands through his hair and glances at the clock. Too late to try and sleep (not that his restless mind will let him) and too early to rise.
He gets up anyway, and pads into the sitting room. John is there with his laptop out and all the lights off. For a moment Sherlock contemplates turning around but if John is foolish enough to watch pornography in the sitting room he deserves to be embarrassed.
It isn't pornography. It's a video of Irene-Rose. He still has trouble reconciling the names in his head. She's got a sweater he's never seen before on, and her face is bare. He nearly doesn't recognize her without the immaculate make-up and dramatic clothing. Her hair hangs down, blonde and slightly wavy. The image is frozen on the screen and John has a word document open blocking half of her face.
"What's this?" Sherlock asks.
John starts. "Bloody hell!" he snaps. "Make some noise, will you?"
Sherlock ignores his outburst. "What are you watching?" He taps the screen.
John frowns. "It's from Rose."
"Yes, I can see that," he replies testily. "Now what is it?"
"Her story." John types something and Sherlock's lips purse.
"She gave it to you?"
The barest hint of a smile crosses John's face. "Yep."
Sherlock crosses his arms and glares at the screen. John continues typing. He's never been great at it, although writing the blog has helped. Sherlock could type faster with his eyes closed, but John taps away, slow and steady and methodical. It's enough to drive anyone mad. "Oh, just push play," he snaps.
"Are you sure you want to see this?" The concern in John's voice is real, and Sherlock wonders what is on this tape that put it there.
He shrugs. "What could it possibly tell me that I don't already know?"
Rose wakes early the next morning. Mycroft is an early riser and she knows he'd like nothing more than to catch her out, to make her feel vulnerable and perhaps get some leverage. She's not about to let that happen. She stares at her face in the mirror; she's older than she was the last time she saw the Doctor, and it shows just a bit at the corners of her lips and her eyes, but there's something more. She feels like she's looking at a stranger, but she's not and the dichotomy makes her fingers shake as she reaches out to touch the glass.
There'll be this woman, this strange woman walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles away from Earth, but she's not Rose Tyler, not anymore. She's not even human.
She very nearly breaks the mirror. Her hands clench and her jaw tenses and she wants to smash, wants to scream and yell and drown out the hateful words her mother once said. If Jackie knew, oh if she knew the truth she'd turn away from her daughter and never look back. Rose takes a deep breath. Mycroft will call, of course he will. In the meantime-the show must go on.
He doesn't call. He visits. It's brief and bitter but the elation that's threatening to send her into a dizzy spiral of joy dulls the razor edge of his words. The cannon is small enough to be mistaken for an old laptop and she can hardly believe she's holding it in her hands. The plans are on a flash drive, safely tucked in her pocket, and when Mycroft bids her a sardonic farewell she waves him off without a thought. It's surreal, this feeling, the knowledge that the end is in sight. She's been fighting for so long, searching for so long that she almost doesn't know what to do with herself. Hope unfurls within her and she feels too large for her skin, like her joy will burst out through her fingertips and the ends of her hair and refract through the air around her.
Sherlock finds her curled up on the window seat. There's a heavy sort of feeling to the air, now that he knows what is coming-now that he knows what has been. If he hadn't seen her with his own eyes, if he hadn't been to Torchwood and seen the machine itself he never would have believed her. Mind control? Aliens? Parallel universes? It sounds like a science fiction novel made reality, but it's more than that. It's an epic, a tragedy, and though he will not bother to learn about such things he is quite able to appreciate them. He has found what moves her, what has always moved her. He should be satisfied, should disdain her for allowing her emotions to rule her-love after all, is a vicious motivator-but he cannot. She has bested him, after all, and she used love to do so.
"Did you ever figure it out?" she asks. The phone is heavy in her hand and her fingers wrap around it like it's something precious. Her thumb hovers over the screen as she looks up through her eyelashes at him. 'I A LOCKED,' the phone says, as it has since she left it with them.
Sherlock frowns. "No."
Irene-Rose-shrugs. "That's all right. I didn't expect you would. There's a story, you see, and you came in rather close to the end. Her thumb flicks down four times and she holds the phone up so he can see.
'I AM T I M E LOCKED' it reads. He sniffs. It's gibberish to him, and for the first time in his life, now that he knows everything he finds himself more confused than when he began. She is a study in contradictions: hard and yielding, glass and steel, and the mystery of her has driven him near madness (that's what love is, biochemistry and madness). In her presence, unmasked, he cannot help but feel small; like he has been caught on the edge of some great epic and pulled into its midst.
It is a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Always before he was center of gravity and others orbited around him-John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, they each had a life, of course, but for better or for worse it centered on him. Being relegated to that position was distressing and overwhelming-and liberating.
"You've accomplished your mission," he says finally, to break the silence and rolls his skull between his hands to give them something to do. She's watching him with whiskey-dark eyes and those red, red lips and he's never been a man to give into baser urges; he considers them beneath him, knows that they cannot compare with the pure aesthetic stimulation of the intellect-but she tempts him, oh she does. "What will you do now?"
A grin splits her face, the first that he's seen. It's nearly blinding with the sheer force of her joy. White teeth sparkle at him and her tongue touches the corner of her lips mischievously. "I'm going to Canary Wharf, Mr. Holmes. I need to see a man about a time machine." She stands with practiced, fluid grace and he can read the combat training in her now, knows that it's not for show. "Coming?"
Should he? He's scolded John so many times about giving in to romantic impulses, about embellishing his accounts of Sherlock's genius and lingering over unimportant details instead of sticking to the facts. He should say no, should dismiss her from his mind and move onto the next case (there is always a next case)-but he doesn't. He would like to see this story ended, would like to learn what role he has played in a tale with all the markings of a tragedy.
"Yes," he says. "Just let me ring John. I'm lost without my blogger, you know."
He has a feeling that she does.
The trip back to Torchwood is uneventful. John keeps looking at Sherlock like he expects the other man to suddenly burst into some strong emotion, but Sherlock remains maddeningly calm. A suppressed excitement thrums in the air, though, and just beneath the surface. Rose stares out one window and Sherlock stares out the other, trapped in their own thoughts, and John sits between them feeling a little like a gooseberry and a lot out of his depth. The cab lets them off just outside One Canada Square and Rose takes the lead.
"Let me do the talking," she instructs the men. "I've got an in, after all, and we'll only get one chance to do this."
"Yes ma'am," John replies. Sherlock merely nods.
"Right." Rose takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders.
Jackie is waiting for them at the front desk. Rose tenses for a fight-but there isn't one. Jackie looks at her for a long time with a sad, wistful expression on her face. It's the same way she looked when she helped Rose get back to the Doctor the first time, and when she watched her daughter leave with him on Christmas night.
"I forget sometimes that you're all grown up," the older woman says finally. "You'll always be my little girl, Rose, and I forget that you're a woman too. Of course you have to go-it's the Doctor. An' if your dad was here he'd tell you the same thing." She blinks and Rose can see that her eyes are full. "Just don't forget me, or Tony, or even Pete. I know he's not your dad, but he tries. He does."
It isn't what she expected, but it's exactly what she needs. Rose hugs her mother fiercely. "You'll always be my mum," she replies. "Even when I'm in another universe. Nothing will ever, ever change that. I love you an' Tony, and I wish things could have been better with Pete." They cling to each other and John elbows Sherlock until he looks away. When they finally separate Jackie busies herself wiping her eyes and Rose gives her a watery smile.
"Oh, look at that," the older woman clucks. "You've made me all weepy and now my makeup's run."
"You look lovely, Mum," Rose insists and rolls her eyes.
"Is everything alright, Mrs. Tyler?' the young woman behind the desk inquires.
Jackie waves her concern away. "Yes, Rachel, everything's fine. We're going up to the lever room."
Rachel eyes the visitors. "Ma'am, I don't believe they have clearance-"
"My husband runs this organization Rachel!" Jackie barks. "And I'll take my daughter and her friends where I damn well please!"
"Yes Mrs. Tyler," Rachel replies, sufficiently cowed. Rose hides a smile behind her hand and John's eyes twinkle merrily. Sherlock watches with interest, but says nothing.
The lever room is silent. Thick sheets of plastic cover what little furniture hugs the walls. Everything is white-the ceiling, the floor, the chairs, the walls, even the drapes that cover the windows. Every sound echoes, even the near-silence of their breathing. It is sterile and empty and cold-like a tomb. Rose shivers and clutches the bag with the cannon more tightly to her. Toward the near end of the room two levers swathed in plastic stand perpendicular to the floor.
Wind and screaming and the pull of the Void. Her hand is slipping-gone. Fingers claw at empty air and his eye bore into her, black and wide, rimmed with white as he screams for her. She is falling, falling, falling and she will never ever stop.
She stares at the levers, back straight, arms wrapped rigidly around herself, until Jackie lays a hand on her arm.
"Rose?" her mother asks softly.
"It's nothing. Just a memory." Rose takes a deep breath and lays the cannon on the floor next to the wall. She presses a series of buttons and a low hum fades into existence. After a quick check she rises from her crouch and steps back.
John looks from Rose to the cannon, and then back again. "Now what?"
Rose leans up against the wall. "Now we wait."
River Song sashays into the TARDIS with her usual combination of seduction and arrogance, but there's something off, a hardness he hasn't seen before (but once) and a twist of the lips that tells him it's going to be a bad day. He knows within ten seconds of meeting her what sort of day it will be, where they are in this strange morass people call a relationship. There are good days, when he can almost forget the ache in his chest, when he can get over the way her hand feels wrong when he takes it and the way her blatant sexuality grates on him. There are days when she's brilliant and he's almost happy, when they are very nearly just two people and not the Doctor and River Song, when the paradox hanging over their heads is a distant irritation.
Then there are days like today, when the rage bubbles in the back of his throat, helpless rage at their situation, at the universe, at the stupid, stupid humans who ripped something bright and shining from him and replaced it with a woman he doesn't trust but must, who keeps secrets and who in turn has secrets kept from her, who he will never fully know just as she cannot fully know him. There are days when he screams at her and she screams right back, when all of the myriad ways he has failed her come back to haunt him and he remembers that far from saving everyone, this go 'round he seems incapable of saving anyone.
"You're late," she informs him.
"Oh, hello Doctor, thanks for the lift," he shoots back. "Terribly sorry for the short notice, did I inconvenience you?"
"Alright you two," Amy says with a glare very nearly worth of Jackie Tyler. "Do I have to come down there and separate you?"
And then the TARDIS stops, just stops like someone's thrown the parking break but inertia carries Amy forward and she slams into the glass floor. Oh, she will have bruises tomorrow, she can feel it. The lights flicker and go out and the only illumination in the room is the dim light of the Time Rotor.
"Oh," she groans. "Ouch."
"Amy!" the Doctor shouts from somewhere beyond the console. She knows it's bad when even he can't keep upright.
"I'm here!" she yells back and drags herself onto her knees. The Doctor dances around the console, River at his side.
"We're dead in the water," the older woman says grimly.
The Doctor's eyes narrow. "That's impossible! We're in the Vortex! We can't be stopped. You don't just stop in the bloody Time Vortex!"
River slides the monitor over and gestures sharply at it. "Yes, Sweetie, I know, but that doesn't change the fact that we are completely and totally still. Ergo, dead in the water. It's an old Earth adage and I know you're familiar with it."
Something flickers off in the corner of Amy's vision. She blinks. She doesn't remember hitting her head, but she must have, because there are three people in the console room-so why are there four? A woman is standing at the foot of the stairs. She's a bit older than Amy, maybe early thirties, and there's something familiar about her, an itch in the back of Amy's skull. Her hair is long and blonde and straight and it hangs down well past her shoulders. She's got huge, dark brown eyes and elegantly sculpted brows. A corner of her mouth tugs up into a half-smile and something in Amy's mind clicks into place. It's not just a woman-it's the woman, the one the Doctor watches when the universe is cruel and he thinks that she's gone to sleep. She's older than she was in the videos, and there's something hard about her and she's got a gun in a holster strapped to her thigh-but Amy would recognize her anywhere.
"Doctor!" she calls and takes a halting step back towards him.
"Not now Amelia!" he snaps and then goes back to arguing with River. He's slipped into Gallifreyan without even noticing, or he's swearing up a storm because the TARDIS isn't translating.
"Doctor, you really want to see this," Amy presses.
"I said not now!" His voice is hard and sharp and if she didn't know better she'd be hurt. But she does know better and she's never let him push her around before so she'll be damned if he starts now. She opens her mouth to try again, but the woman cuts her off.
"Doctor." Her voice is strange, almost choral, and soft enough that Amy thinks he hasn't heard, not at first. River does, though, and stares over his shoulder. She's gone pale and still and that finally gets through to the mad Time Lord who is still denying that what has just happened is possible.
He turns, slowly, as if he's afraid of what he will see. The woman smiles at him, slowly at first, but it breaks over her face like a sunrise, illuminates her like dawn. The Doctor stops breathing. Amy would be worried, but he's boasted long and often of superior Time Lord physiology so she's merely-concerned.
"What are you," he asks, his voice soft. If she didn't know better Amy would think that he was fine, that this was all routine, but he's her best friend; she's traveled with him for around a year (time is-complicated-in the TARDIS) and she can read him like an open book-so she notices the way his shoulders twitch and the icy stillness he projects. He's on the verge of breaking.
"I'm a hologram," the girl says. "Literally, anyway." Her smile fades, just a bit. "I'd hoped to get a you that knows me. Explaining is-difficult-and we're on a bit of a schedule."
"Oh," he says, and his voice is low and dark and the Doctor has stepped out-there's someone else standing where her best friend was. "I know who you look like-but Rose Tyler is gone. Gone and never ever coming back, so I suggest you drop this ridiculous pretense and tell me what you really are."
Something in her eyes changes. "Sure you wanna have that conversation here, Doctor?" she asks and there's an edge of bitterness in her voice that bites. "S'a bit private, after all, and you've got company." South London blurs the edges of her words, makes them thick and heavy in the near-silent TARDIS. It sounds more natural than the posh accent she had been using, like it belongs on her.
"You say you're Rose Tyler." He leans forward until their noses are almost touching. "Prove it."
"All right then." She glares right back at him. "Shall I begin with the first word you said to me? No, that's too simple and besides, you used that when you were regenerating. It was 'run,' by the way," she says-apparently for Amy and River's benefit. "But moving on-what about 'I could save the world but lose you?' or perhaps 'I'm so glad I met you,' or what about the very first place you took me-to the end of the world, Doctor, to watch the Sun swallow the Earth in its death-throes. What about that time you had a gun to my head, or when you took me back to meet my father just because I asked? What about satellite five and 'is a slave a slave if he doesn't know it?' What about that time I burned for you, to save you, because I would happily die if I knew you would live? Or is that too mundane for you, too far in the past?"
His eyes are wide and Amy wonders if he notices that he's leaning back, trying to get away without actually moving. Rose crowds his space, takes a step forward and even though she's insubstantial Amy can feel her presence.
"Want to go a little more recent?" she continues, words clipped and precise like a scalpel. "Shall I tell them about our trip to Scotland-about Queen Victoria and the werewolf and the bet that cost so much more than ten quid? Shall I mention Queen Elizabeth's coronation and the Wire and 'no power on Earth can stop me?' What about the 2012 Olympics? What about Chloe Webber and the Isolus and 'what you really need is a hand to hold?'" Rose takes a shuddering breath and a muscle in her jaw twitches. "Or maybe I should tell them about the impossible planet and the beast in the pit; about a group of brilliant people and a voice in the dark. You told me it lied, Doctor." He flinches. She presses on like an avalanche. "You were wrong. Maybe that's the story I should tell-the last story I have left, about a man and a woman and whole universe in between them; about a beach and a choice and an unfinished sentence."
River is staring. Amy doesn't know who she is, or what place she holds in the Doctor's life (although Amy can hazard a guess)-but there's a look like devastation on her face, like resignation and pity and heartbreak rolled into one as she watches the Doctor and Rose. What does it feel like to watch the man you love with the woman that he loves?
"Oh, for the love of god!" another voice chimes in. "Will the two of you just kiss and make up already?" A petite woman with bleached-blonde hair steps into view and the Doctor blinks.
"Jackie?" he asks once he manages to stop gaping like a demented fish. "Jackie Tyler? Why am I hallucinating you? As I recall you got the best of the bargain: your husband and your daughter all in a neat little package." There's a bitter edge to his voice that cuts like glass.
"You're lucky this is just a hollowhatsit," Jackie grumbles. "You're looking for a slap, you are!"
"Doctor," River calls. He ignores her. "Doctor!"
"Yes, what is it now Dr. Song?" he demands waspishly.
She shoves the monitor towards him. "You'll want to take a look at this."
"I'm in the middle of a crisis, River," the Doctor says so reasonably that he has to be faking it. "And Amelia seems to be caught in it as well. Can whatever chaos you've managed to drum up wait until I've figured out why I am hallucinating about Tyler women?"
River glares at him. "No, it really can't, sweetie." She gestures impatiently to the monitor and, grudgingly, the Doctor turns away from the troubling hologram.
"Oh no," he breathes and his eyes widen as he studies the screen. He seizes it with both hands and pours over the strange symbols swirling across it. "Oh, this is extremely very not good."
"Doctor?" He ignores Amy in favor of muttering viciously at the screen and futilely pressing buttons and flipping switches. "Doctor! What's wrong?"
"She's locked me out of the controls!" he snaps back and whirls around. Rose is watching him with a particularly lupine smile. For a moment Amy feels a bit like little red riding hood staring down the wolf-oh, what big teeth you have. "You cheated!" the Doctor accuses and brandishes a finger at Rose.
"I may have forgotten to mention that the cannon automatically locks onto the TARDIS and feeds her our current coordinates," Rose allows.
He crosses his arms over his chest. "You lied. Look at you, Rose Tyler, all grown-up."
She shakes her head. "Nothing I've told you is untrue."
"Ah! But a lie of omission is still a lie." The Doctor is almost gleeful at catching her out.
She regards him evenly, and her tone is carefully neutral but the words still cut like broken glass. "Yes, well-you'd know all about that."
"I hate to disrupt this lovely domestic," River interjects, "but sweetie, you'll want to find something to hold on to!" The TARDIS shakes and somewhere deep inside the living ship a bell rings, loud and long. "We're going to crash!"
Part Six
Rating: M
Features: Rose Tyler, the 11th Doctor, Amy Pond, River Song, Mycroft Holmes, John Watson, Sherlock Holmes, Ianto Jones, Lois Habiba
A/N; Nothing you recognize belongs to me! This was supposed to be the last part, followed by an epilogue, but then it just GOT LONGER and as I was sitting at 10,428 words (unfinished) I decided to split the chapter up so you can have an update now and it's a little more manageable for me. I'm still trying to post the last parts tonight, but if I don't look for them on Wednesday night. And as always, enjoy! Thank you to Riona for taking a look at this chapter, especially because it was super frustrating for a while!
Summary: She is 'the woman' to both of them.
The ride back to 221 b Baker Street is tense. They take Mycroft's car, of course, and Rose sits across from Sherlock. No one speaks as the driver navigates the streets of London, but Sherlock stares at her for the entire ride. There is desperation in the clench of his fists and the way his lips pull into thin lines across his face. John watches Mycroft. He's harder to read than his brother-damn near impossible usually, but John thinks he detects a hint of discomfort from the man. Good. They only reason they took this case in the first place was because Mycroft insisted. Was it worth hurting his brother and endangering national security? The case itself seems to have been a terrific failure.
Mrs. Hudson is waiting for them when they arrive.
"You've got a visitor," she confides in a loud whisper. "I put her in the sitting room, if you boys would just tidy up a bit…" She wrings her hands. "Oh, tea! I'll bring up some biscuits too."
John at least has the presence of mind to thank her. Mycroft twirls his brolly absently as he peruses messages left on his mobile and Sherlock stares at the wall as if it holds the secrets of the universe. Rose watches Mycroft, but John catches the way her eyes dart to Sherlock every few seconds.
Sherlock catches his arm as they climb the stairs to the flat. "Something's not right here," he murmurs with a pointed look in Rose's direction. "She's lying."
"She's been lying," John shoots back under his breath. "Everything about her is a lie; why are you surprised?"
"Why would she say that she doesn't care?" his friend continues, heedless of the interruption. "It doesn't make sense."
Oh. There's a sinking feeling in John's stomach. He really cares for her; Sherlock Holmes, the man without a heart, has fallen in love. Or the closest approximation he has. "She was using you. Sherlock-you can't trust anything she says."
"Yes, thank you John." Sherlock rolls his eyes. "I don't-but I took her pulse and it was elevated, her pupils were dilated, respiration increased and that's chemistry and chemistry doesn't lie. There's something else going on here." He growls, frustration coming off him in waves. "I hate having a mystery at both ends of the case."
Mycroft slides a key into the door and John would be surprised, but the elder Holmes is the power behind the presidency and John has learned not to underestimate his reach. He and Sherlock are last to enter, and when he does he has to pick his jaw up from the floor.
Jackie Tyler, wife of President Peter Tyler, is in their living room. Rose shoots a look at Mycroft, and John is just a bit surprised when he doesn't spontaneously combust. "Don't think this changes anything, Mr. Holmes."
Mycroft remains a strange combination of menacing and bland. "This was not my idea, Miss Tyler. Your mother is-quite persuasive."
"You'd better believe it," Mrs. Tyler snaps. "When my daughter disappears for five years and I find out she's been-selling herself you can bet your arse I'll be bloody persuasive!"
"Hello mum," Rose replies calmly. "How's Tony?"
Jackie glares at her. "He misses his sister."
"You kicked me out, Mum." The edge is back in her voice, just beneath the surface. "Remember?"
"You were spouting all those mad accusations, Rose, what was I supposed to think? I mean, mind control? Really?" Jackie holds out her hands imploringly.
Rose remains unmoved. "Yeah, mum, mind control. Alien mind control-although it didn't start out that way. An' I know because I found it." Her control is slipping-the carefully constructed, posh accent she's used since John found her basically in Sherlock's lap gives way to a well-worn South London drawl.
"Honestly, Rose, I know it's been hard, but your dad-"
"He is not my father," Rose snaps.
"Would you like some tea, Mrs. Tyler?" John asks, to defuse the tension. He is distinctly uncomfortable, caught in the middle of a family drama wrapped in a national crisis.
"Call me Jackie, love," the older woman says. "And that would be lovely." Her gaze rests on Sherlock, finally, who has been uncharacteristically quiet. Her eyes narrow. "Oh, I know you."
"I highly doubt that," Sherlock replies, sarcastic as ever. "I don't have much occasion to meet the President, although I did waste a great deal of time at the People's Palace recently."
"You've got a clever mouth." She strides forward and Sherlock takes a step back, almost unconsciously. She examines him like a slide under a microscope and John can't help the little surge of hilarity that accompanies the slightly panicked look on Sherlock's face. "Pretty," she continues, "and a genius with all the emotional awareness of a dead fish, and a complete git to boot. Oh, I bet she loves you." Sherlock opens his mouth to reply with something undoubtedly witty and condescending, but her palm against his cheek cuts him off and his head snaps to the side. "That's for seducing my daughter you pillock!" Jackie shouts.
"Mum!" Rose pushes her away from Sherlock, who has one hand pressed to his cheek and is working his jaw experimentally. "Stop it!"
"I know he's gone and it's hard but you can't replace him, Rose," Jackie pleads. "You've got to let go of this obsession."
"Oh, like you replaced dad?" Rose snaps back. "Settled down with a man that looks just like him and everything! But he's not, mum, he's not dad and he never will be!"
"Rose Marion Tyler!" Jackie practically shrieks.
John holds up a hand. "Wait, wait just a moment. You think he," he points to Sherlock, "seduced her?" He points to Rose.
Jackie folds her arms over her chest. "I don't need to think! I know!"
John tries to hold in the laughter, he really does, but he fails. It's so impossible, so completely wrong and the affronted expression Sherlock has plastered on doesn't help at all. Jackie is glaring daggers at John by the time John manages to stop. "I'm sorry," he says but he's not and then Sherlock is glaring at him too.
"It's true." Rose shifts just enough to redirect her mother's attention. "I seduced him because I needed him to solve a puzzle. Biggest security leak in the PRGB, and it's your golden boy's little brother."
Mycroft is still on his phone, clearly disgusted with the triviality of the drama unfolding around him. Jackie shakes her head slowly; her forehead is wrinkled and the fine lines in the corner of her mouth deepen her frown. "What happened to you, Rose? You were never this cold."
"I grew up." Rose turns to face Mycroft, who snaps his phone shut and slides it into the pocket of his trousers. "Like I said before, Mr. Holmes, this changes nothing. The cannon, or every dirty secret you've ever pushed under the rug will be on tomorrow's news."
"Rose." Jackie lays a hand on her arm and though her daughter tenses she doesn't pull away. "What are you doing?"
When she looks back at her mother there's something like hope, a light that John hasn't seen before and it threatens to blind him with its brilliance. "I'm going home."
In the end Mycroft agrees and Jackie leaves. There's nothing else that he can do; Rose remains firm in her demands and no amount of shouting from Jackie will dissuade her. Sherlock's brother blusters like a champion but she cuts through his façade with the sweet suggestion that the Republic's citizens should decide who to trust. John isn't sure who taught her how to haggle, but whoever it was, she did him proud.
Sherlock vanishes shortly after Mycroft, leaving John alone with Rose. She sits next to the window, her eyes fixed on the night sky. It isn't much to see, in London; light pollution drowns out most of the stars and Zeppelins block most of the sky from view. John usually avoids looking up. It's much more productive to look down, as Baker Street is notorious for puddles and hidden ice patches in the winter and the last thing he needs is to land on his arse on his walk home from the tube station.
She doesn't speak and the silence between them stretches into something rigid. There are questions he needs to ask her, about her intentions, about Sherlock, about what the hell is going on, but the words stick in his throat. He turns to leave.
"Please don't think poorly of me, Dr. Watson." Her voice effectively shatters the silence. Rose glances back over her shoulder and offers him a small smile. "If there was another way I would have taken it, in a heartbeat."
"Just-was it really mind control?" It isn't the question he wants to ask but he'll work up to what her relationship with his friend is.
"It didn't start out like that." She strokes her phone absently, her eyes still on the few stars strong enough to pierce through London's airspace. "It's a telepathic wave modulator from Entuuri-their equivalent of a cell phone. The Entuu are highly telepathic: it's like sight or smell or taste or touch, for them, just one more sense and when they travel through space the distances involved disrupt their telepathy." She pauses and her hands clench for just a moment. "It's-distressing. Imagine realizing that you're the last human being in the entire universe and you're stranded millions of miles from home. Imagine you wake up one day and you're blind, or deaf. That's what it feels like when their telepathy cuts out."
"Sounds like you've had experience." It's impossible, of course, she's human, after all, and humans aren't telepathic-are they?
"I had a friend," Rose acknowledges. "It happened to him once. It-wasn't pretty. He isn't Entuu, but the principal is the same. The modulator boosts their signal, lets them remain in contact when they're millions of miles from home. A ship crashed just north of Ystradgynlais, Wales and I was called in to consult. I've got-unusual experience and I've encountered Entuu before." Her lips curls and her fingers tighten around the phone. "When Pete found out about the modulator he had me dismissed from the project, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve. I found the Entuu in one of the holding cells; they were terrified, almost out of their minds with panic, and they told me what happened. Pete took the modulator, had Torchwood scientists reprogram it so that it didn't just enhance an already telepathic signal, but broadcast one of its own. The Entuu gave them the specs, they trusted me and I let Pete take away their only connection to their home-to their families. He was going to take something precious and turn it into a weapon."
"You could have gone to the Yard," John suggests.
She laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. "No one would have believed me, and if I told anyone I'd be more likely to be thrown in gaol than he would. He had me disowned, fired, and nearly committed to a mental institution. My own mother turned against me, my friends thought I was barking; the Preachers were the only ones who believed me. They made me an offer: they would help me get the cannon if I disabled the modulator for them."
He blinks. "You made a deal with terrorists?"
Rose scoffs. "What makes a terrorist a terrorist, Dr. Watson? You fought in the Cyberwars; the Preachers were the ones who stopped Lumic. But it was easier for Pete to brand them as rebels and anarchists than to acknowledge the flaws in his system."
John stretches his leg; he'd been in Afghanistan, destroying one of the last of Lumic's factories when he'd nearly died. That was what brought him back to the PRBG, which led to meeting Sherlock, which governs the whole of his life now. And she's right, he has worked with the Preachers before; they knew the cybermen best, knew how they operated and how to break through the nearly impenetrable armor in which the cyborgs encased themselves. They were good, special ops good and ungoverned by any sort of military discipline outside of a loose hierarchy. "So why didn't they just destroy the machine themselves?" he asks and rubs his leg. "Why did they need you, specifically?"
"One," Rose rests her head against the wall. "They didn't have the machine's location. They didn't even know it existed until I told them about it-they just knew that Pete Tyler was toying with the same path Lumic walked down. And two, it's a telepathic machine. Torchwood had it broadcasting a signal that would cause immense pain to anyone who wasn't expressly excluded from the range; it's amazing what you can do with a brain scanner." She grins and taps her forehead. "But I traveled with a telepath for two years; I've got the best shields this side of the galaxy, maybe the universe. No one gets in or out of my head unless I let them."
"Alright, so they needed you," John allows, "but what about Sherlock? If you could just waltz into that bloody room and shut the damn thing off why involve him?"
"We needed the key." She crosses her legs and runs her hands down her thighs, smoothing away the wrinkles in her trousers. "That room has several unique properties, one of which relates to the doors: they're not always in the same place. It took me months to get the map, but it was encoded. I couldn't go to Mycroft for obvious reasons, so it had to be Sherlock."
It's the wrong answer. A fire has been building in his chest since he saw her at Battersea and it roars into life. "Do you have any idea what it's been like?" he demands, voice tight and sharp. "He thought you were dead. He mourned you! He pretends to be cold and nearly inhuman but he's not, you know and you broke his heart so you could get a code solved. How, in any universe, is that justified?"
"I'm protecting him!" she hisses back, teeth clenched and eyes burning. "D'you think Pete would take kindly to finding out that your friend was a willing participant in the end of his political career? How long d'you think Sherlock would last if Moriarty came after him with a purpose instead of this cat-and-mouse they've got going on? I've seen him, John, I know what he's capable of."
"Sherlock can beat him." John isn't sure exactly where his confidence comes from, but it's there, just as strong as the anger. He's seen Sherlock Holmes do impossible things, what's one more?
"You think so?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.
John rolls his eyes. "Why are you telling me this? Why bother to justify yourself to me? You got what you wanted. Why warn us? Why bother?"
Rose is silent for a long moment. Her eyes stray back to the window and the cloudy London sky. For a moment the mask slips and she looks ageless with half her face in shadow and the light from the streetlamps lending her eyes a strange, golden glow. "When you're in school they tell you about History like it's some immutable fact, like anyone can really know what happened and how and why-but I've been to the past and I've learned that in the end, it's just a story written by the winner. Most of it is lies, justification and national mythology written to bind people together and make them more malleable. But you, you tell stories-his stories. I'd like you to tell mine so that when I'm gone what really happened is remembered, and not the lies Pete will spread. Will you do that for me? Will you tell my story?"
It's a last request, of sorts, and he is honor bound to take it. "Let me get my pen."
She hands him a CD in a thin black case. "It's all here." Her lips quirk. "I've had a lot of time to think about what I want to say."
Sherlock Holmes does not sleep. He does, most nights-well, some nights-but not tonight. He studies every action, every word, every piece of the puzzle he has collected and he comes to the same conclusion time and time again: she is lying, but why? What does she gain? What are her motivations? It's a riddle he can't solve and it drives him up the wall. Her story checks out-mind control and supposed terrorists and hiding and running and all of that, but he can't understand why. There are the usual motivations of course-money (but she doesn't want any), power (but she already has it), love (or conviction) and the last one is the strongest, but it's not love of country because this isn't even her world, and it's not for her family because Mr. Tyler's fall from grace will most certainly impact them negatively. It could be love of justice-she's like John sometimes, firm in her convictions and convinced that 'right' is some sort of incorruptible truth instead of a construction and imposition of society. He runs his hands through his hair and glances at the clock. Too late to try and sleep (not that his restless mind will let him) and too early to rise.
He gets up anyway, and pads into the sitting room. John is there with his laptop out and all the lights off. For a moment Sherlock contemplates turning around but if John is foolish enough to watch pornography in the sitting room he deserves to be embarrassed.
It isn't pornography. It's a video of Irene-Rose. He still has trouble reconciling the names in his head. She's got a sweater he's never seen before on, and her face is bare. He nearly doesn't recognize her without the immaculate make-up and dramatic clothing. Her hair hangs down, blonde and slightly wavy. The image is frozen on the screen and John has a word document open blocking half of her face.
"What's this?" Sherlock asks.
John starts. "Bloody hell!" he snaps. "Make some noise, will you?"
Sherlock ignores his outburst. "What are you watching?" He taps the screen.
John frowns. "It's from Rose."
"Yes, I can see that," he replies testily. "Now what is it?"
"Her story." John types something and Sherlock's lips purse.
"She gave it to you?"
The barest hint of a smile crosses John's face. "Yep."
Sherlock crosses his arms and glares at the screen. John continues typing. He's never been great at it, although writing the blog has helped. Sherlock could type faster with his eyes closed, but John taps away, slow and steady and methodical. It's enough to drive anyone mad. "Oh, just push play," he snaps.
"Are you sure you want to see this?" The concern in John's voice is real, and Sherlock wonders what is on this tape that put it there.
He shrugs. "What could it possibly tell me that I don't already know?"
Rose wakes early the next morning. Mycroft is an early riser and she knows he'd like nothing more than to catch her out, to make her feel vulnerable and perhaps get some leverage. She's not about to let that happen. She stares at her face in the mirror; she's older than she was the last time she saw the Doctor, and it shows just a bit at the corners of her lips and her eyes, but there's something more. She feels like she's looking at a stranger, but she's not and the dichotomy makes her fingers shake as she reaches out to touch the glass.
There'll be this woman, this strange woman walking through the marketplace on some planet a billion miles away from Earth, but she's not Rose Tyler, not anymore. She's not even human.
She very nearly breaks the mirror. Her hands clench and her jaw tenses and she wants to smash, wants to scream and yell and drown out the hateful words her mother once said. If Jackie knew, oh if she knew the truth she'd turn away from her daughter and never look back. Rose takes a deep breath. Mycroft will call, of course he will. In the meantime-the show must go on.
He doesn't call. He visits. It's brief and bitter but the elation that's threatening to send her into a dizzy spiral of joy dulls the razor edge of his words. The cannon is small enough to be mistaken for an old laptop and she can hardly believe she's holding it in her hands. The plans are on a flash drive, safely tucked in her pocket, and when Mycroft bids her a sardonic farewell she waves him off without a thought. It's surreal, this feeling, the knowledge that the end is in sight. She's been fighting for so long, searching for so long that she almost doesn't know what to do with herself. Hope unfurls within her and she feels too large for her skin, like her joy will burst out through her fingertips and the ends of her hair and refract through the air around her.
Sherlock finds her curled up on the window seat. There's a heavy sort of feeling to the air, now that he knows what is coming-now that he knows what has been. If he hadn't seen her with his own eyes, if he hadn't been to Torchwood and seen the machine itself he never would have believed her. Mind control? Aliens? Parallel universes? It sounds like a science fiction novel made reality, but it's more than that. It's an epic, a tragedy, and though he will not bother to learn about such things he is quite able to appreciate them. He has found what moves her, what has always moved her. He should be satisfied, should disdain her for allowing her emotions to rule her-love after all, is a vicious motivator-but he cannot. She has bested him, after all, and she used love to do so.
"Did you ever figure it out?" she asks. The phone is heavy in her hand and her fingers wrap around it like it's something precious. Her thumb hovers over the screen as she looks up through her eyelashes at him. 'I A LOCKED,' the phone says, as it has since she left it with them.
Sherlock frowns. "No."
Irene-Rose-shrugs. "That's all right. I didn't expect you would. There's a story, you see, and you came in rather close to the end. Her thumb flicks down four times and she holds the phone up so he can see.
'I AM T I M E LOCKED' it reads. He sniffs. It's gibberish to him, and for the first time in his life, now that he knows everything he finds himself more confused than when he began. She is a study in contradictions: hard and yielding, glass and steel, and the mystery of her has driven him near madness (that's what love is, biochemistry and madness). In her presence, unmasked, he cannot help but feel small; like he has been caught on the edge of some great epic and pulled into its midst.
It is a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Always before he was center of gravity and others orbited around him-John, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, they each had a life, of course, but for better or for worse it centered on him. Being relegated to that position was distressing and overwhelming-and liberating.
"You've accomplished your mission," he says finally, to break the silence and rolls his skull between his hands to give them something to do. She's watching him with whiskey-dark eyes and those red, red lips and he's never been a man to give into baser urges; he considers them beneath him, knows that they cannot compare with the pure aesthetic stimulation of the intellect-but she tempts him, oh she does. "What will you do now?"
A grin splits her face, the first that he's seen. It's nearly blinding with the sheer force of her joy. White teeth sparkle at him and her tongue touches the corner of her lips mischievously. "I'm going to Canary Wharf, Mr. Holmes. I need to see a man about a time machine." She stands with practiced, fluid grace and he can read the combat training in her now, knows that it's not for show. "Coming?"
Should he? He's scolded John so many times about giving in to romantic impulses, about embellishing his accounts of Sherlock's genius and lingering over unimportant details instead of sticking to the facts. He should say no, should dismiss her from his mind and move onto the next case (there is always a next case)-but he doesn't. He would like to see this story ended, would like to learn what role he has played in a tale with all the markings of a tragedy.
"Yes," he says. "Just let me ring John. I'm lost without my blogger, you know."
He has a feeling that she does.
The trip back to Torchwood is uneventful. John keeps looking at Sherlock like he expects the other man to suddenly burst into some strong emotion, but Sherlock remains maddeningly calm. A suppressed excitement thrums in the air, though, and just beneath the surface. Rose stares out one window and Sherlock stares out the other, trapped in their own thoughts, and John sits between them feeling a little like a gooseberry and a lot out of his depth. The cab lets them off just outside One Canada Square and Rose takes the lead.
"Let me do the talking," she instructs the men. "I've got an in, after all, and we'll only get one chance to do this."
"Yes ma'am," John replies. Sherlock merely nods.
"Right." Rose takes a deep breath and straightens her shoulders.
Jackie is waiting for them at the front desk. Rose tenses for a fight-but there isn't one. Jackie looks at her for a long time with a sad, wistful expression on her face. It's the same way she looked when she helped Rose get back to the Doctor the first time, and when she watched her daughter leave with him on Christmas night.
"I forget sometimes that you're all grown up," the older woman says finally. "You'll always be my little girl, Rose, and I forget that you're a woman too. Of course you have to go-it's the Doctor. An' if your dad was here he'd tell you the same thing." She blinks and Rose can see that her eyes are full. "Just don't forget me, or Tony, or even Pete. I know he's not your dad, but he tries. He does."
It isn't what she expected, but it's exactly what she needs. Rose hugs her mother fiercely. "You'll always be my mum," she replies. "Even when I'm in another universe. Nothing will ever, ever change that. I love you an' Tony, and I wish things could have been better with Pete." They cling to each other and John elbows Sherlock until he looks away. When they finally separate Jackie busies herself wiping her eyes and Rose gives her a watery smile.
"Oh, look at that," the older woman clucks. "You've made me all weepy and now my makeup's run."
"You look lovely, Mum," Rose insists and rolls her eyes.
"Is everything alright, Mrs. Tyler?' the young woman behind the desk inquires.
Jackie waves her concern away. "Yes, Rachel, everything's fine. We're going up to the lever room."
Rachel eyes the visitors. "Ma'am, I don't believe they have clearance-"
"My husband runs this organization Rachel!" Jackie barks. "And I'll take my daughter and her friends where I damn well please!"
"Yes Mrs. Tyler," Rachel replies, sufficiently cowed. Rose hides a smile behind her hand and John's eyes twinkle merrily. Sherlock watches with interest, but says nothing.
The lever room is silent. Thick sheets of plastic cover what little furniture hugs the walls. Everything is white-the ceiling, the floor, the chairs, the walls, even the drapes that cover the windows. Every sound echoes, even the near-silence of their breathing. It is sterile and empty and cold-like a tomb. Rose shivers and clutches the bag with the cannon more tightly to her. Toward the near end of the room two levers swathed in plastic stand perpendicular to the floor.
Wind and screaming and the pull of the Void. Her hand is slipping-gone. Fingers claw at empty air and his eye bore into her, black and wide, rimmed with white as he screams for her. She is falling, falling, falling and she will never ever stop.
She stares at the levers, back straight, arms wrapped rigidly around herself, until Jackie lays a hand on her arm.
"Rose?" her mother asks softly.
"It's nothing. Just a memory." Rose takes a deep breath and lays the cannon on the floor next to the wall. She presses a series of buttons and a low hum fades into existence. After a quick check she rises from her crouch and steps back.
John looks from Rose to the cannon, and then back again. "Now what?"
Rose leans up against the wall. "Now we wait."
River Song sashays into the TARDIS with her usual combination of seduction and arrogance, but there's something off, a hardness he hasn't seen before (but once) and a twist of the lips that tells him it's going to be a bad day. He knows within ten seconds of meeting her what sort of day it will be, where they are in this strange morass people call a relationship. There are good days, when he can almost forget the ache in his chest, when he can get over the way her hand feels wrong when he takes it and the way her blatant sexuality grates on him. There are days when she's brilliant and he's almost happy, when they are very nearly just two people and not the Doctor and River Song, when the paradox hanging over their heads is a distant irritation.
Then there are days like today, when the rage bubbles in the back of his throat, helpless rage at their situation, at the universe, at the stupid, stupid humans who ripped something bright and shining from him and replaced it with a woman he doesn't trust but must, who keeps secrets and who in turn has secrets kept from her, who he will never fully know just as she cannot fully know him. There are days when he screams at her and she screams right back, when all of the myriad ways he has failed her come back to haunt him and he remembers that far from saving everyone, this go 'round he seems incapable of saving anyone.
"You're late," she informs him.
"Oh, hello Doctor, thanks for the lift," he shoots back. "Terribly sorry for the short notice, did I inconvenience you?"
"Alright you two," Amy says with a glare very nearly worth of Jackie Tyler. "Do I have to come down there and separate you?"
And then the TARDIS stops, just stops like someone's thrown the parking break but inertia carries Amy forward and she slams into the glass floor. Oh, she will have bruises tomorrow, she can feel it. The lights flicker and go out and the only illumination in the room is the dim light of the Time Rotor.
"Oh," she groans. "Ouch."
"Amy!" the Doctor shouts from somewhere beyond the console. She knows it's bad when even he can't keep upright.
"I'm here!" she yells back and drags herself onto her knees. The Doctor dances around the console, River at his side.
"We're dead in the water," the older woman says grimly.
The Doctor's eyes narrow. "That's impossible! We're in the Vortex! We can't be stopped. You don't just stop in the bloody Time Vortex!"
River slides the monitor over and gestures sharply at it. "Yes, Sweetie, I know, but that doesn't change the fact that we are completely and totally still. Ergo, dead in the water. It's an old Earth adage and I know you're familiar with it."
Something flickers off in the corner of Amy's vision. She blinks. She doesn't remember hitting her head, but she must have, because there are three people in the console room-so why are there four? A woman is standing at the foot of the stairs. She's a bit older than Amy, maybe early thirties, and there's something familiar about her, an itch in the back of Amy's skull. Her hair is long and blonde and straight and it hangs down well past her shoulders. She's got huge, dark brown eyes and elegantly sculpted brows. A corner of her mouth tugs up into a half-smile and something in Amy's mind clicks into place. It's not just a woman-it's the woman, the one the Doctor watches when the universe is cruel and he thinks that she's gone to sleep. She's older than she was in the videos, and there's something hard about her and she's got a gun in a holster strapped to her thigh-but Amy would recognize her anywhere.
"Doctor!" she calls and takes a halting step back towards him.
"Not now Amelia!" he snaps and then goes back to arguing with River. He's slipped into Gallifreyan without even noticing, or he's swearing up a storm because the TARDIS isn't translating.
"Doctor, you really want to see this," Amy presses.
"I said not now!" His voice is hard and sharp and if she didn't know better she'd be hurt. But she does know better and she's never let him push her around before so she'll be damned if he starts now. She opens her mouth to try again, but the woman cuts her off.
"Doctor." Her voice is strange, almost choral, and soft enough that Amy thinks he hasn't heard, not at first. River does, though, and stares over his shoulder. She's gone pale and still and that finally gets through to the mad Time Lord who is still denying that what has just happened is possible.
He turns, slowly, as if he's afraid of what he will see. The woman smiles at him, slowly at first, but it breaks over her face like a sunrise, illuminates her like dawn. The Doctor stops breathing. Amy would be worried, but he's boasted long and often of superior Time Lord physiology so she's merely-concerned.
"What are you," he asks, his voice soft. If she didn't know better Amy would think that he was fine, that this was all routine, but he's her best friend; she's traveled with him for around a year (time is-complicated-in the TARDIS) and she can read him like an open book-so she notices the way his shoulders twitch and the icy stillness he projects. He's on the verge of breaking.
"I'm a hologram," the girl says. "Literally, anyway." Her smile fades, just a bit. "I'd hoped to get a you that knows me. Explaining is-difficult-and we're on a bit of a schedule."
"Oh," he says, and his voice is low and dark and the Doctor has stepped out-there's someone else standing where her best friend was. "I know who you look like-but Rose Tyler is gone. Gone and never ever coming back, so I suggest you drop this ridiculous pretense and tell me what you really are."
Something in her eyes changes. "Sure you wanna have that conversation here, Doctor?" she asks and there's an edge of bitterness in her voice that bites. "S'a bit private, after all, and you've got company." South London blurs the edges of her words, makes them thick and heavy in the near-silent TARDIS. It sounds more natural than the posh accent she had been using, like it belongs on her.
"You say you're Rose Tyler." He leans forward until their noses are almost touching. "Prove it."
"All right then." She glares right back at him. "Shall I begin with the first word you said to me? No, that's too simple and besides, you used that when you were regenerating. It was 'run,' by the way," she says-apparently for Amy and River's benefit. "But moving on-what about 'I could save the world but lose you?' or perhaps 'I'm so glad I met you,' or what about the very first place you took me-to the end of the world, Doctor, to watch the Sun swallow the Earth in its death-throes. What about that time you had a gun to my head, or when you took me back to meet my father just because I asked? What about satellite five and 'is a slave a slave if he doesn't know it?' What about that time I burned for you, to save you, because I would happily die if I knew you would live? Or is that too mundane for you, too far in the past?"
His eyes are wide and Amy wonders if he notices that he's leaning back, trying to get away without actually moving. Rose crowds his space, takes a step forward and even though she's insubstantial Amy can feel her presence.
"Want to go a little more recent?" she continues, words clipped and precise like a scalpel. "Shall I tell them about our trip to Scotland-about Queen Victoria and the werewolf and the bet that cost so much more than ten quid? Shall I mention Queen Elizabeth's coronation and the Wire and 'no power on Earth can stop me?' What about the 2012 Olympics? What about Chloe Webber and the Isolus and 'what you really need is a hand to hold?'" Rose takes a shuddering breath and a muscle in her jaw twitches. "Or maybe I should tell them about the impossible planet and the beast in the pit; about a group of brilliant people and a voice in the dark. You told me it lied, Doctor." He flinches. She presses on like an avalanche. "You were wrong. Maybe that's the story I should tell-the last story I have left, about a man and a woman and whole universe in between them; about a beach and a choice and an unfinished sentence."
River is staring. Amy doesn't know who she is, or what place she holds in the Doctor's life (although Amy can hazard a guess)-but there's a look like devastation on her face, like resignation and pity and heartbreak rolled into one as she watches the Doctor and Rose. What does it feel like to watch the man you love with the woman that he loves?
"Oh, for the love of god!" another voice chimes in. "Will the two of you just kiss and make up already?" A petite woman with bleached-blonde hair steps into view and the Doctor blinks.
"Jackie?" he asks once he manages to stop gaping like a demented fish. "Jackie Tyler? Why am I hallucinating you? As I recall you got the best of the bargain: your husband and your daughter all in a neat little package." There's a bitter edge to his voice that cuts like glass.
"You're lucky this is just a hollowhatsit," Jackie grumbles. "You're looking for a slap, you are!"
"Doctor," River calls. He ignores her. "Doctor!"
"Yes, what is it now Dr. Song?" he demands waspishly.
She shoves the monitor towards him. "You'll want to take a look at this."
"I'm in the middle of a crisis, River," the Doctor says so reasonably that he has to be faking it. "And Amelia seems to be caught in it as well. Can whatever chaos you've managed to drum up wait until I've figured out why I am hallucinating about Tyler women?"
River glares at him. "No, it really can't, sweetie." She gestures impatiently to the monitor and, grudgingly, the Doctor turns away from the troubling hologram.
"Oh no," he breathes and his eyes widen as he studies the screen. He seizes it with both hands and pours over the strange symbols swirling across it. "Oh, this is extremely very not good."
"Doctor?" He ignores Amy in favor of muttering viciously at the screen and futilely pressing buttons and flipping switches. "Doctor! What's wrong?"
"She's locked me out of the controls!" he snaps back and whirls around. Rose is watching him with a particularly lupine smile. For a moment Amy feels a bit like little red riding hood staring down the wolf-oh, what big teeth you have. "You cheated!" the Doctor accuses and brandishes a finger at Rose.
"I may have forgotten to mention that the cannon automatically locks onto the TARDIS and feeds her our current coordinates," Rose allows.
He crosses his arms over his chest. "You lied. Look at you, Rose Tyler, all grown-up."
She shakes her head. "Nothing I've told you is untrue."
"Ah! But a lie of omission is still a lie." The Doctor is almost gleeful at catching her out.
She regards him evenly, and her tone is carefully neutral but the words still cut like broken glass. "Yes, well-you'd know all about that."
"I hate to disrupt this lovely domestic," River interjects, "but sweetie, you'll want to find something to hold on to!" The TARDIS shakes and somewhere deep inside the living ship a bell rings, loud and long. "We're going to crash!"
Part Six