Held in Trust: Chapter 12
Title: Held in Trust (12/?)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure! Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Previous Chapters: Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11
Additional A/N: Additional thanks for the next several chapters to jaradel and gowdie for helping me with my anal retentive Torchwood internal communications madness, and editrx for vetting my silly plot for instances of extreme ridiculousness.
The Doctor felt like he was going to retch, every muscle in his body was tensed and aching, and a claustrophobic panic began to wash over him. Clawing blindly at the panel in front of him, he finally hooked his fingers around something that might be a latch, and pressed down as hard as his seizing muscles would allow.
There was a whooshing sound and he felt himself fall forward on to solid ground. Solid, rocky ground by the feel of coarse sand against his palms. Then came the realisation that he had in fact been reflexively squeezing his eyes shut, and he ventured now to open them a crack, and then further as the searing pain behind them did not worsen (nor did it fade one iota).
He seemed to be in a cave--barren, dry and dim. The capsule--into which he'd leaped as he saw the tall man raise some sort of particle weapon against him--sat propped up on one wall, hatch now open and a rather unsettling amount of smoke rising from behind it. He rubbed his head and crawled over to the opposite rock face to sit and gather his faculties.
There was something of which he was fairly certain: the discomfort he was now feeling was perfectly in accord with the effects on the human body of a space or time jump without proper shielding. He leaned his head back on the hard, jagged wall of the cave and closed his eyes again as the implications of what had just happened began to bubble up from somewhere more primal and raw than the logical centres of his brain.
Rose and Donna, alone now with an active singularity generator and a madman wielding a particle weapon. The planet Earth, or most likely all of the Sol star system, given nineteen hours before being neatly winked out of existence. And, depending on whether or not the man's boasting regarding Block Transfer Computations bore any merit, an imminent paradox that would either change the face of the entire universe and nearly all timelines , or would simply call forth creatures that would gorge themselves on the very fabric of reality itself until nothing--literally nothing--was left. And he'd vowed to stop it, to defend the planet and all of the wonderful, stupid, beautiful apes that he'd been forced to once and for all cast his lot with.
Stupid, he thought. And so very him. All of his talk about being free from the burden of having to save the universe constantly, and here he was again. Rose would have a field day with that once they were reunited and the world-saving fully sorted.
For a brief few moments he just felt paralysed, numb, and strangely torpid. This, he thought, must be what drowning feels like, or dying of exposure. You know you musn't , but the urge to just lie down, let the cold envelope you, let the water take you, just for a few minutes, just until you feel better....
He jumped to his feet and cracked his neck in an attempt to shake off the insidious temptation to simply give in and surrender to the sort of semi-sentient Fate that he had never believed in before.
Shaking his limbs and bouncing up and down on his heels like an athlete getting ready for a race, he surveyed his surroundings more closely, and stretched his rarely-used Time Lord faculties to explore the dimensional edges of this current situation. Timelines were still intact, meaning relative time on his own present-day Earth had not yet reached the nineteen-hour mark that the tall man had indicated. Perhaps indicated falsely? He couldn't take the risk that the man had been lying--he had to assume that there was a countdown happening, in it's own little temporal bubble.
"Right," he said aloud, his voice echoing and disappearing in to the recesses of the cave behind him. "First to figure out where and when I am now, and how you work." He pointed accusingly at the capsule, still radiating a distressing amount of heat.
He began to inspect the innards of the vessel, starting by crouching down and running his hand along the inside, looking for any secret panels or latches that might reveal a way to turn it back on again. The system appeared to be down--temporarily or permanently, it was hard to tell. Each of the places where lights had been happily blinking before were now dark, and all of the whirring, whining devices that had been nestled in to the tangle of wires he'd observed prior to his impromptu trip now lay silent.
He stepped back from it again and thought his time might be best used by letting the capsule cool down, perhaps reboot itself, while he took a peek outside. He could see an orangey glow at one end of the chamber he was in, which would either be the outside world, or at least some form of civilisation that used artificial light. Either way, it would probably give him more of a clue to his whereabouts, and whenabouts, than the petulantly silent and smouldering machine that had brought him here.
Any course of action beat the sensation of someone having tied a ribbon around his heart and lungs, that was then tugged and tightened at regular intervals, which overtook him whenever he stopped touching, moving, investigating, calculating. No no no, he thought, keep thinking, keep stretching your mind--look forward, not back. Don't think about Rose, she can take care of herself, and Donna, and her whole doomed planet if she had to.
She had done before, she could do it again. He had to believe that, or be pulled down again by the torpid imp of the perverse that made him want to just lie down and take a nap until it was all over.
There seemed to be a bit of an optical illusion at work with the cave opening and it took longer to walk there than he'd initially estimated. The ground was fairly even, dry, and sandy in spots, sloping slightly upwards towards the aperture. There wasn't much evidence of water playing any role in the formation of the cave at any point in its recent geological history, but seams of minerals did glimmer here and there in the faint orange light emanating from the entrance.
When does it feel like?, he thought, willing himself to dip a toe in to the timestreams he felt running around him. Far future? Distant past? Or perhaps the jump had been parallel and only space had been folded. He sniffed the air, which once upon a time he felt helped him determine a general time, but he found that the human olfactory organ was just not up to the job. All he smelled was a dusty, metallic tang, his own not inconsiderable body odour, and a strangely comforting botanical smell that he couldn't quite place. He would have said it was like balsam around Christmas, but his experience of Christmas had a lot more to do with charred flesh and the stink of the Thames. This smell now was nothing like pine, but the effect it had on him was the same as the effect that particular scent has on your average Briton. Or at least that was how Rose explained it when he wondered aloud why they sold little bottles of chemically simulated Christmas tree smell in the shops.
By the time he had nearly reached the cave opening, he had decided that the general feel of the place was far future, and furthermore, he may very well be in the 153rd century, and the time ship had simply dumped him off at its last port of call--the tall man's own time and place. No space station this, though. The man had said he'd been a servant of some sort, perhaps even a slave, though that rattled the Doctor's knowledge of the epoch. So, this planet may have been where he was last employed, and where the origin of his temporal failsafe lay.
This planet that the Doctor now looked out upon.
This ground, on to which he dropped slowly and heavily to his knees, mouth open in wonder, hot tears springing in to his eyes. This sacred ground, with its smell of childhood and running through fields of red grass, hiding from adult minders and laughing just because there was no reason not to.
He folded himself so that his forehead rested on the rocky soil, and he wept--not the pretty tears of wistful longing but the loud, shuddering sobs of someone who finally, after hundreds of years, is given permission to mourn.
***
TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE
Case Number: AC-7863/12-312
Section: Field Operations
Agent: Simmonds, J.
Subject: Rose Tyler
Transcript Excerpt 09:03:43-09:07:01
RT: Will this be going on the record?
JS: You know it has to.
RT: Then I'd prefer not to say.
JS: But you think the discovery that he made had something to do with his...disappearance.
RT: Yes. Have you interrogated the survivors yet?
JS: I'm not at liberty to say.
RT: And Donna Mott?
JS: I'd hardly call that an interrogation, but we have debriefed her, yes.
RT: Where is she now? I'd like to see her.
JS: I can't allow you to speak with her prior to the completion of your debrief. Rose...Ms Tyler, I know that what you told me before was in confidence, but, as it pertains to an open case, I am duty bound to enter that conversation in to the report. As your friend, I'd rather you just stated your suspicions yourself and not make me have to betray your trust.
RT: Do you think I'd be believed?
JS: Why not? We've know about time travel as a theoretical possibility for some time now.
RT: And do you believe me?
JS: About the possibility that the device you spoke of was a time machine? Yes, I do.
RT: That the Doctor isn't dead.
JS: Of course.
RT: Don't lie to me, Jake.
JS: We don't have enough information right now to make an assessment one way or the other. The radiological team are still on site.
RT: I'd like to go home, please.
JS: You're going to go back there, aren't you?
RT: I've got nothing more to tell you.
(To Chapter 13: Lost and Found)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure! Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Previous Chapters: Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11
Additional A/N: Additional thanks for the next several chapters to jaradel and gowdie for helping me with my anal retentive Torchwood internal communications madness, and editrx for vetting my silly plot for instances of extreme ridiculousness.
The Doctor felt like he was going to retch, every muscle in his body was tensed and aching, and a claustrophobic panic began to wash over him. Clawing blindly at the panel in front of him, he finally hooked his fingers around something that might be a latch, and pressed down as hard as his seizing muscles would allow.
There was a whooshing sound and he felt himself fall forward on to solid ground. Solid, rocky ground by the feel of coarse sand against his palms. Then came the realisation that he had in fact been reflexively squeezing his eyes shut, and he ventured now to open them a crack, and then further as the searing pain behind them did not worsen (nor did it fade one iota).
He seemed to be in a cave--barren, dry and dim. The capsule--into which he'd leaped as he saw the tall man raise some sort of particle weapon against him--sat propped up on one wall, hatch now open and a rather unsettling amount of smoke rising from behind it. He rubbed his head and crawled over to the opposite rock face to sit and gather his faculties.
There was something of which he was fairly certain: the discomfort he was now feeling was perfectly in accord with the effects on the human body of a space or time jump without proper shielding. He leaned his head back on the hard, jagged wall of the cave and closed his eyes again as the implications of what had just happened began to bubble up from somewhere more primal and raw than the logical centres of his brain.
Rose and Donna, alone now with an active singularity generator and a madman wielding a particle weapon. The planet Earth, or most likely all of the Sol star system, given nineteen hours before being neatly winked out of existence. And, depending on whether or not the man's boasting regarding Block Transfer Computations bore any merit, an imminent paradox that would either change the face of the entire universe and nearly all timelines , or would simply call forth creatures that would gorge themselves on the very fabric of reality itself until nothing--literally nothing--was left. And he'd vowed to stop it, to defend the planet and all of the wonderful, stupid, beautiful apes that he'd been forced to once and for all cast his lot with.
Stupid, he thought. And so very him. All of his talk about being free from the burden of having to save the universe constantly, and here he was again. Rose would have a field day with that once they were reunited and the world-saving fully sorted.
For a brief few moments he just felt paralysed, numb, and strangely torpid. This, he thought, must be what drowning feels like, or dying of exposure. You know you musn't , but the urge to just lie down, let the cold envelope you, let the water take you, just for a few minutes, just until you feel better....
He jumped to his feet and cracked his neck in an attempt to shake off the insidious temptation to simply give in and surrender to the sort of semi-sentient Fate that he had never believed in before.
Shaking his limbs and bouncing up and down on his heels like an athlete getting ready for a race, he surveyed his surroundings more closely, and stretched his rarely-used Time Lord faculties to explore the dimensional edges of this current situation. Timelines were still intact, meaning relative time on his own present-day Earth had not yet reached the nineteen-hour mark that the tall man had indicated. Perhaps indicated falsely? He couldn't take the risk that the man had been lying--he had to assume that there was a countdown happening, in it's own little temporal bubble.
"Right," he said aloud, his voice echoing and disappearing in to the recesses of the cave behind him. "First to figure out where and when I am now, and how you work." He pointed accusingly at the capsule, still radiating a distressing amount of heat.
He began to inspect the innards of the vessel, starting by crouching down and running his hand along the inside, looking for any secret panels or latches that might reveal a way to turn it back on again. The system appeared to be down--temporarily or permanently, it was hard to tell. Each of the places where lights had been happily blinking before were now dark, and all of the whirring, whining devices that had been nestled in to the tangle of wires he'd observed prior to his impromptu trip now lay silent.
He stepped back from it again and thought his time might be best used by letting the capsule cool down, perhaps reboot itself, while he took a peek outside. He could see an orangey glow at one end of the chamber he was in, which would either be the outside world, or at least some form of civilisation that used artificial light. Either way, it would probably give him more of a clue to his whereabouts, and whenabouts, than the petulantly silent and smouldering machine that had brought him here.
Any course of action beat the sensation of someone having tied a ribbon around his heart and lungs, that was then tugged and tightened at regular intervals, which overtook him whenever he stopped touching, moving, investigating, calculating. No no no, he thought, keep thinking, keep stretching your mind--look forward, not back. Don't think about Rose, she can take care of herself, and Donna, and her whole doomed planet if she had to.
She had done before, she could do it again. He had to believe that, or be pulled down again by the torpid imp of the perverse that made him want to just lie down and take a nap until it was all over.
There seemed to be a bit of an optical illusion at work with the cave opening and it took longer to walk there than he'd initially estimated. The ground was fairly even, dry, and sandy in spots, sloping slightly upwards towards the aperture. There wasn't much evidence of water playing any role in the formation of the cave at any point in its recent geological history, but seams of minerals did glimmer here and there in the faint orange light emanating from the entrance.
When does it feel like?, he thought, willing himself to dip a toe in to the timestreams he felt running around him. Far future? Distant past? Or perhaps the jump had been parallel and only space had been folded. He sniffed the air, which once upon a time he felt helped him determine a general time, but he found that the human olfactory organ was just not up to the job. All he smelled was a dusty, metallic tang, his own not inconsiderable body odour, and a strangely comforting botanical smell that he couldn't quite place. He would have said it was like balsam around Christmas, but his experience of Christmas had a lot more to do with charred flesh and the stink of the Thames. This smell now was nothing like pine, but the effect it had on him was the same as the effect that particular scent has on your average Briton. Or at least that was how Rose explained it when he wondered aloud why they sold little bottles of chemically simulated Christmas tree smell in the shops.
By the time he had nearly reached the cave opening, he had decided that the general feel of the place was far future, and furthermore, he may very well be in the 153rd century, and the time ship had simply dumped him off at its last port of call--the tall man's own time and place. No space station this, though. The man had said he'd been a servant of some sort, perhaps even a slave, though that rattled the Doctor's knowledge of the epoch. So, this planet may have been where he was last employed, and where the origin of his temporal failsafe lay.
This planet that the Doctor now looked out upon.
This ground, on to which he dropped slowly and heavily to his knees, mouth open in wonder, hot tears springing in to his eyes. This sacred ground, with its smell of childhood and running through fields of red grass, hiding from adult minders and laughing just because there was no reason not to.
He folded himself so that his forehead rested on the rocky soil, and he wept--not the pretty tears of wistful longing but the loud, shuddering sobs of someone who finally, after hundreds of years, is given permission to mourn.
***
TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE
Case Number: AC-7863/12-312
Section: Field Operations
Agent: Simmonds, J.
Subject: Rose Tyler
Transcript Excerpt 09:03:43-09:07:01
RT: Will this be going on the record?
JS: You know it has to.
RT: Then I'd prefer not to say.
JS: But you think the discovery that he made had something to do with his...disappearance.
RT: Yes. Have you interrogated the survivors yet?
JS: I'm not at liberty to say.
RT: And Donna Mott?
JS: I'd hardly call that an interrogation, but we have debriefed her, yes.
RT: Where is she now? I'd like to see her.
JS: I can't allow you to speak with her prior to the completion of your debrief. Rose...Ms Tyler, I know that what you told me before was in confidence, but, as it pertains to an open case, I am duty bound to enter that conversation in to the report. As your friend, I'd rather you just stated your suspicions yourself and not make me have to betray your trust.
RT: Do you think I'd be believed?
JS: Why not? We've know about time travel as a theoretical possibility for some time now.
RT: And do you believe me?
JS: About the possibility that the device you spoke of was a time machine? Yes, I do.
RT: That the Doctor isn't dead.
JS: Of course.
RT: Don't lie to me, Jake.
JS: We don't have enough information right now to make an assessment one way or the other. The radiological team are still on site.
RT: I'd like to go home, please.
JS: You're going to go back there, aren't you?
RT: I've got nothing more to tell you.
(To Chapter 13: Lost and Found)