The One True Free Life (3/26)
Title: The One True Free Life (3/26)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: All ages
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
Beta: The lovely and talented jaradel
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
It took longer than the Doctor expected for all of his senses to snap back into focus after waking up. Jackie was smacking his foot where it hung off the end of the sofa, and generally making a racket about having a zeppelin to catch, as Rose made muffled sounds of waking. The wreckage of a sandwich of some sort, and an empty bag of crisps, lay on the coffee table at his eye level as he rolled over. Had he eaten that? He didn't feel hungry any more, so he must have done. The concept of sleep-eating seemed rather upsetting and he preferred not to dwell on it.
Putting his hands behind his head and stretching his legs, he felt like a new man. Which, he supposed, he was. A new man, in a new world, with the old Rose. He raised himself on his elbows to peep over the edge of the sofa to where she had been sleeping but realized too late that she'd just slipped in to the en suite seconds before. Jackie came by and hit him on top of the head with a rolled up Aftenposten.
"Get up! Our zeppelin's waiting! I swear, you do nothing but run around non-stop all the rest of the time! Shift it!"
The Doctor now understood this to be Jackie's way of expressing her desire to see her young son again. Interesting, that. It hadn't really occurred to him before, that all of her shouting and smacking was really just expressing love for her children, and concern for their well-being. He rubbed the top of his head and put his jacket back on in time to hear the lock on the bathroom door click open again.
When he saw her, he could not help smiling. It was like a force of nature, reverse-gravity, drawing the corners of his mouth upwards until he thought his grin couldn't get any bigger, and then it kept going. Her sleep-mussed hair just made him think of all those lazy days they'd spent together in the Vortex between adventures, when she'd pad around the TARDIS in her pyjamas and slippers that looked like vivisected stuffed animals. He pushed down a pang of longing for his lost ship and wiggled his fingers at her in greeting.
"Hello."
She looked down at her shoes and inexplicably blushed. "Hello," she said to her feet.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Jackie walked between them and opened the door. "I'm going to check out, and if you two are not in the lobby by the time I'm done, I'm leaving without you." She began to exit but then turned back and took Rose's face in her hands and kissed her on the cheek. "Not really, sweetheart, but you get my meaning."
And then they were alone. Either for the first time, or the millionth. The Doctor ducked down a bit to catch her eyes from where she'd averted them to somewhere in the region of his shins, and saw the corners of her own mouth begin to creep up, just a little. He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers again.
"Shall we?"
She didn't say anything, but brought her now laughing eyes up to meet his, and took the proffered hand. In the lift, he tried to make some small talk.
"Did you sleep well?" he asked in what he hoped sounded like an offhand way. When she didn't answer immediately he turned and looked down, only to have the back of his head captured by her other hand and brought in to a kiss that, compared to the one of the day before, seemed almost chaste. But where previously there had been desperation and longing, now there was just sweetness, and hope.
The lift dinged its arrival in the lobby and she let him go again.
"Blimey. I will take that as a yes." He wiped any tell tale signs from his lips but savoured the taste of her still on his tongue.
"Shut up," she grinned.
~o0o~
Pete Tyler was waiting for them on the tarmac of the zeppelin port, the wind whipping around his well-tailored trousers, at first concealing the young child that hid behind his legs. He waved madly when he saw them exit the car and picked Tony up in his arms. Jackie ran forward to embrace them both, rocking back and forth in their hug, as if she couldn't quite get close enough to either of them while staying still. Pete looked up over her shoulder and did a double-take, if one can do a double-take while in the death-grip of Jackie Tyler. The Doctor waved, a little too eagerly.
On the Vitex corporation's executive zeppelin, it took very little time for Tony to warm back up to Rose and Jackie, and thereafter he was a whirlwind of four-year-old activity, regaling them all with stories of what the pilot had let him see in the cockpit on the journey over, what his nanny had shown him in the garden the day before, what his favourite food was and how funny he thought the Doctor looked. The adults were powerless to try to have a grown-up conversation in his presence. When the Doctor began to make 50p coins appear from behind his ears, Tony declared him to be the best Doctor ever, and infinitely better than the one who gave him injections.
They only had a short time left in the air when Tony finally ran out of steam and settled in to his mum's lap with a faraway look that indicated that a nap might be imminent. Jackie cooed and smoothed his fine blond hair down while Rose played "This Little Piggie" with his toes, eliciting ever more sleepy-sounding giggles from him.
Pete took the opportunity to finally turn to the Doctor and ask some questions, which he did in a hushed voice, loathe to upset the domestic tranquillity occurring across the aisle with any matters that might be unpleasant.
"So, you're him."
The Doctor nodded. "I'm him. Another of him. I sent myself back here with Rose so we could look after you lot. It's kind of a long and, if I'm honest, sort of icky story involving a severed hand and Daleks and me starkers." He made a grimace. "Do you really want to know?"
"Not really."
"Good. That's...very good."
Pete looked back over at his family. "And Mickey? Did he...not make it?"
The Doctor grinned. "Mickety Mick Mickey! No, no, not at all. He made it just fine. Better than fine! A tall, dark and handsome captain enticed him to stay behind. In the other universe. You know, we always called this one Pete's World. We're going to have to come up with a name for the other one now. Mickey's World? Rose? How do you fancy we call it Mickey's World?"
"I think you'll find that it's Jack's world, and everyone else only lives in it."
The Doctor shrugged. "Jack's world it is."
So, Rose had been right. This strange, mercurial alien really had waited for her, really did want to be with her. Pete was sure Jackie would have quite a bit to say about it all at a later, and more private, time. He had so many questions about their relationship, but it was not really a step-father's place to ask.
"So, I hear you've gotten the sack from Torchwood," the Doctor continued, as if he was totally unaware that this was not a polite topic for conversation.
"Doctor!" Rose looked angrily at him.
"No, Rose, that's okay. No use trying to dress it up. The board voted me out. James Alder is sitting in the big office now."
The Doctor stood to go look out a nearby window, scrutinizing the ocean below. "And after you had so much success with your dimension cannon."
"Well, not everyone was such a fan of that project. Really though I think it's just interpersonal rubbish, and I'm not particularly upset to take an early retirement. Vincent Heths can have his little friends promoted if he wants. I've got better things to do than be his lapdog." Pete tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but was not entirely successful.
Jackie perked up but kept her voice low as Tony had fallen asleep in her lap. "Secretary Heths? What's he doing messing about with Torchwood?"
"Don't know, don't really care. He left us over a year ago but he's still got plenty of mates there, guess he wants to see them do well for themselves. It doesn't matter. We're all together again, and I've still got to make sure they're not cocking things up at Vitex."
The Doctor began to point out the window excitedly. "Look, Rose, we're almost there! We're travelling, what, eighty-three miles an hour? Eight-four? Look, there's the Firth of Forth!" He began to squeak and Jackie shushed him.
Rose stood and went over to him and he, quite gallantly Pete thought, put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. "Our new life," he sighed, kissing the top of her head.
"New new new Doctor," said Rose, but then she turned to him with concern in her eyes. "Doctor? Are you okay?"
The Doctor let Rose out of their embrace and he stumbled back into a nearby seat, clutching his head with one hand and gripping the hand rest of the seat with the other. He'd grown suddenly pale, and Rose knelt in front of him trying to get a good look in to his eyes. It was all over in a few seconds though. He sat back up in the chair again, colour slowly returning to his cheeks.
"Sorry," the Doctor said, putting on a care-free voice. "Just a little spell, I guess. I'm fine." He stood and stretched, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. "See? Sorry to ruin our little moment there, Rose. Shall we try again?"
He strode over to the window, with Rose in tow, placed her where they had been before, and kissed the top of her head again. "Now, you were saying, about your new Doctor?"
(To Chapter 4)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: All ages
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
Beta: The lovely and talented jaradel
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
It took longer than the Doctor expected for all of his senses to snap back into focus after waking up. Jackie was smacking his foot where it hung off the end of the sofa, and generally making a racket about having a zeppelin to catch, as Rose made muffled sounds of waking. The wreckage of a sandwich of some sort, and an empty bag of crisps, lay on the coffee table at his eye level as he rolled over. Had he eaten that? He didn't feel hungry any more, so he must have done. The concept of sleep-eating seemed rather upsetting and he preferred not to dwell on it.
Putting his hands behind his head and stretching his legs, he felt like a new man. Which, he supposed, he was. A new man, in a new world, with the old Rose. He raised himself on his elbows to peep over the edge of the sofa to where she had been sleeping but realized too late that she'd just slipped in to the en suite seconds before. Jackie came by and hit him on top of the head with a rolled up Aftenposten.
"Get up! Our zeppelin's waiting! I swear, you do nothing but run around non-stop all the rest of the time! Shift it!"
The Doctor now understood this to be Jackie's way of expressing her desire to see her young son again. Interesting, that. It hadn't really occurred to him before, that all of her shouting and smacking was really just expressing love for her children, and concern for their well-being. He rubbed the top of his head and put his jacket back on in time to hear the lock on the bathroom door click open again.
When he saw her, he could not help smiling. It was like a force of nature, reverse-gravity, drawing the corners of his mouth upwards until he thought his grin couldn't get any bigger, and then it kept going. Her sleep-mussed hair just made him think of all those lazy days they'd spent together in the Vortex between adventures, when she'd pad around the TARDIS in her pyjamas and slippers that looked like vivisected stuffed animals. He pushed down a pang of longing for his lost ship and wiggled his fingers at her in greeting.
"Hello."
She looked down at her shoes and inexplicably blushed. "Hello," she said to her feet.
"Oh, for heaven's sake." Jackie walked between them and opened the door. "I'm going to check out, and if you two are not in the lobby by the time I'm done, I'm leaving without you." She began to exit but then turned back and took Rose's face in her hands and kissed her on the cheek. "Not really, sweetheart, but you get my meaning."
And then they were alone. Either for the first time, or the millionth. The Doctor ducked down a bit to catch her eyes from where she'd averted them to somewhere in the region of his shins, and saw the corners of her own mouth begin to creep up, just a little. He held out his hand and wiggled his fingers again.
"Shall we?"
She didn't say anything, but brought her now laughing eyes up to meet his, and took the proffered hand. In the lift, he tried to make some small talk.
"Did you sleep well?" he asked in what he hoped sounded like an offhand way. When she didn't answer immediately he turned and looked down, only to have the back of his head captured by her other hand and brought in to a kiss that, compared to the one of the day before, seemed almost chaste. But where previously there had been desperation and longing, now there was just sweetness, and hope.
The lift dinged its arrival in the lobby and she let him go again.
"Blimey. I will take that as a yes." He wiped any tell tale signs from his lips but savoured the taste of her still on his tongue.
"Shut up," she grinned.
~o0o~
Pete Tyler was waiting for them on the tarmac of the zeppelin port, the wind whipping around his well-tailored trousers, at first concealing the young child that hid behind his legs. He waved madly when he saw them exit the car and picked Tony up in his arms. Jackie ran forward to embrace them both, rocking back and forth in their hug, as if she couldn't quite get close enough to either of them while staying still. Pete looked up over her shoulder and did a double-take, if one can do a double-take while in the death-grip of Jackie Tyler. The Doctor waved, a little too eagerly.
On the Vitex corporation's executive zeppelin, it took very little time for Tony to warm back up to Rose and Jackie, and thereafter he was a whirlwind of four-year-old activity, regaling them all with stories of what the pilot had let him see in the cockpit on the journey over, what his nanny had shown him in the garden the day before, what his favourite food was and how funny he thought the Doctor looked. The adults were powerless to try to have a grown-up conversation in his presence. When the Doctor began to make 50p coins appear from behind his ears, Tony declared him to be the best Doctor ever, and infinitely better than the one who gave him injections.
They only had a short time left in the air when Tony finally ran out of steam and settled in to his mum's lap with a faraway look that indicated that a nap might be imminent. Jackie cooed and smoothed his fine blond hair down while Rose played "This Little Piggie" with his toes, eliciting ever more sleepy-sounding giggles from him.
Pete took the opportunity to finally turn to the Doctor and ask some questions, which he did in a hushed voice, loathe to upset the domestic tranquillity occurring across the aisle with any matters that might be unpleasant.
"So, you're him."
The Doctor nodded. "I'm him. Another of him. I sent myself back here with Rose so we could look after you lot. It's kind of a long and, if I'm honest, sort of icky story involving a severed hand and Daleks and me starkers." He made a grimace. "Do you really want to know?"
"Not really."
"Good. That's...very good."
Pete looked back over at his family. "And Mickey? Did he...not make it?"
The Doctor grinned. "Mickety Mick Mickey! No, no, not at all. He made it just fine. Better than fine! A tall, dark and handsome captain enticed him to stay behind. In the other universe. You know, we always called this one Pete's World. We're going to have to come up with a name for the other one now. Mickey's World? Rose? How do you fancy we call it Mickey's World?"
"I think you'll find that it's Jack's world, and everyone else only lives in it."
The Doctor shrugged. "Jack's world it is."
So, Rose had been right. This strange, mercurial alien really had waited for her, really did want to be with her. Pete was sure Jackie would have quite a bit to say about it all at a later, and more private, time. He had so many questions about their relationship, but it was not really a step-father's place to ask.
"So, I hear you've gotten the sack from Torchwood," the Doctor continued, as if he was totally unaware that this was not a polite topic for conversation.
"Doctor!" Rose looked angrily at him.
"No, Rose, that's okay. No use trying to dress it up. The board voted me out. James Alder is sitting in the big office now."
The Doctor stood to go look out a nearby window, scrutinizing the ocean below. "And after you had so much success with your dimension cannon."
"Well, not everyone was such a fan of that project. Really though I think it's just interpersonal rubbish, and I'm not particularly upset to take an early retirement. Vincent Heths can have his little friends promoted if he wants. I've got better things to do than be his lapdog." Pete tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but was not entirely successful.
Jackie perked up but kept her voice low as Tony had fallen asleep in her lap. "Secretary Heths? What's he doing messing about with Torchwood?"
"Don't know, don't really care. He left us over a year ago but he's still got plenty of mates there, guess he wants to see them do well for themselves. It doesn't matter. We're all together again, and I've still got to make sure they're not cocking things up at Vitex."
The Doctor began to point out the window excitedly. "Look, Rose, we're almost there! We're travelling, what, eighty-three miles an hour? Eight-four? Look, there's the Firth of Forth!" He began to squeak and Jackie shushed him.
Rose stood and went over to him and he, quite gallantly Pete thought, put an arm around her waist and pulled her close. "Our new life," he sighed, kissing the top of her head.
"New new new Doctor," said Rose, but then she turned to him with concern in her eyes. "Doctor? Are you okay?"
The Doctor let Rose out of their embrace and he stumbled back into a nearby seat, clutching his head with one hand and gripping the hand rest of the seat with the other. He'd grown suddenly pale, and Rose knelt in front of him trying to get a good look in to his eyes. It was all over in a few seconds though. He sat back up in the chair again, colour slowly returning to his cheeks.
"Sorry," the Doctor said, putting on a care-free voice. "Just a little spell, I guess. I'm fine." He stood and stretched, interlacing his fingers and cracking his knuckles. "See? Sorry to ruin our little moment there, Rose. Shall we try again?"
He strode over to the window, with Rose in tow, placed her where they had been before, and kissed the top of her head again. "Now, you were saying, about your new Doctor?"
(To Chapter 4)