amberfocus

amyo67

Chapter Two: Long Story, No Time to Tell it

“Ah,” said the man standing before me. “No, I suppose not. You seem to have me at a disadvantage.”

“As is often the case,” I said wryly.

“I will know you,” he replied and it wasn’t a question.

“Intimately.”

He was still scanning me with his sonic screwdriver and I was tempted to push it away. I hadn’t even let my Doctor point that thing at me unless he was healing a minor injury. He ignored me for a moment, focusing instead on his readings, and I began to get impatient. “You’re being rude,” I told him. He looked mortified at the very suggestion.

“I’m sorry. It’s just…can you explain to me why you are the way you are?” he asked. “You’re covered in artron energy, dripping with Void residue, and the count of huon particles clinging to you is still rising.” He tapped the side of the sonic screwdriver and then pointed it at me again, just to make sure it wasn’t malfunctioning.

“It’s a very long story.”

“I’m a patient listener.  Tell me.”

I nearly let out a bark of laughter. By no stretch of the imagination would any of my Doctors have labeled themselves as a patient anything. I opened my mouth to retort when my sat comm started beeping in my pocket and I pulled the device out and glanced at it quickly. It was Torchwood. I held up my hand. “Maybe I will. But not just yet. Excuse me, I have to take this.”

I fiddled with the buttons until I found the right combination. I’d only had it a few months and was still getting used to the technology. I held the device up to my ear and turned my body slightly away from the stranger. “What is it, Miles?”

“You know how I called you yesterday? Said the world was ending sometime in the next twenty-four hours?” he asked.

“I vaguely recall.”

“Best revise that number to eighteen.”

“You need me now?” I asked suddenly alert.

“As soon as you can get here, Rose. I wish that the Do—.” He stopped himself abruptly but I knew how that sentence was going to end.

“Well, he’s not,” I said sharply. “All you have is me. The Doctor’s dead and that isn’t going to change. I’ll be there as quick as I can.” I hung up on him. I only felt slightly guilty. Miles was a good man, but grief is never reasonable.

I turned my eyes slowly back to the man on my front porch. Whatever mystery his presence here represented, I didn’t have time to solve it now. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to. If he was an earlier version of my Doctor then I’d be messing with time lines and it would destroy me if I prevented myself from meeting him when I was supposed to, not to mention what the consequences to the world, both this one and my old one, might be. If he was a later version, and I had to admit that was far less likely, then he ought to remember me and he very clearly didn’t.

“I’m dead?” he asked with mild curiosity.

“My Doctor is dead. I—I don’t know what you are. Excuse me. I need to get to work.” I shoved the sat comm back into my pocket and stepped around this version of the Doctor.

“Wait a minute. I don’t even know who you are,” he said.

“You will do. One day. But not today. I’ve got a world to save.” I hurried down the steps and was nearly to the car when his voice came from behind me.

“Would you care for a bit of help with that? I’m rather good at world saving.”

I stopped, hand on the door handle, and looked at him. “Some things never change, I suppose, but I don’t think it would be a very good idea. You might get hurt.”

“I rather think I’m old enough to take care of myself, young woman,” he said looking annoyed at me for the first time. I could almost see a hint of his Ninth incarnation in the look he directed at me and it tugged painfully at my heart.

“Don’t be officious,” I said to him. “We were married too long for you to ever pull that off with me. And anyway, I’m ninety-two. By no stretch of the imagination am I a young woman, no matter how I might look.”

The man’s jaw dropped open and he looked at me in utter consternation as I stepped into the car and started the engine. It could have been the announcement of my age, but if I knew the Doctor at all, I think it was the statement about marriage that shocked him so completely. I was just about to back out when he pulled open the passenger side door and slipped into the car. “What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.

“Going with you,” he answered easily.

“Look, I can’t take you where I’m going. It’s not safe and civilians are not allowed.”

He looked insulted at that. “I have been a lot of things in my long life, but I have never been a civilian.” He sniffed, reminding me so much of the man that I married in that moment that all I could do was stare at him. He ran his hand through his long, auburn curls and then looked at me again. “You’re not getting rid of me. Not until I get some answers.”

“World ending, remember?” I reminded him. “I don’t have time for this.”

He smiled softly. “Time is the one thing I can give you more of,” he told me.

“Not with the person that matters,” I replied. He looked at me quietly and I sighed. “Fine, whatever. You can come with me. But if you get in my way, if you get in anyone’s way, or try to be the highest authority, I’ll shoot you myself.” I started the car and backed out of the drive.

“I’d really rather not go through being shot again,” he said mildly. “It was unpleasant enough the first time. They gave me morphine and aspirin.” He shook his head.

“Then you’re the Eighth,” I said placing him from what my Doctor had told me about the many different ways he’d died in his long life. “Doesn’t sound as painful as the regenerations I’ve seen.”

“It was uncomfortable enough, thank you.” The tension between us was rising quite rapidly. I didn’t know why I was baiting the man. I had nothing against him other than the fact that his very presence here was reminding me of everything I had so recently lost. “How many regenerations have you seen?” he asked a moment later.

“Two. Well, one and a half,” I corrected myself. I pulled into the main transfer station near where I lived and parked the car in the underground car park. The man’s face clouded.

“This is a Torchwood facility,” he said looking uncomfortable for the first time since he’d shown up on my doorstep.

“Yes, it is.” I took off my seatbelt and stepped out of the car. The stranger followed suit. We walked over to a door and I used my identification and tapped a code into the wall unit before leaning forward and letting the little machine scan my retina. The door clicked open and I grasped the handle, pulling it wide. “If you have a problem with Torchwood then I suggest you don’t come along. Assuming the world survives, we can pick up where we left off afterwards.”

“And where’s that?”

I stared at him at a loss for words. “I wish I knew,” I said finally. I had no idea what I could even tell this man that wouldn’t change the course of what his life would one day be, if indeed this was my actual Doctor. There was still a chance he might be some parallel version and my husband had been wrong all these years about parallel Time Lords. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been proved wrong about something. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been proved wrong about a lot of things. I turned around and began walking down the corridor. A moment later I heard his soft footfalls following me. We stepped into a lift and I pressed the down button.

“What’s your name?” he asked and I realized suddenly that I hadn’t told him that. Maybe I didn’t want him to know. Maybe I didn’t want to hear the words spoken so often in love, falling from his lips as if they belonged to a stranger. He was the Doctor, but his mouth wouldn’t curve around the words of my name like a lover’s caress. His voice wouldn’t deepen with emotion as he recited those three syllables. His breath wouldn’t change the timbre of his tone and his eyes wouldn’t darken. They’d just be words again. Nothing more.

I took a deep breath. “Rose Tyler,” I told him.

“Hello, Rose Tyler,” he said. It was like being hit in the stomach with a brick. I leaned hard against the back wall of the lift. I’d been wrong. He’d said it exactly the way I’d heard it for the last seventy years of my life. How was it even possible? This man, this Doctor, didn’t know me. How could he say my name like that? How could he know? Tears came into my eyes and I viciously forced them back. He would not see me cry. No one saw Rose Tyler cry. No one but the man I’d buried a few short weeks ago.

“Hello,” I managed.

“Are you all right?” he asked concern etching his brow. His bright blue eyes were filled with something too familiar for eyes that were not chocolate brown or steely blue. He reached towards me.

I nodded, stepping neatly away from the outstretched hand as the lift dinged. “Teleport is this way,” I told him.

“Teleport?”

“Don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe. You perfected it.”

“I build a teleport? For Torchwood?” he asked. He was astonished but followed me up onto the platform anyway.

“You’ll do a lot of things for Torchwood,” I told him. “Problem is, I’m not sure what I can tell you without the universe imploding. So, first things first. Save the universe and then…then I think, Doctor, that you and I are going to have to have a very long talk.”

I pressed the button on the wall, my Doctor had insisted that it be big and red, and we were transported in the space of three heartbeats to the other side of London and deep inside the heart of Torchwood. As the sensors indicated the presence of an alien life form, every alarm in the building began to scream its displeasure.

 Ch. 3:  http://jeprdyfrndly.livejournal.com/2579.html