"Doctor Who: Powers of Ten" (Invite Only!)

"Why are half the people I run into today trying to do me a mischief?"

Jenny dove back into the third cell, half-kneeling, two sidearms and one longarm and a rasp to her throat. "Dad. We're out of time."

***

She heard the silent accusation in his voice. She heard the desperate warning in her voice. She saw that Blonde girl. The wide smile, so ready whenever she looked at her. No, when SHE, looked at HIM. Her voice screaming his name. Doctor. Calling for him. Over and Over. Calling for him. For help.

She heard the footstep in the hall. Heavy. Foreboding. Pain. They’d bring more pain. Much more pain.

Pushing off the wall she lurched around the corner, and into the hall. A name gasping from her throat. “Rose..”

Seeing the three in the hall drove her forwards. Onwards. She stumbled, or at least it looked that way.

She rolled on the floor, collecting two weapons, before she came up on her feet, running. At point blank range she placed both weapons against the lead troopers face.

And pulled two triggers.

Ten and Jen.

"Why are half the people I run into today trying to do me a mischief?"

Jenny dove back into the third cell, half-kneeling, two sidearms and one longarm and a rasp to her throat. "Dad. We're out of time."

The Doctor's hearts thudded hard in his chest at that pronouncement, and he staggered out of Jack's arms, clapped Jack on the shoulder...

"All right, new plan, here's what we--"

And then T'Pol dove out into the hallway, using That Name Again as her battlecry.

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Or. Well. That. Could do that."

He dove to the door, peered 'round, frowned darkly as T'Pol scooped up the guns and hurled herself, dauntless, at the three--

Judoon Enforcers. Genetically accelerated to take out problematically embedded perpetrators. The tactical squad.

Fast in close quarters, impossibly strong, and--

T'Pol's weapons discharged, she held them up to the face of the first Enforcer, she practically had to stand on tip-toe, God they were tall, red energy zinged and the Enforcer reeled...

...only to roar at her, and swing at her, and while from the combination of her weapons fire and the aftereffects of Jenny's from moments before had practically blinded it, its missed swing still managed to drive a far deeper divot into the deckplates than had T'Pol's little muscle spasm a minute ago. It did not seem hurt. It only seemed... angry.

It missed T'Pol by a yard, by just a yard, but still the force of the impact might be enough to knock her off her feet...

--practically impregnable.

The Doctor's hand flew to cup around his mouth, he bellowed at her. "Neck pinch! NECK PINCH!"

The Doctor whipped around to look at Jack. "Love the coat, by the way, have I ever told you? Lots of pockets. I don't suppose you raided the Torchwood larder before you left? Some of that all-species sedative, or maybe some Weevil spray? Only we should probably help her before she gets herself Red Shirted."

The Doctor shook his head, gritting his teeth. "I'm not leaving anyone behind. Not this time."

Behind the lead Enforcer, the other two were reaching for T'Pol, but it was only by sheer luck that they were too big to fit past the first to destroy her...

It missed T'Pol by a yard, by just a yard, but still the force of the impact might be enough to knock her off her feet...
The ground - the wall - the world - shook under the creatures hammerhand blow. Shook enough to destabilize T’Pol’s footing. Shook enough to knock her down. But all that did really was irritate her.

--practically impregnable.

And irritating an enraged – and pain filled – Vulcan was not a good thing. Not a good thing at all.

The Doctor's hand flew to cup around his mouth, he bellowed at her. "Neck pinch! NECK PINCH!"

Leaping to her feet once more T’Pol darted forward, the gravity well of the ship was set to humanoid standards. Point nine eight Earth gravity. Made prisoner, slave, property transfer easier for the Sontarans. But for a heavy worlder like T’Pol, whose Planet Vulcan carried a gravity well of one point six Earth normal. The lighter gravity was a blessing.

Dashing forward she leaped sideways like some martial artist in a comical cinematagraph from the late twentieth century Earth. She leaped sideways, and up. Her bare foot slapping the black metal, launching her to the other side, and directly at the lead enforcer. Her left leg had curled under during the initial leap, but now. Now it lashed out, Bare foot impacting bare snout.

With a resounding crack the snout splintered. A large chunk snapping off and flying across the battlefield, such as it was in the corridor. The Judoons head twisted under the blow. Eyes watering from pain.

And a Vulcan hand darted down. Down between grey skin and grey armour.

Slim female fingers impacted a nerve cluster.

Squeezing.

Squeezing hard.

And the Judoon went down. Hard.

And loud. A Judoon Trooper wasn’t a light being to begin with. (A ballerina it was not) And once you added in armour it was one heavy son-of-a-bitch. And when they crashed to the ground. They crashed. Loudly. And solidly.

The deckplates shook.

The other two troopers paused. Not long. But.. for Judoon.. it was an eternity.

Jack looked back at the Judoon squad. He had seen these guys before. Well, maybe not THESE guys, but with Judoon who could really tell?

"Get Spockette and your pretty blond friend outta here Doc. This is gonna tickle." Jack spun his Webley and placed it into the Doctor's hand. Followed by the Sonic Gun. "I am particularly fond of these. See to it you keep them safe for me." Jack met the blond in the door to the hall.

"Barbie, I need those pistols. Now. Ten minutes ago." Jack was still smiling. But it was no longer the exuberant puckish smile that had charmed Rose Tyler near out of her knickers when they first met. This was the kind of smile that used to worry Gwen. The kind that suggested that Jack might be a little more unhinged than he portrayed. Jack extended his hands for the guns. Eyes never leaving the Judoon.

Jack watched as the Vulcan dropped one of them.

"Hey, Spockette! Get outta there!" Jack looked back at the blond. Still waiting.

Ten and Jen.

"Get Spockette and your pretty blond friend outta here Doc. This is gonna tickle." Jack spun his Webley and placed it into the Doctor's hand. Followed by the Sonic Gun. "I am particularly fond of these. See to it you keep them safe for me."

Startled, The Doctor accepted Jack's weapons without even realising what he was doing, then made a disgusted face on the order of when he'd tasted blood on The Sycorax asteroid-ship... "(Oh, what I wouldn't give for a super-powered baseball bat...)" Grunting, he shoved these into his pockets. "Jack, don't do anything daft, we've had too much of that today already."

But, hey, they never listen...

Jack met the blond in the door to the hall.

"Barbie, I need those pistols. Now. Ten minutes ago."

Jack bestowed that order on Jenny and her eyes darkened as they narrowed, an expression oh so very much like her father. "'Barbie.' My friend says that's a way to cook food, but I get the feeling you mean something a little more derogative. But get this, 'Captain,' you might have outranked me, once, but I was dishonourably discharged because of my connection to him. And that means you don't get to order me around."

Jack watched as the Vulcan dropped one of them.

"Hey, Spockette! Get outta there!" Jack looked back at the blond. Still waiting.

"Ooh," The Doctor whistled, shook his head, "not many people can do that." ...though fear thrilled down his spine as he watched the lead Enforcer slump to the deck-- he saw the look in the other pair's eyes.

"Anthropomorphic black rhinos," he murmured hurriedly, "if you panic them--"

The second Enforcer took one thundering step forward.

"T'POL!" The Doctor roared, but it seemed she was so deep in a blood-green rage that she was beyond hearing him, "FALL BACK!"

One ominous booming step, and clapped its hands around T'Pol's head like the handclap of a god, of insufficient force to crumple her resilient skull but oh, the sound, the sheer impetus of the noise...

She dropped like a stone, and the Enforcer roared.

"You want an order, 'Captain?'" Jenny smirked, though the smirk was cold and hard, a battlefield smirk to match Jack's madmadman smile. "'Rearguard action.' Dad, on my go, re-establish the force-fields."

And she tossed him the guns, tossed him the pistols, but even as they were in the air, she slung the shotgun that dangled from her arm into the grasp of both her hands and she was sprinting along that wartorn stretch of hall with legs that could run 100 yards in 8.86 seconds...

The Doctor's eyes bulged. "Jenny? Nononono, not again..." He clapped his hands to his head. "Jack, don't you dare let her die!"

She ran. She ran hard. The Doctor's coat billowed around her.

Leave no-one behind.

That was the first lesson she'd learned from her father, when he'd bellowed at her for imprisoning Martha behind a wall of rubble.

This woman was a complete stranger, and her dad was just as willing to risk himself to save her as he was Doctor Jones.

Well, so was Jenny.

The deckplates blew by under her and she grimaced as she ran towards the fallen Enforcer, the fallen Vulcan, and the two Enforcers still standing.

They loomed over her, great and dark and furious, all gleaming black and burning eyes...

Don't care how tall you are.

You've still got knees.

She pumped the shotgun. Blue light crackled in its barrel.

She sprinted. She aimed. She fired.

...the concussive photon blast ploughed into the second Enforcer's left knee. It roared, and staggered, and the one behind it screamed in frustration, trying to get past.

She aimed again. She fired.

...this time the blast punched into its right knee and it began to topple forward, clutching its injury, bellowing, threatening to fall face-first upon its fallen compatriot, and the battered T'Pol...

But as it fell, as it toppled forwards, Jenny was right there to meet it, shotgun angled up, and the barrel of the weapon went right into the rhino's mouth, right between its teeth, and then, right then, before its weight could crush The Doctor's Daughter or his latest acquaintance, she again pulled the trigger.

Blue-white light flashed in the beast's mouth and in its ears and around its eyes and the concussion rammed against the back of its throat and its head snapped back, the ultimate whiplash... its head snapped back and for a moment it was seeing the world upside-down...

...and its horn, its primary horn, lodged in the shoulder of the Enforcer behind it, and both Enforcers howled...

Jenny was panting, and she was flushed, and she was grinning, and her eyes glinted as she surveyed her handiwork.

But then the third Enforcer shoved hard on the shoulders of the second, and the horn came out of its shoulder with a slick thick sluck, glistening gleaming black blood on a glistening gleaming black horn, and both pairs of burning red eyes locked anew onto Jenny.

Their nostrils flared.

And even then, even as Jenny realised she was out of the frying pan and into the fire, the Enforcer already downed began to stir, the Vulcan Neck Pinch having been sufficient only to stun it for moments...

Jenny slung her shotgun onto her back.

The first Enforcer got its hands under itself.

The second Enforcer raised its fist.

Jenny swept up T'Pol like a ragdoll.

"DAD!" she howled.

"Donna, you should get your head down, get under that bunk," The Doctor hissed, screwdriver at the ready.

He blinked, and he glanced over his shoulder. "--Donna?"

Jenny dove for the first cell, T'Pol's cell, carrying the Vulcan she dove for that cell like all the hounds of Hell were at her heels--

--the second Enforcer's fist came down and the force blew her ass over teakettle and she landed a little badly but awake and alive--

"GO!"

Jack had finally stopped grinning. He was all business. All dire savage business.

As Jenny got into the room Jack was moving. Not sprinting. But moving deliberately. His hands busy at work with the guns in his hand. He reached the mid-point of the hall. Ducking quickly, Jack scooped up the gun he had dropped a moment ago. The barrel had been damaged, but the power source was functional. This was all Jack wanted.

"DOC! Shields! Hey, you big oversized herbivore! Leave the ladies alone. You want to get fresh, lets go!" Jack was again smiling as he stepped up to within a few paces of the Judoon Elite. "See, problem is, they breed you bastards for muscle. But then I guess brains aren't the strong suit for your race to start with. You see this? Do you know what these are? Do you know who I am? I am the guy that you don't want to have standing in front of you in this situation. I am the guy that you don't want carrying a bomb. I am the guy who has pretty much ran out of things to care about. That makes me your worst nightmare. Your big, your strong and in about 1.3 seconds, your going to be blown to whatever Wild Kingdom Hell you people believe in. Wish I could say I would see you there." Jack's smile widens as a tear rolls down his cheek as he drops the now fused guns to the deck.

Maybe this is it. Maybe this time I can go. Ianto... Steven... Gray... maybe now I can be done...

Ten and Jen.

"GO!"

"DOC! Shields!"

The Doctor's thumb came down hard on the trigger of his sonic screwdriver, and in that instant, in that eyeblink, the octirinized neutrino level 5 k-field matrix flared back to life, sparks flying...

I'm sorry, Jack.

I'm so sorry.

Neither of us dies today.

At least, not forever.

Jenny glanced up, bewildered, to see "Captain" Jack standing right there, outside the forcefield, with an improvised dambuster of a weapon, smiling and weeping in the face of big obsidian horned worldshattering explosive death. And she gazed in wonder. It really was a lovely speech.

Her indoctrination protocols included the concept of kamikaze, and to hear this, those historical kamikaze warriors would have been proud.

And she gazed in mystery, and she couldn't look away when the first Enforcer, infuriated beyond all sentience, ducked its head and drove its primary horn through the center of Jack's chest...

But then came light.

And then came fire.

And then came thunder.

Jenny threw her arm in front of her face and whipped her head away and still she could see the light bright as day through her eyelids.

The Doctor pressed up hard against the wall of the cell and closed his dark dark eyes and reflected how very like The End of The World this was. Hiding behind shields while a Sun went off outside.

And then it all went quiet.

Nigel Tate was not your typical member of Torchwood. Nor was he your typical member of UNIT. However, given the mess caused by Frobischer and his crew, he was now the man in charge. At least that was the official word. But sense when did Torchwood do anything the official way.

Nigel Tate had just stepped out of his flat when the SUV pulled to the curb. At least he is punctual. Some wonders.

Nigel stepped into the back of the vehicle and spoke not a word on his way to the hub. Not a word as they crossed to the lift. Unfortunately, no good thing lasts forever.

"You know, Mr. Hart, I was not in favor of your commission here. But at least you have proven a better driver and errand boy than that previous fellow. What was his name? Yanni?" The lift was moving into the hub as Nigel finished speaking.

"First of all sir, his name was Ianto. And he was a damn fine man. Second, I really couldn't care less if you like my appointment. Face it chum, I am about the only one suited for the job you lot need done."

"A fine man. Hm. Well I have heard he had a knack for making an excellent cup of coffee. Suppose we all have our..." Nigel was cut off mid chuckle. Not by choice. By a very strong hand, exerting a very great amount of pressure on Nigel's very vulnerable throat.

Captain John Hart grimaced as he held on to this bloated mouth piece. With his other hand John brushed back his coat. The gun evident on his hip.

"I am trying very hard... I do not want to fall off the wagon mate. I hate rehab. All the rules and the whining, murder rehab is the worst. But I swear to you chum, one more insult about Eye-Candy or the others that gave their bleedin' lives for yours, and I will throw you off this lift. Are we clear?" John's voice is stern but full of mockery, doing a terrific mimicry of Nigel's own accent.

Nigel could not speak. But subtly he could nod.

"Good. Now, so we are able to move on, if you think I was rough, try that with the girl. Talk about anger issues." The lift arrives and Hart leads the way into the hub. "I'm back."

T'Pol's nightmare

It was her first.

Her first day off Vulcan. Ordered to the Imperial Academia of Astrophysics. She was to be on a Starship. She’d been drafted. A neural implant stuck to the bone of her skull. To help locate her if anything went awry, they said. More likely to keep track of where a Vulcan was on Earth. Or anywhere else.

Her first day at the Academia.

*****

The humans shoved her hard against the metal lockers, the fingers touching her face and body. Fingers snapping and pinching her ears. “Go home freak! Got off the Planet! Alien! They should be enslaved. They aren’t human after all. They’re stupid. I heard they hate sex! I heard they like sex more than Orions. They fuck anything. And I mean ANYTHING!!!”

****

Clothes lay strewn across the floor. Muffled screams never left the room. Dried tears stained her face. She was beyond pain and horror now. Now she boiled with rage. She would have revenge. One day.

The last of them finished with her body. And several began urinating on her. “Yeah, just like I said. Vulcan’s like sex. Did you hear her moaning? And the screams.. She fucking loved it.”

Chuckling the human’s walked off, leaving her bent over the equipment. Done with her. Their desires satisfied. “Jeez, she couldn’t get enough.” One said, his voice pitching to a falsetto in imitation of the female student. “No! Please!.”

“Hell, she was begging us to keep pounding her. To fuck her. Don’t! Stop! Please!”

“Yeah” his friends agreed. “Don’t Stop, please!”

****

Vulcan fingers pinched human flesh. The troopers eyes widening with shock as his nerves refused to obey him. “Your mind to my mind..” she whispered. Minutes later he was floating in space. Explosive decompression ripped him apart, even as he froze.

T’Pol stood at the airlock, watching him drift. “Three left..” she murmured, her face hard. Cold. Ice. Colder than the darkest reaches of space.

****

Facing the Imperial Marine T’Pol’s fingers caressed his face. “You were my first you know.” She whispered.

“Really baby? When did we fuck?”

“My first day at Academia.”

“Hmm.. I haven’t been at the Academia in nearly twenty years. Not since I graduated.”

“I know, I’ve watched your career. Kept track of you.”

“Damn, I must have made your lifetime. Best fuck you ever had?”

“It was memorable.”

“Wanna do it again?”

“I had, other things, in mind.” She said suggestively her eyes wandering to his crotch.

In a flash his uniform was parted and he was bare to the air. “Yeah bitch, that’s what I like. Gimme some fun”

“Yes it will be very… fun..” T’Pol whispered in his ear as fingers touched his face.

*****

Marine Major McGregor stepped onto the bridge, his weapon firing. Half the Command crew died in the first few seconds. Before the Marine’s body was ripped apart by return fire.

Kneeling next to the body the young Vulcan touched it’s neck. Feeling for a pulse. “He’s dead Captain.” She said, straightening up.

“Why is he naked?”

“Space sickness perhaps?” she replied. Even though she already knew the answer.

Whispering she told the dead Marine. “You were my first. You forced me to bleed for you. And you are my last. And you bleed for me.”

“Captain!!” Yelled the helmsman. “Unidentified ship off the Port Stern.”

Metal ripped apart.

The air screamed.

Fires licked across deck plating.

Flesh melted.

The world tilted at illogical angles.

A dark corridor. A cold steel floor.

Gutteral voices.

Pain.

Always pain.

A Living Nightmare

Standing on the beach he/I asked, “Where are we? Where did the gap come out?”

“We're in Norway.,” She told me.

“Norway. Right.”

“About fifty miles out of Bergen. It's called 'Dårlig Ulv Stranden'. “

“Dalek?” he/I said, started.

“Dårl-IG. It's Norwegian for 'bad'. “

The I continued to stare at her, my brow furrowed.

“This translates as 'Bad Wolf Bay' ”

They laughed at the irony of this, but sobered almost immediately.

“How long have we got? “ she asked me.

“About two minutes...” he/I said.

Rose, almost laughing at the absurdity of this, said “I can't think of what to say!”

The he/I laughed too, then glances over at where Jackie, Pete and Mickey are waiting by the Jeep.

“You've still got Mr. Mickey, then?”

“There's five of us now. Mum, dad, Mickey... and the baby.”

“You're not...?” he/I asked, shocked to the core.

“No.” she said, laughing, the way that made my hearts beat faster. “It's mum.”

He/I laughed with some relief and looked over at Jackie.

“She's three months gone. More Tylers on the way.”

“And what about you? Are you...?”

“Yeah, I'm-- I'm back working in the shop.”

“Oh, good for you.,” we said, nodding

Rose laughed and for a moment it's just like old times. “Shut up. No, I'm not. There's still a Torchwood on this planet, it's open for business.” She said tearing up again. “I think I know a thing or two about aliens.”

“Rose Tyler. Defender of the Earth.” We said, proudly.

Another lingering look between the two of us.

“You're dead, officially, back home. So many people died that day and you've gone missing. You're on a list of the dead.” We told her.

She begins to cry quietly.

“Here you are.” We said, smiling. “Living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have.”

Sobbing in earnest, she asked/pleading with me, “Am I ever gonna see you again?”

Quietly, and so, so sorry, he gave that answer that killed him inside, “You can't.”

“What're you gonna do?”

“Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life. Last of the Time Lords.”

“On your own?”

We nodded silently, still watching her with compassion. Rose surveys us, hopelessly heartbroken, tears falling thick and fast.

“I lo—“ She choked with tears before she can finish her sentence. She takes a moment to regain her composure, and then -

“I love you.” Another shuddering sob escaped her. We gazed at her with heart-rending tenderness and devotion.

“Quite right, too.” We said, softly.

Rose nods, smiling at us through her tears.

Gazing at her, “And I suppose... if it's one last chance to say it...” We paused a moment, eyes locked with hers. “Rose Tyler...”

But their time is up. She fades away into nothingness.

He/I/we stood alone in the TARDIS, eyes filled with tears which are spilling down his/my/our cheeks, his/my/our mouth already open to form the words he/we never got to say. I swallows hard, closing my/our eyes with a heavy heart.

Wilf

It was a clear sky tonight. The whole universe of stars twinkled bright and clear, all signs of pollution nearly gone from the atmosphere after that debacle with ATMOS. No one really commented on it now. Most people acted like it’d always been that way. He supposed that was the way of things. To remember that the stars had once been barely visible was to remember that so many people had died and almost died from a device that they had thought was meant to help people. They had all done the same thing when, one after another, the stars had first been hidden from sight because of said pollution, after all.

Wilfred Mott supposed he wasn’t any different, even if he did like to think that he was a bit more observant than his fellow man, a bit sharper, at least, ever since he met the Doctor. Nearly gave him a heart attack, the Doctor did, when he disappeared into thin air with that woman, but the event had opened his eyes to more than the newest possibility of an alien invasion. He never did ask him what had happened to that woman, didn’t really occur to him until now. If he didn’t happen to trust the man, thinking of that mysterious blond would’ve made him uneasy about his own concerns with Donna, especially as the line on the other end of his cell kept ringing but no one answered. He almost considered hanging up, his worry making him impatient. It was bad enough being as helpless as he felt.

"Torchwood Cardiff. Who's this?"

The voice that answered him was most definitely not the voice of the man he’d talked to. It was a woman, young if he had to venture a guess, seemed good-natured enough, if you could tell all that by a voice, and there was a good bit of noise in the background as well. If he had to venture a guess, he’d go for construction, with all of those indistinct voices and various loud crashings and beeping sounds. As nice as the woman sounded, he couldn’t help but notice that she didn’t give a name, just that bit about being Torchwood, which he already knew. In the back of his mind, Wilf wondered where that Jack Harkness was if this woman was answering the phone. For a moment, he said nothing, debating if this strange woman could be trusted, but there really wasn’t much he could do if she did turn out to be some sort of enemy.

“Wilfred Mott, ma’am. It’s about my grand-daughter. She’s…”

His voice trailed off, leaving him blinking in confusion. There was no history of Alzheimer’s in his family, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going a bit dotty. He couldn’t, for the life of him, remember what it was he’d been trying to say. This was important. She was in trouble. She needed help and these people could help him help her. At least, he hoped they could.

“Her name is…”

The name slipped as easily from him as the circumstances of the crisis had. Scowling, Wilf pressed a hand over his mouth and a lump quickly settled itself in his throat. He couldn’t even remember his own granddaughter’s name. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t remember anything about her. How old was she? What color was her hair? Her eyes? Did she like school? Was she silly or sensible? He couldn’t say and when he tried to remember, any glimpse he could catch of her quickly fled the moment he tried to concentrate on it. Who was she? Why was she in trouble? Why did he want to help her so much? Looking at the phone in his hand, he tried to remember why he knew about Torchwood in the first place, but it eluded him, and he was coming very close to panicking again.

“Something’s wrong.”

Donna

His hand slipped into her own and she pulled him up. The beginnings of a grin eagerly tugged at her lips in answer to his own, but she kept her somber attitude for the moment, by the skin of her teeth. Then he spoke.

"Don't you ever change?"

And Donna, well Donna laughed, tilting her head back a bit as she did so, mirth causing her eyes to crinkle, as she fully understood that he was copying her. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head, red tresses swirling about with the movement, an action she quickly stopped as pain exploded sharp and fast underneath her skin. So she settled for grinning instead as she answered him back.

“Never.”

The grin continued to be worn as her friend turned serious. They did have more important things to attend to at the moment, after all. Oh, did that feel good to think again, ‘they’. She’d missed it, missed this, and missed him. The happiness she felt right now, the adrenaline rush, did a lot to help her ignore her ‘problem’. She almost could fool herself into thinking she didn’t feel that burning anymore.

When the Doctor introduced her to the implausibility that was a Vulcan, the redhead lifted up her hand, fingers spread in a sign that she’d never thought to use in its’ proper context before. Other than that, she dutifully kept her distance. The poor girl had clearly gone through a lot and, well, she could just barely handle her own mind right now. There was no need to inflict it upon someone else. Even though, she was incredibly curious about this T’Pol and how and why exactly she was here. For that matter, she had yet to find out why she herself was in a Sontaran base. There were too many familiar faces for it to be a coincidence. It was all very, very implausible.

Hearing approaching footsteps, Donna turned her head, blinked, and was left looking at scenery that was most definitely NOT the cell she’d been occupying all of this time.

“What?!”

The Doctor, Jenny, Jack, T’Pol, the Sontarans, and the Judoon, they were all gone just like the scenery. She was in a forest, a very well manicured one, by the looks of it. The trees were all evenly spaced apart. There were no weeds or bushes or other low lying vegetation, beyond a trimmed grass lawn, to make walking difficult. A stray breeze rustled through the leaves of the trees, whispering cool against her face, effectively snapping her out of the little gawking session she’d been indulging herself with. All of this was familiar. She KNEW where she was, but, unlike T’Pol’s existence, that was impossible. She shouldn’t be looking at silver leaves dancing in the wind, nor the vibrant orange sky that peeked out from above the foliage. It was beautiful, but it was impossible.

“Gallifrey?”

“No… and yes.”

The sudden voice, the sudden presence of someone beyond herself, had Donna whirling around. Her eyes sparked with indignation about suddenly being pulled away from her friends like this. Then it was replaced with distinct confusion. She had not a clue what this being was, and now that she knew everything the Doctor had known at the time of the meta-crisis that had created her as she was, well her not knowing something was really unlikely. Still, what she was staring at was a humanoid shape that seemed to be made entirely of refracted light, but not at all like a disco ball. It was the best description she could come up with in her head. Its’ form was indefinite and there were no defining features, even the colors of its’ skin shifted as often as the wind that surrounded them. For a rare moment in Donna’s life, she was speechless, even as a million questions buzzed around in her head.

“You are in me, outside of myself. You are everywhere and nowhen. For the space of…” It paused as fingers seemed to materialize on its’ body for the explicit purpose of being counted.”..thirty minutes you will have never existed.”

There was another pause and then those fingers that had materialized, along with the hands attached to them, were gripping her shoulders. It wasn’t painful, but the grasp was firm as It shook her, an air of frantic worry was about it as it did so.

“This is important. Listen. Listen. Listen. LISTEN!”

She did. She listened with everything in her and came to realize a very important thing. Her mind was no longer burning. Her body still hurt, all of time and space ripping at her just underneath the surface, but the flames that had been engulfing the inside of her skull were gone as if they’d been carried away by the breeze that still persisted around them. But, as far as listening went, the sound of air currents making their way through the silver foliage that surrounded them was all she heard. When Donna looked back at the being, it had moved some feet away and seemed to be waiting for her to do something. What was left of her patience eagerly snapped and she stormed towards It, quickly closing the distance, anger clear in her voice.

“Who are you? What are you? Why am I here?!”

“ I am…” As quick as the response came Its’ voice faded off and, for a few moments, silence hung heavy and clear between them, as if it wasn’t entirely sure of the answer itself and was trying to come up with a solution. Then it smiled, or seemed to. It had no lips to pull back, no teeth to reveal, and no eyes to crinkle, but there was a gentle mirth about the being, anyways. She wasn’t sure she liked that. There was also a certain pride in its’ voice as it finally delivered the answer. “Myself. And you… You are mine.”

Ten and Jen.

He didn't move, at first. Not as the golden fire raged outside.

Not as the golden fire died and the forcefields gave up the ghost, dying one last time.

And then he opened his eyes.

And he stared at that spot.

He could still see her. Like an after-image. Like the ghostly visage of a woman recorded onto a pre-incarnate Betamax tape and then recorded over, a sort of modern analog analogue for a palimpsest...

He could still see her where she was standing.

Framed with crimson. Crackling with the fury of her own brainpower.

But he couldn't remember her name. It was a splinter in his mind's eye, an itch behind his frontal cortex. It was like... like meeting River Song, and she knew who he was, but he didn't--

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

The splinter dug in deeper, the itching was excruciating, he couldn't scratch it.

He clutched his head with both hands.

That was where he knew her from, he knew her from meeting River Song and pointing and laughing at archaeologists and this was the lady who'd stood beside him and torn up the personal experience contracts with him, who was that what was her name she was important she was The Most Important who was she?

Rocking from side to side, he could see her image fading, he was hanging onto it with tooth and claw, this was The Infinite Temporal Flux...

...this was like that memory he had of that starship crew from his Fourth life, except something had happened and diverted that timeline and therefore the whole thing couldn't have been possible, it existed like a ghost upon his consciousness, a remembered paradox...

...he'd thought he'd been a paradox himself, once, when his Second and Sixth selves had encountered each other, his Sixth self seeking out his Second self when frightened that the Second had met his end in a manner most, well, untimely.

He shook his head, he shook his whole self, he needed a grounding, here, he needed... he needed to see if anyone else could remember her, it was setting off alarm bells in every cell of his body, he was splitting into two but in one of him his second heart was missing, a paradox and a pair of Docs...

"My head," he muttered, "oh, my head."

He hesitated, not wanting to look away from the outline of her, that's all she was now, he was afraid that by looking away the memory would slip from him completely. But he needed to, he needed to... The Doctor needed a second opinion.

"Jack?" he stumbled out through the gap where the broken force-field had been. "Jack, could you--"

He stopped. Oh. Yeah, of course.

Jack's body was... badly damaged. It had been blown quite a distance, and slagged and cooling shrapnel had rained down around it, along with bits of Sontaran clone-bodies. That really had been quite a blast.

The mouth of the corridor had caved in pretty much completely, twisted broken destroyed, the three Judoon Enforcers buried in this mess. They were sealed in. But there were ways around that, and at least that would buy them time against a second wave of Sontarans or Judoon.

And Jack lay in a heap. He was quite dead.

"Right," The Doctor nodded, as if he'd walked in on a romantic interlude and didn't want to be a nuisance. "I'll just... give you a minute."

"Hey, Dad?" her voice rang out, and he turned from Jack, and made his way back down the hall, stepping over more Sontaran bodies and a few bits of charred Judoon as he poked his head into the first cell.

"You what?" he asked, wearily, and then blinked, finding Jenny kneeling beside the Vulcan woman, the Vulcan woman looking rather the worse for wear. "Oh. Yeah, of course."

Out came the screwdriver, and as he too knelt, he gave her a scan, he wasn't positive as to her anatomy, but the sonic's sonography couldn't detect overmuch structural damage. She was a little concussed, it looked like, but no fractures.

Lucky, so very lucky.

He glanced up at Jenny, tapping the tip of the sonic against his chin. "You all right? Bit of a close shave."

Jenny smiled faintly at him. "Explosions collapsing hallways, armies of aliens speaking inhuman tongues? I've had worse."

"Mm," The Doctor nodded. "Listen, the third-- the third prisoner, d'you... d'you remember a prisoner in the third cell?"

Jenny stared at him blankly. "No, I told you, they narrowed the interrogation subjects down to two, they must not have bothered with a third. Dad, are you all right?"

The Doctor gazed back at her, and nodded. Nodded. Absent-minded. "I'm always all right."

Jenny frowned, shrugging her shotgun off of her back, shrugging out of her coat, handing this back to him. "If you say so."

The Doctor again regarded the Vulcan woman. "Look, I-- I said I'd help sort her out. I said I'd be a minute because of-- I needed to help-- do something. But I can't think of what it is, now, and, well, one problem at a time. I need to. Sort this. Sort her. Could you keep half an eye on the bloke outside? He's dead, that should keep him out of trouble for a few, but still, just, erm. Keep him company? Sometimes that helps."

Jenny's expression grew even more bewildered, but she nodded, and she rose, and she clasped his shoulder as she moved past him. "I'll be here if you need me."

The Doctor smiled at that, a tiny tiny smile. "You know I will."

Jenny moved out into the hall, moved to half-crouch half-kneel by the wreckage that had been Captain Jack Harkness.

She gazed at him quietly, gratefully. He'd sacrificed himself to save them. She could respect that. She could respect that very much.

"I died, once," she murmured softly to Jack. "Hope it's easier for you than it was for me."

Kneeling in the cell with T'Pol's head in his lap, her feet pointing away from him, his coat folded under her head like a pillow, The Doctor took a deep breath. And found her katra points with the fingers of both hands.

And closed his eyes, steadying his wildfire brainpan. It still hurt, missing that piece, that heart, but he couldn't figure that out and he promised this woman he'd help her and one problem at a time.

"Okay," he murmured. "Let's do it right this time."

...and there was a swirl, a billowing of invisible colors, the joining of minds...

...he stood again in the sand. Though this was not a beach, this sand was red.

...for a moment, he balked, he didn't want to be back on Mars, so soon, so raw, he could still hear them crying, still hear them dying.

But then he glanced up at the sky and saw not two moons but a sister planet and he knew, instinctively he knew that this planet was not Mars and its sister planet was named T'Khut. His own planet had had two suns, a binary star system, but this was a trinary star system. 40 Eridani, the primary star of which being named 40 Eridani A by the astronomers of Earth.

Bang a left, go the speed of light for about 16.45 years, you'll reach San Francisco. Home in time for tea.

This was Vulcan.

He put his hands in his pockets, and glanced over his shoulder, and there he found her. She looked disoriented, like she, too, had expected to find herself somewhere else and had been diverted.

He turned to face her more fully, standing there in the sand, hands in pockets.

"'Ello, T'Pol," he murmured softly. "Sorry about all this. Really, really-really, I am. I'm sorry."

Down in The Underground.

Lunaramblings said:

"I am trying very hard... I do not want to fall off the wagon mate. I hate rehab. All the rules and the whining, murder rehab is the worst. But I swear to you chum, one more insult about Eye-Candy or the others that gave their bleedin' lives for yours, and I will throw you off this lift. Are we clear?" John's voice is stern but full of mockery, doing a terrific mimicry of Nigel's own accent.

Nigel could not speak. But subtly he could nod.

"Good. Now, so we are able to move on, if you think I was rough, try that with the girl. Talk about anger issues." The lift arrives and Hart leads the way into the hub.

Click to expand...

"He had a robot dog," Martha stared, blankly, frankly disbelieving. "I mean, I heard him talking about a 'Kay-Nine' with Sarah-Jane before we towed The Earth back, but--"

Mickey raised his hands in an I surrender posture. "No joking, I'm for real on this, 'e 'ad a robot dog from the outer-space future and it sounded like, I dunno, a friendly Dalek. It was a nice enough bloke, really, but-- isn't that so 'im? A robot dog."

Martha pursed her lips, tilted her head, ate her sandwich as she stood by the terminal that Mickey was working on hooking up to the Torchwood off-site file back-ups. "It is, you know? Never any living things on The TARDIS, only people. Not so much, ah, goldfish? Not even a houseplant."

"Mm," Mickey nodded solemnly, holding up three colours of LAN cable and hooking them to a secure router. "Maybe 'e fhought the people were pets enough. Or, sometimes, 'e 'ad those coral bits from The TARDIS pillars, maybe they'd be 'pet rocks' to 'im? I mean, say what you will about this place, cafhedral-'igh ceilings, walls like a Tube station, doors like Babylon Five, at least we've got a pterodactyl."

Doctor Martha Milligan-Jones' expression became even more quiet, thoughtful. "Pet rocks and robots don't die on you. Or, at least, he knows how to fix the robots. Probably he's tired of things dying on him."

Mickey Smith paused, and scritched his nascent beard, suddenly solemn. "'Adn't fhought of that. Yeah."

They were quiet for a moment.

Smith smiled faintly. "Remind you uv anyone else?"

Martha nodded, shoulders rising and falling, and she discarded her sandwich in a dustbin beside the workstation. "Yeah. Yeah, it does. And you know what? He had one of those coral bits, too. They found it in the rubble in his office."

Mickey pondered this. "What do you get the man who's seen Everyfhing?"

And then John Hart strolled up, eyes dark, jaw clenched, looking rather as uncomfortable as a one-footed man in an arse-kicking competition. "I'm back."

Martha grunted, regarding this "new" Captain with far less respect than had she the previous one. "Ah, well, look at what the pet rock dragged in."

Hart smiled thinly at her. "I actually owned the first pet rock, once. I had to leave it behind when some idiot turned it into the first wheel. Anyway, speaking of dragging in, where's HRH Gwen Cooper? I brought the new checks-and-balances guy. Everyone say, 'hello, Nigel!'"

Martha glared dismally at Hart, and then held out her hand to Nigel for a handshake. "Pleased to meet you, Nigel."

"Yeah, wotcher," Mickey greeted the newcomer, with a chin-up nod, and then glanced back at Hart. "Miz Nibs is upstairs in the conference room, taking a phone call. Speaking uv wheels, tho-- how was she?"

Hart shrugged. "I've ridden in worse. But what was with that smell?"

Mickey stared at him, aghast. "You don't like the new car smell?"

“Wilfred Mott, ma’am. It’s about my grand-daughter. She’s…”

The phone trailed off, and for a moment Gwen had thought he'd lost signal, or her tenuous connection to the hardline had been severed somehow, but no, that LCD still twinkled red at her. She frowned, listened harder.

Rhys peered in at her, scrutinising her. "Who is it, then?"

Gwen gestured sharply, gestured for him to shush. Frantically, she waved at the construction workers to stop drilling or jackhammering or whatever it was they were doing, and Rhys hurried over to these men and tapped them on shoulders, made throat-slashing gestures.

The man sounded very much in a state, distraught to say the least. He sounded, if one could judge this by a phone voice, well-meaning and passionate, but at the same time, he kept wavering, as though he were forgetful, or suffering some sort of trauma, or both.

Biting the inside of her cheek, Gwen silently listened, listened imploringly.

“Her name is…”

Gwen winced, and gestured again to Rhys, covered the mouthpiece with one hand, hissed to Rhys. "Get Smith to run a trace on this phone call, quick as yeh can, please."

"Right," Rhys nodded, hustled out of the conference room, grabbed a railing, called down to the floor of The Hub. "Oi! Mickey! We need a trace on this call, find out who's ringing us?"

Mickey glanced up from staring aghast at John Hart and stared bewilderedly up at Rhys, holding up another clump of cables as if by way of demonstration. "Trace it? Wiv what?"

Rhys looked a little distressed at that. "I dunno, I dunno, she said, 'quick as yeh can.'"

"Yeah, 'course," Mickey gestured, feeling put-upon but still diving half-under the desk. "Captain, give us a 'and!"

Hart seemed unimpressed, and deadpanned in reply: "I don't do Windows."

Mickey stuck his head up from under the desk and glared at Hart in a particularly impressive fashion, this expression had stared down hundreds of Cybus Cybermen, and that was just for starters.

Hart grunted in a way that suggested he couldn't be bothered to fight about it, and then dropped down to help, his hands finding cables, charting connections, plug plug plug plug. "Here I thought I was just the hired muscle and test pilot, now I'm in The IT Department."

"You could always take it up wiv The Complaint Department," Mickey harrumphed, toggling a row of switches, a couple of monitors started to flicker to life.

"We have one of those?" John mused, intrigued.

Mickey glanced up at the second-floor conference room, silently implying Gwen.

Hart followed his gaze, hesitated for a moment, and then worked faster.

"All go around here, ennit?" Martha smiled tightly at Nigel, as if worried that he'd think they were just putting on a show for the man pulling the funding strings. "Have you, erm, talked to The Brigadier lately? I haven't seen him since he left for Peru, ah, again."

Upstairs, Gwen was still listening as Rhys moved in again beside her.

“Something’s wrong.”

"Well," Gwen attempted, "try to relax, Wilfred. My name's Gwen. And those words right there, 'something's wrong,' those are two words we always take seriously. Just take a deep breath, and explain it to me. Are yeh in any immediate danger? Are yeh hurt in any way? Yehr grand-daughter, is she hurt? If yeh've seen something frightening, I understand, something impossible, absolutely, just-- describe it as best as yeh can."

A meeting..

The bone horn snapped under her foot. Fingers jabbed into it’s neck. Deck plates slammed into her back. Air screamed. Dark became day. Day became death.

***

She stood on the sands of the Fire Plains, looking at the Womb of Fire A blistering hot place on the edge of the Forge. Vulcans came here at the age of Ascension. They were either tempered into adults, or were never born. Only walking out the other side allowed entry into the logs of Life.

She’d crossed the Forge several times in her life. Each time more arduous than the last. T'Khut rose in the sky like a moon, but was not.

Sand, red red sand crunched and shift under her feet, the winds shifting everything. They always shifted the face of the world, since time immemorial. Since before anything.

People didn’t change the face of Vulcan. The winds did.

And then HE was here. She stood on the Edge of the Forge, about to cross it for the last time. To walk through the last test and enter heaven. Or fail and be damned forever to wander. And he was HERE!

He put his hands in his pockets, and glanced over his shoulder, and there he found her. She looked disoriented, like she, too, had expected to find herself somewhere else and had been diverted.

He turned to face her more fully, standing there in the sand, hands in pockets.

"'Ello, T'Pol," he murmured softly. "Sorry about all this. Really, really-really, I am. I'm sorry."

“Why are you here, Gallifreyan? She asked, even though it sounded more like a demand.

Hands clenched at her side, she wanted to run and grasp his face in her hands, to touch him. But she couldn’t. She was a VULCAN.

“What.. happened..” she snarled.

Ten.

“Why are you here, Gallifreyan? She asked, even though it sounded more like a demand.

Hands clenched at her side, she wanted to run and grasp his face in her hands, to touch him. But she couldn’t. She was a VULCAN.

“What.. happened..” she snarled.

His shoes were red.

And so were the sands that drifted over those shoes.

His suit was blue.

Red and blue.

(Something was missing. Something lovely. Something red. But that wasn't here. That wasn't now. One problem at a time.)

He walked towards her, hands in his pockets, stopped just outside of a decent lunging distance. Her memory was very complex, very precise, as little idealisation as possible, he liked that. He could taste the diminished oxygen in the atmosphere relative to Earth. The alteration in gravity.

He couldn't feel the spin of the world, the orbit, but that's all right, she wouldn't have remembered that feeling. He could feel those things, not her.

"D'you know," The Doctor explained, as though giving a lecture in a Physics class at Deffry Vale High School, "there used to be a planet in The Sol System named Vulcan? Between Mercury and The Sun. No-one remembers it now, they all think it was just a theory. Bit of a paradox, ennit? I remember it. I remember everything I fail to save."

He glanced around. "Wouldn't it be funny, though? If your Vulcan and that Vulcan were one and the same? The same planet. Only it got... moved. That would be mad, wouldn't it? Because that would mean, that would mean... that would mean that your people and The Humans were very nearly next-door neighbours. And all that xenophobia they hurled at your people, all that xenophobia and all those, erm, bullets. They wouldn't have had a leg to stand on."

His eyes were so dark. So dark and so very deep, darker than the darkest sandstorm. Deeper than the deepest space. He stopped glancing around and he looked right to the heart of her, hands in his pockets.

"Yeah," he murmured. "I'm having a proper look, now. You're not from the timeline I'm familiar with. You're not from the-- well, I can't say 'main' Universe, can I, 'primary,' what makes their Universe any better than yours? Any more, well, valid. I can't say that. 'Canonical' is just a bunch of old 'wise' men getting together and deciding what-all's rubbish and what-all isn't.

"We sat down," The Doctor continued. "Me and Rose and Jack, in my Ninth life, we had a good sit and we watched the whole thing on Blu-Ray-Two, all the shows and all the films, just so he would know who we were talking about when we talked about 'Spock.' (And just between you and me, I think Jack fancied him a bit, big surprise there.) But you're not from that world, are you? Bright and shiny Gene Roddenberry Federation future where no-one needs money to live, where no-one ever argues unless they're on a Cardassian space station, where people can get a sandwich from a synthesiser unless there's Tribbles underfoot. You're from a world where Zefram Cochrane pulled a 'Greedo shot first,' Jimmy T. Kirk was called Tiberius and Spock had a beard and Chekov's accent was awful."

He paused. Glanced upward, checked himself. "No. No, hang on. Chekov's accent was always awful. Even Yelchin made fun of it."

He blinked. "Where was I? Right. Yes. Anyway. You're not in that world anymore. I can't promise you this world is any safer, any saner, any brighter, any shinier. It's still full of gnashing teeth and Nightmare Children and gods and monsters and hollow worlds where you can touch the sky. You're in my world, now. And that means your monsters, those slimy snarling inhuman Human monsters, they can't touch you anymore, they can't hurt you."

The Doctor squinted at her. "'Why am I here?' 'What happened?' These are two questions with the same answer. I tried to tell you I was a friend by touching my mind to your mind. In the sixth 'Star Trek' film, Spock extracts crucial plot-related knowledge from Lieutenant Valeris via a mind-meld, a forced mind-meld. Which, really, that's not him at all. In the book, the book was good, he relents at the last minute, it's really quite touching, he lets her decide whether to let him in or not. And she's so amazed at his compassion that she lets him in anyway.

"In the film," he further explained, "he just bludgeons his way in and takes what he needs, very out of character but he was trying to save Jim and Bones, I s'pose that provided sufficient logical impetus for him. Anyway. I was trying for the novel. I was trying to be. Friendly. Just a touch. Mind to mind. But I underestimated how raw your connections were, just how potent your telepathic paracortex was, and you got a residual radial telepathy for a moment, inheriting that from me, and you got-- you got me. You got a download of all of me. From the start, to now. Everything except my name. I was trying for the novelisation but you got the film, and I'm sorry."

His jaw flexed. "So that's what happened. And that's why I'm here."

He took one hand out of his pocket. "The raw emotion I contain could make an empathivore explode. It's only your Vulcan brain structure that's allowed you to survive this long. But I'm here to take me back. To extract all of that. And I'll be gentle. And I'll be careful. But there's things of mine no-one's meant to know but me. And I need to take them back."

He took a deep breath, and rubbed together the fingers on that hand. "I'll be gentle. I'll be careful. But it's going to-- it's going to hurt. That's why we're here, Commander T'Pol A'lex T'ker. Because it's going to get hot in this big silver pot. But I'll be here, and I'll help you through it, and I'll try to-- to minimise the echoes that I leave behind, I know that's a side effect of mind-melds, Sarek and Jean-Luc. But in the meantime. We're both going to burn. Here in The Forge."

He took one step closer to her, and he held his hand out to her, one hand still in his pocket, his other hand held out to her, as the sands of Vulcan spun around him.

His eyes were deep and dark and sandstorms and stone and smoke. And he held out to her his hand.

There near The Womb of Fire, so very like The Untempered Schism of his own eighth birthday.

And he invited her to ascend.

"Burn with me."

His eyes were deep and dark and sandstorms and stone and smoke. And he held out to her his hand.

There near The Womb of Fire, so very like The Untempered Schism of his own eighth birthday.

And he invited her to ascend.

"Burn with me."

He spoke as if he knew the Despot Spock. S’chn T’gai Spock, Spock The Despoiler. The destroyer of Worlds. The Vulcan that rose up and ruled a starship. The one Vulcan that stood against the Empire. And destroyed a World called Utopia Planitia. Very nearly destroyed Terra Prime itself.

But he didn’t, He didn’t know the Despoiler, he knew another Spock. A calmer, more peaceful Spock. A commander, A captain, An Ambassador. A Spock that Surak would have been proud of. A Spock not of her Time.

She’d burned with him. She’d burned inside his skull on the S.S. Pentallian. She’d burned on the surface of the Terran moon with Martha. She’d burned with him when Adric died. When Leela stayed behind on Gallifrey, and died years later. She’d burned with Turlough’s betrayal, she’d burned with Neesa’s departure. She’d burned…

But that wasn’t her. That was him. She knew it was his memories. His thoughts and emotions.

She knew.

But she still felt it. The burning pain that tore at her soul.

The burning pain that was Rose Tyler standing on the Shores of Bad Wolf Bay. The burning pain that didn’t give her, him. Didn’t give him.. time to say those words to Rose.

He took one step closer to her, and he held his hand out to her, one hand still in his pocket, his other hand held out to her, as the sands of Vulcan spun around him.

And she stepped towards him. Away from the Edge, away from The Forge. The Womb of Fire. “Yes,” she said, her hand rising to meet his. Two fingers extended, touching his hand. A single line of cleanliness running down her soot and blood stained face. “teretuhr etek ket'lio.”

Through the Looking-Glass.

“Yes,” she said, her hand rising to meet his. Two fingers extended, touching his hand. A single line of cleanliness running down her soot and blood stained face. “I will burn with you.”

His fingers curled with hers. Astral bodies given the illusion of solidity.

He held her hand.

"Right, then," he murmured. "No time like the present."

He took his other hand out of his pocket and wiped a smudge of the stains of her face. Gentle. Almost intimate. Compassionate.

But oh, so very logical.

He had once been named "Spock."

He had once claimed to be half-human.

And it was with a coolly surgical touch and the warm heartbeat of a once-good man that he invited himself into the sanctum sanctorum of her consciousness.

And, well, Womb or not, Forge or not, Schism or not, something cracked open and something started to burn.

He found the beginning.

'Lonely little boy. Lonely then and lonelier now.'

He worked his way forwards.

His first visit to The Medusa Cascade, a mere 90 years old.

Him and Susan.

'Oh, grandfather!'

And on and on.

Crotchety, acting old and self-important, like you do when you're young.

'We're always in trouble! Isn't this extraordinary -- it follows us everywhere!'

Ian and Barbara.

'It all started out as a mild curiosity in the junkyard, and now it's turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure.'

Leaving Susan behind with that nice boy. Susan's key falling to the dust.

'One day, I shall come back. Yes, I shall come back. Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.'

It wasn't a linear process. And each individual microcosm of recollected experience was tied in with others in unexpected and unexpectable ways. Innumerable dendrites and associations and mnemonics.

Wibbly-wobbly. Timey-wimey.

It wasn't just surgery, this was real-time strategy and combat. Flanking, pincer manoeuvres...

...especially where his earlier memories collided, willy-nilly with the later ones.

'You did quite well. Quite well. Hm. It's reassuring to know that my future is in safe hands.'

Of course, it wasn't until his Second life that he began to mellow out a bit. Just a bit.

It wasn't until his Second life that he began to fall a little bit in love with The Planet Earth.

'Well...it is a fact, Jamie, that I do tend to get involved.'

And oh, wouldn't that come back to haunt him.

The Time Lords had forced him to regenerate, and incarcerated him upon the face of The Earth for a time. It had been interesting, in a purely retrospective sort of way, to see the faces he might have had.

Particularly the one he then described as being 'too thin.'

It had looked, that face, like the one he now wore.

He wondered how his Second or Third self might react to seeing that face on his body. Shaving that bone structure.

'Hmm. I don't like it.'

...he was getting distracted.

...it was getting hot in here.

Both of their brains were consuming an awful lot of energy, racing and coursing in parallel, a closed thermodynamic system powering on and on toward entropy. And The Doctor was consuming more and more and more the deeper he plunged, the more memories he rerouted, the more crossreferences he repaired.

This was harder than he thought.

G'wan, g'wan, g'wan... he implored himself. Get it done.

Outside of himself, his physical body gritted its teeth as sweat poured down its face.

'Courage isn't just a matter of not being afraid. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.'

'A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.'

'A tear, Sarah Jane? No, don't cry. While there's life, there's...'

It was rather like climbing uphill. On Jupiter. Against the wind on a particularly windy day.

A vein at his temple started to twitch.

His weren't the only memories in there. He felt hers awakening as he brushed them, memories of such pain, such... oppression. Memories like hers shouldn't exist in the real world, and yet she'd survived them. Barely-barely.

He wasn't here to exorcise her demons. But oh, if she didn't have plenty of them.

But then again. So did he.

She didn't need to struggle through his as well as hers. No-one deserved that.

'All right! I confess, I confess. I confess to your being a bigger idiot than I thought.'

He fought the urge to hurry. Neither of them could take much more of this.

'I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you. Nine times out of ten...'

Keep going, keep going, keep going...

'I sometimes wonder why I like the people of this miserable planet so much.'

'It's times like this I wish I still had my scarf.'

'...Adric?'

...not there yet, keep going.

'Planets come and go. Stars perish. Matter disperses, coalesces, forms into other patterns, other worlds. Nothing can be eternal.'

'Ten million years of absolute power. That's what it takes to be really corrupt.'

Just a little bit further...

'...far more than just an ordinary Time Lord...'

'There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace. We've got work to do.'

'I've got to stop him.'

...and oh, the most tragic of his lives, his victories the same as his curses, the life that lived through The War...

The power of The Moment crackled in his fingertips.

And two great eternity-spanning species died in fire.

He had to stop, then. Right there, right then. He had to stop. To catch his breath. There in the dragon's throat. There in the heart of The Eye of Harmony, at the core of a matter-antimatter warp drive, there in the heart of the fire that burned Gallifrey and the encroaching Daleks to the ground.

He had to--

And there he was. There he was. Clasping that lovely creature's hand.

Telling her to 'Run!'

He huddled in that memory for a moment, felt it spin and shatter, prismatic, splitting into all the memories that were born from that memory. In moments, he'd have to rein them all back in and make them all go away. But right there in that moment he lacked the strength to continue and thus, thus, he was running with her hand in hand, he was saving the day as The Earth was consumed unobserved, he was confronting his most ancient enemy's last apparent survivor, he was busting ghosts in Cardiff with Dickens, he was escaping in a lift, he was telling The Emperor 'no' and he was kissing the living daylights out of Rose and he had been fantastic.

He was standing on a beach, though she could see it and he could not, perils of transdimensional transmission.

He was running down a London street through a war-zone lit by planets in the sky, running towards her only to get half-exterminated by one of Davros' little pets.

He was standing on that beach again, beside himself, and she was snogging away with his Right Hand Man.

Rose.

Rose.

He glanced over at T'Pol, and he looked... he looked so very tired. So very very apologetic.

"She was so very human," he murmured. "That was the difference. Between her and so many of the others. She was everything I loved about that funny miserable parochial blue-green planet, all encapsulated into one very pretty creature. Everything she did, from shopgirl to dinner lady to Bad Wolf to Defender of The Earth. Everything she did was so human."

He looked quietly at T'Pol. As if asking for absolution. "I never told her. I left her with the most dangerous man I'd ever met and I never told her how I--"

He scowled, and looked away, refuting his own confession. "Oh. She knew. She knew. How could she not?"

In A Mirror Darkly

Rose.

The sands blew.

The Forge boiled.

And she screamed.

After all the things the Sontaran’s had done. All the things she’d endured at the hands of the Agents of Section 5. She’d never screamed. Not since.. well not since that day. Not since she’d entered the Academy.

She watched others around her promoted, while she, the alien, remained ignored. She watched as K-9 was destroyed. She watched the men that had done things, very bad things were congratulated. She watched as worlds collided at the end of everything. She watched the big bang unfold. She watched a world once called Gallifrey burn.

She screamed…

She watched as Earth was formed.

She watched…

…Adric Die.

…Leela get married.

…Katarina die saving the lives of her friends.

…Sara Kingdom die of old age. Because of the Doctor.

…as worlds were born and burned.

…a forest destroyed.

She watched.. and screamed.

She watched Rose, kissing the Human Doctor. The Doctor with one Heart. Doctor John Smith.

He glanced over at T'Pol, and he looked... he looked so very tired. So very very apologetic.

"She was so very human," he murmured. "That was the difference. Between her and so many of the others. She was everything I loved about that funny miserable parochial blue-green planet, all encapsulated into one very pretty creature. Everything she did, from shopgirl to dinner lady to Bad Wolf to Defender of The Earth. Everything she did was so human."

He looked quietly at T'Pol. As if asking for absolution. "I never told her. I left her with the most dangerous man I'd ever met and I never told her how I--"

He scowled, and looked away, refuting his own confession. "Oh. She knew. She knew. How could she not?"

And with everything that had been done to her, T’Pol A’Lex T’Ker wept. She wept not for herself, she wept for him. No the shaking screaming tears of a human. She wept as a Vulcan wept. Silently.

And she stepped closer to him. Her fingers touching points on his face. “She knew,” T’Pol whispered, bringing the meld full circle. “My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.”

There was only one way to heal them both…

Ten and Jen and The Cat Came Back. (with UnseenMaiden's Donna.)

And she stepped closer to him. Her fingers touching points on his face. “She knew,” T’Pol whispered, bringing the meld full circle. “My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts.”

There was only one way to heal them both…

She surprised him, with that. That gentle touch, that silent saline.

You are something new, aren't you?

'Logic and strength combined with fury and passion.' Remarkable.

He ran into the darkness of her mind.

All she'd known all her life was violence and oppression, repression, suppression. But there was still a kind of kindness in her.

There was still green and gold in the black.

He remembered sitting with Martha in an alley in The Undercity of New New York, shortly before they visited the first one. He remembered metal chairs and confessing to a lie, a lie that had made him feel better.

He remembered telling Martha a story.

And as T'Pol partook with silent tears of a psyche that had known more than its share of tragedy, The Doctor decided not to remove the rest of those lingering, burning memories... but instead, he simply changed them.

Psychic alchemy. Conversion to conversation.

...reverse the polarity of the neuron flow...

He removed the agony of experiencing those memories directly.

Instead, like with the architect Peter Street, they happened to someone else. A Winter's Tale.

Just like sitting down with The Doctor and hearing the story of his life performed as a one-man radio play. He withdrew certain facts from consideration, of course, certain names and certain places and certain cowardly retreats, and he embellished certain things, like the effectiveness of his defending Jackson Lake with a cutlass as he backed his way up the stairs.

But all in all it was straight, heartfelt, journalistic description.

Describing the sounds of the voices of The Cybermen as they hurtled past him into The Void. Describing the tastes of far-flung future bubble tea on Shan Shen with-- someone-or-other. Describing the flourishing sight of golden temporally-infused artron and Huon energies as they infused The Bad, Bad Wolf. Describing the feel of cold hospital tiles under his soles as he ran barefoot on The Moon.

Describing the smell of Rose's hair.

And it was. Whether he liked it or not. A love story. With a tragic twist.

He withdrew, then, withdrew from her mind. Fingers both real and imagined departed from katra points, and he carefully this time closed up the radial telepathy he'd left wide open the last time he'd trod amongst her thoughts. Also, on his way out, he double-checked her for physical brain trauma from The Enforcer's impact. Quick little cortical scan, nothing like a little realtime datastream from top-of-the-range neurology.

Fine. No sign of lasting damage. Bit of a headache, that's all.

Looks like green's a bloody lucky colour after all, poppet.

Lucky. Very, very lucky.

He opened his eyes and, in so doing, he cued her to wake up also.

And as she woke up, he rose to his feet, and held out his hand to her, helping her up if she chose to accept that help. "Well. That could've gone worse. C'mon, then. Avanti."

Shrugging into his coat, he strode out into the hallway, sliding his hands into his pockets. He walked up to Jenny, and the heap that was Jack Harkness.

He tilted his head at him, and then glanced at her. "Any movement?"

Jenny arched an eyebrow at him. "Well. No. He's dead."

The Doctor nodded, nodded, mused, took this under advisement. "Right, well. Didn't slow you down for long, did it?"

Jenny arched both eyebrows. "Are you expecting a repeat performance?"

The Doctor sank into a crouch, the coat billowing around him as he moved. "If he were amongst the living, he would say something cheeky and salacious to that. I'll be honest, though, I hope he's not down there for long, because he'll start to--"

He paused. And blinked.

"--smell."

He swung his gaze around hard, swung it around to the last cell in the row.

He stood slowly, and the coat fell around him like a cloak, and he stared at that cell.

Jenny stood up beside him. "Dad?"

"Memory's a curious thing," he murmured. "The littlest things can make us forget the biggest ones. But then you hear something, a snatch of song, the pattering of rain on a roof, or you read a phrase, erm, 'cellar door,' 'I hold with those who favour fire,' and you remember, you remember it, plain as day, like it happened five minutes ago, sneaks right up on you and hits you like a brick to the gob."

He ran his tongue over his teeth and he strolled over to that third cell. "But Time Lords are like humans in one respect. The sense that's deepest-rooted in memory. Is smell."

The Doctor stood there, gazing at that spot where he'd seen the image of that woman fading from sight and from mind.

"The smell of books," he murmured, "the smell of a beautiful woman's hair."

And he stepped into that spot, closing his eyes as he did so.

He exhaled through his mouth.

And he inhaled through his nose, his nostrils flaring.

Air rushed into his nose, sensation coursed along his olfactory nerve and.

He remembered.

He remembered a wedding dress at Christmas, an automated teller machine spewing euros, he remembered the smell of the motorway as The TARDIS bounded after a black cab with its door open.

He remembered the smell of the air outside the window of Adipose Industries, he remembered the smell of luggage and portmanteaux and hatboxes, he remembered the smell of volcanic ash, the smell of Warehouse 15 and the broken circle, the scent of clone feed and the scent of the sky on fire. He remembered the odour of dead Hath and progenated haploids and collapsing subterranean halls.

He remembered the smell of her, her her her her, the smell of her and the smell of her hair as she kissed him, he'd been poisoned and the last ingredient of the antidote wasn't a Harvey Wallbanger but a shock and she'd kissed him to shock him.

And there it was. The smell of books. The smell of faces from flesh-banks, the smell of motes of dust in sunbeams that weren't in sunbeams but in shadows.

The smell of a terrycloth dressing-gown and a hug after a possession by an unnamed horror.

A whiff of a dying Beetle from The Trickster's Brigade.

The stench of his own regeneration, narrowly averted.

The smell of The Vault on The Crucible. The ionic aroma of Davros' mechanical hand spewing lightning at his friend his friend his friend his best mate you're not mating wiv me, sunshine.

The smell of her brain on fire.

The smell of Wilfred and Sylvia's sitting room.

The smell of the rain as he walked away.

The smell of her hair--


--and the smell of the sea.

Vworrrp. Creeeeak.

The Doctor stepped out of The TARDIS onto a rather picturesque-looking boardwalk, lots of little shops, he loved a little shop. It was cold enough that no-one was swimming, but some people were still trying go about in short sleeves. The waves were a nice aquamarine colour, but rather choppy, rather stroppy. There was a bit of a breeze, billowing that salty wet aroma over the beach and up to the boardwalk and the shops.

The Doctor peered about, curiouser and curiouser, and smiled a faint little smile as he saw a bus trundle to a stop. And out she got: a little ginger-haired girl with a determined look upon her pale-skinned face. Her hair was a bit dingier than he remembered, not quite the bright bright red of his remembering. Perhaps like her pale skin, this was thanks to a winter indoors and the dawning of spring having not yet permitted her to freckle up a bit and her hair to brighten playing outside.

That hair fell around her shoulders, but was pulled back a bit. She wore an outfit resembling a school uniform, white blouse, a blue tartan dress.

He gazed at her, watched her as she moved, her determination never wavering. He felt his jaw go a little bit slack, he felt his lower lip gently quiver, incredulity and sadness seeping through him.

She didn't glance his way, but made her way to the railing of the boardwalk, closer to him, ducking down a bit and touching, just barely touching, the top of her head just barely to the underside of the top railing, holding gently to one of the supports as she gazed out at the crash and undulation of the sea. She didn't attempt to climb up to peer above the railing, just peered out through it like The Meaning of Life was in those waves.

He moved up closer to her. Gazed at her in that sadness and that incredulity.

Then The Doctor spoke: "Looks like a storm. You better head back on home."

She looked at him like he had just dribbled on his shirt. She looked at him like he'd sprouted a second head and the second head had just done a bang-on impression of her. She looked at him like he had impugned her very honour, and she didn't mind telling him, strange grown-up or not, that she felt so very impugned: "I came here to have my holiday and I mean to have it."

Then she looked back at the water, with a little scowl on her face.

He smiled a faint little smile. "You're supposed to be in Strathclyde. You told the busdriver in Chiswick you were going to Strathclyde. But this... this is Blackpool."

She sneered a bit. "I had to throw 'em off of my trail, didn't I? Besides, cold as it is here, Strathclyde'd be much too cold, that wouldn't be a holiday at all. I'd've gone to The Isle of Wight except you have to take the ferry."

"Ah," The Doctor nodded, grinning. "Fair do's."

She paused as if it had suddenly dawned on her that he is a strange grown-up. One that is now grinning at her and has apparently been keeping an eye on her. Hurriedly, she detached herself from the rail, stepped back a few feet and accusingly pointed a finger at him.

"You're not some weirdo are you? I warn you, I'll scream if you try anything. My mum says I have a good set of lungs on me!"

And at that, she ran off, ran off towards one of the shops. She stopped, in plain view of one of the shopkeepers, having a look at one of the hats.

The Doctor was laughing. He couldn't help himself, he really couldn't.

She was so very much The Little General, so very much the girl who would become the woman that he knew and adored and lost.

He smiled faintly as his laughter died off, murmuring half to himself and half to that little girl, that Little General, and he slipped his glasses onto his face. "'Don't you ever change?'"

He moved closer to the railing, and slipped his hand underneath the underside of the top rung, right where she'd touched her head to the wood. Bringing that hand out again, he held a tiny thin thing between his two fingers.

Rusty, ruddy, red. Ginger. A hair from that little girl's head. He held it up close to his bespectacled eyes, his other hand going into a pocket and bringing out a tiny test-tube, a miniaturised version of the hyperbaric stasis chamber that had preserved his hand. He peered at the end of that strand of hair. And, seeing something to his satisfaction, he placed that hair in the little stasis tube and capped it.

"Well," The Doctor murmured. "I reckon you will change, one of these days. And I'll be ready."

He turned. And walked back to The TARDIS. And as he walked back towards that Clever Blue Box, he saw a couple of police constables walking along the boardwalk, looking at children's faces and comparing them to the missing-person posters they each carried. He touched one of them on the shoulder, and nodded in the direction of that hat shop, and kept walking.

The constables looked up, and saw her, and one of them hurried towards her while the other grabbed his radio...

As The Doctor stepped aboard his TARDIS, he glanced once more down at that stasis chamber and glanced then up, up into the dome of The TARDIS, at something dangling there. He drew the door shut behind him with a creak.

"I'll be ready."


--he remembered.

A muscle in his jaw flexed as he stood there and he remembered and he glanced up and saw Jenny standing there staring at him, aghast and bewildered.

He reached out, his eyes so very very dark dark dark he reached out and he grabbed her arm and he drew her close and he looked her in the face.

"Breathe," he growled. "Breathe. Just here. Do it."

And, staring at him, aghast and bewildered, she did. She breathed in.

She took a step back. "Oh," she mumbled. "Oh my God. Donna."

He smiled thinly. "Yeah."

She shook her head and clawed at her skull and she mumbled. "But how could we? How could we just forget her like that?"

"Someone made us forget," The Doctor rumbled and seethed. "Someone, or something, fearsome technology, fearsome psychology, what, I don't know. But they made a mistake. Whomever this was that did this to her, they made a mistake. They took the wrong person, wiped the wrong person from existence."

He blistered, he growled. "They wiped away my best friend. But I'm still here. And that's bad news for them."

He held up the sonic. "This won't be enough to find her. Need a far more in-depth scan. We need to get to The TARDIS."

Jenny frowned. "I'll get working on digging us out."

The Doctor smiled thinly, twirling the sonic. "No, no. I know a shortcut."

He whirled, moved from that place, strode to the corpse of Captain Jack Harkness. He beckoned to T'Pol.

"See, here's the thing," The Doctor mused. "This strapping lad was a Time Agent back in his home century, still has the strap to prove it. Built-in Vortex Manipulator, can use it for capsule-less time travel or teleportation, bit of a rough ride. Except, well, he used it one too many times between oil changes, got a bit burnt out. Managed to figure out a teleport base code, but that got scrambled by a temporal prison. It can still send transmissions and things, act as a beacon, trigger teleports from nearby space craft, even-- from the looks of the shrapnel of that defabricator gun --trigger Project Indigo circuitry embedded into devices light-years away. But it's still useless for larking about."

Jenny moved up, squinting at him. "Except?"

The Doctor smiled thinly at both Jenny and T'Pol, thinly and darkly. "Except that I'm brilliant."

The sonic emitted a quick burst, kept quick for the sake of the Vulcan ears present, the wrist-strap emitted a replying beep, and The Doctor grinned a fearsome grin indeed. "Hands in the middle everyone, hold onto the strap, like we're, oh, The Fantastic Four Minus One and we're going to find that One."

Hands in the middle. And go.

The Time Vortex opened up around them.

And winked shut with them inside.


The Cat was on his back on a comfortable bench seat, his tail lashing the air as all four of his paws busied themselves with a delightful new toy.

A wind-up mouse that looked for all the world like it had been sliced in half by a laserbeam and welded back together.

The Cat was delighted, this was great fun, he was purring like a mad thing. There were few things he loved in this Universe more than a toy shaped like a mouse.

And then the screen on the console beside that comfortable bench seat lit up suddenly, an alarm resounding as the screen read, in plain English, ALERT TELEPORT BREACH.

The Cat squinched his eyes at this. "You're a bit slow on the uptake. I've been here for--"

And then the fabric of Time and Space tore open and deposited The Doctor and Jenny and T'Pol and a very very dead bloke with them, but The Cat was already running for the hills, hiding behind a coral pillar with his tail all bushy again, pausing only when it dawned on him who this was. "(Strewth.)"

The Doctor smiled faintly, gesturing grandly to the dome above, The Console in the centre, the great height of The Time Rotor.

"Jenny, T'Pol, 'come into my parlour,'" he intoned. "Free-folding tesseract design, dimensionally transcendental, bigger on the inside. All of Time and of Space at our fingertips which means? Which means that whomever took Donna from us has no place to hide."

It had been many life times. So many. Jack didn't dream often. Not if he could help it. He had seen many terrible things. Done many terrible things.

Jack had lost count of the times he died. It never mattered over much. But never had there been anything. No shining light. No angels, or demons. Nothing. Just. Cold. Black. Empty. Then he would wake up.

Something was different. He was... somewhere. He was there. It was no place he recognised, but he was in a very definate place. Not exactly what he would have thought of for an afterlife. It was very stark. Barren almost. Maybe this was it? After all of the excesses of his life, this was what he was left with.

"Oh, please stop the sullen ruminations Jack. This is not the great beyond."

Jack froze. That voice. He knew that voice. It made his heart pound, his blood sing. It made him cry and laugh all at once.

"Ianto?" Jack's face contorts as he begins to weep. This moment he wanted but feared he would never have.

Ianto indeed appears behind Jack. A smile on his soft sweet lips.

"I never left you Jack. Not for a second. I never will. But this, this is not your time. I promise you, I will be there when it is. But not now. There are too many things that Captain Jack Harkness needs to do."

"No. I am staying. I give up. I need you. I just... I want to be with you. Just us. Like I should have given you."

"Do you reckon that is what I really wanted Jack? To settle down? Be the good wife? I love you. I love Captain Jack Harkness. I knew when we started just what I was getting myself into. I wish this was our end. I wish this was the time. But it isn't. Face the future Jack. Be the man you were born to be. Help him. There are still a lot of lives that need saving Jack. I will be here when your done. Now go." Ianto embraces Jack. With a small kiss on Jack's forehead, all things go dark.

Jack gasps as he comes back to his body.

Jerking himself upright he quickly gets his bearings.

"Oh, this is magnificent... good to be back Doc. Good to be back. So, what I miss?" Jack bounds to his feet looking at the collective people around him. Jack then looks down at his vortex manipulator. "Did... did you just..." Jack's smile, ever present returns to his face.

Ten, Jen, and The Cat.

Jack gasps as he comes back to his body.

Utterly non-nonplussed, The Doctor tossed his coat over a coral pillar, once more neglecting the perfectly good coat stand by the door.

Jenny grabbed for her knife, startled. "What?"

Jerking himself upright he quickly gets his bearings.

The Cat squashed himself against the floor, staring with wide wide golden-brown eyes. "What?"

"Oh, this is magnificent... good to be back Doc. Good to be back. So, what I miss?" Jack bounds to his feet looking at the collective people around him. Jack then looks down at his vortex manipulator. "Did... did you just..." Jack's smile, ever present returns to his face.

"Captain!" The Doctor smirked, clapping Jack on the shoulder as he moved past him to The Console. "Good to have you along! (Well. Again.) As for the Vortex Manipulator, call it a down payment on redressing past wrongs for which I have been recently... punched?"

Jenny sheathed her knife, gazing bewilderedly at Jack, non-non-nonplussed. "He was dead a minute ago."

"He's been a fixed point in a self-perpetuating causal nexus," The Doctor drawled, flicking a number of switches, "since he got improperly resurrected by The Bad Wolf. What's your excuse?"

Jenny scowled at him, but The Doctor ignored her.

Swiveling the monitor screen, The Doctor glanced up at Jack and T'Pol. "Jack. I'll need you to flex those oul' Torchwood problem-solving muscles of yours, if you would? I've got a missing person to report and I can't exactly dial 999. Use that thing on your wrist to see if you can't pick up on any interesting temporal phenomena in the vicinity of the third holding cell."

The Doctor then indicated that screen to the Vulcan commander. "T'Pol, funny question, how d'you feel about scanning for life-forms?"

The Cat wandered over to Jenny and sat down beside her booted feet. "Nice place your dad's got. Bit bodgy."

"Yeah," Jenny grunted, concealing the fact that she was pretty awed by the place because she was irritated at being kept in the dark. Which, that was fair, she'd kept her dad hanging about her own resurrection, too.

"Interesting mates, too," The Cat couldn't help but observe. "Pointy-eared sheila's not hard on the eyes. And that digger was cactus, except now he's flat out like a lizard drinking."

"Mm," Jenny harrumphed. "Also, his name's 'Captain Jack.'"

This seemed to give The Cat pause. "...huh."

T'Pol's parts...

And as she woke up, he rose to his feet, and held out his hand to her, helping her up if she chose to accept that help. "Well. That could've gone worse. C'mon, then. Avanti."

Blinking, she took that offered hand, fingers slipping along fingers. Her hand grasping his wrist as she pulled herself up. Blinking she looked around, the world shifting slightly under her feet. But worlds did that when they were starships. “Gravity plating is damaged.” She muttered. “Ninety-seven percent Terran standard.”

Shrugging into his coat, he strode out into the hallway, sliding his hands into his pockets. He walked up to Jenny, and the heap that was Jack Harkness.

He tilted his head at him, and then glanced at her. "Any movement?"

Jenny arched an eyebrow at him. "Well. No. He's dead."

The Doctor nodded, nodded, mused, took this under advisement. "Right, well. Didn't slow you down for long, did it?"

Jenny arched both eyebrows. "Are you expecting a repeat performance?"

The Doctor sank into a crouch, the coat billowing around him as he moved. "If he were amongst the living, he would say something cheeky and salacious to that. I'll be honest, though, I hope he's not down there for long, because he'll start to--"

He paused. And blinked.

"--smell."

He swung his gaze around hard, swung it around to the last cell in the row.

He stood slowly, and the coat fell around him like a cloak, and he stared at that cell.

Jenny stood up beside him. "Dad?"

"Memory's a curious thing," he murmured. "The littlest things can make us forget the biggest ones. But then you hear something, a snatch of song, the pattering of rain on a roof, or you read a phrase, erm, 'cellar door,' 'I hold with those who favour fire,' and you remember, you remember it, plain as day, like it happened five minutes ago, sneaks right up on you and hits you like a brick to the gob."

He ran his tongue over his teeth and he strolled over to that third cell. "But Time Lords are like humans in one respect. The sense that's deepest-rooted in memory. Is smell."

The Doctor stood there, gazing at that spot where he'd seen the image of that woman fading from sight and from mind.

"The smell of books," he murmured, "the smell of a beautiful woman's hair."

And he stepped into that spot, closing his eyes as he did so.

He exhaled through his mouth.

And he inhaled through his nose, his nostrils flaring.

Air rushed into his nose, sensation coursed along his olfactory nerve and.

He remembered.

He remembered a wedding dress at Christmas, an automated teller machine spewing euros, he remembered the smell of the motorway as The TARDIS bounded after a black cab with its door open.

He remembered the smell of the air outside the window of Adipose Industries, he remembered the smell of luggage and portmanteaux and hatboxes, he remembered the smell of volcanic ash, the smell of Warehouse 15 and the broken circle, the scent of clone feed and the scent of the sky on fire. He remembered the odour of dead Hath and progenated haploids and collapsing subterranean halls.

He remembered the smell of her, her her her her, the smell of her and the smell of her hair as she kissed him, he'd been poisoned and the last ingredient of the antidote wasn't a Harvey Wallbanger but a shock and she'd kissed him to shock him.

And there it was. The smell of books. The smell of faces from flesh-banks, the smell of motes of dust in sunbeams that weren't in sunbeams but in shadows.

The smell of a terrycloth dressing-gown and a hug after a possession by an unnamed horror.

A whiff of a dying Beetle from The Trickster's Brigade.

The stench of his own regeneration, narrowly averted.

The smell of The Vault on The Crucible. The ionic aroma of Davros' mechanical hand spewing lightning at his friend his friend his friend his best mate you're not mating wiv me, sunshine.

The smell of her brain on fire.

The smell of Wilfred and Sylvia's sitting room.

The smell of the rain as he walked away.

The smell of her hair--

--he remembered.

A muscle in his jaw flexed as he stood there and he remembered and he glanced up and saw Jenny standing there staring at him, aghast and bewildered.

He reached out, his eyes so very very dark dark dark he reached out and he grabbed her arm and he drew her close and he looked her in the face.

"Breathe," he growled. "Breathe. Just here. Do it."

And, staring at him, aghast and bewildered, she did. She breathed in.

She took a step back. "Oh," she mumbled. "Oh my God. Donna."

He smiled thinly. "Yeah."

She shook her head and clawed at her skull and she mumbled. "But how could we? How could we just forget her like that?"

"Someone made us forget," The Doctor rumbled and seethed. "Someone, or something, fearsome technology, fearsome psychology, what, I don't know. But they made a mistake. Whomever this was that did this to her, they made a mistake. They took the wrong person, wiped the wrong person from existence."

He blistered, he growled. "They wiped away my best friend. But I'm still here. And that's bad news for them."

He held up the sonic. "This won't be enough to find her. Need a far more in-depth scan. We need to get to The TARDIS."

Jenny frowned. "I'll get working on digging us out."

The Doctor smiled thinly, twirling the sonic. "No, no. I know a shortcut."

He whirled, moved from that place, strode to the corpse of Captain Jack Harkness. He beckoned to T'Pol.

"See, here's the thing," The Doctor mused. "This strapping lad was a Time Agent back in his home century, still has the strap to prove it. Built-in Vortex Manipulator, can use it for capsule-less time travel or teleportation, bit of a rough ride. Except, well, he used it one too many times between oil changes, got a bit burnt out. Managed to figure out a teleport base code, but that got scrambled by a temporal prison. It can still send transmissions and things, act as a beacon, trigger teleports from nearby space craft, even-- from the looks of the shrapnel of that defabricator gun --trigger Project Indigo circuitry embedded into devices light-years away. But it's still useless for larking about."

Jenny moved up, squinting at him. "Except?"

The Doctor smiled thinly at both Jenny and T'Pol, thinly and darkly. "Except that I'm brilliant."

The sonic emitted a quick burst, kept quick for the sake of the Vulcan ears present, the wrist-strap emitted a replying beep, and The Doctor grinned a fearsome grin indeed. "Hands in the middle everyone, hold onto the strap, like we're, oh, The Fantastic Four Minus One and we're going to find that One."

Hands in the middle. And go.

The Time Vortex opened up around them.

And winked shut with them inside.

********

The Cat was on his back on a comfortable bench seat, his tail lashing the air as all four of his paws busied themselves with a delightful new toy.

A wind-up mouse that looked for all the world like it had been sliced in half by a laserbeam and welded back together.

The Cat was delighted, this was great fun, he was purring like a mad thing. There were few things he loved in this Universe more than a toy shaped like a mouse.

And then the screen on the console beside that comfortable bench seat lit up suddenly, an alarm resounding as the screen read, in plain English, ALERT TELEPORT BREACH.

The Cat squinched his eyes at this. "You're a bit slow on the uptake. I've been here for--"

And then the fabric of Time and Space tore open and deposited The Doctor and Jenny and T'Pol and a very very dead bloke with them, but The Cat was already running for the hills, hiding behind a coral pillar with his tail all bushy again, pausing only when it dawned on him who this was. "(Strewth.)"

The Doctor smiled faintly, gesturing grandly to the dome above, The Console in the centre, the great height of The Time Rotor.

"Jenny, T'Pol, 'come into my parlour,'" he intoned. "Free-folding tesseract design, dimensionally transcendental, bigger on the inside. All of Time and of Space at our fingertips which means? Which means that whomever took Donna from us has no place to hide."

Gritting her teeth, willing herself to not vomit, T’Pol leaned on the console, her face noticeably.. greener. Almond eyes closed, a deep breathe was taken. Dimensional transcendentalism is illogical. Time travel is not possible. The Imperial Academy of Science as made that ruling after a great deal of research.

Jack gasps as he comes back to his body.

Utterly non-nonplussed, The Doctor tossed his coat over a coral pillar, once more neglecting the perfectly good coat stand by the door.

Jenny grabbed for her knife, startled. "What?"

“He.. was dead? Apparently you were mistaken.” T’Pol muttered ever so quietly to herself.

Jerking himself upright he quickly gets his bearings.

The Cat squashed himself against the floor, staring with wide wide golden-brown eyes. "What?"

"Oh, this is magnificent... good to be back Doc. Good to be back. So, what I miss?" Jack bounds to his feet looking at the collective people around him. Jack then looks down at his vortex manipulator. "Did... did you just..." Jack's smile, ever present returns to his face.

"Captain!" The Doctor smirked, clapping Jack on the shoulder as he moved past him to The Console. "Good to have you along! (Well. Again.) As for the Vortex Manipulator, call it a down payment on redressing past wrongs for which I have been recently... punched?"

Jenny sheathed her knife, gazing bewilderedly at Jack, non-non-nonplussed. "He was dead a minute ago."

"He's been a fixed point in a self-perpetuating causal nexus," The Doctor drawled, flicking a number of switches, "since he got improperly resurrected by The Bad Wolf. What's your excuse?"

Jenny scowled at him, but The Doctor ignored her.

Swiveling the monitor screen, The Doctor glanced up at Jack and T'Pol. "Jack. I'll need you to flex those oul' Torchwood problem-solving muscles of yours, if you would? I've got a missing person to report and I can't exactly dial 999. Use that thing on your wrist to see if you can't pick up on any interesting temporal phenomena in the vicinity of the third holding cell."

The Doctor then indicated that screen to the Vulcan commander. "T'Pol, funny question, how d'you feel about scanning for life-forms?"

Raising an eyebrow she just quirked a look at him. Instead of replying she moved around the six station console, running her fingers across it. Not switching/pulling/pushing anything. At least until she got to the location she needed.

Then slim Vulcan fingers moved. Tapping sequences of biorhythmic data, cross indexing, confirming, denying, reanalyzing. Rerouting and ignoring bits and particales. “Lifeforms are detected outside the Tardis, Doctor…”

For the life of her she couldn’t remember his name? Just his title. He had a Doctorate. Several of them,. ‘I’m just the Doctor,’ He’d told her. Told her. Told her.

“Sontaran, Judoon, and one other. Species indeterminate. Fifty percent match Human, Fifty percent match.. Gallifreian. A hybrid perhaps? I’m also detecting a variety of other lifesigns, mammalian.. sub genus grouping. Food source most likely.”

Leaning forward, she ignored/didn’t care/didn’t notice the way tempting bits teased and dared to come and say ‘ello. “Judoon lifesigns converging on exterior of vessel. High energy readings are present. Probably outcome is they plan on boarding us. Violently.”

The Cat wandered over to Jenny and sat down beside her booted feet. "Nice place your dad's got. Bit bodgy."

"Yeah," Jenny grunted, concealing the fact that she was pretty awed by the place because she was irritated at being kept in the dark. Which, that was fair, she'd kept her dad hanging about her own resurrection, too.

"Interesting mates, too," The Cat couldn't help but observe. "Pointy-eared sheila's not hard on the eyes. And that digger was cactus, except now he's flat out like a lizard drinking."

"Mm," Jenny harrumphed. "Also, his name's 'Captain Jack.'"

This seemed to give The Cat pause. "...huh."

Ten.

Raising an eyebrow she just quirked a look at him. Instead of replying she moved around the six station console, running her fingers across it. Not switching/pulling/pushing anything. At least until she got to the location she needed.

Then slim Vulcan fingers moved. Tapping sequences of biorhythmic data, cross indexing, confirming, denying, reanalyzing. Rerouting and ignoring bits and particales. “Lifeforms are detected outside the Tardis, Doctor…”

The Doctor grinned lopsidedly. "Got that first go, did you? Not bad, not bad, you've picked up a few things, gallivanting about in me conk."

“Sontaran, Judoon, and one other. Species indeterminate. Fifty percent match Human, Fifty percent match.. Gallifreian. A hybrid perhaps? I’m also detecting a variety of other lifesigns, mammalian.. sub genus grouping. Food source most likely.”

The Doctor blinked, moved in beside her to peer at the screen, combing a hand through his hair. "Yeah, no, what's that? Sontarans don't need a food source, they feed off of energy directly. Which begs the question, what are you picking up? Noah's Ark? Now that's a funny story, you talk about 'bigger on the inside,' the whole thing was-- oh, no, hang on. No, no, hang on."

Leaning forward, she ignored/didn’t care/didn’t notice the way tempting bits teased and dared to come and say ‘ello. “Judoon lifesigns converging on exterior of vessel. High energy readings are present. Probably outcome is they plan on boarding us. Violently.”

The Doctor smiled grimly at that. "Well, they can try. But they're not exactly Daleks, are they? We've got integrated tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator shielding, they'll never make a scratch."

He paused, and considered, and reached past T'Pol, carefully, very carefully, carefully not to -- brush up against -- certain tempting bits. "All the same."

He flicked a switch. "Aaaaaaand locked."

The Doctor squinted then at the small screen. "But, see, down here, down here in the corner, you see the timestamp? The scanner's not a direct visual recorder, it displays whatever's going on at The TARDIS' coordinates. The problem is, this oul' thing, the coordinates have slipped on the w-axis, that's, erm. Half an hour ago? Which means. Which means. The TARDIS has a record of Donna's existence! Well, of course it does, she's soaked through with residual artron energy, The TARDIS could practically smell her, and the readouts in here would be protected from alterations to the timeline, psychic backfeed deletion protocols, all of that. You're picking up Donna from half an hour ago. All those other life-forms, they're, um. They're the other ones. That the Sontarans dumped into space. So."

He squinted at the readings briefly. "No Luke Smith, so much for child prodigies. No Sarah Jane, none of them, maybe The Judoon interrupted before they got to the bottom of the list. Which, I'm not complaining."

His face fell a bit. "Blimey, there were a lot of them. (I'm sorry, you lot, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.)"

"But!" he mused. "Let's have a look at things now, shall we?"

And he grabbed a mallet hanging down beside the console and with one arcing swing slammed it into The Console, sparks flew, the machine shuddered, the screen flickered, and when it refocused--

--the Gallifreyan hybrid was gone.

The mammalian menagerie was gone.

The populations of The Judoon and The Sontarans were each reduced significantly.

But outside--

"Sontarans," The Doctor mumbled, "Shrowl, that bunch from earlier. And Judoon not far away."

Tutting, The Doctor shook his head. "Yeah. We better work fast. Not that they'll ever get in, not in a thousand years, but... those Sontarans would be far too delighted to bring my sweet baby home to mother."

The Doctor swiveled the screen again. "T'Pol. You see this button down here, touchpad, corner of the screen, next to the timestamp? That's rewind. See if you can wind it back and find the exact moment that Gallifreyan hybrid reappears, yeah? Or, well, disappears. Narrows it down."

The Doctor swiveled the screen again. "T'Pol. You see this button down here, touchpad, corner of the screen, next to the timestamp? That's rewind. See if you can wind it back and find the exact moment that Gallifreyan hybrid reappears, yeah? Or, well, disappears. Narrows it down."

Nodding T’Pol began working, “And Doctor?” She said, “I’m called A’Lex, most confuse me with an ancestor when I’m called T’Pol.” Continuing on she tweaked, twitched, twisted, turned and fiddled with the controls fine tuning the readings, and seeking the specific moment in history when the hybrid, vanished.

“Sentons?” she muttered to herself. Looking up she calculated a seventy-eight point three seven five percent chance the Doctor was to busy to assist her, so using Vulcan ingenuity she leaned back and kicked the console. Far more expedient than grabbing the mallet. And the dent wasn’t overly large, or noticeable.

Much.

“Ahh. Much better. Fourteen point seven five six eight minutes ago.”

Ten, Jen, and The Cat.

Nodding T’Pol began working, “And Doctor?” She said, “I’m called A’Lex, most confuse me with an ancestor when I’m called T’Pol.”

Moving off, quickly quickly, lots to be done, The Doctor was muttering to himself as he was counting the gratings on the floor, three to the left, nononono, was it three to the right? But he glanced up when T'Pol corrected him.

He blinked. "Oh. Right. Sorry. Well, consider yourself lucky you don't get confused with your antecedents. Or, well, your post-cedents. Still, duly noted, 'A'Lex.'"

He stopped at a grating, glanced down at it, saw Jenny and The Cat standing (and sitting, respectively), on that particular patch of wireframe. He frowned apologetically.

"Erm," he winced, "budge up a bit, would you?"

The Cat grunted and bounded off a short distance, jumping up onto The Console, perching gingerly on the rim of it, thankfully without getting his paws on any of the controls. "Fine, fine, beg yours. Curse of the diminutive quadruped species, always underfoot."

He glanced over at A'Lex, and squinched golden-brown eyes at her, and, seeming rather put-upon, began studiously to lick down his own back.

Jenny took a step back, and, drawing a hook from a pocket The Doctor pulled up the grating and dropped into the space beneath it, hauling up a particularly robust looking steamer trunk and setting it on floor level as he remained in the indentation in the floor.

"That's a Hell of a foot locker," Jenny mused, bewildered and bemused.

The Doctor smirked. "I'm a Hell of a packrat. F'rinstance, this one is 'N.'"

He flipped open the trunk and began riffling through its contents. He came up with a fiddle, placed this in the trunk-lid. "'N' for 'Nero.'"

He picked up a bunch of red envelopes and tossed them beside the fiddle. "'N' for 'Netflix,' oh, I should really post those back."

He plucked an arrow out of the trunk, examined this for a moment. "'N' for Normans. (Careful with that, you'll put an eye out. Poor oul' Harold.)"

Setting the arrow down, he then reached into the depths of the trunk and pulled out what looked like a tiny little jar, metallic, full of fluid, with one crimson strand suspended therein. He gazed at it wistfully, sadly, hopefully. "...and 'N' for 'Noble.'"

Jenny hunkered down a bit beside her father, and scrutinised this little treasure. "What's this, then? You keep creepy mementos of all of your prior Companions?"

The Doctor didn't quite look at her. "Not all of them. I got the idea from Torchwood Three keeping blood samples of all those in their employ, thankyew Jack, but, no. This one's a special case. (I have... a cunning plan.)"

Jenny smiled softly. "Such a proper General."

The Doctor again didn't quite look at her. "Yeah. You shoulda seen her when she got going."

Jenny blinked.

Continuing on she tweaked, twitched, twisted, turned and fiddled with the controls fine tuning the readings, and seeking the specific moment in history when the hybrid, vanished.

“Sentons?” she muttered to herself.

The Cat glanced up at her, a rather uninterested expression on his face, and then went back to licking his back. He had no idea what a 'senton' was anymore than she apparently did.

Looking up she calculated a seventy-eight point three seven five percent chance the Doctor was to busy to assist her, so using Vulcan ingenuity she leaned back and kicked the console. Far more expedient than grabbing the mallet. And the dent wasn’t overly large, or noticeable.

Much.

Startled out of his intense grooming, The Cat dove off of The Console and hid behind Captain Jack. "(Dunno you from Adam, mate, but at least you're not whacking furniture.)"

“Ahh. Much better. Fourteen point seven five six eight minutes ago.”

Pocketing the hair-in-a-jar, and with Jenny's help squaring the chest away again and closing the grating, The Doctor dusted his hands off and hurried to A'Lex's side. "Oooh, jolly good."

He frowned, though. "But. Yeah. That is. Fearsome. She's gone. She's just... gone. Not even a Tandocca trace, that's--"

Tsking softly, he nodded to A'Lex. "Still, well done. Well done. I wondered if you'd retain any sort of TARDIS empathy from the residual telepathic link, I think she likes you a bit. Still, I wouldn't push it with the, erm, Percussive Maintenance? Like time machines in general, that's to be used judiciously."

He glanced her up and down, and seemed to process her diminished attire for the first time. "Okay. Right. Your dress code's a bit worse for, well, wear, ennit? Now. Leela, you'd've liked her, she didn't mind larking about in togs that weren't exactly coveralls, but just in case you'd rather don a more capacious garment, I've got a whole wardrobe you can pick from."

Pointing to the archway that led out into The TARDIS' deeper reaches, he pondered for a moment. "Now, take your first left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, and fifth door on your left. Take your pick, but go easy on the scarves, I've a bit of a collection going. And, erm. Don't. Wander off. Rule number one. Go erm, frock yourself, and come straight back."

Whirling to face The Captain, The Doctor regarded Jack a little desperately, clawing his hand through his hair. "Jack. I don't suppose you've found anything remotely hopeful on your all-purpose gizmo?"

Jenny agreed with a faint smile. "Good news would be, well, good."