The Doctor and Captain Jack were trying to make sense of the readings coming out of the Rift. In the months since Harold Saxon and his family had vanished, the Doctor had taken to working with Torchwood. It gave him something to do and allowed him to keep harmful alien tech out of the hands of humans who might misuse it. He was also hoping to come across something that would allow him to extrapolate Rose’s new DNA sequencing so he could modify a Vortex Manipulator and send Jack out to find her. He’d considered trying to alter his own but had little desire to risk another run-in with the Chief over that. Thus far, nothing had worked. The Doctor couldn’t make heads or tails of the DNA they had gotten from Royal Hope. Martha Jones, now a proper doctor in her own right, had tried to help them but was currently pre-occupied with her own life. She had landed a job as a medical adviser with UNIT and was engaged to be married.
Married. The minute the Doctor could lay hands on Rose, he was going to drag her to the nearest registry office if she forgave him. If he could forgive himself. Jack had recounted everything that “Vairë” had said during their misadventure at the end of the universe. Still, the Time Lord couldn’t make it all compute. Jack said that she was still Rose at the core but that she had grown older. She looked tired and haunted. That she was even more independent than she had been back when the three of them had traveled through time and space together. She was still one of the most compassionate and merciful people ever but she would use violence when pushed to it. Martha’s own stories had shown that.
The Doctor had never wanted that for Rose. He had never wanted her to be forced to kill or hurt anyone. He could remember her asking for mercy for Cassandra, the bitchy trampoline, even after that flap of skin had tried to kill them all on Platform One. Then she’d been sympathetic even after that same flap of skin had possessed her, nearly compressing her to death in her own head. She’d tried to protect Gwyneth in Cardiff, had been willing to lay her own life down to protect humanity in London, had shown empathy and understanding to a Dalek of all things, and had been willing to burn her own mind and life out to save his. Not as part of a plan or a stratagem and certainly not at his orders but simply because she loved him and wanted him to be safe!
And now she was out gallivanting through the stars and time. Calling the TARDIS her sister. Still trying to get back to France in the late 1700s because she believed he had fallen in love with Reinette. The Doctor had no idea how she was controlling the TARDIS. He’d half-discounted Martha’s explanation about singing until it had joggled a memory loose in his head. It was said that in the earliest days, before Rassilon and Omega had formed the Time Lord society, some Gallifreyans who were so attuned to the universe that they could feel it pulsing in their own veins had been able to use songs to travel. Legend and myth nearly lost to the ages claimed that those Gallifreyans had given up their bodies to become the seeds of the first TARDISes. Had Rose, by taking the Time Vortex into her own mind, somehow jumpstarted her own race’s evolution and reached a point where she might be something like a TARDIS?
He shook his head to clear it and tried to focus on his “job.” Working for Torchwood wasn’t exactly his cup of tea but if he was stranded here on Earth for the time being, he needed something to occupy his time and his intellect as well as earn money so he could live. He already had a flat, various gadgets, and even a car. He had an identity, a driver’s license, even a national insurance number. He was glad that this regeneration was a bit more willing to do domestic than the Ninth him had been. If he’d still been Daft Face, he’d have been ready to claw his own eyes out at this. But then, if he’d still been Daft Face, he probably wouldn’t have gotten into this situation to begin with. He’d already decided to open up to Rose and ask her to join with him before the Game Station. He’d just been waiting for the right opportunity. Then he’d regenerated into an idiot. Oh, a clever idiot but an idiot nonetheless. How was he ever going to explain himself to Rose? And why would she even listen to him?
~*~*~*~
The Doctor grimaced as he watched the spaceships fly off. He’d come to London on a hunch, sensing that something was going wrong. He’d been trying to investigate Adipose Industries for several days but every time he started to make the least bit of headway, Jack Harkness rang up with something else for him to do. If it weren’t for this bloody need to keep his head down, the Doctor would have told Jack to go piss up a rope. As he watched the Adipose babies float up in the sky, the Doctor wished he’d done that days ago. His only hope of finding Rose or Vairë or whatever the hell she wanted to call herself was to look for trouble. Chances were, she’d be involved. But he hadn’t seen any sign of her. He could sense that the TARDIS was nearby but any time he caught a glimpse of it, his Vortex Manipulator zapped him miles away. He thought he’d caught a glimpse of her standing on the roof of the Adipose Industry office. But, he couldn’t be sure. Instead, he watched as the babies were taken onto the ships.
A strange woman, ginger and looking like she could teach stones to be stubborn, approached him. She said something about car keys, a bin, and her mother. Then she retreated. The Doctor shook his head. That was almost a normal day for him. Or had been, back when he’d been with Rose Tyler and the TARDIS. When he heard the familiar wheeze of the TARDIS’s Time Rotors spinning up, he ran the direction the ginger woman had gone. He could see the outline of his ship vanishing in front of him.
“Dammit!” he growled. “I was literally twenty feet from them! Oh Rose, my sweet Rose, what are you doing? And why can’t I ever seem to find you?”
~*~*~*~
Defeated, the Doctor returned to Cardiff and took the lift down to the underground base. Jack said nothing and the rest of the team offered quiet commiseration on the Time Lord having missed out on the action in London.
“Full report on my desk by Friday,” was Jack’s only remark on the escapade.
“Sure thing, Captain,” the Doctor bristled. “In English or Klingon?”
Ianto headed for the front desk, Tosh buried herself in her computer, Gwen muttered something about practicing her firearm training, and Owen ran to the autopsy room. No one wanted to be in the way when the Time Lord and the immortal decided to tangle with each other.
“You can write it in ROT-13 reverse pig Latin for all I care just so long as it’s on my desk by Friday. And the next time you decide to hair off on a hunch, I’d appreciate more than ‘I just have a feeling’ before you run off without any support.”
“I’ve been doing this since before your grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather was a twinkle in his father’s eye,” the Doctor growled.
“And you’ve regenerated how many times?” Jack asked, quirking an eyebrow. “My desk. Friday. No more running off. Rule number two is in effect: don’t wander off.”
“What’s rule number one?” Owen asked before he could keep his mouth from running off with him.
“Hands off the blonde,” the Time Lord and the Captain said at the same time, both turning to level glares at the medical doctor who fancied himself something of a playboy.
“Right, right. Hands off the blonde,” Owen muttered sheepishly, ducking back into the autopsy room.
“Any sign of her?” Jack asked, inclining his head towards his office. The Doctor nodded in understanding and hurried up the stairs, joining his friend in the office that overlooked the rest of the working area.
“I was literally within twenty feet of her,” the Doctor grimaced. “I got there just as the TARDIS finished dematerializing.”
“Tough break, Doc,” Jack sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face. “There’s been no sign of them here either.”
“The TARDIS can go years between needing a fuel-up. I can’t just sit here in Cardiff and wait. I need to be out there, looking for her. It’s been exactly seven years, six months, twenty days, twelve hours, four minutes, and fifty-three seconds since I last saw her. I’m used to having all of time and space at my fingertips. I’m not so good at sitting around patiently.”
“I get that, Doc, which is the only reason I haven’t taken your ass down the whole ladder when you’ve been insubordinate. But getting angry and angsty with us isn’t going to help.”
“No, but I have gotten Owen to act marginally better.”
“Marginally. He’s not nearly as annoying as he used to be. He might even ask Tosh out.”
“He’d better. No way he’ll ever get a better offer than the one he’ll get from her.”
“That’s true,” Jack grinned. “At least Gwen’s getting married in a few months. It’s nice that one of us isn’t in a screwed up relationship.”
“I think you and Ianto are quite cute together.”
“I’m glad someone does,” Ianto said as he ducked his head into the office. “Doctor, Jack, Tosh has something…strange on her computer. You might like to see it.”
The two men glanced at each other and then hurried down to the lower part of the Hub. Toshiko was tapping away frantically at her keyboard, trying to hone in on a signal that seemed to be coming through the rift. She finally managed to get the software to convert it and the Doctor was stunned to see Mickey Smith staring back at him.
“Torchwood,” Mickey said, his voice distorted and slightly out of sync with the video. “Are you getting this back there on Terra Alpha?”
“We are,” the Doctor said loudly. “He is receiving us back there, isn’t he?” he added in an aside to Tosh who nodded.
“I am,” Mickey confirmed. “Dammit, Doctor, am I glad to see you! Look, we’ve got a problem and we need your brain on it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The stars.”
“What about them?”
“They’re goin’ out. All over the place. The stars are just goin’ out!”
“Start from the beginning, Mickey,” Jack said, shouldering the Doctor aside. “Start from the beginning and tell us everything.”