Leap of Faith: Chapter Four

[amberfocus]

                                                                             banner by seduff

Title:  Leap of Faith (4/?)
Author:  amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  John Smith (alt!Nine)/Rose Tyler, Toshiko Sato, Jake Simmonds, Mickey Smith, Ianto Jones, Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler, Tony Tyler, various original characters
Genre:  Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe
Rating:  Adult
Betas:  amyo67, jeprdyfrndly, thetesh
Summary:  Hiding from the Family of Blood, the alt!Ninth Doctor turns himself into John Smith via the chameleon arch and with his companion Toshiko Sato, takes a job at Torchwood.  He clashes with everyone he meets and Rose Tyler, the beautiful young director of Torchwood Field Operative Training and the daughter of his boss, is no exception.  AU after season 2 and based mostly, but not completely, on my short story Third Time's the Charm:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/319447.html, but it is not necessary to have read that.
A/N:  Sleep?  What is this thing of which you speak?  Ah, well, insomnia means I have nothing better to do than post the chapter a few hours earlier.

Previous Chapters:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/327895.html

Chapter Four:  Smith and Smith
 

“Rose, did you get a hold of Tosh? No one else has seen her,” said Mickey from the other end of the phone line.

“No,” said Rose clutching the phone tightly to her ear. She was surprised to hear Mickey’s voice. Had she spent that much time dithering over what to do? She looked at her watch. She had. “Sorry. She wasn’t answering the phone.”

“Well, can you pop down and see if she’s there? Jake can’t start until she gets here.” Rose swallowed hard. “Rose!” said Mickey sharply when she didn’t answer. “Focus.”

“Yeah. Yeah, sorry. I’ll just go see if she’s down there.”

With shaking hands she hung up the phone. This was ridiculous. The Doctor wasn’t here. So the man had a voice that sounded more familiar to her heart than anyone’s voice in this universe had a right to. The man down in that cellar was a human being, same as her. She looked at her computer screen again then pushed away from her desk. One way or another she’d know in a few minutes and she’d have a better chance of not crying about it in person. If she saw just the picture, and it really was him, while she was alone in her office she’d break into tears. She rose to her feet and left her office, strode down the corridor and hit the button for the lift. She used her pass key to override the programming to take her straight to the cellar without stopping at the other floors along the way.

With a quick look in the mirrored back wall, she straightened her hair and her blouse, then told herself to stop being ridiculous. She should have opened the photograph. She was walking into the unknown now and if she’d looked, at least she’d be prepared, even if she would have had to wash her face, blow her nose, and reapply all her eye makeup after the cry it would have caused. She sighed and told herself to stop being so stupid. There was no way to be prepared and face to face would be better. The lift finally opened with a ding and she stepped out into the hall.

Thirty seconds later she was poking her head into A&R. There was no one in sight. “Toshiko?” She took a few hesitant steps into the room. “Tosh? Tosh, are you here?”

“In the back,” called Tosh. Rose made her way around tables and shelving units towards the voice of her friend.

“You’re supposed to be in a mandatory field training exercise,” Rose said.

“I know, but Dr. Smith left an experiment running and I can’t leave it on its own. He should be back any minute,” she said.

“They’re holding the class for you. You could get into serious trouble here; maybe even lose your job if you miss another session.”

“I tried calling down one of the guys from R&D but no one will come near Dr. Smith. He’s got them all scared of their shadows,” Tosh explained.

“Did he know you had training?”

“I told him this morning. He thinks it’s nonsense and a waste of my time. So far he’s managed to avoid it altogether and doesn’t see why I can’t.” Tosh sounded only slightly aggravated by this.

“So he’s deliberately flouting the requirements?”

“Yes,” Tosh said with a shrug. “It’s just like him.”

Whoever the man turned out to be, this couldn’t be allowed to continue. It was her job to make sure training went like clockwork. The man had to be made to understand that field operative training was not an optional experience. When he showed up, she’d tell him so. Rose made a quick decision. “I’ll keep an eye on it. Just tell me what I need to do.”

“Well, not much. Every fifteen minutes you need to take a dropper from the red vial and dump it into the beaker. If the fluid in that vile changes color, take 3 droppers of this clear liquid and add it in. It should turn blue again. If it doesn’t, take it off the heat and wait until it starts to crystallize then add 3 more droppers of the clear and return it to the heat. Repeat as necessary. We want it to stay blue at all times,” Tosh instructed. “Write down anything you do and make sure you put the time next to it.” She handed over her lab notebook.

“All right then.” Rose took Toshiko’s place on the stool and waved her friend away. With a wave in return Toshiko left the room.



There was a knock on Mickey Smith’s door just before it was flung open and a man marched into the room. Mickey looked up at him in surprise at the rudeness of the person not waiting for a reply to enter and then shock. The Doctor? Here? And that Doctor? How? Questions tumbled through his mind, the most important of which was did Rose know?

“Are you the one I need to talk to about this ridiculous field training business?” the man asked sharply. He yanked out the chair in front of Mickey’s desk and plopped into it, his posture aggressive and his displeasure written all over his face.

“And you are?” Mickey asked once he’d picked up his jaw off the ground.

“Dr. Smith,” he said in a tone that declared that it should be obvious.

It figures, thought Mickey. Just when Rose was finally getting better, was starting to put her old life behind her and try to start living again, a man who was the spitting image of her former lover, well, he suspected lover, walked in large as life and twice as arrogant.

“Well? Am I wasting my time here, or are you the one I need to talk to?” he asked grumpily.

“No, I’m not. I’m head of weapons integration for field operatives.”

“How many heads of this department are there? It’s ridiculous.”

“Six. We’re highly specialized because it’s necessary,” Mickey replied evenly.

“Then who do I need to see? Everyone I’ve gone to says it’s not them,” the man groused.

“The person you want is Rose Tyler. Her office is on the 31st floor,” he lied smoothly. It technically was, but since the building didn’t have a thirteenth floor it was labeled as being on the 32nd. While John Smith figured that out it would give him time to call Rose and warn her first. He didn’t even want to think what Rose might go through if she ran into the man without being prepared.

“Rose Tyler,” he repeated. “Any relation to the big boss?”

“His daughter,” Mickey said. “And if you’re trying to get out of training, you’ll be wasting your time anyway. She’s not going to excuse anyone.”

“We’ll see,” he said. His eyes darted around the room taking in all of the various bits of alien equipment and the other items on display before slipping to one side just above Mickey’s head. He studied the poster there with a slight smirk. “That supposed to be you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “It’s a recruitment poster.”

“You recruited people with that?” he asked in surprise.

“Not that version, no,” Mickey said. “Rose wouldn’t approve it.”

“Why? She in charge of advertising, too?”

“No, just of the rights to her own image. That’s her in the drawing.”

“Really.” It wasn’t a question. The man continued to stare at it for a long time until the silence got very uncomfortable for Mickey.

“Anything else I can help you with?” he asked. What he wanted to ask, whether or not the man was actually a time travelling alien known simply as the Doctor, would not come out of his mouth.

“No,” said Dr. Smith. He got to his feet and left the room without another word.

Mickey grabbed up his handset, punching in numbers frantically. He tried Rose’s office first and then her mobile. There wasn’t any answer on either. “Damn it,” he swore. Well, maybe if he was lucky he could find her before Dr. Smith did. Rose wasn’t prepared to face this without some sort of warning. Mickey dashed down the hall for the lift and hurried to find his friend.



“Wow,” said Jake Simmonds as he pulled Tosh’s target paper off the far end of the shooting gallery line. There were six clean shots through the target’s heart and two through the brain. “You’re good at this for a tech head.”

Toshiko shrugged. “I can get by.”

“This is more than getting by, Miss Sato. This is the type of skill the field operative program sorely needs,” he said.

“I told Rose and I’ll tell you. I need to stay with Dr. Smith.”

Jake sighed and pushed his hand through his short, spiky blond hair. “I get that you don’t want to join a field team full time and that you want to focus on your research with Dr. Smith, but I’d really like for you to consider at the very least being emergency backup personnel.”

Tosh frowned. “I don’t understand why you don’t just recruit more people in the muscle department.”

“We’ve tried. It’s been too long since the Cyberwar. There haven’t been any major attacks against Earth since then. The minor ones have been put down so quickly that a large portion of the population hasn’t even noticed they’ve happened. People have short memories. No one really believes the attack on Downing Street was to combat aliens. They think it was a simple terrorist attack and believed the cover story UNIT put out that the spaceship landing in the Thames was part of a special effects production shot for a film.”

He shook his head. “The last time we found a pocket of Cybermen still alive was four years ago and that’s what gets people up and moving. They think we don’t need recruits anymore. We haven’t been allowed to do a recruitment drive for the last year because funding for Torchwood is under deep scrutiny in this election year. President Jones hasn’t quite been herself since the coma. She was our staunchest supporter.”

Tosh winced. No one at Torchwood actually knew she was partially responsible for the president’s condition. It was true that Harriet had sustained her head injury at the hands of a Slitheen family member, but Tosh had still worsened her condition by blowing up Downing Street. She and the Doctor and the president had all managed to ride out the blast in the protected closet, but by the time Tosh and the Doctor had dug their way out the woman had been comatose and a falling beam had shifted on to her and caused internal bleeding.

She knew for the most part that the president had recovered, but because she still wasn’t well and could lose a confidence vote at any time, she had to be much more careful in where she funneled money. Combating aliens was something UNIT was good at and many people in the country thought that there was no point spending extra British tax money on Torchwood when UN funds were available for the other group and came from worldwide coffers. They didn’t seem to understand that also meant worldwide control of any incidents UNIT responded to.

“I’m not a fighter, Jake,” Tosh said. “I’m not a pacifist, but I’m not a fighter.”

“You can shoot like that and say you’re not a fighter? What about all the martial arts you know? You’ve been amazing the last few weeks,” he said.

“I can defend myself. I’ll defend what needs defending, but I don’t…I won’t go out there and start it.”

“That’s not what we do, you know,” Jake said a little offended. “We do defend the planet. We don’t pick fights with alien tourists.”

Tosh smiled. “No, I didn’t think that you did. It’s just…I had to make a very important decision once about using a weapon. And it caused massive destruction. I…ever since then I just…I’ll fight to keep myself alive. I’ll fight for the people that I love. I’ll even fight for the—for Dr. Smith, to keep him safe. But I don’t want to have to.”

“Shame,” said Jake. “You’re a natural.”

“I wouldn’t mind, on occasion, being the techie in the van,” she offered. “I’d be good at that, I think.”

“Really?” Jake said.

“No violence then,” she said.

“But it could still happen, violence. Out in the field we never know until we’re in it,” Jake said.

“Like I said, I’ll fight to defend, I just won’t start it.”

The look of relief on Jake’s face was huge. “I promise we won’t call on you unless we’re desperate. Thanks, Tosh. I know this isn’t what you signed up for, but your willingness to help won’t go unnoticed.” Tosh smiled. “Now,” said Jake moving on, “you’re great with conventional weapons. Let’s see what you can do with some technology that’s a bit more advanced.”



Mickey’s search for Rose was starting to become frantic. He’d started in her office and waited fifteen minutes before deciding that that was wasting too much time. He called down to A&R but no one answered the phone so he figured Rose had left there after finding Tosh. Thinking of Tosh he decided that maybe Rose had decided to tag along with her to the training class.

She hadn’t, and he found himself a bit distracted by watching the steady and sure progress of Toshiko under Jake’s tutelage. The woman was spot on with a laser rifle and he wondered how she’d do with a plasma cannon. Tosh was tiny and there was a big recoil from the cannon, but Rose could handle one so maybe Tosh could, too. She’d be a natural for field work and he hoped Jake could talk her into it. She was wasted doing research with Dr. Smith.

Thinking about Dr. Smith jolted him back to reality. He still needed to find Rose before she ran into the Doctor’s double. He tried to think where else she might be. As far as he knew, none of the field teams had been called out today. He turned away from the observation window, pulled out his mobile, and called down to dispatch. “Harry, is Rose Tyler still in the building?”

“Just a moment,” Harry Thompson said. Mickey could hear the clicking of keys over the line. “Yes, she is. Security shows her ID card hasn’t been used to exit the Torchwood floors.”

“I wish you guys would put trackers in those things,” Mickey said.

“No money for it,” said Harry. “I’d do it in a heartbeat if there was.”

“There never is any money these days. All right, thanks.” Mickey said good-bye and hung up. He tried to think where else Rose might be. Maybe Ianto’s office. Rose had permanent IC-5 rights. Well, technically IC-7, but usually those weren’t necessary to invoke unless they pulled weekenders. Even Jake had IC-5 rights now though he wouldn’t confess what he’d done to get them. He wondered if he’d be able to finagle himself a cup of the Welshman’s coffee if he looked sufficiently pathetic. Then he scolded himself. He wasn’t supposed to be after coffee, he was supposed to be finding Rose.

He hurried off to Ianto’s office. He knocked lightly on the door and heard a muffled, “Enter.” He did and plopped into a chair in front of Ianto’s desk. Ianto was on the phone.

“Well, I can’t hire anyone else right now, Pete. Not unless you start funneling more of the Vitex profits from the tech we pass on into Torchwood’s accounts.” He paused. “No, it’s looking like a complete spending freeze is coming our way. Look, if you’d send back an additional five percent and finance a recruitment drive I think we could at least get the field teams back up to seventy-five percent of post-Cyberwar levels.”

Mickey stared longingly at Ianto’s coffee pot until the Welshman waved him over to it. Mickey poured himself some coffee and fixed it to his liking settling into one of Ianto’s comfy chairs. “If you want the truth, I think we should separate completely from government funding and become completely autonomous. Then raise the entry level salary and increase the signing bonus.” He listened for a moment and then sighed heavily. “Yes, well, all right. I’ll bring it up at the next board meeting. But if you could squeeze out that five percent before then it would help.”

Ianto frowned at whatever Pete had to say. “Okay, Pete,” he replied heavily. “Yes, I know that. See you then.” Ianto hung up the phone and ran his hand over his face. He took a deep breath and composed himself before asking, “What can I do for you, Mickey?”

“I’m looking for Rose,” he said. “Have you seen her?”

“Not since her morning cup,” he replied. “Problem?”

“Well, no, not yet, but I think there’s going to be and I just want to head it off at the pass if I can,” Mickey said.

“Not another partner crisis?” Ianto asked with dread.

“No. Right now she doesn’t have a partner. And I think maybe that’s for the best,” Mickey replied. “I’ve reassigned Martin to work with Dina. He’s been here long enough to mentor someone. No, this is personal.”

“Personal?” Ianto frowned.

“Yes, personal. You know the secret of how we came here, me and Rose and Jackie. You’re one of the few who do. Rose trusted you with that secret a long time ago and now I need to trust you with one, too.”

Ianto leaned forward, hands pressing together. “What is it?” he asked seriously.

“It’s about Dr. Smith.”

“He’s not from your world, too, is he?”

How did he explain this? Well, straight-forward was always best with Ianto. “Doctor Smith is a dead ringer for the love of Rose’s life. He doesn’t just look similar to him, he could be him. But he’s not, he’s got a completely different personality, and if Rose runs into him before I’ve had a chance to warn her, it’s going to devastate her. She’s finally coming out of the funk she’s been in since coming here. I’ve got to find her. She deserves the chance to prepare herself.”

“Okay,” he said without questioning things further. Ianto had a soft spot for Rose and he was one of the few people Rose had ever really warmed up to in this universe. Mickey knew he’d do whatever he could to help. “I’ll look into the CCTV feeds and see if I can’t locate her. I’ll give you a call when I have.”

“Thanks, Ianto.” Mickey stood up, paper coffee cup in hand, and went back to work.



The experiment did absolutely nothing the entire time she watched it and Rose quickly grew bored. Still it was better than doing paperwork. She just hoped she didn’t get called to the field before Dr. Smith returned. She shouldn’t have worried. Toshiko returned from training before the man ever showed. “He never came back,” Rose said, rising stiffly from the work stool.

“Huh. That’s odd. I wonder what he’s up to. He almost never leaves here except on occasion to eat and it’s nowhere near lunchtime. Did it do anything?” Toshiko asked Rose while looking at the experiment.

“Nope.”

“Good. The Doctor will be glad to hear that.”

“What is it, anyway?”

“A bit of the coating we scraped off that downed ship from Ealing,” Tosh said. “It’s got amazing tensile strength. The experiment is meant to test its resistance to stress. It looks like the acid bath hasn’t even touched it.”

“Ah. How’d the training go?” Rose asked.

“Well,” said Tosh. “I think I impressed Jake.”

“You must be a good shot.”

“Close to perfect.” Tosh shrugged. “Learned when I was kid. My grandfather taught me. Not that I’ll ever use it.”

“Never say never,” Rose said. “I thought your grandfather was an interpreter.”

Tosh smiled. “Different grandfather. Mum’s father was a sharpshooter.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “Ah. Well, I better get back to my own work. See you later.”

“Bye.”

Rose left A&R. It wasn’t exactly with a sense of relief, she’d still have to talk to this Dr. Smith about his violation of regulations, but she was glad that for now she’d neither proved nor disproved her hunch. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but the more she thought about it the more she was sure that she’d obviously got herself all worked up over nothing. Over a silly voice.

Lots of people sounded the same on the phone. It meant nothing. Impossible was impossible. She stepped into the lift and pressed the button for her floor. She didn’t bother to turn the lift into an express this time, but no one else stopped it on her way up. It was one of the benefits of working in an office building with thirty-four lifts. Despite that the ride seemed interminable.

At last it opened and she stepped out into the somewhat crowded hallway. She sighed as she made her way through the people, frowning at those that didn’t get out of her way fast enough. Not that she expected them to, they were just inconveniently slow and she felt like she had time to make up for after babysitting that experiment for Tosh.

She opened the door to her office, pulling it closed behind her with relief and leaning heavily against it, her eyes closed, her forehead pressed against thick oak. She felt like she had run the emotional gauntlet for no reason whatsoever and the beginning of a headache was pounding just above one temple.

An abrupt throat clearing noise alerted her that she wasn’t alone in the room. She whirled around, her eyes snapping open and flying to her desk by the window where a man sat tipped back in her office chair, his big feet encased in clunky, black combat boots that were up on her mahogany desk as if he owned the place and the rest of the world along with it. Shock raced fiercely through her as her world seemed to tilt on its axis. It was him. It was the Doctor, her first Doctor. She stared at him in consternation and then a smile lit her face with absolute joy.

Ch. 5: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/329676.html

Comments

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Well, her heart says one thing, but her head will kick in soon enough.