amberfocus | A Place in Time (1/30) (Reply)

Banner by megz33

A/N: This was the second DW fic I ever wrote, written back in Sept/Oct of 2007 before any casting spoilers were ever announced for season four. Everything was speculation on my part. It's a post Doomsday Ten/Rose reunion!fic with crossovers from both the AU and the regular Torchwood cast. Originally it was planned to be much shorter, but then Jack got involved. The first chapter titles and the story title were taken from the lyrics of the theme song from The 4400, just because I liked it. But as things tend to do with me it grew into a much longer fic, and then a series called Time Eternal. It is compatible with Jack's Path series as well (of which Post Pomp was the first story). Little bits will be rewritten as I go for those who have read this before, but no major overhauls. Characters: Ten, Rose, Donna, Martha, Jack, Mickey, Jackie, Owen, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh. Genre: Angst, Romance, Fluff, Action/Adventure.

Chapter 1: So Long Ago

“What is it old girl? What are you trying to tell me?” the Doctor asked, his face close to the screen on the TARDIS console. For the third time in as many minutes the TARDIS shuddered. Then without any warning at all the ship flung herself sideways.

“Ouch,” said the Doctor indignantly, rubbing his head where he’d cracked it against the screen. “What was that for? I wasn’t even hitting you with the mallet.”

Martha Jones staggered into the control room. She made it as far as the jump seat and then held onto it tightly as the room pitched yet again. “What is going on?” she asked. The ship began to shake and showed no signs of stopping.

“She’s upset about something,” he muttered. “And she won’t show me why.”

“Well, bloody tell her to knock it off,” Donna Noble said appearing in the doorway, her face flushed. “I’m getting time sick.”

“I’ve told you before, there’s no such thing as time sick, Donna,” the Doctor said absently, his brown eyes failing to even look in her direction.

“Oh, you’re about to see time sick all over the floor of your blessed ship,” Donna said staggering over to join Martha by the jump seat, her long red hair sweeping into her face as she leaned heavily on it and tried to settle her violent stomach. “Oi, ship!” she hollered. “Give it a rest already; less you want me to toss all over your knobs and levers.”

Immediately the TARDIS went still. Dead still. “That’s got to be a coincidence,” Donna said. “This ship has never listened to me before.”

No sound came from the TARDIS at all. No gentle hums, no beeps or tones, nothing. The silence was beyond any silence any of them had ever heard in their lives. “What’s wrong with her?” Martha’s voice echoed loudly and her words were drawn out as if being played in slow motion.

“I don’t know,” the Doctor said his own words coming out just as slowly as Martha’s had. "Some sort of time distortion." He moved towards her, but it was like moving through a thick but permeable wall. Everything had slowed down. Then the air shimmered and moved across the room like a wave.

“Where are we?” Donna asked. “What’s going on? Are we in danger? Well?” And her words came out sounding like chipmunks speaking in rapid-fire. The Doctor looked up very quickly and then ran around to the far side of the console in double time. He flipped a lever, pulled out a long tube and pushed it back in, then pressed a button.

There was a harsh grating noise, followed by a return to normal speed. “I think it is back to normal now,” he said.

“What was that you just did?” Donna asked pushing her hair out of her face as her stomach vacated her throat and returned to it's usual spot in her body.

“It’s a safety feature. It’ll return you to normal time and space in the event of an emergency. Sort of like pulling the hand brake.”

“You’ll have to show me how to do that,” Martha told him.

“We should be fine now.” The Doctor walked around to his companions. “Are you all right? Were either of you injured?”

“I don’t think so,” said Donna. “And my stomach’s calming down. Martha?”

“I’m fine,” said Martha, “Just bruised a shin.”

“Good. Let’s just see where we are.” He tapped a few buttons and looked up at the view screen. As they watched expectantly, all they saw was black. Not just darkness, but a black so black it reflected absolutely nothing.

“Where are we, Doctor?” Martha looked a little bit worried, her dark eyes trying hard not to feel fear. “I don’t see any stars.”

“That’s because there aren’t any stars,” the Doctor said and his voice was grim. “And…I don’t know where we are.”

“How can you not know where we are?” Donna was shocked, because he’d always had a ready answer before. When he didn’t answer she repeated herself.

“Let me rephrase that. It isn’t that I don’t know where we are. We simply aren’t…anywhere. Or any when. We’re outside time and space. We’ve got to be.”

“You mean we’re in the Void?” Martha asked her mind rapidly jumping to a conclusion that she didn’t like. She'd read about the Void when she'd worked briefly at Torchwood.

“What’s the Void?” Donna asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“Don’t tell me it’s nothing! I want to know what it is!” And Donna’s voice rose, her temper starting to get the better of her. She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

“I just told you,” he snapped back. “It’s nothing. It’s literally nothing. No life. No light. No sound. No smell. No taste. No touch. No picture in picture, no high definition. No anything. And we aren’t supposed to be able to get here anymore.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration and it stood on end. He started pacing back and forth across the room.

“It was sealed,” he mumbled. “I saw it sealed. Ergo we cannot be here. But we are. What am I missing? There’s got to be something.”

“Doctor?” Martha asked.

“It couldn’t be the Daleks. They had their Void ship but…no, we saw them die in New York. Cybermen? Well, no they’re really not clever enough to figure out how to get out. So it can’t be them, either.”

“Doctor?” Martha asked a bit more urgently.

“So then, what? Logic dictates we simply can’t be here, yet we are here. Something had to pull us in. Something had to bring us to this point. And it wasn’t the TARDIS because she was fighting it pretty hard. So then, what, what? There’s got to be an answer. What am I not seeing? What--?”

“Doctor!” Martha shouted.

He blinked. “What?”

“The Void is nothing, yeah?” He nodded. “Then I don’t think we’re in the Void.”

“Why do you say that?” He frowned.

“Look at the view screen,” she said one slim brown finger pointing in its direction.

He spun about and his eyes focused on the screen. A tiny yellow spot was dead center. As they watched it began to expand, looking for all the world like a car windshield that had just been struck by a pebble, the glass fracturing and continuing to spread until it was bigger than the view screen.

The Doctor stared at it not believing the evidence of his own eyes. “What is it?” Donna demanded somewhat frightened by his reaction.

“It’s a fissure between parallel worlds.”

“A fissure? What’s a fissure?” Donna asked.

“It’s a crack. It’s a tear. It shouldn’t be there. Oh, it really shouldn’t be there. But it is; it is. What to do, what to do? Can I trust the evidence of my own eyes? Can the ship? All my senses are telling me it’s there, everything in me is screaming out the reality of our situation. It’s impossible. But how many times have I said that only to find out it wasn’t?”

He resumed his pacing as his mind raced at light speed. “And what about them? If it is real, do I dare put them in danger? They’d have to know the risks. I’m not taking anyone with me who doesn’t know the risks. They’ll have to agree to that. Time travel in and of itself is a risk. So is space travel. They knew the risks when they signed on with me. And if there’s a chance, any chance at all, then I have to. I have to. Would she even remember? It was so long ago. But time, well, time, I can do something about that.”

“But what’s it mean, Doctor?” Martha asked snapping him back to reality.

“It means,” said the Doctor spinning around suddenly to face her, “That I may have just found a way back to Rose.”

Ch. 2: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/45433.html