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lirlovesfic · 6 years

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The Choice

A Doctor Who fanfic

Summary: After GitF, the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Rose, and Mickey back to the estate to solve a problem involving the TARDIS herself. But when they see a familiar face, the face of someone who should not exist, they realize the problem is deeper than they thought and could endanger the Doctor’s very existence. Primary characters: Ninth Doctor, Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith, Jackie Tyler. Genres: Romance, mystery, adventure, drama, character study, HN AU, fobbed!Nine, sick TARDIS. Pairings: Nine/Rose, Ten/Rose Rating: Adult

Warning: none for this chaper

a/n: I am currently working on editing this chapter-by-chapter, with the hopes of completing a chapter a day until I catch up with myself. As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m doing it to try to get back into the swing of writing and to build some momentum in order to finish this. Also, there have been some tiny things nagging at me for a while (grammar, punctuation, etc.) so I’ll be correcting as many of them as I can find as I go. The story will not change. In fact, most of the changes are going to be so minor that I doubt anyone (besides myself) will notice. But to keep myself on target, I’ll be posting it all here as I go, with links to the other websites it’s on. I hope you enjoy it.

Catch up: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet

This chapter: on AO3, on TSP, on ffnet

Chapter Twenty-Two—Southampton, 10 April, 1912

As the Doctor stared at him, Mickey stared back. Without the hum of the TARDIS’s engines, without the Doctor’s constant chatter, the silence in the room was overwhelming. The sound of his heart pounding in his chest echoed in his ears while the Doctor’s words echoed in his head.

“You would be painfully ripped apart along with me.”

“And then you would probably wake up in your own bed on the Powell estate with memories of an excruciating death, a death that would haunt your dreams for the rest of your life...”

“That’s the best case scenario.”

Every instinct told him to run, to accept the offer the Doctor had made of one of his other selves returning him home to the Estate, to safety. By staying with the Doctor, he could be killed only to wake up and find that time had been rewritten and he had two sets of memories. Or he could die outright. Or he could be totally wiped from existence. He pushed the thoughts away from him as hard as he could, but he was only partially successful. The fear crept into his mind and his heart, but he refused to allow it to cripple him.

The air fairly crackled between them in the battle of wills. Mickey knew that the Doctor was powerful, probably more powerful than he could even imagine. The alien had saved entire planets—the entire universe if Rose was to be believed. But despite the fact that Mickey had seen him bring down a government with six words and defeat aliens so dangerous they were beyond his comprehension, he was determined not to allow him to win this one. He couldn’t back down. The Doctor might not think less of him, but he’d think less of himself if he didn’t go through with this.

Mickey swallowed hard before speaking.

“You are going to need me,” he said evenly, determined not to allow the fear he felt to creep into his voice. “Don’t bother tryin’ to deny it.”

For the span of a dozen heartbeats, the Doctor continued to stare at him, evaluating him. He forced himself not to react.

Finally the Doctor’s face broke into a wide grin. “Then we’d better get busy!” He rushed back down the ramp, opened a compartment under the floor, and pulled out a battered cardboard shoebox. After searching the box for a moment, he pulled something tiny out.

“Here,” he said, shoving it into Mickey’s hand. It looked like a tiny hearing aid, similar to the ones the Doctor was wearing. “Put this in your ear.” He dropped the box back into the storage compartment and slammed the grating back in place. The sound echoed through the room.

As Mickey put the tiny device in place, the Doctor pulled one of his telepathic dampers out of his own ear and sonicked it before putting it back.

“Now I estimate we’ve got about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes to link the two TARDISes,” he continued as he rushed back up the ramp and out the door. Mickey followed in his wake. “In thirty minutes the Titanic will sail, and if I know myself, which I do intimately, I’ll stay the whole time on the dock, trying to convince people not to board.”

“What do you need me to do?” Mickey asked.

The Doctor pulled the door shut and locked it. “I need you to watch out for me, either me, and let me know if you see either me. Or Charley since she’d recognize the TARDIS as well,” he answered. He turned and strode down the alley. Mickey had to jog to catch up. “While you do that, I’ll be linking the two TARDISes using his console.”

The Doctor led the way in the opposite direction of the harbor, to a narrow street about three blocks away.

“The TARDIS is about a block further down the road,” he said. “I need you to stay here, and if you see either of my previous selves, particularly my last self, tell me.”

“You want me to run to the TARDIS and tell you if I see one of them?” Mickey asked.

“No,” the Doctor replied. “The device in your ear is a two-way radio. I’ve adjusted one of my telepathic dampers to work as one too. There’s a little switch on the one in your ear. Once you flip it, if you say something, I’ll hear you, and if I say anything you’ll hear it.”

Mickey reached up to his ear and toggled the switch. “How’s that?” he asked.

The Doctor cried out and covered his ears. “You must have hit the volume transmission control,” he said through gritted teeth. He thrust out his hand. “Give it to me.”

“Sorry.” Mickey pulled the transmitter out of his ear and handed it to the Doctor, who adjusted it and handed it back. He put it back in his ear. “How do you know he’ll come this way?”

The Doctor gave him a withering look. “He’s me, remember? Besides, this is the most direct route from the dock to his TARDIS. I estimate he’ll be passing by here in approximately twenty-five minutes. In that length of time I need to finish linking the TARDISes and we need to be back in my TARDIS, ready and waiting for him to take off.”

Mickey nodded. As the Doctor ran down the street, he walked over to a lamppost on the corner. With a sigh, he leaned back against it, crossed his arms, and began to watch.

~oOo~

Once back in his younger self’s TARDIS, the Doctor immediately climbed back under the console and began to rewire the controls. Although he’d had to remotely control TARDISes in the past and even tow them on occasion, he’d never tried to do what he was doing now: have his younger self tow an older version of his TARDIS with his own TARDIS, particularly without his younger self knowing he was doing it.

This was incredibly dangerous. The odds of creating a disaster were astronomical, and he didn’t want to even consider what the risk of creating a paradox was. And that was before factoring in the danger of two interconnected versions of the same TARDIS entering the Vortex together.

For a moment he considered giving up, allowing events to take their course even if it meant the end of this timeline, his personal death and with it, the extinction of the Time Lords. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t considered dying before. When he had set off the Moment, when he had ended the Time War at the cost of his planet and his people, he had intended to die with them.

But this wasn’t just about him. Whatever he did or didn’t do affected the TARDIS as well. If he was right about the TARDIS being poisoned, and he was certain he was, she wouldn’t be able to heal herself. He could face his own death, he could face the extinction of the Time Lords, but he couldn’t face the death of the last of the TARDISes. Not if there was something he could do about it.

With the temporal vortex regulator in one hand and his sonic screwdriver in his mouth, he reached above his head and grabbed the vortex manipulator bypass. A bright blue spark lit up the area under the console.

“Ow!” he yelled, letting go of both the bypass and the regulator. As he yelled, the sonic dropped out of his mouth, landed on the floor, and rolled out of reach. He swore and stuck his singed fingers in his mouth.

“I can hear you, you know,” Mickey said in his ear.

The Doctor ignored him. As he reached for his screwdriver, he hit his head hard on the underside of the console. Wincing, he swore again.

“Wow, I didn’t even know you knew those words,” Mickey said.

“I can speak five billion languages, Mickey,” the Doctor snapped as he picked up his screwdriver. “I know more curses in more languages than you can possibly imagine.” He grabbed the bypass again and was shocked again. And again he swore.

“What does that one mean?” Mickey asked.

“You’re too young to know,” the Doctor said irritably. “Now shut up and let me work!”

Mickey fell silent, and he sighed in relief.

Not wanting to be shocked again, this time the Doctor looked up at the bypass before grabbing it... and groaned. Instead of one, there were two pieces of equipment hanging from the hole above his head. When he had thought he was grabbing the bypass, he was actually grabbing the dematerialization condenser. If he wasn’t more careful, he thought, he wouldn’t have to worry about disappearing due to an aborted timeline. He’d shock himself into oblivion first.

Cursing under his breath, he grabbed the actual bypass and began to reroute the power through the manipulator.

Several minutes later he connected the final wire to the regulator. As he began to pull the reduction inducer out of its housing, Mickey hissed in his ear.

“He’s coming!”

“Where is he?”

“He just rounded the corner. He’s about two blocks away.”

The Doctor shoved everything back into the compartment and screwed the panel back in place. Then he jumped out from under the console and rushed around it, programming the controls as he went. “Mickey, go back to our TARDIS as quickly as you can, without drawing attention to yourself,” he ordered. “Make sure he doesn’t spot you. I’ll meet you there.”

He slammed a hand down on a big red button on one of the control panels, grabbed his long brown coat from the strut and ran out of the TARDIS, yanking the door shut behind him. He began to sprint down the street, pulling on his coat as he went. It flapped behind him.

In his rush he hadn’t bothered to lock the door. He just hoped his younger self didn’t notice.

~oOo~

Mickey casually strolled up the street, occasionally glancing behind himself to make sure he hadn’t been spotted by the younger Doctor. Once he turned the corner, however, he ran flat out to the TARDIS.

Rose had told him so much about traveling with the Doctor—about the monsters, about distant planets and spaceships, about meeting famous people from the past—but she had never mentioned just how much running was involved.

Traveling with the Doctor was better than a gym membership.

When he got to the TARDIS, the door already stood open. Panting, he ran in and discovered the Doctor already in the console room, pulling off his coat.

“Close the door! Close the door!” the Doctor ordered as he threw his coat over a nearby strut and removed the telepathic dampers from his ears.

Mickey did as he was told and then pulled the two-way radio out of his ear and flipped it off.

The Doctor darted under the console. Mickey heard the sonic screwdriver begin to whir. Sparks flew out from under the console.

“I wasn’t able to finish making the connections,” the Doctor told him. “So I’ve got to try to finish them on this end. The problem is that not only do I have to duplicate what I did there, but we’ll have to try to enter the Vortex at the same time as he does. And I estimate he’ll be ready to leave in approximately forty-seven seconds.”

“But last time you tried, the TARDIS couldn’t enter the Vortex,” Mickey protested. “The engine wouldn’t even turn over.”

The Doctor ducked his head out from under the console. “Not a bad analogy,” he said, sounding surprised. “You could think of it like we’re using his TARDIS to jumpstart ours.” He returned to sonicking something under the console. “The connections I did finish should allow us to syphon off just enough energy to get the engines started. Even if it doesn’t work we’ve got to try, or none of this is going to be worth anything. As it stands, since I couldn’t finish the connections at his end, his TARDIS won’t be able to tow ours fully into the Time Vortex, leaving us on the border between the Vortex and normal space.”

“And if that happens?” Mickey asked.

“Boom.”

“Oh.”

The Doctor jumped out from under the console and ran to the monitor. “One of the things I was able to do was create a one-way link to monitor his console room.”

“So we can watch him, but he won’t know,” Mickey guessed.

“Yep. And he won’t be able to see us,” the Doctor answered. “Well, he probably won’t. Maybe.” He began twisting a knob next to the monitor, and a picture of the other console room appeared on the display.

The Doctor grinned at Mickey. “So far, so good.” He paused and stared thoughtfully into the monitor. “The trick is going to be to program in his coordinates, copy exactly what he does, in the order he does, and dematerialize when he does. We’ll have less than half a second to duplicate his every movement. If we’re successful, if he notices us at all we should just appear to be an echo located within his own console rather than from outside the TARDIS.”

“How the hell are you going to watch the monitor and program the controls at the same time?” Mickey asked dubiously.

“I’m not,” he replied. “I’m going to watch the monitor and you are going to program the controls.”

“What! I can’t fly the TARDIS!”

“You won’t be. I will be. All you’ll be is my hands. And my feet.” He stared off into space thoughtfully. “And sometimes my nose,” he said. “Anyway… I’ll tell you exactly what to do. All you’ll be doing is following my instructions.”

Mickey shook his head. “I dunno…”

“Mickey Smith, I’ve seen you shoot missiles at Number 10. You can do this.” He glanced back at the display and his eyes widened. He shoved on his glasses and stared at the monitor. “And we need to do it now! Get to the opposite panel and spin the red dial two and a half times clockwise. Then spin the blue dial counterclockwise three times. Then flip the orange switch on and off twice.”

While the Doctor’s fingers flew across the keypads below the monitor, he barked out orders. Mickey instantly obeyed. A high pitched wail emanated from the center of the console, and the grating that formed the floor shook with an earsplitting rattle. The Time Rotor began to glow a sickly yellow-green.

Mickey ran around the console as rapidly as the Doctor usually did. It was exciting, even a little fun, until he couldn’t find one of the controls.

“Mickey, you need to flip the switch now!” the Doctor shouted, trying to be heard over the sounds of the shrieking TARDIS and the rattling floor.

“I can’t find it!” Mickey yelled back.

“It’s right in front of you!”

Mickey stared at the panel again. Tubes, levers, a knob that could pull out, and a series of metal cups that looked like bells, all set in a panel glowing in the same sickly yellow-green as the Time Rotor. “It’s not here!” he insisted.

“It has to be!” The Doctor craned his neck and looked over the monitor at the panel on the opposite side of the console. “I just saw it… in his TARDIS.” The Doctor groaned. “The TARDIS must have moved it to a different location.” He glanced from side to side. “There it is!” He swung his foot up on top of the console and managed to flip the switch with the toe of his trainer before turning back to the monitor.

“All right, Mickey, one last thing! Grab the mallet and hit the bells on the panel as hard as you can. Don’t hold back.”

Mickey grabbed the mallet. “In what order?”

“Doesn’t matter. Just do it!”

As Mickey began to whack the bells built into the control panel, the Doctor grabbed a lever and slowly pulled it down. The Time Rotor began to move, and the sound of the TARDIS dematerializing joined the other noises in the room.

“We did it!” Mickey shouted.

“We haven’t made it into the Time Vortex yet!” the Doctor answered. “Hang on!”

Mickey tightly grabbed a nearby handle set into the controls with both hands while the Doctor did the same on the opposite side of the console. The TARDIS lurched and the sound of dematerialization died off.

The rolling of the floor stopped.

The Time Rotor, now silent and glowing a bright blue-green, moved slowly up and down.

The Doctor grinned at Mickey, his brown eyes sparkling. Mickey grinned back.

“Now we did it,” the Doctor said. His grin widened, showing all his teeth, and he began to laugh. Mickey joined him.

“We did it!” Mickey yelled. He pumped his fist into the air.

“We did it!” the Doctor cried. “Ha!”

#the choice #ficandchips #tenth doctor #mickey smith #nine x rose #ten x rose #fobbed!Nine #revised chapter

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