Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The base's brig is still adrift in the currents and eddies of time, so the women are confined in the tiny barracks once intended for female soldiers. Based on the decor, Rose thinks the 23rd century must've been pretty dull (on top of being a very bad, backsliding moment in the history of the women's movement), at least on whatever colony world these army blokes came from. There are almost forty people crowded into this room meant to sleep eight on bunk beds: mothers, sisters, daughters. They have no idea what's happened to their men, and they know all too well where their children are.

And every one of them is looking at her.

She pretends not to notice the lens of their attention as she peers into the flat metallic sheet bolted to the barracks wall, combing her fingers through her hair. She doesn't know where her own blokes are, either--she's been expecting them for half the night, and while she's still waiting for a last-minute rescue, she's running low on last minutes.

Not like it's the first time, but she's never had quite so much time to think about her impending execution. Or quite so many people watching while she does. The bruise on the side of her head is still darkening under her hair, and it's swelled impressively, though it's not really dangerous. Her pupils are still the same size, which is the important part, and the ache in her head has subsided from blinding to bearable. She notices her own frown in the mirror and tries to smooth it from her face. The baking tray pretending to be a mirror doesn't show her any frown lines, and she hasn't any laugh lines, either. In the middle of a rambling explanation about cell death, the Doctor once told her that the human body keeps growing a bit until it's about twenty-five, and then it starts to die. It's been a long time since Rose knew her "real" age, but she supposes she's more or less there--no wrinkles and no gray hair, but they'll be along any time now. Assuming she lives that long.

"How can you be so calm?" Marissa asks. In the silence of the barracks-turned-prison-cell, the whispered words carry.

Behind Rose, every Escolian ear strains for her answer. She shrugs and wishes she felt anywhere near as calm as she's trying to look. "Was it the right thing to do?"

A murmur of quiet outrage from the waiting women answers her mild question: every one of them it's here because it was the right thing to do. "Of course!" Marissa says. "But it wasn't your fight--you don't even have a clan, let alone children!"

Rose manages not to flinch, but the words still run icicles down her back. And now, maybe I never will. "But it was the right thing to do," she says firmly. "If they kill me, it will still've been the right thing to do."

In the mirror, Rose sees Sallaidh shake her head. "You're very brave, Rose. I hope you're right about your husbands rescuing you."

Rose doesn't swallow against the ache in her throat. I'm very scared, 's what I am. But the Doctor has to get that thing sealed, no matter how long it takes. Or we're all dead.

All the same, I could really do with that rescue. Any time now.

Rose inhaled deeply as they passed through an open court with food vendors set up along its edges. It did things to her chest that Jack couldn't fail to appreciate, and he grinned. "Peppermint," she decided. "And cinnamon. I could go for a cinnamon bun."

"It's false cinnamon," the Doctor said cheerfully. "Actually the dried leaves of a creeping vine. Not the right climate to grow cinnamon here, but you humans probably can't taste the difference." He ignored Rose as she stuck her tongue out at him. "And I'm sure Escolians make buns out of it."

"Well, that's something, then," she said, mollified.

Jack drew a breath, taking a moment to consider the rich scents of spices. They set his mouth to watering. "I smell cardamom," he said thoughtfully. "Not many places they use cardamom that way, and I haven't had cardamom bread since Jamsa in the 28th century. Nothing's better than fresh, hot cardamom bread, toasted, with just a little bit of butter on top ... "

"Nothing?" Rose asked, grinning.

That just begged for a lewd reply, but before Jack had a chance to answer, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Humans," he complained affectionately, "always thinking with their stomachs."

Jack couldn't resist. "And here I thought you said I was always thinking with my--"

"Oi!"

"--taste buds," he finished innocently. The Doctor gave him a dirty look. "I think that's a bakeshop over there. C'mon." Jack grinned at Rose and grabbed her hand. She laughed and half-ran with him, dodging pedestrians and the occasional rickshaw as they followed the delectable odors across rough stone pavers. They ended up in front of a shop with displays of tea cakes and biscuits set out on top of its fold-down counter, the Doctor trailing behind them with a put-upon look on his face and the faintest of smiles playing at the corners of his mouth.

The shop itself was built of the same ruddy stone that characterized most of the area. It was cool inside, out of the sun's midday heat, despite the warm, sweet draft wafting out from the back of the building, where the ovens would be. Raised voices spoiled the otherwise enjoyable atmosphere. As his eyes adjusted to the dimmer indoor lighting, Jack noticed the aggressive stance of the women behind the counter. He slowed to a stop, keeping Rose close to him, and heard the Doctor come in behind them.

"I said we don't serve your kind here," a middle-aged woman in an apron told a trio of young men in uniform. "You can go three streets over to Sweetbreads or you can go to hell, for all of me. Just so you get out of our shop." Behind her, a much younger woman--barely out of her teens, if that, Jack guessed--gave the would-be customers a near-murderous glare.

One of a pair of pale-skinned, dark-haired young men (twins, Jack thought, though he couldn't be sure from behind) must have missed the glare. "We're just looking for phlink cakes--Sgt. Reynolds told us you have the best in the city, and they're only available during the Midsummer Festival."

"What's this about?" the Doctor murmured, puzzled in a way that told Jack there was more going on here than a question of phlink cakes.

"You'll get none here," the younger woman said, her voice harsh with suppressed emotion. "Baker has seen too many of you Army men, and had too much grief of you."

The third fellow in the trio, standing at enough of an angle that Jack could see his baby-faced, blond-haired profile, smiled disingenuously at the younger woman. Rose rested her face in her hand, and Jack barely managed not to groan. He'd worn that expression himself too many times not to know what was coming, and the kid wasn't particularly good at it.

The young woman saw it coming, too, and her lips compressed into a thin, bloodless line in anticipation. "Marissa ... " the older woman said warningly.

The swarthy-skinned blond said, "That's a shame. I can't imagine who would want to cause trouble for such a beautiful woman."

Marissa bared her teeth. "You clanless, sister-fucking son-without-a-mother--" she gritted out.

"Happy Midsummer!" the Doctor interjected, advancing on the counter while Jack was still blinking at the TARDIS's translation of what must have been an especially eloquent string of curses. "Lovely festival you have here--five days of gifting and revelry, food, drink, entertainment in the streets--"

"Do you have cinnamon buns?" Rose interrupted.

The older woman gave her a relieved look and fixed a cheerful smile on her face, ignoring the group of young men. "We certainly do. With icing or without?"

"Madame Baker--" one of the twins began.

"Thought you lot didn't have a standing army," the Doctor said as Jack moved around to stand on the young soldiers' other side.

"We don't," Marissa said darkly.

"I think you three have someplace better to be," Jack said in his best officer's voice. The young men straightened and turned to face him as if the same hand had pulled their strings, coming to a recognizable attention stance. "Three streets over? I hear they have cakes there, too."

"Sir!" one of the twins said. All three enlisted men saluted smartly, though the blond looked sullen about it. They turned on their heels and walked out of the shop.

Jack grinned and turned back to his partners, only to discover the Bakers frowning at him. "You're one of them, then?" Madame Baker asked.

"We don't serve your kind here," Jack remembered. "Nah," he said. "Haven't been in anybody's armed forces for years ... but they don't know that." He grinned.

Madame Baker did not look reassured. Rose said, "He's ours," and walked over to put an arm around his waist. Jack relaxed a little.

From his other side, the Doctor draped an arm across his shoulders. "Madame Baker, allow me to introduce Captain Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler. And I'm the Doctor. We just came for your lovely Midsummer Festival--didn't expect an army."

The women's tension visibly eased as Jack's partners laid claim to him. "To hear my granddam tell it," Marissa said, "nobody else did, either."

The older woman said, "Call me Sallaidh, please--Madame Baker is my mother. And I apologize for their behavior." She nodded in the direction of the door and the departed would-be customers. "I used to think they at least got better as they get older, but lately, I'm not sure."

"What's happened lately?" Rose asked.

"Why an army, if they're not your army?" the Doctor added, almost on top of her.

Jack shook his head--he could see where this was going. Before anyone could answer his partners, he asked, "Before they get started, do you have cardamom bread? I'd love a couple of slices of buttered cardamom toast."

Marissa and Sallaidh shared a look at Jack's wheedling tone and visibly tried not to giggle. "Oh, go on," Rose said, "he's used to it."

That won them outright laughter. The tension in the bakeshop evaporated as if it had never been. Come to think of it, Jack thought it was the easiest emotional atmosphere he'd felt since they'd arrived for the festival. Which was interesting. Festivals were usually more ... festive. Sallaidh said, "Marissa, toast the cardamom bread, please. And you, Madame Tyler--you wanted cinnamon buns?"

"Rose, please," Rose said as Marissa took a loaf of bread from the shelves behind the counter and began cutting slices. "And yes. For him, too," she said, nodding at the Doctor. "With extra icing." Sallaidh nodded and began putting buns on a plate.

As she opened a large crock, letting steam escape, the Doctor asked, "So why aren't they 'your' army?"

Marissa visibly stiffened as she placed slices of bread on the toasting rack and pulled the lever that started it on its trip through the oven.

Sallaidh said, "Because they're not. They're not from here. They just started appearing." She used a ladle to spoon icing over the plate full of cinnamon buns. "One day, almost a dozen clans were gone, and pieces of the army base were here, instead. Every so often, another bit shows up, with another crop of soldiers that don't know bear lettuce from a hole in the ground."

Jack wondered what bear lettuce was. "Where did they come from?"

Sallaidh shrugged. "I don't know. I might have learned the name of the place back in primary school, but that's been a while."

"A far and distant shore called Bedda Pentrini." Marissa's tart words hit his ear oddly, as if the TARDIS couldn't quite translate the place-name in a useful way. "Too bad they don't pack up their base and go back."

Sallaidh pushed the plate of cinnamon buns across the counter to Rose and the Doctor. "It's not really their fault they're here, Marissa." Her voice was weary and hollow, as if she'd been repeating those words so long that she'd stopped believing them.

"No, but after sixty-some years, it's about time they adjusted," Marissa said. Sallaidh just shook her head.

"So where is here?" the Doctor asked. "Where's this army base?"

The Bakers exchanged a look. "You're really not from around here, are you?" Sallaidh said.

Based on the technology level he was seeing, Jack wasn't entirely sure how to answer that question. The Doctor said, "Nope. Entirely different planet. Tourists, us."

Marissa shrugged. "I'm almost at the end of my shift. I can show you, if you want. I wasn't headed anyplace special--the baths, maybe, and then home."

The Doctor grinned. "Fantastic," he said.

"In the final days of the fall of the Empire of Turning Leaves, our ancestors sought a ship--any ship--that could take them far away from the mad Emperor-General and the crumbling remains of his bureaucratic armies." Marissa let her voice fall into the familiar, almost sing-song cadence as she led the offworlders up the ancient switchbacks that led to Xhang Li's Drop. "They couldn't find a modern ship, but they found twenty-two very old ships with one last journey in them.

"Those ships drifted long amongst the sea of stars before finding Escolia. Before the landing, the ship-clans signed the Charter of Plowshares. Twenty-two clans vowed that they would never create a standing army. And they bound their daughter-clans to the Charter, and in time, those daughter-clans bound daughter-clans of their own." Marissa trailed off, thinking back to a time she'd never known and a world where Brenna would still be alive.

She shook herself, forcing her thoughts back to the here and now and paying more attention to her footing as they approached the top of the ridge. "Then, in my granddam's time, a star fell from the sky to land in the western quarter. No one knows what crater it might have left, for when it touched the ground, the very world changed around it. Or that's how the granddams and granduncles tell it." She stopped as she came to the crest, letting the offworlders have their chance to come to grips with the landscape before them.

The Doctor exclaimed in some foreign language, but she didn't have to understand it to know it was a curse. Marisa approved of cursing in general, both for the evocative language and the sentiment behind it. She glanced back in time to see Madame Tyler and Captain Harkness running the last few steps to catch up with them. "Oh. That's wrong. That's so ... wrong," Madame Tyler breathed.

Marissa looked down below them, ignoring the sheer cliff that dropped away to their right and trying to look at Xhang Li's Drop as if she'd never seen it before. As if I were Xhang Li and the star had just fallen, and I didn't know what I'd find when I went to see what had become of my clan-house.

To the west, the cliff ended abruptly, sheared off in jagged red pieces as if some giant had reached out and torn chunks from it. The path continued carefully down through the tortured stone, with steps hewn out of it in places to make it passable. Eighty or more meters below, it emptied out onto a concrete plane as alien to Marissa as she supposed her clan-house would be to the empire her ancestors had fled. The blocky, false-stone buildings of the army base studded the plane, interrupted at random by red-earth buttes like broken teeth in this maw that ate everything she loved. The ruins of a few broken clan-buildings still capped some of them.

Captain Harkness's hand came to rest on his wife's shoulder. "What the hell does something like this?" he asked.

"Identify yourselves," a familiar voice barked.

"What?" Marissa's head snapped around as she looked for the voice, her gaze coming to rest on a spur of rock about five meters away. "Who's back there?"

A moment passed, like the man didn't know how to react to somebody talking back to him. "Identify yourselves," he repeated. She knew that voice ....

"Hello! I'm the Doctor, and these are Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and Marissa of Baker," the Doctor said cheerfully, walking toward the voice. "And who are you?"

"Antony, behave yourself," Marissa heard in memory. "Gary, is that you?" she asked, elbowing past the Doctor. She went around the spur and came upon her out-cousin, a startled expression on his face and his weapon woefully at half-mast. She'd have to remember to tell Sarah--Gary's wife would be teasing him about this for years.

"Marissa, you're not supposed to come back here," he complained sharply.

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, Gary. What do you mean with this 'Identify yourself' nonsense? You married Sarah when I was seven!" She heard a smothered snicker behind her as the offworlders caught up with her. "And why are you pointing a gun at me? You wouldn't let Antony do that, not even in play."

Gary looked faintly embarrassed--moreso as the Doctor came up behind her. Well, at least he hadn't lost all sense. "We're supposed to challenge everyone, Marissa. It's nothing personal. It's just ... an Army thing."

"What kind of 'Army thing' means treating the footpath from the neighboring civilian city like it's a hostile border?" the Doctor asked as Captain Harkness and Madame Tyler joined him.

Marissa sighed. "Gary, the people you've just offended are the first offworlders we've seen in my lifetime." Gary winced. "Doctor, Captain Harkness, Madame Tyler, allow me to introduce my out-cousin Gary of Army."

Gary started to stick out his hand in that way the Army men had, realized he was still holding a gun, and gave a proper Escolian bow instead. "Sergeant Gary Jackson," he offered. "Yeah, sorry for the fuss. There's a ... I mean ... Look, it's complicated."

The look on the Doctor's face when Marissa shouldered past him was priceless--Rose wished she'd had a camera--but he'd waded right into the conversation like it hadn't even fazed him. "What's going on down there that's complicated, Sergeant Gary Jackson?" he asked.

Rose elbowed Jack and glanced up to find him grinning, too. Gary said, "It's ... a little hard to explain. I wish you'd picked a better time to visit Escolia." His gaze took in all three of them for a moment before he gave Marissa a worried look. "It's weird down there. General Ortiz and General Walters are ... butting heads. General Ortiz thought it'd be safer for all involved if we just kept a close eye on the traffic between the base and the city."

"In the middle of Festival?" Marissa protested.

"What do two generals on the same side find to butt heads about?" Rose asked.

"You'd be surprised," Jack said dryly.

"That's a 23rd century Terosian military base--" the Doctor said, "or most of one, anyway. What's it doing in the middle of fourth-century Escolia?"

Gary shrugged. "It's not like we had a choice. One minute, everything's perfectly routine. The next minute--or some next minute, anyway--there's only one sun, half the base is missing, and your drinking buddies are twenty-five years older than they were the day before."

"Some next minute?" Rose asked.

"Twenty-five years?" Jack added. "Non-constant temporal flux?"

The Doctor was unusually silent. There was a bleak look on his face. This is not good, Rose thought. She slipped around Jack to stand beside their partner, leaning against the Doctor and letting him wrap his arm around her as Gary said, "The way General Ortiz explains it, we think the whole base was sucked into some kind of a hole in space-time on November 23, 2297. And the other end of the hole emptied out here, all in one place but at different times. So for me, it's been about a dozen years, but for General Ortiz, it's been more like fifty. And the parade grounds came through not quite half a year ago." He shut his mouth abruptly.

"What was on the parade grounds?" Rose asked.

"Not what," Marissa said sourly. "Who. General Walters was watching a bunch of stupid young men stand in straight lines and turn on command or something."

"Reviewing the recruits," Gary explained, looking mostly at Jack and the Doctor. "They're settling in now, but it takes time. It's hard to lose everything you know and everyone you loved, all at one go."

"Stands to reason," the Doctor said gruffly. Rose wrapped her arm around his waist to hug him unobtrusively. Jack moved up behind her so he could rest a hand on each of their shoulders. "Any reason we can't go down there and look around a bit?" the Doctor went on.

Gary pulled a face. "You're not catching us at our best."

"The Army has a best?" Marissa asked sweetly.

Gary gave her a tired look. "You know we're not all like that, Marissa," he said. "I may not always like it, but it's home."

Marissa looked away.

Jack said, "We're only here for the Midsummer Festival--we'll take our chances with the timing." Rose could hear the smile in his voice--the one that said, "Trust me, I'm just like you."

Gary sighed. "As long as Marissa's going down with you. I'd hate to have you down there right now without somebody local."

"I'm not going down there," Marissa protested.

"Please?" Rose asked before one of the blokes could stick his foot in it. "It's really important to the Doctor." Even if she didn't know why just yet. When Marissa still looked rebellious, Rose added, "We can pay you for your time."

The younger woman gave an aggravated little growl. "Consider it a Festival gift," she said. She glared at Gary. "Gary, you owe me for this. If Carina ends up growing up without an aunt, I swear, I'm going to come back and haunt you."

Gary rubbed his forehead with his hand. "It'll be fine, Marissa. I'll call down and let them know you're coming--that's pretty much what I'm here for. And I'll take Carina along with Antony to see the Fifth Day fireworks, okay?"

Marissa nodded reluctantly.

"Thank you," Jack said cheerfully, slipping around Rose's side to take Marissa's hand and bow over it. "We're delighted to have you as our knowledgeable and very lovely guide--"

"Jack," Rose and Doctor said in unison.

Jack released Marissa's hand and straightened up, grinning.

"Ignore him," the Doctor advised, sounding much more like his normal self. "He's just like that. And he's taken."

"Ouch," Jack said. But he was smiling, and when Rose nodded to him, he winked in return.

Marissa wore a small smirk on her lips. "Come on, let's get moving. The sooner we get down there, the sooner we can go back where it's sensible."

"Thanks, Marissa," Gary said. He backed away a couple of steps to a piece of machinery--evidently a communications unit of some kind, as he picked up a handset and began speaking into it.

Marissa led them down the earth-and-stone footpath toward the army base. It was surreal, the way the two landscapes were intertwined. Lucky thing the army base wasn't any lower down, or it would have been awash in the sea. "Doctor," she asked quietly, "what does this kind of thing?"

The Doctor was silent a moment before he said, "Irregular spatial juxtaposition usually results from a radical temporal anomaly with multiple foci and a causal structure at the point of temporal outflow."

Jack stumbled and cursed under his breath. Rose elbowed the Doctor. "In English, this time?" she suggested.

"It's a temporal whirlpool," Jack translated.

Rose felt her stomach drop down toward her knees. "So there's actually something here that's sucking the army base through?"

"That would make sense," Marissa said unconcernedly. "It started when a meteorite landed here."

"Doctor," Jack muttered, "Stanislav's second law says that kind of thing can't be stable. And they're saying it's been around for sixty-some years ... "

The Doctor didn't answer. Rose glanced over her shoulder just in time to see him crumple bonelessly to the ground, sliding unchecked toward the edge of the trail.