Chapter Text
If she was being completely honest Rose wasn't a fan of the dimension cannons.
To be fair, they weren't necessarily bad at what they did. For the purpose of jumping through dimensions they worked quite well considering the feat was something even the Doctor thought to be impossible.
She couldn't deny that they were impressive pieces of human made technology and she felt a fair amount of pride about that, especially since her dad (An alternate dimension version of him at least- that was still really weird.) was one of the people involved in their invention. It was just that every other aspect of them was utterly detestable and she found the idea of trying to ride that wolf in Victorian England to be more appealing than using the thing one more time. Of course that didn’t stop her from using them. Like hell was she letting anyone else taking her place in a search for the Doctor. She was just really bitter about it every time she had to press that stupid yellow button.
When she was willing to be charitable, she would admit that she was predisposed to dislike the things due to their association with the worst day of her life which may have colored her initial opinion. Once she began using them regularly to hop between universes she shook off the association as she became familiar with the tool and she learned to despise the things for their own sake instead.
They were clunky, ugly, and just plain awful to use. The steering mechanism was rudimentary at best, nonexistent at worst. The shielding, while enough to protect from the void's basic ‘void-ness’ often resulted in tediously dangerous trips.
This was the worst sort of danger to be in, full of constant bumps and unsteady landings which required constant attention to nothing interesting at all just the same vague lump shaped void matter. The shoddiness often meant that Rose came out to the other side of these trips feeling as though she had been squeezed and stretched through a very long, thin tube with a few loop-de-loops thrown in for good measure. She avoided mentioning that part in her mission reports. No one else had mentioned anything about it and she didn’t want to be stopped from continuing her search.
There was too much depending on this and there was no way Rose would allow someone else to take her place, no matter what Pete and Mickey said. Besides, usually the effects would dissipate shortly after landing so she didn't really see the point of bringing it up.
The one thing the dimension cannon had going for it was its ability to hone in on and track the Doctor, and it couldn’t even do that right half the time.
She was always too late or too far away or too trapped in small locked rooms to be able to find him. That one had happened far too often for it to be a coincidence. She had actually brought that up with the lab techs and they had been working on it
At the top of the long list of the dimension cannon's shortcomings was the simple fact that it wasn't the Tardis.
This was the criticism with the least rational backing but it was also the most significant one. That magnificent blue box had become a home to her in almost every way there was and she couldn't deny there was a sort of ache that came along with thinking about it’s absence. Rose missed the Tardis. She missed a lot of things about it; the console room, the library, her bedroom, that beautiful blue exterior, the way it rocked about as she and the Doctor hurtled through time and space. She particularly missed how it had actual walls and didn't leave her with the taste of anchovies and metal in her mouth every time she traveled in it.
The dimension cannon’s lack of a built-in telepathic translating system that came with comforting hums at the back of her mind wasn't unnoticed either. The dimension cannon was a lonely way to travel. Even when Mickey came on jumps with her, the trips back and forth just had this pervading sense of isolation that came hand in hand with the void. She missed… well there were a lot of things she missed, no use dwelling now, she had more immediate issues before her.
Yes, the lack of Tardis-ness in the Dimension Cannon was at the top of the device's list of sins, unfair as she knew it was. However, in her current situation there was a very close second item on that list. The list currently went:
Issue number 1: Lack of blue walls and a universe saving Timelord.
Issue number 2: The damn thing had gone missing during her jump.
She heaved herself to her feet on a street corner in what looked like 21st century London feeling rather sore in both her state of being and her mood. The trip had been particularly tumultuous, and she was feeling particularly grumpy about that fact.
She started patting herself down, checking her inside jacket pockets and the loops on her jeans to see if the thing had just managed to get itself dislodged during the jump. Having no luck she started looking around the immediate vicinity to see if she could spot where it had ended up. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot, it was bright yellow and the size of a small dinner plate.
She probably looked like a madwoman, standing there waving her arms about, but she couldn't bring herself to care overly much. She needed to find the dimension cannon, or she was utterly buggered. Besides, this was London, everyone had seen weirder. She wasn't even getting side-eyed by the other people on the street. It was fine.
This jump had been a disaster from the beginning. Her trip over had been particularly bumpy and she was pretty sure the navigation system on the cannon had switched targets midjump, giving her some form of dimensional whiplash. She didn’t even know how it had come off, the lab would have had safeguards prevent stuff like that right?
She admittedly was having trouble remembering everything they had gone over in the dimension hopper safety briefing. The edges of her vision were still fuzzy and her head ached something awful. A banging started playing beneath her skull like the drums section of an orchestra when she ducked her head under some parked cars nearby to see if the cannon had slid under one. She decided she probably shouldn’t mention it when she got back, no reason to give Pete or Mickey an excuse to pull her from field duty again. Besides, it was -probably- fine.
She finished her search of the immediate vicinity pretty quickly, spotting no sign of the bright yellow button in the early evening light. She huffed to herself, doing her best to stem off panic quickly forming in her gut. Even if it wasn't in eyesight it had to be nearby.
Unless it had gone to the original destination and catapulted her here. Could that happen? She didn’t think so but the idea wouldn’t stop playing in her head. A lone dimension hopper just settled in the dust on some random planet. Sitting there. Mocking her.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. This wasn’t helpful. She couldn’t have gotten too off-course, it had to be somewhere nearby. She just had to figure out where it went. It was still a ship of a sort even if it was a bloody frustrating one. A ship without it’s passenger would just continue on to it's destination right? It wasn't like she had been actually steering it or anything, it was like an autopilot.
If she was right that meant that she had probably just fallen out a little before the end of the jump. That makes more sense than the cannon flinging her far away from it out of some sort of returned spite. There. All she would have to do is go to her original end destination and she would find the blasted button.
The problem with this is that the destination wasn't so much a place as it was a person, a very specific person. To find the dimension cannon she'd have to find The Doctor first.
Getting back to The Doctor her mission's primary goal so she couldn't say she was displeased with her conclusion, just frustrated. She knew from experience how hard it could be to find the Doctor when he wasn’t trying to be found.
She really hoped this wasn't a younger version of the Doctor that the cannon had latched onto. If he came across the cannon there's no way the Doctor and his irrepressible curiosity wouldn't investigate thoroughly and she absolutely did not want to have to worry about timelines on top of everything else that was going wrong today. The alien hadn’t met a button he didn’t like, he’d definitely press the thing.
She imagined the version of him with the scarf suddenly appearing in the Torchwood R&D department. No. That wouldn’t do at all as funny as it was to imagine. She had managed so far to avoid the younger Hims she had come across in the past and the idea that she might have to throw out her perfect record just because the button had decided to go on a wander on it’s own and dropped her on some random London street by herself was vexing to say the least.
There was nothing for it. She rolled her shoulders and adjusted her leather jacket before starting her search. She had to start quick. When finding the Doctor time was of the essence. Rose had had enough near misses to know that from experience. She was practically a Doctor-finding expert at this point. A Doctor-finding expert who hadn’t actually succeeded yet. She ignored that thought.
Rose took in her surroundings more thoroughly as she made her way down the city street. There wasn't any immediately clear sign of mischief or alien interference but that didn't mean necessarily mean anything. If The Doctor was nearby there had to be some sort of trouble if it wasn’t immediately evident that just meant she had more time to find it. Still, he rarely stayed hidden for long so she kept going, leaving behind an average if slightly familiar street, rubbing her head as she continued her search.
She wondered which Doctor it would be as she quickly walked down the street, still searching her surroundings intently for any sign of him or the Tardis. She had no way of knowing until she found him but she couldn't help but to hope it would be her Doctor. A future version would do for the sake of her mission but the thought of him regenerating before she found him hurt in a way she wasn’t ready to dwell on just yet.
If she actually found him. Oh. If she actually found him the need for the dimension hopper would pretty much be moot and much more importantly, she will have finally found him. She didn't want to get her hopes up too much, but she couldn't help but speed up her pace down the road at the thought. She did her best to ignore how her head still pounded every time she turned it to examine a different section of the street.
The whole area was incredibly familiar but she still couldn't put her finger on the reason why. She felt like she’d been here before. It made sense, this was 21st century London, she was from 21st century London. Lots of streets look the same she supposed, it could just be the familiarity of actually being in her home time and dimension.
She didn't really think that was the case though. This place was tickling at her memories, they were telling her this place was familiar. She just couldn’t figure out how. She winced as the pounding in her head started again with a renewed vigor. She looked up and around at all the signs, now looking for something familiar to place herself by. She had definitely been here before. And often.
She rounded the corner and saw the sign, bright and stark against the night sky: 'Henrik's', the old shop she had worked in before she met the Doctor. It was looking decidedly unblown-up. Her eyes widened in realization, finally recognizing where she was. The realization came slowly and fuzzily, with more effort than really should have been necessary to understand what the implications were.
Henrik's was still standing. Which meant that it hadn’t been blown up yet. She was here. The dimension hopper had brought her here. The dimension tracker was meant to track the Doctor. This meant… Oh dear. She really really was buggered.
~
On the upside, she had found where The Doctor was, the downside was that he was about to meet a younger version of her which meant she absolutely, definitely, without a doubt, couldn't be seen. It wouldn't do for the Doctor to see an older version of a random girl he had just met. Or for her to see an older version of herself. Who knows how they would react. Rose was not doing any timeline interference if she could help it.
Still, she couldn't help but be disappointed. She had really hoped this would it.
Well, no use sitting around crying about it. She still needed to find her dimension cannon after all and to top it off she had to make sure she wasn't spotted at the same time.
She was not telling Mickey about this. It was bad enough she had managed to be the first person to lose their dimension cannon, she also had to go and do it in the worst scenario possible.
She stood there in the shadows of an alley, trying to decide where the dimension cannon was most likely to have landed and keeping an eye out for signs of her younger self, though she was pretty sure she still had a fair amount of time left. The sky was barely dark and if she remembered correctly she had been slow closing up that night. That gave her a bit of wiggle room.
Now she had to decide if the Dimension Cannon was more likely to have followed the Doctor or the Tardis.
She had asked this question before but the scientists at Pete's Torchwood were never able to say for certain. The dimension cannon scanned for signs of Timelords but she had allowed them to use her Tardis key to properly calibrate the scans so it could honestly have gone either way. The two of them were never far apart for long and the cannon was so imprecise that it never seemed to tend towards one or the other.
The Tardis would be easier to check but the Doctor would be easier to find. Additionally, seeing if it had been drawn to the Doctor could be a more time sensitive endeavor, The buttons were pretty sturdy but digging it out of the rubble would be a major pain. It was all depending on how accurate the button had managed to be this time.
If past performance was anything to go by the answer was going to be 'not very'. She decided to check Henrik’s first. She could do a sweep through the upper part of the building if she was quick. There was no point if it was in the basement. The Doctor would have probably already have found it. She’d just have to trust how shit the aim on the thing was.
Before she could even think about acting on this decision a click echoed out right behind her ear.
"Don't move."
An American voice spoke clearly and levelly behind her with a gruff seriousness that made it clear he meant business.
Oh bollocks. She was being mugged. Somehow someone had managed to creep up behind her while she had been planning. She was definitely not telling Mickey about this. The whole thing was just embarrassing at this point.
"Alright mate."
She spoke softly, not wanting to provoke the man.
"Here's what's going to happen. You're going to raise your hands above your head- slowly and turn around- also slowly..."
The man sounded vaguely pained at his awkward wording but he got over it quickly and was still very level for the most part. His words were staccato, quick and hard in his mouth.
She nodded her head and started following the instructions, careful not to have any sudden movements. She bit back a small giggle at the phrasing mess-up and the pure ridiculousness of the situation. She turned to look into deadly serious eyes and she no longer felt the need to giggle. She was too shocked.
"Now, you're going to tell me who the hell you actually are and why you look like that because I don't really appreciate when people use my friend's faces without permission. I'm picky like that."
He looked angrier than she had ever seen him. She just stared, incredulous, because what? This did not make sense at all.
"Jack?"
End chapter