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Rogue may have told the Doctor to find him, but, well, he could do the math well enough. There were, hypothetically, as many dimensions as there were atoms in the universe. More, even. Add in antimatter. Add in every possible thing that can be counted and double it, then triple that and add infinity on top, and then you might get close.
And he was stuck in one of them with five angry Chuldur and no escape plan. Which was just… lovely. And while the Doctor might have some fancy machine in his ship that would allow him to track down which dimension the triform had dropped Rogue into, it wouldn’t really matter if he had already been killed. Or worse, turned into a skinsuit.
Rogue would, even if only to himself, admit that he would rather chop off his own hand than be used against the Doctor like Ruby was. Well, maybe not his hand. He’s rather fond of having good sensory nerves on his fingers, even if prostheses would get him back full function. His foot, maybe.
All of this was to explain that after roughly three weeks of hiding from Chuldur and scrounging for food, when a terrible sort of dimensional gap formed about six feet from the crevice where he’d made his camp, he barely hesitated to approach it. For a brief moment, he pondered whether using it was a good idea. There was no guarantee that the Doctor would be able to find him if he left through the gap—but then again, what was one more dimension on top of an infinite number?
He shrugged, poked the tear with a stick, ascertained that it hadn’t caught fire, and pushed through. Anywhere was better than his current situation.
Immediately, Rogue had the feeling that he had made a terrible mistake. This was due to a multitude of factors: going into the breach had been both simultaneously freezing cold and burning hot; whilst inside it, for a brief moment, he was pretty sure that he didn't materially exist; now every inch of his body felt like it had been shaken loose and then reformed, not to mention he had a sickening the migraine—and where he ended up was, quite obviously, a military base.
He took in the lab coats and guns almost distantly. Like someone had pressed pause on his own mind. That had happened the first time, too, when they’d all fallen through the trap, he realized. Like… like a buffering zone against new dimensions. It had probably been the only reason he’d managed to escape the Chuldur. They’d taken longer to snap out of it.
“Stand down!”
“Intruder alert!”
“Ma'am, someone just came through the breach!”
“Call the Director!”
Rogue blinked, and the lights swirling through the air finally decided to agree that they were coming from only a few sources in the ceiling. He blinked again, and the voices were clearer, they sounded—they sounded like they were speaking Gardenian, which meant that his translator was starting to work. It dropped every third word, but he could get the gist now.
A third blink brought the sources of the voices into focus. They looked like Rogue, like the Doctor and like the humans from 1800s Earth. He scanned the room, taking note of the screens, and the open vents in the ceiling, and then the guns again.
The soldiers had bullet cartridges for reloading, he thought. That said something, at least. If that was the level of technology they were working with, they weren't likely to be very familiar with aliens.
“Put your hands above your head, and do not move,” ordered a woman in a very important looking lab coat. She was standing behind the soldiers in identical bulky vests, but when she spoke the others listened.
Rogue gamely put his hands above his head, and resisted the urge to point out that he could hardly follow both of her commands at the same time.
The woman eyed him warily, and a clicking noise sounded. “Lieutenant Hallett, what’s the status of the intruder?” asked a voice, grainy and diffuse. She unhooked a black box from her belt and said to it, “The intruder hasn’t made any aggressive moves. He—they appear to understand English.”
“English?” Rogue asked, the proper noun, like all proper nouns, being translated as the actual word. It felt weird in his mouth. “Is this Earth, then?” At this, every gun in the lab raised. Whoops.
“Why do you want to know?” the woman asked sharply.
Rogue shrugged. “Just making conversation,” he said. “I tend to like to find out where I've ended up after I fall through an interdimensional portal.”
“And… you’re familiar with Earth?”
“Not well,” Rogue replied. “It died out a long time ago, for me. But as I said,” he inclined his head behind him at the spot he'd come through, “interdimensional portal, and all that.”
“Where did you come from?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” he admitted. “Going there was a bit of an accident too.” Understatement of the fucking century. All of the centuries.
Just then, footsteps sounded, and someone burst through the door. “Stop, stop, stop,” they said. “No guns, we don’t need guns—how many times have I told you that I don’t like guns?” they complained. This person did not dress like the others. They weren’t wearing a lab coat, for one. Nor were they in tactical gear. No, they were wearing a brown suit, and the second they entered the room, the tension seemed to ease. A beat later, a woman walked in behind them.
If the brown-suited person had the command of the room, the woman had the command of the room. She was wearing a black suit one could only call sharp, with blonde hair unconstrained by pins. “Doctor,” she said, “it is an unexpected arrival. You can hardly blame them for being cautious. That being said, officers, do put down the guns.”
Doctor? Rogue narrowed his eyes. Doctor was a title. His translator knew the difference between a title and a name. “You’re… the Doctor?” he asked. Besides the name (Rogue was well aware there had to be more than one person going by that moniker), there was something familiar about him that Rogue couldn't quite put a name to. The presence that seemed too big to be contained within his physical form, maybe, or the casual irreverence with which he treated a potential threat. Something that pinged the instincts that Rogue had honed over the course of his work—and by the time you became as skilled as he was, those instincts had gotten very, very good.
The Doctor grinned, like a child in a candy store. “You’ve heard of me?” he asked, delighted.
Rogue opened his mouth, and then decided that, no, actually, he had no idea how to answer that. I met you a month ago, I thought you were a Chuldur, you saved my life, you understood me, you said that we should go arguing throughout space and time, I proposed to you, and then—I wasn’t expecting to find you, he thought. But… this man wasn't the Doctor, not the one he'd known, anyway.
Rogue honestly hadn’t been paying much attention to those holograms—he’d been a bit distracted by the whole, ‘I am a powerful lord of time’ thing—so he couldn't be sure of the face but... "Shapeshifter?" he asked, more for confirmation than anything.
The Doctor grimaced slightly. “Ah, on occasion,” he said. “And not any more.”
“Well,” Rogue said. “That sounds like a story. What year is it?”
“21st Century London, Earth. 2023, April 18th. You are standing in one of the bases of UNIT, the ah… welcoming committee, as it were. Do forgive them for the trigger happiness. We get a lot of hostiles,” the woman said, and she allowed her lips to curve upwards.
“Yeah,” Rogue commented, eyeing the guns. “I can see that.”
The woman strode forwards, and clasped his hand in her own, and he shook it. He loved his translator—most didn’t account for non-verbal communication, but he’d gone to enough planets where smiling was an act of aggression to shell out an obscene amount of credits for the fancy ones. Handshakes had fallen out of commonality in… fuck, was it in the 26th century or later? Probably when humanity had encountered enough species that didn't have hands. “I’m Rose Tyler,” she said, and smiled at him. “Welcome to our universe.”
Rogue let himself smile back.
.-.. .. -. . -... .-. . .- -.-
“All right,” The Doctor said, sliding the lever of the handbrake. He checked the scanner. “Okay, Rogue is definitely in this dimension.”
“Think you said that last time,” Ruby teased.
“Ha ha,” he pointed at her, and she smiled. “Now,” he clapped his hands, and spun towards the doors. “Off we go,” he said, and took two steps. Then he stopped, patting down his coat. “We’ve got everything, right? Clothes, money, psychic paper, umbrella—”
“Space mace, lockpicks, and scanner, yes yes, come on—” Ruby laughed, and grabbed onto the arm of his jacket.
“Hey, I’m just saying,” The Doctor said, holding up his free hand defensively. “You don’t want to be stuck in the cargo hold of a 27th century battlecruiser chasing an escaped Zetacene without your time dilation scanner and—ah.”
The door to the TARDIS shut behind them. The military base blinked at them. Ruby and the Doctor blinked back. “Hi,” he said, smiling brightly and pushing Ruby back behind him. “I’m the Doctor. Ah, don’t shoot?”
The military base blinked again. One woman looked skywards, heaved a sigh, and reached for a walkie-talkie. “Boss, the Doctor is here. Arrived in the TARDIS, like you said.”
That could be either very bad or very good, the Doctor thought, and shared a glace with Ruby who shrugged at him. Alright, why not, he decided, shaking his shoulders loose. “Are we being taken to your leader?” he asked.
The walkie-talkie spluttered, and whatever it said had the woman shrugging, waving off the soldiers and lab technicians and beckoning them to follow him. “Basically,” she replied. “I'm assuming you’re here for Rogue?”
The Doctor brightened and nudged Ruby. “See, I told you he was here,” he teased.
“Yes yes,” she rolled her eyes, “the Doctor is always right, I know.” He laughed freely, and the woman studied them intently. “Something wrong, Ms…” Ruby asked, leadingly.
“Hallett, Ma’am,” she said.
Ruby grimaced. “Oh oh no no no no, no I am not a ma’am. Miss, if you have to, but really, just Ruby works fine.”
The woman blinked, and then relaxed somewhat. “Ruby,” she said, mulling it over. “Okay. No, nothing’s wrong. I’m just… well. You’ll see, I suppose.”
“Anyways, Hallett-no-first-name, where are we, exactly?”
“We’re in UNIT Base 3, London. We built it after the... well. After that portal became active. You're not the first visitors we've had, let's just say.”
“UNIT!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Oh good old UNIT, even across dimensions there’s still a UNIT, fighting the good fight.” He sobered, suddenly. “You don’t experiment on aliens, do you?”
She shook her head, but didn't pretend to be surprised or insulted by the implication. He respected her a little more for that. “Oh, no, sir, definitely not. Besides, I don't think you'd let us even if we wanted to.”
“Well that’s good,” the Doctor said, and then his brain caught up and he said, “hold on, what do you mean me?”
Hallett smiled, and it was a smile that the Doctor recognized, because he wore it any time he showed Ruby something spectacular. “Like I said sir,” she said, as the doors opened. “You’ll see.”
The Doctor spent the first second looking out at the expansive view of London: the spires of Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the grey clouds. London never changed.
Ruby gasped. “Oh it’s so different,” she said. “Oh, look, the London Eye is gone! And are there more bridges over the Thames? Wait Doctor, are those… oh what are they called? Blimps? Like the Hindenburg!”
The Doctor exhaled, and then started laughing. “Zeppelins,” he said. “Zeppelins, Hallett, is this—was this world invaded by Cybermen in 2006? And saved by Pete Tyler and Torchwood?”
Hallett nodded. “Yes sir,” she said, and she looked very pleased indeed.
The Doctor whooped. “Oh of course!” he crowed. “No wonder he’d end up here, it’s a sister universe!”
Ruby, caught up in the joy, laughed with him. “What does that mean?” she asked. He laughed, and hugged her, spinning around.
“It means,” he explained after he put her down, “that I’ve been here before. There was this whole mess with dimensional walls being torn down; I ended up fixing it, but it must have made a link to our world. Oh, and that’s brilliant. Rogue must have entered another portal, and his energy signature led him here. Pairing with the closest possible resonance structure, brilliant.”
“He did,” a very familiar voice said. The Doctor stilled. “It’s good to see you again, Doctor.”
He turned, slowly. “Rose Tyler,” he said, simply.
“That’s me,” she agreed.
He looked her up and down. Age had treated her well enough, although it was hard to tell exactly how long it had been. “Are you the head of UNIT now?” Despite his good relationship with Kate, there was a lot of surprise and the tiniest bit of disdain in that question.
She grinned at him. It was smaller than it had been, but… well. Time changes all things, he supposed. And she still wore it with ease, so whatever had happened in her life, she had still managed to smile. That was everything he could have hoped for her, really. “Someone had to be,” she teased, “and you refused to deal with the paperwork.”
The Doctor huffed a laugh, and Ruby swatted him lightly on the side. “That does sound like him,” she agreed.
“It does,” he nodded. “It really, really does. Oh, right. Ruby Sunday, this is Rose Tyler. She traveled with me for a bit. 2005?”
“Wow, you really are old,” Ruby said.
“Ha ha,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Rose, not that it isn’t… fantastic to see you, but we came looking for—”
“Rogue, right? He arrived through the portal a few weeks ago.” She checked her phone. “And he’s on his way,” she smiled. “We notified them as soon as you arrived. Should be… about five minutes?”
While Rose was on her phone, and Hallett had politely turned around to pay attention to anything else, the Doctor pulled Ruby aside. “Hey, ah, could you not—you see, the Doctor here, he doesn’t ah… know that we’re adopted.”
“Oh,” Ruby said, “Oh. Are...” she searched his eyes. “Are you gonna tell him?”
The Doctor shook his head, and pursed his lips. “He’s human,” he explained, and her eyes widened. “I’ll explain later,” he said, “but telling him… it would just complicate things that don’t need complicating. But I’m saying it because the face you’re about to see is the face of the me who’s with Donna. And ah… I'd like you to keep mum? If you can?”
“No, of course,” Ruby agreed, nodding. “I’ve got your back, 100%.”
He smiled at her, and wondered not for the first time how he got lucky enough to find such a good best friend. “Thank you,” he said, and he wasn’t just talking about this.
“Any time,” she said, and she wasn’t either.
“Hey, sorry to break up the bonding moment,” Rose said, “but they’re almost here.”
‘Almost’ was a stretch, because right then the doors opened, and Rogue stepped through.
The Doctor didn’t even realize that he’d started moving towards him until he was already halfway across the room. By the time his mind caught up with his body, he was crashing into him, arms winding around his back. Rogue stumbled, but regained his footing, and the Doctor pressed his face into the other man's neck. Rogue hugged back just as tightly, arms winding around the Doctor’s back, and a shaky breath exhaled right next to the Doctor's ear.
The Doctor felt a part of his mind steady, a horrible guilt and terror that had been living in his head for months unwinding. Even with the certainty that they had found him, it hadn’t felt real until just now, skin-to-skin contact.
He blinked back tears, and pulled back. “What the hell was that?” he asked. “Find me?”
“Well you did,” Rogue retorted automatically.
“It took a supercomputer the size of a small city forty-two years to calculate where you’d landed, and then you had the audacity to move?”
“You know as well as I just how many dimensions there are in existence,” Rogue protested, “Your machine had just as good a chance finding me here—”
The Doctor made a frustrated noise and then kissed him. Rogue took a moment to get with the program, but then kissed back just as enthusiastically.
After a moment, Ruby said, “Yeah I like this a lot better than the last time, where I was standing over a pit to hell.”
The Doctor broke off to say, “Oh shut up,” before going back in.
“No seriously,” she continued to the room at large. “We were at this regency ball, totally Bridgerton—well, if Bridgerton had cosplaying aliens stealing peoples’ faces—and this girl, Emily, she was, well, she was really nice, until it turned out that she was an alien and she tried to steal my face, so I hit her over the head with a book, but then I had to pretend to be one of the aliens, and the Doctor had devised a pretty clever trap, but then again, I was pretending to be an alien so I was in said trap—”
The Doctor rolled his eyes, and pulled back. “Ruby,” he said, “must you—”
Rogue was laughing under his hands, smiling with every inch of his body and wow the Doctor had not expected this. He couldn’t have expected Rogue ever, he thought.
“Hey, it’s not like you were telling the story, mister ‘let’s snog the man I just met.’ Oh, which reminds me, now that we’ve found him, can I remind you of something that you said. What was it? I think it was something like, ‘just try not to get engaged’.”
The Doctor flushed, and turned around. “Ruby,” he said.
“But who’s there, not two hours later,” she continued, with the most shit-eating grin he had ever seen her wear. From the corner of his eye, he could see Rose and the other Doctor watching the whole scene, utterly enraptured. “On the middle of the dance floor, calling a man a cad and a coward and threatening to turn his back on him forever unless he can promise them a ‘future together.’” Ruby, it was clear, had been anticipating this reunion for months.
The Doctor was going to kill her. “Sorry, did I say we were best friends? I retract it. Disowned. Dishonored. Wait till I tell your mother.”
“Says the man who’s still wearing the ring,” she shot back. He glared daggers into her soul.
“Really?” Rogue said, and the Doctor could hear just the faintest edge of vulnerability in it. The Doctor swallowed slightly, and held up his left hand.
“Yeah,” he said, as if it were a given. “You can have it back, if you want,” he said, lightly. “Tracking device, and all that. Don’t suppose I really need it—”
“No, keep it,” Rogue said. His cheeks had pinked ever so slightly, but his eyes were steady. “It suits you.”
Now it was the Doctor's turn to blush.
“Wow, are you two going to be like this all the time?” Ruby asked, breaking the moment. “Because I’m more than willing to stay at home for a few weeks for you to figure all of your shit out.”
“Ruby,” the Doctor hissed.
Rogue laughed. “Oh, I like you,” he said, as if it were a surprise.
She grinned. “Thank you,” she said, and mock curtsied.
“Oh my god, I should have left you both,” the Doctor complained to the ceiling and didn’t mean a word.
“Well,” Rose finally said, having gathered her wits. “I… certainly wasn’t expecting this,” she said, looking between the Doctor and Rogue. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she smiled. “Good for you,” she said, to both of them. Good old Rose Tyler, he thought warmly, with a hint of nostalgia. “Now, I don’t suppose you have time to catch up?”
The Doctor grimaced, and exchanged a heavy glance with Ruby. Technically, they had all the time in the world, but neither of them wanted to drag other dimensions into the games of the Trickster's brigade. “A bit,” the Doctor said, finally. “An hour or two, tops,” he said, warningly. “And I will not be seeing Jackie Tyler, so don’t even try—”
The Doctor, the other Doctor, laughed, and the Doctor took the first opportunity to study him. Humanity suited him well, he decided after a moment. “No, no,” he chimed in, “We wouldn’t want that. Heaven forbid we be domestic.”
“Oi,” the Doctor complained. “I’ve travelled with a married couple and their daughter, and a man and his grandson since I last saw you, thank you very much. Not to mention—” he stopped, deciding not to touch on the seventy years with the Master in a vault.
“Really?” Rose said, choosing not to comment on the obvious omission. “You have changed.”
“It’s been several—” he stopped himself from saying million “—hundred years since I last saw you, so I should hope so,” he said lightly. “What’s been up with you?”
Rose and her Doctor exchanged a tender glance, and then turned to them. “How about we all have lunch? Chinese?”
The Doctor looked to Ruby at his right and Rogue at his left and grasped their hands in his. “We’re good with wherever,” he grinned.
And they were.