Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The agent folded at the knees, falling to the ground in a lifeless heap. The man he'd been chasing—the one who'd shot back—was free to take his chances on the rainy streets. But first, he stripped the agent of his precious leather wrist-strap.

The man ran across wet pavement, dodging pedestrians and cabs. At precisely 22:00, the rain stopped. Fortuna bless the Weather Net.

He was still being followed. He couldn't see anyone, but the agent he'd taken out had had two friends, and there was no way either of them was dead. (Even if they were, they weren't the sort of people who'd let that stop them.)

He ducked into a Calvani night club. The streets weren't crowded enough to get lost in, but if he knew his holes-in-the-wall, this one would have at least one loose panel or secret exit that he could exploit. Prohibition had been helpful like that.

The music inside was loud and just a little wild—not his kind of wild, but fluttering and fast, and unmistakably smart. It sounded like a physicist on halluchips.

He sauntered up to the bar and greeted the tall androgyne bartender—shi had a long, flat head shaped like the back of a chair and the same colour as a kind of green ore he'd seen once.

Shi winked four of eight beady mercury eyes at him. "What's your pleasure?" shi asked smoothly.

He smiled back at hir. "I'll have a shot of DaVinci's Ransom," he said.

The bartender's nostrils—a long column of slits that ran down either side of hir head parallel to hir eyes—flared slightly, and shi moved hir mouth to show teeth in what shi probably thought was a convincing imitation of a humanoid smile. (Hir teeth were grey and jagged, so most of the friendly effect was lost.)

"Coming right up."

A few moments later, shi presented him with a glass of liquor that smelled like solvent but, as he knew from experience, tasted like la berries, and a small white and silver card two centimetres wide and about four long. He raised his glass in his right hand and discreetly palmed the card with the other.

"Thanks," he said, and threw back the drink.

He waited a few minutes, getting a couple more drinks and leaving the bartender a big tip. (It was a pair of earrings designed for an Iffrat, but if shi had more than half a brain, shi could get a hell of a price for them on Canal Street.)

He went to the back of the club. Most of the patrons were Calvani, of course, but there were purple-skinned Opinari and the occasional Hath. (He'd never been sure how it was that Hath could get drunk, with their re-breathers covering their mouths.) There were a handful of humanoids and near-humans, too, which was good, because he didn't want to look completely out of place. People would remember the lone human wandering in, and he did not want to be remembered.

As he passed the platform where the band was set up, he noticed that one of the musicians was apparently human. He was good-looking, and tall, with dark hair. He was playing that big guitar like a pro. The guy on the keyboard was Calvani—all those hands were an advantage. The drummer was a Hath, which explained what the other Hath were doing in here. Probably his family come to cheer him on. (Though, as he seemed to be a relatively good-looking Hath: they might have been groupies).

He'd seen weirder trios, but the human kept his eye. It was probably the smile the man gave him as he passed. Too bad he couldn't stay. He'd have to stop in again next time he was on the run in the City.

He went into the restroom with the humanoid stick-figure on the door. The walls were covered in graffiti; what had once been a stylish silver tile was now a plaster of black ink and holo-stickers. He hedged his bet on the middle stall, and locked himself in. The back wall was covered in the same general paraphernalia as the rest of the room. He was delighted to find a small, friendly cartoon scrawl smiling up at him. This kind of graffiti was everywhere in the City, if you knew where to look. Good old Wally: always there to help a guy in need.

He held the datacard the bartender had given him up to the little man in the striped shirt and was rewarded with a wink. The toilet flushed and the wall's hermetic seal hissed. He pushed and the whole thing slid easily back and to the side.

Feeling pretty pleased with himself, he stepped into the narrow passageway that had been revealed.

The hidey-hole was pretty clean, which was a pleasant surprise. Most of these places were littered with discarded fix wrappers and bodily fluids of varying provenance. This one was set up like a little sitting room, complete with comfortable chairs and what looked like a sink. There was a pile of boxes in the corner, part of an Opinari liquor shipment. Good booze on Opintar.

He chose a chair facing the entryway and leaned back. He put his feet up on the little table in front of him and thought about where he was going to go first.

"Hands up," said a smooth, feminine voice with a posh Sanctuary accent. He could feel the end of the blaster on the back of his head. He sighed and slowly raised his arms.

"You do know that we know all about your friend with the glasses, don't you?" she asked.

He rolled his eyes. "I bet it's only because you cheated."

He could feel the agent leaning closer. Her breath warmed his left ear. Her perfume was heady, with a trace of what he recognised as a solvent used in pheromone distillates. Very nice, though he wondered if that was strictly Agency issue.

"Stand up," she murmured. "Slowly."

He got to his feet.

"Turn around."

He kept his hands where she could see them and obeyed. He could reach for his own gun, but she was quicker than him. And probably smarter, he thought ruefully.

The Time Agent smirked at him. She was wearing a shiny white jacket over a black cat-suit, which on most people would have been a big mistake, but on her… He looked over her frankly spectacular frame and felt a pang of regret. Her hair was blonde and very curly, and she had made no attempts to tame it. She appeared to be somewhere in her thirties—she might have been younger than he was—but Agents tended to go in for body clock adjustments.

"You know," he said thoughtfully, not bothering to be subtle about looking her over, "if you just wanted to forget about this whole 'arresting me' thing, I'm sure you and I could find something a bit more… entertaining… to do."

Her smile took on a lazy characteristic. "Tempting. But I quite enjoy the 'arresting you' thing."

"That must be why you do it so often," he answered. "Or is that because you keep letting me get away?"

"Not this time," she said lightly. "But first things first. Where did you hide it?"

"Where'd I hide what?" he asked innocently.

"You're very pretty, Boe," she said. "But don't think that will keep me from shooting your face off."

He grinned. "No worries. I know how important your work is to you." He heard something moving in the restroom upstairs. There was a telltale sound of flushing water.

"I haven't got all day," she said, narrowing her eyes.

"You're a Time Agent," he retorted. "You've got all the time in the universe. Tell you what; we'll chalk this one up to you. Then you can let me go, and we'll see who catches who next time."

"Whom," said another voice. "It's bloody 'whom'!"

The man called Boe rolled his eyes. "You brought your pet?"

"Partner," she corrected, smiling slyly.

The partner revealed himself dramatically from behind the liquor boxes.

Should have checked behind the boxes. Amateur mistake. Just because no one was supposed to know about a hiding spot, that didn't mean they wouldn't. If this was the way things were going, he really was going to have to concede their superior intellect. Of course, they might have just teleported in. Time Agents were renowned for ignoring local teleportation regulations.

"If you can't bother to speak the language properly, Boe," the second agent said petulantly, "then you shouldn't dirty it with your tongue." He was a willowy but muscular human, with ashy brown hair and cheekbones that might as well have been carved out of marble. He had a leonine way of moving that was more than a little attractive. (He'd gone with a loose red jacket in an ancient military cut to offset the slim black Time Agency trousers. He had very nice legs.)

"I can think of a few things my tongue could d—"

"That's enough," said the woman, rolling her eyes. "You're coming with us, Boe."

"Yeah," said her partner, pulling his blaster from his belt. For someone so uptight about the language, his attempts at the Sanctuary accent weren't very good.

"I thought you wanted to know—"

Someone was coming down the steps. He wasn't sure whether to praise his luck or curse it.

Curse, apparently. It was just the human musician from upstairs. The two Time Agents stared at the newcomer; they were completely taken by surprise.

Blessing, then.

He moved quickly, grabbing the man by the arm and taking his blaster from its holster. He pressed it up to the musician's jaw.

"Don't try it," he warned as the woman took a step forward. "I know you well enough to know you don't want to hurt innocent bystanders. Let me go, or I shoot this pretty man's head off."

She raised her gun level with her eye. "You don't know me as well as you think you do."

"I d-don't want to g- to g-g-get…" The musician couldn't even get the words out, he was so nervous.

He probably ought to feel guilty about that, he thought. Instead, he backed them towards the staircase. It was hard to get the musician to follow him—he wasn't practised with up-the-stairs-with-a-gun-to-your-throat manoeuvring, which he could hardly be blamed for, but the Time Agents were creeping closer.

She was a piece of work, there was no doubt about that—not after she fired, missing both their heads by millimetres.

He ought to have abandoned his hostage at the top of the stairs, but when the agent's second shot clipped the musician's shoulder, it was a matter of leaving an innocent person to bleed on a filthy restroom floor, or, at least, getting the unlucky bastard out of that bitch's way.

He dragged the wounded man out of her line of sight and pulled the third agent's wrist strap from his coat pocket and wrestled the musician's hand over it. He was a little bit hasty with the co-ordinates, but he still had the satisfaction of seeing the look on both Agents' faces as the restroom melted away.

Their arrival was rough. He almost threw up. (The alcohol had been a bad idea.) The musician collapsed to the dirt and retched loudly.

"Sorry about that."

It was a few moments before the man could stop puking long enough to look up at him. "Who the h-hell are y-y—" He grimaced and heaved again.

"My name's not important," he replied. Then, as an afterthought, he asked, "What's yours?"

"L-Lee."

"Nice to meet you, Lee." He fought the wide leather strap onto his wrist and helped Lee to his feet. "You can call me Jack."

On his twenty-third day of being human, the Doctor woke up in Rose Tyler's bed. This was, so far, one of his new favourite things.

Top of the list of new least favourites was being choked by large insects. He was going to have to try to avoid that more assiduously in the future. Without a respiratory bypass, it was far more dangerous than he was used to. And surprisingly painful. The human body did not handle pain the same way as his Time Lord one had. It was far more… urgent.

Were it not for certain other things, his new nervous system would have become his new enemy. Lucky for him, pain wasn't the only thing it had to offer. (He might even be able to get used to the endocrine system.)

He didn't move right away. Rose's arm was draped over his back, and she had burrowed her head into the pillow. Her face was relaxed, mouth open just a little bit, and when she shifted, there were marks on her cheek from the fabric of the pillowcase.

The single heart in his chest ached a little. (Or maybe that was his stomach. Nothing was quite where it was supposed to be.) He kissed her cheek and her eyelids started a slow, reluctant movement.

"Good morning," he said. He liked saying that. He'd said it yesterday as well. (Technically, he'd said it lots of times, but it had been the first time saying it to Rose in this particular context.)

Rose took a long breath and rolled onto her back. He watched her stretch—she was as naked as he was—and wondered if maybe his endocrine system wasn't… over-doing it just a bit.

"Morning," she replied through a yawn. She blinked a few times, smiled, and rolled back towards him with wandering hands.

The Doctor lost track of approximately twenty minutes. These human hormones weren't kidding around, were they? Or his time sense was going. He tried not to think about it; Rose made that disturbingly easy.

And then, one leg draped over Rose's legs (she had really fantastic legs), he fell asleep again. He wasn't sure when that happened, either. Sleep kept creeping up on him. How inconsiderate.

Maybe you should get yourself a watch, teased the the voice of Donna Noble that lived inside his head.

He became aware again when Rose bumped his shoulder. "Wake up," she said playfully. He didn't move. He was comfortable and his body was more than happy to stay right where it was. For once, he agreed with it. This was nice.

"Wake up," Rose said again, this time with laughter in her voice.

He turned his face into the pillow, away from the light that was pouring in through the window and grunted his dissent.

"Come on, we're gonna be late."

Giving up, he squinted and wondered what sadistic little human had come up with the concept of 'late.' Who was to say if he was on time or not?

"I thought we were gonna lie in?" he complained.

Rose rolled her eyes, but she seemed amused. "Since when do you wanna lie in?"

"I've discovered that I like bed," he replied. Very suddenly, his arms and back desperately needed stretching. He rolled over lazily and bumped the padded headboard with one hand. It was probably Donna, he thought. She had habitually slept for nine or ten hours if he'd let her, sometimes more if their adventures had been more exhausting. He felt the passenger Donna's approval.

Rose knelt on the mattress with one knee. She was wearing a towel and her hair was still wet. "I've noticed," she said. Then, with a devilish grin, she said, "You've barely left it since Saturday night."

"I like your bed," the Doctor said truthfully. He propped himself up on his right elbow and reached out to touch the fluffy pink towel. She moved invitingly close. "It's much better than mine," he went on. He couldn't stop touching her. So much for the theory that finally properly kissing Rose Tyler (again) would alleviate the… obsessive… need for contact. In fact, it was much worse now. He hadn't thought it could get any worse.

Thank every imaginable god that she didn't seem to mind. The way she leaned into his hand and scooted closer suggested she didn't mind at all.

Of course she doesn't mind, you plum, Donna said helpfully.

Grinning, Rose leaned down and kissed his nose (why his nose?) and then his forehead. "We can come back to it tonight. Meanwhile, it's Monday morning, and we humans have to go to work."

Monday!

The Doctor sat up as if shocked. "Monday? Yes! That's right! Monday!" Days of the week meant something now. He'd never understood the need for them (humans and their illogical arbitrary divisions and labels), but right now, it all made sense. Monday came after Sunday, which came before Tuesday, and Monday was the first day of the work-week, which meant that they were needed at Torchwood. Monday meant that Donna—the corporeal one—would be at Torchwood. Why didn't humans like Mondays?

Rose burst out laughing as he jumped from the bed and tried to scoop his clothes from every part of the room at once. He held up his white tuxedo shirt and frowned. "I need to figure out what to wear. I think I got too many suits."

"How many did you get?" Rose wondered. She watched herself combing her hair in the mirror. "I only saw the packages arrive."

"Five," he replied. He made a face at the long black silk of the bow tie hanging on the padded headboard. How had that got there? "I'll have to pick one to wear today. I'm not sure why I got so many. It was probably…" He paused, suddenly embarrassed to be mentioning Donna. He was also very distractingly aware that he was standing in the middle of the room without any clothes on. Time-Lord-him hadn't been exactly uncomfortable with nudity, generally speaking, but Donna was. Not where people could see her.

Funny how nakedness hadn't been a problem last night. Or this morning. Or the night before. Or most of yesterday. And Rose didn't seem to mind being naked. And he really liked Rose being naked. Liked it entirely too much.

He became aware of the funny look Rose was giving him. He muttered, "It doesn't matter."

"How 'bout a shower first?" Rose suggested. She plucked the discarded bow tie from the headboard and draped it around his neck. (Ah. Now he remembered.) She held either end of it and used it to pull him down for a kiss. "Then dress."

"My room's all the way down the hall," he said.

"So?"

He glanced down at the bundle in his arms. "I don't think Jackie would like it if she caught me wandering the hallways in the nude."

"You could always wear a towel, you know," she said. She was laughing at him, he knew it. (Donna was rankled, but he didn't mind. Rose never meant it seriously.)

"True. Still. I don't much like the idea of your mum catching me…"

"Doing the walk of shame?" Rose suggested.

He blinked at her. "I'm not ashamed!" he cried. "Rose Tyler, that is a ridiculous imputation of… Oh… that's a phrase, isn't it?"

She kissed him on the cheek. "Don't worry about my mum. It's not like she doesn't know."

The Doctor stared at Rose. A feeling very much like horror struck him right in the single heart. "What?"

"She's not stupid."

He swallowed. Blimey. Rose's mum, her mother, knew that he was having sex with her daughter. Brilliant sex. Lots of sex. He hadn't bothered to count how many times they'd had sex in the last… thirty-odd… hours. He was only human now, but he was sure it was a perfectly impressive number. At least, he hoped so. Wait, what did it matter if it was impressive or not? Well, no, it did matter. Even if he hadn't been human, the last thing he'd want to be was unimpressive. Rose was still looking at him. He was going to have to say something. Bollocks. Wait, since when did he… Donna. She had a venerable font of rude words stored away and he was the dubiously honoured recipient of her knowledge, right? Knowledge, memories, feelings, opinions… Everything that had made Donna Donna… Well, except the hair. And the breasts. And the mouth. Well, no, he seemed to have that, just a bit. Damn. Rose was still looking at him. And he was still naked. What had she said? What was he supposed to say now?

The Doctor chose the most innocuous phrase he could think of. "I suppose not."

Of course Jackie knew. Ianto had implied that there was very little that Jackie did not know. When had Jackie become so savvy? Then again, perhaps she and Ianto were in cahoots.

Rose rolled her eyes and leaned a little bit closer. The Doctor wondered why he was still holding the clothes when she was right there, kneeling on the edge of the bed. Her balance was precarious at best. He couldn't let her fall, now could he? It wouldn't be gentlemanly. His hands found their way to the terry cloth covering her hips. She smelled like soap and shampoo and Rose and bloody hell was it ever hard to concentrate on anything. He swallowed and attempted to will the more rebellious bits of his anatomy into calming down so that he could think.

"Rose?"

"Doctor?" she said, her voice low and throaty and oh, but he liked it when she said his name like that.

"Can I use your shower?" He didn't say that he liked it better than his own, because he thought it might sound a bit… pathetic. But he did. It smelled like her—or at least, the soaps and chemicals that he associated with her. All that time and all this money, and Rose still used a lot of the same hygiene products. Or at least, they smelled the same to this human olfactory sense. She liked to smell like flowers.

"'Course." She paused and bit her bottom lip. "Would you…?"

"Would I what?"

"D'you want any help?"

"I know how to bathe myself, Rose," he said slowly, wondering what had prompted such a question. Had he given the impression that he didn't know how to bathe? Sure, he'd maybe been a little lax in that department of late, new biorhythms, new body, and all that, but… "And you already showered."

Realisation slowly dawned, prodded onward by what he was probably going to have to start referring to as his human life coach. "Ohhhhhhhhh… You mean…"

Rose grinned. "I love it when you blush," she said, which made him blush harder.

"I don't," he muttered. "Is it supposed to make my face feel so hot?"

Showering with Rose was very inefficient. He was going to do it again, of course. (Every day, if she'd let him.) But he made note of that anyway.

It turned out that Ianto Jones was even more fastidious than Donna had expected. A place for everything and everything in its place—which he actually said—did not even cover it.

"What is my job, exactly?" Donna asked.

Ianto paused in his preparations to explain the complex colour coding system he had devised for various types of files. "Head of office operations," he replied.

Damn.

"What's your job?" she asked.

His lips twitched downwards briefly. "Officially, I'm in charge of maintaining the Archive, but so is everyone else here. In actuality, I'm more of a facilitator and organiser. And I make the coffee."

Donna looked at a pile of goldenrod papers. "Secretary and Tea Boy?"

"Mr. Smith used to call me the Tin Dog," he said with a wan smile. "He found it quite amusing for some reason."

"Mr. Smith?"

"He was one of the agents who worked on the cannon project with Miss Tyler. There was also Mr. Simmonds; he's head of Torchwood Three in Cardiff now."

Donna had to keep from laughing. "There's a Torchwood base in Cardiff?"

"And Edinburgh, Washington, Tokyo, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Johannesburg, one in Peru… A very small village, but they seem to have quite a few run-ins with aliens down there. Also, we have one very small monitoring station in Leadworth, but it's a one-man operation. You might meet him. He comes in from time to time to visit the Archive."

"Where is Leadworth?" Donna wondered.

"Half an hour from Gloucester by car." He opened a drawer in his desk and handed her a large manual. "Add this to your reading, if you like. Most people don't bother to read the entire thing, but there's quite a bit of useful info in the non-dog-eared pages." He nodded. "Of course, you can't take that off the premises."

Donna took the big black book with both hands, but even then, it was almost too heavy for her to lift. "Naturally."

"I should warn you now: there's a lot of overtime. You'll be working odd hours—maybe slightly less odd than the rest of us, unless, of course, you decide to go for a field commission, but that will ultimately be up to Ms. Jones."

"That's Martha, right?"

Ianto nodded. "As I understand it, Ms. Jones intends Miss Tyler and the Doctor to be the field team. However, Torchwood Alpha is primarily a research facility. And for the last year, most of our attention was focused on the cannon project."

"What was that about?" Donna wondered.

Ianto looked at her, sizing her up. "Do you remember when the stars went out?" he asked.

Donna nodded. How could she have missed that? You didn't notice that sort of thing much in cities, but Gramps, who went up the hill every chance he got to look through that telescope of his, had talked of nothing else.

Ianto fixed a stack of green folders and lined them up evenly with the corner of his desk. "The stars came back."

"That was you lot?"

"Miss Tyler, Mr. Smith. And the Doctor, I presume. I was on the home front."

It wouldn't do, she supposed, to demand more explanation at the moment. But if the Doctor was involved, she could probably ask him.

Almost as if they had been summoned by the speaking of their names, the Doctor and Rose came through the doorway. They were all smiles and cheerful hellos, and Donna knew right away, just from the way they were standing close and holding hands, that they'd got over some of that hesitation. She gave the Doctor a little wave and smiled at the enormous grin he gave her. One might have thought he hadn't seen them in weeks for the way he bounded over to where she and Ianto were sitting. Donna noted that he was wearing a slightly different blue suit than the one he'd been wearing every time she'd seen him previously. (Not counting the tuxedo.) His lips were pink, as if he and Rose had been snogging all the way up to the door. Lucky sods.

"Donna! Good morning! Ianto! How are—"

"Good morning." Martha Jones looked up from the big computer in the centre of the room. "Glad to see you two decided to join us."

Donna had almost forgotten that she and Ianto were not alone in the office. Dr. Harper was at his desk, quietly nursing his coffee and wincing at loud noises. Martha had been standing by the computer—Argus—since Donna had arrived at five to nine this morning. Ianto said she and Toshiko had been at the Warehouse all day Sunday repairing the damage done to the computer by Zzfstaz and her kids.

She sneaked a peek at her watch. It was three minutes to ten now. And if the Doctor's wild hair was any indication, she could guess what had delayed them.

"Sorry we're late," Rose said. "Traffic was terrible." She smiled in Ianto and Donna's direction. Donna smiled back.

Owen looked up from his mug and snorted in disbelief.

Martha gave him a sideways look before turning back to the latecomers. "Just don't let it become a habit," she said in the tone that most bosses reserved for 'never again, or you're mince-meat.'

The Doctor looked unimpressed by the ultimatum. But then again, he didn't technically work here, did he? Rose did, though, and she was looking appropriately uncomfortable.

"I want you two to head over to the London Eye," Martha said, looking away from them and pressing a touch-sensitive panel just below the large screen on the front of the Argus tower. "Toshiko is already down there. We've had a red flag."

"What about the Zvazvera?" Rose asked, looking a bit disappointed.

Martha didn't even look at her. "Torchwood One has it under control. This is your priority. Get on it."

Rose nodded. "Right."

The Doctor looked annoyed, but he didn't say anything.

"I'll see you later, then," Donna said.

He flashed her a smile, gave Ianto a friendly nod and followed Rose back out the door.

Feeling disappointed, Donna turned back to Ianto. So much for the Doctor saving her from a boring, paper-bound morning. If he and Rose were back by lunchtime, she'd try to get him to tell her about the stars thing.

"Is there anything I should do?"

Martha cut Ianto's reply off before he could even open his mouth. "You've got reading to do, I think. Ianto, have you cleared that desk off, yet?"

Donna wondered if Martha detected the chill in Ianto's expression. "I'll have it ready by lunch," he said briskly.

"Good. Meantime, Donna, you can work in the conference room just down the hall. I want you up to speed on basic security protocol first, then we'll decide on your duties. Owen, where's the autopsy report on that Hoix?"

The pale man's forehead wrinkled and he narrowed his eyes at her as if he weren't quite sure what language she was speaking. "You mean the one that Hartman sent over half an hour ago? I haven't done it yet."

"Why don't you get on it, then, hmm?" she said in a voice like honey-coated steel.

Owen leaned back in his chair and looked at her across his nose. "Soon as I finish my coffee."

Martha raised an eyebrow and stared him down. "Do it now, drink your coffee later. It's an autopsy, I don't think you need to worry about killing it."

Donna glanced at Ianto, but he wasn't giving much of a reaction. How did he control his face like that? When she looked back, Owen was stalking off like a grumpy, hung-over adolescent.

"Is there any more coffee, Ianto?" Martha asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Shall I—"

"I've got it, thanks." She made her way past the desk and said, "Donna, you go ahead. I've got a conference call with the heads, then you and I will talk."

Donna found the conference room in an unmitigated mess. There were pyramid-shaped stacks of papers, boxes full of files, and random objects that she could only assume were alien, or at least experimental. It reminded her a bit of when the Doctor had emptied his pockets on top of her car.

She cleared herself a space at one end of the table and set down her pile of manuals and forms to fill with a heavy thud.

Donna had had a lot of different jobs since she'd left uni—most of them temporary until Vitex, then temporary again until H.C. Clements, but these were some of the most unique forms that she had ever had to fill in. The secrecy agreements were even more stringent than the ones at H.C. Clements. The exclusivity agreements made her swear that she would not act as an independent agent "on behalf of the Earth, human race, or Republic of Great Britain" while in Torchwood's employ.

When she got to the payroll and tax forms, she nearly burst into happy tears.

That was a very big number.

Suddenly, she could imagine all the hospital bills evaporating. The second mortgage could be paid off in half the time. No more fear of losing the house she'd been raised in, no more worries about the next time Gramps had a heart attack. (Not on the financial side, anyway.) Her meagre savings account could start to grow again.

Overwhelmed, Donna took a few moments to just stare at the impossibly beautiful number and breathe deeply through her nose. (No wonder Ianto's suits looked so expensive.) She had a very strong urge to call Gramps right now, just so that she could tell somebody, but that would hardly be a professional way to behave on her first day, hopping up and down and screaming happily into a telephone. No, she'd surprise him at supper. Or better yet, she could wait until the first cheque and steal him away from his pub mates for a fancy dinner. She'd be able to buy him a new telescope for Christmas. He would love that.

"Only took fifteen years," she murmured.

Ianto came into the room bearing coffee. "Making progress?"

She handed over the ones she'd finished. His eyebrows rose high up his forehead. "You're very quick." He glanced over her shoulder. "Any troubles there? Canary Wharf put you down for the standard starting pay for secretary, but Mr. Tyler sent this one over this morning and said that was the one you were meant to have."

"I would have been happy with half of this," she admitted before she could stop herself.

Ianto's smile was understanding. "It can be quite a shock," he said.

Donna smirked and said, a little bit breathlessly, "I think I can cope."

He pushed the bright white mug across the table towards her. "Sorry about the mess in here. We're still recovering from the aftermath of re-organisation."

She took a sip, paused and then took a deeper drink. Oh God, that was good coffee.

"Mr. Tyler said you'd want help with the Archives."

"That's all down below, Subbasements Seven through Twelve. This," he gestured at the boxes and pyramids, "is the fallout from Mr. Smith's departure. Miss Tyler said she would go through them herself." One glance at Ianto's face as he looked at the chaos said quite clearly how likely he thought that was. "Perhaps you or I can take a crack at it later, but I doubt we'll find the time. Not today, at any rate."

"Where did he go, this Mr. Smith?" she asked. Whoever he was, he wasn't much for keeping his things neat.

Ianto gave a tight little smile. "Miss Tyler said he went home."

That was an unsatisfying answer, but Donna told herself to let it go. It wasn't really her business, anyway. But all this… The forms, the mess, the dozen different colour file markers, the unspoken but tangible power struggle between Martha and everyone else… Donna had always been a curious person. She liked to know exactly what was going on. It had always got her into trouble at school, so she'd learned to curb her tendency to ask probing, embarrassing questions.

"Nobody seems to like Martha much," she said. Ianto looked uncomfortable—in a strangely genteel fashion, of course. So much for curbing the tendency.

"We're in an adjustment period," he said. "Ms. Jones and Ms. Sato only arrived here from Torchwood Seven last Thursday."

Donna tilted her head. "That explains why I didn't see her around here last week. She's the new boss?"

"That's correct." Ianto started to tidy one of the messier piles.

"But I thought Rose was in charge?"

"All part of the transition," he said cheerfully. "Ms. Jones has an excellent record. She was in Tokyo during the Gojira Incident last summer."

Donna faltered. "The Gojira… you mean the big lizard that was smashing buildings…? I thought that was a hoax!"

Ianto's smile was just a teensy bit smug. "Oh no, quite real. We weren't able to keep the news off the Net, of course. We did quite a lot of work to convince everyone that it was leaked footage from a cancelled film production."

Donna glanced at the big black manual. "How often does that happen? The faking?"

He just smiled at her. "I'll let you know as soon as your desk is ready. You're taking Mr. Smith's old space, so I'm afraid it's going to take me some time to scrape off all the chewing gum."

By 11:30, Ianto had returned and helped her carry her reading material to a desk in the main office. Her desk was the closest one to the door. The computer was just as flashy as the ones on the four other desks—just a monitor and a keyboard, but the whole thing gave an impression of futuristic doings. Everything was metal curves and heavy graphite-grey. If she sat, her back would be to the smooth concrete wall, but she would have an excellent view of both the entrance and the rest of the office. Argus, the Torchwood Computer, was a tall hexagonal pillar with alternating shiny and matte panels on it. She caught her reflection in one and tucked her hair behind her ear. She could see everyone else's desk as well. That was Rose's over to the left, and the one next to it was Owen's, she was pretty sure. That left Toshiko on the right.

Donna sat in the surprisingly comfortable chair and took a moment of silent glee. H.C. Clements had been posh, yeah, so much so that she'd felt like an intruder when she'd first arrived. (Once she'd gone permanent, she'd felt a bit better.) This was far beyond posh. This was… elite. This was beyond belief, beyond good luck… almost like the Universe was trying to make up for the last thirty-six years.

Of course, she tried to remind herself that this could very well end up as some kind of nightmare. (Aliens. And those Zvazvera things hadn't exactly been friendly, had they?) But for this desk, and this pay, she wouldn't have cared if Martha had wanted her to shine shoes with her own saliva.

She went through the desk drawers and poked at the computer a little bit. Ianto promised to get her into the system later that afternoon; he still had to create her account. The phone looked pretty simple; nothing she couldn't handle there. Then she decided to get on those policy and protocol documents. Thank God she had learned how to skim. She was going to have to get a few more office supplies for her desk. Ianto had been a bit too thorough in his cleaning. She borrowed a highlighter from him and set to work.

The Doctor crouched over the manhole cover and dared Rose not to smile.

"Haven't got any anti-plastic on you, have you?" he asked.

Rose flashed him that tongue-between-teeth-grin before turning back to Toshiko. "What d'you reckon?" she asked.

"The signal's definitely coming from down there," Toshiko confirmed.

The Doctor held out his hand for her scanner and took a look at the read-out. Whatever else one might say about the Britain of Pete's World, they were definitely more technologically advanced than the other universe had been at the same time. (They had John Lumic to thank for that.) Even so, zeppelins were more popular than aeroplanes (no Hindenburg disaster, and the Wright Brothers had had some extra troubles getting their idea off the ground), and there was no such thing as ten-pin bowling. (He'd have to start a league.)

The screen of Toshiko's scanner showed a tiny fluctuation on the zeta band. That was odd. Even in this somewhat advanced twenty-first century world, there was no reason it should be here. That was the sort of thing no human would see until, well, until the Hundred Thousands. What was it doing here?

"What's wrong?" Rose asked anxiously.

"That's…" He made a few adjustments to Toshiko's scanner and then there was the explanation he was looking for: artron energy. Only a trace of it, but it was there. Of course, there was some interference; both he and Rose were making the scanner light up like fireworks. Still, there was the third source blinking at him. He handed Toshiko back her scanner and went to open the manhole.

"What is it?" Rose asked again, stopping him with a hand on his arm.

He blinked. "Oh. Right." He smiled brightly at her. "Just a bit of artron energy. No idea what's causing it, though. Let's find out!"

Toshiko pulled out her gun and checked the clip for rounds.

"No," he cried. "No guns! Bloody Torchwood!"

The woman stared back at him, frozen mid-cocking of her weapon. "Standard procedure—" she began.

"'Sall right," Rose said, holding up her hands. "Doctor, is there anything alive down there?"

"Nahhh…" He nodded at the gun. "And I don't see how anything lasts long with you lot toting those around. Is that an automatic?"

Toshiko looked uncertainly at Rose.

"Use the broad-base tranqs," Rose said. "Tranquillisers, okay, Doctor?"

He nodded curtly, remembering the shouting match he and Rose had had when he'd arrived. (He wasn't eager to repeat that.) Then he bent down and turned the handle to open the portal. It was a bit harder to move than the one in the other universe had been, but he managed it by himself. Human muscles. Really. It wasn't as if Time Lords had been the Herculean Force of the Universe or anything, but he was probably going to have to start lifting weights. Bugger.

Ooh, getting a bit salty, aren't we? Donna sing-songed teasingly.

The Doctor started down the ladder. Rose and Toshiko were close behind him. The industrial grating and scaffolding brought back memories—Rose swinging on that big chain in order to save his worthless arse for the first of many times. Mickey the Idiot cowering in fear at the foot of the TARDIS. There was the drainage pit that had held the Nestene Consciousness. He glanced back at Rose, who was engrossed in surveying the area for possible threats, her handgun raised. His smile faded.

That wasn't the Rose who had swung on a chain to save him; that was Torchwood's Rose. Torchwood's Rose carried a gun and used hand signals to communicate with her team. (She was still Rose, of course. But he hated imagining things hardening her, moulding her into a soldier. For one thing, it made him feel guilty.)

The Team (i.e. Toshiko) was holding her scanner up in front of her and was likely to fall off a scaffold, or at least run into something, if she wasn't careful. "The signal's coming from over there," she said, pointing towards the pit.

The Doctor jumped over a railing onto a lower scaffold, just to save time, and took out his sonic screwdriver. It whirred and buzzed and then it made a noise like an angry goat before turning itself off. He stopped and hit it against the heel of his hand. "Oi! Cut that out!"

"The cupboard," Toshiko said, pointing downwards.

He looked, and indeed, there was a large metal storage cupboard down by the drainage pit. He put the sonic between his teeth and climbed down.

The lock on the door would (probably) not be invented for at least four thousand years. He turned the sonic on it. Things were going pretty well, with the help of a bit of percussive encouragement, until the damn thing decided to give up. Again.

"No! Blast!" He glared at the lock. "Either of you ladies have a hairpin?"

Rose gave him a funny look. Her hair was down, so… nothing in it. She'd used to wear her hair up sometimes. Used to let it curl a bit, too. Toshiko's hair was up, but most of it seemed to be in a big clawed clip. Right.

"Never mind," he said. Kneeling in front of the cupboard—probably ruining the knees in his new suit, Donna complained—he tried to see what was wrong with the sonic screwdriver this time. Honestly, he couldn't be that out of practice. Sure, he'd let the TARDIS manufacture the last several models, but they'd been from his own designs. The first one had been all him, as had the second with all its improvements. This one wasn't all that different from the one he'd been using before the meta-crisis, though it was a bit slap-dash. He simply hadn't had the time to really—

A set of delicate probes and jeweller's screwdrivers appeared before his face. He looked up at Toshiko. "Oh, I like you," he said with a grin.

Once the sonic screwdriver was working again, it was only a few seconds before the Doctor had the doors open.

He frowned. "That's… Not what I expected."

Rose and Toshiko looked around his shoulders. Toshiko was holding up her scanner and her mouth was slowly falling open. "I've never seen readings like this," she said, awestruck. "What is it?"

The Doctor scratched his head, and then picked the strange object up. Toshiko gasped, probably because he bolloxed up some Torchwood procedure about not touching unknown artefacts. Rose stared at it with appropriate wonder, a smile stretching her lips over her shining white teeth. She did have very nice teeth.

It looked a bit like an urn, made of glass and a silver metal that wouldn't be seen by mankind until the 45th century. The glass sections shimmered with light in every colour of the spectrum.

"It's all right," he said. "It's harmless. Mostly."

"Mostly harmless?" Rose raised an eyebrow. "There's this bloke I know that you should meet."

"Bloke?" The Doctor was no stranger to jealousy, but it was a bit alarming how sick he suddenly felt. He swallowed and tried to focus on what was in front of him.

Rose rolled her eyes and nudged his arm with her shoulder. "What's it do?" she asked.

"Usually, they're power sources," he said. "The Brindisi effusion produces a variety of different energies. In the other universe, it will be discovered by the Nop on a planet about three galaxies over." He frowned. "Shouldn't be anywhere near here." He glanced at Toshiko as she tapped frantically away at her computer. "It's travelled in time."

That made her pick her head up. Rose, too.

"How do you think it got here?" she asked.

"Somebody put it here, obviously." He nodded at the defeated lock.

Rose gave him a look. "I meant, 'how did it get here from the future?'"

"Don't know yet." Then, mostly because he was curious, he asked, "Is there a rift here?"

A funny sort of look passed over Rose's face. "Not since we closed the one at Canary Wharf."

"So, it's a generator," Toshiko said.

"No… Not really. Most of them are. This…" He peered at it thoughtfully. "I'm not quite sure what this one's for. Doesn't look anything like the ones I've seen."

"Well, let's get it to the lab and you two can have a proper look at it." Rose checked her watch. "It'll be lunch by the time we get back. Thank God. I'm starved."

It was maybe ten past noon when Martha came out of her office down the hall.

"Sorry that took so long," she said, half-smiling. "Come with me."

Donna left her book open on her desk and followed the younger woman to her office. It had a glass wall at the front and pictures of her family on the walls.

"Getting settled in?" Martha asked as they took their seats.

"Yes, thanks."

"Good." Martha's smile was professional—she wasn't the warmest of people, Donna decided. They took their seats.

"I don't know if Ianto explained to you," Martha began, "but Torchwood Alpha's not had an office manager before. You're going to have a lot to learn in a short period of time, and things are probably going to change quickly." The smile had faded away to nothing.

"I believe in honest communication," she went on. "If there's a problem, I am going to tell you about it. Likewise, I expect you to tell me about any concerns you have. Torchwood isn't a democracy, but we're in the service of the people. Not just citizens of the Republic; the entire human race. I believe in doing whatever it takes to do our duty."

"Yes, ma'am," Donna said, and some part of her had to stop from saluting. She remembered Martha's dramatic entrance at the Tyler's party the night before last, detonator in hand, ready to bug-bomb them all to kingdom come.

"First thing: I'm not very happy that Mr. Tyler's given me a greenhorn. Torchwood Alpha's in a unique state. I can't baby-sit you."

Donna stiffened and sat up a little straighter (which was saying something). She could almost literally feel her heart sinking.

Her hackles rose. "I know how an office works. Probably better than you do." She bit her tongue. Bollocks.

To her surprise, and relief, Martha's icy exterior cracked. "Good," she said, smiling genuinely this time. She picked up a lilac folder "Because I'm utterly hopeless with the desk stuff. I've been a field agent for the last six years."

Donna relaxed a bit. "I've worked for people who couldn't tell a stapler from a photo-copier."

"I hope I'm not that bad," Martha said, smirking. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"Not at the moment," Donna said. So far the papers were pretty straight forward. And run-of-the-mill deadly dull, other than mentions of First Contact procedure that it refused to give greater detail on or, heavens forbid, examples of.

"Well, let me know. In the meantime, I actually want you to go ahead and order some food. Ianto has the info, I think."

"Yes ma'am, no problem." Donna stood up. Same old, same old.

"If you could, check on Dr. Harper as well; I need that report for Hartman before she comes down here to get it herself."

Donna wished she'd thought to bring a notepad. "Did you want something specific for lunch?"

"As long as it doesn't have onions, I don't care. And no sushi." She smirked again. "After four years in Tokyo, I can't eat British sushi. No one does it right, you know?"

Donna nodded and smiled a bit—but it was her professional smile—and went back out into the main office. She was pretty sure that she remembered the way down to the medical section of the base. After all, she had spent a couple of days down there only last week.

She found Owen up to his elbows in dead alien intestines like giant wet liquorice ropes. The face of the thing was almost worse than its insides—it was all teeth and gums, and she had a feeling that it hadn't died pleasantly.

Owen pulled a face as he flicked his wrist to free himself from a clinging bit of the alien's innards.

"What do you want?" he demanded grumpily. He was probably still hung-over. He looked awful, even without taking into account the wet grey stains on his apron.

"I was…" Donna sniffed. What was that smell? Was that the alien? "Er…. What is that one called?" It smelled like someone had taken a very angry, incontinent tom-cat and bathed it in tar. And petrol. She covered her nose with her hand, but it didn't help much.

"It's a Hoix," he replied. He peeled off a glove and tapped a key on the laptop computer next to him. "Nasty bastards. Martha send you to check on me, then?"

"Yeah," Donna admitted apologetically. "But I'm ordering lunch, so I thought maybe you'd…" She glanced at the dead Hoix. "You might not be hungry."

"I'm starving," Owen said. "Get me a curry, would you? Something spicy. And extra papadum. And those banana things."

"Which ones?" she asked.

"Pakora," he said. He took off the other glove and wrote something down on his clipboard. "The one place does them. The tea boy knows what I mean." He glanced at her. "Do you do transcriptions?"

"I can," she said.

"Good. This program's shit. Torchwood software, and it still gets all the alien names wrong."

Donna made a note on her pad—curry, papadum, banana pakora—and put a tick mark next to "no onions." Shouldn't be impossible to find a curry without onions in it for Martha. Probably not easy, though.

"Rose and the others back yet?"

She looked up. "Not yet."

Owen's built-in frown deepened. "Well, when they get back, you tell that git—you know the one—that I can't put off that physical anymore."

"I thought he wasn't an agent?" Donna wondered how the Hoix had died. It looked like it had been shot in the head, but then why would they need to do an autopsy? Then again, it was probably more of a research thing. Wasn't it technically a necropsy, not an autopsy? Or was it still an autopsy when the subject was sentient? The Hoix certainly looked like a horrifying Hollywood monster, but that didn't mean it wasn't smart. Zzfstaz hadn't been stupid.

"He's still got to have a physical," he replied. "Admin's orders. He's been avoiding it, but I haven't forgotten, and Torchwood One's started asking about it."

"Ianto didn't mention any physical," she said. There had been some medical forms, though, now that she thought about it. Most of it had been standard medical history stuff.

Owen smirked. "I got your records last week from your GP. Who you'll have to stop seeing, by the way."

Donna's mouth fell open. "What? Why?"

"Because he's crap," he replied, matter-of-factly.

"He is not!"

"He is," Owen insisted. "Usually Torchwood employees see Torchwood doctors anyway. Simpler that way, what with the occasional extra-terrestrial bug and all the gunshot wounds."

"I'm the office manager," Donna said. "I highly doubt anyone's going to be shooting at me."

Owen snorted. "Right."

Donna straightened her back and clicked her pen. "Any particular kind of curry?" she said frostily. She wished she could have come up with something clever to say.

He turned back to the slab and paused thoughtfully. "Vegetarian."