#also I completely forgot I had a legit Tumblr page that isn't just my mobile layout

[crimefightingpigeons]

I’ve shared my head canon on how we go from Doomsday to Turn Left - your turn! What do you think happens??  - @loupettes

OK I’ve got no excuse for why this took me so long (other than complete lack of productive brain cells) but heyyy look part 3 is here! And hopefully it was worth the wait??? Anyone wanna place bets as to how long part 4 will take haha? I PROMISE it will happen though because I’m determined to finally finish this fic.

part 1 | part 2

A Brief Guide to Love and Defending the Universe

3.

After a thorough talking to about her reckless actions and a mandated night of sleep (which everyone took advantage of), the team got right back to work with a lot more luck. Apparently the fractures just hadn’t been wide enough to travel through before, and now they were. For the most part, they took this as an absolute blessing and tried their best to ignore its solemn reminder that they only had so much time left.

For efficiency, both Rose and Mickey took on travelling through the cannon while Pete remained on base to keep track of the two. Plus, connecting Rose’s old phone to the mainframe, they had found a way to call the TARDIS’s number to every universe it could connect to, hoping at some point the ship’s owner might just pick up. On a good day, between the three of them, they could reach upwards of a hundred different worlds.

As powerful as the cannon was, though, nothing came as easy as they would have liked. For one thing, there was no way of knowing how close or far they were to their old universe, no way of knowing from this side of any crack where the Doctor was. It was a setback, but not a surprising one. What was even more frustrating, though, was the recharge time needed between jumps.

Most of the time it was extremely horrible just being stuck. All they had to do upon landing was a universal scan for TARDIS tech, wait a few seconds for a negative answer, and then… wait. Maybe if their own world wasn’t collapsing in on itself every day it might have been easier to enjoy, but unfortunately that wasn’t the case and each passing minute of not being able to do anything useful was quite stressful. And that wasn’t even accounting for the added trouble they’d face when they happened to be dropped right in the middle of an unwanted fight or war zone.

Other times, though, it could truthfully be amazing. Sure the entire multiverse was in a constant state of trouble, but sometimes it was nice to land somewhere that just needed a bit of help. Taking down local authoritarian regiments, solving mysterious disappearances, assisting on small scale alien invasions and such. It was just nice to help and feel properly useful. And sometimes it was these small victories that were just enough to get them to continue on through the next day.

Occasionally, though, very rarely, there would be an unexpected surprise waiting for them.

The first time it happened was to Rose. She had been running off from some strange alien hunting her, and just as she found a safe place to hide, there it was: the TARDIS. Her heart stopped and she didn’t believe her eyes. It didn’t make sense… the scanner said he wasn’t here… It wasn’t possible… Her mind was racing frantically, and then the door of the ship opened and… a blonde man with a piece of lettuce attached to his lapel stepped out. It was a man Rose recognized instantly from an album the Doctor had shown her. Except that her version of that Doctor had chosen celery as his accessory of choice… It wasn’t him, not her him anyways. Parallel universe, parallel Doctor. But before she could even think of how to react, the alarm telling her to jump back went off and she chose to go.

A few weeks later, Mickey had his own run in with the Doctor. He nearly didn’t believe Rose when she told him and Pete about seeing him, figured it was just her mind playing tricks on her. But then during one of his jumps, he had quite literally ran into a strange young man wearing a bow tie and tweed jacket.

“Oh, sorry there mate—” the man apologized as they both fell to the ground. Then just as the pair locked eyes, “Mickey?” The man’s smile grew and he excitedly jumped up, pulling Mickey up with him, and took him into a tight embrace. “Oh Mickey Smith! I can’t tell you how good it is to see you!”

Mickey just smiled and hugged him right back. “It’s good to see you too, Doctor.” It didn’t take an idiot to figure out exactly who that man was.

Since then, they both had a handful of other run ins with versions of the Doctor either they knew or who knew them. Most of the time it was alright. Mickey always seemed to enjoy the reunions, but Rose usually did her best to avoid them. Sure she wouldn’t mind a glimpse from afar every so often, but it was also difficult being so close yet so far from her own Doctor. And on the occasions she did run into a version of him who had clearly lost her… well, it wasn’t exactly easy to walk away from those situations. So she simply pushed forward, not letting herself get distracted.

But as time continued on, the team was facing more difficult problems than just running into people they didn’t want to see. If there were any stars left in the sky they were impossible to locate on even the clearest of nights, and the world was getting more scared and angry every day. Even Torchwood had been run down, the population blaming them for not doing more. Rose, Mickey, and Pete all felt even happier that they had decided to keep this project on the down low. Doing what they were trying to do was hard enough on its own, and they couldn’t imagine having to do it while putting up with angry protestors striking chaos.

Still, even with that obstacle out of the way, they couldn’t help but lose a little more hope every day. Some days the basement would be made a mess from a frustrated break down, and they believed no other room in any world had hosted so many nightmares or tears. They all knew they had a few weeks left- at the very most. A few weeks to get through enough of the infinite universes out there to find the right one. A few weeks to sort through whatever problem might be waiting for them on the other side. Every day it became harder to imagine finding real success. And as it turned out, inevitable universal destruction partnered with a lack of optimism and massive burnout wasn’t the motivation they had been looking for.

Pete chose to step back a bit to spend some more time with Jackie and Tony. It felt nearly cruel thinking everything he had just gained in the last few years was about to be snatched from him. And maybe it wasn’t responsible, but he was going to spend whatever time he could with his family.

Meanwhile Rose was simply running out of energy to keep going. After years of pushing and overworking herself, she had started taking the tiniest of steps back as doubt and hopelessness ravaged through her mind. Maybe this was as far as they got, she started to tell herself. Maybe she had been right all those years ago. Maybe without the Doctor she really wasn’t anything special. She remembered her young, naïve self. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. They felt almost like a stranger’s words now.

Of course if anyone knew that wasn’t true it was Mickey Smith, and he was determined to support her however he could. Most of the time this involved taking on some extra work, to let her have a moment of peace whenever she needed. With his gran gone (which truthfully he was thankful she wasn’t around to experience all this), he certainly had the time. And he knew if it had been Rose in his position, she would do the same for him.

Nowadays time seemed to bleed into itself and the gang never knew exactly when it was (they hoped that was just because of all the work they were doing in a windowless basement, and not a side effect from the whole multiverse ending thing). It felt like a very early morning though, at this particular moment. Pete was probably asleep next to Jackie or watching Tony. Rose was taking a nap on the cot in the corner. And Mickey kept working, taking full advantage of that autopilot function he wasn’t as judgemental at Rose for using anymore. As usual, he encountered failure, after failure, after failure. But he kept going, kept persisting, kept—

*beep beep*

Mickey looked down at his scanner on a planet which seemed to be made entirely of purple rock, a bit startled. His mind went through all the possibilities of what that sound could mean. Low battery? Interference? Surely it couldn’t have been…

But it was! The scanner had received a signal from the TARDIS. Their actual, real TARDIS.

A purely joyful grin spread over Mickey’s face and tears started welling in his eyes. He didn’t know which galaxy, which planet he was on. He didn’t know where Earth was, or wherever the Doctor happened to be at this moment. He didn’t know when he happened to land, 50 years in the past or 2000 years in the future. But none of that was important. Instead he chose to break out into a mad happy dance, hoping in the back of his mind that no alien was around to see him make a fool of himself.

After wearing himself out, Mickey couldn’t help but want to jump back. But then he remembered he still had to wait for his device to repower.

“Fucking hell,” he muttered under his breath. 25 minutes to go until he could jump, 25 excruciatingly impossible long minutes.

Finally though, after what really did feel like an eternity, Mickey’s alarm went off and not even a whole second later he jumped back. Once his feet hit the platform in the basement, he looked up to find a still sleeping Rose, prompting his grin to reappear.

“Rose, Rose!” he started calling her name as he stumble-ran towards her. Then crouching down by her side and shaking her, “Rose, wake up!”

“Mmm… wha’ is’t?” Rose shot up, but her mind was still caught in a sleepy haze. Mickey didn’t have the patience to wait for her to finish waking up, though, and started pulling her along.

“Got somethin’ to show you, come on now. Here, take this,” he handed Rose his jump button and helped her onto the platform. Then, running back to the console, he paused for a second to carefully adjust the coordinates and recalibrate the cannon.

“Mickey what’s going on?” Rose asked again, now awake but still completely confused.

Mickey smiled at her once again. “See for yourself, in 3, 2…” and he sent her off.

“Mickey!” Rose tried shouting again, but it was too late. And before she knew it she was thrown into the street of another world. A world which looked a lot like London, Earth at night. Which maybe it was, but surely it wasn’t their old London. Rose wandered down the road a bit, enjoying the wind on her face as much as possible and wondering what Mickey could have possibly wanted her to have seen… then she saw a gathering crowd around the corner. Her attention piqued and she continued on towards it. There was a big building- a corporate office of some sort or another- surrounded by emergency services of every kind. She was in the middle of wondering what could have possibly happened when a red headed woman came up behind her.

“Listen, there’s this woman that’s going to come along. A tall blonde woman called Sylvia. Tell her that bin there, alright? It’ll all make sense. That bin there.”

Rose could tell something good just happened to this woman by her smile alone. For a moment she remembered when she smiled like that, and the one person who could always effortlessly pull it from her. But she pushed it out of her head. She almost wanted to warn that other woman to hold off on her joy, too. If only she knew what was just around the corner for them all. Rose was sure she wouldn’t have such a reason to be celebrating.

With a sigh, Rose decided to walk away. Whatever Mickey had found so interesting about this event had either passed or simply wasn’t getting her attention like it might have any other time. And frankly she wasn’t too invested in helping that Sylvia woman- or whatever her name was- find a bin. So she went off into the dark street, hoping to clear her mind.

But then… something strange started happening. Rose was still walking down the street, but the ground beneath her started to disappear and the world around seemed to fuzz in and out just slightly and there was a weird static-y feeling around her-

And then everything was back to normal. She was back on the same street. At night. With a giant web star in the sky-

Rose’s head jolted back up to notice the very interesting thing that had certainly not been there just a few moments ago. ‘What the hell is going on?’ she thought. But before she could think of any sort of reasonable answer, she saw missiles being launched at whatever it was floating overhead, blowing it up.

On pure instinct, Rose started sprinting towards the source of the shooting. The whole time wondering- praying- that somehow all of this meant exactly what she was hoping it meant. That he was here. Maybe the Doctor had somehow gotten wind of their interdimensional jumping, maybe the TARDIS had picked up on it and alerted him! Maybe that weird moment she had experienced just a moment ago had been the Doctor pulling her back to him! With each breath and dash forward she had to forcefully restrict every ounce of hope in her body from seeping through.

Finally, Rose arrived at the scene. It appeared things had calmed down a bit, but there were still emergency vehicles and men and women in camo uniforms and red berets all around.

“What happened, what did they find?,” she slowed down as she got close to the barriers. There was a woman- a red headed woman. Rose turned to her. “Sorry, but… Did they find someone?”

“I don’t know. Bloke called the Doctor or something.”

“Where is he?”

“They took him away, he’s dead.”

Rose froze. Any thoughts running through her mind just a second ago disappeared and her body filled with a heavy numbness. She could hear the woman still going on behind her, but didn’t register a single word of it.

“…I came so far,” she breathed out.

Finally, though, Rose forced herself back to reality. Her worst fear may have been coming true, but that didn’t stop the rest of the multiverse from imminent destruction. And there was something weird about this world, something off… and something familiar about the voice talking to her. Rose turned around and for the first time since running into her, got an actually good look at who she was talking to. This woman wasn’t just any ordinary woman. It was the same woman who had told her about that bin just a few minutes ago in that crowded street. Something weird was definitely going on. A dead Doctor, this woman showing up twice… with something very odd on her back unlike before…?

“What’s your name?”

“Donna. And you?”

“I’m just… passing by… I shouldn’t even be here. This is wrong. This is so wrong,” she rambled on, more and more of her focus being diverted to whatever was on this woman’s back. “What was it, sorry? Donna what?”

“Why d’you keep looking at my back?”

Rose snapped her eyes away to look anywhere else. The last thing she needed to do was upset the woman who might be able to give her some answers. “I’m not.”

“Yes you are. You keep looking behind me, you’re doing it now. What is it, what’s there? Did someone….”

But before Donna could finish her sentence and before Rose had any more time to investigate, the world around her started to fuzz back out. And she was gone.