[ENGINEER]
Before Jackie's door even opened, I could already hear Mickey trying to open the door. I could hear the keys very clearly, like I was standing next to him. I could hear the sound of him missing the lock once and sliding in on the second try, the rustling of plastic bags, and some muttering under his breath. Typical human behaviour when they think no one can hear them.
But Time Lords, which I now was, can easily hear things others cannot.
I didn't do anything, I put my mug down on the table, and waited for him to come in.
Jackie had meanwhile gone into the kitchen. Understandable, after our conversation she needed a moment to catch up with herself in her head.
While I was mulling this over, the door finally opened.
Mickey stepped in sideways and turned to manage the bags, and assuming he'd only be alone with Jackie, he started in: "Jackie, they only had their own-brand pasta, but I got the good sauce, so this—"
Right in the middle of his sentence he turned around and saw me sitting at the table.
The bags didn't fall from his hands, but he stopped decisively. His entire body simply went still, exactly the way people go still when their brain needs a moment to catch up with their eyes. He looked at me, then looked at the teacup, glanced at Jackie's back — she was standing in the kitchen doorway but had turned away, presumably because she didn't want any part of what was about to happen — and then looked back at me.
I didn't change strategy, I stayed in my place just the same, in silence, keeping my hands visibly on the table, and let him make the first move.
"…Steven?"
"Hey, Mickey. It's been a while."
He didn't respond with words, instead he decided to put the bags down first, slowly, as if he needed something to do with his hands while he figured out exactly what he wanted to say, and he didn't come closer. He stood by the door and stared, and I watched as several things played out across his face at once. First shock, then relief, which tried to surface with varying degrees of success, but in the end something harder became the final reading of his face. He clenched his jaw, squared his shoulders, and took a deep breath.
"You're here," he said at last, exhaling the deep breath he'd just taken.
"I'm here."
"And Rose?"
"She's with the Doctor, I'm certain they'll be back soon."
He gave a single nod at that, as if filing the information away for later, and focused only on me, then said: "You disappeared."
"I know."
"You just—" He stopped to find the words. "You simply disappeared. Both of you, on the same day, and nobody knew anything, and I just—" He bit off the end of the sentence, didn't know how to finish it.
He was angry, I could see that clearly now, but the anger wasn't clean; I could see plenty of guilt in it too. And that mixture made what he wanted to feel even worse. That kind of anger is hard to give a direction to, so I didn't try to explain myself. Let him get out whatever he wanted to get out.
"They questioned me," he said. "The police, because I was the last one to see her, and they thought I'd done something to her." He looked straight at me. "Do you know what that's like? Having people look at you like that for months? Your friends? Your family?"
"No, Mickey," I said honestly. "I don't."
"And where were you?" He wasn't shouting; his voice was calm, which somehow made it worse. "Your flat was cleared out, at your workplace they said you simply didn't show up. For three weeks I kept going there and knocking on your door, until I understood that—" here he let out a quiet, short laugh "you weren't coming back either."
I kept my face calm, but something shifted uncomfortably in my chest, because I had to digest this too. Three weeks of knocking.
"Mickey," I began.
"Don't," he said. "Please don't try to explain it, I don't care if it all ends up making sense. I'm not ready for that yet, and I don't want it to make sense. You can't close this off that easily. Not after this long, you can't just—"
I closed my mouth. I understood where he was coming from. He didn't continue either; instead he walked over to the table where I was sitting.
He pulled out the chair across from me, sat down, rubbed his face with both hands, then lowered them and stared at the table. Jackie quietly appeared in the kitchen doorway, looked at us, said nothing, and went back to make tea. She gave us space, which I was quietly grateful for.
"Is she alright?" Mickey asked, not looking up.
"Rose? Oh yes, she's fine. More than fine, actually."
"Good," he said, then repeated it quietly: "Good."
Silence.
"I kept your number," he said. "I called you for two months, even after the line went dead." He looked up. "Out of habit, I suppose."
That landed harder than I expected, and I didn't know what to say to it.
"I should have found a way to reach you," I said at last. "I didn't. I could have, but I didn't."
I let him look at me.
"If I ask, will you tell me where you were? Where you both were?" he said. It wasn't quite a question, but it didn't feel like one either.
"I can tell you part of it, not all of it, but, enough."
He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Go on, then."
I told him enough to understand the essence of it. That I'd been with Rose, that she'd been safe, that time had slipped in a way it shouldn't have, that I was sorry about the past year.
He listened and didn't interrupt, and when I finished he stayed quiet for a while.
Jackie set a fresh cup in front of each of us. I thanked her silently with a glance; Mickey wrapped both hands around his but didn't drink.
"You could have simply said you were leaving. Obviously I would have understood," he said at last.
"I know. It didn't work out that way."
"Even just a text. 'Going away for a bit.' Something."
"I know."
He shook his head slowly. "Rose told me about your little adventures. I don't think I've ever seen her that excited about anything."
I acknowledged that with a pained smile. I can imagine what that must feel like from his perspective.
"She also told me that you…"
"Yes, Mickey. Me too."
He nodded a few times, looking into my eyes. "But you're still you," he said, looking at me. "I mean, you seem like you. Interesting outfit, by the way. Ridiculous, but somehow it suits you."
"Yes, Mickey. I am. Perhaps on both counts. And everything you knew was true."
He considered this. "That part where you knew how to fix my nan's boiler, and never charged her for it. That was real?"
Something eased in my chest. "That was completely real."
The corner of his mouth moved, just slightly. "She still talks about it, you know. Every winter."
"Tell her it'll last another season if she turns down the radiator in the back bedroom. She doesn't need to heat every room. The spaces where she lives are small, the living room's enough."
Mickey stared at me for a second, then slowly exhaled through his nose. It wasn't quite a laugh, but it was close.
I glanced at the clock on Jackie's wall, and I was still looking at it when I heard the sound of the TARDIS, I recognised it immediately and at the sound of it, something lit up in the others' eyes too.
Mickey almost ran to the window and looked down. "That's Rose," he said. His voice was full of relief.
Jackie came quickly out of the kitchen, didn't look at me, went straight to the door, out into the hallway, and before the door had fully opened I could already hear her on the stairs. Mickey was already moving too.
I stayed behind for a moment to think, but not for too long as there were things to be done. The Slitheen weren't going to show themselves out. I finished my tea in one go and stood up and left the flat.
I stopped at the turn in the stairwell. Below me, in the yard, three of them stood together. Jackie had both hands on Rose's face, as if checking she was alright. Mickey stood slightly back, arms folded, taking stock of the fact that everything was in its place.
They didn't need me for this part.
I went down the stairs, crossed the yard, and headed for the TARDIS. I knocked once, the way I always do, more a kind of courtesy than a necessity, really. The truth is that TARDISes will unlock themselves for anyone they know, but most Time Lords insist on using the key. I don't know whether they do it out of habit or out of ignorance — I'll ask the Doctor sometime.
The door opened, and the Doctor was on the other side, but when he saw it was me he turned without a word and walked back to the console.
"How did it go?"
"It worked out. Let's go with that. You?"
"Informative."
I closed the door behind me, the TARDIS's hum wrapped around us, and the sounds from outside faded.
"So what did you find? Did you get further?"
He was quiet for a moment, then stepped away from the console, turned, and leaned back against it. "The pilot. Or at least whoever was put on the ship."
I nodded, then waited for him to continue.
"It wasn't an alien. At least not the way we expected."
He laid out the events of the past twenty minutes plainly and briefly, and I listened without interrupting. When he finished, I still didn't say anything for a moment. I obviously knew exactly what was happening, but I couldn't tell him that without him asking uncomfortable questions afterwards. Of course I could have put it all down to some random seventh sense I'd allegedly had since childhood and the rest of the Time Lord blah blah blah — but honestly, that and any other attempt at explanation would only lead to a vicious circle I'd then have to figure out how to get out of.
Instead, I'd worked out the strategy of simply going with the current and trying to steer the direction with logic. And the facts were these: someone had carefully planned this, they had the resources, the time, and the access, and using all of it they had staged a distraction, and they hadn't cared in the least what they built it out of.
"Whoever did this has been here a while. On Earth, embedded. You can't pull something like this together in a week."
"No," the Doctor agreed.
"So there's infrastructure, there are people, more than one person who knew and know what's happening, and went along with it."
"Yes."
"And we still don't know what any of this is covering for."
The Doctor looked at the Time Rotor. "Something that required the entire planet's attention to be pointed in the wrong direction."
"The government," I said. He glanced at me, and I continued: "That's what it has to be, that level of access, that level of resource. You'd need official cover, or someone operating under official cover. Or someone who is the official cover."
The Doctor held my gaze for a moment, then, having thought it through, gave a slow nod. "I came to the same conclusion."
Well, good. I expected nothing less.
The TARDIS hummed steadily, and outside, through the doors, muffled and barely audible, I could hear Rose laughing — high and genuine. She was with her mum and Mickey, and she was fine, she would be completely fine for the next hour or so, and I was glad of it — because after that, things were going to be considerably less fine. Hm. Well put.
"Alright. Where do we start?"
The Doctor's posture shifted; that typically Doctor-ish energy returned to him, which meant everything was back in its usual way, he knew his objective and what he needed to do next to reach it. "If the government is behind it, then we know where we need to go."
I adjusted the strap of my bag. "Give them another twenty minutes," I said, nodding toward the doors.
The Doctor looked at me as if he wanted to argue, but then thought better of it. "Twenty minutes."
He leaned back against the console, and I sat down on the jump seat, took the multimeter out of my belt pouch, and set to work on the three loose contacts in the secondary navigation system that I'd already been meaning to fix last time. The TARDIS hummed around us, and I got to work.