Summary: In the year since they decided to become a team, John Smith and Rose Tyler have made quite the names for themselves as Team TARDIS, bank robbers extraordinaire. Newspapers the world over run headlines about The Doctor and the Bad Wolf and their latest heists. They’re practically unstoppable.
Then their world spins to a halt with a phone call. Jack’s in trouble again and a formidable enemy from John’s past has emerged from the shadows to try and destroy the bank robbing couple once and for all. Will they be able to survive this new threat intact or will the life they’ve been building together go up in flames?
A sequel to Watch it Burn, a Nine/Rose bank robbers AU
Word Count: 4202
Rating: Teen
Note: So you know John’s Mysterious Past™ ? Well you finally get to find out some of it :)
Read here: tumblr // ao3 // tsp // ff
Rose fell asleep on the relatively short flight to Seattle, the retreat of the adrenaline that the heist and the subsequent phone call had sent storming through her had left her exhausted. John smiled down at the top of her head as she let out a soft snore from where she was using his shoulder as a pillow.
He envied her the brief respite of sleep. Rose could sleep anywhere, especially if he was around to watch her back, and she always managed to just go out like a light when she decided she needed some shuteye.
It was not a talent he possessed. He could go days without sleep or with just quick snatches of sleep with minimal side effects but he could not fall asleep on command like she could.
John didn’t know why he found it so endearing that she was able to do so.
He waved off the flight attendant who stopped to see if he wanted a beverage or anything and then sighed, looking down at his partner once more. He had seen all the unasked questions simmering behind her eyes ever since the phone call had ended. All of those were going to come out as soon as they found a place in Seattle and John was in no way prepared for them.
Their pasts were a topic they both carefully avoided, choosing to focus on matters at hand, on them and what they were building together. Sure, they dropped in little tidbits that hinted at covered up pasts but it was mostly just about personal preferences or a snapshot of an experience they wanted to share with the other. The big picture was always left obscured.
He dragged his hand down his face. How the hell was he going to tell Rose what she needed to know without revealing the whole sordid story?
John trusted her, he did, more than he ever thought possible. Trust, however, was not the reason he was still hiding his past. There was blood on his hands that he didn’t want Rose to know about, that he couldn’t wash off, things that he had done that he wanted to keep shrouded in the darkness of his past instead of bringing them out to examine in the harsh light of the present.
For some reason, Rose still thought he was a good man underneath all of the layers he’d built up and he desperately didn’t want to watch that faith in him die, didn’t want to see the light that always shined behind her eyes when she looked at him go out – and it would go out – when she realized that she had been wrong all along. He wasn’t a good man. He had made himself into a monster with a bloodstained soul years ago and then had disguised it under an almost infinite number of masks, trying to hide the truth from the world and from himself.
It had always been just a matter of time until Rose figured it out.
He just thought he would have more time.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-
They got as far as dropping their bags in the extended stay hotel room they rented in Seattle before Rose turned to face him, determined look on her face and arms folded across her chest. His time was up.
“So you going to tell me who the man on the phone was, then?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. She figured diving straight into it was going to be less painful than dancing around the topic.
John swallowed hard. “Can we sit? This is likely to be a long conversation.” He gestured towards the little table in their suite that was just outside of the kitchenette.
They sat, facing each other over a corner of the table. Rose bit down on her bottom lip, nervous about pushing for this conversation but knowing that it needed to take place.
“The phone call?” she prodded when John remained silent.
He let out a deep sigh. “I’m not sure where to start.”
“You recognized the voice of the man who was after Jack, yeah?”
“I did and it’s really bad that Jack’s in his clutches.”
“Figured that out on my own,” Rose said. “Tell me about him? Who is he?”
“Goes by ‘The Master’ most of the time. Or he used to. I would guess he still does since his ego’s bigger than his sense and he likes the power trip. He’s a talented hacker and all-around criminal for hire.” He pressed his lips together in a hard line. “He’s a genius with no conscience. He enjoys inflicting pain. Doesn’t hesitate to kill people if he thinks it’s necessary or just because he thinks it will be fun or profitable.”
“Sounds like a piece of work,” Rose hazarded when he trailed off.
“He is,” he responded flatly.
“Does he have a name to go with this bio?”
“If he does, I don’t know it.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Really? You know all of that but you don’t know his name? You generally try to know everything.”
“I don’t know his name, Rose!” John ran his hand over his face in a frustrated motion. “Look, we were, for the lack of a better word, partners, a long time ago but we didn’t use our real names and he never shared. I knew him as the Master and by his other code name of Koschei and I’ve stumbled across a couple of his aliases over the years but that’s it.”
Rose felt a curious sinking sensation in her chest as she parsed through the vague bits of information he was offering. “When you say partner do you mean…” she trailed off, gesturing between the two of them.
“No. Not like us. It wasn’t anything like us and I won’t make the comparison,” he said quickly, recoiling at the mere thought of comparing what he and Rose had to the time he had spent with the Master. “And there was definitely no romance, so don’t go thinking that that’s what I meant by partner either.”
“I wasn’t!” Rose protested.
John just gave her a look.
“Fine, yes, I was thinking it,” she admitted. “Thanks for clarifying.”
He softened a bit, a rare bit of vulnerability glinting in his eyes as he reached out and rested his hand on hers. “He wasn’t even really a partner, it’s just the easiest word to use.”
Rose gave a one shouldered shrug. “Just thought the two of you being involved would explain a lot about your reluctance to get involved with me at the beginning.”
“I was never reluctant about being involved,” he protested, voice caressing the final word.
Rose snorted, taking her hand back to cross her arms over her chest as she leaned back. “You weren’t reluctant about getting me into bed but you so were reluctant about being involved.”
John conceded the point with a nod. “But there was nothing like that with Koschei. We weren’t even friends really. Not any more than we had to be when working side by side non-stop for a few years.”
He saw the skeptical tilt to Rose’s mouth but she didn’t say anything.
“I mean it,” he insisted.
“Okay, I believe you!” she responded, putting her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “What else do I need to know about him?”
John stared at her, mouth slightly agape. “You’re not going to ask me about why I was working with him or what we… what I did?”
Rose shrugged again. “You can tell me when you’re ready, if you’re ever ready. I’m not going to push you for more than what I need to be able to help save Jack.”
She paused and reached across the table for his hand before continuing. “I can’t even imagine having to dredge up my past and spill everything just because someone popped back up again and started causing trouble.” She shuddered. “Alright, I can imagine it and it’s terrible. I’m not going to make that worse for you just to satisfy my curiosity. And I am curious, for the record.”
Rose smiled at him, trying to ease some of the tension between them.
All John wanted to do in that moment was kiss her in gratitude, with all the love that he had yet to voice. He wanted to pour everything into a kiss that could make them both forget about their pasts and their current situation and focus on them for a moment.
He wanted to kiss her and, as far as he was concerned, there was no reason for him not to. He moved around the table and then leaned down and pressed his mouth to hers, kissing the question of what he was doing right off her lips.
He gave her a series of light kisses, savoring the simple sensation of their lips sliding against each other. Rose wasn’t interested in being as patient or deliberate as he was though. Using her grip on his shoulders as leverage, she pulled herself into a mostly standing position, trying to goad him into taking the kiss where she wanted it.
John smiled into the kiss when she let out a frustrated noise as he refused to open his mouth to allow her tongue entrance. He rotated them around, still holding off her attempts to deepen the kiss, and sat down in the chair she’d vacated. He pulled her down with him, eliciting a squeak from his lover as she tumbled into his lap.
As he’d expected, she wasted no time in rearranging herself so that she was straddling him and then diving back into the kiss. This time he let her coax his mouth open and he sighed happily when her tongue swept inside. It didn’t matter how many times they’d done this, she still sent shivers down his spine and sparks rushing through his veins every single time.
John retained control, keeping the kiss slow and deliberate despite Rose’s continued attempts to escalate it. He readjusted the hand he had threaded through her golden strands, changing the angle of the kiss slightly.
Rose nipped at his bottom lip and he responded by sweeping his tongue into her mouth. They were always playing this game, wrestling for dominance whether it was during a heist or a thorough snog.
It was always exhilarating even as it was now familiar.
John slowed the kiss, running his hands down her sides to rest on her hips as he pulled away. He rested his forehead against hers, just wanting to be close to her for a little bit longer. He knew they were about to face down the toughest obstacle either of them had ever encountered and he didn’t know if they’d both make it out alive, much less together.
Rose had taught him how to hope again and he was hoping with every atom of his being that they would make it through all of this together but he wasn’t going to take a single second with her for granted either.
Rose seemed to sense the change in his mood and her touch turned soothing, hand on his shoulder and thumb rubbing softly over his collarbone through his jumper. She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his lips before climbing off of his lap and taking the chair that had been his earlier.
“So, where do we start?” she asked.
“You’re always the one with the grand plan,” John responded. It was true, Rose had a gift for putting together a plan and thinking through all the different contingencies and potential obstacles and opportunities. He wasn’t half bad at it himself but Rose was better.
“Well, first thing we need to do is figure out where he is and where he’s holding Jack,” she mused. He could practically see the gears turning in her mind as she started to turn the problem over like a puzzle box she needed to solve.
“He usually bases himself in London, at least for something this big.”
“You know that for sure?”
“I’ve seen his fingerprints on crimes in the area in the past couple of years so I know he’s still there and drawing us back there is definitely his style.” He thought for a moment before divulging another piece of information that he’d been holding onto. “He was involved in the Agency job.”
“He was what?”
John winced at the growing anger on her face but it was still better to tell her now than keep it a secret for any longer.
“I didn’t know it when we broke into the Agency but when we pulled our first bank job I recognized his programming in the bank’s computer security and the safe deposit box that the flash drive was in was under one of his aliases, Harold Saxon.”
“And you didn’t think to share this until now?”
“It wasn’t exactly relevant until now and now I’m telling you!”
Rose took a deep breath and let it out. He was right. There was no reason for him to really share this until now and she’d known back during that first bank job that there was something about the security and the safe deposit box that he wasn’t sharing, she’d just forgotten about it.
“You’re right,” she said aloud. “I’m just on edge.”
“We both are,” he replied, accepting her unspoken apology.
“Alright, do you think that this has something to do with the Agency job, then?”
“It has to,” he said. “If it didn’t, he would just be coming after me, not after both of us. Involving Jack makes it even more likely.”
“So the question is, does he know that you’re the Doctor? Is he coming after you personally or just professionally?”
“I can’t tell. He might suspect it’s me based on how I took down the bank security but I doubt he knows for sure.”
Rose was silent for a minute. “We should probably assume he knows who you are. But you know him too so we can use your familiarity with him and his methods as an advantage.”
“Always looking at the bright side,” John quipped.
“One of us has to.”
Rose tapped her fingers on the tabletop. “If you know your way around his systems, can you access them remotely to see if they have any useful information like his location or bits of whatever he has planned?”
John shook his head. “He knows my handle and how I work. If he suspects it’s me he’ll have blocked my normal ways in. Probably blocked them anyways just to be safe. Would take longer than we have for me to hack in, especially with only the laptop. Plus, he’ll know the second I’m in his system. He’ll be waiting.”
Rose bit her bottom lip, considering their options. “What about that other hacker you were talking to last time we were in London. Oswin or something like that, yeah?”
“Clara. Her handle is Oswin.”
“That’s the one. Could you contact her and see if she can get into the system? I remember you saying that she worked a lot differently than you but was scary good.”
John stared into the middle distance over Rose’s shoulder as he mulled it over. “She could probably get in if I was distracting him at the same time. Keep him from noticing that she’s slipping in the back door.”
“Sounds good. Why don’t you try and get in touch with her? I’ll talk to some of my contacts back in London to see what the scene’s like so we know what to expect when we hit the ground since that’s our likely destination.”
“We’re going to have to leave as soon as Clara gets into the system. He’ll be able to backtrack my signal and get our location since I don’t have my normal equipment to mask it.”
“Okay. We’ll be ready,” Rose said, getting up from where she was seated and cupping his face in her hand. “We’re gonna take this bastard down.”
John didn’t say anything, just let out a slightly shaky breath and closed his eyes.
Rose pressed a gentle kiss to his forehead, ran her thumb over his stubbled cheek in a quick caress and then walked away, knowing that he would want to be alone to get himself back in control. She gathered her laptop and the mobile she’d bought at the airport when they landed and set herself up on the hotel bed to get to work.
John listened as she started making calls, recognizing the posh accent she used on occasion and the fake enthusiasm she was exuding as staples of her on the grift. She must not be talking to someone she trusted. He should really start working too but his mind kept drifting back to the last time he’d seen the Master, back when he knew him only as Koschei.
“Target in sight. Two minutes to mission completion.” Koschei said into walkie talkie before glancing over at John who was watching the target through a scope. “I’m ready to get out of this hellhole. They should really send us to nicer places to kill people.”
“We do things other than kill people,” John said shortly.
Koschei rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we scout out people that they then send another team to kill. Don’t get all idealistic on me again, Theta. You know I hate that.”
“Have you ever thought about getting out? Leaving all of this?” John asked, finally glancing away from his scope.
Koschei was looking down his own scope now, sighting the target. “Well we get shit pay for this so I’ve thought about peddling my considerable talents elsewhere.” He activated his mic and began talking to their handlers again. “Mission commencing in three, two, one.”
He squeezed the trigger and a mile away the target fell to the ground.
John didn’t watch the target’s last seconds through his scope. This wasn’t what he had signed up for when a special forces unit had recruited him out of high school. They’d fast tracked him through his degree path with a few other handpicked prospects. Had pulled him out in the middle of his doctoral program and dropped him in some godforsaken desert with the other recruits to be trained.
They gave them codenames that weren’t names at all, just designations designed to make them forget they were people. John was Theta.
They’d all realized how deep they were when their first comrade died in training and their handlers didn’t skip a beat.
There were those who seemed to enjoy the ruthlessness and blood a little too much, who always volunteered to go first in the violent training “games.” John stayed as far away from them as he could, worked on swallowing down the bile in his throat whenever he ended up with hot, sticky blood on his hands, whenever the metallic scent hit his nose. He was doing what he had to survive, to try to keep at least a small piece of his soul intact.
He made it through camp without being responsible for another recruit’s death but only barely.
By the time they left training and started being sent on missions, only half of the recruits remained.
The organization paired him with Koschei, a recruit from the camp before the one John had participated in. The other man trained Theta further as they went on missions, didn’t complain or report it when Theta tried to avoid killing people himself, just took over the wet work himself.
John tried not to think about the fact that Koschei was probably one of the recruits who’d taken a little too much pleasure in camp activities. As it was, he and Koschei were partners for the foreseeable future and something akin to friends most of the time.
John flinched out of his memories when the report of the rifle sent shockwaves through their carefully chosen sniper nest. He didn’t need to look through his scope to know that someone else had just hit the ground to never rise again.
“What the hell, Koschei?” He burst out, reaching out to wrench the sniper rifle out of the other man’s hands. “The mission was a single target, you didn’t need to take out anyone else.”
“It throws investigators off when they have to figure out who the main target was,” Koschei argued, narrowing his eyes.
“You don’t even know who you just shot.”
“We never know who we’re shooting, just that we’re supposed to take them out. Stop being such a bleeding heart.”
“I’d rather have a bleeding heart than not have one,” John retorted hotly, moving to quickly unload and dismantle the rifle.
Koschei snorted in response but didn’t say anything else.
That night, when they were back in a bunker operated by the organization, John’s mobile beeped. He rolled over in the narrow bunk to read the message that had come in. It was Koschei’s mission report. John had hacked the system back at the very beginning of their partnership and had rerouted all mission reports to go through him first before they were sent to the handlers.
His heart sank and then started racing as he skimmed the report his partner had written. It contained a summary of all the times John had refused to kill a target, the instances where he had purposefully let a mission fail and the ones he had let Koschei complete even when he was instructed to do it himself. It contained information about their argument today and his expressed desire to leave the program.
It ended with a recommendation to the organization to take him out, permanently.
As quietly as he could, John gathered what little supplies were at hand and used his training to sneak out of the bunker. He had no clue if he would survive long enough to make a life outside of the living hell that was the organization when it would actively try to hunt him down for defecting, but he had to try.
He made his way across a barren stretch of land that smelled of stale dust and smoke and freedom. His heart felt lighter than it had since the organization had plucked him out of his flat in Oxford three years ago and he almost didn’t care that he was likely being hunted already.
He was free and he was never going back to that life again.
John took another shaky breath and stood to make tea, hoping that it would calm his nerves even if he did have to make it in the microwave since the American hotel didn’t provide a kettle. Koschei, or Saxon, or the Master, or whatever the hell he was calling himself these days was not going to make him run again. He braced his hands against the counter letting his head fall forward as Rose’s voice from the other room washed over him.
This time he had something he was willing to fight for and he damn well wasn’t going to let Koschei take her.
He had to assume that this whole ruse of taking Jack and luring him and Rose in was a way to get back at John for abandoning the organization, for abandoning him. It didn’t matter to Koschei that he had tagged John for removal, it mattered that he’d left without a word and John hated that he still knew a bit of how the Master’s mind worked.
He’d crossed his path a few times in the years since he left, always online in hacking circles. He and Koschei had been the organization’s best cyber operatives. When they weren’t out on scouting missions or wet work missions, they’d been assigned hacking jobs together. He knew Koschei’s tricks as well as he knew his own and he’d recognized him immediately whenever he stumbled upon his work. It had been a bit of a shock to see the Master’s handiwork at the bank during the first heist with Rose. John still didn’t know if Koschei had been working for the Agency or if he’d just contracted with them for that job.
He knew the other hacker could recognize him a good portion of the time as well and there was a gnawing worry in his gut that the Master had Jack and had found them because he’d recognized John’s hacking as being the same as Theta’s. If he thought about it too much, he knew the guilt would cripple him.
He had no doubt that Koschei was still looking for him even though he no longer worked for the organization that had brought them together. He was not a forgiving person and John could only assume he’d continued on down the destructive, bloody path that he’d been on when they parted ways.
The microwave beeped, letting him know that his water was hot and he moved almost mechanically to start preparing his tea.
It would be easier to take Koschei down if he was just a psychopath bent on revenge, but John knew it wasn’t that simple. The man was as brilliant as he was deranged and it made him more than dangerous.
John didn’t know how to beat him and that scared him more than anything.