a/n: This is the first of two sequels to Entanglement. I had originally planned on writing one longer sequel, but I decided it works better as two shorter pieces. Chronologically it follows Entanglement, Dreaming in Color and Wide Awake in my Slow Path 'verse. It is currently a work in progress, but I have about half of it finished so I decided to start posting anyway. I hope you enjoy it.
Duality
Dual (adjective) consisting of two parts, elements, or aspects
Duality (noun) 1. the state or condition of being dual. 2. an instance of opposition or contrast between two concepts or two aspects of something; a dualism
Prologue
Three months ago …
Dr. Frank Collins pulled out a small, square battery out of his pocket, one the Doctor and Rose both recognized as containing the unbonded Kern. As he carried over to Rose, it began to glow with a faint blue light.
"Fight it, Rose!" the Doctor yelled. "I know you can do it!"
As Collins approached, holding out the battery, Rose tried to back away from him, but with her ankles fastened to the chair it was a futile gesture. As the battery grew near, the blue light of the Kern grew stronger. It began to arch towards her hand and when it touched her fingertips it disappeared. She felt the energy of the Kern surge through her and through a haze of blue she saw the Doctor struggle against his restraints.
"No! Rose, fight it! I know you can!"
Rose shook with the effort to fight off the Kern, her body tense and her face screwed up with the effort. She took several deep breaths and then exhaled hard, as if she were trying to blow them out of her body. After several unsuccessful attempts, she collapsed against the back of her chair, exhausted by the effort.
"Rose." She heard desperation in the Doctor's voice. "Don't give up. Do whatever you have to do to fight it."
"I'm sorry," she mouthed to him. She closed her eyes, and when she reopened them she felt a surge of energy go through her body. In an instant she saw Dr. Collins fly several feet backwards. He landed on the floor with his neck in an unnatural position. His eyes were fixed and unseeing, and the skin of his face and hands looked red, almost as if he had received a bad sunburn.
In her bed Rose tossed and turned, and the dream changed, the images within shifted.
From within the small glass-enclosed booth that held the dimension cannon, Rose could see Mickey sitting at the computerized controls on the other side of the room. Next to him stood Jake on one side and Pete on the other. All three of them were intently staring at the display in front of them. As one they all turned and looked at her. She nodded and Mickey turned back to the controls. He pressed a button, a big red button, and then she felt the now familiar sting of the translation across the Void.
She found herself exactly where she expected to be, on a busy street in Chiswick. A crowd had gathered around a large truck parked in the middle of the road.
"Let me through," she said and pushed her way through the mass of people, only to see Donna lying in the center of the road.
"She just appeared outa nowhere," a man, presumably the truck driver, said to someone behind her. "Walked right in front'a me. I swear, I tried to stop…"
Rose didn't listen to the response. Instead she knelt beside the older woman.
"Tell him," she said. "Make sure you tell him… bad wolf."
Donna nodded. "I'll tell him," she whispered with her dying breath. "And I'll make sure to tell him that you killed me."
Rose woke with a start, breathing heavily, heart pounding wildly in her chest. To her relief, the Doctor was sleeping quietly next to her. She hadn't woken him up with her nightmares again.
Since the death of Torchwood's former medical officer, her nightmares had returned with a vengeance. She hadn't meant to kill Frank Collins; she had been fighting off an attack of an alien life form, and he had been caught in the powerful energy wave that her body had produced. And even if she had intended to kill him, since he had been responsible for the alien attempting to take over her, it would have clearly been a case of self-defense.
But even though during the light of day she knew that she wasn't guilty of murdering him, he was still dead, and the sight of his dead body haunted her dreams.
The Doctor didn't blame her. If anything, he blamed himself for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the only reason she had been able to produce the energy wave in the first place was because he hadn't managed to remove all of the artron energy from her body after she had absorbed the Time Vortex.
But Collins hadn't been the only person she had killed. She had been responsible for the death of Toby, who had been possessed at the time, and on her watch a team member working on the dimension cannon had been killed.
And then there was Donna.
She had told him about Donna just last night. That she had discovered the pocket universe created around her and had knowingly sent her to her death to end it. And as much as he tried to reassure her, as much as he reminded her that Donna was alive and well, as much as he told her that the pocket universe had had to end, that Donna's decision had been her own and it wasn't Rose's fault, his face was so full of pain she couldn't bear to look at it.
And even though he said he didn't blame her, Rose still blamed herself.
~oOo~
Two months ago …
Rose suddenly found herself standing in the shadows on a narrow street near the Thames. She quickly glanced around, trying to figure out exactly where, and when, she was. In front of her, a large crowd had gathered, and Rose stood on her tiptoes to try to see what they were all looking at. Beyond the crowd, the area had been cordoned off, and the London police swarmed over the area, their yellow vests reflecting the light from the lampposts.
From where she stood, she could see members of the military were also at the scene, their uniforms and red berets identifying them as UNIT troops. They were examining a tall, blue box that stood on the side of the road. She could tell they were trying to get in, but she knew that they'd never be able to, not in a million years. The combined hordes of Genghis Kahn hadn't been able to breach those doors, and neither would UNIT troops.
She looked quickly around, trying to spot among the swarm of police vests and UNIT uniforms a brown trench coat, a brown pinstriped suit, or dark brown hair. To her disappointment, she couldn't see anyone resembling the owner of the blue box.
Rose made her way slowly through the crowd, trying in vain to spot him. He has to be here, she thought. The TARDIS is here. He has to be here somewhere.
Donna stood off to the side of the scene, watching with the other onlookers. She moved closer to her, but then she spotted the body on a gurney, an arm hanging off over the side. Although it was mostly covered by a red blanket, she could still see a hand and part of the sleeve of what looked like a dark colored suit jacket. Below the hand, lying on the ground, was something that looked like a silver rod.
But Rose recognized it. She knew it wasn't simply a silver rod.
It was the Doctor's sonic screwdriver.
"No," she said softly.
Rose staggered forward, past the onlookers, past the red haired woman, past the barricades. She ignored the protests of the police and orders of the UNIT troops telling her to stop. She continued to walk forward until she stood next to the gurney.
"Please, no," she whispered. "No, it can't be."
Hands shaking, she reached out and slowly pulled back the blanket covering the body. It was him, his still beautiful brown eyes fixed and unseeing.
"No," she sobbed. With the fingers of one hand, she traced the curve of his handsome face, the line of his jaw, his sideburns. She could feel his hair was still wet from the waters of the Thames. She let her head fall to his chest and felt the damp roughness of his pinstriped suit. "No, please God, no."
"Rose, Rose, wake up. Please, please wake up, sweetheart."
The voice calling, pleading, sounded desperate. Panting, she forced herself to regain consciousness as she realized someone was vigorously shaking one of her shoulders. Opening her eyes, she saw the Doctor leaning over her, worry written all over his face.
He must have been really worried about her. He never called her sweetheart.
The last tendrils of the dream she had been having came back to her in a rush and she stared at him wide-eyed, heart pounding. Sitting up abruptly and grabbing him for a hug, she almost knocked them both over. She took deep, slow breaths, trying to slow her heart rate. "You were dead."
"Rose, I'm fine. I'm right here," he said, rocking her and stroking her hair. "I'm right here. I'm alright."
"But you weren't," she said, shaking her head. "You were dead."
"Shh, shh, shh," he whispered. "It was just a dream."
"No, it wasn't," she insisted, her breathing ragged. She pulled away from him and stared him in the face. "You were dead. Donna didn't save you, she turned right instead of left, and you died. You drowned, under the Thames. Didn't she tell you? That parallel world that was created around her? She wasn't there and you died."
A look of shock came over his face.
"I had died under the Thames?" he asked.
Rose nodded. "UNIT said you were fighting, I dunno, a giant spider or something?"
He nodded. "That must have been the Racnoss. Donna was there." He paused, pursing his lips. "It was a difficult time for me. It was right after…" He stopped and kissed her on her temple. "It was right after saying goodbye to you at Bad Wolf Bay. I met Donna right after that. Had I not met Donna…" His voice trailed off as it struck him just how close he had come to dying without regenerating.
He pulled her back into a hug. She rested her head on his chest and listened to the comforting beat of his heart through the thin t-shirt he had worn to bed.
"It happened," she said softly. "I got there too late. But in my dream, I was there before they took you away. I saw… you."
"I'm sorry, Rose," he whispered. "I'm sorry you had to go through that."
"'S okay," she murmured into his chest. "You're here and you're alright. That's all that matters."
~oOo~
One month ago …
"What the hell is he doing?" Mickey demanded. "Crashing through a mirror with a horse?"
Mickey's voice echoed through the empty corridors of the abandoned spaceship, seeming even emptier to her because the Doctor wasn't there. At least the robots weren't trying to kill them anymore, she thought. Thank heaven for small favors.
"He's trying to rescue her," she replied quietly.
"But with a horse?"
She shook her head, unable to answer.
Mickey paced back and forth through the small room of the spaceship. "First, he goes and gets drunk at a party while robots try to kill us. Now he's gone back to her with no way back. It's been, what, four hours? We know time passes faster over there than here. He could have been there four months. Hell, he coulda been there four years so far as we know.
"Rose, when are you gonna wake up to the fact that alien or not, he's just another bloke. He's gonna leave you just like he left Sarah Jane. Only worse, cos when he abandons you, it's on a deserted spaceship in the middle of nowhere where there's no way to get home."
"He's comin' back, Mick. He'd never leave me here. He'd never leave us here. I know it. He'll be back."
"Rose, just wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!"
"He's comin' back, Mick," she whispered. "I know it."
"Rose, wake up," the Doctor said. "Wake up."
Rose opened her eyes and yawned. "What?" she asked sleepily. "What's wrong?"
"You tell me," he said as he held her. "You were having a nightmare again. That's every night this week. What was this one about?"
She yawned again and moved closer to him. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her into his side.
"'S not important," she said, shaking her head.
"Rose, I think it is important. Dreams are symbolic windows into the psyche, and your psyche is obviously troubled by something. We've got to get to the bottom of these nightmares of yours. You've been having them for months. So what was it about?"
She turned her face towards him and mumbled something he didn't understand into his chest.
"Rose?" he asked, tilting her head up so she would be forced to look at him. "What was it about?"
"Five and a half hours," she said quietly.
"I don't understand." She had said it as if he would instantly know what she meant. He scanned his memory to try to place the reference. And then the penny dropped.
"Rose, I am not leaving you," he said, pleading with her to believe him.
"You have in the past," she reminded him. "Not just that time, but you sent me home when we were on the Game Station, and you sent me here when the Daleks were attacking Canary Wharf. Not to mention he left me, us, here."
"But I stayed," he protested.
"Same. Man," she said. He opened his mouth to protest again but abruptly shut it when he heard what she said next. "You can't tell me that if your positions were reversed, if you had ended up the full Time Lord and him the part human one, that you wouldn't have done exactly the same thing." He didn't answer. "You told me yourself. You are the same man, Doctor."
"Rose, listen to me. I am never leaving you. You were so right. The universe kept on trying to split us up, but you have proven time and again that it never, ever will." He pulled her closer and placed a kiss on the top of her head.
"Doctor, never say never ever," she said to him brokenly. She leaned heavily into him. "You're the one who said that to me, right before Canary Wharf, right before we were separated."
"And what did you do? You found me again," he reminded her. "Despite all odds, despite it being impossible, you found me again."
She shook her head as she pulled away from him just enough to meet his eyes. "Oh, Doctor, something's coming. I can feel it, in my skin, in my bones. Something's coming, and I'm scared we can't stop it."
And it scared him that he was beginning to sense it, too.
