The Doctor
The Doctor looked away from Cass's wreck of a body, tears stinging his eyes. Choose, they'd said. Abruptly the Doctor bolted for the door, ignoring the yells of outrage and shock from the Sisters of Karn. He ran on, under a orange sky, discounting his own bloodied, battered body. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the pain in his mind. Spotting the ship that contained his TARDIS, the Doctor began to dig. At last the smudged blue paint lay bare. Fingers leaving crimson smears on the peeling paint, the Doctor opened the doors and dropped inside.
Seeing the large bottle of hypervodka sitting on the end table, the Doctor almost laughed with relief. It would all be over soon. Just a simple drug reaction, and he would be the Doctor no longer. First things first. Pilot the TARDIS into the vortex. It wouldn't be the first TARDIS left there, its owner lost to a never ending war, and certainly not the last.
The Doctor walked around the console, pushing buttons and flipping switches. Within minutes, the TARDIS was in the vortex for the last time. The Doctor pushed away from the console, and crossed to the end table with brisk strides. Enveloped in a shroud of calm, the Doctor snagged the bottle of hypervodka and downed half of it in one go.
Staggering under the onslaught of the alcohol(one of a few forms strong enough to effect his metabolism), the Doctor headed for the medbay. I'm sorry, Cass, he thought. You'll be rid of me soon enough. Too bad you had to die for me to see. The Doctor rummaged through the drawer where that specific, lethal drug was kept. And came up empty.
He growled in impotent rage at the one culprit he knew to be responsible: the TARDIS. Slamming the drawer shut, he stalked out of the room, his simmering fury erasing all but the alcohol in his blood. There were other ways. Ways that didn't rely upon the approval of the TARDIS.
But when he emerged into the hall, it wasn't the hall. The Doctor surveyed the Zero room with growing confusion, only to realise too late what the TARDIS was planning. Throwing himself at the door, he almost made it… only to slam into a solid, roundel-covered wall. The Doctor beat his fists on the wall in a rare display of uncontrolled temper.
In response, the TARDIS hummed angrily at him, asking what the hell he was thinking. He didn't bother with a response, even mentally. Abruptly the hum changed pitch, becoming soothing, persuasive. The TARDIS projected an image of a shiny bronze apparatus bristling with spikes and fitted with a fob watch in the centre. A chameleon arch.
The Doctor shook his head, backing up hastily. Not happening.
The TARDIS hummed, beseeching. Be someone else for a little while, she seemed to say. Forget your problems. It was such a tempting offer, he almost agreed. But then he remembered that he left a trail of blood and destruction behind him, and a human him might be just as bad. The TARDIS hummed, a speculative tone in her hum.
The Doctor mentally glanced up at the TARDIS. "You could do that? Make sure I don't harm anyone else?"
Humming an affirmative, the TARDIS dissolved the wall. Since the Doctor didn't have a traveling companion, this would have to be done a bit differently. Piloting the TARDIS to earth, he landed in London. He wasn't quite sure why, but something seemed to draw him there.
The Doctor got the first flat he could find that would allow him to rent it with the wad of notes he had in his pocket. It just happened to be a large, posh place in central London overlooking a department store. It took him a while longer to get the place fit to live in.
Parking the TARDIS in the spare bedroom of the flat, the Doctor glared at the console. "Eight months till the expiration date. No more. And if you haven't made your point by then, it's time for you to find a new pilot." A cold statement of fact. A plaintive hum came from the TARDIS.
The Doctor took a deep breath, and sat down in the chair that had sprung up near the console. He pulled the chameleon arch over his head. A second later, it activated. The Doctor screamed, thrashing as much as the chameleon arch would allow. He kept on screaming for a long time.
When he stopped, he wasn't the Doctor anymore. Not quite in the way the Doctor wanted, but still. He had forgotten at last. He didn't remember stumbling out of the TARDIS, nor did he remember collapsing on the bed.
Rose Tyler
Rose Marion Tyler was having a rotten day. First Mickey had broken up with her, then one of the mannequins randomly exploded. To top it off, her favourite jumper had met a sad ending at the little fuzzy legs of a family of moths.
She stared out the window of the bus, a cute little crease of pure, unadulterated frustration forming between her eyebrows. The bus juddered rapidly to a halt at Rose's stop, and she dashed off the bus with a muttered 'thank you' to the bus driver. Rose made a face at the rain, and quickly dashed into the cover of her apartment building. As Rose ascended the stairs, the only sounds were her breathing and the flapping of her satchel.
Reaching her apartment, she let herself in without knocking. Jackie was in the kitchen, fixing the ozone layer by cursing at a tray of things that might have once been biscuits. Now they simply resembled charcoal. Rose decided to get her attention before she did something dumb. "Hi Mum!" Rose chirped in her best mock-cheerful voice.
Jackie saw her and immediately went into fussing mode. "I missed you." She enveloped Rose in a smothering hug. Rose raised her eyebrows over her mother's shoulder. Really, she was only gone eight hours. Rose drew back and went to go watch telly.
Later, as she was falling asleep, she had the strangest feeling that things were going to get better soon.
