The salty air of the cold Norwegian beach stung as Rose drew in a deep breath. She stared at the human Doctor, who was staring right back, and tried to concentrate on the reassurance his hand being in hers brought. Yet her mind went back and forth between he's gone and he's here. She couldn't keep to one thought! Even her emotions warred between absolute frustration and dizzying confusion.
"Will he-" Rose pursed her lips and tried again. "Is he gonna be alright? Donna's with him, so he will be, yeah?"
"In time."
"What about you?" Rose didn't know what she wanted to ask, her thoughts still too jumbled to figure out exactly how she felt or what she needed. "You're still...you?"
"I'm still me. Same memories, remember?" He tightened his grip on her hand, but otherwise seemedcalm with their situation.
He knew, Rose thought then, he knew this was going to happen. It was the only reason why he wasn't upset. "Then why-" she stopped when it hit her. Of course he wasn't upset, this was what he decided, the both of them! "Right, it's you. I know that, it's why I kissed ya. It's-" Rose sighed, closing her eyes for a moment, then glared at the human Doctor. "I'm angry, that's what. He just left without saying anything."
"I don't think he wanted to interrupt," the Doctor said, tucking in his chin, his voice lined with apprehension.
Her anger settled when she realized she wouldn't have wanted to interrupt either, especially if their roles had been reversed. "That doesn't matter, he should have said something, anything," she replied flippantly.
The Doctor tugged on his ear with his other hand. He flashed her a quick thoughtful frown. "Would you have heard him? We were a bit busy," he said, somewhat too smugly for Rose.
Rose gazed back at the spot the TARDIS once occupied, ignoring his comment. She didn't want to think about the kiss and how part of her wanted his lips back on hers. The other Doctor was gone and she wasn't with him. Her lower lip quivered as sadness replaced her anger. "What happens if Donna leaves him? Does he think I'm just gonna forget him?" Rose looked down, touching the bottom of her nose with the side of her free hand, trying to keep herself from crying. She let her hand fall once she felt composed and looked back at the Doctor. "And what about you? Being left behind? The TARDIS was your home!"
"I've done without before," he said, his tone dry and serious.
That didn't feel like an answer to her. "You don't mean that!" She shook her head. "Or…I dunno, it's not right." Her mind replayed the words; He needs you, that's very me. "What if he needs me?" She couldn't keep it in. She looked away from the Doctor as her tears fell.
"Rose, this was always going to happen." He let go of her hand and immediately she wanted it back. He placed his hand on her upper arm, and her shoulders drooped a little, feeling relief from the simplest of contact. "You'd get old or maybe one day you'd want to stop, because either you were tired or you began to notice your attention slipping. Or someone died because you weren't fast enough. Then he'd have dropped us off and you'd never see him again. But you'd be without your mother, father, and baby brother." He took a breath and tilted his head for a second, and said with humor back in his voice, "Or probably not so baby brother by then. He might have kids, you'd miss out on being the lovable and preferred aunt."
She looked back at him, her anger coming back, hoping he saw the same intensity in her eyes that she felt in her heart. "I told him, I told you, I'd made my decision long ago."
"I know. Here we are. You're keeping your word."
Her feelings finally decided on absolute frustration. "Fine then, what about you? What happens if you get tired? Or bored? You gonna just leave without saying anything? How are you any different then?"
"Like this."
His hand came up and cupped her cheek at the same time he leaned in and kissed her. It felt more like a continuation of the same passionate kiss from moments before than a new one. His hand dropped from her cheek and he wrapped his arms around her. Her arms went up around his neck, a hand curling around his head. Even frustrated, she couldn't help but want this. She had missed him too much to think about much else.
It was easier to stop thinking and let herself enjoy it, at least for a little while.
"Most peculiar." An unfamiliar female voice rattled around them. Startled, Rose and the Doctor broke apart. Somehow sand had become metal and the sky had become glass walls that looked out into a stratosphere. A setting sun burnt the sky orange, a hint of blue peeking from the top as it transitioned into space. "My Seers tell me you two are to be the instruments of my Empire's downfall, yet all I see is insipid lovers cuddling one another."
Rose glanced around the room, instincts looking for the quickest exit. She put aside her frustration and longing, ready to face more trouble. Soldiers completely covered in black armor with heavy phaser guns surrounded them. Her mother was nowhere to be seen. The only exit, an automatic door, sat to her right. Her attention finally came to the source of the voice. High above them, atop a metal dais, sat a humanoid woman on a simple silver throne, dressed in an extravagant gown.
The Doctor peered up at the woman with furrowed brows and a raised upper lip, and shoved his hands in his pockets. "Insipid? That's a new one. I've been called lots of things: rude, unpredictable, crass, self-absorbed, destroyer of worlds, clever. But never insipid."
Rose leaned into the Doctor's shoulder. "What just happened? I've never experienced a transmat like that before. You think my mum's been taken?" She narrowed her eyes at the woman on the dais. "Do you know them?"
"No, I haven't a clue. And I doubt they took your mother," he whispered to Rose before loudly addressing the mysterious woman once again. "But it looks like we've been pulled across space because we've been prophesied to cause some downfall of a governmental institution and they wish to have words. I'm guessing? That right? Or maybe not words, but our necks? Punish us for some crime we have yet to commit?"
The woman atop the dais gave him a nod, her movement stiff. "Correct. The Imperial Confederacy of Magnus Pyoo will not be destroyed by a pair of rambling idiots."
The Doctor scrunched up his face. "Pyoo? You're Pyoos? No wonder I didn't recognize you." He looked back to Rose, his eyes now wide and full of excitement. "They were destroyed in the other universe centuries before I was born due to a millenia of internal conflict, could never get a thing right. Never seen a Pyoo before. This is fantastic!"
Rose took a step closer to the Doctor, pinching his sleeve. "So you don't know anything that can get us out of this?"
He grinned at her. "Nope! Well, I've read about them at the Academy, heard the legends and so on, never got the chance to actually meet them in person. This is wonderful!"
"Yeah, and they brought us here to punish us, remember?"
"That won't be a problem." He addressed the alien woman again. "Will it? We haven't done anything yet to punish us for, so give us a little slap on the wrist and send us back home. No harm, no foul!"
The woman atop the dais stood, her posture as rigid as her voice. "No, that is not the way we handle prophecies. Our Seers foresee our problems and we seek them out and utterly destroy them. You will be eradicated." She walked forward, each step heavier than the last. "I admit I was curious to see the two humans who could cause the end of our magnificent reign. I have yet to determine how it would be even remotely possible for the two of you."
Rose and the Doctor exchanged an incredulous look. Rose pondered, how many governments had they overthrown before? Was it seventeen or nineteen? The Doctor lifted his chin to the Pyoo woman and, almost happily, replied, "Get to know us, you'd find out. And like they say, never judge a book by its cover. We're full of ideas, wisdom, and information that you won't find anywhere else in this universe."
The soldiers surrounding them took a step closer and it caught Rose's attention. Rose grabbed the Doctor's hand and whispered to him, "Don't think we can talk our way out of this one."
He leaned sideways to get closer to her, though his eyes scanned the room. "If we're going to be punished for our brilliantly clever abilities, why not show them exactly what we're made of? Hmm?"
She squeezed his hand. Her grin formed at the same time as his. This at least felt right. They had been thrown into an impossible situation somehow. Though it had been years since they had done this, just the two of them and not on a grand universal scale, it felt like it had been only yesterday. That gave her courage to face their impending execution. "Right, Stuff of Legends?"
"That's us!"
"You two be silent!" The woman bellowed; her face contorted in fury and annoyance. As they had been speaking she had descended the dais and now stood a few feet away from them.
The Doctor sighed. "You really should have gotten to know us."
In a quick flash of movement the Doctor took out his sonic and pointed it to the ceiling. He yelled, "Rose, get down!" and turned it on.
Rose ducked right when a group of pipes lining the ceiling burst open. Thick white gas overtook the room in seconds. The soldiers shot blind. The sound of bodies hitting the floor mixed with that of the Pyoo woman bellowing orders, among them, "STOP SHOOTING!".
"Doctor, the door!" Rose held out her hand and the Doctor took it.
Together they ran, hunched over, towards the closed automatic door. Rose worried that it would remain closed, but when they approached it, the doors slid open with a hiss. They left the room and out into a stark white hall, with no sign on the walls where they should go next. Without much thought, Rose took a right and the Doctor followed her lead.
They rounded corner after corner, with no change to the architecture. Any door they saw remained closed for them. Rose could hear the sound of footsteps behind them, getting louder with each passing second. The Doctor yanked her into an alcove she hadn't seen. They had to jam into it so that they remained out of sight and in the dark. The tight space meant that their bodies were flush against the other. The Doctor's arms were around her, pressing her even closer to him, chest to chest. His touch felt hot on her back, even through layers of clothes.
They stared at one another while a group of soldiers ran past them.
A corner of her mouth rose in a half smile. Their escape felt like old times. "That's more like it. I'm sorry I ever doubted you."
His hold on her tightened and he ducked his head, his eyes full of excitement. "Oh, no worries. You're human, it's not every day the love of your life splits in two."
That brought her down to reality. She didn't want to think about how there was another him out there without her. "Who says you're the love of my life?" Rose joked, trying to defuse her unease.
"I'm not!?" the Doctor exclaimed, his brows furrowing in disbelief.
One got used to an abrupt change in pace when working for Torchwood. Going from one mission to the next, day after day, made this scenario familiar and almost comforting to Rose. Teasing the Doctor made her feel content. She still had a lid tightly screwed on her frustration. She could figure things out after they got home. She just didn't want to think about their complications as they ran from people trying to kill them.
"There they are!" a soldier yelled as he pointed to their location.
"Come on!" the Doctor urged.
Rose and the Doctor rushed out of the tight space as best as they could, fumbling over each other. Unfortunately, the same soldier who had found them blocked the mouth of the alcove. Rose got ahead of the Doctor and, in a dash, butted the soldier in the chest with her shoulder, avoiding his large gun. The soldier stumbled, giving them enough time to grab each other's hand and run.
The soldier regained his composure and shot at them with a volley of blasts, each missing their target.
"We must have really pissed them off in the future," Rose yelled as a laser blast barely missed her head.
"It's what we do best, eh?" The Doctor looked over to Rose and gave her a quick wink.
They ran into an intersection where they could only go left or right. Rose immediately ran to the right, but the Doctor released her hand and went left.
"Over here!" the Doctor said.
Turning around to look back at the Doctor, she found him looking at a large closed door at the end of a short hallway. "It's a dead end!" Rose yelled.
The Doctor reached out with his hands to feel the contours of the door, his ear pressed up against it as if he were listening. Rose walked up next to him and studied the door for half a tick. The Doctor took out his sonic and scanned the door. "I know, but this door is -"
"Airlocked, sealed, and bolted, with double casing, unlike any door we've seen so far, must be some sort of an exit. Still a dead end with a whole army of people with guns behind us."
The Doctor stopped his scanning, his noisy sonic silent as he stared at Rose. His eyes swept over her and Rose knew her knowledge shocked him. She'd learned so much by being with him but even more without him. He'll have to get used to it.
"Good thing you had a spare," Rose said, trying to lighten the mood.
"What?" He raised an eyebrow at her.
"Your screwdriver." She pointed to the sonic in his hand. "You had a spare laying about? Or did you nick his when he wasn't looking?"
"Oh!" He looked down at his sonic. "Oh! No. No, he still has his own. I lost the original screwdriver not long after I -" He swallowed, then turned around and went back to scanning the door. "After destroying the first one in an accident, well, not so much an accident as collateral damage, I made a couple more just in case I needed another. Came in handy, don't you think?"
A grin threatened to emerge as she said, "For your hand, yeah?"
The Doctor preened and glanced over to Rose. "I'm the handy spare hand!" he said, with hint of a silent laugh in his voice.
Someone behind them shouted a command. They sounded close.
"Doctor!" Rose pleaded.
The Doctor moved his sonic to a small indentation on the door and held his sonic to it for a few seconds. The sonic's noise changed pitch and a clang sounded from inside the door.
"There!" the Doctor declared and pocketed his sonic.
The door busted open, breaking off from its hinges and flying out into the naked stratosphere. As the change in pressure sucked the air from the hallway, Rose dug her heels into the floor to keep her balance. She reached for the Doctor and he took her arm, keeping them grounded. Nothing but sky, and the land far below, stretched before them.
Rose peeked over the edge. "Now what do we do?"
The Doctor turned to her and placed his hands on her upper arms, ducking his head to meet her eyes. "Rose, do you trust me?"
She searched his face and saw the gravity of his question in his eyes. She knew he was about to do something absolutely crazy. "'Course, always," she said earnestly.
He turned them towards the open sky. He grabbed her forearm and she did the same, grasping onto his clothes. "Whatever happens, don't let go," he said gravely.
The soldiers rounded the corner and shot at Rose and the Doctor, their aim still missing their mark.
"Jump!" yelled the Doctor.
With that, they jumped. It seemed more like falling to Rose. The air rushed past her and she found it hard to breathe. She held on to the Doctor with all her strength. She'd never fallen from such a height before. In the past, she'd had to jump from a tall building once or twice while on a mission but it was never like this. She glanced over to the Doctor and he met her eyes, squeezing her forearm in reassurance.
Rose looked down and saw the ground approaching at a speed too fast to comprehend. Panic rose up from her chest and into her throat. In that second her grip on the Doctor loosened, her hand slipping from his forearm. The Doctor twisted her clothes, trying to keep a hold of her. His eyes focused on their connection, gripping as tight as he could, but the space between them grew wider. The Doctor looked over to Rose, his eyes wide and his lips apart, fear etched on every feature of his face. She tried to mimic him, clutching at his clothes, her fingers working tirelessly for purchase.
Then he let go.
Her heart raced and her body seized up. In the second he let her go, he caught her hand and pulled. Hard. Her body then moved to collide with the Doctor's. She slammed into him and his arms went around her in that moment, hugging her to him. He whispered in her ear, "I got you."
Because of the force of their collision, they now spun uncontrollably, twisting and turning. She was going to be sick.
A flash of orange light shattered around them and Rose heard the sound of glass popping. Their descent slowed. Another flash of light shattered, with more popping sounds, and their descent slowed considerably. Then another and another until they passed through leaves and branches. They met the ground, tangled together, with an "Oomph!"
The Doctor got to his feet first and offered his hand to her. She took it, giving him her thanks, and stood, patting dirt from her jeans. They then studied each other, looking for injuries. Rose didn't feel any pain, besides a few aches from their landing, and apart from his mangled and dirty suit, the Doctor appeared fine.
"Are you hurt?" he asked.
"No. You?"
"Nope!"
Rose smiled, relief flooding her. "I can't believe we made it."
The Doctor's face softened and he beamed at her, "Me too!"
Her smile turned into a grin. He reached out at the same time she raised her hands to embrace him. His arms encircled her and, for the first time since she saw this new him, they were hugging as if nothing had changed. As if there had never been a choice needed to be made or a separation that took place. They were alive and that was all that mattered. In this second, nothing had to be complicated. She buried her face into the nook of his neck. He squeezed her.
But then she registered what he said and pulled back. "Wait, what do you mean?"
He let her go and rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, I was only about ninety, ninety five percent certain that we weren't falling to our deaths. Didn't know if they had implemented digital nets. From what I read at the Academy, Pyoos high society liked to live in the upper atmosphere. Figured the rich and powerful would want to take every precaution in case one of them fell."
She lifted her chin and smiled wanly, exasperated by his reply. "Oh, so you just you being you then."
He lifted his brows, a corner of his mouth raised in a cheeky smile. "I would say the one and only but."
Movement above them had Rose studying the skies, stepping away from the Doctor. Black dots poured out of the intricate network of floating buildings in the sky. They moved about in a group, like bees or a flock of birds. "And would you say you're ninety five percent certain those things are coming for us?"
"What things?" the Doctor asked. Rose nodded to the sky, her eyes still trained on the clouds of black dots coming closer towards them. The closer they got, the more their forms were defined. Blacks dots soon turned into groups of soldiers on speeding black hover bikes. The Doctor glanced up to the sky and frowned. "Oh, those." They caught each other's eyes. "I'm fairly certain they are," the Doctor stated flatly.
Rose surveyed the surrounding trees, which continued on for as far as she could see. Their tangled grey trunks formed a blackened abyss. "Can the forest provide cover?"
The Doctor turned around, in a full circle, taking in their environment, then stepped close to Rose. "With their technology, not for long, but it's the best chance we've got."
"Right." She held out her hand and he took it, entwining their fingers. She stroked his hand with her thumb, thankful for the comfort he gave her. They fled into the forest, their silhouettes consumed almost immediately.
To be Continued
Beta'd by the lovely Sporehead (waltzing-with-my-inner-geek)!