Chapter Two—Talking and Running
Rose was standing on a deserted beach, fifty miles from Bergen, Norway. She had intended never to make the trek here again, had sworn she'd never set foot on the sand of Darlig Ulv Stranden again in her lifetime.
But here she was, again standing on the same bloody beach in Norway, in almost exactly the same place as the last time she was here. And as it had before, the wind coming off the bay was catching her hair and blowing it into her face. Since she was shivering, she tightened her leather jacket even though she knew the slight shake of her body wasn't from the cold.
A sudden gust whipped her hair around strongly enough that it stung, and she reached up with one hand and tried to push it back behind her ear.
"Am I ever gonna see you again?" she asked. She bit her lower lip nervously as she listened for his answer, her teeth digging hard enough into the flesh that if it were anywhere else on her body she would have left a mark.
The Doctor shook his head. "You can't," he said, his voice breaking. His face was an open book, revealing the pain he felt.
Tears streamed freely down her face, and she didn't bother trying to brush them away.
"I… I love you," she told him.
"Rose Tyler," he said, drawing out her name. He swallowed thickly, and she could see his eyes were suspiciously moist. "Does it need saying?"
Rose's heart broke. She wanted to shout yes, it did need saying, it always needs saying, but the words wouldn't form in her mouth. She reached out to him, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't manage to touch him. She pushed her hand farther and farther in front of her, but somehow without moving he stayed just out of reach.
Eventually, he turned and walked away towards the TARDIS, his hands plunged deep into his trouser pockets, his blue suit jacket flapping a bit in the breeze.
"But you promised," she pleaded. "You said you'd spend the rest of your life with me!"
He stopped in his tracks and slowly turned back to her. "But that was before I knew what you did," he said quietly. He turned away again and entered the TARDIS.
"Doctor, please don't leave me here!" she begged as she heard the TARDIS start to dematerialize. She wanted to run after him, wanted to run to the TARDIS, but for some reason she couldn't get her feet to move. As it finally disappeared, the sound of its wheezing and groaning echoed off the hills surrounding the bay before fading to silence.
He was gone.
And she was left all alone on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay.
Rose forced herself out of the nightmare, opening her eyes to the still dark room. She instinctively reached across the bed to touch him, to reassure herself that the dream had been just that, a bad dream with no basis in reality. But instead of feeling a warm, sleeping body, she found emptiness. She turned and blearily glanced at the clock on the small table on her side of the bed. Its glowing display read half-three.
And then quickly turned back to look at the other side of the bed. He was gone. She was alone. His side of the bed was cold even. Her heart seized in fright.
Oh, God, he's left me, she thought.
No, she told herself firmly in an attempt to force herself to calm down. He wouldn't do that. He wouldn't just leave while I was sleeping.
Would he?
Unable to completely shake off the nightmare, she jumped out of bed and quickly began to search for the Doctor, trying to convince herself that her fears were unfounded. But he wasn't in the en suite, he wasn't in the kitchen making tea and having a pre-breakfast snack of bread and jam, he wasn't in the living room working on some exotic piece of equipment from Torchwood...
It didn't mean anything, she told herself. He needed less sleep than she did. He often got up before she did. He was probably just in his workshop or something.
She got dressed before returning to the kitchen for a torch. Then she turned on the outside light and headed outside.
The night was dark, the sky filled with thick clouds, blocking any light that could have been provided by the moon. Despite the porch light being on, the long, low barn that housed the Doctor's workshop was barely visible, just one long shadow in a sea of shadows.
The windows of the building were dark. Didn't mean anything, she told herself again. It wouldn't be the first time he had worked on a project in the dark. The holographic model of the universe he had created could only be seen with all the lights off, and if he wasn't using that, he could be working on any number of other projects that required low amounts of light.
With a flip of her thumb, she turned on the torch and crossed to the workshop. But when she entered the building the only source of light besides her own torch was the glow of the power button on the computer tower. She flipped the switch near the door and the room flooded with light.
He wasn't there either.
Flipping off the switch, she went back outside and pointed the torch down the drive. Both cars were still here, both her tiny Mini Cooper and the old Ford Monteo she had bought from the son of her mother's housekeeper, Mrs. McDonald. If the cars are still here, she thought, that means he's still here. Which means he must be working on the TARDIS.
Rose turned the torch down the footpath that led to the stand of trees where the TARDIS was planted, shining its light on the entrance to the woods, and started down the path, but before she had even taken two steps she heard the TARDIS. The sounds of it wheezing and groaning, the same noise that the other TARDIS had made when it was about to dematerialize, echoed through the trees, sounding overly loud in the silence of the night. Immediately she flashbacked to her dream.
The TARDIS disappearing. Standing alone on the beach.
The Doctor was leaving her. He was taking the TARDIS and leaving her behind.
Heart pounding, she raced down the narrow footpath into the woods, the torch swinging wildly back and forth as she ran, shining everywhere except down the path. But she knew the way so well she didn't need it.
Round the tree that stood in the center of the path. Zig zag to avoid a rock sticking out of the ground. Jump over the thick tree root that crossed the path. She could have run it with her eyes closed.
When she reached the clearing, she saw that despite the noise of dematerialization it was making, the TARDIS was still there. She ran across the clearing and pushed against the heart carved into the trunk, fumbling for the door handle that she knew was there despite not being able to see it. As she felt it unlatch she yanked on the door and burst into the console room where she was greeted by a familiar sight.
The mushroom shaped console of the TARDIS looked just as it had looked the last time she had been there. It was only partially finished; loose wires hung from the bottom and parts yet to be installed were scattered, along with a variety of tools, on the grating surrounding it. The Doctor was lying on his back half inside the base, his blue pinstriped trousers and red trainers the only parts of him visible.
At the sound of the door opening, the Doctor hauled himself out from where he had been working and looked up at her. When he saw the expression of fear on her face he flew across the room and caught her in a tight hug. He could feel her tremble in his arms.
"Rose," he said into her hair. "Rose, what's wrong?"
She dropped the torch and clutched at him, his jacket bunching in her hands as she held him in a death grip. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. "You weren't in bed," she said into his shoulder. The accusation held just a tinge of hysteria. "I looked everywhere. You weren't in the house, you weren't in the workshop…"
"I'm here. I'm right here," he said.
After a few moments her heart rate slowed and she stopped shaking. "'M sorry," she said, her face buried in his shoulder. "I just had another nightmare and I couldn't find you and then when I heard the TARDIS I thought…" Her voice trailed off.
When she didn't continue, he prompted her. "What did you think?"
She shook her head and sniffed loudly. "'S stupid."
"Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not stupid," he told her. "What was it?"
She hesitated for a moment before finally deciding to answer.
"In my dream," she said, "you left me, and then when I heard the TARDIS I thought it was coming true."
His arms tightened around her. "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry I scared you. But we talked about this. I told you I'm never gonna leave you and I won't. I swear it. I'm not going anywhere."
Eventually, one arm still around her, he led her out of the TARDIS and down the path back to the house. Once they were inside and seated on the sofa in the living room, he pulled her tightly back into his embrace and whispered promises to her, rocking her gently in his arms. Slowly he could feel the tension leave her body, and he loosened his grip on her. He moved his hand to push a lock of her hair out of her face.
She wiped her face with her hands. "So what were you doing?" she asked. She tried to sound casual, but he knew her question was more than just idle curiosity.
"I was just testing the engines, Rose," he told her gently. "I wasn't going anywhere. Wasn't even going to fully dematerialize."
"I thought you were leaving me," she said softly. "I thought after…" Her voice broke off, and his brow furrowed.
"After what?" the Doctor asked quietly.
Rose bit her lower lip and looked away, unable to face him. "You know," she said.
"No, I don't," he said. "I really, really don't. Because there is nothing, nothing you could say, nothing that you could do, that could make me leave you."
She took a deep breath, steeling herself. "But… two days ago," she began, "when—"
Placing his fingertips under her chin, he tilted her face up and met her eyes. "There is nothing that happened, nothing that could have happened two days ago that would ever make me leave you," he said, interrupting her.
"But…"
"No buts. Rose, I am never going to leave you. Full stop," he said slowly, enunciating every word carefully so there would be no mistake. He paused for a moment, considering his next words. "But I wouldn't blame you if you left me."
Now it was her turn to look confused. "Why would I leave you?"
He swallowed, hard. "Two days ago I lied to you. I, we, tried to trick you. With the best of intentions of course, but still that's what we did. And not only do you know it now, but I'm guessing you knew it all along."
She sighed, a harsh exhalation of breath. "I did know. And I was angry at first," she admitted. "But I wouldn't leave you over that. I worked for years, traveled across universes to get back to you."
"You also traveled universes to get back to him," the Doctor said quietly. "And you cried when he left."
Rose wasn't sure if he meant two days ago, or on the beach in Norway, the first or the second time. Perhaps he meant all three.
"You were… you are the same man," she reminded him. "And you're still with me."
He met her eyes. "Yes, I am. And here's where I'm going to stay."
They fell silent for a moment, eyes locked. Rose was the first to look away. She sighed in mock exasperation. "Look at the pair of us," she said, shaking her head, "both sure that the other is going to leave."
He snorted as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and they fell backwards to rest against the back of the sofa. She snuggled into his side.
"Well, tell you what," he said. "If you don't leave, I won't leave."
"Well, I'm not gonna leave," she replied, resting her head on his shoulder.
"Well then, I'm not gonna leave either," he told her. "So I guess you're stuck with me."
"But stuck with you, 's not so bad," she said, grinning for the first time in more than a day.
And then she gasped as for the first time something occurred to her. She sat up abruptly and turned to him wide-eyed. "Is it my fault? What he did on Mars?"
He stared at her in disbelief. "How could it be…" he asked.
"Because I told him that I wouldn't leave you, even if I could."
He shook his head and cupped her face in his hands. "Bowie Base One was not your fault. It was his. And maybe mine. The meta-crisis didn't just affect me, it affected him as well. This has been a rough regeneration. He lost you, he lost Donna, he even lost part of himself in the meta-crisis. He's become unstable. And he's traveling alone on top of it."
He took a deep breath. "That could have been me," he said in a low voice. "I was the dangerous one, not him. But I have you."
"And he's all alone," she said softly.
"There's no one to stabilize him. No one to stop him when he's going too far." He paused for a moment. "And there's more. I told you that Donna and I ended up on the Ood homeworld." At the mention of Donna, his voice softened. "Donna was brilliant, by the way. Helped save the Ood from lifetimes of enslavement. At the end, they predicted the meta-crisis, the DoctorDonna, although we didn't understand that at the time. But they also told us something else. They said our song was ending. The Doctor's song," he clarified.
"But I thought… I thought you managed to change that. You told me that you thought aborting the regeneration after the Dalek shot at you, that the meta-crisis had changed that."
The Doctor nodded. "We thought so, but we were wrong, because he's received similar prophecies from other sources since then. Everywhere he turns, someone is telling him his song is ending.
"Rose, when I dreamt about Mars, the last thing I heard was the Cloister Bell," he continued. "As you know, it only rings in the gravest of emergencies, in this case, a half-mad Time Lord, drunk with power." His voice trailed off when he saw how upset she was growing, but she deserved to know the rest. "Right after he tried to change time, he had a vision of an Ood, Ood Sigma, motioning to him. He thinks he's going to die. And he's afraid he's going to die outright, without regenerating."
She swallowed, trying to fight down her fear for the other Doctor. She tried to keep her voice steady. "What's he gonna do? Do you know?"
"He's doing what we've always done," he told her. "He's running."
~oOo~
"This way!" the Doctor yelled at the top of his lungs. He ran pell-mell down the corridors of a factory on a large moon that humans had colonized in the 53rd century. Rajesh Dalal, a young man who worked in the building, tried desperately to keep up, but his efforts were made more difficult by the smoke which was rapidly filling the air. Not to mention he was holding over his nose and mouth a dampened pocket square the other man had given him, which slowed him down much more than he thought it would.
After several twists and turns of the corridor, Raj lost sight of the older man. He stopped, trying to catch his breath through the cloth, when he came to a junction of two hallways. Which way had the Doctor gone?
The hall to his left was dark, too dark to make anything out, not a door, not a window, not even a light switch to turn on the overhead lights. Lights which probably wouldn't have worked anyway, since whatever it was that had been chasing them had managed to cut the power to half of the building earlier.
Eyes watering, Raj began to cough as the smoke began to make its way through the pocket square. He looked down the corridor to his right. There was some sort of sign near the ceiling, about ten meters in front of him, glowing red through the thickening haze, too thick to make out what it said. Perhaps it's the exit, he thought hopefully.
"Doctor," he called weakly between coughs. "Doctor, where are you?"
All of a sudden he felt something grab the back of his jacket and yank. He stumbled backwards through a doorway he hadn't seen earlier and almost landed on his bum, catching himself from falling only at the last second.
The Doctor fell to a crouch by the doorway, and Raj mimicked him. Thankfully the air was much clearer closer to the floor. Raj dropped the cloth away from his mouth for a moment.
"Shhhh," the Doctor told him in a stage-whisper. "Finger on lips." He demonstrated by placing his own index finger lightly on his own lips. "You need to keep quiet. They still may be out there."
Raj was puzzled by the Doctor's actions, particularly since it hadn't been Raj who had been yelling loud enough to wake the dead, but he obeyed anyway, placing his finger on his lips.
The Doctor grinned, his face in the shadows, only his teeth shining in the dim light surrounding them.
"Good man," he said. "Now the creatures that are chasing us are vulnerable to liquids, water in particular, but other liquids as well: juice, pop, milkshakes—reminds me a banana milkshake would be good when this is all over. Anyway," he stretched out the word, "very vulnerable to liquids, but nothing flammable. I repeat, nothing flammable. That would make the situation much, much worse. You got that?"
Raj nodded. "We need to lure them into an area that has lots of liquids that aren't flammable. Tell me, Doctor, why aren't they setting the building on fire?"
The Doctor looked surprised at the question.
"Oh, they are," he said. Raj stared at him incredulously when he sounded unconcerned by it. "Building's burning all around us. You know the old adage, where there's smoke there's fire. It's just that they are controlling it for some reason right now. But if they get into anything flammable—petrol, motor oil, even cooking oil—boom."
Raj's eyes widened. "Boom?" he asked. He was a trifle anxious about that. Or at least that's what he told himself. Really he was terrified.
The Doctor nodded, grinning widely at him. He seemed excited by the prospect, and Raj noticed his eyes held a slight touch of madness behind them.
"Yeah. Boom!" He mimicked an explosion with his hands. "Ready, Rajesh?"
Raj took a deep breath and nodded.
He didn't think it was possible, but the Doctor grinned wider. "Allons-y!"
This time Raj led the way, only stopping when they reached the men's loo. He knew that that one, which was located near the offices, contained a small shower in the back.
Once inside, Rajesh dropped the cloth from his face again. The air was visibly clearer here, and he took deep lungsful of air, hacking a bit to get the smoke out of his lungs.
"This is perfect!" the Doctor said, pounding Raj on the back. Then he removed his brown greatcoat, tucked it behind a toilet, and closed the stall door. "Don't want to risk that. I love that coat. Janis Joplin gave me that coat, you know."
"No, I didn't," Raj answered. He had no idea who Janis Joplin was, but she must be pretty important for the Doctor to value the coat like that.
"Hide in one of the stalls, Raj."
As he obeyed, he heard the Doctor cross to the door and fling it open.
"Oi! Over here!"
Raj heard the roar of the fire creatures as they entered the room, and he could feel the temperature in the room suddenly jump.
"Come on, come on, come and get me," the Doctor hollered.
Raj slowly opened the stall door to see what was going on. The heat radiating off of the fire creatures made his skin burn, and he narrowed the crack between the door and the stall wall, just enough to lessen his exposure to the heat yet still allow him to peek out.
The Doctor was walking backwards, towards the shower at the back of the room, with the fire creatures following him. "Come on, come on, just a little bit more…" he coaxed, making a "come here" gesture with his hands.
Raj heard the water turn on full blast, followed by an unearthly shrieking. Steam began to fill the room.
"HA!" the Doctor yelled triumphantly. "Take that!"
The water ran for what seemed like minutes until the screaming stopped. When it was finally turned off, the silence was deafening.
"You can come out now, Raj," the Doctor called.
"Are they gone?" he asked. He walked out of the stall and towards the shower. The Doctor emerged from the steam looking slightly like a drowned rat, hair flattened and dripping down his face, his brown pinstriped suit drenched and clinging to his body.
"Yep," the Doctor answered, popping the p. He reached into his pocket and, amazingly, pulled out a large, fluffy towel which he used to dry his face and hair. "They're completely extinguished. Now to turn on the emergency sprinklers in the rest of the building and we're done."
Rajesh and the Doctor finished putting out the fire with the help of the local fire brigade, which had just arrived, the Doctor holding a giant hose which shot out water so strongly that it looked like he risked getting knocked over. To Raj's eyes, the Doctor was taking a lot of risks, working on the front line of the fire without any protective gear, not to mention earlier when he had led the fire creatures into the shower. When he mentioned it to him, the Doctor merely responded with something that sounded like, "Superior biology."
Whatever that meant.
Later, the Doctor, now wearing his Janis Joplin coat, led the way outside to his blue box which he had told Raj earlier was called the TARDIS.
"So this is goodbye then," Raj stated, slightly disappointed. As odd as the Doctor was, in the time they had spent together Raj had grown to care for him and now considered him a friend.
"Yep." The Doctor nodded. "But before I go, I just wanted to tell you, Raj, you were brilliant in there."
"Thanks," he said, feeling extraordinarily complimented. As the Doctor began to turn away, he stopped him. "Doctor, you never told me who you are. Not really."
"I'm just a traveler," he replied.
Raj's brow furrowed. "Don't you ever stop?"
"No real need to," he said lightly. "I'm a traveler. That's who I am. Come and go, here and there."
"All alone?" Raj asked.
"Yep." The Doctor over-pronounced the p again. He smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes.
"I could, you know, come with," Raj suggested hesitantly. "So you wouldn't be alone."
The Doctor's grin faded, and his face took on a shuttered expression. He shook his head. "No, I don't do that anymore. Used to, but never again."
He turned and entered the TARDIS, and with a wheezing and groaning it disappeared from sight.
Raj stood there, staring at the empty space. "It's not good for man to be alone," he quoted softly before he turned and made his way home.
