Chapter 2

What You Leave Behind

It had been over thirteen years since the Doctor had taken Amy, Rose, and Martha with him. During the weekdays he would have them on Earth so they could go to school to learn and be normal girls. But on the weekends he would take them all over the galaxy and throughout time. They had seen so many beautiful things. Things that no human had seen before and they owed it all to their father, the Doctor.

All three girls were in university and it surprised him that Martha was the only one that wanted to become a doctor. She had said that her experiences with him, inspired her to take up the occupation. Amy was currently in police academy, inspired by how the Doctor defended people he didn't know and Rose took up astrology and physics out of love of space and what she knew was out there. She hoped that maybe one day she could help be an ambassador for mankind if and when aliens came to Earth.

They were a big happy if not sometimes dysfunctional family. It was a happiness that wasn't meant to last much longer.

The Tardis

The Doctor sat in his recliner wearing reading glasses and laughing at the mornings paper. It always amused him to no end how many things they had gotten wrong. Hearing the doors open, he looked up to see his girls walk into the control room, dripping wet from rain water and carrying groceries.

It still amazed him to this day how beautiful and smart the three of them had become. But then he raised them so to think again it wasn't much of a surprise at all.

"Is it wet enough for you girls out there?" the Doctor teased as Amy gave him an irritated glance.

"Ha ha ha, Da." Amy said as she placed the bags on the floor and started to shake her head to get the rain water out of her face and hair.

"Been hanging around your Irish friends again, I see." the Doctor replied with a smile as he turned back around and started to read his paper. "And here I thought you were Scottish?"

"Are you going to help us with these groceries or not?" Rose asked him.

"Oh, I'm coming." he said playfully as he stood up and grabbed a few bags. As they placed the groceries in the cupboard, the girls went to their rooms to take a shower and then get dressed. Walking back to the console room, Amy and Rose saw Martha curled up on the couch with her head on the Doctor's lap. He was gently stroking her hair as she told him about her fears about her future and he in turn told her how proud he was of her that she would be graduating school in a couple of years and that he would be there for her to see it.

Amy was about to walk back to her room and let them stay lost in this intimate moment of being father and daughter until Rose suddenly cleared her throat. Looking up Martha wiped her eyes and regarded her sisters. As they sat down on the couch and joined them, they changed the subject and started to talk about their day.

"I'm bored." the Doctor announced as the group fell into an uncomfortable silence.

"We can always go on a little adventure." Amy suggested, happily.

"Nah, I'd just rather sit here today." he replied as he then looked over to Rose. "Read to me. I'd fancy hearing your voice right now." as he sat down in his recliner, he watched as Rose happily went to the mini library in the console room and started looking at books. Before she could ask him what he wanted to hear the door to the Tardis suddenly slammed shut on its own and the time rotor activated, throwing everyone around. "What?" the Doctor said as he jumped to his feet. "What?"

"How are you doing this?" Amy asked as she and the others ran towards the main console.

"I didn't touch anything." the Doctor told her as he checked his instruments. "We're in flight. It's not me."

"Where are we going?" Rose asked as she went over to another monitor and tried to type into a console with no success.

"I don't know." he informed her as everyone hung on to the console. "The Tardis is out of control!"

"It's never done this before... at least not since we've been 'ere." Amy said as she looked at her sisters and then to her father. "This is impossible."

"Not impossible." The Doctor said as he tried to work the controls. "Just a bit unlikely."

There was a sudden bang, and sparks, then stillness and peace as the Tarids finally landed. Grabbing his coat the Doctor ran outside and sniffed the air before seeing a beautiful Victorian styled house in the distance. Understanding where they were, he ran back inside and nearly bumped into his girls, who watched him intently.

"Well?" Rose asked as she crossed her arms.

"We're still in London." he announced as he walked over to a terminal and opened up a panel.

"Why did the Tardis do all of that just to bring us back to where we started?" Amy asked as she walked over to him and peeked over his shoulder.

"Because it didn't."

"But you just said..."

"We are in London but we're about ten years in the future." the Doctor explained.

Ten years? Rose thought to herself. Maybe I should just take a peek. As she thought that, she tuned back in to what her sisters and father were talking about.

"I don't know how we got here." the Doctor was saying. "Accident? Should've been impossible to come here without someone flying us here. Now we're trapped because the Tardis is dead."

"What's that?" Martha asked as she got down and looked under the panel.

"What?" Amy asked as Martha pointed at a tiny green light.

"It's a light!" the Doctor yelled excitedly. "Is it? Is that a light? I think that's a light. That's all we need. We've got power! Martha, we've got power! Hot dog!" Taking his sonic screwdriver, he got down below the main part of the console and examined the light. "It's alive!"

"What is it?" Amy asked.

"It's nothing." the Doctor replied as he licked at his dry lips. "It's tiny. One of those insignificant little power cells that no one ever bothers about, and it's clinging onto life, with one little ounce of time travel tucked away inside."

"Is it enough to get us home?" said Amy.

"Not yet." the Doctor said as he scanned the power cell. "I need to charge it up."

"We could go outside and lash it up to the National Grid." the beautiful redhead suggested.

"Wrong sort of energy. It's got to come from our universe."

"But we don't have anything."

"There's me." the Doctor said as he cradled the green light in his hands and blew on it, making it gets brighter. "I just gave away ten years of my life. Worth every second."

Seeing that they were distracted, Rose grabbed her jacket and quickly walked out of the door.

"It's going out. Is that okay?" said Amy, trying to understand what was happening.

"It's on a recharging cycle. It'll loop round, power back up and be ready to take us home in, ooh, twelve hours or so." the Doctor figured. "In the meantime we all have to stay here. I've always taken you girls to the far off future so you'd never see what's in your immediate future. Too many things could go wrong if you did."

It took at least seven hours for them to figure out that Rose was gone. Making Martha and Amy promise that they would stay in the Tardis the Doctor walked out to find his blond haired daughter. As he went outside to investigate where she might have gone, he looked up at the Victorian home and thought that it was as good a place as any to check out first.

As he walked up to and then into the home, he saw that it stood abandoned. By the looks of the dust on the furniture and the putrid smell of what he believed was long dead fruit.

"Rose are you here?" the Doctor called out as he walked through the kitchen and into the living room.

"Dad?" Rose asked back as she walked into the living room.

"Rose Elizabeth Smith, what on Earth are you doing out here?" The Doctor asked. "I didn't tell you it was okay to leave the Tardis."

"You wouldn't understand." she replied in disappointment as she turned from him.

"Then make me understand." he said as he turned her around.

"I... I... wanted to contact my future self." Rose confessed as she finally met his gaze. "The phone here is dead but the truth is, I wanted to know if I ever found my parents."

Before the Doctor could reply and to let her know that time didn't work like that, the floodlights suddenly came on, back-lighting rows of marching figures, dainty as elephants. Heavy metal boots clumped across the lawn and upon hearing the noise the Doctor and Rose ran to the window in the front room.

"It's happening again." the Doctor muttered with wide eyes. Both of his hearts beating a little faster.

"What do you mean?" Rose asked as he looked back to her.

"I've seen them before." he replied as they started to come into view. Truth be told someone from his past had created the Cybermen. It was a man that he once held close like a brother.

"What are they?" said the beautiful blond as she saw a hint of metal.

"Cybermen."

"What are they, robots?"

"Worse than that."

"They're people?" Rose asked as she gave him a look.

"They were, until they had all their humanity taken away." the Doctor explained. "That's a living brain jammed inside a cybernetic body, with a heart of steel. All emotions removed."

"Why no emotions?"

"Because it hurts." as he said that the Cybermen smashed through a series of French windows in the other room, while others marched in through the house. Rose and the Doctor were surrounded.

"Human lifesigns were detected." one of the Cybermen said as it looked at Rose. "You will be upgraded."

"Into what?" she asked as she took a step back.

"Into us." the Cybermen told her. "Cybermen now occupy every land mass on this planet and have converted all human life. But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class and color and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us."

So that's why the Tardis brought us here. the Doctor thought to himself. It wanted us to see that in the future the Cybermen will take over. But I thought I'd destroyed them all.

"You are a rouge element." the Cybermen said, breaking the Doctor's train of thought as he scanned him.

"What?" the age old spaceman asked.

"You are incompatible."

"But, I'll surrender." the Doctor replied as he lifted up his hands.

"You will be deleted."

"But I'm surrendering!" the Doctor replied as he brought his hand up a little higher.

"You are inferior." the Cyberman told him. "The last of man will be reborn as Cybermen, but you will perish under maximum deletion." as it said that the Cybermen held out their deadly arms towards him. "Delete. Delete. Delete!"

"Well this is quite the pickle." the Doctor said as he quickly reached into his jacket and pointed the recharging Tardis power cell at the Cybermen, who get bent backwards then atomised by the golden energy coming from it. "Run!" he shouted as they ran out of the house.

A row of Cybermen stopped them from running across the lawn. Turning back, they ran around the side of the house and saw the Tardis in the distance.

"Quick! Quick!" Rose yelled out as she saw that more legions of Cybermen were on the move. Just short of five feet away from the Tardis, the Doctor fell to his knees as he was shot in the back by one of the Cybermen's weapons. As Rose cried out his name, he raised up his arm to touch her face only to be shot in the back again as darkness finally claimed him.

A/N I changed Rose, Martha, and Amy's last name to Smith because they don't know their real last names because they were adopted. For schooling purposes the Doctor used the last name Smith on the adoption papers he forged for them.