The plot thickens. All mistakes are my own and I wrote this fairly quickly. Hopefully it's not terrible.
In the Console Room, the Doctor was having an epic battle with the TARDIS. He'd begged, he'd pleaded, he'd cajoled and she was absolutely refusing to put them on Bilanisky IV. He was trying to impress the Uncrowned Queen of France. Golden streets! Very impressive. And safe. Very safe. Bilanisky was safe as houses. And he definitely needed safe, because, as his Time Sense and his TARDIS kept screaming at him, of all the stupid, idiotic, spotty-faced youthful mistakes to have made...He'd just removed a very important historical human from her Timeline.
And all because he couldn't handle the one in his TARDIS.
The one who was currently standing over to the side of the room with her arms crossed against her chest in a manner that again eerily reminded him of his past self, looking stony. Choosing to ignore the fact that he knew in his hearts why she was looking like that, he breezed past it. The truth was an awfully complicated little bugger and it was much easier to ignore it.
So...Rose looked stony. Which, of course, had nothing to do with him. And whenever Rose looked stony, chocolate was in order.
"Is there something wrong, Doctor?" Reinette asked in a honeyed tone from her position on the pilot's bench, Rose's normal position, something traitorous in his brain noted.
"The TARDIS and I are just having a little misunderstanding at the moment. She doesn't seem to want to go where I want to go," he huffed.
"Maybe we should listen to her -" Rose began. She could feel the apprehension in the TARDIS about this place.
"Don't be stupid, Rose. She's just being stubborn," the Doctor snapped at her without thinking, more forcefully than he intended. Why was the TARDIS being so damn difficult?
Rose flinched and turned away. Stupid. As in stupid ape. As in stupid, low-class, chav of a...She settled down further into her leather jacket.
Reinette sniffed. "It is just a machine, Doctor. Surely a brilliant man like you can make a simple machine do whatever he likes," she said, sidling up close to him and leaning into his arm, placing one hand over his on the console.
Furious at her dismissal of the TARDIS, Rose bristled and turned back, not sure how much of her anger was really hers and how much was coming from the TARDIS herself. In the days since the Bad Wolf it was often difficult to tell.
She opened her mouth to retort, expecting to be in chorus with an indignant Doctor, who instead said, "Quite right, too!" shocking both Rose and the TARDIS and whacking the console with his mallet and literally forcing the ship to into a landing sequence. Bilanisky was the safest place he could think of and, despite his anger at Reinette's words to the TARDIS, he wasn't going to let the ship's anger at him for bringing her along keep him from going where he wanted to go.
The ship howled in anger and fury and three of the four occupants of the room were thrown violently to the ground. The Doctor shot to his feet to help Reinette up and called "All right there, Mr. Mickey?" to the disgruntled, tangled limbed Mickey who had just entered the room. His head whipped around to check on Rose who was, very surprisingly, still on her feet, although hanging onto one of the coral struts as though it were a lifeline. She was looking pale and slightly shell-shocked, caressing the coral and, for moment, he thought he heard her thoughts reaching out to the TARDIS, soothing the ship. Before he could think too long on that, the TARDIS hit his with barrage after barrage of scathing thoughts. She was very, very angry with him right now.
"Rose?" he called, tentatively. Her head shot up and for a moment, he swore her eyes blazed golden fury at him before settling into a cool, neutral hazel. The expression was disconcerting and he shook his head, turning from her.
"Well then! Here we are! Streets of gold, fountains of chocolate!" he said, clapping his hands and striding over to the doors. As soon as his hand reached the handle, a sharp shock went through it into his fingers.
He swore colorfully in Gallifreyan and Reinette rushed over to take his burnt hand into hers. Rose, he noticed, did not rush over nor look particularly concerned for him. "Oh! Are you all right?" Reinette cooed, flipping his hand over to examine it.
"I'm always all right!" he said with a dazzling grin. He pulled open the doors, striding out quickly followed by the three humans, Reinette stepping up to lock her arm through his, Mickey trailing behind her, eagerly swinging his head around searching for chocolate and gold and Rose with one last pat to the TARDIS before carefully shutting the door.
The TARDIS sent one last beg, one last plea to her not to go out, not to leave but Rose shook her head. She'd do this for Mickey. For the Doctor. She'd play the gracious host, she'd keep an eye on the courtesan.
"Doesn't look very golden to me," Mickey said, peering around him, looking disappointed. So far the Doctor was 0 for 2 in his book and was hurting Rose to boot.
"Well, of course not, Rickey," the Doctor responded, tersely. "We're inside a house," he snapped. Something was wrong. Something felt wrong. "Outside we go," he said, itching to move, to run, to do something.
They stepped out of the house...
And into a warzone.
-
Explosion after explosion rocked the deserted and desecrated golden streets around them. Rose, Mickey, the Doctor and Reinette ducked into an alley across the street from the home they'd just left, attempting to take cover.
"We've got to get back in there! We've got to get back into the TARDIS!" the Doctor shouted over the explosions, shielding Reinette with his body. Oh, Rassilon. What had he done? He'd put them all in danger. And if something happened to Reinette, human history - the history of the universe itself - was going to start unravelling.
Rose started to dart out into the street to cross over to the TARDIS when another massive explosion rocked the neighborhood. The Doctor cried out for her, attempting to disentangle himself from the fearful Frenchwoman to get to her in the confusion. In that moment, he forgot about Timelines, forgot about history forgot about pushing her away and saw only Rose and Death. He had to get to her! But he had to protect Reinette. When the dust had settled, he saw Mickey lying on top of Rose, with rubble surrounding them. The strangled cry from his lungs went unheard in the mass of confusion but he saw Mickey stand and help Rose stagger to her feet and he thought maybe he would pass out from relief.
Until he looked across the street. The house where the TARDIS had been resting was now a massive crater. Leaving Reinette in a puddle of taffetta on the street, he sprinted over to the hole in the ground and thought, perhaps, he could see a flash of blue at the bottom, buried under hundreds of pounds of rock and debris.
He fell to his knees beside the hole. He could feel her down there, buried and in pain, alive but trapped. She'd known. Of course she'd known, his brave, beautiful ship and he'd forced them here anyway. As the Doctor watched, a large rock teetered on the edge of the crater and then fell the full distance down to land heavily on the spot where the TARDIS was and he felt her flinch and whimper in his mind.
Hold on. That whimper hadn't come from the TARDIS. He turned slowly around to see Rose on her knees in Mickey's arms, holding her head and whimpering. She raised it momentarily to say something incomprehensible to Mickey and the Doctor felt a powerful wave of jealousy wash over him. It should be his arms Rose was in, not Rickey's. It should be him she was whispering to, it should be him who had saved her, it should be him wiping the blood from her cheek.
What?
He sprung into action once more, roughly pushing past an indignant Mickey to cup Rose's face in his palm. "Rose -"
" 'm fine," she managed, reaching a hand out to Mickey, who pulled her to her feet and out of the Doctor's grasp.
"You're bleeding," he began.
"Oh, Doctor!" Reinette cried in a frenzy, flinging herself on him, sobbing. "What is going on? Where are we? Whatever will we do?" She was frightened, sure, but not nearly this much. She could keep her head cool if needed, although this situation was certainly far out of her training. But she certainly wasn't going to let a golden opportunity to play the distressed maiden to the charming hero go to the scrawny blonde with a little cut on her cheek.
"We've got to get out of the street," the Doctor said, pulling her with him and casting another concerned gaze over at Mickey and Rose. He was going to get the Frenchwoman off him and he was going to look at Rose's cheek whether she liked it or not. "I'm not sure what's going on...there shouldn't be any wars of any sort on this planet. Period."
The explosions seemed to have levelled off for the moment at least and an eerie calm had settled over the desolate landscape in their wake. There seemed to be no people around at all, not that he could blame them.
Once inside another hollowed out husk of a home, Reinette settled disdainfully onto the remains of a dining chair, Mickey paced and Rose slid to the floor with her back to the wall. The Doctor walked over and crouched in front of her. "Rose, let me see your cheek," he said, quietly.
"It's fine," she mumbled into her hands. The sharp sting of the cut there was nothing compared to the throbbing pain in her head. The TARDIS' pain.
"It's not fine," he said, vehemently. "You're hurt and that's never fine." He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up, removing the hands covering it immediately. "Just a surface scratch," he said, examining it with tender fingers. The sonic came out and, with a slight adjustment, the scratch was repaired. "Better?" he asked, softly.
"Yeah," Rose replied, both a truth and a lie. The cut, yes. Her head, no. The way he was looking at her, lips just millimeters away, radiating concern and affection...the jury was still out. Mickey cleared his throat and the Doctor sprang away, the expression closing up instantly.
No, apparently.
Mickey saw the way Rose's face crumpled as the Doctor strode away, over to check the tart. She'd forgiven the sorry git already. Well, he hadn't. And, scary alien bloke or not, he wasn't going to let anyone hurt his Rose.
"What now, Doc?" Mickey asked.
"I don't know what's going on here," the Doctor muttered, more to himself than to Mickey. "This isn't right. Bilanisky is safe. Supposed to be safe. Gold and chocolate, noble royal family, height of music and fashion..." he continued to mutter. "Castle," he finally said, out loud. "We've got to get to the castle. Whatever's happening here is probably centered there."
The sooner this got sorted out, the sooner he could get the TARDIS unearthed and the sooner he could get Reinette back to her Timeline and everything could get back to normal.
Whatever the hell normal was.
