A/N: Please note that the character of Kione has been re-named to be Jackson. My apologies for any confusion, it was done for the sake of consistency; and that's all I'm going to say on the matter at this time. Very astute readers/viewers might be able to figure it out on their own. If not, all will be revealed in the next chapter.
This chapter has been excruciatingly difficult to write, for whatever reason, and ended up being almost twice the length of my usual chapters, so I've split it into two. The next chapter should follow fairly quickly since it's mostly written already.
As usual, this is neither beta'd nor Britpicked. Anyone willing to volunteer for either job, please drop me a note.
Chapter 4: In which we learn just what happened to Mickey, and the Doctor and Rose discuss poetry and hair care products.
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If nothing else, Rose found that travelling with the Doctor was definitely a learning experience; a real study in survival, and the nature of human/alien/sentient life. She'd been keeping a running log of lessons she'd learnt along the way; lessons she referred to often when dealing with the particular menace of the day. The list, so far, went something like this:
1. Never underestimate the usefulness of vinegar.
2. Don't take a genius's word for it; they can be pretty stupid sometimes.
3. Never climb a rope without first checking to see where it leads.
Today, she had a new one to add to the list:
4. Never assume anyone is dead, even if you've personally witnessed a catastrophe that they couldn't possibly have survived. Always check for a pulse.
Mickey had a pulse.
He'd taken a full-force blast direct to the head, but somehow, he was still alive.
He had an alien taking up residence inside his body that wanted to eat him from the inside-out, but unbelievably, his heart was still beating.
Rose's entire body went weak with relief as she crouched over Mickey, her tears of sorrow turning to tears of relief. She cried out happily, "Doctor, he's alive!"
"What?" the Doctor asked in bewilderment, as he bent over to examine Mickey, who remained motionless. The sonic screwdriver whirred as the Doctor commented, "heart rate normal, blood pressure 112/76, metabolic functions normal," he trailed off. He squinted questioningly at Mickey, pointed a finger at his mouth and added, "Bit of drool round the mouth there, and by the look of things, he's about to start snoring any time now." He looked up at Rose. "You actually snogged this man?"
Rose, who was still quite irate with him, was not finding this the least bit helpful. For the moment, however, she had other concerns on her mind. "What's happened to the creature?" she asked.
The Doctor continued scanning Mickey's body. "Still there. It's nearly undetectable," he said. Then he looked up at Rose. "It's been knocked out, near as I can tell."
"Jackson said that was impossible," Rose reminded him, stroking Mickey's forehead protectively.
"Jackson hasn't exactly proven himself trustworthy," the Doctor retorted. He leant over and looked Rose in the eye carefully, deliberately and spoke in a gentle voice. "We'll sort it out," he said. "I won't let anything else happen to him. I promise."
There was a time, Rose thought, when these words from him would've warmed her more than a cup of tea sitting by the fireplace in February, but now she just smiled weakly and looked down at the floor.
Just then, they heard rustling across the room. As if responding to the sound of his name, Jackson had started to stir. Immediately, Rose leapt up, grabbed the blaster off the floor, and went over to him. She aimed the weapon directly into his face. Jackson opened his eyes into the barrel of the gun, jumped in surprise, and slid backwards on his arse so that his back was pressed against the wall.
Rose did not waver with her aim for a second, but continued pointing the blaster directly at him. "I ought to shoot you down, right here," she threatened.
The Doctor went over to Jackson, stooped down and pressed the sonic screwdriver up into the base of his chin. "Just so we're clear," he said in his most menacing voice, "that weapon was set to kill, yes?"
"Highest setting," Jackson confirmed with a sneer.
"You never intended to save Mickey," the Doctor snarled angrily.
"There was no way to save him," Jackson replied. Then he remembered, and frantically scanned the ceiling above them where the trap was still deployed, but conspicuously void of its prey. "Where is it? What's happened? Where's the creature?" he asked.
"Mickey's not dead," the Doctor informed him, each word enunciated slowly and meticulously. "The creature is still in him."
"That's impossible," Jackson said in surprise. "I shot him square in the head. How could he survive?" He tried to move to get up, but Rose advanced on him with the blaster as the Doctor pressed the screwdriver harder up into his chin.
"Give me one good reason why my friend shouldn't pull that trigger right now," the Doctor growled at him, their faces so close that their noses almost touched.
"I'm the only one who understands the creature," Jackson replied. "Please. Let me look at him," he pleaded desperately.
"Understand it?" Rose laughed darkly. "You've no idea what just happened with Mickey. You don't understand a thing."
"Why isn't he in pain?" Jackson asked desperately. "If he's not dead, if the creature is still there, why isn't he screaming?"
"It's been disabled. Knocked out," the Doctor explained, loosening his grip on Jackson and backing away in deference to Rose and the weapon she still had trained on Jackson.
"Knocked out? How can that be?" Jackson repeated. "Please let me look at him," he implored them, looking back and forth between Rose and the Doctor.
"Your call, Rose," the Doctor deferred. "He might be able to offer some help with this creature, but of course he said he would help before, and we all know where that led."
"I'm not going to kill him," Jackson entreated, looking back and forth between Rose and the Doctor. "Really. I'm telling the truth. There may be another way. I've never seen the Entity knocked out before. I'm not going to shoot him if there's a chance. I'm not a murderer." He shot a glance back at Rose, who was still aiming the weapon at him and looking doubtful. "Couldn't shoot him if I wanted to, anyway, you've got the blaster. What d'you think I could possibly do to him?"
Rose sighed in resignation, and motioned for him to go over to Mickey's unconscious figure on the floor. She did not lower the weapon. "Just give me one reason to shoot, and you're done," she threatened him.
Jackson obliged, knelt down next to Mickey and started examining him as the Doctor joined him on Mickey's other side. Jackson indicated one of his tools that was on the floor and the Doctor passed it to him.
"By all appearances, he's sleeping," the Doctor explained. "Heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, metabolic functions, all normal, you'd never know there was a creature in there ravenous enough to devour an entire blue whale as an appetizer before a twelve-course meal if it weren't for-"
Jackson looked up at the Doctor with a frosty glare, clearly indicating that he intended to conduct the examination alone.
"Right. Fine, fine," the Doctor said, eyebrows raised and lips pursed as he watched Jackson work with the slightest hint of bemusement. Then he stood up in acquiescence and made his way over next to Rose, where he paused by her outstretched arm, looking as if to say something. Apparently deciding otherwise, he closed his mouth, turned away and stood quietly.
Rose, who was watching Jackson's every move for the slightest hint of trickery, was finding the Doctor's presence – particularly the uncharacteristic silence about him – unnerving. This feeling was not lessened a bit when he circled around behind her and paused again. She could feel the fabric of his coat brush against her back, making her catch her breath in spite of herself. Her hand aiming the weapon at Jackson wobbled.
And then she heard him sniffing in short bursts of breath behind her, sounding rather like a dog who's picked up the scent of bacon, and she rounded on him, at once bothered and curious. "Something I can do for you?" she asked directly to his face, then quickly turned back to face her target.
"Something's different," came his voice behind her, perplexed. "Are you using a new conditioner?"
Rose might have thought she was hearing things if she hadn't felt him briefly fingering a lock of her hair. "Mickey's got an alien inside him that wants to devour him from the inside out, we've got a man trying to kill him, and you're asking me about my hair care products?" she asked, incredulous.
"Good a time as any," the Doctor replied, coming round to face her with a shrug. "We might as well have a chat while we wait. I was going to mention the football scores, but you haven't seen the 2408 World Cup, and really, there's hardly a match worth discussing after seeing that one. Simply amazing, that. Those Belgians were unstoppable." He grinned one of his most charming smiles at her. "But then I noticed the aroma about you."
Rose gritted her teeth. "That shopkeeper on the jungle planet last week had a scented wash. I liked the smell so I tried it out," she explained, more to quiet him down than anything else.
He was behind her again, leaning in for another sniff of her hair. "Bit spicy for you, don't you think?" he said after a brief silence.
"What's wrong with spicy?" she asked, feeling positively dizzy from the ups and downs and twists and turns, and absurd range of emotions that had become a fact of life since this Doctor had come into being. She doubted she'd ever get used to it.
"You're Rose, you should smell as sweet," he replied, and before she had a chance to roll her eyes at the cliché, she felt his cheek brushing against her hair behind her, and froze. He continued, speaking softly into her ear, "When love first came to Earth, the Spring spread Rose-beds to receive him." She felt each consonant as a tiny gust of warm air against her ear as she stood there, transfixed. Her heartbeat quickened and the blaster suddenly felt like it had quadrupled in weight, as she thought to herself, he's not, he can't mean…
"Thomas Campbell, poet," he explained, his tone noticeably more buoyant. "And then there's Yeats," he went on, "Rose of all Roses, Rose of all the World! You, too have come where the dim tides are hurled. Upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring, The bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing." He gave a dramatic pause and continued, shaking his head. "No, Rose. Rose Tyler, with a name that poets have written about for millennia, a name that represents the very essence of sweetness and love and springtime, no, Rose, 'spicy' is definitely not the way to go for you."
She had the distinct and rather odd impression that he was looking for excuses to say her name. She wasn't sure how she felt about this.
"Are you sure the creature didn't escape?" interrupted Jackson's baffled voice from across the room.
"Oh, so now you want help?" the Doctor asked, with more than a hint of peevishness about him. "Do a level II isomorphic scan, you'll see it there," he relented. Then he came round to face Rose again, and with a wink and a click of his tongue, Rose's mind was flooded with memories of tin dogs and clockwork droids and banana daiquiris, and the spell was effectively broken.
"D'you actually need something, or are you just hanging round here to smell my hair and talk about football matches while Mickey lies there helpless?" she asked, a fresh dose of annoyance in her voice.
He actually looked guilty for a moment. "Oh, no," he replied, shaking his head. And then he backtracked. "Well, yes. I just wondered if I could maybe have a look at that." He indicated the sonic blaster that was still trained on Jackson. "It might provide a clue as to what happened and why it didn't kill Mickey."
"I'm using it right now," Rose reminded him, eyebrows raised, sounding much like she was speaking to a five-year-old.
"Right, right," the Doctor replied, nodding and taking a deep breath. "But, really though…" he hesitated in mid-sentence.
"What?" Rose asked, increasingly impatient with his attitude. He clearly had something on his mind and she couldn't fathom why he was being so hesitant about it.
"I mean, it doesn't look like Mickey's in any imminent danger," he nodded towards Jackson, who was continuing his examination, "so it's not like you're actually going to use that, if you get my meaning," the Doctor finally blurted out. "Right?" he asked, his voice suddenly tinged with doubt.
"Use it on Jackson, you mean?" Rose replied, clenching her jaw and glaring at him with fire in her eyes.
"Rose," he reproached, quietly, knowingly.
She sighed, lowered the weapon and handed it to him.
The Doctor began examining it, turning it over in his hands and scanning with the sonic screwdriver. A moment later he looked up at Jackson. "Where did you get this?" he asked.
"Local mini-mart," Jackson replied cynically, as he opened up Mickey's eyes and shone a light into each one. "Picked it up round the corner."
"You nicked this off a Time Agent, didn't you?" the Doctor accused. "51st century if I'm correct, and I usually am. You're not from around here, are you, Jackson? Been doing a bit of time travel yourself?"
"And what business is it of yours?" Jackson asked defiantly.
"Oh, none, really," replied the Doctor, shaking his head. "It's just what I do; stick my nose into other people's business. Quite a lot, really. Sort of a hobby of mine. I really should find something better to do with myself." He rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully, then brightened suddenly. "Fishing!" he shouted, loud enough to make Rose and Jackson jump. He waggled a finger at Rose. "When we're done here, Rose, we're going fishing. Nice, quiet hobby, away from other people, we couldn't possibly get into trouble there."
Rose sincerely doubted this, and had a sudden vision of the three of them in a rowboat, being swallowed by a carnivorous mutant trout, or fighting radioactive frogs, but she held her tongue.
"But for now," the Doctor continued, "My friend is involved, and that makes it my business. So where'd you get this blaster? I'm betting you're not a Time Agent yourself, or you'd already know why it didn't work on Mickey. Where's it from, Jackson?"
Jackson sighed in defeat, took a deep breath and replied, all the while continuing his examination. "I never knew who she was," he began. "I was tracking the Entity, found its latest victim in the attic of an abandoned farmhouse, screaming, trying to stab himself in the gut with a rusty spoon in order to put an end to his pain." Jackson shuddered visibly. "I tried to help him, much like you're trying to help your friend now. He didn't want to be saved. Ended up giving me this." Jackson indicated a scar on his chin.
He was silent for a moment, the loudest pause that Rose had ever heard, echoing with screaming, tortured victims of the Edacious Entity. Then Jackson continued, "he'd been dead a full twenty minutes before I noticed there was another body in the room. Gnarled and emaciated. She'd been dead long before I ever got there. I found the blaster on the floor next to her."
"This was a Time Agency weapon," the Doctor stated conclusively.
"How d'you know?" Rose asked.
"Explains everything," the Doctor replied brightly. "It's set to detect Artron energy. Residual energy from the Vortex carried by all time travellers."
"So?" Jackson asked impatiently.
"If it senses it, it adjusts to a lower level blast. Well, not exactly lower level, once you've fired a full-force blast you can't retract it. So it mixes in a dash of Kesilon energy. Takes the edge off. Reins in the strength of the discharge."
"Why?" Rose asked.
"Prevents friendly fire accidents," the Doctor explained. "Sort of like a bullet proof vest for Time Agents."
"So when Jackson fired this at Mickey," Rose clarified, "it detected the Artron energy on him because he's travelled in time, assumed he was a Time Agent, and pulled the punch?"
"Exactly," the Doctor confirmed. "Mind you, time travellers can still be bad guys, so the blaster still delivers a wallop of a blow, but not enough to kill. Looks like it had quite an effect on that creature, though."
"I hate to break up this chat," interjected Jackson, "but your friend is starting to go into shock. If we don't get him some help soon we may not have to wait for the creature to do the killing."
tbc