Notes: Sorry for the delay. Editing took a little longer than usual. Please review! :D
Chapter 7 – The Heart of the Wolf: Part 2
The Doctor and Rose watched in horror and Idris in shock as the blue box disappeared before their eyes. Rose tried repeatedly to call them back on her mobile, but couldn't connect.
"Okay, right. I don't, I really don't know what to do. That's a new feeling. Well, I suppose there was one other time, but I was too busy wallowing in self pity at the loss of my wife at the time," the Doctor admitted, feeling almost as lost for the moment. He had no way of getting them back into the universe with their son, no way to save Amy and Rory, and no way that the TARDIS could continue surviving this way.
"It's gone," he moaned despondently.
"Eaten?" Idris asked.
"No, it left. Not eaten, hi-jacked. But why?" the Doctor wondered.
"It's time for us both to go, and keep together," Auntie announced as she and Uncle approached them.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Go? What do you mean, go? Where are you going?" the Doctor protested.
"Well, we're dying, my love. It's time for Auntie and Uncle to pop off," she told him.
"I'm against it," Uncle mumbled.
"It's your fault, isn't it, sweets? Because you told House it was the last TARDIS. House can't feed on them if there's none more coming, can he?" Auntie explained.
"So now he's off to your universe to find more TARDISes," Uncle concluded as they both sat down.
"It won't," the Doctor insisted angrily.
"Oh, it'll think of something," Auntie told him and collapsed in a heap, like a marionette with its strings cut.
"Actually, I feel fine," Uncle told them before he similarly crumpled.
"Not dead. You can't just die!" the Doctor shouted. How was he supposed to outsmart the enemy if they all just left him there?
"We need to go to where I landed, Doctor, quickly," Idris announced suddenly.
"Why?" he questioned, frustrated with all of his options being pulled away before he could make a solid plan.
"Because we are there in three minutes. We need to go now. Ow!" she gasped suddenly and grabbed her side.
"What is it, sweetheart? What's wrong?" Rose asked as she helped her to stay on her feet.
"Roughly how long do these bodies last?" Idris wondered, calculating.
"You're dying," the Doctor realized.
"Yes, of course I'm dying. I don't belong in a flesh body. I could blow the casing in no time. No, stop. You're the Doctor. Focus," she responded firmly.
"On what? How? I'm a madman with a box, without a box. There's no telling what will happen to Rose if you die, and then what? I'm stuck down the plughole at the end of the universe in a stupid old junkyard. Oooh!"
"Ooo what?" Idris questioned.
"I think he's thought of something," Rose beamed.
"Darn right I have, because it's not," he answered confusingly.
"Not what?" Idris wondered.
"Because it's not a junkyard. Don't you see? It's not a junkyard," he told them.
"What is it then?" she asked, thinking that this verbal communication thing was really inefficient.
"It's a parts shop," Rose realized, thinking back on all the times he had dragged her shopping for mechanical junk.
The Doctor bopped her on the nose and stated, "It's a TARDIS junkyard. Come on! Oh, sorry. Do you have a name?"
"Seven hundred years, finally he asks," Idris responded haughtily.
"But what do I call you?" he wondered.
"I think you call me, Sexy."
Rose bent double laughing at that.
"Only when we're alone," he said to Sexy quietly.
"Oh no, you go right ahead!" Rose insisted through her laughter. "I am not getting between you two."
"Oh. Come on then, Sexy. And, I think maybe we need to find a new pet name for you, my love. I'll have to think on that," the Doctor said as he pulled both of them by the hands towards the larger piles of parts.
"A valley of half eaten TARDISes. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" the Doctor asked as they looked out over a huge valley filled with broken pieces of hundreds of ships.
"I'm thinking that all of my sisters are dead. That they were devoured, and that we are looking at their corpses," Sexy replied and Rose hugged her tightly.
"Ah. Sorry. No, I wasn't thinking that," he responded sadly.
"No. You were thinking you could build a working TARDIS console out of broken remnants of a hundred different models. And you don't care that it's impossible," Sexy explained.
"Oh, you know what we think of the word impossible," Rose said encouragingly.
"It's not impossible as long as we're alive. Rory and Amy need us. So do Jamie and that new little TARDIS you've got growing for him. So yeah, we're going to build a TARDIS," the Doctor assured them.
Sexy sat casually on a nearby rock as the Doctor and Rose pulled the various parts they would need together. "Bond the tube directly into the Tachyon Diverter," the TARDIS consciousness instructed.
"Yes, yes, I have actually rebuilt a TARDIS before, you know. I know what I'm doing," he grumbled.
"You're like a nine year old trying to rebuild a motorbike in his bedroom. And you never read the instructions," Sexy countered.
"I always read the instructions," he argued.
"What like the manual that you threw into a supernova?" Rose teased him.
"There's a sign on my front door. You have been walking past it for seven hundred years. What does it say?" Sexy asked pointedly.
"That's not instructions!"
"There's an instruction at the bottom. What does it say?" she insisted.
"Pull to open," he admitted.
"Yes. And what do you do?"
"I push," he answered angrily.
"I thought that was just for the little phone cupboard thing? You pull to access the phone, yeah?" Rose voiced her thoughts on the instruction.
"There! You see? Brilliant my Rose is and she agrees with me!" he crowed triumphantly.
"Every single time. Seven hundred years. Police Box doors open out the way," Sexy continued to grumble.
"I think I have earned the right to open my front doors any way I want," he argued petulantly.
"Your front doors? Have you any idea how childish that sounds?" Sexy chastised.
"You are not my mother," he responded, sounding even more childish.
"And you are not my child," she countered.
"You know, since we're talking with mouths, not really an opportunity that comes along very often, I just want to say, you know, you have never been very reliable," he told her accusingly.
"And you have?" Sexy replied indignantly.
"You didn't always take me where I wanted to go," he accused.
"No, but I always took you where you needed to go," she answered.
"You did. Rose, she does! Look at us talking. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could always talk, even when you're stuck inside the box?" he babbled happily.
"You know I'm not constructed that way. I exist across all space and time, and you talk and run around and bring home strays," she told him, almost sadly.
"Oi! Strays?" Rose protested.
"Not you, my Wolf. You have always belonged with us. You knew that at one point, you'll know it all again soon," she responded, then suddenly collapsed.
"You okay?" the Doctor questioned as they both helped to support her.
"One of the kidneys has already failed. It doesn't matter. We need to finish assembling the console," Sexy informed him.
"I'm starting to feel a bit dizzy again, love," Rose informed him.
"Must be your connection to her. Using a console without a proper shell. It's not going to be safe," he commented.
"This body has about eighteen minutes left to live. If I am not back in my proper form by then, my Wolf will be without her heart. Also, the universe we're in will reach Absolute Zero in three hours. Safe is relative," Sexy insisted.
"Then we need to get a move on. Eh, Old Girl?" he replied.
Rose and the Doctor worked quickly to get the cobbled together console finished. Sexy gave them directions periodically, much to the Doctor's dismay.
"How is this going to make it through the rift? How? We're almost done. Thrust diffuser? Er, retroscope. Blue thingy," he rambled absently as he attached the last few parts.
"Do you ever wonder why I chose you all those years ago?" Sexy asked him as she examined some of the other parts lying around the place.
"I chose you. You were unlocked," he argued.
"Of course I was. I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away. And you were the only one mad enough," she informed him.
Rose laughed. Of course between him and his ship, they would each feel that they were the one in control. It was mutual, she knew, but even the ship had an ego to match his.
"Right. Perfect. Look at that. What could possibly go wrong?" the Doctor announced proudly. Of course, one of the parts chose that moment to spring off onto the ground. Rose raised a speculative eyebrow at him and he responded, "That's fine. That always happens. No, hang on. Wait." He attached what looked like a red rope to keep people in line at the theatre and smiled proudly.
"Right. Okay, let's go. Follow that TARDIS!" he shouted as he flicked the controls to get it moving, however, nothing happened. "Oh no, come on. There's rift energy everywhere. You can do it. Okay, diverting all power to thrust. Let's be having you," he argued with the machine as Sexy examined her face in a small mirror attached to the console.
"Why isn't it working?" Rose shouted over the small explosions that were occurring.
"No, no, no, no!" he cried as he tried to keep the device from being damaged in the malfunction.
"What's wrong?" Sexy wondered.
"It can't hold the charge. It can't even start. There's no power. I've got nothing," he sighed in frustration.
"Oh, my beautiful idiot. You have what you've always had. You've got me," she replied as she kissed her finger and began to glow with golden energy. Rose, beside her, began to glow as well, her eyes trailing wisps of the vortex. Sexy twined her fingers with Rose's and together, they touched the time rotor, making it spring to life.
The Doctor shouted happily and piloted their makeshift craft to follow the beloved blue box.
"We've locked onto them. They'll have to lower the shields when I'm close enough to phase inside," Sexy shouted, the winds of the vortex whipping them around violently.
"Can you get a message to Amy? The telepathic circuits are online," the Doctor responded.
"Which one's Amy? The pretty one?" Sexy questioned. "Hello, Pretty," she said into the monitor where they could see Rory's face.
"What the hell is that?" Rory asked confusedly.
"Don't worry. Telepathic messaging. No, that's Rory," the Doctor told her between striking the controls roughly.
"You have to go to the old control room. I'm putting the route in your head. When you get there use the purple slider on the nearest panel to lower the shields," Sexy instructed.
"The pretty one?" the Doctor gasped when he suddenly realized what she had said. Rose laughed at his response.
"You'll have about twelve seconds before the room goes into phase with the invading Matrix. I'll send you the pass key when you get there. Good luck," Sexy continued.
"How's he going to be able to take down the shields anyway? The House is in the control room," the Doctor wondered.
"I directed him to one of the old control rooms," Sexy replied.
"Ooh, is it the coral one?" Rose asked excitedly and Sexy nodded to her.
"There aren't any old control rooms. They were all deleted or remodelled," he argued.
"I archived them, for neatness. I've got about thirty now," she corrected him.
"But I've only changed the desktop, what, a dozen times?" he responded, wondering how she could have things archived that he didn't know about.
"So far, yes," she agreed.
"You can't archive something that hasn't happened yet," he insisted.
"You can't," she told him factually, making Rose giggle.
"Keep going. You're doing it, you sexy thing," the Doctor shouted happily.
"See, you do call me that. Is it my name?" Sexy asked.
"You bet it's your name!" he called back to her.
"Should I be jealous over here?" Rose teased, her eyes still glowing with golden light.
"Oh, come here!" her husband responded and pulled her to stand in front of him as he continued working the controls around her and nuzzled her neck with a little growl that promised more later.
"They did it. Shields down," Sexy announced suddenly and the Doctor hit the controls to materialize wherever Rory and Amy had found themselves. She opened the communication to Rory again and warned him, "We're coming through. Get out of the way or you'll be atomized."
"Where are you coming through?" he questioned, perfectly willing to avoid being atomized.
"I don't know," Sexy admitted.
"Oh, great. Thanks," he replied with his typical sarcasm.
"It's not going to hold," Sexy shouted as the makeshift console began to rattle dangerously. A moment later, however, they materialized in the familiar old console room.
"Doctor. Rose," Amy greeted them warily.
"Not good. Not good at all. How do you walk around in these things?" Sexy grumbled and Rose held her around the waist, a little to short to support her easily.
"I've got you, sweetheart, I've got you," Rose told her consolingly.
"We're not quite there yet. Just hold on. Amy, this is, well, she's my TARDIS. Except she's a woman. She's a woman, and she's my TARDIS," the Doctor explained excitedly.
"She's the TARDIS?" Amy asked disbelievingly.
"And she's a woman. She's a woman and she's the TARDIS," he corrected with a bright smile.
"Did you wish really hard?" Amy teased him.
"Shut up. Not like that," he protested.
"Are you sure?" Rose prodded.
"Hello. I'm Sexy," Sexy said in greeting, not helping the Doctor's argument.
"Oh. Still shut up," the Doctor told them as Rose and Amy started giggling.
"The environment has been breached. Nephew, kill them all," came the deep voice of the House all around them.
"Where's Nephew?" Rory asked worriedly, apparently nephew had been a problem for them earlier.
"He was standing right where you materialized," Amy added.
"Ah. Well, he must have been redistributed," the Doctor told them vaguely.
"Meaning what?" Rory questioned uncomfortably.
"Meaning, you're breathing him," Rose clarified, being fluent in Doctor-speak.
"Oh, come on," Amy groaned, her disgust apparent.
"Another Ood I failed to save," the Doctor grumbled as he paced the room.
"Doctor. I did not expect you," the House announced haughtily.
"Well, that's me all over, isn't it? Lovely old unexpected me," he replied.
"The big question is, now you're here, how to dispose of you? I could play with gravity," the House told them and everyone was suddenly lying on the floor. When they were released a few seconds later, Rose and Sexy stayed there, both feeling dizzy and weak.
"Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke," the House suggested and for a moment, they all couldn't breathe before their tormentor returned the air.
"You really don't want to do that," the Doctor warned him.
"Why shouldn't I just kill you now?" the being questioned.
"Because then I won't be able to help you. Listen to your engines. Just listen to them. You don't have the thrust and you know it. Right now I'm your only hope for getting out of your little bubble through the rift, and into my universe. And mine's the one with the food in," the Doctor explained.
"Water, water," Sexy called out.
"What is it, Old Girl?" Rose asked her and Rory came to check on them both where they lay on the floor.
"You just have to promise not to kill us. That's all, just promise," the Doctor told the House.
"You can't be serious," Amy protested, knowing that this thing was not to be trusted.
"I'm very serious. I'm sure it's an entity of its word," the Doctor replied, giving the House a false sense of superiority in the situation.
"Doctor, she's burning up. She's asking for water. And what's happening to Rose?" Rory called to him.
"Hey. Hang in there, Old Girl. Not long now. It'll be over soon. Don't worry, love, almost there," he added grasping both of their hands supportively.
"I always liked it when you call me old girl," she told him, repeating what she had told Rose earlier.
"You want me to give my word? Easy. I promise," the House said mockingly.
"Fine. Okay. I trust you. Just delete, oh er, thirty percent of the TARDIS rooms, you'll free up thrust enough to make it through. Activate subroutine Sigma nine," he instructed.
"Why would you tell me this?" the House questioned.
"Because we want to get back to our universe as badly as you do. And I'm nice," he explained, wishing that the damned thing would just do it already before he lost both his ship and his wife.
"Yes. I can delete rooms. And I can also rid myself of vermin if I delete this room first. Thank you, Doctor. Very helpful. Goodbye, Time Lord. Goodbye, little humans. Goodbye, Idris," the voice around them snarled and they all saw a flash of light as they were suddenly transported back into the main console room.
"Yes. I mean, you could do that, but it just won't work. Hardwired fail safe. Living things from rooms that are deleted are automatically deposited in the main control room. But thanks for the lift," the Doctor informed The House confidently, now that they were exactly where they needed to be.
"We are in your universe now, Doctor. Why should it matter to me in which room you die? I can kill you just as easily here as anywhere. Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords," the House replied.
"Fear me. I've killed all of them," the Doctor responded darkly.
"The only water in the forest is the river," Sexy rasped to Rory where she lay, clutching Rose's hand.
"I don't understand. There isn't a forest in here," Rory responded confusedly.
Rose decided that was somehow the connection between when she had called River, the Cub's Water earlier, but wasn't sure what the forest was about.
"Yeah, you're right. You've completely won. Oh, you can kill us in oodles of really inventive ways, but before you do kill us allow me and my wife, and friends Amy and Rory to congratulate you on being an absolutely worthy opponent," the Doctor told the House, clapping his hands and clearly stalling for time.
"Congratulations," Amy applauded with him, trusting that he had some reason for this ridiculous behaviour.
"Yep, you've defeated us. Me and my lovely friends here, and last but definitely not least, the TARDIS Matrix herself, a living consciousness you ripped out of this very control room and locked up into a human body. And look at her," the Doctor prompted as he saw the energy released from the body of Idris and strengthening. Rose was now unconscious on the floor, but he knew that she would be alright in just a moment.
"Doctor, she's stopped breathing," Rory told him sadly. "And Rose is in that coma-like state again."
"Enough. That is enough," the House growled impatiently.
"No. It's never enough. You forced the TARDIS into a body so she'd burn out safely a very long way away from this control room, taking MY WIFE with her by the way. A flesh body can't hold the TARDIS Matrix and live. Look at her body, House," the Doctor rambled.
"And you think I should mourn her?" the House asked.
The steel in the Doctor's voice was frightening as he replied, "No. I think you should be very, very careful about what you let back into this control room. You took her from her home. But now she's back in the box again, and she's free."
Golden energy swirled through the room, then. It flowed into the time rotor and a faint golden glow overtook the green light of the House. Rose gasped on the floor as she came back along with her heart.
"No. Doctor, stop this. Argh! Stop this now," the House shouted painfully.
"Oh, look at my girl. Look at her go. Bigger on the inside. You see, House?" he crowed happily and moved to help his wife up from the floor.
"Make her stop," the House pleaded.
"That's your problem. Size of a planet, but inside you are just so small," the Doctor taunted. "Finish him off, girl."
"Ow. Don't do this! Argh!" the being cried painfully as the golden light overtook the last vestiges of green.
The Doctor pulled Rose into a fierce hug and rubbed her back. She could feel his desperate fear at almost losing her again and sent him waves of reassurance. The image of their ship in Idris' body appeared before them and spoke softly, "Doctor, are you there? It's so very dark in here."
"I'm here," he told her.
"I've been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now."
"What word?" he asked tearfully.
"Alive. I'm alive," she told him.
"Alive isn't sad," he protested.
"It's sad when it's over. I'll always be here, connected to our Wolf, but this is when we talked, and now even that has come to an end. There's something I didn't get to say to you, either of you," Sexy told them.
"Goodbye?" he guessed.
"No. I just wanted to say hello. Hello, my Wolf and my Doctor. It's so very, very nice to meet you," she said sadly.
"Please. I don't want you to. Please," he cried and buried his face in Rose's shoulder when the image faded. The body she had inhabited was gone and everyone waited silently for a few moments, not daring to disrupt the solemnity of the scene.
Rory and Amy went to clean up, leaving Rose and the Doctor alone in the console room. They sat together on the jump seat for a long time, just holding each other and allowing their emotions to swirl around each other.
"I guess we have our answers about me, then?" Rose whispered, afraid to shatter the silence completely.
"Sort of. You and the TARDIS are connected, your life tied to hers somehow, but that doesn't tell us what would happen if you were fatally injured. The aliens at the Pandorica felt that you couldn't be killed, but that just means that they don't know how. You aren't like Jack, I'd know that, you aren't immortal, but neither is the TARDIS herself. You lose consciousness when the TARDIS is having trouble, what would happen to her if you were fatally injured? What would happen if the two of you were separated? I'm not sure, from what she said, how you managed to survive in that parallel universe without her for so long," he told her, voicing all of the worries swirling around in his head.
"But Doctor, despite all of that, you're missing something very important," she said and he turned to look into her beautiful, hazel eyes. "I'll be with you as long as the TARDIS is. You're never going to lose me". They both had tears in their eyes and he kissed her forehead lovingly.
Not wanting to be apart any time soon, Rose followed the Doctor down to the area below the console, where he sat in a little swing while working on repairs to the TARDIS. It was far more comfortable than when he needed to crawl beneath the grating of the floor in the previous control room design and the lighting was much better as well. He didn't need his little headlamp that he used to wear, but he did have some odd, magnifying goggles on at the moment.
Rory and Amy returned to the console room and the former called down to them, "How's it going under there?"
"Just putting a firewall around the Matrix. Almost done," the Doctor replied as they descended the stairs.
"Are you going to make her talk again?" Amy asked.
"I can't," he replied.
"Why not?" Rory asked.
"Spacey-wacey, isn't it?" Amy guessed.
"Well, actually, it's because the Time Lords discovered that if you take an eleventh dimensional matrix and fold it into a mechanical then...Yes, it's spacey-wacey."
"It's not the way she's meant to think, Amy. You saw how confused she was just trying to talk to us that way. She doesn't see time and identity and things the same way we do. Even if we could give her a voice, like a computer AI, most of it would seem like gibberish," Rose tried to explain.
"Sorry. At the end, she was talking. She kept repeating something. I don't know what it meant. Did you understand it, Rose?" Rory asked.
"I have a couple of ideas, but I'm not sure about any of them yet," she replied evasively, thinking she was becoming more and more like her husband.
"What did she say?" the Doctor questioned.
"The only water in the forest is the river. She said we'd need to know that someday. It doesn't make sense, does it?" Rory told him, confused by the woman's insistence that he know that.
"Not yet," he replied with a raised eyebrow towards his wife. He noticed that Rory seemed upset about something. "You okay?"
"No. I watched her die. I shouldn't let it get to me, but it still does. I'm a nurse," Rory responded.
"Letting it get to you. You know what that's called? Being alive. Best thing there is. Being alive right now, that's all that counts. Nearly finished. Two more minutes, then we're off. The Eye of Orion's restful, if you like restful. I can never really get the hang of restful. What do you think, dear? Where shall we take the kids this time?" the Doctor teased.
"Are you asking me or Sexy, husband?" Rose teased back.
The Doctor winked at her and she knew that it was a little bit of both. And since she and the TARDIS were connected, it was sort of the same thing too.
"The House deleted all the bedrooms. I should probably make you two a new bedroom. You'd like that, wouldn't you?" the Doctor told Amy and Rory.
"Okay. Er, Doctor, this time could we lose the bunk beds?" Amy grumbled.
"No. Bunk beds are cool. A bed with a ladder. You can't beat that. It's your room. Out those stairs, keep walking till you find it. Off you pop," he told them.
"So, how come we don't have a bed with a ladder if they're so cool?" Rose questioned.
"Because you, my jeopardy friendly wife, would probably manage to fall out of it and injure yourself," he replied with a bop on her nose.
"The only water in the forest is the river. She called River Water when she was talking about her and Jamie before. But what's that thing about the forest?" Rose wondered.
"I don't know, but I'm sure we'll find out before too long. Jamie seems to have figured out a lot of her secrets, but can't tell us yet for some reason. I've taught him too well, he's protecting us now," he responded with a sigh.
"It's a good thing, love. You're a wonderful father," she told him and ran her fingers through his thick hair. "Would you want another child someday?"
"Of course! I never got to be there the last time, but we've got centuries for that! Right now, I think, the Eye of Orion," he told her happily as he flicked the switches to send them on their way.
A few unexpected lights started blinking and one of the controls moved itself.
"Was that? Are you listening, Old Girl?" Rose questioned and they both felt a contented hum in their minds as the time rotor began to move on its own. They both laughed happily and caressed the edge of the console lovingly, dancing together around the controls of their beloved ship.
