Author's Note: You don't want a bio of what's going on in my life, I'm quite sure. So I'll tell you this. I procrastinate far too much. By the time I got around to editing this chapter, the new term had started and, well... A levels equals a tonne of work. I'm having to survive on my already written chapters. I don't have the time to write any more, despite the fact this story keeps whizzing around my head. So basically, I have another two chapters written, but after that, expect no more for a while. October half term maybe. If you're lucky. Probably around Christmas if you're not. Sorry guys :(
Chapter VII – Waking Revelation
The Doctor was sitting on the grille floor of the TARDIS, his elbows draped tiredly over his knees. His long, brown trench coat was strewn messily beside him, torn off in a hurry when he had dived inside the console controls, sonic screwdriver at the ready. The latest fixing session now over, he leaned back slightly and puffed out a long, weary breath. Rose had disappeared into the TARDIS' rooms, lost somewhere in the rabbit warren of corridors. She didn't need to know that the temperature core had blown a fuse, or that the translation circuit had had a minor blip, or that his psychic connection to the Vortex had suddenly dipped then rocketed, sending his inner signals and senses all over the place. He didn't need to worry her with that sort of thing.
Everything was fixed now, of course – and where his screwdriver hadn't worked, his nimble fingers and clever re-wiring had.
What was bothering him most, however, was not so much the problems themselves as what they meant. The problems were fine. Common. Easy. But so many at once – it was a worry. They just never seemed to end. When he had finished one, two or three more seemed to crop up in its place. It was a time lord's nightmare.
The Doctor suppressed a yawn, bringing a hand to his wearied eyes. He screwed up his face as he ran his fingers harshly across his lids, bringing them to meet at the bridge of his nose. He dropped his hand, sniffed, opened his eyes, then craned his neck backwards, stretching it towards the ceiling. He hadn't been this tired in months.
"Thought you could do with a cuppa."
He jumped, surprised by the voice, and turned to see Rose leaning against the doorframe watching him. She had a steaming mug in her hand, and was holding it out towards him.
"Thank you," he replied earnestly, his voice stiff with tiredness. How long had he been working? Felt like a few hours, at least.
The Doctor climbed heavily to his feet, stretching his arms back and pushing his chest forward. He looked to Rose with a queried expression. "Everything all right?"
"Yeah," she replied quickly as he reached and took the cup from her, hovering his nose above the steaming liquid. "Yeah, everythin's fine."
"You sure?" he asked carefully, watching her over the rim as he took a small sip. How did she manage to make it just the right temperature? Every mug he'd ever made was always too hot, too milky, too sweet. She obviously outranked him in the tea-making department. Which was fair enough, considering he had never really made a habit of drinking it until his regeneration.
"Perfectly," Rose confirmed, though she didn't sound entirely sure. "What 'bout you? You alright?"
"Yeah," he sighed, lifting his head to glance back at the bare controls. He had left the front panel open and all the workings and wires of his beloved machine could be seen shining out. He grimaced with guilt, setting the mug down and hopping over to close the sheet. The TARDIS seemed pleased, whirring quietly as he did so. He pulled up again with a frown, his hands resting on his hips. "Can't say the same for the TARDIS, though," he said worriedly, more to himself than to Rose. "She's been complaining a lot recently."
"Yeah?" Rose asked from behind him.
Strange, he wondered idly, how such a simple word could mean so many things. A confirmation; a question; a request.
"Just little things. Nothing to worry about."
The Doctor turned to her, smiling gently, before bounding over and making a grab for his mug. With a grin he watched Rose and took another sip, the steam rising and warming him, before setting the mug down again on the controls and gazing tenderly at his machine.
As if to make his previous point, one of the screens started beeping and an angry, red light began to flash. The Doctor was transformed into instant work mode, his face becoming dark as he darted to the keyboard, tapping in foreign commands and controls. He muttered something Rose had never heard before, his mouth curling around the alien syllables and strange accent of his words. She wondered why the TARDIS wouldn't translate it for her.
"Something wrong?" she mused worriedly, noting the Doctor's deep-set frown and tensed shoulders. He barely glanced up as he worked, moving to a small dial and twisting it, before heading back to the keyboard. The atmosphere in the room suddenly dropped and Rose felt a chill shiver through her. She watched, her worry becoming more pronounced, as the Doctor continued to move frantically around his ship with hands and arms everywhere. He seemed not to know what to do with himself.
Then he whirled around, his full attention pinpointed on Rose. She felt unnerved, a fox in amongst the hunt.
"There's a signal," he said roughly, his voice suddenly as ragged as he looked. "Asking for help. Calling out. Practically screaming. Ringing out through time and space, desperate for someone to reply... No, wait... not reply..." His gaze intensified, his look wild with frenzied thought. His hand paused in amongst his tangle of hair; then it suddenly dropped to his side again, and he took a heavy step towards Rose. She was slightly taken aback at his sudden change in nature. "Someone to hear. That's all it wants. Shouting its message to someone who will hear it. Anyone." The Doctor looked back to the screen again. "It's dying. Screaming in pain. A warning – run as fast as you can. And don't look back."
With a violent movement, he pounced on a nearby control, slamming down on a leaver with vigour. His mug of tea went crashing to the floor, shattering into hundreds of pieces – he didn't even notice.
The lights in the TARDIS flickered for a moment, dimming with the sudden, harsh treatment. The Doctor barked out an order for Rose to turn that dial over there, hold that button, push that lever. He then shouted to hold on, because the landing would not be pleasant.
An alarm that Rose had never heard before began to sound, a terrifying klaxon blaring loudly through the control room, deafening her ears. She shut her eyes as the sound began to rip through her, bringing sore tears to her worn eyes. The room lurched and shuddered around her, but she listened for the Doctor and obeyed his commands. His face was set in stone; he kept checking the screen again and again as he worked, flicking switches, tapping further commands into the keyboard. Upon hearing the alarm, he dived further onto a mixture of dials and levers, working deep and complicated combinations into the heart of his machine. After a moment or two, the wailing stopped, and they were left with an unearthly hiss as steam began to pour from one of the pipes running the length of the TARDIS walls.
The Doctor stopped and looked up, his face angry and worried, his breathing coarse. He shouted for silence and the ship obeyed. They stopped moving. The lights went out. Deafening silence drowned them. All that was around them was an eerie, opaque gem glow, lighting up the Doctor's face like a ghost. Half his features were shadowed, giving a lean and deathly look about him. When he turned to Rose, she was shaking with fear.
"Doctor – what's goin' on?" She was desperate and pleading; scared not of him, but of what had just happened. The TARDIS had crashed before, but this – this was different. She could sense it in the air.
He turned to her abruptly and paced back and forth, practically spitting the words out as he spoke them. "That signal I just picked up: the planet it's from should be deserted. Nothing, no one. Lost, dead, empty. It's uninhabitable. The microbes in the atmosphere destroy any life form that touches it. It's a defence mechanism, but it has the consequence of no life. Hetica, that's what the planet's called. The closest place to it is six billion light years away, meaning that it's almost completely deserted. Almost; but not quite. There's something big there, Rose." He took a step towards her, his eyes an unnatural green glow in the light of the TARDIS. His mouth was curled into a malevolent smile, his teeth more bared than anything else. Rose found herself stumbling backwards, away from him, as he advanced, his eyes gleaming as dangerous shadows passed over his sunken face. "Something very, very, very big. It's dangerous and it's calling to me and if I don't answer, it's going to keep getting at me until I crack."
He brought a hand up and looked at it, wiggling his fingers like the legs of a spider. "At me and at me, digging deeper, deeper and deeper until there's nothing left to dig. I'll just be skin and bone, alive and existing, but alone again. Always alone." The Doctor's eyes shot to hers and Rose took in a breath as she felt the cool wall of the TARDIS behind her back. The Doctor licked his lips and wiggled his eyebrows once, his face lighting up with a lunacy she had never seen in him before.
"Doctor," she said firmly, her voice as calm and clear as she could make it. He continued to advance towards her and reached out his spidery hand to her cheek. She flinched at his touch – he was freezing, like ice. Rose tried to move her face from his hand, but his fingers tightened, giving her a silent warning.
"You shouldn't be here..." he growled dangerously, his face darkening.
"Doctor, you're scarin' me!"
"Oh, but that's the point, Rose. Scare you away, maybe I'll stop seeing you in my nightmares. Scare myself, sometimes. Screams and wails in the night that I can't control. All those thousands. They burned, like the sun. Like Gallifrey. Like you."
He threw his head back and let out a terrifying laugh, an echo of cackling, manic insanity that sent a shiver down her spine. Rose clamped her eyes shut, forcing back a rising tide of emotion in her stomach. She let out a breath and felt his hand disappear from her cheek, felt the wall fade from behind her, heard a distant hum and gentle whirr come back to swallow her up. She gulped, afraid to open her eyes, afraid that the Doctor might be standing over her with death in his eyes. She clenched her fists.
"Rose...?"
The voice she heard was gentle and quiet, scared almost. She heard the sound of footfalls on metal as he stepped towards her, and a tender hand on her cheek. It was warm and gentle, a complete contrast to his previous touch. She gasped and flinched, pulling herself away from him. Then she opened her eyes.
The Doctor was standing in front of her, his face smooth and unreadable. However, a storm of worry was clouding his eyes as he watched her, his breathing slow. He was wearing the coat that had previously been on the floor and the lights in the TARDIS were back, washing him over with a pale orange glow. His movements were calm and tranquil, and everything was as it should be.
She blinked and shook her head, trying to make sense of the memory that shrouded her mind. The Doctor dropped his hand and held a worried breath, watching while Rose raised a hand to her temple as if trying to physically tap in to her thoughts. When she opened her eyes again, he was still standing there, watching her, unmoving, his arms now folded across his chest.
"What... happened?"
He took in a breath and studied her, his face sombre. "I thought the TARDIS picked up a signal that it shouldn't have picked up. Turned out to be a glitch, that's all. We all have our off days. I asked you to come over for a minute, to ask you what you thought of the screen. You didn't answer, and when I turned to look, you were locked in a silent scream. I've... I've never seen you so scared." Carefully, slowly, he took a step towards her and reached a hand to touch affectionately at her upper arm. She quivered, and he dropped it. He tried to relax his face into a pale smile, but it had faded by the time he asked his question. "Your turn. What happened?"
"I..." Rose swallowed, her mouth dry. She sniffed back the stubborn tears which had risen and glanced to the ceiling, hugging herself for comfort. She looked back again, and happened to catch a glimpse of something sitting on the flat unit of the controls. The Doctor's mug of tea. "You said there was... a signal... and then we sorta... crashed," she tried to explain, limp expressions with her hand to try and outline the motions. "You told the ship to be quiet, then everythin'... stopped. There was this weird glow an'... you started talkin' about... I'm not really sure what about. Then you looked at me and sorta..."
She extended her arm to bring her fingers lightly to the Doctor's face, mirroring what he had done her. She met his eye and continued. "You said I shouldn't be here. That I burned, like Gallifrey. That look... You were... I thought you were gonna..."
She let out a terrified sob. The Doctor closed his eyes for a fleeting second and let out a sigh, before leaning forward and pulling her into a hug, his head resting on her shoulder. He felt her shake in his arms, felt damp tears begin to stain his open shirt. He kept his eyes open in a worried frown as he settled her, whispering gently in her ear.
"Shhh. It's all right, Rose. Everything's all right. I'm right here. It's all right. Shhh..."
She calmed slightly, but he still held her, keeping her close to him, breathing softly on her skin. She was scared and he knew, no matter what had physically happened, that he was the cause of it. In her mind, he was now a danger.
"I'll fix it," he promised, rubbing a comforting hand up and down her back. "I promise you, Rose. Whatever I can do, I'll fix it."
The only sign that she'd head him was a further sob into his shoulder.
I-----------------------------------------------------I
It was later, after Rose had calmed down and explained a little more about what had happened, that she was sat on a bed in the Medical Lab. She swung her legs backwards and forwards over the side, the way that a small child does when they're bored.
The Doctor had been darting around, scanning her with instruments she was sure would never have passed for 'medical' in an actual Doctor's surgery. She'd had wires and scans and, once or twice, injections. But all the results had come up 'negative', showing that she was fine and healthy, that everything was precisely how it should be, that there wasn't a thing wrong with her. She didn't even have a bruise.
"Doctor, I'm fine," she almost laughed, watching him scrunch up another test result and throw it towards the half-full bin. He looked up an met her eye before letting out a sigh.
He looked so funny – shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows, jacket draped over the back of one of the chairs, spectacles, furrowed brow. Quite the 'doctor'.
"Yes, I know. That's what's so annoying," he replied bitterly, sinking back into one of the tall, metal chairs. He leant against the high back, taking off his glasses and reaching to stretch. He brought his hands to his face, massaging his eyes with his fingertips, before sliding them down and bringing them together in front of his mouth as if he were praying, his thumbs tucked neatly under his chin. His brown eyes darted to Rose again and he watched her look at him and smile. He couldn't return it.
Instead, he sighed again and slipped his fingers to follow a trail from the bottom of his nose to the base of his jaw, before linking them and dropping them to rest in his lap.
Rose slid off the bed and leant against it, her hair falling about her like a protective halo. The Doctor cocked his head.
"It just doesn't make sense," he cried for what must have been the seventeenth time.
"Yeah. You said."
She was smiling, amused by his behaviour. "I'm glad you find it so funny."
"Sorry," she mumbled, her smile fading. The Doctor groaned and tilted his head back, before getting to his feet and beginning to pace, pulling thoughtfully on his earlobe.
"Don't be sorry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped. I'm just... I'm..."
"It's all right." She crossed the short distance between them and linked her arms comfortingly behind his neck, pulling him in for a quick hug. His surprise easily faded, and he held her close. He should be comforting her, not the other way around. Did she have any idea of the possible danger she was in?
Rose pulled back and dropped her hands, but stayed close, looking him in the eye. "You're just worried, yeah?"
"One of the many, many words." Then he caught her eye, all the sincerity in the world engraved into his look. "You're all right, aren't you? I mean, aside from the strange illusions. You feel fine? No headaches, no sickness, no dizziness?"
"Nope. Just me."
"Hmm."
He stepped away from her, picking up another sheet of test results to study them. His eyes moved over the page, but everything was reading perfectly. She was healthy – there was no doubt about it.
"Doctor, what's it all mean? What's goin' on?"
He looked up and smiled, set on making her as comfortable as possible. Waiting and watching was all very well, but if... whatever it was... was beginning to affect her state of mind, surely there was something he could do about it? But Gregatio's warning flashed violently into his mind... If you do anything to trigger it, you might be the cause of the pain, Doctor... you might create more problems than you can solve... you might be the one who pushes her to death.. Was it worth it? Was it worth the risk not to do anything, because of a 'might'? He honestly didn't know.
"That depends on a lot of things," he answered tiredly, putting down the test result and unfolding the cuffs from his elbows, dragging them back down to his wrists. "I don't honestly know. It could be horribly complicated. It could be terribly simple. It could be nothing. I just don't know."
He hadn't been so honest with her before, and in truth, it scared her a little. Rose felt a small shiver cross her skin and she rubbed a hand to her forearm, warming her. The Doctor's head shot up.
"You all right?" he asked instantly. She snorted.
"No need to pounce every time I get the shivers," she laughed meeting his eye. "I'm fine."
"Right. Sorry. Won't happen again." The Doctor held his hands up in defence, as if someone was pointing a gun at him. "I'm just – "
" – Worried?" she finished for him. They grinned at each other. Then, slowly, he took her hand and led her to sit beside him on the bed, avoiding her gaze.
"If I told you what I think it is, you'd want to know the full story; then you'd wonder why I didn't tell you in the first place, straight after it happened, and I wouldn't have a good reason, and you'd get angry at me and storm off to your room. So, can I just ask – Can we skip all that?" When he turned to meet her gaze, his eyes were brimming with emotion. "Can I just tell you and we pretend you already knew?"
Rose considered him, wondering what he had hidden inside that mind of his. With a small nod, she agreed, promising that she would pretend.
What he told her next shocked her.
He asked what she remembered prior to his regeneration – nothing, just a bright white light that surrounded her, then waking up on the TARDIS floor with his old self in front of her. He paused for a moment, frowning, then let a story fall from his lips that she'd never even imagine. A story of golden light, of the Time Vortex and the Heart of the TARDIS; of her victory against the Daleks, of her fight to save his life. Of his fear about losing her. About what she saw through the eyes of the Time Vortex, connecting her to him that little bit more. He told her that he'd had to get the vortex out of her because it was killing her from the inside out, burning up every cell it came across.
I absorbed all the energy of the Time Vortex, and no one's meant to do that!
Turns out, that included humans. When he finished his story, she asked him why she couldn't remember. He just wrapped an arm around her shoulder and called it one of the many, unfair consequences.
He hadn't told her how he'd got the vortex out: refused to comment on it, except that he would do it again if she asked him. Considering she hadn't a clue what he was really talking about, she just shrugged and said maybe he would have to end up doing it again anyway, the amount of trouble they got themselves into. He had laughed, and she hadn't known why.
The Doctor stood from the bed and smoothed a hand across the cold counter that ran the perimeter of the room.
"What we have as facts are these: Gregatio seems to think you have residual energy from the vortex stored in you, nothing that's dangerous and nothing that would even be noticed. It would explain the strange things on the TARDIS scanners, at least – some lost fragment from the Time Vortex floating around. Why it's only flaring up now, I don't know. Maybe it had to wait for the time to be right, who knows? Anyway, after all of this is said and done, you start seeing me going crazy in the console room one minute, then perfectly fine the next. That about sum it up?"
Rose hadn't been sure that he was talking to her, rambling as he was, but at this he turned to her with a quizzical expression.
"Yeah, I s'pose. Makes me sound sorta crazy, doesn't it?"
"I don't think you're crazy," he told her truthfully.
"Then, what?"
"I don't know!" He was frantic and brought his hands to his face, breathing heavily into his palms. He was sorry for snapping, and she knew it, but repeating the questions over and over again was not helping anyone. His mind began to produce any sort of reasoning for what was going on, and before he knew it, he was blurting it out of his mouth. "From what I can possibly gather, whatever connection you still have to the Time Vortex is granting you your own personal access to any time and any place. Your subconscious is tapping into it, letting you hop from this time into any one you choose." The Doctor angled two of his fingers to mimic walking as he did so, meeting Rose's eye with an anger that was not supposed to be directed towards her. "Any time, place, universe... On the other hand, you could just be suffering vivid hallucinations, combined with whatever inner demons you have to fight. I don't know. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!"
He sighed and closed his eyes, wondering why he suddenly felt so overwhelmed with anger. It was coursing through him, like a river of fire, red and angry and full. It couldn't just be that the felt helpless – he'd felt more helpless than this and had coped perfectly fine. Rose's life wasn't even in danger; she'd just turned into a human TARDIS, or thereabouts. Unable to control whatever it was that was happening to her, just getting a bit of a shock. That was it. So where on Gallifrey had this onslaught come from?
The Doctor opened his eyes, not surprised to find Rose looking at him with worry.
"There's too much that doesn't make sense," he tried to explain, calming his voice. "It's like someone's just patched all these events together, a string of happenings, one after another, that just go round and round without any point or meaning. Do you know what I'm getting at?"
Rose paused a moment, thinking, her mind remembering. She frowned, fiddling with the bottom of her top, trying to add things up in her mind that didn't make sense. "Sort of... Yeah."
The Doctor puffed out a breath. "So," he began, but didn't venture any more than that. Burying his hands in his pockets, he watched as Rose turned and began to meander around the Med Lab, picking at pieces of equipment here and there.
"It's like... sort of... a dream... almost."
"All these things happening around us, without explanation. And I don't know about you, Rose, but I've certainly been feeling a little strange lately. Tired and exhausted, like my energy is being used up as I make it. Even thinking's a challenge."
"Yeah," Rose agreed with a nod, turning back to him. He had edged towards the door. "Like, thoughts and that don't really make sense. You think 'em, but they're not..."
"...Natural."
Without warning, the Doctor's entire face dropped an inch with realisation; he hurtled out of the Med Lab and down the corridor. Rose followed, shouting after him to ask where he was going. He didn't answer, his mind set on to a vivid thought in his mind, a revelation that he knew he had to hold on to.
Something had bothered him about the visit to Gregatio, he realised. It was all too easy, too precise, too much like it was expected. It fit far too much. And there had to be a reason. He just hoped he was wrong.
His coat flapped out behind him like a magician's cape as he ran, his footsteps pounding on her floor of the corridors. Wasn't there something in the TARDIS' library about feigned reality? Maybe if he could get to it...
And then a strange thing happened. One minute, there he was, flinging open the door of the library; the next, there was nothing. Just... nothing. His hand closed on empty space as everything faded away from him. Frowning, the Doctor turned. Behind him, nothing. He turned back. Nothing. Craning his neck, looking in all directions he could possibly think of, all that met him was a deep, dark black. No light from anywhere, no furniture, no surroundings, no wall, ceiling, floor. Nothing. The strange thing was, however, he could see perfectly. It wasn't the type of darkness you were thrown into when you closed your eyes, or when someone turned out the lights. He could see his hands, his shoulders from the corners of his eyes, his clothes, his shoes. But nothing else.
"Rose?"
No answer.
His voice both echoed around him and seeped into the muffled air. He frowned harder, turning, bringing his hand up in front of his face, over and over again. Was he dreaming? Had the tiredness he had felt suddenly got the better of him? There was another strange thing – his tiredness had gone completely. He felt fresh and alive, his thoughts making easy sense in his head, like he was him again. And still no sign of life.
"Well, this is certainly very strange..."
The Doctor began to walk, though quite where – or how – he wasn't certain. He knew his feet were padding, leading him somewhere, but he appeared to be making no progress around him. There was just black and dark and that was it.
That was when he saw it. Slowly at first, but becoming more and more obvious with every passing second.
All around him, everywhere, bits and pieces of strange symbols that might have been hieroglyphic, might have been snatched bits and pieces from a thousand different languages. They were flowing down the darkness, as if someone were shining a very faint projector all the way down. They tumbled and flowed like a waterfall, their descent never ending. The Doctor made a snatch for his glasses and put them hurriedly on the bridge of his nose, his face creasing into a scrunched frown, his mouth hanging open as he read and translated the symbols.
"It's a code..." he muttered quietly as he read, his eyes flicking over the symbols. "You're joking!" he breathed after a while, half in fear, half in wonder. "That's brilliant, that is! Amazing! Fantastic! Illegal as it gets, mind, but still very, very clever."
The Doctor removed his glasses and stood, legs shoulder width apart, arms out to his side. He angled his head up towards the ceiling, shouting, "You really had me fooled; do you know that? Actually, I suppose you do, given the circumstances. But I started to figure it all out, slipped through the cracks into your little... void. And now here I am, armed with the knowledge and just dying to meet whoever's behind all this. So you may as well let me out: it'll hurt less if you do, I promise."
If he had been expecting an answer, he showed no surprise when he didn't get one. Instead, the Doctor just shrugged and went back to studying the figures in front of him. He was perfectly happy to do so, curiosity taking over his worry, until only a few minutes later, when he caught sight of something he knew shouldn't be right. Something that shouldn't be there. A rogue.
"Hello," he growled softly to himself, pulling out his spectacles once again. "What are you doing there?"
The realisation hit him full on in the front of his mind. The Doctor stumbled, his eyes widening. "No!" he shouted with new-found fright, gasping as he recognised what the figures meant. "No no no no no no NO! That's not right! That shouldn't be there!"
Then he turned back to the ceiling again, shouting to the unknown entity he had addressed previously. "Listen to me!" he pleaded desperately, his breathing becoming ragged. "You know I'm here and you know what I'm saying, so listen – your code is corrupted. Right now, I don't care what you're using it for, or what reasons you have for using it. All I know is that there's something wrong and if you don't let me out right now, you'll be staring into an oblivion of trouble that you can't control! It's not a threat; it's a promise. If you've any sense at all, you'll take me out and hear what I have to say!"
He stood there waiting for longer than he would care to admit. Panting with fear and shock, he just stood, watching the code fall away around him. However, whatever he had said must have had some sort of effect – because the next thing he knew, he was somewhere else completely different. Coughing and choking and struggling to both wake and sit up, he was forced back into a lying position by several pairs of rough hands.
"Let him go," a rough, female voice growled and, obediently, the hands disappeared.
The Doctor sat up and recognised his surroundings immediately. He swung his legs over the side of the cylindrical bed and stood, stretching his body in any direction it could go. In front of him stood a woman, slightly taller than Rose, with dark black hair that curled right the way down to her waist and sparkling, lively blue eyes, shining like electricity. She was wearing a navy uniform with a radio attached to the belt, and her severe presence commanded total attention in the room.
"I suppose I have you to thank for this?" the Doctor asked curtly, putting his hand out signify the room he was in and its various accessories. There were several guards standing stock still, waiting for commands. "I might have known you were – " he spat the word distastefully " – human."
"Brave words for a man who's been out cold for three days," she sneered with a raised eyebrow. She was not unattractive; there was beauty hidden in her plain features that used to shine through when she smiled, or when the light fell on it a certain way. Yet these days, none of that was obvious – she was just severe, and that was that.
"Three days?" the Doctor echoed in return, shocked. "No wonder my body feels like I've never used it before. Now, would you care to explain to me what's going on, or do I have to threaten it out of you?"
At this comment, he noticed out of the corner of his eye that a couple of the guards flexed their numerous hands. Two hands, he thought, was enough for anybody: six was just excessive. He grimaced inwardly at the thought of the damage they could do to him if the need ever came about.
"He's fine," the woman told the guards; she had noticed too. "I called him awake of my own accord. Get back to work."
Instantly, all but two of the guards filed away out of the doors, leaving the remainder to stand hesitantly by the door. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow.
"Protection," explained the woman, noticing where he was looking. "Should you get violent. But reason tells me I won't be needing them?"
"Oh, you don't want to listen to reason," the Doctor countered before he could stop himself. Words from long ago echoed in his mind but he forced them down, back into the pit of his memory.
"Do I not? What a pity. And here was me thinking we could have a civilised conversation."
"There's nothing 'civil' about what you're doing here." He met the young woman's eye fiercly towering over her with menace. "Now, I won't ask again."
She met him with an equal look of courage, her thin mouth tipping up malevolently at the corners. "Well then, if you insist. My name is Raine. Charlotte Raine. And this," she held her arms out beside her, "is my domain. Welcome to the Literature Chamber. You're our first hostile prisoner."
I-----------------------------------------------------I
The Doctor was gone. It wasn't that Rose couldn't find him: she'd lost him before in the TARDIS, countless times, but the corridors had always woven themselves so she'd found him. No, this was different. This time, he was actually gone.
She'd run out of the Med Lab right behind him, calling his name, shouting at him to slow down. The last she'd seen was his coat as he disappeared around a corner and through a door. By the time she'd got to the library, where she was certain he was headed to, he was gone.
At first she had just laughed, saying that his game to lighten the mood wasn't funny. It hadn't been too long afterwards that she'd realised he really wasn't there.
Rose had searched all the rooms she could think of. Aquarium, gym, cinema, living room, kitchen, bathroom, dining room, Chinese takeaway, eat-in restaurant, garden, chapel (quite why he had a chapel, she didn't know. She had asked, once, and he had muttered something about one of his older companions – but that was it). He wasn't anywhere.
His bedroom had offered a glimmer of hope. She had never been in it before, and was now surprised that he even had one. When it came to it, intuition told her that the door she was outside was the Doctor's bedroom. It had been locked. Locked was good – locked could mean he was on the other side.
Desperately, almost happily, she had pounded on the door for him to come out, to stop fooling around, that this wasn't funny anymore.
There was no answer.
She had the idea of checking the TARDIS' on-board scanners. Whenever the Doctor wanted to find out if she was awake, or asleep, or watching a film, or doing whatever it was she did when she wasn't around him, he told her he just checked the TARDIS.
So, off to the console room she set. It offered no comfort when, as kindly and easily at it could, the time machine informed her that she was the only one on board.
"But that's... impossible. Where would he go? He wouldn't just leave me."
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted the mug of tea she had made him a few hours ago. Now, of course, it was stone cold; but she picked it up and wrapped her fingers around it as if it were her one warmth in the world. Her last connection to the Doctor.
She turned to where she thought the ship might best hear her.
"Where's he gone?" she asked quietly, knowing full well that she wouldn't get an answer. However, as much as it could, the TARDIS tried to calm her by dimming the lights and raising the temperature to a gentle warmth.
"Guess you don't know either," Rose laughed, patting the controls of the ship affectionately. "He isn't half rough with you, y'know. If I ever get him back, I'll ask him to take it easy on you, yeah? Ask him to only have a fiddle if somethin's actually wrong rather than when he's bored."
Quite by accident, mostly out of habit, Rose brought the mug to her lips and took a sip. She recoiled instantly with the unpleasant temperature and flavour, setting the mug down and wiping at her mouth. And then, without any sort of warning, she felt the tears well up and spill over her cheek as she realised just how alone she really was.
He'd never disappeared from the TARDIS before.
And now she was alone, she didn't know where to start.
Next Chapter...
Chapter VIII – Systematic
Charlotte faltered a moment, her eyes widened. "What do you mean 'corrupted'?" she demanded, worry tainting her voice. "Doctor, what have you seen?"
He met her eye, mouth thin, cheeks high and face determined. "I'm not telling you a thing until you take me to her."
