Chapter 9: Power of the Heart
Rose staggered back, recognizing the sign.
"What does it mean?" Aelita asked.
When she absorbed the Time Vortex, Rose scattered those words across time and space. And this was another place she must have put them. This was a message. And she knew what it was telling her. Rose didn't answer Aelita, for she knew that it would tell XANA what she was about to do. She could barely keep from smiling… She could still save him.
There was still a tiny smidgen of the heart of the TARDIS left in her. But she had never known before because she needed to save it for this moment.
Rose aimed at the Scyphozoa and turned it to dust. She had thought this wasn't an option before, because the Scyphozoa was the only thing keeping the Doctor from falling. But not anymore.
"I bring life."
The Doctor fell… But before he reached the Digital Sea, Rose caused him to appear again right next to her.
"This is what the TARDIS can do," Rose announced to XANA.
She threw the key into the Guardian. And now that she knew she was still connected to it… She could open its heart.
"This is its power," she finished, "Now TAKE IT!"
XANA laughed, and everyone could see the power of the Time Vortex swirling into XANA's core. Monsters began appearing everywhere, surrounding them, weapons charging. For a moment, it seemed as though he'd won…
Suddenly, before XANA was finished, everything stopped. All the monsters XANA had unleashed simply self-destructed.
Jeremie, Yumi, Ulrich and Odd all watched as everything came back. They regained access to Lyoko, and Jeremie now had control again.
"What happened?" Ulrich asked.
Yumi smiled. "Rose did."
The sparkling golden light of the Time Vortex shot back into the heart of the TARDIS. Everyone could hear XANA screaming as the Guardian disintegrated and the key was thrown back into Rose's hands. The screaming died down. Instead of becoming unstoppable, XANA had deactivated himself.
"Well," said the Doctor, "XANA won't be bothering you for a while."
"How did you do that?" Aelita asked, confused, though grateful.
"First," said Jeremie, "You come back to Earth."
Aelita, the Doctor, and Rose stepped out of the scanners in exhaustion, with all the others waiting. Rose had a bit of trouble balancing herself and fell down. The Doctor held out his hand to help her up.
"Okay?" he asked as soon as Rose wasn't so disoriented. Rose nodded, and the Doctor promptly gave her the hug that XANA never gave him time for on Lyoko.
"Brilliant!" he exclaimed, "That was absolutely brilliant! Who says you can't hold out on your own?"
"What was all that you did back there?" Yumi asked.
"She tricked XANA into absorbing the Time Vortex," the Doctor explained, "You were right, Aelita! We could still trick him… But, anyway, all that power is too much for any living thing to handle. For that split-second, XANA could see the whole of time itself. Everything that was, everything that will be. Seeing all that burns up the mind of any person who absorbs it, and they die. Being a computer program, with a fairly larger mind than the rest of us, XANA was able to live through it. But despite that, he's still thick enough to have fallen for that… That's computers for you… But he won't be waking up for a long time. Consider it a well-earned vacation. Should last, ohh… Say… Two weeks? Sounds about right."
"But what about the Bad Wolf that appeared on the TARDIS?" asked Aelita, "You never explained that to me."
"A long time ago," said the Doctor, "Rose absorbed the Time Vortex just like XANA did. She saved the Earth. The only reason she's alive right now is because I was able to get it out of her. But apparently she kept a bit… She didn't know it until that Bad Wolf showed up. It was this message that kept appearing everywhere we went, and I suppose we haven't seen the last of it."
"If it was a message, then who sent it?" Jeremie asked.
"She did," said the Doctor, "When she absorbed the Time Vortex, she put the message everywhere."
"What?" asked Odd.
"Just some…" the Doctor began, trying to think of a way to explain this to them, "Um… Wibbly-wobbly… Timey-wimey… Stuff."
"Is that the technical term?" asked Yumi with a smirk.
"For now, yeah," said the Doctor. Hopefully he'd come up with something better in the future…
"I guess we should thank you, then," said Yumi, "I don't know what we would have done without your help."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, "I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been there to stop the robot."
"Still regretting that?" Rose joked.
"Not at all," said Yumi, "So, are you leaving now?"
"Well," said the Doctor, "First we've got to get the TARDIS…" He got out his screwdriver and sonicked his TARDIS key. Soon enough, the TARDIS materialized right in the middle of the room.
"You two are impossible," Aelita said, laughing.
"No more than you," the Doctor replied.
"How come you couldn't do that before?" asked Ulrich.
"XANA had it deadlocked," said the Doctor, "This doesn't work on deadlock seals. Or wood…"
"Wood?" Jeremie repeated.
"So," said the Doctor, about to open the TARDIS door and leave, "Off we go… It's been brilliant. Yumi… Aelita… Jeremie, Ulrich, Odd."
"You do realize you guys are honorary Lyoko Warriors now," Odd announced, "We can summon you whenever we want."
"I suppose we should give them our number, then," said Rose.
"Right," said the Doctor, jotting it down on a piece of paper he conveniently had in his pocket. He handed it to Odd. "Just give us a call when you need us," he continued, "Help with XANA, or… Anything else, really… If you see any little pepperpot things flying around shouting 'Exterminate,' it'd be fairly helpful if we knew about it…"
"Well, if you're on another planet five billion years in the future, wouldn't that be out of range?" asked Jeremie.
"Well," said the Doctor, "Nothing a bit of jiggery-pokery can't fix… Jiggery-pokery. Haven't said that in a while. Doesn't really fit the new voice… But, anyway…" The Doctor explained the process of jiggery-pokery to Jeremie as Rose made her farewells.
"I hope we'll see each other again," she said.
"Me, too," said Yumi, "Though I get the feeling it's going to take a disaster to bring us back together." Rose laughed.
"Keep defending the earth," said Rose, giving Yumi a goodbye hug, followed by Aelita.
"You done?" she asked the Doctor.
"If Professor Belpois fully understands the jiggery-pokery upgrade," said the Doctor.
"I've got it," said Jeremie, "…Professor Belpois?"
"No hug for Odd?" Odd whined. It took a few seconds for Rose to get him to let go.
"Until we meet again," said the Doctor. Yumi gave a two-fingered salute. Normally the Doctor hated salutes, but he decided to return this one. "Allons-y," he said, and he and Rose stepped into the TARDIS.
"I find her attractive," said Odd as soon as the doors were closed and Rose was no longer within earshot. Ulrich hit him in the head.
"I can't believe you didn't trust them," said Jeremie.
"Excuse me?" Yumi asked, "Who didn't trust them?"
"You were the one who suggested they might be Men in Black."
"Jeremie, I know this is a difficult thing for a straight-A student to accept, but you were wrong."
"That's completely irrelevant," said Jeremie, despite the fact that he brought it up, "I'm going to need all your cell phones."
"Jiggery-pokery?" asked Odd. Jeremie nodded.
"The one thing I still don't get…" Rose pondered as the Doctor prepared for take-off back in the TARDIS, "Lyoko's a different universe. But I remember you said that traveling between dimensions was impossible."
"Not from here to Lyoko," said the Doctor, "It's connected to this universe. It was created here."
"But doesn't it still tear existence apart every time they travel back and forth? Why didn't you try to stop them?"
"Again, it's because the two worlds are connected. By traveling between the two, they're not ripping a hole. It's like a doorway. The door keeps you from having to break a hole in the wall. Of course, there's not actually a door, but the connection between the two worlds plus the scanners is basically that."
"You know what?" asked Rose, "I actually understood that."
The Doctor grinned, but it disappeared in a second. "You've still got some of the Time Vortex left in you," he said, "It could have killed you last time."
"It didn't, though," said Rose, "And I've had it for this long. I'm sure it's not enough to hurt me."
"It's not enough to hurt you now," said the Doctor, "But if we wait long enough, it might be. I've got to get rid of it."
"Doctor, it's fine."
"You don't know that," said the Doctor. He gave Rose a small, short kiss, passing what Rose had absorbed from her to him.
The two paused. Rose was just about dying the last time the Doctor had to take the Time Vortex from her, so she had forgotten how he did it. Though she didn't even know whether or not that was actually necessary. They stood in an awkward silence for a moment, with no idea what to say…
"Yeah, it's not enough to hurt anyone," the Doctor finally said, acting as though nothing happened.
"No, definitely not," Rose agreed. The Doctor pulled a lever and they were off.
"So…" Rose said, "Where are we going?"
"No idea," said the Doctor. Rose smiled. Of course.
The Doctor stopped avoiding eye contact. "Rose Tyler, you saved my life," he said.
"You saved mine first," Rose replied. They smiled at each other, thinking that was the last word before they ended up wherever they were going. But then another thing popped into Rose's head.
"So it's really possible to move the TARDIS without touching it?" Rose asked.
"Well… Not usually… I keep it safe from teleports when I can."
"Then how did XANA do it?"
The Doctor hesitated. "I… Um… Forgot to put the parking brake on."
Rose gave him a look. All that could have been avoided. The Doctor was brilliant, but he still had strikes of stupidity. None of this would have happened if he'd just remembered.
The Doctor and Rose began laughing their heads off as they flew through the Time Vortex, awaiting their next adventure. They didn't know where they were going, and they hardly ever did. But that was what made traveling with the Doctor through time and space so amazing. Next stop, everywhere.
THE END
So, how was that? Can we say deus ex machina? I would give a high-five to anyone who knows that term XD. Unless it's commonly used among all you British people. But I owe the climax to Krem, really. He gave me the "Bad Wolf" thing. And yet the whole part with them winning seemed odd to me… Reading it didn't feel awesome enough. I saw it in my head… Murray Gold's music was blaring and everything… Then I wrote it out and it was just blah. I also made the Doctor quote himself a lot, but I've managed to go back and change it since. Hopefully I'll get to posting the revisions here soon. I'm satisfied with the finished product, though. Could've had a little more of the Lyoko Warriors, but eh. I started on the ending shortly after watching David Tennant's heartbreaking exit (I'm listening to his theme from season four as I write this). Doctor Who has been pretty much the only thing on my mind since then, so I guess it made me want to write more of him. WE WON'T LET TEN DIE!
After my self-evaluation, I've just realized this is the first multi-chapter story I've finished! YAY ME! Also the first story I'd ever posted here. Though I don't believe there's a connection. And, yes, I did leave it open for a sequel… It takes place after XANA's defeat, with Donna, more of the Lyoko Warriors (but still enough of the Doctor), and a running through lots of corridors sequence that this story was lacking in. Krem and I went crazy trying to figure out who the enemy would be. We talked about Daleks, classic Cybermen from THIS universe, Weeping Angels, the Master, the Graske, the Trickster, the robot Santas… It went on for hours. I wanted to make up my own creature at first, but then I got a better idea. The story's title: The Family of Wrath. GUESS. :) Keep your eyes peeled... But for now, faithful reader, I give my utmost gratitude. The only reason I have this finished right now is because I know you've been reading it. To those of you who've endured the months of waiting between each chapter since the very beginning, great job. Molto bene. To those of you who read this whole thing in one day, you're lucky… But really, I can't possibly express how eternally grateful I am. Thank you all so much. I say to thee farewell!
7
