Author's notes: Sorry it's taken me so long to update—I wanted the next couple of chapters to be juuuuust right.

Secret Door

Chapter 10

Thoughts escaped her as Rose stared down at the doctor's colorless hand, nestled lovingly in her own. She traced the lines of a tear that had fallen on his thumb, and then raised his hand so that she could kiss it one last time. "I'm so sorry, Doctor," she sobbed.

The time she spent sitting on the edge of the bed might have been a thousand years, or a few minutes. Numbness settled in deep through her body, half her heart cold and empty, its desire erased from the universe. She couldn't even begin to think of a future, or make plans, even the most pressing, like what to do with the shell of his body.

The kernel of a thought began drown out her grief and nag at her until it grew into an obsession, and her muscles tensed. Anger paired with the obsession filled the space in her chest where the doctor's love used to live, and her mind became a gale of mixed fury and thoughts of revenge. Queen Bastet had done this to him.

Rose had left him behind, and that was a mistake she would bear the cross of forever. The Anubis had beaten him and forced him to work, but only on the queen's orders. It was she who had enslaved him, who had commanded that he work until he could stand no more. The cursed wonder of the pyramid that stood right outside the Tardis was built on his back, along with the lives of countless other Egyptian slaves, and the evil woman should pay. Yes, she should pay for the pain she inflicted on her beloved doctor, for the love she had destroyed.

Rose stood up, determined to do something to avenge the doctor. She leaned over him, kissing his forehead and stroking his hair one more time before covering his face with a blanket. "I'm sorry, Doctor," she said again. "I'm should have known you'd give your life to save mine. I can't make it up to you, but I can try and make it even."

She paced, fuming for a few more minutes as she plotted her next moves, and then she picked up a bucket and the sash that had been tied around the doctor's waist and headed out the door.

Getting to the queen wasn't going to be easy, but she had an idea. Outside the pyramid was a well where she had drawn up water for the queen. She filled the bucket with water and placed it on her head, carefully carrying it to the entrance of the pyramid, still wearing her plain white tunic. She walked right past the guards at the front, who must have assumed that she was just another house slave, despite her blonde hair.

She made it all the way down the central chamber underground before calling out to an Anubis guard, "Hey, you."

The urge to hurt him simmered strong within her, but she refrained long enough to wait for his reaction. "Slave, get back to work," he said, holding out the handle to his whip as a threat.

Warm with satisfaction, she smiled that he had taken the bait. "What are you going to do about it if I don't?" she said, sass in her tone.

The guard pushed a button on his whip handle, and the electronic whip snapped out to its full length. "This is for the doctor," she said, grabbing the bucket of water with both hands and splashing its contents onto the whip and the guard generously.

With a sizzle, the whip shorted out, the electricity travelling like a flash to the dog-man's hand and throughout his body. He convulsed for several seconds, and then fell to his knees.

Rose had expected to experience some guilt over taking a life, and possibly a bit of sadness. But her heart had turned as cold as the doctor's skin, and she would have spat on this being lying on the ground if she had not cared about wasting a few precious seconds. Her callousness shocked her, but she didn't have time to contemplate it. She had more work to do.

Once the whip stopped sparking, she picked it up cautiously, and marveled at how the weight of it in her hand brought her such gratification. She pushed a button on it, and it lit up again with renewed sizzle. With the weapon empowering her, she moved freely into the control room, where two more Anubis and the queen surrounded the console, looking up just as they realized that something out of the ordinary was happening.

Before the guards had time to react, Rose flicked the whip at first one, and then the other, and both lay dead on the ground. Without even flinching at the lives she had just taken, she turned to the queen, whose eyes shot wide open with surprise. But the heartless woman maintained her composure, saying, "The white-haired slave."

The queen had not aged much, and Rose became furious that this dictator had lived in luxury while the doctor had wasted away, enchained under her tyrannical command. "On your knees, you filthy wench," Rose said, snapping the whip on the floor for emphasis.

The woman glared at her, but did as she commanded, getting down on one knee, and then the other. "I have Anubis all over this pyramid," she said. "You'll never get away, and it's too late anyway."

"I don't care about getting away," said Rose, her jaw hardened. "Just getting even. In fact—" She circled the queen, and once she stood directly behind the woman, she dropped the whip and pulled out the sash. "I want it to be a slow, personal death."

As she said the words, she wrapped the ends of the sash around both of her hands and strung it around the queen's neck, yanking it tight once it encircled her thin, pasty throat. The queen began to gurgle, and there was a rewarding squishy feel as Rose pulled the sash tighter. Through clamped shut teeth, Rose said, "This isn't a fraction of the suffering you caused the doctor."

The gurgling stopped, and the queen's head began to bob as she started to lose consciousness. But Rose lowered herself to her knees and pulled even tighter, saying through fresh tears, "You stole the life from my love, and for that you have to pay."

"Except—" said a familiar voice. "That I'm still alive."

"Doctor?" Rose said, looking up while the queen slumped to the floor.

In contrast to the half-naked, scrawny doctor she had left in the Tardis, he was back to the doctor she knew—clean-shaven and back in his overcoat and pin-stripe suit, hair spikey and wild. He took a step toward her in his blue Converse sneakers. "In the flesh."

"Oh my God, Doctor. You're alive!" As she exhaled the words, she had the urge to drop everything and run toward him, enveloping him in a big bear hug. But a stronger impulse gripped her like a vice, and she found that she could not let go of the sash, and instead tightened it again, almost unaware of her own actions until she felt it sink into the queen's jelly-like neck. It would be easy—so easy, to finish her off.

The doctor must have noticed her obsession as well, because he took another step toward her and held out one hand in a stop sign. "Rose, let her go."

She looked at him, beseeching him with her eyes, and shook her head. "I can't." She clenched her teeth. "I hate her . . . and what she did to you, Doctor. We can't let her get away with what she did."

"I know why you're so angry," he said, sinking his hands into the pockets of his coat. "And I know why she's so bitter. She's had a rough go of it."

"I don't care!" Rose pulled the sash taut, hoping to cut off the last bit of life-saving air. "She's a horrible person."

"Rose, just let go so we can talk. Please." Unable to defy the doctor, she loosened up the sash, but she did not remove it from the queen's neck. The doctor knelt on one knee next to them, speaking softer now. "Queen Bastet's people are from the planet Dogon in the Sirius Star Cluster. Well . . . half her people, anyway." He looked down at the queen's thin, fragile frame with empathy. "You see, she's a hybrid. The Dogons don't look as human as her. In fact, your people are terrified of them—remember the grays?"

Rose peered at him out of the corner of her eye, ashamed of her actions and unable to look him in the eye. Instead, she stared at the queen, noticing for the first time how her features resembled the big-headed aliens with slanted eyes that she had seen in pictures. "You mean, the Area Fifty-One kind?"

"You betcha. They're real. They came here long ago—well," he said, his head bobbing back and forth, "right about thirty years ago. But she's only half-Dogon. The other half of her is human. She probably never even set foot on Dogon. But her people gave the humans some of their technology and left, realizing that the humans weren't advanced enough for their purposes yet." His voice got quiet. "But they left her behind. She's the last of her kind—the only one of her kind, really. Their abandonment of her must have devastated her."

Rose squinted her eyes as tears began to fall from them. "But Doctor, even knowing that, I still hate her." She shook her head. "Right now, I don't think I can stop myself from killing her even if I tried."

Lifting a finger to her chin to raise her face so that their eyes could meet, he said, "I know. And it's not your fault. But I found the secret door, and this is it." He reached into his pocket and withdrew the Tardis light bulb that she had left in his dead hand.