A/N: Sorry for the late update. Sorry for the evil cliffhangers. The next chapter is the last, so I intend to make it the best. It may, therefore, take a little longer.

Thanks to all who are following this story and a huge thanks to those of you who are taking the time to review. It does have an impact on my writing.

Without further adieu:

Cold

Chapter Ten: Tragedy Unfolding

'The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don't always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don't always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.'

"Doctor! Oh my God."

"Are you okay?"

He could hear the familiar sound of their trainers, their beautiful hand-crafted-by-some-poor-starving-minor-in-a-third-world-country trainers, as they pounded the floor viciously to get to him as fast as their legs could physically manage. He could see their blurry figures, clad in clothes whose origins were equally as questionable as those of their trainers. Their stunted forever-evolving language fell from their lips, as foreign-sounding to him in those brief moments as the concept of cruelty for fun. Before he could reply, though he was sure his garbled response would undoubtedly be of questionable understanding, they were by his chair, untying the restraints that held him to the ugly, harsh, geometric shape.

"What have they done to you!"

That was, he thought, Amy. Though, that level of concern from her seemed odd. Perhaps it was Rory. The pitch of the voice didn't exactly help: Rory's voice was hardly the booming, rolling thunder of some of the male companions whose voices he had grown accustomed to. He couldn't even feel them undoing the restraints; he only really noticed they had done so once the handcuffs had fallen from his body. Unbeknownst to them, the metal chains that were rubbing and cutting into his deathly pale skin were the only things keeping him from slumping so far into the chair as to fall out of it and onto the floor where a growing puddle of blood greeted him with a dull splash.

"He's weaker than a kitten!"

"What's new?"

Ah. Now that was Amy. That was definitely Amy. She had an innate habit of telling him at every available opportunity that he was as weak as a kitten, or a newt, or a chick; it varied daily.

"Doctor?"

A bright flash penetrated his blurry vision, causing him to flinch away and lash out violently in the general direction of the light.

"Ouch!"

"Oh, you big pansy!"

"He hit me!"

"You were shining a torch in his face!"

A torch? Where did Rory even get a torch from? The Spiringosians on the Equator never went outside. They certainly never went outside at night, so they certainly would have no need for a torch. In fact, he reassured himself, he was quite sure that the Spiringosians had only discovered torches after contact with humans and even then, the whole concept of a light-producing portable hand-held device had never quite caught on. It had been a trend for a while but like fashion styles on Earth, after a few months, people had grown bored of it and moved onto something newer and more interesting.

"He reacted anyway. So he's conscious."

He managed a frown and an expression of 'duh!' which the pair seemed to have noticed. He was helped into a sitting position though for a brief moment, he just thought his arms were being attacked by an army of arachnids, which he'd experienced before often enough to remember it in great detail. Once sitting, his head rolled onto his shoulders and chest, unable to remain upright. As Rory remarked to Amy, the Doctor was just barely aware of what was physically happening to him. His concern, in fact, lay elsewhere.

"Doctor, the cure fell on the floor, it's smashed… it's gone."

This time the frown was a deeper one, contorting his face into an aged, wrinkly mass of flesh that was wholesomely unattractive. His breathing was audible on the peripheries of his hearing range, something that frightened him when it occurred to him. Laboured and wheezy, he sounded more like the TARDIS when it tried to materialise than a Time Lord. He could only imagine the sort of quips and witty remarks he'd be getting off Time Lord society for sitting in a pool of his own coughed-up blood, on the verge of death, with a dying TARDIS and nothing but humans to save him. It was almost a good thing they weren't around anymore, if only because he didn't have to worry about living down the whole experience.

"Did you hear her? Doctor, the cure's gone. What do we do?"

The change was almost, but not quite, due to his now very poor reaction time, instantaneous. His TARDIS had been dying since the poison-disease had been administered but, as certain pessimistic humans have a tendency to point out, everyone's dying, all the time. However, his TARDIS was actually dying. Her systems were failing. One by one, she began to shut down. Like a computer whose been overloaded and simply can't take it anymore. Like a human suffering the terrible symptoms of Alzheimer's where the body's organs slowly stop, as though having given up altogether on whatever brilliant mind may have once occupied the slowly diminishing brain. It was painful. It was like a piece of him was dying… mostly because, a piece of him actually was dying.

Rose had once remarked, very cleverly, that the TARDIS translation circuits had ceased to work on that Christmas Day that felt so very long ago. She theorised that perhaps the TARDIS wasn't working because the Doctor was ill. The TARDIS felt, at that time, as though a piece of herself was broken and burning with healing energy. This time, the feeling was reversed, the TARDIS's soul was breaking up, beginning to perish and float away and the Doctor could feel it. He could feel his essence willing itself to float away with her and his entire body burned with an uncontainable sense of rage and hatred and despair and hope and devastation and fear. His fists had clenched without him realising. His face had scrunched up in pain. His body quivered with visible freezing fear. Tears rolled over his cheeks.

"Doctor?"

"What's wrong?"

He couldn't tell who'd spoken. He didn't really care either. His TARDIS was dying and so was he and he had far more important things to worry about than reassuring his companions. Then it struck him. Like an iron fist to the gut. Winding him so strongly that he could not breathe for seconds afterwards. How could he have been so slow? It was so obvious! He was becoming far too slow. One day, he would be too slow to save anyone. He had to change. Become faster. But that was for another day. Another life. He made a mental note. Next time. Next time. Next time, he has to be faster. Much faster. As fast as he was when he was young. If not faster. He has to be the best, he has to save everyone. And he's just rambled when there's no time to waste.

"Vortex Mn-" he frowns and tries again, "Vor-" again, "Vor-"

"Vortex Manipulator?"

They understood! Rory had understood. He was so very glad. He nodded.

"You want us to give you the Vortex Manipulator?"

Okay. So perhaps he hadn't completely understood. If he'd completely understood, he wouldn't have asked that question. Stupid Rory. The Doctor nodded.

"What're you going to do with that?"

Amy, confused as always. She made no attempt to help out her husband as he squirmed and squealed 'ew!' in an attempt to wrestle the Vortex Manipulator off the wrist of a dead woman whose bullet wound was visible on her head as he did so. Eventually, the girlish sounds of disapproval ceased and his hands were lifted, before a heavy yet familiar object was dumped within them. Though slimy with what he assumed to be blood, the Doctor recognised the device in his hands as the Vortex Manipulator. He smiled. Perhaps they could get out of this mess yet.

"Sh-" his throat was so dry, it would be a miracle if he could get a word out, "She-" victory! A word! He tried to continue, "Lie-" damn. Perhaps not so lucky.

"She lie? She lied?"

"Ye-" frowning he attempted once more, "Yes. Two cu-"

"Two? There are two? Where?"

"Not," pause, "So," pause, "Happy."

"Why? What?"

"You can understand him?"

"He is speaking English, Rory!"

"Second in pock-" two and a half words, that's a record, "Smashed like first," wow, record's broken already.

"Then why have we given you the- oh! Oh!"

"Ha!" he smiled, one of them had got it, "You got it."

"Got what?" What's he talking about, Amy?"

"The Vortex Manipulator. He's going to send one of us back to pickpocket the second cure out of her coat before she's shot and both smash. We bring it back here and we have a cure!"

"Great!"

There was a long pause.

"Except neither of us know how to use a Vortex Manipulator."

The Doctor just about managed to roll his eyes. They clearly hadn't been paying attention. He'd been tapping in pre-set coordinates and commands ever since the thing had been dumped into his hands. It wasn't difficult. He'd been able to do it at lightning speeds when faced with the end of the universe. In comparison, his current levels of stress were nothing. Positive that the right coordinates and commands had been set, he reached out with his right arm, which shook and strained and shivered from the effort, and found Amy's soft skin. He passed her the slimy, sticky device and pointed towards the one button that would take her there.

"There," he pointed to another one and ordered, "Back."

"Good luck, Amy."

"Luck? I don't need luck!"

A flash of white indicated, even behind closed, sticky eyelids, that Amy had activated the Vortex Manipulator and exited the current time stream. It was just him and Rory and Rory didn't know. Rory didn't know that the Doctor had just taken in the whole illness. Rory didn't know that the TARDIS was now completely healthy. Rory didn't know that one of his hearts had ceased to beat.

…Amy and Victoria Kingstanding Brown…

If there were one thing of which she was sure, it was that the Doctor was an idiot. Okay. Yes, he was on the verge of death. Yes, he had other things on his mind. Yes, he was tapping in controls on a device coated with blood. But why, oh why, had he given her so little time to perform her job. The blue flash of light had immediately taken her to the few seconds before the gun was due to unleash its cacophony of orchestral death. The woman paced before her, pausing as the Doctor whispered his response to her.

"You should join. We have cakes."

Amy pivoted about on her feet. Behind her, watching her with eyes that were strangely unsurprised, stood the gang leader of Neutron, who she had been shown a picture of by Ghveti Tani One. He smiled at her. His ugly, wrinkly brown face contorted and distorted like a bent-out-of-shape mirror at a carnival. Four shining, glistening bright eyes, burning with intellect far beyond what his appearance allowed someone to perceive, stared at her, as though encouraging her and endorsing her task. She frowned and tilted her head at him curiously, about to open her mouth as the events of the past shouted and echoed violently around the room with a suddenness that almost caused a terrified scream to pass from her lips.

"The Secrets, now!" came the deafening shout, which resounded and reverberated and danced off the walls of the vast room as though it were a solid object of incredibly destructive nature, "Or both you and your stupid machine can die!"

The pause seemed to last forever as ten of the final fifty seconds of Victoria Kingstanding Brown's life ticked away. Amy watched anxiously, aware that the woman could turn around and spot her at any given moment. Thankfully, she was too distracted, as Amy was, by the Doctor's whispered reply. The response was broken; quivering and quavering beneath a wavering whisper that seemed to be caused by the Time Lord's illness. The second response indicated otherwise.

"Sorry?"

"The Secrets, NOW!"

As though shouting would make any difference.

"No, no, the other bit. I thought I heard something about a 'stupid machine'."

Amy resisted the urge to slap and punch and laugh at the pathetic woman who thought that shouting would solve her problem. This urge was quickly heightened as the woman waltzed over to the Doctor and grabbed his chin, lifting it upwards and holding it there. The skin around her grasp whitened rapidly from the immensely harsh pressure being exerted there. The Doctor showed no expression that suggested he felt it. Indeed, there was no visible emotion on his face at all. Amy watched with morbid horror as the evil lady leant forward and hissed aggressively into the ears of the Doctor.

"Yes, your TARDIS, now give me the Secrets and you can both live!"

Amy couldn't see what exactly happened between them at that moment but the woman gasped and took several steps backwards, bumping into Amy. Quickly ceasing the opportunity that apparently divine intervention had offered her, Amy's expert hand plunged into the woman's pocket and pulled out a glass vial. Smiling even as the woman span around with an expression of horror, Amy slammed her finger into the button the Doctor had shown her. Fading with a fast inward explosion of blue-white light, the terrible deafening roar of the orchestra sounded, ending with the terrible thud of body against floor.

…The Doctor and Rory…

"Doctor!"

So Rory had noticed. Well that was at least a slight improvement. He could keep going for another ten minutes if Rory performed continual CPR on his heart, the one that had stopped; the one whose resounding silence echoed hollowly the double-beat of its brother. He suddenly felt a pair of fingers, paired together with a forced marriage of panic, fumbling at his neck. Together, the couple of digits found their intended target, a weakly throbbing vein. Rory had been made familiar with the Doctor's unusual heartbeat on several occasions so he instantly recognised that one of the hearts had ceased to sound its drumbeat.

"Don't you dare! Don't you bloody dare!"

Rory swore? Well, it wasn't really a swear word but it wasn't something he was accustomed to hearing from Rory's mouth: from Amy's mouth, maybe, but Rory? Never. There was a sharp and sudden pressure powering onto the left side of his chest. It was a heavy sensation that pressed down with enough force to cause the bones to whimper and whine and strain under the power. His ribcage screamed painfully as the incredible weight bombarded him to the beat of one hundred attacks per minute. He couldn't help but cry out and a small lapse of confidence in the onslaught indicated that Rory was not without guilt for causing these deafening, primal yells.

"C'MON!"

There was a flash of light. Tinted with blue and purple and fire and gold, he instantly knew it to be Amy, returning from the past via the Vortex Manipulator. He could smell the twisted Artron Energy as it fluttered and flittered around the room as though wishing to resemble the beauty of a butterfly; something it should have been well aware that it could never have achieved. Seeing him like this was undoubtedly going to be traumatic for them, if he survived. If he didn't, part of the TARDIS's Emergency Protocol was to erase their memories of him. If he did, he was considering wiping their memories of this event anyway. Trauma + Humans = BAD.

"Amy!"

"What happened?"

"One of his hearts has stopped. Do you have the cure?"

He could imagine a proud smile breaking out onto her face at that very moment. Just as he could imagine the glint of the glass as it was danced upon by the prevailing veils of light that dappled through the window panes above. He could hear the thick pink pearlescent liquid slopping against the sides of the glass vial, leaving an ugly residue, a greasy stain on the divine instrument. He was not aware of what happened in the ten seconds between those ramblings of his admittedly overactive imagination and when he felt the freezing cold heated sand pressing against his burning bottom lip. The cold tore through his senses as his ribcage continued to whine in pain from the pressure of CPR.

"Drink it, it's the cure."

"C'mon, c'mon."

"You have to take us back, remember? Back to boring old Leadworth?"

Oh yes. He remembered Leadworth. If ever a place had been as boring as there, he was quite happy never knowing it. He smiled as the glacial gloopy mess fell down the back of his throat, soothing the burning desertification taking place within the confines of his neck. He could feel it tearing down with its terrible temperature, trickling down his gullet until it settled, like the delicate web of a spider, over his stomach. There, he lost track of it, fearing that perhaps it had been lost, that it was too late, and that his second heart had slowed for no reason other than his impending death.

"Doctor!"

"Doctor!"

His eyes must have drooped further in those seconds, before falling completely behind the sanctity of his eyelids, covered with sticky yellow coagulation of a liquid which he would rather not have been aware of.

Thump-thump-thump-thump.

His mouth fell slightly agape and his chest forgot to rise again once it had fallen.

Thump-thump-thump.

His left heart began to kick itself into life from the efforts of Rory's rather persistent CPR attempts but the right had finally given up, conceding victory to the terrible, terribly virus turned poison.

Thump-thump.

Perhaps he should concede too.

Thump-thump.

Perhaps it was just for the best.

Thump.

Perhaps.

…