Disclaimer: Conclusion of "The Unquiet Dead" by Mark Gatiss. While most is directly from the episode there are many alterations and additions. No offense intended, or money gained.
Many thanks to my hard working Beta Jordan K West.
CHAPTER 9: GELTH INVASION
Previously on Doctor Who...
"No chance you were gonna say 'gazebo', is there?" Rose said. It figured. They had to go to the morgue of all places to enact this creepy plan. This just got worse and worse. But Gwyneth had made up her mind to help the Gelth, even if she mistakenly thought of them as angels, Rose had no right to tell her what to do. And Rose was going to stay with her and the Doctor and help any way she could...
D*W
The four of them followed Sneed to the Morgue down in the basement of the house. Rose was right, it was creepy down here and cold. There were several bodies on the tables scattered about the room.
"Talk about a bleak house," the Doctor commented.
"The thing is, Doctor, the Gelth don't succeed. 'Cause I know they don't. I know for a fact that corpses weren't walking around in 1869," Rose said.
'How little humans understand Time. It's infinite complexity, it's infinite twists and fluctuations. I guess it's time for her to start getting a grasp on the Infinite Temporal Flux,' thought the Doctor.
"Time's in flux, changing every second. Your cozy little world could be rewritten like that," he said snapping his fingers to emphasize his point. Her entire history as she knew it could easily change in the blink of an eye.
"Nothing is safe, remember that. Nothing." He didn't like scaring her, but better to be scared than have her be unprepared.
Rose was a little startled at his revelation but trying to process it as quickly as possible. She needed to be ready for anything that may go wrong with this plan, she could process this and question him later.
"Doctor," said Dickens, "I think the room is getting colder."
They heard voices whispering. "Here they come," said Rose.
A blue-gas specter appeared below an arch. "You've come to help. Praise the doctor. Praise him."
"Promise you won't hurt her!" demanded Rose, still worried about the situation and Gwyneth in particular.
"Hurry, please. So little time. Pity the Gelth."
The Doctor stepped forward. "I'll take you somewhere else after the transfer. Somewhere you can build proper bodies. This isn't a permanent solution, all right?" Wanting to make sure they wouldn't start a fight once they got here. He hadn't noticed, but he had placed himself between the aliens and Rose.
"My angels. I can help them live," Gwyneth said.
"Okay, where's the weak point?"
"Here, beneath the arch," the Gelth said.
Gwyneth moved and stood underneath the arch where the Gelth also was, turning so she was facing out into the room. Rose moved to her to try to stop her one more time. "You don't have to do this," she said.
"My angels," Gwyneth said, her hands on Rose's cheeks. Rose felt a sudden shock and quickly moved back into the Doctor's arms.
"Establish the bridge; reach out to the void; let us through."
"Yes. I can see you. I can see you. Come. Come to me."
"Bridgehead established."
"Come to this world poor lost souls."
"It is begun. The bridge is made." Gwyneth's mouth opened and Gelth started entering the room. But it did not look like one or two, it looked liked dozens, with more still coming. "She has given herself to the Gelth."
"Rather a lot of them, eh?" said Sneed. All three of them were looking around at the Gelth floating around the room in concern.
"The bridge is open. We descend," the Gelth behind Gwyneth said. At this point it lost its blue coloring and friendly facade and turned fire-orange so that it looked like it was made of fire. "The Gelth will come through in force," it declared.
"You said you were 'few' in number!" Charles yelled over the howling of the Gelth.
"A few billion. And all of us in need of corpses."
"Oh, Gwyneth. Stop this!" Sneed cried. "Listen to your master. This has gone far enough. Stop dabbling, child, and leave these things alone. I beg of you."
Rose turning her head suddenly noticed one of the previously still corpses in the room was now walking-courtesy of a Gelth, no doubt. One was about to attack Sneed. "Mr. Sneed, get back!" she yelled.
The Doctor grabbed Rose and pulled her away from the Gelth-infected corpses. But Sneed hadn't gotten away in time, one of them had him in a tight grip and broke his neck. Quickly thereafter a Gelth infected him, and he was one of them.
"I think it's gone a little bit wrong," the Doctor said. Rose decided not to comment. How could he have known the Gelth were that bad? He was trying to help them, and she understood that.
"I have joined the legions of the Gelth," Gelth-Sneed said. "Come. March with us."
"No," Charles said. He was on the opposite side of the room from the Doctor and Rose. If he ran, he could escape, but the Doctor and Rose had too many Gelth between them and the door.
"We need bodies. All of you, dead. The human race, dead," Gelth-Sneed said as he advanced on the Doctor and Rose. The Doctor backed them up as he kept a tight hold of her hand. He wasn't letting her go, he wasn't losing her.
"Gwyneth, stop them. Send them back, now!" he yelled desperately.
The head Gelth spoke again. "Three more bodies, convert them. Make them vessels for the Gelth."
Charles was lucky, all the Gelth were focusing on the Doctor and Rose. He had a chance to escape. He couldn't see how to help them anyway. "Doctor, I-I can't. I-I'm sorry. This new world of yours is too much for me!" he cried.
Meanwhile, the Doctor had noted that at his back was a cage-like door, one that was a metal frame with bars on it-like in jails. He quickly opened it up and pulled Rose inside with him, shutting it behind them. They were trapped but at least the Gelth couldn't reach them, for now. They quickly ended up with their backs pressed against the concrete wall.
"I'm so-" Charles said, but was interrupted by a scream that finally scared him enough that he fled, still feeling guilty for leaving people behind to die.
Gelth-Sneed spoke again, "Give yourself to glory. Sacrifice your lives to the Gelth." by now there were more than a half dozen Gelth-corpses leaning on the bared-door, trying to get and the Doctor and Rose.
"I trusted you. I pitied you!" the Doctor said. He did not like being duped. How had Rose known not to trust them? He wished now that he had listened to her.
"We don't want your pity!" the Gelth cried. "We want this world and all it's flesh."
"Not while I"m alive," he declared.
"Than live no more," the Gelth said. They clearly had no idea who he was.
Rose was scared, truly scared. If she had been alone, she would have long since panicked and probably been turned into a Gelth-corpse by now. Then, again, she probably wouldn't have been here on her own, so it was a moot point anyway.
But the Doctor was here, right beside her, holding her hand tightly in his, offering comfort or taking comfort-she wasn't quite sure which. Maybe it was both.
"But I can't die," Rose said, "Tell me I can't. I haven't even been born yet. It's impossible for me to die!" She was being stubborn, she knew, but she couldn't help it. She was desperate to find a way to make this okay. "Isn't it?" she asked pointedly, noticing he hadn't answered her and his eyes were firmly on the Gelth.
'Oh, Rose. You young, human, linear girl. No concept of temporal flux, at all yet. I don't want to answer that. But I don't want to lie to her either,' the Doctor thought. He finally looked down at her.
"I'm sorry."
"But it's 1869. How can I die now?" she asked him.
"Time isn't a straight line. It can twist into any shape," he explained to her. "You can be born in the 20th century and die in the 19th, and it's all my fault. I brought you here." He hated that he was gonna get her killed. He always tried to protect those that traveled with him, but it was a dangerous life and not everyone made it home. Still, somehow he thought losing Rose would be worse than all the others he had lost.
Rose turned back to face the Gelth. One thing she was quickly learning about the Doctor is that he blames himself for everything. He has a lot of guilt, and she didn't know if he deserves any of it or not. She hoped someday he'd learn to start forgiving himself. Or tell her what he did so she at least can forgive him. But for now, she can absolve him of this.
"It's not your fault. I wanted to come," she said firmly.
"What about me," he asked, now trying to lighten the mood a little bit. "I saw the fall of Troy. World War V. I pushed boxes at the Boston Tea Party, now I'm gonna die in dungeon...in Cardiff!" he cried melodramatically.
"It's not just dying," Rose reminded him. "Gonna become one of them," she nodded to the zombies.
The thought of his body being used to house one of those creatures sickened the Doctor. But he wasn't sure if they knew how to properly kill him. It was possible, of course. Even a simple gun could do it, if he was shot while regenerating, he'd die and nothing would save him.
"We'll go down fightin', yeah?" Rose said, her voice pulling him out of his musings.
"Yeah," he confirmed.
"Together?"
"Yeah," he squeezed her hand, and shifted his hold so their fingers interlocked. "I'm so glad I met you," he told her.
"Me too," she said, and gave him a wide grin, which he returned.
D*W
Charles had disgracefully fled his new friends, for lack of a better term, and was running for his life out of the undertaker's house at speed. He got all the way to the front door, and once on the other side, he finally stopped for breath, believing himself safe enough. Moments later that illusion was shattered when he saw wisps of the Gelth creatures coming through the cracks in on the sides of the door. He pushed himself to run further.
Charles continued to run down the street, but the Gas creature chased after him. After a moment it cried out, "Failing. Atmosphere hostile!" It fell back into a gas lamp.
This gave Charles an idea. Finally something he could do to help his friends, rather than run like a coward. "Gas!" he cried.
Charles rushed back to the undertaker's house and quickly set about his task. He turned off flame on the lamps but turned up the gas, thus flooding the rooms, indeed the entire house, with gas. He pulled out a handkerchief and covered his mouth so that he could breathe better. It helped a little to filter out the gas fumes.
He made his way down to the basement. He was relieved to see the Doctor ans Rose had been clever enough to find a way to avoid the Gelth so far; they were currently behind the bars of a door the Gelth were not able or clever enough to get through.
"Doctor! Doctor!" Charles called. "Turn off the flame, turn up the gas! Now fill the room, all of it, now," he said.
"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked. That gas might choke them all, Rose and Charles first, but him soon after.
"Turn it all on," Charles cried, moving to do just that. "Flood the place!"
The Doctor caught on. "Brilliant- gas!"
"What, so we choke to death instead?" Rose asked, not understanding Charles's plan.
"Am I correct, Doctor?" Charles asked, turning to look at him. "These creatures are gaseous."
"Fill the room with gas, it'll draw them out of the host. Suck them into the air like poison from a wound," the Doctor finished explaining. 'Brilliant, why didn't I think of it?' he thought.
As the Gelth turned from the bared-door to Charles, the writer began to worry. "I hope," he said. "Oh, Lord. I hope that this theory will be validated soon. If not immediately."
"Plenty more," said the Doctor. He had to let go of Rose's hand to reach over to his left to the gas main and turn the gas up even further, seriously flooding the room with gas. Immediately there was an effect on the Gelth-corpses. The Gelth were thrown out of the bodies into the area with higher gas content, which was now the room, since it had been flooded with gas.
The Gelth screamed, and were yanked from their host bodies. The corpses they were riding fell to the floor. "It's working," Charles said.
The Doctor opened the door and let him and Rose out of the dungeon. "Gwyneth, send them back! They lied, they're not angels."
Rose stepped out of the dungeon, looking around horrified at the bodies around the room. She knew in her mind that most were already dead before they started, but still, it tore at her heartstrings. She knelt at Mr. Sneed's side for a moment while the Doctor first spoke to Gwyneth, before following him to check on her.
"Liars," Gywneth said, her hands finally falling to her side.
"Look at me," he said, making his way over to her. "If your mother and father could look down and see this, they'd tell you the same. They'd give you the strength. Now, send them back!" he cried.
Rose stared coughing. "Can't breathe," she said.
"Charles get her out of here," the Doctor said to Charles, his second concern always his companion's safety. Sometimes it was even his first concern.
Charles moved to escort the choking lady out of the gas flooded building. However, Rose pushed him aside. "I'm not leaving her!" she yelled.
Charles was a gentleman and not accustomed to forcing ladies to do his bidding, even if it was for their own good. So he was at a loss as to how to get her to safety.
Rose, having no cloth with which to help protect her from the fumes, held her hand to her face and tried to limit how much she inhaled the fumes that way.
"They're too strong," Gwyneth said.
"Remember that world you saw, Rose's world? All those people-none of it will exist unless you send them back through the rift," the Doctor implored.
"I can't send them back," she said meaningfully. "But I can hold them. Hold them in this place, hold them here. Get out," she warned them. She reached her hand into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a small thing of matches, and her intentions became clear.
Rose ran toward her, not wanting her new friend to sacrifice her life for this. "You can't!" she cried. The Doctor caught her arms as Rose reached out to stop Gwyneth, stopping her in her tracks.
He had to shake her a bit to get her to face him, but once she was he told her, "Rose, get out, go now. I promise I won't leave her while she's still in danger. Now go!" he yelled, gripping her arms firmly and giving her a shove towards the door. Finally she listened and ran, taking Charles with her, trusting the Doctor to save Gwyneth.
Turning back to Gwyneth he held out his hand for the matches. He could regenerate while the human girl could not. He'd scare Rose, but there was no time. "Come on, leave that to me." he said. But as he got closer, he saw her eyes. There was no life in them. He put a hand on her neck checking both her pulse and body temperature.
There was no pulse, confirming that she was dead. Her body temperature, which his superior physiology was able to accurately pinpoint, told him that she had been dead for at least five if not ten minutes.
"I'm sorry," he told her. He never should have let her do this. This was his fault: her death, Sneed's death. He shoved that aside, for the moment; he could wallow later. He kissed her forehead, as an apology, and as a thank you. "Thank you," he said, turning and running out of the basement and house as fast as he could.
Gwyneth, what was left of her, slowly opened her matches and pulled one out. She got ready to light the house up. She hesitated just long enough to be sure the Doctor was safely outside. No one else needed to die tonight. Then she slid the match along the side of the box. It sparked and lit on fire, and the house-filled with gas-exploded, taking the Gelth with it.
The Doctor had only just made it outside before the house had blown up. The force of the blast had knocked him off his feet. He was just picking himself up again and brushing himself off when Rose came over.
Rose, seeing the Doctor had run over to him, concerned for both him and Gwyneth. She shot him a questioning look, wanting to know where Gwyneth was. He looked a bit guilty and a bit sad. He couldn't quite meet her eyes. And then Rose knew. "She didn't make it," Rose said.
The Doctor hated disappointing her. What was worse was that he was beginning to think that was the part he felt most guilty about, disappointing Rose, rather than the fact that Gwyneth was dead. "I'm sorry. She closed the rift."
"At such a cost. The poor child," Charles said.
The Doctor finally met Rose's accusing eyes, that hadn't left his face the entire time. "I did try, Rose, but Gwyneth was already dead. She had been for at least five minutes," he explained.
Rose was confused. How could she have been dead already? "What do you mean?"
"I think she was dead from the moment she stood in that arch," he said.
"But she can't have, she spoke to us. She helped us. She saved us. How could she have done that?" Rose asked.
It was Charles who answered. "'There are more things in Heaven and Earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Even for you, Doctor." He quoted Shakespeare. No matter all that the Doctor had seen, there was still more out there, forces greater than even he could imagine.
"She saved the world. A servant girl. No one will ever know," Rose said, mourning the girl who will never be honored as she should be, just once. The three of them continued to watch the house burn, for a while longer, just reflecting on the events of the past evening.
D*W
Sometime later the Doctor turned to Rose. "Time to head in?" he asked her.
"Yeah," she agreed.
She took his arm again and leaned on his shoulder, weary both physically and mentally. It wasn't long before they reached that wonderful blue box. Rose smiled, happy to be back.
The Doctor pulled out his key and led them inside, after saying a mysterious goodbye to Charles and promising that his books will last forever. Charles was given new inspirations for writing, but the Doctor informed Rose that he dies next year and would never get the chance to tell his story. But at least he had new vigor for life. They gave Charles one last surprise as they departed, dematerializing right in front of his eyes.
The Doctor turned to Rose. "First, I want to head down to the medbay, make sure all that gas didn't do too much harm."
"I'm fine," Rose claimed, but coughed again. The Tardis' lights flickered as well.
"Right, you're fine. But just so that you stay fine with all that gas in your system, how about you humor your Doctor, hmm?" he said.
"Okay, fine, but can I at least change into something more comfortable, first?" she asked.
"Will it take long?"
"Five minutes, maybe," she guessed.
"Hurry up," he agreed. But followed her to the wardrobe so he could escort her to the medbay afterwards. That way she couldn't get lost or get out of the exam. He should probably check himself over too. Gas wasn't exactly good for his system either, and though his respiratory bypass kept him from choking, the gas could possibly cause trouble for his system.
Six minutes and twenty-four seconds later, Rose came out dressed as she had been earlier that day. He took her hand and led her to the medbay. She pulled him to a stop, and told him her second stop was gonna be her bathroom. Blushing, he nodded and led her to one of the common baths along the way. He pointed to door.
Finally they made it to the medbay, and Rose noted a green moon on the door, as well as Gallifreyan writing, and below that written in apparent English was "Med-Bay" with a big red cross in the middle. Clearly it had been made to be understood as the health help center by many cultures.
The Doctor led her in to the most homey and organic-looking sickbay she had ever seen. The walls were the same shade of coral as her walls in the Console room. The counters and floors were ivory, rather than white. And the beds were the same of green as the Time Rotor in the console room, the main column leading from the central console to the ceiling. It was all soothing without offending or being irritating patients, like hospital colors often did.
The machinery, however, was nothing like anything Rose had ever seen in any hospital before. But as this was an alien ship that could move through Time as well she supposed she shouldn't be surprised. The Doctor had her sit on one of the beds while he went to grab some sort of scanner. He ran it up and down her chest and back. Then he apparently waited for the results.
"Well, the gas did not do any tissue damage. But let me check you for a couple more things first, before we call you good to go, okay?" he asked.
"You're to Doctor," Rose quipped.
He smiled at her, grabbing another small device with a tube sticking out one end. "I just need you to breathe into this, real hard," he told her.
Rose did as her Doctor ordered. The device light up and beeped after a moment, and he told her to stop. He took the device and looked at the readings. It said that her oxygen was slightly low. He had her put her finger on another scanner to check her blood oxygen levels, and those too, were low.
He pulled out an oxygen pod, a small mask that would fit over a person's nose and supply a good amount of oxygen for about half an hour. He explained to her that her oxygen levels were low and that she needed oxygen and that the pod would supply it. He explained how to use it and helped her put it on, told her it was from the planet Aldoon and that he would take her there someday if she wanted. His supply of alien information seemed to distract her for a while.
After Rose's treatment was complete he checked her again and her levels were closer to normal, close enough to call her 'fine'. "Rose, I need to check myself out as well, but I'll need your help. My physiology is a bit more resistant that humans' but it is still possible the gas damaged my respiratory bypass."
"What's a respiratory bypass?" Rose asked.
"It's like a third lung, it kicks in when I have to go extended periods of time without breathing, for whatever reason. Okay. Take that respiratory scanner over there, on the left counter. That's it. Now hold it like this, and slowly, slowly, run it from the top of my head to almost my waist, both front and back. It should make a small whistle when it's done."
Rose did as instructed. This was the same scan he had done on her, as well. When she finished, she gave the scanner back to him, carefully, so as not to drop it, though she had been surprised how light it really was.
The Doctor looked at the screen, and so did she, trying to make sense of the readings she couldn't possibly understand. When he noticed her looking, he smiled and began pointing out a few things on the screen, so that she could figure out what it was telling him. So Rose slowly began to make sense of the scanner results as well, it indicated no tissue damage to his lungs, hearts, or respiratory bypass system. Wait a minute, hearts? Plural?
"Hearts?" She asked him. "You have two hearts? Or is this malfunctioning?"
"No, it's working right. Time Lords are one of the very rare species that has two hearts," he told her.
Rose thought about that for a minute, before deciding she could think more about it later. "Okay, what next," she asked.
"Hand me the oxygen scanner," he asked. She handed him the small hand-held computerized scanner. He put his thumb on the screen for 5 seconds. It beeped and displayed a result. He showed Rose how to read it, again. His oxygen was too low. But unlike, Rose, he did not need medical help to fix that.
He explained that to Rose and then he proceeded to fix his oxygen levels. He took several deep breaths and stimulated his body to accept more oxygen for a few minutes. In five minutes, he had his levels back to normal. The Tardis, still concerned about her passengers upped the oxygen levels slightly in the rooms they were in for the rest of the night, to make sure they stayed fine and there was no lasting effect.
The Doctor turned to Rose and said, "There, that's better."
"How about some lunch or dinner or whatever, Doctor?" Rose asked.
"Whose buying?" he asked.
"I could always make us something in the kitchen, if you want. That way we don't even have to go out, we could just sit at home for a minute. Put our feet up," Rose said.
The Doctor looked at her. He wondered if she was getting tired. He sometimes forgot that humans ate three times a day, slept every 20 hours-maximum-for at least 6 hours, and needed to rest between sleeping too. He nodded.
They could stay in the Tardis a while, maybe he could start on her lessons. With that decided, they made their way to the kitchen to figure out what was for dinner.
TBC...
I am a pretty knowledgeable patient. (Frequent patient) So I can piece together some pretty convincing medical jargon, but it may not hold any water from the doctor side of things.
I actually meant to lessen that small fight between Rose and the Doctor, but when writing it Rose went and made it worse on me. Then I had to compensate for it.
Mo
I apologize, but I still plan to switch to update every other week starting with the next chapter. You must remember that prior to this I had time to write all day everyday if I felt so inclined. That's How I pumped out So many chapters so fast. Now I'm back in class, and I'm injured to boot. I'll write as much as possible, as I'm having fun, but I'm also planning to stock up chapters, as I head back to University in May.