CHAPTER TEN
Conversations in Silence
Rose was sleeping peacefully. The Doctor had gone through just about all of the memory and memorization exercises he knew to map this perspective of the stars. It wasn't a bad way to spend the night; it kept him busy and kept his mind sharp. But he had other things to think about.
He moved carefully, out from under her, making sure she settled comfortably and remained asleep before he rose to his feet and headed for the Tardis. The door was open and he stepped inside slowly, looking all around, waiting. He wasn't sure what he was waiting for. Something. Anything. Why wasn't she talking?
Rose had had the Tardis matrix in her head - however briefly. The heart of the Tardis, contained in a human body, in sync with a human mind. It was a wonder that it hadn't killed her on the spot. It was possible that the experience might have somehow fused her mind to the Tardis, not unlike his although surely not to the same extent. But that answered the how, not the why.
It didn't make any sense. In the end, she was still only human. The Tardis already had a link, and he was sure there was no confusion about the roles here. Rose was still human. She would be gone after only so many years. He and the Tardis would go on for hundreds more. Shutting him out to talk to her instead as a simple matter of preference didn't even make sense. It was something else. Something much more logical. But he couldn't imagine what.
"Why?" he asked softly, walking towards the console. "Why are you doing this?"
That fearful, pained look in her eyes was still fresh in his memory. He focused on it for a moment, considered it, turned it over and over in his mind.
"I know you don't want to hurt her. But you are hurting her."
He ran his hand slowly over the curves of the Tardis' structure. It warmed under his touch, immediately responsive. Affectionate, even.
"And you would know that," he mused, watching his hand as he gently stroked her. "You would feel it. You would feel her fear and it wouldn't feel good so why would you do something masochistic? What is it you're trying to say that's worth feeling so much negative energy? And why say it to her and not me?"
Complete silence answered him. Silence in the room and in his head. Slowly, he stepped forward, toward the console. She was powered down. Comfortable, if he had to put it into concrete terms. He could feel it when he touched her controls. She was calm. Calm and silent.
"You won't talk to me. Won't tell me anything even though you know I'd be able to decipher it better than she can. Just because she can hear you doesn't mean she can understand. And you know that. If it's something that she needs to know, do you think I wouldn't tell her? What does she need to know that I can't tell her?"
The flash of envy was startling, and relieving. The Tardis was responding.
"What do you mean jealous?" He almost laughed. "I'm not jealous! I'm..." He stopped, calling up the image of her fear, the look in her eyes. As he did, he could feel his own anger spark. "Did you feel that? Did you feel that look in her eyes? Did you hear her screaming for me? You lit up all the pain centers in her brain; don't you realize you could've killed her? She's only human; you can't shock her system that way!"
The memory that answered was vivid and blinding in its intensity. The tingling in his hands, moving up from the soles of his feet, the fear he couldn't suppress even though he knew it wasn't really, truly the end. The look in her eyes as he thanked her one last time for the memories. That excruciating pain, like his entire body was on fire - flesh and bone and the very core of his being.
"But she's human," he said again. "She doesn't regenerate. She shouldn't have to know what dying feels like and live through it. And yes, you really could have killed her. And she wouldn't have come back as someone else but you..." His anger faded as he realized the obvious. "You wouldn't have necessarily known that, would you? You know she's human, but you don't think about things like that. You don't have any concept of death except what you see and feel through me and even that... Just electrical impulses."
The images faded from his mind, into silence. He frowned as his thoughts wandered onto the next topic. Withdrawing from the console, he moved to the bench and sat down, pulling his legs up and crossing them under him.
"But then you took us to that place, the New Sphere, with the Sensorites." His tone was bordering on accusatory, and he didn't try to curb it. "All the places in the universe, in all of time, you could've landed us anywhere, and you chose to take us there. Why? You knew I wouldn't want to know about that. And it wasn't as if I could do anything to help them. You took us there just so that I could see what I'd done. One more race, species, planet I'm ultimately responsible for destroying."
The flash of memory came suddenly and strong. Rose standing beside him. Her voice, "It's not your fault," and her hand over his. He felt a wash of relief. The Tardis was listening. And responding, even if she wasn't really giving him the answers he was hoping for.
"That's not the point," he continued quietly. "The point is that you took me there. You took me to a place I wouldn't have wanted to go to show me something I didn't want to see, and there was no reason for it, nothing I could do. That feels cruel."
Silence. He let it linger for a moment before tipping his head back, his gaze tracing her curves all the way to the domed ceiling as he sighed.
"But you're not cruel. You've never been cruel. You're not even capable of being cruel. That's far too complex, too... emotional. You're capable of a lot of things, but allowing your emotions to overrule your rationality has never been one of them. And besides that, it's pointless! More depressed, negative energy signatures; I know you don't like those. So why?"
He waited. He wanted an answer to this. He needed an answer. This wasn't normal; it wasn't like the Tardis to try so hard to communicate something, let alone to someone other than him. So he waited. He waited for an explanation, an impression, anything. He knew his chances of getting one were slim to none. She was far more patient than he was. But he waited, silent, with his mind blank, until the image slowly formed. An image not of his own, because he never would've wanted to picture it.
Rose lying still on the floor of that bright white control room.
"No." His eyes snapped open, and he stared at the cylinder in the center of the console as if he could somehow make eye contact with the Tardis herself. "Why say that?"
He stood, taking a few steps toward the console. "That doesn't even make sense. Even if it were true, if she was going to die, you couldn't tell me. You don't show me my own future; I know you don't. You can't! So why show me that?"
He paused in the silence that followed as a thought - his own - struck him.
"Are you jealous? No." He dismissed it just as quickly but continued, pacing as he brainstormed out loud. "Not with Rose. We've been through that, haven't we? And if you didn't like her - if you didn't really like her - you would've let her die when she absorbed you.
"So why are you having so much trouble communicating all of a sudden? You have all the images and thoughts of nine hundred years, well, longer really; you've got the experiences of anyone you met before me, too. Which means you've got infinite knowledge of... what? Well, everything. Space, time, science, religion, culture, creature language, computer language, any language, well... Almost any language. I do manage to find one every so often and emotional languages escape you, well... not entirely but the inherent concept behind nonverbal communication is... oh, never mind, not important. Think!"
He hit his forehead before he spun on his heel, pacing back and forth as racing thoughts spilled out of his mouth. Somewhere along the way, he'd slipped back into his native language, the way he always did when the thoughts came too quickly.
"All of those ways to communicate and you've used almost every one of them in some form or another, with me, through the years. I understand you, I understand what you're trying to say when you speak to me. So why wouldn't you speak to me? Why would you speak to her and more importantly, why would you speak to her to say something that doesn't even make any sense? Because I know the laws that are built into your existence; I know your limits and I know you wouldn't show me - or her - anything on our own timeline. That means this is something she needs to know but it's not about her dying; it's got nothing to do with her dying. Something she needs to do, needs to feel, needs to be aware of. Something she needs to know and I don't. Something that she's going to go through but I'm not."
He paused, letting that settle, letting his eyes fade out of focus for a moment as he considered the possible implications.
"And it's soon," he realized quietly. "It's very soon. That feeling, before the Games, that was you. You were talking to me, not her. So why switch? When did you start talking to her? Actually, funny thing, when did you ever start talking to her? Could've been a long time ago; she wouldn't even have necessarily realized it."
He pushed that unimportant thought aside as he began pacing again, thoughts picking up speed. "You could've been talking to her from the beginning and it doesn't matter. What matters is now. Here, now. It's important now because it's close. Now you have to speak louder. Now you're yelling, screaming into her head all the time, telling her things she probably doesn't even realize she knows and she can't tell me because she - Oh! Yes! No..." He stopped, considered, continued more slowly. "Yes... Of course! Why didn't I think of that sooner? I'm so slow! Old and slow! Rose!"
He was bounding out the doors of the Tardis, across the few steps to where she was sleeping soundly. Sand flew everywhere as he dropped to his knees next to her. "Rose, wake up."
Startled awake, she blinked a few times and sat up, reaching for him. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. Listen, I've got it. I need to get inside of your head."
Bleary-eyed and half asleep, she tightened her fingers around his arm, squeezing as if to reassuring herself that he was real. "Am I dreaming?" she slurred.
"Not dreaming, very much awake, well..." He gave himself a moment to take a better look at her and reconsidered those words. "Figure of speech. Listen. Whatever the Tardis is trying to say to you, there's pieces missing. Lots of pieces. Now, whatever she's saying, she thinks it's more important that you hear it than me. That's why she's speaking to you. You've had the Tardis matrix in your head; you're probably just as receptive to her communication efforts as I am. But the difference is, I know when she's trying to talk to me because I've had years and years - centuries, in fact - of learning to listen and figuring out when it's her thoughts and when it's mine."
"Doctor..."
"No, Rose, just listen. This is important. She doesn't realize the difference! Well, she does, I mean, she knows the difference between you and me. But that experience you had in the room with the burning - she wasn't trying to kill you she was just trying to say something to you the way she would try to say it to me if she was screaming it at me because I wasn't listening! That means she's said it before. She's been saying it for a long time in a thousand different ways and I need to know what she's been saying."
"Uh huh?"
"But you didn't notice it. That's why you can't just tell me, because you didn't realize it was anything important. Your brain just filed it away with all the other random thoughts that come and go. But it's still there. It's still in your mind. And I need to see it; I need your permission," finally, he paused for a breath, "to see it."
She was staring at him blankly. Finally, she closed her eyes slowly and shook her head, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I could ask you to say all that over again at half the speed, but I'm really just too tired. What do you need me to do and can it please wait 'til morning?"
He smiled. "I don't need you to do anything," he said softly, more slowly. "I just need your permission."
"For what?"
"I need to see inside of your head."
"Can you do that while I'm sleeping?"
"Even better than when you're awake, actually."
She yawned as she lay back down on the sand, tucking her arm underneath her head. "Then be my guest."
He watched her for a moment, and his smile softened. She was asleep again - lightly - as soon as she lay her head back down. She really was exhausted. He was going to have to be careful about what he dragged up when her mind was so open and vulnerable.
He breathed deep and slow, clearing his own mind as he touched the tips of his fingers to her forehead, brushing her hair aside gently. Relaxed. Warm. She was definitely asleep. But the door... As he approached the door to her mind, he stopped abruptly. It wasn't open. That was strange. The door of a sleeping mind should be wide open. That was strange. He studied it carefully. No way to open it. It was locked? Not just that... It was sealed tight.
How to get through a locked door with no visible locking mechanism? But more importantly, why was there a door with no locking mechanism sealing off her mind? He was no stranger to these techniques. Even if there was a door here, he should've been able to get easily through it. What was protecting her? And from what?
"Rose?"
She was asleep. He knocked on the door.
"Ow!" Bolt upright and holding her head, she cut the connection between them so abruptly, he jumped back. Eyes wide, she was staring at him with a look of startled anger. "What the hell did you do that for!"
"Do what?"
"I..." The anger faded to confusion. Still holding her head, she frowned. "I don't know. What did you do?"
He shook his head slightly, just as confused. "I didn't do anything. Nothing that should've hurt."
"No, it didn't hurt. It just..." She frowned deeply, shaking her head. "I don't know. But whatever it was, I'm wide awake now."
He stared, curious, thinking but not moving. What had that startled her so much? It was like every alarm in her brain triggered at once when he'd knocked.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I think so." She rubbed her eyes, then her chest. "Heart is beating really fast."
"Massive shot of adrenaline."
"Why? What exactly were you doing in my head?"
"I wasn't doing anything; I wasn't even there yet."
"Oh." She looked around, then back at him, eyeing him warily. "Are you gonna try again?"
"Will you let me?"
"Yes. But. Can you warn me before you do anything that's going to scare the living daylights out of me?"
He nodded. "I promise."
Moving a bit closer, he placed his hands gently on either side of her head. "Try and relax. This won't hurt."
"Mmm hmm."
Again through the emptiness, and again to that door - huge and airtight, like the hull of a massive ship with no external oxygen barrier. He approached it slowly, searching the edges of it, looking for any sign of how to get through. But why was it there? How was it here?
"Rose?"
"Yeah?"
"What are you thinking right now?"
"What?"
"Right now, this very moment, the first thing that comes to your mind is...?"
"I wonder how this is going to feel."
The free admission of her thoughts should've flung that door wide open. Instead, it stood sealed between them, keeping him in the dark.
"That is strange."
"What is?"
"Your mind. It's like it's locked."
"What does that mean?"
"Means I can't get in. Are you afraid?"
"Of what?"
"Of anything. Anything at all, right this minute."
"No."
"So why is your mind locked down so tight?"
Slowly, he let his hands fall, severing the link. She looked up at him curiously as they sat still for a moment, eye to eye.
"A great big door like that, you couldn't put that there." He looked over his shoulder. "That's the Tardis."
"What do you mean?"
"She's protecting you. Shielding your mind."
"From what?"
"Anything trying to get in."
"Like you?"
"Not specifically me. Can't be. I'm not a threat to you, she knows that. She doesn't need to protect you from me."
"So... the door gets locked to everyone and that means you too?"
"Yeah."
"So how do I open it?"
That was a very good question. It was the obvious solution; she would have to open it from the inside. But that would require a language of communication that she hadn't ever been taught. Human beings could be telepathic, to a limited extent, but it took years and years to teach them even the basics. If he could open the link and invite her through it, she could come and go back and forth. But as far as her opening it...
"You can't," he concluded. "I'll have to do it. Come on."
He sprang to his feet, offering a hand down to her. She took it and he pulled her up before grabbing his coat off the sand and shaking it out.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe," he answered as he stepped inside the Tardis and closed the doors behind them. "And somewhere with oxygen."
