Quick note: Thinking about starting a Sherlock fanfiction if anyone fancies it! Let me know!

(I'm going to do something naughty. If you're on Facebook, look up We Are The Benaddicted and like)

Sorry about the wait.

I got stuck.

And as an apology... there will be something... special for next chapter!

Chapter Ten

The Important Bit

He sat at the bar, hand caressing a small glass of whiskey, just the scent of which was beginning to make him feel just a touch dizzy. It was late and the only straggles that were left were the lonely and broken souls, the dregs and shipwrecks of a daily storm, those that life forgot.

It was all new to him, sitting at the bar of a grimy pub while nursing a drink that we was never going to finish, but it felt oddly right. Appropriate even.

"Another," the woman on the stool next to him tapped drunkenly on the bar. Her unnatural red hair was matted, black eyeliner and mascara run down her cheeks in unlovely lines and a bleeding lip where someone had torn out one of two lip piercings. Her knuckles were scraped and she was shaking.

"You still 'aven't paid for the last three miss." The balding landlord grumbled. "And I don't tend to allow tabs."

He normally would have ignored her but there was something about him that urged him forward, a whispering in his mind, an empathetic heart he was not used to. She needed a drink... He corrected himself. She needed more drink.

"I'll get this." The man sighed and peeled a twenty from the thick wad he had curled in his pocket. "And I'll pay her outstanding debt."

The landlord shrugged, took the money, gave change and filled another glass with whatever the girl was drinking. He pushed it toward her and then shuffled off to serve another drunken woman at the end of the bar. The girl was now staring at him. Her eyes narrowed.

"Do I know you?" She asked, slowly.

"Prob'ly not." He finally lifted the drink to his lips and took a sip. It burned down his throat but not in a way that was unpleasant. He gasped and grinned at the woman. "I noticed that you didn't exactly turn down my charity."

She snorted. "Charity. Puh." She downed her drink. "You're just trying to get in my pants." The glass slammed against the bar, now empty.

Before she could even yell for the landlord, he beat her to it. He pointed to her glass. "Another!"

She gaped at him. "You... I'm not going to jump into bed with you just because you bought me two drinks."

"Five." He corrected.

"Wha?"

He scratched the side of his nose. "Five drinks. I also paid for the last three you had before I sat down, remember?" The landlord refilled the glass, took the offered money and slouched off, grumbling to himself about wishing he had taken his mother's advice and been a doctor instead. "So... what happened?"

The girl stared at the drink in front of her before her eyes sliced slowly into his. "What?" She seemed unfriendly.

He pointed. "Your lip."

The girl shrugged and pulled the sleeve of her black top up to reveal a mottled pattern of bruises in varying stages of healing across her forearm. She shrugged at his shocked expression. "Boyfriend's an asshole." She said.

"Your... boyfriend did that?"

She shrugged again. "He drinks a lot and decides that I'm not how I should be. I don't listen, hence the bruises."

"And you're okay with this?"

She snorted. "No, but why do you think I drink? I don't enjoy it here. The landlord's a wanker, the place smells like piss and I can't sit here for two minutes without some creep thinking he can get into my pants. But it's cheap and I can drink in relative peace."

The man sighed, his anger rising in a way that he did not like at all, in a way he was not used to, and clenched his fist before he resolutely slipped it off the bar and onto his lap, hiding his anger from the girl. No one should be treated like that.

"What's your name?" He asked suddenly.

She blinked and then grinned. "Nix. Short for Nicola but I haven't been called that since I was six."

"It's a good name."

She smiled and they both lapsed into silence, sipping their drinks as they thought about what had been said and left unsaid. He wasn't used to the bluntness that was spilling from this girl, the honesty and the bleak way she accepted her lot in life. He had come to believe that everyone was fighting for something better, he had learned that there was always something better... but she didn't believe that. She felt alone and had accepted that she would always be alone.

A lonely man swung from his barstool and stomped over to the jukebox. When it didn't work, even when he slowly, drunkenly, put every loose coin he had in his grimy pocket into it, he kicked it. It flickered once and died.

"Oi!" The barman yelled. "What are you doin'?! Those things aren't cheap you know!?"

"Shut up, dick." The drunken man said. He was wearing dull blue jeans that were covered in greasy oil stains and a green overcoat that hung in tatters around his knees. He gave the jukebox another sound kick. The lights flickered once and then settled back into inactivity.

"I'm warning you."

There was no prelude. Suddenly, the man was screaming, throwing empty pint glasses at the man behind the bar. Screaming obscenities until he was blue in the face, he stared throwing bottles and ashtrays, anything he could get his hands on and the man and girl slipped from their stools and hid from the showers of glass. The screaming of the drunk took drowned out any other sound and most of the other patrons were hiding under tables, peering round the cigarette machines and fruit machines in fear.

The landlord slowly stood up, his face set behind a thin sheen of blood that was spilling from a shallow cut on his forehead, and he was holding a shotgun in a way that told everyone in the bar that he knew how to use it. He pumped once and aimed it at the no-longer screaming man.

"I said." He whispered, evenly. "I'm warning you. That was a warning... This, here... this is a threat." The man blinked, once, twice and with a growl that caused the hairs to rise on Nix' arms, he fled.

The landlord slowly lowered his gun and grinned sheepishly at the nervous patrons that were beginning to peer out from their hiding places. "I don't suppose, if you're ever asked about what happened here, you could omit the fact that I had a shotgun?"

"What shotgun?" Nix said, a little breathlessly. She looked up at the man sitting next to her and giggled, reaching up to push her hair out of her eyes.

She had a very pretty smile.

O

He was storming off again and it was all the brothers could do to keep up with him.

"Doctor, what did you mean?" Lewis asked as he came abreast with him. They were heading upstairs to the ward again, mainly because the Doctor felt like he had been away from Rose for far too long. "When you said that... it's an invasion?"

"The Pods are lifeless. The only way they can do anything is if someone lands on their planet." He shook his head. "I should have remembered but my head is so full of... stuff that I can't think straight... I landed on their planet once before and I left because something was happening to me... anyway, like I said, lifeless. They can't do anything and so, how did they get here? Someone sent them."

"What if someone landed there then? You said that the Pods steal life, so maybe they came after stealing life from whoever landed there." The Doctor looked over at Lewis. He was starting to like him.

He shook his head. "They'd be in a different shape." He stopped and his eyes grew wide. "Oh I can be so stupid. A genius but really, really stupid."

"Doctor?"

"It doesn't matter." He said, with a thoughtful frown on his face. "I'd love to show off a bit but I don't really have time. All I know is that the Pods were sent here, as seeds planted to slowly destroy the human race. It would take hundreds and hundreds of years but it would work. Just before you lot take your first tentative steps out there in that big glittering void... you wouldn't even see it..."

Lewis and John stood and stared at the stranger that stood in front of them. He seemed to know so much, had seen so much and yet here he was standing in the middle of the corridor with a faraway look on his face like a schoolboy. His arms were at his side and his face was slightly tilted upwards to look at the ceiling but both brothers had the impression that he saw so much more than that...

He was something else.

And he was off again without a word, faster this time, hurrying to get to the ward.

She had been alone for too long.

O

She hadn't changed. The Doctor sat on a chair with his legs propped up on a second one that he had pulled forward to rest them on. He was frowning as he stared at the multitude of monitors that beeped around the prone body of Rose like it was their fault she were like this.

She had lost her sense of feeling. Nothing the Doctor did could make her react to him. She didn't move, she didn't speak. All she did was lie there and breathe, each and every breath a grain of sand in an hourglass, counting down the time until the Pod stole everything that was her and made her go away.

And he was just sitting there.

Lewis and John had gone down to the cafeteria earlier to get sandwiches and drinks and were probably on their way back up now but the Doctor didn't really care what they were doing. The only thing he cared about was getting Rose back on her feet.

Bzzt. The Doctor glanced to Rose's phone which was lying on a small table at the foot of her bed and he sighed, reaching up to pick it up.

Jackie. Again.

On some sort of insane impulse, the Doctor answered it.

"Okay, Doctor, what the hell have you done with my daughter? I let you into my home, I feed you, buy you clothes and how do you thank me? By running off to the hills with my little girl, that's how! And she hasn't been answering her phone! What am I supposed to think?! Oh you wait until I get hold of you, you blighter, you'll be running to the flaming sun to get away from me!"

"Hello Jackie."

"Where are you? Do you know how long it's been since I've heard anything from you two?"

"We're still at work." It wasn't exactly a lie.

He heard her sigh. "Yeah, right and I'm the Prime Minister."

"How was the election?"

"Don't get smart with me!" The Doctor stood up, instantly regretting antagonising her. He was feeling useless, which was starting to become somewhat of a trend and had begun lashing out, the anger bubbling beneath the surface. Rose would've hit him on the arm with the back of her hand, amused but slightly annoyed. He shouldn't toy with Jackie, she was worried.

He mooched over to the window and rested his head on the glass. "I'm sorry Jackie..."

"Doctor, where is my daughter?"

He sighed and looked out the window, down at the people milling around below them.

"She's sick."

"Sick?"

"Very sick."

"You said you'd keep her safe."

"I'm trying to make her better, Jackie."

"What is wrong with her?"

Now that was a question, how was he supposed to answer that?! He rolled his head so he was looking up at the overcast sky, forehead still pressed against the cool glass. "She's..." Jackie knew about this sort of stuff, she understood more than normal parents would... "She's getting her life sucked out by an alien, gradually losing her senses while it happens... she has about a week. A week for me to find the alien that's doing it to her and stop it."

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a while, so long that the Doctor had to check a couple of times that the call was still connected. Eventually, she spoke. "You make sure you bring her back alive Doctor. You do this for me. Don't you dare come back without her."

O

John and his brother came back shortly after. They were walking in silence with food and drink in their hands and they only nodded to the Doctor when they entered, moving over to the table to divvy out the food they had bought between the three of them. Rose was now hooked up to an IV.

None of them were talking much, there was nothing to say. Ella was dead and now Rose was on her way to follow her and however close they were to knowing how to make Rose better, it was useless without the Pod. The Pod was the key.

And he wanted to crush it for hurting Rose.

Slowly, slicing through the almost silence that had taken hold of the room since the Doctor finished his conversation with Jackie was... a sound that did not fit in with the constant beeping of the heart monitor. That was it, a sound... but it was coming from Rose. A strange sort of gasping that caused John and Lewis to turn and gape at her.

"What... What is she..." John and his brother circled the bed, staring down at the girl. The Doctor stood at the window, staring down at the milling people below, going about their day to day business, not knowing anything of the man that watched them or the pain he was going through. "Ella never... Doctor... What is she doing?"

"Tell me... John... Lewis." The Doctor turned and looked hard at the two men, careful to keep his eyes away from Rose. She was just lying there... So still... "What would you do? If you couldn't see, you didn't know where you were and you couldn't even feel yourself breathe. What would you do if you didn't know what was happening to you, if you were scared? What would you do?"

The brothers stared at him for a moment before the younger one spoke.

"I... I'd call for help," Lewis looked at his brother. "I'd..." his eyes widened and he looked at the Doctor who nodded slowly and approached the bed. He reached out a hand and pressed his fingers to her cheek, listening to her gasp.

"Rose is screaming." he confirmed. He turned around and ran his hands through his hair. "And I'm doing nothing. I can't just... I can't just stand here. I need to find that bloody Pod."

"But we don't know where it is! It could be anywhere!"

He stopped and stared at Lewis. "Not anywhere... Rose told me, there was no security footage from the lab, static... an electrical discharge..." He hit himself in the forehead. "I should have realised then. The energy that shorted the life support system for Ella was the same that shorted out the CCTV in the lab! But the cameras in the corridor were working fine and nothing came out of the lab!"

"Are you saying that the Pods are still there?"

"They can't be anywhere else!" He turned for a last time and fled the room.

O

It was then, on his way to Lab Six once again with John and Lewis in tow, that the Doctor met an angel.

His stride had remained steady from the ward to the floor that housed Lab Six, but the moment he saw those whitewashed corridors, he found his feet speeding up and the brothers fell behind as he raced toward his destination.

He had only one thought on his mind.

Unless he could find those Pods soon, he was going to lose his Rose.

"Doctor!"

He frowned as his thoughts bubbled beneath the surface, his feet taking him along the corridor to where he knew Lab Six was housed. He wouldn't forget the route now, not with his memories of Rose to guide him.

"Doctor!"

He skidded to a stop, still frowning. Did someone call his name?

One of the technicians from Alien Tech was bolting up the corridor behind them, his white coat flapping behind as he closed the distance between him and the Doctor, who finally turned as the tech reached him. For a second, he bent over double, catching his breath, before he straightened and thrust his closed hand toward him.

"B...b... bit." He gasped.

John and Lewis, who had overshot slightly when the Doctor had stopped, mooched backwards to meet them.

"Bit?" Lewis asked as he came abreast with the Doctor. His eyebrow was arched slightly.

The Doctor offered his hand forward and the tech opened his fist. A small round, metallic object fell into his palm.

There was a heartbeat of silence as the Doctor and the brothers peered into his palm.

"HAHA! YOU BEAUT-AY!" The Doctor suddenly cried, making all three men jump. He reached forward and planted a huge kiss on the cheek of the poor man standing in front of him. "This is it!" He twirled back around to show it to John and Lewis. "HA!"

Lewis frowned and backed away in case he was going to be kissed too. John had a politely puzzled look on his face. "This... this is what?"

"I can finish my sonic screwdriver!" He announced proudly. "HA!"

"You can... what?"

The manic look on the Doctor's face calmed a little as he looked down at the microscopic object in his palm, smiling because, just then, he realised that this tiny, tiny thing could very well be the thing to save Rose. "With my screwdriver... I can find out... I can find it." He nodded and grinned at the brothers. "Give me a sec!" And without another word, be bounded off again.

O

Rose was lying completely still and the Doctor was crouched at the foot of her bed snapping the metallic tubing into place, which is how John and Lewis found them as they entered the ward. The Doctor had disappeared completely and they had been searching for him for the last half an hour. Lewis glared.

"Where have you been?"

The Doctor lifted up the sonic screwdriver and activated it. The red tip lit up and the device emitted a loud, high-pitched whirr. He leapt to his feet. "Fixin' this!" He flipped it up and caught it before he practically danced over to Rose's bedside.

"But where have you been?"

"Tech room. They had soldering irons." He frowned down at Rose and carefully aimed the screwdriver at her and activated it.

John and Lewis approached him as he muttered to himself. Suddenly, the Doctor turned, facing the door. "I got it!" He gasped. He looked down at the sonic screwdriver and grinned. "HA! I've got it!"

"Got what?!"

"The link! The link between Rose and the Pod! I can find the Pod... or..." he turned to look at Rose. "... I can sever the link..."

Lewis gasped. "Will that make her better?"

The Doctor nodded. "Her senses will return. It's still draining her and without the link, they will automatically return to her... like letting go of an elastic band."

"Then do it!"

"Wait!" John stepped forward, holding up a hand. "What about the Pod?"

"What about the flaming Pod? This is Rose's life we're talking about!" Lewis growled at his brother.

John shook his head. "If we just cut the link then the Pod will be free to hurt another girl, won't it?" He looked to the Doctor. "Won't it?" The Doctor nodded.

"So?"

"If we find the Pod, then we can make sure nothing like this happens to anyone else. No one will be hurt like Rose or... like Ella."

Lewis put his head in his hand. "He can cut the link!"

"I can do both." The Doctor shrugged. "Find the Pod, sever the connection. You humans never think do you? I mean, really." They stared at him and for the first time since the Doctor had met the two men they actually looked like brothers to him. John was small and unassuming, in his white lab coat and thin-rimmed glasses while Lewis was taller and bulker and... well, more menacing, but at that time, they were sporting identical insulted expressions. The Doctor had missed insulting humans. He grinned and without another word, he was off, once again.

It turned out that the Doctor's hunch was correct.

Five minutes later he was racing through the sliding doors of Lab Six that, for the time being, no one had bothered locking. He stopped in the centre of the room and turned in a tight circle. He stared at the screwdriver in confusion. "What?" He demanded of it. "There's nowhere else to turn!"

John and Lewis weren't far behind. "God, hanging out with you, you don't half get fit," Lewis grumbled as John leant on him. "Where's the Pod then?"

"The screwdriver is being stupid. It's saying it's here!"

"How about the ventilation grille?"

Lewis and the Doctor turned around and glared at John. "The ventilation grille." They said in unison.

John pointed to a square of the silvery flooring in the corner of the room. It looked almost identical to the rest of the floor but now that the Doctor's attention had been drawn to it, he could tell the silvery colour was off somehow, changed by the dozens of tiny gaps to allow the room to be ventilated. He bent close to it and pulled the cover off, revealing a small hole that a grown man could easily slip down. He grinned at the two men that were looking down at

"Going down," and with a wink, he dropped and swung onto the ladder.

Thanks to:

dogsluvme123: Here you go! Lovely chapter update and I am so sorry for the wait you guys have put up with! 3 Keep reading!

mtdonnygirl817: You'll have to wait til next chapter for that! Oops! Spoilers ;)

Nan0min: No reason to thank me! :P Thank YOU for reading and reviewing :) I write this for you guys, no thanks necessary!

mspstar97: Here you go! More to read ;) Sorry for the wait!

Bunny-chan16: Again, I AM SO SO SORRY! 3 I hope you like this chapter and keep reading and reviewing, I LOVE YOU GUYS! Your reviews are wonderful to me 3

BookyGurl: Hope you continue to read! 3

Hudine: Well here you go!

OpalKitty: I'm SOOO SORRY for the wait! I'm so sorry! I got so stuck and I could do it and then there was stress and just sadness but here you go! New Chapter! ENJOY!

JollyRoger1: We're getting there! :D