"SEE YOU IN HELL"
Chapter 11: Realisation
A/N - Just a quick reminder: I started this fic a couple of years ago, just after watching the season 2 finale. So, while there has been a slight reference to another companion in the Tardis, none of the events from seasons 3 or 4 are taken into account. Saying that - how freaking amazing was Turn Left?! Oh. My. God.
DISCLAIMER: There's no way I could have come up with the awesomeness that is Dr. Who. Dammit.
"Doctor?" The whispered name was all she could get out past the shock of having him threatening her, the hard look on his face leaving absolutely no doubt in her mind that he meant the threat.
A cocking noise sounded from beside him and dimly she registered Jack's gun being pointed at her beside the screwdriver. "Give her back to us."
"What? Doctor, it's me," steel eyes just glared at her so she turned to Jack. "Jack, please. It's me, Rose. I don't know what that machine says, but it is me! Maybe it's malfunctioning or maybe it's picking up the void stuff."
She took a faltering step towards them, but stopped when the screwdriver was raised slightly higher and Jacks grip on his gun tightened.
"Oh you're clever. You're very, very clever." The Doctor studied her intently. "But I'm cleverer. Rose?"
"Doctor?" She was scared.
"I'm so sorry."
There was no time for her to ask what he was apologising for before he pressed a button on the sonic screwdriver and her legs crumpled beneath her and her world turned black.
The light wasn't particularly bright but it still hurt Rose's head when she slowly opened her eyes. Thankfully the noise of the alarm and flashes of red had stopped.
Groaning weakly, Rose hauled her body to a sitting position, the glass wall in front of her betraying the fact that she wasn't in the main command hub anymore.
"Hello?" She stood warily, looking around the small stone room she was in. Three dank brick walls and one of clear glass with several small holes in it. And it was cold. So cold that she could see her breath in gusts.
"I'm sorry I had to do that Rose."
At the Doctor's voice, she ran to the glass, peering out to see him standing slightly to one side, on the other side of the hallway beyond it.
"Doctor, please let me out."
"I can't. Not until we've figured out how to reverse what's been done to you." He sounded so solemn, his steady eyes sombre.
"Nothing's been done to me. I'm fine." She didn't understand how he could stand there and tell her there was something wrong with her. She would know if something had happened.
"Oh Rose. I'm going to get you out of here, I promise." Sad eyes turned thoughtful, "but first you've got to tell me how you got back to this world."
She paused, looking at his earnest face, "tell me what you think's wrong with me first." She trusted him, she really did, but the way he was acting was scaring her.
That sucking his teeth between his lips movement again, and he pushed himself away from the wall he was leaning slightly on and moved towards the glass.
"The Tardis locked onto alien activity not far from here. I've no idea which species it is but whoever they are they are extremely clever. They've been siphoning energy from the rift, massive amounts. But they've figured out a way of manipulating the effects so that they're felt in the worlds on the other side of the void instead of in this one.
"That's why Torchwood couldn't detect it. None of the ramifications will be felt in this world until all the rest of them are destroyed."
"Destroyed?" Rose prayed that she was jumping to the wrong conclusions, that the Doctor didn't mean that Pete's World…
"That's what would normally happen with the huge amount of damage they're doing to the rift, but when you fell into the void, something happened. Somehow the rift closed and you ended up here. Pete's World is intact, but something happened to you. That's why I need to know how you got out of the void. If I know that I can figure out who it is and what they want from you. And then I can stop them."
The look in his eyes scared her slightly. The number of times she'd seen the Doctor this intense and this angry could be counted on one hand. It was the look that meant absolutely no mercy would be given because something close to the Doctor had been threatened. It was the look which reminded her who he was and what he could do. That he was alien and he was oh-so-powerful and she was his. His to save, his to protect. His to avenge.
It was the look more than the explanation that set her resolve and, haltingly, she started talking.
It was almost therapeutic, describing the horrific nothingness that she'd felt, the absolute terror of the void. And then the blue light.
"Blue light?" He interrupted. "Tell me more about this light, where did it come from?"
Rose hadn't really thought about the light before. She'd just dismissed it, not as important as the rest of the things that were happening to her.
"I don't know. It had gold streaks in it. I kinda figured it came from the extrapolator I was holding…" She trailed off to think it through more carefully, before realising she hadn't told him possibly one of the most important things. "I had all my memories back, Doctor. Even before the rift, I'd been dreaming about the Game Station and Jack."
A glance at his impassive face, expecting a comment he didn't give, before she closed her eyes and willed herself to remember everything as clearly as possible. Breaking through the mental blocks she'd thrown up to protect herself from having to relive everything.
"I knew what I'd done. All the stuff on the Game Station, the Daleks, the heart of the Tardis. I remembered the Bad Wolf." She felt a frown crease her forehead but carried on, "in the void, I was nothing, just a bunch of memories. And I thought about Jack, how it felt to bring him back to life and then I could see the blue.
"It was all around me in a split second. I didn't have time to be scared, just relieved there was something there. But then the gold light appeared." Rose took in a gasping breath. "The gold was me."
She opened her eyes wide at the realisation she'd just reached, startled to see the Doctor's face so close to hers, his hands pressed against the glass, mirroring her own stance.
"The blue light … I was threatened by it and the gold streaks came from me, trying to defend myself."
"The gold wasn't you, Rose. It was the Bad Wolf."
The Doctor took a step back, dragging his hands through his hair and muttering in an exact reconstruction of his actions in a stately home in 19th century Scotland, when trying to piece together seemingly random facts.
"The Bad Wolf. Think. Void manipulation, different dimensions. Think, think, think! All that power."
He stopped and looked right at her. "Power."
"What?" Rose didn't like the way he looked at her.
"Of course! I just thought it was the vortex, and Jack's so wrong, I just ignored it, tried to block it all out, but it all makes sense now."
"Tell me! Is there something wrong with me Doctor?" Her eyes were streaming now, tears she hadn't thought she had left. She, too, backed away from the glass. If the Doctor was right, if there was something wrong with her, she didn't want to risk being too close.
"Remember after I regenerated? I was giving off power, that power needed for the regeneration process merged with the power of the time vortex, drawing the Sycorax here.
I mustn't have taken the whole of the vortex from you. The Bad Wolf must have stopped me and hidden from me. The blue light picked it up when they were siphoning off the void energy. They knew you'd be an immense source of power, enough to keep them going for years. The Bad Wolf tried to protect itself, but some of it got in."
"The blue light's in me right now? Is it doing anything to me?" There were so many questions and all of a sudden Rose was so scared.
"I don't think the light itself can do anything, it's like a tracking device, but it's putting out a faint signature so its masters can find the source of the power. It hitched a lift inside you, too tiny to be picked up by Jack's machines but just alien enough to show up on the scanners boosted by the Tardis."
"Well what are you waiting for, get it out of me!" That was all Rose managed to get out before she realised that the gusts her breath made in the frigid air were blue.
"Doctor?"
Of course, he'd noticed it the exact same second she had.
"Oh no, you don't!" His screwdriver was pressed against the hinges of the glass.
It was going to take too long, instead of disappearing, each breath lingered in the air, growing darker and thicker incredibly quickly.
"Rose, don't let it take you," he didn't even look up from the hinges.
"Take me?" It was surrounding her now. "You said it couldn't do anything to me!"
"It's not just tracking you. Must have an active teleport for when it's threatened. Don't let it take you!"
It was getting hard to see through the deep blue clouds, but she heard the door give way just as the blue descended on her and stole her scream from her lips.
A/N2 - Next chapter's in the works.
