This chapter is actually meant to be quite a bit longer, but rather than make you all wait too much more for me to complete it, I've split it up.
Thank you for all your wonderful reviews! I'm happy you all liked the plot twist. I have definitely been channeling my inner Moffat lately.
A special thanks and credit to: AkumakoRonso for coining the phrase 'TARDIS Rose' to help explain the difference between Rose and the manifestation created by the Doctor and the TARDIS. You are awesome!
Please review? :)
Rose's diminished grip on reality was dangling perilously close to the edge of no return. Every moment counted. She sat with her knees tucked under her. Her hands slid down the coarse wall she was facing. Her broken nails dug into the peeling paint. She could no longer feel the cold, weighted metals anchoring her wrists and ankles to chains loosely embedded into the wall.
Every image being fed to her felt real. She had nothing with which to separate the hallucinations from the real world around her. All previous awareness of her current surroundings were sparse at best. She was being occupied with tormenting images the TARDIS streamed directly into her mind courtesy of the Rose that the Doctor and the TARDIS had created.
"She's not real. She's not real. She's not real!" Clutching her ears, the TARDIS Rose shook her head back and forth as she pressed herself against a wall across from the room where a moment ago Rose's scream had emanated. "I'm real! I'm real! Me!" Tears slid down her cheeks.
Jackie Tyler stared down at a framed picture of her daughter. She traced her fingers over the edges of the delicate features of her lost child's face. Jackie looked like hell. Her hair hadn't been combed in days. It stuck out this way, and that, thrown up in a bun just to get it out of her way. She wore the same clothes she had on for two full days now. A frumpy brown housecoat and slippers. Her face was drawn. More wrinkles were around the dark circles under her eyes. She'd lost some weight. The woman who had slapped the Doctor, looked like the walking dead.
"Mum!" Rose's tears fell freely. "Mum, I'm right here! I'm safe, see?" She pleaded with the woman. She was across the room from her. Rose could smell the staleness in the air. She reached out and could place a hand on a wall, or it felt like the wall, in the doorway. She could see her mother as clearly as she could anything else. She just knew if she could make her feet move, she could go to her, hug her, tell her it was alright. There was just one problem. Her feet wouldn't move.
Jackie took in a ragged breath. She brought a handkerchief up to her mouth and coughed. To Rose's horror, when she dropped her hand to the armrest of the chair she was seated in, she could see that the handkerchief was spotted with blood.
"She's very real and you're hurting her." The Doctor purposefully tempered his voice to a soft, even tone. " You're real, too. But you're not her." The Doctor's dark gaze didn't leave her. Not even to return to the door where he knew Rose was experiencing her own personal hell. Trying to unlock it would do no good with her living echo, TARDIS Rose, in this state of mind.
"Mum, please! I'm right here! I can hear you, why can't you hear me?" Rose tried again to move within the vivid illusions. She knew it was pointless, but it didn't stop her trying. She'd been doing this for what felt like ages now. It was as if her feet weren't really there at all. Just a head with some arms and a torso. She felt like a ghost, watching, but unable to interact. Whether she opened her eyes in the darkened room, or closed them, it made no difference. What she saw, felt, heard, even smelled, remained fairly in tact.
She stared helplessly as her mother's face drained of color and the picture slipped from her grip. It dropped to the carpet. Jackie gasped, dragging in painful breaths.
"Mum! You've got to call for help! Call 999! Call the Doctor! Call me! Please?" She cried, unable to move any direction at all.
But her cries went unheard.
"But I'm Rose! I'm real, Doctor!" TARDIS Rose's eyes fell to his, begging him, pleading with him to agree. To tell her this nightmare was nothing more than that. A simple nightmare.
He approached her cautiously. "You're not. You're an echo. You're a Rose, but not the Rose. I'm sorry, but you know what I'm saying is true." TARDIS Rose drew in a shuddery breath as the Doctor now stood directly in front of her. He continued. "You sensed her presence in the TARDIS. You found her. Remember? Outside the bathroom, in the spot I took you to earlier."
TARDIS Rose's hands slowly dropped back down to her sides. She gazed dully at him.
The Doctor recalled his own terror at turning a corner just in time to see the two Roses on their knees, staring at each other with equal amounts of shock. He could easily tell them apart. TARDIS Rose was healthier in appearance, for one thing. He'd had just enough time to try to call out to them when Rose disappeared in a flash of light. By the time he ran over, TARDIS Rose had shimmered into an identical outfit and crumpled to the ground. He knew then that he had to tread carefully if he was to ever retrieve Rose safely.
He pushed the memories aside and went on. "Her memories bled into you through the TARDIS' psychic matrix because you're part of Rose and part of the TARDIS, too. You realized who she truly is and that terrified you, didn't it? It served to remind you that you're not her. You couldn't hold onto the illusion any longer and you found that unacceptable. That's when you used your ability to interact directly with the TARDIS to teleport Rose into that room because her being here scares you." His words came out unhurriedly in contrast to his acute sense of urgency. Rose was in danger. Every moment counted. "When someone is in a panic, locking something up that frightens them can feel sensible. I understand. But it's time we stop pretending. She needs you to let her out now."
TARDIS Rose shook her head in denial. A gentle hand landed on her upper arm. "But it's okay." He consoled her. " I'll make it all okay. I promise."
Jackie's eyes suddenly widened. Her hand flew to her chest. She jumped to her feet. The handkerchief was forgotten and fluttered to the ground. She now grasped at her chest with both hands. She fell forward, landing hard on the floor. A crackling sound indicated the picture frame now lay broken beneath her. There was also no doubt the shards of glass were now cutting into her skin.
"MUM!" Rose screamed. She threw her hands forward, desperately, but they fell against some solid object she couldn't see. She blinked and for a brief moment, a familiar darkened wall with shadows dancing across it was directly in front of her. She blinked again, and the wall was gone, replaced once more with her mother's home.
TARDIS Rose trembled. "But who am I, Doctor?" His soothing touch and calming voice allowed her to remember things. Joking and laughing with him, after. After she was created. After the memories of everything that Rose had experienced up to the point of looking into the heart of the TARDIS, became who she believed herself to be. After he continually coaxed her away from leaving the TARDIS. After he sat her down with that forlorn look of his and explained in heartbreaking detail, what he'd done and what she truly was. After she made herself forget. After she threw all memories back into the TARDIS, refusing to acknowledge truths that bit into the core of all she knew about herself, him, and life.
But then she felt Rose nearby. She confronted her. She sent her away and tried to forget again. It was all so draining. "You're telling me that I'm not who I feel I am. That I'm not how I feel, what I think, and remember! So who am I?" Her voice was rising along with her despair.
Jackie's body started twitching. Her limbs jerking, her mouth opening and closing like some kind of fish, her eyes rolling back into her head. It lasted an agonizingly long time until it subsided. She lay there, her congested breaths noisily pushing in and out of her lungs.
"Mum?" Rose whispered, no longer caring that it was no use. Her mother couldn't hear her.
"Rose...My Rose...Sweetheart, where...Are...You...?" Jackie's mournful question went unanswered. The rattling noise in her lungs abruptly stopped. Her body went completely still. She lay there, unmoving.
Other images had been plaguing Rose since she'd entered this nightmare.
The haunting ones of the people from this and possible other realities that had died because she made the choices she'd made. Ones where countless people ran uselessly from Daleks, Slitheens, Cybermen, and Sontarans only to be shot down before her eyes. Ones where her own friends and most of her family seemed to simply forget her. Ones where she watched individuals become heroes and die, sometimes in fruitless efforts to save others, all because the Doctor wasn't there to save them as he should have been. Because of her. Each bitter image dug into Rose and killed her heart a little more.
But not even being transported to see right before her eyes, innocent children cowering and fearful, crying and screaming, only to have their screams cut off by way of robotic creatures crushing their skulls, had destroyed Rose so utterly as this did.
It all hurt. Much of it made her cry out, and even scream. But it was the imagery of her mother's final moments that had her once more clawing at the walls in the darkened room. Blood seeped out from underneath her fingernails, dripping along the sides of her fingers and down the palms of her hands. She didn't feel it.
"You're someone new." The Doctor stilled TARDIS Rose with the calming hand on her arm. He kept eye contact with her. "You've got her memories. You know her feelings and thoughts, her past. But you've got something all your own, Rose of the TARDIS. You've got access to power and understanding that she doesn't have. You've got some control over the most powerful ship in all of creation!" He reminded her with a bit of excitement in his voice. He failed to mention she had a lot more power over the TARDIS than that. Such a failure was very much on purpose. "You've also got some memories she hasn't. I've given you those, haven't I? All your own memories of us here in the TARDIS." He reminded her, a compassionate smile gracing his lips.
TARDIS Rose's tears were stopping, she was listening calmly now, her breathing more even, her body more relaxed against the wall. She did have that and it was all hers, not that other Rose's. She focused on the distraught, yet ever hopeful, man before her.
The Doctor was the one thing she could believe in. The one person she could trust to make everything okay again. She knew what she was. An echo. A creation. Something real and alive though. "But what does that mean for me? Who does that make me?"
"What do you want it to mean for you?" The Doctor's spare hand moved up to pat her hair. "You're alive. Life is all about choices. Who we choose to be. Who do you choose to be?"
"Mum...Mum, please?!" Rose cried, shaking terribly as she stood there, watching her dead mother lay there. She'd never seen her so quiet and still in all her life. She'd died alone. In pain and not knowing what had become of her daughter. All alone and wanting Rose.
This is what finally broke Rose Marion Tyler.
She started screaming again. This time, she didn't stop.
The Doctor's entire body spasmed at the sudden agonizing wailing coming from within the room. His hands fell away from TARDIS Rose and he dashed to the door. His frenzied hands scrambled to free the door of the complex coded locks that left Rose buried in an isolated torment.
TARDIS Rose only watched, eyes bloodshot, crossing one arm over the other. She wasn't her, but she was real. She was alive. The Doctor's questions spun round and round in her head. Who did she choose to be? The sort of girl who locked someone up and tortured them? No, that wasn't the sort of person she ever could be. It wasn't who she was ever meant to be. She wanted to be the sort of girl who had courage. Someone who leapt heart first. But there was something else.
The Doctor's voice quietly shook with emotion. "I need you to open this door!"
From within the room, Rose's tortured cries penetrated directly into the ancient mans' hearts.
"I'm sorry, Doctor. But I-I can't." TARDIS Rose mumbled, watching him with sorrowful, but determined eyes.
Working frantically at the door, The Doctor went through the series of combinations with rapid-fire succession. It would have been an impressive feat were it to have accomplished the task at hand. As soon as he completed it and heard a click, the locks returned with a fresh set of puzzles for him to work out.
Rose's screams grew louder and more unbearable.
"Why?" He demanded, his uneven voice becoming harder to control.
"Because," TARDIS Rose's eyes trailed to the floor. "She doesn't want me to."
The part of the Doctor's mind that howled at him to keep the calm logic that had brought them this far and question her further, was overridden by the screams of anguish coming from the locked room.
"No!" Screamed Rose, inconsolable at the loss of her mother. Her cries sounded so despairing, so needful that the Doctor knew he had to get to her and do something, anything, to ease her pain.
He lost control.
Eyes flashing, he spun and stormed over to TARDIS Rose. He grabbed her roughly by the shoulders. She flinched. Each word was emphasized by shoving her against the wall. "Open!" Thud. "That!" Thud. "Door!" Thud.
TARDIS's Rose's eyes widened, she trembled in his grasp, staring at him in silent fear.
"You open that door right now!" The rage in his voice was too much. The girl before him began to glow white. She flickered in and out of his grip before vanishing completely.
His mistake struck him with absolute clarity. Animosity filled every pore in is body, each ounce of it dedicated exclusively to himself.
"No!" He struck the bare wall with his balled fists. He had been so close. Having kept his cool for this long, it was Rose's heartrending cries that drove him over the edge and made it impossible for him to stand back and patiently wait for TARDIS Rose to make her choices.
He believed he couldn't possibly have failed Rose more thoroughly were he to have chained her up with his very own hands and tossed her to the nearest Dalek. He drew back and kicked hard at the same wall, grunting with the effort.
He turned back to the loathsome door, his fists clenching and unclenching. His jaw tightened. He walked to it and slowly loosened a fist. He lifted and rested a palm on the door. The girl whose pain was radiating through the corridor with her screams, was pulling at his darkest emotions.
"Rose." He choked out her name, his eyes filling. "I'm sorry." His fingers stroked their way down the door as if he could somehow reach her through it. Bring her the comfort she desperately needed. End her pain. "I've failed you in the worst way imaginable and there is nothing I can do."
I know this is pretty much where we left off in the last chapter, but as I said at the beginning, this was meant to be a longer chapter and I'm still working on it. I thought you all might like to get some of it now instead of waiting for all of it later.