The Tyler Factor

By Lumendea

Chapter Fourteen: Hole in Time: Bleeding Together

Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or any of the spinoff material and I gain no income off of this story, just the satisfaction of playing with the characters.

…

The personnel of Section 13 moved about the bubble on small jeeps and followed the Doctor's orders with a precision born of both respect and fear. Doctor Matthews and Swanic were sticking close to the main science vehicle and after a few minutes of debate Matthews had phoned UNIT UK. Benton hadn't been pleased to learn about the danger Rose was in but expressed a faith in the Doctor that surprised Doctor Matthews.

It was staggering to think that a man that had almost no contact with the Doctor still trusted him so absolutely, but then again Matthews herself carried a great deal of gratitude for his help in rescuing the Donovan children. But there was a small voice at the back of her mind that was worrying about the relationship that was very apartment between Rose Tyler and the Doctor. She was young and very human while he was neither. The second man who had arrived with him, Jack Harkness, was a mystery as well. He was apparently one of the Doctor's infamous companions and yet talked to the Doctor with an unusual ease and seemed just as worried about Rose as the Doctor was. Shaking her head, Matthews forced her curiosity to the back of her mind and headed out of the mobile science vehicle to rejoin the Doctor and Jack.

The Doctor leaned over the sensors, his green eyes darting over the readings quickly before rising to look at the shimmering time bubble. The soft ripple of colours was still blurring out the lake, but every so often there was a moment where they could see the lake and they almost caught sight of Rose.

"How do we bust it open?" Jack pressed next to him, shifting nervously on his feet. His expression was stern and blank, his worry only showing in his eyes.

"I'm working on that," the Doctor answered tensely without looking at Jack. "The problem is closing the hole in time that the Silver Lord has opened without destroying Rose."

"Then this could…."

"In theory yes," the Doctor replied with a quick nod, his hand coming up to play with his bow tie. "This lake is a still point in time, a point in time and space where nothing important has ever or was ever supposed to happen. They are very rare, almost every other place in the universe has something at some point. But this lake… it's silent. I'd say the people who named it even felt that somehow."

"But how does that-" Swanic began to ask from behind the Doctor only be cut off.

"A still point in time also has nothing protecting it, there's no… time around it and over it if you will." The Doctor spun on his heel and glanced at Swanic, Matthews and Jack. Bringing up his hands he moved them around as it talked. "Imagine several layers of wood, a nail and a hammer. Now those pieces of wood are all stacked on top of each other and they are protected by a thick concert vault, all except for one small area that is exposed."

Jack tensed, understanding where the Doctor was going as Swanic and Matthews nodded nervously. "Now Rose is the nail and the Silver Lord is the hammer. He just trapped her, hammered the nail down all the way through all those layers. Those layers are the different alternate realities that surround our reality. Together these realities keep a cosmic balance and will one day, billions of years from now, collapse into each other to trigger a new big bang and a new universe."

"What does that have to do with Tyler?" Swanic asked urgently.

"Rose is important," the Doctor huffed, his green eyes fixing on the man. "This trap has linked Rose and all her alternates together. The nail as it was is now much longer, going through all the layers at once. But when the Silver Lord pulls it out, it is going to leave a hole in all those boards. She will cease to exist not only in this reality but in all of them, all at once."

"Shit," Jack hissed. "Can the Guardians help? This is what they are supposed to guard against."

"I tried calling them, but nothing so far."

"But aren't you from Rose's future?" Matthews asked in confusion. "Doesn't that mean that things will be just fine?"

"Normally you'd be right, but this is different. What is happening now isn't anchored to properly to time. There aren't many events in my history and Rose's that are easy to change, but erasing her isn't changing the past. It is erasing her. If this fails then she'd gone and my history with her no longer exists. She'll have never been born, never met me, never saved the Earth or anything. We won't even remember that we lost her."

"What do you need from us?" Matthews asked, raising her chin in determination.

The Doctor smiled, a dark and sharp expression that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge. However, the man standing next to him only seemed to relax at the dark look and Matthews tried to take some confidence in that. Whatever the Doctor was planning, however bad wasn't directed at them. She didn't care if the rumours about Tyler marrying the Doctor or something were true, she'd be putting a warning on Rose Tyler's file that she was never to be harmed. Matthews never wanted the ideas and anger behind that look intended for her.

Then the Doctor answered her question, rattling off a long list of different kinds of cables, some kind of generator and a few other things. His speech was so fast that she nearly missed it, but Swanic nodded, a pen and notepad in his hand.

"You'll have all of it in half an hour at most," Swanic promised.

"Bring everything you have to me now," the Doctor ordered Swanic.

"What's the plan Doc?" Jack asked calmly, his eyes moving back towards the bubble.

"We're going to link the TARDIS to that bubble," the Doctor informed him. "If we can pump some time into the bubble then we can keep things stable for a little longer."

"And beyond that," Swanis asked. "What is your plan? How can you free Tyler?"

"I'm a Time Lord," the Doctor replied, a sense of calm falling over him as he smirked. "My people began our history with playing with alternate realities."

"I hate to point out that it only got them into trouble," Jack muttered, earning a look from the Doctor.

"Don't worry," the Doctor said, a small more cheerful smile appearing on his face. "This is going to work."

….

Rose couldn't see or hear anymore. The flow of images and noise had become a blur of colours and a mess of sounds that she could no longer understand. There was a pressure building in her head, worse than anything she'd felt even when…. She couldn't think, couldn't remember. It felt a lot like falling, except only part of her was falling. Somehow, some part of her was in place while the rest was just falling.

She thought her fingers might be moving as another series of images pushed forward in her mind. There was someone standing in front of her, talking while her fingers moved on some kind of keyboard. But she couldn't hear them talking, instead, she was hearing the sounds of a crowd clapping and cheering over loud music.

It hurt so much, the pounding in her head and the assault of too much information all at once. Her eyes might have been closed, but she couldn't tell anymore and it didn't seem to matter. Everything was becoming more and more distant. She felt things touching her hands, but it was fleeting, like the touch of a ghost, there one moment and not the next. Nothing seemed real anymore. She thought she felt tears running down her cheeks, but her face also hurt from smiling so hard. She thought she had long hair blowing in an icy breeze, but then it was short cropped hair with the hot heat of the sun on her neck.

Trying to make sense out of something, she tried to focus on her name, but there were too many. Rose seemed the most familiar and she thought she heard a warm, smooth and gentle voice calling her that. Then it was Emily, then Hilda, then Astrid and many more. There was a voice shouting at her full of anger and a jolt of fear shot through her. She wanted to run, but her body didn't seem her own. She could move and the fear spiked, turning into a raw terror.

There was the shot of a gun ringing through her ears, suddenly blocking out everything else. A sharp pain in her stomach was suddenly crystal clear and she felt her fingers gripping at her own gut. Warm sticky fluid was spilling out over her fingers and looking down she saw red blood.

The pain didn't fade, but the sight began to change. She was sitting in a row of tight seats and the entire place was shaking, an airplane she realised as her head lowered. Around her she could hear people crying, a few screaming and several praying. There was a dull hum of the engines and metallic clanking as they sputtered out. Her ears popped as the altitude began to change rapidly and she began to feel faint. There was a dull pounding in her head as blackness began to seep into her vision.

She was dying, over and over again, somehow. One death led into another, creating a parade of pain, shock and sorrow all around her. The images, feelings and even the pain was blurring together. Her limbs were heavy, the pain was weighing heavily on her and despite the sense that this wasn't right that she could give up; Rose just wanted it to be over.

….

Jack stepped closer to the bubble, the heavy length of tubing held tightly in his hands. Swanic was rubbing his hands together nervously nearby and looking between the bubble and a screen hooked up to what sensors were still working. He looked back over his shoulder, into the TARDIS where the Doctor was rapidly flipping switches and adjusting toggles.

"This isn't going to kill me is it?" Jack yelled back to the Doctor, shouting to be heard over the loud thrum that was coming from the TARDIS.

"No," the Doctor shouted back. "Well I don't think so," the Doctor amended a moment later. "There isn't much of a chance, but there is a chance," the Doctor admitted, moving his hands in front of him and adjusting his bow tie nervously. "I haven't dealt with kind of thing very much after all."

"Great," Jack muttered even as he nodded. He sighed loudly and looked back at the bubble, glaring at it. "I'd better come back from this. I'm connected to the whole universe, even if you do kill me, I should come back." Shaking his head, Jack pushed the end of the tube into the side of the bubble.

Unlike the earlier demonstrations of things just moving through the bubble's outer edge, the bubble's colour began to change the moment the end of the tube connected with it. The translucent colour darkened rapidly, going from a shimmering pinkish and blue colour to a dark violet.

"Doc," Jack yelled back without turning around. "Something is definitely happening."

"That's a good sign," the Doctor answered, a hint of glee in his voice. "Just keep the tube right there."

"Fine," Jack replied, his eyes moving across the bubble's surface as the darkening shade of dark violet turned more night sky purple and spread over slowly across the bubble. It was slow, like watching a thick liquid try to run down a very slight slope, but the colour was changing. But the problem was that the tiny hints of the lake they'd been able to see before were vanishing along with any chance of seeing Rose.

"Doc I sure hope you know what you're doing," Jack whispered as he reached out towards the bubble with one hand. His fingers brushed the bubble's surface which was becoming colder and his hand didn't shift through the surface this time, the surface was becoming solid. Underneath his hand, Jack could feel the warmth of his body seeping into the bubble which seemed to suck it in sharply. "I knew it," Jack sighed. "I'm going to die again. Ah Rose the things I do for you."