Rose Tyler: Earth Defense
(21/?)
She exited to a completely silent laboratory, her laughter ringing hollow in the empty room. She was always returning to a full room, but there only sat Saxon, collapsed on the controls. As soon as she hit the ground, his head snapped up and looked at her bleary eyed. He looked down at the screens, started, and then looked back at her, rubbing his eyes and making gargling noises.
"Harry, what's going on?" Rose asked quietly, her hand going slowly to her holstered guns on her side. If there was something to be concerned about, she wanted to meet it properly.
"Put the guns down, Rosey Posey." Saxon said quietly, reaching out a hand placatingly. "Everyone...Everything is...fine."
There was enough hesitation in his voice to make her very concerned. He only was that serious when someone died. She sat down hard on the closest stool "Oh god, who was it?"
"Rose," Saxon began, reaching a hand out to her. "Rose, I need you to listen to me for a minute, you could not have done anything to have stopped this, you could not have prevented it. You have to know that, you have to understand that. There is nothing you could have done."
"Oh my god, is it my Mum?" Rose asked in a whisper.
"Mickey and Jake went out on a mission by themselves, it was supposed to be low risk." Saxon said, slowly and softly, cradling her, preparing her for the shock that he knew was coming.
"Oh god." She whispered, clutching at him, and she that sickeningly, sinking, gut wrenchingly familiar feeling when two Mickeys left and only one came running back, that moment of tossing a coin and both outcomes being terrible, but knowing in the deepest, darkest part of your heart that one was slightly less personally devastating and hating yourself so completely for thinking it.
"It wasn't supposed to be dangerous, it wasn't supposed to be anything, but they got cornered by some Weevils that sprang out of nowhere, and..." Saxon held her more tightly. "Jake, he didn't make it."
Rose let out a sob and held on tighter to Harry as he curled her deeper into his arms, cradling the back of her neck into his shoulder. She wasn't as close to Jake, but he had been there when her brother had been born, whenever they had Mickey for dinner, and really, she had just come to take him as part of Mickey, you got one, you had the other, they were a matched pair and-
"Oh god, Mickey." She said, sitting bolt upright. No matter how much she wanted to grieve for a lost friend, he had lost so much more.
"He's on floor three, under observation. We told him you'd come right down, he'd been asking for you." Saxon released her and Rose nodded, taking a second to gather herself together, smoothing down her leather jacket before taking off at a brisk walk for her friend. Soon as she got there, she knew where he was, it was like a deep pit of darkness and sadness, and she took a deep breath and then followed it in.
She sat slowly next to him, where he was tucked up in the corner, staring at the other wall blankly. She noticed her mother's cutlery on the table next to him, and of course she had stopped by, the two of them had been much closer since they crossed over. As he felt her sit down next to him, he leaned over and tucked his head into the nape of her neck, and she curled her arm around his head, pulling him tightly to her. She could tell he hadn't cried yet, but soon as he was curled up in her warmth, they started to flow, and he started to talk. He talked all night of Jake, and what they'd been up to. She'd read the briefs of course, but they didn't do their relationship justice, she understood what going through those life threatening situations could do to friends.
"He was m'best friend, Rose." Mickey said quietly. "I never 'ad a best friend, right? It was just you an' me, and then it wasn't and then it was me'n Jake."
"I know, Mickey, I know. I'm sorry." Rose said, "I'm so sorry."
"An', an' he was more than m'best friend." Mickey said, and Rose knew, they'd never made it very public, but she'd known.
"I know, sweetie, I know." Rose said, slinging her legs over his so she could sit more comfortably.
Rose waited a week and a half with Mickey, but as she charted the stars, they were running out of time. She had to trust that her mother would be able to help him as much as she would, and she did, she needed to get to the center of it more than put her friend back together, much as she wanted to do the latter.
"Go, save the universe." Mickey said one day. He came into the lab and started learning the controls beside Saxon. He'd always been handy in the lab so long as they didn't make him learn the theoretical, and it seemed to help. "Mission control will take it from here on this end."
"Oh, that's you lot, then?" Rose said, smiling with her tongue between her teeth.
"That's us." Jackie said, crossing her arms over her chest, glaring at them like she couldn't believe she wasn't immediately invited.
"Right, Mum." Rose said, smiling at her mother.
"Right then, since the party's all here, places please." Saxon said, clapping his hands sharply."Time for Rosey Posey to shine."
Something was different this time, she could feel it. She took two steps back and ran at the wall, hitting the bubble right as Saxon reached one, and she careened on through. She hit the correct universe, but in the tracking of where he was, something twisted and she popped through what felt like a hole just too small for her body. Rose burst through the liquid sunshine and clap of thunder to a commotion of red berets and kevlar, well known and comfortable, but full of unfamiliar faces. There was this intense feeling of rightness, and familiarity, and she knew, this was the correct universe, she was right here, right now. Right universe, but there was something strange about it, like it was sick, twisted like the stars. The center of the twist was right up ahead, she could feel it in the pit of her stomach. She came tearing down the street towards the people, running full tilt. She passed a shell shocked red haired woman, who was staring straight ahead, not even noticing the blond about to breeze past her. That look, one that she only saw after she had to tell someone that aliens had killed the one they loved and they would never even know the truth of it, just know the gaping hole that was rent by the loss.
"What happened! What did they find?" She breathed, her hair sticking to her mouth as it fluttered down from her sprint. Her chest was heaving breaths as she tried to gather herself together. "Sorry, did they find someone?"
"I dunno, a bloke called the doctor or somethin'" Her voice was quiet, flat and emotionless, as if she knew that there was a sense of urgency in this woman.
"Well where is he?" Rose asked impatiently, turning her eyes to stare hard at the woman who had been present in the same place as him. She could almost smell him on her, that stinging sensation of time that he left wherever he went.
"They took him away, he's dead." She was trying to be gentle, break the news in the nicest way possible. "I'm sorry, did you know him? I mean, they didn't say his name. Could be any doctor."
"I came so far." Rose said, staring at the retreating car that held nothing more than an empty shell. She had passed through so many different universes, met so many different versions. He would have regenerated by now, he would have been bouncing around with a new face and a new personality but she'd bet her life that he'd still have a gob and he'd still know everything in the universe and those would be the two things that she needed in that moment.
"I-It could be anyone." The woman said softly, reaching out to touch Rose's shoulder and she jerked, feeling a stinging pain in her head at the woman's touch, hissing slightly as something over her shoulder caught Rose's eye. There was something wrong there, something she wasn't supposed to see. But the non area hadn't met anyone like Rose, someone else who wasn't supposed to be here and Rose stared harder at her and panted for breath before asking,
"What's your name?" Rose's eyebrows leaped together as she stared at the red haired woman. She'd seen her before in London, she was the lady who had bought the purple shoes. She seemed at odds with herself, quiet, contemplative, as if she were wafting in a breeze.
"Donna," She answered, staring at the younger woman. "And you?"
"Well I was just... passing by, I shouldn't even be here." Rose stared over Donna's shoulder as a clawed hand waved, as if to say hello. "This is wrong...This is wrong... This is s-so...wrong."
"Sorry, what was it, Donna-what?" furrowed brow
"Why d' you keep lookin' at my back?"
"I'm not" Rose look away and then back, she couldn't help herself. There was something on that woman's back, and it had something to do with the Doctor's death. She could smell it and the golden glow began to stir.
"Yes you are, you keep looking behind me you're doin' it now what is it what's there did somebody put something on my back?" Donna began to throw a fit, trying to see what what was on her back, but as she turned around, Rose faded out, the membrane retracting and bringing her back to her world.
Rose was silent, as she slipped between the membranes. There was something wrong with her return journey, as if she was bumping against something, like the walls were tightening, and the wrongness of the right feeling persisted. She knew she was in the right universe, but like something had pinched off a part of it, and it was disconnected and wrong, so, so wrong. It wasn't like the stars going out, it was a different sort of wrong. Now she understood how the Doctor felt, all she wanted to do was talk to her Doctor, but she was going to have to untangle whatever was going on before she would be able to speak with him, clearly.
"There's something off." Saxon said, as soon as she cleared the walls. "The patterns just now are coming back."
"Yeah, I felt it shift when I went over there." Rose said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. She pulled one of the screens around as she slid next to Saxon. "Somethin's going on. What do the readings say?"
"We're not going to be able to get there for some time. See this," Saxon tapped the screen with the end of his pencil. She could then visualize what she felt as a primordial gut instinct. There was a sort of pocket around the area that they had pinpointed as the event and she could see it was now completely enclosed. There was a small hole that rotated around the pocket, an area that wasn't as thick, which would bet the only time that they would be able to go in and out of the pocket. Rose began to chew on her thumbnail as she considered. If she'd ever needed confirmation that time ran faster on this side than on the other, the time dilation between the pocket and their time clinched it.
"As it rotates, I'd get about 15 minutes." Rose said thoughtfully. "Then it would be about a 6 hour shift round before I could make it home again."
"Is that going to be a problem?" Saxon asked, giving her a sidelong glance. "I think it's going to be a problem."
"'Course you do." Rose said absently as she tucked a piece of hair behind her ears. "You think everything is a problem."
"The fact that I am the reasonable one, should rather worry you." Saxon said, jostling her elbow. She gave him an annoyed look and then turned back to the screens.