Title: Into the Woods (20/21)
Pairing: TenII/Rose
Rating: PG
Genre: Action/adventure, romance, drama (just a smidge)
Spoilers: Just to be safe let's say everything up to JE.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I make no money off of them (if anything it's the other way around)
Summary: After being left on the beach the Doctor, Rose and Jackie are forced to stay overnight in a small Norway village until they can get home, but something strange is happening in the quiet town.
Authors Note: Well here it is, the end of the story. All that's left is my wrap up in the next chapter and this story will be done.
Thank you to my amazing beta mik109 you're a life saver.
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Time seemed to slow as Freya watched on, her heart in her throat, as the two women flew past the hulking metal form of the Cyberman and the Doctor set about fighting it with a sword.
Rose and Jackie barreled through the open doorway, neither of them bothering to shut the door behind them. Rose spun towards Freya, who was now standing near the back of the room and out of their way. "Where's your daughter?"
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The Doctor looked back to the Cyberman once Rose and Jackie had made it into the room just in time to see a set of metal fists come flying towards his face. He ducked beneath the first one, straightening up just in time to leap backwards in order to avoid the second one. The Cyberman followed him forward as he backed out of the entry way and towards the sitting room, the Cyberman's fists lashing out again and again only to be parried away by the sword.
The Doctor said a silent thank you to the fact that the Cyberman was working slower and weaker than it usually would. He would never have a chance against a fully functional one.
The back of the Doctors legs suddenly hit the hard edge of the coffee table. The still attacking Cyberman had backed him into the living room and successfully blocked him against the table. He couldn't move to either side, the Cyberman might be severely weakened but it was still a solid metal figure against his smaller, far more frail one. It would break him in half before he could take more than a step or two in either direction. With no where else to back up the Doctor leaned back, narrowly avoiding another punch, before jumping up onto the table itself. He had always been of the belief that if you can't work around something, work with it.
The Cyberman continued to throw punches at the Doctor, who in turn continued to block them though he wasn't able to attack further even from his higher position atop the coffee table. They were at, what some would call, an impasse. Neither of them was winning, and they didn't seem to be moving any more either, which suited one of them just fine seeing as he was the distraction and all.
Just as the Doctor had begun thinking, and a little smugly, that sword fighting a Cyberman wasn't all that bad (he should have tried it ages ago, he was rather good with a sword after all) the Cyberman had apparently decided that the best way around an impasse was through the object that had brought it about.
With that the Cyberman kicked out, bringing its heavy metal leg slamming down through the middle of the table. The Doctor tumble to the floor amongst the tables splintered remains as the Cyberman regained its footing.
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Freya pointed to a small bed pushed to the corner of the room. In the middle of it, with an old red quilt pulled up and tucked around her, was the little girl, Maren. She looked small and pale even though the bed wasn't overly large. If it wasn't for the constant moving of her eyes beneath her eyelids, she would have easily been mistaken for dead.
"So?" Jackie turned to look at Rose expectantly. "How do we wake her up?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"I dunno. I thought you might have a plan or sumthin'."
Rose stared at her mother for a long moment, trying to decide how to take that comment. According to the Doctor, she, herself, had been asleep for at least three hours. During that time, he and her mother had escaped the town, found the townspeople, discovered what was going on and rescued her from a castle guarded by a dragon. If either of them should have a plan, even a vague one, it would most certainly not be her. "Well…How was the Doctor going to wake her up?"
"He said something about a backdoor in the program and how she'd just wake up."
"Did he say how he was going to find it?" she asked urgently trying her best to not shout at her mother.
"Not really," she answered honestly really searching her mind for anything he might have said. "Oh, he did say one thing."
"What?"
"He just said something about…being telepathic."
Rose's eyes grew wide as she stared at her mother. "That's not gonna work for us," she said slowly, her eyes darting down to the girl.
"Well, what else is there?" Jackie asked as she looked down at the pale form of the little girl in bed. "She's not part of the fairytales, and even if she was, I doubt we could find a prince charming suitable for a seven year-old anytime soon."
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The Doctor groaned as he clambered off of the floor, sword held tightly in hand even though it was at his side, ignoring the thought that splintered wood was one of the top five worst (not to mention uncomfortable) things to land on.
The Cyberman shot a fist out at the Doctor, who quickly pulled his sword up and once again blocked the punch aimed at his chest, taking a massive step backwards and out of the remains of the table as he did so. He could feel the far wall of the room growing ever closer as the Cyberman continued to move him back with each blow. The Doctor racked his mind quickly trying to devise a way out of his ever looming predicament.
A table was one thing to work with, a wall was something else entirely. Unless he could somehow get the Cyberman to punch through the wall and get stuck there he didn't really see any way of working with it. There was no way to work around it either, and he really doubted that if he asked nicely the fictional Cyberman that was currently trying to kill him would give him a timeout so he could reposition himself with more room to back up into.
Mind made up, though mostly due to a lack of options, the Doctor parried the next punch, this time pushing back against the Cyberman's arm with everything he had.
The Cyberman staggered back slightly, thrown off by the attack, and the Doctor darted around him, turning on his heel as soon as he passed it so he could be face to face with it again.
The Cyberman swung its arm out, aiming for the Doctor's head, as it turned back around. The Doctor blocked the blow, the metal of his sword tinging off the metal of the Cyberman's arm.
'If they kept fighting like this for long,' he thought bitterly, 'his hands were going to go numb from the reverberation of the sword.'
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"There has to be something else. Something we can do," Rose asserted urgently as they stepped over to the bed.
"Like what?" Jackie asked as she stared down at the sleeping girl. "Tell her to wake up before she kills the Doctor?"
"That's not a bad idea."
"I wasn't being serious."
"Maren," Rose said as she sat on the edge of the girl's bed. "You have to wake up, now," she said softly, gently holding the girl's cold hand. "If you don't wake up, people are going to get hurt."
Rose stared down at the little girl, watching her face intently for any sign she had heard her as the sound of smashing furniture and metal hitting metal echoed through the house and into the small room.
"Fat lot of good that did," Jackie said bluntly when absolutely nothing changed.
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The Cyberman took a large step forward, throwing its arm out at the Doctor in a wide swipe. When the blade of the sword made contact with the metal forearm, the Cyberman's other hand shot forward, wrapping around the base of the sword's blade. It tightened its fist, crunching the metal in its hand, before pulling it roughly out of the Doctor's hands.
The Doctor watched in wide eyed dismay, slowly backing towards yet another wall, as the Cyberman threw his sword haphazardly into the other room, paying it no mind at all as it threw its other fist out towards his head once again.
The Doctor ducked, or to be perfectly accurate fell to the ground in a worried heap, as the Cyberman's fist hit the wall just above him, sending bits of the shattered stone into the air above his head. He staggered backward, scrambling to his feet as the Cyberman turned its body towards him. The Cyberman's body jerked. Its fist still stubbornly stuck in the wall. It turned back towards the wall quickly, jerking its body backwards as it attempted to remove its hand from the wall.
The Doctor stumbled slightly with a loud and triumphant "Ha!" as he watched it struggle with the wall for a moment honestly surprised that his earlier option on how to work with a wall actually worked, before spinning around and searching the floor for his discarded sword.
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Rose resisted the urge to chew on her thumbnail as she continued to look down at the little girl.
She pushed herself off the bed and turned towards her mother, determination written across her face. "How'd she get hooked into the virtual reality program?"
"How should I know?"
"You were with the Doctor. What did he say?" she asked exasperatedly.
"I dunno. He just went on about how she set it off and it hooked into her brain. He never said anything else about it."
Rose looked back at the little girl trying to connect the pieces in her head. "But… why her?" she whispered to herself as she bit her lower lip.
"Oh, I asked that," Jackie said suddenly getting Rose to spin towards her with an expectant look on her face. "He said it was because the ship finally had power."
"Yeah but," Rose started chewing her bottom lip worriedly, "just 'cause a computers on doesn't mean its going to start running programs."
"I just figured she must've tripped something," Jackie said with a small shrug. "You know, like a silent alarm or when you go to the shopping market and the doors open when you walk up to 'em."
Rose spun around quickly. "Freya, did she have anything unusual on her? Anything…ya know, sort of alien?" Rose asked hesitantly. She didn't have time to try and think of a way to ask the question without the other woman thinking she was crazy. Then again there was a stranger in this woman's living room sword fighting a Cyberman while fairytales took over her town, it's not like the situation could get stranger than that.
"Alien?"
"Yeah…alien."
Freya looked at her daughter, wracking her brain for anything that could fit the very vague description the young woman had given her. She slowly shook her head no.
"She didn't have anything with her out there?" Rose asked determinedly.
"Her father, for her last birthday, he gave her a necklace. But… it's just stone," she answered nervously. "Nothing alien."
Rose's face fell. She had been sure she was onto something with the alien gizmo angle. Things like this only ever happened to people who had some sort of gadget on them that would activate other alien devices.
"Stone?" Jackie asked slowly. "You mean stone like the cave stone? That cave out on the edge of town kind of stone?" Freya gave her an odd look and nodded. Jackie gasped and spun towards her daughter excitedly.
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The sword had slid to the far side of the room, resting at the base of the wall there. The Doctor ran towards it just as the Cyberman pulled free of the wall. He ducked down and grabbed the sword with both hands. In one fluid motion, he spun back up and towards the Cyberman swinging the sword towards it.
The Cyberman swung its arm out, catching the blade between the stone wall and its metal forearm. The thin metal of the sword broke under the pressure right in the spot the Cyberman had crushed when it had grabbed the sword away from the Doctor.
The Doctor stumbled back a few steps, the broken sword held in front of him. "Right, should have seen that coming," he grumbled dejectedly before he looked up at the again approaching Cyberman.
The Doctor chucked what remained of his sword at the Cyberman, the handle connecting with a heavy metal thunk against the Cyberman's head. The Doctor quickly turned and ran as fast as he could towards where everyone else was, the Cyberman not far behind.
He came bounding through the still open door, slamming it shut behind him and locking it with his sonic screwdriver. "We're going to have company in a second," he said quickly as he glanced at everyone in the room.
"Doctor, she's got a necklace made out of the same stuff that spaceship out in the woods is made of," Jackie said quickly as she joined him next to the door.
"Spaceship?" Freya asked meekly.
"She's not wearin' it," Rose shouted over to them as she moved away from the girl.
"Where is that necklace?" he demanded, his question punctuated by the rattling of the door behind him.
The hinges of the door creaked and groaned under the weight of metal fists. Freya gave a startled shout as the top hinge ripped away from the doorframe completely. The Doctor spun back towards the door, throwing himself against it in a feeble attempt to take some of the pressure off the straining hinges while the whole door continued to shake.
"It's stronger the closer it gets to her," he grunted out through gritted teeth as he continued to shove against the door. The hinges gave another pathetic groan under the weight and Jackie pushed herself against the door next to the Doctor.
"Freya!" Rose shouted at the frightened woman. "Where's the necklace?"
Freya gulped in a deep breath and pointed a shaky finger towards the dresser next to her daughter's bed. Rose dove across the end of the bed and began throwing everything on top of the dresser aside as she searched for the necklace. When she didn't find it, she yanked open the top drawer and began digging through it frantically.
The second hinge burst away from the wood frame. "This isn't working!" Jackie shouted as she pushed against the door even harder as the final hinge began to break free of the doorway.
Rose's hand hit something rough beneath the shirts in the second draw and wrapped around the cool stone of the necklace. The Doctor and Jackie fell away from the door, both spilling to the floor in heaps just as Rose pulled the necklace out of the drawer and threw it to the ground, smashing it under her heel. The necklace gave off a small spark just as the last hinge flew off the doorframe. All eyes were fixed on the door as it fell open, a shattered mess of wood tumbling to the ground in front of them.
There was nothing there.
Jackie gave out an exhausted laugh and laid back on the ground running a tired hand across her face. The Doctor pushed himself off of the ground with a low groan as a deep pain shot through his chest, right where the dragon's tail had hit him, letting him know his brand new body was definitely protesting the strenuous activity involved in saving the day.
He turned to look at Rose, now back in her black pants maroon top and blue leather. She was giving him a smile so big it could rival the one she gave him on that deserted street earlier. He returned the smile full force and had been about to say something when a hoarse voice cut through the happy silence. "Mor?"
Everyone turned towards the small figure sitting up in bed. The small figure rubbed her fists against her eyes, trying to wipe away the remaints of an all too vivid nightmare, as she looked around at the unfamiliar faces around her room. Freya ran to her now awake daughter, scooping her up into her arms all the while muttering nonsensically in her ear.
~TBC