Rose

Forests & Silence

It was nine o'clock at night. They were all on Earth, in the front garden of the Maitlands'. The Doctors had all finished repairing the 200 and it was ready to fly, the perception filter remaining intact as they thought it would be useful. Christina flew away and they waved her off in her red bus, though Jack had quite indiscreetly slipped her his phone number and had probably told her where she could find Torchwood.

They filed back into the TARDIS (which was waiting around the corner of the street), Clara, Eleven and the Maitlands staying behind to make everything appear normal to the children's father. Then they'd planned to go off shopping, which actually meant coming into the TARDIS with the others for another excursion.

Rose leant on the console next to Ten as he flicked some buttons, while they waited for the secret couple. Even though everyone knew quite obviously they were now together, even the people who hadn't been told. And they were everyone except Rose and Martha. They weren't very inconspicuous about it though.

"Where are we going?" asked Rose.

"Dunno. How about we just roll the dice and see where we end up?" Ten said.

"Like the old days?"

"Just like the old days. No ulterior motives, no broken TARDIS, no errands to run. A good old fashioned adventure!" he shouted, flinging out his arms.

"Don't do that, do you want to look any more like a twig?" said Donna. As usual, Ten just rolled his eyes while Martha and Rose both laughed along.

"What about those Slitheen things?" asked Amy.

"Nah, Slitheen won't come back. It's not how they work. One of them's dead, they won't send any more. Least not for a while, and we won't be gone longer than half an hour I'd say," said Ten, flicking some more switches as Clara and Eleven arrived back.

"All aboard for anywhere!" said Nine, smacking a big red button as soon as the door shut. They were flung about wildly again, it was like there was an earthquake as the TARDIS flew into the time vortex. It felt good to be travelling just for fun again, Rose thought as the time machine lurched to a halt.

"Here we are, brand new place!" Ten said as soon as the TARDIS had landed. He looked around and beamed. "Everyone up for an adventure? Good!" he grabbed his coat and pulled it on, running up to the doors and opening them. Rose followed the closest, Donna and Martha close behind her. Mickey, Jack and Nine behind them. The Ponds, River, Clara and Eleven lingering at the back.

"Wow..." said Rose, staring out at the sight they were faced with. The TARDIS was atop a cliff and spanning out across the purple ground was a sprawling city with branches of suburbs reaching off across the flat ground. The heights of the houses made the city rise and fall like rolling hills and then, right in the centre were multiple skyscrapers, the tallest twice the size of the rest and it peaked in the centre of one of the three suns Rose could see. Everything was silver and it all glimmered below the bright blue sun that was highest in the sky. And surrounding the whole city were trees, a vast forest of them, brown trunks but pink and yellow leaves which glistened before them. It resembled a web from their height, the black-topped tall scraper the spider who owned it, watching over all the little strands of silk, the other various tall buildings the captured flies.

"Wow..." said Rose. "It's beautiful."

"And it is the capital city on the capital planet of the Trancha Nebula, and that building there, is an embassy," Ten said, pointing toward the 'spider'. "Or, strictly speaking, the embassy."

"Currently the biggest embassy in the universe, it's the centre of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire," said Nine, "it's where all the relations between planets are formed."

"You brought us... to an embassy," said Martha in a bored voice.

"Nothing wrong with embassies! C'mon, let's go see what's going on," said Ten, putting his hands in his pockets and walking down the sloping cliff to get to the city.

"It's quiet," said Donna, "whenever I come back to London from being away, you can hear it from miles away."

"Yeah..." agreed Martha, "can't hear anything."

"Maybe it's a holiday," said Ten darkly, staring around with narrowed eyes as they neared the city. "Maybe you have to be quiet, noise pollution's very important to Tranchans."

"What time is it?" asked Rose, whispering in case Ten's second guess was correct.

"By Earth time it's..." Eleven began, lifting his wrist to check the watch that wasn't there, "Bout five o'clock. Gets dark in two hours or so."

"Hang on, in 200100 I did a lot of reading up about human history. Even got myself one of those info-spikes, not that it lasted long because of my... condition," said Jack, "I heard about the destruction of the Second Empire. Started here, Trancha IV."

"It did, didn't it?" said Ten rhetorically.

"Doctor, were you even listening to me?" asked Jack.

"Yeah, course I was," said Ten, glancing back at Jack, "Destruction of the Second Empire started on Trancha IV. 'Cept we're not on Trancha IV, this is Trancha II."

"So... It's started..." said Jack morbidly.

"Started? What's 'started'?" asked Donna rather aggressively.

"That's the thing, nobody knows," said Eleven excitedly, "It'll be good to find out!"

"Or, we could just forget about this and go back to the TARDIS where it's safe?" suggested Clara. Rose saw him give her an affronted look, but other than that he ignored her.

They walked in silence into the city, shadows landing at awkward angles around them, the buildings curving oddly against the sun, but they didn't see any people, or hear any sounds apart from themselves breathing. The group stopped.

"Humans picked this world because of the trees," said Nine, "You like trees, you lot. Every planet in this Empire has trees because you just can't cope without being able to see where you're oxygen's coming from. Even planted fake trees in a few places."

"They're all fake trees?" Rose said, looking out at the distant forest.

"Nope, all real."

"Hang on, loads of trees and complete silence and something that killed a whole world?" said Donna, fearful.

"We should leave," said River, "All of us, right now. We should all, definitely leave."

"That's probably a good idea!" said Ten, escalating into a shout as they turned to run. But lying across the road behind them was a shadow.

"STOP!" yelled River, Ten, Nine, Eleven and Donna. Everyone did.

"What? It's just a shadow," said Rory, "I'm sure we can just step-" he tried to put his foot forward but River grabbed him and pulled him back.

"Stay out of the shadows. All of the shadows. Just stay out of them if you want to live," said River.

"What's in the shadows..?" asked Martha.

"Vashta Nerada. And they're hungry," snarled Ten.