Chapter 13: The Things To Come

Armed with directions, Jack and Millennia made their way through the TARDIS to the closest access stairwell to get down to the lower decks, which was half-hidden at the end of a particularly long and particularly dark corridor. As they drew closer to the ominous TARDIS netherworld their nonconsequential conversation grew less and less, until eventually they passed over the threshold and complete silence descended.

Despite Leah's resounding success in the attic, Jack had to put his foot down and refuse her coming with them. From his last conversation with her father, he had absolutely no idea what state they were going to find him in. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't going to be appropriate for his child to see.

So he and Millennia followed the directions for what felt like a few miles, until they reached a mundane-looking door which Leah had assured them was the one. Jack turned to Millennia.

'You'd better stay up here, just in case that Dalek's not powered down. Any sign, just seal the door and get out,' he instructed.

'But you both be stuck inside,' Millennia pointed out, pained.

'We'll handle it. Just promise me. Protect the kids.'

After a moment, she nodded. 'I promise.'

And with that, Jack stepped through the door into the Brig.

It was just as he'd imagined it would be - cold, dark, and soulless. There were lines of high-tech cells stretched down the right-hand side, each one containing some very basic amenities including a toilet, a shower, and a bed. He walked past all of them to the very end where more doors were sitting.

There were some white panels by each which looked like standard handprint access points. His heart sank a little as the inevitability of what would happen next washed over him, but he didn't have much choice.

He pressed his palm to the first scanner. As he'd anticipated, the device punctuated red and emitted a negative electronic noise. No prizes for guessing whose handprint it needed to open the doors.

Thinking on his feet, he moved to the nearby terminal which thankfully was translating into English for him. He scanned through the options, exploring every menu until he found one which opened a communication channel to the Inquisition Room. He pressed the button to link up, and there was the sound of ringing akin to a phone. Eventually it connected.

'Doctor?' he tried in the following silence.

The sound of the terminal ringing from across the room pulled the Doctor out of his stupor as his addled brain slowly kicked back into reluctant life. He then heard Jack's voice, loud and clear, calling out his name.

Too terrified to move for fear of what pain would be reawakened, he flickered his eyes open and tried a response. 'Jack …?' he said with a very quiet voice.

'Doctor, can you hear me?'

The Doctor, with a wash of pain, took a deep breath and forced his next word out, 'Jack …!'

'Oh thank god. Doctor, I'm down here with you but I can't get through to the Inquisition Room area. There are security panels and they won't open for me.

The Doctor's mind accelerated. In the event of catastrophic systems failure, the TARDIS was programmed to deadlock every door in the Brig; only able to be opened by the handprint of the pilot. The Dalek must have used him on the way in, and now it was only him who could get back out. There was no way Jack could override it.

'I … have to m-meet you,' the Doctor realised. 'B-but I can't …'

'Why not? Your legs broken?'

The Doctor moaned a little, running his hands down his legs. He couldn't feel any obvious fracture or dislocation. 'No, I d-don't think so.'

'Then quit complaining and get the hell up,' Jack ordered.

Like he'd been slapped in the face, Jack's words motivated him. Lacking the use of his dead exotronic left arm, he pushed himself up with a single bloody hand to a crawling position. He rocked for a moment, feeling temporarily light-headed as the urge to vomit ebbed through him briefly. He forced himself to take a few deep breaths, and then began to inch forward.

He was almost immediately stopped by his left leg, which he'd forgotten was still chained to the wall. Letting out a groan of frustration, he turned over and steeled himself, before feeling out the chain to grip it and pull as hard as he could.

Pain that had been lying dormant until now woke up like a roaring beast on its first morning hunt. He fought the incredible desire to pass out as he continued to pull until finally … finally … it pinged free from the wall.

He collapsed backwards, letting out a dulled cry on every exhalation as he blinked ferociously, staring up at the blackness with tears rolling down the sides of his face.

'Help me,' he begged through the tears.

'You gotta get out of the Brig first. I'm waiting right here for you. C'mon.'

He had to get to the door. He forced himself forward, inch by agonising inch until he made it to the Dalek sitting in front of it. With an internalised scream and an audible whimper he lifted his arm and used the Dalek's gunstick to pull himself onto his feet.

The room began to sway almost immediately as more nausea built. He bit it back. With tears rolling down his face, he shuffled to the door.

'That's it. It's just 200 metres to the exterior doors. I'll see you on the other side, okay? You can do this.'

The Doctor pressed his hand to the lock, and the door opened. He edged through, leaving the terminal and Jack's motivational speech behind. He swallowed back what tasted like blood, refocused on his task, and began the long walk to freedom across a very long and very high bridge.

As he progressed, the pain steadily increased. With every move he could feel his blood pressure dropping and his heartsrate slowing. His muscles were beginning to deaden.

It took 120 metres for his body to give out.

Unable to take another step, he sank to his knees and collapsed onto the floor, gasping. For a moment he just lay there, fluctuating somewhere between hell and purgatory.

Suddenly, he heard someone sobbing. A woman. Rose? He forced his head up. He was astounded to suddenly see a person - a woman he recognised - kneeling on the floor next to him, crying. It took a few moments to place her, before he realised this was the beautiful blonde woman from the TARDIS portraits - the one he'd never quite understood who to be. Now he knew for sure.

'... Tardis,' he gasped.

'Eiveyre,' she breathed. She seemed to be glowing slightly gold in a strange, ethereal way. 'Δυを2-This is my fault-ρ3βΕ,' she said without moving her mouth. The words seemed to jump into the Doctor's head in every single language simultaneously amid a random string of seemingly meaningless letters and numbers, yet somehow it made sense to him.

'It wasn't your fault,' he responded telepathically.

She reached forward to rest her hands over his hearts. He suddenly felt a surge of pain as his displaced nuclei reacted strongly to her time-centric presence and he couldn't stop the scream that erupted as a consequence.

She drew back immediately, startled and horrified. 'Ιη6σ-I am/We are sorry!-Ñο2Φ'

'It's ok-kay,' he gasped out loud, despite a fresh set of tears rolling down his face.

'Э吾щΧ-You/We have such sadness and pain that you/we cry-8Εϒ2,' the TARDIS said mournfully, gazing at him.

'I promise it's okay,' he insisted telepathically, suppressing the spasm his entire body suddenly wanted to do.

She sniffed, shaking. 'Πみ9Ё-You/we need to get up-шΥαΓ.'

'I can't.'

'ΘΧ1ϒ-We/You did it before-艾λнэ.'

'I know.'

'ΣαΕ6-We/You have only a few more steps-δ5Β哦.'

'I can't do it anymore,' the Doctor moaned.

'ΕΞ4Д-No, you/we will not give up,' the TARDIS stated firmly, 'you/we are going to live. Get up, Eiveyre, get up right now, because you/we will not give up-БβΡÑ!'

The Doctor swallowed, and spontaneously pushed himself up to his knees, and then his feet. Holding his stomach as he gasped, he fought the creeping blackout he could feel coming on.

'Эгθ5-We/I will walk slowly, Eiveyre-だτΦ.'

Clearly taking care to avoid touching anywhere near his chest, the TARDIS wrapped her arms around him and supported him as he took a few more agonising steps forward. The pain turned quickly back into a crescendo.

'I c-can't,' the Doctor moaned out loud, crying again as he stopped. 'P-please don't make me …'

'χΩ7Χ-Keep going, Eiveyre, I am/we are here-σぎ5λ,' she whispered, gently encouraging him to continue walking across the bridge. Despite everything, he did - just like before.

'How are you here? Are you real?' he found himself asking telepathically, trying desperately to distract himself.

'θБвΨ-This is my nightmare, and you are all real,' the TARDIS replied. 'You/We must reset to wake me up and escape-そΚζ7.'

'You're dreaming yourself into your nightmare,' the Doctor realised.

'Ξψёま-To save you/us, Eiveyre. The Lanwa is strong but I will not let this happen again, it is not strong enough-9ζρΨ.'

The Doctor looked up ahead of them. He could see the exit now - twenty metres or so. But even something so close suddenly looked so ridiculously far away.

'υΒ5ぷ-You/We are nearly there-чжΥλ,' the TARDIS said.

'I'm gonna black out,' the Doctor moaned.

'ΚÑΔ2-No, you/we will not. We will get there together-βτ6Α.'

He steeled himself, and kept going with the support of the TARDIS. His destination grew closer and closer, until they finally crossed the bridge and he was in arm's length of the lock.

'07Δα-Reset me, Eiveyre, and the nightmare will end-бשΛБ.'

'St-stay with m-me,' the Doctor begged out loud.

The TARDIS smiled sympathetically. 'οωΓλ-Get well and take us to Tuvala. I am/We are ready and I am/we are willing-ם73Δ.'

He was crying again, but this time it wasn't all from the pain. 'Thank y-you. And if … if I d-don't make it through Tu-Tuval-la…'

'Δρא3-I will protect the children-ηΛзП,' she confirmed.

'And L-Leah?'

She smiled. 'ΤΛШЬ-Leah will be your successor-4らΚΨ.'

'Y-You'll accept h-her?'

'ΔπσЧ-She fights hard, Eiveyre. I/We are proud. I/We grew her inside me/us and protected her within our/my walls. We/I watched her grow and now she thrives with our/your spirit-ÑИ9φ. εθκΛ-I choose her, as I chose you. Good bye, Eiveyre. We/I are sorry-あ3мГ.'

And with that, she disappeared. Relief seeped through him. Whatever was about to happen over the coming months with Tuvala and the Lanwa, at the very least Leah, Theo, and the TARDIS would all have each other.

He swallowed, and reached up to the lock. The door opened, and he visually saw Jack for the first time in weeks, standing there looking anxious.

'Doc … oh my god.'

That was all the Doctor heard before his legs abruptly gave way, and he finally passed out.

Jack rushed the Doctor to the infirmary with Millennia in tow, placing him gently on the nearest bed. Millennia rushed to retrieve some medical equipment as Jack leant over him, wide-eyed and frantically looking for any signs of consciousness.

'Doc? Doctor?' he tried in an effort to rouse the Time Lord, but he didn't so much as twitch. Jack cursed under his breath. There was no telling if the Lanwa had already been or if it was yet to come and take away the Doctor's speech - the physical signs were decidedly mixed. His mouth and nose were edged with dry blood, but nowhere near the amount he'd expect if the Lanwa had been successful.

After a few silent moments, Jack drew back and made a plan of action in his head. They couldn't reset the TARDIS without the Doctor being conscious, which meant they currently had a Dalek due to wake up in 90 minutes free to roam the TARDIS as it pleased. He raised his manipulator to his mouth, establishing a link with the console, 'Leah, we've got him and we're back on the upper floors, but now we've got a Dalek ready to go on the loose. Anything you can do?'

'Can't Daddy just reset the Tardis?'

Jack's eyes drifted over the physically decimated Time Lord. 'He … can't do it yet. Just give us a temporary fix. He'll do it later.'

'Okay. I can trap it where it is.'

'Good. Stay in the console room.'

'What!? But Uncle Jack, I …'

'Don't argue. I need you to look after Theo and make sure that Dalek's not going anywhere.'

She sighed. 'Okay.'

He turned off his manipulator and looked at the Doctor again. Without a hope of rousing the Time Lord yet, he decided he needed to at least give him a little dignity with a wash to get rid of the layers of grime.

Firstly, the Doctor's mangled wrist and ankles were being held in manacles he had to remove. He checked the Doctor's pocket and found the sonic screwdriver, but a quick buzz on the locks told him that wasn't going to work.

His attention turned to the room for a solution. After a quick scour around the medical cupboards, he managed to find a pair of cutters he was fairly sure were designed for amputation. With a little elbow grease he was able to cut through the chains, leaving the Doctor free with bloody and black wrists and ankles and where Jack already knew electricity had been repeatedly conducted through; burning the skin and ripping it away.

Stripping him down revealed the true magnitude of what the Dalek's extremely brief imprisonment had done to him. Besides the thin coating of sweat and vomit and the black mess on his wrist and ankles, he had two very distinct holes in his stomach from Dalek gunfire, one of which was oozing yellow. He had a pattern of dark bruising across his torso and stomach too, and his breathing was incredibly erratic.

Jack retrieved some soap and water and commenced cleaning him up, managing to remove the filth and the smell before getting him carefully redressed into a pair of shorts and an unflattering grey gown. By the time he was done Millennia was back and linking the Doctor up to an observation monitor, which promptly displayed a very irregular heartsrate and a low level of oxygen.

'How's he looking?' Jack asked.

'Not good,' Millennia said, and looked up at the scanner across the room. 'Need a scan.'

'Want me to take him?'

She nodded. Jack obligingly picked him up and placed him in the scanner, where familiar red lines began to run him up and down. Tense seconds passed.

'Scan complete,' the machine finally said.

'Audio readout, please.'

'Scan has detected contusions, lacerations, and tissue necrosis in the wrists and ankles; tissue necrosis of regio abdominalis secondary to multiple penetrative traumas in the right lumbar and left iliac; critically low oxygen saturation secondary to pulmonary hemorrhage and contusions and coagulative necrosis of pulmonary parenchyma; internal hemorrhaging and second degree burns; myocardial contusion; venusian influenza; cerebral hemorrhage; non-localised causalgia; myoclonus; and displaced imprimateur.'

As the diagnoses came like a waterfall one after the other, Jack's heart sank a little with every syllable. By the end it felt like it was sitting in the soles of his feet. He looked at Millennia standing there with her jaw agape, and then the Doctor, who still hadn't moved.

He then looked back at Millennia. 'I'm gonna add a new word to your vocab. Shit.'

'You're welcome.'

The Lanwa's voice rang in the Doctor's ears as he found himself back in that featureless dark room that constituted his mental prison. He pushed himself up to sitting position on the floor, the aches and pains of what had happened now seemingly muted in his dreamstate, but he had very little desire to try standing yet. Instead, he looked up and saw the Lanwa sitting there in a chair on a raised platform, staring at him.

'You gave me my sight back,' the Doctor realised.

'A gift, to help you get out of a situation you couldn't handle,' the Lanwa stated. 'Seems the mighty Time Lord needed help from little old me.'

'What am I supposed to say? Thank you?'

'Yes,' the Lanwa replied, not even blinking.

The Doctor sighed. 'Well, okay, thank you for doing the exact thing I said you needed to do, just six hours after I told you to do it. Anyway, this has been fun, but I've got things to do. Let me wake up.'

The Lanwa seethed. 'Do you think you're in control?'

The Doctor rolled his eyes. 'Of course I'm not, but neither are you. You can't even control a human woman inside your head. And I bet she's laughing right now, isn't she?'

The Lanwa suddenly smiled. That unsettled him. 'I'm afraid not.'

'What?'

'I had to deal with that. All that complaining.'

The Doctor's eyes widened. 'What have you done to her!?'

The Lanwa's smile increased and the room suddenly blackened, before the lights rapidly came back on. And there, sitting where the Lanwa had been in the chair, was the real Rose. She was blindfolded and tied to the arms and legs, squirming, with what he immediately recognised as crudely-done stitches running along her bloody lips, sealing her mouth shut with thread.

He forced himself up with the resultant adrenaline, rushing to her. He touched her hand, causing her to flinch badly with absolutely no idea who it was. 'Rose, it's me, it's the Doctor,' he said quickly.

She immediately relaxed, followed by urgent humming from the back of her throat in some desperate form of communication. He reached up to pull off her blindfold, but it was as though it was stuck to her head. He couldn't get it off.

He cupped her cheeks with his palms. 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.'

She made a small heartbreaking whine. Instead, he rested his forehead against hers. 'Talk to me,' he invited, 'use your mind.'

He was expecting a cacophony of contradictory thoughts to come through; incoherent and scattered in the utter mess of an untrained human trying to use telepathy. But there was only silence.

'Think the words, one at a time, just like before,' the Doctor ordered.

Nothing.

'Please, try again,' he begged.

Still nothing but silence.

He drew back as more muted whines came out of her sealed mouth, his hearts sinking. He kissed her forehead for a long time, with his chin growing damp from the blindfold, which was rapidly becoming saturated with her tears.

'I'm getting you out. I promise. Hold on.'

As he drew back he realised his vision had a distinct black spot in the centre, which was steadily growing outwards. The Lanwa was taking his sight again.

He forced his eyes to stay open as he gazed at Rose in front of him, who was slowly but surely seeping away to black. He built a deliberate picture, taking in every nanometre of her to preserve in his memory.

'I love you,' he said, just before his vision completely blackened.

'I win,' the Lanwa's voice suddenly said in the unyielding darkness. 'Poor sad little Time Lord and his pathetic mute wife.'

There was a brief pause as the Doctor took that in. Then, without really deciding, he suddenly found himself laughing.

'Why are you laughin'?' the Lanwa asked, astonished.

'Oh, you really don't know what you're dealing with, do you?'

'What?'

'That didn't hurt me. That just made me angry. I'm angry. And here's your warning. If you don't let her go, travel to some dark uninhabited lonely planet in the Universe and stay there until your lifeforce runs out then I'm going destroy you.'

'You-'

'I'm going to save her and you're going to die. I will kill you. If you had one modicum of sense you'd start running now.'

'I think you need to shut your mouth just like your irritatin' human woman,' the Lanwa spat. 'I've got some needle and thread left.'

'Good choice,' the Doctor grated. 'Because I want to know exactly what you put her through. Try the backstitch if you know it, that'll really shut me up.'

He smiled as he heard the Lanwa advance, bracing himself for the pain.