Chapter 7: The Garden of Unearthly Delights

Deciding a day's rest might be a well-timed event, they landed on what they deemed to be a safe spot on one of the half-fractured outer planets of Tuvala to allow both the TARDIS and the Doctor a little recovery time before they continued.

The Doctor had had a transfusion from his own blood stocks overnight and was currently convalescing in the botanical gardens alone, lying back on the grass to stare up at the artificially-created night sky, lost in thought. The sky was a duplicate of the view from London without the pollution, just as Rose had requested a very long time ago when they'd last lain here together. He hadn't changed it since.

That had been … just before he'd had to confront Braxiatel and the Master amid the Moirai hunt nearly two years ago.

Playing entry 22/?.

DOCTOR: …

DOCTOR: …

DOCTOR: … Two years …?

Two years since it had all started. Two years since he and Rose had last felt normality - at least, as normal as their usual normality could ever really be. He missed it. He missed her. He missed the way she used to subconsciously seek out his hand when she felt he might need it. The way she'd take an extra ten seconds in the morning to make sure his hair was appropriately fluffed before they left the bedroom. The way she'd, every now and then, appear with a brand new tie for him that she was convinced would "go with everything".

He loved the way he just knew her, unlike anyone else. If they'd had a particularly dramatic day, he would go to the same small fish and chip shop in Devon and get her a portion of chips. 'Best chips I've ever had,' she would say every time she ate them. She'd never ask where he kept getting them from.

Of course, he'd been annoyed by her too. The way she used to leave her clothes strewn absolutely everywhere - random jumpers and socks she dispensed with in the living room while watching TV and only cleaned up one Sunday every three months. The way every time she'd had a few drinks with Gwen or Martha, she'd come home and sing "The Power of Love" by Frankie Goes to Hollywood like she was reciting a brand new Shakespeare verse he'd never heard before. The way all those bottles of things had appeared overnight in his bathroom when they'd started sharing a room, which he'd had to discover the hard way smelt delicious but weren't for tasting.

But he missed all that too. She'd become so ingratiated in his life that he'd give anything to be able to dig out one more stray fluffy sock from the crevice of his sofa. Listen to one more drunk rendition of 'make love your goal' being sung passionately in his face at 3am in E flat. Just one more chance to be yelled at by her when he ate her banana face cream.

Now, she was somewhere in the artificial sky he was staring at, controlled by a disease that was killing her, and pregnant with a child he'd originally thought had been made with the same kind of love Frankie used to sing about, but had turned out to be anything but.

Still, she was why he was fighting.

He was absolutely dreading what state he'd find her in if they got back to the normal universe.

He sighed, closing his eyes to listen to the natural sounds of the botanical gardens - the creaks of the trees, the rustle of the leaves, the songs of the birds, allowing himself to be enveloped in memories. It was very peaceful until it was all interrupted by a familiar voice.

'Hey,' Jack greeted.

'Hello,' the Doctor acknowledged, opening his eyes and looking at him. His voice was still a little raspy from the damage.

'Sorry, I know this is your thinking spot,' he said, shrugging a little.

'It's okay.'

'Feeling better?' Jack asked, taking a seat on the grass next to him.

'Yeah, thanks.'

'Not getting a taste for blood yet, are you?'

The Doctor smirked. 'Not yet.'

'That's not reassuring,' he pointed out, grinning back.

'Well, if I suddenly start biting people, I give you permission to stake me through the hearts,' the Doctor told him. 'But it's not the first time I've been bitten by a vampire and won't be the last. How are the girls?'

'They're out on the planet. We're having a picnic. Brought you some,' Jack said, plonking a bag on his chest. Interested, the Doctor pushed himself to sit up and open it, pulling out some beef and salad sandwiches.

'Thanks,' the Doctor said and proceeded to peel out the beef slices and leave all the salad, throwing whole pieces of the meat into his mouth.

Jack watched, slightly disconcerted as the Doctor chewed. 'No salad?'

'Nah. I dunno, I've suddenly got a craving for more … red meat.'

Jack stared at him, wide-eyed.

The Doctor snorted with laughter and then ate the rest.

'Hilarious,' Jack muttered.

'I thought so,' the Doctor replied through a mouthful of salad.

'What's the sky tonight?' Jack wondered, casting his eyes up to the artificial night above them.

'London.'

'Anything interesting?'

'Jupiter,' the Doctor replied, pointing up to an exceptionally bright one just on the right before moving his finger slightly. 'And Saturn.'

'Oh, I like Jupiter. Hate Saturn.'

'Couldn't agree more,' the Doctor said, smiling at a distant memory before his face fell again.

Jack gazed at him for a while.

'What?' the Doctor queried, finishing his sandwich.

'Thinking about Rose when I walked in, weren't you?' Jack said.

The Doctor pulled a brief guilty face. 'Maybe. How can you tell?'

'Recently, every time you've talked about her, you get the same look on your face.'

'What look?'

'Like you're standing in the middle of a desert, and you can't work out which way's north.'

The Doctor half-smiled at that but said nothing.

'Anything you wanna talk about?'

The Doctor sighed, his eyes dropping to the grass. 'She'd hate me for this, wouldn't she?'

'For what?' Jack wondered.

'This entire trip,' the Doctor admitted, curling into the foetal position and hugging his knees.

'We've done pretty well so far,' the immortal pointed out. 'Alright, freaky clowns and bitey vampires aside, we've got progress.'

'Progress?'

'Still alive,' Jack clarified.

'Just,' the Doctor added.

'Doc, you know as well as me she'd hate every second of this, and you also know she'd support you all the way. Because this is what you do. This is your life. Can't stop you. Besides, we're too far in now, Doc.'

The Doctor grimaced and nodded as he looked back up at the sky, wincing a little at the sharp pain in his neck, instinctively trying to itch it through the adhesive dressing.

'Let me look at that,' Jack said, leaning in.

Lacking the drive to protest, the Doctor tilted his head to give him access to his neck. Jack gently pulled off the dressing, which had blood stains in it, and the fang marks in his skin were still obvious and shining red.

'You're still bleeding a bit,' Jack said. 'You can't be.'

'My X2 level was nonexistent for a while; it'll take time,' the Doctor replied. 'Should be much better by tonight.'

Jack conceded, smoothing the dressing back on his neck. 'Guess you're not coming out to play, then.'

'Need to stay in here for the artron,' the Doctor said. 'Actually, it might not be a bad idea for me and Leah to sleep tonight. Normal sleep.'

'Isn't that risky? The Lanwa …'

'... Hasn't got control here,' the Doctor completed and gestured to his eyes. 'I can still see. I passed out with the vampires, and I didn't dream of her. We're out of her reach.'

'You sure about that?' Jack asked, cautious.

'Yes,' the Doctor said. 'I can't feel it inside my head.'

'Wait … You could feel it?'

'Like a little weight inside,' the Doctor explained. 'But that's gone now.'

Jack considered that for a moment. 'Be sure.'

'I am.'

Jack nodded and got up. 'I'd better get back.'

'Thanks for visiting,' the Doctor said honestly.

'You're welcome. D'you want me to get anything for you?'

'Nah. Thanks.'

Jack nodded again and left.

The Doctor watched him go. As soon as he'd disappeared, he laid down to stare at the sky again, determined to spend the rest of the day reliving his memories.

Playing entry 23/?.

MILLENNIA: Jack. Jack! Wake up!

JACK: Urgh … what?

MILLENNIA: We have got a big problem.

Jack blinked open sleepy eyes, registering Millennia standing over his bed in a dressing gown in the dark. 'What problem?' he asked drowsily.

'I think … I think we are being followed.'

That made him wake up, sitting bolt upright with wide eyes. 'By what?'

'I do not know, but a ship come to us and will not answer hail,' she said anxiously. 'I do not want to be doing anything without Nei'Veeto.'

Jack rapidly forced his sleep-addled brain to accelerate to catch up with the situation. 'Go monitor it. I'll get him.'

'Okay,' she said and ran out the door.

Jack quickly pulled on some clothes and jogged out of his bedroom door, crossing the hall to where (he hoped) the TARDIS had kept the Doctor's room for the night. He opened the door, and to his relief, found it was the right one when he saw the Time Lord and his daughter asleep in the bed. Leah was cuddling up to her toy bunny, Floppy, and her Dad's biological arm, while he was hanging half off the bed in a mess.

Jack tip-toed to him, kneeling down and carefully shaking him. 'Doc. Doc, wake up.'

The Doctor groaned. 'Leave me alone,' he complained in a sleepy murmur.

'Doc!' Jack hissed, trying not to wake Leah. 'Problem!'

'Deal with it yourself; you're a grown-up,' the Doctor replied, pulling the cover further over himself and resettling.

'Doc. Tor. Wake. Up,' Jack said firmly, punctuating each syllable.

Finally, the Doctor opened his bleary eyes. 'What?' he complained.

'Problem,' Jack told him. 'Get up.'

The Doctor sighed but eventually nodded and quietly slipped out of bed, carefully extracting his arm from Leah's hold. He took a moment to make sure the cover was still over Leah and Floppy before he followed Jack out into the corridor and shut the door.

'Right, what?' he asked, rubbing his eyes and yawning, standing there in a T-shirt and pyjama bottoms with chaotic hair.

'Millennia's detected something following us.'

'So? It could be anything. Can I go back to bed now?' the Doctor asked seriously.

'No. She said she's been hailing, but there's no reply. It's coming straight for us.'

The Doctor sighed again but turned and made his way to the console room regardless with Jack in pursuit. There they found Millennia, who pointed at the monitor.

'It is an escape pod,' she said.

'Vampire?' Jack wondered.

The Doctor frowned, stepping up to the monitor to check the scan. 'No … humanoid.'

'Survivor?' Millennia suggested.

'Hold on … That's a cargo ship escape pod …' the Doctor was saying as he continued checking the scan.

The monitor suddenly burst into life, making them jump in alarm as on the screen appeared a crackled view of something the Doctor had hoped he would never have to look at again.

It was a pale-faced, blue-haired clown with absurdly large and pointed teeth protruding out of a crimson red mouth that was currently twisted upwards in a demented smile. Its eyes were on fire and gazing at him as though he were a chocolate parfait. As it stared through the monitor with those soulless eyes, a long white tongue slipped out from between its jagged teeth, and it licked its lips, leaving them dripping with saliva.

'Qe-ei'kupo'eon, Timeia ...' its creepy voice came through the speakers. 'This one only wants a lick ... Ai-heeshi ... Plak ara kiin ara kinko ara kahsi ... This one afa'wi-iviran ...'

It was the Ravenous. The Doctor quickly switched it off.

'You said it couldn't follow us!' Jack said. 'You said no Uber! I heard you!'

'Hey, I'm not always right,' the Doctor protested. 'Time to intercept … two minutes. We need to do something.'

'You don't say,' Jack said sarcastically.

'Someone go to Leah in case she wakes up,' the Doctor ordered.

'On it,' Jack said and ran back into the corridor.

'What are you gonna do?' Millennia asked in gallifreyan.

'Relocate,' the Doctor replied and began to tap at the controls to commence flight.

'No, wait, I have an idea,' Millennia said, resting her hands on his to stop him.

'Yeah?'

'We can make an EMP and transmit it over a radius of two hundred astronomical units. It'll disable its ship for at least twelve hours,' she said.

The Doctor looked delighted. 'Great idea. Brilliant. Love it. One problem.'

'What?'

'I've got no idea how.'

'I can,' she said, stepping in to take control of the TARDIS' systems. 'We have a storage capacity of 300,000 omegas, with a running output of 900,000 omegas per second across all systems if we open the Eye of Harmony. If we can get over 1,400,000 omegas, and that should be just enough to launch the EMP using the extrapolator without losing any power reserves.'

'Um, what?'

'We need to delete a room, Bluebird.'

'Err …'

'Okay, our biggest power drain is …' She tapped a few buttons to bring up the list on the monitor. '... The Botanical Gardens. We can delete that and get 600,000 omegas - that's more than enough.'

The Doctor froze, something indistinct rising in his throat. '... Botanical Gardens?'

'Yes!'

'B-but …' he stammered out before his eyes flickered to the monitor. Thirty seconds to intercept. He swallowed. 'Okay. Okay. Do it.'

She nodded, and with three precise taps on the console and two short seconds later, the Botanical Gardens and everything in it was deleted forever.

He didn't have time to think about that as Millennia proceeded to quickly and efficiently fire off the EMP. They both watched, partially mesmerised, as on the monitor the approaching pod was hit by a wave coming out from the TARDIS, stopping it immediately.

'Okay, get us out of here,' Millennia said. The Doctor obliged, jumping around the console in his pyjamas to commence a short program to hop them to a different location. With the new abundance of power, the ride was the smoothest it had ever been, with a quick shift 10,000 miles to the other side of the planet.

Millennia nodded, stepping back. 'Okay, that should be enough.'

The Doctor did another scan to be sure and then programmed the TARDIS to track the pod with a proximity alert. 'Time to intercept twenty-four hours.'

'How is it chasing us?' Millennia asked, anxious.

'Must've adapted the escape pod and overridden the default controls,' the Doctor answered, running his hand through his hair. 'It's clever, and it can smell me lightyears away.'

'So … it's going to keep coming for you?'

'Yes.'

She swallowed nervously, a frown creasing her brow. He caught it and quickly rested a hand on her shoulder.

'Don't worry. It's slow. It caught us by surprise this time, but now we can keep track of it.'

'I suppose.'

'In fact, I'm so confident that I'm going back to bed,' the Doctor told her with a reassuring smile. 'Make sure you get some sleep too.'

She nodded, and he left back into the corridor to get back to his room, where Jack was outside the doorway, watching Leah from afar.

'She didn't wake up,' Jack told him in a whisper. 'Sorted?'

The Doctor nodded. 'We've got twenty-four hours.'

'What did you do?'

'We had to … delete the botanical gardens to fire off an EMP.'

'You deleted the botanical gardens?' Jack said, surprised.

'... Yeah.'

'Sorry,' Jack said, genuinely pained for him.

'It's just a room. It can be rebuilt,' the Doctor dismissed.

'Yeah, but … I know what that meant to you.'

The Doctor nodded but said nothing more about it. 'Night, Jack.'

Jack smiled sadly. 'Night, Doc.'

The Doctor stepped into his room, climbing carefully back into bed next to Leah.

'Daddy?' she asked quietly.

'Sorry,' he whispered. 'Go back to sleep.'

'Mmmkay,' she said and took back his arm to hold it again, instantly asleep. He closed his eyes and tried to drift back into that comfortable sleep he'd had before, but his head was quickly crowding up with memories of the Botanical Gardens like people clambering at a stop for a late bus.

All the stories he and Rose had exchanged - the late nights talking about their deepest secrets and darkest memories. He'd told her about the atrocities he'd committed in the Time War and the things the Master had done to him and made him do in the Year That Never Was. She'd told him about Jimmy, and he'd told her about Glospin and the rest. Somewhere in the middle of all the laughter and the tears (lots of tears), they'd created Leah under that cherry tree by the purple river.

Gone now.

He looked at Leah briefly and then closed his eyes, resettling into his indent and trying to push all his thoughts away.

Safe to say, he didn't sleep another wink.

A/N: Translation:

Qe-ei'kupo'eon, Timeia … - This one smells you, Time Lord …

Ai-heeshi ... Plak ara kiin ara kinko ara kahsi ... This one afa'wi-iviran … - A nibble ... Hot and soft and sticky and beautiful … This one is so empty …