Sanctuary
Time Out of Joint
"Who're you then? And how d'you know who I am?" demanded Rose, standing protectively by the TARDIS door.
"My name is Alison." Rose's look remained questioning. "I believe that the Doctor has been injured. He requires treatment or the coma may become permanent."
"Did you do this to him then?"
"He did it to himself," snapped Alison, but the flash of anger was gone as quickly as it had appeared. "Please, let us treat him."
Rose folded her arms.
"Be sensible, Rose, there is nothing you can do for him, after all."
"I can keep him safe."
"Can you revive him?" asked Alison. "I am alone and I am unarmed. Please, let us help him."
"Us?" asked Rose.
"Yes, I don't live on this planet all by myself." She stepped towards the TARDIS, but Rose still blocked her way. Alison sighed. "What else?"
"Who exactly are 'us'?"
"I promise I will answer all your questions, but the Doctor needs help. Have your travels really jaded you so much that you won't trust a simple offer of help when it most needed?"
There was a long silence, as Rose considered that the stranger was right, there really wasn't a lot she could do for the Doctor by herself. She tried not to think about the other bit too much.
"Alright," she said finally, stepping into the TARDIS. Alice followed her inside and Rose fully expected some comment about the size, but none was forthcoming. Stupid of her really, when this woman had been waiting for them. She must know what a TARDIS is.
"How long has he been like this?" asked Alison, kneeling by him.
"Less than a day," said Rose.
"We need to get him outside, the signal won't penetrate the TARDIS."
The obvious question was on the tip of her tongue, but Rose suppressed it, thinking that the Doctor would be a little less suspicious and a little more concerned about her welfare if she were the one in trouble. Probably.
As Alison took hold of the Doctor under his shoulders, Rose grabbed his ankles and together they managed to get him outside and onto the beach without too much trouble. Alison slipped a hand inside her pocket and retrieved a small metallic disk, and attached it to the Doctor's forehead before Rose could protest.
"One to transport," she said into a comms bracelet that Rose had mistaken for a watch. A moment later the Doctor vanished. When Alison caught Rose's look, she held her hands up in mock surrender.
"He'll be fine, I promise. That's just the quickest way to get him to the hospital. I thought you might enjoy the walk to the colony. This is a pleasant world and it'll give you a chance to ask me all those questions that I'm just dying to answer."
Rose managed a smile. "Yeah, alright."
"Besides," said Alison. "We don't get many visitors, it'll be nice to have someone different to talk to."
She turned away and began walking across the sand, inland. Rose could see no sign of civilisation, but the fine sand did gave way to much rockier beach running below a cliff face that seemed to extend along the coast for miles in both directions.
"I want to see the Doctor as soon as he wakes up," said Rose, jogging a few steps to catch up with Alison.
"I know, and you will, soon. But, please, you've been travelling with his for some time. Tell me, have you noticed anything odd happening?"
"What, you mean apart from the fact that he's a time-travelling alien with two hearts, the last of his kind and has an unfailing ability to attract trouble?"
Alison's eyes lit up, but she hid it quickly. "Last of his kind?"
Rose gave her best innocent smile, and remembered Van Statten. "Thought you knew all about us."
"I do know about the Time War, Rose," she said. They had reached the end of the sandy beach, and now there was a stretch of rocks ahead, before a short cliff face.
"Is this cross-country all the way?" asked Rose. Her trainers were sturdy enough to get her over the rocks, but she wasn't thrilled about the idea of walking for miles over rough ground, not when she wanted to see the Doctor as soon as possible.
"Don't worry, a pathway runs by this bit of the cliff. It leads straight to the colony," Alison told her as they clambered over the rocks.
Alison leapt over the final few rocks and quickly found the handholds she needed to start ascending the dozen or so metres of cliff. She moved surely and swiftly; clearly she'd made the climb before.
"Not afraid of heights are you?" she called over her shoulder.
Some sort of pride swelled inside Rose's chest. It'd been years since she'd climbed a tree, but she tried to convince herself that it was just like riding a bicycle. She stepped up to the rock determinedly and searched for the foothold that had been found so easily by Alison.
The climb wasn't as easy as it had looked. Rose scraped her knees more than once as she ascended, twisting her limbs to awkward angles so that they had a grip on the cliff. Halfway up, she caught sight of Alison's face peering down at her. "Come on, slowcoach!" she called, grinning down at her.
Rose gritted her teeth, but didn't reply. The last thing she wanted was to lose concentration and slip to a very ignominious death.
"Almost there," said Alison. She reached a hand down to help Rose up the last few feet and pulled her to safety.
Sitting on the grass and breathing heavily, Rose looked over the cliff. "Seems much higher from up here."
"This is one of my favourite spots," Alison told her as she gazed out to the sea.
Rose got to her feet and brushed down her jacket. "Alright then, which way to this colony of yours?"
"North, which is that away," Alison said, pointing in one direction which, as far as Rose could see, was as equally devoid of landmarks as the other. "About three miles and more or less downhill all the way. Then we'll reach the transport platform."
"And what's that when it's at home?"
"Actual colony's several hundred miles inland, but we've installed several transport stations across the continent - matter transmission, bit like what the TARDIS does but a lot less sophisticated."
They walked in silence for some minutes as Rose got her breath back, and it was Alison who was the first to break it.
"Did you really not notice anything strange when you were travelling with him? Never felt threatened? Afraid?"
"Of the Doctor?" asked Rose, guessing that she wasn't referring to the various human and aliens who'd tried to do something nasty to her.
"Yes," said Alison.
"Never," Rose told her. "And I thought I was the one meant to be asking questions."
"I'm sorry, please go ahead."
"Right. So how d'you know who I was, and the Doctor? And what happened to him, exactly?"
Alison regarded Rose for a long moment. "I will answer, but please listen to my whole answer. I am not your enemy."
"Yeah, whatever. Just tell me."
Alison shrugged. "We've been watching you for some time. Both of you. When it became clear that the Doctor had no intention of altering his ways, we had to act."
Rose's voice cooled. "So you did that to him. Made him ill."
"Yes, Rose. Please listen: you've seen the dangers of time-travel now; you've seen how dangerous, how very fragile the time-line can be."
"My dad," she said quietly.
"But the Doctor, as you may have noticed, pays no attention to such things," said Alison. She paused for a moment. "It isn't his fault. He just…forgets that things aren't the same anymore."
"He says he knows what he's doing," said Rose, annoyed at herself for such a half-hearted defence of her friend.
Alison shook her head. "He knows how things used to be, when it was possible to wander the time-streams with very few restrictions. But we live in a universe without the protection of the Time Lords now. A universe where even the smallest change can be catastrophic. He's hundreds of years old, Rose, and very set in his ways. He's no fool, but he may not realise what he's done, especially after…everything that he's lost."
"So you've brought him here cause he's causing this damage?"
"That's right. But he won't be harmed, neither of you will. We aren't hostile, just concerned. Think of the web of time as the environment, and we're the Green Party, except we got into power."
Rose smiled. "You're from Earth," she said with a little more certainty than she felt.
"Accent give it away?" Alison asked with a hint of sarcasm.
"Come on, have you heard the Doctor?"
"No, actually. But, yeah, long time ago I lived on Earth. I used to tend bar."
"I used to work in a shop."
They caught each other's eyes then, and Rose thought she saw a little bit of herself reflected back. For a few moments, there was a companionable silence.
"I know it looks pretty bad," said Alison. "I've been experimented on by aliens before, but it really was the only way to get the Doctor's attention. He doesn't exactly have a healthy respect for authority."
"Tell me about it," said Rose, with a roll of her eyes. "So who's this 'we' you keep mentioning?"
"Ah, well, it wasn't me that gave the Doctor his…condition. Don't have the medical expertise, but I'm pretty good with people, and there are rather a lot of people to deal with in Sanctuary."
"So who's in charge?"
"The guy that wants to speak to the Doctor," Alison told her. "Look, there's the platform." She gave Rose a sidelong glance. "Race you?"
"You're on," said Rose. She broke into a sprint, ignoring the path and cutting across the long grass, swiftly followed by Alison.
The platform was less then a hundred metres away, but they were both out of breath by the time they got there.
"Who won?" asked Rose.
"Dunno. Want to go again?"
"No way. I want a seat and a nice cool drink."
"I think I can manage that," Alison said. "Right, just stand in the circle and we'll be off."
The platform looked like a slab of stone. It was embedded in the ground and had a thin pillar attached to one side. Rose stepped on and watched as Alison hit a button on top of the pillar, and then a whole series of buttons in a furtive enough way to make Rose suspect it was a password.
"All set?" asked Alison.
"Whenever you are," said Rose, but they were no longer standing in rolling grasslands.
They had materialised on an identical stone platform in the middle of a busy marketplace, bustling with people, none of whom batted an eye at their sudden appearance. Alison jumped down onto the gravel.
"Don't worry," she said. "Just market day."
Rose climbed down and looked around. The stalls were simple wooden constructs roofed by brightly-coloured fabrics, and there were dozens and dozens of them filling the quadrangle. She caught the cry of sellers advertising their wares above the general rumble of conversation. Most of the people here were not as well-dressed as Alison. She could see the clothes they wore were far simpler: tunics and trousers for the most part, broken by the occasional white-coat and one or two people dressed in the same manner as Alison.
For some reason Rose was most surprised by the children. A half dozen or so playing in a patch of dirt with a ball, others clinging to parents, babies crying, older ones wandering alone amongst the stalls.
She didn't realise she was staring.
"You not seen humans for a while or what?" asked Alison.
Rose shook her head. "It's not that." She paused. "I just wasn't expecting something like this, I guess. Seems a bit normal. For intergalactic almost-assassins, I mean."
"We've got the painfully sterile white corridors and high-tech equipment too. At the hospital, for one, which is also where your Doctor is."
"Course. Well, lead on."
The further they moved from the marketplace, the quieter the streets grew. Cobbled stones, low buildings and the occasional horse and carriage reminded Rose of Dickensian London.
The hospital didn't seem at all out of place until they went inside. Rose felt like she had stepped from the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first. She cast a questioning look at Alison.
"It's a bit of a conceit," she said. "The labs are all modern constructs, we just stuck up an imaging field so they fitted in with everything else."
White coats were everywhere in here, but Rose really wasn't paying much attention to what was going on around her. She was eager to see the Doctor.
"Right down here," said Alison, taking the first left. "We put him right next to the entrance, since he's only in for a few hours."
She pushed open the first door in the corridor and Rose rushed into the room. By the far wall, the Doctor lay propped up on a bed, his eyes closed. She hovered by the door, glancing expectantly at Alison.
"It was just a matter of administering the antidote. He's fine, just asleep."
Rose rushed to the Doctor's side, wrapping him in a hug.
"Oi! Get off!" said his sleepy voice, slightly muffled by her hair. "You've just interrupted a very nice dream about ice cream and fishes."
"I was really worried about you!" She punched him lightly in the arm. "Don't ever scare me like that again." The Doctor grinned and returned her hug. Rose savoured the feeling of his arms wrapped around her, and turned her head to hear the hearts beating in his chest. She smiled.
Alison coughed politely, and they turned to look at her.
"So you're the trumped up little human who thinks that I'm damaging time then? Alison, isn't it?" asked the Doctor, jumping out of bed. "What've you done with my coat?"
"How d'you know about the time thing?" asked Rose.
"Very long, very boring lecture from one of these suits when I woke up. Would've walked out but some bright spark paralysed my legs."
"That was for your own safety, Doctor," said Alison. "The antidote needed time to take full effect."
"Yeah, and you didn't want me strangling that pompous idiot."
Alison ignored him. "And besides," she said, "you seem to be under a misapprehension. I'm afraid that my knowledge of temporal mechanics is pretty limited. If you'll follow me to the audience chamber, you can air your grievances."
"And who's in this audience chamber?" asked the Doctor, not moving.
"The guy in charge of this place," Rose told him.
"The guy in charge of this place?" mimicked the Doctor. "And who might he be. Alison?"
"Please," she said. "If you'll come with me."
"Actually, I'd much rather just get my TARDIS back and leave, if it's all the same to you. I don't much like being the victim of a bio weapon and having my TARDIS hijacked."
"Hijacked!" exclaimed Rose. "I was the one who got us here."
The Doctor looked at her and blinked. "What did you do then?"
"I, um, well, I improvised," said Rose. "It was an emergency."
"You started randomly pressing button on my console!" he accused.
"I didn't have a lot of choice, Doctor. Not when I didn't know if you were ever going to wake up again."
"Please," said Alison, raising a hand. "The Doctor's right. Your TARDIS was, ah, redirected. Whatever you did to the console would not have interfered with that."
"You're lucky you didn't blow us both up," muttered the Doctor to Rose. She thought of the exploding panel on the console and decided not to mention that. "I think a quick course on emergency TARDIS protocols might be in order," he told her.
Alison coughed politely.
"You still here?" asked the Doctor
The smile that she had been half-concealing vanished. "I won't be here for as long as you are, if you do not co-operate."
"See that, Rose. A dictatorial heart lies under every polite surface."
Rose tried very hard to remember that the Doctor had a lot more experience of the universe that she did and wasn't too happy about being poisoned or having his home nicked. "Look, I don't see the harm," she said. "They went to a lot of trouble to get you here, they must have a good reason that doesn't involve some really inventive form of death."
"You'd be surprised," he said.
Rose rolled her eyes, which did not go unnoticed by the Doctor. He sighed. "Yeah, alright, we'll see what your new friend wants. But I reserve the right to say 'I told you so,' at any and all appropriate junctures."
"I'll get you your coat," said Alison.
The imposing building that housed the audience chamber was located behind a high wall at the end of a very long, very grandiose and very, very quiet street.
They passed through the security checkpoints with little trouble. A few words from Alison was more than enough to satisfy the guards.
"This is the centre of government, I suppose," Alison explained when Rose asked about the security. "Our parliament, you could say."
"Not exactly a democracy then?" asked the Doctor.
Alison led them through the big, airy reception hall of the parliament building and into the elevator at the far end. "Penthouse audience chamber," she said curtly. As they began to move up Rose slid her hand into the Doctor's. She wasn't worried but she knew that he was, and this had become her shorthand for reminding him that she was right beside him, wherever he went.
The elevator doors slid open again after a few moments to reveal a long dully lit room dominated by a long conference table. The trio stepped out.
The lighting gradually increased as the elevator doors slid shut with an ominous click. Bit dramatic, thought Rose, and when the Doctor's hand tightened around hers, she knew something was wrong.
The Doctor's eyes were fixed on the far end of the table. The man sitting there seemed to be regarding the Doctor with an equally intense stare.
"Doctor," he said. "I'm so glad you finally made it."
The Doctor's eyes widened slightly, and Rose tightened her grip on his hand.
"Doctor, who is it?" she asked.
"But you're dead." She barely heard him, and she was certain that he hadn't heard her. "You're all dead."
The man's arms spread in a magnanimous gesture. "Obviously not."
"Doctor, who is he?" insisted Rose.
"Another Time Lord," the Doctor replied finally. "He likes to call himself the Master."
