A/N: This is the last chapter I have written. I am working on the next chapter, which gives Rose a little more of a lime light
Chapter Twenty-five: Death's Doctor
"I accept that you exist." The Doctor told the large creature before him. It was huge, taller than anything else he had ever seen, and very much fit the description of 'devil' that was so prevalent in myths and legends. This was definitely a memory he was going to have to share with Annamae. "I don't have to accept what you are, but your physical existence, I'll give you that. I was expected down here. I was given a safe landing and air. You need me for something. What for?" The Doctor demanded to know, glancing to the beast and back to the drawings on the wall, trying to understand.
"Have I got to, I don't know, beg an audience? Or is there a ritual? Some sort of incantation or summons or spell. All these things I don't believe in, are they real?" he knew well that magic and spells were real, because that was what Annamae used – the woman from another universe. He had never seen evidence of true magic, the magic she could do, in this universe though. It was all science, words and numbers, not some internal power that could be manipulated.
"Speak to me! Tell me!" when all the beast did was growl and strain against his chains, the Doctor frowned. "You won't talk. Or you can't talk. Oh, hold on, wait a minute, just let me." He grabbed his head, thinking, conclusions and information running through is brain so quickly he nearly missed them.
"Oh! No. Yes! No. Think it through. You spoke before. I heard your voice. An intelligent voice. No, more than that. Brilliant. But, looking at you now, all I can see is Beast. The animal. Just the body. You're just the body, the physical form. What's happened to your mind, hmm? Where's it gone? Where's that intelligence? Oh, no."
The Doctor looked up at the cavernous ceiling, separating him from the rocket which had just taken off. The rocket which would have taken Annamae, Rose and the rest of the crew to safety. But, more importantly, it would have taken Toby with it. They were taking the mind of the beast in the body of a man.
'Annamae' The Doctor focused on that mental connection that they hadn't closed completely. It was week, like her mind was perishing. Her life force was weak, weaker than it had been in that alternative universe when she had been dying. 'Come on, Annamae, answer me.'
'Doctor...' it was a whisper, but it was something, her mind was still active.
'Toby, he contains the mind of the beast' The Doctor sent the image and information to her. They couldn't let such a powerful mind make it back to humanity – not after such powerful protections were put in place to contain him.
Annamae didn't use words or images to explain what was happening to her, instead sending an extreme feeling of tiredness. Tiredness explained why she didn't use words to communicate – she wasn't strong enough to form them and send them to him with the open connection they shared. If she was too tired to even talk with him, then she was definitely too tired to get up and stop Toby.
'Then, share my strength.' The Doctor thought strongly, sending the feeling of adrenaline, determination, hope and strength through to her. He couldn't share regeneration energy at a distance, so she was going to have to make do with the feelings of power he could send her. Hopefully, she would be able to take it and trick her body into moving. 'Now, how do I stop the body…'
In order to distract the beast from his mental conversation, he continued monologing. "You're imprisoned, long time ago. Before the universe, after, sideways, in between, doesn't matter. The prison is perfect. It's absolute, it's eternal. Oh, yes! Open the prison, the gravity field collapses. This planet falls into the black hole! You escape, you die. Brilliant! But that's just the body. The body is trapped, that's all. The devil is an idea. In all those civilisations, just an idea. But an idea is hard to kill. An idea could escape. The mind. The mind of the great Beast. The mind can escape! Oh, but that's it! You didn't give me air, your jailers did. They set this up all those years ago! They need me alive, because you're escaping, then I've got to stop you. If I destroy your prison, your body is destroyed. Your mind with it."
He grabbed a rock from the ground and went to smash one of the urns, but paused as another thought occurred to him.
"But then you're clever enough to use this whole system against me. If I destroy this planet, I destroy the gravity field. The rocket. The rocket loses protection and falls into the black hole. I have to sacrifice Annamae and Rose." He sighed angrily. He knew Annamae wouldn't hesitate to sacrifice herself, but Rose… they had both promised to protect her.
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The Doctor's strength pulled me from the dark pit I'd surrounded myself in to protect me from the damage of organs failing. Since I'd been separated from the rest of the crew, I hadn't even maintained my audio interaction with the world around me because there was no point.
Groaning in pain, I forced my failing body to its feet. I could feel the shuddering rocket under my feet, as I stumbled out of the sleeping room I had been placed in and towards the cock point – which frustratingly was up a ladder.
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"So, that's the trap. Or the test, or the final judgment, I don't know. But if I kill you, I kill her. Except that implies in this big grand scheme of Gods and Devils that she's just a victim. But I've seen a lot of this universe. I've seen fake gods and bad gods and demi-gods and would-be gods, and out of all that, out of that whole pantheon, if I believe in one thing, just one thing, I believe in her." The Doctor snapped, raising the rock once more. Annamae would be able to reach and stop Toby, and she would protect the others. She was strong enough to pull through, he had faith in that.
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By the time I made it to the top of the ladder, every muscle was shaking, my breathing was laboured and I was pretty sure I was bleeding from somewhere but couldn't feel that over the pain of my kidney giving up and my lungs fighting like hell to continue bringing in oxygen. It was fifty-five minutes since we lost contact with the Doctor, and he'd given me the extra minutes I needed to move instead of simple waiting for my brain to die.
I made it just as the we lost the gravity funnels because the Doctor had finished talking. Time was up. The body was going down, and now it was time to send the mind down with it.
"I shall never die!" Toby was raging, pushing against his seat belt and intermediately spewing fire. "The thought of me is forever. In the bleeding hearts of men, in their vanity and obsession and lust. Nothing shall ever destroy me. Nothing!"
"Yeah, well check again." I leaned over the seat and removed his buckle as Rose grabbed the nail gun and pointed at the window screen.
"Go to hell." Rose snarled, firing.
With the window gone, and Rose's seatbelt loose, I hooked my legs under the back of her chair and latched on – acting like her seat belt and holding her to the chair as Toby was sucked out into the vacuum.
"Emergency shield!" Zach shouted over the sound of their oxygen being pulled out of the craft.
The moment the metal shutter came down, my iron grip on Rose failed and I went down. I was done – I had nothing left to give. The Doctor would save Rose now – stop the ship from falling into the Black Whole – he had found the TARDIS.
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Tying a 'rope' around the rocket was easy. Almost as easy as creating a gravity bubble around them and pulling them away from the Black Whole.
"Sorry about the hijack, Captain." The Doctor picked up the microphone once he had jacked into the com system. "This is good ship Tardis. Now, first thing's first. Have you got a Rose and Annamae Tyler on board?"
"Doctor! I'm here, but Anna…" Rose broke off with a sob.
"Doctor, she's not breathing." Jefferson's grim voice came over the coms.
"Bring her down to the cargo hold." The Doctor lost his smile at the news. "I'll park there. Be ready to receive Ida"
"She's alive?" Zach asked surprised.
"Yes. Bit of oxygen starvation, but she should be all right. I couldn't save the Ood. I only had time for one trip." He explained, unhooking the toe once they reached the safe zone outside of the Black Wholes reach. Immediately, he dematerialised to land inside the cargo hold.
Picking Ida up, the Doctor left the Tardis and waited impatiently for the others to join him. If Annamae had died, then he was working on a time limit unless her ability to come back had passed over into this life. This would be the first time they would be testing it and he really didn't like the idea that she might not come back. Of the nine companions who had died travelling with him, each had hit him hard. But Annamae was the first companion who he had connected to on a stronger, deeper level. She had pulled him out of the darkness that had consumed him on the death of his planet and people. Annamae, without him noticing, had become his anchor. If he lost her…
"Doctor," Rose's relieved voice brought the Doctor from his spiralling thoughts. Rose was leading the small group which included Zach and Jefferson. It was the solider who was carrying Annamae, although Zach had helped him get her down the ladder.
"Rose, are you okay?" The Doctor quickly checked her over for injuries.
"Yeah, I'm not hurt." Rose whipped her tears away, trying to give him a reassuring smile.
"Captain, Ida's fine. She'll be waking up soon." The Doctor passed his burden on to Zach before he took Annamae from Jefferson. "Thank you."
Without waiting for anyone to say anything, he disappeared into the TARDIS, hardly acknowledging Rose as she followed him. He made a direct line to the med-bay, locking the door behind him the moment he made it inside since he didn't want Rose to see anything – either his inability to save her sister, or Annamae coming back from the dead under her own power which she wouldn't want her to know.
Carefully, he lowered Annamae's body onto the bed before he grabbed the scanner. If he knew what had caused Annamae's heart to stop, then he might be able to reverse it – she hadn't been gone too long.
When the scanner had completed its work, the Doctors hearts stopped briefly. The scanner didn't just tell him the damage done to her body, but also when that damage was done. Before he had managed to mentally contact her, Annamae's body had been failing – her muscles deteriorating until she had almost none left, and her organs just stopping. But, after he gave her the strength to move, there was tears in her tendons and muscles, her left lung had a tear through it, and her kidney seemed to have burst. The nerves in both her brain and body had all been burned – like she had been subjected to a large amount of electricity. By getting up, moving to stop Toby, she had done a lot of damage to her body – she must have been in extreme pain, moving through the rocket to help Rose.
The only relief he got from the scan was that, in the last five minutes – twelve since her heart stopped – some of the damage was being repaired. Starting with the deadly damage done to her lungs and kidney, it seemed that their theory was right – she would come back. Hoping to ease the transition – and perhaps even to monitor it so he would know what to do in the future – he hooked up an oxygen mask before placing Annamae in an incubation chamber which had a general 'healing' setting which helped stimulate and encourage cellar regeneration. It was normally used by Time Lords who were injured to the point that they might regenerate, or those who had been injured near the end of the first fifteen hours of regeneration.
Once all the monitoring equipment was up and ready, he took a seat next to the bed and took Annamae's hand through the field. He should go and speak with Rose, make sure the teenager was okay, but he couldn't bring himself to leave Annamae while her heart wasn't beating and she was so vulnerable. She may be safe in the TARDIS, but that didn't mean he should just leave her alone – especially since he didn't know when she would wake up. Fortunately, the TARDIS was putting them in a time pocket which was moving faster than the rest of the TARDIS.
This was the first time Annamae had died in this universe, in this body, and they didn't know how she was going to react when she came back or what her memory was going to be like (especially due to the nerve damage done).
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Waking was a slow process – very different to how it had been before she had been reborn. Before, it had been like waking from a nightmare – sudden and jarring. In this instance, she woke as though she was waking from a drug induced sleep. Her mind felt groggy and her body felt numb and weighed down. She couldn't feel or sense anything around her, couldn't hear or see, she couldn't even smell anything.
Eventually, the heaviness started to lift and her hearing came back to her.
"…your vitals are good; your heart beat is strong and a lot of the damage you've taken have started to heal – mostly only muscle and tendon damage is remaining." The Doctor was rambling nervously, disuss cussing her current medical state. "It's been seven long hours…" the Doctor sighed. "Your heart started beating just over six hours ago, but your body has been healing itself since about five minutes after your heart stopped. This is far exceeding any projections that you discussed several months ago, and I can only keep Rose out for so long. The time compression we are in means that only seven minutes have past for Rose. It won't be long before I have to talk to her and you need to have woken first…"
There was silence for a moment. "I suddenly know how you felt when I regenerated."
"Then, you won't do it again." Annamae managed to fight through the heavy feeling weighing doing her body and open her eyes half way.
The Doctor laughed half in relief and half in surprised delight. "I'll do my best, as long as you don't do that again."
"No, promises." Annamae forced a hand up to the Doctor's face. "Where are we?"
"In Captain Zack's ship, heading towards Earth." The Doctor took her hand and held it to his cheek as it was clear she had intended to place her hand there.
"Rose?"
"Grieving outside this room." The Doctor admitted.
"Help me up," Annamae requested. "Let's say goodbye to Zack and his crew, then settle into the vortex."
The Doctor's face twisted with his complicated emotional response to that request, before he helped Annamae up and too her feet. Her body was still week, so she ended up leaning into the Doctor's steadying strength, but she managed to move in a stumbling step towards the exit.
"Easy, take it slow," The Doctor said softly. "You're still healing, and your energy is completely depleted."
"I'll need to eat once... we say goodbye," Annamae grimaced in pain, pins and needles were running down her left leg. "Then, sleep."
"Annamae!" Rose gasped in shock when the door opened to the hallway. She had been sitting on the floor, curled into a ball and crying. Launching herself to her feet, Rose hesitated – she wanted to hug her older sister, but the way she was leaning into the Doctor told her that wasn't a good idea.
"Hey, sorry I worried you." Annamae reached out a hand and took Rose's to give it a squeeze. "I'm going to be okay."
"I thought I'd lost you," Rose chocked on her tears, tightening the grip she had on Annamae's hand.
"I'm too stubborn for that," Annamae smiled. "Come on, we have some friends to say goodbye too."
Getting to the console room, Annamae settled into the pilot seat so the Doctor could open a communication channel to the ship without worrying about her falling over. Rose settled next to her and curled up against her like they had when they were watching movies as children. She wouldn't be letting go of her easily until she was asleep.