Five
Rose had done her best to listen while Aigon explained the history of the Dann, his people. He chatted amiably while Lorcan prepared a simple meal for them under the blackout shelter in the deepening dusk. A thin but flavourful stew of some small dead animal and another sweet, dry biscuit had done much to ease the swimming in her head. They'd given her a cup of something hot and pungent, like coffee, only thicker. It relaxed her a little. She frowned in concentration, trying to remember what he was saying, something about a whole country picked up right out of it's place in the universe, but was having trouble concentrating. It reminded her of a fairy tale she'd heard as a child. Tir Nan Og. The words began to echo in her mind and run together as she watched Lorcan scrub out their few dishes with handfuls of coarse, dry sand before rinsing them with only the barest amount of water. Long before Aigon had finished his tale, the blackness overtook Rose, and she slept. She never even heard the scout reach the camp. He was there only a moment or two before he'd run back the way he came. Two men watched the darkness and Rose dreamed.
The exhausted men in his detail had fallen far behind the Doctor as he ran through the rifts, following the directions he'd demanded the instant the scout had returned. There were fewer rifts this far out into the perimeter, and fewer turns to remember than in the crisscrossing spider web of cracks closer to the settlement. The chasms here ran long and straight, thankfully, making navigation somewhat easier. He'd run straight along this narrow rift for close to three hours without stopping. Estimating the time it had taken the scout to reach them, at least another seven hours had passed since the scout had actually SEEN Rose, injured, but alive, in the company of the two riftrunners. He hadn't waited for a full report. It was well past midnight now. Dark. Nights were long here. About twelve hours by his estimation. Something about that struck him as unnatural. He kept moving. If not for his enhanced alien senses, the Doctor would have been blind. The rest of the search party would be far behind now, picking their way along in the blackness. He felt, as much as saw the walls of the cavern stretching up on either side of him. In spite of both the darkness and his haste, the Doctor moved almost silently, with the trained precision of a soldier behind enemy lines. That neither of the two men watching in the inky blackness was aware of his approach allowed him a moment to study the small tableau under the blackout shelter. Two men. One in his forties and rugged. Facing away from the Doctor, gazing up the rift in the direction opposite his approach. This would be Lorcan. The one who had lost first wife, then daughter to the creatures in the sky. That fit. A weight of more than just years showed in the slump of his shoulders. The younger man, then, was Aigon, his would be son in law. He stared into the blackness in the Doctor's direction. From his hiding place behind a rocky outcrop the Doctor could see past him to the small heap on the ground between them. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath, forcing his body to a calm he didn't feel. He looked again.
Rose was breathing. His hearts loosened their grip on his throat just a little. He felt the beginnings of one of the rages that had been characteristic of this regeneration as he studied her there in the dark. He took in the deep bruises on her face and arms, and the blood matted in her hair and shook with fury imagining Rose had received the same welcome from these men that he had from the guard, Tristan. Broccan had told him that the older man was Tristan's cousin. Red haze clouded his vision for a moment, and the Doctor wondered, not for the first time, if this regeneration was entirely stable.
Rose stirred and he refocused his attention. She tossed and murmured something, and he assured himself that she was merely sleeping. Slowly the red cloud diminished.
"Doctor!" The hoarse cry from under the shelter shocked him like a slap.
She'd been dreaming about the fall. Her shoulders still burned from the effort of clinging to the cavern walls the day before. In her dream, she hung on still, calling for him to come and help her. Sudden commotion woke her. It was pitch dark. Feet scrabbling in the gravel. Rose struggled to remember where she was. Scuffling and grunting. Men were fighting. Three of them. She could feel them moving all around her. She sat up in the blackness.
"Don't make me kill you!" Carefully measured words from a familiar voice.
"Doctor?" She croaked again.
The frantic scuffling stopped.
"You're the Doctor?" The older man studied him. The Doctor ignored him.
"Alright then, Rose?"
He sat on his heels in front of her now, as the other two men stood back. Silently, Lorcan lit the small lantern, and hooded it. The dim light barely allowed them to make out each other's silhouettes, however, as the Doctor studied her face Rose had the distinct impression that he could see more than they could. Long, cool fingers traced lines of dirt, and bruises along her hairline. He sucked his teeth when his fingers settled on the bump on her head and she winced at the contact. One at a time he lifted her arms and examined them closely, smooth hands taking inventory of every abrasion. He carefully flexed her arms and fingers watching her face for any sign of pain that might indicate a serious injury.
"Yeah, sort of." She mumbled, still trying to shake off sleep. "I fell."
"Fell?" The Doctor let his gaze wander to the two men watching them in the shadows. "They didn't…hurt you then?"
Lorcan turned away uncomfortably, but Aigon met the stranger's eyes defiantly.
"Of course we didn't hurt her!" He spat. "She was like that when we found her! We damned near tripped over her!"
Lifting her chin so he could see into her eyes, the Doctor's raised eyebrows asked the silent question.
"S'true." She mumbled. "You know me…" She attempted a smile and winced at the answering throb from her bruised cheek.
"Jeopardy friendly." He shook his head and rolled his eyes, and stood to face the two men standing nearby. They stared back at him cooly.
"I'm Lorcan, this is Aigon. The scout will have told you that. You should take better care of your woman while you're in this place." The older man spoke softly. "There are very few of them left."
The lines around the man's eyes deepened into a frown as he regarded the Doctor, watching to see if his words had had an impact.
They did. Guilt clouded the stranger's expression as Aigon stepped forward with the canteen to kneel beside Rose. Guilt, and something else, as the younger man poured a small amount of water over his neck scarf and gave it to Rose to wash her face with.
"She's not my woman." The Doctor said, flatly. Irritated when the corners of the man's mouth twitched just a little. "And Rose Tyler can take care of herself!"
He rounded back to look at her.
"Even though she should bloody well have more sense than to wander off, alone, in a strange place, without so much as telling me she was going!" The stern glare was directed straight at Rose. Now that he was sure she wasn't seriously hurt, he had the sudden impulse to strangle her. Irritation replaced the panic that had gripped him for much of the last day. It was always like this with them.dddsq2qzxsssssssszszzzzz
The tension broke when the two men began to laugh. Even Rose smiled a little. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow and glared at them.
"That's one way of putting it! She damned near took my head off when we found her!"
Rose straightened proudly and shot the Doctor the best "So there!" look she could manage. Aigon draped an arm around her shoulder and she leaned against him for a moment as she scrubbed the damp bandanna over her gritty face in the watery light of pre dawn.
"Tell me what happened." He demanded stonily, glaring at Aigon as he crouched beside her, fiddling with some gadget from his pocket before cupping her chin, and shining a small bright light into each of her eyes. He continued to fuss around her until it had become clear that where he was sitting, Aigon was in the way of whatever it was to Doctor was doing.
Lorcan brewed more of the pungent bitter drink from a canister in his pack, while Rose outlined her misadventures. He smiled to himself at the sheer determination that had kept the young woman moving after her fall, even as he wondered at the foolishness that had brought her out into the desert, alone, in the first place. She was tiny by Dann standards, but what she lacked in size, she more than made up in strength. She would make a good desert woman. The more she spoke, the more she reminded him of his own lost daughter. A sliver of hurt ran through him as he noted that Aigon too, seemed to have found similarities. As he listened, however, another truth dawned on him. These strangers had been able to arrive here on their own. Presumably, they had the means to leave as well. Was it possible that after all these seasons, Daigh had finally sent them someone who could help them return home? He turned to watch them as he busied himself preparing a meager breakfast for them all.
Her companion, the Doctor, sat very near her.
On first glance, his posture appeared relaxed, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles as he leaned back on his arms. His face betrayed concern however, even as he made a point of not looking directly at the girl. Instead his head was bowed as he listened, and his eyes closed. His muscles were taught, though, like a cat waiting to spring. Studying him from this angle, Lorcan realized he could not begin to guess the man's age. Though he appeared to be similar in years to himself, there was something else to his features, a certain weariness that he'd only ever seen in the very old. It hung on the stranger like a veil, and parted only when he looked at his companion. Lorcan suspected he'd been a lot more frantic to find her than he had let on. He decided he would probably like this man.
Aigon had hovered close to Rose after the Doctor had arrived. At least until the two of them had become so wrapped up in exchanging stories that it had become awkward, standing there, completely shut out, so he'd busied himself striking their camp instead. He made rather a large show of noisily packing and repacking their gear. His initial impression of the Doctor was of a dangerously unstable man. He resented the suggestion that he or Lorcan could have harmed Rose deliberately. For that, he knew he had to excuse the man. He gathered from what he'd overheard that the Doctor had had the misfortune of meeting Tristan first. That was unfortunate. Lorcan's cousin was an angry, bully of a man, bent on using the fear of others to gather what power he could to himself. Though most of the Dann dismissed him as a harmless, if noisy eccentric, in recent months he had begun to gather followers, mostly frustrated young men he'd managed to convince of the council's inactivity on their behalf. If this man had met Tristan first, then it was a wonder he hadn't simply killed them both when he'd found them here. Still, looking for something to dislike he settled on carelessness. For someone who professed such deep concern for Rose's well being, he had certainly taken his time in looking for her. His attention was recalled to the pair of them as the Doctor had stood up suddenly, and turned away from her, leaning against the wall of the chasm with one hand braced over his head, his voice raised, and angry.
"One of these days I'm actually going to find a companion who understands what the words "Don't wander off!" actually mean!" He sounded like an angry father scolding a child who'd scared him half to death.
Unable to decide whether to be angry at the patronizing tone in his voice, or grateful for his concern, Rose stood awkwardly behind him, toeing at the dirt, but finally squared her shoulders and stood her ground.
"You'd have done the same thing!" She shot back at him. "You find trouble everywhere we go, and it's usually up to me to get us out of it!"
He wheeled around and advanced on her. Aigon's muscles tensed. He thought the Doctor looked as if he would strike her. The two of them faced off, staring angrily at each other. In spite of the difference in their sizes, the stubborn set of her jaw made Rose appear more than his equal. His owns suspicions about the Doctor's intentions left him feeling foolish a moment later, when stranger pulled Rose into his arms, rested his chin on the top of her head and closed his eyes. They stood like that for a long time. Clearly, there was a relationship between these two, but exactly what it was, he couldn't fathom. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen anything like it before. They stepped apart as the rest of the Doctor's party arrived from downrift.
There was commotion as packs were dropped, backs slapped and greetings exchanged. In spite of the circumstances, there was an air of celebration in the growing light. Life in the Outlands was hard, and changed little from day to day. The presence of the strangers was an event worth marking. The Doctor was chatting comfortably with all of them, examining items from their packs and discussing fuel cells with one of the older men. Rose pretended not to notice the frank curiosity in the faces of those around them. Without anyone saying anything, it was clear to both of them that these people were waiting for them to say or do something extraordinary.
"Well, Doctor?" Rose whispered, slipping up to stand just behind him. "What now?"
Above them, unseen, something circled lazily in the sky.
