Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow –
Part Two: Civil Blood Makes Civil Hands Unclean
A/N: Part two! Massive thanks to ShrinkingVioletGirl and Uh.yeah for your lovely reviews to part one! This is a continuation of that chapter, with more and more odds fighting against the Doctor and Rose as they fight for their lives. Still don't own anything!
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Completely shocked at the revelation that she was apparently about to die in the presence of a mad woman, Yvonne didn't quite manage to perfect a glare and ended up grimacing at the blonde. "The walls are reinforced! It'd be a waste of bullets!" Even though she wasn't quite sure how bullets would help her against metal men, she knew she definitely wanted to be armed to face whatever was out there.
"Not to mention anything we shoot would probably ricochet back off the wall and straight into our brains," the Doctor added dryly.
Becoming slightly annoyed that it only seemed to be her who was bothering to come up with anything, silly as her suggestions apparently were, Rose sighed exasperatedly. "Got a better idea? 'Cause I'd love to hear it."
Silence.
"Right then. How about shooting at the holes? They have to be the weak point of the room, right?"
A look of dawning realisation crossed the Doctor's face, mingling with stunned hope as his grip on her hand tightened. Then his face fell and his hold became weak again. "Even if we get out, we have no way of defeating the Cybermen, Rose." He sounded tired, resigned, but there was no way Rose was giving up. The Doctor might have accepted that he was going to die here but she certainly wouldn't. There was still a chance open for her and, as she was 900 years younger than him and not nearly so weary of life, she was going to fight for it, even if it was the last thing she did.
"Then I'd rather die from a bullet on the rebound than become one of those robots."
He stared at her, admiration and incredulity mixing across his features, before springing into action and firing out instructions. Apparently, the gas was not yet affecting him at all.
"Brilliant…it'd at least give us some more natural air." He eyed Rose, who was twenty shades of pale – she was certainly in need of it. Even Yvonne was beginning to look decidedly short of breath. "And they need us…they'll just take us to another prison, hopefully one that isn't a gas chamber…" he frowned slightly as he weighed up the odds, speech faltering for a moment as he looked around curiously, calculating, pacing, until: "You two – get in that corner - that one there - and stay put. Do not move an inch. Don't mind if I use your gun, do you? No, didn't think so." With that, he snatched it out of Yvonne's surprised grip.
"What're you going to do?" Yvonne asked suspiciously.
Tapping his foot impatiently, the Doctor replied. "Exactly what she suggested." Rose couldn't help but smile as he flashed a boyish grin in her direction. Sometimes it really helped that he was quite as insane as she was.
"Are you mad? You'll kill us all!" Her shrieks echoed around the room. Apparently, the calm and collected director of the alien institute wasn't quite so calm and collected under duress.
"You want to suffocate to death in here, that's up to you. But I won't and I won't let her either. Now get in the corner!"
Yvonne flinched but stood her ground. "What if I don't?" As big as her building grudge against Yvonne Hartman was, Rose couldn't help but admire her for that. It took a lot to stand up to the Doctor.
"Then you die," he said simply, for it really was as simple as that, and Yvonne blanched. "If I fire this at this angle and it bounces off the wall, there is a possibility that it will bounce back to almost any point except that corner."
"How on Earth do you know that?"
Jiggling his head a little, he tapped somewhere near his brain.
Rose, suddenly doubting her plan and decidedly nervous, piped up from the designated corner. "What about you?"
"It could hit me." A light shrug. "But it'd probably only get my leg. I'm less attached to my leg than my backside. I have got two of them, after all."
"Only your leg!" Perhaps she'd been wrong when she thought it was handy he was so insane.
"This is our last chance," he said, quietly, finally. She knew the matter was closed and she leant back against the wall, shutting her eyes in resignation as she struggled to draw breath.
"Three…two…one…"
The gunshot echoed like a crack throughout the room and was followed by a short silence in which Rose did not dare to open her eyes. Then, something creaked ominously and dust began to fall again as the Cybermen marched ever closer, more hurriedly this time, as though they had heard the small explosion.
Thud thud thud.
Something massive crashed down beside Yvonne, pushing her further into the corner and making Rose scream as the entire room shook. Feeling the blast of air, gas and rubble across her face, she knew she couldn't open her eyes now even if she wanted to and she called out blindly for the Doctor, choking on crumbling dust as she did so.
"Stay back!" he yelled, sounding very small and vulnerable amongst all the crashing debris. The room continued to shake and another gunshot exploded around it, this time causing most of the wall to crash in. So much was falling around her that she began to feel like she was falling too, no longer knowing if she was hitting the debris or if it was hitting her, until –
Suddenly, a hand reached out through the darkness and the dust, pulling her to her feet. "Run!"
Closing her fingers tightly around his, she would have laughed in relief if she wasn't too terrified to open her mouth. Not only was the air full of gas, but it had somehow ignited; she was breathing in hot ash and her lungs screamed in protest. A burning heat seared up her leg just as her hand was tugged on sharply and she stumbled a few steps forward, cooler, cleaner air beginning to wash over her.
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After snapping her eyes open, she needed to blink a few times before she realised she probably would have been better keeping them closed. Everything was covered in a coat of ash hanging threateningly in the air; the room looked like it had been hit with industrial revolution-style smog. Yellow, burning air began to billow from the room and into the corridor beyond, carrying the fire with it. Soon, none of Torchwood tower would be safe…they would have nowhere to hide.
Her hand was dropped as the Doctor raised both his hands to Yvonne's gun and stood in the doorway, blinking through the ash and looking swiftly from side to side for any sign of the approaching Cybermen. "Rose, get out!"
A small gasp left her as she realised they wouldn't be running for their lives together; he intended to stay behind and fight the Cybermen alone. "I'm not leaving you!" And, unspoken, almost visible on her trembling lips, you're worth dying for.
"You have to. My biology's different; I can cope with the gas for longer but for you can't. For God's sake get out!" Desperation rang loud and clear through his voice as he leant back into the room to pull a shaking Yvonne to her feet. "You too, run!"
"What happened to fighting? Together?" It felt as though someone was holding a cloth to her mouth and slowly pushing it down her throat. Her brain cried out for oxygen but Doctor was the one coherent thought in her mind.
"I'm sorry. I've lost too many people today, Rose." Images of several Torchwood workers, lying dead at the feet of the Cybermen, flashed through both of their minds. "I can't lose you as well. Do you understand that? I can't and I won't. I don't need you to die for me. If you go now we can both get out alive. You know that if I could have you with me safely I wouldn't hesitate for a second." The utter certainly in his voice calmed her for a moment.
"But what about you?"
"I told you, I'll be fine, now run!"
"Doctor…"
"If anything happens to you…" Unvoiced fears hung like a threat in the air. He took her hand and squeezed it briefly before dropping it again and turning back to the door. "Yvonne, get her out of here."
And before she could say anymore, an iron grip took over her wrist and steered her straight out of the room, forcing her to break into a run. Looking back over her shoulder, all she could see was burning ash. Smoke soon swallowed the voice and shape of the Doctor.
--
Yvonne's grip on her wrist tightened and Rose felt her veins pulse in protest as great billows of hot ash, smoke and chloroform chased them through the long corridors. "Watch it!" she snapped with as much energy as she could muster. "I would like to keep my hand for when we get out!"
The director turned to her with a new, steely glint in her eyes, now nothing like the wide, terrified orbs they had been back in the gas room. "You won't be needing it."
"Y'what? W-what are you on about?" Rose panicked, allowing herself to be led in her shock, beginning to wonder whether the gas had made Yvonne crazy or if the Doctor had just pulled her out of the frying pan and pushed her into the fire.
Yvonne continued on, running, in Rose's opinion, completely away from the exit, although it was hard to tell with the gas still obscuring everything. A sharp pain shot through her lungs as she spoke and it felt as though she couldn't quite breathe in deep enough. "Where are we going? Get off me!" Never one to give in without a fight, Rose kicked out sharply and pulled roughly backwards as Yvonne gasped and her grip slackened. However, before she'd even retraced two steps, her arm was yanked almost out of its socket and she stumbled reluctantly forwards again, screaming. "Let go! Let me go! Have ya gone completely mad? We're gonna run straight into the Cybermen!"
The only answer she got was to have a gun thrust roughly in her face. "Any more of your stupid questions or comments and you can say goodbye to that pretty little head."
Escape plan after escape plan dashed through Rose's mind, all tumbling over each other and making less and less sense as the entire air space was filled with the gas. Before she could even begin to act on any of them, though, the other woman had glanced behind her and Rose felt a sudden pressure on her back and her own head come into sharp contact with a wall without even her brain even having time to register she'd been falling. The cold steel behind her, although certainly painful, was quite a steadying influence and Rose grasped at it desperately, unable to metaphorically hold onto that feeling and needing physical reassurance. Nails screeched against metal.
Trying to breathe to steady herself, her ears rang with Yvonne's laughter and she found she couldn't draw breath at all. All the oxygen in the air had been replaced by chloroform and smoke. Though her vision was now nothing but a fast-moving, green blur, she still knew exactly what she was being hit with when Yvonne's gun found its way to her head. Down, down, down she slipped, further and further into blackness, thoughts swimming dizzily, eyes rolling back…her head lolled to one side and she dropped horizontally to the floor, unconscious.