Standing before an assembly of overly tall humanoids, all of them shining a pristine clinical white, just like the building, with several hundred pairs of blood-red eyes gazing down at her in silence, meant that it took every scrap of confidence Rose had gained working for Torchwood to ensure that she didn't shiver. Or take several steps back in intimidation invoked fear.
She stood beside Mother Deathswing in the middle of a circular hall, the doors at her back, and forced herself to swallow back her nerves, hands clasped tightly in the small of her back, her rucksack pressing them against her spin and booted feet braced against the white floor as she waited for someone to say something.
The only kind eyes in the room belonged to the Architect who had orchestrated the entire assembly, and Rose took some small comfort in her presence. Even if the rest of the room appeared to be carved from marble for all the emotions they were showing.
The Architect stood smoothly, her voice echoing around the room without effort. "Carrionite known as Deathswing. You have requested a planet to live out your finals months upon. The assembled Proclamation has approved your request on one condition. You will use your abilities to return the being beside you to her own universe. Is this task within your abilities?" the Architect demanded, her eyes boring into the white gaze of the Carrionite.
"It is," the witch confirmed and the albino continued with only a single nod of acceptance.
"Are you willing to complete the task the Proclamation asks of you as payment for our leniency?" she asked, and Deathwing bobbed her head as Roses' stomach began to do backflips.
"I am."
"Rose Tyler, otherwise known as Bad Wolf," the Architect said, shifting her attention, and Rose shifted her weight nervously, "of the three options provided to you by the Shadow Proclamation, do you consent to this verdict?"
Somehow Rose kept her voice from shaking and met the red eyes that seemed to have a hidden smile in their depths, just for her, and she nodded, "I do."
"Very well then," the Architect announced firmly. "The Carrionite will pay the price now. Please proceed, with the Proclamation as witness."
The albino took her seat once more, and the tension in the room climbed a notch or two as Rose turned to face the wizened woman that held her ticket home.
"Good luck, Valiant Child," Deathswing offered her tone almost gentle before power began to flare off her in visible waves and her eyes all but glowed with power.
A single, twisted arm raised and the Carrionite's finger with its elongated claw-like nail protruded out towards Rose, but Deathswings voice was low and calm as she spoke. The power behind it carried her words around the room, and Rose held her breath as she saw several of the Proclamation flinch back in their seats.
"No time to worry, you must head out,
The storm is heading for the South,
The wolf will guide you to the Howling's mouth.
Wherein the Rose would wither and die,
The wolf ensures you will survive,
To seek your pack and once more thrive."
As her words came to a close, Rose felt the sharp jab of the witch's nail hit the centre of her chest and ice flooded her body.
She wanted to scream but couldn't move.
Wanted to open her eyes, but realised they weren't shut.
She could hear nothing. Smell nothing. See nothing. No light, no dark, and her mind couldn't comprehend it. Panic clawed through her and that's when she realised she couldn't feel anything either.
There was no ground beneath her feet and no wind on her face. No tickle of hair against her neck or the weight of a pack against her back.
Her panic grew when she realised she couldn't even feel the pass of air into her lungs, of the thrumming of her own heartbeat, and she thought she might go insane, but the blessing was that she couldn't feel her own mind cracking under the pressure.
Instead, a scream rose in her throat and dissipated into the nothingness of the void as she traversed the eternity in a momentary span of time.
"I gaze upon this bag of bones,
and now I name thee, Martha Jones."
Just like that, the girl collapsed. The Doctor barely managed to lunge forward fast enough to stop her crashing into the ground, lowering her slowly even while he frantically searched her throat for a pulse.
"What have you done!?" he demanded.
"Only sleeping, alas," the Carrionite sighed, and Martha's pulse beneath his fingers calmed the Doctor's own racing hearts as it confirmed the witches' words.
Anger rose to take the place of his panic, and he turned dark eyes on the woman as she mused to herself, unaware of the growing danger kneeling at her feet.
"It's curious. Her name has less impact. She's somehow out of her time."
The Doctor let Martha's limp form slide from his grip to rest against the straw dusted floor and shifted as if to stand, but the movement drew Lillith's attention, and she snapped a finger out towards him warningly. The Doctor paused, hesitant to draw her wrath down on Martha again, and Lillith grinned.
"As for you, Sir Doctor..." she hesitated a moment, head tipping to one side as her eyes began to sparkle with curiosity. "Fascinating. There is no name. Why would a man hide his title in such despair? Oh! But look! There's still one word with a power that aches !"
"The naming won't work on me," the Doctor growled, but the confidence in the crooning of the Carrionites voice forced a sliver of ice to trail down his spine and a flicker of doubt to gnaw at him.
"But your heart grows cold,
the chill wind blows,
and carries down the distant... Rose.
No time to worry or go forth,
The storms descending from the North,
Now heed the howling of the big, Bad Wolf!"
The fury erupted, forcing the Doctor to his feet, movements dangerously fluid. Her words echoed around his mind like the cloister bell inside the Tardis and for a moment he couldn't catch his breath.
He hissed in air through ground teeth and advanced on the Carrionite, with pain and rage burning through him, and her smirk fled, her confidence wavering and caution overtaking her stance as she warily watched him pace towards her.
"Oh, big mistake! 'Cause that name keeps me fighting!" he spat, "The Carrionites vanished, where did you go?" The question was snared inches from her face, and Lillith spun on her heel, turning away from him and retreating, and the Doctor felt a dark thrill of satisfaction that he had unnerved her as much as she had him.
Rose.
Would the Carrionites power stretch across dimensions? Had she felt the call of her name? Why had the Bad Wolf been mentioned once more?
He forced himself to concentrate on Lillith's answer to his question. There was nothing he could do to help Rose, even if she had been affected, but he could save Martha and stop the end of the world. Again.
"The Eternals found the right word to banish us into deep darkness."
"And how did you escape?" he growled impatiently, but she grinned in spite of his tone.
"New words. New glittering words, from a mind like no other."
Of course. The grief of a genius and the Doctor sighed, "Shakespeare."
That was why the Tardis had landed them here. He wasn't going to tell Martha that this hadn't been his intended landing spot. For one trip, she didn't need to know the peculiarities of the Tardis.
"His son had perished," Lilith explained, her fingers brushing the edge of the cauldron and the image of the playwright floated above it, twisted with tears and pain. "The grieving mind of a genius wordsmith was potential without measure. The madness of loss just enough to let us in and, together, we crafted our escape."
"How many of you?"
"Four of us escaped our prison. But only the three made it through the deep dark to this world," Lilith admitted and for just a moment, eyes lowered, she looked sad, but the Carrionite hid it quickly behind a wide smile. "But no matter! The play tonight shall restore the rest and then the human race will be purged as pestilence!"
It occurred to the Doctor, then, that she was being far too honest. More forthright than he had expected. Less riddles, and more prose, and he braced himself accordingly. At some point, this was going to turn from a tête-à-tête into an attack and he could already feel his body producing the additional adrenaline that he'd need to react or run.
"From this world we will lead the universe back into the old ways of blood and magick!" she finished, smirking and he drew a deep breath before responding, giving himself time to think.
"Sounds like you've got a lot to do, busy schedule and all that, but there's just one problem," the Doctor said, stepping closer to her slowly as he spoke, until he hovered right before her, "to do all that, first you've got to get past me."
He let his hands clasp in the small of his back, and met her bright blue eyes flooded with amusement, and she simply smiled up at him, seeming unphased.
"You are merely a man. Intelligent, yes, but ultimately easy to manipulate. To distract." She shifted closer, her hands lifting to stroke through his hair and the Doctor stilled.
"It shall be a pleasure," she purred, even as she let her arms rest against his shoulders, curling around him like smoke, and just as deadly to someone without a respiratory bypass.
"Considering my enemy has such a... handsome shape," Lillith let her voice drop to a dark rumble, her lips drifting closer to his skin and making the muscles in his shoulders tense with the desire to recoil. The Doctor let himself raise a single uninterested eyebrow as he gazed down at her with impassive brown eyes. She wasn't Rose.
"Now that's one form of magick that's definitely not going to work on me," he told her dryly, less than amused, but she didn't seem deterred.
"Oh, we'll see."
He blinked in surprise, but then he heard the soft sound of metal snicking together close to his ear and Lillith reeled back from him quickly, still grinning, a lock of his hair in her grasp and a soft giggle that wasn't exactly what he called comforting.
"What's that for? What did you do?" he snapped, hands running through his hair and quickly finding the uneven patch behind his right ear that she'd snipped a sample from.
"Simply a souvenir—"
"Well give it back!" he snarled, advancing on her swiftly, his long legs carrying him forward but the Carrionite turned and literally flew out of the window, hovering in the air just beyond his reach.
"Well, that's just cheating," the Doctor muttered, running frustrated fingers through his head and his mind raced ahead to all the possible things someone could do with a sample of his DNA, even in 1599.
"All men are merely puppets in the hands of a woman, Doctor," she said while removing a small doll from her pocket, her smile turning wicked, "or a Carrionite."
"Now, you might call that magick," the Doctor spluttered, watching her twist his hair around the head of the doll, with rising concern. His only hope was that she still thought him human and he braced himself, dragging in a quick, sharp breath, "but I call it a DNA replication module—"
"What use is your science now? I simply cannot have you getting in the way, Doctor. No matter how... interesting you may be."
The blow came faster than he'd anticipated, the scissors she drew from who-knew-where sliding into the doll swiftly, and the Doctor didn't have to fake the cry of pain the action tore from his throat.
He let his body fall, collapse to the floor with a thump and let himself stop breathing, making use of that respiratory bypass and hoped the Carrionite was in too much of a rush, or too confident in her own abilities, to check his body.
He heard her cackle of delight and found not to make a sound at the throbbing agony in his chest as his left heart ceased functioning. Either his cry or the Carrionites cackle woke Martha, and he could hear her moving on the far side of the room.
"Oh my god... Doctor!" the woman called, and he heard her scrabble across the wooden floor, her panic palpable. Warm hands grasped at his body and rolled him onto his back but he stayed still, unmoving. Even as Martha pressed her head against his chest, and then just as quickly as her panic had risen, he could hear her sigh with relief and pull back, a sharp slap landing against his arm.
"Hold on, mister. Two hearts!" and he couldn't stop his lips from twitching up in amusement, eyes sliding open to stare up at her.
"You're making a habit of this," he teased, before moving to sit up. He glanced at the window, slammed shut behind the fleeing Carrionite, and he breathed a sigh of relief that his ploy had worked. He hadn't been able to risk her doing more damage, one heart down was more than enough for him.
He had to get to the Globe. Had to stop the summoning, destroy the copies of Shakespeare's play so that it would never unlock the Carrionites from their cage, and with his mind moving ahead the Doctor rose to his feet, only to promptly collapse back to his knees with a sharp cry of pain.
He rose to his feet, and promptly collapsed to his knees, another shout getting ripped from his throat, but this one tinted with surprise too. Damn it, he'd got too far ahead of himself. He'd forgotten.
"Doctor!"
"I've only got one heart working!" he hissed through clenched teeth, Martha's hands grasping his arms, helping him stay upright as he struggled to catch his breath through the waves of pain now radiating out from his chest once more.
Lying on the floor, unmoving, it had receded to the back of his mind, more life-threatening problems taking priority, but when he'd tried to move it had been sharply brought back to his attention.
His second heart was trying to compensate for the first and failing, and now it really hurt. Martha was talking, but he couldn't focus. There wasn't enough oxygen getting to the rest of his body. To his brain...
"Blimey, how do you people cope?!" he snapped at Martha, and she reeled back slightly. No wonder humans couldn't access all of their brain's functions at the same time. The lungs, the heart, it couldn't supply enough power. If they could genetically advance enough to incorporate a binary vascular system— Another burst of pain that had him sucking in a breath redirected his thoughts again and the Doctor groaned.
"I've got to get the other one started," he explained to Martha, leaning back slightly so she could reach his chest. "Hit me... Hit me on the chest—"
He felt like he could barely concentrate, could hardly gasp out the words out, but Martha didn't hesitate, thumping him with the full force of a medical professional and he groaned.
"Other... side!"
She hit him again, and he grunted. Better, but not enough. He let himself fall forward, bracing his hands against the floor, "On the back."
He felt the increased pressure of her linked hands connecting, and groaned, "left a bit— Ah!"
He sucked in a deep breath, back arching as his second heart began beating again. His system flooded with oxygen, blood being correctly delivered to where it was needed, and his brain buzzing with all the good things it required to function at capacity.
"Lovely!" the Doctor announced, and Martha's gasps of relief finally filtered through to his brain, "There we go then, ba-da-boom!" he climbed to his feet, mind scattering in a hundred directions as he considered the Carrionites, the play, Rose, Shakespeare, Bad Wolf, and keeping his newest companion focussed on the important things like the end of the world in 1599.
"Well, what are you standing there for? Come on! The Globe!" and he was off, running. Not giving her a chance to respond. The Doctor knew she'd follow, she didn't have a choice. Martha had nowhere else to go and he was, as Rose had once said, the designated driver.
It was time to save the world again. He could rest later.
After the death of Ed Morgan, the hub had been a mixture of tense, quiet and pain. Jack didn't want to know what the ghost machine would sense rolling off his team that night.
Tosh left first, and Jack could see in her eyes that she'd just needed to get out. Get away. For as certain as she had sounded, reassuring Gwen that Ed Morgan had wanted to die, Tosh hadn't wanted to linger long enough to be convinced otherwise. Couldn't let herself doubt that narrative.
Ianto had left shortly after that. After placing the ghost machine into the secure archives, and plying everyone with healthy amounts of strong alcohol to get through the night.
Owen had buried himself in the morgue for a few hours while Jack finished up the paperwork. He might be trying to convince himself he wasn't at fault, that he hadn't wielded the knife that killed Ed Morgan, but his actions had led to the man's death and Jack knew that Owen knew that.
By the time Jack finished his filing though, even Owen had left the hub, and headed home.
Gwen though... Gwen had stayed. Silently slumped in the chair in Jack's office. Curled under a blanket on the far side of his desk, and when Jack finished the work that needed doing and returned to her side, he stopped in the doorway just to watch her.
He let his weary blue eyes settle on her shock frozen features and sighed, her hands sitting in her lap, still crusted in dried blood, and her face stained with tear tracks. The trails of salt down her freckled face left the Welsh woman looking so very young, that Jack instantly decided he couldn't just send her home to a boyfriend who didn't understand, who couldn't understand.
It was a matter of moments to gather a warm bowl of water and a washcloth, and before he could think too much about it Jack knelt before her and gently began soaking the blood from her hands, dragging the wet towel across her fingers and brushing away the constant reminder of the death she'd seen that night.
At the first touch, Gwen startled slightly, jumping in her seat and glancing down at him with wide eyes.
"What... what are you doing?" she asked, her voice hoarse as though he'd been screaming for the long hours she'd been lost inside her mind, and Jack felt his own throat close in response.
He kept cleaning her hands, gaze focussed on the blood as it was slowly washed away, and he swallowed hard before forcing himself to answer, "Helping."
She didn't appear to need to know any more than that, and the pair fell silent. Jack didn't know if that was quiet acceptance, or if Gwen just lacked the energy to fight him, but he kept going. Cleaning, rinsing the cloth, cleaning some more, and slowly her tears stopped and her ragged breathing and half-sobs softened into smooth, quiet breaths.
Only then did he set aside the towel and rise to his feet, her hand still grasped lightly in his as he tugged her, gently, to her feet.
"Come on. Let's get some air," he offered gently, and with only a short pause, Gwen nodded shakily.
Exchanging the blanket for her jacket, she followed him out of the hub in silence. She didn't ask where they were going, or why, and Jack didn't speak again. Didn't ask her questions or pressure her to talk. He took her up to the top of one of his favourite buildings in Cardiff, and let her stand beside him as they watched the sky lighten into dawn.
She didn't need pressuring or nagging. She needed quiet support and understanding, and as they stood in the dawn light, the sun slowly creeping over the horizon of the city, the tension eased from her shoulders.
He'd let her speak. If she wanted to. Let her keep her own counsel. If that's what she needed, and Jack hoped that his unconditional acceptance of whatever she might require was helping.
It was the best he could offer. It was what Rose had offered him.
Slowly, Gwen sucked in a shuddering breath, her arms curling up to wrap around herself, and Jack knew what was coming, and turned to meet her eyes as she stared up at him.
"I killed him," Gwen said softly, her voice nearly a whisper on the morning breeze. "I've still got his blood on my hands. It'll never wash off."
"He killed himself," Jack corrected firmly, gently, watching her carefully. She was strong, brave, and his team needed her. He needed her. She had that rare compassionate spirit that was so vital, but it was exactly that compassion that had caused the events of the day to hit her so hard.
He could see the doubt there, and tried not to sigh, "Come on, Gwen," he tempted gently. "Look, the sun's coming up." He watched her watch the sky, but nothing flittered across her features, still dampened by shock and grief.
"A new day," she muttered, and Jack let his gaze scan along the horizon.
"The city'll be awake soon," he said. Maybe the hope of a new day, new memories, a new start would help her. "All those people, all that energy—"
"All those ghosts," she cut him off, and this time Jack did sigh, deflating slightly, his lips pressing together and he returned his eyes to her face.
Gently, he curled one arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. For all the Doctor would tease him about his flirting, this was pure comfort. A warm touch, a gentle hand. Kindness. "We're surrounded by them," he explained softly, "We can't see them. We can't touch them... but they're there, all right. A million shadows of human emotion." Jack paused, and carefully studied her features, waiting until she met his gaze to finish, "We've just got to learn to live with them."
He said it gently, softly, slowly, but something about it made her crumble and her walls crashed down. She sank against his coat, a weary sigh hiding a sob but she was too drained to cry anymore, so Jack just let her lean. He kept her upright, supported her, and pressed a tender kiss to the top of her head. He let her rest, her eyes closed against the pain and she rebuilt her defences as dawn finally shattered across the sky in reds and pinks and soft yellows.
Jack would have stood there all day, letting Gwen recover in her own time, but the alarm that sounded from his vortex manipulator had him jerking back from Gwen, startled.
It hadn't worked for decades, not as a manipulator or a teleport anyway, but he'd hooked it into Torchwood's systems, and the alarm now meant trouble. Big trouble. Huge.
"The alarms," he spluttered, studying the device strapped to his wrist more from habit than any real use, and he could feel the shock on his own face, "the rift activity's off the charts!"
He glanced at Gwen, concern for her making him hesitate, but she flung her hands in the air, almost shooing him, "Well come on, then!" she snapped, and they headed for the stairs together at a run.