Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; you should be aware of the rules of this kind of writing.

Feedback: Always appreciated.

AN: This is set an indefinite amount of time after the 2019 version of the film Rabid, and between "The Snowman" and "The Bells of St John" for the Doctor, so it's recommended that you've seen both of those before reading this. As with my past story 'Scottish Guardian of Camp Bloodbath', I appreciate that I'm likely writing for a small target audience, but I hope those who have seen both will find this interesting.

A Better Doctor

Rose Miller didn't know how long it had been since she woke up in this room, the thing that had once been Burroughs' wife on the wall beside her and the doctor who'd destroyed so many lives her only form of contact, and frankly she wasn't sure it mattered any more. Ever since she'd confirmed that she couldn't even get out of the nightmare her life had become by killing herself, her existence had fallen into a twisted cycle. Whenever she tried to sleep, her dreams consisted of nightmares about the 'attacks' that her captor had previously claimed were just standard dreams, and when she was awake Burroughs kept trying to talk with her about the 'possibilities' of her new physiology.

She just couldn't understand how the man could talk about 'saving lives' when he'd turned his wife into some kind of living tumour and then turned Rose herself into… she wanted to say 'vampire', but she wasn't even sure what she was feeding on and she couldn't think of any vampire that had all those tentacles. She still wasn't entirely clear what connection she'd had to the apparent outbreak she'd heard about, but from everything Burroughs had told her about what she'd assumed were just 'dreams', she wasn't sure she wanted to know more.

About the only blessing so far was that Burroughs hadn't started throwing people into her cell for her to feed on them directly, but the fact that he was providing her cell with meat prevented her from even entertaining the idea of trying to starve herself to death to get out of this living hell. She could resist the hunger for a day or so at a time (assuming that she had worked out what a 'day' was in this mess) but eventually it would reach a point where her body became so hungry that her 'new' instincts basically overrode her own desires and she would wake up to a shattered plate and a few flecks of meat lying around from where she must have torn through the offered food.

The thing that scared Rose the most about this situation was how long it could last. So far she had made it clear that she wouldn't give Burroughs anything he wanted, and he couldn't exactly come into the room to get samples if she wasn't willing to let him get close to her, but how long could that last? If she only had him as 'company'… if everyone who might even bother to look for her was already dead… how long would it be before she gave into his questions?

She might not have been a big fan of that kind of psychological thriller, but she'd read enough to picture how it might play out; some day, she'd just be so broken that she'd welcome any kind of human contact, willing to give Burroughs whatever he wanted so long as he'd just start talking with her rather than to her… or maybe she wouldn't even care how he talked to her so long as they were interacting…

Even knowing it wouldn't do any good, Rose slammed her hand against the glass wall of her prison, wishing that Burroughs was there so that she could once again tell him what she thought about his sick philosophy. The idea that removing human morality from the equation made things 'better' was sick enough on its own, but when she thought about how he had still been so panicked when she had turned on his wife…

If he wanted to act like he was above human morality when he could still care about one particular person, as far as Rose was concerned that just proved that he was a hypocrite, and she hadn't had a high opinion of him even before she knew about his wife. How could anyone talk about wanting to get rid of death and then be so blasé about all the people who had died as a result of her infection…?

Not for the first time, Rose knelt against the room's metal door and began to cry. Maybe it did her no real good, but she could do so little at this point that it felt good to be able to acknowledge her emotions on some level as she explored one of her rare freedoms.

Any minute now, Burroughs would come back to the window-wall and start another rant about how Rose should stop denying her nature and accept the new reality he'd presented her with…

"Hello, Rose Miller."

It was the unfamiliarity that prompted Rose to look up more than anything else. For the first time since she'd 'woken up' in this room after slitting her throat, the man standing on the other side of the glass window wasn't Burroughs in his usual suit, but a younger, thinner man with shaggy hair. The lighting in the room made it hard to tell, but from what Rose could see the new arrival was wearing a brown jacket made of what looked like tweed over a blue shirt and dark trousers, along with…

Is that a bow tie?

Rose shoved the incredulity at the situation to the back of her mind and settled back into silence. Whoever this man was, if he was here, that meant he had 'permission' to be here from Doctor Burroughs, and that meant that she had no reason to listen to him.

"I've been looking over Doctor Burroughs' reports on you," the man said, which reinforced Rose's decision not to trust him. "His basic ideas about how he might use the positives of your 'condition' are fundamentally commendable, but his actual process… it reflects the fundamental problem of smart men thinking they're smarter than they are and trying something too big."

The dismissive description of Doctor Burroughs surprised Rose at first, considering how the man had acted for so long as though his own view of things was all that mattered, but she soon put that aside. If Burroughs had allowed this man to see her in the first place, her view of him as the type of man who couldn't seek help couldn't have been entirely accurate.

After all, I already misjudged Burroughs when I thought he was a good man before all this…

"And that's before we start talking about what he did to you in the first place," the man continued, his tone becoming more bitter as he spoke. "I don't even know where he got some of those DNA samples he mixed together, but testing them on a human in the first place… frankly, it's a miracle that you weren't driven insane yourself, and turning you into a Patient Zero should have been an obvious possibility if he was as smart as he thought he was…"

The sound of the young man walking outside the window-wall prompted Rose to look up despite her promise to herself to ignore the visitor, and was surprised to see him pacing back and forth from either side of the room, a bitter expression on his face as though he was actually-

Rose forced that thought down before it could develop any further; she couldn't allow herself to have that kind of hope in this situation.

"I mean, in principle transhumanism is a good philosophy in theory, but it's like every good philosophical or political movement; it needs such exact circumstances to get it absolutely right that people are more likely to get it very wrong the first time out," the man continued, before he paused and turned to look at Rose with a proud smile. "You know, you should be proud of yourself, Rose Miller; for all that Burroughs thought he had destroyed your humanity, you held on to your true nature far longer than most other people could have done in such circumstances. Whatever Burroughs says about mankind having started out as a predator, he actually made a bad choice when he made you his test subject; you're just not ruthless enough to be what he thought the human race would be."

Rose had been alone for so long it was possible she'd lost her ability to properly read people, but the honest admiration in that man's words…

"You… you mean that?" Rose looked at him in surprise, only realising that she'd abandoned her plan to ignore him after the words had passed her lips.

"I do," the man nodded at her.

"So… you're not here to help Doctor Burroughs?"

"Help him?" the man repeated with a disgusted frown. "Why would I help a man who'd put an innocent woman through all that just to prove his own theories? Believe me, Rose Miller, I would never think of helping a man who proudly compares himself to a vampire-"

"Then… why are you here?" Rose asked, fighting down the brief hope she felt at the thoughts now buzzing through her mind for the first time in what felt like months.

"To cure you."

Of everything this man could have said, those three words had never even been an option as far as Rose was concerned.

"…Cure?" she repeated, looking anxiously at the new arrival for the first time.

"It took a while to get everything together, but I had some experience that Doctor Burroughs didn't," the man explained as he reached into his jacket and took out a small test-tube, which he held out in front of him. "From what I've put together from Burroughs' research, the contents of this little thing will deal with the side-effects of what Burroughs' work did to you, and you'll even retain the reconstruction work it did to your face even if you also lose the extra appendages. I can't guarantee what this will do for your intestinal damage, but even in a worst-case scenario you'll just need to be careful about your diet in the future-"

"H-how… how could you cure me?" Rose cut in, looking desperately at the man. "Wh… who are you?"

"I am the Doctor, Rose Miller," the man said, smiling at her and giving her a brief nod as he spoke. "Long story short, I'm part of a secret government task force that deals with the strange and unconventional threats of the world, and in my capacity as their scientific advisor, I was made aware of the outbreak of a hyperactive form of rabies in your home city-"

"Rabies?" Rose repeated in shock.

"That was the closest analogy anyone could come up with for what the disease was doing to its victims; you don't have rabies, I promise," the Doctor explained, before he held out the small test-tube once again. "But I stand by what I said; this will cure you."

For a moment Rose just stared in silence at the man on the other side of the window, unsure if it would be worse to believe him and have her hopes dashed when it did something worse to her or dismiss this as a lie when he might be telling the truth…

How can this get any worse?

She was already locked away from the world after basically causing the deaths of everyone she cared about; what could this man do to her life that she hadn't already done to herself? Even if this thing just destroyed her mind… she was grimly resigned to going mad in some way already; at least this way she could end it on her terms.

At this point, she would have even accepted a return to the nightmare that her face had been when she first woke up after the accident, left side of her mouth basically shredded off and her jaw held shut, teeth permanently bared in some kind of horrific snarl; at least that was a human kind of terrifying.

"The… feeding area's over there," she said, indicating a corner of the room. Nodding briefly at her in thanks, the Doctor walked over to the indicated spot and opened a hatch on the other side. Rose gave him a moment to step back before she walked over to the hatch and took out the small phial, studying the strange liquid inside it for a moment. There was a vague sense of golden yellow in the colour of the substance, which raised a couple of questions, but at this point Rose didn't see that she had anything to lose. Taking a deep breath, she opened the phial and swallowed it, only to reel back as she felt an agonising pain spike across her chest-


"Are you awake?"

Opening her eyes, Rose wasn't sure how to feel when she found that she was still in the room that had been her cell, but her manner calmed when she realised that the Doctor was standing in the middle of the now-open door, looking at her with a warm smile and his hands casually in his pockets. As she sat up, Rose looked around the room and saw a bizarre range of what she definitely 'recognised' as tentacles lying around the floor, their fleshy colour and the sudden breeze she felt around the back of the skimpy medical robe she was still wearing confirming to her what had happened.

"Did those just… come out of me?" she looked uncertainly at the Doctor.

"Yes," the Doctor nodded, kicking one of the tentacles near his feet. "Sorry it's a bit painful, but I did calibrate the dosage so you'd be knocked out while it was happening; I figured this was one experience you didn't need."

"Right…" Rose said, deciding not to question how those… things… could have erupted so cleanly from her body; when she still didn't entirely understand how she could have manifested any of them in the first place, it was probably best not to look 'behind the scenes' and just accept the situation in front of her.

"So… how do you feel?"

"I… I feel…" Rose began, placing a hand on her stomach and then looking back at the Doctor with a smile as she finally identified the sensation. "Hungry…"

"Hungry in the sense that…"

"Just… peckish," Rose said, the grin cautiously spreading on her face as she stood up. "I mean, before I would feel fine for a while and then feel like there was this… agony in my stomach, but now it's just…"

"You just want a quick snack?" the Doctor finished for her with an understanding smile. "Good for you; glad I could help."

"Uh… thanks," Rose said, looking uncertainly at the Doctor for a moment. "I… don't suppose you have something…?"

"You could eat?" the Doctor grinned, reaching into another pocket and tossing her a couple of apples. "Will those do?"

Relieved beyond words at the opportunity, Rose bit into the apples one after the other, uncaring of the juice running down her chin as she swallowed the delicious fruit. She was so relieved to finally be eating something that could tolerate on every level that she even found herself swallowing the cores before she realised what she was doing.

"…Sorry about that?" she smiled cautiously at the Doctor even as she swallowed the last of the apple.

"Don't worry about it," the Doctor nodded at her, before he indicated the door. "And now that you've eaten, I have someone I'd like you to meet."

Rose hesitated at first, but reminded herself that this man hadn't done anything to her that she hadn't ultimately wanted, and so cautiously followed him out of the room. The first few steps seemed so strange, walking along that corridor once again when she'd spent the last few days imagining that she would never even set foot outside that room as herself, until she found herself standing outside a room she vaguely recognised as one of Burroughs' operating theatres. For a moment she froze outside the room, mind racing at the thought of what she might find in there, but then the Doctor opened the door and her gaze became fixed on the figure lying on the table.

There were a few small holes in the dress that was evidently where she'd been shot, but the skin underneath those holes was unmarred, and the only equipment linked to the woman was what Rose recognised as a heart monitor. The identity of the woman was so unexpected that it took Rose a moment to recognise her, even though she'd known that woman since she was a little girl herself; the fact that she'd been anticipating that the other woman was dead probably had something to do with that.

"Chelsea?" she yelled, looking over at the Doctor once she had finally confirmed that she was looking at her foster sister.

"That's her," the Doctor nodded.

"But… how?" Rose asked, wishing that she could do more than look at the Doctor in shock. "I was there… she was-"

"You saw that she was shot and then got dragged off before you could do more than confirm that she wasn't moving any more," the Doctor corrected her with a smile. "And that's the trick here; you didn't know for a fact that she was dead- actually all I found was records saying that she was last seen at the fashion shoot where you both vanished- so once I was sure of what had happened to you, I was able to go back and retrieve your sister you're your friend took you out of the room."

Rose wasn't entirely sure she understood more than half of what this man had just told her, but she had heard enough to be sure of the fact that this man had saved her sister.

Right now, the fact that Chelsea was the one who had prompted Brad to talk to her in the first place was basically irrelevant; all that mattered was that her sister was still alive…

Suddenly overwhelmed by emotion once again, she ran over to the Doctor and gave him a grateful hug, wishing that she could do more for him in turn as she stepped back.

"And… she's all right?" she asked, wishing that she could stop herself thinking about the way Chelsea had looked the last time she'd seen her, mouth dripping with blood and a feral glare in her eyes. "Your cure… it worked on her?"

"The results were different, but biologically the infection attacked the cells in a similar manner; the results might have been more obviously brutal for the others than it was for you, but I got to her early enough that the cure was still an option," the Doctor explained. "Actually, getting shot probably helped her; the infection focused on keeping her alive for a few moments so that it couldn't mutate her body like it would have for other patients, so she was easy enough to treat."

"Other patients?" Rose looked at the Doctor with new urgency. "Who else? Who did you save?"

"Well… I managed to get to a few of the other models in time to treat them, and there was a Doctor Riley of the CDC in the local hospital who was open to working with me on the already-quarantined once I'd established my credentials, but overall… well, there were casualties, let's leave it at that," the Doctor said, his expression solemn.

As much as it shamed her to admit it even to herself, Rose wasn't going to ask about Gunter and Brad. From what the Doctor had told her about how he'd managed to save Chelsea, it was probably safe to assume that the two men were definitely dead as nobody could survive what she'd seen happen to them, but actually asking that question…

Either it would make her feel bad when she had proof that they were dead or it would make the Doctor feel bad that he couldn't have saved someone else she'd cared about, and right now she couldn't bring herself to make the man who'd literally given her back her life feel like he'd failed her in any way.

"I… understand," she said at last, before she indicated the room around them with a slight smile. "And where's Burroughs in all this?"

"Under arrest," the Doctor grinned. "Once I established a cure, it wasn't hard to trace him as the source of the virus; nowhere else in this area was doing the kind of work necessary to cause the kind of viral mutation you'd been subjected to, and his clinic was the source of most of the 'violent flu' rumours."

"… Violent flu," Rose repeated incredulously. "He seriously tried to make people think that was a flu outbreak?"

"Like so many other brilliant men, Burroughs got caught up in the idea that him being smart makes everyone else an idiot," the Doctor clarified with a cool smile. "Once my associates came here to arrest him, it was almost amusing to see how hard he tried to spin the situation to focus on his final intentions rather than the overall outcome."

"He could be good at that…" Rose said, her tone bitter as she found herself remembering all the times Burroughs (she wouldn't think of him as 'doctor' ever again; this man was a true doctor, and Burroughs was just an egomaniac) had convinced her that her attacks were just strange dreams.

"But convincing a scared woman who's been through serious emotional upheaval isn't the same as trying to fool trained scientists and soldiers who expect some kind of manipulation," the Doctor observed. "Right now, the only question is who actually gets to put Burroughs on trial once we've finished looking over his work to confirm where he got those DNA sequences he used in your treatment; once that's decided, he'll be left in a dark hole that he'll never get out of again."

Rose might not have liked hurting anyone, but she would have needed to be an outright saint not to enjoy the thought of Doctor Burroughs suffering like that after what he had done to her…

"Wh… why would you do all this?" she asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor. "I… you don't even know me…"

"True," the Doctor nodded. "And… well, I admit that I'd spent a bit of time just staying out of this sort of thing, but after recent events inspired me to go out and about once again, I saw an article about this outbreak, found a few references to what had happened to you while I was doing some background research, and… well, I lost a very good friend who worked in the fashion industry a while back."

"Who?"

"Amelia Pond."

"Amelia…" Rose trailed off, as she suddenly remembered the name; she might have been more interested in the dresses than the models, but Chelsea had always had a few favourites when looking at past campaigns from rival agencies. "The Girl Who Waited? Didn't she… vanish a couple of years ago?"

"She was… lost… helping me stop something terrible," the Doctor replied, his tone solemn as he looked down at the ground for a moment before he looked back at Rose. "And… when I heard about what had happened to you, your career got me thinking about Pond, your name made me remember… someone else important to me, and then… well, I found myself thinking about how I'd feel if it was one of my friends in your position, and decided this was one case where I could afford to step in after the fact to bend the rules a little."

Rose didn't know what to say to that strange comment, so settled for walking up to the Doctor and giving him another firm hug, taking in the strangely reassuring scent of this mysterious man as he returned the hug.

"I'm… I'm sorry about your friend," she said as she stepped back. "But… thank you for helping me."

"You're welcome," the Doctor nodded at her with another smile, before he indicated a corner of the room. "Your sister should be up in a few minutes, so I'll be off."

"Off-?" Rose repeated in confusion as the Doctor walked off into the corner, which Rose only just now realised had a strange blue box standing there. "What-?"

"When UNIT forces come in, just tell them that the Doctor spoke with you; that should explain everything," the Doctor said as he opened the door, revealing a strange blue light inside the box. "I'd like to talk with you more, but I have other matters occupying my attention right now, and I have a feeling that you'd prefer to spend some time bonding with your sister after all this right now?"

Confused about what the Doctor might be about to do, Rose just nodded in tentative understanding, before this unusual man walked into the box and closed the door behind him. Rose didn't have time to wonder what that was about before the light on top of the box started to glow, accompanied by a strange wheezing, groaning sound, followed by the whole box fading from view.

Even as Chelsea stirred beside her, Rose couldn't take her eyes of the corner of the room where the blue box had been moments ago, simultaneously lost to explain what had just happened and telling herself not to question the miracle. When she heard Chelsea let out a soft groan beside her, Rose turned her attention away from the box and back towards the other woman, who was already sitting up.

"…Rose?" Chelsea asked, looking at her anxiously. "Wh… what just happened?"

It might have been a foolish thing to do, but Rose chose to take it as a sign of how she trusted the Doctor over Burroughs; rather than question why Chelsea didn't seem to remember what had happened to her, she just reached over to give her sister a warm hug.


The next few days would become a blur of interviews and tests in Rose's memory when she looked back on that part of her life, as the forces of UNIT took the two of them away from the lab for further analysis. However, even when she was among trained soldiers and qualified scientists, it was as though her brief association with the Doctor had given these other people certain ideas about Rose that she could never explain, beyond the idea that she would be well simply because it had been the Doctor who saved her and any follow-up tests were just a formality. By the time it was over, Rose and Chelsea were back in New York, confirmed to be well and apparently normal even after everything their bodies had been through, each ready to return to what parts of their old lives they could salvage.

As they would later learn when they looked up the original outbreak, while several victims had been allegedly euthanized for their own safety one their conditions were found to have degenerated past the point where any treatment could have saved them, a few had vanished for a few days and then turned up alive and well. Doctor Riley of the CDC, who had been in charge of investigating the situation, had reported successful vaccines provided by a discreet research team who had managed to track down the original source of the virus. A few of those who had recovered included vague descriptions of how they felt while under the influence, but just as many known cases stated that they didn't remember anything between actually succumbing to the infection and 'waking up' after treatment. Rose never dared to ask if Chelsea had any memory of that and was resolved not to openly ask the question anyway, especially when most of the known infected preferred to just get on with their lives and forget about the whole experience.

On a personal level, while Haus of Gunter had basically closed after the death of the owner during the final attack at the fashion show, but the insurance pay-offs and the lack of official records identifying Rose and Chelsea as anything more than further victims was enough for them to get an 'in' with another fashion company. The dress Chelsea had been wearing the night of the 'incident' (as they would refer to the final night amongst themselves) was kept for just the two of them as a memento, given the tricky legalities of trying to sell it to another company, but Rose's new font of inspiration was enough to keep the sisters in good standing with their new employers.

And if Rose's new designs tried to explore a sense of hope in shades of blue, red and gold, occasionally using a cuboid theme with an air of mystery… well, the general public liked what she had come up with, and the people who understood the source of her inspiration wouldn't be talking about it.

She would never fully understand who the Doctor was or how he had saved her and her sister, but Rose Miller would always be grateful that he had helped her when she needed it most.