Author Note: I would like to thank everyone who has viewed, followed, and favorited my story already. I'm so glad you've seemed to enjoy it thus far! A special thank-you for Deepika for her constructive criticism (I've fixed it, as well as a few other minor errors) and for her raving review (you're making me blush!) ;) I hope you all continue to enjoy. Thanks so much!
"EXTERMINATE!"
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Watching the Daleks advance toward her and knowing she was probably about to die, Rose squeezes her eyes closed and shouts out. "Daleks!" she cries, feeling her courage swell when they pause. In the newfound silence she continues speaking, with the hopes that if she can just keep talking until the Doctor comes they might still survive. "You're called 'Daleks'."
The Daleks don't respond but neither do they exterminate her. She tilts her head the side, like a dog, considering it, studying it. "I know your name," she finally tells it, shucking off her lab coat, moving around like the life of the party – keeping the attention of the Daleks on herself and not on the other two hostages. "Think about it… how can I know that? A Human... who knows about the Daleks. And the Time War. If you wanna know how, then keep us alive. That's all I'm asking. Me and my friends," she says, including them now; if they all seem important, they'll all survive a little bit longer.
Mickey, proving himself again to not be the tin-dog, had latched onto the name 'Dalek' immediately, he now latched onto Rose's plan to keep them alive. "Yeah, Daleks. Time War. Me too."
"Yeah. And me," Rajesh states from his place behind them.
After a quick glance at its prisoners, the Dalek focuses its eyestalk back on Rose, just as she'd hoped it would. "You will be necessary."
Then he swivels around to Dalek Jast. "Report - what is the status of the Genesis Ark?"
"Status - hibernation."
"Commence awakening," Dalek Sek intones.
"The Genesis Ark must be protected above all else," Dalek Thay exclaims as the Daleks gather around the Genesis Ark, which has also emerged from the void ship, and attach their suctions to its sides.
"The Daleks," Mickey whispers, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. "You said they were all dead."
"Never mind that! What the hell's a Genesis Ark?"
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"What's down there?" Jackie cries to the Doctor. "She was in that room with the sphere. What's happened to Rose?"
The Doctor is leaning against a wall, his body language relaxed but Jackie had been the only one for some time who had been able to look him in it eye. His true age was showing though, a side-effect of the frustration that comes from helplessness. He sympathizes with Jackie, she's only voicing his own panic after all, but she isn't helping because no matter how many times she asks him, his answer will remain the same. He's unreasonably angry with her for it.
"I don't know."
When she begins to cry in he kicks off the wall and pulls her into a hug, rubbing her back in silent apology for snapping at her.
"I'll find her," he soothes her as best he can but it's not reassurance enough, he knows. "I brought you here; I'll get you both out. You and your daughter. Jackie, look at me. Look at me… I promise you," he tells her once he's got her full attention. "I give you my word."
A few meters away a Cyberman approaches Yvonne at her desk.
"You will talk to your central world authority and order global surrender."
"Oh, do some research. We haven't got a central world authority," she snaps back.
"You have now. I will speak on all global wavelengths," the Cyberman tells her while the Doctor puts his 3D glasses back on.
"This broadcast is for human kind," the Cyberman begins, addressing the entire planet. "Cybermen now occupy every land mass on this planet. But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class and color and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us."
All the announcement had done was cause mass hysteria. Chaos broke out, from high above the terrified people on the ground, the Doctor, Jackie, and Yvonne watch in horror alongside the Cybermen, as small fires raged and the sounds of collisions and small explosions could be heard intermittently in the distance.
"I ordered surrender." The Cyberman says, looking to the group of humans nearest him for answers, the Doctor bursts out angrily.
"They're not taking instructions! Don't you understand? You're on every street! You're in their homes. You've got their children! Of course they're gonna fight!"
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"Which of you is least important?" Dalek Sek asks the human trio.
Rose blanches. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Which of you is least important?"
"No, we don't work like that. None of us."
"Designate the least important!"
"This is my responsibility," Rajesh says, stepping forward even as Rose acts to hold him back. "I, ah, I represent the Torchwood Institute. Anything you need, you come through me. Leave these two alone."
The Dalek orders Rajesh to kneel, they need information on current earth history. Rajesh stammers nervously that he'll tell them all he can so long as it doesn't compromise home world security, but his talking proves unnecessary and his bravery fatal, when Dalek Sek reaches out his suction arm and puts it over his head.
"Speech is not necessary. We will extract brainwaves."
"Don't... I- I'll tell you everything you need. No. No!" His crying peters off until he's not crying anymore, his skull crushed in and body abandoned, dead on the floor.
"You didn't need to kill him!" Rose shouts, her body shaking in such vivid anger it temporarily overrides her sense of self-preservation.
"Neither did we need him alive," said Dalek Caan.
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In the lever room, human and Cybermen alike wait the an update from the Cybermen who went to check on the activity in the sphere room. Dalek Thay had likewise been sent out as a representative to intercept the approaching Cybermen.
On Yvonne's laptop the Doctor watches and waits, chewing on the inside of his lip hard enough to make it bleed, to see what creature Rose has been trapped alone with for all this time. All the air leaves his body in rapid succession when he sees it there on the screen. His respitory bypass left absolutely useless, he's sure he must not be getting enough oxygen to his brain.
"Identify yourselves."
"You will identify first."
The Doctor's eyes remain fused to the screen, eyes rimmed red but unable to cry. Unable to do anything but stare at the monster blankly. He needed to see Rose! He needed to talk to her. To look at her. To hold her.
"... illogical, you will modify."
"Daleks do not take orders."
"You have identified as Daleks." The Cyberman said, sounding suspiciously smug to the Doctor's ears.
"Outline resembles the inferior species known as 'Cybermen'."
Jackie shakes the Doctor slightly. "Rose said about the Daleks. She was terrified of them. What have they done to her, Doctor? Is she dead?"
His head snapped up at the suggestion, the words grating oddly in his ears. His Rose was full of life, death seemed to be word that should never touch her.
"Phone." He said briskly, holding out his open palm.
"What did you –?"
"Phone!"
Jackie inconspicuously hands the phone over to the Doctor, who doesn't bother to conceal it from the surrounding Cybermen. Beginning a fast-paced, slightly aggressive pacing back and forth as he dials the number to Rose's superphone, fear coats his stomach with bile every second she doesn't answer, 'and if she's… he doesn't know what he'll do if she doesn't pick up her –'
But she does answer her phone. Holding it at her side so it'll go unnoticed she flips it open and presses send. Still unable to talk, they keep up the connection while The Doctor grabs at his hair, wondering why she is alive and wearing out his rubber soles as he tries to figure out how to keep Rose that way. He has no idea what 'the Genesis Ark' is; though the slightly reverential tone is bothersome.
"Our species are similar," the Cyberman asserts. "Though your design is inelegant."
"Daleks have no concept of elegance."
"This is obvious," The Doctor shakes his head.'Cheeky Cybermen, just what this day needed.' "But consider – our technologies are compatible. Cybermen plus Daleks – together, we could upgrade the Universe."
"You propose an alliance?"
"This is correct."
"Request denied," Dalek Thay said, prompting the Cyberman into taking immediate aim and shooting their weapons at the Dalek, only for the rays to bounce right off the Dalek's armor.
"Exterminate!" Dalek Thay yelled, in two shots both Cybermen had gone crashing to the floor, deleted.
"Open visual link," the Cyberman in the lever room commanded. "Daleks, be warned: you have declared war upon the Cybermen."
"This is not war. This is pest control."
"We have five million Cybermen. How many are you?"
"Four."
"You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?!"
"We would destroy the Cybermen with ONE Dalek. You are superior in only one respect."
"What is that?"
"You are better at dying. Raise communications barrier!" Sek shouts, the Doctor's connection to Rose ends as the screen goes to static, leaving the Doctor trapped in the lever room with a scared Jackie, Cybermen, a Dalek infestation, no Rose, and no idea how to get himself out of this mess.
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"Wait! Rewind image by nine rells," Jast shouts, seeing the man who registers as 'enemy' standing in the background of the shot.
"Identify him." Cast aside to the corner of the room, Rose's heart had begun pounding madly in her chest at seeing him still alive and uninjured. Sek had observed her recognition and accosted her with the demand.
"All right then... if you really wanna know. That's the Doctor," The affect his name along has on the psyche of the Dalek's is immediate – as one, they jerk back suddenly, giving rise to a predatory smile gracing Rose's face "Five million Cybermen? Easy. One Doctor? Now you're scared," she taunts.
After a few moments of silence, disturbed only by the loud mechanical yelling of the Daleks, Mickey finally turns to Rose and asks her what had concerned him since the sphere had opened and Cybermen hadn't stepped out. "Why are we being kept alive?"
She takes a moment. She'd wondered the same thing, though she had some idea about what the real reason might be, she leaned in closer to him and whispered, "They might need me," but she hoped she was wrong.
"What? What is it?" he asks her but she gives no more answers, choosing to continue her study of the Daleks in silence, dread shone from her eyes.
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Upstairs, the rest of the humans had just been rounded up, and were being forcibly taken to be upgraded, in preparation of the Cybermen's battle again the Daleks. As Yvonne and Jackie are led away the Doctor vows he'll think of a way to save them… he just needs to think of it first.
He sits down on a windowsill in the lever room, overlooking the dystopia the Cybermen had created below, he let his thoughts stray to happier times – this morning, when he and Rose had been swinging their laced hands between them as they made the quick jaunt from the TARDIS to Jackie's flat. He doesn't notice immediately when he is approached by one of the metal men.
"You are proof," it tells him.
"Of what?"
"That emotions destroy you."
"Yeah, I am," he says looking away from it and fighting the color threatening to burn his cheeks. He thinks of Rose and the time vortex. Of giving up his life for hers. Of not giving the Wire a chance (let alone a second chance) because in his fury over what had been done to her mercy hadn't ever even occurred to him. Of the paralyzing fear he felt looking at the Daleks on that computer screen and thinking she might actually be dead. He'd believed her to be dead three times now: once in a vault, once on a satellite, and again just a few moments ago. He might not survive a fourth with this regeneration intact.
Something shifts in the air then; his senses tell him another small tear has been made in the skin of the universe, but his time sense expands, allowing for the entrance of quite a few new time lines, some of which appear to be quite long. "Mind you, I quite like hope. Hope's a good emotion. And here it comes."
It came in the form of a cluster of people in black cat suits, helmets concealing their identities and holding… rather large guns. They seemed to appear out of thin air but the Doctor knew better. At their leader's order they shot and destroyed all the Cybermen in the room, barely giving the Doctor a chance to roll out of the way find cover behind Yvonne's desk.
"Doctor," Jake says with a pleased smile as he removes his helmet, "Good to see you again."
"Jake?!" The Doctor exclaims. A Cheshire grin envelopes the Doctor's face at the sight of Jake, but it's a tumultuous sort of joy. The walls of the universe are so thin, they won't stand up to the prodding being done to them and Jake really should not be here. One look at the lot of them through his 3D glasses tells him that.
"The Cybermen came through from one world to another - and so did we."
"You can't just—just—just hop from one world to another. You CAN'T."
"We just did. With these," he says, chucking a large yellow button on a chain to the Doctor for his inspection.
"But that's impossible. You can't have this sort of technology."
"We've got our own version of Torchwood. They developed it. Do you wanna come and see?"
"NO!" The Doctor shouts as they disappear.
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The first thing The Doctor notices about this world's Torchwood the darkness. It smells musty and disused. Jake explains that on this world the people found out what Torchwood was doing, and they stopped it—took control.
All The Doctor is concerned with his getting back to his universe's Torchwood and getting to Rose and her mum, and he tells Jake so.
"That'd be Jackie," came the voice of Pete Tyler from the shadows; he walks into the room, flanked by two soldiers. "My wife in a parallel universe. And as for you, Doctor, at least this time I know who you are."
"Right, yes, fine, hooray. But I've gotta get back. Right now."
"No, you're not in charge here. This is our world, not yours. And you're gonna listen for once."
The Doctor falls silent, but glares at Pete Tyler with the open malice only someone keeping him from Rose can conjure up. Pete, to the Doctor's consternation, stares calmly back.
He explained to the Doctor what had been happening on the parallel earth. The debate to try to help the Cybermen or to dispose of them went on, until they vanished three years ago (the mass of five million Cybermen crossing the void at once had made their travel slow).
He learns that Mickey went first. "Any chance to go and find Miss Rose Tyler."
"She's the child of a dead man," Pete said coldly when he tried to explain that biologically Rose Tyler was his. If he had the time, the Doctor would've be livid with the man for again discarding his Rose. But he doesn't have time to be livid. Pete's tale is winding to a close.
The temperatures on his Earth are rising, the ice caps are melting. It's not just global warming, both he and the Doctor know; it's the breach – it's the strain put on this world from the travel through the void. This world is starting to boil and the Doctor knows the other will soon follow.
"But you can stop it – the famous Doctor? You can seal the breach?" Pete coaxes.
"Leaving five million Cybermen stranded on my Earth." 'With my Rose. My family.'
"That's your problem. I'm protecting this world and this world only."
"Hm, Pete Tyler. I knew you when you were dead. Now here you are, fighting the fight… alone…" The Doctor leans in conspiratorially. "There is a chance… back on my world… Jackie Tyler might still be alive."
"My wife died." Pete deadpans, but he's eyes glaze over at the thought.
"Her husband died. Good match."
But Jackie a subject that Pete Tyler is unwilling to discuss. "Help us," he pleads.
"What? Close the void. Stop the Cybermen. Defeat the Daleks. Do you really believe I can do all that?"
"Yes."
The Doctor face softens now, like a flower shaking out its petals, as he looks at the man. Pete Tyler looks back at him with absolute confidence in his statement and for the first time he sees his Rose in this hardened man.
"Maybe that's all I need. Off we go then!" He grins.
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In the sphere room, Rose and Mickey are still conversing quietly about the Ark and the Daleks possible need of them.
"As the Doctor said, when you travel in time in the TARDIS, you soak up all this... um... background radiation. It's harmless, it's just… there. But in the Time War, the Daleks evolved so they could use it as a power supply."
"They need you."
"You've travelled in time - either one of us would do."
"But why would they build something they can't open themselves?"
"The technology is stolen. The Ark is not of Dalek design," Dalek Sek interrupts.
"Then who built it?" Rose asks.
"The Time Lords. This is all that survives of their Home World."
"What's inside?"
"The future."
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"First of all, I need to make a phone call. You don't mind?" Without waiting for a reply, the Doctor calls Jackie's number from the phone on Yvonne's desk while Pete watches on.
"Help me! Oh, my God, help me," Jackie yells into the phone, her breathing labored and panic evident in her voice.
"Jackie, you're alive! Listen—" but he stops to pull the phone from his ear, shushing her when she screeches at him.
"They tried to download me but I ran away!" She cries.
"Listen, tell me - where are you?"
"I don't know!" She yells as she runs. "Staircase."
After spending some time coaxing an identifiable location from Jackie, The Doctor disconnects their call and takes Jake's gun, upgrading it so it'll be useable on Dalek skin.
He takes a sheet of A4 office paper, races to the Cybermen to propose a temporary alliance, telling himself that this is the lesser of two evils and then racing off the sphere room with his recruits behind him.
As he approaches the sphere room, his army of enemies-turned-allies behind him, awaiting his signal, he hears Rose voice from inside and breathes out a sigh of relief that she's still alive.
"…gonna kill us anyway, so what the hell?" The Doctor tenses. "If you um… escaped the Time War… don't you want to know what happened?"
"Place your hand—"
"What happened to the Emperor?" She popped her 'p' and rolled her 'r's' on the last word, tauntingly. 'Stupid girl! Provoking a Dalek!'
"The Emperor survived?!"
"'Til he met me..." She told Dalek Sek happily.
The Doctor felt his eyes widen. 'She wasn't supposed to remember any of that. Since when did she remember?! Did she remember the kiss too—no! no. Time and a place.'
" 'cos if these are gonna be my last words, then you're gonna listen. I met the Emperor. And I took the Time Vortex and I poured it into his head and turned him into dust. Do you get that? The God of all Daleks... and I destroyed him." Her smile shifts evocatively from taunting, to predatory, to taunting again, and she gives one full-bodied "HA!" right in the Dalek's eyestalk, sure it will be the last time she ever laughs again.
"You will be EXTERMINATED!" Dalek Sek screeches in fury but before he can follow through the Doctor has stomped his way loudly into the room.
"Oh now, hold on, wait a minute," the Doctor says to them.
He's identified as the Doctor, takes a quick look at the room through his 3D specs, sees Rose is unharmed, and even takes a moment bump fists with Mickey before being chastised by a Dalek for "social interaction."
He supposes they should just cut to the chase then.
"How did you survive the Time War?" The Daleks demand to know.
"By fighting," he can feel Mickey's shocked eyes on him but he doesn't look – can't look the man in the eye. "On the front line."
Rose, Mickey notices, is watching the Doctor in empathy, and Mickey latches onto another truth: that as surprising at this information is to him, it's old hat to Rose. Rose, who has woken him gently from nightmares, in fear that his convulsing body will lead to an injury. Rose, who hid from him the bruises left over on her hands and wrists from where his fingertips clung too tightly to her skin while he worked to control his breathing and assured himself she was there. And Rose, who'd sat in the library for six hours straight after Krop Tor, although she was exhausted, and listened to him attentively because he was finally ready to share it all – then stayed awake with him in silence while he'd counted all the children he'd killed, before stoking his hair and scalp until he'd fallen, blotchy-eyed, asleep with is head in her lap.
Yes, Rose, Mickey thought, did not look at all surprised.
"I was there at the fall of Arcadia. Someday I might even come to terms with that. But you lot - ran away!" He shifted moods easily, if abruptly into enthusiasm.
He wanted to know why these four Daleks were so special that they had to survive. They are the Cult of Skaro. Not a legend. The real thing. A secret order above even the Emperor, with independent thought, all so they could kill more creatively.
They escaped in the void ship with the Genesis Ark, something of Time Lord origin, though he'd never heard of it. Not that it mattered. If it was made during the War, it was manipulated with touch, an impossible act for a Dalek.
"Technology using the one thing a Dalek can't do. Touch. Sealed inside your casing. Not feeling anything... ever... from birth to death… locked inside a cold metal cage," the Doctor leans in closely and whispers. "Completely alone. And that explains your voice. No wonder you scream."
The Dalek demands the Doctor open the Ark and he laughs; removing his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and making a comment on its usefulness in opening doors, he activates it and half tackles Rose to the ground as the doors blow inward and the humans and Cybermen force their way in.
The Doctor tells Rose to leave, watching her progression hawk-eyed as she does as he asks before stumbling; looking up to thank her helper she finds herself looking in the eyes of her father, the same shade of butterscotch as her own. The Doctor sighs when she's safe from the battle, warring with the relief that she's okay and anxious to have her near him, he quickly makes the decision to follow after her out into the hall.
In the chaos within the sphere room, Mickey loses his footing and touches the Genesis Ark as he and Jake try to make their escape. The Dalek's evacuate with the opening Ark and hover high in the sky as millions of Dalek's shuffle out of the bigger-on-the-inside Ark and into the open sky above London; back in the room they'd just vacated the alliance between the humans and Cybermen breaks down, and a blood bath ensues behind the locked doors.
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They find Jackie in a corridor, cornered by two Cybermen. In one quick move Pete grabs a gun and shoots both Cybermen from behind, leaving a cloud of smoke where the metal men stood a moment ago.
Jackie squints through the smoke for a moment before her eyes widen in confusion and recognition.
"Pete!"
"Hello, Jacks."
"I said there were ghosts, but that's not fair. Why him?"
"I'm not a ghost." Pete says, smiling at her perturbed voice.
"But you're dead. You died twenty years ago, Pete," she tries to explain to him why he can't be real, before telling the Doctor to shut up, which surprisingly, he does.
Pete smiles.
"Oh. You look old," she tells him. What else should she say to her dead husband who isn't really her husband, she wonders.
"You don't."
"How can you be standing there?"
"Just got lucky... lived my life. You were left on your own. You didn't marry again, or...?"
"There was never anyone else." The Doctor and Mickey share a look until Rose ribs the Doctor and steps on Mickey's foot. Both men wince. "Twenty years, though. Look at me - I never left that flat. Did nothing with myself."
"Brought her up. Rose Tyler. That's not bad."
"Yeah," Jackie says before they move on to Pete's success in his own world.
"Thing is though, Jacks, you're... you're not my wife. I'm sorry, but you're not. I mean, we both... You know, it's just sort of...Oh, come here," he cries and starts toward her. Jackie lets out a small cry of her own before running toward Pete and jumping into his hug, letting him spin her around while she cries.
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Going back to the R and D department, the Doctor opens the door and watches the battle between the Cybermen and the Daleks continue taking place. Waiting for the right moment he dives into the room, watched with trepidation by Rose. He picks up two of the magnaclamps, using them to deflect shots coming in his direction as he makes his way back out the door; he trips over the body of a fallen Cyberman but quickly rights himself, making it safely back into the corridor.
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In the elevator on their way to the top floor the Doctor keeps Rose's hand fisted so tightly in his he wonders if he isn't hurting her. But she doesn't complain and he is unwilling to loosen his grip for a moment. With his thumb he traces his name onto her skin.
With his plan coming together as it is, he put on his 3D glasses and took a look at all the void stuff, the moment to enact his plan was just moments away and he felt himself being choked under the maelstrom of emotional turmoil. He'd thought they would be facing a storm! But this—this is bloody hurricane!
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Stepping back out onto the lever room floor, 3D glasses on his face, magnaclamps in hand, The Doctor and Rose gasp in unison – the first to get a look out the window, they now understood exactly what 'Time Lord science' means.
"It's bigger on the inside," the Doctor whispers in horror, and has to bend forward slightly to fight the urge to retch for the second time today.
He hears Mickey asking why the Time Lords would put the Daleks in there but his voice sounds far away. "It's a prison ship." The Doctor replies.
Millions of Daleks. Millions. And millions of Cybermen. And one Doctor.
Pete walks away from the window, unable to watch anymore. "I'm sorry, but you've had it. This world's gonna crash and burn. There's nothing we can do. We're going home. Jacks, take this." He tosses her the yellow button
"But they're destroying the City!" She tells him.
"I'd forgotten you could argue," he says to her affectionately as he puts the chain around her neck for her. "It's not just London, it's the whole world. But there's another world, just waiting for you, Jacks. And it's safe. As long as the Doctor closes the breach. Doctor?" He gives Jackie a long look, begging her to come with him, before looking to the Doctor for assurance.
The Doctor dashes around in the carefully staged exuberance which Rose knows to be fake. She looks to her mum and Mickey and sees recognition in their eyes. He ignores all their gazes, fiddling with the computers and playing with his glasses; he explains the void stuff and haves a quick lark at her mum, all in manic succession, building up to the crescendo of this act when Mickey asks, "What's the Void?" And the group realizes the Doctor is going to send the Daleks and Cybermen to Hell.
"We're all contaminated." Rose says, putting a stop to his act, not at all liking the way he's been avoiding her eyes. "We'll get pulled in."
"That's why you've gotta go."
She feels like he's just slapped her. She has to stop herself from physically staggering back under the weight of her rejection. He still won't look at her; he's even moved to the other side of the room to stop any physical contact. In his mind, she knows, she's already gone.
"Reboot in two minutes." She hears, but she cannot comprehend the words. Her mind has gone stagnant.
"Back to Pete's world," the Doctor clarifies. "Hey, we should call it that - 'Pete's World.'" he says cheerily to Pete before finally looking Rose in the eye. "I'm opening the Void, but only on this side. You'll be safe on that side."
She stares back at him, unblinkingly.
"And then you close it. For good?" Pete asks.
"The breach itself is soaked in Void Stuff, in the end it'll close itself. And that's it. Kaput."
Finally Rose forces herself together enough to speak again, to make him understand what he's saying. "But you stay on THIS side...?"
"But you'll get pulled in!" Mickey gasps, the Doctor and Rose are locked in each other's gaze.
The Doctor breaks eye contact first, grabs the magnaclaps and once again to avoid looking in her direction, afraid of what he might see there. "That's why, I got these. I'll just have to hold on tight - I've been doing it all my life."
"I'm supposed to go," she asks him in a small voice.
"Yeah," the Doctor tells her without looking up, his tone suggesting the fact should be obvious.
But Rose keeps pushing. "To another world, and then it gets sealed off."
"Yeah," he replies in the same monotone voice, eyes glued to the computer monitors in front of him.
She gapes at him, unbelievingly, just twelve hours ago he had been looking her in the eyes as she'd promised him the rest of her life and he'd seemed to believe her – to want her even – only to reject her now because they'd found themselves in danger. They were often in danger (maybe not this much, but this wasn't just his life, it was hers now too. And she loved it.)
To her, this was like 'France: the reprisal.' One night he's telling her he won't leave her like Sarah Jane, the next he jumps on a horse and breaks through a window into the Palace of Versailles, without taking her with him and with no foreseeable way back. He was leaving her.
"Forever." She whispered, this time more to herself than him, she couldn't hold back a flagellating laugh at herself and her absurdity for thinking that he'd even valued her forever. Her life was more important to him than her happiness, but that should never be the case. He'd convinced himself if she was alive and not with him she would just move on like a shallow crush, that way there would be less guilt for him. He could keep her alive forever, imagining how fantastic her life was, putting her on a pedestal and using the loss of her as an excuse to never let anyone in, ever again.
But this is her life, and her choice, and she will not become a willing martyr to his masochistic lifestyle. "That's not gonna happen," she informs him as the whole building gives a shake.
"We haven't got time to argue, the plans works, we go in. You too. ALL of us!" Pete commands.
"No, I'm not leaving him!"
"I'm not going without her," Jackie tells him.
"Oh, my God," he says, if he could, he'd rip out his own hair. One stubborn Tyler woman was purgatory on a normal day, two – on a day when the world was ending, was just too much for any man. "We're GOING."
"I've had twenty years without you, so button it. I'm not leaving her."
"You've got to," Rose said delicately to Jackie, knowing that it would mean being separated from her mum forever, but also that this was her mum's chance. No more going from man to man, always hoping for love and always comparing to love lost. Her lost love was right there and he was promising Jackie a better life.
"Well, that's tough!"
"Mum. I've had a life with you for nineteen years. But then I met the Doctor and... all the things I've seen him do. For me. For you… For all of us. For the whole... stupid planet and every planet out there. He does it alone, mum."
She didn't see the Doctor approaching her with the dimension hopper in his hands or the sadness in his eyes as he took a look at his makeshift family for the last time.
"But not anymore.'Cos now he's got me," she said, backing up and reaching out a hand to him to show everyone, including him, her commitment, once and for all; instead she'd been closing the distance between them so he could get the hopper quickly around her neck.
She turns around just long enough for him to see the betrayal on her face. And then she is gone with Jackie and Mickey and he is alone again…
For exactly eleven seconds.
"I think this is the on switch..." she says, the Doctor's head snaps up from his inspection of the floor to see her standing there.
For a moment his eyes swell with affection, but it's stamped out by a worry so strong it becomes fury, he approaches her and grabs her roughly by the shoulders, shaking her slightly and stooping over her in a way that may have been meant to intimidate, but had no effect on her.
'She's insane,' he thinks.
Even having no idea how to work the dimension hopper, she had blindly returned to him. There are fault lines spanning both worlds, she could have pressed the wrong buttons, could have navigated herself directly into the void. He wants to tell her she had no business risking her life like that, not for him. "Once the breach collapses, that's IT. You will never be able to see her again. Your own mother!"
Rose's body trembles slightly in his grip, but although her body and voice shake, she shows no sign of fear or uncertainty. She looks him calmly in the eye and tells him, "I made my choice a long time ago, and I'm never gonna leave you."
The Doctor stares at her for a moment, not sure how to react or what to think. He remembers his resolve to tell her how he feels when this whole thing is over and realizes for the first time since he felt the storm coming – way back, on a suburban London street in the not too distant future – that he may actually get his chance after all.
"So what can I do to help?" She asks him, holding his gaze until he gives in and more harshly than he means to gives her the order the set the co-ordinates to six.
"And hurry up!" He barks at her again, too worked up to be kind.
"There are Cybermen one floor down," she tells him, but the levers are already operational and the Doctor grins a manic smile at her, encouraging her into their old routine.
"That's more like it, bit of a smile! The old team...!"
" Hope and Glory, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake!"
"Which one's Shiver?" Asks Rose, her tongue between her teeth in that rather distracting manner.
"Oh, I'm Shake," he says huskily. He's feeling bolder than he ever has, runs the pad of his finger down her arm, letting it graze over the sensitive skin of her inner forearm and wrist; goose bumps rise on her skin and his superior biology tells him her trembling isn't from fear right now. He smiles at her cheekily, satisfied she now knows why she's his Shiver, then allowing the urgency to creep back into his momentary surge of courage.
They activate their magnaclamps near each lever, the expanse of the room dividing them and he tells her that if she holds on she'll be fine. The void stuff didn't coat their skin the way it did the Daleks and Cybermen.
They pushed up their levers and quickly grabbed onto their clamps; lost in the wind caused by the suction a computer chimed, "Online." And Cybermen and Daleks a like went whizzing by them at high speeds.
"The breach is open! Into the Void! Ha!" The Doctor cries in delight, thinking this would work. They'd done it and they were together!
The Doctor's celebration is cut short when a Dalek clashes with the lever near Rose on its way into the void, causing a small explosion of sparks and the lever moves back into the 'off' position.
"Turn it on!" The Doctor shouts to her, even as his muscles clench and his tension multiplies exponentially.
The suction is easing now and though she tries her best to reach it, the lever is too far away. She lets go of her magnaclamp and puts herself in front of it, grunting and whimpering with the effort it takes to get it upright again.
"Online and locked." The computer intones and the suction increases again, with Rose holding onto the lever instead of the magnaclamp, her arms already tired from her struggle of getting it back online in the first place, and now she's being lifted off the ground and stretched in the direction of the breach.
Desperation and dread fill the Doctor as he watches her struggle. "Rose, hold on!"
He can see her strength waning, her cries and whimpers just reaching his sensitive ears over the rushing of the wind as she struggles to keep her grip on the lever even as her body is pulled taut by the suction of the Void. The last of the Daleks and Cybermen are flying past now and if she can just hold on for a few more seconds… just a little bit longer…
"HOLD ON!" He screams at her, because if she lets go now he just might follow and he's only half-exaggerating.
Her fingers do slip from the lever then and he watches helplessly as her body is dragged across the open air of the lever room and toward the Void.
The terror on her face is the last thing he sees of her before can no longer bring himself to watch. It will haunt his dreams every night for the rest of his lives.
He closes his eyes.
The air in the room grows stagnant with an eerie speed, the Void closing in on itself in less than one full second – before the Doctor's Time Lord mind can begin to process the dangers conclusion and the price today had cost him, Rose's body impacts the white wall, hard.
He opens is eyes as wide as they'll, watching in slow motion, his Rose crumbling in a broken pile on the floor. Thanking Rassilon she's here and hoping—oh, he's really hoping she's okay.
He sprints toward her, dropping to his knees as he nears her, he lets his speed slide him to a stop by her motionless body, hearing immediately how alive she is, at least for now.
Rose lays before him, on her side with her arms both raised halfway and bent at the elbow, where they'd landed after her attempt to protect her face and neck from the collision. She was whimpering quietly, her eyes were wet with pained tears, and he could see the effort she seemed to be expending on keeping her chest from convulsing in her tears—or from moving at all, in fact.
The Doctor did a quick check of her spine, neck, and head to make sure it would be safe to move her onto her back and exhaled a fraction of his tension upon finding her neck and spine intact.
But seeing for himself the amount of pain she was in, he still didn't dare move her an inch. Leaning over her, gently brushing some of her hair out her face, he whispered soothingly into her ear for a moment to call her attention away from the pain, not really knowing if she'd be able to hear him through her agony anyway. "I'm going to get the TARDIS, Rose. I'm going to materialize her around you. It'll be okay. I'll be back in ten seconds."
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For Rose it was ten seconds – ten excruciating seconds. But for the Doctor it was almost thirty minutes. The elevator was no longer functional and the Doctor was left to descend the stairs and navigate through the debris and the dead, all the way back to his TARDIS. It left him stymied, the number of humans which lay dead on this battleground; but there wasn't a single Cyberman or Dalek to be seen. The void had wiped way every trace of their existence, including their remains.
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The TARDIS materialized around Rose the moment the past Doctor jogged out of the room, and the Doctor immediately sent them into the Vortex.
Once there he moved her as delicately as possible to a gurney, apologizing all the while for causing her more pain, and rolled her to the infirmary, which was mercifully placed just past the entrance to the North corridor by an accommodating TARDIS.
He used a portable x-ray/MRI device to survey the damage done to her body; blanching at the results and amazed she was still conscious—'How was she still conscious'—he wanted to give her a sedative, and he would were he not so terrified she wouldn't wake up.
After cutting her out of her shirt and pants and moving the ruined clothing delicately out from under her, he gave her local anesthetics in the locations of her worst injuries and covered her with several blankets to keep her body warm as it went into shock, moving them as necessary to mend her as best he could. The Doctor set out to undo the damage done, starting with her clavicle and sternum, which had each sustained messy fractures, as well as six ribs, two of which had perforated her left lung (one shard of bone just barely missing her single human heart, he noted). He removed the bones from her lung, patched it and set her bones so they'd heal properly, then using a regenerative tool, he kick started her healing process; he wished he could heal her completely; he wished her lever had been his.
She would be sore for quite a while. He bandaged her chest up – for the bruising already darkening her pale torso there was nothing he could do.
Her pelvis, miraculously, sustained no damage other than heavy bruising and a vivid, red wall burn. He used a dermal regenerator to kick start the healing of the deep scratch on her skin and then rubbed a creamy salve over the still unhealed tear before bandaging it too.
Rose's left hand was shattered; there was no other word to describe it. The bones had fractured like the glass in Yvonne's partition. He spent a great deal of time tending to and resetting the bones in her hand, ensuring they would heal, and would heal fully, with time. Her body would need therapy to recover full range of motion in it and she never have as much strength in it again.
She had dislocated her left shoulder and her right wrist, two easy, if painful fixes, but she'd mercifully succumbed to unconsciousness some time ago. There were cuts and bruises on her knees and two broken toes on her left foot, all of which he was able to repair fully, although the mended bones would be weak for a short while (forced regeneration of the human body was just no substitute for naturally healing, after all).
On the right side of her forehead near her hairline were a large black bump and a few shallow cuts from where her scalp grazed the wall. Picking the dermal regenerator back up he was able to repair her skin back to newness; He still added the salve to stop it from itching, as new skin does. She'd obtained a mild concussion and of course, she'd have whiplash, he knew, but she protected her head from injury very well.
His time sense told him it'd been eight hours and twenty-six minutes since he and Rose had landed on the estate. Six hours and forty-nine minutes since he'd been 'imprisoned' at Torchwood. Four hours and two minutes since the battle in the sphere room. Three hours and thirty-five minutes since she hit the wall. Right about now the evacuation team would be reaching the top floor of Canary Warf – all they would find of Rose and the Doctor to suggest they'd ever been there were the blood stains Rose left behind on the wall.
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It took over three hours to search all the rooms on all the floors in the Canary Warf building. Half of it was in ruins, unable to be navigated and frequently back-tracking had been necessary to finding alternate routes of travel. But after three hours and nine minutes of slowly climbing over the wreckage and bodies littering the floors, the rescue team had reached the top level.
They found the bodies of several scientists scattered throughout a bleach-white room, some with strange ear-pieces in their ears; some had just crumbled to the floor as the men and women on the lower floors had.
This top level had sustained less structural damage than most of those under it.
On the stark whiteness of the walls, the beaten eyes of the evacuation team immediately found the red blood stamped out in glaring contrast to the colorlessness surrounding it. Later, a sample of that blood would be taken and the victim would be identified as a Miss Rose Tyler, age twenty-one. The search party didn't need identification to know what list the owner of that blood would end up on though, not after the horror they had seen today. 'DECEASED/MISSING: PRESUMED DEAD.' And one space above hers, her mother Jackie's name would be etched with hers on a bronze commemorative plaque hung over a memorial on this very spot. Mickey's name would be just a few names about them.
The CCTV camera footage had been destroyed and unsalvageable on multiple floors, including the sphere room, the lever room, and the entire R and D department, as well as the north stairwell, but enough of the footage remained for a general synopsis of the occurrences that played out on what the journalists are calling 'Doomsday,' and how these happenings came to be.
Search and rescue left Canary Warf with grim expressions plastered upon their faces and no desire to ever speak of the carnage they'd witnessed inside, ever again. There were hundreds of employees in that building today, and only forty-six came back out again.
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Feeling exhaustion over the emotional hurricane he had found himself in, the Doctor moved to the cupboard, grabbed Rose a heated blanket and draped it over her to keep her body warm now that shock had finally set in.
He sat down beside her, made to grab her hand but stopped himself just in time when he remembered the state of it; he settled for placing his hand on her cheek and petting her hair worriedly out of her face, repeating, "You're gonna be okay."
The more his eyes drooped the more his statement began to sound like a panicked question. In the background as always, the TARDIS watched over her thief and her Rose. She sang her thief to sleep with comforting hums, wondering if his sanity may actually be dependent upon the answer to his question. With his last seconds of consciousness he was still desperately muttering, "You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay."
You're gonna be okay?