Rose

Rose...

Rose?

Ohhh, Rose?

"Shut up," she groaned, her head thundering at her stomach churning. She felt hungover.

"Where are we?" she muttered, not daring to open her eyes for fear of worsening the pain.

"My humble abode," drawled an unpleasantly familiar voice, which wasn't Jack's.

Gritting her teeth she fluttered her eyelids open, and saw Jack smiling down at her, with the gloomy ghost of Sinclair Blackburn looming over his shoulder.

"Welcome back." Jack whispered.

"We should be dead." Rose managed, shutting her eyes and falling back against the pillow. "Are we dead?"

"Not quite," Jack soothed. "Don't you remember?"

"I remember...there was the spider." she laughed humourlessly. "Znya is the spider. And the spider is Callow's Reach. We've been living in a damned web all this time, and we never even noticed. How could we not have noticed that?"

"You were bitten." Jack told her. "Remember?"

She strained, but what happened after the spider materialized was naught but a blur. She distinctly remembered it lunging at them, followed shortly thereafter by a surge of pain...and then? Now she really thought about it, she could picture a series of rushing corridors, vaguely recollected being carried across field, a pounding in her heart and a throbbing in her head.

"How did we get away?"

"I've carried heavier than you before," Jack said, "the spider was damned fast, no mistake, but it wasn't built for chasing people through the halls of a castle. It's too cumbersome. I got us out - just."

"Were you hurt?"

"Only in the battle," he said. "We're at the Blackforte now, I couldn't think where else to go."

She finally propped her eyes open, trying to ignore the sharp tang of the light against them. She was in an average sized bedchamber, sitting on one of those tilted back seats that were somewhere between chair and bed, with a thin blanket thrown over her.

"I feel sick".

"You gonna be sick?"

"Probably."

On cue, a large china vase was deposited before her, and Rose retched out all she'd eaten yesterday, and a healthy measure of stomach acid to boot. She wiped her mouth, and realized with faint disgust that the bowl was a chamber pot; she doubted it had been properly sterilized, what with them being in 1500, and with this in mind, she vomited a little more.

"She's got him." Jack whispered darkly. "She's got the Doctor. He was gone last I saw of him...what happened, Rose?"

"I don't..." she groaned and slammed her fist against the bed in frustration.

"Amnesia." Sinclair Blackburn unhelpfully observed. "Come girl, think! Where's Arthur?"

"Who?"

"Arthur, girl, Arthur! My son! I don't give two hoots for your precious Warden, but"-

-"His name is the Doctor." she spat. "We're travellers in space and time, and we were lured here by Znya. And..." it came flooding back. "She made him kill. She made him shoot a man, turned him into everything he hates...that one act, it was like a key to his mind."

"I know what she is." Jack said. "I think."

"What?"

"A parasite," he said, "a dirty stinking parasite, and nothing more. Even the Toymaker wouldn't tangle with her. She could even be an aspect of the Toymaker for all I know."

"What does she want with the Doctor?"

"Huh. Things like that, they don't belong in our reality. They can't get comfortable here, not really, coz' every moment they spend here is effort. Just existing is a chore. But with a mind like his, she can do anything. The last of the Time Lords, a plaything in the hands of a jumped-up demon, ready to wreak havoc across reality on her behalf. He'll do whatever she commands now, mark my words. Destroy any planet, enslave any culture, make her the empress of the universe. He's lost. Every second he's spent in her presence has drained him, and making him kill yesterday was the final move. Checkmate."

"So what do we do?"

"We don't do anything." Jack said sternly. "Once your better, I take you home."

"I'm not leaving him!"

"Oh, but you are. I'm taking you home, because it's what he'd have done, and because it's what he'd want. And then I'm gonna come back and whoop some ass, probably getting killed in the process. I'll try my best to save him."