Chapter Eleven: Not Exactly Brixton
The first morning after the Christmas holiday, the Doctor looked at Rose over the console. "What do you think? Shall we let the TARDIS take us wherever she wants for a while? Since apparently she's mostly in charge of our destinations anyway?"
Rose laughed at his reference to their conversation on Christmas Eve. "Yeah, why not?" She patted the console. "I know she'll take care of us."
The time rotor started moving before she'd finished her sentence, and even Rose was caught off guard when they shifted into the Vortex. "Whoa!" the Doctor said as he jogged around the console to give her a hand up.
They leaned on the console and watched the time rotor move, then slow as they shifted out of the Vortex. "Well, she was definitely excited to bring us here," Rose said once they'd stopped. "Let's check where we are."
That trip landed them in the middle of a smuggling ring that had a stranglehold on the economy of an entire sector. It took them a week to break it down, and then the adventures never stopped.
So when they left the TARDIS a month later and saw the Serpentine in Hyde Park, they looked at each other and nodded. This might be their home away from home, but they weren't on holiday. It was time to save the Earth again.
The Doctor sniffed a few times as he closed the TARDIS doors. "Do you feel that, Rose?" He stuck out his tongue, tasting the air. "There's something very not—London—y here."
Rose rubbed her arms. "Yeah, I feel it. It feels kind of like being in the Vortex, only… different. Less friendly," she offered.
The Doctor had bent over to run his fingers over the grass, trying to trace that off-putting feeling. He sat back on his heels and looked up at Rose.
"Friendly?"
"Yeah, when I was in the Vortex alone, it felt almost nice. Like I belonged there."
"When you…" He shook his head. "Less friendly works," he said, deliberately choosing not to think about the nonchalant way Rose talked about travelling through the Vortex. "There's a… disturbance."
"In the Force?" Rose quipped, making him grin.
"Something like that. Or in the time-space continuum. Something is interfering with the space around London in a way that definitely does not feel friendly. Now, if I could just…"
He tugged on his earlobe. No matter how hard he tried, he could not place this feeling. "I need something to help me track down the source." He stuck his hand into his coat pocket, all the way to the elbow. Feeling his way around the various things he kept there, he finally found what he was looking for.
"Ah-hah!" he crowed, pulling it out with a flourish.
Rose blinked. "Is that… your timey-wimey detector?" It had been almost three years since their stay in 1969, but she was pretty sure she was right.
"Yep! I worked on it a bit when we got home. Now it can detect any kind of disturbance in the fabric of reality."
"Well then. Let's get detecting."
oOoOo
Donna sighed and leaned into Lee slightly as they walked through Hyde Park just before sunset. "Thanks for getting me out of there," she said. "I don't know why, but she always brings out the worst in me."
Lee wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Because she won't see the best in you."
Donna didn't know if it was the simple truth of the statement or the matter of fact way he said it, but she felt like she'd been hit with a 2x4. She stopped on the bridge over the Serpentine and stared at him.
"What?" she asked, and for once, she felt dumbstruck rather than just plain dumb.
Lee nodded. "She d-d-didn't say a single positive thing the whole time we were there."
Donna ran her hand through her hair. It was true, but she was so used to it that she hadn't quite realised how abnormal it was. She spotted something over Lee's shoulder and squinted at it.
"I didn't believe Rose, but she was right," Lee continued, not noticing that Donna's attention had wandered.
"Well, you can tell her that when we find them," Donna said. She pointed at the TARDIS, only thirty feet away. "Come on, they've got to be around here somewhere."
Lee grinned and held out his hand. Laughing, Donna took it and they jogged over the bridge together.
They heard the Doctor's voice as they passed the TARDIS. "Look, Rose. You can see the way the device is picking up the rhodium particles—just like a geiger counter."
"Oh, of course you couldn't just be here for fun," Donna drawled, taking great delight in the shocked looks on her friends' faces.
"Donna! And Lee! What are you doing here?" the Doctor asked.
"I should be asking you that," Donna retorted. "We actually live on this planet… sort of, part time at least."
"The TARDIS brought us here," Rose told her. "We've been on a series of adventures and she decided to give us one closer to home."
Donna eyed the device in the Doctor's hands. "Well, if we're going to save the Earth, I guess we'd better get moving. Which way are we going?"
The Doctor took a few steps, watching his device, then walked in a circle until he saw the indicator spike. "That way," he said, pointing vaguely southward.
The sun had set and they'd walked through most of Knightsbridge when the Doctor looked up for a moment. A large display of Easter candy in a shop window caught his eye and he raised an eyebrow.
"It's barely March," he complained. "They've only just cleared out the leftover Valentine's chocolate, and now here they've already got the next holiday moving into the space."
Rose smirked at him. "What?" he asked.
"Nothing. Just wait here for a minute."
He watched as she jogged into the nearest shop. From where he was standing, he couldn't see what she was buying—and why was that important when they were tracking down the very-not-London disturbance?
Rose returned a few minutes later and handed him something wrapped in gold foil. "So you don't feel like you've missed the holiday chocolate."
The Doctor laughed and handed her the device. "Have I told you today that I love you?" he asked as he unwrapped the chocolate and broke off a piece of the egg.
They started walking again. "Maybe, but I don't think there's a rule stating you can only say it once a day."
I do love you, he told her as he munched happily on the sweet.
"I don't know how you stay so skinny when you eat all that sugar," Donna said. "And your teeth! They've got to be completely rotten."
The Doctor turned and gave her a toothy grin. "Superior biology," he said smugly.
Donna snorted. "You're trying to tell me that your teeth just magically clean themselves?"
The Doctor continued to watch his device as he took another bite of the chocolate. "Our saliva breaks down the bacteria that causes tooth decay."
Rose had only been half-listening to the exchange. The already busy street was suddenly crawling with police, and sirens in the air indicated more on their way.
"Does that have anything to do with us?" Donna said, noticing the same thing.
"Does what?" the Doctor said, not looking up from his device.
"All of the p-p-police." Lee gestured at the street.
The Doctor finally looked up and blinked several times when he noticed the officers moving quickly up and down the street.
"Interesting," he muttered.
The device pinged, and he looked down at it again, apparently completely dismissing the police activity. "Finally!" he said. "I've got a good heading. We need to go south. I can't tell if it's on the other side of the river, but it's still a ways away."
Donna pointed at the bus across the street. "Any reason we have to walk?"
The Doctor grinned. "Nope! Come on, everyone onboard."
They jogged across the street and quickly filed onto the bus. The driver shook his head. "You're just in time, folks."
The Doctor grinned at him with a cheeky wink. "Oh, we're very good at time," he said while Donna, Lee, and Rose went down the aisle. Then he touched the psychic paper to the Oyster card reader.
The driver opened his mouth to protest, then shut it when the display indicated that all four fares were paid. He blinked, then shut the door and nodded towards the back.
Rose followed Donna and Lee down the aisle and slid into the seat in front of them. The Doctor sat down beside her and grinned. "Allons-y, Rose Tyler!"
"Oi!" Donna tapped him on the back of his head. "What about me and Lee? Don't we rate a mention?"
He rolled his eyes. "Fine, fine… Allons-y, everyone."
The woman sitting in front of them brushed her dark hair back over her ear and turned her face towards the window. "Yes please, let's go," she muttered. The sirens wailed after them, and she flinched in response.
Rose looked out the opposite window at where she could see police lights flashing in the dark, and then back at the woman. Well that's an interesting development.
She tapped the Doctor on the shoulder, intending to fill him in. But as she did, the unfriendly feeling that had been bothering her all afternoon doubled. She shivered and rubbed her hands briskly over her arms, trying to stop the chill.
"Cold?" the Doctor asked. He dropped his chocolate and started to wrap his arm around her shoulders, but his device started beeping in mid-move.
"Ah!"
"Yeah, exactly." Rose grabbed the chocolate off his lap while he fumbled through his pockets for the device. "That weird feeling is getting worse."
The Doctor pulled his detector out of his pocket and flipped it in his hands. "Oh, we've got excitation," he said, waving it so they could all see the flashing lights.
Rose clenched her hands into fists. The unfriendly feeling had settled into a cold pit in her stomach and a prickly sensation down her back.
The Doctor glanced at her, his device held up to his ear. All right?
She shrugged. It feels almost like a fixed point, except I know it's not.
His eyes narrowed. "I'm picking up something very strange," he muttered.
"Well don't leave us in suspense, Spaceman—what is it?" Donna asked as the bus entered the Gladwell Road Tunnel.
The Doctor extended the antenna at the top of the device, and the beeping got louder. "Rhondium particles, that's what I'm looking for. This thing detects them." He flicked the dish. "Look, this should go round, that little dish there."
"Right now, a way out would come in pretty handy," the woman sitting in front of them said. "Can it detect me one of those?"
Rose had almost forgotten about her, and the police cars chasing them. But now she could hear the sirens echoing in the tunnel. I wonder which will get us first, the rhondium particles or the police.
"The d-d-dish is going round now," Lee said.
The Doctor nodded. "And round. Whoa." He jumped up and pivoted slowly in the aisle, trying to sense which direction the excitation was coming from.
The device fritzed, and a spark landed on a blonde woman a few seats in front of them. "Sorry, do you mind?" she asked, brushing her hair back over her shoulder.
The Doctor got up and paced the aisle, staring at his little device. "Sorry," he said absently. "That was my little dish."
Rose smiled at the people watching him dubiously, especially the older couple seated opposite Donna and Lee. "I think we're about to hit a rough patch in the road," she told them. The wrong feeling intensified, and she planted her feet firmly on the floor.
The Doctor's eyes widened, and he dropped the dish back into his pocket. "Rose is right," he said tersely as he returned to their seat. "Donna, Lee, hold on tight." He braced his arms against the seat in front of them. "Everyone, hold on!"
The bus jolted with a crash that sounded like breaking glass. The window over Rose's head broke and she ducked to avoid the falling glass. A bit of deja vu, she thought wryly.
A hard jolt knocked the Doctor out of his seat, but Rose grabbed the back of his jacket and yanked him back down almost without realising she'd done it.
When a blinding white light flashed through the bus, Rose relaxed. No matter how she got there, the Vortex always felt safe to her. And whatever had created this wormhole might not be friendly, but the wormhole itself was stable.
The light disappeared and every window in the bus shattered. Rose winced when she heard the wrenching sound of tearing metal—apparently, a London bus was not made to travel through the Vortex the way a TARDIS was.
The wormhole opened up and dumped them out onto a planet. Rose blinked against the bright sunlight streaming in through the gaping holes in the bus's frame.
The Doctor slowly stood up and held out an automatic hand for Rose. Together, they walked to the front of the bus and pushed the battered door open.
"End of the line," the Doctor mumbled. "Call it a hunch, but I think we've gone a little bit further than Brixton."
"Just a bit," Rose said.
"Come on," the Doctor said, and they skidded down a dune. "There's something a bit flashback-y about this," he added. "Stranded on a bus on an alien world with a bunch of humans."
Rose tightened her grip on his hand. "Yeah, but this time we're together."
"And this time…" The Doctor glanced at Rose, and she felt his unspoken question. Taking a deep breath, she reached out to the TARDIS. Wherever they were—Brixton, or parts farther afield—they were stranded. They would need a way back to London.
In the back of her mind, where her connection with the TARDIS lived, she felt the softest flicker in response to her call. Rose frowned and tried again, but this time, there was no response at all.
Rose?
She opened her eyes and looked at the Doctor. I can't call her, she said. We're too far away, I think.
He nodded, and the lines around his eyes tightened. Makes sense that there's some kind of distance limit, I suppose, he said. Of course the first time we're stranded, we're too far out.
oOoOo
As soon as the bus stopped and the sun started pouring in through the broken windows, Donna pulled her mobile out of her pocket. "Let's hope this works," she muttered as she pressed and held the number 9.
Ten seconds later, a message popped up on her screen. Coordinates sent.
Beside her, she felt Lee draw in a breath of relief she echoed. "That's good," he said.
"Yeah. Now we just need to wait. Come on, let's go tell the Doctor and Rose."
But as they left the bus, most of the rest of the passengers joined them. "Where are we?" asked a blonde woman Donna guessed was in her early 40s.
"It's impossible. There are three suns. Three of them," said a woman Donna guessed was in her early 40s.
The young Black man standing next to her shaded his eyes against the glare. "Like when all those planets were up in the sky."
"But it was the Earth that moved back then, wasn't it?" another young man countered. His fair skin wasn't going to last long beneath three suns.
The first man moaned. "Oh man, we're on another planet!"
Lee stepped forward and rested a hand on his shoulder. "We are, so we need to find a way home," he said, his voice steady as it always was in a crisis. He looked at the bus driver. "Can you drive it?"
Donna nodded at Lee and followed after the Doctor and Rose. He would keep the passengers calm; she needed to talk to them about getting everyone home.
The Doctor had just shambled away from Rose when Donna reached her and tapped her on the shoulder.
"When will the TARDIS get here?" Donna asked.
A furrow creased Rose's forehead. "She's not. I tried to call her to come pick us up, but we're too far away."
Donna snorted. "I didn't mean call her directly with some kind of mind meld thing," she said, trying not to be too weirded out by the idea.
Rose frowned. "Then…"
Donna rolled her eyes. "Sometimes, you're just as bad as Spaceman over there. Use your phone and call Jenny. She can come get us." She waved her phone in front of Rose. "I already did the thing and sent the coordinates."
Rose stared at her. "That's… I mean… That's actually brilliant, Donna."
Donna pursed her lips. "Don't sound so surprised."
Rose laughed as she pulled out her phone. "Never," she promised.
She started to call, then looked at the other passengers standing not too far away. "Come on," she said, motioning for Lee to join them. The more they stayed together, the better.
Jenny picked up on the second ring. "Hiya, Mum."
"Hi Jenny."
The Doctor rocked back and sat on his heels. Jenny? He mouthed, his eyes wide and hopeful. Rose smiled at him as she kept talking.
"Listen, we might have gotten a bit… stuck."
Donna snorted, and Rose made a face at her.
"How do you mean, stuck?" Jenny asked after a short pause.
Rose rubbed her forehead. Jenny was picking up some of her mum's speech mannerisms, and it was a little disconcerting.
"Stuck off world. Could you get to the TARDIS and fly her here?"
"Um…"
A rustling noise came over the line, like Jenny had covered up the microphone. Rose heard muffled voices, then the rustling stopped, replaced by the staticky click of being on speaker phone.
"Are you still there, Rose?"
Rose frowned. "I'm here, Pete."
"Jenny just told me what happened. Where did you park?"
"In Hyde Park, near the Serpentine."
"Okay, we're leaving the Hub now. It'll take us a few hours to get there, though. Are you safe for a bit?"
Rose looked down at the Doctor, knowing he'd picked up every word of the conversation. He nodded.
"Yeah, we'll be fine. See you in a bit."
"See you then."
Donna smirked at Rose as she put the phone back in her pocket. "Well?"
"We just need to wait a few hours, then the TARDIS will be here to pick us up. Thank you, Donna."
The Doctor was playing with a handful of sand, sniffing at it and picking up bits and letting it float away on the wind. "Funny sort of sand, this. There's a trace of something else." He rubbed his fingers in it, then licked his fingertips.
Rose laughed when he stuck his tongue out and made a face. "That's what you get for licking sand."
"Not good," the Doctor pronounced.
"Not good how?" Rose asked, just as Donna said, "Well yeah, it's sand, Dumbo."
"No, it tastes like…" He breathed out heavily through his nose and shook his head. "Never mind," he said quickly as he stood up.
Donna opened her mouth to insist he told them what he was thinking, but Rose shook her head quickly and nodded back towards the bus. Donna followed her gaze and scowled.
One of the passengers had left the group huddled around the mangled bus and was walking their way. Donna had noticed her before and had disliked her on sight. She knew this type of posh woman all too well—the type who dressed all in black so you couldn't help but notice how expensive their clothing was.
The interloper set her backpack down, and the heavy bag left an indentation in the sand. "Well, the four of you seem a little more organised than that group back there."
The Doctor and Rose exchanged a glance, and Donna crossed her arms over her chest.
"We're just experienced in handling emergencies," Rose offered after a second's conversation.
The woman's mouth curved into an amused, almost mocking smile. She reached into a small pocket of her backpack and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.
"So am I," she agreed as she put them on. "Ready for every emergency."
Donna rolled her eyes. "Having a pair of designer sunnies does not count as being ready for an emergency."
The woman didn't respond. She just sidled closer to the Doctor. "And what's your name?"
"I'm the Doctor. This is Rose, Donna, and Lee," he replied, pointing at each of them in turn.
It didn't matter, because she didn't look away from the Doctor. "Name, not rank."
"His name is the Doctor." Rose bit back a sigh.
Donna couldn't tell if she was tired of people always doubting the Doctor's name, or always ignoring everyone else. Either way, she definitely agreed.
The woman spared Rose a quick glance, then focused on the Doctor again. "Surname?" she pressed.
"Listen, sunshine," Donna snapped. "He's told you his name is the Doctor. His wife has told you his name is the Doctor. What more do you need? His passport?"
The woman finally blinked. "You're called the Doctor?" she queried, somewhat disbelievingly.
"Yes, I am." He put his hands in his coat pockets and rocked back on his heels.
She rolled her eyes. "That's not a name. That's a psychological condition."
"Well, what's your name?" Donna demanded.
She sighed. "Christina. Lady Christina de Souza, actually."
"Right," Donna drawled. "Lady Christina. Talk about a psychological condition."
The Doctor turned towards the bus so Christina couldn't see his smirk. But when he saw the young Black man striding towards them, he wished he'd made a different choice.
"Hold on a minute," the man said, waving his finger at the Doctor as he approached, the other passengers and the driver close on his heels. "I saw you, mate. You had that thing, that machine. Did you make this happen?"
"Well if I did it backfired on me, didn't it?"
The man's eyes narrowed, and the Doctor was again reminded of another trip on another bus.
"Look, look, if you must know," he started rambling as the rest of the passengers joined them, "We were tracking a hole in the fabric of reality." The others looked at him in disbelief, and he shrugged. "Call it a hobby.
"But it was a tiny little hole," he insisted, holding up his hand, his fingers only an inch apart. "No danger to anyone. Suddenly it gets big, and we drive right through it."
"But then where is it?" The driver turned and looked at the golden desert. "There's nothing. There's just sand."
"All right." The Doctor walked past the passengers, Rose, Donna, and Lee right behind him. "You want proof? We drove through this."
He grabbed a handful of sand and threw it towards the anomaly. The air shimmered and swirled as the sand hit the wormhole.
He spun back around and was gratified to see the less angry looks from the passengers.
Lady Christina glanced at him, then at the invisible tear behind him. "And that's?"
"It's a wormhole," Rose said, beating him to it. But outside of Donna and Lee, no one else seemed satisfied by her explanation. "A door in space," she clarified.
The driver stepped forward, pointing at the wormhole. "So what you're saying is, on the other side of that is home? We can get to London through there?"
The Doctor shook his head. "The bus came through, but we can't."
Some of the passengers nodded their heads in agreement, but the driver didn't pay attention.
"Well then, what are we waiting for?" he said and rushed past the Doctor.
The Doctor's eyes widened and he pivoted to watch the man. "No, no, don't."
"I'm going home, mate!"
"It won't work," Rose argued. She tried to grab his sleeve as he jogged past her, but he shook her off and jumped into the wormhole.
Rose closed her eyes so she wouldn't see his body disintegrate, but she couldn't shut out his scream. She felt a hand slide into hers, and squeezed Donna's hand back in thanks. Then she took a deep breath and opened her eyes again.
The passengers were all staring in horror at the blank space where the bus driver had been.
The young man who had first accused the Doctor of bringing them through space spoke first. "He was a skeleton, man," he shrieked. "He was bones. Just bones."
"Th-that's what a wormhole d-d-does, if you aren't protected somehow," Lee said quietly. His words didn't seem to soothe the young man, who stumbled to his knees in the sand.
The Doctor cocked an eyebrow, then nodded. "Quite right, Lee."
The Doctor gestured towards the bus. Rose looked at it, taking in the way the top had been peeled off by the wormhole.
"It was the bus," the Doctor explained. "Look at the damage. That was the bus protecting us. Great big box of metal."
"Rather like a Faraday cage?" Christina surmised.
"Like in a thunderstorm, yeah?" another of the passengers said. He had an arm around the woman who'd gotten singed by the the Doctor's device earlier, comforting her as she cried. "Safest place is inside a car, because the metal conducts the lightning right through. We did it in school."
"But if we can only travel back inside the bus…" Lady Christina shook her head. "A Faraday cage needs to be closed. That thing's been ripped wide open."
"Well…"
The Doctor stretched the word out while he thought quickly. It would take Jenny at least two hours to get to the TARDIS. He knew all too well how quickly humans could turn on each other in stressful situations. Giving them a purpose might be the best way to keep them safe until the TARDIS arrived.
He scratched his cheek. "Slightly different dynamics with a wormhole. There's enough metal to make it work, I think. I hope."
Rose stepped forward, brushing her hand on his arm as she moved to let him know she'd followed his line of thought. "We'll have to dig it out of the sand first, though."
"Exactly," Christina said briskly. "Five tons of bus, and we've got nothing but our bare hands. Correct?"
"I'd say nine and a half tons," the Doctor mused, "but the point still stands, yes."
Donna saw the smirk on Lady Christina's face and knew exactly what she was going to say. "All right, Doctor," she said, cutting Christina off before she could take charge. "But can't we go sit inside while you tell us how we're going to get this bus back to Earth?"
"Right, yes." The Doctor nodded and gestured towards the door. "Everybody in."
Lady Christina snapped her mouth shut and stalked towards the bus. Donna caught the twinkle in Rose's eyes and knew her friend realised exactly what she'd just done. She smirked and Rose nodded back.
"Is it safe in there?"
Donna and Rose both turned to the scared young man. "What's your name?" Rose asked.
"Nathan."
"Well Nathan, safe's more of a relative term at the moment," Rose said, and Donna rolled her eyes at that understatement. "But Donna's right—we ought to sit down for a few minutes, and getting out of the sun probably isn't a bad idea either."
He nodded shakily and followed the blonde woman onto the bus, Rose and Donna right behind him.
The Doctor held out a hand to the last passenger, the young Black man still sitting on the sand. "Come on," he said, pulling him to his feet. "I think they're all waiting on us."
The man shrugged and brushed sand off himself. "Does it even matter?" he asked fatalistically.
The Doctor slung an arm over his shoulder and walked them to the bus. "Oh come on… What's your name?"
"Barclay."
"Barclay, I promise you. I have a plan to get us all home safe." He felt some of the tension ease out of the other man's body before letting him go so they could enter the bus.
Barclay took an empty seat, but the Doctor stood at the front of the bus. "Hello, everyone. I'm the Doctor. As I was just telling Barclay here, I have a plan to get us all home."
He took a breath, ready to launch into a ramble on the nature of wormholes and the fabric of reality. Rose prodded the bond gently before he started, and he nodded quickly.
"But before we get into that, let's get to know each other a little. Why don't you start?" he suggested to Lady Christina.
She raised a haughty eyebrow, and the Doctor wondered what had gotten her dander up. "Christina," she said coolly.
"Excellent. And what's your name?" he asked the blonde woman sitting to Christina's right.
"Angela. Angela Whittaker."
He smiled at her, then nodded at Rose, who was sitting in the seat just behind Angela. She waved at the group. "Rose Tyler."
"I'm Donna and this is Lee," Donna said, going next without being asked.
The older Black couple were next. "My name's Louis," he said, a slight West Indies accent colouring his words. "Everyone calls me Lou. And this is Carmen."
The Doctor nodded at Barclay, who gave a faint smile and waved. "I'm Barclay."
And finally, the young man Donna and Rose had encouraged earlier waved weakly at the group. "Nathan."
"Right." The Doctor bounced on his toes. "So, the wormhole. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just an accident."
"No," Carmen interrupted him, her voice louder than it had been before. "It wasn't." She shook her head firmly. "That thing, the doorway? Someone made it for a reason."
The Doctor narrowed his eyes. That fit with the unfriendly feeling, but still…
"How do you know?" Rose asked, beating him to the question.
Carmen sighed and looked down at her hands, but Lou answered, his voice full of pride. "She's got a gift. Ever since she was a little girl, she can just tell things. We do the lottery twice a week."
Lady Christina huffed quietly. "You don't look like millionaires," she muttered.
Rose and Donna both scowled at her, and even Lou's warm good nature cooled. "No, but we win ten pounds," he told her. "Every week, twice a week, ten pounds. Don't tell me that's not a gift."
"I'd take it," Donna said, earning a round of laughter from the group.
The Doctor grinned, then studied Carmen for a moment. He put his hands behind his back and said, "Tell me, Carmen. How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Three."
Could be a coincidence. He added a finger, testing her.
"Four."
His eyebrows rose. "Very good. Low level psychic ability, exacerbated by an alien sun." The Doctor walked down the aisle and sat down next to Rose, across from Lou and Carmen. "What can you see, Carmen? Tell me, what's out there?"
Her eyes unfocused slightly, and the Doctor knew she was listening to something only she could hear. "Something, something is coming. Riding on the wind, and shining."
The uncomfortable feeling—that very-not-London feeling—came back. "What is it?" he asked, though he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answer.
She swallowed, then looked him straight in the eye. "Death. Death is coming."
"We're going to die," Angela gasped, tears coming to her eyes.
Barclay threw himself back in his seat and glared at the Doctor. "I knew it, man. I said so."
"We can't die out here," Nathan protested. "No one's going to find us."
"Oh, now there's a cheerful thought," Christina said sarcastically.
"What is there to be cheerful about?" Barclay growled. "Bloody hell, we're dying on an alien planet and you want to dress it up somehow."
"Quiet," Lou ordered, but no one could hear him over the argument brewing in the front seats.
"I just think there's nothing to be gained by whimpering," Christina countered testily.
The Doctor held his hands out. "All right now, stop it. Everyone, stop it!"
His shout finally quieted the bus. He took a moment to meet everyone's eye, making sure they weren't going to burst out into fighting again as soon as he moved.
In the silence, he realised Angela was still crying, sobbing hysterically. Rose had slid into the seat next to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but the woman didn't seem to notice.
The Doctor joined them, crouching on the floor in front of Angela. "Angela, look at me," he requested firmly. She kept sobbing, and rested a hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently to get her attention. "Angela? Angela? Answer me one question, Angela."
Her sobs slowed to sniffs and she finally looked up at him.
"That's it. At me, at me. There we go. Angela, just answer me one thing. When you got on this bus, where were you going?"
She bit her lip and looked at the floor. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"
Rose squeezed her shoulders. "Come on, Angela. Just answer the question."
She shrugged and wrung her hands together. "Just home."
"And what's home?" the Doctor pressed, wanting her to think about what she had waiting for her back in London.
"Me and Mike." Her voice broke, but she kept going even as her tears returned. "And Suzanne. That's my daughter. She's eighteen."
"See, that's good," Rose said, and Angela nodded, finally a little bit calm.
The Doctor looked up at her. "Rose, what about you?"
Rose raised an eyebrow, and the Doctor shrugged. So everyone knows that we all have a reason to get home.
She smiled. "Jenny, and Mum and Pete."
The Doctor stood up. "Definitely want to get back to Jenny—she's our daughter," he added for the group. "I'm not sure about your mum, though."
"Oi!"
Donna laughed. "You know that most days I'd be glad to strand my mum on an alien planet." She sighed and her smile dimmed. "Gramps though. I'd like to get back to him."
The Doctor nodded. "Lovely man, your Gramps. Lee?"
"J-just home. I was already g-gone too long."
The Doctor winced. After being trapped in the Library for 100 years, and then in Amelia's wall for who knew how long, he didn't blame the man for wanting to be home.
He looked at Barclay, wanting to keep the positive talk going. "What about you?"
"Don't know." He shrugged. "Going round Tina's."
"Who's Tina? Your girlfriend?"
Barclay smirked. "Not yet."
"Good boy," the Doctor cheered, then looked at Nathan. "What about you, Nathan?"
Nathan shrugged sheepishly. "Bit strapped for cash. I lost my job last week. I was going to stay in and watch TV."
"Brilliant," the Doctor said, absolutely meaning it. Everyday life was worth going home to. The more they believed that, the better off they would be.
He looked back at Lou and Carmen. "And you two?"
"I was going to cook," Lou replied.
Carmen nodded. "It's his turn tonight," she said, pointing at him. "Then I clear up."
"What's for tea?"
"Chops," Lou answered. "Nice couple of chops and gravy. Nothing special."
"Oh, that's special, Lou. That is so special. Chops and gravy, mmm." Both Lou and Carmen finally gave him a small smile, and the Doctor turned to the last passenger. "What about you, Christina?"
She blinked, clearly not expecting to be included. "I was… going so far away," she said, and he couldn't tell if she sounded evasive or wistful. Or both?
He shelved the question of Christina and looked around the bus, taking care to meet everyone's gaze. "Far away. Chops and gravy. Watching TV. Jenny and Pete and mums and Gramps. Home. Mike and Suzanne and poor old Tina."
"Hey," Barclay protested.
"Just think of them. Because that planet out there, all three suns, wormholes and alien sand, that planet is nothing. You hear me? Nothing, compared to all those things waiting for you. Food and home and people. Hold on to that, because we're going to get there. I promise. I'm going to get you home."