A/N: Have to ninja post today ... ran out of time!
Thanks for your comments! Love them all!
Hope you enjoy this section... (30Aug17 - Deleted the last section of this chapter .. didnt' like it at all .. rewritten entirely in the next chapter)
~~oooOOOooo~~
Rose emerged from the fire with a gulping gasp of breath and a stumble of her shoulder against the wall. For a moment, she let herself curl into a slouch as she battled to catch her breath and tried to calm her thundering heart. God, it was racing; pounding against her ribs with such violence that she thought for sure it was throwing itself left and right inside her chest trying to escape.
She punched her fist against her chest in a fool's attempt at calming it and then twisted herself in place so that she could press her back up against the wall. She braced herself in that position and tried to make sense of her surroundings and just how she'd managed to survive a point-blank shot of a musket to her chest.
Her chest.
She flattened her palm against the thin cotton fabric covering her bosom and winced to discover a sticky, sickly wetness against her skin. She winced before she dared look, and held her breath as she let her eyes fall upon her open hand. It was covered in a sticky orange-red substance. It may have been blood, but it didn't have the deep crimson hue that she would have expected to see. With a bite at the inside of her cheek, she dared pull out the top of her blouse.
Clean. Her skin was clean and unmarred from the gunshot.
She fell into a deeper slouch and let out a long breath of relief. Whatever the ammunition in the gun, it obviously wasn't powerful enough to penetrate human skin – which was a laugh. Human skin was pretty penetrable by most things … even a piece of paper could slice a pretty painful cut.
Alive and assured that she was in one piece, Rose finally let her attention fall to the situation at hand: She was taken captive by the soldiers of King – or was it Lord? – George. She and the Doctor had been betrayed by Bess and Oein…
She frowned.
She was held captive. Tied and bound at gunpoint by a group of men, who were laughing, leering, and pointing guns at her … but where were they now?
She chewed lightly on her tongue and took a look around the room. It was vastly different to how it was before her captor took a shot at her. Moments ago it was pristinely made and immaculately kept. Now it was a mess of metal, gears and oily sludge, torn and scorched clothing, and walls blackened with soot. There wasn't a single person to be seen, yet only moments ago this room held at least six people.
The only thing that made sense was that perhaps the Doctor had realized that they'd been betrayed and had returned as the Storm in all his glory to obliterate everyone and everything that stood to harm either her or the TARDIS…
…Well, that was wishful thinking and then some…
She found herself actually chuckling at the thought of the Doctor circling back to ride like a mad man with his sonic screwdriver brandished high over his head, hollering out a cry of attack as the dirt road smoked and spat up gravel behind him.
…and in those tight pants and all. A real Prince Charming.
She shook her head and bit at her cheek as she carefully pulled herself from the wall and approached the doorway of the bedroom. She stumbled as she took her first tentative steps and thrust her arm out to find stability with her hand against the wall. Another step and she staggered once more. She felt as though her gait was wrong, like her stride that she'd crafted and perfected over her twenty one years didn't match her legs and feet. She stopped a moment, figuring it was panic that was causing her to stumble, and then closed her eyes to concentrate.
When she closed her eyes to concentrate a full range of heightened senses seemed to come online: There was a metallic taste inside her mouth. It wasn't quite the flavour of iron as she would have expected, but it was a metallic tang none the less. It wasn't blood, she knew the taste of that well enough, but it was a flavour that seemed to be a warning all in itself: The after effects of something traumatic? Probably. She was terrified and confused after all, so it made sense. Her nose picked up a scent that was as tangy and metallic as the taste upon her tongue. It wasn't anything recognisable to her, but she knew it was a scent that was organic in nature. This wasn't the smell of dirt and trash and machinery, this was something else entirely.
There was a hiss. A hush. A song and then the sound of white noise inside her head. It swished and hissed and crackled much like a radio station that couldn't quite be located on an old turn-dial wireless radio. It wasn't a sound that was captured by her ears – no, she could hear the outward sounds of nature and the settling house – this was internal. It was a dream-state symphony inside her mind that simply couldn't completely clear itself into one distinct or discernible sound.
"Ahhhhh," she breathed to herself with an untrained and unsure self-diagnosis. "I must've hit my head pretty good."
It was a concussion; what else could it be? Staggered gait, cottony dry mouth, strange sounds in her mind and brilliant colours across her eyes, confusion and disorientation.
No mind on all that. An Aspirin or two from the TARDIS med-bay would sort all of that out well enough…
There was a sudden jolt down along her back at that consideration and a negative blaring inside her mind; both of which caused her to gasp and stumble.
"Okay, okay," she breathed hurriedly to herself. "No aspirin, apparently. How about a Panadol instead?"
She didn't expect an answer, but seemed to receive a more calm sense of white noise inside her head; white noise that she desperately hoped a good night sleep in her TARDIS bed would eliminate. It was very distracting and very annoying.
She absently scratched at the back of her head as she cautiously and carefully paced toward the door. Hoping not to startle or encounter anyone who might be armed, she curled quietly around the thick wooden doorframe and into the darkened hallway that led toward the stairs.
Empty.
Empty and very very quiet.
Rose licked at her lip and then stuck the very tip of her tongue into the edge of her mouth as she stepped into the dark and shadowed hallway. She blew a silent and soundless whistle between her lips and paused to remove her shoes. This close to an undetected escape, and she didn't want to risk making any unnecessary sounds. Her boots, leather and wood, clicked, squeaked, and clunked with every step, so she had to lose them. She even removed her socks and then stepped as carefully as she could so as not to make the wooden floorboards creak under her weight.
One step at a time, she descended the stairs. There were no lights downstairs; nothing to show any life or movement inside the cottage. It felt as though she was alone, but she knew it was unlikely they'd left her alone. Any misstep and she would be captured once again. She bit at the very edge of her lips, squinted in the darkness to see through the dark, and prayed to any and all deities watching that she'd make it out and to the Doctor and his TARDIS without being discovered.
Her hand was light on the railing, but ready to flex if she needed to quickly push, and her feet were soft and weightless on the stairs. There were only a few short metres to cross and she'd be outside and free…
A brilliant flash of lightning lit up the sky, and the entire cottage. Brilliant white light flickered and sizzled through the air, the electricity crackling as it devoured all of the moisture around her. Another flash, and then another.
Rose took the last two steps in a single stride and paused with a shudder in her bones as she waited for the chest pounding crash of thunder that she knew had to be coming next. There was no planet shattering boom of any kind, but the lightning flickered and flashed outside once more.
Over her shoulder, she saw the silhouette of a person hunched over and glaring directly at her. The bright white light shadowed the face in such a way that it offered her an eerie and haunted expression of hatred and anger.
She let out a yelp of shock and fear and stumbled forward, almost colliding with the unnamed person. Her hands thrust out to shove him away from her, and he fell with a crash to the ground, his chest and head shattering into a smattering of metal chunks and gears that rolled across the floor at her feet.
There was no further time to waste, Rose decided quickly, and certainly no time to wonder just what the hell that was. She flicked her head side to side in search of anyone else and then launched toward the doorway. Her need for escape was such that she barely waited the flick the latch on the door before she shoved her shoulder against it to slam it open.
Although in an extreme rush to get to safety, she paused in the doorway to best assess which direction she needed to run. There was only one way to go: toward the TARDIS.
She turned toward the direction that would take her to the sentient time ship, and found herself shielding her eyes with her forearm against another flash of lightning off in the distance… Only this flash of light was different to all the others that had been violently flashing since she'd been captured. This wasn't white, it was a hot golden yellow, and it flashed a more sustained blast than any of the other forks of lightning, and appeared to be much, much more dangerous….
~~oooOOOooo~~
Oh how he hated regenerating.
This was his eleventh time at ripping apart and rewriting every single cell and atom in his body. Eleven times and still he was as terrified and hateful of it as he was when he first underwent the change of the Time Lords back … oh … back when he was only in his second century.
He'd like to admit that he was an old hat at it now and that he had full control over the change and the man he would become next, but that would be a lie. He wasn't Romanadvoratrelundar, who had obviously been awake during those lectures at the Academy that would give her total control over her own regenerations. Truth was he usually didn't particularly care about what he'd look like and who he would be come after the lindos had waned and a new man rose where the old man had fallen.
But. While he might not have had control on the rewritten script of who he would become, he certainly had control over just where he was going to funnel out those delightfully destructive regeneration energies…
…and those destructive forces were going to be aimed at each and every one of those murderous clockwork robots posing as loyal humanoid subjects to an evil ruling overlord.
When he felt the regeneration energy buiding up in his shoulder blades, he spread his arms outward; pointing them toward the small band of men in a semi-circle around him.
"You don't even get a warning," he growled through gritted teeth.
The energy within him finally burst forth, and with a cry to the purple sky above him, he erupted into hot amber flames.
And within only a moment, he hiccupped and the flames died down to nothing. He staggered in place and drew in his first deep gasp into a new set of lungs.
"Woah," he blew out on an exhausted breath. "That never gets any easier."
Part of him wanted to take some time to check that he was still typically Gallifreyan in appearance – although he figured that was just par for the course unless he controlled it otherwise. He could certainly sense that this was the case. But to be sure he made a rather swift assessment of his current form. He had two legs, two arms, two hearts, two eyes, two of each of the most important parts of his body…
…And that's all that mattered, really. Any further analysis could wait until after he'd found Rose, after they were safely in the TARDIS, and after he'd flown them into the Vortex away from any of the perils on the ground.
His body still rippled with hot regeneration energy, and he knew it would make his run toward the village slow and cumbersome. He also wasn't used to moving inside this new body – who knew if he would be as lithe and sleek as a gazelle or as uncoordinated as a drunken giraffe?
Oh, this might take a while…
A whinny at his side, and the hard shuffle of a heavy beast quickly stole the Doctor's attention. He flicked his head to his left, and saw the long muzzle of his Wroddosk glistening in the twin moonlight. The animal was spooked, that was clear. It stomped impatiently into the ground, and in place, too scared to run.
The Doctor blew out a light hiss for calm and slowly raised his hand to the large beast.
"Shhh there," he ventured carefully. "I'm not going to hurt you."
The wroddosk continued to stamp and snort. It looked with terror from side to side, eager to run, but still too frightened to do so.
"Please don't fear me," the Doctor said with a smile. "I'm the least scary thing around here." He tilted his head to the side and finally touched the palm of his hand to the long nose of the beast. "And like you – but not like any of the other riders who left with me tonight - I'm very much alive."
He lifted his other hand and made a gentle cooing sound as he stepped a stride closer to the wroddosk and encouraged it to nuzzle against his chest. "I promise you that the last thing I would want to do is to harm a magnificent creature such as yourself."
He Wroddosk finally stepped forward with trust and allowed both man and beast to stand together, forehead against forehead. The Doctor whimpered just slightly when he heard the beast's voice in his mind and spoke of his confusion and terror, and of the eons of fighting and warfare.
The Doctor's eyes were closed and his forehead remained pressed against the Wroddosk's. "I promise you that I'll put a stop to this," he vowed gently. "I promise you."
He opened his eyes and found himself looking into the deep hazel pair of eyes of his steed. "But for me to do that, I need to ask you a favour."
He chuckled at the word anything dancing across his mind in response.
"I'd be very careful of making that offer," the Doctor joked on a whisper. "But let me assure you that my request isn't too great." He inhaled and kept his voice a whisper. "Please. I need you to take me back to the village. Take me to Rose…"
Your mate?
The Doctor's breath caught, and then held, as he considered that question. He blew it our long and slow and slowly rocked his head side to side without breaking contact with the Wroddosk.
"I am not so lucky," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean I don't hold her in the same regard as I would if she was my mate." His voice cracked just slightly as his face contorted into a wince of pleading. "Please. Rose is everything I believe in; she keeps me fighting; makes me a survivor. You have to help me help her."
The Wroddosk broke their connection before a clear answer was given, and for a moment the Doctor slouched with remorse and defeat. The beast, however, stomped with encouragement for him to mount.
"Thank you," the Doctor cheered with a smile as he hooked his foot into a stirrup and pulled himself up into the saddle. He petted the beast's thick neck and gave a light kick of his heels to spur the wroddosk into action. "Let's go find my Rose," he called out with a cheer and his fist held up victoriously in the air.
"Geronimo!"
~~oooOOOooo~~
Rose stumbled in her run toward the TARDIS. The lightning was no longer lighting her path, and she stumbled and tripped on a dirt road illuminated only by the twin moons above her head. She'd stumbled to her knees on more than one occasion, and although she had been running for what felt like an hour, she'd only managed to make it into the town centre. She had a long way to go before she met with the TARDIS parked in the woods.
The thundering of hooves on the gravel road ahead of her had Rose skidding to a stop. She was still in her bare feet, and although she was able to grit her teeth through the pain of the rocks digging into the tender soles of her feet, she was unable to suppress the yelp of pain that dragging them through the dirt caused.
Once again, she stumbled to her knees in the dirt. This time, however, she was slower to rise back to her feet as she had done every other time. She could hear that the beast was close, and knew that she would never be able to escape a man on horseback.
She lifted to her feet and slouched in defeat and she considered for just one moment waiting around for capture. That moment lasted for only a heartbeat, however, and very quickly she determined that she wasn't about to be captured again – not while the Doctor was still in danger at any rate.
With renewed purpose, Rose curled her toes to try and take out the pain and then launched herself back into a run toward the TARDIS.
All she could do was hope that the Doctor wasn't too far away.
"Doctor, where are you?"
~~oooOOOooo~~
