A/N: This is a major edit of my last chapter. I decided that I didn't like it ... so I obliterated the whole last bit of it and completely rewrote it.
I am much more happy with this version ... I truly hope that you are too.
~~oooOOOooo~~
There was something quite thrilling about being on the back of a beast that was travelling at it's fastest speed. He had spent quite a lot of time on horseback on earth, and on the back of the glederbeast back on Gallifrey when he was a youngster. He always felt so incredibly powerful; that no man or beast could touch him whenever he had his ride at full throttle.
Tonight was no different.
Tonight he was a newly regenerated man. A dashing hero riding with purpose, ready to burst into the frey to save his honoured damsel from whatever evil threatened her.
Whimsical though that sentiment was, he was most certainly dressed for the part. There was no reason he couldn't indulge in a little whimsical fantasy here and there. And so help any man or puppet that was threatening his fair Rose this eve. He would slay them all. Each and every one of them…
He inhaled deep to call out Geronimo once more, and found the words get captured inside his throat at the heady scent that drew inside his lungs.
His head dropped and a frown creased his features as he analysed the scent to attempt to confirm, and then maybe make sense of just what it was.
Lindos.
He shook his head.
No. It couldn't be.
He sniffed at himself much like a man in a gymnasium might smell his armpits in search of body odor. He picked up his own scent of the Lindos hormone. He knew he was still rippling with it, he would be for at least the next fifteen hours. Until his regeneration was complete, that scent was going to surround him like an invisible shield.
But this scent didn't belong to him. It was … well it smelled younger than the Lindos he produced. It degraded and changed with age and regenerations. His was waning in strength and odor, this particular release, well… well it was far more crisp and pungent. This was the scent of a Time Lord exiting what was very likely a first regeneration.
But that was impossible! All of the Time Lords were gone. He was the last. How was there another regenerating Lord of Time, when there were none left to roam?
His beast suddenly whinnied with fear and jerked hard off to one side. The Doctor, distracted by his thoughts, wasn't able to react well enough in time to stay in the saddle. With an undignified yelp, he tumbled off the back of the beast and onto his ass in the gravel.
The Wroddosk took off down the road, leaving him in an undignified heap in the bush.
"Oh," he muttered with his palm covering his forehead in disbelief. "Well, that didn't exactly go to plan now, did it?"
He half expected to hear Rose give him an amused chiding about his lack of grace and the fact that his plan wasn't coming together, followed by a grin and an American purr about loving plans that did come together, but he received no such comments.
Rassilon's robes he was worried about her.
He was also concerned about the possibility of another Time Lord being alive, and while he most certainly hoped that it wasn't the case, he was wondering if this planet and its clockwork inhabitants were a rogue Time Lord's doing?
Nah. Far too elaborate for one of them to pull off…
He pursed his lips and hauled himself to his feet. He brushed off his thighs and shook his head with worry as he launched into a run.
He could count on one hand a very specific number of Time Lords and Ladies that were just insane enough to want to pull a stunt like this. It might explain how his TARDIS ended up here in the first place.
Rani. The Master. The Meddling Monk. Even Borusa might have the want to pull off something so bizarre, given his insanity toward the end of the war...
He weaved himself around a large boulder in the road and kept his mind running as fast as his legs were.
He'd witnessed their deaths, though. Well. Not witnessed per se, but he had heard about each of their demises in the reports out of the Citadel during the time War. There was a slight possibility that one of them may have escaped and that reports of their deaths were misreported…
…Unlikely, however.
He continued to run hard along the road, and found himself struggling to do so after having just completed a regeneration. Typically his regenerations had come at the end of a battle, and he'd be afforded some time to let his new body take hold and sleep off any regeneration sickness in the safety of his TARDIS. This time, however, he was still arse-deep in danger and mayhem, and Rose was missing and considered captured and in peril. That meant that despite being a Time Lord, time was a luxury not available to him. He would just have to let this new body hit the floor at a run and hope and pray to Rassilon above that he wouldn't succumb to any of the maladies and sluggishness that would typically affect a new regeneration.
Keeping his balance as he bolted toward the city was a good start. One thing that became apparent very quickly was that he would need to run with his arms flailing about if he hoped not to stumble and fall to the ground. A different running speed and an unfamiliar gait meant that stopping was going to be a trial of sorts. Should he skip, hop, and stumble to a stop, or would he have to skid his shoes in the gravel and let friction slow him down?
That question had an additional scenario added in, when he found himself at a fast approach toward a woman who also appeared to be on a determined run … heading straight toward him … on a rather thin road .. surrounded by thick brush that would make him have to run a steeple chase over hedges in order not to hit her.
… He wasn't sure that he had that kind of coordination this time around.
With a holler of apology, the Doctor curled his arms around the waist of the woman and spun them all in place to switch their positions so that they could continue along their respective ways.
Before he had a chance to set her feet on the ground, however, the intoxicating aroma of high-quality and potent Lindos energy danced into his nostrils. He drew in a long breath of and let it hold before he exhaled with a moan.
The woman inside his arms wriggled and growled to be let down.
With her struggle, and his refusal to let her down, the Doctor looked closer at the woman in his hold. He couldn't help but gasp at her beauty. Her hair was as black as a raven's wing and as smooth as the stillest waters. Her eyes were a magnificent hazel green that seemed to swirl with the very essence of the universe itself. She was taller than the average humanoid woman that he'd encountered before. Her face was pale, and dusted lightly with freckles. She had rich and naturally ruby lips and eyes lined dark with thick lashes and an adorable button nose. Her scent of time swirled around him like a cloak and wrapped around his hearts.
… the Doctor was immediately enamoured by her.
Her hands beat against his chest and her legs kicked against his shins, but he felt no pain from them at all.
"You," he breathed out long on a reverent breath. "You are magnificent."
The woman finally shoved herself out of his hold and stumbled backward with a pant and a gasp. She was slightly hunched and pointed a finger of accusation at him.
"What'dya think you're doin'?" she asked angrily as she struggled to steady her breath.
"I'm sorry," he pleaded, both hands held ahead of him in surrender. "It was either scoop you up into my arms, or ... " he stopped with a frown. "Was it a scoop, or was it a wrap and spin action?"
"It was a touch and feel is what it was," she corrected him sharply. "And I don't much appreciate you manhandling me like that."
He rolled his eyes and huffed lightly. "It was either I manhandle you," he amended. "Or I barrel straight through you. Which would you prefer?"
She pointed off toward the bushes at the side of the road. "You're tall and lanky enough, go over them and –" She stopped sharply at his grunt of annoyance. Her eyes narrowed. "You know what? I don't have time for this. I need to find my friend before he gets himself …" She swallowed in lieu of actually speaking the word that ended that sentence. She didn't want to say it.
The Doctor inhaled a deep sniff through his nose and offered her a nod of agreement. "Quite right. I have a friend of mine in peril as well."
"Girlfriend?" she asked softly.
"Yes," he admitted with a croak in his voice. He quickly cleared his throat and thumbed at his nose. "That is to say a girl who is a friend. A good friend. A very special friend in fact." He looked back over his shoulder. "I should really get to her."
"I'm sorry," she breathed with empathy. "I hope you find her."
"And yours," he queried curiously. "A boyfriend?"
"You mean a friend who is a boy?" she said with sadness. "Yeah. Yeah. Something like that."
She thumbed back over her shoulder. "Well. I should be off, you know." She smiled weakly. "He's useless without me."
The Doctor nodded. "Much as I'm useless without my friend."
"Men usually are," she offered with a small smile. She looked to one side, and then to the other, and then looked back at him with a smile that split across her face. "Well. Gotto go. Good luck."
"Yes," he muttered to himself as he watched her spin and launch into a run away from him. "Good luck to you, my lady."
He watched her until she had disappeared deep into the darkness and then turned on his heel to run back toward the village. He could not afford to let his mind trail to the possibility that he was no longer alone in the universe; that somewhere, out there, some of his people still roamed.
The cottage where he'd left Rose appeared faster than he'd expected it to. And it was dark. So very dark. And quiet. Unnervingly so. The stillness of the cottage, and the darkness within terrified him. He didn't slow as he came to the front door, instead he put on an extra burst of speed and threw himself through the door like a madman. There was no pause at the doorway or at the base of the stairs to assess any perils that stood between he and Rose Tyler. He climbed the stairs, two steps at a time, as he hollered out desperately for Rose.
He saw no movement; nothing; as he burst up the top step into the open foyer between the bedrooms and the bathroom. Both hearts hammered desperately inside his chest and terror settled on his shoulders as he inhaled deeply to capture the scents of the cottage to assess just what may lie behind every door.
He had a feeling that whatever lay on the other side was an image that he would have to prepare himself wholly for. No movement at all was an eerie and morbid sign.
He inhaled deeply and catalogued each and every one of the scents around him. The metallic twang of greased gears and spilt hydrolic fluid was the least of the pungent smells, and was most definitely a more encouraging scent. If Rose had managed to somehow destroy the puppets, then perhaps she was able to escape…
…and he'd expect no less of her, his magnificent pink and yellow human girl.
He had to smile at the thought of her kicking some robot butt and scarpering back to the TARDIS. Oh what a sight that would be to behold.
…he desperately hoped that was the case and that Rose was nestled safely inside his TARDIS.
He looked to his left and to a room where the door was only slightly ajar. There was a slight whirring sound coming from within. With caution born of so many centuries of danger, the Doctor warily approached the room. He help his chin low and looked past his brows as he pressed his temple to the wall and let both his sense of smell and his ears tell him what danger was lurking beyond the door.
…The smell that assaulted his senses; the crisp and tangy metal scent of Lindos energy; drew something primal within him.
Inside that room, something had assaulted one of the last remaining members of his people enough that she was forced to regenerate. And if they'd tried to kill a Time Lady, then the odds were that his precious Rose had succumbed to the same.
And whomever it was that harmed her, was going to pay dearly for it.
With a deep and booming roar, the doctor slammed his shoulder against the lilting wooden door and forced his way inside. His boots stepped hard onto metal fragments and slid inside blackened oil. Darkness still hung over him like a heavy curtain drape, and so he snatched his sonic screw driver from his pocket and let it light up with a buzz to scan the room.
IF there was any doubt that a full and violent regeneration had occurred in this room, then the state of it very much eliminated it. The scorch marks and burn patterns, more ash grey than black and still lightly glowing with amber energy, as well as the perfect silhouette of e female form, as a void space amongst the charring, left little doubt that his mysterious Time Lady had met her previous incarnation's demise in this very space.
He blinked sadly in sympathy for whatever torture led to her regeneration, and then panned his light slowly across the carpet in hopes that he might find a sign of the woman he'd destroy planets to protect.
"Where are you, rose?" he breathed hopelessly to himself. Lump after lump of torn and charred fabrics, surrounded him. He searched throughout the mess to see if he could see the colours of her dress in the blue light of his sonic, and the more stillness he saw, the more the hope within his chest began to wane.
The Time Lady had survived whatever happened in here, but it didn't appear that Rose had been so fortunate. How could he expect that she had? If the torture had been enough to take down a lady of time, there was no way that Rose's inferior biology could withstand it.
HE couldn't fight the tear that rolled down his cheek as his hearts shattered inside his chest.
"Oh, Rose," he breathed to himself. "I'm so sorry."
There was a whirring sound behind him, and the Doctor immediately spun in place to address whomever had encroached into his space. He held his sonic screwdriver with an outstretched arm into the broken and warped face of Oein.
"Doctor…" the voice crackled and popped through an unmoving mouth.
"What have you done with Rose," the Doctor growled darkly in reply. "And you'd better tell me she's alive, or else I'll rip you gear from gear." He took a breath. "And then, when I'm done with you, I'm going to return to my TARDIS and make sure that this entire planet is completely and irrevocably obliterated."
Oein cracked a static reply that was indecipherable.
"In fact," the Doctor continued with a darker and more dangerous tone. "I'll do better than simply obliterate you. I have the power to make sure you, and whatever created you never existed I the first place. I'm a Time Lord; from a peoples who can control and wield time like a weapon."
His head swam a little through the air, much like a snake issuing a threat to a predator. "Don't you think for a second that I won't wield that power." He moved in close, nose against nose. "Now tell me. Where is she?"
The broken static voice of Oein rattled out her name, but stumbled over trying to offer anything further.
The Doctor growled hotly through an open mouth, spraying spittle against the puppet's face. He lifted his sonic and dug it into Oein's temple and pressed hard against the trigger. Blue light and a piecing whistle of sonic waves echoed throughout the room.
"Tell me!" the Doctor bellowed in demand as Oein stumbled to a knee. HE kept that sonic screwdriver buried deep and hard against the man's temple. "What happened to Rose?"
Oein's eyes lit up with the same brilliant blue as the sonic and the static smoothed out to return to the same smooth voice of the elderly man the Doctor had met only a few hours earlier.
"Light," he answered the Doctor cryptically. "The Rose burst into a flaming tree of yellow light."
The Doctor frowned in puzzlement. "She did what?"
"They shot her, Doctor, as they always do to the girl," Oein admitted with defeat. "Very few ever survive when they come through here, least of all the women." His lighted blue eyes looked up intot he Doctor's face. "Rose lasted longer than the others. Oh, but she had spirit that child. Spirit and bravery like none I've ever seen."
The Doctor sneered. He leaned further over Oein and dug his sonic harder into the puppet's skull. "And so what; you thought to destroy a spirit like that? For what reason?"
"For treason," he answered simply. "Against our Lord."
The Doctor's voice softened. "You killed her?"
"Not me," Oein answered soothly. "I merely trap them. Branson, however. He is the leader of the execution squad, and he is the one who pulls the trigger."
The Doctor let out a staggered breath of utter and absolute heartbreak. He inhaled a shaking breath through his nose and tried to firm himself up. HE held onto his anger. "And where can I find this .. this Branson?"
Oein looked over the Doctor's shoulder toward a shattered mass of wires, cogs and oil. "That's where you'll find him."
The Doctor looked at the pile and then back to Oein. The pressure of the sonic against his temple was lessened, but the Doctor didn't take it away completely. "Who destroyed him?"
Oein chuckled. "Rose did."
The Doctor's eyes shot wide. "Excuse me?"
"Branson took to her with a musket," Oein said without emotion. "Held the musket to her breast and pulled the trigger to end her life." He paused and looked back up to the Doctor's face. "But your Rose wouldn't be taken so easily."
Fear washed over the Doctor. "What happened?"
"An explosion of light and fire," Oein stated with awe. "The spirit within her burst free when the bullets pierced her chest. Bright lights and hot fire burst from her neck and her hands, dripping from her fingertips like melting wax from a candle." He smiled as best he could through a warped mouth. "Magnificent to behold, if one dared to do so, Doctor."
The Doctor gulped. "No…"
"Oh, but one can't watch the holy spirit, can they? Anyone who dared look upon her was incinerated by her fire, and one by one they fell." He groaned. "Some tried to fight, credit where credit is due, I suppose, but you can't fight the hands of Gods. They shattered and fell."
The Doctor's voice fell to a whisper as his mind worked back to the woman he'd seen running barefoot and frightened on the road.
"Tell me what happened to her."
"Your Rose is gone," Oein answered in a voice slowly waning and slowing out. "Gone and replaced by another."
"What do you mean?" Oh, he didn't need to ask that. The Doctor had a fair idea that he knew exactly what it meant …
…How it was possible, however … that was another thing entirely.
"Rose perished in the flames, Doctor," Oein replied with static now returning to his voice. "And in her place a new Rose Tyler emerged. Raven hair, ivory skin…."
"Hazel eyes that swirl with the universe itself," the Doctor finished. His breath flew into him with a gasp. ''By the rule of Rassilon, the Time Lady … Rose?"
How?
"He'll kill her again, our Lord," Oein warned, barely understandable through static. "You'd best go to her."
The Doctor stopped his Sonic and let it hang at his side as he quickly straightened to his full height. His mind cried out to him to do exactly as Oein had told him to do, but he found himself somewhat unable to make any of his muscles obey any of his mind's commands to run to the TARDIS and make sure Rose was …
… was a Time Lady?
No. No. That was impossible. Completely and utterly and quite properly impossible…
…But then again, so was Rose.
HE didn't know if he should let himself hope as much as he was right now; but he wasn't going to abandon that hope altogether. He said nothing further to the broken puppet on the floor, and he paid no mind to anything else around him as he turned and fled the room.
He took the full staircase in only two lanky strides and then bounded out of the front door to take to the street like a mad man. If Oein was right, and his Human Rose was now a Gallifreyan Akrytior, then he needed to get to her as quickly as possible…
…hopefully before she found a mirror.
