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Love, Laugh, Die
Author's Note: Oh, look, it took me less than a month to update this time! Now, a lot of this chapter might seem a little unclear. I can assure you everything will be explained clearly in subsequent chapters.
Chapter 7
…
It took nearly an hour for things to settle. The crew were in just as much shock as the passengers, after all. But, eventually, the supervisors leapt into action. The SS Bad Wolf could no longer afford to go on allowing passengers to carry about their daily activities, pretending as though nothing was amiss. Five people had been killed. An entire section of the ship had been demolished. The ship itself was not yet responding to the crew's commands. Things had become serious; emergency action was called for.
Passengers were to return to their cabins and stay there until further notice. Meals would be delivered to cabin doors twice a day. Staff would be available to respond to passengers' needs. The supervisors would also being doing interview rounds over the course of the next coupe of days. After this announcement was made, the passengers were shepherded down to their cabins.
The entire time, the Doctor did not properly respond, not even to Rose's murmured attempts at consolation. He shuffled downstairs with the other passengers and shut himself up in his cabin.
Rose dared to knock at his door two hours later, slipping out of her own cabin and rapping against the wood hesitantly. "Doctor?" she called softly. "Please can I come in?"
There was no answer and she bit her lip. She tried the doorknob. It turned all the way, so she pushed the door open.
Rose hadn't been sure what to expect. Part of her had expected him to be pouring over the blueprints in a fit of quasi-rage, hell bent on getting to the bottom of the murders once and for all. The other, more sensible half had expected his cabin to be a mess; had expected him to look a sobbing wreck. It wouldn't be the first time.
Instead, he had hardly changed. He was sat on the floor with his knees raised up to his chest and his arms hanging limply over them. It looked as if he had been aiming for the bed and had missed, but hadn't bothered to pull himself back up. He stared vaguely downwards, but his eyes did not seem to be seeing anything. He looked dead. Dead and hollow as a drum.
Rose faltered in the doorway a moment, then slid the door neatly shut and sat down next to him. She reached out a hand and, after a moment's frightened pause, laid it on his shoulder.
He reacted instantly, like a viper, one hand shooting up to grab hers. Rose startled but kept her hand there, even as he gripped it so tightly it felt as if he were about to break the bones in her hand.
"You okay?" she whispered after a moment's pause.
He snorted. "What do you think?"
Right. Stupid question. "You don't know the TARDIS is gone," she said softly. "Maybe she managed to dematerialise at the last second."
The Doctor gave a dry, humourless laugh, but he finally turned to look at her. "Ah, Rose Tyler. Always trying to keep her chin up, eh? You're lucky. 'M not very good at the whole hope thing. Funny," he added, "you'd think I'd be used to losing things by now. But still. There's always been her, no matter what, for eight hundred years. Last little bit o' my planet I had left. Home."
She looked down. She wasn't sure if he was referring to the TARDIS or his planet as his home. "Still… you don't know."
"Guess I don't." He let go of her hand and flexed his fingers, then pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. She looked up at him. "I can't get you home without her. You will be stuck, here, for the rest of your life. No way to go back to your family."
"Yeah," said Rose. "Yeah, I know. But 'm good at the hope thing." A beat. "So what you gonna do now?"
He blinked. "What 'm I gonna do about… ?"
"The aliens. Whatever they are. TARDIS or no, we've gotta stop 'em, yeah? You and me. Savin' the worlds, 'til the very end."
"Oh." He paused, nodded. And then it was like a switch had gone off. A lever pulled to bring him back to life. He shot to his feet. There it was, that manic energy, and while Rose knew he was running off it to stay alive, that the broken man who had been sitting next to her mere seconds ago still lurked just under his skin, it was a relief to see the Doctor she was accustomed to.
"We're not to go out of the cabin rooms, they said. Sod that, don't you reckon?"
"Sod that," she agreed, grinning, now pulling herself up to sit on his bed. "You still got material here. Got the sonic 'n' the psychic paper. Got that weird squiggly whatsit of yours."
"Energy reading device."
"Keep telling yourself that. So what do we do? Maria's on duty, all the staff are, but if we run into her – "
He waved this off as irrelevant. Suddenly a new expression took over his features, his eyes ablaze with something Rose had never seen before. "I've got to go down there. Face 'em…. " With a new surge of energy, he grabbed his sonic and the psychic paper, stuffing them into the inner pocket of his leather jacket.
"What?!" Rose stared at him with incredulity. "Doctor, don't be stupid, you can't – we don't even know what those things are yet; and it's dangerous. Aren't you always the one tellin' me to stop thinking on my feet, stop wanderin' off, to use my head?"
"What? Why not? Might be fun. The deep and lovely dark." He laughed shortly. "Who could resist, Rose?"
"Doctor – "
"Rose." He grabbed her by the wrist as she tried to reach out to him, probably a little harder than he'd intended. "Rose, listen. I'm gonna go down there, and you won't be stoppin' me. So if you care about anythin', then listen to me, and wait here."
She bit her lip, still hesitant. "But what if you don't come back?"
She waited for him to say, What, got no faith in me, Rose Tyler?
She waited for him to say, 'Course I will, you know me.
Instead he looked at her long and hard. His grasp slid from her wrist down to her hand, which he gripped tightly, one thumb stroking the smooth skin. Then his other one came up, so that her hand was completely clasped in both of his. He did not smile, just locked eyes with her for a long moment before letting go and turning on his heel.
He walked straight out of the cabin. He did not turn back, and Rose did not try to stop him.
…
The passageways were quite deserted as he made his way down to the engine room. Frankly he'd been expecting them to be patrolled by staff members, but perhaps he'd just gotten lucky.
He exited the main stairwell at Deck D, then had to detour through the passageway to access the stairway leading down to the lower decks. He scanned his passenger card at the door. Just for laughs.
Access denied, of course. He pulled his sonic screwdriver out from his inner pocket, aiming it at the access card panel. Sparks erupted there, and there was a satisfactory little click as the door opened. He pushed.
There was a chill, almost, as he stepped into the stairway, the door closing behind him. It was almost completely dark. The low hum of engines filled the space – white noise – and the air tasted like pennies.
He closed his fist tightly around the handle of the sonic and extended it, holding it at his side as he began to make his way down the three flights of stairs, his every footstep echoing off the coarse concrete.
He waited for something to happen.
Nothing did.
He reached the Deck A landing – last stop. He pulled the door open.
The lowermost deck of the ship was so ill-lit he could barely see a thing. Still, the Doctor marched steadily forward, his free hand held out ever so slightly in front of him. He could just make out the shapes of balconies above, looking down from the two decks over him. He did not, however, feel like he was being watched from those balconies. The creatures he was about to face did not need to watch him.
Somewhere in the corners of his mind he could feel a slight tug, a swelling, the kind of feeling one got from the presence of other psychics. Somewhere, he sensed something whispering – He has arrived.
There was a watertight hatch at the end of this grim passageway. It was open. He was expected.
The Doctor slipped through, into a dizzying brightness.
The main engine room wasn't really all that well-lit, but coming from the darkness as he just had, he found himself blinking like a mole. When his eyes adjusted a moment later, he silently took in his surroundings: hulking masses of engines towering over him, overbearing. Their metal bodies had gone dull and dark with rust, and they had been scratched deep, wounded in places.
He began to edge deeper into the room.
Around him, whispering – no, not quite whispering. Just the presence of.. voices. They were low and hushed, many voices layered and woven together. They pressed against the edges of his mind, brushed against it.
The old stories, it turned out, were true – the Doctor had never encountered one of these creatures before, but he had read of them and heard the tales of old. A great many Time Lords had confronted these creatures in the past, and had told of their experiences.
It seemed all of them had had a way with words.
As he progressed deeper and deeper into the room, the Doctor now saw that more and more of the engines had been defaced. In places, entire chunks of metal had been torn out entirely, the gaps patched up with thin metal panels from which long tubes and wires emitted.
"Doctor."
The voice spoke his language. It was high, soft, and childlike, and so very, very sweet.
He spun, his twin hearts picking up a more rapid beat.
A small giggle. "You have arrived. I knew you would come, though my kin began to doubt you."
He searched the shadows. He sensed movement, but nothing more.
"But I always had the faith they lacked, Doctor. I do hope you're proud of me. I waited, and my expectations were answered."
And then he saw her.
She had a small, slight frame and skinny little arms and legs. Her pale pink nightie fell loosely to her ankles, a bit too large for her small body. Her long dark hair reached her waist and a few stray locks fell into her face. It was bone-white and cracked with fissures that spiderwebbed across her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, as if across a vase; and her eyes were like empty chasms. It was a terrible face, and yet it had a kind of innocence about it, something remarkably childlike, and that was the worst thing about it.
She smiled at him then, blinking her empty eyes, and revealed her teeth, triple rows of tiny, razor-sharp fangs. There were a couple of tooth gaps.
"I know what you are," said the Doctor quietly. He tilted his head and ran his fingers, almost contemplatively, along the rusty metal device the creatures had built. "Reckon I've known it for a while."
"Yes?"
"You're the Dyrfain. Must admit you're the first one o' your people I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Seein' as you're the one what's come out to speak to me, I'd reckon you're the leader. Or what's left of the leaders, anyway. I heard most of the noble families got wiped out."
The Dyrfain creature smiled wider. "And of our purpose?"
"That," he said, folding his hands behind his back, "I know a mite less about. Care to enlighten me?"
Her smile widened, the Cheshire cat who'd gotten the mouse. "Poor Doctor. You must miss your home."
His head snapped up as he glared at her. "No. You don't speak to me about that. I asked you what you wanted. Courtesy to answer."
The Dyrfain took a step closer to him, head cocked to one side. "Impatient, aren't you, Doctor?" She paused. "We miss your home too."
He felt his muscles tense, hands curling into fists. The creature – he would not think of her as a child, he told himself resolutely – seemed to notice this. "It was our home, too, Doctor. You know it. We had settled there thousands of years before the Time War. Your people never quite managed to get rid of us, did they?" She sighed. "You know we had the upper hand."
She began, slowly, to circle the Doctor, making him feel suddenly light-headed. "Yeah. Well." He shook his head, recovering. "They never managed to get rid of cockroaches on Earth, either."
"Oh, I suppose not. But I'm surprised at you, Doctor, really. Resorting to petty insults so early. The Dyrfain have always been aware we were catalogued as a parasite race in the records of old. We hardly minded. We were also aware, after all, that we were more powerful than the Time Lords, in our own way. More powerful as psychics and as a telepath race, certainly.
"I don't suppose you ever bothered to study our history, but you should know we were always wanted far less on our native planet. We can't all be the ruling race, after all. We liked Gallifrey. We were sorry when it was gone. My people called the time we spent there the golden times."
He felt his hands curl into fists again. "Sure, you were sorry. Sorry you wouldn't – consume another one of my people. And let me take a guess. Now you want to take over Earth."
"Take over Earth?" she laughed softly. "Take over Earth? Oh, Doctor, I sense a Time Lord who's spent far too much time dreaming. We hardly want to take over or conquer the Earth. We only want to settle there, the same way we settled on Gallifrey. Share it. We're very few, we wouldn't take up much space. The humans wouldn't even notice we were there."
"So go on living like rats in the sewers, you mean?"
She pouted. "Even the sewers offer a tasty meal. And rats are resourceful little creatures. You know what we did on Gallifrey, how we lived. We intend to continue living in a similar manner on Earth."
"By killing those people? By killing a child?"
"Temper, temper," the creature chided. "Silly Doctor. That's hardly fair. You know well why we took those humans' lives. The war left us with almost nothing. Nothing. You would be surprised how few of my people survived. We needed the energy to seize the ship and rebuild some of our old power, enough to start rebuilding our old kingdom. Just a fraction of what we had. It's hardly a lot to ask. We've collected the amount of human essence necessary. We still need quite a bit more energy now, but... We have no desire to take more humans than we need." She paused and smiled, twirling a lock of hair around her finger.
"And so you need a Time Lord essence," the Doctor said shortly, after a long pause.
"Very good. Yes. We miss your taste."
He snorted. "Aren't you supposed to say that like it's a threat?"
She ignored him. "So, Doctor. You do mean to let us make a happy home on Earth, don't you? It would be so much easier for everybody. No need for a war. And with a title like that, I thought you'd have prided yourself in being a peacemaker."
He stiffened. "No. No. That's not me. Not anymore."
Another smile. This one had a gentle wisdom to it, the kind of smile you only ever saw on an especially perceptive child. It made the cracks on her face blend into her skin, somehow. "Yes," she whispered, her words a lullaby. "Yes, I know." And she held out her hand. When the Doctor made no move to take it, she folded her own hands in front of her.
"Think of our joy when we felt you," she breathed. "The promise of the sweet fluid of Time Lord life bathing our tongues, the warmth that would follow once your essence had filled our stomachs and hearts. After the War we were so crushed, with our cosiest home turned to ash, and believing we would never have a Time Lord or even a mere Gallifreyan to ourselves ever again… oh, it was enough to make us weep." She cocked her head, appraising him.
"You are young," she said at last, "though years away from home have made you forget it. You shall not be altogether very filling, but how nice you'll taste! Some may disagree, but I call it a bargain."
The Doctor stared at her. One sentence stood out to him in particular, for the honesty of her statement was staggering. She was right – he was young, for a Time Lord. But he didn't feel it. He'd been little more than a boy when he'd stolen his TARDIS and run off to touch the stars. Would he feel as youthful as he'd done then if he'd stayed?
The Dyrfain creature suddenly caught his attention as she began to giggle – girlishly, sweetly, horribly. "Oh, but your life shall taste nice," she said. "I can sense it all rolling off you – there's so much guilt, and fear, and anger. I cannot wait to taste the anger – such self-loathing! It consumes you, Time Lord, and I shall consume it. And… " the creature paused, head cocked again. "… do I detect lust? Oh, you'll make a tasty meal indeed. Now I see why I took this form."
The Doctor studied her. "Who are you?" he asked at last, for he thought he understood too.
The child giggled, using a hand to cover her mouth. The Dyrfain took a step closer towards him, then began to circle him slowly, her hands folded in front of her. The dizziness fogged his thoughts again, blurred his sight. He was prepared this time – he screwed his eyes shut and shook his head, clearing the haze.
"I am every child, Doctor," she said, and her voice bounced off every corner of the engine room, creating an echo. "I am every child you ever saved and failed to save. I am every laugh and scream that ever passed through young lips by your hand. I am your guilt. I am your guilt and your hopes and dreams, your moral code and self-betrayals, your victories and your defeats. I am all that you live for, given one universal form.
"I am every child. I am the lonely little boy that ran through bright red fields, laughing and calling out to the stars. I am the little girl you spun in circles underneath a burnt orange sky. I am the children you saved from horrible fates, before they were even aware that they were in danger. And I am, too, the children that burned on a battlefield, on the remains of what was once a beautiful red meadow, screaming and sobbing, while you flew away. I am every child, Doctor, and I believe that now you understand why."
The Doctor bowed his head. "Yes," he said quietly, "I reckon I do."
At some point she had gotten close enough to touch him, cradling his calloused hands in her small, smooth ones. The Doctor took a step back, wrenching his hands from her grip.
"So what shall it be, Time Lord?" she whispered, her empty eyes trained up on him.
"Oi, listen. Now, this is all very lovely, but I've wasted a lot of time. I need to get goin'. And I bloody dare you to try and just stop me. We both know you don't work that way." He spun on his heel.
She folded her hands and stood still as he made his way out with brisk, pointed steps. "You can't fool us, Doctor," she called after him. "You've already come to your decision. We already know what it is."