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Love, Laugh, Die
Author's Note: And… it's the end! Gosh, it's been quite a ride, hasn't it? Many thanks to everyone who faved/followed or took the time to review this story. As ever, I would appreciate any and all feedback anyone might have – whether in regards to the characters, the development of the plot, the Dyrfain, or the ending you're about to read. Anything. Anything at all. Virtual banana to anyone who might have constructive criticism for me. Bananas are good.
Now we must enjoy Series 10! Because HOW FANTASTIC WAS THAT SERIES STARTER. HOW FANTASTIC WAS THAT TARDIS REACTION. Man, I already adore Bill; she's fantastic and fits right in. While I'm hesitant about Nardole being around 24/7 (he's… something of a third wheel right now), I love Matt Lucas and hopefully he'll get a bit more development and purpose as the series continues. And, oh, Peter Capaldi, I'm going to miss you…
Epilogue
Everybody knows that everybody dies. And nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.
…
Thud.
The entire ship shuddered as it descended onto the elevated landing pad. Rose nearly tipped over into the Doctor and giggled a little.
Their fellow passengers glanced over at them. All had gathered in the passageways of their respective decks. The mood was painfully sombre.
It had been a week since the Dyrfain had fled the ship. A week since the Doctor, after a period of just under two hours, had finally summed up the energy to drag himself to his feet and stumble up from the engine room to the upper decks. A week since he'd all but collapsed on the floor just outside his cabin – he was doing an awful lot of collapsing of late.
Rose had burst out of her cabin room, and she'd dropped to her knees next to him and righted him, hands pressed firmly on his shoulders. This he remembered clearly. The rest was something of a haze. He'd muttered something about having won, and then the next thing he knew he'd been seated on edge of her bed. She'd called for a cup of tea, and a staff member had arrived with a watery, oversweet cup, which Rose had thrust at him before dropping expectantly into the desk chair. The Doctor remembered sitting there, cupping the lukewarm mug in his hands, and while he couldn't quite remember everything he'd told Rose, he was certain he'd told her most of it. He owed her as much.
The one other thing he remembered clearly of that night – had it been nighttime? He had no idea, had no idea at what time he'd woken up from his previous visit to the engine room in the first place – was Rose, pursing her lips and nodding once he'd finished his tale. "Do you have a headache?" she'd asked him.
He'd laughed dryly. "Oh, yeah."
"All right. You let me know when it stops hurting, won'tcha?"
"Didn't know you cared so much, Rose Tyler."
"'s not that. It's so I can give you a good whack over the head. But there ain't much point if it's already hurting, you ask me." She'd poked a finger in his direction, then suddenly lunged forwards across the small space and thrown her arms around him.
"Oi! Tea!" Some of the liquid had sloshed over the top of the mug and onto his lap. He'd leaned over to place it on the floor before hugging back.
"You're a bloody idiot, y'know that?"
"Yeah."
"God, is there anything you're good at?"
"Probably not. Well, 'cept being an idiot maybe. Gotta say I'm fantastic at that. Though maybe not as much as your Mickey. But still, pretty damn fantastic."
"And havin' a bloody ego."
"That, too."
He'd made some feeble excuse about wanting some rest, then, and had slipped off to his own cabin, where he'd spent the next twelve hours shut up, sitting on the edge of the bed just twiddling his thumbs and staring at the wall.
That last week aboard the SS Bad Wolf had not been the most eventful one in the Doctor's life, nor indeed in the lives of any of the passengers, he was certain. After all, the supervisors had yet to solve the murders. It wasn't as if they would have believed the Doctor if he'd popped by and told them a parasite race had made themselves a home in the engine room of the ship and had been slowly taking over, killing off passengers and members of staff to harvest their essences for energy storage, with an endgame of re-establishing their invisible empire on Earth. Everyone – everyone – was still suspect. Passengers had been confined to their cabins, though the crew eventually allowed for friends and family members to wander between each other's cabins on their own decks – even allowed for visits to friends on other decks, if only with the company of an escort.
Maria's body had been found in the engine room two days after her death. Her corpse had started to decay.
The Doctor had had a lot of time to brood over the loss of the TARDIS over the past week. He felt almost empty without the soft touch of her presence brushing constantly against the back of his mind. Rose was hopeful about the entire affair. The Doctor was not. The Dyrfain destroyed an entire batch of new TARDIS models once, in his youth. He remembered hearing concerned mutters about it at the Academy. Both the physical ships themselves and the souls built into their cores, gone. The TARDIS was many things, but invincible was not one of them.
And now they were stuck, in 2095. Rose was stuck, nearly a hundred years after her time. A hundred years away from her mother. "You ought to call her," the Doctor had told her, but Rose had shaken her head adamantly.
"I will if it comes down to it."
They hadn't discussed what they planned on doing, now that the TARDIS was gone, since.
Now the SS Bad Wolf was landing on a small station in the outer reaches of Earth's atmosphere. It was, of course, too big and heavy to actually land on Earth itself. Smaller vessels would carry all passengers and members of staff back down to the planet once everyone had gathered in the atrium. And then… well, with the intercom system back up and running, it had been announced that members of the police force would be there to "greet" them once they landed on Earth.
"All right, folks, feel free to get a move on!" Alfie the maintenance manager called. "Into the viewing gallery!"
The passengers of Deck J exchanged looks before beginning the slow shuffle in the direction of the viewing deck. Each deck had two doors on either side of its viewing gallery room, which had finally been opened. Rose glanced up at the Doctor with a frown. "How're we gonna get down to the main level?"
"Guess we'll see."
"You don't know?"
"I dunno. Maybe. They do stuff different in different eras, on different kinds of spacecraft. I'd wager some kind of device to get us down to the actual space station atrium, though. Or maybe some railings situated at each level. It's gotta be a bloody big atrium to hold this old thing." He rapped a wall with his knuckles as he passed it.
"So not a ramp or anything like that?"
He gave her a look, and she blushed. "Right. Figure they're a bit beyond plain old ramps by 2095, yeah?"
"Oh, not really. All depends."
Rose blinked up at him, then rolled her eyes as they passed through the threshold to the viewing gallery. Through the window, she could see the atrium of the space station, and she nearly stopped dead in her tracks to gawk at the sight. She'd never seen a room so huge in her life. Just from what she could tell from her limited view, the domed ceiling must have been at least two hundred feet high where it met the walls. The ceiling had sealed itself back up after the Bad Wolf had landed. The entire atrium seemed to be lined with railings that wound all along its walls in a spiral pattern. Rose stopped for just a second to stand on tiptoe and tried to see over the heads of the passengers that filled the viewing gallery and obstructed her view. The woman behind her barrelled into her. "Sorry," she muttered, resuming her shuffling pace again.
The pace really was slow – it took the Doctor and Rose nearly twenty minutes to reach one of the doorways. Rose gulped as they came to its threshold. The floor was a very long way down, and indeed she saw no ramp or anything of that nature. Then she caught sight of a man in uniform, clearly a worker of the space station, coming up to them on what Rose could only describe as a hover pad. Made of metal, it was small and circular, and was quite literally hovering up to the doorway. The uniformed man seemed to be holding a remote control of some sort, which he used to steer the hover pad so that it stopped only a few inches away from the cruise ship, exactly level with the floor. He looked bored. "Five to a hover pad, let's move on, go on," he droned, reaching out a hand to help Rose hop the gap. She took it and jumped, taking care not to look down. She landed lightly on the hover pad, then shifted closer to its edge to make room for the other passengers. She craned her neck up, finally able to take in the full grandeur of the space station's atrium.
It quickly became apparent that, once you got over its immense size, the space station had very little going for it in terms of impressiveness. The entire atrium seemed to be made of metal (save for the sleek floor below, which might have been made of linoleum), and gave off an unwelcoming affect: cold, harsh, and austere. Nothing could compare to the warmth of the TARDIS, but even then Rose had been on countless space stations and space shuttles more beautiful than this one. Still, she could see a couple dozen other hover pads all floating down to the ground floor or taking on passengers, high above and far below her.
"Careful there, miss. Long way down." Rose blinked, then realised she was standing with her toes over the edge of the hover pad. She quickly took a step back, and the man gave her a thin, awkward smile before helping the next four passengers onto the hover pad. All took his hand gratefully save the Doctor, who shrugged him off and hopped the short distance without batting an eye.
"All right." The hover pad floated away from the doorway, then began its slow, slightly wavering descent. "If you'd care to look down now, you'll see several queues forming. We're going to land right at the back of your deck's queue, Deck J's. From there, feel free to follow a guide, who'll lead you to another chamber just outside the atrium. You can get rested up, stretch your legs, drink a cuppa, before an escort'll lead you to the smaller vessels that'll carry you back down to Earth. Make sense?"
A vague, collective nod of assent from the passengers. Rose looked down – the entire atrium was bustling with activity. She couldn't have counted how many people filled the main space, but as they got closer to the ground, she could see the tall doorways situated all around the atrium, beyond which seemed to lie a network of corridors rather than individual rooms.
"Do we just… follow?" Rose asked the Doctor in an undertone. "Like… follow directions?" She was fairly certain they'd never done anything of the sort before.
"Don't see what else there is to do." He gave a shrug. He looked more miserable than ever.
Rose fell into silence. She said nothing as the hover pad landed and they all hopped down onto the ground to join the Deck J queue, which had already started to shuffle towards one of the corridors that branched off from the atrium.
She said nothing as she and the Doctor allowed themselves to be led, at that same miserable dragging pace, to a vast network of corridors. They were all of them just as featureless as the atrium. Once in a while, they passed large steel doors, all of them shut. Still, Rose looked about idly, sparing the odd glance at the Doctor, whose expression remained unreadable as ever, his face like an axe. It wasn't as if there was anything else to do.
It struck her that she was really was stuck, seemingly truly stuck, in 2095, with no way back home, but even that realisation came to her in passing. Maybe she was just in denial, or maybe her heart still clung firmly to a last thread of hope. She liked to think it was the latter, and she would only let go once they arrived on Earth. Nothing seemed quite real yet. Nothing in these cool, featureless corridors, in this cold, dead space station. She resumed taking in her surroundings, when something out of place caught her eye, just peeking out from around the corner of a branching side corridor.
"Doctor!" Rose shook his arm. "Look."
The Doctor, for his part, stopped and turned his head to look in the direction she was pointing, quickly stepping out of the line of ambling passengers. The first thing he noticed among the subdued, chrome shades of the space station was the colour: a faded, muddied, but clear, clear, blue.
Something flitted gently against his mind, filling in every gap, caressing him. It struck him that it had been there for a while now – all day at least. He just hadn't realised it, too deep in his despair as he'd been. Brooding old idiot.
He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his face had broken into a grin. The Doctor offered his arm, like a gentleman, and with a beam, Rose took it. Passengers continued to file on, following their escort. Nobody noticed them. "Shall we?"
"Don't mind if I do."
They slipped away, invisible, in the direction of the ship, which for her part sat totally unnoticed, just like she always did.
Reaching the TARDIS, the Doctor's footsteps faltered and came to a halt before he pressed a palm to her wooden door. He'd forgotten how battered her exterior form was. How could he have forgotten in the space of just nine days? He caressed the wood, fingers tracing out every whorl, every splinter, every chip in her painted coat, in the way she liked. Rose meanwhile grinned. "Maybe save your romantic reunion for when we get inside?"
He lifted his head. "Right."
He produced the key from his breast pocket, inserting it into the keyhole. A turn, and the lock gave a most satisfying click. The Doctor could not help but grin to himself, just a bit, as he pushed the door open, and stepped past the threshold in one long stride. The TARDIS gave a soft hum of greeting, and surged to life, washing the console room in a warm, blue-green light. "Hey, old girl," he murmured.
Rose followed him, but at the top of the ramp stopped dead. "Hold on. Oh my god, I completely forgot – all my stuff!" Staff members were going to take all the passengers' trunks and personal items from their cabins and transport them down to Earth on separate vessels, where they could finally be reclaimed.
He gave her a look. "It doesn't really matter, does it?"
Rose looked sheepish. "Well, I mean, I guess not. Was just clothes and toiletries, and my book… "
He paused. "Anythin' of particular sentimental value?"
Rose shook her head. No, there hadn't been. Nothing that wasn't easily replaceable. The closest thing she'd had to an object of value had been a thin grey hoodie she'd borrowed from her mate Shireen, ages back. And she suspected every single item that had been in her trunk would be waiting for her in her TARDIS bedroom when she got there. Including the toiletries.
"Good. We can go, then." The Doctor's tone was short as ever. His fingers closed around the lever would send them flying off into the vortex. "Where to next? Your turn, I think."
Rose circled the central console before dropping into the jump chair, tucking her legs under her. From here she could see a copy of Heat splayed open under the console. She must have been leafing through it the morning they'd left. "Home," she said decidedly. A pause. "But maybe first we could just… lounge about for a bit? Just a few hours? I just – need to prepare if I'm gonna see my mum."
The Doctor just nodded once, then punched in the desired coordinates before pulling the lever. The TARDIS thrummed with the powerful whirring of her engines as they whizzed off into the vortex. Rose supposed there was something comforting about letting the ship just float there, suspended and surrounded by nothingness. She supposed it made it easier to pretend nothing mattered, that the sharp pain of Maria's loss would not be able to touch them there.
She supposed she knew that wasn't true.
"How long you plan on spendin' with her?" The Doctor's voice pulled her back into reality, and she startled. He'd pushed back from the console and had taken to leaning against the railing that encircled the ship.
"I dunno. Couple days, maybe. Why?"
"You wouldn't mind if I just stayed in here, would you? Not really up to popping in to say hello. Don't think your mother likes me over much."
Rose flashed him a teasing grin. "Aw, c'mon, Doctor. I think you and her really get on. It's sweet. What, not scared of my mum, are you?"
"She slapped me!"
"You had it coming!"
"It hurt!" He raised a hand to his cheek as if it still smarted.
"That's why you had it coming." Rose rolled her shoulders, and silence fell back between them. It failed to make itself comfortable. Rose took to staring at the copy of Heat, barely registering the glossy information on the glossy pages of the tabloid. It struck her, idly, that she should be mourning Maria more than she was. Maria had been her friend, a brave and fearless ally, and here she was, acting like nothing had happened, like she hadn't just lost someone she cared about. Like it was an just another ordinary, lazy afternoon, as ordinary as an afternoon could be aboard a spaceship-time machine with an alien, anyway. Already she was putting it behind her.
And as soon as that thought came into her mind, she shoved it away.
Just like the Doctor would do.
Meanwhile the Doctor himself removed the sonic from his breast pocket, which he tossed idly from hand to hand. Rose wished he would find something else to occupy his hands with.
The low humming of the TARDIS tried to fill the empty space between them until the Doctor broke the silence. His voice was low and uncharacteristically monotone. "This is what it's like, you know."
"Hey?" Rose looked up at him, puzzled, and shifted over on the jump seat to make room for him. He stayed put.
"It's not all fun and games. Sometimes you're in danger, and sometimes people get hurt. It happens. All of time and space at your disposal, odds are you learn, eventually, that sometimes it can be ugly, and brutal. It can be sodding tiresome. You don't have to keep at it, if it's not what you had in mind when you said you wanted to come. You can go home anytime you like."
Her expression morphed from one of confusion to one of incredulity, and annoyance. "Blimey, how thick can you get? I thought I was supposed to be the stupid ape."
His expression hardened. "Rose, listen. I know we've been in fixes before, but this was… well, at least for you, it was different. And you can expect to see more of this if you stay, cos once in a while it comes up. You meet people and get close to 'em, people who're fantastic like Maria, people you come to love. And you lose 'em." When Rose's gaze did not falter, he sighed and ran a hand down his face before continuing pointedly, "you're not immune, Rose. It could happen to you."
She looked back at him defiantly. "I know."
"Rose – "
"I know. And it's worth it."
His lips quirked just a little. "Especially in the fixes you seem dead set on getting yourself in. Jeopardy-friendly, you are."
"That's the fun of it."
His grin widened. "You're sort of fantastic, you know that?" He pushed off from the railing and held out his arms. "Ah, c'mere."
Rose beamed and went to him, throwing her arms around his shoulders and gripping the fabric of his jumper. He was warm. She felt him squeeze her back, felt his fingers pass briefly through her hair. She closed her eyes and buried her nose in his shoulder, breathing in the smell of him, all leather and time.
"Home, then?" His voice a low murmur in her ear.
Rose pulled away from him. "Yeah. All right."
"Still not gettin' me to go in."
She laughed. "Not even for a minute? Come on. Bet her hand misses your cheek. And then after she can make you a cuppa, beans on toast... settle down for a night of EastEnders… "
"Nope." He went quiet for a moment. "Just wanna settle back in. I really thought I'd lost this old thing." A few lights on the console blinked, apparently in response.
Rose contemplated this. "Guess that's fair."
The Doctor rapped his knuckles against the time rotor. "Guess we're off, then." His hand closed around the lever.
"Hmm." Rose leaned on the console, tilting her head. "Wait, hold on." He glanced over at her. "I – do wanna go home, but… well, maybe we could make a pit stop first?"
He cocked a brow. "A pit stop."
"Well, we got all the time in the world, y'know," Rose couldn't help but point out.
His lips quirked again. "If that isn't true. All right. Humour me. Let's take a… 'pit stop.' What did you have in mind?"
"Chips?" she asked hopefully, and the Doctor chuckled.
"Chips. Still, maybe we could go somewhere that's at least a mite interesting after? There's this one planet, it's fantastic, you'd love it, they've got – " At her look, he shuffled his feet. "Right. First, chips."
"And they're on you this time, by the way," she added. "Don't try to trick me into using my money, I know you've got infinite amounts of every currency in the universe on this old ship."
"Oh, I don't know," he drawled. "None of it's quite real, you know. None of it properly circulated. D'you really think it's fair?"
"Shut up."
"Chips," was all he replied, his own grin not faltering for a second, and he pulled the lever. It was the same as every time – the same flaring blue-green lights, the same whirring sounds that swelled to fill the air, the same rush of adrenalin, the same thrill that was so sharp she could almost taste it, the same feeling that the universe was at her fingertips, that it was hers – and just like every time, Rose smiled.
END.
(Cue Doctor Who theme).