This story has been rewritten. See chapter 1 for details.

Chapter 4

Victor slammed his glasses on the dash of the TARDIS console. What had him so … what was an adequate term? Flustered? Bewildered? He'd never lost control like that before. It wasn't like him. Or maybe it was. New body, new rules. Was he prone to weakness now?

No. Post-regenerative mania, had to be. Happened to the best of Time Lords—which he was.

And anyway that was the least of his concerns. He had a glaring vulnerability; the girl knew too much. Telepathic tampering created the mess. Trying to erase her memory could make things worse. And he couldn't just kill her, not without knowing more about this coming threat.

His gaze fell to the dimension hopper lying in two pieces on the console. Then he had to find out as much as he could as fast as possible so he could end this himself. He'd start by finding out the maximum heat capacity of this infernal contraption. He pushed his glasses back in place and pressed his laser onto one of the halves.

The air pressure shifted in his ears as the doors open behind him. He whirled around to see his fiery human push her way into the chamber.

"Look," she said with her nose in the air, "I'm not gonna go and tell all your little friends about what happened. I just wanted to—" She glanced at his laser pressed to the device, then launched herself at him. "What on earth are you doing, you mad Time Lord?" she asked as she pried his fingers apart. "Do that and you could exceed the thermal limit!"

He stared open-mouthed as she stole the device right out of his hand. "I've killed people for less, I'll have you know."

"Yeah? Well suck it up. I'm not letting you jeopardize the universe for the sake of your ego." She lifted the smoking hull and inspected it. "Do you even know what happens when you overload a dimensional stabilizer covered in void stuff? It's not pretty."

He snatched it back. "Don't talk to me of science. You're downright fortunate I haven't ended you. Stop pushing your luck." He pressed the tip of the laser back against the device, but she grabbed his wrist again. Suddenly he felt like a child bickering over a toy as he struggled to yank away.

"Don't! You barmy, psychotic—"

"How dare you! You out-of-control—"

His hand slipped and his laser shot straight into the converter of the dimensional stabilizer. They both froze in mutual realization. A sound rose in pitch as the tiny device shook in his palm. A second later, an alarm blared near the console.

He dropped the sliced dimension hopper onto her hand and ran toward the controls. "Critical energy buildup detected," he read aloud. "Catastrophic implosion imminent. But that's—"

Rose yelped. He looked up as the device spun across the floor, the inner core glowing hot. "Now you've gone and done it," she shouted as she clutched her reddened hand. "You and your laser-powered screw-it-up-royally toy. What on Earth made you slice through the components that inhibit overheating and then heat the darn thing up as high as you could?"

He dashed to the other side of the console. "I've got to isolate the implosion. I could create a time lock or chrono loop—freeze the implosion until I can figure out how to cancel out the effects of the void particles interfering with the reality converter."

"No time. Anyway, I've got a better idea." Rose bent under the dash. A moment later, a loud whooshing sound filled the chamber.

He choked on the sickly smell of concentrated carbon dioxide and wafted the thick white vapor from his face. The alarm stopped.

Rose tossed a bulky CO2 gun to the floor. "Might not be the 'Time Lord way'," she said as she brushed a stray lock from her forehead, "but where I come from, this is how we freeze impending threats."

"A fire-extinguisher? But how'd—"

She shrugged. "Guess I figured they'd be standard on TARDISes. Last time we had a console fire on the Doctor's TARDIS, my quick thinking helped put it out. The Doctor was off trying to calculate who knows what, just like you." She waved toward him as though to prove her point. "And anyway, void stuff doesn't like heat. Cool it off like the nothingness of the void and the excited particles die down."

He dipped the rims of his glasses. "Where did you say you came from again?"

"I didn't." Her posture stiffened, then slowly relaxed. "Powell Estate, London, 21st Century."

"And yet you're standing there talking about void particles and reality field converters as if they're no-never-mind to you, things that even Earth's brightest would have a hard time grasping centuries into your future."

Rose jutted her hip to the side with her hand still attached. "Careful now. That's almost a compliment coming from you."

"Hardly." He swung around to the diagnostic controls and pecked at the scanners. "And anyway," he said in a rush, "if you hadn't so rudely interrupted my experiment, my hand wouldn't have slipped and none of this would have happened in the first place, you stupid girl."

"Oh, is that right? 'Cause I seem to recall warning you about a thermal overload as soon as I stepped in the room."

"Which you then proceeded to cause," he said without looking up. Honestly, she was more trouble than she was worth. A pinch of untethered chaos in his world of uncontested authority and 'will that be all my lord?' Now she knew his greatest secret. Perhaps it was time to rectify the situation permanently before it went any further.

"I'm not as clueless as you think I am, you know," she almost whispered.

He turned to find her right next to him, peering up at him with those honey-brown eyes of hers. And there was that maddening fragrance again, exotic with a touch of sweet. His gaze flitted to her mouth. Her plump lips still glistened from that kiss, the bottom one slightly more swollen than the top.

Maybe he could endure her unruliness for a bit longer—just a bit.

"We already know where the problem is," she said. "We measured the timelines and traced the source back to my original universe. If we can just get back there and warn the Doctor, he can stop it. Problem is, all the surrounding universes have been devoured, and the greater the distance, the more power is needed. The cannon takes hours to recharge. At this point, we're not sure we can get enough power to get all the way back."

"Is that all? Coat the plasmic shell with enough dwarf-star alloy and you can boost the power and cut your charging cycle down to half an hour."

Her lips spread until her teeth shined, wiping his mind of all thought. "You're brilliant," she said, "but I knew you would be. 'Cause you're like him. That's why I stayed, you know. I was hoping you'd help me."

He shook his head into functioning cognizance and moved around her. "Oh, I have no intention of helping you, Rose. Like I said, the chances of catastrophic failure are simply too high. If nothing else, this whole debacle ought to prove that."

"But you just—"

"I simply explained how to overcome your problem." He flipped the closest notch he could find. "Never said I'd actually do it."

"Hang on, you know my name."

"Course I do." He tapped at a gauge. "I saw into your mind."

Her left hand rested on his black sleeve. "Please be careful with it. I'm not supposed to be here. Any events I get tangled in could significantly alter the course of history for you and your universe."

He dropped his attention to the unsolicited contact, then looked up at her. "Rose, I'm a Time Lord. I know what I'm doing. You don't."

"Actually, I can do this by myself if I have to." She crossed her arms. "You just watch."

He folded his glasses and tucked them away. "And just how do you intend on doing that?"

"I'll find a way. I always do. But if you know what's good for you, you'll give me a hand 'cause with each day I waste here, the task becomes more impossible."

"Rose, by your own admission you can't do this. Impossible infers absolute failure, no viable solutions, nothing but the same inevitable conclusion."

"But you said it yourself, I'm an anomaly. I created myself to protect the chain of events. There's no way I could have seen the darkness and just let it happen. That's why I know I'm gonna get back to the Doctor. I don't know how or when, but I've got to 'cause I'm the only chance he has."

"It's never going to happen." He leaned in with a sneer. "You're not getting back to him, so just forget it."

"You can't honestly think I'm gonna stand back and do nothing."

He pushed his thumb into his chest. "You're not fooling me into helping you get back to your boyfriend."

"But you saw in my head. Why would I lie about something like this? If you don't act now, you and every one of your stupid trophies are gonna vanish into nothingness."

Vanish? His gaze fell to his distorted reflection staring back at him in the glass pump of the time rotor. Yes, he had seen her mind, and she was without doubt a reckless creature—but an honest one. Therefore, this darkness had to be real too.

Rose placed her hand back on the bend of his arm. "Help me," she said with unwarranted softness in her voice. "'Cause much as I hate to admit it, you are more clever than me. And I need you."

He ground his teeth. What choice did he have?

He pointed at her. "Let's get one thing straight, if I do this"—She donned a triumphant smile—"I said if, then it's not to help you get back. It's to stop this darkness for myself. And I don't need your precious Doctor."

Her grin didn't diminish.

No objections? He held her gaze while she swayed on her heels, arms tucked behind her. Shenanigans. She better not spring it on him at the final hour.

He swiveled the monitor toward him and began to type. "As it so happens, you're looking at the universe's top scientist. Just need to calculate a few things."

Rose sprang next to him, then rested her chin on his shoulder and peered down at the screen.

His head swirled with the ambrosial scent of her hair. "Y—your presence is not required, Rose."

"I know." Without so much as a glance for permission, she sat herself down in his captain's chair and swung her legs over the side. "But you could use another pair of hands, and I'm smarter than I look, honest."

He regarded the girl slouched in his seat, bare feet kicked up on the hand-woven, fifth-century Gnosian fabric. Did he like servants in his console room? Particularly loud-mouthed, distracting servants? No. But while he could order anyone to help, none of them already knew the intricacies of the element that needed to be synthesized.

"Fine," he muttered as he pulled out his screwdriver. "Let me see that burn. Not much as a second pair of hands if you can't use one, now are you?"