Sister Star
Chapter 4: Nightmares and Explanations
Almadynis
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all associated characters, plotlines, etc. are not mine. No matter how much I wish that I was Russell T. Davies illegitimate offspring. *sigh*
However, Astrid is mine in every way, shape, and form. *glomps* No takies!
Also, I am an American…which means my British colloquialisms come from Doctor Who and Torchwood. So forgive me please if I mess up.
I now have a lovely beta! She is peaceloverhealer101, and writes "A Love Through Time" in the DW archives. Go check it out, she is wondermous! Unfortunately, she is currently on vacation, so all mistakes are mine.
Astrid's thoughts/dreams
Astrid was confined to bed rest for the next twenty hours or so until the glowing blue liquid could finish its work. Urged by her, the Doctor and Rose went on another trip without her, this time into the past. She had grinned at them both and commented, "Just don't forget about me, or I'll have to come find you!"
Rose hugged her friend fiercely before handing Astrid her purse. "Here you go, keep you company. You have a book in there, yeah?" At Astrid's nod, she gave another hug and then disappeared out of the medical bay.
The Doctor watched the brunette with an interesting expression she wasn't quite able to decipher. "Where did you get that bag?" He asked softly without any emotion.
Astrid paled. Even though she had fitted the handle to be more accommodating as a purse, it was the same bag that the Master had given her over a year ago. A Time Lord bag that was bigger on the inside. She gave a sigh, "I forgot about the bag. Of all the things I thought would give me away, it never crossed my mind." Her eyes begged him to understand, to forgive her.
She opened her mouth to begin her tale when they heard Rose's voice call out, "Doctor! You coming?"
Astrid sighed again—saved by the Rose—and gave him a blank look, "You'd better go." She held up the arm attatched to the IV. "I'm not going anywhere. You can interrogate me after."
He gave a sharp nod and disappeared out the door.
She heard the whoosh of the TARDIS flying and the ding as they landed. A few shuffle noises, laughter, the squeak of the door, and then silence except for the faint humming the TARDIS made constantly.
Astrid drew up her legs to hug them tightly and laid her head on her knees. What if he doesn't believe me? How do I convince him? What if the Master comes back? Oh god, I don't know what to do! Help me…someone, please…I don't know what to do…She held the bag close to her chest, rolled over on her side, and cried herself to sleep.
[dream sequence]
Gwyneth and Sneed had successfully loaded the body of an old woman into the back of the hearse when Rose caught up with them.
"What're you doing?" Rose demanded.
"Oh, it's such a tragedy, miss. Don't worry yourself, me and the master will deal with it." Gwyneth tried to stop Rose from seeing inside the hearse, but the blond was too stubborn and pushed past. "The fact is, this poor lady's been taken with the brain fever and we have to get her to the infirmary."
Rose pushed Gwyneth aside and felt the old woman's forehead. "She's cold…she's dead! My God, what did you do to her?"
Sneed approached Rose silently from behind and clamped a tissue full of a drug, probably chloroform, to her mouth. She struggled for a few seconds and then went limp.
[flash]
The key turned in the Morgue of Sneed and Company, and they all troupe in, led by the Doctor. Bodies were covered in white sheets next to all but one wall that had an arch.
"The thing is, Doctor - the Gelth don't succeed. 'Cause I know they don't. I know for a fact there weren't corpses walking around in 1869." Rose tried to be smart, but she knew she wasn't the expert on the subject of time and the Doctor quickly corrected her.
"Time's in flux. It's changing every second. Your cozy little world could be rewritten like that." He snapped his fingers. "Nothing is safe. Remember that. Nothing."
[flash]
Gwyneth positioned herself beneath the arch and Rose rushed to her side. "You don't have to do this."
Gwyneth placed her hands on Rose's cheeks. "My angels" Rose staggered back from the servant girl.
The Gelth were insistent, demanding, but sounded so sweet and patient at the same time. "Establish the bridge, reach out of the void, let us through!" Gwyneth called to them gently, like a mother or sweet older sister. "Bridgehead establishing. It is begun! The bridge is made!"
Gwyneth's mouth opened and the Gelth poured out of it.
"No! Gwyneth, don't!" Astrid cried out in horror as she watched, helpless to do anything, not realizing it was a dream. A dream of something she had watched years ago.
Suddenly, the Gelth leader hovering above and behind Gwyneth becomes demonic, wreathed in flames. The gas turns from blue to red. "The Gelth will come through in force."
Charles Dickens demanded an answer, "You said that you were few in number!"
The leader of the Gelth sneered, "A few billion. And all of us in need of corpses."
The bodies around the group began to rise.
[flash]
The corpses advance on the Doctor and Rose. The Doctor looks behind him, spots the dungeon door, pushed Rose in there with him and slammed it shut again so they are both locked in the small room, far enough that the corpses couldn't reach them, but with nowhere to go.
Charles Dickens was very apologetic as he stammered, "Doctor, I can't…I-I'm sorry. This new world…It's too much for me! I'm so…" He didn't get to finish as he jumped and ran from the Morgue as one of the Gelth screeches and swooped at him. The corpses are clambering to get in the dungeon, to reach the Doctor and Rose to make new host bodies to inhabit.
The Gelth leader demanded, "Give yourself to glory. Sacrifice your lives for the Gelth."
The Doctor glared, "I trusted you. I pitied you!"
"We don't want your pity! We want this world and all its flesh."
The Gelth in the corpses were rattling the barred door.
The Doctor snarled right back at them. "Not while I'm alive."
"Then live no more."
"No…Please, no…"
[flash]
The Doctor and Rose were free to come out of the dungeon as the Gelth are drawn out of the corpses and into the air by the innovation of Charles Dickens. Their blue forms hover and fly in the air around Gwyneth.
The Doctor yelled to the servant as he crossed the room. "Gwyneth! Send them back! They lied, they're not angels."
Gwyneth seemed to droop down as she asked, "Liars?"
He spoke in earnest as he moved to be in front of her. "Look at me. If your mother and father could look down and see this, they'd tell you the same. They'd give you the strength. Now send them back!"
Rose behind him began to choke on all the gas being in the air of the morgue. "Can't breathe."
"Charles, get her out." Dickens grabbed Rose's arm, but she shook him off. The Doctor stayed, trying to convince Gwyneth. "Remember that world you saw? Rose's world? All those people - none of it will exist unless you send them back through the rift."
Gwyneth was firm as she spoke. "I can't send them back. But I can hold them. Hold them in this place, hold them here. Get out." Her hand went to her apron pocket and she took out a box of matches. Rose rushed forwards.
"You can't!" The Doctor grabbed Roses' shoulders and forcefully handed her over to Charles.
"Rose, get out, go now. I won't leave her while she's still in danger. Now go!"
"Astrid, wake up."
Dickens and Rose left the Morgue. The Doctor held his hand out for the matches. "Leave that to me." But Gwyneth didn't respond. He reached out and felt for a pulse, but she had already died at least five minutes before. There was nothing he could do.
"Astrid."
"I'm sorry. Thank you." The Doctor pressed a kiss to the servant girl's forehead and ran as quickly as he could out of the morgue.
Gwyneth struck the match and the world burned.
"Astrid!"
[end dream sequence]
"Astrid!" The Doctor shook the brunette's shoulders harshly, trying to wake her from the nightmare she was caught in. He'd been trying for the last five minutes. "Wake up!"
She bolted awake in an instant, looked wildly around in search of the monsters from her nightmares, saw him, and began crying. He pulled her into his chest and made soothing noises. He really didn't like domestics, but he'd make an exception for her. Just this once.
It took a while, but she quieted down. "Now, would you like to tell me what that was all about? Or how you got that bag?"
Her blue eyes were windows into her soul, begging him once again for understanding. For forgiveness. She slowly nodded and drew out of his arms. Searching around, she found the bag in question, caught it with one hand, reaching in with the other, and pulled out The Book. "Read the first entry."
The Doctor frowned at her actions but opened up to the very first page. The handwriting was easily legible but what it said was impossible.
'Rose.
'The first day the Doc meets Rose, he blows up her job at Heinrik's clothing store. They meet again when he tracks a plastic hand to her apartment. Next, at a pizza restraint where her boyfriend Mickey has been copied by the Nestene Consciousness to find out more of what the Doc knows. Doc pulls off Mickey's head and both run to the TARDIS out back.
' "The assembled lords of Ghengis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me they've tried." Doc says.
'Find the Nestene under the London Eye down a manhole. Doc gets captured, antiplastic taken away. Rose swoops in "Got no A levels, no job, no future. Tell you what I have got…under 7s gymnastics team. I've got the bronze." And knocks antiplastic into Nestene. Lots of explosions. They run (with Mickey) to TARDIS and escape.
'Doc offers to take Rose with him, doesn't like Mickey. Rose kisses Mickey and runs after Doc.'
The Doctor looks up in disbelief. "You haven't written in this since you've been here, have you?"
She slowly shook her head, leaning back on the pillows. "I wrote that book the first weekend I got here. Read the next entry." She gave him a stern look, so much so that he nodded and went back to reading.
'End of the World.
'Doc tries to impress Rose by going really far into future. Go to Platform One that observes the day the sun expands to watch the death of the Earth. They join the festivities by means of psychic paper. Metal eggs hold robots that will take over the platform. Steward dies. Rose almost dies because of decending sunshield. Lady Cassandra at fault. Jabe dies holding lever down for Doc to restart computer.'
The Doctor glanced upward. "This isn't what happened. Not all of it."
She was just looking at him steadily. "And the next, but no further."
'Unquiet Dead.
'Rift opens to let through Gelth. Gaseous beings that want to inhabit corpses. Have no problem with creating the corpses. Gwyneth, servant girl to Sneed, establishes bridge to let them through. Dies under arch. Kills all Gelth and closes the Rift by lighting a match once the building is full of gas.'
"Why is this entry so short?" The Doctor says quietly, shutting the book. It had happened barely thirty minutes ago. He had just gotten back. The girl had no time to write such an entry, especially since she hadn't been there. Almost the whole book was filled with entries and his mind whirled with the implications of such a small and important journal.
Astrid sighed and drank from a glass of water at her bedside before answering. "I didn't like that episode. I never watched it much. Not as many details to remember."
He frowned in confusion. "'Watched it'? What do you mean?"
Astrid drew a deep breath. She was silent for long minutes "Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a little girl. She was a strange child and her peers treated her harshly. So she lived in books, reading everything she could get her hands on. When she got older, she loved movies and television series. All things that dealt with science fiction and fantasy. One of her favorite series was by the BBC, called…" she took a breath to steady herself, watching his face. "…Doctor Who. She watched her favorite episodes over and over and followed the series for years."
His face had gone from shock to incredulous to blank. Now he just listened.
"Years go by. Doctor Who never gets old to her and she keeps watching it faithfully. She grows up, goes to college. But she's still strange and weird and never gets many friends. Her best friends are her parents. She makes plans to go to grad school and has only one semester left before graduation." Astrid begins to cry silently, her tears making tracks down her cheeks.
"One day, she hears the noise of the TARDIS landing. She had heard it so many times before on the show. She thinks her father is playing a trick on her, but when she looks around she doesn't see anyone. She goes hunting for the source of the noise and finds it behind the trailer on their property. But the man that comes out—" She stopped talking, not sure whether she should keep going. The Master was his future, and Jack had told her not to tell him—or anyone—about their personal futures. She decided to keep going, but to just skip who it was that showed up.
"He kidnaps her. She fights him, because he said enough for her to know that they were crossing dimensions and she'd never get to come back. When she finally regains consciousness, he has already left, having given her a bag that's bigger on the inside full of money, clothes, and identification so that she can get a job. And she waited for the Doctor to come, finding Rose first." Astrid finished looking down at her clasped hands, waiting for his reaction. For his betrayal and rejection.
The Doctor looks at the brunette laying in his medical bay, trying to make sense of all of what she had said. Finally, he had to ask just one question. "What did the man tell you?"
Her voice was quiet. "That the events I had watched didn't occur the way they should have because someone was missing that should have been there. He worked with the…and they figured out where to find this…me. Said that if I got it wrong again, he'd come back." Her voice broke in her fear.
Astrid looked up at him, tears streaming down her cheeks again. "I tried to change it, but if I changed the beginning, I wouldn't be able to meet you. And then with Platform One…" Her voice failed her for a few moments. "But I know I can change things, they're still changing. Jack said that Jimmy would be with me for a long time, and then he died. Please don't send me away. I can change things, I can. Please…" Her voice broke and her body shook with the force of her silent sobs.
The Doctor couldn't stand it any longer, he reached out and pulled her into his arms and began to whisper soothing things, nonsense sounds of comfort, into her ears. The bravery she had shone was amazing, fantastic, brilliant. Though she was obviously afraid, terrified even, she had come anyway. She had kept it hidden away from Rose and himself for as long as she could to spare them the pain of having to know.
He understood her dilemma, oh did he. He could feel the universe spinning around him and under him. He could see all that could be, all that should not. He saw all of time as a ball of string that could be twisted into any shape imaginable and even more that couldn't be imagined no matter how much one tried. He knew the burden of knowing the future. He had spent a lifetime running from it. Even a Time Lord could be afraid of such knowledge, and it was a part of their very being. For a human to do it—and for such a long time since Rose had said earlier that she had known Astrid for at least a year—it was incredible.
Astrid finally stopped crying, nestled into his chest was comforting and felt right. She looked up at him through her eyelashes because of the angle. "So what do we do now?"
"I think we should go home." Rose said quietly, startling both of them. They looked her, Astrid in horror and the Doctor expressionlessly. Rose continued unheeded, "We should both pack a bag with changes of clothes and things, I need to check with Mum, and I bet Julian would be really happy to see you." Rose could see the ache she had created in Astrid's eyes and knew the brunette thought she was rejecting her. "Then we can meet back up with the Doctor and go on another trip. It's your turn to choose where to go, Astrid."
Astrid's face lit up with a beautiful smile as the Doctor grinned. "Fantastic!"
Everything was going to be alright.
No one has reviewed since Chapter 1…starting to think you guys don't like it. Please tell me why and I'll see if it's fixable. Reviews are love!