Chapter Twelve

Quarantined

Ashley paced the cell, muttering bitterly. She couldn't believe she had just been lynch mobbed by a bunch of the Doctor's imaginary friends. Well… not lynched as such. They had been quite polite after they had forced her into the cell. In all honesty, it had been her who had yelled the abuse and threw the obscenities around willy-nilly. They had actually… well… they had apologised.

She stopped and looked at her watch. It had been four hours now. For four bloody hours she had been stuck in this stupid cell. After two hours she had given up yelling. After two and a half hours she gave up kicking the bars on the cell and resorted to moping and muttering.

The sound of the door opening caught her attention and she ran to the bars, pressing her face against them and straining to see down the corridor. 'Doctor?' she called. 'Is that you?'

She got no response, but he stopped outside her cell and looked at her sadly. She narrowed her eyes at him and waited for him to speak first.

'I was going to come down straight away,' the Doctor said, unable to make eye contact. 'But… they were trying to keep me away.'

Ashley gritted her teeth and said nothing. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, the silence growing awkward and tense.

'I just… I couldn't…' He paused, swallowed. Decided to tell the truth. 'I didn't want to leave.'

Ashley reached out quickly and went to grab him, but he jumped back so her fingers only brushed the front of his suit. 'You hypocritical bastard!' she bellowed, furious. 'You were all ready to kill that guy Cartwright because he and thousands of other people were spending their lives in a place like this. You get plugged in by accident and within twenty four ours you decide you'd rather stay too?' She swiped for him again, but he was already out of her reach. She scowled angrily at him.

The Doctor rubbed his face with one hand. 'Look, Ashley,' he sighed. 'I don't expect you to understand but this… this place isn't just some made up world. It's my home.'

'So what?' Ashley snarled. 'You've got a bloody space ship slash time machine. You can go home whenever the hell you want!'

'I can't…' The Doctor shook his head.

'Why not? You got daddy issues or something? I guess here you won't have bills to worry about or angsty parents or kids to deal with. You just swan around in one huge party with all your poncy friends and forget about everything else around you. Forget about the people you're leaving behind.'

The Doctor shifted on his feet, his teeth clenched. 'Ashley, don't-'

'You can go anywhere!' she yelled. 'Of all the places you can go you're lying on a bed with wires sticking in your head! You can go home any time you want-'

'I can't!'

He yelled so loud Ashley was stunned to silence. She moved her head back, mouth closed and eyes wide. She blinked at him in bewilderment. He was practically shaking, his face red and he stared right at her. She couldn't tell whether he was angry or upset. Maybe both.

Ashley regrouped quickly and rested her hand on her hip, deciding not to drop her attitude just yet. 'Why the hell not?' She had aimed to sound annoyed, but her voice was too unsteady.

The Doctor looked away, his expression dark. 'Because it's not there anymore.'

Ashley cast her eyes down, feeling bad. She crossed her arms over her chest. 'I'm sorry.' She mumbled.

He shook his head. 'It's not your fault. You didn't know.'

The two of them stood in silence for a few moments, the bars of the cell between them.

'What happened?'

The Doctor didn't look from the spot he was staring at. 'There was a war.' He replied. 'Everyone… everyone died. I'm the last.'

Ashley's mouth dropped open and she winced. 'Oh, Doctor…'

He looked at her and frowned. 'Don't. I don't want your sympathy.'

She fell silent, but her expression was still sympathetic. She leaned her forehead against the bars, looking at him with her big, blue eyes. 'But you can't stay here.'

The Doctor turned away, running both hands through his hair. 'I know,' he sighed. 'I know I can't. I was… I don't even know what I was going to do.' Ashley watched him silently as he leaned against the bars of her cell and sighed heavily. 'I don't know what I was thinking.'

Ashley moved to him and reached through the bars, taking his hand. 'I get it. I'm sorry for going all PMT on you but I was just… well… a bit peeved by the being dragged and thrown in a cell thing.' She offered a smile, but he didn't respond to it so she continued. 'Mitchell said the longer you stay in the game, the less likely it is that you want to leave. And if you do leave… he says its practically impossible to re-adapt. A part of your mind will always be here. You won't be the same person, Doctor.'

The Doctor's eyes were dark and he stared at the floor silently. She squeezed his hand a little harder to try and get a reaction.

'Imagine where you are now,' she said. 'Where you really are. You're lying on a bed in a deserted colony with a whole bunch of wires sticking out of your head. You're like a cabbage, seriously. You're going to have to have Mitchell running around after you until you die. Do you really want to cause that poor bloke more grief by adding to his list of vegetables to look after?'

The Doctor looked at her grimly.

'And… and if you are the last of your kind…' Ashley glanced down and bit her lip. 'If you really are, then do you really want your race becoming extinct by you lying down and dying? Because that's what you're doing, Doctor.'

He was quiet for a long time. Ashley didn't say anything else. She held his hand, but he wasn't holding hers. For one horrible moment, she thought he was going to tell her he was staying.

'You're right.' He said quietly.

Ashley smiled too widely, mostly out of relief. She toned it down. 'You're going to unplug then?'

The Doctor ran his hand over his face and sighed. 'Yeah. Yeah I will.' His eyes fell on Ashley. 'But I'll wait until you're okay to unplug. You have to wait twenty-four hours before you're given the choice to unplug. You've been here, what… four hours?'

Ashley smiled at him. 'I can stand twenty hours in a cell.' She told him. 'One time I spent forty eight hours in a police cell because a bunch of us thought it would be funny to deface a rather special monument in our town. I won't go into detail about it, but it involved bras and lots and lots of whisky.'

She had hoped for at least a hint of a smile, but he was looking down at the floor again. She let go of his hand and took his face in both of hers instead. He looked at her sadly.

'It's going to be okay you know.' She told him gently. 'You would never be happy here knowing it's not real.'

The Doctor put his own hand over one of hers and nodded. 'Thank you.'

Ashley winked and grinned. 'You just go upstairs and get me one of those banana daiquiris and we're even.'

He managed a smile back and was about to say something, when the door at the end of the corridor opened. Ashley strained to see and the Doctor stepped away from the cell.

'I told you not to come down here,' Rose frowned, looking between the Doctor and Ashley. 'She's in quarantine.'

'Who's this then?' Ashley smirked. 'Looks a bit too chavvy to be living in a place like this.'

Rose shot her an angry stare and grabbed the Doctor's arm. 'Come on.' She insisted.

The Doctor pulled his arm away. 'I'm not staying any longer.' He told her. 'I'm unplugging.'

Rose turned and looked at him incredulously. 'You can't!' she insisted. 'Doctor! I… I've been looking for you for so long! I…' Her eyes began to well up. 'I thought we could be happy here!'

The Doctor looked devastated. He turned and looked at Ashley and gave a kind of weak shrug. Ashley grabbed the bars. 'She's not real!' she insisted.

Rose turned on her with a curled up lip. 'You're the one who doesn't belong here.' She shot angrily.

'Oh shut up, Vicky Pollard,' Ashley shot back. 'At least I'm actually real.'

The Doctor grabbed Rose as she lunged towards the cell. 'Don't.' he warned.

'Why would you want to leave us?' Rose pleaded, eyes wide. 'We… we made this place for you because we knew it would make you happy! Everyone is here, Doctor! Your friends, you family, your children… we can live so happily here…'

The Doctor covered his face with both hands. 'Stop it…' he muttered.

'Doctor, ignore her!' Ashley yelled. 'That's not her talking. It's the game. It's trying to talk you out of leaving.'

Rose took the Doctor's hands from his face. 'You can have everything you ever wanted here. You'll never be lonely again.'

'Doctor, just unplug! Unplug now!'

'I can't…' the Doctor mumbled.

Ashley's mouth dropped open. 'Doctor!'

The Doctor pushed Rose's hands away and took a step back. 'I can't.' he repeated, shaking his head. Ashley breathed a sigh of relief. Rose's expression turned from upset to furious in the blink of an eye.

'Fine.' She hissed, and lunged forwards, her hands seizing the Doctor's throat and she squeezed hard. Ashley yelled out in shock and pulled on the bars, but it was no use. She wouldn't be able to get out of her cell. She watched helplessly as the Doctor stumbled backwards and struggled with the blonde girl, but she hung on.

'Unplug!' Ashley screeched, her heart thudding in her chest. 'Doctor, unplug!'

Rose threw the Doctor against the wall. His face was beetroot and he pulled at her hands but she was incredibly strong. She glared at him with an anger that he knew Rose would never be capable of. He tried to unplug, but he couldn't concentrate. He couldn't breathe.

'Doctor!' Ashley kept screaming. 'Unplug!'

He closed his eyes tightly and there was a sudden blinding whiteness. Ashley wrapped her arms over her face. The pressure on his throat lightened. The room around them, and Rose, dissolved with the light.

The Doctor's eyes shot open and he gasped. He could see nothing. He raised his hands to his head, feeling strange things where his head should be. He was disorientated and confused. Suddenly, someone lifted the cover from his eyes and the light blinded him.

'A… Ashley?' he groaned, grasping around blindly.

'It's Mitchell,' a male voice replied. 'Just relax, okay? I had to unplug both of you. You'll be a bit disorientated for a while, but it'll wear off.'

The Doctor frowned. Mitchell? Then he remembered. He sat up quickly and his balance failed him. He felt hands on his shoulders.

'Whoa,' Mitchell told him. 'Keep still, okay?'

The Doctor ignored him and began pulling the wires out of his hands and head. 'What happened?' he demanded.

'Your vitals were going crazy,' Mitchell replied worriedly. 'Both of you. I panicked because I didn't know what was going on and… and I just pulled the plugs out of you both.'

The Doctor looked to Mitchell and put a hand on his shoulder. 'You did the right thing.' He said sincerely.

Mitchell smiled weakly and then moved around the bed. The Doctor looked beside him and gritted his teeth at the sight of her with all the wires connected to her. Then he frowned slightly.

'Why isn't she awake?'

Mitchell leaned over her and checked her pulse. 'I unplugged you both at the same time…' he mumbled. 'She wasn't in the game as long but…'

The Doctor leaned forward and pulled the black goggles from Ashley's face. He shook her. 'Ashley? Ashley, can you hear me?'

'She's still alive,' Mitchell pointed out, sounding worried. 'I… I don't know… I don't know why she isn't waking up…'

The Doctor shook Ashley harder. 'Ashley? Can you hear me? Ashley!'

She didn't respond.