A/N: Thanks for all the support so far! Warning for reference to (almost) attempted suicide.

Rose struggled against the angry mob, dodging their flailing arms and clenched fists as they waved posters in the air, thrusting them in her face to try and make her understand their cause.

She called out for the Doctor, looking around frantically to try and find him. As soon as his hand had been wrenched from hers, she had been dragged to the far side of the crowd as people shoved at her to cram close together, all chanting the same thing: 'Stop the Oppression!' She had fallen at least twice, scraping her hands on the gravel road but not particularly caring as a thin line of blood began to drip down to the floor. And now she caught a glimpse of the Doctor lying on the floor by the café, his eyes closed and an oozing cut on his head.

She shoved at a man who dared to get in her way, grasping her arm and forcing a leaflet into her hand. And now she had several major paper cuts to add to her small store of injuries. She jammed the leaflet into her pocket and pulled her arm from the man's grasp before breaking away from the madness of the mob and dashing over the short space separating her and the Doctor.

She dropped down at his side, carefully taking his head in her hands and resting it against her knee. She quickly ran her hands over his body, checking for any sign of injury aside from the head wound. 'Doctor,' she said, gently pulling back his eyelids to check for signs of life, even though she wasn't exactly sure what people were looking for when they did this.

The Doctor shifted in her arms, his head moving to rest more comfortably against her thighs as she knelt close to him and cradled him protectively, sheltering him from the bits of flying rubble and debris that the mob had taken to hurling around, seemingly with no purpose. Rose vaguely noticed the crowd a little way down the street, standing and watching the actions of the mob. She didn't notice the guards that rounded the corner, weapons drawn and the insignia of the government emblazoned on their uniforms.

'Doctor,' she said again as his face creased up in discomfort and he bought his hand to his head.

Rose took his hand in hers to prevent him from touching the gash at his temple, folding his fingers around hers and smoothing his forehead with her free hand. A brick flew past her head to smash into the wall beside her, and the sounds of the mob increased.

'What…' the Doctor mumbled, his eyes flickering before opening fully to take in her face. 'Rose, why am I on the floor?'

'You fell,' she said. 'The mob came out of the café and you hit your head on the wall as they pushed past. Are you okay?'

He slipped his hand from hers and gingerly touched it to his temple, his fingers coming away covered in blood. 'I'll be all right,' he said. 'Just a little cut, looks worse than it is.'

'Are you sure?'

He gave her a shaky smile. 'Of course.'

'We need to get it cleaned up. We could go into the café?'

'Yeah, that sounds like…' He trailed off, his gaze wandering to the scene behind Rose's head. He pushed up on his elbows to gain some leverage, frowning at what he saw. 'That can wait,' he amended. 'We should get going back to Ganjud's; I'm sure he has a First Aid kit there.'

Rose frowned. 'Why?' She noticed the Doctor's gaze drifting to focus on something behind her and she started to turn her head.

'Don't look round,' he told her quickly. He sat up and leaned against the wall of the café, gesturing for Rose to stay low. The sounds of the mob began to change, cries of protest becoming shouts of pain as a troop of guards descended on them. Apparently brute force was an entirely acceptable way of dispelling crowds on Eustance. The blood that was beginning to flow from several members of the mob made the Doctor's head wound look like an ink spot on a dark shirt. 'Rose, we have to get out of here,' he said, keeping his voice low.

'Okay,' she replied, trusting. The look on the Doctor's face was more than enough to tell her he was deadly serious.

He held a finger to his lips as he stood slowly, pulling Rose up with him to stand next to the wall. Doing his best to ignore the scenes of violence in front of them, he looked around for the best way out without the guards seeing them. Spotting a small road leading down the far side of the café, he gripped Rose's wrist and tugged her behind him, pulling sharply when her gaze lingered too long on a guard beating a protestor with a large stick.

They turned into the road to walk down the side of the café and Rose jerked her arm out of the Doctor's grasp. 'Doctor, we should help them,' she said. 'Those policemen- or whatever they are- are hurting those people. Shouldn't we stop it?'

'We can't draw attention to ourselves,' he said quietly, slowing his pace slightly as he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, pressing it against the cut on his temple.

'That's never stopped you before,' Rose retorted. 'Doctor, that one man… There was so much blood!'

'Rose, we don't know what those people have done. They could be supporters of whatever is going on here. We don't know that we're on the same side as them.' He pushed the guilt down, knowing that Rose was right; they probably should have stayed to help. But he knew they couldn't afford to get captured here, at least not before they properly knew what was going on. He hoped Ganjud would be able to answer some questions for him when they got back.

Rose pulled the leaflet that the man had given her out of her pocket and handed it to the Doctor. 'All their posters said "Stop the Oppression",' she said. 'And you're saying that's potentially a bad thing?'

He sighed, quickly scanning the leaflet she had handed him. 'No, that's not what I'm saying, Rose. We couldn't afford to get caught up in that in any way, especially not if the guards are more than willing to bash your head in for the slightest thing. I wasn't going to stick around to let you get beaten up for no reason, although I'm sure the guards would have found reason with this.' He waved the paper in her face. 'Did you not notice all the people watching? They weren't helping either; they were scared. Everyone else around here knows something we don't.'

She nodded, keeping her eyes lowered to the ground. 'I guess we're going to find out what's going on?'

'That we are,' he replied, reaching out to take her hand once more and frowning when she pulled away as soon as his skin touched hers. 'Rose?'

'I fell,' she said, holding her hands up so he could see the grazes on her palms. 'The road was a bit gravelly.'

The Doctor glanced back at the way they had come. 'Yeah, looks like it could do with a bit of resurfacing,' he said. He carefully took one of Rose's hands in his and stopped walking momentarily so that he could press a kiss to her palm.

'What you doing?' she asked him, her eyebrows raised almost off her forehead.

'Kissing it better,' he grinned. 'Isn't that what you're supposed to do?'

She smiled at him, despite still feeling uneasy about the situation they had just left behind. 'Yeah,' she said. 'But you're gonna have to wait until we get the blood cleaned off your head. I'm not a vampire!'

He looked at her fondly. 'Fair enough,' he said, taking her other hand in his. He bought it up to his face, carefully touching one finger to a small piece of raised flesh in the middle of her palm. 'You have a piece of gravel stuck,' he told her. 'I'll get it out when we get back to the bar; fix you up as good as new!' He settled for kissing the heel of her hand instead.

Both their arms fell back to their sides and they continued walking in companionable silence back to Ganjud's bar. Rose was amazed that the Doctor could instantly find his way down a multitude of tiny back roads despite never having seen them before. It was like he had a compass in his head, she mused, before realising that he probably did. She didn't think it would be possible to get to the grand old age of nine hundred without picking up a fairly decent sense of direction. It had probably saved his life a good few times. Hers, too. She let her mind wander on that topic for a while, deciding not to dwell on the fact that her hand felt empty without his clasped tightly around it.

Damien goes into work the day after Airlia says goodbye to her father forever. She is all he can think about as he walks down the hospital hallways lined with charred dead flesh and lifeless small bodies. She is all he ever thinks about, and he wonders somewhere in the back of his mind if this obsession should be considered a bad thing.

He goes through the motions of the day, dealing as best he can with the aftermath of a truly horrific disaster. The television networks have still not been switched back on and no newspapers have been published today, so nobody knows what really happened the night before last. That is, nobody officially knows what happened. Off the record, everybody knows who to blame; they're just too scared to say at this early stage while tensions are still running high and there is the threat of reprisal attacks from militant protest groups, interference from the governments of other worlds and sanctions from Eustance's government a real possibility.

Damien's day is made harder when the electricity switches off without warning. He takes a moment to stand at the window in his office, looking out over the dark city that stretches out into the wider vicinity. He can imagine people out there, children huddled against their parents, holed up in their houses and flats and apartments praying that the lights will come again, that this is not a sign of a new age of darkness beginning.

He is exhausted by the time he finishes for the day, two and a half hours later than normal. It is so much harder to save lives in the dark, without knowing the full extent of the problem. Three people died on his operating table today, but for once he refuses to blame himself. This is the fault of the government, he knows, and he is pointing the finger of blame at President Maximillian Camdon.

Eventually, he collapses through the door of his apartment, out of breath from climbing thirteen flights of stairs because the lifts aren't working in the power cut. He shuts the door behind him and rests his head against the door for a moment, his breathing gradually slowing. He knows he isn't a young man anymore, but he would have thought he could walk up a few flights of stairs without too much trouble. Obviously, he thought wrong.

A soft weeping is coming from the kitchen and he walks towards it, knowing Airlia has stayed here today to hide from whatever onslaught may be facing the rest of her family- her repulsive, rejected family- at the President's large house a few miles away. 'Airlia?' He calls out to her, receiving a slightly choked sob in response.

He walks into the kitchen to find her sitting in the corner surrounded by a bottle of pills tipped over to spill on the floor, a glass of water, and a large knife in her hand. She looks up at him, tears streaking down her face as she holds her hand out to him. 'Stop me,' she whispers, her body shaking.

He strides over to her and takes the knife from her, setting it down on the table behind him before crouching down next to the woman he loves and looking at her intently. He can see a streak of blood on her arm where the sleeve of her blouse has ridden up slightly, the red liquid slowly dripping down from a thin cut just beneath her elbow. 'Airlia,' he says.

'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I'm sorry. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't think…' Her voice cracks and she begins to sob openly, collapsing into his waiting arms to rest her blonde head against his chest and clutch at his shirt with her hands. Damien notices that her usually perfectly manicured fingernails are chipped and broken; she is beginning to come undone.

He studies her face as she clings to him and feels his heart break a little. She is so young; too young, younger than him. Far too young to be dealing with this. He marvels at her strength so far, knowing that if he had been in her position he more than likely would have broken long ago. Give her father his credit; he had certainly brought his daughter up to have staying power.

He holds her in his arms until she falls asleep, when he lifts her and carries her to his bed, carefully undressing her before sliding her gently under the covers. He kisses her forehead before walking back through the dark apartment to the kitchen, tidying away the pills and the water and putting the knife somewhere he hopes she'll never think to find it. And then he pulls out his notebook, lights a candle and sits down at the table to work by the dim light, planning his escape from this living hell and dreaming of the day when he and Airlia will finally be free.

This is the day Damien learns that everything could so easily break, and that darkness cuts so easily through the light. (Everything will change in three months, twenty one days and six hours.)

'Hello again, Mr Smith,' came Ganjud's surprised greeting as the Doctor walked through the entrance to the bar, followed closely by Rose. His gaze flicked to her and he grinned. 'Hello, sweetness. What happened to you two? You look like you had a cat fight.'

'We kind of did,' the Doctor said, holding up his blood stained handkerchief. 'Do you have a first aid kit?'

'Yeah, yeah.' Ganjud waved them to a table next to the bar and bent down to rummage around for first aid supplies.

They both sat down and sighed simultaneously. The Doctor picked up Rose's hand and studied the piece of gravel lodged under her skin, murmuring a soft apology when he accidentally pressed too hard and she winced with pain. He took the offered first aid kit from Ganjud with his free hand, rooting around in the small box until he found a pair of tweezers and some disinfectant.

The gravel was easily removed with only a small amount of protest from Rose when the Doctor carefully swabbed the wound with a disinfectant wipe. He put the tweezers away and let go of her hand, grinning up at her. 'Do you want a plaster?' he asked her.

She pretended to think carefully about the decision, biting the inside of her lip before shaking her head and saying, 'Nah, I think I'll live. Now, let's get this head wound of yours sorted.'

Whilst Rose worked at cleaning the cut on his temple, the Doctor became aware of Ganjud hovering at their table. The bar was empty apart from them, and he wondered in the back of mind how Ganjud managed to stay in business if it was always this quiet. It had been deserted last night too, and they had been the only guests in the rooms available to rent. 'You okay there?' he asked the owner of the bar.

'Yeah,' came the response. 'Just wondering how you managed to get into a fight on your first day here. Thought you two were leaving, anyway.'

'We were,' the Doctor replied, sucking in a breath as Rose gently wiped disinfectant over his temple. 'Change of plan.'

'What happened?'

'Our escape route was intercepted,' he deadpanned.

'Your escape route,' Ganjud repeated flatly.

'It's complicated,' the Doctor replied. 'But now, seeing as we're going to be staying around a bit longer, we'd appreciate it if you could give us some information on the current situation around here. Because on my estimates, it doesn't seem like things are going too well. And that earlier display of police brutality didn't exactly smack of the pleasant and ordered democracy the human race always seems to be striving for. So what's going on?'

'What display of police brutality?'

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by the door to the bar opening. He looked across to see Maurice enter, wearing the same shabby coat he'd had on last night.

'You again!' Maurice exclaimed as he crossed the room to stand next to Ganjud. 'Thought I told you to get out of here as quickly as possible.'

'Yes, well it's not like we haven't tried,' the Doctor replied. 'But technicalities are not making things easy at the moment.'

There were a few moments of silence before Ganjud went behind the bar to make coffee and Maurice busied himself with dragging more chairs over to the table and taking off his coat before making himself comfortable on a large padded chair. Rose finished sticking a plaster to the Doctor's temple, discreetly running her hands through his hair before sitting back down beside him, close enough for his knee to bump against hers under the table.

Ganjud appeared with a tray of coffee, setting it down in the middle of the table. He sat down. 'So,' he said. 'What was this display of police brutality you saw?'

The Doctor took a long sip of coffee before answering. 'It was up near where we arrived last night, outside a café called Bitsy's. I'm not sure exactly what happened; I was somewhat unconscious for a lot of it.' He pointed at his head and then looked at Rose.

'There were these protestors,' she filled in, suddenly feeling uncomfortable now that everyone was looking at her. 'They were saying something about stopping the oppression. Then the police, or guards- whatever they are- showed up. They just… started hitting people.' Her gaze drifted to the centre of the table. 'There was all this blood.'

The Doctor squeezed her knee under the table, before fixing Maurice and Ganjud with a piercing gaze. 'Does this kind of thing happen often?' he asked.

Neither man had to hesitate before nodding. 'Oh yes,' said Maurice. 'And it's getting worse all the time.'

'Everyone is scared,' Ganjud added. 'Everyone goes through the days scared for their lives, for their children's lives. So many die each week, and all because they simply want to be free.'

'And the worst thing,' Maurice said sadly. 'Is that this is what the people voted for. Only they didn't know this was what they were voting for. And now they don't even have the right to vote anymore.'

The Doctor swallowed some more coffee. 'Tell me everything,' he said, in the voice he knew was almost impossible to disobey.

And so they did. The Doctor and Rose sat and listened to two men telling a story of corruption and power, death and oppression. They learnt of how the government had been elected to strengthen Eustance's position within the Planetary Alliance and had instead taken to torturing its opponents and those who dared to dissent against it. They were told a story of fear and waste and dictatorship, of how the government had become terrorists to their own people, of how the people had been too scared to stand up to the nightmare they were being forced to live in. Then they were told of a backlash of protests, of the opposition gaining momentum as it gained support from other planets at the same time the government was strengthening its forces. And now there was all out war in the vicinity of Valtallahan. Every man for himself, and the violence was escalating from a series of carefully staged attacks to all out bloody battles on the street at all hours of the day- as long as it was light, of course. You could be shot for being out after curfew. Which, the Doctor and Rose now learnt, was in place for over half the hours of the day. That could be good for family bonding time, but it also gave people a lot of time to mull over their situation and plan ways to make things change.

Finally the horrific tale was over; the last major incident in the sequence of events being the night the government killed over twenty thousand people in Valtallahan with a series of carefully timed explosions. They had gone from being the people's best triumph to cold and calculating terrorists. And that had to stop.

'You two want to be careful around here,' Maurice said, leaning in conspiratorially. 'If the authorities find out you just showed up here one night and the next day got yourselves caught up with a gang of protestors, then well…' He sat back in his chair, his voice quiet when he spoke again. 'You just need to be careful.'

The silence hung in the air for a moment before Rose got up the courage to ask, 'Why, what would they do?'

Nobody answered her, the quiet in the room stretching on for over a minute before Ganjud took a deep breath and spoke. 'They'd capture you, honey,' he said. 'They'd lock you up and scare you to death. And then they'd torture you for information. Real nasty stuff, as well. Stuff I imagine your fella here doesn't want you to be knowing too much about, sweetness.' He nodded to the Doctor and was awarded with a look of appreciation from him.

'But we haven't done anything wrong,' she said. 'We don't know anything.'

'Then I advise you to keep it that way. But the authorities don't know that, and for all they know you're lying when you say you're innocent. That's what they all say. But they always break in the end; give the authorities what they want. You can't get away with anything around here.'

'Does it happen a lot?' Rose asked quietly, doing her best to ignore the sick feeling in her stomach that had started when Ganjud and Maurice had begun to tell the story and now refused to go away. 'People getting tortured, I mean.'

Ganjud nodded. 'Yeah, it does. Practically common place. You'd think we were back in the Dark Ages. So watch out, sweetness. And I'd advise you not to get into any more fights. It's horrendous what they do to people here.'

The Doctor leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head as he mulled Ganjud and Maurice's words over in his head. He was torn between the need to leave as quickly as possible and the urge to stay and help, to fight. 'Well,' he said eventually, placing his drained coffee cup alongside all the others on the table, lined up in a row like soldiers. 'Something needs to change, doesn't it?'