Hey! Finally back with a new chapter. This one's got a strange name and will bring some actual information on what the Doctor and River are about to face...
MOVE ON
5 - About pupils.
"This is not an accident, by any means" he started explaining, with a low tragic voice "The TARDIS brought us here, here to you" he glanced at Rose "Through the re-opened gap between parallel worlds..."
Rose's smile faded.
"It certainly has something to do with the Ood's prediction" River prosecuted "I think she might have to come with us…"
"Not so fast, River" he quietly scolded her, approaching Rose again, firmly, angrily, with a cold forehead "I think there's a query which needs an answer, before we leave, and that is: do you know anything… Rose Tyler?"
Her name.
She gulped.
Not only he was close to her again, but he was inquisitive, resolute, intimidating.
Yes, she knew something.
But how could she tell him?
Although, she was pretty positive it would've made things worse.
Therefore, she had to be still…
"Don't EVER lie, Rose. Don't lie to me. If you know something, just say it. Let it out. Spit it. Just…DO TELL ME!" he yelled, close to her face, his traits profoundly altered, his eyes two lit fires.
But Rose was determined to resist.
"I don't know anything" she denied, a little sparkle hidden in her eye.
All she had to do was hope he didn't see it.
Not only the Doctor saw it, but he saw it so vividly he could accurately point at it.
Why was she lying? And how could he pull out what she didn't want to tell?
"Alright! Explain, then: why are you here at this very moment? Why now? How can it be?!" the Doctor insisted virulently, his eyebrows paining for being furrowed.
"The last time you appeared, it was here: I came here every Friday since you left, hoping to find you. That being said, how can I even be involved?" Rose responded, reviving the grief of all the past years.
The Doctor was impassible and his forehead was still corrugated.
"When it comes to prophecies, and especially prophecies involving people dying, I'm no longer tolerant to any kind of deceit. I shall believe you, Rose, after you get on my ship and narrowly describe everything that is within your actual knowledge. Oh, and don't protest, otherwise you'll be automatically proved wrong and I'll be authorized to go for the hard way. Do you understand this?"
Rose's eyes were gaping, bravely sustaining the remarkable weight of his.
She wasn't even blinking.
"Doctor… if she leaves, she'll never be able to come back home again" River noticed, somewhat pitying her, even if she hadn't a clue about who she could be and of what she could be concealing.
"This isn't home. This was never home for me, even though I've been here with my family. Now I'm going to leave without even getting to say goodbye to them, perhaps ever! But the Doctor knows, what choice I've made, long ago " Rose replied, never losing one bit of her resolution.
The Doctor nodded and winked at River, looking rather unimpressed and annoyed.
That kind of words didn't work on him, anymore.
She had him once, he couldn't let her have him twice.
Those feeling were now marked and removed irreversibly.
"Keep your priorities in mind", Ood Sigma said.
Perhaps that was exactly what he was referring to…
"Alright then, we're going to get inside. River, you go first and take control of the TARDIS, please"
"Of course!" River's voice echoed onto the walls of the ship.
He made way to Rose, who stepped forward, already curiously peeking into the new TARDIS.
It looked a lot different now.
The pattern, the colours, the structure, the theme overall: they were barely recognizable.
The stairs were a bit higher, and the light coming from underneath more greenish.
The holes in the walls acquired different sizes one from the other.
Even the corals disappeared.
This got Rose to think.
Nothing about the TARDIS consistently changed after Ninth Doctor's regeneration. Why had a change been needed after Tenth's? What was he trying to accomplish?
Anyway, she just shrugged and folded her arms, keeping her stare to the newly verdant floor.
She kept forgetting, the Doctor hadn't finished with her yet.
She was wondering if she cared.
That woman was always near him within a span of a dozen centimeters and ,while approaching him, she had some spontaneous seductive manners he was apparently encouraging.
Did she care about that, too?
She knew something she definitely cared about, though.
She would've never got to see or speak to her family again, just for that man.
"So, Rose" the Doctor began again, more softly this time "Tell me now, please"
"What would I have to tell you?" she muttered breathlessly, aware she was again shifting to hostile territory.
The Doctor didn't answer, looking at her with sympathy. His eyes were lucid.
She knew he knew.
That she couldn't resist being eye-pierced like that for long, by him.
She attempted to avoid his stares, to shift the attention to something that could have been relevant for him with some winking, but she failed. She had to talk.
"I met a woman… that looked exactly like me"
Both the Doctor and River were attentively listening now.
"I'm convinced she is… was a version of me from the future. She can travel in time, apparently: she even had yellow fluctuating particles around her left hand. She came on this exact day, right before I met you in the bay, because she said it was important. She also said that the bay is called after her, I… really don't know where to begin to rationalize something like this…"
"Thank you" the Doctor was sincerely grateful.
He understood that it had been hard for her to admit to have seen such a curious thing, especially after meeting him in a whole new different social and physical environment.
The Doctor bent on his TARDIS, his eyes lazily laid on the moving machineries and his mind struggling to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
How could that be…?
A future Rose who names herself Bad Wolf and travels in time and space into her own timeline?
Given that she had probably used one of the Torchwood devices, what was with the particles around her hand? Where did they come from?
And wasn't she afraid to cause a paradox?
The contemporary Rose sure was aware of the consequences of interacting with her past selves and it was highly improbable she would've ever forgotten them.
Then, why did she do it?
Why would Rose ever want to do something like that on purpose, knowing that she wasn't safe?
He scrubbed his forehead with his right hand, with the growing conviction that it was all tightly linked to the Oods' predictions.
"Hope you don't mind me asking, but who are you?" River questioned, in a fairly polite tone.
She really didn't know how to approach her, actually. Of course the Doctor knew her, but he also seemed a bit conflicted in her regards and she had no idea why.
"I'm Rose Tyler, I used to be with him" Rose answered very quickly, so that she couldn't actually feel how heavy those words were for her.
"Oh…" River nodded.
She wasn't finished yet, though.
Something must have had happened between them to establish their separation, but she said earlier that she would've never left him. It was also self-evident that she cared a lot about him and she had been broken-hearted.
River needed to know.
"Why did you leave?" she asked, involuntarily gritting her teeth a bit.
"I didn't leave!" she replied offended, as if she had just called her dumb "I was trapped in the parallel world. I wasn't able to reach him anymore!"
River felt her grief, but what could she possibly do?
And was the Doctor overhearing or it was just a feeling?
"He never told me about you. Rose, I'm sorry. I swear that if I knew I wouldn't have asked, but you must understand that we don't know what's coming for us. We have no idea-"
"-And whatever it is, she's involved" the Doctor severely stated, clinging to some wide levers.
Rose took a step in his direction, her lips narrowed, feeling more and more insulted by both of them.
They were shamelessly treating her as their prisoner. As if she actually knew more than they did and they were attempting to make her feel regretful for keeping her mouth shut!
"What? Do you still think I'm hiding things from you?" she yelled, hoping to make those shoulders shudder and finally show some reminiscence of the 'humanity' he had left.
"No, Rose! No, no, no. Of course not! I just think you're scared, confused and-"
"And what, Doctor? Need I to remind you some things? But they're long gone, aren't they, eh?! They're just gone! " Rose was screaming. Pride was literally lighting her up: she pulled the Doctor back and faced him, with weird shiny sprinkles in her eyes.
Not only the Doctor saw them, but he noticed he had seen them a while before. They were awful, magnetic and… familiar…
Anyway, her expression reminded him that, whatever was going on inside her, she was still Rose, the shocked, abandoned, resentful girl he left immeasurably far from home and was now probably about to rave against him.
Sure River now had no doubts about what could have made him so stiff in her regards: if he didn't behave like that, she probably would've jumped in his arms and refused to ever let go.
Because the Doctor always wants or has to let go, at a certain point.
"Yes, they're gone, Rose" he confessed, a bit condescendingly, trying to focus on anything that wasn't her eyes "I'm sorry, but now we are busy looking after… oh"
"What, Doctor?" River and Rose both exclaimed, at a very brief distance from each other.
And at that very moment, he finally realized.
It all matched.
Somehow, the TARDIS was attracted to what was left in her of the Time Vortex, and that was why she had thrown herself into the parallel world as the gap opened.
But why? And why was she reflecting it into her eyes?
Why was it growing into her? How could they even communicate?
"Your eyes, Rose" he explained, forcing himself not to stick his behold to them "You must get out of here immediately, otherwise you'll die"