"Rose!" they screamed, Jackie and the Doctor and the second Doctor. "ROSE!"
A thunderclap was their answer, and a high impossible cry like tearing sheet metal that was also Rose's voice.
"What happened?" Donna shouted, half-running out of the TARDIS.
"Rose vanished," the Doctor spat. "Something grabbed her, as soon as she stepped out - of the TARDIS -" He turned and looked at Donna with horrified eyes.
Another thunderclap, in a clear sky; birds rose shrieking in protest from the sea. A scream that started as a woman's cry and then grew loud, impossibly loud, unbearably bestial, until the howl of a tortured wolf split the sky.
"What is that?" Donna yelled, trying to protect her ears with her hands.
"What did you do!" That was the second Doctor, striding closer to stare at her as though she was some poisonous insect. "What did you do to her!"
In answer, Donna pointed and yelled. They all turned and saw a terrible shining silhouette, towering over them like storm clouds lit by the sun: the outline of a woman with flaming hair, on her knees, hands raised against a blow: and a figure standing over her, holding in one hand what could only be a sword.
The thunder boomed and Jackie screamed. For an instant, the entire ocean seemed to be gleaming red, like blood. Rose's blood, she was suddenly terribly certain: Rose was going to die here screaming, and they would stand here helpless as she died.
The thunder slapped at them, faster and faster, every blow to their ears met by a scream from the sky, and then it stopped, and Rose Tyler collapsed to the ground in front of them, her back a sodden mass of blood. Fragments of pink cloth and blue leather spattered down around her like feathers.
"Oh no," Donna moaned. Then she shook herself. "Medical kit," she snapped, turning and running.
The Doctor and his double were kneeling besides Rose, holding her up, looking at her. Alive, she was alive, but her great dark eyes were red from crying.
"What…what was that?" she managed to gasp.
"WHO!" That was the second Doctor, rising to his feet, screaming up at the sky. "Who did this! Come out here and face me and I'll kill you for doing this to her!"
"And if he don't kill you I will!" Jackie shrieked, her eyes blazing, her face that of a Fury ready to slay anyone in her path with sheer rage.
Donna was back, opening a medical kit and holding it for the Doctor. He gave Rose a shot and then slicked gloves over his hands before starting to assess the damage.
"How bad is it, Doctor?" Jackie asked. Rose just kept panting through clenched teeth.
"Not so bad as - steriliser, Donna - not so bad as it looks." He waved a purple light over the rent flesh, pulled the rest of the jacket away and stared at the smooth white skin of her back, now crossed over with wet-smudged red lines.
He looked up at them, his own eyes wet, and said, "She's been whipped."
"Whipped. Whipped? I'll whip them, whoever did this!" Jackie raged, and then she turned and shouted "You!" with deep loathing.
They stood, Donna with the medical bag in her hands, the Doctor supporting Rose, and the second Doctor: they rose and stared at a shadow in front of them. A black shadow, with what might be straight hair to the shoulders, and broad hips.
A voice came from the shadow; the voice of Esselle. "I hope you will excuse my minimal presence; I am manifesting in this dimension through a puncture considerably smaller than a molecule, and I'd prefer not to open it any wider."
"What have you done to my Rose!" Jackie said, her voice with more than a little of the wolf in it.
"You can't do this, I mean, you can't have done this," Donna said, her brow furrowed. "You - the Eternals wouldn't break into this world, just to punish Rose, no matter what she did!"
A sigh out of nowhere; the shadow lightened and transformed into Esselle, pale and grim in her black uniform. She looked at them, opened her mouth to speak, and then vanished before as the large chunk of rock that Jackie was swinging at her head could make contact. The second Doctor grabbed her, and they wrestled for it.
Esselle spoke from nowhere, barely loud enough for them to hear. "I wasn't sent here to punish Rose Tyler. Davros sent me here to kill her."
They stared, struck again as though by thunder, as Esselle reappeared. There was a sword in her hands, they could see that now, lettered along the blade with pointy script, and wet with fresh red blood. She let the sword's tip drop onto the wet sand, and they heard the rasp of the grains of sand against it.
"Why?" said the Doctor, voicing their shared confusion in one word.
Esselle's stony face grew colder. "Davros was horrified at the damage that the Cult of Skaro did to the walls around the Howling, and nauseated at the Cybermen's damage. But when he found that one woman, one girl, had kept on punching holes through the walls, because she wanted to find a big strong man to solve her problems, even though she knew the damage it would cause, well, he really lost his temper."
"I needed-" and Rose was cut off by Esselle's voice, sharp as a knife.
"You did not need the Doctor, you little fool! You could have solved it! You could have defeated Dav and his Daleks by yourself! You don't have any idea of the sort of power that lies within you, do you?"
Esselle's lips were curled back in fury; then with a visible effort she relaxed.
"Well." She drew a figure in the sand with the tip of the sword, and it steamed. "Well, actually I should say, the power that did lie within you? Because it's gone now, Rose Tyler. The last of the Bad Wolf is beaten out of you, body and soul, and you will not be calling on those powers ever again. You will stay put, once and for all." She cut her eyes at the Doctor, and that glance cut as hard as iron. "Just as you wanted." Donna stiffened, seeming to read something in Esselle's glance.
"And now you're disobeying Davros by not killing her, aren't you?" Donna said. "What could make you do that?"
Esselle looked at Rose's pain-stained face almost meditatively, as though it was some abstract sculpture of pink skin and wet tears.
"Because once I lost the man who was the centre of my life, and I had to go on; and I know how much that hurts. And because Mickey Smith pled your case: that the Void Ship and the Cybermen had started the cascade of damage to the dimensions, and that your efforts were only to heal them."
She turned on one boot heel and faced Jackie. "And for you."
Jackie stared at her, wide-eyed. "Me?"
"Yes."
"I'm not going to kiss you in the future, or anything, am I?" Jackie sounded very worried at this prospect.
Esselle propped the sword against her hip, and then clasped her hands in front of her, her face serious.
"No, not so far as I can see. Another has spoken for you. Another has promised me her life, all her strengths and efforts and love, and in exchange asks only that I grant you a favour. I have granted it, by not taking your daughter's life."
"Another - who?" Jackie couldn't think of anyone who this Eternal person would know that would want to give her, Jackie Tyler, a favour.
"You know about the Daleks and the Cybermen being trapped in the Howling."
"Yeah, Mickey told us about it."
"Well, they did mostly go insane in there. We've been taking them out, translating them into normal space, down on a barren planet where they can't hurt anyone, but most of them just sit there. Their minds have burnt out by the Howling pouring through their senses until they were scoured away.
"But there was one Cyber unit that did not sit. It stood tall, and it remembered. It remembered that it had once had a name. It remembered that it had done its duty for Queen and Country. And it remembered a face. The last human face that it had ever seen with human eyes. Your face, Jackie Tyler."
"Queen and Country - oh. Her." Jackie swallowed in nausea, remembering a dim corridor lined with blood-flecked plastic, the scream of electric saws through bone and muscle, the feeling of cold metal hands holding her in place. "Her at Torchwood. Yvonne Hartman."
"Yvonne Hartman." Esselle smiled, and her eyes glowed as bright as the sky behind her for a heartbeat. "I saw your face in her mind, and I saw her name in your mind, and when I told that Cyber unit its human name, it remembered. It remembered being Yvonne Hartman. It started to come back to being a person, not just a metal drone. Would you like to see it?"
Esselle raised her sword, and sliced a silver curtain in the air with it. The silver condensed, seemed to crinkle like foil, and it formed a skeletal figure. Blunt armoured limbs, handled helmet - a Cyberman in shadow, faint silver lines drawn on air.
It spoke, its Cyber voice eerily melded with a woman's tone. "I did my duty for Queen and Country. I died for Queen and Country."
It crossed its metal arms on its chest, and fell to its knees in worship. Its helmeted head was cocked at a grotesque angle, craning up towards Esselle. "And I still serve my Queen."
She reached out one hand, and seemed to caress the helmeted head.
"And I accept your service," she whispered. "Go and learn yourself. I will always be there to help you."
The Cyberman vanished, and the second Doctor spat in disgust.
"You are obscene," he snarled at her puzzled expression. "Taking advantage of that poor woman, using her-"
"Healing her, rebuilding her body and mind and soul, for no more payment than her devotion; that is not a very exploitative relationship," she snapped, and frowned at him. "You have a talent for getting under an Eternal's skin."
"Thank you," he shot back.
"It was not a compliment." She turned again and faced Donna, and they looked at each other for a long, sweet, painful moment.
"Until we meet again," Donna said a little unsteadily.
Esselle nodded her head, and faded. Then she reappeared, eyes locked on the Doctor.
"And please be careful piloting back out of here," she said in a gritty voice. "Do not go wobbling off course in that erratic way of yours. The hole you punched to get in is large enough that even you can't miss it."
"What are you implying?'
"The TARDIS has many fine qualities, Doctor. She is loyal and strong, adaptable and honourable. But she is not, by any stretch of the imagination, svelte."
Esselle disappeared, leaving the Doctor to stare at where she had been and mutter to himself.
"Did she just call my TARDIS fat?" he finally beseeched the thin air, and got no reply.
Jackie had her arm around Rose's shoulders now, and her cell phone tight to her ear. "I'll call Pete, get an ambulance."
"Mum, I don't need an ambulance."
"You'll have scars for the rest of your life, we don't get you to hospital right now!"
"That's not what's going to scar me," she said, turning and stepping away from the Doctor. She stared up at him, and shivered at the sensation of blood trickling down her spine.
She had to say it, even though the words made her heart cry out. "You're going to leave me here, aren't you. Again."
The Doctor's face was tight with pain as well. "Yes," he managed to squeeze out. "Rose, I - if I stay here, the TARDIS dies."
"But if I go with you..."
Donna interrupted. "Rose. When Esselle said that you were to stay put, she meant it. She might disobey Davros once, but not twice. If you step foot outside Pete's World, if you leave this dimension, she will have your life."
Jackie's eyes widened, and she took Rose's hand in hers.
"And what about me?" the second Doctor asked, standing with one hip cocked just a shade too arrogantly.
Without words, the Doctor walked to him, reached as though to touch his face – and recoiled. Then, slowly, the other man's hands rose. They touched their hands together, palm to palm, and then very slowly leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together.
Rose's breath caught in her throat. There was – a sort of charge, flowing between them. It wasn't sex, and it wasn't love, but it was – connection, that was it. The connection between two nearly identical beings.
"Time Lord metacrisises never work out," the Doctor said, eyes closed.
The second Doctor's eyes were half-lidded, staring at something inside his mind. "Never do," he agreed. "They always end up tearing themselves to pieces, trying to become one being again – and failing."
There was a long, excruciatingly painful pause, and then the second Doctor pulled away. He stepped back, staring at the Doctor, and his fingers rose and touched his forehead.
"No," he said, his dark frightened eyes suddenly brightening with something that might have been hope. "No, you – you're leaving me here? Here, with Rose?"
The Doctor smiled, painfully, and nodded. "You said that you'd always be alone – well, you won't be. You said that you couldn't trust. I trust you with the most precious, the most wonderful person. I give her your life, and you – you do the same. Because she deserves it all."
"If I deserve it all, then I deserve you." Roe was still shivering, the wind cold through the rents in her clothes, but her heart was colder still. "I don't want some Xerox copy of the real thing!"
"He's better than real," Donna said, and both Doctors flinched at those words. "He has what I have: Time Lord knowledge and human creativity. There's nothing to stop him from becoming the greatest force this planet has ever seen. And it's up to you, Rose, to make sure that force is used for good."
"So – what? I'm supposed to, what, ride the Oncoming Storm, tame the lightning. I can't. I can't do that. I just want you, Doctor!" she accused.
"You can do it." Donna went to her and smiled sadly. Rose looked into her eyes and flinched, remembering the Doctor looking at her with that expression.
"You can do it because you have to," she went on. "You can do – almost anything, Rose Tyler. Believe me. I know."
"Thanks," Rose said, the words thick in her throat, Donna touched her fingers to her own lips and then to Rose's, in a brief almost-stylised gesture. Then she turned and went to the second Doctor, and Rose watched them, frowning, touching her mouth and wondering what that not-kiss had meant.
Donna stood and regarded the second Doctor, and her smile faded. They leaned towards each other – for a moment – only a moment- and then jerked back. The thought of sharing their minds was – too tempting, too dangerous.'
A crackling boom came from somewhere overhead, and they both glanced skyward.
"The walls are closing again," the Doctor said. "We can't stay. Donna..."
Donna waved one hand as though to silence the Doctor, and stared again at the man in front of her.
"I don't know what to say," she whispered. "You're like - a brother I never knew I had. A very angry brother, and I'm afraid, so afraid for you."
"You're afraid for me?" he said, puzzled.
"And of you, a little," she said, and then her shoulders slumped a hair. "I suppose if I said I had a gift for you, courtesy of Davros, that you would sorta hesitate to accept it?"
"Hesitate to accept?" His face suggested that he might in fact run at full speed from such a gift.
"It's this." She pulled her hand out of her pocket and showed him a small round stone that glowed with a thousand shades of green. Not the green of poison or neon, but the rippling hues of jungle and ocean and living things seemed to glow from her palm.
"I know what that is," he said, stunned. "It's a-"
"-soul regenerator," the Doctor finished, looking over her shoulder. He moved as though to touch it, then pulled away. "I saw one once, in a museum. It was dead, millennia dead. I've never seen one alive before."
"Well, the thing is, you've got my DNA, and the Doctor's mind, but you haven't got much of a soul right now. And souls are a lot more important that you ever realised. Which means that, well, things can go really, really wrong with you if you aren't careful. So if you want to live, and if you want to love, you'll take this. And keep it with you, until you're healed. And-"
Her fingers spread wide around the green stone in shock. "Of course," she whispered. "Rose will need this too. Didn't Esselle say that she had beaten the Bad Wolf out of her soul? Whatever sort of wound that left, this will heal it."
"I-" and the second Doctor choked. It was obvious that he wanted to say 'I don't want that,' but at the same time something in him was already stretching out towards it, like a plant reaching out for the sun.
"For both of you," she said, and pressed it into his hand. Rose had come close to watch; she reached out and placed her hand over his, and he felt wetness on his skin. He turned her hand over and saw the bloody tracks of her fingernails in her palms, from when she had clenched her fists in pain and rage at Esselle's attack. That memory made him - and he held the stone and breathed, breathed, breathed, trying to relax, trying to calm the wrath in his single heart.
He finally opened his eyes and gazed at the Doctor and Donna, and said too casually, "Goodbye, sister. Goodbye," a long pause, "brother. I - I'll think of you. Lots."
"And take care of Rose?" the Doctor said.
"For all my life."
There was nothing left to say. The Doctor and Donna stepped into the TARDIS, and with a rattling wheeze the blue box vanished away. Forever.