Sorry, this is rather a short chapter, but I'm having trouble with the length of the chapters at the mo - I have a ten page chapter written out, except it feels far too long, so I'm trying to divide it into natural breaks. This is the first, the rest should be uploaded soon. This is the Doctor contemplating what he's discovered. Please read and review, and thank you to those who did review! As always, I own nothing except the vague idea :)
The Doctor sat beside Amy until the bed, holding her in his arms, waiting for her to fall asleep, and watching the occasional lonely tear sliding down her cheek.
Once Amy had indeed given in to slumber, the Doctor got up stealthily and left the room. He had a mystery to figure out.
Running down the TARDIS corridors to his room – even more off limits to strangers than Amy's room – he rummaged through his cavernous cupboard until he found what he was looking for – a mobile phone. It had stayed on the TARDIS ever since...it was Rose's old 'phone. When he'd left her with the human doctor, she'd pressed a note with her number on into his hand. He'd never used it, but had always kept it with him...just in case, he reasoned with himself.
Now, the Doctor dialled the number, having located the scrap of paper with Rose's handwritten scrawl on it from somewhere within his jacket. Using Rose's super phone, he tried to contact his former companion, but there was no answer, only a recorded message saying "The number you have dialled has been disconnected." The number was at least reachable, which meant that the 'phone must be in this universe, but it hadn't been used time. The Doctor started to panic. What had happened to Rose? He'd thought, that when he left her with the human doctor, that they'd live a long and happy life together. He thought he'd given her the life that...the life that he could never have with her. It had nearly killed him, losing her the first time. Physically leaving her behind a second time had damn nearly killed him...he harboured a secret belief that the heartbreak – seeing her for the last time, happy with someone else, had left him weakened for his final months as his previous incarnation, and had been, in part, a cause of his regeneration. His tenth self had known he'd never have Rose back, and so he hadn't wanted to continue.
But seeing her happy with someone else paled in comparison to knowing that she was dead – and in such a pointless way as well. A random robbery gone wrong and his Rose was dead. One thing that the Doctor failed to understand, however, was how exactly Amy ended in his universe? Or was he actually in Pete's world? If he were, that would explain an awful lot, such as why no one around here seemed to have heard anything about any of the events of the past few years – the aliens in Downing street, or the Sycorax invasion, or Canary Wharf, for example.
But the worlds had been sealed – twice – so how had this happened?
The Doctor ran his fingers through his brown hair, desperate for answers that he didn't know how to find. Unable to come up with any, he stalked off to the console room to tinker with the TARDIS, tugging at his bowtie as he went.
I promise the next installment will be longer :)