(AN) This chapter is more from the Doctor's perspective. I thought I would just try it out, but if people like it I might do more chapter like this. Enjoy!
The Doctor flipped the monitor to where he bent over the console, fiddling with the knobs that controlled compounds in the atmospheric shell he had constructed. Upon examining it, much to his relief, he could see that he had manipulated the chemicals to just the right level to make the air sustainable and healing. He tapped the screen, changing the monitor from the various graphs and charts displayed there to the camp itself, right outside the TARDIS. After pulling a lever, he watched as a translucent turquoise shield descended over the area. This would prevent toxins from permeating the safe bubble he had created.
Knowing that all was in place, the Doctor shut off the monitor and proceeded to the door. This air treatment was not admittedly the most particular and stringent way of curing the camp, but it was the quickest, and the most convenient. After only a short interval of inhaling the modified medicinal air, people's lungs would clear of the tar, and initiate sterilization of infection. This technology was very similar to that of 51st century nano-genes that his friend Captain Jack Harkness had available on his ship.
The thought of this individual made the Doctor's hearts sink heavily. Captain Jack had joined him and Rose as a companion on their ship part way into their travels. He had many of the personality traits traditional to someone of the 51st century, what with his obnoxious flirting and obvious vanity. But despite this, the Doctor had grown to appreciate and respect the Captain to some extent. In fact, the most he had ever come to respect any of the 'pretty boys' that Rose had insisted travel with them.
The Doctor had considered, for the briefest moment, bringing Captain Jack with him, on that horrible day. He had caught the briefest glimpse of him, gasping for breath on the floor as the Doctor ducked into the TARDIS. But he knew that Jack was a liability, and would only bring harm to him and Rose.
The Doctor opened the TARDIS door, stepping outside to face the camp before him. He then sighed heavily as the inevitable memories assaulted his weary brain.
The Doctor had mainly feared for the safety of his Rose, who lay lifeless in his arms as he staggered into the TARDIS. At the moment, he had been in complete and utter denial that she was dead. When she had told him that she could see everything, the sun and the moon, the day and the night, he had known that she was seeing the same things that he was seeing. He also realized that if it wasn't taken out of her, the bad wolf entity, that she would burn. That her mind would completely disintegrate.
But, before the Doctor could get to her, all the light had fled from her eyes and body, rushing back into the TARDIS, and she had fallen to the ground, completely limp. The Doctor had rushed to her, hope flooding his mind at the possibility that Rose was safe, that the Bad Wolf had left her. But her pulse had stilled, and no breath filled her lungs. The Bad Wolf had left, but taken Rose's consciousness with it.
The Doctor shuddered at this rememberance, and it brought him back to reality somewhat. A woman who was Rose in every single aspect was in the camp that sprawled before him at this very moment. It would appear as though she had gone through all of the same experiences that he had, and gone through them with a parallel him. The two if them had discussed this to some extent, and the Doctor still felt haunted to by that encounter. He had been prepared to cart her off to the Shadow Proclamation without a moments consideration, nor knowledge of what hell they would put her through. He hadn't seen what she was, hadn't realized the chance he had been blessed with.
What made it even worse was that the Doctor had met her before, talked with her even. When he had first discovered this Rose, the officials at Torchwood had drugged him and brought him to a room to be stored as one of their keepsakes. They had temporarily put Rose there as well, and they had been able to speak to each other. Everything had been somewhat vague, and he himself was very disoriented. The Doctor had reassured her in her panic at getting her memories wiped, and tried his hardest to keep calm himself. The Torchwood workers came in at regular intervals at this point, attempting to beat the information about the memory wiping machine out of him. He had damaged the innermost circuitry, and the technology was so beyond that of Torchwood that they had no concept of how to fix it. The Doctor hadn't relented under this pressure, for a while at least.
It was when they had told him that Rose, who he still hadn't known was from a parallel world, would be killed if he didn't comply.
The Doctor reached the perimeter of the camp ground and stepped through the atmospheric shield. He was a timelord with superior biology who wasn't affected by the meteorite dust, but immediately he found it easier to breathe when he stepped into the boundaries of the camp.
All of the refugees stood outside of their encampments, just as Rose had instructed them to do. Much to the Doctor's relief, he could visibly see that the atmospheric treatment was helping these people. The sound of people coughing and hacking wasn't nearly as present, and he could see that those near him stood straighter, and looked overall less ill. Of course, there would be anomalies, and those who needed extra medical attention, and the Doctor could help them out more now that everyone was inhaling the treated air.
The first order of business was to go to the main tent to inform Harriet Jones that the treatment was successful. The Doctor started walking further in the camp, only to be distracted when he heard a loud clamor in the direction he was heading. He could hear shouting and screaming, but the words being spoken were indistinct. The Doctor increased his speed, jogging towards the tent, lost as to what could be causing this distress.
Upon turning a corner down the row containing the main tent, a massive amount of people were to be seen crowded around up ahead, yelling and waving their fists in a similar manner to before. But there was one key difference to be found this time.
Weapons. Very crudely put together, at that, but weapons. Spears created from broom handles and bits of scrap metal tied together with someone's shoe lace and old rusty kitchen knives were among the mix.
This was a rather alarming change, and the Doctor sped up further, running onto the scene. He soon saw Harriet Jones, standing off to the side, a stern, disapproving look on her face. The Doctor ran to her, and as he did so, he noticed that heads were turning. Those who held weapons looked on at him with a look that could only be compared to sympathy, and this only added to the Doctor's confusion.
Eventually, Harriet Jones caught sight of him, and she too moved briskly in his direction, an unreadable look on her face.
"What's going on?!" the Doctor asked, eyebrows knitting together. "The weapons, why-?"
Harriet's facial expression suddenly was much more readable to the Doctor, and now he could see fear written plainly across her features.
"Doctor, you need to come with me now," she said, and the Doctor could hear the slightest tremor in her voice, no matter how authoritative she tried to come off as.
Before Harriet could proceed towards the tent, the Doctor seized her arm, turning her around. "But what's happening? You need to tell me!" He exclaimed.
Harriet stiffened under his grasp and turned to him abruptly.
"Doctor, it's Rose," she said sharply.
All rational thought evaporated from the Doctor's mind in that moment, and he ran to the tent, cutting and pushing through the crowd. He could only think of her, of Rose, and fear what had happened to her.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted. He shoved through the tent flap, into the darkened room, his hearts jumping all over the place as panic rose up his throat.
She lay on her side on a table, and the Doctor couldn't hear her breathing from where he stood. His hearts sank into his stomach at the sight of her, and in four strides he was at her side, taking her hand in his and feeling her wrist for a pulse.
There were no words to describe the relief that went through the Doctor when he felt it there, the faintest flutter of a beat.
The Doctor released her hand and stood, facing Harriet, who now seemed infinitely small in his current rage.
"What happened to her?!" he growled. "Where did you find her?"
"She's contracted the disease, Doctor. The one you were talking about before," Harriet responded resolutely.
The Doctor quite suddenly felt very oblivious, and he dropped once more to Rose's side, taking her hand in his. He could see black stains now that he hadn't noticed before down the front of her sweatshirt, and her skin felt unnaturally warm.
"She was found outside the atmospheric bubble that you created, and appeared to have collapsed there. She was unconscious."
Harriet's words were nothing but a buzz in the Doctor's ears at this point, and he quickly reached into the pockets of his jacket and pulled out a stethoscope he had in there. He placed it on Rose's chest, and was able to hear a rattling sound accompanied by her uneven breathing.
"I'll presume that you've seen the creatures, the things outside the camp, right Doctor?" Harriet said sharply, abruptly changing the subject.
The Doctor nodded vaguely and tucked his stethoscope back into his pockets, knitting his brows together in concern as he looked down at Rose's slack face. She most likely had a higher susceptibility to the disease, having not been exposed to the dust ever before in her life.
"Well one of the things was found by Rose, dead," Harriet continued. "The species arrived on our planet shortly after the arrival of the meteorite, and it is believed by many that they are responsible to the illness to some extent."
The Doctor absent-mindedly nodded again, Harriet's voice coming in one ear and going out the other. Rose was in critical condition here, and it appeared that it would be necessary for him to move her to the TARDIS medbay and treat her properly.
"There is now an uproar. People have somehow rationalized that because of this occurrence, they can now go out and kill these creatures. I didn't allow it before, but it's possible that if I don't now, I would have an uprising on my hands. I've now authorized people to-"
"I'm taking her to my ship," the Doctor interrupted bluntly. He wrapped his arms under Rose's legs and torso and picked her up, pulling her close to him as he stood.
"I will return as soon as I can," he continued, glancing at Harriet. She made no response to him, appearing rather offended at his interruption, and on that note, he ran out of the tent, Rose jostling in his arms.
When he emerged out of the tent, the crowd was gone, much to the Doctor's relief. It gave him the ability to move much faster through the camp.
Rose was alive, but the Doctor's panic hadn't ceased. It would be horrible beyond anything if he had to witness the death of this tiny pink and yellow human once more, and know that he was responsible. She had to be fighting now, if she was still managing to breathe.
The Doctor cursed himself infinitely as he dove around corners and pelted past frightened families. He should've payed more attention to her, given her the care that he had been negligent in giving to her before. He should've protected her where he had failed to otherwise. Now she could die again, and he reckoned he wasn't going to get a third chance. The Doctor clutched Rose tighter to him, reminding himself that with each wheezing breath she was losing some of her life.
After an interval of time that felt like a million years, the Doctor finally reached the TARDIS, breath coming shortly. The poisonous air around him wasn't helping in the slightest, and it almost seemed like it had gotten thicker, more noxious since the last time the Doctor had been in it.
He temporarily set down Rose to unlock the TARDIS door, and then scooped her up again once it swung open.
The familiar hum in the console soothed his frayed nerves to some extent, but had a minimal affect. He could practically feel Rose dying in his arms, and it terrified him beyond anything. It took far too long for him to stagger into the med bay and put her on a table. Once he had gotten in though, he worked more quickly, more frantically than he ever had before. In a matter of moments, he had her hooked up directly to a respiratory machine. Now, two tubes ran out of her body, one from her mouth and one from her nose. The tube from her mouth directly pumped the massive accumulation of tar out of her lungs, and the tube from her nose pumped oxygen back in. In addition, she had an IV in her arm pumping sedatives to prevent her from waking up while the tar was still being removed.
With a minute or two of setting all of this up, the Doctor could see the black substance filtering up from the mouth tube, and he sighed in relief, sagging to his knees at Rose's side. He stayed there for a long time, grasping her hand tightly in his and listening to her breathing becoming more smooth and regular. Eventually, he pulled up a chair and took her hand again, just sitting there and watching her face, searching for some kind of response.
The Doctor's panic about her illness had subsided dramatically, but he still worried about what awaited him when Rose awoke. He was unsure whether she trusted him or not. And he was unsure about how she would be around him when she awoke. They hadn't really just sat down and talked about what had happened to the both of them, and he felt like that needed to happen.
After a few moments of this, the Doctor got up from his seat, intent on going to the console room. He would remove her tubes as soon as all of the tar had been pumped out of her lungs, and the time interval between now and then wasn't long enough for him to go back outside to the camp. For now, he would just pop out and check on the readings for the atmospheric shield.
The Doctor reached the console room fairly quickly, and when he did so he proceeded over to the monitor. The levels within the atmospheric shell remained around the same, meaning that no adjustments had to be made. However, just before the Doctor was about to shut off the screen, he noticed a small mauve flashing alert in the corner of it. Concerned, he tapped the light.
The monitor started emitting a shrill beeping sound, and the message on the screen alarmed the Doctor.
DANGEROUS LEVELS OF ATMOSPHERIC TOXINS. DO NOT PROCEED OUTSIDE OF TARDIS WITHOUT SPACESUIT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES
"What?" The Doctor exclaimed to himself. He looked at the levels, and was astonished to see that the amount of pollutants in the air outside the atmospheric shell had increased dramatically since he had last checked. This was an urgent matter that had to be monitored, and the Doctor needed to unhook Rose from the machine as soon as possible so he could go outside and figure out was happening to the air.
He dashed back to the medbay, and a flashing green light and an empty tube indicated that Rose's lungs had been cleared. The Doctor proceeded to disassemble and remove the tubes coming from her nose and mouth, and cut off the sedative flowing in the IV. He quickly scribbled a note on a piece of scrap paper, and ran out of the medbay.
A second after arriving in the hallway, the Doctor couldn't help but glancing back at Rose. She lay motionless on the table, arms and legs limply splayed apart.
Before the Doctor knew what he was doing, he had dashed back into the room. He pulled Rose up into his arms again and started carrying her down the hall, approaching her room. He nudged the door open with his foot, then padded over to her bed, gently placing her down on it. Retrieving the quilt from the foot of the bed, he tucked it around her body, slowly, as to not wake her up. He then put the note from the medbay on her bedside table, tucking it underneath the empty tea mug from earlier. Before leaving the room, he stooped down and pressed a brief kiss to her forehead, tucking a stray bit of hair behind her ear.
It was the Doctor's first instinct to feel disgusted at such domesticity, but now he didn't, for some unknown reason. The sight of Rose lying there, entirely serene, made his hearts swell with an emotion that was completely foreign and familiar at the same time.
An emotion that needed to be ignored, he realized, as he crept past the locked pink door down the hall.
From the wardrobe, he found an old orange spacesuit that he pulled on over his normal clothes. Apparently it was what was necessary, if the atmospheric levels outside were really that dangerous.
The Doctor exited the TARDIS not pausing to do anything in the console room.
Without checking the monitors, for he had already done so earlier.
Neglecting to see what he should have seen so long ago.
Planet: Earth
System: Sol
Galaxy: Milky Way
Time: 10/6/06