Well...here we are. Needless to say, I've been a bit busy lately. Haven't had much time to write outside of Nanowrimo, and my muse seems to have decided to fly south for the winter. But the 50th Anniversary guilted me into getting back to this (as well as making me fangirl for a solid two hours), so here we are. I won't abandon you like this again, and since Thanksgiving break has just about started you can expect the next chapter within a week. If it hasn't arrived by then, feel free to beat down my door and chain me to my computer. Sometimes I need intervention. Enjoy!
Van Statten's office has been silent since his last outburst, leaving the Doctor to pace silently in front of the door. His mind is spinning in useless circles, what if's and maybe's and how come's, but it grinds to a halt when the door opens and pretty boy Adam enters, not a scratch on him. That is all it takes to set the Doctor off again.
"You were quick on your feet, leaving Rose behind." he snaps at him.
"i'm not the one who sealed the vault!" Adam throws right back, and it very nearly knocks the Doctor off balance, but he just sneers right back, not letting the emotions boiling just below the surface show. Of course Rose's death is his fault, it's always his fault. But it isn't as if he murdered her- oh hell, yes it is. He's not fooling himself or anyone; he is the only one to blame.
"O-pen the bulk-head," the voice of the dalek floods the room and the Doctor's hands clench into fists, so tight his fingernails draw blood from his palms, and he turns to the screen. "Or Rose Ty-ler dies!"
He can't breathe. He's not quite sure how he's moving either, but he knows he is because he can because he can feel the side of the desk scraping his elg as he walks toward the screen. A tiny, tiny smile appears on his face as he whispers her name too quietly for anyone but himself to hear. Rose.
"You're alive." he says, and she is. A captive, certainly, but breathing, living, standing next to the dalek uncomfortably. And as far as he can tell from the pixelated image of her fantastic, beautiful face, she isn't even injured.
"Can't get rid of me." she replies nervously, but oh just the sound of her voice is calming him already. That voice he thought he would never hear again.
"I thought you were dead." he says, silently pleading for her to understand. To understand everything he can't say: he didn't want to, it was an impossible choice, he never meant to do anything to hurt her; but the Time War and all its horrors are still too fresh, too immediate, and he couldn't chance loosing a dalek on an innocent world.
"O-pen the bulk-head!" the dalek orders again, its weapons waving erratically in anger.
"Don't do it!" Rose yells. And that is just so like her isn't it, putting herself in harm's way without a thought. The Doctor is frozen, fear and hatred battling with this as of yet un-named emotion that burns in the pit of his stomach whenever he thinks of Rose. The dalek is growing impatient, however, and interrupts whatever plans the Doctor has forming.
"What use are e-mo-tions," it mocks. "if you will not save the wo-man you love?"
For a split second, everything stands still. Time ripples almost imperceptibly in front of his eyes, showing him the crossroads he is standing on, the infinite branches spreading out before him. With barely a hesitation, he makes his choice.
"I killed her once." he says, crossing to the computer in three long strides. "I can't do it again." he pushes the key and hears Van Statten curse under his breath as the screen goes blank.
"What do we do now?" he cries, glaring at the Doctor. "You bleedin' heart, what the hell do we do?"
"Kill it when it gets here!" Adam suggests, and the Doctor listens with only moderate interest as Goddard points out that their guns are useless. His mind is elsewhere.
The woman he loves? Where the hell did that come from? And even more importantly, why did that one statement affect him so much? Why did it open so many paths to him? Even now he can feel himself edging to a new crossing, toeing several lines all at once.
Then he shoves all these confusing, and frankly a bit frightening, thoughts into a box in his mind, to be opened and reexamined later. Adam, in a move that is either stupid or brilliant, reveals that he keeps a couple of uncatalogued alien weapons in his workshop, and the Doctor orders him to take him there.
Whoever she is, however he feels, he will save Rose Tyler, if it's the last thing he ever does.