Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who

Chapter 10

As morning drifted into afternoon and afternoon merged into early evening, Rose's condition became progressively worse. It was as though the poison surging through her blood and invading all her tissues was marching in tune with the sun's progression as it tracked across the sky.

There was nothing left inside her to vomit, but her stomach still heaved dryly as the first stars appeared in the heavens. Albeit they were faint in the blue-black of the summer sky, the sun barely dipping below the horizon gave the nightscape a glow which only the brightest celestial objects could pervade.

The pounding in her head increased to the point where she couldn't open her eyes anymore.

A sad thought passed through her mind, barely making a blip on her consciousness, the overwhelming pain taking up ninety nine percent of her awareness.

She would never see stars again.

She'd already resigned to the fact that she wouldn't see the Doctor again; if he was even still coming he'd arrive too late. Maybe he'd take her body back to Canary Wharf. Back to the day when everything changed, to be 'found' amongst the thousands of other bodies, the uncountable dead...

That would explain why the Master thought that she'd died there – and it would save the Doctor the trouble of going through the process of registering her death, coroner's report, post-mortem, explaining the poison which was probably of alien origin... she could understand that. He'd want to distance himself from the whole process and the pain and guilt that went with it.

But looking at the stars had given her comfort, had reminded what a fantastic life it had been.

Travelling with the Doctor through time and space.

As it should be.

The stuff of legends…

But now, even though the light in the room was dim, any optical stimulus sent a sharp, searing agony right through her skull and she couldn't look at the stars outside anymore. The pain was too much… too much.

Her thoughts became more jumbled, less coherent as the blackness crept towards her. The cold, dark of oblivion reaching out to claim her, its arms enveloping her as the Doctor's once had and whispering one word as she slipped into the black.

"Rose."

dwdwdwdwdwdwdw

Jack leapt forwards to restrain the Master as the Doctor crashed to his knees in front of Rose's limp, pale form.

She was alive, but barely. Her heart failing, her breaths shallow and irregular, her skin cold and waxy.

"Rose." He whispered, gathering her in his arms as his joy at seeing her faded to despair and then hardened into resolve.

"What have you done to her?"

The Master was standing passively by the window, his arms restrained by Jack, but there was no need. He wasn't resisting, his weapons were never about physical strength, he had plenty of other ways to fight and win.

"A little concoction of my own making. I have the antidote but you have to do something for me first. Give me the TARDIS, Doctor."

"Never!"

"Oh, never's quite a long time, Doctor. And trust me, you don't have that long. Look at her."

The Doctor looked down at Rose's pale, lifeless face, unconsciously crushing her body to his a little tighter as he held her. He had no choice.

He nodded.

The TARDIS was in the cramped car park at the rear of the building, nestled between the foul smelling bins and a nondescript white van. Upon seeing it the Doctor begun to sprint, solutions forming in his mind as he ran but as he opened the door to his ship and took a step over the threshold a blast caught him, throwing him into the air so that he landed hard on his back on the dusty tarmac. More worried about his companion than anything else, the doctor checked her over. There didn't seem to be any new injuries but her heartbeat was barely perceptible now. He was losing her.

The Master had been released by Jack as run to his friend's aid. He was leaping up and down joyfully. "Oh that was FUNNY!"

"There's no point anyway, Doctor. Even if you could get her into the TARDIS it would take too long to analyse the poison and synthesise an antidote. Why do you think I had you running all over London all day?"

"Then give me the antidote!" The Doctor roared.

"Not until you give me what I want… oh no you DON'T!" this directed at Jack who was moving to restrain him again." The Master took out his screwdriver and pointed it at Jack's chest. It emitted a high pitched screech and a beam which blasted Jack off his feet.

"Laser screwdriver!" He declared, proudly. "Who'd have sonic? And the good thing is, he's not dead for long, I get to kill him again!"

"I'll do it, I'll do it!" The Doctor shouted, desperate, pleading. "Just give me the antidote! Please!" His face was screwed up in anguish and tears had started to form in his eyes.

At some point during the kerfuffle, Rose had stopped breathing.

Then three things happened at once.

The Master joyfully turned to rush to the TARDIS, Jack took a loud, gasping breath and a gunshot rang out as Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones rushed into the car park. Jack took the opportunity to leap on the Master's back, divesting him of the screwdriver and pinning his arms. There was blood pulsing from the Master's shoulder where the bullet had struck him, but that didn't seem to be slowing his attempts to escape.

"Search him!" he commanded his team. "He's got the antidote on him somewhere."

But with the strength of a cornered, injured and in this instance, cowardly Time Lord, the Master broke free from Jack's grip, wresting the vortex manipulator from his wrist, he took a giant leap away from his captors and vanished.

Jack looked at the Doctor in horror, the Time Lord's face was almost as white as the skin of the girl clutched so desperately in his arms but an icy resolve was forming there.

"Give me that screwdriver, Jack!" the Doctor commanded. "And take Rose, bring her into the TARDIS."

"But Doctor, the TARDIS…"

"Just do it!" The Doctor's furious tone brooked no refusal.

"Doctor, she's…" The ex time agent's voice was stricken as he took Rose from the Doctor.

"I know!" the Doctor ground out, his teeth clenched.

As he swept into the TARDIS he held both screwdrivers, his and the Master's ahead of him. "I'm sorry old girl." He whispered as he activated both screwdrivers.

The TARDIS screamed as the beams hit the console, the sound curdled the Doctor's blood but he didn't relent. The invisible barrier at the door faded and Jack stepped through with Rose in his arms as the cloister bell begun to toll, it's mournful cry echoing around the ship.

"Follow me! Hurry up!" the Doctor shouted as he sprinted to the sick-bay, surrounded by the screams of his agonised ship.

"Quick!" The Doctor commanded as he rushed inside, Jack hot on his heels. Together, they placed her on a gurney.

"We've got to drain her blood, replace it with clean blood while I synthesise an antidote."

"Will that work?" Jack's scepticism was overlaid with hope.

"I have to try." Was the Doctor's only response. He'd already incubated Rose and was inserting a needle into her arm.

With Rose as stable as was possible under the circumstances, with one tube feeding her blood and another tube taking it away the Doctor set about analysing the sample he'd taken from the blood that was being drained.

"Will the TARDIS be able to help you?" Jack asked, worried that the damage she'd sustained would prevent her from carrying out anything complex.

"Quicker if I do it myself." The doctor muttered, separating the sample into vials, adding drops of this or that and analysing the results under a microscope. Determination flashing in his eyes he started mixing an antidote.

"You've done it?" Jack's voice was an equal mix of awe and relief.

For the first time in a long time the Doctor's face broke into a smile. "Didn't I ever tell you that I'm brilliant?"

He dashed to Rose's side. One syringe-full of antidote into her skin and one into the bag of blood feeding her. He stood back from his work, his hands suddenly bereft of anything to do, he drew a seat next to the gurney and held one of her hands in both of his.

And so they waited. Neither daring to leave the room, but with each passing hour Rose's condition improved.

"What did you do to the TARDIS?" Jack asked, hours later the cloister bell was still booming.

"She's very, very angry with me." The Doctor acknowledged with a grimace. "But I had to hurt her enough to let us in. I can fix the damage I've done. I probably shouldn't step outside until she's forgiven me though, I she might not let me back in."

Finally, after many hours of waiting, Rose started to show signs of awakening. The hand that wasn't held in the Doctor's grasp reached up to claw at the tube in her mouth.

dwdwdwdwdwdw

The first thing that registered as Rose started to awaken was that she hurt. A lot. She tried to swallow but there was something blocking her throat, something hard and uncomfortable, she reached up, her arm numb and heavy to claw the obstruction away.

"Not yet." A voice murmured gently, a hand staying hers.

That didn't sound like the Master. That sounded like… but it couldn't be! She opened her eyes a crack.

It was. It was him. It was the Doctor!

Her eyes opened fully and she stared up at him dazed. Relief and disbelief flooding through her in equal portions. She smiled as best she could around the tube in her mouth.

"Oh, Rose." He murmured, brokenly as he caught her gaze in his. "I thought I'd lost you."

Tears formed, unbidden in her eyes as she gazed back. How long had it been since he'd looked at her like that? The bond, once so strong between them, had been shattered that day when her future self had materialised at Canary Wharf. But right now, as he looked at her, his expression so full of emotion, it was as though the events of the last two weeks had melted away.

Her senses told her that she was in the TARDIS, she had no idea how that had happened but she was suffused with happiness that it had. She'd thought she'd never see the inside of this ship again. The beautiful little blue box that had become her home.

An unearthly clangour coming from somewhere in the TARDIS caught her attention and she looked around noticing Jack for the first time. Catching her look, he smiled broadly and walked over to her. Both of her hands had been captured by the Doctor so he contented himself with pushing her hair back from her face.

"Nice to see you again, Rose." He grinned at the understatement.

She tried to make a noise. She just wanted this damn tube out of her throat. She struggled to release one of her hands from the Doctor's grip and pointed to the obstruction in her mouth.

"Okay." He nodded. "Just relax for me. This is going to feel a bit strange."

He was right, it felt extremely weird, a bit like a backwards swallow, as the tube was pulled, slowly and gently out of her airway causing her to gag.

She was left with a horrible, chemical taste in her mouth and a scratchy feeling at the back of her throat.

After the Doctor had helped her sip some water, Jack left the room saying he had to share the news with Gwen and Ianto.

Rose had no idea who Gwen and Ianto were, but she was grateful for the time alone with the Doctor, especially now that she was able to speak.

"So, we're in the TARDIS?"

The Doctor nodded in affirmation. "Yeah, TARDIS sick-bay, doesn't get much use but that's actually a good thing."

"What's that noise?"

"That's ur.. that's the TARDIS, but it's fine, she'll be fine."

"I didn't think you were coming."

"Oh, Rose." His eyes narrowed with hurt. "Why would you think that? For even a second?"

"I dunno, I jus'…." She tried to think of the right words to express what she was feeling without hurting him more. "I just thought, after everything, after what I did – what the future me did – an' then you were so angry an' I thought you were jus' waiting for the opportunity to get rid of me."

"Rose, you'd been taken hostage!" The Doctor's face was hard, his tone disbelieving. "You think I'd just let that go?!"

"I thought maybe… you'd probably come for the TARDIS." She admitted in a small voice. "an' that you'd leave it to Jack to find me, 'cause you didn't know about the poison so..." she broke off.

The Doctor swallowed, hard as he tried to compose his expression. "You really think that?" His voice broke a little as he spoke.

She looked away, unable to bear the expression of hurt on his face.

"Rose." His tone was urgent, "What have I ever done to make you think that?" he cupped her chin in his hand, turning her head and demanding her attention.

"On that day that my father died, you left me. You stormed off and if there hadn't been something wrong with the TARDIS you wouldn't have come back."

"I was coming back. I was never gonna leave you there, Rose. Never."

"an' then you left me an' Mickey on that spaceship when you went back to France for her" she knew she sounded petulant, even childish, but they'd never really talked about that one. It was like, 'oh, yeah, you've fallen in love with a French aristocrat and now you're leaving me stranded so you can go and live with her and not come back… but yeah, that's fine…'

His expression darkened at the mention of France. "Rose, Reinette Poisson was a fixed point in time, I had no choice! If she'd died prematurely at the hands of clockwork droids from the future it would've changed the entire course of history!"

"So?" She breathed with a short laugh, smiling in spite of herself.

He smiled back, indulgently, and cupped her face more firmly with his hand, his thumb caressing her cheek. "And you know what Rose Tyler?"

Her heart was hammering in her chest. "What?" she breathed.

"If that ever happened again, I'd…" he broke off as Jack rushed into the room.