Water, Mud, or Medicine

Rose

She tried not to take much note of the scenery. Silverstorm's TARDIS-proofing had become defunct right after their first visit, when Rose summoned the ship to materialise around the eight of them so that they could escape. Now it had dropped them off in the middle of the derelict old city, thankfully not in the middle of a superpowered-brawl. Getting knocked unconscious and dragged to opposite ends of the complex (again) would not be good, even if this time they hadn't been drugged with power-preventative serum. Silverstorm was the real embodiment of some of those dark images of the future people often explored, and she wasn't inclined to think about the injustice of it all. She would just make herself angry if she did, and were they not trying to end it all, anyway? It wasn't as though she was outright ignoring Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged, not at all. She was sure some people did, though.

"What happens to us, in the future?" Amy asked Esther Drummond, for the third time. It was them and Clyde Langer, who had made a quip or two about not being so happy about how he was outnumbered by girls three to one (all jokes, of course) and was supposed to be some sort of expert when it came to getting around Silverstorm, thanks to this liquification ability he apparently possessed that allowed him to slip through the forcefield.

"I don't live with you guys," Esther answered shortly. She kept avoiding the question, for good reason. Rose experienced enough of the time vortex whispering cross-temporal secrets to her to know Amy probably didn't want to know whatever Esther did about the future. There was always something people didn't want to hear; it was easier and better to just let fate take its course.

"Aren't you supposed to have premonitions? Visions, or something?" Rose asked Amy, stepping over a pile of rubble from a building by now so dilapidated she couldn't really tell what it had been before.

"I never have them about anything useful," Amy quipped, sounding like she was in a bad mood. She always sounded like she was in a bad mood. But people (Clara, eurgh) often said the same thing about Rose. And she didn't like it.

"What makes you think I'll tell you anything useful? You're seeing the future right now," Esther said, "You live in a time machine. You see more of the future than anybody." Amy narrowed her eyes at Esther as they walked.

"Have you grown an attitude?" she asked, and Esther looked surprised, then her expression relaxed into one of understanding, and she shrugged.

"I've been living with Sally Sparrow for thirteen years," she said. That was all she needed to say. God only knew what living with Sally Sparrow, of all people, for that long would do to somebody. Murder-suicide would be Rose's preferred fate in that situation.

"So you really can't tell us anything?" Amy asked, and Esther sighed. Clyde wasn't getting involved in their conversation, he (and Esther, to a lesser extent because she kept getting distracted by them) was the only one paying attention to their surroundings. Then again, he was also the only one who knew their way around.

"Maybe you should ask Oswin? She always knows more than she lets on," Esther remarked. Did she, Rose wondered? Then again, Rose also knew more than she could ever let on (she knew when Thirteen came from, for instance, and that at some point Laika, the dog who died in space, would live on the TARDIS.) She wouldn't go asking Oswin anything, but Amy might, and Rose doubted Oswin would take too kindly to that.

"Shh," Clyde hushed them and they all paused to listen. They didn't have to listen for long until they heard what he had; shouting, lots of it, and other noises of general chaos and destruction. A fight, undoubtedly. Well, what had they expected going back into Silverstorm and its vicious gang war? It was as though the people living there didn't even remember who had imprisoned them, who the real enemy was. Maybe they didn't.

A shape flew across the sky above them like a meteor, coming from the direction of the ruckus, and it took Rose a few seconds to discern that it was a person. Then it took her a few more seconds to discern that this person was not flying. Well, they were flying, but not flying-flying. It looked to Rose like something had thrown them that distance, and their little blot of a body arced beneath the grey sky with their screams whistling behind them. And then Rose Tyler realised that this person was going to die, unless somebody did something.

The world turned beneath her feet to bring her to this body in an instant, the time vortex bending reality to her will in a brightness of gold light. She knew exactly where they were going to land, and she was there to use her superstrength to catch them right out of the sky and save their life, gripping the anonymous person's arm to try and steady them as they stumbled on the ground. They slipped from her grip and ended up falling onto their hands and knees, breathing deeply. They were a boy – a young boy, too. Couldn't even be thirteen years old. What was going on in Silverstorm was abhorrent. Who on Earth had just thrown a child halfway across the ruined city? Who had incarcerated a child in the first place?

"Are you alright!?" Rose asked, and he whimpered and tried to get away from her, but she appeared in front of him in a flurry of gold sparks, residual light shining behind her eyes like a sun. She crouched down to speak softly, "I'm not going to hurt you – I'm a friend. I just saved your life," she smiled. He softened. He wasn't in much of a state to try and run away from her, to be honest. She glanced around like she expected the others to still be there, but of course they weren't.

"What do you want from me? I don't know anything about the pump, alright!?" he exclaimed, trying to get away from her again.

"Pump? What pump?" Rose asked. The last time she had been in Silverstorm she hadn't heard anything about any 'pump.' Most of the fighting between the Apexes and the Conduits had just revolved around grabbing the best food supplies and resources. "I'm new here," she said, "I'm here to help."

"Help?" he asked. Her attempt to calm him down was ruined by a noise that tore through the air, accompanied by a vivid blue light. This light then, in an instant, turned into Esther Drummond, blueish-white streaks left burned into Rose's eyes in the air behind her.

"What was that!?" Rose exclaimed, "Did you teleport!? You can teleport!?" The boy was even more scared now two of them had showed up.

"No," Esther said, "Sally calls it flitting. I forgot that I haven't learnt how to do anything when you guys are coming from… she sometimes calls it 'going into hyperspace.' Or 'warpspace' but I told her 'warpspace' isn't scientifically accurate." Rose really didn't care what Sally Sparrow said about this or that (unless she was making fun of Clara, like she had been the other week.) "It's sort of like I can turn into lightning, uh, in layman's terms, but it's dangerous for anybody nearby."

"I'm trying to talk to this kid – you scared him," Rose said, indicating the boy. Again, she had to teleport to get in front of him, which probably wasn't doing a whole lot to get him to trust her, this idea that he couldn't really escape. "It's okay, we're going to help here. How are they allowed to lock up a kid?" she asked Esther.

"Manifests don't have human rights anymore," Esther explained, "The HCC can do what they like."

"They what?" Rose exclaimed the same time Clyde and Amy rounded the corner of a broken old house, both of them tired from having to run. Rose hadn't had to run anywhere for a long time.

"Told you I'm faster than your girlfriend," Esther remarked to Clyde.

"Whatever, ignore them," Rose addressed the boy, "I told you, we're here to help – we're not prisoners, we've broken in to try and put a stop to Silverstorm. What's this pump?" Clyde was coming over, though Esther and Amy kept their distance, and the boy deliberated for a few seconds before he finally decided that they were trustworthy.

"It's what they're fighting over, the gangs," he explained, "The Conduits have it right now, the Apexes are attacking."

"Which ones are the good ones, again?" Esther asked.

"They're both as bad as each other," Clyde answered, coming to crouch next to Rose, "What's the pump, though?"

"It's a way to get water."

"My god – you're soaking! What have you been doing!?" Rani Chandra demanded of Amy after Rose had teleported the four of them back into the Sanctum.

"Maybe she wanted to see what it's like to be a real 'pond'?" Clara remarked from one of the chairs by the desk where she was sat, a mug between her hands. They all had mugs of something or other, in fact – how long had they been back, Rose wondered?

"I fell into a big silo full of water trying to put the cure in it," Amy said, unamused by Clara's sense of humour. Then again, who was amused by Clara's sense of humour? Certainly not Rose.

"When did you lot get back? Is it over?" Rose asked.

"You tell us – is Silverstorm done?" Rani questioned them. Rose wanted a drink. Ironic, since they'd just been trying to spike a water supply. What Oswin hadn't told them was that the cure, when put into water, made the water glow bright blue. It took Amy's talent for persuasion to get anybody to drink it, but it had all been relatively smooth sailing. Not one god-awful brawl the entire time, mainly because Esther had some phenomenal ability to electrically incapacitate a dozen people at once. It had been welcomely anticlimactic, Rose thought. She'd never complain for not having to be in a fight; there was only so far superstrength got you before you needed to actually know how to do things. Perhaps she should ask Jenny to teach her how to fight? But then again, Jenny was too busy running off becoming a lesbian recently.

"They're cured. Or in the process of being cured," Clyde answered her.

"Leave it a few days and I'll shut off the forcefield," Esther said, "We could go offer bottled water with the remains of the cure to everyone. It'll be easy now you guys have dismantled the HCC." There was an uneasy pause where the lot of them who had already been back at the Sanctum glanced between each other.

"What?" Amy asked, "I'm cold and soaked. Don't tell me you lot failed. Was it her fault?" she nodded at Clara.

"Why would it be my fault!?" Clara exclaimed. Amy shrugged.

"She has a point," Rose agreed with Amy. Clara rolled her eyes and went back to whatever she had been doing before. A whole lot of nothing, it looked like. Daydreaming.

"It's complicated," Luke interjected, "The HCC have… moved… and we'd need a teleporter to get to them now."

"Where are they…?" Rose, sensing that by 'teleporter' he meant her, asked carefully.

"On the Valiant. Mark 2. They built another one."

"Did you at least find out what Project Crystal is?" Clyde asked after he groaned, annoyed that they weren't really making much progress at all. Well, half of them were making progress, but the others had proven themselves to be nothing short of useless.

"Uh…" Luke faltered, and nobody else spoke.

"Seriously? Then what did you do?" Rose asked.

"They found out what Project Populace is," Adam Mitchell answered, "Klein was making more Manifests artificially, using Simmonds' original formula."

"They were keeping them in these sort of tanks, or cells," Clara answered. Sounded to Rose like how that hospital on New Earth had been run, keeping people locked up and drugged in the cellar.

"This Project Crystal sounds like stage two, so we need to find away onto the Valiant to stop Klein. It's over the Atlantic right now," Luke explained.

"Oh great. The sea," Amy commented dryly, unamused with this turn of events, "Is there even any point in asking if you'll let me dry off a bit first?"

AN: Full disclosure, this chapter was awful to write, I do not care. Next ones should be better. One of the upcoming ones I've already mostly written and it IS better, it's just because this stuff is so tedious and painstakingly necessary, so just bear with. Anyway. All my lectures are over now until like January 13th (for real), I just have a 2500 word essay to do for the 2nd on Ulysses (end my life.) SO, I'm gonna try and start legitimately regularly updating again, and try and keep it up for at least the next five weeks when all I have to do is read books. But I have TWO questions for you to please answer: First of all, I'm thinking of doing an all-girls (well, all five major female companions) storyline, but would you guys like to see Future Clara join them in place of Present Clara? Not sure how far in the future, probably before Thirteen goes back in time, but yeah what do you think? Like, dislike, indifferent? (There would be no Thirteen or other Futures, it would just be Clara, though you'll be pleased to know I added another Future Clarteen storyline and a Future Clarenny storyline to my roster when I revamped my whole Day Plan.) Second question is would you all be averse to some Oswin stuff coming up? I'm thinking of fleshing out her current arc a bit more since she has stuff going on, but she's one of the characters who's always dangerously overused (though she actually hasn't been recently if I look at my statistics.) Answers would be appreciated ASAP.