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Complicated by padawanpooh [Reviews - 6]  Author's Notes: Originally for Solielle at the OSK ficathon. | |
Rose was relaxing for once; lying on her stomach kicking absently at the artificial-but-not-grass. A book lay open beside her, a book with the promising title The Human Response to Alien Contact, a book she’d eagerly swiped from the TARDIS library. Sadly, the book seemed to consist entirely of a list of names and dates followed by several thousand measurements and incomprehensible cross-references; so it lay, discarded, among the many artificial-but-not-flowers. Rose instead watched curious butterflies land on its pages.
The Doctor’s voice crackled over an unseen speaker. “Rose? Where are you?”
“Butterfly Room.” She glanced up; the artificial-but-not-sun was just touching the horizon: it would be dinnertime soon, “is it time to eat?”
“We seem to have hit a patch of temporal shearing. Dimensions are all mixed up…the TARDIS should protect us but…” his voice rose a full octave, “Rose? You’re not near anything, are you? You need to move to the middle of…”
Rose watched as the book began to dissolve into purple smoke. Then the grass, the flowers, the sun…she felt the ground give beneath her feet. The walls twisted sickeningly, but there was no air to help her scream…
III
“Rose? You awake?”
She knew she lay on a hard surface that smelled of the medbay’s not-so-subtle disinfectant. She knew, too, that someone had used her head for a punching bag. She decided to risk opening her eyes.
The Doctor peered down at her. “Welcome back!” he smiled. She noticed his tie was, as always, askew. She tried to sit up and say something sarcastic, but all that came out was a loud groan.
“Oh no no no you don’t, Miss Tyler.” He put a firm hand on her shoulders and shook his head. “You managed to step right into the middle of a shearing bubble. You should have listened to me! It’s scrambled all your electrical impulses — your heart, your brain — your whole nervous system.”
“Should have -- !” she started to protest, but the look on his face told her what the light-hearted lecture was hiding. She lay back down with a sigh. “That doesn’t sound good.”
He picked up a white, hinged device and began fiddling with its controls. “No, not good doesn’t start to cover it. If we hadn’t been on board the Tardis,” he dropped the device on her forehead and adjusted the hinges to fit to her skull, “well, the Tardis managed to restart your heart before I even found you and this,” he tapped the device, “will finish re-aligning your neurons.” He glared at the thing as if daring it to do otherwise.
Rose swallowed and decided it would be better not to think about it. “Doctor…it’s getting cold.” The machine was now ice cold and starting to feel uncomfortable. She wriggled her forehead a bit. “Really cold.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said as he squeezed her hand, “the impulse synchrotron can be uncomfortable. It’s not exactly calibrated for humans. Let me see…I should have something that will make it a bit less unpleasant.” He rummaged through the medbay cabinets.
“Please,” Rose pleaded, her head now throbbing.
“Got it!” the Doctor grinned.
A short, sharp sting in her arm, and warmth spread through her limbs and up to her head. She relaxed. “Wish the injections back home worked like that.”
“Well…I’ve just given you a bit of a metabolism adjustment. Just temporary you see…now don’t raise your eyebrows, you’ll move the synchrotron. It’ll come in handy at our next stop: humans and Tau Tauri Alpha don’t generally mix.”
Rose shot him her best Jackie Tyler Look..
The Doctor swallowed and started to speak faster. “The time rotor got damaged from that shearing bubble. Not enough to ground us but we can only travel in space, not time.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Lucky for us Tau Tauri Alpha isn’t far and it’s the best source of temporal jewel matrix crystals I know. That’ll repair the damage to the rotor. It’s interesting stuff; elementally identically to the matter in the shearing storm. Mining it isn’t a one-person job, though. So, if you’re feeling better when we arrive…?”
Rose rolled her eyes.
III
True to his word Rose was able to leave medbay after another hour. She got back to her quarters and found her blouse was sticking to her back with sweat. As soon as she realised she was uncomfortable a cool breeze came out of one of the ceiling vents and she silently thanked the Tardis. Her sudden need for a cold room must be a side effect of the drug the Doctor had given her, she realised.
She showered (again having to turn the water temperature down) and changed into a thick shirt and combat trousers: there was no sense ruining her favourite blouse for one of the Doctor’s mad schemes.
He was waiting for her in the Console Room. He smiled brightly when he saw her looking better and handed her a pair of thick gloves. “You’ll need these,” he said, grabbing another pair for himself from by the time rotor which Rose noticed was glowing a dull red.
The doors opened, not, as Rose had expected, onto an alien landscape, but rather a silent, cathedral-like cave. The roof was so high she couldn’t see it, but it hardly mattered as from every surface grew the most exquisite crystal structures she had ever seen.
“It’s beautiful”
The Doctor shrugged, intent on calibrating his sonic screwdriver. “Not as breathtaking as the Calhoon Moons of Goroid Jaega, but pretty nice.” He looked up at Rose and waved his sonic screwdriver at the nearest group of nearly transparent stalactites that shimmered with refracted rainbows.
Rose, entranced, went to examine them; reaching out her hand to touch a flawless point.
“Ah, no Rose," The Doctor pulled her arm away from the tower of violet, "don't touch that, it’s really sharp. Anyway, we’re not here for sightseeing.”
“It is pretty impressive though, isn’t it,” he said. “I don’t often come here and never thought I’d be able to show it to you.” He bounded forward, but turned back in a graceful pirouette and Rose could see he had just remembered something. “Enjoy how it looks but whatever you do,” he looked at her in deadly serious warning and pointed a finger at her to reinforce his words, “don’t let a crystal touch your bare skin. They’re full of poison.
“I should have guessed."
"Humans can't cope with it." He tapped the sonic screwdriver against a paler pink crystal. "Touch this, and it'll make the damage from the shearing bubble look like a case of the hiccups."
III
The mining was hard physical work, but Rose didn’t mind: the crystal cave was mesmerising. The air was cold and crisp, and small puffs of her breaths condensed on the temporal jewels she held steady for the Doctor.
“So how many of these are we going to need then?”
“About six, but I’m going to cut as many as I can. It’s not somewhere I come very often, and I usually don’t have anyone else with me.”
Rose saw him look down and frown as he focussed a narrow beam from his sonic screwdriver at the base of the crystal she was holding. “So why can’t you do this on your own, you know,” she couldn’t resist teasing him, “I’m sure a Timelord should be able to deal with a couple of sticks of rock. You probably only need me here so I can tell you how clever you are.”
The Doctor’s eyes narrowed and he straightened up, laying his sonic screwdriver on a convenient crystal surface and then ruining his performance by having to dive back and catch it as it nearly rolled off the edge. He gave Rose a stern look as she tried not to smirk.
“It may have escaped your attention, but the temporal jewel matrix crystals are rather slippery: even though they’re light you need to brace yourself as they come loose from the main formation or you’ll come a cropper. As wonderful as I am,” he preened, just a little, “even I don’t have four arms and two legs.”
“That’d be a sight,” muttered Rose.
The Doctor ignored her and continued. “Therefore, I need help. Physical help,” he clarified before Rose could suggest it was really psychological help that he needed.
As they settled into the rhythm of the work the conversation dwindled, the Doctor cutting, Rose holding. With the Doctor’s help Rose swung each liberated piece up onto her shoulder and carried them back inside the Tardis’ doors until they had a pile of twenty or so three metre length pieces. She returned outside.
“We’ve got loads, now. Even you can’t manage to break the time rotor more than once every couple of centuries.”
The Doctor ignored the slight on his driving. “Great,” he said from around the sonic screwdriver that he was currently holding in his mouth. Rose took over from holding the latest partially severed temporal gem steady, an exceptionally stout piece so he could use his hands again. “We’ll just cut a few more for spare parts whilst we’re here.”
He started to use the cutting beam again, helping to hold the crystal steady with his free hand.
“Doctor, did you hear that?”
“What? No.”
Rose looked at the crystal, eyes wide. “It’s cracking!”
“Rose, jump back,” the Doctor’s voice was laced with panic. “Forget the crystal, get out of the way!”
The mineral encrusted floor was like ice and Rose couldn’t control her fall, legs shooting out from under her so she sat down on her bottom with a gasp, throwing her arms up over her face as the crystal toppled and shattered all around her.
The Doctor was beside her in a flash; eyes wide with concern. “Rose? Are you alright?”
Rose took a shuddering breath, nodding slowly, but her eyes widened as she lifted one of her hands up, bright drops of blood welling up from her wrist and a gleaming slither of crystal sticking out from the wound. She looked at the Time Lord in horror.
“I think I cut myself,” she whispered, and then everything faded to blackness.
III
“Rose. Wake up my dear.”
Someone was calling her. A man. He seemed to be far away but he sounded insistent. Slowly, for the second time that day, Rose came back to consciousness to find herself on a medical bed.
She opened her eyes and gasped. The man standing over her appeared to be in his early sixties; with a heavily lined face; a shock of white curly hair and a beaky nose. He was wearing a frilly shirt under what looked like a green velvet cape and his eyes sparkled with intelligence and concern.
As she tried to scramble off the bed the man took her by the shoulders. “Rose, listen. It’s me, the Doctor.”
“No,” she groaned, “you haven’t changed again. You’ve got to be a Slitheen or something.”
”Rose Marion Tyler. You’ve been to the end of the world with me, back in time, forward in time and even brought your dreadful boyfriend Mickey along for a ride,” the man said quickly. Rose stopped struggling and slumped back in resignation.
“You have changed again. Great.”
Seeing that she wasn’t trying to escape the man stood back, rubbing the back of his neck as he looked at her ruefully. “Well it’s not quite as straightforward as that I’m afraid,” he admitted. “I, or rather my tenth self, managed to get you back into the Tardis and extract the toxin from your bloodstream, but not before he got infected. It took so long to clear your system that when he became infected he didn’t have time to treat himself. You’re going to be fine now, but I’m afraid my form is rather unstable. I appear to have regressed into an earlier body.”
Rose’s head was spinning. “Earlier body?” she echoed
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Well you’re not the Doctor I know now, or the one I met before, so which body are you?”
“Well I’m both of them, but I’m also neither of them.”
“Huh?”
“Well there will be thirteen of me eventually, but there are only ten of me now.”
“Ten of you?”
He smiled. “Exactly, my dear.”
Rose glowered, but the Doctor didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m the third Doctor, and it seems that the Tardis has reconfigured herself into how she appeared for me.” He gestured and for the first time Rose realised that the brightness of the room wasn’t coming from a high-powered medical lamp, but from the gleaming white walls of the room. Gone was the dark, organic Tardis she knew; instead it was stark white: angular. Clinical.
The Doctor took her hand gently. “Now don’t you worry, Rose,” he said with a smile. “My tenth self’s memories are rather hazy as this body got tugged out of it’s own timestream, but my Timelord physiology will allow me to fight off the toxin in a couple of weeks. In the meantime,” his face lit up with a grin. “Why don’t we visit a lovely planet I know called Metebelis Three?”
III
They didn’t end up on Metebelis Three, but rather on Ocean, a watery world in the Clorandis Sector. The Third Doctor seemed rather indignant with the Tardis for the wrong turn, but Rose couldn’t help but smile.
“Come on old girl,” the Doctor wheedled, “you know where Metebelis Three is: we’ve been there lots of times.”
“Yep, you’re the Doctor, my one can’t steer either.”
“I’ll have you know, young lady, that my Tardis navigation skills were the talk of the Time Lord Academy”
“As in legendarily bad?” Rose smiled, taking the sting out of her words. She looked at the landscape on the monitor. “Anyway, this place looks alright, let’s go and have a look.”
By now the metabolism adjuster had worn off, and Rose had to bundle herself up in a thick winter coat, gloves, hat and scarf before venturing out onto Ocean. The whole ship had changed and it had taken her a long time to locate this Tardis’ wardrobe room, although once she finally found it she saw that it was as well stocked as her own. Her room had gone, she had discovered with a pang, but had been replaced with a simple rectangular room which was still filled with her things: her own clothes and souvenirs from countless worlds. She couldn’t help tearing up a little when she saw a photo of her and the Tenth Doctor that she had taken on her camera phone. Rose was smiling at the camera, and the Doctor was grinning in a way only he could.
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. The man aboard the Tardis was still the Doctor, she reminded herself. It would just take a while for him to regain his familiar form, and in the meantime, she would still enjoy travelling with him.
III
As they stepped out of the Tardis Rose took a deep breath. “The air’s so clean here,” she said, stepping gingerly on a narrow wooden bridge that led from the island where they had landed to a larger area with low buildings in the distance.
The Doctor turned and nodded, his velvet cape flapping around his shoulders in the cool breeze. “I don’t think the civilisation here is much beyond the agrarian stage, Rose.”
“How do you know that?”
The Doctor smiled. “Ah, Rose, you do ask good questions.” He nodded towards the small town ahead and pointed. “Simple wooden huts and a large delineation of fields. It seems to me that our hosts may be refugees of some description.”
Rose looked at him sceptically. “There is no way you can know that.”
The Doctor grinned. “Oh yes I can. There was wreckage of at least a dozen spaceships behind where we landed. The people who landed here don’t appear to have had much choice in the matter.”
Rose had to concede the point as they met by some curious villagers that confirmed that yes, they had fled a neighbouring system which was in the middle of a civil war.
The village leader, Simon, welcomed them, and invited them to share dinner with the group.
“So, what are you doing here?” asked Rose, breaking a crust of fresh-baked bread at the simple meal.
“Trying to start again,” said a woman. “We can’t go home and our ships are destroyed.”
“But Ocean is a good world,” interrupted Simon. “We have everything we need.”
“But not a working irrigation system,” said the Doctor, “I couldn’t help but notice, old chap, that your main distribution pump was making a rather atrocious wheezing noise.”
Simon shrugged. “What can we do? We have no spare parts: we have to make do with what we have.”
“You know,” said Rose in a deceptively casual tone, “the Doctor is pretty good with mechanical stuff. At least,” she gave him a sideways look, “the Doctor I know is.”
The Third Doctor spluttered. “Are you implying that my current incarnation is not competent in matters technological?”
Rose couldn’t resist. “Well, are you?”
“I’ll have you know I could rewire the Giant Battle Computer of Rixalon Seven with one hand tied behind my back if I had the inclination.”
Rose turned and smiled sweetly at the refugee’s leader. “Would you like us to help fix the pump, Simon?”
And so, after the meal, the Doctor rolled up his ruffled sleeves and went out into the fields. Rose had insisted on helping, something that seemed to pleasantly surprise the Timelord.
“But I thought you would have rather explored the settlement, Rose,” he said as she held firm a wobbly joist whilst he ran a small silver box complete with flashing lights over it to secure the water pump framework.
Rose quirked an eyebrow. “Why?” she asked, meeting the Doctor’s gaze with a challenging look of her own.
”Well, Rose,” said the Doctor, obviously flustered, “I suppose from your time…the twenty first century isn’t it?” She nodded in confirmation, “…I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Rose’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, although she knew that she could probably guess. “You and me are a team. Always have been.”
”Forgive me, my dear,” said the Doctor, breaking eye contact. “I forget how quickly attitudes change on your world. I seem to have been spending far too much time in the mid Twentieth century recently.”
Rose smirked, enjoying her superiority at that moment to the Time Lord. “Well, y’know, we had this thing called Women’s Lib a while ago, Doctor. Seems my gender aren’t as thick as your gender liked to think.”
"Of course, my dear," he said, patting her arm. "I should have remembered."
Rose rolled her eyes and ‘accidentally’ dropped the joist on the Doctor’s foot.
As he yelped and hopped from one foot to the other, she smiled. “Sorry Doctor, must have been my weak feminine hands. Just make sure that you don’t say such daft things when you turn back into my Doctor or you’ll find yourself on the receiving end of another of my mum’s well-deserved slaps!”
The Third Doctor’s eyebrows shot up. Perhaps when his muddled awareness had sorted itself back into the correct time stream, he would search for a companion with as much independence and, yes, sheer stubbornness, as this one had. But he'd try to remember to avoid the mothers.
III
They spent a week on Ocean by Rose’s reckoning. Once the irrigation system was fixed and the Doctor had proved his technical skills the refugees asked them to help them find out why so many of their number had lost their hearing.
Rose spent an interesting morning watching the Doctor running around waving a butterfly net. She stood, leaning against the Tardis’ doors trying to contain her laughter, but the Doctor noticed.
“It’s not…funny, Rose,” he said, puffing hard. “I’ve seen this form of auricular degeneration before and it’s often caused by a rather nasty pollen grain.”
Rose casually reached into her pocket and took a picture on her phone when she was sure he wasn’t looking.
“That’s rather a nice picture of me,” said the Doctor from by Rose’s shoulder as she closed her phone, making her jump.
She looked up at him guiltily. “Couldn’t resist.”
He smiled. “It’ll look lovely in the Tardis’ art gallery. Remind me to print it out later and we’ll choose a frame to hang it in. Anyway,” he passed her the butterfly net whilst he unlocked the Tardis, “let’s go to the laboratory and see what I’ve caught.”
It turned out that the Doctor was right: pollen grains from Marsh Oaks were damaging the inhabitants’ eardrums, something they had only learned after a frustrating two days trying to isolate the allergen. Rose had to concede that the Third Doctor was an excellent scientist, jumping from one chemistry-based line of enquiry to a biological one in a moment. She had been stuck in the role of lab technician; passing him various pieces of glassware or preparing compounds as he directed.
Rose did her best, but her patience only stretched so far. After seven hours on the second day of powdering, dissolving and boiling she announced that she needed a break.
The Doctor looked up from the burette he was using and gave her a sympathetic smile.
“You’re doing wonderfully, Rose.”
Rose tried to smile. “Yeah? Well I feel like a right idiot. Doctor, I never even passed my Chemistry GCSE. All this stuff is beyond me.”
“But you’re willing to learn.”
Rose broke eye contact, embarrassed at the compliment.
“Perhaps we should turn this stop into a proper holiday,” said the Doctor, setting aside the glassware. “Once we’ve created an antidote for the refugees lets take a tour of the Ice Fields they told us about. They’re only a few hours’ walk from here.”
Rose nodded. “That’d be nice. Give me a chance to get used to you a bit more.”
The Doctor looked hurt. “Rose, it’s still me, remember, well” he conceded, “the third of me, anyway. And whilst I don’t have all of my tenth self’s memories, you’re still my assistant, and I want you to be happy.”
“Assistant?”
”Well yes. You’re my future self’s assistant aren’t you?”
“He calls me his companion.”
”Ah…” the Doctor looked distinctly uncomfortable. He looked back to his burette.
Rose, sensing that this was a conversation she shouldn’t continue, got back to work.
Later, as she stood on the crest of a breathtaking crevasse larger than the Grand Canyon on Earth she couldn’t help but remember her happiness on Woman Wept. Her happiness with another Doctor, the ninth. The first of the two Doctors she had previously known.
She felt a hand rest on her shoulder. “Are you all right, Rose,” asked the Third Doctor, concern in his voice. She turned to face him and smiled, noting his friendly concern: no hidden agenda, no sign of deeper feelings, just a simple check that this young human woman was comfortable in this strange alien landscape. She swallowed away the lump in her throat and nodded with a smile. “Yeah, Doctor, I’m fine,” she declared, and realised as she said it that she was speaking the truth.
III
As the Tardis left Ocean Rose was feeling more relaxed than she had for a long time. She left the Third Doctor to set coordinates for Earth, as he said that since they were stuck in this particular time frame he may as well “check how Lethbridge Stewart was doing,” whoever that was. She headed for her room.
She flopped down on the bed, exhausted but happy after such an emotional day. I really like this Doctor she mused, then cringed with a stab of fear. Why did that thought feel like a betrayal of her own Doctor?
She fingered the tissues and water she'd placed on one of the roundels. He infuriated her, sometimes, with his constant concern for her welfare. He patted her like a puppy. He said good job, Rose every time she managed to unscrew a bolt without his assistance. He was just like her grandf…
Oh, she thought as a weight seemed to lift from her chest. Their relationship had become…simple. Simple and fun. And that had an allure she'd never considered before.
Where the Tenth Doctor looked at her with soulful hope, the Third Doctor’s eyes were full of avuncular concern. Whereas she and the Tenth Doctor used any excuse to hug and to touch, she wanted nothing more than friendship with the Third Doctor. Anything more and….she stuck her tongue out. Yuck.
She heard a gentle tap on her door and sat up. “Yeah?”
The Third Doctor peeked his head around her door he smiled. “Sorry, Rose, I didn’t realise you were having a snooze. We’ve just landed in South London if you fancy a stroll.”
Rose smiled. “Sounds good.”
III
It was something of a shock when she set foot outside the Tardis to find that they weren’t in the early Twenty First century but, by the looks of the military personnel gathered around the Tardis (and the fact they were military and friendly was enough of a shock), they had landed in a city street sometime in the mid 1970’s.
The decade that taste forgot.
A montage of the sitcom repeats her mother had forced her to endure on Saturday nights in her childhood flashed across her mind. The shaggy hairstyles; the orange and brown décor; the flares; the Bay City Rollers. Surely they had just been a nightmare?
She shuddered. Looking at the sideburns on some of the soldiers, and the poster for Babysham up on a grimy brick wall it looked like those sitcoms had been horribly accurate.
One moustached soldier, older than the rest, stepped up to the Tardis and shook the Doctor’s hand as if he was an old friend.
”Good to see you again, Brigadier,” said the Doctor warmly. He stepped to one side and indicated Rose, who was thankful she had chosen nondescript jeans and a blue jumper for that day that wouldn’t look out of place from the 1950’s until her own time. “May I introduce, Miss Rose Tyler. Rose, this is Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge Stewart of UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce and currently, sad to say,” he smiled wryly at the Brigadier apparently sharing an old joke, “your planet’s best way of dealing with alien incursion.”
The Brigadier turned his warm gaze on her and extended his hand. “Pleased to meet you, my dear.”
Rose nodded, taking his hand and trying to smile at him whilst trying to give a soldier who happened to be trying to look down her jumper a nasty glare.
The Brigadier and the Doctor seemed oblivious, and were already walking towards a fleet of army jeeps. “You got here just in time,” the Brigadier said, “We’ve been having a devil of a time with a recent increase in Cybermat reports. It seems that we didn’t flush all of them out of the Underground after the last Cyberman invasion: a large colony has taken up residence in the area of Battersea.”
Rose looked up at mention of the Cybermen. She still remembered the Cyber helmet on a plinth in Van Statten’s museum: dead eyes and a dead merciless soul. She desperately hoped she would never have to face a real one.
III
Rose decided that if she had disliked the Seventies as seen on TV she hated it even more in person. She had been assigned a room in some hotel that was the base of UNIT’s operations and true to form it had orange and brown floral curtains, a deep brown carpet and stank of stale cigarette smoke.
Earlier the Doctor had announced that he and the Brigadier were going off to investigate whatever was going on in Battersea.
“It’s far too dangerous for you though, Rose,” said the Doctor gravely, “I want you to stay here, and if we need you I’ll send a soldier to fetch you.”
Rose felt her hackles rise. “Don’t you dare,” she said, pointing at him with a warning finger.
“But it’s going to be dangerous.”
“Doctor,” Rose said, voice rising in volume, “we’re a team. I saved you from the Auton consciousness. I took down an entire Dalek fleet. So I’m coming with you.”
“Actually, Miss Tyler, you can’t, ” said the Brigadier coming in from the hallway. “Battersea is in a restricted area at the moment: no civilians allowed, and no exceptions.”
”Even if I vouch for her?” asked the Doctor.
The Brigadier smiled apologetically. “Even if you vouch for her. Word has come down from Geneva. They don’t want any unnecessary casualties.”
So Rose was stuck. A guard posted on the door of the hotel had put paid to any escape plan so she had chosen to sulk.
She casually flicked on the TV (no remote control), only to find that there were just three channels: one showing a tacky gameshow, one a sitcom she remembered from childhood and one of a sour faced man reading the news in a posh accent. She flipped through them for all of about ten seconds before jumping up from the bed and turning it off. She sat back down, closing her eyes as the traffic and life below her eighth floor room drifted up from the damp city streets.
It was then that she heard an explosion.
She leaped from the bed and rushed to the window. Over the city she could see a deep purple cloud twisting malevolently: a vortex of crackling energy.
Rose felt her heart jump wildly in her chest. Deep breaths, slow breaths…she forced her eyes to open. The storm swirled and flashed like a monstrous tornado, hovering and circling, then suddenly touched one of the chimneys of the Battersea power station. With a deep rumble the one, then another, then another of the chimneys exploded, showering the people below with deadly shrapnel. Rose gasped; she'd passed that landmark countless times on train trips to Brighton with Mickey. In her time it was deserted, but she knew from the rapidly rising flames that it had been functioning just a moment before…
Three of its iconic white chimneys were now gone: the fourth twisted and bent almost ninety degrees. The central structure was burning, and was undoubtedly the source of the explosion Rose had heard. And of course, that was where the Doctor had gone with his UNIT friends…
She swallowed hard and dragged her gaze away from the ruin to follow the course of the Thames. A group of buildings, including about half of Tower Bridge looked to have been picked up and turned upside down; the Houses of Parliament had turned to glass. Everything was crazy. She looked back at Tower Bridge: there was something familiar in the way it was twisted…like the Time Rotor in the Tardis.
Shearing.
She blinked. Temporal shearing.
It was here.
Swallowing her panic she rose and ran from the room, racing down the hotel stairs two at a time, shoving the bewildered UNIT guard to one side and bursting out onto the street.
She had to find the Doctor.
III
The hotel was at least five stops from Battersea, but Rose ran breathlessly, thanking her time with the Doctor for her increased stamina, slowing only when she spotted a soldier in a khaki uniform.
He raised a rifle as she got closer, but Rose could see he was younger than she and appeared nervous. She raised her hands and kept walking.
”Stop or I’ll shoot, Miss!”
Rose spent precious moments trying to gulp in enough air. Finally she was able to make herself appear calm. “It’s okay, soldier. I’m Rose. I’m looking for the Doctor. Is he here?”
At the mention of the Doctor the soldier relaxed and nodded, and to Rose’s relief, lowered his gun.
“He’s down the road, Miss,” the soldier told her.
“No I’m not!” said a bemused voice from behind Rose. She caught herself before she jumped.
The Doctor managed to smile and frown at the same time. "Do I want to know why you disobeyed my instructions? You could have been killed, Rose!"
She frowned back, too busy catching her breath to answer.
The Doctor signed. "Of course, Women’s Lib," he groaned.
Rose followed him as he walked back to the station. "It's more temporal shearing, isn't it.” He nodded grimly.
”So what are we going to do about it?” she demanded. The Doctor stopped and glared at her. “I am going to set up a temporal transit stabiliser,” he said, jabbing his chest with a bony finger for emphasis. “You on the other hand are going to go back to the hotel.”
As he turned to walk away Rose caught his arm. “So you didn’t hear anything I said back on Ocean, did you,” she said heatedly, “You and me are a team. Always have been, remember?”
He rounded on her. “But not when it gets this dangerous,” said the Doctor, scowling. “I’m sure I would remember sending you into certain death.”
Rose stared him down. “What about me looking into the heart of the Tardis, destroying the Dalek fleet and ending the Time War. Do you remember that?”
The Doctor’s face turned as white as his hair. “Heart of the Tardis?” he whispered: he turned away. “I remember something…singing…dogs with no noses?”
Rose felt tears welling up. “Yes! Yes exactly. Doctor, you do remember!”
He frowned. “There’s something there, it’s on the tip of my mind. But..” He shook his head. “The memories are too vague. I only have a residue of my Tenth self’s memories.” He looked back at Rose. “But you have faced dangers before. I know that much.”
”Yeah,” asserted Rose. “I’ve seen far more danger than I bet any of the stupid dolly birds you picked up in this time zone have ever even dreamed of. And,” she said, looking away and reasoning aloud, “I reckon that this temporal shearing and the one that damaged the Tardis are connected. Must be. And,” she looked back at him with excitement, “what if this twisting in time could be stopped, plugged, by a source of temporal energy?”
”What are you suggesting,,” asked the Doctor, studying her carefully.
She grinned.. “You of course! You’re waiting for the toxin to work out of your system, but why not let a temporal bubble do it instead? I bet if you made contact with that great big purple cloud, stood in it’s path, all that,” she gestured dramatically, “temporal difference locked up inside you would neutralise it and turn you back into my Doctor!”
The Third Doctor looked at her in shock as he processed her idea. “Do you know, my dear,” he said in wonder, “you might very well be right. If I were just to reverse the…"
But Rose wasn’t listening. She had spotted the Brigadier and was already running towards him to tell him of her plan.
III
The Brigadier quickly called a conference with the Doctor and two soldiers, Yates and Benton, who didn't seem surprised to see their scientific advisor at the centre of the mayhem. Rose began to wonder if everyone knew the Doctor in this decade. They certainly responded quickly when he asked them to plot the trajectory of the purple cloud and predict its most likely path. The answer came back within a few minutes, although to Rose it felt like an eternity.
“It’s heading towards Hyde Park, Doctor,” said Benton as he put down the walkie talkie.
“Right then,” said the Brigadier with a brisk clap of the hands. “Sergeant Benton, contact the London police and get them to evacuate Hyde Park. Yates,” he turned to the Captain, “go ahead and set up a cordon around the area. And you two,” he said, looking at the Doctor and Rose with a small smile, “we had better get you both to Hyde Park so that you can save the day.”
III
"Rose knew getting to Hyde Park from Battersea would have taken at least half an hour by tube, but with the roads cleared along the route for the military vehicles they made it in ten minutes.
The Doctor and Rose jumped out of the jeep and looked up. The storm cloud filled the skyline like an ugly bruise from across the vast Serpentine lake which bisected the park.
As they ran across the deserted open space Rose could feel the air crackling with electricity; the wind whipping up all around them. The storm was getting ever closer and Rose started to make out clear cloud shapes in the roiling maelstrom.
”Here,” shouted the Doctor above the wind. “This is it!”
Rose turned to him. The storm was perhaps a hundred metres off. “If this doesn’t work, you’ll die!” she yelled.
The Doctor paused and studied her kindly. "It will work, Rose. I must work. We don't have any other choice."
Rose felt tears filling her eyes as she started to sprint away, and knew they weren’t entirely due to the spiteful wind, She nodded, turned, and then impulsively ran back, giving the Third Doctor a big hug and kiss on the cheek. “My Doctor,” she whispered into his ear, as she turned once more, heading for the UNIT jeep as fast as she could.
She hadn’t got far when she heard an ominous rumble. She turned and continued to back up, but her eyes were fixed on the Doctor’s form. He had flung his arms out: eyes closed, his white hair blowing around his head, and as she watched his form seemed to grow taller, his hair darker and a scarf appear which flapped wildly in the storm. Another Doctor.
Then his figure shrunk once more, his curly brown hair becoming light and sandy, his clothes cricketing whites; his face much younger. Then older, taller and dark, older still and shorter. Then young, Byronic, and finally tall, lean and familiar.
The Ninth Doctor.
She gasped as the familiar sharp blue eyes looked back into hers. And then, hardly a heartbeat later, a deafening crack echoed from the deep black clouds, and the storm disappeared into silence. A lean, boyish figure in dirty white chucks grinned at her. He lifted one hand and wiggled his fingers.
"Hello!"
All was silent.
Rose struggled to her feet, running towards him, laughing in pure joy. He pushed his way through the arriving UNIT soldiers, grabbed her and swung her up and off the ground in a huge hug.
“You did it!” she said, into his neck.
”The Oncoming Storm beat the Oncoming Storm,” he said smugly, “but it was your idea.” He released her, and looked at her with pride. “Rose Tyler, you are a piece of work.”
Rose smirked, feeling her old feelings for this Doctor welling up once more and she welcomed them. Stuff platonic friendship. This was more complicated, but it was so much better.
The Brigadier came up beside them both and had obviously heard what had been said. “So are you, Doctor,” he remarked, “so are you.”
As Rose started to get her breath back she felt the Doctor grab her hand and squeeze it. She smiled and squeezed back. Everything was back to normal.
Almost.
She noticed Benton trotting over from the jeep. “HQ reports that the storm has passed, sir,” he reported to the Brigadier.
The Doctor jumped in before the Brigadier could answer. “It has indeed, Sergeant,” he declared, lifting Rose’s hand up with his own as he stretched. “The temporal shearing has been neutralised by yours truly by reversing the polarity of…” he waggled his free hand vaguely, “something or other which my Third self was always rabbiting on about.”
The Brigadier looked bemused at this outburst. “Carry on Sergeant,” he said mildly.
Benton cleared his throat. “Yes well….HQ also reports that the Cybermat infestation in Battersea Power Station had been obliterated by the explosion but that one hundred and seventeen people are reported as missing, presumed dead.”
Rose swallowed hard. So many lives lost. Again.
Death truly did seem to follow the Doctor.
III
The Brigadier escorted the Tenth Doctor and Rose back to the Tardis. He knew, Rose realised, that the Doctor didn’t stick around after a disaster. He just fixed it and then let other people clean up the mess.
The Brigadier, although he didn’t appear to like it, seemed to accept it, as did Rose, as the price you paid for association with the Time Lord.
The three of them shook hands, with the Brigadier securing a promise that they would come back soon, and then they were off and away.
III
Later that night, as Rose relaxed in her restored, organic bedroom, she heard a gentle knock at the door.
”Come in,” she called, setting down the newly framed photograph of the Third Doctor that she had taken on Ocean. Tomorrow she would ask the Doctor to show her the Tardis art gallery so she could hang it as the Third Doctor had suggested.
The Tenth Doctor poked his head around the door, and seeing her look up and smile, took that as an invitation walking in and bouncing down onto her bed. “I’ve fixed the Tardis. The Time Rotor is repaired and we’re good to go,” he said, making a great show of peeling off his heavy protective gloves.
They looked at each other for a long moment, and both asked at the same time: “how are you doing?”
They smiled.
“You first, Rose.”
She nodded. “I’m okay. Really,” she reassured, seeing his doubt, “but what about you. Getting bashed up by all that energy, rushing through all your past forms. Can’t have been fun.”
He frowned. “It wasn’t,” he admitted. He took her hand and squeezed it. “So what did you think of my previous self?”
Rose blushed. “He was nice,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “He was kind.”
”Kinder than me?”
Rose scowled. “No, just different,” she said defensively. “He was annoying but…”
”Easier to deal with?”
Rose’s blush deepened. He was right. Affection for a grandfatherly figure was easier to deal with than the far-from-platonic fantasies she often entertained about this Doctor.
“Are you reading my mind?”
The Doctor smiled and shook his head. “Don’t need to,” he said softly, lifting his other hand up to brush her face, a gesture that she knew was an echo of his way of establishing telepathic contact; “I know.”
Rose looked at him fearfully.
“What we have,” said the Doctor, gently, “what this me and you have, is something I’ve never faced before with any other companion. It’s complicated. I don’t know if that makes you special or cursed.”
Rose lent forward into his touch, “not cursed,” she whispered, “never cursed.”
He smiled and moved up to hug her. “Then we’ll have to settle for a complicated relationship, Rose Tyler,” he said, head on top of her hair.
“I think I’ll take complicated over simple every time,” Rose said, smiling into his jacket.
And they sat holding each other for a very long time.
Fin
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