The Snow Queen (1/7): A Doctor Who Fic
Title: The Snow Queen
Author: angelofprey
Beta:
Pairing: Rose/Ten, Ten/OC
Rating: PG (may go up later for more disturbing concepts)
Spoilers: through The Idiot's Lantern
Word Count: 5,671
Summary: The Doctor is enchanted an kidnapped by the Snow Queen and now it is up to Rose to do the saving of her Doctor. Rose must overcome many trials before even reaching the bitter cold of the planet's northern tundra to find the Doctor, and what if he doesn't even remember her by the time she gets there?
A/N: So I started writing this about a month ago when I stumbled upon a fantastic piece of art work by Skytyne on deviantart. Found here:
http://skytyne.deviantart.com/art/DW-Snow-Queen-92505482
After being tortured by it for the following twenty-four hours I asked Skytyne if I could have the honor of writing a fic based on the picture, Skytyne said yes, and here it is, just in time for my region's first snowstorm of the year! Thank you Skytyne for letting me write this! And without further ado I will cease to ramble, enjoy.
Oh, and please comment, I love feedback!
Chapter 1: A Broken Mirror
On the planet of Skadi, in the third quadrant of the constellation Emreslion there are two very old stories. The first story is the story of the twin mirrors. When the planet was being created, the Great One made a truth mirror. When one would look into the truth mirror they saw themselves and anyone reflected in it as they truly are. At the same time the Great One’s arch nemesis made a second mirror, a mirror of lies and deception. Whenever someone beautiful would look into it, they would appear ugly and monstrous, a good person would see themselves as evil, a courageous person would see themselves cowardly, and likewise a terrible person would see nothing but how good they are.
Eventually the Great One’s arch nemesis grew tired of this pitiful joke; it didn’t cause enough chaos for his chaotic mind, so he took a staff of wood and shattered the mirror into a million tiny pieces. These pieces scattered to the wind and it was a few months before the nemesis saw their effects. Should a person get a shard of the mirror lodged in their eyes, they would see everything around them as if they were constantly looking into the mirror. To make matters worse, should a shard end up in the person’s heart, the shard would turn their heart to a block of ice, and they would become self-centered, cruel, and unfeeling. This amused the Great One’s nemesis to no end, and since he first saw these things take place, he has not been able to stop laughing at the trouble he’s caused. Every time a person suddenly changes for the worse, this change is blamed on that evil mirror.
The second story of the planet Skadi, was that of a witch. This witch called herself the Snow Queen and was the embodiment of the season of Winter on that planet. She was unyielding, and beautiful, but bitter in both looks and demeanor. It was said she lives in a castle made of ice, that was guarded by polar bears and wolves in the northern reaches of the planet, where it was so silent that the song of the northern lights could be heard carried on the wind. She was known for stealing men and boys from their homes during a storm and for leading women young and old into the woods and freezing them to death. She was lonely, very lonely, and she would steal the men to appease her loneliness, and kill women to appease her jealousy. In the end, the men died too quickly to be of any use, and the death of the women meant little for they were still loved even in death. The Snow Queen longed for a companion who understood her unending loneliness and could share it with her for as long as the snows came in Winter. For now she hunted towns and cities searching for such a man to steal back to the north with her. She could be seen at the heart of a snow flurry traveling in the form of the largest snowflake of them all. It was said that the frosty patterns made on windows in the middle of a cold night were her kisses. She would mark each house she peered into to inspect on the men and boys with her frigid kisses, letting the inhabitants know that she was watching.
A prophesy had been given to the people of Skadi by the Great One many centuries ago, before the First Great Civil War. It said that one day a house of blue would appear in the northern woods, and the Winter Queen would steal a lonely god from it. When she does this and only then will her searching for a companion cease. However, when the lonely god is stolen, a child of Spring will search for him and will be the one to find and smash the mirror of truth which will cease the terror caused by its brother.
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The Doctor and Rose had come to this planet once before, briefly, very briefly. They left as soon as the Doctor realized that he had landed them smack dab in the middle of the planet’s ninth violent upheaval and civil war. That had taken him, about 0.2 of a second to realize this fact, and he promptly pushed Rose back into the TARDIS after realization had dawned, and they skittered off into the stars again to set down on a slightly less life-threatening but still dangerous planet for an adventure with yet again, lots of running.
This time he touched down in the middle of the planet’s winter festival, exactly where and when he’d planned to.
Brilliant.
When Rose stepped out of the TARDIS and into the snow she was grinning and giggling like a madman… well madwoman.
“Oh Doctor, this is beautiful!” she sighed spinning around in the fresh snowfall, closing her eyes and tilting her face to the starry night sky.
The Doctor just went on smiling at her until she finished basking in the first moments on the new planet. She had settled to stand when she peered through the trees of the woods at little golden lights peeking through the branches.
“Look! There’s a town over there!” she told him. “Can we go explore it?” Like she really needed to ask anymore.
He stepped forward and reached for her mitten clad hand and clasped it firmly in his own un-mittened one.
“You sure you’re warm enough in that?” she asked with genuine concern. He hadn’t added any layers to his usual pin-stripe suit and overcoat, though he had thrown on a green scarf to look festive for the… festival. Rose had donned a big puffy winter coat, mittens, a rainbow colored scarf and matching hat. Her nose, chin, and cheeks had already been worn a rosy red by the chilly air and the Doctor could barely suppress the urge to ignore her question and just stand there taking in her rosy complexion for the rest of the night. But then that would lead to her developing hypothermia and she would freeze to death and that would be bad. So he wondered how she managed to look so cute and be devastatingly beautiful… you know, for a human, at the same time, and then began his explanation of why he needn’t bother with extra layers.
“Quite warm enough,” he explained, “Timelord physiology allows my internal temperature to fluctuate.” He said beginning to walk with her towards the lights.
“So you’re… cold-blooded like a reptile or something?” she asked.
“I’ll try not to be insulted by that…” he muttered before correcting her. “Not cold-blooded no, if that were the case I’d be lethargic by now. No, it’s just a little bit of superior biology, my brain tells my circulatory what the outside temperature is and the double heartbeat keeps everything the right temperature. Something like your own heating systems but mine doesn’t shut off areas that are considered ‘expendable,’ my hearts work faster so everything keeps warm, and I don’t drop dead of a heart attack because there are two of them. So I suppose hot-blooded would be the correct term.” He ignored her giggle at his expense. “I love having two hearts, without them I’d freeze up like a block of ice dressed like this.”
“Does that mean that your normal temperature is higher than mine?”
“On the contrary, it’s actually cooler. Here take off your mitten.”
He pulled off her mitten and wrapped her warm fingers in his own. She gasped realizing that his fingers were indeed cooler than hers, but not in the out-in-the-cold-for-too-long kind of way.
“See, lower body temperature… Can’t believe you haven’t noticed before!”
She grinned at him with an adoring giggle and leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked, before slipping into another string of questions.
“So, what’d you take me here for?” She asked poking his shoulder.
“Well, do you remember how we came here before and it was in the middle of a giant battle.”
Rose shivered remembering the sight of the battle field greeting them as she stepped out of the TARDIS, it was horrific. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well I thought we’d try again, and this time we landed right where I wanted us to.”
“Well that’s a change!”
“Oi!”
“And what’s so special about this planet at this exact time?”
“It’s the planet’s winter festival, there’s singing, dancing, music, food, shops, big dinners, ice skating, jams, cakes, a whole celebration to forget the cold winter’s night, and I’m told, some of this solar system’s best chips.”
Rose stopped dead in her tracks. “Really?”
“Yup.” He said popping the “p”, and skipping ahead a little.
“You are the best.” She said gratefully falling back into stride with him.
“Yes, I am.”
“Oi, now don’t let that go to your head!” she said good-naturedly slapping him on the arm.
“Are you insinuating that I have an ego?” he laughed in return.
“Yup,” she retorted, “One the size of Belgium.”
They continued to argue and laugh happily as they neared the town, but before they cleared the trees a gust of wind picked up and the fluffy snow danced from the branches of the evergreens towering above them.
Rose had fallen into a snow bank after a shove from the Doctor and she spluttered and spat trying to compose herself as he laughed uncontrollably, she was about to let loose a string of curses on him but his cry of surprise and pain distracted her.
“Doctor, are you alright?” she asked, struggling to stand.
“My eye.” He said. “Something’s blown into my eye…”
“Let me look.” She stood in front of him and inspected the eye. Besides a little redness from irritation of something definitely having been there, there was nothing wrong.
“It’s gone now.” He whispered. “Must’ve been a bit of ice or something.”
Rose first suspected something was really truly wrong when his gaze returned to her and his face grew grave, like he was seeing her for the very first time.
“Doctor?” she inquired. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, and looked at her again, this time his frown deepened but he replied. “Nothing, I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine; a shard of the mirror of deception had worked its way into his eye. Now, the human girl he had seen as one of the most beautiful creatures in the universe (though he’d never admit to that), seemed ugly, and as they walked he was wondering exactly why he had seen her as exceptionally beautiful. What the hell was going on?! This was Rose he was talking, well thinking about and she was still the Rose who had opened up the TARDIS to save his life… she was still his amazingly brilliant companion and he was still going to let her stay for as long as she wanted. Perhaps this realization of her plainness was a good thing, perhaps his hearts would stop speeding up whenever she turned her special “Doctor” smile on him, maybe he would stop grinning back at her like a madman, maybe he would stop reaching for her hand as often as possible, maybe, just maybe he would stop adoring her so much that it hurt. It was unlikely, he realized, because it wasn’t her beauty that he had admired her so much for, but her spirit.
When they had finally reached the town Rose was back to chatting happily with the Doctor, but found it oddly unsettling that he was silent. The Doctor was NEVER silent, only when they were hiding from the gravest danger was his mouth not running, and the fact that he had his nose scrunched up in distaste as he looked around the town really set her warning bells off.
“Alright, what’s wrong?” she said stepping in front of him and putting her hands on her hips.
His eyes met hers for a moment before flitting away again to appraise the town. “I dunno, this place was a lot more beautiful in my memories…” he trailed off. “Now it’s, I dunno…”
“What are you talking about?” she chastised him. “It’s gorgeous! It reminds me of Winter scenes from the fronts of Christmas cards back home… It’s quaint, and homey, and perfect.” She sighed.
The Doctor continued to look around. “Well, I guess it could be… but I really wouldn’t say perfect…”
“Well of course nothing’s perfect, but this is as close as you can get really.”
“But look at it Rose, there’s something off with everything! That building has a door that’s too large, and the glass is all in non-geometric shapes! And that horse over there is completely disproportionate!”
“…That’s because it’s a cow.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. They have them in Scotland -- are you sure we’re not on Earth?”
“We’re not on Earth, but this was colonized by humans seeking a return to the better times and traditions.”
“That would explain everything looking Earth-like… Except for that alien over there of course.”
“But really Rose, you think this place is that great? Don’t you want me to take you somewhere else? Maybe the frozen moon of Grimbonaught, where all of the ice crystals align ever so perfectly? Wouldn’t that be better, then being on this misshapen rock with a lot of misshapen… stuff?”
“I like it here Doctor, you took me here to see the festival so I want to stay! What’s wrong with you?! Really, you’ve been rude before but now you’re being outrageous!”
“I’m sorry Rose, it’s just, everything looks so strange right now and I don’t know why… like I’m looking at the world through one of those fun house mirrors, the kind that makes everything look so ugly…”
Rose chastised herself for being hurt by his comment. She had tried so hard to arrange her hair into her hat in a pretty way, and had done up her makeup especially nice for him because he had said that he was going to treat her today after being such a trooper when she lost her face in 1953.
“Why don’t you try your glasses then?” she quipped.
“Here Rose, let me make it up to you! Let’s go visit the shops, and I’ll buy you some sweets and something nice alright?”
She looked incredulous. “Do you have any money?”
“As a matter of fact, this planet’s currency finds a fresh banana to be more valuable than gold.” He pulled three bananas out of his pocket. “So I can get us a five course dinner at the finest restaurant in town, you a diamond necklace, and half of the rooms in the finest hotel in town with the amount of bananas I’ve got in my pockets.”
Rose fought a smirk at the innuendo the Doctor has missed.
“Sounds lovely.” She said.
“Well then Rose Tyler, would you join me for a night out on the town?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her and offered an arm. “What do you say?”
A slow grin appeared on her face. Maybe this was just a passing thing with his vision being all wonky, she hoped. “I would be glad to.” She replied taking his arm and being happily led through the town.
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The first thing they did was grab some chocolate crepes from a street vendor, and ate them watching people ice skate. Then they joined in with the town wide annual snow-ball fight. After which they were again ravenous and went for fish and chips; not at the most expensive restaurant in town. Then to the Doctor’s chagrin, Rose dragged him shopping. Rose bought some gifts for her mother and for her friends and they even found a door knob for the TARDIS’ console. Finally Rose stumbled upon something that she would love for herself. In the cobbler’s shop window sat a pair of beautiful leather boots. She went inside to admire them; they were soft and light brown with bright red trim, and had fur on the inside that was gloriously soft and warm, and to Rose’s delight they were just her size. To her disappointment they were also expensive and Rose had already spent most of the purse of Skadilian currency that the TARDIS had dropped on her head on the way out the door, so there was no way Rose was going to get these beautiful shoes; until the Doctor stepped in.
“Rose, I promised you a gift.” He insisted handing three bananas over to the cobbler. Rose blushed furiously as the cobbler wrapped them up in a special box and winked at her saying something about being lucky for having such a generous man on her arm.
A bonfire had been set up in the main square for a story teller to entertain anyone who cared to listen and the Doctor and Rose purchased mugs of hot chocolate before sitting on a bench to watch him retell local legends with practiced enthusiasm. The man spun the ancient legends about the Snow Queen making Rose shiver with the ghost stories. Then he moved on to stories about the twin mirrors, the mirror of truth, and the mirror of deception. He told about how the mirror of deception was smashed and that people would get pieces stuck in their eyes and would suddenly see the world as ugly, a condition described as “mirror syndrome.” The Doctor paled considerably during this story and could not contain himself to ask:
“What are the symptoms of this mirror syndrome?”
“Why?” asked the storey teller, “You know someone who might have been affected by it?”
“No, just wanted to know.” The Doctor replied a little too harshly.
As the story teller went into the details of the effects of the mirror shards, Rose listened intently, then felt dread pit in her stomach as she realized the Doctor was exhibiting the first signs of having a shard in his eye. Luckily there was a relatively easy way to have them removed, unlike the ones that lodge in the heart.
She leaned over to him to ask him quietly about this theory. “Doctor, do you think that’s what ended up in your eye? In the forest when you said something blew into it?”
“Not right now Rose.” The Doctor hissed. He didn’t mean to be so harsh, but he was absolutely terrified. He had once seen someone die because they went untreated for the mirror shards and it wasn’t a pleasant death. His only solace was the fact that one hadn’t lodged into his heart; otherwise he would have been in serious danger. Only then did he notice the hurt expression on her face.
“Rose I’m sorry for snapping, but I’m anxious. I’m not sure if it was a bit of the mirror or not, but I intend to find out, and get it treated before this gets any worse… this town, I remembered it as being so beautiful, but to me it looks hideous. Even people… I was wondering what could have made you seem so different in such a short period of time… I should have known it would be this. I really shouldn’t have taken you here, it could have been you that got a sliver in your eye, still could… Come on, we can’t do anything for it tonight, and you look exhausted, let’s get a room and you can settle in for the night.”
As they stood to walk to the hotel Rose reached up and kissed the Doctor’s cheek in thanks for the wonderful evening, regardless of him being a little bit more rude than usual. He smiled at her happy that they had figured out what was wrong, and that it was just an easy fix. Everything seemed to be alright until the wind picked up again and the clouds that had gathered in the sky began to pour snow over the town in a magical end to the night, but it also blew another shard into town, and as luck or fate would have it, into the Doctor’s right heart.
The Doctor doubled over in pain, “Oh, my chest!” he gasped clutching at his clothes.
“Doctor!?” Rose cried. “Doctor, what’s wrong? Speak to me please, tell me what happened!” she shouted clutching his arm tightly and trying to help him up. She was shocked when he pushed her off him forcefully and growled:
“Get off me! I don’t need a mother hen, I’m a grown man! Stupid ape, stupid girl.”
Rose sat where she had landed on the boardwalk in complete silence and shock at his words. Rose’s jaw set before she got up grabbing the bags of gifts for her friends and family, and striding off towards the hotel with a couple of the bananas that had fallen from his pocket to pay for a room. She purposely left the box with the beautiful shoes on the sidewalk next to him.
Only when she had drawn herself a hot bath and had allowed herself to calm down did she find herself in tears. It had been… a while since she’d been called a stupid ape, and the second part of the phrase had stung even more. She was only concerned for him, and he had thrown her off like she’d been the one to hurt him in the first place. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t like him. She wondered absently if it had anything to do with the shard of glass in his eye before she crawled out of the tub and into bed.
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As the Doctor watched Rose storm off, he immediately regretted his actions. What had come over him? This worried him. What worried him only slightly more was the fact that he was shivering. He wasn’t supposed to shiver… Brushing the thoughts aside and focusing on fixing his relationship with Rose, he scooped up the shoe box with her beautiful new shoes, and they really were beautiful… if he closed one eye and squinted.
He sat outside the hotel for a little while with a pen and a slip of paper in his freezing hands scratching a helpless note onto the paper. As he finished a large sledge had pulled up in front of the hotel and stopped before him. The Doctor smiled down at the note, it was sure to fix his mistake.
“You there.” A voice floated on the air to his ears and gripped him fiercely by his nerve-endings. The voice was deep yet feminine; it spoke of countless winters, unending frost, and loneliness. The Doctor looked up and met the eyes of one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. It was a tall woman with silvery white hair, porcelain skin that was nearly as white as the furs surrounding her, eyes blue like both the coldest ice and the hottest flame, but dark and deep and hypnotizing. She was dressed in a giant fur coat of the purest white. The shape of her face was oddly familiar and enticing with generous lips and full cheeks. The Doctor felt the air temperature drop another few degrees and he shivered. Something was distinctly off about her, her image shimmered a little before his gaze and he thought he could see this image of her superimposed over another more dangerous one. He rubbed the eye the shard was in and blinked a few times before responding to her words.
“Me?” he replied rather weakly, his voice about an octave higher than he wanted it to be.
The woman smiled a smile that he supposed was supposed to look warm. It wasn’t.
“Of course you.” She said. “Do you see anyone else I could be talking to?”
The Doctor looked around sheepishly, “Well… no.”
“Come with me.” She said moving over to make room for him in the sledge.
“Oh, I would but you see I’ve got a… friend in the hotel over there, and I really shouldn’t… er… I mean I should at least say goodbye…” the Doctor couldn’t find the will power to refuse the mysterious woman and her invitation. Something about her was tugging at the back of his brain and it wasn’t letting go.
“Then be quick about it… I won’t wait long.” She said turning to face forward. The Doctor felt like his collar had loosened when her eyes left him he took a deep breath to rid himself of the sensation. He paused for a beat letting the woman’s words fully sink-in, and then bolted with the shoe box into the hotel.
“Excuse me,” he addressed the woman at the front desk. “Hello, um, I’m looking for Rose Tyler; could you tell me what room she’s in?”
“Um, I’m sorry sir that is against our customer confidentiality policy.” The woman replied.
The Doctor felt like he could scream with frustration.
“You don’t understand. She’s my… wife, I’m John Sm-- er, Tyler!” He wiped out the psychic paper and the woman’s eyebrows rose.
“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience sir. She’s just checked in, room 307, up those stairs, first corridor, and third room on the left.”
“Thank you!” he growled making a dash for the stairs.
“Don’t you want your room key sir?” she hollered after him.
“No, Rose’ll let me in!” he called down from the stairs.
The Doctor stopped at the door and rested his head against the wood panting heavily. He wasn’t tired it was just that the further he got from the pure white woman the harder it became to take another step away. What the hell was wrong with him? He left without going in.
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When the thoroughly enchanted Doctor had dashed back down the corridor to leave with the woman in white the completely lucid Doctor stepped from around a corner and walked up to the thoroughly abandoned Rose’s door.
The no-longer-abandoned and Doctor’s-savior Rose stood behind him and watched the entranced Doctor leave.
“You sure we can’t just--“Rose began.
“No.” The Doctor answered dryly.
“No, I mean we could-“
“Rose.” He said looking up at her this time; there was a warning in his voice.
“Alright.” She sighed. She watched him finish scrawling the warning message onto the back of his apology letter, and frowned as she remembered the panic that had flooded her when she found it.
The Doctor spoke again when he’d finished the letter and stuffed it into the box and closed the lid, his eyes were full of sympathy and affection as he spoke. “As much as I would love to stop what happens next, just as much as you would, we can’t. This has to happen this way. You help so many people along your journey, and we save so many more the way it turns out… we can’t change it Rose, not a thing, we just can’t.” He had placed his hand on her shoulder and Rose nodded as it slid from her shoulder to her hand where his finally warm-ish hand grasped her own.
Rose smiled sadly then wrapped her arms around him tightly. “You just can’t understand how scared I was. I thought I’d lost you!”
The Doctor grinned into her hair, “No, it’d take more than a carbon-based skin graft created to resemble an embodiment of winter to make me truly ever forget you.”
Rose smiled genuinely this time. “I’m sick of this place.” She said patting his hand. “Take me home.”
The Doctor’s face paled a little.
“I mean the TARDIS, Doctor…” her grin was infectious.
He smiled back and squeezed her hand, “Let’s go home, Rose Tyler.”
They walked down the corridor and out the door before the Doctor bolted back inside to drop the box in front of the other Rose’s door and pound on it till she woke up and then bolt back out into the street to join the laughing Rose waiting for him in the snow.
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She smiled as he burst through the hotel doors.
“I was afraid I was going to have to leave without you.” The frosty woman in the pure white furs said too sweetly. “Hang on to the sled on the back.”
“Excuse me?” he said glancing at the child’s toy clinging for dear life onto the runners of the larger sled.
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” She hissed turning an icy glare on him which he obeyed instantly.
As the Doctor folded his limbs onto the sled in a way that would keep him from falling off and regenerating, half of his mind was beating him over the head with a metaphorical frying pan and screaming to get back in that hotel and stay safe in the room with Rose. The other half of his mind was jumping about with that familiar itch at the back of his skull chanting “go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…” That little voice was going to be the death of him someday. Before he could do anything about it, the larger sledge was off and he was flying behind it hanging on with every muscle in his body as the sledge with the woman passed through the town and then out into the country side.
Every once in a while the woman driving would turn around to look at him and he would smile weakly, she would return the smile and then urge the reindeer pulling the sledge to go faster. Suddenly the Doctor found himself on his back in a snow bank watching his sled careen over the surface of the snow and off of a bridge into the frigid water below. His head fell back into the snow with the breath he didn’t know he was holding. That could have ended badly.
Then in dawned on him, it had ended badly. He was at least five miles outside of town, more than that from the TARDIS, and he was lying in a snow bank in the middle of a snow storm, with numb fingers and toes, and no way to tell which direction he had come so as to get back… bollocks, he’d really screwed up this time. Wait, why were his fingers numb? The Doctor did a mental scan of his body and felt real fear set in when he realized one of his hearts had stopped and wasn’t about to start up again. ‘A shard of the mirror,’ he thought with dread as he recognized a piece of the glass lodged deep within him. With a shiver he could almost feel its poison spreading through his veins. If he didn’t get back to the TARDIS soon, he might not live through the night…
He thought of Rose looking for him when morning came and organizing search parties when she couldn’t find him and the searchers finding his frozen corpse three days later hidden under two feet of snow because he hadn’t moved from where he lay. Oh dear Rassilon, he had to get up.
Before the Doctor could muster the will to move the lady he had followed into this situation was leaning over him.
“You’re alive.” She said, sounding a little annoyed. “That is good.”
“You almost killed me!” he cried, staring at her. Something in his head knew that she was just so wrong.
“You fell off of the sled.” She reasoned. “Come, sit up.” She helped him to sit and then pressed a kiss onto his lips.
The Doctor felt the kiss throughout his entire body, not because it was good, but because it was cold. The heat drained from his body and he was instantly numb, he couldn’t feel anything to move it or to resist her.
“What was that?” he heard himself say.
“You looked cold.” She replied. “Do you feel cold now?”
He thought about it. “No.”
“Then come, onto my sledge, we have a long way to go before morning breaks.”
So he did, because he was absolutely powerless to do anything else.
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The Doctor woke from a nap that felt more like a coma and found them flying over mountain tops and villages, all of them buried in frost. He shivered a little, realizing that feeling was returning to his body and he felt nothing but cold. His mind was sluggish so he couldn’t remember why his body wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.
“How are you?” the woman he’d followed asked.
“Cold.” He whispered back shivering more violently.
“I suppose that kiss should have worn off by now… tell me do you remember the woman that you were traveling with?” she said glancing at him sideways.
His thoughts immediately snapped back to Rose.
“Rose!” he exclaimed, “I left her back at the hotel…” immediately guilt set in. “She’s going to be so worried.” He turned to the woman driving. “Take me back!” He demanded pulling out the sonic screwdriver and aiming it at her. “Take me back to Rose right now!”
The woman merely glared at him and in a flurry of movement knocked the sonic screwdriver out of his hand. He watched with horror as it fell towards the nameless woods below.
“What did you do that for?!” the Doctor demanded.
“I don’t like weapons pointed at me.” The woman replied calmly.
“It wasn’t a weapon!”
“You were threatening me with it like it was… Now then, answer my question good Doctor, do you remember a girl named Rose?”
He would ask her how she knew their names later. “Of course I remember Rose, I brought her here!”
The woman gripped him by the collar and pulled him in for another kiss. He immediately felt numb again.
“Let’s try this again Doctor, do you know of a girl named Rose Tyler?”
The Doctor’s face scrunched up as searched his memories for that name. “No, no I’ve never met her. The name rings a bell though, Rose Tyler…”
“Good, good.” The woman smiled. “Now sleep Doctor, there is a long journey still ahead of us.”
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Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
Again please comment! I had a really hard time ending this chapter since there were three good places for a cliff-hanger... I decided to go with my first instinct. Hope you enjoyed it, and keep an eye peeled for the second chapter, currently going through the beta-ing process.
Author: angelofprey
Beta:
Pairing: Rose/Ten, Ten/OC
Rating: PG (may go up later for more disturbing concepts)
Spoilers: through The Idiot's Lantern
Word Count: 5,671
Summary: The Doctor is enchanted an kidnapped by the Snow Queen and now it is up to Rose to do the saving of her Doctor. Rose must overcome many trials before even reaching the bitter cold of the planet's northern tundra to find the Doctor, and what if he doesn't even remember her by the time she gets there?
A/N: So I started writing this about a month ago when I stumbled upon a fantastic piece of art work by Skytyne on deviantart. Found here:
http://skytyne.deviantart.com/art/DW-Snow-Queen-92505482
After being tortured by it for the following twenty-four hours I asked Skytyne if I could have the honor of writing a fic based on the picture, Skytyne said yes, and here it is, just in time for my region's first snowstorm of the year! Thank you Skytyne for letting me write this! And without further ado I will cease to ramble, enjoy.
Oh, and please comment, I love feedback!
Chapter 1: A Broken Mirror
On the planet of Skadi, in the third quadrant of the constellation Emreslion there are two very old stories. The first story is the story of the twin mirrors. When the planet was being created, the Great One made a truth mirror. When one would look into the truth mirror they saw themselves and anyone reflected in it as they truly are. At the same time the Great One’s arch nemesis made a second mirror, a mirror of lies and deception. Whenever someone beautiful would look into it, they would appear ugly and monstrous, a good person would see themselves as evil, a courageous person would see themselves cowardly, and likewise a terrible person would see nothing but how good they are.
Eventually the Great One’s arch nemesis grew tired of this pitiful joke; it didn’t cause enough chaos for his chaotic mind, so he took a staff of wood and shattered the mirror into a million tiny pieces. These pieces scattered to the wind and it was a few months before the nemesis saw their effects. Should a person get a shard of the mirror lodged in their eyes, they would see everything around them as if they were constantly looking into the mirror. To make matters worse, should a shard end up in the person’s heart, the shard would turn their heart to a block of ice, and they would become self-centered, cruel, and unfeeling. This amused the Great One’s nemesis to no end, and since he first saw these things take place, he has not been able to stop laughing at the trouble he’s caused. Every time a person suddenly changes for the worse, this change is blamed on that evil mirror.
The second story of the planet Skadi, was that of a witch. This witch called herself the Snow Queen and was the embodiment of the season of Winter on that planet. She was unyielding, and beautiful, but bitter in both looks and demeanor. It was said she lives in a castle made of ice, that was guarded by polar bears and wolves in the northern reaches of the planet, where it was so silent that the song of the northern lights could be heard carried on the wind. She was known for stealing men and boys from their homes during a storm and for leading women young and old into the woods and freezing them to death. She was lonely, very lonely, and she would steal the men to appease her loneliness, and kill women to appease her jealousy. In the end, the men died too quickly to be of any use, and the death of the women meant little for they were still loved even in death. The Snow Queen longed for a companion who understood her unending loneliness and could share it with her for as long as the snows came in Winter. For now she hunted towns and cities searching for such a man to steal back to the north with her. She could be seen at the heart of a snow flurry traveling in the form of the largest snowflake of them all. It was said that the frosty patterns made on windows in the middle of a cold night were her kisses. She would mark each house she peered into to inspect on the men and boys with her frigid kisses, letting the inhabitants know that she was watching.
A prophesy had been given to the people of Skadi by the Great One many centuries ago, before the First Great Civil War. It said that one day a house of blue would appear in the northern woods, and the Winter Queen would steal a lonely god from it. When she does this and only then will her searching for a companion cease. However, when the lonely god is stolen, a child of Spring will search for him and will be the one to find and smash the mirror of truth which will cease the terror caused by its brother.
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The Doctor and Rose had come to this planet once before, briefly, very briefly. They left as soon as the Doctor realized that he had landed them smack dab in the middle of the planet’s ninth violent upheaval and civil war. That had taken him, about 0.2 of a second to realize this fact, and he promptly pushed Rose back into the TARDIS after realization had dawned, and they skittered off into the stars again to set down on a slightly less life-threatening but still dangerous planet for an adventure with yet again, lots of running.
This time he touched down in the middle of the planet’s winter festival, exactly where and when he’d planned to.
Brilliant.
When Rose stepped out of the TARDIS and into the snow she was grinning and giggling like a madman… well madwoman.
“Oh Doctor, this is beautiful!” she sighed spinning around in the fresh snowfall, closing her eyes and tilting her face to the starry night sky.
The Doctor just went on smiling at her until she finished basking in the first moments on the new planet. She had settled to stand when she peered through the trees of the woods at little golden lights peeking through the branches.
“Look! There’s a town over there!” she told him. “Can we go explore it?” Like she really needed to ask anymore.
He stepped forward and reached for her mitten clad hand and clasped it firmly in his own un-mittened one.
“You sure you’re warm enough in that?” she asked with genuine concern. He hadn’t added any layers to his usual pin-stripe suit and overcoat, though he had thrown on a green scarf to look festive for the… festival. Rose had donned a big puffy winter coat, mittens, a rainbow colored scarf and matching hat. Her nose, chin, and cheeks had already been worn a rosy red by the chilly air and the Doctor could barely suppress the urge to ignore her question and just stand there taking in her rosy complexion for the rest of the night. But then that would lead to her developing hypothermia and she would freeze to death and that would be bad. So he wondered how she managed to look so cute and be devastatingly beautiful… you know, for a human, at the same time, and then began his explanation of why he needn’t bother with extra layers.
“Quite warm enough,” he explained, “Timelord physiology allows my internal temperature to fluctuate.” He said beginning to walk with her towards the lights.
“So you’re… cold-blooded like a reptile or something?” she asked.
“I’ll try not to be insulted by that…” he muttered before correcting her. “Not cold-blooded no, if that were the case I’d be lethargic by now. No, it’s just a little bit of superior biology, my brain tells my circulatory what the outside temperature is and the double heartbeat keeps everything the right temperature. Something like your own heating systems but mine doesn’t shut off areas that are considered ‘expendable,’ my hearts work faster so everything keeps warm, and I don’t drop dead of a heart attack because there are two of them. So I suppose hot-blooded would be the correct term.” He ignored her giggle at his expense. “I love having two hearts, without them I’d freeze up like a block of ice dressed like this.”
“Does that mean that your normal temperature is higher than mine?”
“On the contrary, it’s actually cooler. Here take off your mitten.”
He pulled off her mitten and wrapped her warm fingers in his own. She gasped realizing that his fingers were indeed cooler than hers, but not in the out-in-the-cold-for-too-long kind of way.
“See, lower body temperature… Can’t believe you haven’t noticed before!”
She grinned at him with an adoring giggle and leaned her head on his shoulder as they walked, before slipping into another string of questions.
“So, what’d you take me here for?” She asked poking his shoulder.
“Well, do you remember how we came here before and it was in the middle of a giant battle.”
Rose shivered remembering the sight of the battle field greeting them as she stepped out of the TARDIS, it was horrific. “Yeah, I remember.”
“Well I thought we’d try again, and this time we landed right where I wanted us to.”
“Well that’s a change!”
“Oi!”
“And what’s so special about this planet at this exact time?”
“It’s the planet’s winter festival, there’s singing, dancing, music, food, shops, big dinners, ice skating, jams, cakes, a whole celebration to forget the cold winter’s night, and I’m told, some of this solar system’s best chips.”
Rose stopped dead in her tracks. “Really?”
“Yup.” He said popping the “p”, and skipping ahead a little.
“You are the best.” She said gratefully falling back into stride with him.
“Yes, I am.”
“Oi, now don’t let that go to your head!” she said good-naturedly slapping him on the arm.
“Are you insinuating that I have an ego?” he laughed in return.
“Yup,” she retorted, “One the size of Belgium.”
They continued to argue and laugh happily as they neared the town, but before they cleared the trees a gust of wind picked up and the fluffy snow danced from the branches of the evergreens towering above them.
Rose had fallen into a snow bank after a shove from the Doctor and she spluttered and spat trying to compose herself as he laughed uncontrollably, she was about to let loose a string of curses on him but his cry of surprise and pain distracted her.
“Doctor, are you alright?” she asked, struggling to stand.
“My eye.” He said. “Something’s blown into my eye…”
“Let me look.” She stood in front of him and inspected the eye. Besides a little redness from irritation of something definitely having been there, there was nothing wrong.
“It’s gone now.” He whispered. “Must’ve been a bit of ice or something.”
Rose first suspected something was really truly wrong when his gaze returned to her and his face grew grave, like he was seeing her for the very first time.
“Doctor?” she inquired. “What’s wrong?”
He shook his head, and looked at her again, this time his frown deepened but he replied. “Nothing, I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t fine; a shard of the mirror of deception had worked its way into his eye. Now, the human girl he had seen as one of the most beautiful creatures in the universe (though he’d never admit to that), seemed ugly, and as they walked he was wondering exactly why he had seen her as exceptionally beautiful. What the hell was going on?! This was Rose he was talking, well thinking about and she was still the Rose who had opened up the TARDIS to save his life… she was still his amazingly brilliant companion and he was still going to let her stay for as long as she wanted. Perhaps this realization of her plainness was a good thing, perhaps his hearts would stop speeding up whenever she turned her special “Doctor” smile on him, maybe he would stop grinning back at her like a madman, maybe he would stop reaching for her hand as often as possible, maybe, just maybe he would stop adoring her so much that it hurt. It was unlikely, he realized, because it wasn’t her beauty that he had admired her so much for, but her spirit.
When they had finally reached the town Rose was back to chatting happily with the Doctor, but found it oddly unsettling that he was silent. The Doctor was NEVER silent, only when they were hiding from the gravest danger was his mouth not running, and the fact that he had his nose scrunched up in distaste as he looked around the town really set her warning bells off.
“Alright, what’s wrong?” she said stepping in front of him and putting her hands on her hips.
His eyes met hers for a moment before flitting away again to appraise the town. “I dunno, this place was a lot more beautiful in my memories…” he trailed off. “Now it’s, I dunno…”
“What are you talking about?” she chastised him. “It’s gorgeous! It reminds me of Winter scenes from the fronts of Christmas cards back home… It’s quaint, and homey, and perfect.” She sighed.
The Doctor continued to look around. “Well, I guess it could be… but I really wouldn’t say perfect…”
“Well of course nothing’s perfect, but this is as close as you can get really.”
“But look at it Rose, there’s something off with everything! That building has a door that’s too large, and the glass is all in non-geometric shapes! And that horse over there is completely disproportionate!”
“…That’s because it’s a cow.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. They have them in Scotland -- are you sure we’re not on Earth?”
“We’re not on Earth, but this was colonized by humans seeking a return to the better times and traditions.”
“That would explain everything looking Earth-like… Except for that alien over there of course.”
“But really Rose, you think this place is that great? Don’t you want me to take you somewhere else? Maybe the frozen moon of Grimbonaught, where all of the ice crystals align ever so perfectly? Wouldn’t that be better, then being on this misshapen rock with a lot of misshapen… stuff?”
“I like it here Doctor, you took me here to see the festival so I want to stay! What’s wrong with you?! Really, you’ve been rude before but now you’re being outrageous!”
“I’m sorry Rose, it’s just, everything looks so strange right now and I don’t know why… like I’m looking at the world through one of those fun house mirrors, the kind that makes everything look so ugly…”
Rose chastised herself for being hurt by his comment. She had tried so hard to arrange her hair into her hat in a pretty way, and had done up her makeup especially nice for him because he had said that he was going to treat her today after being such a trooper when she lost her face in 1953.
“Why don’t you try your glasses then?” she quipped.
“Here Rose, let me make it up to you! Let’s go visit the shops, and I’ll buy you some sweets and something nice alright?”
She looked incredulous. “Do you have any money?”
“As a matter of fact, this planet’s currency finds a fresh banana to be more valuable than gold.” He pulled three bananas out of his pocket. “So I can get us a five course dinner at the finest restaurant in town, you a diamond necklace, and half of the rooms in the finest hotel in town with the amount of bananas I’ve got in my pockets.”
Rose fought a smirk at the innuendo the Doctor has missed.
“Sounds lovely.” She said.
“Well then Rose Tyler, would you join me for a night out on the town?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at her and offered an arm. “What do you say?”
A slow grin appeared on her face. Maybe this was just a passing thing with his vision being all wonky, she hoped. “I would be glad to.” She replied taking his arm and being happily led through the town.
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The first thing they did was grab some chocolate crepes from a street vendor, and ate them watching people ice skate. Then they joined in with the town wide annual snow-ball fight. After which they were again ravenous and went for fish and chips; not at the most expensive restaurant in town. Then to the Doctor’s chagrin, Rose dragged him shopping. Rose bought some gifts for her mother and for her friends and they even found a door knob for the TARDIS’ console. Finally Rose stumbled upon something that she would love for herself. In the cobbler’s shop window sat a pair of beautiful leather boots. She went inside to admire them; they were soft and light brown with bright red trim, and had fur on the inside that was gloriously soft and warm, and to Rose’s delight they were just her size. To her disappointment they were also expensive and Rose had already spent most of the purse of Skadilian currency that the TARDIS had dropped on her head on the way out the door, so there was no way Rose was going to get these beautiful shoes; until the Doctor stepped in.
“Rose, I promised you a gift.” He insisted handing three bananas over to the cobbler. Rose blushed furiously as the cobbler wrapped them up in a special box and winked at her saying something about being lucky for having such a generous man on her arm.
A bonfire had been set up in the main square for a story teller to entertain anyone who cared to listen and the Doctor and Rose purchased mugs of hot chocolate before sitting on a bench to watch him retell local legends with practiced enthusiasm. The man spun the ancient legends about the Snow Queen making Rose shiver with the ghost stories. Then he moved on to stories about the twin mirrors, the mirror of truth, and the mirror of deception. He told about how the mirror of deception was smashed and that people would get pieces stuck in their eyes and would suddenly see the world as ugly, a condition described as “mirror syndrome.” The Doctor paled considerably during this story and could not contain himself to ask:
“What are the symptoms of this mirror syndrome?”
“Why?” asked the storey teller, “You know someone who might have been affected by it?”
“No, just wanted to know.” The Doctor replied a little too harshly.
As the story teller went into the details of the effects of the mirror shards, Rose listened intently, then felt dread pit in her stomach as she realized the Doctor was exhibiting the first signs of having a shard in his eye. Luckily there was a relatively easy way to have them removed, unlike the ones that lodge in the heart.
She leaned over to him to ask him quietly about this theory. “Doctor, do you think that’s what ended up in your eye? In the forest when you said something blew into it?”
“Not right now Rose.” The Doctor hissed. He didn’t mean to be so harsh, but he was absolutely terrified. He had once seen someone die because they went untreated for the mirror shards and it wasn’t a pleasant death. His only solace was the fact that one hadn’t lodged into his heart; otherwise he would have been in serious danger. Only then did he notice the hurt expression on her face.
“Rose I’m sorry for snapping, but I’m anxious. I’m not sure if it was a bit of the mirror or not, but I intend to find out, and get it treated before this gets any worse… this town, I remembered it as being so beautiful, but to me it looks hideous. Even people… I was wondering what could have made you seem so different in such a short period of time… I should have known it would be this. I really shouldn’t have taken you here, it could have been you that got a sliver in your eye, still could… Come on, we can’t do anything for it tonight, and you look exhausted, let’s get a room and you can settle in for the night.”
As they stood to walk to the hotel Rose reached up and kissed the Doctor’s cheek in thanks for the wonderful evening, regardless of him being a little bit more rude than usual. He smiled at her happy that they had figured out what was wrong, and that it was just an easy fix. Everything seemed to be alright until the wind picked up again and the clouds that had gathered in the sky began to pour snow over the town in a magical end to the night, but it also blew another shard into town, and as luck or fate would have it, into the Doctor’s right heart.
The Doctor doubled over in pain, “Oh, my chest!” he gasped clutching at his clothes.
“Doctor!?” Rose cried. “Doctor, what’s wrong? Speak to me please, tell me what happened!” she shouted clutching his arm tightly and trying to help him up. She was shocked when he pushed her off him forcefully and growled:
“Get off me! I don’t need a mother hen, I’m a grown man! Stupid ape, stupid girl.”
Rose sat where she had landed on the boardwalk in complete silence and shock at his words. Rose’s jaw set before she got up grabbing the bags of gifts for her friends and family, and striding off towards the hotel with a couple of the bananas that had fallen from his pocket to pay for a room. She purposely left the box with the beautiful shoes on the sidewalk next to him.
Only when she had drawn herself a hot bath and had allowed herself to calm down did she find herself in tears. It had been… a while since she’d been called a stupid ape, and the second part of the phrase had stung even more. She was only concerned for him, and he had thrown her off like she’d been the one to hurt him in the first place. It wasn’t fair, and it wasn’t like him. She wondered absently if it had anything to do with the shard of glass in his eye before she crawled out of the tub and into bed.
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As the Doctor watched Rose storm off, he immediately regretted his actions. What had come over him? This worried him. What worried him only slightly more was the fact that he was shivering. He wasn’t supposed to shiver… Brushing the thoughts aside and focusing on fixing his relationship with Rose, he scooped up the shoe box with her beautiful new shoes, and they really were beautiful… if he closed one eye and squinted.
He sat outside the hotel for a little while with a pen and a slip of paper in his freezing hands scratching a helpless note onto the paper. As he finished a large sledge had pulled up in front of the hotel and stopped before him. The Doctor smiled down at the note, it was sure to fix his mistake.
“You there.” A voice floated on the air to his ears and gripped him fiercely by his nerve-endings. The voice was deep yet feminine; it spoke of countless winters, unending frost, and loneliness. The Doctor looked up and met the eyes of one of the most beautiful creatures he had ever seen. It was a tall woman with silvery white hair, porcelain skin that was nearly as white as the furs surrounding her, eyes blue like both the coldest ice and the hottest flame, but dark and deep and hypnotizing. She was dressed in a giant fur coat of the purest white. The shape of her face was oddly familiar and enticing with generous lips and full cheeks. The Doctor felt the air temperature drop another few degrees and he shivered. Something was distinctly off about her, her image shimmered a little before his gaze and he thought he could see this image of her superimposed over another more dangerous one. He rubbed the eye the shard was in and blinked a few times before responding to her words.
“Me?” he replied rather weakly, his voice about an octave higher than he wanted it to be.
The woman smiled a smile that he supposed was supposed to look warm. It wasn’t.
“Of course you.” She said. “Do you see anyone else I could be talking to?”
The Doctor looked around sheepishly, “Well… no.”
“Come with me.” She said moving over to make room for him in the sledge.
“Oh, I would but you see I’ve got a… friend in the hotel over there, and I really shouldn’t… er… I mean I should at least say goodbye…” the Doctor couldn’t find the will power to refuse the mysterious woman and her invitation. Something about her was tugging at the back of his brain and it wasn’t letting go.
“Then be quick about it… I won’t wait long.” She said turning to face forward. The Doctor felt like his collar had loosened when her eyes left him he took a deep breath to rid himself of the sensation. He paused for a beat letting the woman’s words fully sink-in, and then bolted with the shoe box into the hotel.
“Excuse me,” he addressed the woman at the front desk. “Hello, um, I’m looking for Rose Tyler; could you tell me what room she’s in?”
“Um, I’m sorry sir that is against our customer confidentiality policy.” The woman replied.
The Doctor felt like he could scream with frustration.
“You don’t understand. She’s my… wife, I’m John Sm-- er, Tyler!” He wiped out the psychic paper and the woman’s eyebrows rose.
“I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience sir. She’s just checked in, room 307, up those stairs, first corridor, and third room on the left.”
“Thank you!” he growled making a dash for the stairs.
“Don’t you want your room key sir?” she hollered after him.
“No, Rose’ll let me in!” he called down from the stairs.
The Doctor stopped at the door and rested his head against the wood panting heavily. He wasn’t tired it was just that the further he got from the pure white woman the harder it became to take another step away. What the hell was wrong with him? He left without going in.
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When the thoroughly enchanted Doctor had dashed back down the corridor to leave with the woman in white the completely lucid Doctor stepped from around a corner and walked up to the thoroughly abandoned Rose’s door.
The no-longer-abandoned and Doctor’s-savior Rose stood behind him and watched the entranced Doctor leave.
“You sure we can’t just--“Rose began.
“No.” The Doctor answered dryly.
“No, I mean we could-“
“Rose.” He said looking up at her this time; there was a warning in his voice.
“Alright.” She sighed. She watched him finish scrawling the warning message onto the back of his apology letter, and frowned as she remembered the panic that had flooded her when she found it.
The Doctor spoke again when he’d finished the letter and stuffed it into the box and closed the lid, his eyes were full of sympathy and affection as he spoke. “As much as I would love to stop what happens next, just as much as you would, we can’t. This has to happen this way. You help so many people along your journey, and we save so many more the way it turns out… we can’t change it Rose, not a thing, we just can’t.” He had placed his hand on her shoulder and Rose nodded as it slid from her shoulder to her hand where his finally warm-ish hand grasped her own.
Rose smiled sadly then wrapped her arms around him tightly. “You just can’t understand how scared I was. I thought I’d lost you!”
The Doctor grinned into her hair, “No, it’d take more than a carbon-based skin graft created to resemble an embodiment of winter to make me truly ever forget you.”
Rose smiled genuinely this time. “I’m sick of this place.” She said patting his hand. “Take me home.”
The Doctor’s face paled a little.
“I mean the TARDIS, Doctor…” her grin was infectious.
He smiled back and squeezed her hand, “Let’s go home, Rose Tyler.”
They walked down the corridor and out the door before the Doctor bolted back inside to drop the box in front of the other Rose’s door and pound on it till she woke up and then bolt back out into the street to join the laughing Rose waiting for him in the snow.
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She smiled as he burst through the hotel doors.
“I was afraid I was going to have to leave without you.” The frosty woman in the pure white furs said too sweetly. “Hang on to the sled on the back.”
“Excuse me?” he said glancing at the child’s toy clinging for dear life onto the runners of the larger sled.
“Don’t make me repeat myself.” She hissed turning an icy glare on him which he obeyed instantly.
As the Doctor folded his limbs onto the sled in a way that would keep him from falling off and regenerating, half of his mind was beating him over the head with a metaphorical frying pan and screaming to get back in that hotel and stay safe in the room with Rose. The other half of his mind was jumping about with that familiar itch at the back of his skull chanting “go on, go on, go on, go on, go on, go on…” That little voice was going to be the death of him someday. Before he could do anything about it, the larger sledge was off and he was flying behind it hanging on with every muscle in his body as the sledge with the woman passed through the town and then out into the country side.
Every once in a while the woman driving would turn around to look at him and he would smile weakly, she would return the smile and then urge the reindeer pulling the sledge to go faster. Suddenly the Doctor found himself on his back in a snow bank watching his sled careen over the surface of the snow and off of a bridge into the frigid water below. His head fell back into the snow with the breath he didn’t know he was holding. That could have ended badly.
Then in dawned on him, it had ended badly. He was at least five miles outside of town, more than that from the TARDIS, and he was lying in a snow bank in the middle of a snow storm, with numb fingers and toes, and no way to tell which direction he had come so as to get back… bollocks, he’d really screwed up this time. Wait, why were his fingers numb? The Doctor did a mental scan of his body and felt real fear set in when he realized one of his hearts had stopped and wasn’t about to start up again. ‘A shard of the mirror,’ he thought with dread as he recognized a piece of the glass lodged deep within him. With a shiver he could almost feel its poison spreading through his veins. If he didn’t get back to the TARDIS soon, he might not live through the night…
He thought of Rose looking for him when morning came and organizing search parties when she couldn’t find him and the searchers finding his frozen corpse three days later hidden under two feet of snow because he hadn’t moved from where he lay. Oh dear Rassilon, he had to get up.
Before the Doctor could muster the will to move the lady he had followed into this situation was leaning over him.
“You’re alive.” She said, sounding a little annoyed. “That is good.”
“You almost killed me!” he cried, staring at her. Something in his head knew that she was just so wrong.
“You fell off of the sled.” She reasoned. “Come, sit up.” She helped him to sit and then pressed a kiss onto his lips.
The Doctor felt the kiss throughout his entire body, not because it was good, but because it was cold. The heat drained from his body and he was instantly numb, he couldn’t feel anything to move it or to resist her.
“What was that?” he heard himself say.
“You looked cold.” She replied. “Do you feel cold now?”
He thought about it. “No.”
“Then come, onto my sledge, we have a long way to go before morning breaks.”
So he did, because he was absolutely powerless to do anything else.
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The Doctor woke from a nap that felt more like a coma and found them flying over mountain tops and villages, all of them buried in frost. He shivered a little, realizing that feeling was returning to his body and he felt nothing but cold. His mind was sluggish so he couldn’t remember why his body wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.
“How are you?” the woman he’d followed asked.
“Cold.” He whispered back shivering more violently.
“I suppose that kiss should have worn off by now… tell me do you remember the woman that you were traveling with?” she said glancing at him sideways.
His thoughts immediately snapped back to Rose.
“Rose!” he exclaimed, “I left her back at the hotel…” immediately guilt set in. “She’s going to be so worried.” He turned to the woman driving. “Take me back!” He demanded pulling out the sonic screwdriver and aiming it at her. “Take me back to Rose right now!”
The woman merely glared at him and in a flurry of movement knocked the sonic screwdriver out of his hand. He watched with horror as it fell towards the nameless woods below.
“What did you do that for?!” the Doctor demanded.
“I don’t like weapons pointed at me.” The woman replied calmly.
“It wasn’t a weapon!”
“You were threatening me with it like it was… Now then, answer my question good Doctor, do you remember a girl named Rose?”
He would ask her how she knew their names later. “Of course I remember Rose, I brought her here!”
The woman gripped him by the collar and pulled him in for another kiss. He immediately felt numb again.
“Let’s try this again Doctor, do you know of a girl named Rose Tyler?”
The Doctor’s face scrunched up as searched his memories for that name. “No, no I’ve never met her. The name rings a bell though, Rose Tyler…”
“Good, good.” The woman smiled. “Now sleep Doctor, there is a long journey still ahead of us.”
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Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3
Again please comment! I had a really hard time ending this chapter since there were three good places for a cliff-hanger... I decided to go with my first instinct. Hope you enjoyed it, and keep an eye peeled for the second chapter, currently going through the beta-ing process.