The Inhuman Doctor (Doctor Who)
Title: The Inhuman Doctor
Author: daffybroad
Recipient: rhyana
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, and I do not harbour any misconceptions of ownership or creative control. This is a derivative work of fiction. Please refrain from suing me. I would consider it a kindness.
Spoilers (if applicable): Rose, Journey’s End
Warnings (if applicable): Implicit rape. May be triggery.
Characters: Ten, Rose, and Human Ten. Appearances by some old (and one very old) friends.
Summary: “You might as well call me John Smith, I mean… you’re the only person left who gets the joke.” The Tenth Doctor feels himself fading away. The TARDIS tries to help.
Note: It’s made clear in the above warning, but it bears restating: this story contains a horrible crime. In no way do I mean to glamourize it, or suggest that it is rooted in anything other than violence, madness and hate. This is the first time I’ve written a story that even touched on this, and I want to hear how I’ve done. Please comment, or if you want to converse privately, I can be reached at megan DOT blink AT gmail DOT com.
Edited to Add: Beta-read on very short notice by
luc_darling , who totally stepped up AND pointed out a massive problem with the first draft. Much obliged!
The Universe Is Loud Silence. Something Bursts Through, A Single Puncture, Cutting Through One and Every Layer Of Being, From An Impossible Outside.
The Universe Is Bleeding…
* * *
“Oh, mum?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I’m down the pub with Mickey tonight, there’s a match on.”
“Bring us some chips, if you please.”
“Love you.”
“Course you do. Off with you, then, you’ll be late!”
“Bye!”
“See you later!”
A door slams, like a gavel, on the last morning she will recognize her daughter.
* * *
The Doctor had just turned towards the steps, with an eye to the closet to replace a snapped shoelace on his trainers, when he found himself doubled over, his forehead pressed against the TARDIS’ grated floor, one heart racing, the other pumping dangerously slowly.
Hello, he thought to himself. This is new.
He tried to raise his head. An electric shock of pain travelled from his neck, down through his spine, strolled casually along his left leg, stopped for a quick lunch in his toes, and admired the scenery from the right kneecap before remembering it had a bus to catch and sprinting for his temples.
Alright, so, head first an admittedly reckless way of going about things, don’t I know it. The Doctor wiggled his toes experimentally. The pain in his head didn’t seem to notice, milling about aimlessly behind his right eyeball. Emboldened, he rolled his ankles, flexed his knees, waggled his hips, arched his back, shimmied his shoulders and then, for good measure, did them all again, at once. Nothing happened. The headache seemed to have disappeared.
Around him, the TARDIS moaned sympathetically.
“Oi, what’s wrong with you?” said the Doctor, rising cautiously to his feet. The TARDIS shuddered, and made a gurgling noise. “There, there,” he muttered, running a comforting hand over the console, “it can’t be as bad as-“
His sentence was cut off by his own pained shout as he yanked his hand back from the red-hot controls. Cradling it, he pitched backwards; the headache had returned, and from the feel of it, had brought a busful of friends.
As he dropped to his knees, fighting the urge to pass out, he raised his hand to his face to examine the damage. It wasn’t the burned pattern on his palm that made his stomach leap sideways.
It was the other pattern, the stamped metal of the floor, which he could clearly see through his hand.
Unconsciousness caught up with the Doctor and he slid into a graceless heap.
Around him, the TARDIS groaned and jerked to a halt. In the dead silence of space, the Cloister Bell began, ponderously, to toll.
* * *
“Um, excuse me…”
“Hiya, welcome to Henrik’s.”
“Hi, thank you. I… oh… sorry, I just… forgot what I was going to say for a moment.”
“Um…”
“You’re so young.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“To work! Here! Surrounded by, you know, floral patterns and broaches and… chintz…”
“You’re giving style tips?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nice trainers.”
“What’s wrong with them? I think they’re dashing. Good for dashing, anyway. If, you know… you… dash.”
She smiles, so open, so willing to believe the best in people. In all the years he had her, she never lost that.
She will.
* * *
“Bong.”
The Doctor lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, or what he assumed was the ceiling. Exact specifications were somewhat hampered by his total lack of equilibrium, not to mention the pitch-blackness; a defensible argument existed for lying on the ceiling, or the wall, or on a particularly uncomfortable beach, or in the belly of a giant steel herring.
Though admittedly these were unlikely.
“Bong,” the Cloister Bell repeated, reminding him that at least he was demonstrably within the TARDIS.
“Right,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“Bong,” it graciously replied, and then inquired, “Bong?”
“I can’t move,” he quavered, feeling the words in the pit of his stomach. Around him, the TARDIS heaved a shaking sigh.
What the Doctor had never quite managed to explain to anyone is that the TARDIS, for lack of a better word, breathes. It lives, it feels, and of course it thinks, though not in any way even he could truly recognize… but when you love a thing for hundreds of years, and you live inside her, and you and her are the only two remnants of a dead world, what you learn to appreciate is the breathing. The unceasing rhythm of it, like a metronome.
Her breathing, now, reminded him distressingly of the two hours Donna Noble had spent, after a brief foray in a Norplaxian Hyperpub, curled around the toilet, praying softly under her breath, desperate and jagged. Donna, he’d been able to reassure with a kind word and a fizzy tablet.
“You want a fizzy tablet, old girl?” he whispered, ignoring, for the time being, his paralysis.
“Bong,” chided the Cloister Bell.
“Well, I thought it was funny.”
“Bong.”
“I know. I’m trying.” And then, unexpectedly:
“Bing!”
The Doctor paused, confused.
“… what?”
“Bing!”
“Why’re you saying ‘Bing’? You don’t bing. What’s ‘bing’ about?”
“Bong!” returned the Cloister Bell, disapprovingly, like a mother cat to its gambolling kittens.
“I’m asking!”
“Bong.”
“Bing!” the new bell retorted.
It occurred to him that for all his current problems, they at least didn’t appear to include blindness. A dim red glow was beginning to emanate from somewhere, barely illuminating the area but at least allowing him to finally confirm his floor hypothesis. There was also a second light, thinner, more spastic, flickering in the general area above his left eye.
The TARDIS heaved hideously, and something sickening started to blossom in his stomach.
“This is impossible…”
“Bing bing!” chirped the frantic light. There was a hiss of white noise, and then a far too familiar voice burst through the speakers.
“Hello, Doctor.”
His own. A voice he hadn’t heard since the last time he visited Norway. A voice he hadn’t ever expected to hear again.
“You might as well call me John Smith, I mean… you’re the only person left who gets the joke."
* * *
“Hello, Police? Right, I’ve just seen my girlfriend snatched, I was… Mickey, Mickey Smith, listen, I’m in the parking lot in front of Henrik’s department store, I was meeting her for lunch, this guy just grabbed her, right, and shoved her in a van, you’ve got to… no, listen, listen to me, I got the plate number, I know what he looks like, he’s tall, skinny, short brown hair, blue suit, trainers… yeah, trainers… It’s a white van, there’re plates, I wrote it down… LJ51 LJV… well, I was right here, wasn’t I; I saw the whole thing, bold as bloody brass, broad daylight and all! Just tell me you’re sending out, whatever, a bulletin or something! … yeah, I’ll hold.”
He taps his foot, crosses his arms, bites his lips, does nothing. He feels his own insignificance, like a blade, for the first time in his life.
* * *
Over the speakers, the Human Doctor - John - exhaled heavily. “If you’re listening to this, it means you’re too late to stop it. Sorry. You won’t believe me, but I truly am.”
The Doctor struggled to lift his hand, and failed. It wasn’t like paralysis, muscles heavy and locked, more like they were just… gone. Whatever mechanisms exist to move your body are currently busy, but please stay on the line, and we’ll address your neural impulse in sequence.
“Bong,” worried the Cloister Bell. The TARDIS shuddered.
“You should never have brought her with you,” John was saying, darkly.
A particular nostalgia bloomed in his chest. Around him, the TARDIS keened in pain, red shocks of vile, familiar light bursting from its heart.
“So I’m going to fix it.”
The Doctor realized, with a jolt, what was happening.
“I don’t know how much time you have… even you can’t stave this off for very long.”
The sound from his old friend, the only other remnant of Gallifrey, was terrifying. Inside its core, the TARDIS was holding the whole of time back, screaming in pain from the torture of remembering how to be a paradox machine.
* * *
“… wha…”
“You’re awake.”
“Yeah, I… why… who…”
“It might take a second to remember. I hit you fairly hard.”
“… you… oh my god.”
“… yeah.”
“No, please. Please let me go.”
“I can’t… I can’t stop looking at you. I forgot how young you are.”
“What?”
“You’re so beautiful.”
“… oh god…”
“Even at the end, you were beautiful. Terrified, confused… but still beautiful.”
“No, please, don’t kill me, please.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t… I don’t know what you’re saying, you’re insane.”
“…Since the day I was born.”
He grins, maniacally, and seems almost confused when she bursts into sobs.
* * *
“I took a clipping from the TARDIS when we were towing the Earth home; I was growing our own. I was going to surprise her on our anniversary. I had it all planned out.”
John trailed off, and the paralyzed Doctor noticed two things. The first was that wherever he’d recorded this message, it was small, enclosed and echoey, like a capsule. The second was that John was crying.
“She was supposed to make me better, you said. I was ‘born in battle - full of blood and anger and revenge.’ I remember that really well, you see. I was going to be whole, and hers, for the rest of our lives. I could ignore every vicious thought, all the rage, so long as I had her.”
A cold heaviness settled in the Doctor’s stomach.
“But I only had her for six weeks. Six weeks, three days, eleven hours, forty-two minutes between you leaving her and her leaving me.”
No, thought the Doctor.
“And I know what I have to do. I couldn’t wait for mine to be fully grown, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s a one-way trip. I just need to punch a hole into your universe, just one, and aim for London, 2005. I’m recording this on my way there, but you won’t hear it until it’s over.”
Whatever part of him that was able to think over the constant sound of Roseisdeadroseisdeadroseisdead screamed at him. This won’t work. The timeline will patch itself up. I’ll meet her one way or another.
This will always be what happens.
“You made her reckless, you know,” John Smith was saying, his voice malicious and wild. “Fighting Daleks, dangling from barrage balloons, what’s a couple of thugs in an alleyway to that?”
The Doctor’s vision was starting to blur around the edges. Could have been blindness, he supposed, his eyeballs disappearing. The heat streaming down the sides of his face, however, suggested otherwise.
“They asked for her wallet, and she looked at the gun, and she laughed. And they shot her.”
He couldn’t feel any part of his body anymore. He didn’t care. The TARDIS wheezed.
“Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, saviour of the universe twenty times over… died in my arms, behind a pub in a puddle of vomit, after a botched mugging.”
John drew in a ragged breath, then laughed once, with bitter mania. “It’s a funny word, ‘botched’, innit? Like a sound effect. Oh, I dropped the crumpets - botch! Oh, I ran over the cat, botchy botchy botch! Oh, I shot a girl in the stomach because she wouldn’t give me her handbag, bloody fucking BOTCH.”
Over the hijacked intercom, John was sobbing softly.
“She was so scared. She begged me not to let her die.”
There was nothing to be done. The Cloister Bell tolled apologetically.
“And it’s your fault. You made her reckless. I’m going back to make her careful.” There was madness under his voice, like a constant, repressed giggle.
The TARDIS, his TARDIS, made a sound he’d heard before, too many times but never like this. It was a death rattle.
* * *
“It’s not good enough that we aren’t meeting now.”
“…”
“I mean, you’ll run into me later, and you’ll still… you’ll help, and I’ll see in you everything I saw before, how brave, how curious you are, and I’ll take you with me.”
“… Mister, I don’t know who you think I am…”
“You need to understand. You need to learn you can be hurt.”
“I know, I know I can, I swear, just please...”
“Oh, Rose.”
“No, don’t touch me, don’t.”
“Rose, I’m sorry.”
“Get off me, stop it.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“… stop…”
He turns her face from his, viciously. If she notices that some of the tears on her face are not hers, she doesn’t let on.
She struggles, until she doesn’t anymore.
A few seconds later, he hears the sirens.
* * *
“I set this to send as soon as the timeline starts to rewrite itself. If I wasn’t dead already, I’ve probably faded away, like you."
The Doctor felt weightless, empty, like a helium balloon. He wished he could give the TARDIS a comforting pat on the console as both their strength ebbed away. It’s all right, old friend, he thought. Nothing to be done now. You can rest.
“I know you think I’m ending the world, that I’m insane, that I’ve killed us all. Maybe that's true. Maybe I've undone the universe, and it's all unravelling now.”
Rest.
“But I needed to fix it.”
It’s all right.
“I needed to fix her.”
It's-
* * *
“Dispatch, this is car 427.”
“PC Roderick, go ahead.”
“Hostage has been successfully retrieved, and is on the way to Trauma. Force Firearms entered the scene at 2040 hr. Suspect neutralized, single shot to the heart.”
“Acknowledged.”
* * *
In the basement of Henrik’s Department Store, which closed early today, no one notices a back door creak open. A man, with close shorn hair and unfortunate ears, tucks a curious device into the breast pocket of his black leather jacket and edges, quietly, towards the storerooms.
He pauses, momentarily, feeling queasy… but it passes.
For now.
* * *
“Mrs. Tyler?"
“Yes, Doctor, that’s me. How is she?”
“She’s stable… may I speak with you privately?”
“… Right, Jackie, I’ll just… I’ll grab us a cuppa down the canteen.”
“Cheers, Mickey.”
“That’s Mickey Smith?”
“Saved her life, that boy did.”
“Mrs. Tyler…”
“Jackie, please.”
“Jackie. Your daughter… you need to be prepared. She’s been through a serious ordeal. The physical damage is manageable, but…”
“What are you saying?”
“… She refuses to speak of it, but… well, we’ve made a note that only females should be allowed in the room.”
“… may I see her, please?”
“Yes, of course, right this way."
* * *
The Wound Is Everywhere. Sharp Openings, Tiny Rifts.
The Universe Quakes In Its Centre, Rearranges Itself.
The Edges Of Time And Space Curl Like A Burning Page.
It Begins.
It Bleeds.
It Breaks.
* * *
“… Rose? Rose, sweetheart, it’s Mum.”
“… hi.”
“Hello, love. Oh, hello.”
Jackie Tyler looks into Rose's eyes, blank and dull, and cannot see her daughter there.
Author: daffybroad
Recipient: rhyana
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating: R
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine, and I do not harbour any misconceptions of ownership or creative control. This is a derivative work of fiction. Please refrain from suing me. I would consider it a kindness.
Spoilers (if applicable): Rose, Journey’s End
Warnings (if applicable): Implicit rape. May be triggery.
Characters: Ten, Rose, and Human Ten. Appearances by some old (and one very old) friends.
Summary: “You might as well call me John Smith, I mean… you’re the only person left who gets the joke.” The Tenth Doctor feels himself fading away. The TARDIS tries to help.
Note: It’s made clear in the above warning, but it bears restating: this story contains a horrible crime. In no way do I mean to glamourize it, or suggest that it is rooted in anything other than violence, madness and hate. This is the first time I’ve written a story that even touched on this, and I want to hear how I’ve done. Please comment, or if you want to converse privately, I can be reached at megan DOT blink AT gmail DOT com.
Edited to Add: Beta-read on very short notice by
luc_darling , who totally stepped up AND pointed out a massive problem with the first draft. Much obliged!
The Universe Is Loud Silence. Something Bursts Through, A Single Puncture, Cutting Through One and Every Layer Of Being, From An Impossible Outside.
The Universe Is Bleeding…
* * *
“Oh, mum?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
“I’m down the pub with Mickey tonight, there’s a match on.”
“Bring us some chips, if you please.”
“Love you.”
“Course you do. Off with you, then, you’ll be late!”
“Bye!”
“See you later!”
A door slams, like a gavel, on the last morning she will recognize her daughter.
* * *
The Doctor had just turned towards the steps, with an eye to the closet to replace a snapped shoelace on his trainers, when he found himself doubled over, his forehead pressed against the TARDIS’ grated floor, one heart racing, the other pumping dangerously slowly.
Hello, he thought to himself. This is new.
He tried to raise his head. An electric shock of pain travelled from his neck, down through his spine, strolled casually along his left leg, stopped for a quick lunch in his toes, and admired the scenery from the right kneecap before remembering it had a bus to catch and sprinting for his temples.
Alright, so, head first an admittedly reckless way of going about things, don’t I know it. The Doctor wiggled his toes experimentally. The pain in his head didn’t seem to notice, milling about aimlessly behind his right eyeball. Emboldened, he rolled his ankles, flexed his knees, waggled his hips, arched his back, shimmied his shoulders and then, for good measure, did them all again, at once. Nothing happened. The headache seemed to have disappeared.
Around him, the TARDIS moaned sympathetically.
“Oi, what’s wrong with you?” said the Doctor, rising cautiously to his feet. The TARDIS shuddered, and made a gurgling noise. “There, there,” he muttered, running a comforting hand over the console, “it can’t be as bad as-“
His sentence was cut off by his own pained shout as he yanked his hand back from the red-hot controls. Cradling it, he pitched backwards; the headache had returned, and from the feel of it, had brought a busful of friends.
As he dropped to his knees, fighting the urge to pass out, he raised his hand to his face to examine the damage. It wasn’t the burned pattern on his palm that made his stomach leap sideways.
It was the other pattern, the stamped metal of the floor, which he could clearly see through his hand.
Unconsciousness caught up with the Doctor and he slid into a graceless heap.
Around him, the TARDIS groaned and jerked to a halt. In the dead silence of space, the Cloister Bell began, ponderously, to toll.
* * *
“Um, excuse me…”
“Hiya, welcome to Henrik’s.”
“Hi, thank you. I… oh… sorry, I just… forgot what I was going to say for a moment.”
“Um…”
“You’re so young.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“To work! Here! Surrounded by, you know, floral patterns and broaches and… chintz…”
“You’re giving style tips?”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nice trainers.”
“What’s wrong with them? I think they’re dashing. Good for dashing, anyway. If, you know… you… dash.”
She smiles, so open, so willing to believe the best in people. In all the years he had her, she never lost that.
She will.
* * *
“Bong.”
The Doctor lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, or what he assumed was the ceiling. Exact specifications were somewhat hampered by his total lack of equilibrium, not to mention the pitch-blackness; a defensible argument existed for lying on the ceiling, or the wall, or on a particularly uncomfortable beach, or in the belly of a giant steel herring.
Though admittedly these were unlikely.
“Bong,” the Cloister Bell repeated, reminding him that at least he was demonstrably within the TARDIS.
“Right,” he muttered. “Sorry.”
“Bong,” it graciously replied, and then inquired, “Bong?”
“I can’t move,” he quavered, feeling the words in the pit of his stomach. Around him, the TARDIS heaved a shaking sigh.
What the Doctor had never quite managed to explain to anyone is that the TARDIS, for lack of a better word, breathes. It lives, it feels, and of course it thinks, though not in any way even he could truly recognize… but when you love a thing for hundreds of years, and you live inside her, and you and her are the only two remnants of a dead world, what you learn to appreciate is the breathing. The unceasing rhythm of it, like a metronome.
Her breathing, now, reminded him distressingly of the two hours Donna Noble had spent, after a brief foray in a Norplaxian Hyperpub, curled around the toilet, praying softly under her breath, desperate and jagged. Donna, he’d been able to reassure with a kind word and a fizzy tablet.
“You want a fizzy tablet, old girl?” he whispered, ignoring, for the time being, his paralysis.
“Bong,” chided the Cloister Bell.
“Well, I thought it was funny.”
“Bong.”
“I know. I’m trying.” And then, unexpectedly:
“Bing!”
The Doctor paused, confused.
“… what?”
“Bing!”
“Why’re you saying ‘Bing’? You don’t bing. What’s ‘bing’ about?”
“Bong!” returned the Cloister Bell, disapprovingly, like a mother cat to its gambolling kittens.
“I’m asking!”
“Bong.”
“Bing!” the new bell retorted.
It occurred to him that for all his current problems, they at least didn’t appear to include blindness. A dim red glow was beginning to emanate from somewhere, barely illuminating the area but at least allowing him to finally confirm his floor hypothesis. There was also a second light, thinner, more spastic, flickering in the general area above his left eye.
The TARDIS heaved hideously, and something sickening started to blossom in his stomach.
“This is impossible…”
“Bing bing!” chirped the frantic light. There was a hiss of white noise, and then a far too familiar voice burst through the speakers.
“Hello, Doctor.”
His own. A voice he hadn’t heard since the last time he visited Norway. A voice he hadn’t ever expected to hear again.
“You might as well call me John Smith, I mean… you’re the only person left who gets the joke."
* * *
“Hello, Police? Right, I’ve just seen my girlfriend snatched, I was… Mickey, Mickey Smith, listen, I’m in the parking lot in front of Henrik’s department store, I was meeting her for lunch, this guy just grabbed her, right, and shoved her in a van, you’ve got to… no, listen, listen to me, I got the plate number, I know what he looks like, he’s tall, skinny, short brown hair, blue suit, trainers… yeah, trainers… It’s a white van, there’re plates, I wrote it down… LJ51 LJV… well, I was right here, wasn’t I; I saw the whole thing, bold as bloody brass, broad daylight and all! Just tell me you’re sending out, whatever, a bulletin or something! … yeah, I’ll hold.”
He taps his foot, crosses his arms, bites his lips, does nothing. He feels his own insignificance, like a blade, for the first time in his life.
* * *
Over the speakers, the Human Doctor - John - exhaled heavily. “If you’re listening to this, it means you’re too late to stop it. Sorry. You won’t believe me, but I truly am.”
The Doctor struggled to lift his hand, and failed. It wasn’t like paralysis, muscles heavy and locked, more like they were just… gone. Whatever mechanisms exist to move your body are currently busy, but please stay on the line, and we’ll address your neural impulse in sequence.
“Bong,” worried the Cloister Bell. The TARDIS shuddered.
“You should never have brought her with you,” John was saying, darkly.
A particular nostalgia bloomed in his chest. Around him, the TARDIS keened in pain, red shocks of vile, familiar light bursting from its heart.
“So I’m going to fix it.”
The Doctor realized, with a jolt, what was happening.
“I don’t know how much time you have… even you can’t stave this off for very long.”
The sound from his old friend, the only other remnant of Gallifrey, was terrifying. Inside its core, the TARDIS was holding the whole of time back, screaming in pain from the torture of remembering how to be a paradox machine.
* * *
“… wha…”
“You’re awake.”
“Yeah, I… why… who…”
“It might take a second to remember. I hit you fairly hard.”
“… you… oh my god.”
“… yeah.”
“No, please. Please let me go.”
“I can’t… I can’t stop looking at you. I forgot how young you are.”
“What?”
“You’re so beautiful.”
“… oh god…”
“Even at the end, you were beautiful. Terrified, confused… but still beautiful.”
“No, please, don’t kill me, please.”
“I didn’t.”
“I don’t… I don’t know what you’re saying, you’re insane.”
“…Since the day I was born.”
He grins, maniacally, and seems almost confused when she bursts into sobs.
* * *
“I took a clipping from the TARDIS when we were towing the Earth home; I was growing our own. I was going to surprise her on our anniversary. I had it all planned out.”
John trailed off, and the paralyzed Doctor noticed two things. The first was that wherever he’d recorded this message, it was small, enclosed and echoey, like a capsule. The second was that John was crying.
“She was supposed to make me better, you said. I was ‘born in battle - full of blood and anger and revenge.’ I remember that really well, you see. I was going to be whole, and hers, for the rest of our lives. I could ignore every vicious thought, all the rage, so long as I had her.”
A cold heaviness settled in the Doctor’s stomach.
“But I only had her for six weeks. Six weeks, three days, eleven hours, forty-two minutes between you leaving her and her leaving me.”
No, thought the Doctor.
“And I know what I have to do. I couldn’t wait for mine to be fully grown, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s a one-way trip. I just need to punch a hole into your universe, just one, and aim for London, 2005. I’m recording this on my way there, but you won’t hear it until it’s over.”
Whatever part of him that was able to think over the constant sound of Roseisdeadroseisdeadroseisdead screamed at him. This won’t work. The timeline will patch itself up. I’ll meet her one way or another.
This will always be what happens.
“You made her reckless, you know,” John Smith was saying, his voice malicious and wild. “Fighting Daleks, dangling from barrage balloons, what’s a couple of thugs in an alleyway to that?”
The Doctor’s vision was starting to blur around the edges. Could have been blindness, he supposed, his eyeballs disappearing. The heat streaming down the sides of his face, however, suggested otherwise.
“They asked for her wallet, and she looked at the gun, and she laughed. And they shot her.”
He couldn’t feel any part of his body anymore. He didn’t care. The TARDIS wheezed.
“Rose Tyler, the Bad Wolf, saviour of the universe twenty times over… died in my arms, behind a pub in a puddle of vomit, after a botched mugging.”
John drew in a ragged breath, then laughed once, with bitter mania. “It’s a funny word, ‘botched’, innit? Like a sound effect. Oh, I dropped the crumpets - botch! Oh, I ran over the cat, botchy botchy botch! Oh, I shot a girl in the stomach because she wouldn’t give me her handbag, bloody fucking BOTCH.”
Over the hijacked intercom, John was sobbing softly.
“She was so scared. She begged me not to let her die.”
There was nothing to be done. The Cloister Bell tolled apologetically.
“And it’s your fault. You made her reckless. I’m going back to make her careful.” There was madness under his voice, like a constant, repressed giggle.
The TARDIS, his TARDIS, made a sound he’d heard before, too many times but never like this. It was a death rattle.
* * *
“It’s not good enough that we aren’t meeting now.”
“…”
“I mean, you’ll run into me later, and you’ll still… you’ll help, and I’ll see in you everything I saw before, how brave, how curious you are, and I’ll take you with me.”
“… Mister, I don’t know who you think I am…”
“You need to understand. You need to learn you can be hurt.”
“I know, I know I can, I swear, just please...”
“Oh, Rose.”
“No, don’t touch me, don’t.”
“Rose, I’m sorry.”
“Get off me, stop it.”
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“… stop…”
He turns her face from his, viciously. If she notices that some of the tears on her face are not hers, she doesn’t let on.
She struggles, until she doesn’t anymore.
A few seconds later, he hears the sirens.
* * *
“I set this to send as soon as the timeline starts to rewrite itself. If I wasn’t dead already, I’ve probably faded away, like you."
The Doctor felt weightless, empty, like a helium balloon. He wished he could give the TARDIS a comforting pat on the console as both their strength ebbed away. It’s all right, old friend, he thought. Nothing to be done now. You can rest.
“I know you think I’m ending the world, that I’m insane, that I’ve killed us all. Maybe that's true. Maybe I've undone the universe, and it's all unravelling now.”
Rest.
“But I needed to fix it.”
It’s all right.
“I needed to fix her.”
It's-
* * *
“Dispatch, this is car 427.”
“PC Roderick, go ahead.”
“Hostage has been successfully retrieved, and is on the way to Trauma. Force Firearms entered the scene at 2040 hr. Suspect neutralized, single shot to the heart.”
“Acknowledged.”
* * *
In the basement of Henrik’s Department Store, which closed early today, no one notices a back door creak open. A man, with close shorn hair and unfortunate ears, tucks a curious device into the breast pocket of his black leather jacket and edges, quietly, towards the storerooms.
He pauses, momentarily, feeling queasy… but it passes.
For now.
* * *
“Mrs. Tyler?"
“Yes, Doctor, that’s me. How is she?”
“She’s stable… may I speak with you privately?”
“… Right, Jackie, I’ll just… I’ll grab us a cuppa down the canteen.”
“Cheers, Mickey.”
“That’s Mickey Smith?”
“Saved her life, that boy did.”
“Mrs. Tyler…”
“Jackie, please.”
“Jackie. Your daughter… you need to be prepared. She’s been through a serious ordeal. The physical damage is manageable, but…”
“What are you saying?”
“… She refuses to speak of it, but… well, we’ve made a note that only females should be allowed in the room.”
“… may I see her, please?”
“Yes, of course, right this way."
* * *
The Wound Is Everywhere. Sharp Openings, Tiny Rifts.
The Universe Quakes In Its Centre, Rearranges Itself.
The Edges Of Time And Space Curl Like A Burning Page.
It Begins.
It Bleeds.
It Breaks.
* * *
“… Rose? Rose, sweetheart, it’s Mum.”
“… hi.”
“Hello, love. Oh, hello.”
Jackie Tyler looks into Rose's eyes, blank and dull, and cannot see her daughter there.