Fic: Two Coins, Silver 7/10 (Doctor Who; Realignment 'verse)
Story Title: Two Coins, Silver (7/10)
Series Title: part of the Realignment universe
Author: butterfly
Summary: It's not exactly the honeymoon of anyone's dreams.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG-13.
Warning: AU after Doctor Who 3x13 - "Last of the Time Lords". Some plot elements and lines from "The Voyage of the Damned", written by Russell T Davies.
Previous Parts: One; Two; Three; Four; Five; Six.
Two Coins, Silver
He possibly shouldn't have let her kiss him.
He allowed himself mull it over a bit as he headed down toward Deck 31. He wasn't entirely sure whether or not Rose would be all right with other people kissing him even if it was done purely out of a spirit of friendship. If Rose had been down here and he'd been up on the bridge, would he have minded Astrid kissing Rose?
Hmm.
He ducked under a low, half-fallen beam.
He was not, in fact, entirely certain about the answer to that question. He didn't think that he would feel particularly threatened if it had happened - Rose had not, to his knowledge, ever shown any inclination to narcissism in her sexual behavior. On the contrary, she seemed to be attracted to a more complementary type - male, computer and process-based, with a weakness in the emotional sphere.
He would have been bothered if she'd kissed that man she'd been speaking to earlier at the party. But was he a fair comparison to Astrid? He'd clearly been physically attracted to Rose, while Astrid was drawn to the exotic notion of space travel and aliens, of which the Doctor was merely a symbol.
Rose certainly would have had no need to feel threatened, but she hadn't needed to be concerned about his brief connection with Reinette or his relationship with Sarah Jane and she'd still gotten a bit worked up over those things.
Of course, that comparison also showed that she realized such facts fairly quickly - it had only taken one brief, if unpleasant, conversation to convince her that her fears were unfounded in the case of Sarah Jane. And then the two of them had been as close as a pair of Grahu siblings. As for Reinette, she'd only shown a slight annoyance over that in a time of great stress. Perfectly understandable.
Even if she were less than thrilled about the kiss and Astrid coming aboard, she'd likely work through her issues before much time passed at all. And Astrid would be charmed by her as soon as they met - Rose was intensely vivacious and charismatic - so any awkwardness would be done by the end of the first day.
There wasn't a problem at all.
And then they'd need to show Astrid just what the TARDIS was capable of - he'd let Rose take a crack at driving on her own, if she liked. Perhaps they could go to Rome. He'd been to Rome a few times before, but it was always a fun trip. He could even show Astrid the statue of Rose that he'd done. The Sacred Days Bazaar on Shan Shen was also something that came to mind - he hadn't gotten a chance to show Rose that particular marketplace yet. There was a booth there that he'd visited once that did the best hot chocolate in three galaxies.
The Lost Gardens of Ki'plu also sounded appealing - he hadn't taken a friend there since the days of Jamie and Zoe. As he recalled, their private gardens were very private.
Perhaps, he mused, hacking through a door control and wishing for his sonic screwdriver, that was precisely why he hadn't gone back there. Jamie had been the last time he'd felt free to associate so intimately with a human - it would have been strange to have gone there with Jo or Sarah Jane or even Peri. As for Tegan... well, it would have been sheer cruelty to go there with Tegan, for both of them.
Finally, finally, he came out into a room populated by the Host. If he'd had to get down to 31 the way he'd been doing it, he'd likely have run out of time.
They challenged him, of course, and it should as been as simple as anything. Except that when he called for Security Protocol One, they took his basic conversational gambits as serious questions and he was down to just one out of three before he had time to think.
If Rose had been there with him, she would have smacked his arm and told him that he should have done his thinking before any of his talking. She'd have grabbed his hand and he would have paused and then he wouldn't be left with only a single question.
What could he do with just one question?
Then, the Doctor had the flash of brilliance that he'd been hoping for - the same word that had caught Astrid's attention might very well distract the Host.
So, this time he used that magic word 'stowaway'. He couldn't be a true survivor that should be killed because he wasn't supposed to be there at all. And that meant that he would need to be dealt with by someone who had an actual mind rather than simple computer protocols.
“Take me to your leader,” he told them triumphantly, adding, more quietly, “I love saying that.”
He let them take him without a fight, naturally, and it was much easier to make his way downstairs quickly when he didn't need to be the person opening the doors.
He wondered if Astrid and the others were already up to Reception One. Hopefully, they were and they'd sent out that SOS. If whatever he was doing here didn't work, then they would need it. Rose and Midshipman Frame would be doing their best to keep the engines running, but their time was quickly running out and the Doctor wasn't planning on Rose dying any time soon - not in his lifetime was too much to wish for, but he could at least manage a few more decades. If he failed, he had no doubt that, somehow, Jackie would find out about it. Then she would work out a way to cross the Void, come and find him, and kill him in the slowest and most painful way possible.
And he would deserve it.
However, Rose wasn't dead yet and he was determined to keep it that way.
The Host led him into a large balcony area - he could see the open space of the engine room in front of him. It was quite a large room, with just about as much damage as the rest of the ship. It did seem to be the servicing area for the Host, as he saw some of them lying on tables ready to be worked on. Likely never to be fixed, now. There were no bodies in this area of the ship, though the Doctor doubted that was because no one had been killed here. The bodies had probably been moved. Whoever was the mastermind behind this had wanted to keep death at a distance - he caused it entirely by use of tools like the Host and through sabotage, perhaps believing that this kept his hands clean.
Between the meteoroids and the attacks of the Host, there wasn't much left of this ship. Doomed to certain failure, just like her namesake, though this particular one was down to intent rather than carelessness and arrogance.
This room seemed to be the place where the Host wanted him to be - he hadn't resisted his 'arrest' at all, so they weren't attempting to hold him in place, but they'd stopped, encircling him as though they could really stop him if he decided to escape them.
Well... maybe they could.
He repeated his demand to meet the person giving them their orders. This was a chance, perhaps his only chance, to find and reason with another thinking person. If he could manage to make a connection to whoever it was that had caused this disaster, maybe they would be able to fix it, together.
A set of doors hissed open behind him and he turned to watch as fog rolled out of the entrance. That was a bit ominous. Possibly a bad sign. And the construction was unmistakable. “That's an omnistate impact chamber. Indestructible. You can survive anything in there.”
As he'd known had to be true, there was a mind behind this madness. Someone who had planned all of this out and knew just how he was going to survive it. The Doctor saw a machine started to wheel out - from the whistling and bubbling noises, the Doctor was willing to bet that it was a life-support machine.
Max Capricorn, of the shiny gold tooth and insistently annoying advertisements, was the greedy and selfish mind behind all of this.
Of course.
Unfortunately, Max Capricorn's first impulse was to order the Host to kill the Doctor without any sort of conversation beforehand, which wouldn't do at all, so the Doctor's first priority was to talk his way out of certain death. Luckily, he was quite good at that. Even managed to amuse the man, which might keep the Doctor alive for that little bit longer that he needed to fix all of this.
Once the Doctor got Capricorn to not immediately kill him, it was time to find out how and why he was doing what he was doing.
As the brilliantly insane always did, Max Capricorn did want to talk about why he was doing all this, of course he did. They all did, once the Doctor got close enough and talked enough to prime them. So, Max Capricorn was trapped by a society that despised what science had made him, but instead of simply taking his money and going off to find some measure of peace, he had to kill millions of people in the process.
Because, to Max Capricorn, the only person who really mattered was Max Capricorn.
And that degree of selfishness became even more apparent when he compared it to Foon, Morvin and Bannakaffalatta - three good people who were dead because Max Capricorn had needed to make the people who'd hurt him pay for what they'd done.
To a certain extent, the Doctor could empathize with him - Capricorn had been reduced to a neck and head stuck into a crude life-support device. He probably would be feared and hated if that truth came out, especially if he had been as nasty a man in the public eye as the Doctor suspected. Because, of course, the quality of life depended just as much on the personality of the person living it as anything else. Ursula, who he and Rose had only barely managed to save from the Absorbaloff, was merely a face stuck in concrete, but when he had reunited her with Elton, both of them had been nothing but grateful over getting to spend more years together.
Perhaps that was key as well - Ursula had another person in her life that made living worthwhile, whatever form that life might take. Capricorn just had business contacts and the Host. Hardly the same thing. He'd told Rose once that loneliness was the wellspring of some of the worst acts imaginable and this was another example of that. Capricorn was lonely and afraid and, therefore, didn't bother to care about anyone other than himself.
None of which excused his actions. Capricorn was still a murderer and only minutes away from being the cause of a genocide, so the Doctor wasn't inclined to excuse his actions or give his words much attention.
And when the Doctor tried to get Capricorn to justify those deaths and explain his behavior, the man simply turned his wheeled cart around and tried to head back to his omnistate chamber, which the Doctor just couldn't allow. He jumped in front of Capricorn and tried to find those perfect right words that would make all this better.
He needed to get inside Max Capricorn's head. He needed to understand.
“The business isn't failing,” he realized, not able to completely hide his satisfied glow at figuring it out. “It's failed. Past tense.”
“My own board voted me out,” Capricorn confirmed. “Stabbed me in the back.”
“If you had a back,” the Doctor quipped and then hurried on before Capricorn could respond. “So, you scupper the ship, wiped any survivors, just in case anyone's rumbled you, and the board find their shares halved in value.”
But no, he realized, looking over at Capricorn, even that wasn't quite enough revenge for this man.
“If a Max Capricorn ship hits the Earth, it destroys an entire planet,” the Doctor said, stalking forward, his own feelings only barely held in check. “Outrage back home. Scandal! The business is wiped out.”
“And the whole board thrown in jail for mass murder.” Capricorn had the gall to smile, as though his plan were simply a clever way at getting back at those who had hurt him, rather than the loss of billions of lives and all the potential that any planet contained. He used the words and had not the slightest comprehension of what it meant to take lives on that enormous a scale.
“While you sit there, safe inside the impact chamber,” the Doctor said, knowing that his disgust was showing on his face. Right now, he didn't care. He'd run across many different creatures in his lifetime and he knew a monster when he saw one.
“I have men,” Capricorn bragged. “Waiting to retrieve me from the ruins... and enough off-world accounts to retire me to the beaches of Pentaxico Two, where the ladies, so I'm told, are very fond of... metal.”
“So, that's the plan,” the Doctor said, lip curling, breath coming short and hard. “A retirement plan. Two-thousand people on this ship, six billion underneath us, all of them slaughtered and why? Because Max Capricorn is a loser.”
Capricorn wheeled himself right up into the Doctor's face and... if he could spit, he likely would have tried just then. “I never lose,” he said, his voice low and bitter.
“You can't even sink the Titanic,” the Doctor taunted.
“Oh, but I can, Doctor,” Capricorn said. “I can cancel the engines from here.”
Something on Capricorn's life-support machine buzzed and the Doctor's hearts felt like they were losing rhythm. No. He couldn't let this happen.
“You can't do this,” the Doctor said and he wasn't sure whether he was arguing ethics or engineering. Capricorn ordered the Host to grab hold of him and their grip was as light and implacable as any machine's - the ship was losing power, they were going to fall and everyone was going to die.
His brave three - Astrid, Mr. Copper, and even Rickston Slade - they were going to die without the chance to fight for their lives. The planet below - the Earth - the planet that had sheltered him, through all the worst storms of his life, was going to be destroyed before it ever had the chance to grow wings. Young Mr. Frame up in the control room would be dead without the Doctor ever getting to meet him.
Rose.
Always, forever, there was Rose.
He yanked hard against the Host holding his arms and he could see her - the very first time that he'd ever seen her. She'd backed herself up against the pipes at the back of Henriks' basement and the Autons were about to kill her and he'd just about resigned himself to dying for the sake of her planet, but he couldn't let this stupid human girl die in vain. He'd already seen one man die that day and he couldn't stand another death on his hands. Not that day. So, he'd reached out and grabbed her hand and her face had swung toward his, her silky blonde hair covering up her features. He'd finally seen her properly when he'd got her to the relative safety of the lift - she'd been an average-enough young human, he remembered thinking, but... clever. Intelligence hovered behind those big hazel eyes of hers and he'd been drawn to it, even then, when he hadn't wanted to be near anyone.
Always, her mind had raced to theories that he hadn't thought of and she noticed the details, large or small, that he missed. Mr. Copper had called humans... 'below' him. His own people used to call them a lower species.
Humans weren't as old as the people of Sto or, naturally, anywhere near as ancient as his people had been before the war. Still, just as it had with Rose herself, that very youth gave them the ability to see things that he would never have noticed.
If Rose were here, if she were down here with him, she would see that small detail that would save them all. Perhaps, even now, she was saving the world up on the bridge.
He closed his eyes, calling back the memory of coming up behind her earlier today. She'd spun around, that red dress she'd put on clinging to her curves and beckoning him closer. Her skin had seemed creamy and accessible, her hair dressed up in a way that had made him want to slide his hands into it and muss it up. He ached for Rose in a way that was like nothing else in his memory. It must be something in this regeneration because, before he'd burned up his previous self in her fire, though he had longed for her to be near, it had been the certain, slow want of a river. This new feeling was the tumbling, desperate desire of that same river falling helplessly into more need, a waterfall that never stopped.
When she'd been gone, that avalanche of feeling hadn't faded even the smallest measure. He had, perhaps, begun to come to peace with feeling the loss of her, but the pain itself had been just as acute the day before he'd found her again as it had been the day that he'd watched her fall into a world where he couldn't reach her.
Everything that both of them had suffered through before having the chance to be together again and it might all be over before this day was out.
And now, Capricorn kept on talking - blathering, really - and none of his words were the least bit important. All that mattered was the attempt to free himself from the Host, yet no matter how he twisted and tugged, they held firm.
When Capricorn ordered the Host to kill him, the Doctor felt a rare moment of pure panic come over him, but before the feeling could consume him, he heard another, much more welcome voice.
“Mr. Capricorn,” Astrid said. The Doctor turned his head toward that sound and... there she was, sitting in a forklift, of all the insane and brilliant things in the universe. “I resign.”
He saw her reach down and shift the machine into gear, driving forward with little grace but much determination. It was wonderful and amazing and far too dangerous. The Doctor yelled out for her to stop, but she ignored him. How had the mad woman gotten down here? Unexplained miracles were something that he'd come to expect from Rose, but normal people generally had to have reasons of some kind.
Then he spotted it - the blue glow of a teleport bracelet around her wrist. They'd made it to Reception One, then, which was a relief, even she'd decided to be stupidly brave afterwards.
She slid the tines of the forklift directly under Max Capricorn's life-support machine and lifted him up off the ground - the man was in such a clear state of shock that he didn't even call for the Host to kill her. She was pushing down on the accelerator as hard as she could and didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The Doctor saw one of the Host coming up behind her and struggled as hard as he could to get loose, but he failed again and he could only watch as it took off its halo and threw it at her.
It missed her, barely, but when the weapon glanced off, it cut the brake line for her forklift. She wouldn't be able to stop her momentum if she actually managed to start forward.
Uselessly, time slowed, but all the tricks of a Time Lord couldn't help him now. He was useless as she glanced in his direction, and she was afraid - oh, he could see how horribly afraid she was - but she wasn't going to let that stop her. He tried, one last time, to beg her not to do this, but she turned away from him.
Capricorn's machine finally lifted up and started getting pushed backwards. The pair of machines crashed into the railing and - it seemed to happen so slowly - they tipped over the side and he could barely hear both of them screaming over his own cry.
As soon as Capricorn went over, the Hosts' grips on him loosened and the Doctor finally pulled himself free, rushing over to the side of the balcony, hoping that she'd found some kind of hold on the side and that she'd managed to get herself out of that forklift in time.
There she was, falling away, reaching out for him.
And he couldn't reach back. She was already too far. All he could do was watch as the fires of the nuclear storm engines swallowed her up in yellow and orange.
He'd lost her.
The warning systems of the Titanic kicked in, reminding him that he didn't even have the time to grieve for her or for any of the others that he'd lost on this ship. He still had to get to the bridge, where Rose was waiting for him, and he had to keep the ship from hitting the Earth and killing all those people.
The Host had released him as soon as Capricorn had fallen - that meant that they were bound to him by his authority and not by any true programmed loyalty. And that meant that, with Capricorn out of the picture, they were free to the highest bidder.
Or, more correctly, the person who exuded the most pure power. He might not have been able to stop Astrid's death or any of the rest of the horror that had happened on this ship, but he could feel his very essence racing through his blood, filling him up with enough authority that all he had to do was gesture at them and they obeyed.
He strode forward until he was directly under where the bridge should be, raised up his arms, and snapped his fingers. Obediently, two of the Host took him by the arms and levitated him upward.
As they flew up, the Host lifted up their other hands into fists and the Doctor hoped that Rose and Mr. Frame were ready for a bit of a bang.
Continue on to Part Eight.
Series Title: part of the Realignment universe
Author: butterfly
Summary: It's not exactly the honeymoon of anyone's dreams.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG-13.
Warning: AU after Doctor Who 3x13 - "Last of the Time Lords". Some plot elements and lines from "The Voyage of the Damned", written by Russell T Davies.
Previous Parts: One; Two; Three; Four; Five; Six.
Two Coins, Silver
He possibly shouldn't have let her kiss him.
He allowed himself mull it over a bit as he headed down toward Deck 31. He wasn't entirely sure whether or not Rose would be all right with other people kissing him even if it was done purely out of a spirit of friendship. If Rose had been down here and he'd been up on the bridge, would he have minded Astrid kissing Rose?
Hmm.
He ducked under a low, half-fallen beam.
He was not, in fact, entirely certain about the answer to that question. He didn't think that he would feel particularly threatened if it had happened - Rose had not, to his knowledge, ever shown any inclination to narcissism in her sexual behavior. On the contrary, she seemed to be attracted to a more complementary type - male, computer and process-based, with a weakness in the emotional sphere.
He would have been bothered if she'd kissed that man she'd been speaking to earlier at the party. But was he a fair comparison to Astrid? He'd clearly been physically attracted to Rose, while Astrid was drawn to the exotic notion of space travel and aliens, of which the Doctor was merely a symbol.
Rose certainly would have had no need to feel threatened, but she hadn't needed to be concerned about his brief connection with Reinette or his relationship with Sarah Jane and she'd still gotten a bit worked up over those things.
Of course, that comparison also showed that she realized such facts fairly quickly - it had only taken one brief, if unpleasant, conversation to convince her that her fears were unfounded in the case of Sarah Jane. And then the two of them had been as close as a pair of Grahu siblings. As for Reinette, she'd only shown a slight annoyance over that in a time of great stress. Perfectly understandable.
Even if she were less than thrilled about the kiss and Astrid coming aboard, she'd likely work through her issues before much time passed at all. And Astrid would be charmed by her as soon as they met - Rose was intensely vivacious and charismatic - so any awkwardness would be done by the end of the first day.
There wasn't a problem at all.
And then they'd need to show Astrid just what the TARDIS was capable of - he'd let Rose take a crack at driving on her own, if she liked. Perhaps they could go to Rome. He'd been to Rome a few times before, but it was always a fun trip. He could even show Astrid the statue of Rose that he'd done. The Sacred Days Bazaar on Shan Shen was also something that came to mind - he hadn't gotten a chance to show Rose that particular marketplace yet. There was a booth there that he'd visited once that did the best hot chocolate in three galaxies.
The Lost Gardens of Ki'plu also sounded appealing - he hadn't taken a friend there since the days of Jamie and Zoe. As he recalled, their private gardens were very private.
Perhaps, he mused, hacking through a door control and wishing for his sonic screwdriver, that was precisely why he hadn't gone back there. Jamie had been the last time he'd felt free to associate so intimately with a human - it would have been strange to have gone there with Jo or Sarah Jane or even Peri. As for Tegan... well, it would have been sheer cruelty to go there with Tegan, for both of them.
Finally, finally, he came out into a room populated by the Host. If he'd had to get down to 31 the way he'd been doing it, he'd likely have run out of time.
They challenged him, of course, and it should as been as simple as anything. Except that when he called for Security Protocol One, they took his basic conversational gambits as serious questions and he was down to just one out of three before he had time to think.
If Rose had been there with him, she would have smacked his arm and told him that he should have done his thinking before any of his talking. She'd have grabbed his hand and he would have paused and then he wouldn't be left with only a single question.
What could he do with just one question?
Then, the Doctor had the flash of brilliance that he'd been hoping for - the same word that had caught Astrid's attention might very well distract the Host.
So, this time he used that magic word 'stowaway'. He couldn't be a true survivor that should be killed because he wasn't supposed to be there at all. And that meant that he would need to be dealt with by someone who had an actual mind rather than simple computer protocols.
“Take me to your leader,” he told them triumphantly, adding, more quietly, “I love saying that.”
He let them take him without a fight, naturally, and it was much easier to make his way downstairs quickly when he didn't need to be the person opening the doors.
He wondered if Astrid and the others were already up to Reception One. Hopefully, they were and they'd sent out that SOS. If whatever he was doing here didn't work, then they would need it. Rose and Midshipman Frame would be doing their best to keep the engines running, but their time was quickly running out and the Doctor wasn't planning on Rose dying any time soon - not in his lifetime was too much to wish for, but he could at least manage a few more decades. If he failed, he had no doubt that, somehow, Jackie would find out about it. Then she would work out a way to cross the Void, come and find him, and kill him in the slowest and most painful way possible.
And he would deserve it.
However, Rose wasn't dead yet and he was determined to keep it that way.
The Host led him into a large balcony area - he could see the open space of the engine room in front of him. It was quite a large room, with just about as much damage as the rest of the ship. It did seem to be the servicing area for the Host, as he saw some of them lying on tables ready to be worked on. Likely never to be fixed, now. There were no bodies in this area of the ship, though the Doctor doubted that was because no one had been killed here. The bodies had probably been moved. Whoever was the mastermind behind this had wanted to keep death at a distance - he caused it entirely by use of tools like the Host and through sabotage, perhaps believing that this kept his hands clean.
Between the meteoroids and the attacks of the Host, there wasn't much left of this ship. Doomed to certain failure, just like her namesake, though this particular one was down to intent rather than carelessness and arrogance.
This room seemed to be the place where the Host wanted him to be - he hadn't resisted his 'arrest' at all, so they weren't attempting to hold him in place, but they'd stopped, encircling him as though they could really stop him if he decided to escape them.
Well... maybe they could.
He repeated his demand to meet the person giving them their orders. This was a chance, perhaps his only chance, to find and reason with another thinking person. If he could manage to make a connection to whoever it was that had caused this disaster, maybe they would be able to fix it, together.
A set of doors hissed open behind him and he turned to watch as fog rolled out of the entrance. That was a bit ominous. Possibly a bad sign. And the construction was unmistakable. “That's an omnistate impact chamber. Indestructible. You can survive anything in there.”
As he'd known had to be true, there was a mind behind this madness. Someone who had planned all of this out and knew just how he was going to survive it. The Doctor saw a machine started to wheel out - from the whistling and bubbling noises, the Doctor was willing to bet that it was a life-support machine.
Max Capricorn, of the shiny gold tooth and insistently annoying advertisements, was the greedy and selfish mind behind all of this.
Of course.
Unfortunately, Max Capricorn's first impulse was to order the Host to kill the Doctor without any sort of conversation beforehand, which wouldn't do at all, so the Doctor's first priority was to talk his way out of certain death. Luckily, he was quite good at that. Even managed to amuse the man, which might keep the Doctor alive for that little bit longer that he needed to fix all of this.
Once the Doctor got Capricorn to not immediately kill him, it was time to find out how and why he was doing what he was doing.
As the brilliantly insane always did, Max Capricorn did want to talk about why he was doing all this, of course he did. They all did, once the Doctor got close enough and talked enough to prime them. So, Max Capricorn was trapped by a society that despised what science had made him, but instead of simply taking his money and going off to find some measure of peace, he had to kill millions of people in the process.
Because, to Max Capricorn, the only person who really mattered was Max Capricorn.
And that degree of selfishness became even more apparent when he compared it to Foon, Morvin and Bannakaffalatta - three good people who were dead because Max Capricorn had needed to make the people who'd hurt him pay for what they'd done.
To a certain extent, the Doctor could empathize with him - Capricorn had been reduced to a neck and head stuck into a crude life-support device. He probably would be feared and hated if that truth came out, especially if he had been as nasty a man in the public eye as the Doctor suspected. Because, of course, the quality of life depended just as much on the personality of the person living it as anything else. Ursula, who he and Rose had only barely managed to save from the Absorbaloff, was merely a face stuck in concrete, but when he had reunited her with Elton, both of them had been nothing but grateful over getting to spend more years together.
Perhaps that was key as well - Ursula had another person in her life that made living worthwhile, whatever form that life might take. Capricorn just had business contacts and the Host. Hardly the same thing. He'd told Rose once that loneliness was the wellspring of some of the worst acts imaginable and this was another example of that. Capricorn was lonely and afraid and, therefore, didn't bother to care about anyone other than himself.
None of which excused his actions. Capricorn was still a murderer and only minutes away from being the cause of a genocide, so the Doctor wasn't inclined to excuse his actions or give his words much attention.
And when the Doctor tried to get Capricorn to justify those deaths and explain his behavior, the man simply turned his wheeled cart around and tried to head back to his omnistate chamber, which the Doctor just couldn't allow. He jumped in front of Capricorn and tried to find those perfect right words that would make all this better.
He needed to get inside Max Capricorn's head. He needed to understand.
“The business isn't failing,” he realized, not able to completely hide his satisfied glow at figuring it out. “It's failed. Past tense.”
“My own board voted me out,” Capricorn confirmed. “Stabbed me in the back.”
“If you had a back,” the Doctor quipped and then hurried on before Capricorn could respond. “So, you scupper the ship, wiped any survivors, just in case anyone's rumbled you, and the board find their shares halved in value.”
But no, he realized, looking over at Capricorn, even that wasn't quite enough revenge for this man.
“If a Max Capricorn ship hits the Earth, it destroys an entire planet,” the Doctor said, stalking forward, his own feelings only barely held in check. “Outrage back home. Scandal! The business is wiped out.”
“And the whole board thrown in jail for mass murder.” Capricorn had the gall to smile, as though his plan were simply a clever way at getting back at those who had hurt him, rather than the loss of billions of lives and all the potential that any planet contained. He used the words and had not the slightest comprehension of what it meant to take lives on that enormous a scale.
“While you sit there, safe inside the impact chamber,” the Doctor said, knowing that his disgust was showing on his face. Right now, he didn't care. He'd run across many different creatures in his lifetime and he knew a monster when he saw one.
“I have men,” Capricorn bragged. “Waiting to retrieve me from the ruins... and enough off-world accounts to retire me to the beaches of Pentaxico Two, where the ladies, so I'm told, are very fond of... metal.”
“So, that's the plan,” the Doctor said, lip curling, breath coming short and hard. “A retirement plan. Two-thousand people on this ship, six billion underneath us, all of them slaughtered and why? Because Max Capricorn is a loser.”
Capricorn wheeled himself right up into the Doctor's face and... if he could spit, he likely would have tried just then. “I never lose,” he said, his voice low and bitter.
“You can't even sink the Titanic,” the Doctor taunted.
“Oh, but I can, Doctor,” Capricorn said. “I can cancel the engines from here.”
Something on Capricorn's life-support machine buzzed and the Doctor's hearts felt like they were losing rhythm. No. He couldn't let this happen.
“You can't do this,” the Doctor said and he wasn't sure whether he was arguing ethics or engineering. Capricorn ordered the Host to grab hold of him and their grip was as light and implacable as any machine's - the ship was losing power, they were going to fall and everyone was going to die.
His brave three - Astrid, Mr. Copper, and even Rickston Slade - they were going to die without the chance to fight for their lives. The planet below - the Earth - the planet that had sheltered him, through all the worst storms of his life, was going to be destroyed before it ever had the chance to grow wings. Young Mr. Frame up in the control room would be dead without the Doctor ever getting to meet him.
Rose.
Always, forever, there was Rose.
He yanked hard against the Host holding his arms and he could see her - the very first time that he'd ever seen her. She'd backed herself up against the pipes at the back of Henriks' basement and the Autons were about to kill her and he'd just about resigned himself to dying for the sake of her planet, but he couldn't let this stupid human girl die in vain. He'd already seen one man die that day and he couldn't stand another death on his hands. Not that day. So, he'd reached out and grabbed her hand and her face had swung toward his, her silky blonde hair covering up her features. He'd finally seen her properly when he'd got her to the relative safety of the lift - she'd been an average-enough young human, he remembered thinking, but... clever. Intelligence hovered behind those big hazel eyes of hers and he'd been drawn to it, even then, when he hadn't wanted to be near anyone.
Always, her mind had raced to theories that he hadn't thought of and she noticed the details, large or small, that he missed. Mr. Copper had called humans... 'below' him. His own people used to call them a lower species.
Humans weren't as old as the people of Sto or, naturally, anywhere near as ancient as his people had been before the war. Still, just as it had with Rose herself, that very youth gave them the ability to see things that he would never have noticed.
If Rose were here, if she were down here with him, she would see that small detail that would save them all. Perhaps, even now, she was saving the world up on the bridge.
He closed his eyes, calling back the memory of coming up behind her earlier today. She'd spun around, that red dress she'd put on clinging to her curves and beckoning him closer. Her skin had seemed creamy and accessible, her hair dressed up in a way that had made him want to slide his hands into it and muss it up. He ached for Rose in a way that was like nothing else in his memory. It must be something in this regeneration because, before he'd burned up his previous self in her fire, though he had longed for her to be near, it had been the certain, slow want of a river. This new feeling was the tumbling, desperate desire of that same river falling helplessly into more need, a waterfall that never stopped.
When she'd been gone, that avalanche of feeling hadn't faded even the smallest measure. He had, perhaps, begun to come to peace with feeling the loss of her, but the pain itself had been just as acute the day before he'd found her again as it had been the day that he'd watched her fall into a world where he couldn't reach her.
Everything that both of them had suffered through before having the chance to be together again and it might all be over before this day was out.
And now, Capricorn kept on talking - blathering, really - and none of his words were the least bit important. All that mattered was the attempt to free himself from the Host, yet no matter how he twisted and tugged, they held firm.
When Capricorn ordered the Host to kill him, the Doctor felt a rare moment of pure panic come over him, but before the feeling could consume him, he heard another, much more welcome voice.
“Mr. Capricorn,” Astrid said. The Doctor turned his head toward that sound and... there she was, sitting in a forklift, of all the insane and brilliant things in the universe. “I resign.”
He saw her reach down and shift the machine into gear, driving forward with little grace but much determination. It was wonderful and amazing and far too dangerous. The Doctor yelled out for her to stop, but she ignored him. How had the mad woman gotten down here? Unexplained miracles were something that he'd come to expect from Rose, but normal people generally had to have reasons of some kind.
Then he spotted it - the blue glow of a teleport bracelet around her wrist. They'd made it to Reception One, then, which was a relief, even she'd decided to be stupidly brave afterwards.
She slid the tines of the forklift directly under Max Capricorn's life-support machine and lifted him up off the ground - the man was in such a clear state of shock that he didn't even call for the Host to kill her. She was pushing down on the accelerator as hard as she could and didn't seem to be getting anywhere. The Doctor saw one of the Host coming up behind her and struggled as hard as he could to get loose, but he failed again and he could only watch as it took off its halo and threw it at her.
It missed her, barely, but when the weapon glanced off, it cut the brake line for her forklift. She wouldn't be able to stop her momentum if she actually managed to start forward.
Uselessly, time slowed, but all the tricks of a Time Lord couldn't help him now. He was useless as she glanced in his direction, and she was afraid - oh, he could see how horribly afraid she was - but she wasn't going to let that stop her. He tried, one last time, to beg her not to do this, but she turned away from him.
Capricorn's machine finally lifted up and started getting pushed backwards. The pair of machines crashed into the railing and - it seemed to happen so slowly - they tipped over the side and he could barely hear both of them screaming over his own cry.
As soon as Capricorn went over, the Hosts' grips on him loosened and the Doctor finally pulled himself free, rushing over to the side of the balcony, hoping that she'd found some kind of hold on the side and that she'd managed to get herself out of that forklift in time.
There she was, falling away, reaching out for him.
And he couldn't reach back. She was already too far. All he could do was watch as the fires of the nuclear storm engines swallowed her up in yellow and orange.
He'd lost her.
The warning systems of the Titanic kicked in, reminding him that he didn't even have the time to grieve for her or for any of the others that he'd lost on this ship. He still had to get to the bridge, where Rose was waiting for him, and he had to keep the ship from hitting the Earth and killing all those people.
The Host had released him as soon as Capricorn had fallen - that meant that they were bound to him by his authority and not by any true programmed loyalty. And that meant that, with Capricorn out of the picture, they were free to the highest bidder.
Or, more correctly, the person who exuded the most pure power. He might not have been able to stop Astrid's death or any of the rest of the horror that had happened on this ship, but he could feel his very essence racing through his blood, filling him up with enough authority that all he had to do was gesture at them and they obeyed.
He strode forward until he was directly under where the bridge should be, raised up his arms, and snapped his fingers. Obediently, two of the Host took him by the arms and levitated him upward.
As they flew up, the Host lifted up their other hands into fists and the Doctor hoped that Rose and Mr. Frame were ready for a bit of a bang.
Continue on to Part Eight.