The Voyage of Alternatives (3/5)
Title: The Voyage of Alternatives
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Summary: A cruise liner acquires a stowaway. The lounge singer doesn't know what to make of him when he knows her name and refuses to let go of her hand. Rose Tyler has never seen this "Doctor" fellow before. Has she?
Note: A rewrite of "The Voyage of the Damned" as a challenge response. Please note that Astrid Peth does not appear on this ship at all. Also, not all of the action is shown because I'm leaving out the parts that aren't affected by this change.
The Voyage of Alternatives
Part III: The Long, Strange Trip
Making their way up the staircase was going to take time, but they could get up it with effort. Mr. Copper's commentary on Christmas traditions almost had the Doctor pulling out his hair, if for no other reason than that the others believed him, even, it seemed, Rose.
"Do they worship ghosts?" she asked after the Doctor resigned himself to the fact that his Christmases were starting to become pretty much always like this. "I think... there were ghosts, weren't there, Doctor?"
"Rose!" the Doctor exclaimed, delighted. "You remember!"
"I... no, just... ghosts and a... sword fight?"
"Yep," the Doctor agreed. Then he found the host.
He set the Von Hoffs to fixing it, since they knew how, and the rest continued until they found the passage blocked with debris. There was a hole in it, too small for anyone but the cyborg and maybe Rose to get through.
Bannakaffalatta went through straight away. The Doctor looked at Rose - the next smallest member of the party. He couldn't bear to let her out of his sight, but then he had to know what awaited them further up. She nodded firmly. "I'm going," she said. He took her hand and, with his help, Rose managed to wriggle through the hole.
Gazing around, Rose found the Bannakaffallatta had fallen and seemed too weak to move. Her heart twisted. He was so nice, and this was so hard. She didn't want to lose anyone else, not even that rotten sot Slade. "What's wrong?" she asked.
She found out he was a cyborg and that he was running low on power. "Don't tell anyone," he pleaded.
"I won't," she said softly as she arranged to get him recharged. "But you don't have to be ashamed, you know. It's not your fault, it's just who you are, and you have the same rights to exist as anyone else."
"That's not the way most people see it," he told her.
"Rose?" the Doctor shouted.
"It's fine," she called back. "Just... give us a minute."
"All right. But hurry."
She turned back to Bannakaffalatta. "I think he's always like this."
"I'd worry about you, too," the cyborg said. "Pretty girl, and so nice."
Rose smiled. "But I'm just ordinary. It's not special to be nice to people. I mean, even on Sto they're getting it straight, now. I heard before I left that they're getting cyborgs equal rights, let you get proper jobs, even get married."
The cyborg chuckled. "Yes. I'd marry a girl like you."
Rose giggled.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted again. "What's happening!"
"I think Bannakaffalatta just proposed," she replied, looking back through the hole into the dark, strange, beautiful eyes peering up at her.
The Doctor grinned. "You and your boyfriends!" he said cheerfully. "What'd you say?"
She shrugged. "S'the best offer I've had," she said.
"Did I mention it also..." He bit his lip, stopped, turned to look back down the staircase.
"Did you mention what?" she said, something tugging at the emptiness where her memories of this man were apparently supposed to be.
"My ship," he said. "Remind me to tell you later, if you don't remember."
"All right," she agreed, and set about trying to clear the passage a bit so they could get everyone through. She didn't care what fancy Rickston thought, he wouldn't fit through now, either, the bastard.
The Doctor made a call to the bridge while Rickston the Idiot (that worked) and Mr. Copper (the deluded historian, perhaps?) continued clearing the passage and the Von Hoffs worked on the host. They, at least, seemed to be doing well, and he was happy for them, because it couldn't be easy, especially with the abuse heaped on them by the heartless bastard the Doctor couldn't even understand.
The news was bad. There were life signs all over the ship, but they were dropping as fast as Frame could detect them. The Doctor asked about the air, but the culprit turned out to be...
"It's the host, Doctor! They're killing everyone!"
The Doctor jumped down the staircase, but of course his usual very bad timing had come into play and the Von Hoffs had just gotten the host working. It immediately tried to strangle Morvin.
Who double deadlocked an android, anyway? He couldn't use the screwdriver, so the only thing left was brute force. Luckily, while the host had the strength of ten men, it had no leverage to move, and he was a Time Lord. He could, in a panic situation muster something very near that himself.
Somehow, with some pushing and shoving and quite a lot of whining from Rickston, they got the Von Hoffs through the passage. He pried some information out of the host - Deck 31 was where this disaster originated - and then he slipped through. Mr. Copper was supporting the beam practically by himself, although Rose was trying to help him. The Doctor gave a quick nod as he slipped through, and they let go of the lever they were using to support the debris. The beam fell and the host's electronic head exploded.
The Doctor slumped with relief and, as the others headed into the next area, he reached out and took Rose's hand. She smiled up at him. "You all right?" he asked.
"Yeah. How 'bout you?"
"I'm always all right," he replied.
Rose, as she had always done, laid her head on his shoulder. She never pressed, but she knew very well to never, ever believe that one.
"Look, Morvin," Foon exclaimed, "food!"
"Well, someone's happy," Rickston snapped sarcastically.
Rose Tyler was one of the most amazing women in any Universe. She was brave, beautiful, and loved without bounds. She was also Jackie Tyler's daughter. If anyone asked, the Doctor would have claimed he was too busy calling the bridge to stop her.
She moved too quickly for anything human to catch, anyway. One blink, she was leaning on the Doctor, the next, she had delivered a powerful slap to Rickston's right cheek. It made a sound like a whip crack and the Doctor turned to the computer with a smile.
Rose stood there breathing heavily and thumped Rickston in the chest. "You can just shut up, you know. You don't have to comment on everything, and I think you'd be a little grateful. You're bloody useless; if it wasn't for everyone else working together to keep us all alive, you'd be a very dead git. So why don't you go over there and let the rest of us eat in peace?"
"How dare you talk to me like that!" Rickston exclaimed.
Rose balled up a fist. The Doctor appeared at her side to take her hand. He glowered at Rickston. "I wouldn't," he told Rickston forbiddingly, and took Rose's arm to lead her over to the computer.
She muttered quiet swear words under her breath and he listened to see if he recognized any of them from their travels - she'd picked up quite a vocabulary from Jack. It would have embarrassed him that the sum total of her Gallifreyan was all exotic curses, too, but there was no one left to judge them, anyway. "I'll... I'll just go get us some plates," she said after a moment. "You check with the bridge."
He grinned at her. "Yes, miss," he teased. "Thank you, miss."
"So gonna get you for that."
Really, he couldn't help it if he loved her.
When Rose came back with a plate for the Doctor, he looked very disturbed. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Here. Way you go on, you're bound to need to replenish your energy."
"Good strong cup of your mum's tea would do that," he said cheerfully, but bit into one of the potato things happily enough.
"How did you get to be 900 years old and still look like that?" she asked, as she sipped at some drink box thing Morvin had recommended. They didn't have things like this back at... never mind.
The Doctor smiled. "You know, that's one thing I thought you'd remember for the rest of your life. 'Course, that day was a bit of a haze for you, and ended up being a bit of a haze for me, so who knows."
"What day was that?" she asked.
"Two Christmases ago for me," he said. "We were... we were together. Something terrible happened."
"I..." she shook her head to try to shake something loose but all she could remember was light - lots and lots of light - and singing.
'That's right,' a voice in her head replied. 'I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.'
Her eyes widened and she dropped her drink. There it was. Her best friend, the man she loved more than anything at all and would have followed into hell itself, the one who she was never going to leave. In her mind's eye, she watched, dumbstruck and terrified, as he exploded into golden flame.
"Rose," the Doctor said urgently. "Come back, Rose!"
"I..." she brushed distractedly at her cheeks. "He died, didn't he? I remember, oh God, it hurts." She blinked away tears and realized that the Doctor had dropped his plate and was holding on to her arms. It was a good thing, because she felt like sinking down into a little ball and never rising again.
"No, Rose, don't think about that. He's alive, I promise you. Whoever it is you're worried about, he survived. We all made it through that day. Me, you, Mickey, Jack. Every one of us."
"But... but he didn't," she sobbed. "I loved him so much, and he died and I never even got to tell him. He just... exploded."
The look he gave her in answer to this was full of sympathy, warmth, and the strangest sort of fond exasperation. "It's all right, Rose," he said, and pulled her close. "It didn't end like that at all. In fact, that was just a new beginning."
"Are... are you sure?" she asked, because she could still see it, every time she blinked. He was there, one minute, bright, broken, with beautiful blue eyes. Then, he exploded.
"I promise," the Doctor said. "Oh, it'll never end now, you'll see."
"Did... did he love me, too?" she asked.
The Doctor reached over and brushed her hair out of her face. There was something painfully familiar in that gesture. "So much it terrified him," he whispered, and drew her head down to rest on his chest.
Mr. Copper came over then with questions about the possibility of help from Earth. The Doctor made a few very strange, off-hand comments about rooms and long stories, and then asked Mr. Copper where the man had gotten his degree in Earthonomics.
It turned out they all had secrets, here. Maybe not the Von Hoffs - they seemed normal enough. And probably not Rickston - he made no secret of the fact that he was an arse. But Bannakaffalatta didn't want anyone to know he was a cyborg. The Doctor was a powerful alien, Mr. Copper got his degree practically by mail order, and Rose... Rose didn't even know what her secrets were.
The host arrived and pounded on the sealed door behind them, just as things were starting to seem a little peaceful. The Doctor opened the next bulkhead door with his screwdriver and they all piled through after him. They spread out and stared in astonishment at the obstacle before them - the ship's power supply and engines compartment, a great bloody chasm of unstoppable nuclear fire, with a single, damaged, narrow causeway across it.
"Oh, fantastic!" Rose snapped sarcastically.
The Doctor's face shifted from horror at the situation to a broad grin at her, and then to clever consideration. "Right," he ordered, "we've got to get across."
"It'll never hold us," Morvin protested.
There was a considerable argument, and Slade was still as rude as ever. Rose rounded on him and therefore missed it when Morvin leaned over the edge and, just like that, he was gone.
Foon shrieked and screamed and slipped into denial, and Rose dropped to her knees to hold the woman, knowing now, remembering, what it was like to lose someone you loved that much.
Slade went across first, Rose noted vaguely, hugging the sobbing, protesting woman. The Doctor sent Bannakaffalatta after him, then came for her. "You have to go, Rose. Now."
"But I can't leave her," she insisted.
"And we won't," he promised. "We're all going across, all of us."
"She won't go," Rose whispered. "I wouldn't."
"You're going now," he answered. "Just, please, Rose, please."
She nodded and got to her feet, trusting Foon to him. She knew he could only do so much, but if anyone had a chance to convince the sudden widow to keep living, it was him.
The ship was shaking, settling. Slade was demanding the Doctor bring the sonic screwdriver. Rose could have cursed herself - she could have gotten it, she seemed to remember having used it before for a couple of things. It even had a setting, if she remembered, for getting out of dancing.
Rose had jumped the gap and was most of the way there. The Doctor was behind Mr. Copper. Foon was staying behind, but the Doctor wouldn't leave it that way if he at all had a choice.
Then, the pounding at the door stopped. Slade looked relieved and kept demanding the screwdriver, but Rose looked back at the Doctor and wrenched the nearest bit of piping up from the causeway. The look on his face meant he was worried and a worried Doctor always meant trouble.
"We seem to have forgotten," Mr. Copper announced, suddenly and sadly, "the Christmas traditions. Angels have wings."
Above them, all around them, were the shining, white clad, golden bodied host. Rose remembered, all at once, that she had never liked it when death looked so beautiful.
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Rating: T
Warnings: None
Summary: A cruise liner acquires a stowaway. The lounge singer doesn't know what to make of him when he knows her name and refuses to let go of her hand. Rose Tyler has never seen this "Doctor" fellow before. Has she?
Note: A rewrite of "The Voyage of the Damned" as a challenge response. Please note that Astrid Peth does not appear on this ship at all. Also, not all of the action is shown because I'm leaving out the parts that aren't affected by this change.
The Voyage of Alternatives
Part III: The Long, Strange Trip
Making their way up the staircase was going to take time, but they could get up it with effort. Mr. Copper's commentary on Christmas traditions almost had the Doctor pulling out his hair, if for no other reason than that the others believed him, even, it seemed, Rose.
"Do they worship ghosts?" she asked after the Doctor resigned himself to the fact that his Christmases were starting to become pretty much always like this. "I think... there were ghosts, weren't there, Doctor?"
"Rose!" the Doctor exclaimed, delighted. "You remember!"
"I... no, just... ghosts and a... sword fight?"
"Yep," the Doctor agreed. Then he found the host.
He set the Von Hoffs to fixing it, since they knew how, and the rest continued until they found the passage blocked with debris. There was a hole in it, too small for anyone but the cyborg and maybe Rose to get through.
Bannakaffalatta went through straight away. The Doctor looked at Rose - the next smallest member of the party. He couldn't bear to let her out of his sight, but then he had to know what awaited them further up. She nodded firmly. "I'm going," she said. He took her hand and, with his help, Rose managed to wriggle through the hole.
Gazing around, Rose found the Bannakaffallatta had fallen and seemed too weak to move. Her heart twisted. He was so nice, and this was so hard. She didn't want to lose anyone else, not even that rotten sot Slade. "What's wrong?" she asked.
She found out he was a cyborg and that he was running low on power. "Don't tell anyone," he pleaded.
"I won't," she said softly as she arranged to get him recharged. "But you don't have to be ashamed, you know. It's not your fault, it's just who you are, and you have the same rights to exist as anyone else."
"That's not the way most people see it," he told her.
"Rose?" the Doctor shouted.
"It's fine," she called back. "Just... give us a minute."
"All right. But hurry."
She turned back to Bannakaffalatta. "I think he's always like this."
"I'd worry about you, too," the cyborg said. "Pretty girl, and so nice."
Rose smiled. "But I'm just ordinary. It's not special to be nice to people. I mean, even on Sto they're getting it straight, now. I heard before I left that they're getting cyborgs equal rights, let you get proper jobs, even get married."
The cyborg chuckled. "Yes. I'd marry a girl like you."
Rose giggled.
"Rose!" the Doctor shouted again. "What's happening!"
"I think Bannakaffalatta just proposed," she replied, looking back through the hole into the dark, strange, beautiful eyes peering up at her.
The Doctor grinned. "You and your boyfriends!" he said cheerfully. "What'd you say?"
She shrugged. "S'the best offer I've had," she said.
"Did I mention it also..." He bit his lip, stopped, turned to look back down the staircase.
"Did you mention what?" she said, something tugging at the emptiness where her memories of this man were apparently supposed to be.
"My ship," he said. "Remind me to tell you later, if you don't remember."
"All right," she agreed, and set about trying to clear the passage a bit so they could get everyone through. She didn't care what fancy Rickston thought, he wouldn't fit through now, either, the bastard.
The Doctor made a call to the bridge while Rickston the Idiot (that worked) and Mr. Copper (the deluded historian, perhaps?) continued clearing the passage and the Von Hoffs worked on the host. They, at least, seemed to be doing well, and he was happy for them, because it couldn't be easy, especially with the abuse heaped on them by the heartless bastard the Doctor couldn't even understand.
The news was bad. There were life signs all over the ship, but they were dropping as fast as Frame could detect them. The Doctor asked about the air, but the culprit turned out to be...
"It's the host, Doctor! They're killing everyone!"
The Doctor jumped down the staircase, but of course his usual very bad timing had come into play and the Von Hoffs had just gotten the host working. It immediately tried to strangle Morvin.
Who double deadlocked an android, anyway? He couldn't use the screwdriver, so the only thing left was brute force. Luckily, while the host had the strength of ten men, it had no leverage to move, and he was a Time Lord. He could, in a panic situation muster something very near that himself.
Somehow, with some pushing and shoving and quite a lot of whining from Rickston, they got the Von Hoffs through the passage. He pried some information out of the host - Deck 31 was where this disaster originated - and then he slipped through. Mr. Copper was supporting the beam practically by himself, although Rose was trying to help him. The Doctor gave a quick nod as he slipped through, and they let go of the lever they were using to support the debris. The beam fell and the host's electronic head exploded.
The Doctor slumped with relief and, as the others headed into the next area, he reached out and took Rose's hand. She smiled up at him. "You all right?" he asked.
"Yeah. How 'bout you?"
"I'm always all right," he replied.
Rose, as she had always done, laid her head on his shoulder. She never pressed, but she knew very well to never, ever believe that one.
"Look, Morvin," Foon exclaimed, "food!"
"Well, someone's happy," Rickston snapped sarcastically.
Rose Tyler was one of the most amazing women in any Universe. She was brave, beautiful, and loved without bounds. She was also Jackie Tyler's daughter. If anyone asked, the Doctor would have claimed he was too busy calling the bridge to stop her.
She moved too quickly for anything human to catch, anyway. One blink, she was leaning on the Doctor, the next, she had delivered a powerful slap to Rickston's right cheek. It made a sound like a whip crack and the Doctor turned to the computer with a smile.
Rose stood there breathing heavily and thumped Rickston in the chest. "You can just shut up, you know. You don't have to comment on everything, and I think you'd be a little grateful. You're bloody useless; if it wasn't for everyone else working together to keep us all alive, you'd be a very dead git. So why don't you go over there and let the rest of us eat in peace?"
"How dare you talk to me like that!" Rickston exclaimed.
Rose balled up a fist. The Doctor appeared at her side to take her hand. He glowered at Rickston. "I wouldn't," he told Rickston forbiddingly, and took Rose's arm to lead her over to the computer.
She muttered quiet swear words under her breath and he listened to see if he recognized any of them from their travels - she'd picked up quite a vocabulary from Jack. It would have embarrassed him that the sum total of her Gallifreyan was all exotic curses, too, but there was no one left to judge them, anyway. "I'll... I'll just go get us some plates," she said after a moment. "You check with the bridge."
He grinned at her. "Yes, miss," he teased. "Thank you, miss."
"So gonna get you for that."
Really, he couldn't help it if he loved her.
When Rose came back with a plate for the Doctor, he looked very disturbed. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Here. Way you go on, you're bound to need to replenish your energy."
"Good strong cup of your mum's tea would do that," he said cheerfully, but bit into one of the potato things happily enough.
"How did you get to be 900 years old and still look like that?" she asked, as she sipped at some drink box thing Morvin had recommended. They didn't have things like this back at... never mind.
The Doctor smiled. "You know, that's one thing I thought you'd remember for the rest of your life. 'Course, that day was a bit of a haze for you, and ended up being a bit of a haze for me, so who knows."
"What day was that?" she asked.
"Two Christmases ago for me," he said. "We were... we were together. Something terrible happened."
"I..." she shook her head to try to shake something loose but all she could remember was light - lots and lots of light - and singing.
'That's right,' a voice in her head replied. 'I sang a song and the Daleks ran away.'
Her eyes widened and she dropped her drink. There it was. Her best friend, the man she loved more than anything at all and would have followed into hell itself, the one who she was never going to leave. In her mind's eye, she watched, dumbstruck and terrified, as he exploded into golden flame.
"Rose," the Doctor said urgently. "Come back, Rose!"
"I..." she brushed distractedly at her cheeks. "He died, didn't he? I remember, oh God, it hurts." She blinked away tears and realized that the Doctor had dropped his plate and was holding on to her arms. It was a good thing, because she felt like sinking down into a little ball and never rising again.
"No, Rose, don't think about that. He's alive, I promise you. Whoever it is you're worried about, he survived. We all made it through that day. Me, you, Mickey, Jack. Every one of us."
"But... but he didn't," she sobbed. "I loved him so much, and he died and I never even got to tell him. He just... exploded."
The look he gave her in answer to this was full of sympathy, warmth, and the strangest sort of fond exasperation. "It's all right, Rose," he said, and pulled her close. "It didn't end like that at all. In fact, that was just a new beginning."
"Are... are you sure?" she asked, because she could still see it, every time she blinked. He was there, one minute, bright, broken, with beautiful blue eyes. Then, he exploded.
"I promise," the Doctor said. "Oh, it'll never end now, you'll see."
"Did... did he love me, too?" she asked.
The Doctor reached over and brushed her hair out of her face. There was something painfully familiar in that gesture. "So much it terrified him," he whispered, and drew her head down to rest on his chest.
Mr. Copper came over then with questions about the possibility of help from Earth. The Doctor made a few very strange, off-hand comments about rooms and long stories, and then asked Mr. Copper where the man had gotten his degree in Earthonomics.
It turned out they all had secrets, here. Maybe not the Von Hoffs - they seemed normal enough. And probably not Rickston - he made no secret of the fact that he was an arse. But Bannakaffalatta didn't want anyone to know he was a cyborg. The Doctor was a powerful alien, Mr. Copper got his degree practically by mail order, and Rose... Rose didn't even know what her secrets were.
The host arrived and pounded on the sealed door behind them, just as things were starting to seem a little peaceful. The Doctor opened the next bulkhead door with his screwdriver and they all piled through after him. They spread out and stared in astonishment at the obstacle before them - the ship's power supply and engines compartment, a great bloody chasm of unstoppable nuclear fire, with a single, damaged, narrow causeway across it.
"Oh, fantastic!" Rose snapped sarcastically.
The Doctor's face shifted from horror at the situation to a broad grin at her, and then to clever consideration. "Right," he ordered, "we've got to get across."
"It'll never hold us," Morvin protested.
There was a considerable argument, and Slade was still as rude as ever. Rose rounded on him and therefore missed it when Morvin leaned over the edge and, just like that, he was gone.
Foon shrieked and screamed and slipped into denial, and Rose dropped to her knees to hold the woman, knowing now, remembering, what it was like to lose someone you loved that much.
Slade went across first, Rose noted vaguely, hugging the sobbing, protesting woman. The Doctor sent Bannakaffalatta after him, then came for her. "You have to go, Rose. Now."
"But I can't leave her," she insisted.
"And we won't," he promised. "We're all going across, all of us."
"She won't go," Rose whispered. "I wouldn't."
"You're going now," he answered. "Just, please, Rose, please."
She nodded and got to her feet, trusting Foon to him. She knew he could only do so much, but if anyone had a chance to convince the sudden widow to keep living, it was him.
The ship was shaking, settling. Slade was demanding the Doctor bring the sonic screwdriver. Rose could have cursed herself - she could have gotten it, she seemed to remember having used it before for a couple of things. It even had a setting, if she remembered, for getting out of dancing.
Rose had jumped the gap and was most of the way there. The Doctor was behind Mr. Copper. Foon was staying behind, but the Doctor wouldn't leave it that way if he at all had a choice.
Then, the pounding at the door stopped. Slade looked relieved and kept demanding the screwdriver, but Rose looked back at the Doctor and wrenched the nearest bit of piping up from the causeway. The look on his face meant he was worried and a worried Doctor always meant trouble.
"We seem to have forgotten," Mr. Copper announced, suddenly and sadly, "the Christmas traditions. Angels have wings."
Above them, all around them, were the shining, white clad, golden bodied host. Rose remembered, all at once, that she had never liked it when death looked so beautiful.