Fic: The Broken Key (4/4)
Title: The Broken Key (4/4) - COMPLETE
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Trapped and imprisoned, with no hope of rescue from Torchwood, the Doctor and Rose are forced to go to desperate lengths to save each other and the universe from a deadly enemy who's been watching them for a long time.
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for beta reading and various others for encouragement!
Episode 19 and the finale of of a virtual series at the_altverse, following Clocksleepers last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” came Rose’s voice. “Not yet, anyway.”
Both men turned to see her. The Doctor’s heart rejoiced to see her alive and well and here, but that was quickly replaced by panic. She’d walked straight back into the lion’s den, Isabelle and Jed behind her, none of the three even armed.
“You would say that!” snapped the Master, before he and the Doctor both realised what she’d said.
“‘Yet’?” demanded the Doctor huffily. He didn’t need Rose giving advice on when the best time to shoot him was, thank you very much.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, human or not, he’s got the same brain,” she said. “And you might need all of the help you can get.”
The Master snapped his fingers. For a second, the Doctor thought he saw Isabelle and Jed stiffen, but neither moved. The already furious look on the Master’s face turned uglier.
“What have you done to them?” he demanded.
“What? Me? A stupid little human stop a big, scary Time Lord’s hypnosis?” said Rose. “They fought you off themselves. Mostly, anyway,” she added, turning to give Isabelle a smile.
The guards around the room were closing in. The Doctor stared desperately at Rose, willing her to run, but she didn’t even seem all that fazed.
“I’ll kill you,” snarled the Master. “All of you.”
“So do it!” said Jed, in his best Superman pose, making the Doctor inwardly cringe. “You made us, so answer this: did you make us the sort who feared death?”
All things considered, the Doctor grudgingly supposed, it wasn’t a bad line.
“Then I’ll kill her first!” The Master’s gun was suddenly pointed at Isabelle. To the Doctor’s surprise, all three stood their ground. Isabelle’s eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t step back. Jed made no dramatic leaps to the rescue. Rose, standing between them, didn’t move to protect the other woman. What was their plan?
“It’ll be quick, I guess,” said Isabelle quietly. “I never was one for revenge, so I don’t need to hang around and watch you die.”
The Master hesitated again. “What,” he began, voice dripping with bile, “are you talking about?”
“We thought we’d give you a chance to save yourself and the universe,” said Rose casually. “‘S why I thought you might like the Doctor’s help.”
“Nothing is going to kill me! I’m going to be in there!” He pointed at the TARDIS. “You’ll all be dead and I’ll be flying back home.”
Rose coughed. “Yeah, about that,” she said. “You know all that tech down there?” She pointed to the room she’d come from. “You know how you nicked half of the good stuff from Torchwood? You didn’t think to read all the boring paperwork, did you?”
The Doctor and the Master stared at her.
“Didn’t think so,” said Rose. “Bad idea. I mean, I know the blueprints were the only exciting bit, really. Five million requisition orders and emailed arguments over the science probably didn’t seem important, but if you had read them properly, you might have noticed that at the end of every single report was four words. Project Director: Rose Tyler”
The Doctor’s heart sang. The Master had stolen technology Rose helped design!
“What?” The Master has almost dropped the gun. “But you- you- I read all about you. You’re stupid! You quit school. You worked in a shop!”
“Oh, you should know better than that by now,” said the Doctor, grinning at Rose.
She didn’t smile back.
“What have you done?” snapped the Master. “You can’t have- I checked- You didn’t-”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose quietly to the Doctor. “But I couldn’t stop the show. And just destroying the Dimension Cannon would have caused an energy feedback on a massive scale. It could have fractured two universes. Maybe more.”
“What did you do?” demanded the Doctor.
“I sealed us in.”
“You what?”
Rose turned back to the Master and raised her head. “I sealed this whole universe up tight. In five minutes time, the energy will tear this universe apart, unless you stop it.”
“You’ll kill us all!” shouted the Doctor, staring at her in horror. What the hell had she done?
She stared back at him without flinching. “But every other universe will be safe.”
He felt a lump settle in his throat. Billions upon billions dead, but so many more saved. The other Doctor - assuming he’d survived the other Masters - tucked away safe with no knowledge this had ever happened. “You shouldn’t- you shouldn’t have had to-” His voice came out as a hoarse whisper. Rose should never have had to make that choice, not while he was around.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
There was a sudden, incoherent roar from the Master. As the Doctor watched, helpless in his chair, the Master seemed to move in slow motion: levelling his gun at Rose, taking a couple of steps forward, pulling the trigger-
“NO!”
A bright beam of light burst out, directly at her.
But the Doctor wasn’t the only one who’d screamed. Jed had seen it coming too. He’d pushed sideways, shoving Rose out the way and to the floor, taking the hit in his back.
He screamed in pain as the light hit him, convulsing for a moment before collapsing.
The Doctor, Rose and Isabelle stared in horror at his body. Rose was the first to move, scrambling forward and taking hold of one of Jed’s hands, then touching his face. Isabelle almost fell to the floor to join her, taking the other hand.
“Jed, oh my god, Jed, are you still alive?”
Jed coughed roughly. The Doctor didn’t need to be any closer to see how this would end, and he felt a cold emptiness settle in his stomach.
“Well what did that achieve?” he snarled at the Master. “Are you happy now?”
“You can’t die!” begged Isabelle, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Suppose I was... made too noble,” managed Jed.
The Doctor shut his eyes. He wished he could be closer, wished he could thank the man properly for saving Rose. Just like he would have done, he thought. Whatever stupidities the Master had poured into Jed’s mind, in the end something real had come out.
“I love you,” stammered Isabelle, in between sobs.
There was a long pause. Too long, in fact.
“Say it!” the Doctor blurted out, not even realising he’d spoken until after the fact. Rose’s fingers were white as she continued to clasp Jed’s hand. The Doctor held back the desire to apologise to her for his own failings, hoping Jed wasn’t too much like him in the end.
“Love you, too, Isabelle,” mumbled Jed at last. “Now go... save the world.”
Silence fell.
“Are you done, yet?” asked the Master, folding his arms. “Or did you want to waste a bit more time on that stupid, self-sacrificial, pompous windbag?”
“You made him!” snapped Isabelle, jumping to her feet.
Rose followed, taking Isabelle’s hand and holding her back.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” she murmured quietly.
Isabelle’s eyes were so blank and dead the Doctor had to look away. He knew all too well what she was feeling. The Master hadn’t planned on her and Jed becoming real people, but that was humans all over, wasn’t it? They never neatly fitted into someone’s tightly controlled plan.
“What good will saving her life now do? You’ve destroyed the universe!” said the Master.
Rose snorted dismissively. The Doctor could see disgust and dislike written across her face, but no fear or intimidation. Rose Tyler had weighed the last of the Time Lords - and found him wanting.
“Aren’t you going to save it, then?” she asked. Her tone was more statement than question, as though in all her work on the dimension cannon she’d never stopped to consider that the Master wouldn’t sort things out.
Well... he’d do anything to survive, wouldn’t he? And he’d saved the universe before. How could she know that, though? And how could she rely on that when this whole universe seemed to have made him more insane than ever before?
The Doctor watched the Master in the silence that followed. For a second, he thought the man might raise his gun again and finish off Rose. But then, far off somewhere, an alarm sounded.
The Master dropped his gun and bounded over to the Doctor’s chair, cutting through the duct tape with his remote control (which was evidently somewhat based on the laser screwdriver).
“Into the TARDIS,” he snapped at the Doctor. “You!” He turned back to Rose. “Get down to the Dimension Cannon and direct the energy flow into the TARDIS herself.”
Rose glanced at the Doctor for confirmation. He nodded, then rushed backwards into his console room, the Master at his heels.
“Do we need to move her down?” asked the Doctor.
“Do it,” replied the Master. “If we can connect her physically, it’ll be safer.”
He began to set the coordinates as the Master ran around the console, preparing her to deal with the energy. The cloister bell started to sound yet again, ringing louder and clearer than the alarm outside, on top of the noises of their frantic efforts.
“She’s too young!” snapped the Master. “It’s never going to work!”
“KEEP GOING ANYWAY,” shouted the Doctor, grabbing the final lever to send them to the room on the next floor down.
As they materialised, the door flung open and Rose threw in some thick looking cables and a rather large piece of machinery he vaguely recognised from Torchwood. He dashed over, sparing half a glance outside to see her and Isabelle frantically at work at a large bank of computers. Running back to the console, he shoved half the cables into the Master’s hands and set about connecting the rest.
“It’s never going to work!” moaned the Master. “We’re all going to die and it’s her fault!”
“We are not!”
The Master was right, though. The TARDIS was young and she’d been weakened by what the Master had been doing to her. She would fall apart under the strain and pour all the energy right back into the world.
“We can channel it ourselves!” he yelled.
“Are you mad?” screamed the Master. “I’m not dying for this dump of a universe! I can’t take on that much power!”
“No,” agreed the Doctor, rushing around the edge of the console and putting his hand on the Master’s. “You can’t. But we can. I’m still half Time Lord, remember. At most you’ll regenerate.” And at most, I’ll die, he thought, but what other choice was there?
The Master hesitated, wavering on the edge of choosing the right thing just for once.
“Come on,” wheedled the Doctor. “If you don’t, we all die. I can’t do it without you.”
“And I know you would if you could, you self-sacrificing git,” muttered the Master. “All right, all right, no need to be so bloody smug about it. I’m still going to kill you both when this is over.”
The Doctor’s heart leapt. They’d be all right! They could do this!
He and the Master raced around the console in opposite directions, pulling levels and flicking switches and getting ready. If they did this right... if they got everything just so then nobody else had to die.
They met again, next to the handbrake.
“We can do it!” blurted out the Doctor with a grin.
“And after I kill you both, I’m going to find a way back there and tell your tremendous berk of a Time Lord self that I saved the universe from your girlfriend’s destructive tendencies and had to kill her for her own good,” said the Master.
The Doctor ignored him, suspecting that even his other self wouldn’t be quite so stupid as to believe that. He reached forward for the handbrake. The Master took the fluctron stabiliser in both hands and pulled it.
All around them, the TARDIS jumped into life. The grinding of the engines sounded loud and sharper than normal as the Doctor’s hold kept the TARDIS still.
“Thirty seconds,” said the Master, moving around the console again. “Let go at exactly the right time.” He hesitated. “Can you do that?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Suppose we’ll find out!” he said.
The Master groaned as he worked. “Why...?” he muttered to himself.
In twenty-five... twenty-four... twenty-three they would take off and leave Rose and Isabelle behind. He didn’t know if they’d ever be back. She was going to kill him, he thought ruefully, but what else could he do?
“Twenty seconds,” snapped the Master. “Keep your eye on the task!”
Beneath his hand, the handbrake was growing hot and vibrating more than ever. The TARDIS wanted to leave like she’d been programmed, but if he let go a moment too soon...
A scream from outside. Two screams. Not of fear or surprise but of pain.
The Doctor locked eyes with the Master as they both realised what it was at the same time. He’d forgotten... how could he forget...?
Not all of the energy would hit the TARDIS and them. A feedback loop outside was a possibility. Enough energy to wipe out a city.
Rose.
Barely thinking, he let go of the handbrake and ran to the door. His brain vaguely recognised the Master diving forward and grabbing the shuddering brake before anything happened.
“YOU NEARLY KILLED US, YOU MORON,” he screamed. “GET BACK HERE!”
The Doctor hesitated in the door frame, staring back at his one-time friend.
“Ten seconds!” snapped the Master. “And if you don’t stay here, I’ll die.”
“If I don’t go out there, she’ll die,” he said simply. “Master... I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but-”
“Oh get out!”
Another silent moment passed before the Doctor felt the full freedom and relief the message brought.
“Thank you,” he said.
The Master replied with a two-fingered salute he’d definitely picked up on planet Earth and not Gallifrey.
The Doctor dived out the TARDIS doors without another look back. Instantly a wave of pressure hit him. No longer protected by the TARDIS herself he could feel the energy build-up around him. The power to rip universes apart was rushing through the instruments in that very room.
Rose and Isabelle had fallen to the floor, clutching their heads in agony. The Doctor staggered forward, wishing he’d spent more time with the Dimension Cannon instead of avoiding it for all the unfortunate things it made him remember. He just had to... cancel out the waveform... by...
There! He darted forward and leaned across the desk, feeling his own ears burning in the force around him. If he could just reverse the polarity...
He lunged for the final button as behind him, the familiar grating engines changed pitch. The breeze played across his hair and he turned just in time to see the TARDIS vanish.
The pressure instantly dissipated.
The Doctor half fell down onto the ground.
“He did it!” he said quietly, disbelieving. The full force of what had just happened hit him. “Rose! Isabelle! HE DID IT! HA!” He stared forward into the blank space where the TARDIS had been. The cables that had run into the console room were now lying in a tangled heap on the floor.
The Doctor glanced at Isabelle’s watch. Seven forty-five pm. The show was over. The whole world had watched it and the whole world had survived.
“He really did it!” he said, boggled again. At the end of all things, the Master had died to save the universe. The last of the Time Lords had saved them all.
~*~
Rose’s head was aching.
Somewhere in the distance she thought she could hear buzzing.
She blinked her eyes open a few times and stared up at the beaming face of the Doctor. “Wh-?” she managed.
He leaned down and hugged her, pulling her upright into a seated position as he did so. Something in her brain registered that it had been far, far too long and she hugged him back with all her might.
“We’re alive, Rose! We’re alive!”
Then he leaned the other way and hugged Isabelle, forcing her to sit up a little too.
“What happened?” asked Isabelle.
Rose stared around the room. Some of the machinery had collapsed or exploded, and there was a large gap in the floor where the TARDIS had been. Other than that, everything was suspiciously intact.
“So the universe didn’t end, then?” she managed. Her voice sounded slurred, even to her, but she got the sentence out.
“The energy feedback in here was too much,” said the Doctor in a quiet, guilty voice. “I’m sorry, I should have thought sooner.”
She tightened the arm that had remained behind his back. He’d had enough to worry about without that too.
“You saved us, yeah?” she said, sending him a smile. At first he returned it, but then he seemed to get distracted and turned back to where the TARDIS had been.
“Yeah, I did,” he said quietly, his eyes lost in some memory.
Rose frowned, deciding now was really not the time for cryptic messages. “Where’s the TARDIS? And the Master? Is he coming back?” She tensed, prepared for another fight if she had to.
“No,” said the Doctor quietly. “He died.”
She blinked. “Did... did you kill him?”
“Yes,” he said. Something in his tone told her it hadn’t been as simple as holding a gun to his head.
“What happened?” she asked softly. She would gladly have killed the Master herself, but the Doctor never would. She’d had to figure out their relationship from the odds and ends she’d picked up from Jed, and that had told her enough.
“He needed me,” said the Doctor, voice hollow. “One Time Lord wasn’t enough.”
Rose worried her lip, squeezing him again, wanting to provide some small comfort. His childhood friend, or something like that. Yet the Doctor had rescued her and Isabelle, and the Master had let him.
“He... saved us, then,” she said. “He died and saved us.”
“Yup,” murmured the Doctor. He turned to Rose, eyes inscrutable. “How did you know?”
She stared blankly at him.
“You set up these machines,” he said, nodding around the room, “and you went up there without a weapon. If he hadn’t helped, he’d have killed you and let this universe be destroyed. How could you know he wouldn’t do that?”
“Because Jed thought there was good in you,” she answered truthfully. The Doctor scoffed, but she squeezed his arm to grab his attention again. “The Master might’ve been mocking you, and he might’ve thought he was writing an idiot, but he was writing you. So I knew you believed there was some good in him.”
“And if I was wrong?”
“You weren’t,” she replied. “No more than he was wrong about you.”
On the other side of the Doctor, Isabelle let out a stifled sob. Rose felt her heart break for the girl. When she’d lost the Doctor, she’d been in no state to do anything. Yet Isabelle had come down here and helped Rose with the dimension cannon. Now it all seemed to be hitting her again. Rose moved around the Doctor to sit on Isabelle’s other side and hug her, holding on tight. If the Master had- If anything had happened to the Doctor- She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling at once incredibly glad it hadn’t and incredibly guilty for that happiness in the face of Isabelle’s loss.
“I’m sorry,” murmured the Doctor. “I’m so sorry, Isabelle.”
“You’re still Isabelle, then?” asked Rose quietly. “Even though he’s dead? I’d sort of expected you’d be Anna now.”
Isabelle sniffed. “I... I think I’m sort of both,” she said. “I remember being both.”
“Hypnosis that strong,” said the Doctor thoughtfully, and shrugged. “He didn’t just hypnotise, he implanted real memories and thoughts. And from those sprang real emotions, which makes real people. It takes more than the Master’s death to change that.”
Rose gave him her best Not Helping look when Isabelle started sobbing again. He looked guilty.
“Right,” he said apologetically, turning back to Isabelle. “I could help,” he offered. Isabelle turned a tear-stained face up to him. “I’m not a Time Lord any more, but I’ve still got some telepathic powers. I could suppress your memories. Not remove them altogether, but Isabelle Buchanan could be just a dream Anna had.”
Isabelle stared at him with the same horror Rose felt she must be displaying. Hide memories that were real? “Never!”
The Doctor sighed and rubbed his nose. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “I had a feeling you might say that. Nobody wants to lose themselves, even to take the pain away.” As he spoke he was looking at neither Isabelle, nor Rose.
“I couldn’t forget him,” said Isabelle. “I just couldn’t. And before I met him, I was just so... so ordinary! I worked in a cafe and I was an actress all at once. But now I can do anything because I know someone’s got to. And someone’s got to remember Jed properly.”
“I know,” murmured the Doctor, still not looking at her.
“He saved my life,” said Rose apologetically. “I’ll never forget him. Never.”
Then suddenly, the Doctor jumped to his feet and extended a hand to both of them.
“What are you going to do now, Isabelle Buchanan?” he asked her, voice suddenly happy and perky as though nobody had lost anybody. He was avoiding looking at Rose, mostly likely because he could guess she’d seen through his false cheer.
Isabelle sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I think I’m gonna save the world,” she said, with another sniffle. “It’s what Jed said, before he.... It’s what he said.”
“I reckon you’ll be pretty good at it,” said Rose, encouragingly. “If you need a hand, look up Torchwood, but I think you might be OK without them.”
“I think you’ll be brilliant!” said the Doctor.
Isabelle smiled sadly, dropping the Doctor’s hand, wiping her eyes again and pushing her hair behind her shoulders.
“What about you two?” she asked. “What are you gonna do?”
Rose and the Doctor turned to inspect the space where the TARDIS had been.
“D’you know what happened to her?” asked Rose.
The Doctor shrugged, in a grand show of appearing like he didn’t care. “He probably, I don’t know, chucked her into a black hole or something. Always was a bit of a sore loser.” He paused and glanced around the room. “We can probably reconstruct his remote and bring her back eventually. Might take a bit of time.”
Rose squeezed his hand. He’d lost the TARDIS and the Master all at once. She hoped she could be enough for him. His answering squeeze was reassuring, though, and he looked her straight in the eyes and smiled. His eyes were sad, but the smile was real.
“I made my choice,” he said, as though reading her mind. “It was the right choice.”
Rose’s eyes threatened to well up with tears as she leaned into his shoulder. She was prevented from having to think of a response by the most welcome, brilliant, familiar sound right at the edge of her hearing. The Doctor heard it too, jumping back and staring at the empty space.
Slowly, surely, but with engines sounding healthier than they had done in days, the TARDIS materialised right where she’d been, almost like she’d never left.
The Doctor laughed delightedly and Rose felt herself beaming too. She was here!
“Did he send her back?” she asked dubiously. “Or was that an accident?”
The Doctor shrugged and shook his head. “Haven’t a clue,” he admitted. He reached into his pocket for his key before frowning, and Rose remembered the Master had taken it. She still had hers, though, and as she stepped forward to the door, she was struck by a sudden hesitation. He’d died, hadn’t he? Was the Doctor sure? And even if so, what would they find?
A hand closed over hers and she looked up to see the Doctor.
“He’s dead,” he promised. “And she’ll have cleaned up.”
“What about the key?” Rose asked, still reluctant to open the door. “Will that be in there?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I think it’ll have disintegrated and been absorbed back into the TARDIS.” She must have winced, because he smiled apologetically. “No need to worry, the TARDIS is more capable of that.”
“But how did it even get broken in the first place?” she asked. “He just said... something went wrong. What does that mean? Did you get him to tell you?”
“No,” said the Doctor, with another shake of his head. “I don’t know, Rose, I really don’t. Maybe he landed in the middle of a Torchwood operation and had to break it to stop them using it. Maybe he sat on it.”
Rose frowned, worrying her lip. She couldn’t really believe that something as powerful as the key could be broken by being sat on, and she doubted the Doctor did either. Nor did she think the Master would have had any such trouble with Torchwood. Something had broken the key, though.
“But what was it?” asked Isabelle. “You seem to know so much, but nobody’s answered that one.”
“Yeah,” said Rose. “I did so much work, and that was just a key!” The Doctor sent her a sad smile.
“I can’t answer that one, either,” he said. “Once my people - the Time Lords-” he added, for Isabelle’s benefit, “could hop between universes without a blink. That all changed. That key...” he sucked in a breath, “that didn’t feel like Time Lord technology. The perception filter, maybe, but not the rest. It’s too small, too subtle, not nearly grand enough.” He smiled bitterly. “Maybe there’s someone else out there trying to break down the walls like you were, Rose. Someone just a little bit less sensible.”
She shivered, thinking how the key had nearly destroyed them in the innocent hands of Conan Doyle. No doubt the dimension cannon could do the same if someone forced it. With the Master’s help, it nearly had. Maybe it was time to destroy the technology. She just wasn’t sure if she could bring herself to. Perhaps in the future, Torchwood could make it work safely, and then people could explore anywhere.
“Anyway, we’d best be off,” said the Doctor, gesturing to the TARDIS door, which still lay shut, and interrupting her before she thought think too hard about it. He gave no indication he’d noticed the maudlin look on her face, and she guessed he must have been lost in his own thoughts for a moment.
Still a little wary of what had happened in the TARDIS, she smiled tightly and unlocked the door, stepping forward into...
“What the-?”
The TARDIS had changed. No longer was the console room the bright white of IKEA cabinets. She also wasn’t the gold and green coral that Rose still missed. Instead the room was dark, with striking blacks and blood reds. It was not a comforting room. Call it a grave, or a memorial, it still felt like death.
The Doctor walked forward slowly, calmly, as though expecting nothing more. Then he spun around to Isabelle, who’d moved over to the door and was staring inside, eyes wide and fearful. He gestured for her to come in.
“Come on!” he said, voice still light and overly cheerful, sounding even more incongruous against the backdrop. “We’ll give you a lift home.”
“Doctor?” asked Rose, not sure what to say. Was this normal? Some sort of Time Lord funeral thing? Could he change it back? Did he want to?
“The last of the Time Lords died in here,” he said quietly. “This is her doing, and his. Not mine.”
Rose shuddered. How much of a mark had the Master left on their home?
The Doctor moved around the new console without any hesitation. Rose stood back: the switches and dials she’d been learning on had all changed now. He seemed to know what he was doing, though, and in no time at all he stood with his hands on the only lever that looked vaguely familiar: the handbrake. For a long, silent moment, he stared down.
Then, suddenly, he looked up to Rose and Isabelle with the smile that did not reach his eyes.
“On we go!”
End of Series One
Thanks to all of you who've read and commented this series. We look forward to seeing you soon for series 2 in a few months (hopefully)!
Author: shinyopals
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rose/Ten II
Summary: Trapped and imprisoned, with no hope of rescue from Torchwood, the Doctor and Rose are forced to go to desperate lengths to save each other and the universe from a deadly enemy who's been watching them for a long time.
Author's notes: Thanks to ginamak for beta reading and various others for encouragement!
Episode 19 and the finale of of a virtual series at the_altverse, following Clocksleepers last week.
Virtual Series Masterlist
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” came Rose’s voice. “Not yet, anyway.”
Both men turned to see her. The Doctor’s heart rejoiced to see her alive and well and here, but that was quickly replaced by panic. She’d walked straight back into the lion’s den, Isabelle and Jed behind her, none of the three even armed.
“You would say that!” snapped the Master, before he and the Doctor both realised what she’d said.
“‘Yet’?” demanded the Doctor huffily. He didn’t need Rose giving advice on when the best time to shoot him was, thank you very much.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, human or not, he’s got the same brain,” she said. “And you might need all of the help you can get.”
The Master snapped his fingers. For a second, the Doctor thought he saw Isabelle and Jed stiffen, but neither moved. The already furious look on the Master’s face turned uglier.
“What have you done to them?” he demanded.
“What? Me? A stupid little human stop a big, scary Time Lord’s hypnosis?” said Rose. “They fought you off themselves. Mostly, anyway,” she added, turning to give Isabelle a smile.
The guards around the room were closing in. The Doctor stared desperately at Rose, willing her to run, but she didn’t even seem all that fazed.
“I’ll kill you,” snarled the Master. “All of you.”
“So do it!” said Jed, in his best Superman pose, making the Doctor inwardly cringe. “You made us, so answer this: did you make us the sort who feared death?”
All things considered, the Doctor grudgingly supposed, it wasn’t a bad line.
“Then I’ll kill her first!” The Master’s gun was suddenly pointed at Isabelle. To the Doctor’s surprise, all three stood their ground. Isabelle’s eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t step back. Jed made no dramatic leaps to the rescue. Rose, standing between them, didn’t move to protect the other woman. What was their plan?
“It’ll be quick, I guess,” said Isabelle quietly. “I never was one for revenge, so I don’t need to hang around and watch you die.”
The Master hesitated again. “What,” he began, voice dripping with bile, “are you talking about?”
“We thought we’d give you a chance to save yourself and the universe,” said Rose casually. “‘S why I thought you might like the Doctor’s help.”
“Nothing is going to kill me! I’m going to be in there!” He pointed at the TARDIS. “You’ll all be dead and I’ll be flying back home.”
Rose coughed. “Yeah, about that,” she said. “You know all that tech down there?” She pointed to the room she’d come from. “You know how you nicked half of the good stuff from Torchwood? You didn’t think to read all the boring paperwork, did you?”
The Doctor and the Master stared at her.
“Didn’t think so,” said Rose. “Bad idea. I mean, I know the blueprints were the only exciting bit, really. Five million requisition orders and emailed arguments over the science probably didn’t seem important, but if you had read them properly, you might have noticed that at the end of every single report was four words. Project Director: Rose Tyler”
The Doctor’s heart sang. The Master had stolen technology Rose helped design!
“What?” The Master has almost dropped the gun. “But you- you- I read all about you. You’re stupid! You quit school. You worked in a shop!”
“Oh, you should know better than that by now,” said the Doctor, grinning at Rose.
She didn’t smile back.
“What have you done?” snapped the Master. “You can’t have- I checked- You didn’t-”
“I’m sorry,” said Rose quietly to the Doctor. “But I couldn’t stop the show. And just destroying the Dimension Cannon would have caused an energy feedback on a massive scale. It could have fractured two universes. Maybe more.”
“What did you do?” demanded the Doctor.
“I sealed us in.”
“You what?”
Rose turned back to the Master and raised her head. “I sealed this whole universe up tight. In five minutes time, the energy will tear this universe apart, unless you stop it.”
“You’ll kill us all!” shouted the Doctor, staring at her in horror. What the hell had she done?
She stared back at him without flinching. “But every other universe will be safe.”
He felt a lump settle in his throat. Billions upon billions dead, but so many more saved. The other Doctor - assuming he’d survived the other Masters - tucked away safe with no knowledge this had ever happened. “You shouldn’t- you shouldn’t have had to-” His voice came out as a hoarse whisper. Rose should never have had to make that choice, not while he was around.
“I’m sorry,” she said again.
There was a sudden, incoherent roar from the Master. As the Doctor watched, helpless in his chair, the Master seemed to move in slow motion: levelling his gun at Rose, taking a couple of steps forward, pulling the trigger-
“NO!”
A bright beam of light burst out, directly at her.
But the Doctor wasn’t the only one who’d screamed. Jed had seen it coming too. He’d pushed sideways, shoving Rose out the way and to the floor, taking the hit in his back.
He screamed in pain as the light hit him, convulsing for a moment before collapsing.
The Doctor, Rose and Isabelle stared in horror at his body. Rose was the first to move, scrambling forward and taking hold of one of Jed’s hands, then touching his face. Isabelle almost fell to the floor to join her, taking the other hand.
“Jed, oh my god, Jed, are you still alive?”
Jed coughed roughly. The Doctor didn’t need to be any closer to see how this would end, and he felt a cold emptiness settle in his stomach.
“Well what did that achieve?” he snarled at the Master. “Are you happy now?”
“You can’t die!” begged Isabelle, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Suppose I was... made too noble,” managed Jed.
The Doctor shut his eyes. He wished he could be closer, wished he could thank the man properly for saving Rose. Just like he would have done, he thought. Whatever stupidities the Master had poured into Jed’s mind, in the end something real had come out.
“I love you,” stammered Isabelle, in between sobs.
There was a long pause. Too long, in fact.
“Say it!” the Doctor blurted out, not even realising he’d spoken until after the fact. Rose’s fingers were white as she continued to clasp Jed’s hand. The Doctor held back the desire to apologise to her for his own failings, hoping Jed wasn’t too much like him in the end.
“Love you, too, Isabelle,” mumbled Jed at last. “Now go... save the world.”
Silence fell.
“Are you done, yet?” asked the Master, folding his arms. “Or did you want to waste a bit more time on that stupid, self-sacrificial, pompous windbag?”
“You made him!” snapped Isabelle, jumping to her feet.
Rose followed, taking Isabelle’s hand and holding her back.
“Don’t get yourself killed,” she murmured quietly.
Isabelle’s eyes were so blank and dead the Doctor had to look away. He knew all too well what she was feeling. The Master hadn’t planned on her and Jed becoming real people, but that was humans all over, wasn’t it? They never neatly fitted into someone’s tightly controlled plan.
“What good will saving her life now do? You’ve destroyed the universe!” said the Master.
Rose snorted dismissively. The Doctor could see disgust and dislike written across her face, but no fear or intimidation. Rose Tyler had weighed the last of the Time Lords - and found him wanting.
“Aren’t you going to save it, then?” she asked. Her tone was more statement than question, as though in all her work on the dimension cannon she’d never stopped to consider that the Master wouldn’t sort things out.
Well... he’d do anything to survive, wouldn’t he? And he’d saved the universe before. How could she know that, though? And how could she rely on that when this whole universe seemed to have made him more insane than ever before?
The Doctor watched the Master in the silence that followed. For a second, he thought the man might raise his gun again and finish off Rose. But then, far off somewhere, an alarm sounded.
The Master dropped his gun and bounded over to the Doctor’s chair, cutting through the duct tape with his remote control (which was evidently somewhat based on the laser screwdriver).
“Into the TARDIS,” he snapped at the Doctor. “You!” He turned back to Rose. “Get down to the Dimension Cannon and direct the energy flow into the TARDIS herself.”
Rose glanced at the Doctor for confirmation. He nodded, then rushed backwards into his console room, the Master at his heels.
“Do we need to move her down?” asked the Doctor.
“Do it,” replied the Master. “If we can connect her physically, it’ll be safer.”
He began to set the coordinates as the Master ran around the console, preparing her to deal with the energy. The cloister bell started to sound yet again, ringing louder and clearer than the alarm outside, on top of the noises of their frantic efforts.
“She’s too young!” snapped the Master. “It’s never going to work!”
“KEEP GOING ANYWAY,” shouted the Doctor, grabbing the final lever to send them to the room on the next floor down.
As they materialised, the door flung open and Rose threw in some thick looking cables and a rather large piece of machinery he vaguely recognised from Torchwood. He dashed over, sparing half a glance outside to see her and Isabelle frantically at work at a large bank of computers. Running back to the console, he shoved half the cables into the Master’s hands and set about connecting the rest.
“It’s never going to work!” moaned the Master. “We’re all going to die and it’s her fault!”
“We are not!”
The Master was right, though. The TARDIS was young and she’d been weakened by what the Master had been doing to her. She would fall apart under the strain and pour all the energy right back into the world.
“We can channel it ourselves!” he yelled.
“Are you mad?” screamed the Master. “I’m not dying for this dump of a universe! I can’t take on that much power!”
“No,” agreed the Doctor, rushing around the edge of the console and putting his hand on the Master’s. “You can’t. But we can. I’m still half Time Lord, remember. At most you’ll regenerate.” And at most, I’ll die, he thought, but what other choice was there?
The Master hesitated, wavering on the edge of choosing the right thing just for once.
“Come on,” wheedled the Doctor. “If you don’t, we all die. I can’t do it without you.”
“And I know you would if you could, you self-sacrificing git,” muttered the Master. “All right, all right, no need to be so bloody smug about it. I’m still going to kill you both when this is over.”
The Doctor’s heart leapt. They’d be all right! They could do this!
He and the Master raced around the console in opposite directions, pulling levels and flicking switches and getting ready. If they did this right... if they got everything just so then nobody else had to die.
They met again, next to the handbrake.
“We can do it!” blurted out the Doctor with a grin.
“And after I kill you both, I’m going to find a way back there and tell your tremendous berk of a Time Lord self that I saved the universe from your girlfriend’s destructive tendencies and had to kill her for her own good,” said the Master.
The Doctor ignored him, suspecting that even his other self wouldn’t be quite so stupid as to believe that. He reached forward for the handbrake. The Master took the fluctron stabiliser in both hands and pulled it.
All around them, the TARDIS jumped into life. The grinding of the engines sounded loud and sharper than normal as the Doctor’s hold kept the TARDIS still.
“Thirty seconds,” said the Master, moving around the console again. “Let go at exactly the right time.” He hesitated. “Can you do that?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Suppose we’ll find out!” he said.
The Master groaned as he worked. “Why...?” he muttered to himself.
In twenty-five... twenty-four... twenty-three they would take off and leave Rose and Isabelle behind. He didn’t know if they’d ever be back. She was going to kill him, he thought ruefully, but what else could he do?
“Twenty seconds,” snapped the Master. “Keep your eye on the task!”
Beneath his hand, the handbrake was growing hot and vibrating more than ever. The TARDIS wanted to leave like she’d been programmed, but if he let go a moment too soon...
A scream from outside. Two screams. Not of fear or surprise but of pain.
The Doctor locked eyes with the Master as they both realised what it was at the same time. He’d forgotten... how could he forget...?
Not all of the energy would hit the TARDIS and them. A feedback loop outside was a possibility. Enough energy to wipe out a city.
Rose.
Barely thinking, he let go of the handbrake and ran to the door. His brain vaguely recognised the Master diving forward and grabbing the shuddering brake before anything happened.
“YOU NEARLY KILLED US, YOU MORON,” he screamed. “GET BACK HERE!”
The Doctor hesitated in the door frame, staring back at his one-time friend.
“Ten seconds!” snapped the Master. “And if you don’t stay here, I’ll die.”
“If I don’t go out there, she’ll die,” he said simply. “Master... I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but-”
“Oh get out!”
Another silent moment passed before the Doctor felt the full freedom and relief the message brought.
“Thank you,” he said.
The Master replied with a two-fingered salute he’d definitely picked up on planet Earth and not Gallifrey.
The Doctor dived out the TARDIS doors without another look back. Instantly a wave of pressure hit him. No longer protected by the TARDIS herself he could feel the energy build-up around him. The power to rip universes apart was rushing through the instruments in that very room.
Rose and Isabelle had fallen to the floor, clutching their heads in agony. The Doctor staggered forward, wishing he’d spent more time with the Dimension Cannon instead of avoiding it for all the unfortunate things it made him remember. He just had to... cancel out the waveform... by...
There! He darted forward and leaned across the desk, feeling his own ears burning in the force around him. If he could just reverse the polarity...
He lunged for the final button as behind him, the familiar grating engines changed pitch. The breeze played across his hair and he turned just in time to see the TARDIS vanish.
The pressure instantly dissipated.
The Doctor half fell down onto the ground.
“He did it!” he said quietly, disbelieving. The full force of what had just happened hit him. “Rose! Isabelle! HE DID IT! HA!” He stared forward into the blank space where the TARDIS had been. The cables that had run into the console room were now lying in a tangled heap on the floor.
The Doctor glanced at Isabelle’s watch. Seven forty-five pm. The show was over. The whole world had watched it and the whole world had survived.
“He really did it!” he said, boggled again. At the end of all things, the Master had died to save the universe. The last of the Time Lords had saved them all.
~*~
Rose’s head was aching.
Somewhere in the distance she thought she could hear buzzing.
She blinked her eyes open a few times and stared up at the beaming face of the Doctor. “Wh-?” she managed.
He leaned down and hugged her, pulling her upright into a seated position as he did so. Something in her brain registered that it had been far, far too long and she hugged him back with all her might.
“We’re alive, Rose! We’re alive!”
Then he leaned the other way and hugged Isabelle, forcing her to sit up a little too.
“What happened?” asked Isabelle.
Rose stared around the room. Some of the machinery had collapsed or exploded, and there was a large gap in the floor where the TARDIS had been. Other than that, everything was suspiciously intact.
“So the universe didn’t end, then?” she managed. Her voice sounded slurred, even to her, but she got the sentence out.
“The energy feedback in here was too much,” said the Doctor in a quiet, guilty voice. “I’m sorry, I should have thought sooner.”
She tightened the arm that had remained behind his back. He’d had enough to worry about without that too.
“You saved us, yeah?” she said, sending him a smile. At first he returned it, but then he seemed to get distracted and turned back to where the TARDIS had been.
“Yeah, I did,” he said quietly, his eyes lost in some memory.
Rose frowned, deciding now was really not the time for cryptic messages. “Where’s the TARDIS? And the Master? Is he coming back?” She tensed, prepared for another fight if she had to.
“No,” said the Doctor quietly. “He died.”
She blinked. “Did... did you kill him?”
“Yes,” he said. Something in his tone told her it hadn’t been as simple as holding a gun to his head.
“What happened?” she asked softly. She would gladly have killed the Master herself, but the Doctor never would. She’d had to figure out their relationship from the odds and ends she’d picked up from Jed, and that had told her enough.
“He needed me,” said the Doctor, voice hollow. “One Time Lord wasn’t enough.”
Rose worried her lip, squeezing him again, wanting to provide some small comfort. His childhood friend, or something like that. Yet the Doctor had rescued her and Isabelle, and the Master had let him.
“He... saved us, then,” she said. “He died and saved us.”
“Yup,” murmured the Doctor. He turned to Rose, eyes inscrutable. “How did you know?”
She stared blankly at him.
“You set up these machines,” he said, nodding around the room, “and you went up there without a weapon. If he hadn’t helped, he’d have killed you and let this universe be destroyed. How could you know he wouldn’t do that?”
“Because Jed thought there was good in you,” she answered truthfully. The Doctor scoffed, but she squeezed his arm to grab his attention again. “The Master might’ve been mocking you, and he might’ve thought he was writing an idiot, but he was writing you. So I knew you believed there was some good in him.”
“And if I was wrong?”
“You weren’t,” she replied. “No more than he was wrong about you.”
On the other side of the Doctor, Isabelle let out a stifled sob. Rose felt her heart break for the girl. When she’d lost the Doctor, she’d been in no state to do anything. Yet Isabelle had come down here and helped Rose with the dimension cannon. Now it all seemed to be hitting her again. Rose moved around the Doctor to sit on Isabelle’s other side and hug her, holding on tight. If the Master had- If anything had happened to the Doctor- She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling at once incredibly glad it hadn’t and incredibly guilty for that happiness in the face of Isabelle’s loss.
“I’m sorry,” murmured the Doctor. “I’m so sorry, Isabelle.”
“You’re still Isabelle, then?” asked Rose quietly. “Even though he’s dead? I’d sort of expected you’d be Anna now.”
Isabelle sniffed. “I... I think I’m sort of both,” she said. “I remember being both.”
“Hypnosis that strong,” said the Doctor thoughtfully, and shrugged. “He didn’t just hypnotise, he implanted real memories and thoughts. And from those sprang real emotions, which makes real people. It takes more than the Master’s death to change that.”
Rose gave him her best Not Helping look when Isabelle started sobbing again. He looked guilty.
“Right,” he said apologetically, turning back to Isabelle. “I could help,” he offered. Isabelle turned a tear-stained face up to him. “I’m not a Time Lord any more, but I’ve still got some telepathic powers. I could suppress your memories. Not remove them altogether, but Isabelle Buchanan could be just a dream Anna had.”
Isabelle stared at him with the same horror Rose felt she must be displaying. Hide memories that were real? “Never!”
The Doctor sighed and rubbed his nose. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “I had a feeling you might say that. Nobody wants to lose themselves, even to take the pain away.” As he spoke he was looking at neither Isabelle, nor Rose.
“I couldn’t forget him,” said Isabelle. “I just couldn’t. And before I met him, I was just so... so ordinary! I worked in a cafe and I was an actress all at once. But now I can do anything because I know someone’s got to. And someone’s got to remember Jed properly.”
“I know,” murmured the Doctor, still not looking at her.
“He saved my life,” said Rose apologetically. “I’ll never forget him. Never.”
Then suddenly, the Doctor jumped to his feet and extended a hand to both of them.
“What are you going to do now, Isabelle Buchanan?” he asked her, voice suddenly happy and perky as though nobody had lost anybody. He was avoiding looking at Rose, mostly likely because he could guess she’d seen through his false cheer.
Isabelle sniffed and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I think I’m gonna save the world,” she said, with another sniffle. “It’s what Jed said, before he.... It’s what he said.”
“I reckon you’ll be pretty good at it,” said Rose, encouragingly. “If you need a hand, look up Torchwood, but I think you might be OK without them.”
“I think you’ll be brilliant!” said the Doctor.
Isabelle smiled sadly, dropping the Doctor’s hand, wiping her eyes again and pushing her hair behind her shoulders.
“What about you two?” she asked. “What are you gonna do?”
Rose and the Doctor turned to inspect the space where the TARDIS had been.
“D’you know what happened to her?” asked Rose.
The Doctor shrugged, in a grand show of appearing like he didn’t care. “He probably, I don’t know, chucked her into a black hole or something. Always was a bit of a sore loser.” He paused and glanced around the room. “We can probably reconstruct his remote and bring her back eventually. Might take a bit of time.”
Rose squeezed his hand. He’d lost the TARDIS and the Master all at once. She hoped she could be enough for him. His answering squeeze was reassuring, though, and he looked her straight in the eyes and smiled. His eyes were sad, but the smile was real.
“I made my choice,” he said, as though reading her mind. “It was the right choice.”
Rose’s eyes threatened to well up with tears as she leaned into his shoulder. She was prevented from having to think of a response by the most welcome, brilliant, familiar sound right at the edge of her hearing. The Doctor heard it too, jumping back and staring at the empty space.
Slowly, surely, but with engines sounding healthier than they had done in days, the TARDIS materialised right where she’d been, almost like she’d never left.
The Doctor laughed delightedly and Rose felt herself beaming too. She was here!
“Did he send her back?” she asked dubiously. “Or was that an accident?”
The Doctor shrugged and shook his head. “Haven’t a clue,” he admitted. He reached into his pocket for his key before frowning, and Rose remembered the Master had taken it. She still had hers, though, and as she stepped forward to the door, she was struck by a sudden hesitation. He’d died, hadn’t he? Was the Doctor sure? And even if so, what would they find?
A hand closed over hers and she looked up to see the Doctor.
“He’s dead,” he promised. “And she’ll have cleaned up.”
“What about the key?” Rose asked, still reluctant to open the door. “Will that be in there?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I think it’ll have disintegrated and been absorbed back into the TARDIS.” She must have winced, because he smiled apologetically. “No need to worry, the TARDIS is more capable of that.”
“But how did it even get broken in the first place?” she asked. “He just said... something went wrong. What does that mean? Did you get him to tell you?”
“No,” said the Doctor, with another shake of his head. “I don’t know, Rose, I really don’t. Maybe he landed in the middle of a Torchwood operation and had to break it to stop them using it. Maybe he sat on it.”
Rose frowned, worrying her lip. She couldn’t really believe that something as powerful as the key could be broken by being sat on, and she doubted the Doctor did either. Nor did she think the Master would have had any such trouble with Torchwood. Something had broken the key, though.
“But what was it?” asked Isabelle. “You seem to know so much, but nobody’s answered that one.”
“Yeah,” said Rose. “I did so much work, and that was just a key!” The Doctor sent her a sad smile.
“I can’t answer that one, either,” he said. “Once my people - the Time Lords-” he added, for Isabelle’s benefit, “could hop between universes without a blink. That all changed. That key...” he sucked in a breath, “that didn’t feel like Time Lord technology. The perception filter, maybe, but not the rest. It’s too small, too subtle, not nearly grand enough.” He smiled bitterly. “Maybe there’s someone else out there trying to break down the walls like you were, Rose. Someone just a little bit less sensible.”
She shivered, thinking how the key had nearly destroyed them in the innocent hands of Conan Doyle. No doubt the dimension cannon could do the same if someone forced it. With the Master’s help, it nearly had. Maybe it was time to destroy the technology. She just wasn’t sure if she could bring herself to. Perhaps in the future, Torchwood could make it work safely, and then people could explore anywhere.
“Anyway, we’d best be off,” said the Doctor, gesturing to the TARDIS door, which still lay shut, and interrupting her before she thought think too hard about it. He gave no indication he’d noticed the maudlin look on her face, and she guessed he must have been lost in his own thoughts for a moment.
Still a little wary of what had happened in the TARDIS, she smiled tightly and unlocked the door, stepping forward into...
“What the-?”
The TARDIS had changed. No longer was the console room the bright white of IKEA cabinets. She also wasn’t the gold and green coral that Rose still missed. Instead the room was dark, with striking blacks and blood reds. It was not a comforting room. Call it a grave, or a memorial, it still felt like death.
The Doctor walked forward slowly, calmly, as though expecting nothing more. Then he spun around to Isabelle, who’d moved over to the door and was staring inside, eyes wide and fearful. He gestured for her to come in.
“Come on!” he said, voice still light and overly cheerful, sounding even more incongruous against the backdrop. “We’ll give you a lift home.”
“Doctor?” asked Rose, not sure what to say. Was this normal? Some sort of Time Lord funeral thing? Could he change it back? Did he want to?
“The last of the Time Lords died in here,” he said quietly. “This is her doing, and his. Not mine.”
Rose shuddered. How much of a mark had the Master left on their home?
The Doctor moved around the new console without any hesitation. Rose stood back: the switches and dials she’d been learning on had all changed now. He seemed to know what he was doing, though, and in no time at all he stood with his hands on the only lever that looked vaguely familiar: the handbrake. For a long, silent moment, he stared down.
Then, suddenly, he looked up to Rose and Isabelle with the smile that did not reach his eyes.
“On we go!”
End of Series One
Thanks to all of you who've read and commented this series. We look forward to seeing you soon for series 2 in a few months (hopefully)!