(no subject)
From the Sky to the Ground, They All Fall Down, Rose/Ten, PG-13, 12,350 words in total
Author’s Notes: Written for Challenge 72. When a good chunk of angst, much too little sleep, and an utterly ridiculous title converge, this is apparently what you get.
Excerpt: “Shh,” Rose said. Strangely, she felt completely calm, having had to push her own slowly-growing panic down to deal with his. She’d never thought she would see him like this. Even though she hated that it had come to this, she was glad that she could at least be here for him when it happened.
Part One
“I thought you’d said we’d landed already?” Rose shouted across the console, gripping the railing fiercely to prevent herself being tossed clear across the room. She felt like her shoulder was nearly being pulled out of its socket for her efforts.
The Doctor, well and truly rolling about the floor by then, somehow managed to grab onto the gaps in the grating and steady himself. “We have,” he called out. “It isn’t the TARDIS doing this. This is whatever’s outside.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “You would go and set us down in the middle of some kind of explosion.”
“It’s not my fault!”
“Then who was that I saw jumpin’ about at the controls flyin’ us here, then?”
The sharp jerk as the movement finally stopped caused the Doctor to bash his head against the bottom of the console. Rose herself barely avoided a similar collision against one of the coral struts, staggering off in a different direction at the last possible moment, her head spinning a little.
“You’d think I’d have got my space legs by now,” she said, before seeing the thin stream of blood running down the Doctor’s temple. She pushed herself towards him, leaning unsteadily down when she reached his side. “You all right?”
He groaned, but then said, “Yeah. ’Course I am. Just took a bit of a knock, killed a few brain cells off. It’s not so bad. Well, I always say I have too many of them, don’t I? I could stand to lose a few.”
Rose wiped the liquid away before it could reach his eyes, then looked at her hand, not quite knowing what to do with it. For all of the trouble they got themselves into, she’d rarely seen him bleed before. Even when he’d gone and changed his face, it had all been pretty no-mess-no-fuss, physically at least. Now she had the evidence that he could be hurt just as easily as she could smeared across her skin. So soon after she’d thought she’d lost him (before realising that this really still was him after all), that thought made her heart accelerate. She wiped the blood on the grating, knowing full well that that wouldn’t be enough to completely remove the stain of it.
“You can’t be too bad off if you’re jokin’ about it,” Rose said, trying to lighten the mood.
The Doctor blinked rapidly a few times to clear his vision, and then pulled himself up, looking about as stable as she felt. He cracked his neck. “Ah, that’s better. Not bad at all. Ready and raring to go, as a matter of fact.”
“You wanna step right out into that?” Rose said. Usually she’d be the first to jump out of the TARDIS without a second thought, keen to see new and wonderful places, but she thought that just this once they should probably heed the warning that their more than rocky landing had give them. “What’s out there, anyways?” she asked.
The Doctor reached over and pulled the view screen around. He peered at it. “It’s a corridor. Or a storage area, maybe, with that - Oh!” he said, and suddenly grinned at her. “Double landing! That doesn’t happen very often, even to me. That out there is a ship. I landed us on a ship that was in the middle of landing itself. What good timing.”
“Good timin’?” Rose asked, looking pointedly at his wound, which was still slowly oozing red. “And here I thought that you were the only one who drove like that.”
“Hey,” the Doctor protested. “D’you know how hard it is to hit a small moving target like a ship entering a planet’s atmosphere out of all of time and space? A second later and we’ve have ended up in mid-air, and then probably crashed miles to the ground below; the TARDIS doesn’t really do the whole flying and defying gravity in the normal sense. As options go, I think I did very well to catch us a ride with a slightly rough landing.
The Doctor held out his hand to her. “Want to see what’s out there? There’s a whole new world outside that ship.”
“Maybe not,” Rose said, teasing. “You’re good at landin’ on spaceships and space stations and stuff, I’ll give you that, but different planets? You can’t seem to stop knockin’ into Earth. Knowin’ our luck, it’s probably London out there. Or worse, Cardiff.” She took his hand regardless.
“I took you to see New Earth just a few days ago!” said the Doctor. “That was a different planet.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just a revamped Earth in a bit of a different part of space,” Rose said glibly. “Doesn’t really count.”
“Blimey, when did you get so difficult to please?” he asked. Rose grinned at him, and he matched her. “You’d want to be aware, Rose Tyler, that you’re really asking for it,” he threatened as he opened the TARDIS door and pulled her out with him. “Next stop, I’ll take you to the Hirovale String. You’ll be begging to go back to spaceships and Earth trips after that, I bet.”
“Try me,” Rose said, poking her tongue teasingly out at him.
“You’re getting a bit cheeky, you are.”
“You’re one to talk, these days,” Rose laughed, then fell silent a little awkwardly.
They still hadn’t really talked about the ways that the regeneration had changed him. Rose didn’t really want to bring it up, so much, because that would mean actually facing the ways it had changed this thing, whatever it was, between them. While she personally was quite happy with those changes - happy in a way that she’d never imagined she could be when she’d first truly realised that the old him was gone - she didn’t know whether he’d say the same.
That worried her. One thing that seemed to have remained constant from one face to the next, after all, was that the Doctor didn’t like change. Not that kind of change, anyway.
She was almost glad for the disruption when they found themselves surrounded suddenly by what appeared to be the crew of the ship, who seemed to have clued into the fact that they had intruders on board.
“Oh, good, an escort,” the Doctor said calmly. “You know, I was starting to wonder how long we’d have to wander about in here. If this was my ship, I think I’d make the exit a little clearer. Post little signs. 21st century humans got one thing right, bless them.”
Rose tactfully didn’t point out that the Doctor’s own ship was like a maze and the way back out to the console and the exterior door was constantly changing, actually. He’d likely just ignore her anyway.
“Now, you can put those away,” the Doctor said, gesturing at the guns that were trained on them. “We’re not armed, and we’re only here by accident.” He turned slightly to Rose. “Is there something about us that makes people particularly want to point guns at us just as soon as they see us?”
“Maybe they hear your voice beforehand,” Rose suggested. “It does travel.”
“It’s a good voice,” the Doctor insisted petulantly, the voice in question notching up a pitch. “I like it.”
“Yeah, you certainly like the sound of it,” Rose said. “Other people, though? Not always so much.”
“Are you saying I talk too much? I don’t think you can ever talk too much. Talking’s good. Just think of all the things that have been solved by -”
“Please could you be silent!” one of the women surrounding them directed.
Rose raised her eyebrows pointedly at the Doctor, who looked very put out indeed at being interrupted, and also by having someone prove Rose’s point for her.
“Identify yourselves,” the same woman said.
“I’m the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler,” the Doctor announced. Rose wiggled her fingers in a little wave. “We’re just travellers, honestly. Nothing to worry about. We made most of the journey on our own, but then we just sort of accidentally hitched a bit of a lift on the last little home straight to... where are we, exactly?”
“This ship is the Magneallius 15,” one of the other crew members said. “Which you should know, having broken into it.”
“That’s good to know,” the Doctor said. “Or, well, I hope it’s good. I don’t know, really. I’ve never heard of the ship, myself, which could be either a good sign or very, very bad one. But I was actually asking where we’d landed. Or well, where you’d landed, since I suppose strictly speaking Rose and I actually did land in the ship.”
“Do you think they’re natives?” one of the crew asked quietly, clearly addressing his fellows rather than Rose and the Doctor. They’d probably decided to ignore them, since to any sane outsider it would sound as if the Doctor was talking complete nonsense. “They weren’t on board during the last sweep; I checked myself. That was only about a thousand kliks ago, so they could only have snuck in once we’d landed.”
“I thought there were no humans on Senescens, though,” another of them pointed out.
“Ah, Senescens!” the Doctor butted in loudly. “That’s a tiny little planet in the 56th quadrant, isn’t it? Funny that they kept calling them quadrants after the count made it past four, isn’t it? Still, humans didn’t make it out this far until a good, oh, sixty thousand years after they first started travelling the stars. Although, I don’t remember humans ever actually coming to this planet in particular. No reason to, really. I mean, there’s no natural resources that humans want as far as the records show, and it’s too small to be much use for settlers.”
“Maybe they’re just explorin’ for the sake of it,” Rose suggested.
“That’s fairly likely. They do a lot of that over time,” the Doctor agreed. “But you’d think I’d remember...”
“You don’t know everythin’, though,” Rose said. “You’ve said that yourself.”
The Doctor looked slightly disconcerted for a second longer, but then shrugged. “Yeah, quite right. That’d make things boring, wouldn’t it? Better to be always finding out new things. See, Rose? I told you I’d found us a new world. And you doubted me.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not exactly out on the planet yet. And it’s lookin’ like we might never get there. I’d hold off on the celebration for now.”
“Good point,” the Doctor said. He turned back to the crew. “So, thanks very much for your help. Very good landing. But if you don’t mind, I think Rose and I might just have a bit of a look outside. I fancy a walk, myself.”
“We should just lock them up,” one of the men said. “Until we know what’s out there, at least. There’s clearly something weird about them, and I don’t fancy having any unwanted surprises on this sortie. Remember what happened last time?”
The Doctor sighed, frustrated. “You’re not a very trusting lot, are you? I guess we’ve had a bit of a good run lately. I’d forgotten what it was like to get stuck with one of the really paranoid groups. But really, there’s no point locking us up like dangerous criminals. No weapons, see? Not much mischief we can do without them.”
“But what we could do is help,” Rose offered. “I know we don’t look it, but we’ve got enough muscles to pitch in. Settin’ out on a new planet, I bet you’ve got tonnes of equipment to lug around, and there’s not many of you by the looks. Wouldn’t you like some extra hands?”
“Well said,” the Doctor murmured almost inaudibly when it appeared the crew was considering that.
“Thanking you,” Rose replied with a self-satisfied smile.
The crew seemed to confer off in a huddle. They looked a lot less intimidating when they were all crammed in together like that, with their guns pointing in a direction other than at the two of them. She hadn’t realised until that moment that there were just six of them all told. Rose figured that the guns probably gave them scale.
“All right,” the woman, who Rose thought appeared to be in charge, said finally. “Fair warning, one step out of line and we will lock you up. You’ll stay contained to the ship unless escorted by a crew member.”
“Don’t wander off,” the Doctor said. “I said to Rose, I said, ‘Rose, that’s the first rule of space travel: don’t wander off.’ ’Course, she didn’t pay any attention at all to me. Couldn’t stop her from going off and getting into trouble for anything.” Rose glared at him when the people around them gave them a sceptical look, clearly second-guessing their decision. “Though,” the Doctor backtracked quickly, “she’ll definitely listen to you. It’s all me, you see. I just blab on and on; it’s no wonder she doesn’t listen, don’t you think?” Rose rolled her eyes. Too right, she thought. Hopefully they’d all just decide to ignore him because of that as well. “Ship like this, that’d make you a Captain and everything, I bet,” the Doctor said to the woman, sounding suitably in awe. She didn’t deny it. “That’s all the authority you could need, right there. We wouldn’t dare disobey someone with all that rank and power. We’ll stay put.” He raised his right hand. “I swear.”
From what little Rose could overhear, the ship’s crew seemed split between thinking they were a bit mad but ultimately harmless and thinking that it might all be some kind of act to make themselves just seem innocuous. They did, however, decide to let the two of them help out regardless.
It didn’t look so different to a forest on Earth outside, if Rose ignored the fact that the sky was a deep purple even though the sun was clearly out.
“Well that’s good, at least,” the Doctor said.
Rose, who couldn’t produce much more then than the occasional grunt of exertion from the weight of the boxes they were being made to carry - it figured the two of them would be given the heaviest things to schlep about - made an inquisitive noise.
“The air is breathable,” the Doctor explained. “I did worry a little, when they sent us out first.”
Rose let loose an exasperated noise. He might have mentioned his concerns before they’d stepped out into the elements, she thought.
It took them quite a few trips, frequently passing the crew hauling things out as well as they headed back inside the ship to collect more cargo, before the captain seemed satisfied that they’d retrieved what they needed, for the moment at least.
“There we go then,” the Doctor said, finally panting just enough to make it evident he’d been doing some labour. Rose, on the other hand, was drenched in sweat and practically gasping. He would show off, she thought, with his superior organs and respiratory bypass and whatever other little alien tricks he had on his side that always allowed him to run so much faster and further than she could (though she had to admit that when they were being chased, she did usually manage to push herself hard enough to keep up, since it was usually that or be blown up or eaten or some such).
The Doctor wandered over to the Captain, his hands in his pockets as if to try to make himself seem more innocuous. “So considering that we’ve told you our names, and now we’ve all worked together like some big team, do we get to know you’re names? Bit rude, not telling us, and I know all about being rude.”
“I’d never have guessed,” the Captain said sardonically. “My name is Captain Aubrey.”
“That’s a bit formal, isn’t it?” the Doctor said.
“I’ll tell you my first name if you tell me yours, Doctor,” Captain Aubrey said sharply. “But I don’t expect you will do, or you’d have said it upfront. I’m surprised there’s anything you won’t say, actually, with the amount you talk. You certainly offered your friend’s name freely enough, though I suppose that might be a code name as well.”
“Nope,” the Doctor said. “She’s definitely Rose Tyler, born and raised. And my name is the Doctor. No first name, no last. Just that.”
“I don’t believe that,” the Captain said. “My crew think you’re on the run. Fugitives. Is that why you’re hiding behind an alias?”
“No the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair. “We’re not running from anything.” Rose didn’t think that that was entirely true, actually, but better not to bring it up in front of the distrustful lady with the big gun, probably. “I guess we’ve got a bit of a stalemate then. You’re not going to trust us, are you?”
“Not until you’ve earned it,” stated Captain Aubrey firmly.
“We’d better get to it, then,” Rose said simply.
The Doctor beamed. “We’re very good at that, yeah,” he admitted. “Most people I meet trust me on sight, actually. They don’t always like me, mind - think I’m a bit arrogant.”
“Wonder what gives them that impression,” Rose sniggered.
“But they do trust me, despite that,” the Doctor continued.
“Well I don’t,” the Captain said, “so I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She glared pointedly at the two of them.
“Bit weird,” Rose reflected as Captain Aubrey shouted some instructions at one of the crew members and walked off to sort out whatever the issue was. “Sixty thousand or more years in the future, and all the way across the universe, and they just sound a bit... I dunno, Welsh or somethin’. You’d think stuff like that would have changed more by now.”
“They never really do,” the Doctor said. “The human race might move around and evolve back and forwards a bit, but you always come back to the same thing in the end. The optimal human form, accents and all.”
“Wouldn’t have thought the optimal anythin’ would ever be Welsh,” Rose joked.
“Remind me to take you to the 124th century one day,” the Doctor said, his eyes alight. “The whole of Earth adopts a single Welsh leader.”
“You’re kiddin’ me,” Rose gaped.
“Not even a little. I don’t know what’s more surprising - that a group of tens of billions of humans ever managed to agree on anything at all, or that that something was that a Welshman should rule the world. Of course, it wasn’t called Wales by then, but still. Same difference.”
One of the crew, apparently realising that the Doctor and Rose were off in the corner having a bit of a good time (how dare they), then put them quickly back to work.
Most of the rest of the crew weren’t as frosty as the Captain, at least, though Rose definitely sensed a layer of distrust shared amongst them.
That didn’t mean that they all completely kept their distance, though. One of the men, who looked barely old enough to be called as much, and probably was even younger than Rose was (it was hard to tell in the future, since people might age more slowly for all Rose knew), came up to where Rose was unpacking one of the crates specifically to introduce himself.
“I am Annan,” he greeted. “Sorry about the lack of welcome, but you know what it’s like out here.”
Actually, Rose didn’t.
“Millie says we’re all alone out here, in the far reaches of space,” Annan elaborated, perhaps sensing from her silence that Rose wasn’t quite fully following. “We don’t really know what to expect from a place like this. We have to be careful, or we’ll probably end up dead. So she says.”
“Who’s Millie, then?” Rose asked.
Annan pointed out the only female member of the crew other than Captain Aubrey.
“Sounds a bit melodramatic, this Millie,” Rose said.
“Maybe a little,” Annan admitted with a small smile. It was then that Rose caught sight of his teeth, which weren’t teeth at all, but what must of been thousands of little thin things that looked like broom bristles. She fought to hide her surprise. She didn’t think it’d be polite, somehow, to call attention to them. Or to the fact that he looked all sort of scaly, now that she was having a closer look.
She’d met cat people, she supposed. Maybe he had a bit of fish in him, though he seemed to be breathing oxygen well enough.
“She’s mostly right though, I think,” Annan said, “exaggeration aside. It’s dangerous, being the first to come to a place like this.”
“Why did you come?” Rose asked, honestly curious.
Annan shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. I was looking for work, and it paid well, so I didn’t really ask questions.”
“First job?” Rose asked.
Annan nodded. “I’m just out of school. I barely even managed to get through that before leaving, actually. I didn’t really want to hang around, you know? I wanted to get out there. Veyron - that’s my planet - is a bit dull, really, when there’s so much more out there.”
Rose could sympathise with that. Nothing compared to life among the stars with the Doctor, but those few years between dropping out of school and having her job blown up seemed particularly unbearable in comparison. It hadn’t exactly been the height of excitement.
She hated to think what her life would have been like had the Doctor never come along.
“So what’s your job, if you don’t even know what you’re all here for?” Rose asked.
“I keep the ship working,” Annan said. “I don’t have much need to know about all the science outside.”
“You’re a mechanic?” Rose asked. She thought of Mickey, so far away.
“That’s me. I’ve always been good with machines, though not with much else.”
“I dunno,” Rose said, “you also seem to be a lot better with people than most of the rest of them. At least you’re willin’ to actually talk.”
“I think you’ll win them over soon enough,” Annan said. “You’re far too nice for them to be all suspicious for long.”
Rose wondered whether he was flirting with her. It certainly seemed like it. She liked to think she was pretty liberal these days, with all of the things she’d seen, but it was still a bit weird to imagine the logistics of kissing someone with a mouth full of whatever those things were.
She supposed the Doctor was even weirder, though, as aliens went. He might look human (or humans might look Time Lord, as he always liked to counter), but she bet in contrast Annan would never suddenly and without warning change his face and his personality.
The Doctor himself appeared suddenly, hurrying over to her. “I don’t think we’re alone on this little planet,” he said, completely ignoring Annan’s presence. “There are tracks leading off into the trees, but they look more like someone being dragged off than people walking on their own two, or four, or however many feet. Could be that that’s why there’s no record of anyone coming here; they might never make it back.” He said all of that in an excited rush, clearly thinking that it was brilliant. Annan, however, looked anything other than excited about the prospect.
“What are they?” he asked. “Are you saying that you think they’ll come and take us away?”
“Oh, hello there,” the Doctor greeted, finally noticing him. “Which one are you? I’ve been trying to pick up all your names by listening in, since no one seems to want to talk to me, but it’s a bit hard when you all keep slinking away every time you realise I’m nearby, like I’ve got something catching. And Rose says I’m rude.”
“I’m Annan,” Annan said, sounding amused, like he would have offered his name ages ago if the Doctor wasn’t so busy talking without drawing a breath.
“Nice to meet you Annan. Now, what do you know about the species that lives on this planet at this time?”
“Nothing at all. Sorry. You’re better off asking Millie, the scientist.”
“Which one’s Millie?” the Doctor asked.
“She is,” Rose pointed.
“Look at you. None of them will give me the time of day, but you’ve got it all figured out already. I shouldn’t be surprised at all,” the Doctor said, sounding almost proud.
“We’ve just been talkin’ for a bit,” Rose said. “Annan’s been tellin’ me a few things.”
The Doctor eyes flicked briefly between the two of them. “Has he?” he asked, sounding somehow slightly less cheerful than he had just moments ago.
“Could you cover for us?” Rose asked Annan. “We should go and check out whatever the Doctor’s found, but I don’t think your Captain Aubrey would be happy with us goin’ off on our own if she knew.”
Annan hesitated slightly, but then nodded. “I’ll distract them, if need be. Please don’t be too long, though.”
He didn’t ask whether they’d be back, rather taking it for granted. The Doctor seemed to notice that. He said, while they were ducking into the tree-line, trying to keep low and move quickly to make sure they weren’t spotted, “So, you’ve clearly managed to gain that boy’s trust. Been using your wiles on him, have you?” He was clearly trying to make it sound joking. He didn’t quite succeed. More than anything, he just sounded a bit annoyed, the way she’d noticed that he’d always acted (back when he had big ears and a leather jacket) when she’d spent time with people like Adam and Jack and especially Mickey.
“Yeah, right,” Rose said, laughing. “He’s nice enough, but I don’t think so. He’s all alien and stuff.”
Rose realised what she’d said just moments after it was already out there.
“Right,” the Doctor said flatly.
“I didn’t -”
“The tracks go this way,” the Doctor interrupted loudly, clearly signalling an end to that line of discussion. Not that it had been a discussion, really. Not that they’d ever actually just talk about it, like normal people.
“That way?” Rose asked, her heart sinking, looking up at what might as well, to Rose’s eyes, have been a sheer cliff. “How’re we gonna get up there?”
“There are rocks and things to act as footholds and pave the way,” the Doctor said. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
True to his word, the Doctor continuously steadied her the whole way up and even caught her when she nearly fell. He even suggested that they rest partway up, even though he clearly didn’t need to himself. All of it was done, though, with a strange tentativeness that she hadn’t seen from him since she’d figured out that he was still the same man and had taken his new hand. She wasn’t used to him acting as though he wasn’t sure whether he should touch her, and regretted bitterly implying that she thought there was something wrong with him being alien.
When the hill ended, and the Doctor pulled her over the edge, Rose was too busy catching her breath and being relieved the struggle was over to notice their surroundings straight away. The Doctor’s sharp indrawn breath drew her attention, though.
It looked like what Rose imagined an internment camp must have been like, a mostly enclosed space topped with hundreds of feeble bodies lying on the ground, or barely propping themselves up. It was sort of like New Earth all over again, except that the only obvious signs of sickness here were how thin the creatures were, and how they looked too old and exhausted to really even move. They almost looked dead, except for the rise and fall that clearly indicated that they all, or at least most of them, were breathing.
That was the worst part of it all. They were alive. Rose never before thought that she’d think of that as a curse.
Most of them seemed barely able to move, but any that could shuffle themselves enough to turn their eyes onto the Doctor and Rose did so, staring right back at them as if they were the strange sight. It was unnerving.
“What...” Rose began. “What happened here? Is it some sort of plague?”
“No,” the Doctor said. “There’d be a few who were healthy, if that were the case. All species other than clone stock tend to have enough biological diversity that at least some of them would survive.”
“Maybe some of ’em did,” Rose said. “Maybe they got scared that they’d get sick as well and just abandoned them.” She hated the idea even as she was saying it. How could anyone see all of this and not want to help them, even if they’d have to put themselves at risk to do so?
“There’s no evidence of anyone healthy walking away from this,” the Doctor said grimly. “Not recently, anyway.”
“But what about those tracks down near the ship?” Rose asked. “Someone had to have made those. And I can’t see any of these people climbin’ to get back up here. I could barely do it. They look like they’d sort of keel over straight away.”
“It would explain the dragging marks,” the Doctor said contemplatively. “It would be an effort, but maybe some of them would be strong enough to manage the trip. They must have to go collect food and water and such. Or, I don’t know, maybe they don’t. Maybe they won’t be around long enough to need to.”
Rose shivered.
“Why are they all starin’ at us like that?” she asked, distracting herself. “Is it because they’ve never seen a human before?”
After a long pause in which they both look out over the crowd, the Doctor said, “I think it might be because we’re old, actually.”
“We’re old? But they all look...”
So old that they were about to die. The words hung between them as clearly as if they’d been spoken aloud, but Rose didn’t want to actually voice them. She didn’t want to think about the idea that every single person in the area looked as if they had just days left, if that. There were hundreds of them.
“But look at them,” the Doctor said. Rose could see that he had that expression that meant he was working something out. “They’re all like that, except one or two here or there that look just a little more alive. They’re in a terrible situation and need as much help as they can get, so where are the more able portion of their species? Why wouldn’t they be here? If you look at them, at this area, you can see they’re clearly not technologically advanced enough that they could have been teleported here or anything similar. And for all that they look old, there are some things about them, and the way they seem to be existing, that suggests they haven’t been around for all that long.”
“What’re you sayin’?” Rose asked, not sure she really wanted him to confirm what it sounded like he was talking about, but at the same time needing him to just say it, to make it real.
“I think most of them are just days old. Well, maybe a week or two in some cases.”
“How’s that possible?” Rose breathed, horrified. “Are their lives really so short that they can die of old age just days after bein’ born? How would they even have time to make more of them? I mean, even if they make babies in a different way to humans... well, where are they?”
The Doctor looked as though he was weighing his words. “I think they do have very short lives, yes, but not the way you’re thinking. They don’t go from babies to middle aged to elderly and dying in a span of days. Because you’re right; none of them look young, or even just a little younger. None. So either somehow there’s not a single new child to be found in this whole little civilisation, in which case it should have died out already, or...”
“Or they’re all children,” Rose finished. She felt like she wanted to be sick. “God, that’d mean they’re just babies. All of them.”
“What if they’re born this way,” the Doctor postulated, “frail and with many of the symptoms that usually come with age in humans? What if they’re so fragile that they die before they get a chance to live?” The Doctor snorted bitterly. “Humans have this strange saying that youth is wasted on the young. Not here, if I’m right, and I really think I am.
“That’s why they’re staring at us like that,” the Doctor concluded. “We’re something very strange to them; people who’ve survived through our childhood.”
“But what would even cause that?” Rose asked. “Being born old?”
“It is how we are,” a small voice said from the ground nearby. “How it has always been.”
“You can talk,” Rose blurted, stunned. It (or he or she, Rose guessed, but she couldn’t really figure out how to tell which) was only a few days old, probably. She hadn’t thought they’d be able to learn to speak so quickly. If they were anything like humans, after all, it would be years before they lived long enough for their brains to develop well enough to learn speech, or even to remember anything about being alive. She hoped that wasn’t true for them. Even if they did only live a short time, she’d like to think they at least understood what it was like to be alive for some of that. Otherwise, their lives seemed pointless. No type of life should be like that.
“We have evolved,” it said. “This is our way of life. It has been like this for as long as our accounts have been passed down. There are stories handed down of a lucky few who lived on for countless lifetimes, but no more. Now we all sicken and pass quickly.”
“And you mature quickly as well,” the Doctor said despondently. “Right... Well, you have to, don’t you? You have to understand concepts like death early so that you can realise just how much life you need to fit into just a few days. Lives that are over in the blink of an eye.”
The Doctor looked directly at Rose in a way that made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, as if he saw the same thing when he looked at her as he saw in these people all around them.
Was that really what she was to him? Just the blink of an eye, and that was all?
“Doctor,” Rose snapped quietly, “they can all actually hear you.”
“Sorry,” the Doctor said, for once sounding suitably chastised.
“It is all right,” the little person said. “We understand our fate, and we are not afraid to face it.” It let out something that sounded like a weak cough to Rose’s ears. “We do not have a choice.”
It went still.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “I’m so sorry.”
It took Rose a long moment to realise that he, or she, or it, was dead. Even though she’d known, of course, that it was likely to die any day now, that knowledge had been purely theoretical until then. She hadn’t expected it to happen right in front of her, with no warning. For all its suddenness, though, it was such an unremarkable death that it somehow made their situation even more pitiable.
Not with a bang, but a whimper, as the Doctor had once said.
She’d never even known the poor thing’s name.
“We have to help them,” Rose said quietly, finally looking away from the body.
“We might not be able to,” the Doctor replied. “If this is part of their DNA, if it’s not due to disease or any external factor... I can’t tamper with a whole species like that. I won’t.”
Rose nearly pointed out that he meddled in people’s lives all the time, but she quickly realised what he was saying. Changing a whole species, trying to ‘fix’ the way they naturally were so that they were more in line with what the Doctor thought they should be... well, he’d be a bit like a god, wouldn’t he? Whatever the Doctor was, Rose didn’t think he was willing to step onto that pedestal, and she could sort of see why.
“Should we tell the others back at the ship that this lot are here?” Rose asked.
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’re likely here to study the planet, and that means its inhabitants as well. I’ve seen what happens when people ‘study’ alien species they don’t understand. This lot don’t deserve that. Their lives are already hard enough. And, like I said earlier, there’s nothing in recorded history to suggest that there’s anything alive and sentient living on this planet at this point in time. If the crew of that ship found out about them, don’t you think there would be?”
The Doctor moved to walk away, but Rose hesitated, looking down at the pitiable little body. “Shouldn’t we bury it?” she asked. “I feel like we should do somethin'. It doesn’t look like the others’d be strong enough to do it themselves.”
The Doctor shook his head sadly. “With so many of them passing all the time, they must have some way that they deal with their dead. It’d be more disrespectful to interfere.”
Rose didn’t feel quite right leaving it there, all alone at the edge of the group of them, but she followed the Doctor anyway.
As the Doctor started to help her back down the slope, his hands steadying her waist as he dug his own feet in to balance himself, Rose was distracted by something that was wholly unexpected.
“Is that what it looks like?” Rose asked, pointing.
The Doctor looked around to stare at the same massive staircase that had drawn her attention.
“How’d they go and build that?” she said almost under her breath.
“Well,” said the Doctor, “There could be another species on this planet, though in a place this small you’d think we’d have seen something that would point to that by now. And our little friend back there did say that some of them used to live on for what sounded like years.”
Rose frowned. “Years like that, though? I can’t see how they’d have the strength for this.”
The Doctor didn’t seem to have an answer, for once.
At another time, in another place, she might have complained about how they’d climbed all the way up that torturous hill when there was a perfectly serviceable staircase just across the way. However, she didn’t think she had the right or the inclination to complain about anything at all after what she’d just seen. She’d never felt so lucky, in truth.
So instead, they proceeded down the staircase in relative silence, each caught up in their own thoughts.
His hand, however, found hers, supporting her in a very different way than how it had on the trip upwards. The grip of it felt a lot less uncertain than it had earlier, as if he realised just how welcome any contact between them was after all.
Part Two
Author’s Notes: Written for Challenge 72. When a good chunk of angst, much too little sleep, and an utterly ridiculous title converge, this is apparently what you get.
Excerpt: “Shh,” Rose said. Strangely, she felt completely calm, having had to push her own slowly-growing panic down to deal with his. She’d never thought she would see him like this. Even though she hated that it had come to this, she was glad that she could at least be here for him when it happened.
Part One
“I thought you’d said we’d landed already?” Rose shouted across the console, gripping the railing fiercely to prevent herself being tossed clear across the room. She felt like her shoulder was nearly being pulled out of its socket for her efforts.
The Doctor, well and truly rolling about the floor by then, somehow managed to grab onto the gaps in the grating and steady himself. “We have,” he called out. “It isn’t the TARDIS doing this. This is whatever’s outside.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “You would go and set us down in the middle of some kind of explosion.”
“It’s not my fault!”
“Then who was that I saw jumpin’ about at the controls flyin’ us here, then?”
The sharp jerk as the movement finally stopped caused the Doctor to bash his head against the bottom of the console. Rose herself barely avoided a similar collision against one of the coral struts, staggering off in a different direction at the last possible moment, her head spinning a little.
“You’d think I’d have got my space legs by now,” she said, before seeing the thin stream of blood running down the Doctor’s temple. She pushed herself towards him, leaning unsteadily down when she reached his side. “You all right?”
He groaned, but then said, “Yeah. ’Course I am. Just took a bit of a knock, killed a few brain cells off. It’s not so bad. Well, I always say I have too many of them, don’t I? I could stand to lose a few.”
Rose wiped the liquid away before it could reach his eyes, then looked at her hand, not quite knowing what to do with it. For all of the trouble they got themselves into, she’d rarely seen him bleed before. Even when he’d gone and changed his face, it had all been pretty no-mess-no-fuss, physically at least. Now she had the evidence that he could be hurt just as easily as she could smeared across her skin. So soon after she’d thought she’d lost him (before realising that this really still was him after all), that thought made her heart accelerate. She wiped the blood on the grating, knowing full well that that wouldn’t be enough to completely remove the stain of it.
“You can’t be too bad off if you’re jokin’ about it,” Rose said, trying to lighten the mood.
The Doctor blinked rapidly a few times to clear his vision, and then pulled himself up, looking about as stable as she felt. He cracked his neck. “Ah, that’s better. Not bad at all. Ready and raring to go, as a matter of fact.”
“You wanna step right out into that?” Rose said. Usually she’d be the first to jump out of the TARDIS without a second thought, keen to see new and wonderful places, but she thought that just this once they should probably heed the warning that their more than rocky landing had give them. “What’s out there, anyways?” she asked.
The Doctor reached over and pulled the view screen around. He peered at it. “It’s a corridor. Or a storage area, maybe, with that - Oh!” he said, and suddenly grinned at her. “Double landing! That doesn’t happen very often, even to me. That out there is a ship. I landed us on a ship that was in the middle of landing itself. What good timing.”
“Good timin’?” Rose asked, looking pointedly at his wound, which was still slowly oozing red. “And here I thought that you were the only one who drove like that.”
“Hey,” the Doctor protested. “D’you know how hard it is to hit a small moving target like a ship entering a planet’s atmosphere out of all of time and space? A second later and we’ve have ended up in mid-air, and then probably crashed miles to the ground below; the TARDIS doesn’t really do the whole flying and defying gravity in the normal sense. As options go, I think I did very well to catch us a ride with a slightly rough landing.
The Doctor held out his hand to her. “Want to see what’s out there? There’s a whole new world outside that ship.”
“Maybe not,” Rose said, teasing. “You’re good at landin’ on spaceships and space stations and stuff, I’ll give you that, but different planets? You can’t seem to stop knockin’ into Earth. Knowin’ our luck, it’s probably London out there. Or worse, Cardiff.” She took his hand regardless.
“I took you to see New Earth just a few days ago!” said the Doctor. “That was a different planet.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just a revamped Earth in a bit of a different part of space,” Rose said glibly. “Doesn’t really count.”
“Blimey, when did you get so difficult to please?” he asked. Rose grinned at him, and he matched her. “You’d want to be aware, Rose Tyler, that you’re really asking for it,” he threatened as he opened the TARDIS door and pulled her out with him. “Next stop, I’ll take you to the Hirovale String. You’ll be begging to go back to spaceships and Earth trips after that, I bet.”
“Try me,” Rose said, poking her tongue teasingly out at him.
“You’re getting a bit cheeky, you are.”
“You’re one to talk, these days,” Rose laughed, then fell silent a little awkwardly.
They still hadn’t really talked about the ways that the regeneration had changed him. Rose didn’t really want to bring it up, so much, because that would mean actually facing the ways it had changed this thing, whatever it was, between them. While she personally was quite happy with those changes - happy in a way that she’d never imagined she could be when she’d first truly realised that the old him was gone - she didn’t know whether he’d say the same.
That worried her. One thing that seemed to have remained constant from one face to the next, after all, was that the Doctor didn’t like change. Not that kind of change, anyway.
She was almost glad for the disruption when they found themselves surrounded suddenly by what appeared to be the crew of the ship, who seemed to have clued into the fact that they had intruders on board.
“Oh, good, an escort,” the Doctor said calmly. “You know, I was starting to wonder how long we’d have to wander about in here. If this was my ship, I think I’d make the exit a little clearer. Post little signs. 21st century humans got one thing right, bless them.”
Rose tactfully didn’t point out that the Doctor’s own ship was like a maze and the way back out to the console and the exterior door was constantly changing, actually. He’d likely just ignore her anyway.
“Now, you can put those away,” the Doctor said, gesturing at the guns that were trained on them. “We’re not armed, and we’re only here by accident.” He turned slightly to Rose. “Is there something about us that makes people particularly want to point guns at us just as soon as they see us?”
“Maybe they hear your voice beforehand,” Rose suggested. “It does travel.”
“It’s a good voice,” the Doctor insisted petulantly, the voice in question notching up a pitch. “I like it.”
“Yeah, you certainly like the sound of it,” Rose said. “Other people, though? Not always so much.”
“Are you saying I talk too much? I don’t think you can ever talk too much. Talking’s good. Just think of all the things that have been solved by -”
“Please could you be silent!” one of the women surrounding them directed.
Rose raised her eyebrows pointedly at the Doctor, who looked very put out indeed at being interrupted, and also by having someone prove Rose’s point for her.
“Identify yourselves,” the same woman said.
“I’m the Doctor, and this is Rose Tyler,” the Doctor announced. Rose wiggled her fingers in a little wave. “We’re just travellers, honestly. Nothing to worry about. We made most of the journey on our own, but then we just sort of accidentally hitched a bit of a lift on the last little home straight to... where are we, exactly?”
“This ship is the Magneallius 15,” one of the other crew members said. “Which you should know, having broken into it.”
“That’s good to know,” the Doctor said. “Or, well, I hope it’s good. I don’t know, really. I’ve never heard of the ship, myself, which could be either a good sign or very, very bad one. But I was actually asking where we’d landed. Or well, where you’d landed, since I suppose strictly speaking Rose and I actually did land in the ship.”
“Do you think they’re natives?” one of the crew asked quietly, clearly addressing his fellows rather than Rose and the Doctor. They’d probably decided to ignore them, since to any sane outsider it would sound as if the Doctor was talking complete nonsense. “They weren’t on board during the last sweep; I checked myself. That was only about a thousand kliks ago, so they could only have snuck in once we’d landed.”
“I thought there were no humans on Senescens, though,” another of them pointed out.
“Ah, Senescens!” the Doctor butted in loudly. “That’s a tiny little planet in the 56th quadrant, isn’t it? Funny that they kept calling them quadrants after the count made it past four, isn’t it? Still, humans didn’t make it out this far until a good, oh, sixty thousand years after they first started travelling the stars. Although, I don’t remember humans ever actually coming to this planet in particular. No reason to, really. I mean, there’s no natural resources that humans want as far as the records show, and it’s too small to be much use for settlers.”
“Maybe they’re just explorin’ for the sake of it,” Rose suggested.
“That’s fairly likely. They do a lot of that over time,” the Doctor agreed. “But you’d think I’d remember...”
“You don’t know everythin’, though,” Rose said. “You’ve said that yourself.”
The Doctor looked slightly disconcerted for a second longer, but then shrugged. “Yeah, quite right. That’d make things boring, wouldn’t it? Better to be always finding out new things. See, Rose? I told you I’d found us a new world. And you doubted me.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not exactly out on the planet yet. And it’s lookin’ like we might never get there. I’d hold off on the celebration for now.”
“Good point,” the Doctor said. He turned back to the crew. “So, thanks very much for your help. Very good landing. But if you don’t mind, I think Rose and I might just have a bit of a look outside. I fancy a walk, myself.”
“We should just lock them up,” one of the men said. “Until we know what’s out there, at least. There’s clearly something weird about them, and I don’t fancy having any unwanted surprises on this sortie. Remember what happened last time?”
The Doctor sighed, frustrated. “You’re not a very trusting lot, are you? I guess we’ve had a bit of a good run lately. I’d forgotten what it was like to get stuck with one of the really paranoid groups. But really, there’s no point locking us up like dangerous criminals. No weapons, see? Not much mischief we can do without them.”
“But what we could do is help,” Rose offered. “I know we don’t look it, but we’ve got enough muscles to pitch in. Settin’ out on a new planet, I bet you’ve got tonnes of equipment to lug around, and there’s not many of you by the looks. Wouldn’t you like some extra hands?”
“Well said,” the Doctor murmured almost inaudibly when it appeared the crew was considering that.
“Thanking you,” Rose replied with a self-satisfied smile.
The crew seemed to confer off in a huddle. They looked a lot less intimidating when they were all crammed in together like that, with their guns pointing in a direction other than at the two of them. She hadn’t realised until that moment that there were just six of them all told. Rose figured that the guns probably gave them scale.
“All right,” the woman, who Rose thought appeared to be in charge, said finally. “Fair warning, one step out of line and we will lock you up. You’ll stay contained to the ship unless escorted by a crew member.”
“Don’t wander off,” the Doctor said. “I said to Rose, I said, ‘Rose, that’s the first rule of space travel: don’t wander off.’ ’Course, she didn’t pay any attention at all to me. Couldn’t stop her from going off and getting into trouble for anything.” Rose glared at him when the people around them gave them a sceptical look, clearly second-guessing their decision. “Though,” the Doctor backtracked quickly, “she’ll definitely listen to you. It’s all me, you see. I just blab on and on; it’s no wonder she doesn’t listen, don’t you think?” Rose rolled her eyes. Too right, she thought. Hopefully they’d all just decide to ignore him because of that as well. “Ship like this, that’d make you a Captain and everything, I bet,” the Doctor said to the woman, sounding suitably in awe. She didn’t deny it. “That’s all the authority you could need, right there. We wouldn’t dare disobey someone with all that rank and power. We’ll stay put.” He raised his right hand. “I swear.”
From what little Rose could overhear, the ship’s crew seemed split between thinking they were a bit mad but ultimately harmless and thinking that it might all be some kind of act to make themselves just seem innocuous. They did, however, decide to let the two of them help out regardless.
It didn’t look so different to a forest on Earth outside, if Rose ignored the fact that the sky was a deep purple even though the sun was clearly out.
“Well that’s good, at least,” the Doctor said.
Rose, who couldn’t produce much more then than the occasional grunt of exertion from the weight of the boxes they were being made to carry - it figured the two of them would be given the heaviest things to schlep about - made an inquisitive noise.
“The air is breathable,” the Doctor explained. “I did worry a little, when they sent us out first.”
Rose let loose an exasperated noise. He might have mentioned his concerns before they’d stepped out into the elements, she thought.
It took them quite a few trips, frequently passing the crew hauling things out as well as they headed back inside the ship to collect more cargo, before the captain seemed satisfied that they’d retrieved what they needed, for the moment at least.
“There we go then,” the Doctor said, finally panting just enough to make it evident he’d been doing some labour. Rose, on the other hand, was drenched in sweat and practically gasping. He would show off, she thought, with his superior organs and respiratory bypass and whatever other little alien tricks he had on his side that always allowed him to run so much faster and further than she could (though she had to admit that when they were being chased, she did usually manage to push herself hard enough to keep up, since it was usually that or be blown up or eaten or some such).
The Doctor wandered over to the Captain, his hands in his pockets as if to try to make himself seem more innocuous. “So considering that we’ve told you our names, and now we’ve all worked together like some big team, do we get to know you’re names? Bit rude, not telling us, and I know all about being rude.”
“I’d never have guessed,” the Captain said sardonically. “My name is Captain Aubrey.”
“That’s a bit formal, isn’t it?” the Doctor said.
“I’ll tell you my first name if you tell me yours, Doctor,” Captain Aubrey said sharply. “But I don’t expect you will do, or you’d have said it upfront. I’m surprised there’s anything you won’t say, actually, with the amount you talk. You certainly offered your friend’s name freely enough, though I suppose that might be a code name as well.”
“Nope,” the Doctor said. “She’s definitely Rose Tyler, born and raised. And my name is the Doctor. No first name, no last. Just that.”
“I don’t believe that,” the Captain said. “My crew think you’re on the run. Fugitives. Is that why you’re hiding behind an alias?”
“No the Doctor said, running a hand through his hair. “We’re not running from anything.” Rose didn’t think that that was entirely true, actually, but better not to bring it up in front of the distrustful lady with the big gun, probably. “I guess we’ve got a bit of a stalemate then. You’re not going to trust us, are you?”
“Not until you’ve earned it,” stated Captain Aubrey firmly.
“We’d better get to it, then,” Rose said simply.
The Doctor beamed. “We’re very good at that, yeah,” he admitted. “Most people I meet trust me on sight, actually. They don’t always like me, mind - think I’m a bit arrogant.”
“Wonder what gives them that impression,” Rose sniggered.
“But they do trust me, despite that,” the Doctor continued.
“Well I don’t,” the Captain said, “so I’ll be keeping an eye on you.” She glared pointedly at the two of them.
“Bit weird,” Rose reflected as Captain Aubrey shouted some instructions at one of the crew members and walked off to sort out whatever the issue was. “Sixty thousand or more years in the future, and all the way across the universe, and they just sound a bit... I dunno, Welsh or somethin’. You’d think stuff like that would have changed more by now.”
“They never really do,” the Doctor said. “The human race might move around and evolve back and forwards a bit, but you always come back to the same thing in the end. The optimal human form, accents and all.”
“Wouldn’t have thought the optimal anythin’ would ever be Welsh,” Rose joked.
“Remind me to take you to the 124th century one day,” the Doctor said, his eyes alight. “The whole of Earth adopts a single Welsh leader.”
“You’re kiddin’ me,” Rose gaped.
“Not even a little. I don’t know what’s more surprising - that a group of tens of billions of humans ever managed to agree on anything at all, or that that something was that a Welshman should rule the world. Of course, it wasn’t called Wales by then, but still. Same difference.”
One of the crew, apparently realising that the Doctor and Rose were off in the corner having a bit of a good time (how dare they), then put them quickly back to work.
Most of the rest of the crew weren’t as frosty as the Captain, at least, though Rose definitely sensed a layer of distrust shared amongst them.
That didn’t mean that they all completely kept their distance, though. One of the men, who looked barely old enough to be called as much, and probably was even younger than Rose was (it was hard to tell in the future, since people might age more slowly for all Rose knew), came up to where Rose was unpacking one of the crates specifically to introduce himself.
“I am Annan,” he greeted. “Sorry about the lack of welcome, but you know what it’s like out here.”
Actually, Rose didn’t.
“Millie says we’re all alone out here, in the far reaches of space,” Annan elaborated, perhaps sensing from her silence that Rose wasn’t quite fully following. “We don’t really know what to expect from a place like this. We have to be careful, or we’ll probably end up dead. So she says.”
“Who’s Millie, then?” Rose asked.
Annan pointed out the only female member of the crew other than Captain Aubrey.
“Sounds a bit melodramatic, this Millie,” Rose said.
“Maybe a little,” Annan admitted with a small smile. It was then that Rose caught sight of his teeth, which weren’t teeth at all, but what must of been thousands of little thin things that looked like broom bristles. She fought to hide her surprise. She didn’t think it’d be polite, somehow, to call attention to them. Or to the fact that he looked all sort of scaly, now that she was having a closer look.
She’d met cat people, she supposed. Maybe he had a bit of fish in him, though he seemed to be breathing oxygen well enough.
“She’s mostly right though, I think,” Annan said, “exaggeration aside. It’s dangerous, being the first to come to a place like this.”
“Why did you come?” Rose asked, honestly curious.
Annan shrugged. “I don’t rightly know. I was looking for work, and it paid well, so I didn’t really ask questions.”
“First job?” Rose asked.
Annan nodded. “I’m just out of school. I barely even managed to get through that before leaving, actually. I didn’t really want to hang around, you know? I wanted to get out there. Veyron - that’s my planet - is a bit dull, really, when there’s so much more out there.”
Rose could sympathise with that. Nothing compared to life among the stars with the Doctor, but those few years between dropping out of school and having her job blown up seemed particularly unbearable in comparison. It hadn’t exactly been the height of excitement.
She hated to think what her life would have been like had the Doctor never come along.
“So what’s your job, if you don’t even know what you’re all here for?” Rose asked.
“I keep the ship working,” Annan said. “I don’t have much need to know about all the science outside.”
“You’re a mechanic?” Rose asked. She thought of Mickey, so far away.
“That’s me. I’ve always been good with machines, though not with much else.”
“I dunno,” Rose said, “you also seem to be a lot better with people than most of the rest of them. At least you’re willin’ to actually talk.”
“I think you’ll win them over soon enough,” Annan said. “You’re far too nice for them to be all suspicious for long.”
Rose wondered whether he was flirting with her. It certainly seemed like it. She liked to think she was pretty liberal these days, with all of the things she’d seen, but it was still a bit weird to imagine the logistics of kissing someone with a mouth full of whatever those things were.
She supposed the Doctor was even weirder, though, as aliens went. He might look human (or humans might look Time Lord, as he always liked to counter), but she bet in contrast Annan would never suddenly and without warning change his face and his personality.
The Doctor himself appeared suddenly, hurrying over to her. “I don’t think we’re alone on this little planet,” he said, completely ignoring Annan’s presence. “There are tracks leading off into the trees, but they look more like someone being dragged off than people walking on their own two, or four, or however many feet. Could be that that’s why there’s no record of anyone coming here; they might never make it back.” He said all of that in an excited rush, clearly thinking that it was brilliant. Annan, however, looked anything other than excited about the prospect.
“What are they?” he asked. “Are you saying that you think they’ll come and take us away?”
“Oh, hello there,” the Doctor greeted, finally noticing him. “Which one are you? I’ve been trying to pick up all your names by listening in, since no one seems to want to talk to me, but it’s a bit hard when you all keep slinking away every time you realise I’m nearby, like I’ve got something catching. And Rose says I’m rude.”
“I’m Annan,” Annan said, sounding amused, like he would have offered his name ages ago if the Doctor wasn’t so busy talking without drawing a breath.
“Nice to meet you Annan. Now, what do you know about the species that lives on this planet at this time?”
“Nothing at all. Sorry. You’re better off asking Millie, the scientist.”
“Which one’s Millie?” the Doctor asked.
“She is,” Rose pointed.
“Look at you. None of them will give me the time of day, but you’ve got it all figured out already. I shouldn’t be surprised at all,” the Doctor said, sounding almost proud.
“We’ve just been talkin’ for a bit,” Rose said. “Annan’s been tellin’ me a few things.”
The Doctor eyes flicked briefly between the two of them. “Has he?” he asked, sounding somehow slightly less cheerful than he had just moments ago.
“Could you cover for us?” Rose asked Annan. “We should go and check out whatever the Doctor’s found, but I don’t think your Captain Aubrey would be happy with us goin’ off on our own if she knew.”
Annan hesitated slightly, but then nodded. “I’ll distract them, if need be. Please don’t be too long, though.”
He didn’t ask whether they’d be back, rather taking it for granted. The Doctor seemed to notice that. He said, while they were ducking into the tree-line, trying to keep low and move quickly to make sure they weren’t spotted, “So, you’ve clearly managed to gain that boy’s trust. Been using your wiles on him, have you?” He was clearly trying to make it sound joking. He didn’t quite succeed. More than anything, he just sounded a bit annoyed, the way she’d noticed that he’d always acted (back when he had big ears and a leather jacket) when she’d spent time with people like Adam and Jack and especially Mickey.
“Yeah, right,” Rose said, laughing. “He’s nice enough, but I don’t think so. He’s all alien and stuff.”
Rose realised what she’d said just moments after it was already out there.
“Right,” the Doctor said flatly.
“I didn’t -”
“The tracks go this way,” the Doctor interrupted loudly, clearly signalling an end to that line of discussion. Not that it had been a discussion, really. Not that they’d ever actually just talk about it, like normal people.
“That way?” Rose asked, her heart sinking, looking up at what might as well, to Rose’s eyes, have been a sheer cliff. “How’re we gonna get up there?”
“There are rocks and things to act as footholds and pave the way,” the Doctor said. “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
True to his word, the Doctor continuously steadied her the whole way up and even caught her when she nearly fell. He even suggested that they rest partway up, even though he clearly didn’t need to himself. All of it was done, though, with a strange tentativeness that she hadn’t seen from him since she’d figured out that he was still the same man and had taken his new hand. She wasn’t used to him acting as though he wasn’t sure whether he should touch her, and regretted bitterly implying that she thought there was something wrong with him being alien.
When the hill ended, and the Doctor pulled her over the edge, Rose was too busy catching her breath and being relieved the struggle was over to notice their surroundings straight away. The Doctor’s sharp indrawn breath drew her attention, though.
It looked like what Rose imagined an internment camp must have been like, a mostly enclosed space topped with hundreds of feeble bodies lying on the ground, or barely propping themselves up. It was sort of like New Earth all over again, except that the only obvious signs of sickness here were how thin the creatures were, and how they looked too old and exhausted to really even move. They almost looked dead, except for the rise and fall that clearly indicated that they all, or at least most of them, were breathing.
That was the worst part of it all. They were alive. Rose never before thought that she’d think of that as a curse.
Most of them seemed barely able to move, but any that could shuffle themselves enough to turn their eyes onto the Doctor and Rose did so, staring right back at them as if they were the strange sight. It was unnerving.
“What...” Rose began. “What happened here? Is it some sort of plague?”
“No,” the Doctor said. “There’d be a few who were healthy, if that were the case. All species other than clone stock tend to have enough biological diversity that at least some of them would survive.”
“Maybe some of ’em did,” Rose said. “Maybe they got scared that they’d get sick as well and just abandoned them.” She hated the idea even as she was saying it. How could anyone see all of this and not want to help them, even if they’d have to put themselves at risk to do so?
“There’s no evidence of anyone healthy walking away from this,” the Doctor said grimly. “Not recently, anyway.”
“But what about those tracks down near the ship?” Rose asked. “Someone had to have made those. And I can’t see any of these people climbin’ to get back up here. I could barely do it. They look like they’d sort of keel over straight away.”
“It would explain the dragging marks,” the Doctor said contemplatively. “It would be an effort, but maybe some of them would be strong enough to manage the trip. They must have to go collect food and water and such. Or, I don’t know, maybe they don’t. Maybe they won’t be around long enough to need to.”
Rose shivered.
“Why are they all starin’ at us like that?” she asked, distracting herself. “Is it because they’ve never seen a human before?”
After a long pause in which they both look out over the crowd, the Doctor said, “I think it might be because we’re old, actually.”
“We’re old? But they all look...”
So old that they were about to die. The words hung between them as clearly as if they’d been spoken aloud, but Rose didn’t want to actually voice them. She didn’t want to think about the idea that every single person in the area looked as if they had just days left, if that. There were hundreds of them.
“But look at them,” the Doctor said. Rose could see that he had that expression that meant he was working something out. “They’re all like that, except one or two here or there that look just a little more alive. They’re in a terrible situation and need as much help as they can get, so where are the more able portion of their species? Why wouldn’t they be here? If you look at them, at this area, you can see they’re clearly not technologically advanced enough that they could have been teleported here or anything similar. And for all that they look old, there are some things about them, and the way they seem to be existing, that suggests they haven’t been around for all that long.”
“What’re you sayin’?” Rose asked, not sure she really wanted him to confirm what it sounded like he was talking about, but at the same time needing him to just say it, to make it real.
“I think most of them are just days old. Well, maybe a week or two in some cases.”
“How’s that possible?” Rose breathed, horrified. “Are their lives really so short that they can die of old age just days after bein’ born? How would they even have time to make more of them? I mean, even if they make babies in a different way to humans... well, where are they?”
The Doctor looked as though he was weighing his words. “I think they do have very short lives, yes, but not the way you’re thinking. They don’t go from babies to middle aged to elderly and dying in a span of days. Because you’re right; none of them look young, or even just a little younger. None. So either somehow there’s not a single new child to be found in this whole little civilisation, in which case it should have died out already, or...”
“Or they’re all children,” Rose finished. She felt like she wanted to be sick. “God, that’d mean they’re just babies. All of them.”
“What if they’re born this way,” the Doctor postulated, “frail and with many of the symptoms that usually come with age in humans? What if they’re so fragile that they die before they get a chance to live?” The Doctor snorted bitterly. “Humans have this strange saying that youth is wasted on the young. Not here, if I’m right, and I really think I am.
“That’s why they’re staring at us like that,” the Doctor concluded. “We’re something very strange to them; people who’ve survived through our childhood.”
“But what would even cause that?” Rose asked. “Being born old?”
“It is how we are,” a small voice said from the ground nearby. “How it has always been.”
“You can talk,” Rose blurted, stunned. It (or he or she, Rose guessed, but she couldn’t really figure out how to tell which) was only a few days old, probably. She hadn’t thought they’d be able to learn to speak so quickly. If they were anything like humans, after all, it would be years before they lived long enough for their brains to develop well enough to learn speech, or even to remember anything about being alive. She hoped that wasn’t true for them. Even if they did only live a short time, she’d like to think they at least understood what it was like to be alive for some of that. Otherwise, their lives seemed pointless. No type of life should be like that.
“We have evolved,” it said. “This is our way of life. It has been like this for as long as our accounts have been passed down. There are stories handed down of a lucky few who lived on for countless lifetimes, but no more. Now we all sicken and pass quickly.”
“And you mature quickly as well,” the Doctor said despondently. “Right... Well, you have to, don’t you? You have to understand concepts like death early so that you can realise just how much life you need to fit into just a few days. Lives that are over in the blink of an eye.”
The Doctor looked directly at Rose in a way that made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, as if he saw the same thing when he looked at her as he saw in these people all around them.
Was that really what she was to him? Just the blink of an eye, and that was all?
“Doctor,” Rose snapped quietly, “they can all actually hear you.”
“Sorry,” the Doctor said, for once sounding suitably chastised.
“It is all right,” the little person said. “We understand our fate, and we are not afraid to face it.” It let out something that sounded like a weak cough to Rose’s ears. “We do not have a choice.”
It went still.
“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “I’m so sorry.”
It took Rose a long moment to realise that he, or she, or it, was dead. Even though she’d known, of course, that it was likely to die any day now, that knowledge had been purely theoretical until then. She hadn’t expected it to happen right in front of her, with no warning. For all its suddenness, though, it was such an unremarkable death that it somehow made their situation even more pitiable.
Not with a bang, but a whimper, as the Doctor had once said.
She’d never even known the poor thing’s name.
“We have to help them,” Rose said quietly, finally looking away from the body.
“We might not be able to,” the Doctor replied. “If this is part of their DNA, if it’s not due to disease or any external factor... I can’t tamper with a whole species like that. I won’t.”
Rose nearly pointed out that he meddled in people’s lives all the time, but she quickly realised what he was saying. Changing a whole species, trying to ‘fix’ the way they naturally were so that they were more in line with what the Doctor thought they should be... well, he’d be a bit like a god, wouldn’t he? Whatever the Doctor was, Rose didn’t think he was willing to step onto that pedestal, and she could sort of see why.
“Should we tell the others back at the ship that this lot are here?” Rose asked.
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’re likely here to study the planet, and that means its inhabitants as well. I’ve seen what happens when people ‘study’ alien species they don’t understand. This lot don’t deserve that. Their lives are already hard enough. And, like I said earlier, there’s nothing in recorded history to suggest that there’s anything alive and sentient living on this planet at this point in time. If the crew of that ship found out about them, don’t you think there would be?”
The Doctor moved to walk away, but Rose hesitated, looking down at the pitiable little body. “Shouldn’t we bury it?” she asked. “I feel like we should do somethin'. It doesn’t look like the others’d be strong enough to do it themselves.”
The Doctor shook his head sadly. “With so many of them passing all the time, they must have some way that they deal with their dead. It’d be more disrespectful to interfere.”
Rose didn’t feel quite right leaving it there, all alone at the edge of the group of them, but she followed the Doctor anyway.
As the Doctor started to help her back down the slope, his hands steadying her waist as he dug his own feet in to balance himself, Rose was distracted by something that was wholly unexpected.
“Is that what it looks like?” Rose asked, pointing.
The Doctor looked around to stare at the same massive staircase that had drawn her attention.
“How’d they go and build that?” she said almost under her breath.
“Well,” said the Doctor, “There could be another species on this planet, though in a place this small you’d think we’d have seen something that would point to that by now. And our little friend back there did say that some of them used to live on for what sounded like years.”
Rose frowned. “Years like that, though? I can’t see how they’d have the strength for this.”
The Doctor didn’t seem to have an answer, for once.
At another time, in another place, she might have complained about how they’d climbed all the way up that torturous hill when there was a perfectly serviceable staircase just across the way. However, she didn’t think she had the right or the inclination to complain about anything at all after what she’d just seen. She’d never felt so lucky, in truth.
So instead, they proceeded down the staircase in relative silence, each caught up in their own thoughts.
His hand, however, found hers, supporting her in a very different way than how it had on the trip upwards. The grip of it felt a lot less uncertain than it had earlier, as if he realised just how welcome any contact between them was after all.
Part Two