Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (15/27)
Title - Chaos Theory in Vortex Orbits in Relative Dimensions in Time and Space (15/27)
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, OCs
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for Brem and Athena. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - In which...Well. Yes. Sorry to do this to you, but the rest of my week looked booked from this point, so you're getting two consecutive posts and then I'm leaving you with this for a bit...
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks to my beta of awesome, jlrpuck, currently somewhere in the air en route to Kansas City. Many thanks also to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly, and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14
Chapter Fifteen
He kept them in the Vortex, until Rose and the children began complaining about the lack of milk. It was unusual for him to keep them so long without a stop at some planet or other, and he wondered if Rose was suspicious, if Rose knew that he was scared. If she didn’t suspect at that point, she must have suspected when he suggested they visit her mother while they pick up milk. Relations with Jackie may be at an all-time high, but he still never asked that they stop and visit her.
But if Rose was suspicious, she let it slide.
He went to Earth, to Jackie’s, because it was the safest place he could think of for them. Whatever this storm was, gathering, unbalancing the air around him, Rose and the kids would surely be safe at Jackie’s. He needed to go out, to confront this storm, to stop behaving like a bloody coward and just get it over with, but in the meantime, he thought, he’d just get his little family settled, safe and sound, before trying to persuade Rose to let him go.
He went to Jackie’s to keep them safe, and he had never been so wrong in his life. Not in 900 years of existence--and he had been spectacularly wrong at points of that 900-year existence. But everything paled in comparison to his wrongness at that moment.
The TARDIS missed Jackie’s flat, landing them in a playground a short distance away, and that should have raised red flags. It had been years, since before Rose had become pregnant with Brem, since he had missed landing the TARDIS in Jackie’s flat. But it didn’t alarm him, because Brem and Athena giggled their way through the playground, and he had actually thought, at the time, that it had been a gift from the TARDIS, letting the kids play a bit, happy and carefree.
And by the time he’d realized that things were a mess, here on this Earth, he was trapped. There was a huge row with Rose. He had to figure out where the ghosts were coming from, of course he did, if he didn’t the entire planet would possibly explode, but he wanted Rose and the children in Jackie’s flat, where it was safe. Rose did not think Jackie’s flat was anything like safe, had insisted on coming with him in the TARDIS, dragging her mother along-and Rose had turned out to be right about that, although it had not looked that way when he had been standing in the TARDIS staring at a great deal of guns on the monitor.
And then there had been another row, even fiercer, when he insisted he had to leave the TARDIS, guns and all. By this point he was starting to think that they should have locked the children in the nursery, before having a furious argument about how he never carried any weapons and was going to get himself regenerated. When he flung open the door and stalked out to face the guns, he was still angry with Rose.
Even at that point, though, he hadn’t realized how bad things were. The true force of it didn’t hit him until they knew all about Rose. Whatever this Torchwood place was-the house with Rose? So long ago? Really?-they were not to be underestimated. He grabbed Jackie instead of Rose, but there was no time for silent communication. It was the best improvisation he could think of, but he couldn’t get more than that across to Rose. He tried going through the children. They knew about Rose, but they didn’t seem to know that there were Time Lord kids running around. Tell Mum to keep you hidden. Make sure she keeps you hidden. Even as he was led all about Torchwood, confronting Void ships, realizing how truly disastrous this situation was, he was constantly broadcasting to the kids.
And it all seemed familiar. He stood in the lever room, hands in his pockets, and frowned, trying to figure out why it seemed so familiar. Had he been there in one of his other incarnations? His UNIT days, perhaps?
“She one of yours?” Yvonne Hartman asked, interrupting his musings as he propped himself against her office door and stared at the stark white lever room.
“What?” The Doctor looked back at her. Jackie was looking at Yvonne’s computer monitor. Yvonne herself was gesturing to it. The Doctor walked over to it and frowned. Rose was on the monitor, trying to make herself cute with a little wave.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said.
Rose grinned, as if she were the most adorable thing in the universe. Which she wasn’t right at that moment, he thought. “I don’t always listen to him,” she said. “Just sometimes.”
He caught the code. The kids were safe. Probably locked in the nursery, and the TARDIS wouldn’t let them leave until he or Rose unlocked it. Why she had left the TARDIS was another matter entirely, and they were most assuredly going to have a discussion about that after he’d sorted all this.
He was still, at that point, thinking it could be sorted. But by the time he’d encountered the Cybermen, and the parallel worlds, and the-oh, not again-Daleks, by the time he’d stood at a window in Canary Wharf and watched a Dalek prison ship open in the London sky, he’d recognized that he was done. There was no getting out of this one. He needed to open the Void. He needed the two levers in the room behind him to do it.
And there was only one of him.
“The children,” Rose murmured, beside him suddenly, and he’d forgotten she was there. “They’ll be safe in the TARDIS?”
“Yeah, they’ll be…” Pete was talking about going back to the parallel world, taking Jackie with him, and the Doctor suddenly realized. The parallel world. Yes. They should all go to the parallel world. If he was going to be sucked into the Void, he wasn’t going to leave Rose alone on this Earth. She would be with her mother; with a rich, powerful father figure who could protect her unusual children; yes, even with Mickey, a friend and a confidante, the sort of person she still lacked on this planet, even after their efforts to build up friendships. He made his decision in a heartbeat. “Get the children.”
“What?”
He turned to look at her. “Get the children. Get them now. We need them here, in this room, now. Go.”
She was used to trusting him, completely, when he spoke in that quick-or-the-world-ends tone of voice, and she raced off, fishing for the chain she wore her TARDIS key on.
“It’s safe,” Pete was saying to Jackie, “just as soon as the Doctor closes the breach. Doctor?”
“Oh, I’m ready,” he said, grim with determination. “We just have to wait for Rose and the children before you go.”
“Go?” echoed Jackie. “I’m not going to this parallel universe. I’m not leaving you and Rose and the kids.”
“Kids?” said Mickey, who clearly had not anticipated this particular development, and the Doctor would have enjoyed that, if he wasn’t busy trying to give himself the best fighting chance at getting both levers up before he was sucked into the Void.
“You’re not leaving Rose and the kids,” he said, not looking up from his typing. “They’re going with you.”
“We’re what?” said Rose, and he couldn’t look at her, could not bear to look at her. He knew exactly how she would look, in that soft blue sweater she was wearing, Athena on her hip, her hair falling out of its elastic as it always was, clutching Brem’s hand, Brem in that daft green jumper and probably holding his sonic screwdriver in case he was needed. He knew these things, elementally, and the only thing that made him able to do this at all was the knowledge that he wasn’t going to have to live with himself after this. Not really. There was Nothing in the Void.
“I don’t have time to explain,” he clipped out, grabbing some of those absurd yellow buttons from Pete and throwing one over Rose’s head. He wasn’t sure how they worked, so he tossed one over Athena and Brem for good measure, being careful not to look at any of them as he did so.
“You’re going to make time to explain,” she said. “We’re not leaving you. Leaving you to go where?”
“To Pete’s world,” he said. “We should call it that. Pete’s world.”
“And where will you be?”
“I’ll be here. I’ve got to open the Void. Someone’s got to be here to open the Void.”
“Okay,” said Rose, and oh, she would argue with him, but did she have to? “So we’ll all stay here while you open the Void.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have time-” Pete began.
“Shut up,” Rose snapped at him. “Why not?” she demanded of the Doctor.
He sighed, pushed the 3-D glasses onto her face, then picked her hand up and waved it in front of her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked, after a second.
“Void stuff,” he said. “The Daleks and the Cybermen are covered in it. Once I open the Void, they’ll be pulled right in.” He paused. “But so will you.”
“You’re covered in it, too,” she said, staring at him. “You’ll get pulled in.” For a second, their eyes met, Rose’s behind the 3-D glasses before she threw them off. “Doctor-”
“I’ve got these,” he said, pushing away from her with effort, indicating his magnaclamps. “I’ll just hold on, it’ll be fine.”
“We’re supposed to go,” Rose clarified, flatly, and he could the fury under her tone.
“Yeah.”
“To another world and then it gets sealed off.”
“Yeah.”
“Forever?”
That he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even try.
Rose almost laughed. “You daft…Well, that’s never gonna happen.”
“Dad,” said Brem, in the very smallest of voices, and the Doctor wished fervently that he were in the Void already.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Pete said. “The plan works.”
“The plan works?” shrieked Rose. “The plan does anything but work! We’re not leaving without him.”
“I’m not leaving without them,” said Jackie.
“Oh, my God,” said Pete. “We’re going.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Rose shouted at the Doctor. “And you know you have, which is why you can’t look me in the eye while you send me away-”
He moved, so quickly he startled himself, so quickly he didn’t even know he was going to do it until it was done, but he pressed, smartly, on Rose’s yellow button. Her mouth was an “oh” of shock as she disappeared, and he did look her in the eye, because if he was going to never see her again, then he wanted to remember how beautiful she was. And the tableau she presented was exactly as he had thought, except that Brem was holding Madrid. Good lad, Brem, he thought, proudly, and winked at the boy just before he faded from sight.
The cold, white room was startlingly silent. Outside, the battle was raging, but there, in the white lever room, completely alone, the Doctor wondered what the point of any of it was. Open the Void, he thought. Open the Void and save the bloody planet and just end it.
“I think this is the on switch,” said Rose’s voice, and he turned from the monitor.
There she was, still holding both children, and still looking furious.
He was furious, too. “What are you doing?”
She pulled off her yellow button, pulled them off the children. “Not in front of the kids.”
“Listen to me,” he snapped out. “Everyone you love is in that universe. And once the breach is closed, that’s it. You’ll never see them again.”
“You bloody, stupid, arrogant bastard. How can you possibly stand there and tell me that everything I love is anywhere but in this room?” Silence rang around the room after her shout. “Not in front of the kids,” she said, breathing heavily with anger.
His eyes flickered to the kids, back to Rose. Plan B, he thought. “Fine. Take them back to the TARDIS. Stay there. We’ll have it out once I’m done here.” He turned from them, back to the monitors. “The TARDIS’ll be fine, she won’t budge an inch. You’ll be perfectly safe in there.” His voice was dull. He did not look up at her, as he heard her exit with the kids.
And then, for just a moment-one precious moment that he luxuriously allowed himself and gave Rose far too much time-he braced his arms on the table and closed his eyes and breathed. Hard. Ragged. He was a mess, he thought. He was an absolute mess. This was why they had to be in the other universe. Because he was never going to be able to do this knowing they were just in the other room, that he could go back to their marvellous life. Earth would be destroyed, the Daleks and Cybermen would see to that, but wasn’t it worth it? The fate of one tiny, insignificant planet… Who cared about Earth, if he was off on the other side of the universe, watching Rose laugh as she tried to teach the kids to sing Do Re Mi?
Pull yourself together, he told himself, sharply, opening his eyes and shaking his head briskly to try to focus.
And then Rose said, “You can’t do this, can you?”
He misunderstood her for a moment. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it and it’ll kill you. Because there are two levers. To open the Void, fully, you’ll need them both. But you’ll never be able to cross the room in time. You’ll never be able to brace yourself properly. You’ll be pulled into the Void. That’s why you were sending us away. You can’t do this.”
He ruffled his hair, considering, and then walked over to her. “You should go, Rose. Take the kids, and go. Pete will protect them, he’ll do it for Jackie. You’ll have Mickey…”
She shook her head. “You’re not understanding. You can’t do this alone. But you have never been alone.” She leaned forward and kissed him, her taste familiar as it flooded his being. Then she pulled back, combing her fingers through his hair. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“Rose…”
“Tell me. Push up the lever and then hang on? I can do it. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. When we’re done, we’ll take the kids to see ice cream being invented.”
He couldn’t do it. He wanted to. He wanted to send her away, but he couldn’t. He’d done it once that day. He couldn’t do it again. He wanted this life. He just wanted it. He reached for her and pulled her into a suffocating hug, burying his face into that soft, blue sweater. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah.”
The building actually shook, which registered with him enough to push her away. “We have to do this now. Push up the lever. Then hang on.”
He looked over at her as they got into position. She smiled at him, and he knew she was reassuring him, and the idea, of her reassuring him… He loved her. He’d known it for years, while he’d been pretending not to know it, not to know what word to put to it. But he loved her, and suddenly wanted to say it.
“Ready?” she said. “On three.”
He wanted to protest. I’m not ready. I have something I need to say.
“One,” she said. “Two.”
He moved, pushing the lever up and grabbing onto the magnaclamp, and really, it was working gloriously. He laughed with delight, as he looked over at Rose. They would be fine, he thought. They were really, really, really going to be-
There was a sudden showering of sparks from Rose’s lever. “Offline,” the computer informed them, helpfully. The delight faded from his face, as he met Rose’s eyes. Don’t, he wanted to tell her, even as she dropped to the lever, struggling to push it back into its upright position. She was fighting against the pull of the Void to do it, and he could tell the effort it was taking her. Don’t, he wanted to plead with her, even as she scrambled to find purchase on the lever.
“Hold on,” he shouted at her, as the Void whipped at her clothing and hair. “Hold on,” he begged, as she slipped, as her fingers clawed frantically, as she fell, plummeting.
“No!” he shouted. “No!” As if that were going to do anything at all. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, was frozen into place as he watched in horror, as she fell, in a white room, toward the Void, and he realized at that moment, far too late, why the room was so familiar to him. He dreamed it. He dreamed this.
And, as the horror was breaking over him, at the last possible moment, Pete Tyler appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her. There was one moment when Rose looked over her shoulder, met his eyes, before she vanished. And then, only seconds later, the Void closed.
And everything in the white room was silent again.
Next Chapter
Author --
earlgreytea68
Rating - Teen
Characters -- Ten, Rose, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, OCs
Spoilers: Through the end of S2.
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for Brem and Athena. They're all mine.)
Summary - And then there came a day when Rose said she was having a baby. Hijinks ensue from there.
Author’s Notes - In which...Well. Yes. Sorry to do this to you, but the rest of my week looked booked from this point, so you're getting two consecutive posts and then I'm leaving you with this for a bit...
The icon was created by
punkinart , commissioned by
aibhinn , who graciously offered it to me for my use.
Thanks to my beta of awesome, jlrpuck, currently somewhere in the air en route to Kansas City. Many thanks also to Kristin-who-won't-get-an-LJ, who brainstormed this fic with me endlessly, and
bouncy_castle79 , who gave it the first major outside-eyes read-through.
Ch.1 - Ch. 2 - Ch. 3 - Ch. 4 - Ch. 5 - Ch. 6 - Ch. 7 - Ch. 8 - Ch. 9 - Ch. 10 - Ch. 11 - Ch. 12 - Ch. 13 - Ch. 14
Chapter Fifteen
He kept them in the Vortex, until Rose and the children began complaining about the lack of milk. It was unusual for him to keep them so long without a stop at some planet or other, and he wondered if Rose was suspicious, if Rose knew that he was scared. If she didn’t suspect at that point, she must have suspected when he suggested they visit her mother while they pick up milk. Relations with Jackie may be at an all-time high, but he still never asked that they stop and visit her.
But if Rose was suspicious, she let it slide.
He went to Earth, to Jackie’s, because it was the safest place he could think of for them. Whatever this storm was, gathering, unbalancing the air around him, Rose and the kids would surely be safe at Jackie’s. He needed to go out, to confront this storm, to stop behaving like a bloody coward and just get it over with, but in the meantime, he thought, he’d just get his little family settled, safe and sound, before trying to persuade Rose to let him go.
He went to Jackie’s to keep them safe, and he had never been so wrong in his life. Not in 900 years of existence--and he had been spectacularly wrong at points of that 900-year existence. But everything paled in comparison to his wrongness at that moment.
The TARDIS missed Jackie’s flat, landing them in a playground a short distance away, and that should have raised red flags. It had been years, since before Rose had become pregnant with Brem, since he had missed landing the TARDIS in Jackie’s flat. But it didn’t alarm him, because Brem and Athena giggled their way through the playground, and he had actually thought, at the time, that it had been a gift from the TARDIS, letting the kids play a bit, happy and carefree.
And by the time he’d realized that things were a mess, here on this Earth, he was trapped. There was a huge row with Rose. He had to figure out where the ghosts were coming from, of course he did, if he didn’t the entire planet would possibly explode, but he wanted Rose and the children in Jackie’s flat, where it was safe. Rose did not think Jackie’s flat was anything like safe, had insisted on coming with him in the TARDIS, dragging her mother along-and Rose had turned out to be right about that, although it had not looked that way when he had been standing in the TARDIS staring at a great deal of guns on the monitor.
And then there had been another row, even fiercer, when he insisted he had to leave the TARDIS, guns and all. By this point he was starting to think that they should have locked the children in the nursery, before having a furious argument about how he never carried any weapons and was going to get himself regenerated. When he flung open the door and stalked out to face the guns, he was still angry with Rose.
Even at that point, though, he hadn’t realized how bad things were. The true force of it didn’t hit him until they knew all about Rose. Whatever this Torchwood place was-the house with Rose? So long ago? Really?-they were not to be underestimated. He grabbed Jackie instead of Rose, but there was no time for silent communication. It was the best improvisation he could think of, but he couldn’t get more than that across to Rose. He tried going through the children. They knew about Rose, but they didn’t seem to know that there were Time Lord kids running around. Tell Mum to keep you hidden. Make sure she keeps you hidden. Even as he was led all about Torchwood, confronting Void ships, realizing how truly disastrous this situation was, he was constantly broadcasting to the kids.
And it all seemed familiar. He stood in the lever room, hands in his pockets, and frowned, trying to figure out why it seemed so familiar. Had he been there in one of his other incarnations? His UNIT days, perhaps?
“She one of yours?” Yvonne Hartman asked, interrupting his musings as he propped himself against her office door and stared at the stark white lever room.
“What?” The Doctor looked back at her. Jackie was looking at Yvonne’s computer monitor. Yvonne herself was gesturing to it. The Doctor walked over to it and frowned. Rose was on the monitor, trying to make herself cute with a little wave.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said.
Rose grinned, as if she were the most adorable thing in the universe. Which she wasn’t right at that moment, he thought. “I don’t always listen to him,” she said. “Just sometimes.”
He caught the code. The kids were safe. Probably locked in the nursery, and the TARDIS wouldn’t let them leave until he or Rose unlocked it. Why she had left the TARDIS was another matter entirely, and they were most assuredly going to have a discussion about that after he’d sorted all this.
He was still, at that point, thinking it could be sorted. But by the time he’d encountered the Cybermen, and the parallel worlds, and the-oh, not again-Daleks, by the time he’d stood at a window in Canary Wharf and watched a Dalek prison ship open in the London sky, he’d recognized that he was done. There was no getting out of this one. He needed to open the Void. He needed the two levers in the room behind him to do it.
And there was only one of him.
“The children,” Rose murmured, beside him suddenly, and he’d forgotten she was there. “They’ll be safe in the TARDIS?”
“Yeah, they’ll be…” Pete was talking about going back to the parallel world, taking Jackie with him, and the Doctor suddenly realized. The parallel world. Yes. They should all go to the parallel world. If he was going to be sucked into the Void, he wasn’t going to leave Rose alone on this Earth. She would be with her mother; with a rich, powerful father figure who could protect her unusual children; yes, even with Mickey, a friend and a confidante, the sort of person she still lacked on this planet, even after their efforts to build up friendships. He made his decision in a heartbeat. “Get the children.”
“What?”
He turned to look at her. “Get the children. Get them now. We need them here, in this room, now. Go.”
She was used to trusting him, completely, when he spoke in that quick-or-the-world-ends tone of voice, and she raced off, fishing for the chain she wore her TARDIS key on.
“It’s safe,” Pete was saying to Jackie, “just as soon as the Doctor closes the breach. Doctor?”
“Oh, I’m ready,” he said, grim with determination. “We just have to wait for Rose and the children before you go.”
“Go?” echoed Jackie. “I’m not going to this parallel universe. I’m not leaving you and Rose and the kids.”
“Kids?” said Mickey, who clearly had not anticipated this particular development, and the Doctor would have enjoyed that, if he wasn’t busy trying to give himself the best fighting chance at getting both levers up before he was sucked into the Void.
“You’re not leaving Rose and the kids,” he said, not looking up from his typing. “They’re going with you.”
“We’re what?” said Rose, and he couldn’t look at her, could not bear to look at her. He knew exactly how she would look, in that soft blue sweater she was wearing, Athena on her hip, her hair falling out of its elastic as it always was, clutching Brem’s hand, Brem in that daft green jumper and probably holding his sonic screwdriver in case he was needed. He knew these things, elementally, and the only thing that made him able to do this at all was the knowledge that he wasn’t going to have to live with himself after this. Not really. There was Nothing in the Void.
“I don’t have time to explain,” he clipped out, grabbing some of those absurd yellow buttons from Pete and throwing one over Rose’s head. He wasn’t sure how they worked, so he tossed one over Athena and Brem for good measure, being careful not to look at any of them as he did so.
“You’re going to make time to explain,” she said. “We’re not leaving you. Leaving you to go where?”
“To Pete’s world,” he said. “We should call it that. Pete’s world.”
“And where will you be?”
“I’ll be here. I’ve got to open the Void. Someone’s got to be here to open the Void.”
“Okay,” said Rose, and oh, she would argue with him, but did she have to? “So we’ll all stay here while you open the Void.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“We don’t have time-” Pete began.
“Shut up,” Rose snapped at him. “Why not?” she demanded of the Doctor.
He sighed, pushed the 3-D glasses onto her face, then picked her hand up and waved it in front of her eyes.
“What is it?” she asked, after a second.
“Void stuff,” he said. “The Daleks and the Cybermen are covered in it. Once I open the Void, they’ll be pulled right in.” He paused. “But so will you.”
“You’re covered in it, too,” she said, staring at him. “You’ll get pulled in.” For a second, their eyes met, Rose’s behind the 3-D glasses before she threw them off. “Doctor-”
“I’ve got these,” he said, pushing away from her with effort, indicating his magnaclamps. “I’ll just hold on, it’ll be fine.”
“We’re supposed to go,” Rose clarified, flatly, and he could the fury under her tone.
“Yeah.”
“To another world and then it gets sealed off.”
“Yeah.”
“Forever?”
That he couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even try.
Rose almost laughed. “You daft…Well, that’s never gonna happen.”
“Dad,” said Brem, in the very smallest of voices, and the Doctor wished fervently that he were in the Void already.
“We don’t have time to argue,” Pete said. “The plan works.”
“The plan works?” shrieked Rose. “The plan does anything but work! We’re not leaving without him.”
“I’m not leaving without them,” said Jackie.
“Oh, my God,” said Pete. “We’re going.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” Rose shouted at the Doctor. “And you know you have, which is why you can’t look me in the eye while you send me away-”
He moved, so quickly he startled himself, so quickly he didn’t even know he was going to do it until it was done, but he pressed, smartly, on Rose’s yellow button. Her mouth was an “oh” of shock as she disappeared, and he did look her in the eye, because if he was going to never see her again, then he wanted to remember how beautiful she was. And the tableau she presented was exactly as he had thought, except that Brem was holding Madrid. Good lad, Brem, he thought, proudly, and winked at the boy just before he faded from sight.
The cold, white room was startlingly silent. Outside, the battle was raging, but there, in the white lever room, completely alone, the Doctor wondered what the point of any of it was. Open the Void, he thought. Open the Void and save the bloody planet and just end it.
“I think this is the on switch,” said Rose’s voice, and he turned from the monitor.
There she was, still holding both children, and still looking furious.
He was furious, too. “What are you doing?”
She pulled off her yellow button, pulled them off the children. “Not in front of the kids.”
“Listen to me,” he snapped out. “Everyone you love is in that universe. And once the breach is closed, that’s it. You’ll never see them again.”
“You bloody, stupid, arrogant bastard. How can you possibly stand there and tell me that everything I love is anywhere but in this room?” Silence rang around the room after her shout. “Not in front of the kids,” she said, breathing heavily with anger.
His eyes flickered to the kids, back to Rose. Plan B, he thought. “Fine. Take them back to the TARDIS. Stay there. We’ll have it out once I’m done here.” He turned from them, back to the monitors. “The TARDIS’ll be fine, she won’t budge an inch. You’ll be perfectly safe in there.” His voice was dull. He did not look up at her, as he heard her exit with the kids.
And then, for just a moment-one precious moment that he luxuriously allowed himself and gave Rose far too much time-he braced his arms on the table and closed his eyes and breathed. Hard. Ragged. He was a mess, he thought. He was an absolute mess. This was why they had to be in the other universe. Because he was never going to be able to do this knowing they were just in the other room, that he could go back to their marvellous life. Earth would be destroyed, the Daleks and Cybermen would see to that, but wasn’t it worth it? The fate of one tiny, insignificant planet… Who cared about Earth, if he was off on the other side of the universe, watching Rose laugh as she tried to teach the kids to sing Do Re Mi?
Pull yourself together, he told himself, sharply, opening his eyes and shaking his head briskly to try to focus.
And then Rose said, “You can’t do this, can you?”
He misunderstood her for a moment. “I’ll do it.”
“You’ll do it and it’ll kill you. Because there are two levers. To open the Void, fully, you’ll need them both. But you’ll never be able to cross the room in time. You’ll never be able to brace yourself properly. You’ll be pulled into the Void. That’s why you were sending us away. You can’t do this.”
He ruffled his hair, considering, and then walked over to her. “You should go, Rose. Take the kids, and go. Pete will protect them, he’ll do it for Jackie. You’ll have Mickey…”
She shook her head. “You’re not understanding. You can’t do this alone. But you have never been alone.” She leaned forward and kissed him, her taste familiar as it flooded his being. Then she pulled back, combing her fingers through his hair. “Tell me what I have to do.”
“Rose…”
“Tell me. Push up the lever and then hang on? I can do it. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine. When we’re done, we’ll take the kids to see ice cream being invented.”
He couldn’t do it. He wanted to. He wanted to send her away, but he couldn’t. He’d done it once that day. He couldn’t do it again. He wanted this life. He just wanted it. He reached for her and pulled her into a suffocating hug, burying his face into that soft, blue sweater. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yeah.”
The building actually shook, which registered with him enough to push her away. “We have to do this now. Push up the lever. Then hang on.”
He looked over at her as they got into position. She smiled at him, and he knew she was reassuring him, and the idea, of her reassuring him… He loved her. He’d known it for years, while he’d been pretending not to know it, not to know what word to put to it. But he loved her, and suddenly wanted to say it.
“Ready?” she said. “On three.”
He wanted to protest. I’m not ready. I have something I need to say.
“One,” she said. “Two.”
He moved, pushing the lever up and grabbing onto the magnaclamp, and really, it was working gloriously. He laughed with delight, as he looked over at Rose. They would be fine, he thought. They were really, really, really going to be-
There was a sudden showering of sparks from Rose’s lever. “Offline,” the computer informed them, helpfully. The delight faded from his face, as he met Rose’s eyes. Don’t, he wanted to tell her, even as she dropped to the lever, struggling to push it back into its upright position. She was fighting against the pull of the Void to do it, and he could tell the effort it was taking her. Don’t, he wanted to plead with her, even as she scrambled to find purchase on the lever.
“Hold on,” he shouted at her, as the Void whipped at her clothing and hair. “Hold on,” he begged, as she slipped, as her fingers clawed frantically, as she fell, plummeting.
“No!” he shouted. “No!” As if that were going to do anything at all. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, was frozen into place as he watched in horror, as she fell, in a white room, toward the Void, and he realized at that moment, far too late, why the room was so familiar to him. He dreamed it. He dreamed this.
And, as the horror was breaking over him, at the last possible moment, Pete Tyler appeared out of nowhere and grabbed her. There was one moment when Rose looked over her shoulder, met his eyes, before she vanished. And then, only seconds later, the Void closed.
And everything in the white room was silent again.
Next Chapter