BEYOND THE RIFT: Those Who Have Crossed
Title: Those Who Have Crossed
Characters/Pairing: The Doctor/Martha/Des, mention of Mathias/Pagiel
Word Count: 3632
Rating: PG
Summary: In which people are kidnapped for their own good, time passes unexpectedly, and things apparently just can't stay where you left them.
Notes: Written for meritinabox prompt #26, crimes of love, and the (very) late prompt for April 4 at itsproductivity, "it was a rainy day". This was meant to be around 500 words. SEE HOW THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN? It is an AU of doom. And yes, I'm going to be writing more of it. Because AUs will take over your brain. (And yes, totally an AU, because even if everyone manages to return to their own - or at least, some universe - I fully expect the Doctor to have regenerated by that point.)
Disclaimer: Martha and the Doctor belong to the BBC, Des belongs to kawaiispinel, and beyondtherift apparently belongs to no one but itself and will eat your brain.
It's not long before it's just the three of them standing on this side of the Rift. Not long relatively speaking, that is, not long when they think of what it took to get here, alive and mostly in one piece. None of them want to look at each other, and none of them want to look away. It leads to a series of odd, skittering glances that linger until there's a chance two of them might lock eyes, then dart quickly away.
The Doctor clears his throat at last; he's more accustomed to goodbyes than anyone should have to be. "So, Des!" he says with forced cheerfulness, swinging around to plug a series of universal coordinates into the machine stationed beside the Rift. Neither Des nor Martha thinks to question why he knows the appropriate coordinates off the top of his head. "Ready to go home?"
He's not, and they're not ready to lose him, but there's only so long they can stall. Des puts on an utterly false smile the Doctor catches only out of the corner of his eye. "Good a time as any."
Des shifts his weight, momentarily wavering between the Doctor and Martha, and finally swings toward Martha, as the Doctor had known he would. The Doctor turns his back, so he doesn't see the lingering kiss, the way Martha stubbornly does not cry, her hands on the sides of his face, sliding down to rest on his chest. He doesn't focus on the words they whisper to each other, and pretends not to hear at all.
"Take care of yourself. And don't forget you can die now."
The Doctor ducks his head, flips a switch.
"Believe me, I won't."
The weight of knowledge in his voice, that it's not long until he has to die anyway, no matter how careful he is.
The Rift pulsates, rippling blue-purple-green, flashing brighter.
"I love you."
The Doctor turns as Martha releases Des reluctantly, as Des turns to face him, and now he does meet his eyes. He wonders what Des sees there, what he ever saw there, if there's any hint of apology now, of regret, or if he's walled it off well enough.
"Doctor," he says uncertainly. The Doctor's been here before, and it ended with the words "see you in hell" and running away as far as he could go. It's not happening that way this time. He steps forward to hug him, hard as he can, and Des' arms around him are just as tight, crushing the breath from him. It doesn't matter. Des murmurs something against his shoulder that might be "I love you" or might be "thank you" or might be something else entirely. The Doctor won't ask.
The Doctor lets go first, and starts to step back. Des grabs him before he gets more than half a step away, pulling him forward with a hand fisted in his jacket, and kisses him, hard and warm and desperate, the sort of kiss you know is the last. The Doctor returns it without thinking, swaying in to him, and doesn't open his eyes for a second or two after Des releases him.
I really am sorry.
"You should go," he says when he opens his eyes, glancing past Des to the Rift. "It won't stay open much longer - I set it to close in... very soon."
Des nods. There's something in his eyes, fighting to rise to the surface, but some things can't be said aloud. Some things can't be said at all. He reaches out to clasp the Doctor's arm, briefly, looks to Martha one last tie, and takes a step back. "Take care of each other."
Another step and he's gone, and the Doctor and Martha close their eyes involuntarily against the flash of purple-white light.
As soon as the glow's faded, the Doctor's eyes snap open, and he lunges to grab Martha by the arm, giving her no time to process, no time to grieve. The display on his machine is flashing a warning: a countdown.
Twenty seconds until the Rift closes.
Nineteen.
"Time to go!"
Martha stares at him. "You didn't change the coordinates."
"I know."
Fifteen.
Fourteen.
"So we're just going to go running off to Des' universe?" Her expression flickers uncertainly, like she's not certain if she likes the idea or not. "Doctor..."
"It's not Des' universe."
Six.
Five.
Realization dawning on her face. "You didn't-"
"Really, Martha," he says, tightening his grip on her arm. "We have to go." He pulls her forward, toward the Rift at a run, tumbling through just as the countdown in his head hits one.
Everything goes white. Brilliant, blinding white, white noise ringing in his ears, and the only thing that's real is his hand still on Martha's arm, and he can feel it even if he can't see it. It can't have been too late, it can't, they have to-
The world rushes back in a whirl of noise and darkness, and the Doctor falling very hard into someone, Martha landing on top of him a moment later. It hurts, but it means they made it, and the Doctor lets out a short, breathless laugh. "I did it!"
Martha rolls off him with a soft groan, hands to her temples. "Is it supposed to give you a migraine?"
"I told you we should have gone earlier. We stepped through just as the Rift was closing..."
Beneath him, Des coughs and pushes himself up, rolling the Doctor off him and onto a rough stone floor. Not so much floor as... ground. It's a cave, the Doctor realizes, and one he's been in before. Though it was a lot more... occupied at the time, something to do with eggs and an alien he can't quite remember the name of. Come to think of it, he's not certain it had a name.
"Doctor?" Des says slowly, on his feet now. "...Martha?"
The Doctor stands smoothly, ignoring the vague concern that he might have bruised his ribs, and brushes off his suit. "Yeah, sorry. Think I got the date a bit off. Which is all for the best, really, because I don't think you would have liked to come through just to run into a very upset... egg-laying... thing."
That would have sounded a lot more impressive, he reflects, if he had an actual name for the creature.
"Definitely not," Martha says, still crouched with her eyes closed against the light coming through the mouth of the cave, "considering it was something to do with purple slime."
The Doctor takes her gently by the arm and pulls her to her feet. There must be some sort of painkillers still on the TARDIS, when they find it. If it's still there. If it's not, that presents some problems, but... "There is that too. But really-"
"I thought you were sending me home."
The Doctor releases Martha, turns to meet Des' eyes squarely. For once, it's impossible to tell what Des is feeling - not because he's gotten any better at hiding it, but rather because the primary emotion there keeps shifting, rage to relief to confusion and on and on...
"About that. Slight change of plan."
Des is still for a moment. Martha's hands fall from her temples, gaze shifting warily from the Doctor to Des. The Doctor waits for him to say or do something, gives up before long, and offers finally, "I'm sorry."
Now Des reacts, lunging forward to throw a wild punch that lands on the Doctor's cheekbone, knocks him to the ground. He should have expected that.
"They needed me there!"
The Doctor pushes himself up, ignoring the throbbing pain in his face and the fact that Des looks perfectly ready to hit him again, and stalks forward to snap in his face, "They needed you to die! I wasn't going to send you just walking into that!"
Des bristles, and raises a half-curled fist like he's thinking about hitting him again. Martha forces her way between them before he can actually throw a punch, grabbing hold of his wrist. "Stop it, both of you. My head hurts too much for this."
He lowers his fist, but persists in glowering at the Doctor over Martha's head. "What are they going to do without me?" he asks quietly. Deceptively so, but the Doctor knows better than to take that as a sign he's in the clear.
The Doctor eyes him for a moment, then turns away, toward the mouth of the cave. He left the TARDIS by a tumble of boulders a good twenty minutes' walk from here if he remembers correctly. Assuming the TARDIS hasn't been moved in that time, or something hasn't-
"Doctor!"
"What would they have done with you?" he snaps, rounding back toward Des. "They needed you as you were - immortal, between heaven and hell. You would have been dead long before you had the chance to give your heart away. I did you a favor!"
The last word echoes in the cave, too loud, and the Doctor winces. That was probably too much, wasn't it?
He studies Des' expression, clenched jaw, blue-eyed gaze frigid...
Yeah, definitely too much.
Des jerks out of Martha's grasp and starts toward the Doctor, who stumbles quickly backwards, hands raised in front of him, one finger raised to make a point. "If you'll just... just let me explain, very quickly, there are several very good reasons I think-"
Des isn't listening. Des doesn't even look at him, just shoulders roughly past and stalks out onto the rocky slope outside, starting off to what seems to be nowhere in particular. The Doctor stares after him momentarily, then turns back to Martha.
"If you think about it, this is a good thing. From what I've heard, it's not usually this easy to get him out of caves."
"Doctor..."
"He'll be fine. Give him a few hours, he'll calm down. Anyway, there aren't any major predators around here, so it's not like anything's going to eat him..."
"Wasn't something trying to eat you just before you fell through the Rift?"
"Well, yeah, but that was different, and it's... gone now..."
Martha looks less than convinced. Actually, she looks like she's considering hurting him very badly, and considering there are a number of rocks littered around the cave floor with which to hurt him...
"Alright, I'll go and find him. Don't go anywhere." He points a threatening finger at her, which she's clearly not threatened by in the least. "I mean it this time!"
*
Des didn't wander for, which the Doctor more or less expected. He couldn't leave them here if he wanted to - there's nowhere to go, and unless the Doctor's estimation of the date is further off than he thought, there's not even supposed to be any sort of civilization on this planet for another millennium at least, whichever way you go. Des runs away from them, he's a bit stuck.
The Doctor stops a metre or two behind Des, looking first to Des himself - shoulders hunched, jaw clenched from what the Doctor can see of his face, sitting crosslegged on a rocky outcropping just above a sheer drop - and then the vista Des seems to be staring at. Knowing Des, he might not be looking at it at all, just looking off into nothing to avoid looking at the Doctor, but...
The plain is actually much more interesting than the mountains behind them, though that may just be the storm rolling in, blue-black clouds crashing over themselves from the horizon like slow-motion waves. The Doctor scans the open plain for some sort of life - aren't there supposed to be massive herds of something in a scene like this? - but there's nothing he can see except for the ripple of long grass in the wind. The air's still here, his trench coat motionless. The wind hasn't reached them yet.
"Are we going to sit out here until we get rained on?" he asks at length. "Very dramatic, especially with the setting and all, but not as much fun as you'd think."
"Where are we?"
It's not the question the Doctor expected. A lot less yelling, for one thing, though his voice is tight, the anger just held in. "It's not your universe anyway. I can't bring you home."
Des, for a moment, doesn't speak. Doesn't move. And then looks back to the Doctor over his shoulder without actually looking at him. "I know that. That wasn't what I was asking. I mean..." He shakes his head and turns away again, towards the rain clouds.
"It's called Tarses. Roughly the year... three hundred thousand, going by Earth years? That's just my best guess, but... it's a good one." He steps forward and sits beside Des, legs crossed, hands clasped in front of him. "Humans colonized it... oh, ages ago, terraformed it and all, which is why the gravity and so on's so close to Earth. Then... well, you know humans, one silly mistake after another, leads to disaster, and they all die or evacuate. Planet's abandoned, more or less forgotten... They come back a couple thousand years from now. I think."
Des snorts, a little grudging smile on his lips before he realizes it and returns to scowling into the distance. "How many planets do you just know the history of? Off the top of your head?"
The Doctor smiles vaguely. "You probably don't want to know. I could tell you, but it would just be showing off."
"Yeah, you've done enough of that today." He closes off again, hunching his shoulders, jaw clenching so tight the Doctor's jaw aches in sympathy. He curls a hand into a fist on his leg, fingers pressed into his palm to keep himself from reaching out.
"Do you think that's what this was? Showing off?"
"I think it was something."
"I think we're all pretty certain it was-" Now the wind hits them, all in one big gust. The Doctor winces a bit - the combination of high places and wind seems particularly bad - and waits for it to drop off a bit. The wind seems less than intent on dropping off.
"You really think sarcasm's a good idea right now?"
"With you? Yes." The Doctor glances over, willing Des to look at him, rather than just occasional flickering glances in his general direction. It doesn't work. "It wasn't showing off."
"I know."
"You're... still going to be mad at me, aren't you?"
"How'd you guess?" Des asks, and for someone who was criticizing the Doctor's sarcasm just a minute ago... The Doctor decides not to comment on it.
He sighs and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. He has the feeling that it looks somewhat ridiculous already thanks to the wind, but at least Des' hair does too. "So... any chance you can do that on the TARDIS?"
"No."
"It's got plenty of room! You can... lock yourself in your room or wander around and probably not run into me or go hide in some corner, really, I just... Storms on Tarses get nasty, alright? And if Martha asks why we're out in the middle of it, I'm pointing at you."
"This is supposed to make me forgive you for abducting me and leaving my friends to die in another universe?"
"No, this is supposed to- I didn't leave them to die! You really think I would do that?"
Des' silence is answer enough, and the Doctor looks away with a grimace, fighting to ignore the sudden pang in his chest. All this time, you'd think that he would have learned...
Apparently not.
"They're fine. You saw them, they're back there and safe and happy, alright? I did not leave them to die."
"But now I can't go back. How do you know that hasn't changed something?"
The Doctor sighs, half a growl. "Because it doesn't work that way!"
"You don't know that!" Des snaps back, shoving himself to his feet. For a moment he's perilously close to the edge, his foot knocking a few loose rocks to tumble down the side of the rock face. Des doesn't seem to notice, but he moves away, thankfully, when the Doctor rises to his feet as well.
"I-" the Doctor starts, and then the words stop on the tip of his tongue. Anything he can think to say now would be a lie. Des waits for a minute, and then rolls his eyes, turning away.
"Yeah, I thought so." He only manages to keep his back to the Doctor for a few seconds before spinning back around, one finger pointing accusingly. "You know what? You think you can just-"
"What are you doing?"
They both stop. They both freeze. Long experience has taught them the appropriate reaction when Martha shouts at them, even if half of it is just the necessity of raising her voice to be heard over the wind. Martha holds her arms folded tightly over her chest, against the wind. Rather than dying down, it seems to have picked up while the Doctor wasn't paying attention, now tossing his trench coat about his legs, gusting hard enough occasionally that he has to brace himself against it, unthinking. He takes a few steps farther from the edge.
"We weren't-"
"You were standing on the edge of a cliff and arguing like a pair of twelve-year-old boys, from what I saw. In the middle of a storm, no less!"
The Doctor looks to Des for help, but Des is still pointedly not looking at him. Apparently he's on his own. "Well, it's not really a cliff, as such, and it's less in the middle of a storm than right before..."
"Doctor."
Des shakes his head and stalks toward Martha, leaving the Doctor behind. "Can we just find the TARDIS?" he asks, and his voice is pitched more for Martha to hear than the Doctor - the Doctor only just catches it over the wind.
"At least one of you has some sense."
The Doctor gapes. "I was just trying to-" His mouth snaps shut, jaw tightening, and he strides past them, dredging up ancient memories of where he last left the TARDIS. "Fine. Right. TARDIS. Here we go."
It's not a long or particularly difficult walk, but the sky's growing darker and darker with lowering clouds, the wind shoving them roughly about over rocky ground, and the three of them are angry and not paying a great deal of attention to where they put their feet. Not a long or difficult walk, but a silent, angry, stumbling one. The Doctor slips once, falls, and he's fairly certain twists his ankle, but says nothing and keeps walking, doing his best not to limp.
A blue box should not be hard to find in a place with absolutely no features that aren't natural. Mountain, mountain, tree, boulder, TARDIS... simple. Except that he's not seeing anything resembling a blue box, Martha and Des obviously haven't or they would have said something, and he's turned back to retrace his steps two or three times now, hoping they won't notice. Now he's getting nervous, and now he starts talking, because it's better than uncertain silence.
"It's possible your universe has a sort of inertia, so things'll work out the same way even without you there. Or, come to think of it, more likely your apocalypse won't happen at all, without you there. Circumstances are different, and from what I've heard, you were a major part of the initial..." He glances back over his shoulder, sees Des glowering at him, and trails off rather than going into the fluid nature of time and big balls of stuff.
"Anyway, they're safe. Back in the angels' universe. No matter what happens in your universe, it can't affect them. The barriers between the worlds are too solid."
He stumbles a little, catches himself on a boulder with a curved top, a bit of a dip in the middle like some massive bowl. He stops, barely hearing as Des says, "Oh, that's comforting. I haven't doomed Mathias and Paige, just the rest of my universe."
"Hold on," the Doctor says, and holds up a hand. "Just... stop."
"What?"
"I know this rock. I remember..."
Martha raises her eyebrows at him. "What about it?"
He glances to the conspicuously empty space next to the boulder. There's nothing there but rocks and dirt. "I parked the TARDIS next to it."
"Doctor."
"Yes," he says flatly, carefully not looking at her.
"Doctor."
The Doctor winces. "I know!"
Des stares, open-mouthed for a second, and takes a half step forward, almost threatening, almost like he's going to hit him again. "Not only did you kidnap me, but you lost our ride?"
"I didn't lose it!" He turns to face Des, voice rising, high and indignant. "I wasn't even here!"
"You think it matters when we're stuck on Planet Nowhere?"
The Doctor growls under his breath and bangs the side of his fist against the rock, hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to break anything. "I don't know! We'll find it! But I think it's important to note that this is not my fault!"
Thunder cracks. The rain rolls in. The Doctor closes his eyes as his hair's plastered against his head, warm rain rolls down the back of his neck, and the wind buffets around him, roaring in his ears.
Characters/Pairing: The Doctor/Martha/Des, mention of Mathias/Pagiel
Word Count: 3632
Rating: PG
Summary: In which people are kidnapped for their own good, time passes unexpectedly, and things apparently just can't stay where you left them.
Notes: Written for meritinabox prompt #26, crimes of love, and the (very) late prompt for April 4 at itsproductivity, "it was a rainy day". This was meant to be around 500 words. SEE HOW THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN? It is an AU of doom. And yes, I'm going to be writing more of it. Because AUs will take over your brain. (And yes, totally an AU, because even if everyone manages to return to their own - or at least, some universe - I fully expect the Doctor to have regenerated by that point.)
Disclaimer: Martha and the Doctor belong to the BBC, Des belongs to kawaiispinel, and beyondtherift apparently belongs to no one but itself and will eat your brain.
It's not long before it's just the three of them standing on this side of the Rift. Not long relatively speaking, that is, not long when they think of what it took to get here, alive and mostly in one piece. None of them want to look at each other, and none of them want to look away. It leads to a series of odd, skittering glances that linger until there's a chance two of them might lock eyes, then dart quickly away.
The Doctor clears his throat at last; he's more accustomed to goodbyes than anyone should have to be. "So, Des!" he says with forced cheerfulness, swinging around to plug a series of universal coordinates into the machine stationed beside the Rift. Neither Des nor Martha thinks to question why he knows the appropriate coordinates off the top of his head. "Ready to go home?"
He's not, and they're not ready to lose him, but there's only so long they can stall. Des puts on an utterly false smile the Doctor catches only out of the corner of his eye. "Good a time as any."
Des shifts his weight, momentarily wavering between the Doctor and Martha, and finally swings toward Martha, as the Doctor had known he would. The Doctor turns his back, so he doesn't see the lingering kiss, the way Martha stubbornly does not cry, her hands on the sides of his face, sliding down to rest on his chest. He doesn't focus on the words they whisper to each other, and pretends not to hear at all.
"Take care of yourself. And don't forget you can die now."
The Doctor ducks his head, flips a switch.
"Believe me, I won't."
The weight of knowledge in his voice, that it's not long until he has to die anyway, no matter how careful he is.
The Rift pulsates, rippling blue-purple-green, flashing brighter.
"I love you."
The Doctor turns as Martha releases Des reluctantly, as Des turns to face him, and now he does meet his eyes. He wonders what Des sees there, what he ever saw there, if there's any hint of apology now, of regret, or if he's walled it off well enough.
"Doctor," he says uncertainly. The Doctor's been here before, and it ended with the words "see you in hell" and running away as far as he could go. It's not happening that way this time. He steps forward to hug him, hard as he can, and Des' arms around him are just as tight, crushing the breath from him. It doesn't matter. Des murmurs something against his shoulder that might be "I love you" or might be "thank you" or might be something else entirely. The Doctor won't ask.
The Doctor lets go first, and starts to step back. Des grabs him before he gets more than half a step away, pulling him forward with a hand fisted in his jacket, and kisses him, hard and warm and desperate, the sort of kiss you know is the last. The Doctor returns it without thinking, swaying in to him, and doesn't open his eyes for a second or two after Des releases him.
I really am sorry.
"You should go," he says when he opens his eyes, glancing past Des to the Rift. "It won't stay open much longer - I set it to close in... very soon."
Des nods. There's something in his eyes, fighting to rise to the surface, but some things can't be said aloud. Some things can't be said at all. He reaches out to clasp the Doctor's arm, briefly, looks to Martha one last tie, and takes a step back. "Take care of each other."
Another step and he's gone, and the Doctor and Martha close their eyes involuntarily against the flash of purple-white light.
As soon as the glow's faded, the Doctor's eyes snap open, and he lunges to grab Martha by the arm, giving her no time to process, no time to grieve. The display on his machine is flashing a warning: a countdown.
Twenty seconds until the Rift closes.
Nineteen.
"Time to go!"
Martha stares at him. "You didn't change the coordinates."
"I know."
Fifteen.
Fourteen.
"So we're just going to go running off to Des' universe?" Her expression flickers uncertainly, like she's not certain if she likes the idea or not. "Doctor..."
"It's not Des' universe."
Six.
Five.
Realization dawning on her face. "You didn't-"
"Really, Martha," he says, tightening his grip on her arm. "We have to go." He pulls her forward, toward the Rift at a run, tumbling through just as the countdown in his head hits one.
Everything goes white. Brilliant, blinding white, white noise ringing in his ears, and the only thing that's real is his hand still on Martha's arm, and he can feel it even if he can't see it. It can't have been too late, it can't, they have to-
The world rushes back in a whirl of noise and darkness, and the Doctor falling very hard into someone, Martha landing on top of him a moment later. It hurts, but it means they made it, and the Doctor lets out a short, breathless laugh. "I did it!"
Martha rolls off him with a soft groan, hands to her temples. "Is it supposed to give you a migraine?"
"I told you we should have gone earlier. We stepped through just as the Rift was closing..."
Beneath him, Des coughs and pushes himself up, rolling the Doctor off him and onto a rough stone floor. Not so much floor as... ground. It's a cave, the Doctor realizes, and one he's been in before. Though it was a lot more... occupied at the time, something to do with eggs and an alien he can't quite remember the name of. Come to think of it, he's not certain it had a name.
"Doctor?" Des says slowly, on his feet now. "...Martha?"
The Doctor stands smoothly, ignoring the vague concern that he might have bruised his ribs, and brushes off his suit. "Yeah, sorry. Think I got the date a bit off. Which is all for the best, really, because I don't think you would have liked to come through just to run into a very upset... egg-laying... thing."
That would have sounded a lot more impressive, he reflects, if he had an actual name for the creature.
"Definitely not," Martha says, still crouched with her eyes closed against the light coming through the mouth of the cave, "considering it was something to do with purple slime."
The Doctor takes her gently by the arm and pulls her to her feet. There must be some sort of painkillers still on the TARDIS, when they find it. If it's still there. If it's not, that presents some problems, but... "There is that too. But really-"
"I thought you were sending me home."
The Doctor releases Martha, turns to meet Des' eyes squarely. For once, it's impossible to tell what Des is feeling - not because he's gotten any better at hiding it, but rather because the primary emotion there keeps shifting, rage to relief to confusion and on and on...
"About that. Slight change of plan."
Des is still for a moment. Martha's hands fall from her temples, gaze shifting warily from the Doctor to Des. The Doctor waits for him to say or do something, gives up before long, and offers finally, "I'm sorry."
Now Des reacts, lunging forward to throw a wild punch that lands on the Doctor's cheekbone, knocks him to the ground. He should have expected that.
"They needed me there!"
The Doctor pushes himself up, ignoring the throbbing pain in his face and the fact that Des looks perfectly ready to hit him again, and stalks forward to snap in his face, "They needed you to die! I wasn't going to send you just walking into that!"
Des bristles, and raises a half-curled fist like he's thinking about hitting him again. Martha forces her way between them before he can actually throw a punch, grabbing hold of his wrist. "Stop it, both of you. My head hurts too much for this."
He lowers his fist, but persists in glowering at the Doctor over Martha's head. "What are they going to do without me?" he asks quietly. Deceptively so, but the Doctor knows better than to take that as a sign he's in the clear.
The Doctor eyes him for a moment, then turns away, toward the mouth of the cave. He left the TARDIS by a tumble of boulders a good twenty minutes' walk from here if he remembers correctly. Assuming the TARDIS hasn't been moved in that time, or something hasn't-
"Doctor!"
"What would they have done with you?" he snaps, rounding back toward Des. "They needed you as you were - immortal, between heaven and hell. You would have been dead long before you had the chance to give your heart away. I did you a favor!"
The last word echoes in the cave, too loud, and the Doctor winces. That was probably too much, wasn't it?
He studies Des' expression, clenched jaw, blue-eyed gaze frigid...
Yeah, definitely too much.
Des jerks out of Martha's grasp and starts toward the Doctor, who stumbles quickly backwards, hands raised in front of him, one finger raised to make a point. "If you'll just... just let me explain, very quickly, there are several very good reasons I think-"
Des isn't listening. Des doesn't even look at him, just shoulders roughly past and stalks out onto the rocky slope outside, starting off to what seems to be nowhere in particular. The Doctor stares after him momentarily, then turns back to Martha.
"If you think about it, this is a good thing. From what I've heard, it's not usually this easy to get him out of caves."
"Doctor..."
"He'll be fine. Give him a few hours, he'll calm down. Anyway, there aren't any major predators around here, so it's not like anything's going to eat him..."
"Wasn't something trying to eat you just before you fell through the Rift?"
"Well, yeah, but that was different, and it's... gone now..."
Martha looks less than convinced. Actually, she looks like she's considering hurting him very badly, and considering there are a number of rocks littered around the cave floor with which to hurt him...
"Alright, I'll go and find him. Don't go anywhere." He points a threatening finger at her, which she's clearly not threatened by in the least. "I mean it this time!"
*
Des didn't wander for, which the Doctor more or less expected. He couldn't leave them here if he wanted to - there's nowhere to go, and unless the Doctor's estimation of the date is further off than he thought, there's not even supposed to be any sort of civilization on this planet for another millennium at least, whichever way you go. Des runs away from them, he's a bit stuck.
The Doctor stops a metre or two behind Des, looking first to Des himself - shoulders hunched, jaw clenched from what the Doctor can see of his face, sitting crosslegged on a rocky outcropping just above a sheer drop - and then the vista Des seems to be staring at. Knowing Des, he might not be looking at it at all, just looking off into nothing to avoid looking at the Doctor, but...
The plain is actually much more interesting than the mountains behind them, though that may just be the storm rolling in, blue-black clouds crashing over themselves from the horizon like slow-motion waves. The Doctor scans the open plain for some sort of life - aren't there supposed to be massive herds of something in a scene like this? - but there's nothing he can see except for the ripple of long grass in the wind. The air's still here, his trench coat motionless. The wind hasn't reached them yet.
"Are we going to sit out here until we get rained on?" he asks at length. "Very dramatic, especially with the setting and all, but not as much fun as you'd think."
"Where are we?"
It's not the question the Doctor expected. A lot less yelling, for one thing, though his voice is tight, the anger just held in. "It's not your universe anyway. I can't bring you home."
Des, for a moment, doesn't speak. Doesn't move. And then looks back to the Doctor over his shoulder without actually looking at him. "I know that. That wasn't what I was asking. I mean..." He shakes his head and turns away again, towards the rain clouds.
"It's called Tarses. Roughly the year... three hundred thousand, going by Earth years? That's just my best guess, but... it's a good one." He steps forward and sits beside Des, legs crossed, hands clasped in front of him. "Humans colonized it... oh, ages ago, terraformed it and all, which is why the gravity and so on's so close to Earth. Then... well, you know humans, one silly mistake after another, leads to disaster, and they all die or evacuate. Planet's abandoned, more or less forgotten... They come back a couple thousand years from now. I think."
Des snorts, a little grudging smile on his lips before he realizes it and returns to scowling into the distance. "How many planets do you just know the history of? Off the top of your head?"
The Doctor smiles vaguely. "You probably don't want to know. I could tell you, but it would just be showing off."
"Yeah, you've done enough of that today." He closes off again, hunching his shoulders, jaw clenching so tight the Doctor's jaw aches in sympathy. He curls a hand into a fist on his leg, fingers pressed into his palm to keep himself from reaching out.
"Do you think that's what this was? Showing off?"
"I think it was something."
"I think we're all pretty certain it was-" Now the wind hits them, all in one big gust. The Doctor winces a bit - the combination of high places and wind seems particularly bad - and waits for it to drop off a bit. The wind seems less than intent on dropping off.
"You really think sarcasm's a good idea right now?"
"With you? Yes." The Doctor glances over, willing Des to look at him, rather than just occasional flickering glances in his general direction. It doesn't work. "It wasn't showing off."
"I know."
"You're... still going to be mad at me, aren't you?"
"How'd you guess?" Des asks, and for someone who was criticizing the Doctor's sarcasm just a minute ago... The Doctor decides not to comment on it.
He sighs and reaches up to run a hand through his hair. He has the feeling that it looks somewhat ridiculous already thanks to the wind, but at least Des' hair does too. "So... any chance you can do that on the TARDIS?"
"No."
"It's got plenty of room! You can... lock yourself in your room or wander around and probably not run into me or go hide in some corner, really, I just... Storms on Tarses get nasty, alright? And if Martha asks why we're out in the middle of it, I'm pointing at you."
"This is supposed to make me forgive you for abducting me and leaving my friends to die in another universe?"
"No, this is supposed to- I didn't leave them to die! You really think I would do that?"
Des' silence is answer enough, and the Doctor looks away with a grimace, fighting to ignore the sudden pang in his chest. All this time, you'd think that he would have learned...
Apparently not.
"They're fine. You saw them, they're back there and safe and happy, alright? I did not leave them to die."
"But now I can't go back. How do you know that hasn't changed something?"
The Doctor sighs, half a growl. "Because it doesn't work that way!"
"You don't know that!" Des snaps back, shoving himself to his feet. For a moment he's perilously close to the edge, his foot knocking a few loose rocks to tumble down the side of the rock face. Des doesn't seem to notice, but he moves away, thankfully, when the Doctor rises to his feet as well.
"I-" the Doctor starts, and then the words stop on the tip of his tongue. Anything he can think to say now would be a lie. Des waits for a minute, and then rolls his eyes, turning away.
"Yeah, I thought so." He only manages to keep his back to the Doctor for a few seconds before spinning back around, one finger pointing accusingly. "You know what? You think you can just-"
"What are you doing?"
They both stop. They both freeze. Long experience has taught them the appropriate reaction when Martha shouts at them, even if half of it is just the necessity of raising her voice to be heard over the wind. Martha holds her arms folded tightly over her chest, against the wind. Rather than dying down, it seems to have picked up while the Doctor wasn't paying attention, now tossing his trench coat about his legs, gusting hard enough occasionally that he has to brace himself against it, unthinking. He takes a few steps farther from the edge.
"We weren't-"
"You were standing on the edge of a cliff and arguing like a pair of twelve-year-old boys, from what I saw. In the middle of a storm, no less!"
The Doctor looks to Des for help, but Des is still pointedly not looking at him. Apparently he's on his own. "Well, it's not really a cliff, as such, and it's less in the middle of a storm than right before..."
"Doctor."
Des shakes his head and stalks toward Martha, leaving the Doctor behind. "Can we just find the TARDIS?" he asks, and his voice is pitched more for Martha to hear than the Doctor - the Doctor only just catches it over the wind.
"At least one of you has some sense."
The Doctor gapes. "I was just trying to-" His mouth snaps shut, jaw tightening, and he strides past them, dredging up ancient memories of where he last left the TARDIS. "Fine. Right. TARDIS. Here we go."
It's not a long or particularly difficult walk, but the sky's growing darker and darker with lowering clouds, the wind shoving them roughly about over rocky ground, and the three of them are angry and not paying a great deal of attention to where they put their feet. Not a long or difficult walk, but a silent, angry, stumbling one. The Doctor slips once, falls, and he's fairly certain twists his ankle, but says nothing and keeps walking, doing his best not to limp.
A blue box should not be hard to find in a place with absolutely no features that aren't natural. Mountain, mountain, tree, boulder, TARDIS... simple. Except that he's not seeing anything resembling a blue box, Martha and Des obviously haven't or they would have said something, and he's turned back to retrace his steps two or three times now, hoping they won't notice. Now he's getting nervous, and now he starts talking, because it's better than uncertain silence.
"It's possible your universe has a sort of inertia, so things'll work out the same way even without you there. Or, come to think of it, more likely your apocalypse won't happen at all, without you there. Circumstances are different, and from what I've heard, you were a major part of the initial..." He glances back over his shoulder, sees Des glowering at him, and trails off rather than going into the fluid nature of time and big balls of stuff.
"Anyway, they're safe. Back in the angels' universe. No matter what happens in your universe, it can't affect them. The barriers between the worlds are too solid."
He stumbles a little, catches himself on a boulder with a curved top, a bit of a dip in the middle like some massive bowl. He stops, barely hearing as Des says, "Oh, that's comforting. I haven't doomed Mathias and Paige, just the rest of my universe."
"Hold on," the Doctor says, and holds up a hand. "Just... stop."
"What?"
"I know this rock. I remember..."
Martha raises her eyebrows at him. "What about it?"
He glances to the conspicuously empty space next to the boulder. There's nothing there but rocks and dirt. "I parked the TARDIS next to it."
"Doctor."
"Yes," he says flatly, carefully not looking at her.
"Doctor."
The Doctor winces. "I know!"
Des stares, open-mouthed for a second, and takes a half step forward, almost threatening, almost like he's going to hit him again. "Not only did you kidnap me, but you lost our ride?"
"I didn't lose it!" He turns to face Des, voice rising, high and indignant. "I wasn't even here!"
"You think it matters when we're stuck on Planet Nowhere?"
The Doctor growls under his breath and bangs the side of his fist against the rock, hard enough to hurt, not hard enough to break anything. "I don't know! We'll find it! But I think it's important to note that this is not my fault!"
Thunder cracks. The rain rolls in. The Doctor closes his eyes as his hair's plastered against his head, warm rain rolls down the back of his neck, and the wind buffets around him, roaring in his ears.