Fanfic: Doctor Who: Pillar of Salt 3/6
Author: kadath_or_bust, aka Unknown Kadath
Words: 3,400
Rating: T
Series: The Other Egg of the Phoenix (but stands alone)
Summary: On a beach in Norway, Rose Tyler made a choice. Now she’s wondering if she made a mistake-and where she can go from here.
Thanks to my lovely betas: tardis-mole, my alarmingly thorough nit-picky beta, Mornea, my philosophical beta, and TempusDominus10, my wildly overenthusiastic beta/devil on my shoulder egging me on.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I even stole the other egg of the phoenix from Neil Gaiman.
Part I: Fixed Abodes Part II: Sealed With a Kiss
Part III: Changes
Even in my dreams
I try to fight but I can’t ever win
Dan Auerbach, “Whispered Words”
8. Then-Not Really All Right At All
“Are you all right?” asked Jackie, her voice pitched low.
She’d been acting her usual self-cheerful, chatty, complaining about the unimportant things, little bit of the ditzy blond, really-until a few minutes ago. They were waiting in the Bergen Airport for the next flight to London. She and Rose had collapsed into chairs, footsore (and heart-sore, in Rose’s case) but the doctor hadn’t stayed still for long. He was wandering around, staring at everything (a poster of a Dalek, with warnings in three languages and phone numbers for sightings, had given him pause) and as soon as he was out of earshot Jackie had turned to her daughter.
“Course I’m all right,” said Rose. God, I sound like him, she thought, a little disgusted with herself. When did I stop being able to admit something’s wrong? To my own mother? But she didn’t take it back.
Jackie gave her a hard, shrewd look. “No. Something’s wrong.”
“Really, it isn’t, Mum. Look, I’m back, everything’s all right, and …” Her gaze drifted to a distant figure in a blue suit, currently reading the evacuation diagram. She wondered what he thought of the bit about the bomb shelters. The last few years had not been kind to this world. “He’s here. For good. I’m … great.”
“But you’re thinkin’ you picked the wrong one. Now don’t go tellin’ me you’re not,” Jackie said, over Rose’s protests. “I’ve seen how you watch him when he ain’t looking.”
She hadn't meant to say anything. But she suddenly found she had to tell someone. It was too much for her to bear alone. “He ain't the same. He don't even talk the same, Mum.”
“Sounds near enough to me. Bit less posh, maybe.” Jackie shrugged. “Used to talk like he was from the north, too, come to that. An he was the same man.”
“That was … different.”
“Don't see how.”
“Look, it’s just … confusing, okay?”
Jackie put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, pulling her close. “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “But that man over there loves you. He gave you a chance to stay wi’ him, an’ stay with us-with your family. Now don’t go spoiling what you’ve got worrying over what you can’t have.”
“They both loved me,” said Rose, very softly. She had to believe that.
“But only one could say it,” said Jackie, as if that decided things. Bit rich, really, coming from someone who’d always had a very definite opinion about the things men said-and not a flattering one, either.
“Did he-“ Rose looked around to see where the doctor was. Nowhere to be seen. She didn’t want him hearing this, but she had to know. “Did he look back?”
“Rose-“
She fixed her mother with a hard look of her own. “Did he?” she demanded.
“No,” said Jackie, after a long pause. “And neither should you.”
There was a long silence, then. Jackie broke it. “There is somethin’ wrong, isn’t there? About Himself? Really wrong, I mean, not just the voice or whatever.”
Yes. Yes there was. There was the ice cream, for one. But Rose couldn’t think of a way to explain it to her mother without sounding silly. She didn’t want to explain it. If she didn’t say it out loud, maybe it wouldn’t seem as real.
“Not now, Mum,” she said. And, when Jackie tried to pursue it, “I said not now. He’s comin’ back, an’ I can’t let him see me cry.”
The doctor bounced up to them and fell into the seat beside Rose, grinning like a loon. “I found a little shop!” he said, like he’d discovered El Dorado. “I love a little shop, don’t you? Come on, we got time, come an’ have a look!”
9. Now-Lost
“I know you’ve changed,” said Rose, reaching out to him again, trying to show him with the warmth of her eyes that it was all right.
He took a step back, out of her reach. “No,” he insisted. “I haven’t. Not inside, not in any way that matters.” Now he reached out to her, taking her hand and pressing it to his chest over his single heart. It felt like it was beating too fast, and a little unsteadily. “This doesn’t change who I am.”
How could it not change you? she thought. Losing a whole heart … how could there not be anything else missing with it?
It was ironic, really. She’d searched for so long, and when she’d finally seen him down that dark street … they’d run towards each other, all the world forgotten, and she’d seen the joy in his face and known he did love her. Even if he never said it.
And then came the Dalek. And she begged him not to change, not to regenerate, so she wouldn’t have to learn to love the same man with a different face all over again. And he hadn’t.
And the doctor had been born, and the Doctor had left. And she was left with a different man with the same face.
“No,” she said. “I know you’re different.”
“But I’m not. Honestly, Rose, I’m not, I’m just the same. I’m him. I remember seein’ you in the street-that was me, Rose-an’ then the, the Dalek …” He took her by the shoulders, staring earnestly into her eyes. “I was in your arms. You helped carry me to the TARDIS. You begged me not to change, an’ I didn’t. See? I’m right here. I found a way to stay me. An’ then it all goes black, an’ I wake up wi’ one heart goin’ … I did it for you, Rose.”
God. He really believed that. He thought he was the Doctor. What must that be like, to believe you were one person, and have to live with the body and mind of someone else?
It was her fault. Her fault the doctor had to suffer. And her fault the Doctor was alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice catching. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t … when he regenerated the first time, I felt like I lost ‘im. I didn’t want …”
“No, no no no no no … Rose, oh, Rose, no,” he babbled. “Cos I didn’t wanna change, either. ‘S like … like dying. Losing part of myself, cos I can’t go back to who I was. An' I like bein' me. Waited a long time to be me. ‘Sides, what if I had changed? No Doctor-Donna, nobody to save us …”
She sniffed, hard, though her eyes were still dry, and nodded.
“An’, all right, maybe I’m a bit diff’rent,” he conceded. “Not from before the metacrisis, but from when you knew me. Cos it’s been years, I’ve been places, I done stuff, yeah? Course it changed me. An’ look at you. Look how you’ve changed.”
10. Then-Years
There was only one flight left to London that day. They ended up flying coach, because the small airship only had two first-class cabins, both taken.
She sat beside him on the zeppelin, her hands lying cold in her lap, and listened to him talk. She had her eyes closed, and in the bright sun and the shadows of the clouds she could imagine she was a small child, dreaming away a summer’s afternoon.
But the dream was a lie, wasn’t it? Because her Doctor had left her. It was over. She couldn’t even dream of going back, now, couldn’t even pretend that if she could just reach him everything would be all right.
“D’you remember the Kohinoor?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to fake a bit of enthusiasm. At first she’d been relieved to hear him talk about old times, comforted. He’d been talking nonstop for hours, bouncing up and down in his seat, kicking his trainers in the air like a big kid. Sometimes he’d sit with his nose smooshed up against the window (and of course, he had to take the window seat), exclaiming over things outside, saying things like, “Ooo, you’ve got barges in this universe, too!”
A prim-looking woman in the row in front of them had looked back at him oddly. Until he started talking to her. Her head had snapped around to the front so hard Rose thought she must have given herself whiplash, and she hadn’t looked back since.
But now the doctor was flagging, shadows forming under his eyes and a hoarse note in his voice. And still he refused to give in and shut up. Rose thought about reaching over and taking his hand again, but she found his hands were otherwise occupied. He’d taken out the little piece of TARDIS coral and was turning it over and over.
“Five years,” he told her. “Wellll, give or take. Depends on the growing conditions. But then we’ll be off. Just like old times, Rose, you an’ me, in the TARDIS. Forever.” He turned a somewhat feverish gaze on her. “Just the same, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, not having the heart to contradict him. “So what sort of growing conditions?”
“Well, water and a nutrient mix to start with,” he said. “An’ a modulated temporal flux-field. Straight artron energy’d be better, but she can probably convert tachyons well ‘nuff. Gonna have to “invent” most of the equipment myself. But some of the components …” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know where I could find a post-magnetic chronon inhibitor, do ya, Rose?”
There was a triumphant quirk at the corner of his mouth, like he expected her to be impressed by all that. Like he thought it proved he hadn’t changed. And it didn’t, but it was still reassuring to hear him talk like that. Even if the accent was a little off.
Kind of sexy, too.
And perhaps because he sounded so much like the Doctor, she couldn’t resist teasing him a bit.
“Well, no, never heard of one of those …” she started. “How’s that work, now? Cos it sounds like it’d create a discontinuity between time inside and outside the field, an’ then use the friction to create a modulated pulse. Yeah?”
He turned his entire body around in his seat to stare at her, gaping like a stranded fish, and his eyes bulged even more than usual. The prim woman in the row in front of them very nearly looked back again, but controlled herself at the last moment.
“S’pose we could modify a dilithium-based shield generator to do something similar,” she went on, now grinning openly. “Add a magnetic regulator and feed it back through the thermoconverters …”
She trailed off, her smile fading a bit. She was suddenly aware that this was not her Doctor, and she wasn’t quite the same Rose as the teenaged shop girl he used to know. Maybe this new doctor wouldn’t like Brainy Rose. Maybe he’d give her that wrong-footed, blustery, I-prefer-women-I-can-impress face she sometimes got from some of her male colleagues.
Then a huge, delighted grin spread over his face, ear to ear. “Rose Tyler! You went and got you’re A-levels!” And he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her in a great big breath-stealing Doctor-hug. “Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene!”
“Bit more than A-levels,” she said, as he settled back into his seat.
“My Rose,” he said proudly.
“Now hold on, that’s my Rose,” said Jackie, without any real resentment. “And there’s no need to act so surprised, neither.”
“Hold it, hold it,” said Rose. “I’m too old for a custody battle. But if you’re gonna fight, wait until I get out from between ya.”
“S’pose we can share,” conceded the doctor.
“Course we can,” said Jackie. “For five years, anyway. Then I suppose you’ll be off again.”
There was a note of resignation in her tone.
“Don’t go blamin’ it all on him, Mum,” said Rose. “I’ve been travelin’ on my own, you know.”
Jackie leaned across her daughter to address the doctor. “She has, too,” she said. “Ramblin’ Rose, that’s what she is. Don’t bother calling half the time, neither.”
The doctor gave Rose a wistful look. “Stories to tell, eh?”
“Yeah, stories.” All those years apart. Maybe they’d talk it over, dredge up all those memories, find out they’d become different people. Maybe she’d changed as much as he had.
Maybe that was why …
No. Don’t think that.
The doctor had turned away, looking out the window. With the sun coming from the other direction, she could see his reflection clearly-a troubled frown across a darkening sky.
Perhaps he saw her reflection watching him. He turned back with a sunny smile, good enough to fool anyone but her. But she’d known that face too long and too well to miss the worry in his eyes, even if it wasn’t quite the same man looking out at her.
“Soooo,” he said, changing the subject. “Dimension Cannon? Really? What’s that do, then?”
“Well,” she said, mimicking his light tone and meaning it even less than he did, “I stick on a helmet, climb into the barrel, an’ ask somebody to light the fuse …”
“Noooo. Really?” He frowned. “Who came up wi’ a daft name like that, anyway?”
“Harley. You’ll meet Harley, s’pose.” That would be interesting to watch.
“So how’s it work?”
“Well, we didn’t want to damage the walls of the universe, like with the hoppers.” She gave her mother a pointed glare that made no impression whatsoever. “So we decided to try creating a phase shift around whatever we were sending through. Slip it right through the walls, like a ghost.”
“Huh. No, but see, you can’t-not when the walls are intact. Cos the higher-dimensional sheaves of the barrier are quantum-interlaced.”
“Oh …” She made a face. “I hadn’t thought of that … an’ here I was, thinkin’ I was so brilliant.”
“You are brilliant,” he told her. But he still looked worried. “Tell me, Rose … what level of phase shift did you use to create that effect?”
Rose opened her mouth, closed it, looked around. The prim woman was partly turned around in her seat again. “Shouldn’t really be talkin’ about this in public, you know,” she murmured to the doctor.
“But what did you use for shielding?” he persisted.
“Oh, enough of this,” said Jackie, inadvertently saving Rose from a conversation she really, really didn’t want to have. “I get enough of this nonsense at home. Anyway, look, they’re gonna start serving dinner.”
“Dinner? Oh, good,” said the doctor, completely distracted.
11. Now-Werewolf
“I ain’t talking ‘bout that physics degree you’re workin’ on, neither,” said the doctor. There was something thunderous in his expression, a shadow in his eyes, but it didn’t reach as deep as the Oncoming Storm. This was a more human look, hurt and resentment and accusation. “Cos I know why you didn’t wanna talk about the Dimension Cannon. You couldn’t launch a conker across the Void wi’out a massive phase conversion. An’ you’re brilliant, Rose, you really are, but you were workin’ wi’ tech you didn’t understand, not really.”
And now there was something worse in his eyes. Pity. Fear. Not for himself, but for her.
“Even wi’out knowing what I know,” he went on, gentle and relentless, “you knew it was dangerous. Had to. You all had to know. So why’d they send you? Why send the Director’s daughter?”
She wanted to ask him to stop, wanted to tell him anything if he would just leave it. But it wouldn’t change anything.
Too late. Things had already changed.
“Because of Bad Wolf,” she said, before he could say it for her. “They didn’t want to let me go. Dad least of all. But I was the only one who could. Mitch Adams tried it first, an’ it almost killed him. The others couldn’t even go near it when it was operating, not without getting sick. But it didn’t bother me.”
He didn’t tell her it was all right. Maybe it wasn’t. He shoved his hands in his pockets, a subtle don’t-touch-me gesture, putting distance between them. And his eyes were still stern. “I’ve always known there was a trace of Bad Wolf left in you. Like an old scar. But it’s been reopened. An’ every time you used the Cannon, every time you crossed the Void, it must’ve opened a bit more. What did you used for shielding?”
“Quantum dampers, at first,” she said, her mouth dry. “But it limited our range. So in the later trials, I went unshielded.”
He didn’t say anything. That was the worst of all.
No. Worst was that she’d done it to herself, willingly. She’d hurled herself into the emptiness between universes. And in the silence of the broken places, she’d stretched her mind, straining for direction, learning to feel the eddies of time and space and other things she had no name for.
Until one day, while resting in the blessed solidity of a material world, she realized she could still feel it. Realized that her travels were making her into something she didn’t recognize.
And she’d kept going.
“I can feel currents,” she told the doctor, willing him to understand that it wasn’t important. “Just on the edge of my mind. I can feel … energy, and the Time Vortex. I can feel the walls of the universe.”
And now the last little slivers of cracks were sealing up, too tight for even thought to pass through. Forever.
Like a tomb.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. His voice was gentle now. Terribly gentle.
She looked away. She’d had enough of crying for today. “Dunno. I mean, it don’t matter, yeah? So I can sense the Time Vortex. Doesn’t mean anything, does it? Does it change anything?”
“Rose. Oh, Rose.” He went to her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. She held onto him, too, and it felt like being held by the Doctor again. Like she was safe. “Course it don’t matter. I knew, see, I knew from the moment I saw you again. I can feel it in you, like … like you got a little bit of the sun in you, burnin’ away.”
“My parents don’t know,” she said, all in a rush. “They know I could find my way cos I’d traveled with you before, they knew it didn’t make me sick, but … I just want to be home, the way things used to be, and-“
Her voice cracked, and she stopped, not wanting to listen to it.
“Shh,” he said, stroking her hair. “You don’t want them to treat you differently. You don’t want them lookin’ at ya like you’ve changed.”
“But I guess I have.” Changed into something … less than human.
“It don’t matter,” said the doctor, pulling away from her just far enough to look into her eyes with a sort of desperation. “You hear me? Not to me. Not ever. You’re still my Rose. And I’m still me. I’m still the Doctor.”
She wanted to tell him it didn’t matter to her, either. Should tell him. He’d been through so much, and here he was, trying to comfort her. But she couldn’t return the favor, not now.
“But you can say it,” she said. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t matter.”
Coming Soon: Promises
Words: 3,400
Rating: T
Series: The Other Egg of the Phoenix (but stands alone)
Summary: On a beach in Norway, Rose Tyler made a choice. Now she’s wondering if she made a mistake-and where she can go from here.
Thanks to my lovely betas: tardis-mole, my alarmingly thorough nit-picky beta, Mornea, my philosophical beta, and TempusDominus10, my wildly overenthusiastic beta/devil on my shoulder egging me on.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I even stole the other egg of the phoenix from Neil Gaiman.
Part I: Fixed Abodes Part II: Sealed With a Kiss
Part III: Changes
Even in my dreams
I try to fight but I can’t ever win
Dan Auerbach, “Whispered Words”
8. Then-Not Really All Right At All
“Are you all right?” asked Jackie, her voice pitched low.
She’d been acting her usual self-cheerful, chatty, complaining about the unimportant things, little bit of the ditzy blond, really-until a few minutes ago. They were waiting in the Bergen Airport for the next flight to London. She and Rose had collapsed into chairs, footsore (and heart-sore, in Rose’s case) but the doctor hadn’t stayed still for long. He was wandering around, staring at everything (a poster of a Dalek, with warnings in three languages and phone numbers for sightings, had given him pause) and as soon as he was out of earshot Jackie had turned to her daughter.
“Course I’m all right,” said Rose. God, I sound like him, she thought, a little disgusted with herself. When did I stop being able to admit something’s wrong? To my own mother? But she didn’t take it back.
Jackie gave her a hard, shrewd look. “No. Something’s wrong.”
“Really, it isn’t, Mum. Look, I’m back, everything’s all right, and …” Her gaze drifted to a distant figure in a blue suit, currently reading the evacuation diagram. She wondered what he thought of the bit about the bomb shelters. The last few years had not been kind to this world. “He’s here. For good. I’m … great.”
“But you’re thinkin’ you picked the wrong one. Now don’t go tellin’ me you’re not,” Jackie said, over Rose’s protests. “I’ve seen how you watch him when he ain’t looking.”
She hadn't meant to say anything. But she suddenly found she had to tell someone. It was too much for her to bear alone. “He ain't the same. He don't even talk the same, Mum.”
“Sounds near enough to me. Bit less posh, maybe.” Jackie shrugged. “Used to talk like he was from the north, too, come to that. An he was the same man.”
“That was … different.”
“Don't see how.”
“Look, it’s just … confusing, okay?”
Jackie put an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, pulling her close. “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “But that man over there loves you. He gave you a chance to stay wi’ him, an’ stay with us-with your family. Now don’t go spoiling what you’ve got worrying over what you can’t have.”
“They both loved me,” said Rose, very softly. She had to believe that.
“But only one could say it,” said Jackie, as if that decided things. Bit rich, really, coming from someone who’d always had a very definite opinion about the things men said-and not a flattering one, either.
“Did he-“ Rose looked around to see where the doctor was. Nowhere to be seen. She didn’t want him hearing this, but she had to know. “Did he look back?”
“Rose-“
She fixed her mother with a hard look of her own. “Did he?” she demanded.
“No,” said Jackie, after a long pause. “And neither should you.”
There was a long silence, then. Jackie broke it. “There is somethin’ wrong, isn’t there? About Himself? Really wrong, I mean, not just the voice or whatever.”
Yes. Yes there was. There was the ice cream, for one. But Rose couldn’t think of a way to explain it to her mother without sounding silly. She didn’t want to explain it. If she didn’t say it out loud, maybe it wouldn’t seem as real.
“Not now, Mum,” she said. And, when Jackie tried to pursue it, “I said not now. He’s comin’ back, an’ I can’t let him see me cry.”
The doctor bounced up to them and fell into the seat beside Rose, grinning like a loon. “I found a little shop!” he said, like he’d discovered El Dorado. “I love a little shop, don’t you? Come on, we got time, come an’ have a look!”
9. Now-Lost
“I know you’ve changed,” said Rose, reaching out to him again, trying to show him with the warmth of her eyes that it was all right.
He took a step back, out of her reach. “No,” he insisted. “I haven’t. Not inside, not in any way that matters.” Now he reached out to her, taking her hand and pressing it to his chest over his single heart. It felt like it was beating too fast, and a little unsteadily. “This doesn’t change who I am.”
How could it not change you? she thought. Losing a whole heart … how could there not be anything else missing with it?
It was ironic, really. She’d searched for so long, and when she’d finally seen him down that dark street … they’d run towards each other, all the world forgotten, and she’d seen the joy in his face and known he did love her. Even if he never said it.
And then came the Dalek. And she begged him not to change, not to regenerate, so she wouldn’t have to learn to love the same man with a different face all over again. And he hadn’t.
And the doctor had been born, and the Doctor had left. And she was left with a different man with the same face.
“No,” she said. “I know you’re different.”
“But I’m not. Honestly, Rose, I’m not, I’m just the same. I’m him. I remember seein’ you in the street-that was me, Rose-an’ then the, the Dalek …” He took her by the shoulders, staring earnestly into her eyes. “I was in your arms. You helped carry me to the TARDIS. You begged me not to change, an’ I didn’t. See? I’m right here. I found a way to stay me. An’ then it all goes black, an’ I wake up wi’ one heart goin’ … I did it for you, Rose.”
God. He really believed that. He thought he was the Doctor. What must that be like, to believe you were one person, and have to live with the body and mind of someone else?
It was her fault. Her fault the doctor had to suffer. And her fault the Doctor was alone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice catching. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t … when he regenerated the first time, I felt like I lost ‘im. I didn’t want …”
“No, no no no no no … Rose, oh, Rose, no,” he babbled. “Cos I didn’t wanna change, either. ‘S like … like dying. Losing part of myself, cos I can’t go back to who I was. An' I like bein' me. Waited a long time to be me. ‘Sides, what if I had changed? No Doctor-Donna, nobody to save us …”
She sniffed, hard, though her eyes were still dry, and nodded.
“An’, all right, maybe I’m a bit diff’rent,” he conceded. “Not from before the metacrisis, but from when you knew me. Cos it’s been years, I’ve been places, I done stuff, yeah? Course it changed me. An’ look at you. Look how you’ve changed.”
10. Then-Years
There was only one flight left to London that day. They ended up flying coach, because the small airship only had two first-class cabins, both taken.
She sat beside him on the zeppelin, her hands lying cold in her lap, and listened to him talk. She had her eyes closed, and in the bright sun and the shadows of the clouds she could imagine she was a small child, dreaming away a summer’s afternoon.
But the dream was a lie, wasn’t it? Because her Doctor had left her. It was over. She couldn’t even dream of going back, now, couldn’t even pretend that if she could just reach him everything would be all right.
“D’you remember the Kohinoor?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, trying to fake a bit of enthusiasm. At first she’d been relieved to hear him talk about old times, comforted. He’d been talking nonstop for hours, bouncing up and down in his seat, kicking his trainers in the air like a big kid. Sometimes he’d sit with his nose smooshed up against the window (and of course, he had to take the window seat), exclaiming over things outside, saying things like, “Ooo, you’ve got barges in this universe, too!”
A prim-looking woman in the row in front of them had looked back at him oddly. Until he started talking to her. Her head had snapped around to the front so hard Rose thought she must have given herself whiplash, and she hadn’t looked back since.
But now the doctor was flagging, shadows forming under his eyes and a hoarse note in his voice. And still he refused to give in and shut up. Rose thought about reaching over and taking his hand again, but she found his hands were otherwise occupied. He’d taken out the little piece of TARDIS coral and was turning it over and over.
“Five years,” he told her. “Wellll, give or take. Depends on the growing conditions. But then we’ll be off. Just like old times, Rose, you an’ me, in the TARDIS. Forever.” He turned a somewhat feverish gaze on her. “Just the same, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she said, not having the heart to contradict him. “So what sort of growing conditions?”
“Well, water and a nutrient mix to start with,” he said. “An’ a modulated temporal flux-field. Straight artron energy’d be better, but she can probably convert tachyons well ‘nuff. Gonna have to “invent” most of the equipment myself. But some of the components …” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t know where I could find a post-magnetic chronon inhibitor, do ya, Rose?”
There was a triumphant quirk at the corner of his mouth, like he expected her to be impressed by all that. Like he thought it proved he hadn’t changed. And it didn’t, but it was still reassuring to hear him talk like that. Even if the accent was a little off.
Kind of sexy, too.
And perhaps because he sounded so much like the Doctor, she couldn’t resist teasing him a bit.
“Well, no, never heard of one of those …” she started. “How’s that work, now? Cos it sounds like it’d create a discontinuity between time inside and outside the field, an’ then use the friction to create a modulated pulse. Yeah?”
He turned his entire body around in his seat to stare at her, gaping like a stranded fish, and his eyes bulged even more than usual. The prim woman in the row in front of them very nearly looked back again, but controlled herself at the last moment.
“S’pose we could modify a dilithium-based shield generator to do something similar,” she went on, now grinning openly. “Add a magnetic regulator and feed it back through the thermoconverters …”
She trailed off, her smile fading a bit. She was suddenly aware that this was not her Doctor, and she wasn’t quite the same Rose as the teenaged shop girl he used to know. Maybe this new doctor wouldn’t like Brainy Rose. Maybe he’d give her that wrong-footed, blustery, I-prefer-women-I-can-impress face she sometimes got from some of her male colleagues.
Then a huge, delighted grin spread over his face, ear to ear. “Rose Tyler! You went and got you’re A-levels!” And he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her in a great big breath-stealing Doctor-hug. “Brilliant! Fantastic! Molto bene!”
“Bit more than A-levels,” she said, as he settled back into his seat.
“My Rose,” he said proudly.
“Now hold on, that’s my Rose,” said Jackie, without any real resentment. “And there’s no need to act so surprised, neither.”
“Hold it, hold it,” said Rose. “I’m too old for a custody battle. But if you’re gonna fight, wait until I get out from between ya.”
“S’pose we can share,” conceded the doctor.
“Course we can,” said Jackie. “For five years, anyway. Then I suppose you’ll be off again.”
There was a note of resignation in her tone.
“Don’t go blamin’ it all on him, Mum,” said Rose. “I’ve been travelin’ on my own, you know.”
Jackie leaned across her daughter to address the doctor. “She has, too,” she said. “Ramblin’ Rose, that’s what she is. Don’t bother calling half the time, neither.”
The doctor gave Rose a wistful look. “Stories to tell, eh?”
“Yeah, stories.” All those years apart. Maybe they’d talk it over, dredge up all those memories, find out they’d become different people. Maybe she’d changed as much as he had.
Maybe that was why …
No. Don’t think that.
The doctor had turned away, looking out the window. With the sun coming from the other direction, she could see his reflection clearly-a troubled frown across a darkening sky.
Perhaps he saw her reflection watching him. He turned back with a sunny smile, good enough to fool anyone but her. But she’d known that face too long and too well to miss the worry in his eyes, even if it wasn’t quite the same man looking out at her.
“Soooo,” he said, changing the subject. “Dimension Cannon? Really? What’s that do, then?”
“Well,” she said, mimicking his light tone and meaning it even less than he did, “I stick on a helmet, climb into the barrel, an’ ask somebody to light the fuse …”
“Noooo. Really?” He frowned. “Who came up wi’ a daft name like that, anyway?”
“Harley. You’ll meet Harley, s’pose.” That would be interesting to watch.
“So how’s it work?”
“Well, we didn’t want to damage the walls of the universe, like with the hoppers.” She gave her mother a pointed glare that made no impression whatsoever. “So we decided to try creating a phase shift around whatever we were sending through. Slip it right through the walls, like a ghost.”
“Huh. No, but see, you can’t-not when the walls are intact. Cos the higher-dimensional sheaves of the barrier are quantum-interlaced.”
“Oh …” She made a face. “I hadn’t thought of that … an’ here I was, thinkin’ I was so brilliant.”
“You are brilliant,” he told her. But he still looked worried. “Tell me, Rose … what level of phase shift did you use to create that effect?”
Rose opened her mouth, closed it, looked around. The prim woman was partly turned around in her seat again. “Shouldn’t really be talkin’ about this in public, you know,” she murmured to the doctor.
“But what did you use for shielding?” he persisted.
“Oh, enough of this,” said Jackie, inadvertently saving Rose from a conversation she really, really didn’t want to have. “I get enough of this nonsense at home. Anyway, look, they’re gonna start serving dinner.”
“Dinner? Oh, good,” said the doctor, completely distracted.
11. Now-Werewolf
“I ain’t talking ‘bout that physics degree you’re workin’ on, neither,” said the doctor. There was something thunderous in his expression, a shadow in his eyes, but it didn’t reach as deep as the Oncoming Storm. This was a more human look, hurt and resentment and accusation. “Cos I know why you didn’t wanna talk about the Dimension Cannon. You couldn’t launch a conker across the Void wi’out a massive phase conversion. An’ you’re brilliant, Rose, you really are, but you were workin’ wi’ tech you didn’t understand, not really.”
And now there was something worse in his eyes. Pity. Fear. Not for himself, but for her.
“Even wi’out knowing what I know,” he went on, gentle and relentless, “you knew it was dangerous. Had to. You all had to know. So why’d they send you? Why send the Director’s daughter?”
She wanted to ask him to stop, wanted to tell him anything if he would just leave it. But it wouldn’t change anything.
Too late. Things had already changed.
“Because of Bad Wolf,” she said, before he could say it for her. “They didn’t want to let me go. Dad least of all. But I was the only one who could. Mitch Adams tried it first, an’ it almost killed him. The others couldn’t even go near it when it was operating, not without getting sick. But it didn’t bother me.”
He didn’t tell her it was all right. Maybe it wasn’t. He shoved his hands in his pockets, a subtle don’t-touch-me gesture, putting distance between them. And his eyes were still stern. “I’ve always known there was a trace of Bad Wolf left in you. Like an old scar. But it’s been reopened. An’ every time you used the Cannon, every time you crossed the Void, it must’ve opened a bit more. What did you used for shielding?”
“Quantum dampers, at first,” she said, her mouth dry. “But it limited our range. So in the later trials, I went unshielded.”
He didn’t say anything. That was the worst of all.
No. Worst was that she’d done it to herself, willingly. She’d hurled herself into the emptiness between universes. And in the silence of the broken places, she’d stretched her mind, straining for direction, learning to feel the eddies of time and space and other things she had no name for.
Until one day, while resting in the blessed solidity of a material world, she realized she could still feel it. Realized that her travels were making her into something she didn’t recognize.
And she’d kept going.
“I can feel currents,” she told the doctor, willing him to understand that it wasn’t important. “Just on the edge of my mind. I can feel … energy, and the Time Vortex. I can feel the walls of the universe.”
And now the last little slivers of cracks were sealing up, too tight for even thought to pass through. Forever.
Like a tomb.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. His voice was gentle now. Terribly gentle.
She looked away. She’d had enough of crying for today. “Dunno. I mean, it don’t matter, yeah? So I can sense the Time Vortex. Doesn’t mean anything, does it? Does it change anything?”
“Rose. Oh, Rose.” He went to her and wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight. She held onto him, too, and it felt like being held by the Doctor again. Like she was safe. “Course it don’t matter. I knew, see, I knew from the moment I saw you again. I can feel it in you, like … like you got a little bit of the sun in you, burnin’ away.”
“My parents don’t know,” she said, all in a rush. “They know I could find my way cos I’d traveled with you before, they knew it didn’t make me sick, but … I just want to be home, the way things used to be, and-“
Her voice cracked, and she stopped, not wanting to listen to it.
“Shh,” he said, stroking her hair. “You don’t want them to treat you differently. You don’t want them lookin’ at ya like you’ve changed.”
“But I guess I have.” Changed into something … less than human.
“It don’t matter,” said the doctor, pulling away from her just far enough to look into her eyes with a sort of desperation. “You hear me? Not to me. Not ever. You’re still my Rose. And I’m still me. I’m still the Doctor.”
She wanted to tell him it didn’t matter to her, either. Should tell him. He’d been through so much, and here he was, trying to comfort her. But she couldn’t return the favor, not now.
“But you can say it,” she said. “Don’t tell me that doesn’t matter.”
Coming Soon: Promises