Fic [Doctor Who]: Things You Need (4/14)
Chapter Title: Open It Back Up
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: PG-13 (war, ethics, et cetera, and a little language)
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Beta: annissag!
Summary: The Bad Wolf may have been the lesser evil, but that doesn't make things right, and it certainly doesn't make them easy. Fortunately, a little swamp mud goes a long way. Follows immediately after Chapter 3, between "New Earth" and "Tooth and Claw". Half humor and half angst.
So you never get the things you need need need
Where it's hurt you cover up with weeds weeds weeds
Open it back up and let it bleed bleed bleed
No one knows, red red rose
Out of the cell, check. Foil a coup d’état, check. Save Rose Tyler, check. Run for your life…
Well, still working on that one. Although the coup d’état part he’s pretty proud of. And he’s not going to think right now about exactly how he saved Rose Tyler, so the running really isn’t so bad. Avoiding the eels is a good distraction.
They’ve been in the swamp for almost a day and a half. Rose is pale and drawn, but she keeps muttering about Dead Marshes, all dead and rotten, bloody hell, and he takes that as a good sign. Trying to foil the coup was great, lots of sneaking and dramatic entrances and last-minute bluffing that made Rose almost laugh. Actually succeeding in foiling the coup was fantastic. But then there were those rebels that they just missed catching by an eensy bit, those rebels who decided that it would be a great thing to ambush them while they were headed back to the TARDIS. Next thing he knew they were spending the night up a scrubby tree, soaked with swamp and stinking, unable to move, unable to sleep without falling into the welcoming arms of an angry guerrilla, unable to talk (possibly a blessing). Just able to hold on and think (actually, that wasn’t much of a blessing).
He’s picking his way around the worst of the pools, trying to find the ground that’s ground and not a bog they’ll break through. Behind him, the grumbling tells him she’s still there. He’s beyond tired, might even actually sleep, and she’s hungry, but it’s not far to the TARDIS now, at least as long as there are no more rebels with big huge guns.
Oh wait. That does look like a suspicious bush over there, doesn’t it. A suspiciously moving bush with a suspiciously barrel-like black thing poking out of it.
“Rose,” he whispers. “Don’t say anything, don’t stop walking, but be ready to run. Left.”
The grumbling stops, and he hopes she’s got it, because he can’t take his eyes off that bush until they get up with this tree that will block the sightlines, just before they get in range.
Now here’s the tree, out of the sightline. Oops, into range. Great day, this.
“Run!”
So now they’re running to the left in a wild zigzag, splashing through puddles and probably exciting every eel on this Void-damned planet, which he’s never ever coming back to. At least this’ll throw off their aim, maybe. Oh, but it’s obviously not going to stop them from trying. And oh, now they’re being chased over an open swamp, and that is a very, very big gun, and this day could not possibly get worse.
He’s never supposed to say that, because days like this always surprise him.
He looks over his shoulder to make sure Rose is still there, and she is, sprinting and covered with muck to her waist, but past her he sees the most wonderful, glorious, unimaginably lucky thing. The first gun-toting madman stops to aim just as the second runs up behind him, and smash! One guerrilla goes into the other, and one gun goes nose-first into the ground, and two angry soldiers go flat down in the swamp water.
There is a great stirring of eels.
He pauses to thank all the planets and the stars in every age for that wish he made on Astra, the one about days that couldn’t be any worse occasionally not getting worse, and Rose nearly crashes into him. That nearly sends both of them into the drink too, rendering all lucky planets and stars and balloon-wishes completely academic.
“Doctor?” she wheezes, and bends over, gasping for breath.
“Um…let’s not wait up.” He grabs her hand and starts running again, listening to her curse, and thinking it might be the best, most normal thing in the multiverse that he could hear right now. One more bend and the TARDIS is in sight.
Her hand’s out of his and she’s sprinting past him, completely single-minded and focused, no doubt, on the endless hot water heater, and suddenly he’s racing her and the gloom and the stink are gone and they’re going home-
And then he’s winning, because her foot’s gone straight through the bog and she’s literally up to her eyeballs in swamp, forty feet from the safe blue doors, shrieking.
“Eels! Oh my god, are there eels? There are eels, I’m going to die, oh god, I’m going to die in the fucking dead marshes and it’s going to be eels. I can’t get out! The water’s moving, I can feel them, they’re coming-”
And then he’s got her by the wrist and he’s heaving back (she’s 37 percent heavier waterlogged, he notes distantly). His spine is not going to thank him later, but she’s on the ground, jerking her boot out of the way as the eels break the surface. And he goes down too, smack on his backside, and lets himself flop over in the muck. Brilliant.
“Doctor?”
“Hmm?”
“Let’s never have this day again.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, look at me. I’m soaked. I stink. There is more swamp-weed in my hair than there is hair, and I don’t know if this is mud or eel-shit.” She sits up and runs a disgusted hand across her shirt. “Is this eel-shit?”
“Hmm. Maybe? No? Yeah.”
“Oh, god! Did you have to tell me? I’ve been in jail, and I’ve been shot at, and now I’m covered with eel-shit and you’re not.”
He’s got his arm over his face so he doesn’t see her stand, and then he’s glad he’s got his arm over his face because there’s a disgusting, soggy plop on his jacket. She’s throwing it. Throwing swamp muck. At him.
He sits up, wide-eyed, and she giggles, and pulls a long strand of weed out of her hair and chucks it at him too. Then she grabs something he thinks might be a dead bird (but he’s definitely not telling her) off her shoulder and screams, and giggles again, hysterically, and flings it at his head. And then more mud, and she can’t stop laughing, and the sticks from up her sleeves, and she’s going for her ruined boots now. He’d better put a stop to this, he decides, so he reaches behind him for a handful of god-knows-what, staggers to his feet, and throws it at her.
After that it gets a little, well, muddy, and it’s impossible to tell who’s winning. They’re both even filthier than he thought possible and laughing madly: this is definitely the best sound he’s ever heard in his whole nine hundred-odd years and possibly the best thing he’s ever done too. They keep missing each other; there’s slime all over the TARDIS, and he’s going to hear about it later, but he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care a bit. She’ll be fine.
Finally they both collapse again, breathless, trying not to laugh any more because it hurts, but still snorting and snickering every time they try to stop. She hauls herself up eventually and hunts around for her other boot, pulling it out of a puddle with two fingers and a completely disgusted look. He starts to struggle up, but she hauls him to his feet and hands him his jacket, which he thinks he might have tried to wrap around her head at one point.
Dragging a hand across his face, he grimaces at the slimy feel of the mud. “The TARDIS will kill us if we go inside like this.”
“Then she’s just going to have to kill us. She’s going to have to kill me all the way to my bathroom, and electrocute me the entire time I’m in the shower, which will be a long time, and then she’ll have to poison my towels. It’ll hurt, but I don’t care.”
“She’ll turn off all the hot water.”
“Better not.”
“She will, though. In the laundry too.”
“I don’t care about the laundry. This will never come clean.” And her clothes are truly vile.
“Ah, the TARDIS laundry’s brilliant. Anything will come clean if you ask her nicely. It might take three, or five, or, hmm, eight washes, but I’m definitely keeping this suit.”
“You do that. I’m burning all of this. Can I build a fire in the cloister?”
“Not the cloister!” He’s unlocking the door now, poking his head in experimentally. The ship’s growl is nothing short of epic. He pokes his head out again. “You cannot burn things in my cloister. The smell will never come out. Besides, that’s what the incinerator is for.”
“If I burn it in the incinerator,” she says ferociously, “I can’t watch it burn.”
“Sorry. No pyrotechnics in my ship. Well, at least no pyrotechnics that don’t come out of the console in my ship. Now come on. Be really nice and quiet and don’t touch anything, and we might get out of this alive.”
*
As it turns out, the TARDIS is more forgiving that he’d expected. She relents and turns the hot water back on after only twenty solid minutes of his desperate pleas (Rose is scowling and glaring at him) and mollifying platitudes. God, he’s tired. The telepathy and the running and clinging to a tree and the mud… She goes off for her six showers, and he drags on a plastic poncho (emergency storage under the coat tree) to keep the slime from getting everywhere. First stop: the wardrobe. Somewhere there’s a bathtub the size of a duck pond that Rose doesn’t know anything about, but he’s got to find another suit before he can hunt for it. Ah, blue pinstripes. Red trainers. That’ll do.
It takes two hours to get clean and persuade the ship that it’s really in her best interests to let the laundry machines work, thanks, and then he could sleep for a week. Which is saying something, since he hasn’t needed to sleep in a week. He wants to find her first, though.
She’s in the library with the couches, not the one with the science books and the wonderful big desks, wearing pajamas, sipping tea, reading a dreadful romance novel, and if she’s looking solemn, she also looks like she never got chased through a swamp by armed men. Good. She’s fine. Time to go to bed.
“Doctor?”
So much for sneaking out and leaving talking to tomorrow, when his brain might be working again.
“Rose?”
“Are you coming in here, or…what are you doing there, anyway?”
“Just making sure the TARDIS didn’t actually electrocute you in the bath. I’m going to bed.”
“You? Sleep?”
“Yes, me, sleep. Uh, see you.” He’s abrupt, but he doesn’t really have any energy for anything else.
“…Goodnight.”
He’s at his door in a minute with the ship’s helpful guidance (good thing, because he wasn’t sure he could navigate on his own right now). He lets it click shut behind him and heaves a sigh. Trainers off, jacket off, tie off, that’s enough. Flat on the bed. It’s almost disorienting to lie still after the past forty-eight hours, but he’s sure he’ll manage.
“Lights.”
The room dims from a sunny cove to the deep sea floor and he tries to relax. Not very successfully. The body gets exhausted eventually, but the mind never stops, especially not after the overload of this adventure. Dratted huge brain.
There is a tap on the door.
She doesn’t know where this room is, doesn’t technically know that it exists. The only possible explanation is that the TARDIS just decided to take her here, which means the TARDIS thinks she has a good reason to be here.
There’s a tap again.
“Rose?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you up, I just… And you left, so I thought…”
Either she makes more sense to the TARDIS, or his ship is a very bad watchdog. The lights come up about halfway, and the old girl’s poking his sore brain insistently, so she obviously thinks it’s important. He rolls his eyes and wills himself toward coherence.
“Yeah, no need to stand there talking through the door, come in.”
She slips inside, closes the door, sinks down on the step. Her eyes take in the room without staring-he’s grateful, he’s had the urge to change things since he regenerated, but every time he starts he gets interrupted. The place is a wreck, books and bits of screwdriver and the detritus of his previous self’s questionable taste in art everywhere. In her pale pajamas she looks very small against the door.
He should sit up, find his glasses, look attentive. But he can’t, physically can’t move. He sprawls. She perches on the step.
“Doctor. What happened today-yesterday-”
Yep. He knew it was going to be about this, right now, when he’s not ready for it and hasn’t slept and so the telepathic echoes are still humming through his brain. And she can’t even get it out, whatever she has to say, so he’s going to have to guess. This conversation is going to be hard. This day just never ends.
It’s Rose, and it’s now, and he actually can live with the day not ending as long as she’s going to be all right. But he’s still not totally sure that she will.
“Yes. The thing. That happened.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
Silence. He wants to tell her it’s all right, it doesn’t matter, because he wants to believe it. Wants everything to go back to normal. But she wouldn’t give him the wolf because it was too strong, and it’s made her strong too. She might never be ready to hear that it brought her something good, but it did, and there’s no going back.
“Yes.”
“I really am, please, you’ve got to understand. I looked, it hurt but I looked at what I did, and I can’t see any other way. I couldn’t….”
The memory’s on her face again and it’s choking her off. This is the test. There are only two ways it can go: she can remember to breathe on her own, or he’ll have to get it out for good, and she won’t be his Rose anymore, and she can’t ever even know he was there. It goes on forever, thirty-eight point oh-seven seconds, but forever, the black black stare and her hand over her mouth and that radiating fear. And then she gasps, and sucks in air. There is a glimmer, life in her eyes, and he’s sure he’s imagining that it’s gold and timeless, before she looks up at him with a hazel gaze.
“Did any of it make any difference?”
He’s fairly certain she can feel his relief at this point, because it’s rushing over him in waves and his mental shields are roughly as solid as Swiss cheese. There was that golden gleam too, the one that he might have hallucinated, but it makes him wonder fleetingly if she’s still the girl he thought she was, and what exactly she hears without knowing. There are so many things he’d rather she didn’t hear.
There are so many things he’d rather not tell her. And he’s so so tired.
“Do you know what I was doing while you were gone, on Satellite Five?”
“You were building a thing, a delta-thingy. It would have killed the Daleks. I guess you didn’t finish in time?”
“Delta Thingy-I forget Earth has no technology yet. I was building a Delta Wave.” And now the scientific recitation. “A delta wave is a brainwave; it’s completely normal, helps you sleep-well, it helps humans sleep, anyway. It keeps Daleks sane, insofar as that’s possible. What I was building-it was a weapon in the Time War, a kamikaze weapon. A Delta Wave transmitter disrupts normal brain activity. For Daleks, it drives them mad-they become intensely schizophrenic, and then their minds essentially eat themselves, and they die.”
She’s staring at him. This is a lecture, just science, he tells himself, and goes on.
“For humans it’s like dying from lack of sleep. Brain overload.”
Her face looks blank for a moment, and then she gets it.
“They would have died. You would’ve got the Daleks, but the whole Earth would have died, and everybody on Satellite Five.”
“Yes. The humans in other parts of the galaxy would have survived, but the people on Earth would have been wiped out. And Satellite Five too, of course. Jack knew. That’s why he helped me send you away.”
“And Time Lords? I mean, with the Delta Wave.”
“More or less like humans. It just takes longer.”
“I don’t understand. I-why? Was there really nothing else?”
“No. There wasn’t. Except to let the Daleks win.”
“So…they were going to die anyway. And all the people on Earth, and all the people on Satellite Five. And you.”
“And me. I couldn’t have regenerated, you know; it would have driven me mad same as anyone else, with no way to channel the energy.”
“So what I did was better.” He looks over and she’s got her head in her hands, her fingers clenched in her hair.
“Rose, what you did was a way out that I never even imagined because I knew it was impossible, which it was until you did it. It had consequences that never crossed my mind. In some ways it was worse than what I planned, and in some ways it was better.
“The thing is, I built the Delta Wave, but I didn’t activate it. The moment came, and I tried, but I couldn’t. There were millions of people who didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t particularly want to either, so I walked away. They-we-would have died anyway and been cloned into Daleks, and the Daleks would have taken over the galaxy, the whole universe, and I couldn’t be the one to stop it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean my solution was even more impossible than yours, for me. It’s sort of a paradox: you did an impossible thing to stop an impossible thing.”
“I still don’t see…there’s nothing good in it. When I remembered, it was like there was nothing good left in me.”
“No, there’s not. Good in it, I mean, not good in you. You’ve got loads of good, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried, let alone found a way out that meant millions of people lived who would have died. The Vortex could just as easily have destroyed everything in that sector, written it out of existence back to the birth of the Sun. Something had to guide it to touch only the Daleks.
“But you’re right; there’s no good in it. Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is?”
“No. Please don’t change the subject, Doctor, not right now.”
“I’m not. A Pyrrhic victory is a victory, but one that costs so much on all sides that it feels like it couldn’t possibly have been worth it, even if it started out as the right thing to do. It’s been a part of human legend and history for thousands of years, and a lot of times it’s senseless; the consequences are truly so great that it hardly matters who wins. But occasionally, even though the victory is empty and the cost obscene, it’s right. That’s what you did: something terrible, but right.”
“And you couldn’t.”
“No. It’s…I see things differently, sometimes. I’ve seen a lot of war. You did it because you’re human, and you saw not a threat to the universe and a million dark futures, but a way to save your people. That’s what makes you human.”
“Humans do terrible things.”
“Yes. But not as bad as Daleks, or lots of other cultures and planets and people.”
“I’m not proud.”
“If you were, I’d drop you off at the nearest penal colony. What’s going through your head is exactly what should be there, because you’re still human. Some people wouldn’t be.”
There’s a dull smack, and he forces himself up on one elbow to see her, with her head back on the door and her eyes scrunched shut and her throat working.
“Doctor…” she’s forcing this out. “I’m not, I’m not not proud either.”
“Ah.”
Her eyes are open and fixed, unseeing, with tears streaming down her face, and she’s still trying so hard. But her emotions are all over the map, meaning all over the room and all over his head, so he feels rather than hears my God, it’s horrible, I’m horrible, he’ll hate me.
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Being not-not proud?”
She nods.
“That’s all right, then. You did save the Earth, and probably most of the known universe, and, as a bonus, me. Those are still important, but it’s even better that you’re not proud of being glad that you did. Means you’re still Rose Tyler.”
“Am I really?”
“Definitely. You’re not the nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler who ran off with a stranger in a blue box for a lark, but you haven’t been her for ages anyway. You’re still you. Thing is, you didn’t remember what you’d done until yesterday, but some part of you knew for the past six months. I did remember, and I would have seen if it had twisted you.”
The long, low release of her breath is wind, wind rushing behind a storm, sweeping the thunder away.
“The other thing. I’m sorry you had to…fix it. Fix me.”
“I don’t mind. Well, I don’t want to make a habit of it-I don’t like invading other people’s brains-but I don’t mind.”
“Are you okay? You looked so tired all day, and you don’t even sleep, and now I’m keeping you from sleeping…” She snickers, a little. “We can’t get anything right today, can we?”
“Hmm, I have to agree. Not our best day. But I’m always alright.”
The step creaks and his eyes shoot open. She’s there, right in front of him, arms crossed, giving him the Oh-No-You-Don’t stare.
“If you think I believe that, I’ve got a house on Downing Street to sell you.”
He really doesn’t have the energy to breathe, but he thinks he might bubble over laughing if he could, just like with the mud. She’s Rose, still, and she will be very, very all right.
“Okay, you win. I am bruised and sore and I put my back out hauling someone out of a bog and showing a world full of eels exactly what they haven’t got. I’m completely exhausted but I can’t sleep because I’ve still got your telepathic resonance running through my head, so I don’t actually mind much that you came here. Nonetheless,” and he tries for his most winning smile, “I’m not sure we’re going to get out of the Vortex tomorrow. I’m going to have the universe’s worst hangover.”
“I’m sorry. I should-”
“Nope. Sorry is now forbidden. You’ve said it at least six times, you aren’t allowed to say it again. Besides, now that you’ve distracted me from my brain for a bit, you can keep on. See that book over there?”
“That one?”
“No, that one. Two stacks over and five down from the top.”
“You do have a library, you know, two of them,” she comments as she nearly tumbles the unsteady tower. “There are loads of books in here.”
“Nah, these are my favorites. Most of them are in the library too.”
“Why am I bringing you a book you’ve already read?”
“Best way to fall asleep, something you like where you know the ending.”
“But you read books in three seconds!”
He snorts. “Right now I couldn’t read a sentence in three seconds. With comprehension, it’d take at least six. Believe you me, stupid apes are far out in front. Could you grab my specs too?”
Digging through his jacket pockets looks to be even more of an adventure for the unwary than navigating his lack of bookcases. She pulls out the sonic screwdriver, three apples, a banana, a map of Rome (the planet), a tissue-paper crown, a sprig of blue grass, a piece of the true cross (yes, really), and a deck of playing cards before she throws up her hands and says, “No. I will not bring you your specs. And after all this--” she gestures at the objects she’s dumped on the floor “-I’m not sorry.”
“But I can’t moooove. Bring me my jacket.”
“No.”
“What? You’re just going to leave me here to stew in my own brainwaves?”
“Nope. Got a better idea.”
She drops unceremoniously to the thick Persian carpet (actually from Persia on Earth, centuries before her time, and a very good one too) and leans back against the side of the mattress.
“Book, please.” He reaches down, but she swats at his hand.
“No! Told you: I’ve got a plan.”
Apparently the TARDIS is in on this plan too; the lights dim out across most of the room, with one little bright splash across where Rose is sitting. She draws her knees up, curling bare toes into the priceless rug, and props the book across her legs. Which is when his abused brain gets it, finally, and he feels like he ought to protest but this is actually quite a nice idea. Moreover, when the ship gets involved with nice ideas she tends to do things like blow out every light in his room if he interferes, and he really doesn’t want to change fifty recessed bulbs with a telepathic hangover.
She’s found the bookmark now; messy twists of hair are shielding her face, but her lips are pursed and she’s obviously skimming the page. It’s not satisfying her. She starts flipping through the heavy volume like she’s looking for something, and he revises his opinion of her taste in fiction, because this is a great book. Finally she finds it, whatever it is, and clears her throat.
“Mists curled and smoked from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the still air…”
He smiles and runs one long finger across the ends of her hair where they splay across the mattress, and listens to her voice, the story of passing across water and grass and little lights and dead faces. Before the travelers have reached the other side, he is asleep.
*
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose" as quoted above.
Count the Lord of the Rings references. Bet you can't find them all.
A Pyrrhic victory is technically a military victory that so incapacitates the winner that any further battle would be a disaster. From a more metaphorical, personal point of view, it's pretty much exactly what the Doctor tells Rose: a victory that in some significant way destroys the victor. Oddly enough, I first learned about the concept in a Harry Potter fanfic about a gazillion years ago.
Delta waves actually are normal brainwaves that dominate certain parts of the sleep cycle. Messed-up delta wave activity correlates with lots of sleep disorders and also more debilitating conditions like schizophrenia. The explanation for the Delta Wave machine that I've used is my attempt to vaguely connect the events of "The Parting of the Ways" with actual science.
I own nothing, blah blah blah.
Previously in Things You Need: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three
Story: Things You Need
Series: Love in Time
Rating: PG-13 (war, ethics, et cetera, and a little language)
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler
Beta: annissag!
Summary: The Bad Wolf may have been the lesser evil, but that doesn't make things right, and it certainly doesn't make them easy. Fortunately, a little swamp mud goes a long way. Follows immediately after Chapter 3, between "New Earth" and "Tooth and Claw". Half humor and half angst.
So you never get the things you need need need
Where it's hurt you cover up with weeds weeds weeds
Open it back up and let it bleed bleed bleed
No one knows, red red rose
Out of the cell, check. Foil a coup d’état, check. Save Rose Tyler, check. Run for your life…
Well, still working on that one. Although the coup d’état part he’s pretty proud of. And he’s not going to think right now about exactly how he saved Rose Tyler, so the running really isn’t so bad. Avoiding the eels is a good distraction.
They’ve been in the swamp for almost a day and a half. Rose is pale and drawn, but she keeps muttering about Dead Marshes, all dead and rotten, bloody hell, and he takes that as a good sign. Trying to foil the coup was great, lots of sneaking and dramatic entrances and last-minute bluffing that made Rose almost laugh. Actually succeeding in foiling the coup was fantastic. But then there were those rebels that they just missed catching by an eensy bit, those rebels who decided that it would be a great thing to ambush them while they were headed back to the TARDIS. Next thing he knew they were spending the night up a scrubby tree, soaked with swamp and stinking, unable to move, unable to sleep without falling into the welcoming arms of an angry guerrilla, unable to talk (possibly a blessing). Just able to hold on and think (actually, that wasn’t much of a blessing).
He’s picking his way around the worst of the pools, trying to find the ground that’s ground and not a bog they’ll break through. Behind him, the grumbling tells him she’s still there. He’s beyond tired, might even actually sleep, and she’s hungry, but it’s not far to the TARDIS now, at least as long as there are no more rebels with big huge guns.
Oh wait. That does look like a suspicious bush over there, doesn’t it. A suspiciously moving bush with a suspiciously barrel-like black thing poking out of it.
“Rose,” he whispers. “Don’t say anything, don’t stop walking, but be ready to run. Left.”
The grumbling stops, and he hopes she’s got it, because he can’t take his eyes off that bush until they get up with this tree that will block the sightlines, just before they get in range.
Now here’s the tree, out of the sightline. Oops, into range. Great day, this.
“Run!”
So now they’re running to the left in a wild zigzag, splashing through puddles and probably exciting every eel on this Void-damned planet, which he’s never ever coming back to. At least this’ll throw off their aim, maybe. Oh, but it’s obviously not going to stop them from trying. And oh, now they’re being chased over an open swamp, and that is a very, very big gun, and this day could not possibly get worse.
He’s never supposed to say that, because days like this always surprise him.
He looks over his shoulder to make sure Rose is still there, and she is, sprinting and covered with muck to her waist, but past her he sees the most wonderful, glorious, unimaginably lucky thing. The first gun-toting madman stops to aim just as the second runs up behind him, and smash! One guerrilla goes into the other, and one gun goes nose-first into the ground, and two angry soldiers go flat down in the swamp water.
There is a great stirring of eels.
He pauses to thank all the planets and the stars in every age for that wish he made on Astra, the one about days that couldn’t be any worse occasionally not getting worse, and Rose nearly crashes into him. That nearly sends both of them into the drink too, rendering all lucky planets and stars and balloon-wishes completely academic.
“Doctor?” she wheezes, and bends over, gasping for breath.
“Um…let’s not wait up.” He grabs her hand and starts running again, listening to her curse, and thinking it might be the best, most normal thing in the multiverse that he could hear right now. One more bend and the TARDIS is in sight.
Her hand’s out of his and she’s sprinting past him, completely single-minded and focused, no doubt, on the endless hot water heater, and suddenly he’s racing her and the gloom and the stink are gone and they’re going home-
And then he’s winning, because her foot’s gone straight through the bog and she’s literally up to her eyeballs in swamp, forty feet from the safe blue doors, shrieking.
“Eels! Oh my god, are there eels? There are eels, I’m going to die, oh god, I’m going to die in the fucking dead marshes and it’s going to be eels. I can’t get out! The water’s moving, I can feel them, they’re coming-”
And then he’s got her by the wrist and he’s heaving back (she’s 37 percent heavier waterlogged, he notes distantly). His spine is not going to thank him later, but she’s on the ground, jerking her boot out of the way as the eels break the surface. And he goes down too, smack on his backside, and lets himself flop over in the muck. Brilliant.
“Doctor?”
“Hmm?”
“Let’s never have this day again.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, look at me. I’m soaked. I stink. There is more swamp-weed in my hair than there is hair, and I don’t know if this is mud or eel-shit.” She sits up and runs a disgusted hand across her shirt. “Is this eel-shit?”
“Hmm. Maybe? No? Yeah.”
“Oh, god! Did you have to tell me? I’ve been in jail, and I’ve been shot at, and now I’m covered with eel-shit and you’re not.”
He’s got his arm over his face so he doesn’t see her stand, and then he’s glad he’s got his arm over his face because there’s a disgusting, soggy plop on his jacket. She’s throwing it. Throwing swamp muck. At him.
He sits up, wide-eyed, and she giggles, and pulls a long strand of weed out of her hair and chucks it at him too. Then she grabs something he thinks might be a dead bird (but he’s definitely not telling her) off her shoulder and screams, and giggles again, hysterically, and flings it at his head. And then more mud, and she can’t stop laughing, and the sticks from up her sleeves, and she’s going for her ruined boots now. He’d better put a stop to this, he decides, so he reaches behind him for a handful of god-knows-what, staggers to his feet, and throws it at her.
After that it gets a little, well, muddy, and it’s impossible to tell who’s winning. They’re both even filthier than he thought possible and laughing madly: this is definitely the best sound he’s ever heard in his whole nine hundred-odd years and possibly the best thing he’s ever done too. They keep missing each other; there’s slime all over the TARDIS, and he’s going to hear about it later, but he doesn’t care. Doesn’t care a bit. She’ll be fine.
Finally they both collapse again, breathless, trying not to laugh any more because it hurts, but still snorting and snickering every time they try to stop. She hauls herself up eventually and hunts around for her other boot, pulling it out of a puddle with two fingers and a completely disgusted look. He starts to struggle up, but she hauls him to his feet and hands him his jacket, which he thinks he might have tried to wrap around her head at one point.
Dragging a hand across his face, he grimaces at the slimy feel of the mud. “The TARDIS will kill us if we go inside like this.”
“Then she’s just going to have to kill us. She’s going to have to kill me all the way to my bathroom, and electrocute me the entire time I’m in the shower, which will be a long time, and then she’ll have to poison my towels. It’ll hurt, but I don’t care.”
“She’ll turn off all the hot water.”
“Better not.”
“She will, though. In the laundry too.”
“I don’t care about the laundry. This will never come clean.” And her clothes are truly vile.
“Ah, the TARDIS laundry’s brilliant. Anything will come clean if you ask her nicely. It might take three, or five, or, hmm, eight washes, but I’m definitely keeping this suit.”
“You do that. I’m burning all of this. Can I build a fire in the cloister?”
“Not the cloister!” He’s unlocking the door now, poking his head in experimentally. The ship’s growl is nothing short of epic. He pokes his head out again. “You cannot burn things in my cloister. The smell will never come out. Besides, that’s what the incinerator is for.”
“If I burn it in the incinerator,” she says ferociously, “I can’t watch it burn.”
“Sorry. No pyrotechnics in my ship. Well, at least no pyrotechnics that don’t come out of the console in my ship. Now come on. Be really nice and quiet and don’t touch anything, and we might get out of this alive.”
*
As it turns out, the TARDIS is more forgiving that he’d expected. She relents and turns the hot water back on after only twenty solid minutes of his desperate pleas (Rose is scowling and glaring at him) and mollifying platitudes. God, he’s tired. The telepathy and the running and clinging to a tree and the mud… She goes off for her six showers, and he drags on a plastic poncho (emergency storage under the coat tree) to keep the slime from getting everywhere. First stop: the wardrobe. Somewhere there’s a bathtub the size of a duck pond that Rose doesn’t know anything about, but he’s got to find another suit before he can hunt for it. Ah, blue pinstripes. Red trainers. That’ll do.
It takes two hours to get clean and persuade the ship that it’s really in her best interests to let the laundry machines work, thanks, and then he could sleep for a week. Which is saying something, since he hasn’t needed to sleep in a week. He wants to find her first, though.
She’s in the library with the couches, not the one with the science books and the wonderful big desks, wearing pajamas, sipping tea, reading a dreadful romance novel, and if she’s looking solemn, she also looks like she never got chased through a swamp by armed men. Good. She’s fine. Time to go to bed.
“Doctor?”
So much for sneaking out and leaving talking to tomorrow, when his brain might be working again.
“Rose?”
“Are you coming in here, or…what are you doing there, anyway?”
“Just making sure the TARDIS didn’t actually electrocute you in the bath. I’m going to bed.”
“You? Sleep?”
“Yes, me, sleep. Uh, see you.” He’s abrupt, but he doesn’t really have any energy for anything else.
“…Goodnight.”
He’s at his door in a minute with the ship’s helpful guidance (good thing, because he wasn’t sure he could navigate on his own right now). He lets it click shut behind him and heaves a sigh. Trainers off, jacket off, tie off, that’s enough. Flat on the bed. It’s almost disorienting to lie still after the past forty-eight hours, but he’s sure he’ll manage.
“Lights.”
The room dims from a sunny cove to the deep sea floor and he tries to relax. Not very successfully. The body gets exhausted eventually, but the mind never stops, especially not after the overload of this adventure. Dratted huge brain.
There is a tap on the door.
She doesn’t know where this room is, doesn’t technically know that it exists. The only possible explanation is that the TARDIS just decided to take her here, which means the TARDIS thinks she has a good reason to be here.
There’s a tap again.
“Rose?”
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I hope I didn’t wake you up, I just… And you left, so I thought…”
Either she makes more sense to the TARDIS, or his ship is a very bad watchdog. The lights come up about halfway, and the old girl’s poking his sore brain insistently, so she obviously thinks it’s important. He rolls his eyes and wills himself toward coherence.
“Yeah, no need to stand there talking through the door, come in.”
She slips inside, closes the door, sinks down on the step. Her eyes take in the room without staring-he’s grateful, he’s had the urge to change things since he regenerated, but every time he starts he gets interrupted. The place is a wreck, books and bits of screwdriver and the detritus of his previous self’s questionable taste in art everywhere. In her pale pajamas she looks very small against the door.
He should sit up, find his glasses, look attentive. But he can’t, physically can’t move. He sprawls. She perches on the step.
“Doctor. What happened today-yesterday-”
Yep. He knew it was going to be about this, right now, when he’s not ready for it and hasn’t slept and so the telepathic echoes are still humming through his brain. And she can’t even get it out, whatever she has to say, so he’s going to have to guess. This conversation is going to be hard. This day just never ends.
It’s Rose, and it’s now, and he actually can live with the day not ending as long as she’s going to be all right. But he’s still not totally sure that she will.
“Yes. The thing. That happened.”
“God, I’m sorry.”
Silence. He wants to tell her it’s all right, it doesn’t matter, because he wants to believe it. Wants everything to go back to normal. But she wouldn’t give him the wolf because it was too strong, and it’s made her strong too. She might never be ready to hear that it brought her something good, but it did, and there’s no going back.
“Yes.”
“I really am, please, you’ve got to understand. I looked, it hurt but I looked at what I did, and I can’t see any other way. I couldn’t….”
The memory’s on her face again and it’s choking her off. This is the test. There are only two ways it can go: she can remember to breathe on her own, or he’ll have to get it out for good, and she won’t be his Rose anymore, and she can’t ever even know he was there. It goes on forever, thirty-eight point oh-seven seconds, but forever, the black black stare and her hand over her mouth and that radiating fear. And then she gasps, and sucks in air. There is a glimmer, life in her eyes, and he’s sure he’s imagining that it’s gold and timeless, before she looks up at him with a hazel gaze.
“Did any of it make any difference?”
He’s fairly certain she can feel his relief at this point, because it’s rushing over him in waves and his mental shields are roughly as solid as Swiss cheese. There was that golden gleam too, the one that he might have hallucinated, but it makes him wonder fleetingly if she’s still the girl he thought she was, and what exactly she hears without knowing. There are so many things he’d rather she didn’t hear.
There are so many things he’d rather not tell her. And he’s so so tired.
“Do you know what I was doing while you were gone, on Satellite Five?”
“You were building a thing, a delta-thingy. It would have killed the Daleks. I guess you didn’t finish in time?”
“Delta Thingy-I forget Earth has no technology yet. I was building a Delta Wave.” And now the scientific recitation. “A delta wave is a brainwave; it’s completely normal, helps you sleep-well, it helps humans sleep, anyway. It keeps Daleks sane, insofar as that’s possible. What I was building-it was a weapon in the Time War, a kamikaze weapon. A Delta Wave transmitter disrupts normal brain activity. For Daleks, it drives them mad-they become intensely schizophrenic, and then their minds essentially eat themselves, and they die.”
She’s staring at him. This is a lecture, just science, he tells himself, and goes on.
“For humans it’s like dying from lack of sleep. Brain overload.”
Her face looks blank for a moment, and then she gets it.
“They would have died. You would’ve got the Daleks, but the whole Earth would have died, and everybody on Satellite Five.”
“Yes. The humans in other parts of the galaxy would have survived, but the people on Earth would have been wiped out. And Satellite Five too, of course. Jack knew. That’s why he helped me send you away.”
“And Time Lords? I mean, with the Delta Wave.”
“More or less like humans. It just takes longer.”
“I don’t understand. I-why? Was there really nothing else?”
“No. There wasn’t. Except to let the Daleks win.”
“So…they were going to die anyway. And all the people on Earth, and all the people on Satellite Five. And you.”
“And me. I couldn’t have regenerated, you know; it would have driven me mad same as anyone else, with no way to channel the energy.”
“So what I did was better.” He looks over and she’s got her head in her hands, her fingers clenched in her hair.
“Rose, what you did was a way out that I never even imagined because I knew it was impossible, which it was until you did it. It had consequences that never crossed my mind. In some ways it was worse than what I planned, and in some ways it was better.
“The thing is, I built the Delta Wave, but I didn’t activate it. The moment came, and I tried, but I couldn’t. There were millions of people who didn’t deserve to die, and I didn’t particularly want to either, so I walked away. They-we-would have died anyway and been cloned into Daleks, and the Daleks would have taken over the galaxy, the whole universe, and I couldn’t be the one to stop it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean my solution was even more impossible than yours, for me. It’s sort of a paradox: you did an impossible thing to stop an impossible thing.”
“I still don’t see…there’s nothing good in it. When I remembered, it was like there was nothing good left in me.”
“No, there’s not. Good in it, I mean, not good in you. You’ve got loads of good, otherwise you wouldn’t have tried, let alone found a way out that meant millions of people lived who would have died. The Vortex could just as easily have destroyed everything in that sector, written it out of existence back to the birth of the Sun. Something had to guide it to touch only the Daleks.
“But you’re right; there’s no good in it. Do you know what a Pyrrhic victory is?”
“No. Please don’t change the subject, Doctor, not right now.”
“I’m not. A Pyrrhic victory is a victory, but one that costs so much on all sides that it feels like it couldn’t possibly have been worth it, even if it started out as the right thing to do. It’s been a part of human legend and history for thousands of years, and a lot of times it’s senseless; the consequences are truly so great that it hardly matters who wins. But occasionally, even though the victory is empty and the cost obscene, it’s right. That’s what you did: something terrible, but right.”
“And you couldn’t.”
“No. It’s…I see things differently, sometimes. I’ve seen a lot of war. You did it because you’re human, and you saw not a threat to the universe and a million dark futures, but a way to save your people. That’s what makes you human.”
“Humans do terrible things.”
“Yes. But not as bad as Daleks, or lots of other cultures and planets and people.”
“I’m not proud.”
“If you were, I’d drop you off at the nearest penal colony. What’s going through your head is exactly what should be there, because you’re still human. Some people wouldn’t be.”
There’s a dull smack, and he forces himself up on one elbow to see her, with her head back on the door and her eyes scrunched shut and her throat working.
“Doctor…” she’s forcing this out. “I’m not, I’m not not proud either.”
“Ah.”
Her eyes are open and fixed, unseeing, with tears streaming down her face, and she’s still trying so hard. But her emotions are all over the map, meaning all over the room and all over his head, so he feels rather than hears my God, it’s horrible, I’m horrible, he’ll hate me.
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? Being not-not proud?”
She nods.
“That’s all right, then. You did save the Earth, and probably most of the known universe, and, as a bonus, me. Those are still important, but it’s even better that you’re not proud of being glad that you did. Means you’re still Rose Tyler.”
“Am I really?”
“Definitely. You’re not the nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler who ran off with a stranger in a blue box for a lark, but you haven’t been her for ages anyway. You’re still you. Thing is, you didn’t remember what you’d done until yesterday, but some part of you knew for the past six months. I did remember, and I would have seen if it had twisted you.”
The long, low release of her breath is wind, wind rushing behind a storm, sweeping the thunder away.
“The other thing. I’m sorry you had to…fix it. Fix me.”
“I don’t mind. Well, I don’t want to make a habit of it-I don’t like invading other people’s brains-but I don’t mind.”
“Are you okay? You looked so tired all day, and you don’t even sleep, and now I’m keeping you from sleeping…” She snickers, a little. “We can’t get anything right today, can we?”
“Hmm, I have to agree. Not our best day. But I’m always alright.”
The step creaks and his eyes shoot open. She’s there, right in front of him, arms crossed, giving him the Oh-No-You-Don’t stare.
“If you think I believe that, I’ve got a house on Downing Street to sell you.”
He really doesn’t have the energy to breathe, but he thinks he might bubble over laughing if he could, just like with the mud. She’s Rose, still, and she will be very, very all right.
“Okay, you win. I am bruised and sore and I put my back out hauling someone out of a bog and showing a world full of eels exactly what they haven’t got. I’m completely exhausted but I can’t sleep because I’ve still got your telepathic resonance running through my head, so I don’t actually mind much that you came here. Nonetheless,” and he tries for his most winning smile, “I’m not sure we’re going to get out of the Vortex tomorrow. I’m going to have the universe’s worst hangover.”
“I’m sorry. I should-”
“Nope. Sorry is now forbidden. You’ve said it at least six times, you aren’t allowed to say it again. Besides, now that you’ve distracted me from my brain for a bit, you can keep on. See that book over there?”
“That one?”
“No, that one. Two stacks over and five down from the top.”
“You do have a library, you know, two of them,” she comments as she nearly tumbles the unsteady tower. “There are loads of books in here.”
“Nah, these are my favorites. Most of them are in the library too.”
“Why am I bringing you a book you’ve already read?”
“Best way to fall asleep, something you like where you know the ending.”
“But you read books in three seconds!”
He snorts. “Right now I couldn’t read a sentence in three seconds. With comprehension, it’d take at least six. Believe you me, stupid apes are far out in front. Could you grab my specs too?”
Digging through his jacket pockets looks to be even more of an adventure for the unwary than navigating his lack of bookcases. She pulls out the sonic screwdriver, three apples, a banana, a map of Rome (the planet), a tissue-paper crown, a sprig of blue grass, a piece of the true cross (yes, really), and a deck of playing cards before she throws up her hands and says, “No. I will not bring you your specs. And after all this--” she gestures at the objects she’s dumped on the floor “-I’m not sorry.”
“But I can’t moooove. Bring me my jacket.”
“No.”
“What? You’re just going to leave me here to stew in my own brainwaves?”
“Nope. Got a better idea.”
She drops unceremoniously to the thick Persian carpet (actually from Persia on Earth, centuries before her time, and a very good one too) and leans back against the side of the mattress.
“Book, please.” He reaches down, but she swats at his hand.
“No! Told you: I’ve got a plan.”
Apparently the TARDIS is in on this plan too; the lights dim out across most of the room, with one little bright splash across where Rose is sitting. She draws her knees up, curling bare toes into the priceless rug, and props the book across her legs. Which is when his abused brain gets it, finally, and he feels like he ought to protest but this is actually quite a nice idea. Moreover, when the ship gets involved with nice ideas she tends to do things like blow out every light in his room if he interferes, and he really doesn’t want to change fifty recessed bulbs with a telepathic hangover.
She’s found the bookmark now; messy twists of hair are shielding her face, but her lips are pursed and she’s obviously skimming the page. It’s not satisfying her. She starts flipping through the heavy volume like she’s looking for something, and he revises his opinion of her taste in fiction, because this is a great book. Finally she finds it, whatever it is, and clears her throat.
“Mists curled and smoked from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the still air…”
He smiles and runs one long finger across the ends of her hair where they splay across the mattress, and listens to her voice, the story of passing across water and grass and little lights and dead faces. Before the travelers have reached the other side, he is asleep.
*
Notes:
Inspired by The Weepies' "Red Red Rose" as quoted above.
Count the Lord of the Rings references. Bet you can't find them all.
A Pyrrhic victory is technically a military victory that so incapacitates the winner that any further battle would be a disaster. From a more metaphorical, personal point of view, it's pretty much exactly what the Doctor tells Rose: a victory that in some significant way destroys the victor. Oddly enough, I first learned about the concept in a Harry Potter fanfic about a gazillion years ago.
Delta waves actually are normal brainwaves that dominate certain parts of the sleep cycle. Messed-up delta wave activity correlates with lots of sleep disorders and also more debilitating conditions like schizophrenia. The explanation for the Delta Wave machine that I've used is my attempt to vaguely connect the events of "The Parting of the Ways" with actual science.
I own nothing, blah blah blah.
Previously in Things You Need: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three