Part 02 - Chapter 10 - Aftermath
Chapter 10 - Aftermath
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Adam entered the TARDIS and no sooner than he stepped within the doors then they closed behind him. For a long time he just stood inside the doors, his mind scrambling to take in the environment that now surrounded him. The room was much larger then the small box he had entered, there was a pleasant spicy smell, and the odd grinding noise that had enticed him to enter. “It’s bigger on the inside,” he says, stating the obvious, dumbfounded.
Rose leaves the Doctor’s side to talk to Adam, to try to get through to him; she can feel he is on the verge of panic. His sudden realization that he is in a very alien environment is leaving him stunned and even without her new talent his anxiety would be obvious from the expression on his face. “Adam it’s okay,” she says as she gently takes his arm and leads him up to the walkway to the main console.
Rose can guess the expression on the Doctor’s face at Adams comment, which prompts a small smile. It had been something they had laughed about early on as the Doctor had told her it seems like virtually every one other then the Time Lords have made the same comment, she knows she did, when she first saw the place.
Adam is looking around, his eyes wide. As he begins to acclimatize to the new environment he begins to ask questions. “How… where… we’re not still in the base are we? She said cement you know.”
Looking up annoyed, from the console the Doctor addresses the last question, “And you’re supposed to be a genius? Don’t be daft, of course we’re not!”
“Then?”
“He’s your boyfriend, you straighten him out Rose,” The Doctor snaps in irritation, immediately regretting it when she looks furious.
“He’s not my boyfriend! Come on Adam, let’s leave Mr. Grouchy to his sulking.” Giving the Doctor a glare she leads Adam from the control room. She is not sure that she likes the feeling of satisfaction she gets from Adam at seeing the Doctor and her snipping at each other.
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Rose was furious with the Doctor for his comment about Adam. Didn’t the Doctor know how much he meant to her yet? But even as she began explain to Adam about what the TARDIS could do, how beautiful and wonderful she was, she couldn’t help but remember the look of horror on the Doctor’s face when she had asked him what he was changing into. She had been scared and angry, the emotions of the Dalek behind her swamping her senses with its confusion, grief… fear blaring in her mind. His bolt of shock had been like an ice bath as she had said those words. She had regretted them immediately as on a wave of emotion she had felt how incredibly devastated he was by them. Her confident courageous Doctor had been reduced to sputtering out bits of sentences. When then Dalek asked him why they survived the flood of grief that those words brought had almost brought her to her knees.
“Rose?”
“Yes, sorry Adam it’s just been a long day. Here we are, a nice room near the kitchen; figure that should make it simpler for you to find us in the morning. You best get some rest; days tend to get a bit long travelin’ with him,” she said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the control room.
“But…”
She could feel a swell of disappointment from him and no small amount of frustrated lust, which made her feel distinctly uncomfortable. “Good night Adam,” she said firmly but politely. “Don’t wander off, this place can get a bit confusing and it’s really pretty easy to get turned around.” She tried to reiterate her lack of interest with the subtle and gentle warning not to try to follow her.
“Yeah, right then, see ya’ tomorrow.” With that he turned and entered the room to which she had pointed.
Rose turned her back on him and headed into the kitchen. There were too many thoughts still swimming around in her mind and she wanted a cuppa before she headed off to bed. She also thought that it wouldn’t hurt to bring the Doctor a cup to as a peace offering.
It didn’t take long to make up two cups of chamomile tea and she headed off to the control room.
The Doctor is surprised as she enters and that by itself tells her how upset he still is; he almost never misses her entering, doesn’t miss much of anything actually. The words between them are brief and she can tell by just the way he is warily standing near the console that her presence is making him uncomfortable. She finds herself wishing again that whatever it was that cut off her ability to read his emotions in the TARDIS wasn’t there and wonders again whether it was something the TARDIS did or whether it was something he did when in the TARDIS. Some day, when she got the courage to tell him about her newly developed talent, she would ask him.
Returning to her room, she was reminded of wonderful the Doctor had been to her, how he had let the Dalek out even after everything he had told her the Daleks’ had done to him and his people, just for her. That thought scared her, that she had that kind of effect on him. The Dalek was dangerous; it had killed hundreds of people without so much as a thought. Was what the Dalek said true? Did the Doctor love her? Yet he had locked her down with it, expecting it to kill her. Sometimes he confused her so very much.
Then the vision of his face as he stared at that Dalek renewed it self in her minds eye, that look of pain, anger, even a strong measure of hate, and the feeling that was the worst of all, of devastating loss that felt like her soul was being ripped out. The memory makes her wonder if she had ever really understood what loss was before today. Yet he was still able to have compassion for it when he realized how it had changed and even though that change had saved her life, he was able to understand how horrible it was for the Dalek to no longer even have its most basic identity intact. Ultimately that was why, when it demanded her to give it the order to die, she had relented. Not only was she feeling the horrible loss and pain it felt at no longer knowing what it was, but the Doctor’s grief and sympathy for that slimly white creature that had never before even seen the sunshine. Between the two of them it was too much. She was almost crying by the time it had stuttered out in its inhuman mechanical voice how repulsed it was at the very idea of being something like her, once again demanding she give it the order it seem incapable of acting on without her.
As she had run back to the Doctor’s side she felt how stunned he was by the things that were transpiring. Then the crushing grief he felt as she suspected he was reliving that final battle between his people and the Daleks, and the relief and disbelief that it was finally over. She had so wanted to take him in her arms and hold him, tell him everything was going to be all right. But part of her knew that for him it would never be truly all right again and that it didn’t matter that the war was finally over, that he had won. What he had lost was far greater then the closure of seeing the last of his peoples murderers die.
Finally all she could do was take his hand and lead them back to the TARDIS so that they could leave this place of such death and destruction that had ripped open old wounds. It made her wonder again exactly how long it had it been since the war for him.
Looking around her beautiful room that the Doctor had given her she finally could stand it no longer and let the cavalcade of emotions that had run roughshod over her overtake her, sliding bonelessly to the floor on the rose motif carpet in front of her bed and crying.
For a long time she cried, gently rocking herself, her knees tucked up under her chin and her arms wrapped around them with her back partially supported by the bed.
She cried for the Doctor, cried for the Dalek, cried for herself, cried for all the men and women who had died trying to fight to stay alive. She cried until she could cry no more and, exhausted, she finally dragged herself from the floor and into the ensuite. Finding comfort in the large warm shower and the soft warm oversized towels hanging on the rod by the shower tub. She was so exhausted that she barely noticed the beautiful surroundings of the rose shaped marble sink, and it’s large matching rose rimmed oval mirror that hung over it. She took comfort in the familiar smells of her soap, shampoo and conditioner that she didn’t remember unpacking the night before, yet there they were sitting awaiting her use on the shelf in the shower. Best of all though was the wonderful comforting presence in her mind that seemed so very much like it belonged there.
Exhausted, she finally emerged from the shower to crawl into her bed and very quickly fell into a deep dreamless sleep.
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The control room was quiet. Rose had taken Adam off to find a room and had then retired to her own. For a long time, all he can do is stare at the central column gently moving up and down. His mind chained to thoughts of the day’s events. From that first uneasy feeling he got when suddenly the signal appeared on the TARDIS monitor indicating a distress call, to his inability to identify the sender and finally to the deadly events that happened because he investigated. The words of the black guardian so many lifetimes ago choosing that moment to come and haunt him, ‘You have made such a perfect agent of Chaos, your actions are forever bring destruction to everything you touch’. Never had those words seemed so true as they had this last couple of months. He was the ‘Oncoming Storm’, ‘The Destroyer of Worlds’ and the downfall of his own people. Time and time again, in spite of his best intentions, he was the harbinger of death and destruction. He had very good reasons when one day he had told Karl Marx that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Reaching to adjust a dial, he cringes as he rotates the muscle in his wrist. He knows he should do something about the bruises but the pain reminds him he is alive, alive when so many people are not. What makes him better then them? Why should he be the one that survives repeatedly, what kind of galactic irony it that? He thinks bitterly. The Time Lords are now all gone but for him, and such a poor example he is of a once great people. True many of them had codified their existence into emasculation and stagnancy but that didn't change what they had once stood for, didn't change that they had keep a reign on the out of control races that would try to manipulate time for their own gain, not caring about consequences they could neither see nor feel. One of the greatest crimes to a Time Lord had been to change history for your own personal gain. True, his people considered him a meddler, but he held true to just fixing the things that had altered time from what he knew was the proper course. He could feel the river of time as surely as any other Time Lord could and they all had known when someone had tampered. Just so many had decided that unless it was something drastic that they shouldn't get their hands dirty. Let the lower races straighten out themselves. Too many Gallifreyans had abdicated their responsibility to the time stream and so the rebels, the outcasts, were responsible for taking care of the dirty work; the things the elite had considered too far below them to address. That way the council could claim deniability and maintain their clean hands and more then once they had penalized him for doing what they all knew needed to be done.
It didn't really matter now. They were gone, and yet he continued on in spite of his best efforts. A wave of resentment at that thought prompts him to give the TARDIS a sharp bang with the nearby mallet. Her response is typical; she gives him a good solid shock for his lack of gratitude. It was no use; this morbid contemplation. In disgust he throws the mallet over at the jump seat and stalks from the control room, going in search of where Rose had stuck the pretty boy, thinking that it is probably for the best if he knows where that one is. He thinks Adam will most likely be just down the hall from Rose. He really wouldn't be surprised; he was smart, well for a human, and Rose seemed taken with him. She really did seem to like the pretty boys; he could tell by the looks she would get on her face when one appeared. He was still trying to figure out why she had wanted to stay with him after everything that had happened. Maybe she just hadn't asked yet to be taken home, or maybe she would want to be dropped off with the pretty boy some place. That thought made his stomach hurt. Just thinking about Rose with that one causes anger to boil up as he recalls how Adam left her behind to the mercy of the Dalek.
The Doctor finds Adam’s room and is surprised; it isn't anywhere near his or for that matter Rose's rooms He notes with amusement and a bit of disquiet that the TARDIS has moved the room down to a level with no elevator access, causing it to only be accessible by stairs, and has sandwiched the room between a broom closet and the smallest bathroom he has ever seen provided by the TARDIS. The fact that it didn't open into Adam's room would be something he was to hear about annoyingly and at length about the next morning over breakfast. However, he found it both found interesting and concerning that the TARDIS had treated Adam in that way. The TARDIS did not take a disliking to someone without good reason.
Chapter 11 - Hurts and Exposure
Moving Forward Index 1