Held in Trust: Chapter 26
Title: Held in Trust: Chapter 26
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Teen
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: A Ten II action/adventure fic, with sci-fi, a bit of romance, and alt!Donna. The Doctor, Rose and Donna investigate an apocalyptic death cult, with a whole boatload of unforeseen consequences, including time travel, a mysterious planet with burnt-orange sky, and a human empire gone horribly wrong.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23| Chapter 24 | Chapter 25
The Doctor found himself torn between solving the puzzle of the black box and chasing after these mad youngsters who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. He couldn't blame them-the life they'd led, the things they'd seen-but he'd never been able to approve of revenge. It was too easy, and it felt too good.
"Elpis!" he impotently yelled after the girl as she fled the chamber with a box of explosives and charges.
She rounded on him before ducking into the passageway, her eyes filled with rage. "I don't know who you are, or where you're from. You saved my life and for that I thank you, but I will not sit in here and let myself be taken back."
She looked like she had more to say, but stopped herself, turned and ran back into the darkness.
She was right, of course. As much as he wished there was some other way, he knew deep down that there wasn't. Maybe that was the human part of him, the part that knew when to look away, and when to forgive. He himself had so much to seek forgiveness for.
He fixed his eyes on the box, racked his brain, hovered his hand over the isomorphic controls and then drew it away again.
The explosion set off by Elpis was deafening. Small pebbles rained off the walls of the chamber on all sides of him, a particularly large one coming dangerously close to striking the top of the box. The Doctor drew back, instinctively, and then laughed at the absurdity of his reflexes-as if just moving a few inches back could save him from a nuclear reaction.
He was still chuckling and wiping the panicked sweat from his brow when his young companions re-entered the chamber. The Doctor started admonishing their foolishness (half-heartedly, though he felt he was obligated) before he realised that two had gone out, yet three had returned. He interrupted himself mid-stream:
"Hello, I'm the Doctor," he said cheerfully. Such a practised line, he couldn't even begin to count how many times in his long life he'd uttered it. "You are..."
The man, elongated like Crede, but much older, and wearing a guard's uniform, darted his eyes around the room, but didn't answer.
"Theris," Crede offered. "He's a friend."
Elpis snorted derisively at that. "Are all your friends guards?"
"He wasn't a guard. Tell them," Crede said, sounding as if he needed to hear it just as much his own self.
"What is all this?" was all Theris said, offering no solace to Crede, or confirmation to Elpis.
"You'd like to know," Elpis sneered. "So you can tell your mates, get us all captured, earn yourself an extra ration and a day off. Not bloody likely."
The Doctor had, in fact, opened his mouth to explain the situation, but shut it again with a click. It wouldn't matter anyway. The chances that this human would have any salient information to offer were infinitesimal.
"Right," the Doctor drawled, trying to at least defuse some of the tension. "Why don't we put down all the weapons and relax for a tick."
"I'm not armed," Theris said calmly. "Am I your prisoner, Crede?"
Crede looked down at his hands and seemed surprised to find a gun still there. He flinched, and clicked the safety back on.
"Dunno," Crede said.
"Oh, of all the ridiculous..." Elpis sighed in exasperation. "Humans! What is it with you lot? Always sticking together even when you've got no cause to! I should have known!" She pointed an accusing, feathered finger at Crede, who stepped back a half step, as if she too was holding a gun. "I should have known! Never trust a human, that's what I was always told, and sure enough, the one time I think a human is different, you get back in with your own at the first chance to sell me out! I'm beginning to think this Tane had the right idea. You'll always pick your own species over anyone else."
The Doctor heard her words, even understood the core of her emotion, but something she'd said started his wheels spinning and once started, they wouldn't stop.
"That's it!" he barked, tugging at his hair wildly and approaching the mysterious black box again.
"That's what?" Crede asked.
Elpis just stood with her hands on her hips, fuming with righteous indignation and casting whithering glances towards Theris.
"Elpis, I'm going to need you over here for a second."
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "For what, human?"
"Oi, I'm only part human, thanks. Mistrust that part all you want, goodness knows you've a right, but I think I know how to open it, and... I need you. We all need you."
"Yeah? What if I don't feel like it?"
The Doctor gritted his teeth, wanting so badly to just grab her. He didn't need her cooperation, just one of her petite, downy fingers. He willed himself to relax and not think of the time pressure.
"Okay, listen, you need to know that you're not doing this for me, or for Crede or for any of the humans on Cassiel. Forget them. Forget me. What they've done here is despicable, and I promise that I'll put a stop to it if we can just sort this thing and get out of here. But... there are all these people back where I'm from. They don't know anything about sixers or indentures or Cassiel or any of it. They're just living their lives. These people that I love, I might never see them again, but if Tane isn't stopped, they'll all be snuffed out. Poof, just like that. And, true, all of the rest of this will cease to exist, but so will they, and the universe will be so much less for not having them in it. Please."
Elpis closed her eyes slowly, and when she opened them again, the Doctor knew he'd gotten through.
"All right. What do you need?"
He sprang in to action with a jubilant grin and took her gently by the arm. "I know it's hard for you to be too close to this, but all I need is a finger."
"A finger? Still attached to the rest of me, I hope."
"Still attached to the rest of you. 'Cos I reckon that Tane felt the same way about humans as you-none could be trusted, not even himself. So he set the lock to only open for a non-human, and I figure any non-human will do. At least, I hope."
"Any old non-human: that's me." She held out her hand, and the look on her face was one of resignation-of just being too tired to fight about it any more. The Doctor knew that look well.
He took her hand and led her slowly towards the box. He had to not think about the possible consequences of a mistake on his part. Just holding his breath and going for it was something else he knew well, but rarely had the stakes been quite this high, and rarely had he felt so bereft of the people who loved him and knew him well.
"Here goes nothing," he murmured, and guided Elpis's hand-finger already outstretched-towards the small bio-scanner mounted on the front-facing side of the cube.
There was a sickening moment when nothing at all seemed to happen, and he looked into the Campheline's wide eyes and saw such a tremendous amount of fear behind the bluster that he almost didn't notice when the whirring sounds began.
Crede was craning his long neck, trying to see over the Doctor's shoulder, and finally said, "What's happening? Did we do it?"
"I can't help but notice that we're not dead," Elpis said.
A door slid open at the top of the cube and the Doctor peered in. Elpis, meanwhile, leapt back, wrenching her hand from the Doctor's light grip. She clutched her head in her hands and started moaning, wordlessly.
"What is that thing?" Theris asked, standing well back from it as well.
The Doctor ignored him. "Hang on, Elpis!"
Her sounds of distress grew louder. Crede put his gun down and rushed to her side, not really knowing whether or not to touch her, his hands sort of flapping about in the air around her.
The Doctor drew the sonic probe out and aimed it into the hole, hoping that setting 324 would begin containment of the fusion reaction, which would then, theoretically, trigger the closing of the wormhole.
Elpis had buried her head in her hands, as if shielding herself from the invisible temporal energy now pouring out of the cube. Her moans had turned to sobs, intermingled with Crede's helpless, and increasingly frantic words of comfort. Theris continued to demand to know what was happening, and everyone else continued to ignore him. At this point, it didn't matter what was happening, just that it was.
"Come on," the Doctor said to himself through a clenched jaw, releasing one last burst from the probe.
***
Elpis didn't understand most of what she saw in her mind in between the lightning-flashes of searing pain. It hurt too much to try and piece together what exactly was happening to her, though she knew it was caused by the box being opened and its contents exposed.
Beyond that, it was just flashes-glimpses of times and places and people that didn't slot in anywhere with what she already knew. She'd seen before that the Doctor was an anomaly; what some more conservative members of her people would call an abomination. Once she'd seen how the timelines bent around him and probabilities tangled in on themselves at his touch, she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it instantly. She didn't want to say that he was wrong, in that haughty, unsympathetic way that her grandsires might, but he was certainly something unique and new.
Once the box was opened, she felt like she was splitting apart at the seams, disassembled so that she could be taken piece-by-piece through that tear in space-time. Through it bled glimpses of another world.
It was a world whole and complete, but paradoxically missing a piece. Like the cables that lowered her daily into the mining shafts, it was meant to be married to another for greater strength, yet the other was missing. The threads of its time would probably hold, but if they frayed or snapped, there would be no recourse.
And after that flash of understanding, again the pain, like something dissecting her, dividing her. No one knew better than a Campheline that all life is an indivisible whole formed by bits of now and then and if. Exposure to this terrible, arrogant manipulation of time gave her the experience of dissolution and she couldn't keep herself from crying out.
***
Rose lay awake, Donna's words ringing in her ears (as well as Donna's snores, coming from the guest room across the hall).
If he were to walk in right now, how would he feel if he heard you say that about him?
She was right, of course. Rose had been what her mum had always referred to as wallowing. She didn't want to bother anyone else with it, didn't want anyone's pity, but she felt like if she could just marinate a bit longer, she'd arrive at the real source of her melancholy.
This isn't a life. It's not right. It's not what he'd want.
When people died, you were supposed to get on with your life because it's what they would want (it's always assumed). But the Doctor wasn't dead, and a course of emotional action didn't seem nearly as clear, as a result. Not only that, she had no idea where he was, unlike the first time around when she'd had a target location, and prior experience at hopping between universes, having already done it a couple of times.
Still, she was fairly certain that what the Doctor wouldn't want was her just giving up on him. She'd never do that anyway, as perilously close as she felt she'd come in the past few weeks. But perhaps in order to see the land you live in clearly, you have to back up almost to the edge of another-the trick was not crossing over entirely. The grass is never greener on the other side.
She pulled the duvet up to her chin and looked at the clock on her mobile phone, which made her jump when it rang as she held it. She answered the call immediately, hoping the sound hadn't woken Donna.
It was Torchwood. The readings from the time lock were going mental. She quizzed them about Hawking radiation while shaking Donna awake and hopping one-footed around the kitchen, putting her wellies on.
The night-shift scientists reported no signs of time travel or the Doctor, but Rose realised that it didn't matter. In a flash, she knew what the Doctor would want her to do. He wouldn't want her to move on with her life, or get over it, or any such selfless nonsense. That wasn't the Doctor at all. He'd want her to fight, to be a right pain in everyone's arse, and to do whatever it took to help him get back.
Donna stumbled downstairs blearily, having trouble finding the arm of her coat and blinking in the light of the kitchen.
"Any chance for tea?" she asked.
"No time for that," said Rose. "We've got work to do."
A slow smile crept across Donna's face. "I thought we might."
[ To Chapter 27]
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Teen
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: A Ten II action/adventure fic, with sci-fi, a bit of romance, and alt!Donna. The Doctor, Rose and Donna investigate an apocalyptic death cult, with a whole boatload of unforeseen consequences, including time travel, a mysterious planet with burnt-orange sky, and a human empire gone horribly wrong.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23| Chapter 24 | Chapter 25
The Doctor found himself torn between solving the puzzle of the black box and chasing after these mad youngsters who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. He couldn't blame them-the life they'd led, the things they'd seen-but he'd never been able to approve of revenge. It was too easy, and it felt too good.
"Elpis!" he impotently yelled after the girl as she fled the chamber with a box of explosives and charges.
She rounded on him before ducking into the passageway, her eyes filled with rage. "I don't know who you are, or where you're from. You saved my life and for that I thank you, but I will not sit in here and let myself be taken back."
She looked like she had more to say, but stopped herself, turned and ran back into the darkness.
She was right, of course. As much as he wished there was some other way, he knew deep down that there wasn't. Maybe that was the human part of him, the part that knew when to look away, and when to forgive. He himself had so much to seek forgiveness for.
He fixed his eyes on the box, racked his brain, hovered his hand over the isomorphic controls and then drew it away again.
The explosion set off by Elpis was deafening. Small pebbles rained off the walls of the chamber on all sides of him, a particularly large one coming dangerously close to striking the top of the box. The Doctor drew back, instinctively, and then laughed at the absurdity of his reflexes-as if just moving a few inches back could save him from a nuclear reaction.
He was still chuckling and wiping the panicked sweat from his brow when his young companions re-entered the chamber. The Doctor started admonishing their foolishness (half-heartedly, though he felt he was obligated) before he realised that two had gone out, yet three had returned. He interrupted himself mid-stream:
"Hello, I'm the Doctor," he said cheerfully. Such a practised line, he couldn't even begin to count how many times in his long life he'd uttered it. "You are..."
The man, elongated like Crede, but much older, and wearing a guard's uniform, darted his eyes around the room, but didn't answer.
"Theris," Crede offered. "He's a friend."
Elpis snorted derisively at that. "Are all your friends guards?"
"He wasn't a guard. Tell them," Crede said, sounding as if he needed to hear it just as much his own self.
"What is all this?" was all Theris said, offering no solace to Crede, or confirmation to Elpis.
"You'd like to know," Elpis sneered. "So you can tell your mates, get us all captured, earn yourself an extra ration and a day off. Not bloody likely."
The Doctor had, in fact, opened his mouth to explain the situation, but shut it again with a click. It wouldn't matter anyway. The chances that this human would have any salient information to offer were infinitesimal.
"Right," the Doctor drawled, trying to at least defuse some of the tension. "Why don't we put down all the weapons and relax for a tick."
"I'm not armed," Theris said calmly. "Am I your prisoner, Crede?"
Crede looked down at his hands and seemed surprised to find a gun still there. He flinched, and clicked the safety back on.
"Dunno," Crede said.
"Oh, of all the ridiculous..." Elpis sighed in exasperation. "Humans! What is it with you lot? Always sticking together even when you've got no cause to! I should have known!" She pointed an accusing, feathered finger at Crede, who stepped back a half step, as if she too was holding a gun. "I should have known! Never trust a human, that's what I was always told, and sure enough, the one time I think a human is different, you get back in with your own at the first chance to sell me out! I'm beginning to think this Tane had the right idea. You'll always pick your own species over anyone else."
The Doctor heard her words, even understood the core of her emotion, but something she'd said started his wheels spinning and once started, they wouldn't stop.
"That's it!" he barked, tugging at his hair wildly and approaching the mysterious black box again.
"That's what?" Crede asked.
Elpis just stood with her hands on her hips, fuming with righteous indignation and casting whithering glances towards Theris.
"Elpis, I'm going to need you over here for a second."
She pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. "For what, human?"
"Oi, I'm only part human, thanks. Mistrust that part all you want, goodness knows you've a right, but I think I know how to open it, and... I need you. We all need you."
"Yeah? What if I don't feel like it?"
The Doctor gritted his teeth, wanting so badly to just grab her. He didn't need her cooperation, just one of her petite, downy fingers. He willed himself to relax and not think of the time pressure.
"Okay, listen, you need to know that you're not doing this for me, or for Crede or for any of the humans on Cassiel. Forget them. Forget me. What they've done here is despicable, and I promise that I'll put a stop to it if we can just sort this thing and get out of here. But... there are all these people back where I'm from. They don't know anything about sixers or indentures or Cassiel or any of it. They're just living their lives. These people that I love, I might never see them again, but if Tane isn't stopped, they'll all be snuffed out. Poof, just like that. And, true, all of the rest of this will cease to exist, but so will they, and the universe will be so much less for not having them in it. Please."
Elpis closed her eyes slowly, and when she opened them again, the Doctor knew he'd gotten through.
"All right. What do you need?"
He sprang in to action with a jubilant grin and took her gently by the arm. "I know it's hard for you to be too close to this, but all I need is a finger."
"A finger? Still attached to the rest of me, I hope."
"Still attached to the rest of you. 'Cos I reckon that Tane felt the same way about humans as you-none could be trusted, not even himself. So he set the lock to only open for a non-human, and I figure any non-human will do. At least, I hope."
"Any old non-human: that's me." She held out her hand, and the look on her face was one of resignation-of just being too tired to fight about it any more. The Doctor knew that look well.
He took her hand and led her slowly towards the box. He had to not think about the possible consequences of a mistake on his part. Just holding his breath and going for it was something else he knew well, but rarely had the stakes been quite this high, and rarely had he felt so bereft of the people who loved him and knew him well.
"Here goes nothing," he murmured, and guided Elpis's hand-finger already outstretched-towards the small bio-scanner mounted on the front-facing side of the cube.
There was a sickening moment when nothing at all seemed to happen, and he looked into the Campheline's wide eyes and saw such a tremendous amount of fear behind the bluster that he almost didn't notice when the whirring sounds began.
Crede was craning his long neck, trying to see over the Doctor's shoulder, and finally said, "What's happening? Did we do it?"
"I can't help but notice that we're not dead," Elpis said.
A door slid open at the top of the cube and the Doctor peered in. Elpis, meanwhile, leapt back, wrenching her hand from the Doctor's light grip. She clutched her head in her hands and started moaning, wordlessly.
"What is that thing?" Theris asked, standing well back from it as well.
The Doctor ignored him. "Hang on, Elpis!"
Her sounds of distress grew louder. Crede put his gun down and rushed to her side, not really knowing whether or not to touch her, his hands sort of flapping about in the air around her.
The Doctor drew the sonic probe out and aimed it into the hole, hoping that setting 324 would begin containment of the fusion reaction, which would then, theoretically, trigger the closing of the wormhole.
Elpis had buried her head in her hands, as if shielding herself from the invisible temporal energy now pouring out of the cube. Her moans had turned to sobs, intermingled with Crede's helpless, and increasingly frantic words of comfort. Theris continued to demand to know what was happening, and everyone else continued to ignore him. At this point, it didn't matter what was happening, just that it was.
"Come on," the Doctor said to himself through a clenched jaw, releasing one last burst from the probe.
***
Elpis didn't understand most of what she saw in her mind in between the lightning-flashes of searing pain. It hurt too much to try and piece together what exactly was happening to her, though she knew it was caused by the box being opened and its contents exposed.
Beyond that, it was just flashes-glimpses of times and places and people that didn't slot in anywhere with what she already knew. She'd seen before that the Doctor was an anomaly; what some more conservative members of her people would call an abomination. Once she'd seen how the timelines bent around him and probabilities tangled in on themselves at his touch, she couldn't believe she hadn't seen it instantly. She didn't want to say that he was wrong, in that haughty, unsympathetic way that her grandsires might, but he was certainly something unique and new.
Once the box was opened, she felt like she was splitting apart at the seams, disassembled so that she could be taken piece-by-piece through that tear in space-time. Through it bled glimpses of another world.
It was a world whole and complete, but paradoxically missing a piece. Like the cables that lowered her daily into the mining shafts, it was meant to be married to another for greater strength, yet the other was missing. The threads of its time would probably hold, but if they frayed or snapped, there would be no recourse.
And after that flash of understanding, again the pain, like something dissecting her, dividing her. No one knew better than a Campheline that all life is an indivisible whole formed by bits of now and then and if. Exposure to this terrible, arrogant manipulation of time gave her the experience of dissolution and she couldn't keep herself from crying out.
***
Rose lay awake, Donna's words ringing in her ears (as well as Donna's snores, coming from the guest room across the hall).
If he were to walk in right now, how would he feel if he heard you say that about him?
She was right, of course. Rose had been what her mum had always referred to as wallowing. She didn't want to bother anyone else with it, didn't want anyone's pity, but she felt like if she could just marinate a bit longer, she'd arrive at the real source of her melancholy.
This isn't a life. It's not right. It's not what he'd want.
When people died, you were supposed to get on with your life because it's what they would want (it's always assumed). But the Doctor wasn't dead, and a course of emotional action didn't seem nearly as clear, as a result. Not only that, she had no idea where he was, unlike the first time around when she'd had a target location, and prior experience at hopping between universes, having already done it a couple of times.
Still, she was fairly certain that what the Doctor wouldn't want was her just giving up on him. She'd never do that anyway, as perilously close as she felt she'd come in the past few weeks. But perhaps in order to see the land you live in clearly, you have to back up almost to the edge of another-the trick was not crossing over entirely. The grass is never greener on the other side.
She pulled the duvet up to her chin and looked at the clock on her mobile phone, which made her jump when it rang as she held it. She answered the call immediately, hoping the sound hadn't woken Donna.
It was Torchwood. The readings from the time lock were going mental. She quizzed them about Hawking radiation while shaking Donna awake and hopping one-footed around the kitchen, putting her wellies on.
The night-shift scientists reported no signs of time travel or the Doctor, but Rose realised that it didn't matter. In a flash, she knew what the Doctor would want her to do. He wouldn't want her to move on with her life, or get over it, or any such selfless nonsense. That wasn't the Doctor at all. He'd want her to fight, to be a right pain in everyone's arse, and to do whatever it took to help him get back.
Donna stumbled downstairs blearily, having trouble finding the arm of her coat and blinking in the light of the kitchen.
"Any chance for tea?" she asked.
"No time for that," said Rose. "We've got work to do."
A slow smile crept across Donna's face. "I thought we might."
[ To Chapter 27]