Through A Glass Darkly - Ninth, Tenth, Rose - PG13
Title:Through A Glass Darkly // Part 2 of 3
Authors: Little_Speaker and Dubious_Gannet (co-authored fic)
Rating: PG13 (angst, some mild knife-wielding)
Era: Ninth through Tenth
Notes: Set during the first 10-15 minutes after regeneration (which puts it during the Children in Need Special). AU where something is horribly wrong with the Doctor after his regeneration. Something....REALLY....WRONG.
::First Chapter::
Through A Glass Darkly // Part 2 of 3
What happened next was hard to follow even when you're not crouched behind an armchair in an unfamiliar version of a time-travelling spaceship being attacked by an insane parody of an alien you once knew and loved.
Adding to the confusion factor was the fact that the only person who can save you from said maniac is that very alien you once knew and loved, currently sporting an unflattering piece of neckwear as well as a very upsetting lateral incision to the pectoralis as a direct result of the other version going at him with a butterknife.
Where did he even get that? wondered Rose, blinking.
The Doctor -- her Doctor -- that is, the bleeding one, staggered backwards and collided with a pile of leather-bound journals that were stacked next to a gaudy Tiffany floor lamp. Dragonflies and lilies shattered while the madman, face contorted in feral rage, lunged forwards, screaming like the dammed.
"You took my face! You took my FACE!"
Scrabbling blindly, the Doctor managed to heft one of the tomes. It missed.
"Give it back!" the lunatic shrieked.
"Stay away!"
"GIVE IT BACK!!"
The Doctor lashed out with one of his legs, catching his attacker on the knee. The blow wasn't that powerful, but the broken glass had already destabilized his footing and he tumbled, flailing, onto an ottoman just to the Doctor's right. Gasping, the Doctor rolled away from the snarling man and tried to pull himself up, wincing as the chest wound oozed fresh blood.
Rose tried to will herself into action, tried to make herself wake up from this stupor, but her fingers seemed to be sewn into the sides of the chair. Her vision blurred.
Whirling, the scarecrow lunged at the Doctor's swaying form, jabbing the butterknife into the side of his thigh. Bellowing in pain, the Doctor managed to punch his assailant's face before both of them toppled back down.
"Rose!" gasped the Doctor. If it was a plea for help or a command to run, she couldn't tell.
"Thief! Coward! Murderer!" spat the madman, temple bleeding, eyes locked on the Doctor's. Having lost the knife, his slender hands were now locked firmly around his opponent's throat, jamming into the pronounced cords with horrible force.
"ROSE!"
She wasn't losing him again. Fireplace. Logs? Pokers? Rose turned, and saw the stump of the cricket bat.
She landed a good glancing blow on the scarecrow, though it only made the head swing up, the horrible (beautiful) black eyes focusing on her with confused rage. For a moment, she thought she saw him falter--
The Doctor kneed him the chest, sending him tumbling backwards into yet another pile of books. Rose knelt down by the bleeding Time Lord, hauling him to his feet despite his cursing and groaning.
"You'll be all right!"
"Sincerely doubt that," he wheezed, slumping forwards. "Auugh. Quick. Get to the console --"
"You're hurt!"
"Yeah, did occur to me," he spat, limping and dragging Rose towards the dais--
The sound of rapid footsteps and a sudden emptying of the lungs, and then the madman was ahead of them, pounding past their sagging forms and leaping onto the grille like a deranged gazelle. He stabbed at a sequence of buttons, then whirled to face them, eyes gleaming.
"You stole my history," he murmured in a bizarrely low undertone, watching the Doctor struggle to stand up again. "Took my name and face and place in space --" He giggled, faintly, as though the inane rhyme amused him.
Abruptly, the giggling stopped, the face went blank. "And you killed them." His hand alighted on the dial he had been so fond of a moment before.
The Doctor lurched upright. "No choice."
"Liar."
"There was nothing --"
"LIAR!" howled Scarecrow, wrenching the dial savagely.
The bell Rose had heard in the distance tolled again, only much louder and more urgently. The TARDIS shook, the time rotor abruptly slowed, and the bats in the cavernous ceiling fled shrieking from their roosts. The console dais was engulfed in an all-too familiar golden haze --
calling to Rose, trying to tell her something --
She jerked herself out of her reverie. "Doctor! What do we do?!"
He grabbed her hand, tore the butterknife out of his leg and lunged for the door leading into the rest of the TARDIS.
"RUN!"
-----
Time and relative --
No, that's not right --
time and --
in here, in here of all places, the safe place, the place where nothing bad was supposed to be--
Tall men with shrunken autumnal souls and silly frocks, standing at the bridge of here and never, scowling at you like a murder of headmasters sizes up the world's most truant schoolboy. Throw rocks at them and they fly back to the dumpsters.
In here.
You couldn't save them.
so many funny dresses, burning like October leaves
burning.
Well, time to clear up the rubbish before the neighbors complain, eh Rose?
----
It was the better part of ten minutes before the Doctor finally collapsed, dragging Rose down with him. They had ran down several corridors already, him pulling her by the hand as his staggered pace caused her to trip once or twice. She glanced back once or twice, noticing the none-too-discreet trail of blood that was being left in their wake.
The halls in this area of the TARDIS were all masonry work, with the occasional creeping vine or wooden vaulting to break up the monotony; wholly different from the highly organic, patch-work feel of her TARDIS. But this was her Doctor next to her, and the dark spot on his jeans where the madman's weapon had penetrated was growing larger. Blood was beginning to pool on the floor.
"Here..."
Rose moved closer to where he had slumped onto the floor, eyes half-slitted with pain. She gingerly reached over and removed the dusky green cravat from around his neck as he tilted his head slightly to look at her. "Didn't really go with the jacket, anyways...", he coughed.
Rose forced something like a smile. "Yeah."
She pulled his left leg up and begin wrapping the piece of fabric into a tourniquet, causing him to wince.
"Not so tight..nngghh..."
"Sorry."
There was a long pause, and she reached back over to pull away the collar of his dress shirt away to reveal the cut right below his collarbone, run a good portion of the way across to his right shoulder. The front of the shirt was soaked down to his waist with blood, but even Rose's limited medical and first-aid knowledge knew this was less serious than the gouge on his leg. She wondered if Time Lords were immune to tetanus.
Her gaze drifted back to the masonry of the corridors for a moment until a cool hand slipped around her own, and gave a reassuring, familiar squeeze. Then she was being pulled to her feet again, and they were back off down the hall, but the pace was cut in half. Most of the Doctor's weight was leaning onto Rose, and she used all the strength she had to push back against it to keep them upright.
"Doctor..what...what did you see when you did that -- thing?" The question seemed to hang in the air as their steps resonated throughout the stone work.
"Probably a lot I shouldn't have. A lot more than I should have." Another endless silence. "But I did see you." A warm, but pained smile broke out across the familiar visage. "And I also saw the source of this whole bit a mess we got ourselves in."
She shot him a confused look from her hunched-over position.
"The TARDIS is a powerful ship, Rose. Even I'm not sure what she's capable of half the time. And there was no way to predict what was gonna happen when you opened up her heart. My people didn't even have an equation or mathematical theorem for that kind of power. But you did, and he-- I mean me -- well, he, took that power back from you. But not all of it." They were stopped now, and he was trying to turn to face her, awkwardly shifting his weight to the other leg and try to balance using both hands on her shoulders.
"I'm not real,l Rose."
"What?" Her mouth gaped open slightly, disbelief on the edges of her voice. "What are you going on about? How could this not be real? You're standin' right here, aren't you?" Her voice rose in accusation.
"It's not that simple". He let out a sigh, partly out of pain and mostly to gather his wits about him. "Do you remember -- oh, what was it -- Margaret the Slitheen?"
"You're a Slitheen?!" She was about to pull back but the Doctor's grip on her shoulder's tightened.
"No, and just listen before you start getting your knickers in a bundle. Rose, The TARDIS looks into your heart, can sense your needs and desires, and when all it's raw energy is released like that, it can end up being highly unstable, and most of all -- unpredictable. Margaret got a second chance, and that all worked out fine and dandy. But it's not always like that. There's consequences. Think of it as a 'careful what you wish for' kind of deal."
She shook her head. "I still don't understand what you're trying to get at..."
"Rose, you wanted him back, and you wanted it so badly that the tiny bit of the Vortex left inside you had one last burst of energy left in it. You willed echoes of the past back into the physical plane. Or, more specifically, you caused the fabric of my relative space and time to overlap and what you got was a mirror of sorts. I don't like the idea of being a figment of you and the TARDIS's imagination, but that seems to fit pretty accurately."
Rose stood in silence for a moment and cautioned a glance back up into those blue depths. How could this all be a lie? Was the TARDIS this cruel? Was the Doctor this cruel?
"But you're here now...and...we got to stop this bleeding." She reached down to fuss with the bandage, but a strong hand stopped her.
"No, leave it alone. We're going to get somewhere safe first, down one of these halls, then we we need a game plan to confront me..him, er, that. Rose, part of what's driving him so mad is the fact we're both existing here in the same place. He can't help it, especially on top the regeneration. It's not affecting me because I'm not real. Just an echo. He's the real me."
He met her gaze. "And the only one who can stop it is...you."
-------
Time and--
Relative?
"I'm afraid any sort of return is quite impossible, my dear. They would never allow it."
oh but Grandfather --
No.
Wrong.
**ehhhhnntt!** Ooh, I'm afraid the answer we were looking for was, 'reverse the polarity.' So, with the scores tied, we move on to --
NO.
Still wrong.
In here, of all places.
here?
you left it like this, but at a different leave-taking. Oh, the glimmery bits and the knobs and sprockets and widgets and whatnots, they were there, yes, and the hat-racks and lampshades and bone china tea services --
--ooh, that's right: they left. You'll be mother, then? -- two lumps, please, and sugar if you've got any --
but that was different.
the tall men with broken souls burning
the wailing of the timeships as they died
the all-consuming fire devouring the monsters as they hung immobile in space
and it tore, that fire
and burned
and it ate him/you
and the other monster birthed itself from his/your/their ashes
and garbed itself in black
and destroyed the relics of those past lives
and took these fripperies, these hat-racks, these lampshades, these tea services (lemon anyone?)
and stripped everything down to cold harsh reality
and the oncoming storm wracked the Universe
Yes.
The Oncoming Storm. The despoiler. Death-Who-Walks. Life-thief and name-stealer and murderer.
Oh, no.
Rose is with him --
----
Moving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth that was the TARDIS's inner workings, Rose was beginning to think that she was stranded in a Moebius strip. Every corridor looked like a minor variation on the last, although the vines seemed to gradually snake away while the rondels had grown larger and more uniform. Once or twice, she thought she saw pinkish-red marks on the side of a wall, but what they might've been escaped her.
The Doctor -- he was the Doctor, she didn't care what anyone said; she hadn't risked everything for the sake of that freak with the knife -- was breathing more regularly than before. His face was screwed up in tight concentration, and now and then he would pause at a juncture and mutter furiously under his breath. She was starting to think even he wasn't sure where they were going.
Just when she was certain they were going to walk back into the console room at any moment, the Doctor gave a triumphant "Aha!" and pointed at something leading out from around a corner. It was brown, unspooled yarn.
They followed it to a little alcove of sorts, where, seemingly against all probability, there stood a full-length mirror and a coat-rack. Behind these was a door, which, when opened --
"Oh, I don't believe this."
"Hey, we all have lapses in judgment when it comes to home furnishings--"
"A cricket clubhouse?"
She managed to set him down in a cane chair off to the side, then moved to the door. In spite of the fact that she hadn't felt as though they'd been followed, she took a long, nervous glance before shutting it. "Doctor, why do you have a--"
He was already sponging up the chest wound with a sweater that had lain off to the side. "Long story."
Rose averted her eyes -- less out of a sense of decorum than out of squeamishness at the sight of the angry red gash -- and rifled through the crates, boxes, and desk drawers before stumbling across an old (and slightly suspect) medical kit. "Iodine's good for this, right?"
The Doctor sighed. "Considering the circumstances, infection really isn't weighing that heavily on my mind."
"It won't sting that much, promise."
"Missing the point, Rose Tyler."
Nonetheless, he grudgingly allowed her to dab the edges of the cut, staring fixedly at the charts on the walls. For someone who kept insisting that he wasn't real, he certainly flinched enough. "So--"
"So?"
Rose bit her lip, squeezing some more iodine onto the gauze. "When I came into . . . into wherever you were, you know --"
He didn't look as though he was looking forward to answering her. "Yeah?"
"Well . . why does the console room look like that?"
The Doctor took a deep breath, than yelped as she reapplied the gauze. "Be careful! . . . That's how the TARDIS console was before . . . well, apparently before you met me. End of the Time War, or thereabouts." His face locked down into that old expression she knew so well, the stony look that demanded silence. She wasn't going to oblige him in this.
"So, why did you --"
"I got tired of swanning around in someone else's antique shop," he snapped. "All right? Just a load of rubbish and old odds and ends that no one was using. Little conceits meant to give the place ambience, or whatever." He glowered at a shelf of cricket balls, as though they were the reason he was bleeding. "And, in answer to the next bit, the reason why you saw that version -- and why you've met me like this at this point in this regeneration's timeline --"
"Your what?"
"Oh, for --" The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture she'd never seen him use before -- "That thing? When the Vortex gutted your version of me and left Rear-Admiral McStabby in his place? --Regeneration. Time Lord's body repairs and rewrites everything in one fell swoop, leaves a brand spanking new body in its place." There was a distinct note of bitterness in his voice. "Though all the same problems are still there. Can't believe I -- he -- never told you about that."
Rose felt queasy. "So -- so you just die, and then you . . ." Her voice trailed away. Parts of her mind had gone quietly into lockdown.
"Not sure if you could really call it death," was the more subdued response. "Sort of like birth, maybe, just inverted. Just as messy, though. Anyway," he reluctantly took his gaze from the cricket balls and looked her in the eyes, "I've been through it more than a few times over the years. Matter of fact, when you came barging in, I was doing the big ol' post-near-death spring cleaning, getting rid of everything I didn't need anymore. . ." The Doctor's voice trailed off. His expression was so utterly miserable, so cramped and bleak and desolate, that Rose's hands shook.
When he finally spoke again, the mask was back up. "Anyway. I was clearing out the console room. The TARDIS, or rather, the Vortex was trying to make your wish come true, but unfortunately its memories of me -- him -- only loosely match up with yours. Add the requisite regeneration trauma, and everything gets jumbled into a great big mess." He bit his lip, staring with a slightly gentler expression at the room around him. "These bits here, though -- these are common to the TARDIS in both realities, so we might be all right here." He took the gauze from Rose's immobile hand and briskly taped it across the wound, then pulled a cleaner cricketing sweater over his chest. "Nutter-boy will be looking for us, so we have to get organized, and fast."
Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled.
----
Time and --
oh, this is getting old.
the birds ate the breadcrumbs. That nice young man who wanted to fight the minotaur needed a way of finding his way out. Of course, there were a lot of minotaurs, and all hungry to start the Great Circle of --
no, that's not right.
anyway.
the monster's bad at covering his tracks.
"I'm going to find my friends, and then I'm going to find you."
Wait, that sounds familiar.
Oh well.
"Rose?"
"Yes, Doctor?"
"I'm coming to get you."
-----
If he could remember where he was he could remember where he was going. And vice versa. He is sick of thinking in rhymes and half-memories and half sentences. This is getting him nowhere.
But, this trail of dried blood is getting him somewhere.
The regeneration wasn't easy; all the synapses in his brain open to the lingering energy of the Vortex. It was exhausting, and over all the most frightening experience in his 900-plus years (aside from you-know-what). The fog in his brain is clearing more and more with each passing moment and hour, but he is not out of the woods yet. In fact, he's in another wood he's never been in before, or maybe he has and he's forgotten. No, he's in the TARDIS.
The Doctor lurches forward in pain. Not only does the whole entirety of space and time running through you at the moment of your regeneration cause a few problems with your cognitive ability, it also plays havoc with everything else pertaining to your physiology. His insides ache. He falls against the side of the corridor, clutching his gut in pain. A wisp of orange particles leaves his gaping mouth, face contorted in pain.
"Rose..."
He knows something is wrong, and he has to find her. The raw emotion swimming around in his yet unsettled mind is still too much to deal with, and he is having trouble keeping a grasp on reality. The differences between a dream, a waking-nightmare, and the physical world is all blurring together, and he is still having trouble trying to figure out his place. He does remember stabbing someone though, and he hopes it wasn't Rose. He was just trying to protect her from the intruder in his TARDIS. The skinwalker, walking around in HIS body. Or what was his body...
"I'm sorry..D'you hear that, I'm sorry!" Tears are streaming down his face and he is groping along the wall now, feeling for the passage they might have gone through. He needs them. They knew what was going on, and Rose would be able to tell him why she was fraternizing with that body thief, surely....
-----
Rose had been sitting in the chair across from him, wringing her hands for the past several minutes. The Doctor was frantically scrawling something on a piece of paper, trying not to wince every time he had to move his arm, which in turn stretched the gash. She hoped he wasn't writing their suicide note.
"Come over here. I need to show you something".
She got up and walked over to where he sat, crouching down on her heels. "What is it?"
It looked at first like a crossword puzzle, sans black boxes. But on closer inspection, she could see tiny details like hashes, cross-marks, and a straight red line from one end of the system of interlocking blocks to another. It was a map.
"We're here. Do you see? Right here, near the 'X'. Now, you're going to have to get here...the red hash mark. Do you see it? It's down this corridor--"
"Why are you drawing a map? I mean, you're coming, aren't you?"
"No, Rose. This is the only way to end this, and you have to go do what I'm telling you, for once. No more heroics, like last time. There's not gonna be a chance for that, because all you have to do is make it to this room and do what I say, and everything's going to be fine. It's hard for you to understand, I know, but I'm not your Doctor. Rose, this isn't reality. I'm about as real as that hologram..."
"Then how can your blood be on my hands?!" She outstretched her shaking arms for him to see the dried and flaking specks.
"Believe me, it's not easy realizing all of a sudden you're not real, but it's easier to accept if I know you can do this AND save the real me out there. It's not really even that I don't exist; this me did exist at one point, and it's like your watching the version you recorded off your TIVO. You can interact with me, but ultimately I'm just a construct, Rose."
She was tearing up again and wondered how much of this day she'd spent not crying. "What do I have to do?"
"See this room right here? That's an unused console room. It's unlocked, but the door is hidden and you need to use this map", he pushed the wrinkled parchment into her palm, "...and you need to do it fast. I don't know how much longer this reality can sustain itself, and I don't know how much longer the other version of me can hold out. The time rotor -- you know the column in the middle the room?"
Nod.
"Good, listen. That is the interface that weaves the raw power of the vortex into temporal and spacial coordinates. It's not an easy thing to control when everything is going well, and especially not when you have an inverted reality clashing with the forward momentum of your reality--"
"Enough with the Spock!" she cried.
"Rose, get to this room, set the coordinates on the console (it will probably be manual), and that's all you have to do. Well...not all; you're going to have to get me to follow you there. Don't give me that look, not me, me. He's the only one who can actually make the TARDIS take off. And I can't be in that part of the ship when you do. This is the only way to cut off this end of reality. Once that happens, it will probably redisperse in a few minutes or so."
"I can't leave you again. You can't even expect me to do that."
"Either way Rose, this world is going to come to an end. You can't die for someone who isn't real anymore, and leave the real me alone out there. If you really care, you'll do what I'm tellin' you to do."
She stood back up from the crouching position and moved in closer to him. Unexpectedly, he pulled her down into his arms gripped her tight. "I know you need this...So, just take a minute". He closed his eyes.
And all the thoughts of the past 24 hours came rushing back to her. The terrible burning fire through her brain that was the Game Station memory, the deep hollowed-out sorrow when she saw the hologram flicker on, the intense desire to try and save the creature, the man she cared for deeply, and the crescendo of joy when she saw her Doctor again, alive and whole.
A strong hand moved in reassuring circles a few times on her back, then pushed her away, and she stumbled back from the force.
"Now go."
She didn't have to be told twice.
Cross-posted to ipswich and time_and_chips
Authors: Little_Speaker and Dubious_Gannet (co-authored fic)
Rating: PG13 (angst, some mild knife-wielding)
Era: Ninth through Tenth
Notes: Set during the first 10-15 minutes after regeneration (which puts it during the Children in Need Special). AU where something is horribly wrong with the Doctor after his regeneration. Something....REALLY....WRONG.
::First Chapter::
Through A Glass Darkly // Part 2 of 3
What happened next was hard to follow even when you're not crouched behind an armchair in an unfamiliar version of a time-travelling spaceship being attacked by an insane parody of an alien you once knew and loved.
Adding to the confusion factor was the fact that the only person who can save you from said maniac is that very alien you once knew and loved, currently sporting an unflattering piece of neckwear as well as a very upsetting lateral incision to the pectoralis as a direct result of the other version going at him with a butterknife.
Where did he even get that? wondered Rose, blinking.
The Doctor -- her Doctor -- that is, the bleeding one, staggered backwards and collided with a pile of leather-bound journals that were stacked next to a gaudy Tiffany floor lamp. Dragonflies and lilies shattered while the madman, face contorted in feral rage, lunged forwards, screaming like the dammed.
"You took my face! You took my FACE!"
Scrabbling blindly, the Doctor managed to heft one of the tomes. It missed.
"Give it back!" the lunatic shrieked.
"Stay away!"
"GIVE IT BACK!!"
The Doctor lashed out with one of his legs, catching his attacker on the knee. The blow wasn't that powerful, but the broken glass had already destabilized his footing and he tumbled, flailing, onto an ottoman just to the Doctor's right. Gasping, the Doctor rolled away from the snarling man and tried to pull himself up, wincing as the chest wound oozed fresh blood.
Rose tried to will herself into action, tried to make herself wake up from this stupor, but her fingers seemed to be sewn into the sides of the chair. Her vision blurred.
Whirling, the scarecrow lunged at the Doctor's swaying form, jabbing the butterknife into the side of his thigh. Bellowing in pain, the Doctor managed to punch his assailant's face before both of them toppled back down.
"Rose!" gasped the Doctor. If it was a plea for help or a command to run, she couldn't tell.
"Thief! Coward! Murderer!" spat the madman, temple bleeding, eyes locked on the Doctor's. Having lost the knife, his slender hands were now locked firmly around his opponent's throat, jamming into the pronounced cords with horrible force.
"ROSE!"
She wasn't losing him again. Fireplace. Logs? Pokers? Rose turned, and saw the stump of the cricket bat.
She landed a good glancing blow on the scarecrow, though it only made the head swing up, the horrible (beautiful) black eyes focusing on her with confused rage. For a moment, she thought she saw him falter--
The Doctor kneed him the chest, sending him tumbling backwards into yet another pile of books. Rose knelt down by the bleeding Time Lord, hauling him to his feet despite his cursing and groaning.
"You'll be all right!"
"Sincerely doubt that," he wheezed, slumping forwards. "Auugh. Quick. Get to the console --"
"You're hurt!"
"Yeah, did occur to me," he spat, limping and dragging Rose towards the dais--
The sound of rapid footsteps and a sudden emptying of the lungs, and then the madman was ahead of them, pounding past their sagging forms and leaping onto the grille like a deranged gazelle. He stabbed at a sequence of buttons, then whirled to face them, eyes gleaming.
"You stole my history," he murmured in a bizarrely low undertone, watching the Doctor struggle to stand up again. "Took my name and face and place in space --" He giggled, faintly, as though the inane rhyme amused him.
Abruptly, the giggling stopped, the face went blank. "And you killed them." His hand alighted on the dial he had been so fond of a moment before.
The Doctor lurched upright. "No choice."
"Liar."
"There was nothing --"
"LIAR!" howled Scarecrow, wrenching the dial savagely.
The bell Rose had heard in the distance tolled again, only much louder and more urgently. The TARDIS shook, the time rotor abruptly slowed, and the bats in the cavernous ceiling fled shrieking from their roosts. The console dais was engulfed in an all-too familiar golden haze --
calling to Rose, trying to tell her something --
She jerked herself out of her reverie. "Doctor! What do we do?!"
He grabbed her hand, tore the butterknife out of his leg and lunged for the door leading into the rest of the TARDIS.
"RUN!"
-----
Time and relative --
No, that's not right --
time and --
in here, in here of all places, the safe place, the place where nothing bad was supposed to be--
Tall men with shrunken autumnal souls and silly frocks, standing at the bridge of here and never, scowling at you like a murder of headmasters sizes up the world's most truant schoolboy. Throw rocks at them and they fly back to the dumpsters.
In here.
You couldn't save them.
so many funny dresses, burning like October leaves
burning.
Well, time to clear up the rubbish before the neighbors complain, eh Rose?
----
It was the better part of ten minutes before the Doctor finally collapsed, dragging Rose down with him. They had ran down several corridors already, him pulling her by the hand as his staggered pace caused her to trip once or twice. She glanced back once or twice, noticing the none-too-discreet trail of blood that was being left in their wake.
The halls in this area of the TARDIS were all masonry work, with the occasional creeping vine or wooden vaulting to break up the monotony; wholly different from the highly organic, patch-work feel of her TARDIS. But this was her Doctor next to her, and the dark spot on his jeans where the madman's weapon had penetrated was growing larger. Blood was beginning to pool on the floor.
"Here..."
Rose moved closer to where he had slumped onto the floor, eyes half-slitted with pain. She gingerly reached over and removed the dusky green cravat from around his neck as he tilted his head slightly to look at her. "Didn't really go with the jacket, anyways...", he coughed.
Rose forced something like a smile. "Yeah."
She pulled his left leg up and begin wrapping the piece of fabric into a tourniquet, causing him to wince.
"Not so tight..nngghh..."
"Sorry."
There was a long pause, and she reached back over to pull away the collar of his dress shirt away to reveal the cut right below his collarbone, run a good portion of the way across to his right shoulder. The front of the shirt was soaked down to his waist with blood, but even Rose's limited medical and first-aid knowledge knew this was less serious than the gouge on his leg. She wondered if Time Lords were immune to tetanus.
Her gaze drifted back to the masonry of the corridors for a moment until a cool hand slipped around her own, and gave a reassuring, familiar squeeze. Then she was being pulled to her feet again, and they were back off down the hall, but the pace was cut in half. Most of the Doctor's weight was leaning onto Rose, and she used all the strength she had to push back against it to keep them upright.
"Doctor..what...what did you see when you did that -- thing?" The question seemed to hang in the air as their steps resonated throughout the stone work.
"Probably a lot I shouldn't have. A lot more than I should have." Another endless silence. "But I did see you." A warm, but pained smile broke out across the familiar visage. "And I also saw the source of this whole bit a mess we got ourselves in."
She shot him a confused look from her hunched-over position.
"The TARDIS is a powerful ship, Rose. Even I'm not sure what she's capable of half the time. And there was no way to predict what was gonna happen when you opened up her heart. My people didn't even have an equation or mathematical theorem for that kind of power. But you did, and he-- I mean me -- well, he, took that power back from you. But not all of it." They were stopped now, and he was trying to turn to face her, awkwardly shifting his weight to the other leg and try to balance using both hands on her shoulders.
"I'm not real,l Rose."
"What?" Her mouth gaped open slightly, disbelief on the edges of her voice. "What are you going on about? How could this not be real? You're standin' right here, aren't you?" Her voice rose in accusation.
"It's not that simple". He let out a sigh, partly out of pain and mostly to gather his wits about him. "Do you remember -- oh, what was it -- Margaret the Slitheen?"
"You're a Slitheen?!" She was about to pull back but the Doctor's grip on her shoulder's tightened.
"No, and just listen before you start getting your knickers in a bundle. Rose, The TARDIS looks into your heart, can sense your needs and desires, and when all it's raw energy is released like that, it can end up being highly unstable, and most of all -- unpredictable. Margaret got a second chance, and that all worked out fine and dandy. But it's not always like that. There's consequences. Think of it as a 'careful what you wish for' kind of deal."
She shook her head. "I still don't understand what you're trying to get at..."
"Rose, you wanted him back, and you wanted it so badly that the tiny bit of the Vortex left inside you had one last burst of energy left in it. You willed echoes of the past back into the physical plane. Or, more specifically, you caused the fabric of my relative space and time to overlap and what you got was a mirror of sorts. I don't like the idea of being a figment of you and the TARDIS's imagination, but that seems to fit pretty accurately."
Rose stood in silence for a moment and cautioned a glance back up into those blue depths. How could this all be a lie? Was the TARDIS this cruel? Was the Doctor this cruel?
"But you're here now...and...we got to stop this bleeding." She reached down to fuss with the bandage, but a strong hand stopped her.
"No, leave it alone. We're going to get somewhere safe first, down one of these halls, then we we need a game plan to confront me..him, er, that. Rose, part of what's driving him so mad is the fact we're both existing here in the same place. He can't help it, especially on top the regeneration. It's not affecting me because I'm not real. Just an echo. He's the real me."
He met her gaze. "And the only one who can stop it is...you."
-------
Time and--
Relative?
"I'm afraid any sort of return is quite impossible, my dear. They would never allow it."
oh but Grandfather --
No.
Wrong.
**ehhhhnntt!** Ooh, I'm afraid the answer we were looking for was, 'reverse the polarity.' So, with the scores tied, we move on to --
NO.
Still wrong.
In here, of all places.
here?
you left it like this, but at a different leave-taking. Oh, the glimmery bits and the knobs and sprockets and widgets and whatnots, they were there, yes, and the hat-racks and lampshades and bone china tea services --
--ooh, that's right: they left. You'll be mother, then? -- two lumps, please, and sugar if you've got any --
but that was different.
the tall men with broken souls burning
the wailing of the timeships as they died
the all-consuming fire devouring the monsters as they hung immobile in space
and it tore, that fire
and burned
and it ate him/you
and the other monster birthed itself from his/your/their ashes
and garbed itself in black
and destroyed the relics of those past lives
and took these fripperies, these hat-racks, these lampshades, these tea services (lemon anyone?)
and stripped everything down to cold harsh reality
and the oncoming storm wracked the Universe
Yes.
The Oncoming Storm. The despoiler. Death-Who-Walks. Life-thief and name-stealer and murderer.
Oh, no.
Rose is with him --
----
Moving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth that was the TARDIS's inner workings, Rose was beginning to think that she was stranded in a Moebius strip. Every corridor looked like a minor variation on the last, although the vines seemed to gradually snake away while the rondels had grown larger and more uniform. Once or twice, she thought she saw pinkish-red marks on the side of a wall, but what they might've been escaped her.
The Doctor -- he was the Doctor, she didn't care what anyone said; she hadn't risked everything for the sake of that freak with the knife -- was breathing more regularly than before. His face was screwed up in tight concentration, and now and then he would pause at a juncture and mutter furiously under his breath. She was starting to think even he wasn't sure where they were going.
Just when she was certain they were going to walk back into the console room at any moment, the Doctor gave a triumphant "Aha!" and pointed at something leading out from around a corner. It was brown, unspooled yarn.
They followed it to a little alcove of sorts, where, seemingly against all probability, there stood a full-length mirror and a coat-rack. Behind these was a door, which, when opened --
"Oh, I don't believe this."
"Hey, we all have lapses in judgment when it comes to home furnishings--"
"A cricket clubhouse?"
She managed to set him down in a cane chair off to the side, then moved to the door. In spite of the fact that she hadn't felt as though they'd been followed, she took a long, nervous glance before shutting it. "Doctor, why do you have a--"
He was already sponging up the chest wound with a sweater that had lain off to the side. "Long story."
Rose averted her eyes -- less out of a sense of decorum than out of squeamishness at the sight of the angry red gash -- and rifled through the crates, boxes, and desk drawers before stumbling across an old (and slightly suspect) medical kit. "Iodine's good for this, right?"
The Doctor sighed. "Considering the circumstances, infection really isn't weighing that heavily on my mind."
"It won't sting that much, promise."
"Missing the point, Rose Tyler."
Nonetheless, he grudgingly allowed her to dab the edges of the cut, staring fixedly at the charts on the walls. For someone who kept insisting that he wasn't real, he certainly flinched enough. "So--"
"So?"
Rose bit her lip, squeezing some more iodine onto the gauze. "When I came into . . . into wherever you were, you know --"
He didn't look as though he was looking forward to answering her. "Yeah?"
"Well . . why does the console room look like that?"
The Doctor took a deep breath, than yelped as she reapplied the gauze. "Be careful! . . . That's how the TARDIS console was before . . . well, apparently before you met me. End of the Time War, or thereabouts." His face locked down into that old expression she knew so well, the stony look that demanded silence. She wasn't going to oblige him in this.
"So, why did you --"
"I got tired of swanning around in someone else's antique shop," he snapped. "All right? Just a load of rubbish and old odds and ends that no one was using. Little conceits meant to give the place ambience, or whatever." He glowered at a shelf of cricket balls, as though they were the reason he was bleeding. "And, in answer to the next bit, the reason why you saw that version -- and why you've met me like this at this point in this regeneration's timeline --"
"Your what?"
"Oh, for --" The Doctor pinched the bridge of his nose, a gesture she'd never seen him use before -- "That thing? When the Vortex gutted your version of me and left Rear-Admiral McStabby in his place? --Regeneration. Time Lord's body repairs and rewrites everything in one fell swoop, leaves a brand spanking new body in its place." There was a distinct note of bitterness in his voice. "Though all the same problems are still there. Can't believe I -- he -- never told you about that."
Rose felt queasy. "So -- so you just die, and then you . . ." Her voice trailed away. Parts of her mind had gone quietly into lockdown.
"Not sure if you could really call it death," was the more subdued response. "Sort of like birth, maybe, just inverted. Just as messy, though. Anyway," he reluctantly took his gaze from the cricket balls and looked her in the eyes, "I've been through it more than a few times over the years. Matter of fact, when you came barging in, I was doing the big ol' post-near-death spring cleaning, getting rid of everything I didn't need anymore. . ." The Doctor's voice trailed off. His expression was so utterly miserable, so cramped and bleak and desolate, that Rose's hands shook.
When he finally spoke again, the mask was back up. "Anyway. I was clearing out the console room. The TARDIS, or rather, the Vortex was trying to make your wish come true, but unfortunately its memories of me -- him -- only loosely match up with yours. Add the requisite regeneration trauma, and everything gets jumbled into a great big mess." He bit his lip, staring with a slightly gentler expression at the room around him. "These bits here, though -- these are common to the TARDIS in both realities, so we might be all right here." He took the gauze from Rose's immobile hand and briskly taped it across the wound, then pulled a cleaner cricketing sweater over his chest. "Nutter-boy will be looking for us, so we have to get organized, and fast."
Somewhere in the distance, a bell tolled.
----
Time and --
oh, this is getting old.
the birds ate the breadcrumbs. That nice young man who wanted to fight the minotaur needed a way of finding his way out. Of course, there were a lot of minotaurs, and all hungry to start the Great Circle of --
no, that's not right.
anyway.
the monster's bad at covering his tracks.
"I'm going to find my friends, and then I'm going to find you."
Wait, that sounds familiar.
Oh well.
"Rose?"
"Yes, Doctor?"
"I'm coming to get you."
-----
If he could remember where he was he could remember where he was going. And vice versa. He is sick of thinking in rhymes and half-memories and half sentences. This is getting him nowhere.
But, this trail of dried blood is getting him somewhere.
The regeneration wasn't easy; all the synapses in his brain open to the lingering energy of the Vortex. It was exhausting, and over all the most frightening experience in his 900-plus years (aside from you-know-what). The fog in his brain is clearing more and more with each passing moment and hour, but he is not out of the woods yet. In fact, he's in another wood he's never been in before, or maybe he has and he's forgotten. No, he's in the TARDIS.
The Doctor lurches forward in pain. Not only does the whole entirety of space and time running through you at the moment of your regeneration cause a few problems with your cognitive ability, it also plays havoc with everything else pertaining to your physiology. His insides ache. He falls against the side of the corridor, clutching his gut in pain. A wisp of orange particles leaves his gaping mouth, face contorted in pain.
"Rose..."
He knows something is wrong, and he has to find her. The raw emotion swimming around in his yet unsettled mind is still too much to deal with, and he is having trouble keeping a grasp on reality. The differences between a dream, a waking-nightmare, and the physical world is all blurring together, and he is still having trouble trying to figure out his place. He does remember stabbing someone though, and he hopes it wasn't Rose. He was just trying to protect her from the intruder in his TARDIS. The skinwalker, walking around in HIS body. Or what was his body...
"I'm sorry..D'you hear that, I'm sorry!" Tears are streaming down his face and he is groping along the wall now, feeling for the passage they might have gone through. He needs them. They knew what was going on, and Rose would be able to tell him why she was fraternizing with that body thief, surely....
-----
Rose had been sitting in the chair across from him, wringing her hands for the past several minutes. The Doctor was frantically scrawling something on a piece of paper, trying not to wince every time he had to move his arm, which in turn stretched the gash. She hoped he wasn't writing their suicide note.
"Come over here. I need to show you something".
She got up and walked over to where he sat, crouching down on her heels. "What is it?"
It looked at first like a crossword puzzle, sans black boxes. But on closer inspection, she could see tiny details like hashes, cross-marks, and a straight red line from one end of the system of interlocking blocks to another. It was a map.
"We're here. Do you see? Right here, near the 'X'. Now, you're going to have to get here...the red hash mark. Do you see it? It's down this corridor--"
"Why are you drawing a map? I mean, you're coming, aren't you?"
"No, Rose. This is the only way to end this, and you have to go do what I'm telling you, for once. No more heroics, like last time. There's not gonna be a chance for that, because all you have to do is make it to this room and do what I say, and everything's going to be fine. It's hard for you to understand, I know, but I'm not your Doctor. Rose, this isn't reality. I'm about as real as that hologram..."
"Then how can your blood be on my hands?!" She outstretched her shaking arms for him to see the dried and flaking specks.
"Believe me, it's not easy realizing all of a sudden you're not real, but it's easier to accept if I know you can do this AND save the real me out there. It's not really even that I don't exist; this me did exist at one point, and it's like your watching the version you recorded off your TIVO. You can interact with me, but ultimately I'm just a construct, Rose."
She was tearing up again and wondered how much of this day she'd spent not crying. "What do I have to do?"
"See this room right here? That's an unused console room. It's unlocked, but the door is hidden and you need to use this map", he pushed the wrinkled parchment into her palm, "...and you need to do it fast. I don't know how much longer this reality can sustain itself, and I don't know how much longer the other version of me can hold out. The time rotor -- you know the column in the middle the room?"
Nod.
"Good, listen. That is the interface that weaves the raw power of the vortex into temporal and spacial coordinates. It's not an easy thing to control when everything is going well, and especially not when you have an inverted reality clashing with the forward momentum of your reality--"
"Enough with the Spock!" she cried.
"Rose, get to this room, set the coordinates on the console (it will probably be manual), and that's all you have to do. Well...not all; you're going to have to get me to follow you there. Don't give me that look, not me, me. He's the only one who can actually make the TARDIS take off. And I can't be in that part of the ship when you do. This is the only way to cut off this end of reality. Once that happens, it will probably redisperse in a few minutes or so."
"I can't leave you again. You can't even expect me to do that."
"Either way Rose, this world is going to come to an end. You can't die for someone who isn't real anymore, and leave the real me alone out there. If you really care, you'll do what I'm tellin' you to do."
She stood back up from the crouching position and moved in closer to him. Unexpectedly, he pulled her down into his arms gripped her tight. "I know you need this...So, just take a minute". He closed his eyes.
And all the thoughts of the past 24 hours came rushing back to her. The terrible burning fire through her brain that was the Game Station memory, the deep hollowed-out sorrow when she saw the hologram flicker on, the intense desire to try and save the creature, the man she cared for deeply, and the crescendo of joy when she saw her Doctor again, alive and whole.
A strong hand moved in reassuring circles a few times on her back, then pushed her away, and she stumbled back from the force.
"Now go."
She didn't have to be told twice.
Cross-posted to ipswich and time_and_chips