#frozen three better be fucking amazing of else I will not fucking hesitate to riot and cryyyyyyyyyy

[promisedyouforever]

dementophobia, chapter five

I had a time and a half wrestling with this!  But finally, here it is!

PAIRING: Ten x Rose RATING: Teen FIND IT:  Ao3 | Teaspoon ON TUMBLR: Part One * Part Two * Part Three * Part Four * Part Five

@lvslie ...!

Chapter Five

(See Part One for full comments)

Twenty one days, seventeen hours, and fifty-three minutes before:

The Doctor stopped them where they stood.  He’d not made much of the crowd at first, but looking at it now he saw it had more than doubled in only moments, a pace that was only increasing.

Dammit!  Pete’s unexpected presence had distracted him and yanked his hearts and thoughts in too many directions at once.

The mob was some distance away yet, but the gap was closing.  The unease Rose had momentarily chased away came swooping back through him to settle in the pit of his stomach.

Reflexively he tugged, pulling her closer.  She came easily, fingers tightening against his with one hand while the other wrapped around his arm.

“Doctor?”

“It’s… ”  He trailed off, searching the crowd with his superior vision.  His attention swam from person to person as he tried to pick out details, to piece together some idea of what was happening.  They were a diverse lot with no obvious commonalities beyond their humanity; yet here they were, united by something important enough to cut through such distinctions.  And they were tense, the low white noise of agitation rippling through the sea of bodies.

Many were dressed in street clothes, but a few wore what looked like uniforms, all the same shade of grey and all bearing some variety of the letters “MMH”.  They were far more nervous, and almost all hid their faces with handkerchiefs or scarves so that all he could see were eyes – jittery but fierce, anonymous eyes.

A few clutched what looked like photographs.  He  knew by the way they clung to them that they could only be pictures of loved ones.

He wasn’t sure which detail disturbed him most.

“Doctor?” Rose murmured again, snapping him out of his thoughts.  He glanced down at her.  “I think… This is some kind of protest, yeah?”

She’d seen enough social unrest in their travels together to know it when she saw it, a thought that gave him the peculiar sensation of simultaneous pride and guilt.  Slowly, still scanning the scene, he nodded.  “It is.”

But what was driving it?  He needed to know more; he had no idea why they were even in this universe, but he had a gut feeling this was connected.  He watched and weighed their options.

The mood in the plaza gradually escalated, and he circled the idea of fleeing the scene.  What had begun as nervous bravery was rising and changing, becoming the kind of restless edginess that whispers riot police and broken glass.  And the throng grew still, relentlessly, closing in fast.

He muttered, “This is very, very not good.”

Claustrophobic anxiety began to wrap itself around him, squeezing.  They weren’t safe here.  Telepathy dampened and time senses stressed by this universe’s unfamiliarity, there was still something, something scratching at the recesses of his mind.

Rose.  Rose isn’t safe.  The urge to pull her away grew until there and then she was the single overriding categorical imperative, a visceral need more important than breathing.

The warmth of her palm, skin against skin, conjured a flash of his empty reaching hand and electric air and her fingers losing their grip, white white walls and the blinding hungry pull of the Void.

Not safe.

That was all.

“We can’t be here,” he declared.  He took a backward step and moved her along with him.

She hesitated.  “Can’t we do something to help?”

He shook his head, apologetic but urgent.  “No.”

Whatever this was, it was beyond their control.  A deeply aggrieved populace was amassing, and they seemed on the brink of exploding into bright, violent flames.

A man holding a megaphone, features cloaked beneath a balaclava, shimmied up a lamppost near the government building.

Ah.  The match that lights the gasoline.

Something jostled the Doctor’s shoulder and he whirled to see people now moving in from behind them, rushing forward en masse now that events were underway.  Soon he and Rose would be surrounded, absorbed in the mob and cut off from exit.

He began to say so when someone darted between them, severing the lifeline of their joined hands.  They fought to re-establish it as more people crushed in around them until finally, he caught her reaching fingers and pulled, forcibly dragging her free.

Breathless, she leaned into him and squeaked, “Let’s get out of here, yeah?”

 “Just stay with me.”  He tightened his hold on her.  “And don’t let go.”

She pressed closer.  “Not a chance.”

 ~~0~~

 PRESENT:

Rose flailed, eyes screwed shut, all knees and elbows and fists pummelling empty air to fend off some invisible attacker.

Without thinking, the Doctor scrabbled to get a grip on her.  Her response was a sweeping roundhouse punch aimed at his head.

He yelped and caught her wrist just before the blow hit home.  Snatching the other one up for good measure, he trapped her hands tight against his chest.

She kicked and yanked, struggling with all the panicked fury of a wild animal.  Amazed at her strength and fearful she’d hurt herself, he still knew better than to let go.  All he could do was yell, “Rose, stop!  Stop!  Rose!  

“Stop!”

At his last and loudest she slumped back, surrendering to lie trapped, red-faced and snarling.  Her breath came fast and shallow, her brows pulled wire tight over sealed eyelids.

Something feral growled across the surface of his brain.  It was chuffing, sniffing – looking for a way in.

Then it was gone, vanishing before he could be certain it was ever really there, and Rose left him no time to consider it.  Her head snapped back suddenly against the pillow.

She howled.

The sound of it sent razor blade shivers across his skin.  It was utterly alien, even to him, a strange multiplicity somehow deafening and haunting, enraged and frightened and mournful all at once.

And so very, very wrong.

His throat constricted; this… creature wasn’t her.

It wasn’t Rose.

He’d found her – had it really been only moments ago?

He’d found her, and yet she was still missing.

But he’d seen her, caught that glimpse just before she lost consciousness.  She’d recognised him.  She was there.

She had to be.  Whatever had set this off, she had to be alive still, inside somewhere and just – just misplaced.  He could not believe anything else.  If he could just calm her enough…

He rallied, determined to do whatever it took to be heard over the ear-splitting keen.  “Stop, love, stop!  I’ve got you; it’s alright..  you can do this…  I’ve got you… you’re safe…”

He kept on for what seemed so long but could only have been seconds, a persistent litany of urging and reassuring, demanding and pleading.  None of it did any good, and the only option he had left would be too dangerous to try if he couldn’t soothe her at all.  He had to find a way.

After an inhumanly long time her lungs were spent.  He rushed into the brief quiet with a voice now hoarse from shouting, and words never said spilled out in a ragged tumble.  “Please, Rose, open your eyes.  I know you’re there.  You’ve got to come back.  I need you.  You’re scaring me now.  Please.  Please.”

She drew a long breath, prelude to another wild cry, and he couldn’t keep the muddy, thick tangle of emotion and frustration from flooding him.  Without thought he burst out, “For fuck’s sake, Rose, it’s me!”

The second scream died on her lips.  Her eyes flew open wide.

He’d shocked himself with his own profanity, but maybe that had done it.  He could not stop a glimmer of hope from rising.  A heartsbeat passed, then two, and he waited, but she seemed frozen.  Tentatively, softly, he called her name again.

She startled at the sound, and her vision skittered blindly across empty space, searching for the source.  Her pupils were huge.

Huge and ringed with swirls of luminous gold.  He swallowed past the sudden stone in his throat.

“Rose?”

The unnerving glow flared into fiery clarity, bright and sure and no longer sightless.  Preternaturally swift, her eyes shot up and nothing short of infinity was staring straight and unblinking into the darkest corners of him. 

A voice that was still not quite hers whispered, “They know.”

What?

“They know,” she repeated.

“They’re coming.”

Whatever he’d expected her to say, that wasn’t it.  Confusion hammered home once more how little he still knew, how efficiently he’d been stonewalled from the very beginning as he stammered, “What? Who?  Who’s coming?  The Ministry?  Who?”

The light in her eyes flashed white hot.

“Everyone.”

 ~~0~~

 Twenty one days, seventeen hours, and forty-one minutes before:

The Doctor moved against the current as nimbly as he could, darting between people, pushing and squeezing past the ever tightening crush of protesters moving in.  Rose slowed him down but he kept an iron grip on her hand and pulled her along with him.

Forty minutes:

He stopped for an instant, and she stumbled into him gracelessly.

He glanced up, gauging their position, and saw they’d made some progress.  Just another few metres and –

Behind them, a megaphone crackled to life and the crowd hushed, stilled with anticipation.  He took advantage of the distraction and quickened his already frantic pace.

Thirty-nine minutes:

The voice of unrest boomed through the speaker, shouting, “What do you want?”

A split second of silence followed, then a lone voice, elderly and fragile, found the courage and cried out in a thick Welsh accent, “I want me son back!”

That was the spark that lit the fire, and the crowd roared to life.

Thirty-eight minutes:

Chaos poured in around them.  A wall of people surged forward, taking the Doctor stumbling with them.

Rose lost her footing completely and plummeted in the opposite direction.

Thirty-seven minutes and 47.6744 seconds:

Her hand was wrenched violently away from him.

Adrenaline flooded him and he dove toward her, crashing into people, heaving them aside and using his own weight to clear a path.  He barely noticed – all he saw was glimpses of blonde moving too fast away from him; all he heard was the roar of his own ears and her voice calling him.

A flash of prescient induction insisted he wasn’t going to reach her.  He ignored it.

Then without warning a heavy gloved hand grabbed his shoulder and sent him spinning.  Before he could react the same hand caught him off balance and shoved.

He hit the ground.  His head cracked hard against the pavement.  It lolled sideways against his will, his cheek pressed into something wet and dark and mixed with the scrape of gravel.

Blood.  His.

Oh gods. Rose.

Everything went blurry at the edges and impending darkness poured over him like thick honey, cloying and heavy and dragging him under.

He fought, willing himself to stay awake, to get up, to get back to Rose.

His body wouldn’t respond.

Disjointed, distorted flashes swam across his vision.  Black boots.  Military uniforms.   The swing of a rifle.

Memory and waking nightmares bled hazy redwhite into the now, and it was the boots of Cybermen he saw, and it was Torchwood and Daleks and the crackling smell of voidstuff and the end, the end of it all.

don’t no hang on hang on

Her fingers weren’t strong enough and he couldn’t reach her, could do nothing but watch as she fell into the impossibly white absence-of and how could nothing be so bright?  She crossed into it and in 0.005 nanoseconds the static devoured her without so much as a flicker.

She was gone.

Gone, and forever ended.  Gone and he followed her, pulled into the light as the healing coma overtook him.

 ~~0~~

 PRESENT:

Pete snatched his overcoat from its hook and shook it at Maddie. “How did you let this happen?”

Anger flashed in Maddie’s eyes before he saw it harnessed, pressed into defiance.  “I did not ‘let it happen’!  You’ve been running it all, Pete!  We’ve done everything, everything you asked, and more!”

“Well, obviously your surveillance of him leaves something to be desired,” he snapped.

She opened her mouth and he knew it was to tell him what he already knew – how hard the alien had been to find, how something about this “Doctor” had eluded their best (admittedly alien provided) equipment.

He cut her off before she could start.  “And her protocol damned well better hold!”

“It ought to!” she shot back.  He raised his eyebrows at the less than complete confidence in her voice and she threw an annoyed glance at the ceiling.  “We’ve never done this before, rewriting the memory centers so extensively.”  She sighed. “I told you there were risks, Pete.  I told you from the beginning this could open her up to brain injury.”

With more difficulty than he would have liked, he managed to keep his voice level, though it was weighted with sarcasm.  “Well, what is your best prediction, Madame Scientist?”

She narrowed her eyes at him then took a beat to consider it. Her growing frown told him that he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

“Well, Pete, let’s think through it,” she said, no small measure of edginess in her own voice.  “We had to reprogram everything specifically for her from the ground up. But you know you’re the only one who has the termination sequence. It’s permanently dormant unless you activate it, and it should stay that way.”

He sensed she wasn’t telling him everything.  “But?”

“But,” she said on a huge exhale, “that might be a problem itself. I honestly can’t predict the outcome of going offline without the termination protocol intact.  It’s never happened.  Her brain could retain its current state, revert, or wind up so much mash she can’t tie her own shoelaces.  There are too many variables.”

It was hardly reassuring, not close to enough; a feeling he couldn’t quite identify was getting louder, more difficult to keep at bay, and it was egging him on. “Maddie, goddamit!  If Rose is hurt – ”

She barked a short, humorless laugh, and he was thoroughly taken aback by the venom in her voice.  “Bit rich to worry about that now.”

At that, a wave swept over him the likes of which he hadn’t felt in a long time.  He drew himself up to his full height and pinned her in place with hard and dangerous eyes. For the first time in their history, to him they were no longer bickering spouses – she was the Minister, but he was the Autocrat, the only person alive more powerful than she was.

“If this ends badly,” he ground out, each word delivered with military precision, “I will hold you responsible.”

Shocked but unflinching, her chin angled up and she glared back at him with a menacing expression that promised devastation should he go too far.  “Try it, Peter,” she hissed.

For an instant everything slammed to a halt as each of them stared the other down.  Then something broke through in Pete, piercing the steel sheen of his authority.  It was that feeling again, the sharp graveyard nails of something ancient and rusty.  Something that had died forty-three years ago.

It bloomed in his awareness like the blood of a wounded soldier, a vivid crimson-stained flower on crisp white.

It was fear. Fear of losing his daughter.

It was making him rash.

Suddenly exasperated, he shook himself from whatever had overtaken him and barked, “Oh, God, we’re just wasting time!”

Maddie’s expression was inscrutable as he yanked on his overcoat.  He ignored her, hoping she’d forgive him later.  At least insofar as she ever forgave him anything.

He headed toward the doorway as he spoke.  “Tell the agent to wait for reinforcements unless they try to leave, and get a team down there, now.  I want all of your best people.”

She gave him a curt nod and moved two fingers toward the skin behind her ear when he interrupted.

“You go with them, understand?”

Again, she nodded.  “What about you?”

Pete set his jaw.  “Oh, I’m coming with you.”

Again she began to speak, and again he ploughed over her. The need to settle this and settle it permanently clawed at him relentlessly now.  “No argument.  I’m personally retrieving my daughter and doing what I should have done before.  No more protocols.  I don’t care what state she’s in.  Your doctors and technicians will come to her.  I’m bringing her directly under my care.”

She seemed to know better than to question him.  “Alright, then.”

He turned away then back, almost as an afterthought, to give her one last order. “And tell them to get rid of that damn alien the first time anyone gets a clear shot.”

 ~~0~~

 PRESENT:

Everyone.

The Doctor stared at this not-quite-Rose, into those unending eyes, and a bone deep chill rippled through him and he had no words at all to ask exactly what she meant.

Suddenly she broke away from his gaze and wrenched her hands from him with incredible strength only to pound her fists into the mattress beneath her – once, then again, and again.  He was frozen, gaping and unable to process what was happening.

With the fourth impact, her back arched.

She began to spark, veins beneath her skin lighting up with streaks of gold, what looked for all the world like –

energy.  Vortex energy.

Impossible!

She looked like she was about to regenerate.

For all its might, his so-impressive, massive brain fell poverty-stricken and he stared at her with owlish shock and unabashed awe.

With one last, mighty slam of her fists, her face morphed somehow and even her body shifted, and the glow abruptly vanished.

She blinked and he knew in an instant she was finally finally there, just Rose, his Rose.  He forgot everything else and saw only her, and a muffled sob of relief escaped him.

She pushed herself up slowly with trembling arms, eyes darting everywhere as she took in her surroundings.  Gingerly, he lowered himself to sit beside her, and as the bed dipped and she sat up fully under her own power, those eyes landed on him.

They were amber and hazel and only Rose, all Rose, full of bewilderment.

“Doctor?”  Her voice was small and hoarse.  “Where are we?  What hap – ”

He didn’t try to rein himself in, didn’t even let her finish her sentence before he shot forward, wrapping her in his arms, enveloping her completely. Disoriented, still she returned the embrace without question, and it undid him completely.  He held on, stroking her hair without letting go, rocking them both back and forth and murmuring her name until tears closed his throat and stung his eyes.

There was a rustle from somewhere behind them and a dumbfounded voice stammered, “What – What the hell was, was – that?!?”

George.  He’d forgotten the man was even there.

He ignored him and only tightened his hold on Rose.

Held on.  He held on and held on and couldn’t seem to stop until he realised the tables had turned. She was practically rocking him now, shushing and smoothing her hands along his back as she whispered gentling, comforting words.  “Shhh, s’alright, we’re alright, I’m okay, Doctor, I’ve got you, it’s alright…”

He should be the one saying those things.

He pulled back and she took a deep breath, composed herself and met his gaze.

“Are you alright?” she asked.

He should be asking her that.

He cleared his throat and nodded slowly, looking back at her through red,  raw eyes. “I am now.”

The meaning of that wasn’t lost on her, its honesty surprising.  “Something bad happened to me, didn’t it?”

He didn’t know how to begin, what to tell her, what she recalled. His hand leapt to the back of his neck, mussing his disheveled hair even more.  “Erm, well – let’s start off this way.  What’s the last thing you remember?”

“We were in the Tardis and… and we had a rough landing, yeah? Did I hit my head or something?”

Another wave of relief washed over him – could it be she remembered nothing of the past three weeks?

But... no, he’d lied to her before, and he vowed never to do it again.  “No.  Absolutely no head injuries allowed in the Tardis,” he said, trying to lighten the weight of it.

She half-smiled.  “Okay.  But that’s the last thing – ”

Abruptly she switched direction.

“No, wait!  That’s not right.  I… you weren’t…”  She cocked her head, concentrating.  “I was in a really posh room, and I – did I live there once?  I was playing chess with… I dunno.”

Chess?

She shook her head, frowning, and he watched as her thoughts doubled back on themselves.  “No.  No.”

Her frown grew puzzled, then dread began to steal away her confidence.  “I don’t play chess!” she insisted.  She gave him a pleading look.  “Do I?”

Her confusion was what he’d expected, but this made him wonder just how much the Ministry had mucked about with her brain.  There had only been the one time, in the library, when he’d tried to teach her to play chess. She loathed it.

He took her hand and replied softly, “No, you don’t play chess. It’s alright, though.  I expected you’d be a bit confused.”

Though his touch was welcome comfort, she was still on the verge of tears.  She shook her head again.  “Yeah, but that’s not – I – Doctor, it’s all mixed up!  Are you sure I didn’t hit my head?”

“I’m sure.”  He opened his arms and said, “Come here.”  She leaned over gratefully and curled into him until she was sitting in his lap like a lost child.  He’d never seen her so vulnerable; she was always so strong.  He wanted to wrap his hands around the neck of whoever was responsible for taking that away from her.

“It’s alright,” he murmured into her hair.  “I promise.  We’ll get back home and I’ll get you fixed right up, you’ll see.”

She quieted then, and it helped him ease himself down from everything they’d just been through as well.  Gradually, other thoughts began trickling through, events to file away for examination later.  Then he caught a glimpse of poor George, sitting in the desk chair now and staring at them with a look bordering on shell-shocked.

How, exactly, was he going to get her back home?

With a jolt, he remembered the warning.

They’re coming.

He had to get her out of there.

At that instant Rose stirred and he glanced down at her. It seemed she’d had a thought of her own.

She looked up at him and asked, “Doctor?  Where’s Dad?”

As if a trap door had opened, his stomach plunged past the floorboards.

 ~~0~~

 INDETERMINATE:

A leviathan Consciousness stirred.  Something had disrupted a connection, severing a link in the collective web that sustained and nourished all things in its realm.  Untroubled, the Consciousness moved without motion through space that was not space, seeking the source of the disturbance in the simultaneous everywheres that were not and yet were.

So many tiny creatures, so distracted, so fraught with the mundanity of their fleeting and finite three dimensional lives.  The Mind was so often (what a strange concept, often) replacing them.

Easily the disturbance was located.

Oh.  The gap in the web was bigger than expected.

The Mind stopped and looked again.

Peter Tyler.  The small one who thought himself an emperor. It had been nothing to discern that his offspring was the one of true importance.

And she’d been cut off, disconnected somehow.

The Consciousness peered more closely.

Outrage rippled along Its not-body.

The Doctor.

    to be continued...