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misachanTitle: In Dreams
Rating:: PG
Characters: Nine, Rose, Jack, More would be telling:)
Spoilers: Through "The Doctor Dances"
Summary: What's supposed to a quick stop spirals out of control, and even as Jack and Rose struggle to save him the Doctor finds someone he'd thought he'd lost forever.
(A/N: This story is set between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boomtown." Special thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
superherogrlcat for catching my mistakes. Posted in two parts because LJ wouldn't let me do it in one.:) Also available in one piece at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind here)
In Dreams
The Tardis finished materializing with a wheeze and a rattle instead of its customary whoosh. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack opened the doors to find themselves in a dank, industrial-looking corridor. "Oh, lovely," Rose said, appraising the surroundings. The air was thick with dust, and sickly-green vines climbed up over the walls, even though the Tardis readings had said they were hundreds of feet underground. "The places you take me to."
"Oh, hush," the Doctor said. "We're here for parts, not to take in the sights." Rose glanced over at Jack, who just shrugged. "I saw that, you two," the Doctor said, shooting them a look over his shoulder. "If we want to get the Tardis moving again, I need to make a new fluid lock, and I can't do that without something to make it out of. Last time I was here, this was the premier shipyard in the galaxy." He looked around at the streaks of rust working their way down the walls. "'Course, last time I was here, it didn't look abandoned," he admitted.
"When were you here last?" Jack asked.
"Six months ago. Well," he said, "six months by the calendar. Not long enough for it to have gone to seed this badly, at any rate."
The Doctor led them through a labyrinth of corridors; finally, as they made their way further into the complex it opened up into what looked like showrooms. The Doctor knew where to look; he led Jack and Rose into one room off to the right. Tables were littered with parts and bits of machinery; Jack picked up a rectangular piece of metal as they walked by. "Hey, I think this might power up my blaster."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Forget the gun and keep looking." Rose saw Jack smile and slide the piece into his pocket.
"Isn't it a bit creepy, though?" she said, looking around. "If it really is abandoned, why would everyone just leave their things?"
The Doctor didn't answer, but he took her hand and squeezed hard. She could see on his face that he'd been thinking the same.
Something cracked underfoot. The Doctor pulled her off to the side and Jack crouched down; he brushed through the debris littering the floor and came up with what looked to Rose unmistakably like a human jawbone. She felt the Doctor tense up beside her; Jack looked up at them. "I don't think they left."
The mood changed immediately. "I want to know what happened here," the Doctor said, quietly. He looked over to Jack, who was still examining the body.
"It's in stage 4 of decomp, at least," Jack said. Rose felt sick just looking at the body; she didn't know how Jack could stand handling it. "Remains are skeletal and dry. I'd say mummified, but there's no flesh left. It's more like something just sucked all the moisture out."
"You ever seen anything like that before, Captain?"
Jack shook his head. "You?"
"Couple times," the Doctor said. "But nothing that should be down here."
Jack got up and brushed the dust off his knees. "By the way, am I the only one who smells that?"
Rose sniffed the air. "It smells like...perfume?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "I smelled it as soon as we got out of the Tardis."
"So the question is," the Doctor said, finishing the thought, "if we're standing in a graveyard, why does everything smell like flowers?"
"Well," Rose said, "there are all these vines everywhere, maybe they...." she trailed off when she saw the look on the Doctor's face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something rustling up the wall. "Doctor," she said slowly, "did that vine just move?"
The Doctor had a death grip on her hand; she could see in his eyes that whatever conclusion he'd reached, it was very, very bad. "51st century," he whispered. "Jack, have you ever been to Tarsus 5?"
All of the color drained out of Jack's face. "Oh, hell."
All of the vines on all the walls where moving now; pods were opening up and pink and white flowers were unfurling. "Run. Back to the Tardis," the Doctor said. "Now!"
***
The walls crawled as more and more of the pods and flowers sprouted. The vines shifted over the walls and over each with a dry scratching sound; to Rose it sounded like millions of insects skittering along the corridor. The Doctor was running so fast he was practically dragging her along; she had a stitch in her side already. When she looked up, she saw the vines spreading over the ceiling, the flowers dangling down towards them. Jack was a few feet ahead; he stumbled as the plants started to carpet the floor. "Watch your footing!" he shouted back towards them.
A vine lashed out from the wall and wrapped around her arm; she yelped as it yanked her backwards off her feet. Pain shot up from her ankle, and as soon as she hit the floor the vines started crawling towards her. "Doctor!"
He whirled around, and Rose's fear spiked when she saw the look on his face. The flowers were creeping closer, and the perfume smell was so strong it stung. The Doctor dove to his knees next to her, and Rose heard the whir of the sonic screwdriver as he tried to dislodge the vine from her arm. After a few agonizing seconds the vine let go; he wrapped an arm around her to help her up. "All right?"
She winced; the pain from her ankle increased when she stood up. "My ankle," she said.
"Can you still run?" he asked. "It's not much further, I promise."
Rose tested her leg; she could put weight on it, but she wasn't sure how far she could run. Still, the last thing she wanted was to force him to carry her. "I think so," she said, taking a few steps.
He offered her his hand. "Then we have to keep running."
She bit her lip and followed.
***
A few minutes later her ankle was in agony but she didn't dare stop. The vines were thick on the walls now, and every so often they had to run through writhing green curtains. The vines kept grabbing at them; one wrapped around the Doctor's leg and tripped him up, and it took almost a minute of Rose fumbling with the screwdriver to get him free. Jack came racing back around a corner during the struggle and helped them fend off the vines, but as soon as the Doctor saw him he waved Jack off. "Go! Keep running! Get back to the Tardis and shut the door the second you're inside! That's an order, Captain!"
Rose saw defiance flash across Jack's face, then his expression closed and he followed the orders without argument. He looked from Rose to the Doctor, then shook his head. "Hurry," he said, then pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose and disappeared around the corner.
The Doctor got back to his feet slower than Rose would have liked; he'd hit the ground hard. He took a second to catch his breath. "Still with me, Rose?"
Rose squeezed his hand. "Always."
Then they were off again.
***
About three hundred feet from Tardis Rose tripped over a vine the size of a tree trunk. It pulsed like it had a heartbeat, and Rose watched as smaller, flowered vines rose from it like cobras from a snake charmer's basket. Less then a foot from her the largest of the blooms shuddered; before she could scream, the Doctor clamped one hand over her mouth and nose. "Don't breathe," he whispered in her ear.
The flower spit out a cloud of mist; it looked golden and luminescent floating in the air. The Doctor dragged her to a side corridor and motioned for her to stay low. The pollen cloud slowly spread, until the entire area where they'd just been glistened with gold. Rose could feel her lungs burning for air; a few seconds before she thought she would pass out the cloud suddenly flickered and went out, like someone had switched it off. She looked at the Doctor, who nodded back. She took in an enormous gulp of air.
"The pollen's toxic," he said. "Lucky it doesn't last long."
"It was beautiful," she said. She felt slightly light-headed.
"Deadly, though. So many things in the universe are like that," he mused. He grinned at her. "Is that a sign, do you think?" He took several more deep breaths of air. "We have to keep moving," he said. "If they're starting to pop, we don't have much more time."
He helped her up, and after making sure the way was clear he led her at a dead run. The throbbing in her ankle was dulled by adrenaline; she could see more flowers on the walls and ceilings starting to shudder, and she picked up her pace. One popped right over her head; she had to duck and hold her breath for several painful yards until it was safe. More and more of the flowers popped; Rose noticed that the larger the flower, the longer it took the cloud to disperse. Though the twisting corridors meant they couldn't see it, Rose guessed they must be less than one hundred yards from the Tardis when they stumbled onto a clump of the flowers growing from another of the pulsing vine trunks. "Oh, fantastic," the Doctor said as several of the blossoms began to shake. "Stay out of their range!"
Rose dodged the first few jets of pollen, then the Doctor pushed her head down. "Stay low!" Rose took a breath of air, held it, then dropped to the ground and started to crawl. She turned around to see if the Doctor was following and almost choked on a scream.
One of the vines had him grappled by his wrist; by the time he yanked his arm free, the three small flowers left on the vine were shuddering. He dodged the blasts from the first two, but the last flower was lower, and he was off-balance. Rose watched in horror as the pollen cloud went off in his face.
He took two steps back. Rose's mind raced: He must have been holding his breath. Maybe he's resistant. Maybe he's wrong about how toxic it is.
Then he dropped.
Rose counted off the longest twenty seconds of her life as the pollen clouds shimmered, then flickered and went out. She gasped and crawled to him; he was lying on the floor like a broken doll, and she couldn't tell if he was breathing. She dragged him a few feet further from the vines before her ankle gave way; she knew there was no way she could get him to the Tardis by herself. "Jack!" she screamed. It only hit her then that if Jack had done as the Doctor said, he might be in the Tardis already and wouldn't hear her.
More of the vines were snaking towards them. She imagined Jack coming to look when they didn't come back and finding them dead there, like the bones on the showroom floor, imagined him realizing he was there alone. "Doctor! Doctor, wake up! Please, wake up," she said, shaking him. "I can't carry you, please, you have to wake up." She screamed again for Jack. The vines were coming closer, and she could see more of the flowers unfurling. She fished the sonic screwdriver out of the Doctor's pocket and turned it on. "All right," she said, waving it at the plants. "Come on, then."
Just then she heard the faint thud of boots further along the corridor. "Jack?" She couldn't take her eyes from the swaying flowers.
She heard her name then, and almost fainted with relief. "Rose, where are you?" Jack's voice sounded tinny and distorted in the metal corridors, and Rose thought it was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard.
"Jack, I'm over here! Help me!" She jammed the screwdriver into the closest of the flowers; it reared back like an injured animal. "Hurry!"
The sound of his boots grew louder; unfortunately, the largest flowers Rose had ever seen were unfurling, and Rose didn't think she was fast enough with the screwdriver to take on them all.
Jack chose exactly the right moment to round the corner. "Rose, duck!" he shouted, just as all the flowers began to shake. Rose dove on top of the Doctor and tried her best to shield his head. She didn't know what Jack was doing, but she'd learned that "duck" usually preceded "boom."
The blast that flew over her head was like something from the sonic screwdriver's angry older brother. She looked behind her to see the vines shrinking and shriveling before the blue sonic wave, and when she looked up she saw Jack striding forward with his blaster drawn like an action movie hero. "Guess the piece worked, then?"
"Not a perfect fit, but I've got enough to do that five or six more times," he said. The shockwave was still traveling down the corridor, but the vines were already growing back along the sides. "Are your ears okay?"
Rose nodded. Her head actually felt like it was about to come off, but she credited that more to panic, terror, and poison than to Jack's blaster. She saw Jack's eyes go wide as he took in the Doctor lying still on the floor. "They got him," she said. She could feel herself edging towards hysteria and firmly told herself she could fall apart once in the Tardis. "There were too many of them, and he was trying to keep me out of their way. One grabbed him, and he couldn't move in time." She could hear the scratch of the flowers growing back. "Help me with him, I can't---"
Jack holstered his blaster and slung one of the Doctor's arms around his neck. "I've got him. No, you go," he said, shaking his head when she tried to support the Doctor from the other side. "I've got him. Get moving; you got him this far, I'll get him the rest of the way."
No, he got me this far. She didn't want to let the Doctor go; all she could think was that if she turned around, she'd be the one left there alone.
Jack seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. "We'll be right behind you," he said, giving her his most roguish smile. It would have been much more reassuring if his eyes hadn't looked so terrified.
There was no time to argue. She ran.
***
Rose's hair streamed out behind her like a golden flag. Jack kept his eyes locked on her as he dragged the Doctor through the narrow corridor. Even with her bad leg she was out pacing them; the Doctor was dead weight, and both taller and heavier than Jack. It had been a long time since Jack had been forced to drag an unconscious (not dying, Jack wouldn't let himself think dying) teammate. It brought back the memories he'd wished they had erased instead of the missing two years.
The damn things were everywhere, across the floor, hanging from the ceiling, writhing along the walls. Every time he got too close he could feel vines grabbing at his clothes, brushing against his face, and while normally that might sound like his idea of a good time this was all moving a bit too fast.
A vine curtain cut off his view of Rose; Jack could hear her footsteps receding down the corridor. He didn't get away so cleanly. One vine grabbed his right arm; the Doctor's weight made him lurch off-balance and he felt his arm almost wrench out of the socket. A second vine wrapped around his waist and held him like it was made of steel. No flowers yet, but Jack could see the first buds starting to sprout.
He felt his grip on the Doctor slipping. Jack looked over and saw the vines had latched onto him, too, masses of creeping green tendrils trying to pull him down. Jack tightened his hold around the Doctor's waist, but the vines were stronger and the Doctor slipped a little bit more. No, Jack thought, fury giving him a second wind. You can't have him.
He strained his arm against the vine holding it until he felt his fingertips brush against his blaster. With a final surge he reached down the final few inches and yanked out his gun. He had just enough mobility to whirl around on the grasping green curtain. "Not today," he said, and pulled the trigger.
The plants wilted before the sonic energy wave, and Jack staggered forward a step. He checked the blaster and swore; it would be a few minutes at least before it was charged enough to do that again.
He could still just see Rose ahead. He got a firmer grip on the Doctor and got moving.
A minute later, his shoulders and back were starting to scream, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other as fast as he could. He needed to keep Rose in sight; if she turned around and didn't see them following, he knew she'd panic, and that would be it. He didn't know how she'd managed to keep it together as well as she had; he wanted to panic, and he'd been trained for this kind of thing.
Well, not death flowers precisely, but deadly peril, and unless his history was seriously flawed, deadly peril wasn't a normal fact of life in 21st century London. Rose would have made one hell of an Agent; she'd have been giving him orders in no time.
The image of Rose cracking a whip and giving him orders was blessedly distracting for the moment he let it flit through his brain, but reality reasserted itself as the vines started growing back over the walls. And growing fast. Like he'd made them angry. Jack didn't know if plants could be angry, but he allowed that if anyone was capable of making it happen, he was probably the guy.
He plowed through another curtain of the things and saw the Tardis standing at the end of the corridor like a beautiful beacon. He loved that ship so much at that moment that if it had a mouth he would have kissed it, and frankly was tempted to do so anyway. Rose was already fumbling with her key, and he could see the Tardis' interior glow as she threw open the door.
Then he saw the vines growing up and out from the walls, and his heart sank. The flowers were already mature, ready to burst, and coming from all sides. There was no way he'd get past them in time. He glanced down at his blaster, but it was still charging and didn't have enough juice to take them all out.
"Come on! Hurry!" Rose shouted, standing in the doorway.
"Rose, forget it! There's too many, just close the door!"
Rose looked at him like he'd asked her to sprout wings and fly. "No."
The flowers were starting to shake. "Rose, just do it!"
"I'm not stranding you both out there!"
Two of the flowers burst. Jack ducked as low as he could while still dragging the Doctor and managed to stay just in front of the cloud. There were six more in front of him. "Rose...."
"I won't do it, Jack." She suddenly sounded wonderfully calm; Jack recognized the potent mix of terror and certainty, the kind of feeling that you got from looking over the edge of a very high cliff knowing every other escape route's been blocked.
"I don't want to get you killed, too!"
"Then move."
Oh, he was definitely right about her giving orders. "Yes, ma'am," he muttered under his breath. He pumped his legs as fast as they would go; he could hear the pop, pop, pop of the flowers spewing their poison. He was feet away from the Tardis when the final pair of flowers began to shake and could tell he still wasn't moving fast enough. He got a better grip on the Doctor, said a quick prayer to any god who might be passing by, and made a desperate lunge.
He dove through the doorway with less than an inch to spare, twisting as he fell so he would take most of the impact. He saw Rose slam the door shut just as the last flower spit. One more second would have been too late.
Rose's legs failed her and she sank down to the floor; Jack just leaned his head back and tried regain the wind that had been knocked out of him from the fall. The only sounds in the Tardis were the quiet hum of machinery and their breathing.
Rose was the first to break. "Did I really just do that?"
Jack laughed. "Yep, you did," he said. He eased the Doctor off of him and gently rolled him to the floor.
"I yelled at you."
"A little bit." He flashed her what he knew was a charming grin. "Don't apologize. I liked it."
"Shut up."
He knelt over the Doctor and started a vitals check. "He's still breathing," Jack said, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. Rose flashed him a look that was a combination of Of course he is and Don't you dare say it like that again. She crawled over to them.
"How's your leg?" he asked, measuring the Doctor's pulse as he did. It was stronger than he'd expected, but Jack didn't know how much of that was due to the fact that he'd been running hard a few minutes before. "You were limping."
"Fine, I'm fine," she said. "How's he?"
Jack shook his head. "I don't know what fine is for him."
"What about if he was human?"
"If he was human he'd be dead," Jack said. She winced, but he didn't know how else to put it. "If you or me had taken a shot to the face like he did, we'd be dead before we hit the ground."
She'd taken the Doctor's hand. "But he's not." She looked at Jack. "Does that mean he'll be all right?"
Jack just shook his head again. "Rose, I don't know." He made another pulse check; it was slower, but again, he didn't know if that was good or bad. "Here, help me with his jacket," he said. She held the Doctor steady as Jack eased his arms free; he folded the jacket up and slid it under the Doctor's head.
"So, what do we do now?" Rose asked.
Jack folded his arms as he sat back down. "We wait."
***
The Doctor opened his eyes. He woke to a burnt orange sky; the soft light gave an amber cast to everything it touched. The grass beneath him gave off a sweet scent; it swept him back to a time when he'd had another name and dodging tedious lectures had been his favorite hobby. He scrambled to his feet and looked around; he was at the gates of a beautiful city. Even from outside he could feel the hum of activity going on inside; he could close his eyes and see people going about their daily business, just as it had always been.
He knew the city of course; he could never mistake it. But he couldn't believe it. "This was all destroyed," he whispered. He'd come back and seen it, forced himself to come back and see it. It had been ruins, rubble. It had burned.
But here it was, whole. And even if he couldn't believe his eyes, he could feel the wind, smell the grass. He could sense the turn of the planet, the exact angle of its axis. It was true.
He was home.
He caught some movement out of the corner of his eye and knew he was being watched. "Who's there?"
A shadow perched in a low-hanging tree limb hopped down and started towards him. He shaded his eyes against sun, but his hand dropped as the silhouette came closer and the realization of who it must be struck him. He touched the gate to steady himself as a petite, dark-haired girl stepped into the light; a young, pretty girl with a pixie haircut and a pixie's features. She looked at him with dark, clever eyes, and for one of the few times in his long life the Doctor found himself completely speechless.
She smiled, and it was like every good memory he'd ever had was happening at once. "Hello, Grandfather."
He took one step towards her and stopped; he was suddenly terrified that if he made any movement she would disappear. "Susan?"
She raised her eyebrows; it was a well-remembered look, one that said he was being a funny old man. He touched her shoulders; they felt solid. "Are you real?"
Before she could answer he swept her off the ground in a bear hug; he hadn't been tall enough or strong enough to hold her like this since she'd been a little girl. "Just tell me you're real."
She laughed and kicked her feet in the air; he felt her arms circle around his neck, and thought that if this moment could just stretch to last forever, he and the universe would be even. "Well, I certainly feel real, don't I?" she said laughing, and the Doctor had to concede the point. "Put me down! I'm not a baby anymore, you know."
He placed her back on the ground. "But what are you doing here?"
"Don't be silly, Grandfather. I'm here because you're here."
That made sense. Of course she was, where else would she be?
"Oh, you've changed!" she said.
He held his arms out. "D'ya like it?"
"I do," she said, giving him an appraising look. She tilted her head to one side. "I'm not sure about the ears, though."
"Hey," he said, mustering up as much mock hurt as he could. "You know I can't control how it works out."
"You know I'm only teasing, Grandfather," she said. "I like it, I do." She fingered his jacket. "Although the leather makes you look like you're spoiling for a fight."
"Maybe I am." He bent down into a boxer's crouch. "It would scandalize you, I bet, seeing your old grandfather in a fight." He shadowboxed her until she smiled, then straightened up again. "Oh, Susan, I've been in so many fights since I saw you last, you'd never believe it."
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," she teased, skipping a few steps ahead. "You always made Ian do all the fighting."
"That's because Chesterton was good at it," he countered. "It made him feel like he was contributing."
"Oh, of course, that's why." She turned back to face him and giggled. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "You just sound so different, I can't get over it!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Look completely different, that's fine, no problem. Little bit of a northern accent, that you can't get over. Lots of planets have a north, you know!"
Susan shook her head. "But Grandfather, you're not from the north," she said, quite reasonably.
He smiled. "But I sound like it." The smile dropped from his face; he's made the "lots of planets have a north" joke before, made it recently, but he couldn't remember where or when or to whom. Normally his memory was impeccable, but this was a hole he couldn't explain. Finally he banished the thought. It couldn't be very important now, could it?
Susan seemed to be looking at him very carefully. "Is there something wrong, Grandfather?"
"No," he said, shaking away the last bit of doubt. "What could be wrong? Here we are, together, home---"
He looked up and the sky was an angry, blighted red. He spun around and saw a pile of rocks and cinder where his city had been. The air was thick with smoke, barely breathable; the ground beneath him was blasted and cracked. All he could smell was burning, burning; worse, he could feel that the axis of the planet had tilted, could feel that down to its core the planet was wrong and empty and dead. Then he blinked and the sky was as it should be, and everything was perfect again.
"Grandfather?" He jumped when she touched his arm. He turned away from her eyes, looked at the sky and tried to stop shaking. "Grandfather, what did you see?"
He looked back at her. "Nothing," he lied. "Trick of the sun. My eyes are older than yours, you know." He told himself this over and over until he believed it, until his heartbeats were back under control and he thought he could walk without collapsing.
He also told himself he didn't see the flash of worry on Susan's face.
***
The seizure started with no warning, and for a second Rose was terrified it was never going to stop. "Oh God, oh God, oh God," she said, trying to hold him down. "Jack, help him!"
Before she even finished speaking it seemed like Jack just appeared next to her, like he had a teleport. He was cool and calm and Rose absolutely loved him for it, because he was the only thing keeping her from melting into total panic. "Rose," he said, "hold his head, keep him from hitting it on the floor. Watch his airway, make sure it stays open. You can do that?"
Rose nodded and cradled his head; Jack turned the Doctor on his side and wrapped his arms around him. The Doctor seized for two endless, tortuous minutes, then the convulsions stopped just as suddenly as they'd started. When they were sure it was over, Jack gently eased him onto his back again and started looking him over. Rose sobbed into her hands; after a minute she felt Jack massaging the back of her neck. She looked up and saw that Jack was checking the Doctor's pulse, saw that the Doctor's chest was rising and falling, and started sobbing harder. She'd been sure the only reason the seizure had stopped was because he was dead.
It took her a minute to manage words. "How is he?" she finally choked out.
"Not bad," Jack said, and Rose felt like hitting him.
"No, Jack. Don't lie to me, really how is he?"
"No, I mean it," he said. He looked her in the eyes, and she realized he actually did. "His pulse is weaker than before, but it's still not bad, and his breathing's steady."
"Is he dying?" The words came out in a sob, and Rose hated herself for it; she wanted to be handling this as well as Jack.
Jack sat back on his heels and lifted an eyebrow. "Actually, I think the seizure might be a good sign."
"What?" Rose said. "How could that possibly be a good thing?"
Jack sighed and raked a hand through his hair, mussing it up. "If I'm right about what those things are, he got hit with a psionotoxin...."
Rose felt her expression go blank just like when the Doctor was trying to explain things. "A...a psino...."
"Psionotoxion," Jack said, pronouncing it clearly. "It's like...Do you know what a neurotoxin is?"
Rose nodded. "It's a type of poison. Like a snake's poison. And neuro means it works on the nervous system, right?"
"Exactly. A psionotoxin is similar, except that it works on the mind. Not the physical mind, the mental one. That's why it's so good at killing humans, we don't have any defense against it."
Rose processed this. "So, the seizure could mean...."
"It could mean that his mind is trying to fight off whatever the toxin's doing to it." He reached over and brushed her hair away from her face. "He's fighting. That's good."
"'Course he's fighting." She tried to wipe the tears away, but they just seemed to keep coming. "When I was in second year," she said, "there was a girl in my class who had epilepsy. She used to have fits in maths, and it looked just like that. It was horrible; I never knew what to do then, either."
"Well, it's scary. You're better than me; first time I saw something like that I ran."
Rose shook her head. "You are such a liar." She held the Doctor's hand; his skin was cool, and he didn't move. "Is he in pain?" she asked. "Fighting this, do you think it hurts him?"
Jack shook his head. "I don't know."
Rose wrapped her free arm around her knees. "He should've let them have me," she said. She knew she was going to start crying again. "I'd rather that. I'd've rather they'd caught me than he have to go through this."
"Hey." Jack leaned forward and tipped her chin up. "Don't say that. You know full well he wouldn't rather that. You dying is not an option."
Rose leaned her head against the Tardis console. She imagined the thousands of vines growing and waiting just outside the door. "What are those things? Why do they do this?"
"I think," Jack started, "I think they're Adirial vines." He saw this had no meaning to her, and kept going. "In my time, there's a poison called Adirian. It's a psionotoxin, which is very rare; I knew it came from a vine, but I've never seen them until now. It's outlawed in most of the galaxy, obviously, but of course it's still used sometimes. It's quick, it's airborne, and it kills like that," he said, snapping his fingers. "Real useful when you're trying to take out a large number at once, or when you want something done quietly."
Rose shivered. "Did...I mean, when you were an Agent, did you...."
Jack gave her a cold grin. "Don't worry, Rose. I wasn't wetworks." The grin soured. "Though I guess I can't really be sure, can I?"
Rose wished she hadn't asked. "The Doctor mentioned something right before we all started running. Tarsus...?"
"Tarsus 5."
"What was Tarsus 5?"
Jack took a deep breath. "Tarsus 5 was a colony moon on the outskirts of civilized space. It hadn't been completely terraformed yet, so most of the inhabitants were packed into a small area." Jack's mouth twisted into a snarl. "Someone decided they weren't happy with the way things were being run."
Rose was starting to think she didn't want to hear the end of this story. "What did they do?"
Jack drummed his fingers against the Tardis floor. "They released Adirian into the air vents. Took out the whole colony. Well," he said, "that's what everyone thought happened. The problem was, no one could figure out where someone could get their hands on that much Adirian; the stuff works fast, but you need a lot of it to do that much damage. Looking at this place, now I'm thinking they may have just planted it. Nothing better than poison that grows more of itself."
"That's horrible."
"It makes sense, though. Explains why everything was hushed up the way it was, too."
"I don't understand."
"Adirian is usually used by two kinds of people: people who need a job done fast, and those who want to kill the mind but have an intact body. Since there's no damage to any tissues, the body's perfect, and that's the goal for some people."
Rose started to ask who would possibly need that, but Jack cut her off. "Believe me, you don't want to know. I wish I didn't know."
Jack leaned back. "I always thought it was strange that they didn't release any pictures from Tarsus. The only good thing about Adirian is that it leaves you presentable."
"I'm still not following."
Jack's eyes were shadowed. "Think about it, Rose. Why would a plant evolve a psionotoxin? It follows that they must have some use for the body." He looked at Rose. "I think they go in when after the person's dead and suck them dry. That explains why the body we found was so desiccated when, if the Doctor' right, it's only been a few months."
"So...they kill you and use you like fertilizer?"
"That's why they're the only organic things down here. They must have stripped everything else bare."
Every new detail Rose learned just made it all more horrifying. "That's the most appalling thing I've ever heard." And they were all a second away from that. "Oh my God, and he would've still been alive while that happened."
"No, he wouldn't have been." Rose looked up; Jack's eyes were cold. He tapped the gun in his holster. "If I'd known we were trapped, I would have made sure of that. Even if it was the last thing I did."
Oh, Jack. Rose reached out and took his hand. "You didn't have to, though. You saved him." She squeezed his hand, and felt better when he smiled. "So," she said, trying to compose herself, "you've been to Tarsus, you said? Were you there as a Time Agent? Did you catch who did it?"
"Yeah, well...." he trailed off. He ran a hand through his hair again, and his smile turned sheepish. "Er...not exactly."
"Oh, Jack."
"I went there to wind up a long con I'd been running," he admitted. "Hey, I put four months of work into that!" he said when she rolled her eyes. "Didn't get my money, you might have guessed."
Rose shook her head. "You have the worst luck."
"Yeah, I guess the universe was trying to tell me something. Still, it wasn't all bad luck; a week earlier and I would've been plant food, too."
"But I don't understand; you said you hadn't seen anything like this."
"I hadn't. Everything had been cleaned up by the time I got there. What I remembered was the smell." Jack got up and started to pace. "The whole colony smelled like a perfume factory. I thought it was just part of the cover-up, but now it's obvious the authorities just hadn't gotten to it yet." He leaned against one of the Tardis control panels; the lights threw his face into shadow. "I noticed it as soon as we stepped out of the Tardis," he said. "The smell. That same perfume smell, I just couldn't place it. It didn't click for me until he mentioned Tarsus."
Rose realized where this was going. "Jack, it's not your fault."
"It bothered me the entire time, but I didn't mention it. If I'd said something as soon as we got out, maybe...."
"Jack, the Doctor didn't realize what was happening, you can't...."
Jack rounded on her. "Rose, it was less than two years ago for me. Two years ago I was standing in a place not that different from this one, smelled the exact same thing, and I still couldn't put it together. We're trained not to make stupid mistakes like that, careless mistakes, because that's what gets people...." He bit off the end of the sentence and covered his face in his hands. "That's what gets people killed."
Oh, Jack. You're just as scared as I am. "Jack, c'mere."
"Rose, if he doesn't...."
"Jack. Come here."
He walked towards her, his steps heavy on the Tardis walkway. She wrapped her arms tight around him; she felt him shaking, felt him press his face against her hair. "I'm sorry...." he whispered.
"Shush." His arms were warm around her. "We'd be dead if you weren't with us, the both of us." He squeezed her but didn't answer. "And you came back for us. You're the only reason we made it back here, and you almost got killed doing it, so stop apologizing." Rose didn't know how long they held each other there, but finally she stepped back and looked into Jack's eyes. "We're gonna be all right. We will. You said yourself he was fighting, and he's not going to give up and leave us. He's not."
Jack nodded. His expression shifted; Rose could almost see the gears turning in his head. "Rose, you sit with him," he said, "keeping talking to him, maybe you'll get through. I'm going to see if I can find something."
"What, something else to soup up your gun?"
"Not quite. You'll see." He kissed her on the top of her head. "And thanks."
He rounded the Tardis console and disappeared into the interior. Rose knelt back beside the Doctor and took his hand. "I hope it's a good plan he has, because I can't think of anything."
She stroked his forehead and his hair. "Doctor," she said. "It's time to wake up now. I'm scared, and I need you. I know it's hard, but I'm right here, so just open your eyes. Please, Doctor."
***
"...Doctor..."
"Susan, did you hear that?"
They were walking along a garden path; Susan hadn't wanted to go into the city, and frankly the Doctor was happy to have her all to himself for a little while longer. He'd just finished telling her about the Isis II system, where there was an asteroid belt made of solid diamonds, and had begun relating the story of how he'd been mistaken for a spy when he'd landed on Marseis, where half the population lived in underwater cities because no one had told them the war on the surface had ended a thousand years before. Then he'd lost his train of thought; he could've sworn he'd heard something.
"Why, Grandfather? What did you hear?"
"I don't know." For a moment he'd thought it had sounded like his name, like someone calling...but that was impossible, he and Susan were the only ones there. "I must be imagining things."
She linked her arm through his; it felt just like old times, just the two of them against the universe. "Where was I?"
She smiled. "Everyone had mechanical gills."
"Oh, yes, right. Well, they didn't know what to make of me, you can imagine. After I broke out of jail...." A half hour later he'd wound through the story, and they continued the walk in companionable silence. The Doctor didn't think he could ever get tired of this.
Only one small detail bothered him; it nagged at his mind until he couldn't think of anything else. Susan squeezed his hand; she seemed to sense something was wrong. "Susan, can I ask you a question?" he asked, each word dragging out of him. "You don't have to answer, it's not that important."
"Of course, Grandfather. You can ask me anything."
His mouth felt packed full of sawdust. "Why do you look the same?" He turned his head to look at her. "Even if you hadn't regenerated, you should be grown. It's been long enough for that. Why aren't you grown up?" He turned his head away; he thought he'd feel better once the words where out, but he felt like something was sitting on his chest and squeezing. "Forget it," he said, "Forget I said anything. It's not important, I don't care."
He wanted to walk away from the conversation, but she stopped and wouldn't let him go. "I wanted to make sure you recognized me."
He walked back towards her and cupped her chin in his hand. "Susan, I would know you no matter what you looked like. You could regenerate two heads and I would know you. You know that, right?"
She nodded and kissed his hand. She had tears in her eyes, and he wiped them away when they fell. "Don't cry. I'm sorry, don't cry. It's just," he said. "It's just I never got to see you grown, is all. That's all I mean." Cold shame settled in his stomach. "I promised to come back, but I never...how could I have never...."
"Grandfather," she said, but he cut her off.
"No, no, don't say it's all right, it's not. I always intended to come back, Susan, you have to believe me," he said. "I would come back, and I would look different and maybe you would look different, but it wouldn't matter because we'd just pick up where we left off. You'd tell me everything about your life, then I'd take you everywhere I'd been." He felt hollow; there were no excuses he could make. He hugged his arms and turned away. "That's how it was supposed to be," he whispered. He looked back at her, and his voice broke. "Who ever hear of Time Lords running out of time?
Susan moved in front of him. "Shh," she said. "That's enough of that." She cupped his face in her hands, and he had to close his eyes or he was going to break right there. "Grandfather," she said, and all he could do was shake his head. "Grandfather," she said again, firmly this time, and he forced himself to meet her eyes. "No regrets, no tears, remember?" She sounded so mature he had a sudden flash of all the years he'd missed. "That's what you told me." She brushed her hands down the sleeves of his jacket and straightened his collar. "I took that to heart and didn't have any, and I don't want you to, either."
He laughed, but it was a harsh, bitter sound. "Susan, all I have anymore is regret." He wanted to go back in time and strangle that naïve old man. So self-satisfied, always so sure he was right.
He drew her close, wrapped her tight in his arms. He was making her cry, and that had to stop. He had her back, that was the important thing now. Now he could start making everything different.
"Was he good to you?" he mumbled. She frowned, and he elaborated, "Your man. That rebel boyfriend of yours. Was he good to you?"
Her expression cleared and she smiled. "Yes. Yes, he was very good to me"
Well, that was something. She laced her fingers through his and they continued on. When they came to a wide fence cordoning off a grove of silver-leaf trees, she perched on top and he leaned against one of the beams and watched the sun filter through the leaves. "You think you've very cute up there, don't you."
She kicked her heels against the slats of the fence and didn't take his bait; he'd never been very good at winding her up. The Doctor stood there feeling the sun on his face with his granddaughter at his side and felt something hard and knotted inside him slowly loosen. It had been so long since he'd felt peaceful that it took him a while to recognize the emotion. "This should have been your life," he said, "not spinning about the universe with your daft old grandfather."
"I liked traveling with you."
"It was selfish of me to drag you along like I did. I didn't want to go it alone, and I just uprooted your whole life. I didn't even let you finish school."
"You sent me to school."
"Human school. Big difference, there. And that was your idea, not mine."
"You taught me everything I would have learned at home."
"That's not the point."
She edged over towards him and draped one arm over his shoulder. "Do you remember the night we left?"
He sighed. "You caught me stealing the Tardis."
She giggled. "You climbed out the window! In the middle of the night, like a teenager!"
He actually had forgotten that embarrassing detail. "Well, you followed me," he said, wincing at how childish it sounded.
"I couldn't let that go! I had to see what you were up to."
"Well, you saw. You should have run home and raised the alarm. Saved us both a universe worth of trouble."
"You would just have tried again later."
The Doctor had to admit that was true. "Doesn't mean you should have stowed away, though."
"I couldn't let you just go off on your own. You wouldn't have had anyone to take care of you."
"That's the whole point of it. I should never have let you take that role on. You were a child, it wasn't fair to you."
"I wanted to take care of you."
"Shouldn't have been your job. I stole your life."
She hopped off the fence and gave him a look so fierce he would've taken a step back if he hadn't already been pressed against the fence. "That's not fair to me, either. I wanted to go with you. Did I ever ask you to take me home?"
"Well," he said, "No, but...."
"So listen to me." She took both of his hands in hers. "I saw more, and experienced more, and lived more than most people ten times my age. I wouldn't trade away one second of that time for anything. Not anything."
"Susan...."
She pressed two fingers against his lips. "You have to listen now."
He waited for her to continue, but the voice he heard wasn't Susan's.
"...Doctor, please..."
The voice rushed through him like a shock. He jumped forward, looking around for its source; it seemed like it was coming from the sky. "I know that voice," he said. He looked at Susan. "Who is that? How do I know that voice?"
She squeezed his hand. "Keep trying."
He searched his memories, but none of the faces he called up matched the voice. Each time he was ready to give up and dismiss it he looked down and saw Susan looking at him, nodding at him to continue. He could feel parts of his mind shying away, whole blocks of his memory he couldn't see. He pushed through block after block, tracking down the voice, until he felt something give way. "Rose," he said. At first it was just a name; then he could see her face and it was like a whole section of memory slid back into place and he laughed. "Of course, it's Rose."
Susan smiled up at him. "Is Rose a friend of yours?"
"Oh, yes. Do you know, the day we met I blew up her job and she still talks to me?" He laughed again and led her back down towards the walking path. "Susan, just wait 'till you meet her, you'll love her. Jack, too," he said, as another slice of memories slid where it belonged. "Though I might have to keep a closer eye on Jack, with you coming along."
"Grandfather." He realized she'd stopped following. He turned around to see what was wrong. "Grandfather, I can't meet them."
"Why not?" He put his hands on his hips. "Now, don't act jealous, you've never been like that before..." He trailed off as he looked in her eyes and knew that wasn't it at all. "Susan, what's wrong? Just tell me and I'll fix it."
She took a deep breath. "Grandfather, where are you right now?"
"What do you mean? We're both right...." He stopped. Susan had never been the sort of girl who asked silly questions; she deserved for him to consider the answer seriously. He closed his eyes and stretched out his senses.
He felt the wind and heard the rustle of grass, the call of birds, his blood pulsing through his veins. He pushed past; he could sense there was something underneath the surface impressions, like a painting the artist had decided to sketch over. He held his breath and stretched further until he thought he would fly apart in all directions. Then he caught the faint hum of machinery coming from below and around him; he knew he was lying on something metal, with something softer under his head. "I'm in the Tardis," he said, not quite believing the words even as he said them. "How is that possible?"
He could hear his ship clearly now, hiding just underneath. "Where is the Tardis?" he said, feeling a surge of panic as he looked around. He couldn't remember where he'd landed it, or how he'd gotten here. "I have to find it, Rose'll be worried if we're not back." He looked at Susan and saw another flash of worry; he could feel that he was missing something very important.
(On to part two)
Rating:: PG
Characters: Nine, Rose, Jack, More would be telling:)
Spoilers: Through "The Doctor Dances"
Summary: What's supposed to a quick stop spirals out of control, and even as Jack and Rose struggle to save him the Doctor finds someone he'd thought he'd lost forever.
(A/N: This story is set between "The Doctor Dances" and "Boomtown." Special thanks to
superherogrlcat for catching my mistakes. Posted in two parts because LJ wouldn't let me do it in one.:) Also available in one piece at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind here)In Dreams
The Tardis finished materializing with a wheeze and a rattle instead of its customary whoosh. The Doctor, Rose, and Jack opened the doors to find themselves in a dank, industrial-looking corridor. "Oh, lovely," Rose said, appraising the surroundings. The air was thick with dust, and sickly-green vines climbed up over the walls, even though the Tardis readings had said they were hundreds of feet underground. "The places you take me to."
"Oh, hush," the Doctor said. "We're here for parts, not to take in the sights." Rose glanced over at Jack, who just shrugged. "I saw that, you two," the Doctor said, shooting them a look over his shoulder. "If we want to get the Tardis moving again, I need to make a new fluid lock, and I can't do that without something to make it out of. Last time I was here, this was the premier shipyard in the galaxy." He looked around at the streaks of rust working their way down the walls. "'Course, last time I was here, it didn't look abandoned," he admitted.
"When were you here last?" Jack asked.
"Six months ago. Well," he said, "six months by the calendar. Not long enough for it to have gone to seed this badly, at any rate."
The Doctor led them through a labyrinth of corridors; finally, as they made their way further into the complex it opened up into what looked like showrooms. The Doctor knew where to look; he led Jack and Rose into one room off to the right. Tables were littered with parts and bits of machinery; Jack picked up a rectangular piece of metal as they walked by. "Hey, I think this might power up my blaster."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Forget the gun and keep looking." Rose saw Jack smile and slide the piece into his pocket.
"Isn't it a bit creepy, though?" she said, looking around. "If it really is abandoned, why would everyone just leave their things?"
The Doctor didn't answer, but he took her hand and squeezed hard. She could see on his face that he'd been thinking the same.
Something cracked underfoot. The Doctor pulled her off to the side and Jack crouched down; he brushed through the debris littering the floor and came up with what looked to Rose unmistakably like a human jawbone. She felt the Doctor tense up beside her; Jack looked up at them. "I don't think they left."
The mood changed immediately. "I want to know what happened here," the Doctor said, quietly. He looked over to Jack, who was still examining the body.
"It's in stage 4 of decomp, at least," Jack said. Rose felt sick just looking at the body; she didn't know how Jack could stand handling it. "Remains are skeletal and dry. I'd say mummified, but there's no flesh left. It's more like something just sucked all the moisture out."
"You ever seen anything like that before, Captain?"
Jack shook his head. "You?"
"Couple times," the Doctor said. "But nothing that should be down here."
Jack got up and brushed the dust off his knees. "By the way, am I the only one who smells that?"
Rose sniffed the air. "It smells like...perfume?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "I smelled it as soon as we got out of the Tardis."
"So the question is," the Doctor said, finishing the thought, "if we're standing in a graveyard, why does everything smell like flowers?"
"Well," Rose said, "there are all these vines everywhere, maybe they...." she trailed off when she saw the look on the Doctor's face. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something rustling up the wall. "Doctor," she said slowly, "did that vine just move?"
The Doctor had a death grip on her hand; she could see in his eyes that whatever conclusion he'd reached, it was very, very bad. "51st century," he whispered. "Jack, have you ever been to Tarsus 5?"
All of the color drained out of Jack's face. "Oh, hell."
All of the vines on all the walls where moving now; pods were opening up and pink and white flowers were unfurling. "Run. Back to the Tardis," the Doctor said. "Now!"
***
The walls crawled as more and more of the pods and flowers sprouted. The vines shifted over the walls and over each with a dry scratching sound; to Rose it sounded like millions of insects skittering along the corridor. The Doctor was running so fast he was practically dragging her along; she had a stitch in her side already. When she looked up, she saw the vines spreading over the ceiling, the flowers dangling down towards them. Jack was a few feet ahead; he stumbled as the plants started to carpet the floor. "Watch your footing!" he shouted back towards them.
A vine lashed out from the wall and wrapped around her arm; she yelped as it yanked her backwards off her feet. Pain shot up from her ankle, and as soon as she hit the floor the vines started crawling towards her. "Doctor!"
He whirled around, and Rose's fear spiked when she saw the look on his face. The flowers were creeping closer, and the perfume smell was so strong it stung. The Doctor dove to his knees next to her, and Rose heard the whir of the sonic screwdriver as he tried to dislodge the vine from her arm. After a few agonizing seconds the vine let go; he wrapped an arm around her to help her up. "All right?"
She winced; the pain from her ankle increased when she stood up. "My ankle," she said.
"Can you still run?" he asked. "It's not much further, I promise."
Rose tested her leg; she could put weight on it, but she wasn't sure how far she could run. Still, the last thing she wanted was to force him to carry her. "I think so," she said, taking a few steps.
He offered her his hand. "Then we have to keep running."
She bit her lip and followed.
***
A few minutes later her ankle was in agony but she didn't dare stop. The vines were thick on the walls now, and every so often they had to run through writhing green curtains. The vines kept grabbing at them; one wrapped around the Doctor's leg and tripped him up, and it took almost a minute of Rose fumbling with the screwdriver to get him free. Jack came racing back around a corner during the struggle and helped them fend off the vines, but as soon as the Doctor saw him he waved Jack off. "Go! Keep running! Get back to the Tardis and shut the door the second you're inside! That's an order, Captain!"
Rose saw defiance flash across Jack's face, then his expression closed and he followed the orders without argument. He looked from Rose to the Doctor, then shook his head. "Hurry," he said, then pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose and disappeared around the corner.
The Doctor got back to his feet slower than Rose would have liked; he'd hit the ground hard. He took a second to catch his breath. "Still with me, Rose?"
Rose squeezed his hand. "Always."
Then they were off again.
***
About three hundred feet from Tardis Rose tripped over a vine the size of a tree trunk. It pulsed like it had a heartbeat, and Rose watched as smaller, flowered vines rose from it like cobras from a snake charmer's basket. Less then a foot from her the largest of the blooms shuddered; before she could scream, the Doctor clamped one hand over her mouth and nose. "Don't breathe," he whispered in her ear.
The flower spit out a cloud of mist; it looked golden and luminescent floating in the air. The Doctor dragged her to a side corridor and motioned for her to stay low. The pollen cloud slowly spread, until the entire area where they'd just been glistened with gold. Rose could feel her lungs burning for air; a few seconds before she thought she would pass out the cloud suddenly flickered and went out, like someone had switched it off. She looked at the Doctor, who nodded back. She took in an enormous gulp of air.
"The pollen's toxic," he said. "Lucky it doesn't last long."
"It was beautiful," she said. She felt slightly light-headed.
"Deadly, though. So many things in the universe are like that," he mused. He grinned at her. "Is that a sign, do you think?" He took several more deep breaths of air. "We have to keep moving," he said. "If they're starting to pop, we don't have much more time."
He helped her up, and after making sure the way was clear he led her at a dead run. The throbbing in her ankle was dulled by adrenaline; she could see more flowers on the walls and ceilings starting to shudder, and she picked up her pace. One popped right over her head; she had to duck and hold her breath for several painful yards until it was safe. More and more of the flowers popped; Rose noticed that the larger the flower, the longer it took the cloud to disperse. Though the twisting corridors meant they couldn't see it, Rose guessed they must be less than one hundred yards from the Tardis when they stumbled onto a clump of the flowers growing from another of the pulsing vine trunks. "Oh, fantastic," the Doctor said as several of the blossoms began to shake. "Stay out of their range!"
Rose dodged the first few jets of pollen, then the Doctor pushed her head down. "Stay low!" Rose took a breath of air, held it, then dropped to the ground and started to crawl. She turned around to see if the Doctor was following and almost choked on a scream.
One of the vines had him grappled by his wrist; by the time he yanked his arm free, the three small flowers left on the vine were shuddering. He dodged the blasts from the first two, but the last flower was lower, and he was off-balance. Rose watched in horror as the pollen cloud went off in his face.
He took two steps back. Rose's mind raced: He must have been holding his breath. Maybe he's resistant. Maybe he's wrong about how toxic it is.
Then he dropped.
Rose counted off the longest twenty seconds of her life as the pollen clouds shimmered, then flickered and went out. She gasped and crawled to him; he was lying on the floor like a broken doll, and she couldn't tell if he was breathing. She dragged him a few feet further from the vines before her ankle gave way; she knew there was no way she could get him to the Tardis by herself. "Jack!" she screamed. It only hit her then that if Jack had done as the Doctor said, he might be in the Tardis already and wouldn't hear her.
More of the vines were snaking towards them. She imagined Jack coming to look when they didn't come back and finding them dead there, like the bones on the showroom floor, imagined him realizing he was there alone. "Doctor! Doctor, wake up! Please, wake up," she said, shaking him. "I can't carry you, please, you have to wake up." She screamed again for Jack. The vines were coming closer, and she could see more of the flowers unfurling. She fished the sonic screwdriver out of the Doctor's pocket and turned it on. "All right," she said, waving it at the plants. "Come on, then."
Just then she heard the faint thud of boots further along the corridor. "Jack?" She couldn't take her eyes from the swaying flowers.
She heard her name then, and almost fainted with relief. "Rose, where are you?" Jack's voice sounded tinny and distorted in the metal corridors, and Rose thought it was the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard.
"Jack, I'm over here! Help me!" She jammed the screwdriver into the closest of the flowers; it reared back like an injured animal. "Hurry!"
The sound of his boots grew louder; unfortunately, the largest flowers Rose had ever seen were unfurling, and Rose didn't think she was fast enough with the screwdriver to take on them all.
Jack chose exactly the right moment to round the corner. "Rose, duck!" he shouted, just as all the flowers began to shake. Rose dove on top of the Doctor and tried her best to shield his head. She didn't know what Jack was doing, but she'd learned that "duck" usually preceded "boom."
The blast that flew over her head was like something from the sonic screwdriver's angry older brother. She looked behind her to see the vines shrinking and shriveling before the blue sonic wave, and when she looked up she saw Jack striding forward with his blaster drawn like an action movie hero. "Guess the piece worked, then?"
"Not a perfect fit, but I've got enough to do that five or six more times," he said. The shockwave was still traveling down the corridor, but the vines were already growing back along the sides. "Are your ears okay?"
Rose nodded. Her head actually felt like it was about to come off, but she credited that more to panic, terror, and poison than to Jack's blaster. She saw Jack's eyes go wide as he took in the Doctor lying still on the floor. "They got him," she said. She could feel herself edging towards hysteria and firmly told herself she could fall apart once in the Tardis. "There were too many of them, and he was trying to keep me out of their way. One grabbed him, and he couldn't move in time." She could hear the scratch of the flowers growing back. "Help me with him, I can't---"
Jack holstered his blaster and slung one of the Doctor's arms around his neck. "I've got him. No, you go," he said, shaking his head when she tried to support the Doctor from the other side. "I've got him. Get moving; you got him this far, I'll get him the rest of the way."
No, he got me this far. She didn't want to let the Doctor go; all she could think was that if she turned around, she'd be the one left there alone.
Jack seemed to know exactly what she was thinking. "We'll be right behind you," he said, giving her his most roguish smile. It would have been much more reassuring if his eyes hadn't looked so terrified.
There was no time to argue. She ran.
***
Rose's hair streamed out behind her like a golden flag. Jack kept his eyes locked on her as he dragged the Doctor through the narrow corridor. Even with her bad leg she was out pacing them; the Doctor was dead weight, and both taller and heavier than Jack. It had been a long time since Jack had been forced to drag an unconscious (not dying, Jack wouldn't let himself think dying) teammate. It brought back the memories he'd wished they had erased instead of the missing two years.
The damn things were everywhere, across the floor, hanging from the ceiling, writhing along the walls. Every time he got too close he could feel vines grabbing at his clothes, brushing against his face, and while normally that might sound like his idea of a good time this was all moving a bit too fast.
A vine curtain cut off his view of Rose; Jack could hear her footsteps receding down the corridor. He didn't get away so cleanly. One vine grabbed his right arm; the Doctor's weight made him lurch off-balance and he felt his arm almost wrench out of the socket. A second vine wrapped around his waist and held him like it was made of steel. No flowers yet, but Jack could see the first buds starting to sprout.
He felt his grip on the Doctor slipping. Jack looked over and saw the vines had latched onto him, too, masses of creeping green tendrils trying to pull him down. Jack tightened his hold around the Doctor's waist, but the vines were stronger and the Doctor slipped a little bit more. No, Jack thought, fury giving him a second wind. You can't have him.
He strained his arm against the vine holding it until he felt his fingertips brush against his blaster. With a final surge he reached down the final few inches and yanked out his gun. He had just enough mobility to whirl around on the grasping green curtain. "Not today," he said, and pulled the trigger.
The plants wilted before the sonic energy wave, and Jack staggered forward a step. He checked the blaster and swore; it would be a few minutes at least before it was charged enough to do that again.
He could still just see Rose ahead. He got a firmer grip on the Doctor and got moving.
A minute later, his shoulders and back were starting to scream, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other as fast as he could. He needed to keep Rose in sight; if she turned around and didn't see them following, he knew she'd panic, and that would be it. He didn't know how she'd managed to keep it together as well as she had; he wanted to panic, and he'd been trained for this kind of thing.
Well, not death flowers precisely, but deadly peril, and unless his history was seriously flawed, deadly peril wasn't a normal fact of life in 21st century London. Rose would have made one hell of an Agent; she'd have been giving him orders in no time.
The image of Rose cracking a whip and giving him orders was blessedly distracting for the moment he let it flit through his brain, but reality reasserted itself as the vines started growing back over the walls. And growing fast. Like he'd made them angry. Jack didn't know if plants could be angry, but he allowed that if anyone was capable of making it happen, he was probably the guy.
He plowed through another curtain of the things and saw the Tardis standing at the end of the corridor like a beautiful beacon. He loved that ship so much at that moment that if it had a mouth he would have kissed it, and frankly was tempted to do so anyway. Rose was already fumbling with her key, and he could see the Tardis' interior glow as she threw open the door.
Then he saw the vines growing up and out from the walls, and his heart sank. The flowers were already mature, ready to burst, and coming from all sides. There was no way he'd get past them in time. He glanced down at his blaster, but it was still charging and didn't have enough juice to take them all out.
"Come on! Hurry!" Rose shouted, standing in the doorway.
"Rose, forget it! There's too many, just close the door!"
Rose looked at him like he'd asked her to sprout wings and fly. "No."
The flowers were starting to shake. "Rose, just do it!"
"I'm not stranding you both out there!"
Two of the flowers burst. Jack ducked as low as he could while still dragging the Doctor and managed to stay just in front of the cloud. There were six more in front of him. "Rose...."
"I won't do it, Jack." She suddenly sounded wonderfully calm; Jack recognized the potent mix of terror and certainty, the kind of feeling that you got from looking over the edge of a very high cliff knowing every other escape route's been blocked.
"I don't want to get you killed, too!"
"Then move."
Oh, he was definitely right about her giving orders. "Yes, ma'am," he muttered under his breath. He pumped his legs as fast as they would go; he could hear the pop, pop, pop of the flowers spewing their poison. He was feet away from the Tardis when the final pair of flowers began to shake and could tell he still wasn't moving fast enough. He got a better grip on the Doctor, said a quick prayer to any god who might be passing by, and made a desperate lunge.
He dove through the doorway with less than an inch to spare, twisting as he fell so he would take most of the impact. He saw Rose slam the door shut just as the last flower spit. One more second would have been too late.
Rose's legs failed her and she sank down to the floor; Jack just leaned his head back and tried regain the wind that had been knocked out of him from the fall. The only sounds in the Tardis were the quiet hum of machinery and their breathing.
Rose was the first to break. "Did I really just do that?"
Jack laughed. "Yep, you did," he said. He eased the Doctor off of him and gently rolled him to the floor.
"I yelled at you."
"A little bit." He flashed her what he knew was a charming grin. "Don't apologize. I liked it."
"Shut up."
He knelt over the Doctor and started a vitals check. "He's still breathing," Jack said, unable to keep the astonishment out of his voice. Rose flashed him a look that was a combination of Of course he is and Don't you dare say it like that again. She crawled over to them.
"How's your leg?" he asked, measuring the Doctor's pulse as he did. It was stronger than he'd expected, but Jack didn't know how much of that was due to the fact that he'd been running hard a few minutes before. "You were limping."
"Fine, I'm fine," she said. "How's he?"
Jack shook his head. "I don't know what fine is for him."
"What about if he was human?"
"If he was human he'd be dead," Jack said. She winced, but he didn't know how else to put it. "If you or me had taken a shot to the face like he did, we'd be dead before we hit the ground."
She'd taken the Doctor's hand. "But he's not." She looked at Jack. "Does that mean he'll be all right?"
Jack just shook his head again. "Rose, I don't know." He made another pulse check; it was slower, but again, he didn't know if that was good or bad. "Here, help me with his jacket," he said. She held the Doctor steady as Jack eased his arms free; he folded the jacket up and slid it under the Doctor's head.
"So, what do we do now?" Rose asked.
Jack folded his arms as he sat back down. "We wait."
***
The Doctor opened his eyes. He woke to a burnt orange sky; the soft light gave an amber cast to everything it touched. The grass beneath him gave off a sweet scent; it swept him back to a time when he'd had another name and dodging tedious lectures had been his favorite hobby. He scrambled to his feet and looked around; he was at the gates of a beautiful city. Even from outside he could feel the hum of activity going on inside; he could close his eyes and see people going about their daily business, just as it had always been.
He knew the city of course; he could never mistake it. But he couldn't believe it. "This was all destroyed," he whispered. He'd come back and seen it, forced himself to come back and see it. It had been ruins, rubble. It had burned.
But here it was, whole. And even if he couldn't believe his eyes, he could feel the wind, smell the grass. He could sense the turn of the planet, the exact angle of its axis. It was true.
He was home.
He caught some movement out of the corner of his eye and knew he was being watched. "Who's there?"
A shadow perched in a low-hanging tree limb hopped down and started towards him. He shaded his eyes against sun, but his hand dropped as the silhouette came closer and the realization of who it must be struck him. He touched the gate to steady himself as a petite, dark-haired girl stepped into the light; a young, pretty girl with a pixie haircut and a pixie's features. She looked at him with dark, clever eyes, and for one of the few times in his long life the Doctor found himself completely speechless.
She smiled, and it was like every good memory he'd ever had was happening at once. "Hello, Grandfather."
He took one step towards her and stopped; he was suddenly terrified that if he made any movement she would disappear. "Susan?"
She raised her eyebrows; it was a well-remembered look, one that said he was being a funny old man. He touched her shoulders; they felt solid. "Are you real?"
Before she could answer he swept her off the ground in a bear hug; he hadn't been tall enough or strong enough to hold her like this since she'd been a little girl. "Just tell me you're real."
She laughed and kicked her feet in the air; he felt her arms circle around his neck, and thought that if this moment could just stretch to last forever, he and the universe would be even. "Well, I certainly feel real, don't I?" she said laughing, and the Doctor had to concede the point. "Put me down! I'm not a baby anymore, you know."
He placed her back on the ground. "But what are you doing here?"
"Don't be silly, Grandfather. I'm here because you're here."
That made sense. Of course she was, where else would she be?
"Oh, you've changed!" she said.
He held his arms out. "D'ya like it?"
"I do," she said, giving him an appraising look. She tilted her head to one side. "I'm not sure about the ears, though."
"Hey," he said, mustering up as much mock hurt as he could. "You know I can't control how it works out."
"You know I'm only teasing, Grandfather," she said. "I like it, I do." She fingered his jacket. "Although the leather makes you look like you're spoiling for a fight."
"Maybe I am." He bent down into a boxer's crouch. "It would scandalize you, I bet, seeing your old grandfather in a fight." He shadowboxed her until she smiled, then straightened up again. "Oh, Susan, I've been in so many fights since I saw you last, you'd never believe it."
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," she teased, skipping a few steps ahead. "You always made Ian do all the fighting."
"That's because Chesterton was good at it," he countered. "It made him feel like he was contributing."
"Oh, of course, that's why." She turned back to face him and giggled. "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "You just sound so different, I can't get over it!"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Look completely different, that's fine, no problem. Little bit of a northern accent, that you can't get over. Lots of planets have a north, you know!"
Susan shook her head. "But Grandfather, you're not from the north," she said, quite reasonably.
He smiled. "But I sound like it." The smile dropped from his face; he's made the "lots of planets have a north" joke before, made it recently, but he couldn't remember where or when or to whom. Normally his memory was impeccable, but this was a hole he couldn't explain. Finally he banished the thought. It couldn't be very important now, could it?
Susan seemed to be looking at him very carefully. "Is there something wrong, Grandfather?"
"No," he said, shaking away the last bit of doubt. "What could be wrong? Here we are, together, home---"
He looked up and the sky was an angry, blighted red. He spun around and saw a pile of rocks and cinder where his city had been. The air was thick with smoke, barely breathable; the ground beneath him was blasted and cracked. All he could smell was burning, burning; worse, he could feel that the axis of the planet had tilted, could feel that down to its core the planet was wrong and empty and dead. Then he blinked and the sky was as it should be, and everything was perfect again.
"Grandfather?" He jumped when she touched his arm. He turned away from her eyes, looked at the sky and tried to stop shaking. "Grandfather, what did you see?"
He looked back at her. "Nothing," he lied. "Trick of the sun. My eyes are older than yours, you know." He told himself this over and over until he believed it, until his heartbeats were back under control and he thought he could walk without collapsing.
He also told himself he didn't see the flash of worry on Susan's face.
***
The seizure started with no warning, and for a second Rose was terrified it was never going to stop. "Oh God, oh God, oh God," she said, trying to hold him down. "Jack, help him!"
Before she even finished speaking it seemed like Jack just appeared next to her, like he had a teleport. He was cool and calm and Rose absolutely loved him for it, because he was the only thing keeping her from melting into total panic. "Rose," he said, "hold his head, keep him from hitting it on the floor. Watch his airway, make sure it stays open. You can do that?"
Rose nodded and cradled his head; Jack turned the Doctor on his side and wrapped his arms around him. The Doctor seized for two endless, tortuous minutes, then the convulsions stopped just as suddenly as they'd started. When they were sure it was over, Jack gently eased him onto his back again and started looking him over. Rose sobbed into her hands; after a minute she felt Jack massaging the back of her neck. She looked up and saw that Jack was checking the Doctor's pulse, saw that the Doctor's chest was rising and falling, and started sobbing harder. She'd been sure the only reason the seizure had stopped was because he was dead.
It took her a minute to manage words. "How is he?" she finally choked out.
"Not bad," Jack said, and Rose felt like hitting him.
"No, Jack. Don't lie to me, really how is he?"
"No, I mean it," he said. He looked her in the eyes, and she realized he actually did. "His pulse is weaker than before, but it's still not bad, and his breathing's steady."
"Is he dying?" The words came out in a sob, and Rose hated herself for it; she wanted to be handling this as well as Jack.
Jack sat back on his heels and lifted an eyebrow. "Actually, I think the seizure might be a good sign."
"What?" Rose said. "How could that possibly be a good thing?"
Jack sighed and raked a hand through his hair, mussing it up. "If I'm right about what those things are, he got hit with a psionotoxin...."
Rose felt her expression go blank just like when the Doctor was trying to explain things. "A...a psino...."
"Psionotoxion," Jack said, pronouncing it clearly. "It's like...Do you know what a neurotoxin is?"
Rose nodded. "It's a type of poison. Like a snake's poison. And neuro means it works on the nervous system, right?"
"Exactly. A psionotoxin is similar, except that it works on the mind. Not the physical mind, the mental one. That's why it's so good at killing humans, we don't have any defense against it."
Rose processed this. "So, the seizure could mean...."
"It could mean that his mind is trying to fight off whatever the toxin's doing to it." He reached over and brushed her hair away from her face. "He's fighting. That's good."
"'Course he's fighting." She tried to wipe the tears away, but they just seemed to keep coming. "When I was in second year," she said, "there was a girl in my class who had epilepsy. She used to have fits in maths, and it looked just like that. It was horrible; I never knew what to do then, either."
"Well, it's scary. You're better than me; first time I saw something like that I ran."
Rose shook her head. "You are such a liar." She held the Doctor's hand; his skin was cool, and he didn't move. "Is he in pain?" she asked. "Fighting this, do you think it hurts him?"
Jack shook his head. "I don't know."
Rose wrapped her free arm around her knees. "He should've let them have me," she said. She knew she was going to start crying again. "I'd rather that. I'd've rather they'd caught me than he have to go through this."
"Hey." Jack leaned forward and tipped her chin up. "Don't say that. You know full well he wouldn't rather that. You dying is not an option."
Rose leaned her head against the Tardis console. She imagined the thousands of vines growing and waiting just outside the door. "What are those things? Why do they do this?"
"I think," Jack started, "I think they're Adirial vines." He saw this had no meaning to her, and kept going. "In my time, there's a poison called Adirian. It's a psionotoxin, which is very rare; I knew it came from a vine, but I've never seen them until now. It's outlawed in most of the galaxy, obviously, but of course it's still used sometimes. It's quick, it's airborne, and it kills like that," he said, snapping his fingers. "Real useful when you're trying to take out a large number at once, or when you want something done quietly."
Rose shivered. "Did...I mean, when you were an Agent, did you...."
Jack gave her a cold grin. "Don't worry, Rose. I wasn't wetworks." The grin soured. "Though I guess I can't really be sure, can I?"
Rose wished she hadn't asked. "The Doctor mentioned something right before we all started running. Tarsus...?"
"Tarsus 5."
"What was Tarsus 5?"
Jack took a deep breath. "Tarsus 5 was a colony moon on the outskirts of civilized space. It hadn't been completely terraformed yet, so most of the inhabitants were packed into a small area." Jack's mouth twisted into a snarl. "Someone decided they weren't happy with the way things were being run."
Rose was starting to think she didn't want to hear the end of this story. "What did they do?"
Jack drummed his fingers against the Tardis floor. "They released Adirian into the air vents. Took out the whole colony. Well," he said, "that's what everyone thought happened. The problem was, no one could figure out where someone could get their hands on that much Adirian; the stuff works fast, but you need a lot of it to do that much damage. Looking at this place, now I'm thinking they may have just planted it. Nothing better than poison that grows more of itself."
"That's horrible."
"It makes sense, though. Explains why everything was hushed up the way it was, too."
"I don't understand."
"Adirian is usually used by two kinds of people: people who need a job done fast, and those who want to kill the mind but have an intact body. Since there's no damage to any tissues, the body's perfect, and that's the goal for some people."
Rose started to ask who would possibly need that, but Jack cut her off. "Believe me, you don't want to know. I wish I didn't know."
Jack leaned back. "I always thought it was strange that they didn't release any pictures from Tarsus. The only good thing about Adirian is that it leaves you presentable."
"I'm still not following."
Jack's eyes were shadowed. "Think about it, Rose. Why would a plant evolve a psionotoxin? It follows that they must have some use for the body." He looked at Rose. "I think they go in when after the person's dead and suck them dry. That explains why the body we found was so desiccated when, if the Doctor' right, it's only been a few months."
"So...they kill you and use you like fertilizer?"
"That's why they're the only organic things down here. They must have stripped everything else bare."
Every new detail Rose learned just made it all more horrifying. "That's the most appalling thing I've ever heard." And they were all a second away from that. "Oh my God, and he would've still been alive while that happened."
"No, he wouldn't have been." Rose looked up; Jack's eyes were cold. He tapped the gun in his holster. "If I'd known we were trapped, I would have made sure of that. Even if it was the last thing I did."
Oh, Jack. Rose reached out and took his hand. "You didn't have to, though. You saved him." She squeezed his hand, and felt better when he smiled. "So," she said, trying to compose herself, "you've been to Tarsus, you said? Were you there as a Time Agent? Did you catch who did it?"
"Yeah, well...." he trailed off. He ran a hand through his hair again, and his smile turned sheepish. "Er...not exactly."
"Oh, Jack."
"I went there to wind up a long con I'd been running," he admitted. "Hey, I put four months of work into that!" he said when she rolled her eyes. "Didn't get my money, you might have guessed."
Rose shook her head. "You have the worst luck."
"Yeah, I guess the universe was trying to tell me something. Still, it wasn't all bad luck; a week earlier and I would've been plant food, too."
"But I don't understand; you said you hadn't seen anything like this."
"I hadn't. Everything had been cleaned up by the time I got there. What I remembered was the smell." Jack got up and started to pace. "The whole colony smelled like a perfume factory. I thought it was just part of the cover-up, but now it's obvious the authorities just hadn't gotten to it yet." He leaned against one of the Tardis control panels; the lights threw his face into shadow. "I noticed it as soon as we stepped out of the Tardis," he said. "The smell. That same perfume smell, I just couldn't place it. It didn't click for me until he mentioned Tarsus."
Rose realized where this was going. "Jack, it's not your fault."
"It bothered me the entire time, but I didn't mention it. If I'd said something as soon as we got out, maybe...."
"Jack, the Doctor didn't realize what was happening, you can't...."
Jack rounded on her. "Rose, it was less than two years ago for me. Two years ago I was standing in a place not that different from this one, smelled the exact same thing, and I still couldn't put it together. We're trained not to make stupid mistakes like that, careless mistakes, because that's what gets people...." He bit off the end of the sentence and covered his face in his hands. "That's what gets people killed."
Oh, Jack. You're just as scared as I am. "Jack, c'mere."
"Rose, if he doesn't...."
"Jack. Come here."
He walked towards her, his steps heavy on the Tardis walkway. She wrapped her arms tight around him; she felt him shaking, felt him press his face against her hair. "I'm sorry...." he whispered.
"Shush." His arms were warm around her. "We'd be dead if you weren't with us, the both of us." He squeezed her but didn't answer. "And you came back for us. You're the only reason we made it back here, and you almost got killed doing it, so stop apologizing." Rose didn't know how long they held each other there, but finally she stepped back and looked into Jack's eyes. "We're gonna be all right. We will. You said yourself he was fighting, and he's not going to give up and leave us. He's not."
Jack nodded. His expression shifted; Rose could almost see the gears turning in his head. "Rose, you sit with him," he said, "keeping talking to him, maybe you'll get through. I'm going to see if I can find something."
"What, something else to soup up your gun?"
"Not quite. You'll see." He kissed her on the top of her head. "And thanks."
He rounded the Tardis console and disappeared into the interior. Rose knelt back beside the Doctor and took his hand. "I hope it's a good plan he has, because I can't think of anything."
She stroked his forehead and his hair. "Doctor," she said. "It's time to wake up now. I'm scared, and I need you. I know it's hard, but I'm right here, so just open your eyes. Please, Doctor."
***
"...Doctor..."
"Susan, did you hear that?"
They were walking along a garden path; Susan hadn't wanted to go into the city, and frankly the Doctor was happy to have her all to himself for a little while longer. He'd just finished telling her about the Isis II system, where there was an asteroid belt made of solid diamonds, and had begun relating the story of how he'd been mistaken for a spy when he'd landed on Marseis, where half the population lived in underwater cities because no one had told them the war on the surface had ended a thousand years before. Then he'd lost his train of thought; he could've sworn he'd heard something.
"Why, Grandfather? What did you hear?"
"I don't know." For a moment he'd thought it had sounded like his name, like someone calling...but that was impossible, he and Susan were the only ones there. "I must be imagining things."
She linked her arm through his; it felt just like old times, just the two of them against the universe. "Where was I?"
She smiled. "Everyone had mechanical gills."
"Oh, yes, right. Well, they didn't know what to make of me, you can imagine. After I broke out of jail...." A half hour later he'd wound through the story, and they continued the walk in companionable silence. The Doctor didn't think he could ever get tired of this.
Only one small detail bothered him; it nagged at his mind until he couldn't think of anything else. Susan squeezed his hand; she seemed to sense something was wrong. "Susan, can I ask you a question?" he asked, each word dragging out of him. "You don't have to answer, it's not that important."
"Of course, Grandfather. You can ask me anything."
His mouth felt packed full of sawdust. "Why do you look the same?" He turned his head to look at her. "Even if you hadn't regenerated, you should be grown. It's been long enough for that. Why aren't you grown up?" He turned his head away; he thought he'd feel better once the words where out, but he felt like something was sitting on his chest and squeezing. "Forget it," he said, "Forget I said anything. It's not important, I don't care."
He wanted to walk away from the conversation, but she stopped and wouldn't let him go. "I wanted to make sure you recognized me."
He walked back towards her and cupped her chin in his hand. "Susan, I would know you no matter what you looked like. You could regenerate two heads and I would know you. You know that, right?"
She nodded and kissed his hand. She had tears in her eyes, and he wiped them away when they fell. "Don't cry. I'm sorry, don't cry. It's just," he said. "It's just I never got to see you grown, is all. That's all I mean." Cold shame settled in his stomach. "I promised to come back, but I never...how could I have never...."
"Grandfather," she said, but he cut her off.
"No, no, don't say it's all right, it's not. I always intended to come back, Susan, you have to believe me," he said. "I would come back, and I would look different and maybe you would look different, but it wouldn't matter because we'd just pick up where we left off. You'd tell me everything about your life, then I'd take you everywhere I'd been." He felt hollow; there were no excuses he could make. He hugged his arms and turned away. "That's how it was supposed to be," he whispered. He looked back at her, and his voice broke. "Who ever hear of Time Lords running out of time?
Susan moved in front of him. "Shh," she said. "That's enough of that." She cupped his face in her hands, and he had to close his eyes or he was going to break right there. "Grandfather," she said, and all he could do was shake his head. "Grandfather," she said again, firmly this time, and he forced himself to meet her eyes. "No regrets, no tears, remember?" She sounded so mature he had a sudden flash of all the years he'd missed. "That's what you told me." She brushed her hands down the sleeves of his jacket and straightened his collar. "I took that to heart and didn't have any, and I don't want you to, either."
He laughed, but it was a harsh, bitter sound. "Susan, all I have anymore is regret." He wanted to go back in time and strangle that naïve old man. So self-satisfied, always so sure he was right.
He drew her close, wrapped her tight in his arms. He was making her cry, and that had to stop. He had her back, that was the important thing now. Now he could start making everything different.
"Was he good to you?" he mumbled. She frowned, and he elaborated, "Your man. That rebel boyfriend of yours. Was he good to you?"
Her expression cleared and she smiled. "Yes. Yes, he was very good to me"
Well, that was something. She laced her fingers through his and they continued on. When they came to a wide fence cordoning off a grove of silver-leaf trees, she perched on top and he leaned against one of the beams and watched the sun filter through the leaves. "You think you've very cute up there, don't you."
She kicked her heels against the slats of the fence and didn't take his bait; he'd never been very good at winding her up. The Doctor stood there feeling the sun on his face with his granddaughter at his side and felt something hard and knotted inside him slowly loosen. It had been so long since he'd felt peaceful that it took him a while to recognize the emotion. "This should have been your life," he said, "not spinning about the universe with your daft old grandfather."
"I liked traveling with you."
"It was selfish of me to drag you along like I did. I didn't want to go it alone, and I just uprooted your whole life. I didn't even let you finish school."
"You sent me to school."
"Human school. Big difference, there. And that was your idea, not mine."
"You taught me everything I would have learned at home."
"That's not the point."
She edged over towards him and draped one arm over his shoulder. "Do you remember the night we left?"
He sighed. "You caught me stealing the Tardis."
She giggled. "You climbed out the window! In the middle of the night, like a teenager!"
He actually had forgotten that embarrassing detail. "Well, you followed me," he said, wincing at how childish it sounded.
"I couldn't let that go! I had to see what you were up to."
"Well, you saw. You should have run home and raised the alarm. Saved us both a universe worth of trouble."
"You would just have tried again later."
The Doctor had to admit that was true. "Doesn't mean you should have stowed away, though."
"I couldn't let you just go off on your own. You wouldn't have had anyone to take care of you."
"That's the whole point of it. I should never have let you take that role on. You were a child, it wasn't fair to you."
"I wanted to take care of you."
"Shouldn't have been your job. I stole your life."
She hopped off the fence and gave him a look so fierce he would've taken a step back if he hadn't already been pressed against the fence. "That's not fair to me, either. I wanted to go with you. Did I ever ask you to take me home?"
"Well," he said, "No, but...."
"So listen to me." She took both of his hands in hers. "I saw more, and experienced more, and lived more than most people ten times my age. I wouldn't trade away one second of that time for anything. Not anything."
"Susan...."
She pressed two fingers against his lips. "You have to listen now."
He waited for her to continue, but the voice he heard wasn't Susan's.
"...Doctor, please..."
The voice rushed through him like a shock. He jumped forward, looking around for its source; it seemed like it was coming from the sky. "I know that voice," he said. He looked at Susan. "Who is that? How do I know that voice?"
She squeezed his hand. "Keep trying."
He searched his memories, but none of the faces he called up matched the voice. Each time he was ready to give up and dismiss it he looked down and saw Susan looking at him, nodding at him to continue. He could feel parts of his mind shying away, whole blocks of his memory he couldn't see. He pushed through block after block, tracking down the voice, until he felt something give way. "Rose," he said. At first it was just a name; then he could see her face and it was like a whole section of memory slid back into place and he laughed. "Of course, it's Rose."
Susan smiled up at him. "Is Rose a friend of yours?"
"Oh, yes. Do you know, the day we met I blew up her job and she still talks to me?" He laughed again and led her back down towards the walking path. "Susan, just wait 'till you meet her, you'll love her. Jack, too," he said, as another slice of memories slid where it belonged. "Though I might have to keep a closer eye on Jack, with you coming along."
"Grandfather." He realized she'd stopped following. He turned around to see what was wrong. "Grandfather, I can't meet them."
"Why not?" He put his hands on his hips. "Now, don't act jealous, you've never been like that before..." He trailed off as he looked in her eyes and knew that wasn't it at all. "Susan, what's wrong? Just tell me and I'll fix it."
She took a deep breath. "Grandfather, where are you right now?"
"What do you mean? We're both right...." He stopped. Susan had never been the sort of girl who asked silly questions; she deserved for him to consider the answer seriously. He closed his eyes and stretched out his senses.
He felt the wind and heard the rustle of grass, the call of birds, his blood pulsing through his veins. He pushed past; he could sense there was something underneath the surface impressions, like a painting the artist had decided to sketch over. He held his breath and stretched further until he thought he would fly apart in all directions. Then he caught the faint hum of machinery coming from below and around him; he knew he was lying on something metal, with something softer under his head. "I'm in the Tardis," he said, not quite believing the words even as he said them. "How is that possible?"
He could hear his ship clearly now, hiding just underneath. "Where is the Tardis?" he said, feeling a surge of panic as he looked around. He couldn't remember where he'd landed it, or how he'd gotten here. "I have to find it, Rose'll be worried if we're not back." He looked at Susan and saw another flash of worry; he could feel that he was missing something very important.
(On to part two)
