Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Rose and Nine The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Three ( Chapter 3 )

Rose was standing at the observation window of Gallery 15, with tears in her eyes. She was looking out at an expanded Sun, and the remains of the Earth. `The end of the Earth . . . it's gone.' Her voice was breaking with the emotion of it all, she never realised that time travel would be like this.

She heard the Doctor walking towards her. `We were too busy saving ourselves, no one saw it go.' She blinked away the tears. `All those years, all that history, and no one was even looking. It's just . . .' She couldn't put into words the feeling of loss for her home.

The Doctor held out his hand, and she took it, and they felt it again, that feeling of "rightness" at that simple touch of their hands, just as it had been in the basement of Henrick's three days ago.

`Come with me,' he said, and they silently walked out of the Gallery.

`Where are we goin'?' she asked him as the Time Rotor pumped up and down.

`To cheer you up,' he said with a warm smile.

She heard the TARDIS land and the rotor stop. `Go on then,' he said, nodding at the doors.

`Where are we?'

In answer, he just nodded at the doors and grinned. She walked down the ramp, and glanced over her shoulder to see him grinning at her and waggling his eyebrows. She opened the door and stepped out onto a busy London street.

There were people everywhere. She heard a baby cry, a man laugh, and the door of the TARDIS open. `Big Issue! Big Issue!' a man was calling.

`You think it'll last forever, people and cars and concrete, but it won't. One day it's all gone. Even the sky,' he said, and they both looked up at that beautiful, blue sky.

He could see that she was still tearful after her experience on Platform One. It was difficult for him to admit it, but he knew how she felt. `My planet's gone . . . It's dead. It burned like the Earth. It's just rocks and dust before it's time.'

Rose looked at him in surprise as he stared ahead. `What happened?' she asked him, her voice full of concern.

`There was a war and we lost.'

`A war with who?' He didn't answer; she could see him struggling with the emotion of the memory. When he didn't answer, she asked a different question. `What about your people?'

`I'm a Time Lord. I'm the last of the Time Lords. They're all gone. I'm the only survivor. I'm left travelling on my own 'cos there's no one else.'

Rose's heart was breaking for him. No wonder he was so sullen and grumpy at times. The thought of him being all alone in the universe was unbearable.

`There's me,' she offered without a second thought.

He was stunned by her offer, and her eyes still had the remnants of tears in them, either for the loss of the Earth, or the loss of his people, he wasn't sure. `You've seen how dangerous it is . . . do you want to go home?'

That was a leading question. Did she want to go home? Her emotions were so fragile at the moment that she really didn't know. She had never been so terrified in her life, and yet she had never felt more alive.

`I don't know,' she told him; she was trying to put into words how she felt. `I want . . .' Suddenly, real life imposed itself on her senses, focussing her thoughts in the here and now. `Oh, can you smell chips?'

The Doctor smiled, he could feel her mood lifting. `Yeah . . . Yeah.'

`I want chips.' Before she made any decisions, she wanted to eat chips.

`Me too,' he agreed, nobody made chips like humans.

`Right then, before you get me back in that box, chips it is, and you can pay.'

"Back in that box", she said "back in that box", oh, that was fantastic news. At the moment though, there was a small problem.

`No money,' he said sheepishly.

`What sort of date are you?' she said with a smile. `Come on then, tight wad, chips are on me. We've only got five billion years 'til the shops close.'

She gave him a smile, and he didn't know it at that moment, but he would come to love that smile, where her tongue would just peek from between her teeth. She would use that smile when she was teasing him, and she would come to love using that smile on him, because she would come to love teasing him.

They followed their noses and quickly found the small Cafe on Duncannon Street that was cooking chips. `Two bags of chips please,' Rose said to the girl behind the counter.

They took their chips, wrapped in white paper, and walked down the street towards Trafalgar Square, where they sat by the fountains.

`This is weird y'know, I was sittin' here, what was it, three, four days ago with Mickey, eatin' my lunch before goin' back to work. And now look at me; I'm sittin' here eatin' chips with you, before I go . . . where?'

`Anywhere you want,' he said as he bit into a chip. `Only, I think five thousand million years was a bit too far for your first trip, maybe something a bit more local.'

`Y'got that right,' she said with a laugh. `What about the past, somethin' that's already happened, that would be all right wouldn't it?'

`Of course it would, only maybe not Jurassic or anything like that; might be too far the other way.'

`Mmmmm.' She was savouring a particularly large chip. `Agreed. Hang on though, what about if I meet one of my ancestors, isn't that dangerous?'

`That depends,' he said seriously.

`Depends on what?' she asked him with concern.

`Depends on who your ancestors are. I mean, if they're all homicidal maniacs with guns and knives and stuff, well, that meeting wouldn't end well.' He gave her his big cheeky smile and she burst into a fit of giggles.

`You nutter, you had me goin' then, but isn't there somethin' about killin' your own grandfather?'

`Theoretically, yeah, you could compromise your own existence, but the TARDIS has paradox avoidance systems that minimise the chance of that happening.' He picked at the last few scraps of chips and batter before screwing up the paper.

`Right then,' he said as he stood up and dropped the paper in a bin. `You've seen "Back to the Future"; now let's go forward to the past.' He held out his hand to help her up off the step. She funnelled the paper and tipped the last bits of her chips into her mouth, before scrunching up the paper and taking his hand.

With her stomach full of chips, a vibrant city around her, and the melancholy of a few hours ago forgotten, she had a spring in her step and a new eagerness to travel and see what was out there.

The TARDIS was parked next to a row of red telephone boxes at the junction of Duncannon Street and the Strand, near the entrance to Charing Cross Underground. They opened the door, stepped inside, and walked up to the console, where the Doctor started to power up the systems.

Rose looked around the TARDIS with a new awareness of this remarkable ship. It wasn't just the Doctor's time machine; it was the only place in this universe he could call home. It seemed to be old, cobbled together with scavenged parts, and full of character.

There was something else as well, something she was aware of but couldn't put into words. Love, was the closest she could get to it, not like someone loving their house or their car, but an emotional bond between the Doctor and the TARDIS. If she stood still and closed her eyes, she was sure she could feel the TARDIS in her head . . . no, it was in her heart.

He had told her on Platform One that the TARDIS was in her head, translating languages for her, what else was she doing in there, was she helping her understand the sad, tortured soul of a refugee from a war that killed all those involved.

`So, this is home for you now then,' she said quietly as she stood beside him.

He stopped what he was doing and looked into her concerned, brown eyes. `Yeah,' he said with a smile. `A little bit of home that I can take with me wherever I go. A bit like you humans going camping.'

Rose gave a little laugh. `Oh yeah, I hadn't thought of it like that.' He was being light hearted about his circumstances, and seemed to be in a “good place” at the moment, so she didn't dwell on it or pester him about it.

`You ready then?' he asked her, she nodded an affirmative with a big, excited smile. `Off we go then.'

He flicked switches, twiddled knobs and pulled levers to start the Time Rotor and take them into the Vortex. The grating, wheezing sound of the engines got inside your head and your soul, and filled you with a childlike joy.

`Where are we at the moment?' she asked as she watched him move around the console, making adjustments.

`Ask me another one.'

`Eh?'

He looked at her with ancient, piercing blue eyes and smiled. `Out side of those doors, this moment doesn't exist. We are everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but there's no time, because we are every when and no when.'

Rose gave him a look that, like her teasing smile, he would come to love. A look like a startled rabbit in car headlights. And Rose saw his expression, which she wouldn't love, but would get used to. The look he would give her as though she had dribbled down her blouse.

`It's called the Vortex, or more accurately, the Space/Time Vortex. It exists outside of any normal frame of reference, and within it, light; darkness, matter, and energy all blend, divide, shift, and change. It underlies the whole of Creation, only slightly touching the normal Universe.'

His eyes took on their normal appearance, and Rose realised that her mouth was hanging open, when he used his curled index finger to gently close it.

She gave a little shiver. `Blimey.'

`Its pathways are twisted, unstable, and hard to follow. A journey through these strange dimensions might take a moment and carry you a million years and a billion light years from your starting point,' he said seriously, and then grinned. `There again, a journey of months in the Vortex might end in a journey of six feet and ten days in conventional space. Without being able to calculate the pathways, there's simply no way of knowing.'

`So, you're tellin' me, you set the controls and hope for the best?' she said with a look of disbelief and burst out laughing.

`What?' he said with a hurt expression.

`I was just thinkin', if the trains and buses ran like that, they'd go out of business.' He started to laugh with her. `Imagine gettin' on a train for say, Halifax in Yorkshire, and ending up in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a hundred years late.'

`Or Birmingham, England and end up in Birmingham, Alabama . . . no, actually, that's not funny.'

They both burst into fits of laughter. `Fortunately, I have a TARDIS, which is designed to navigate its way through the Vortex. There are occasional hiccups,' he lied, `but on the whole, I end up where I intended to be.'

Rose stopped laughing when she realised what he had said. `Hiccup? What hiccup?'

`Well, not really a hiccup, do you remember I told you the TARDIS has a paradox avoidance system? Well, sometimes the TARDIS has to make changes to the temporal-spatial destination to avoid a disaster.' He felt it was prudent at this point to leave out the bit about the TARDIS taking him where he needed to be, rather than where he wanted to be.

'Oh, that's all right then,' she said, not seeing his crossed fingers behind his back.

`So, it's time to leave the Vortex, and drop back into conventional time and space.' He started adjusting the controls, and the TARDIS started to shake.

Rose was concerned by the frown on his face. `What's wrong?'

`Nothing . . . much,' he told her as he ran around the console.

`You're not filling' me with confidence here,' she told him.

`Okay, nothing much . . . really. It's nothing that a bit of fine tuning won't take care of,' he said with a grin. `Here, put your hand on that for me.'

Rose reached over and put her hand on the lever that he had indicated. `Fantastic!' he beamed at her.

He ran around opposite to where she was standing. `Hold that one down!' he said, pointing to another lever.

`I'm holding this one down,' she told him, nodding at her hand.

`Well, hold them both down,' he said, giving her that `dribble' look again.

Rose stretched across the console, arms wide. `It's not going to work.'

`Oi! I promised you a time machine and that's what you're getting,' he told her, all manic and frenetic. `Now, you've seen the future, let's have a look at the past. 1860. How does 1860 sound?'

`What happened in 1860?' she asked, slightly confused.

`I don't know, let's find out. Hold on, here we go!'

Rose felt the TARDIS jolt as it hit 1860 Earth, and was thrown to the floor along with the Doctor.

`Blimey!' she exclaimed. She had thought the TARDIS was old and cobbled together, but that was beyond a joke.

`You're telling me,' he said, propping himself up on his elbows before standing up. He looked down at Rose. `Are you all right?'

`Yeah. I think so,' she said as she climbed to her feet. `Nothing broken. Did we make it? Where are we?' she asked as she joined him at the view screen.

`I did it. Give the man a medal. Earth, Naples, December 24th, 1860.'

`That's so weird . . . It's Christmas,' she said, an hour ago, she was eating chips in March sunshine.

`All yours,' he said with a sweep of his arm towards the doors.

`But, its like, think about it, though. Christmas. 1860. Happens once, just once and it's gone, it's finished, it'll never happen again. Except for you. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone a hundred thousand sunsets ago. No wonder you never stay still.' They were grinning at each other insanely.

`Not a bad life.'

`Better with two,' she beamed at him. `Come on, then.' She ran towards the doors.

`Hey, where do you think you're going?'

`1860.'

`Go out there dressed like that, you'll start a riot, Barbarella. There's a wardrobe through there. First left, second right, third on the left, go straight ahead, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on your left. Hurry up!'

“Blimey, how big is this ship?” she thought to herself, she'd only seen this bit so far, and hadn't considered that there could be more. But then she thought to herself, that if this was his home, he must have a bedroom, a kitchen, and all those other rooms a home should have.

She started to follow his directions, which somehow seemed easy to remember and follow. `Hang on, did he say stairs?' she asked herself as she took the third left. Yep, sure enough, there they were. This ship had more than one floor!

He had also said "wardrobe", and she was expecting, well, a wardrobe. If not a wooden one, then at least a walk in one, but this one, you could park a Double Decker bus in here! Calling these two floors of clothing a wardrobe, was like calling Henrick's a closet.

He had got a lot to learn about teenage human women, and she was just the one to teach him. He didn't have to be all flash, trying to impress her with travelling through time and space, just show her the drive-in wardrobe and where she has to sign.