Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ Rose and Ten The Inbetweens and backstories ❯ Chapter Twelve ( Chapter 12 )

The young woman lay peacefully on the stretcher, blankets tucked protectively around her. The Doctor brushed a strand of auburn hair gently from her forehead.

The woman's eyelids flickered open briefly to reveal sparkling grey eyes. The Doctor smiled at her. She caught hold of his hand and squeezed it. `Thank you,' Bronwyn whispered. `For setting me free.'

The Doctor shook his head. `Your boy set you free. Your Jimmy. He showed me what you had seen. What I needed to do.'

Bronwyn smiled. `He was such a good boy.'

`Who loved his mother. Always.'

A hurrying paramedic manoeuvred the Doctor firmly to one side, catching hold of the stretcher's handles. His colleague took the other end and they hoisted Bronwyn off the beach and into the waiting ambulance.

The Doctor closed the doors behind them and watched as the ambulance roared off through the village, lights whirling. Bronwyn's rejuvenation had been an unexpected bonus. As he had hoped, Ali's readjustment of the Cynrog transceivers had tapped into the fears and neuroses of the adults of Ynys Du, not the children. Instead of fantastic monsters, the nightmares were of a far more mundane nature.

`Tainted by the trivia of the real world,' as Peyne had put it. Without the imagination of the children to sustain it, the monster had simply ceased to exist.

He glanced up at the smudge of grey smoke that trailed into the blue sky from the cliff top. The fire in the rectory had raged all night. There would be no traces of the Cynrog machinery by now. He crossed to where Rose sat on the sea wall, shaking her head in disbelief. Ali was perched next to her.

`I just came down the stairs and she was sitting there, fast asleep.'

`How did old Bronwyn become pretty again?' Ali had her head cocked to one side, squinting at the Doctor.

He tried to look casual. `Well, the Cynrog transceivers were still working flat out until the moment they blew up. As soon as the monster was finally solid, they were designed to switch frequencies and suck the life force out of you lot to rejuvenate Mr Morton and his friends. When Peyne started to triangulate on Bronwyn's psychic signature, looking for the final piece of Balor, the machinery somehow got its polarity reversed. Instead of rejuvenating Morton and the others, it look their life force and rejuvenated Bronwyn instead.'

Ali frowned and nudged Rose. `Does he always talk like that or do you get him to speak English sometimes?'

Rose laughed. `Nah, he's always like this.'

`Of course, the machinery was also operating on similar frequencies to the TARDIS, so there's a possibility that she had a hand in it somewhere . . . '

`The TARDIS . . . ' Rose looked at him quizzically.

`Yeah, well, she does like to . . . interfere sometimes.'

`Right. I wonder where she gets that from.'

`I'll tell you another thing . . . ' The Doctor hopped up on to the wall next to Rose, whispering into her ear. `Bronwyn's pregnant.'

`No way? Another Jimmy?'

`Could be.'

`But isn't everything gonna just start up all over again? Doesn't she still have a bit of that Balor thing inside her mind?'

`Not any more.' The Doctor tapped the side of his head. `In here. Ooh, nasty little bit it is, all buzzy and angry like a big wasp. Gonna have to give myself a mental enema when we get back to the TARDIS.'

`Eeergh!' Rose and Ali both grimaced.

`Come on, Ali!' The Doctor bounded off the wall, catching her by the hands. `Rose and I have got equipment to strip out of a lighthouse and some Cynrog to send on their way, and I want to buy you an ice cream before we go.'

Bob Perry, the harbour master had marshalled a number of the local fishermen to take the Doctor, Rose, and the Cynrog prisoners over to the lighthouse. As the Doctor used his sonic screwdriver to dismantle the transceivers, the fishermen carried them down to the cave, where Rose placed them inside the spaceship, alongside the sleeping Cyngog.

Back in the village, the Doctor came out of the local shop carrying three ice cream cones that he's bought . . . well, technically, Rose had bought them as she'd given him the money.

He crouched down and offered one to Ali. 'Why don't you go and round up your mates and take them to the cliff top? I think you're in for a treat when that ship takes off.'

Ali took the ice cream and hugged him around the neck. She turned to Rose, and Rose lifted her into a rocking hug. 'Will I see you again?'

'I hope so,' Rose said, smiling at Ali's parents as she hugged her. She put her down and gave her a little wave before Ali ran off to find her friends.

'We can give you a ride to where ever you need to go,' Ali's father Mervyn told them.

'Oh, brilliant,' the Doctor said. 'Time we were on our way then.'

Dai Barraclough puffed and panted as he took the final few steps on to the cliff top. `What have you dragged us all the way up here for, Hardy?'

Ali glared at him. `I told you. I've got something special to show you.'

`It'd better be worth it.'

`Shut up, Dai.' Billy Palmer threw him an angry glare. `If Ali says it's special, then it'll be special.'

Ali smiled at him. She liked Billy Palmer.

The rest of the gang were squatted down on the grass at the cliff edge, staring out at the jagged rocks of Black Island. The sun was high in the sky, sending silver highlights dancing over the waves. A fresh breeze blew in from the sea, swaying the tall grass and flecking the rocks far below with foam.

`What are we looking for, Ali?' asked one of the twins.

Ali glanced at her watch. `You'll see. Any moment now . . . '

With a loud rumble, something emerged from behind the lighthouse in a blaze of light, a silver shape skimming over the water before lifting higher and higher into the blue sky.

The children watched open-mouthed as it curved above them and then, with a flare of dazzling light, streaked away towards the horizon, the roar of its engines sending seagulls shrieking into the brilliant blue.

Ali shielded her eyes from the sun and smiled.

The big Range Rover drove over the cliff top and pulled up in front of the out-of-place blue wooden box. Mervyn and Beth looked at the streak of light, open mouthed as the climbed out of the car.

Beth Hardy handed a carrier bag of clothes to Rose as she climbed out. 'They're dry now, but I haven't had chance to wash them.'

Rose had almost forgotten that she was wearing Beth's joggers and sweatshirt. When she'd escaped from the rectory, she'd gotten soaked and covered in mud. 'Oh, that's fine. I can get my mum to wash them when I go home.'

Beth looked up to the sky. 'And where is that, home I mean?' Thinking that they came from the stars.

'Peckham,' she said with a laugh. 'I'm a London girl. It's the driver who's from out of town so to speak.'

Rose turned to the Doctor, and held out her half eaten ice cream. 'Here, hold on to this and I'll go and get changed so I can give her joggers back.'

'You don't have to . . .' Beth said, but Rose had already stepped inside the TARDIS.

Mervyn held out his hand and the Doctor juggled the two ice creams so that he could shake his hand. 'Thank you Doctor . . . for everything.'

'Don't mention it,' he said with a smile. 'No, really. Don't mention it.'

Beth pulled him into a hug and kissed him on the cheek. 'Thank you.'

Rose emerged from the TARDIS wearing a denim mini skirt, white trainers, and blue T-shirt. She handed the grey joggers back in the carrier bag.

'What is that?' Mervyn asked, 'some kind of travelling wardrobe?'

Rose laughed and gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek. 'Somethin' like that, yeah.'

She hugged and kissed Beth and then took the ice cream back off the Doctor, sucking at the top of it, before running her tongue around her lips.

'We'll be off then,' said the Doctor, not really liking long goodbyes.

Rose waved from the door. 'See ya,' she said and stepped inside. She walked up the ramp to join the Doctor at the console. They stood there, eating their ice cream cones, watching on the scanner screen as the silver shape of the Cynrog ship slowly made its way out of orbit, accelerating away from the Earth.

`You've sent them back to their war, then?' Rose sounded disapproving.

`Yeah, but by the scenic route.'

`How scenic?'

`Oh . . . about . . . forty or fifty parsecs out of their way. Should take them a couple of years at that speed.'

`A couple of years.' Rose looked shocked. `Can they survive that long in that sardine tin?'

`Course they can! Lovely little stasis capsules in that thing. They'll sleep all the way home! Mind you . . . ' He tailed off.

`What?'

`They might have a few bad dreams on the way.'

`Dreams?' Rose raised a quizzical eyebrow.

`Well, nightmares if you want to be strictly accurate. Just enough to ensure that they won't fancy coming back.'

`Oh yeah, and what do creatures like the Cynrog have nightmares about?'

The Doctor just smiled. They would dream of fire and ice and rage, night and storms in the heart of stars. Ancient, eternal beings, burning at the centre of time, seeing the turn of the universe.

Rose finished her ice cream, and remembered that there was something she needed to do in her room. The Doctor noticed that her mood was sad and melancholy.

She sat on her bed, looking hesitantly at the cardboard box next to her. It said "Walkers Ready Salted" on the side, but she knew that wasn't what was inside. It contained her items that she'd collected from Mickey's flat.

Chasing a Hoix in a Woolwich warehouse, and running from monsters in a Welsh town had helped her forget that she would never see Mickey again. But after the post adrenalin rush, the memories would always come back.

She took a deep breath, and let out a long sigh, picked up the box, put it on her lap, and opened the lid. She started rummaging through the contents when there was a gentle knock at the door.

`Come in,' she called. She knew who it was, there was only one other person in the TARDIS.

The Doctor's dishevelled hair, followed by his concerned face, peeped around the door. `Are you all right?'

`Yeah, fine.' She patted the bed next to her in an invite for him to sit down. `I was just sortin' through my stuff from Mickey's flat.'

She took out make up items, deodorants and perfume, a toothbrush. She stopped and looked at a photograph of them taken one Christmas at her mum's flat, wearing paper hats, and obviously having a great time. It reminded her of her last Christmas, when they were all together.

She reached into the box again and pulled out a sexy black bra and matching knickers, which she quickly put behind her and sat on them, blushing at the Doctor's appreciative gaze. At the bottom of the box, was one last item, a simple note off the cork board in the kitchen.

It was just a simple shopping list, from before Christmas she thought. “Bread, milk, peanut butter, beer, Rose's perfume”. He had bought her perfume for Christmas, even though he didn't know if she was ever coming back. That simple note told her that he was thinking about her when she was away, and she treasured it.

The Doctor put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him, grateful of his comforting support. He cleared his throat and smiled at her. `I came in to tell you that the TARDIS has found somewhere nice and sunny. So when you're done, slap the sun block on and we'll go and have a look.'

`I'm done here,' she said, putting the box on the floor. `Let's go.'

Engines rasping like a giant's dying breaths, the TARDIS forced itself into existence in the middle of a crop field. It grew solid only slowly, as if exhausted by its long voyage through time and space. Finally, there it stood, improbable and serene under the baking sun - an old fashioned police box, like a big, blue blot on reality.

But if the incredible craft seemed a little worn out, its owner was most definitely not. He sprang from the box with the grace of a gangly gazelle, eyes wide and dark, brown hair bouncing over his brow. He grinned at the sight of the tall, fleshy plants pressing all around, then shook one by the leaves as if introducing himself. He puffed out his cheeks. `Flaming hot, isn't it? Quite literally. Sauna in the Sahara sort of hot.'

He struggled out of his brown pinstriped jacket and flung it through the open TARDIS doors - just as Rose came out. She dodged aside yet still caught the jacket with the casual air of one who spends most of their life ducking whatever fate might throw their way.

`Thanks for that, Doctor,' she said, smoothing out the fabric.

`Rose Tyler!' He gave her a crooked smile of appreciation.

`You really are something special, aren't you? Help me save the universe every other day, make sure we never run out of milk - and even offer a quality clothes-care service!'

`Don't thank me till you hear how much I charge.' Rose smiled sweetly back and tossed his pinstripes on to the TARDIS floor. `It's boiling out here.' She smoothed down her light blue T-shirt so that it covered the waistline of her short denim skirt. `Where are we this time?'

`Not sure,' the Doctor admitted, rolling up his grey shirtsleeves. `Lots of weird alien static about when we dropped out of space-time. Whole area's polluted. Clogged the sensors.'

`So this is a planet that sees a lot of space traffic, then?' She stepped out and looked round at the rows of towering crops, listening to the way they rustled in the warm wind. `Seems quiet enough. These plants are weird, though. Kind of like fat corn.'

`Sort of,' the Doctor agreed, taking hold of a fleshy leaf and tearing it. A gloopy liquid oozed out. `Allo, allo! Or rather, Aloe barbadensis. Aloe vera!'

`Don't call me Vera,' she said with her cheeky, tongue between the teeth grin.

`Ha, ha. Oh, but its lovely stuff. Good old aloe vera. Good for the skin, and great for sunburn.' He glanced reproachfully at the blinding sun, smeared some of the ooze on the back of his neck and set off along the nearest line of crops. `So, high-yield corn that also produces aloe vera, what does that tell you?'

Rose closed the TARDIS doors and hurried along after him. `That this planet sells magic seeds?'

`That here be humans - probably future humans. Or at least, future human plants. Could be a colony? Dunno, though.' He stopped and jumped up and down on the dry soil. `Feels like Earth. Earthish, anyway. Thought we were in the neighbourhood . . .'

`But what about the alien pollution stuff?' Rose asked, sniffing the air. `Has everyone got their own spaceship in this time?'

`Seems to me -'

`Don't move,' snapped a low, warning voice close by.

`As I was saying . . .' The Doctor held obligingly still as gun barrels pushed out from both sides of the foliage, and glanced ruefully at Rose. `Seems to me we're in something nasty and smelly - but probably very good for the crops here.'

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`All I wanted was the sun on my legs,' Rose muttered to herself as she climbed the lava chimney out of Mount Tarsus. She could see the young crop inspector, Basel climbing above her.

`Benidorm would have done,' she continued to mumble. Below them were lava tubes full of bats, vultures, dogs, and monstrous insects covered in an alien, golden metal that turned them into golems.

`And where do I end up? Caves under a volcano in Chad . . . typical!'

`You all right up there?' the Doctor's cheery voice called up to her.

`Yeah, brilliant thanks,' she called sarcastically. Her sprained ankle was throbbing. “And he gets an eyeful of my knickers again,” she thought to herself as she remembered clinging to a rope ladder under Lumic's air ship in the parallel universe, wearing a short, maids uniform.

It could have been worse though. One of their group, Chief Overseer, Solomon Nabarr had been smothered by the liquid golden metal and “sucked” through the opening to the cave.

It reminded Rose of the liquid metal robot in the Terminator II film. The Doctor told them it was Valnaxi magma form, a sort of burglar alarm, booby trap, defence mechanism all rolled into one.

A hand reached down to her, and she grabbed it. Basel pulled her up, and she scrabbled into the uncomfortably hot night air. The Doctor's unruly haired head popped out of the hole, and he climbed to his feet.

`Look at them,' breathed Rose.

Rose, Basel and the Doctor stood close together in silence, staring out over the grounds of the agri-unit. From here, high up in the foothills, Rose could see that all golems great and small had gathered together.

The bats smothered the crags and slopes of the foothills. Insects in their millions formed a shimmering, molten pond in the main concourse. Men and birds and rangy dogs, all gleaming gold in a sinister phalanx, waited in silence. A sense of dread anticipation carried through the night.

`They're in formation,' the Doctor realised. `Privates on parade. That's why the golem-bats and their animal mates didn't follow us through the caves, why they only left a skeleton guard for us. They can sense it.'

`Sense what?' Rose asked him.

`Something's coming. Something they stand a chance of beating only if they all work together.' He looked at her, eyes dark and soulful. `I think war's going to break out tonight.'

`Hey. What the hell is that?' Basel was pointing to a glowing blue light, higher up in the crags, a few hundred metres away. The glow became green as they watched.

The Doctor stared. `Sub-orbital landing beacon, by the look of it.'

`Thought so,' said Rose, deadpan. `What does it do?'

`It guides down spaceships.' The Doctor was already setting off towards it. That's what the golems are waiting for. Trouble is coming down from the sky. Big trouble.'

`Trouble, Doctor?' Jaxamillian Faltato came clattering over the lip of the crag, rubbing his pincers together, his five eyes glinting silver in the moonlight. `You don't know the meaning of the word.'

They had met this alien in the tunnels below. It was some sort of intergalactic art thief, which Rose thought had too many legs, too many arms, too many eyes, and too many tongues. And if he thought that the Doctor didn't know the meaning of the word trouble . . . well, he didn't know the Doctor at all.

`Not him again,' said Basel, shrinking back. Rose took his hand and squeezed it.

`So what are you doing?' the Doctor enquired. `Bringing down your getaway vehicle, ready to stash the loot?'

`As if you're not after the treasures yourself!' Faltato retorted.

`He's not!' said Rose.

`Why else would you be right here, right now, unless you'd been following our progress from warren to warren?' Faltato sneered. `Each Valnaxi art warren contains coded directions to find the next - and I have decrypted those pointing the way to the final warren correctly!'

He clapped his pincers together. `All those great works - the Lona Venus, The Flight of the Valwing, The Shriek . . . Lost for thousands of years - and located by me.'

`How many Valnaxi strongholds have you raided?' the Doctor demanded.

`Does it matter?' Faltato said airily.

`They lost the war, their planet, their spirit. Their eternal muse, the key to their artistry - shattered by their enemies and turned into a rancid squat.'

`They lost everything,' agreed Faltato. `Their holdings and acquisitions are forfeit - along with their existence.'

`But you've opened a proper little Pandora's box, haven't you?' The Doctor stabbed a finger down at the gathered golems. `The Valnaxi defences have been triggered. People have died, animals have -'

`Oh, don't be foolish.' The creature's legs brushed and bristled together as he gave a theatrical shrug. `I hardly designed the defence mechanism, did I? Anyway, there'll be a lot more dead by the time my sponsors are finished here.'

`Sponsors?' The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver and wielded it like a weapon. `Who's in that spaceship? Who's coming?'

`You'll see.' Faltato slapped out his tongue and lashed the sonic from the Doctor's hand. `They'll want to meet you, I'm sure.'

`Give that back!'

`They take a dim view of tomb robbers trying to steal their treasures.'

`Theirs?' The Doctor gaped. `Theirs by what right?'

`By right of conquest!' Faltato snapped, slipping the screwdriver into the pocket of his immaculate suit jacket.

`Oh. My. God.' Rose felt her blood run cold. A dark undulating shape had resolved itself from out of the starry indigo overhead. It was like staring up at the vast, fleshy underbelly of some huge, segmented creature that had come crawling out of the crevices of deepest space. And it was plummeting to earth at an alarming rate. `What is that?'

`It's a spaceship,' said the Doctor.

`This ain't even happening,' said Basel in a small voice. `No way.'

Rose wished she could agree. `Never seen a spaceship like that before.'

`I have.' The Doctor looked at Faltato, pursed his lips. `So they're your sponsors? Suppose it makes sense. Not happy with wiping out the Valnaxi, they're coming to crush whatever was left behind.'

`Who are?' Rose asked, frowning. But suddenly huge, puckering mouths opened up in the quivering base of the thing. They spat out thick, foul-smelling muck at an incredible rate, and Rose and Basel almost gagged. In a matter of seconds, two entire crop fields were buried beneath a mountain of the stuff. `The TARDIS,' she breathed. `Doctor, the TARDIS is under there!'

The strange ship squelched down, using the muck mountain to cushion its impact. A shudder passed through the ranks of the golems. Rose stared transfixed as the sides of the muck-mountain began to shake. Piles of manure were knocked clear and crumbled down the stinking slopes.

Then suddenly the mud was alive with dozens of huge, monstrous shapes, squirming, writhing, forcing their way through. Each was the size of a baby elephant, with a pale, glistening, segmented body like a giant earthworm - Rose couldn't tell where the neck ended and the head began, there were no discernible features.

They wore strange suits of crumbling white armour round their Wiggling torsos, with special attachments on their stubby arms. As they coiled and slithered down the mudslide, she could see no legs, only the fat, muscular lower body, raw pink segments rippling.

`What are those things?' Basel croaked.

`They're called Wurms,' said the Doctor. `Fought the Valnaxi across seventeen star systems.'

Rose shook her head. `Just for that one planet?'

`They'd already taken its neighbours. It was perfectly placed for the Wurms to expand their empire out into space - or for their opponents to land a bridgehead and expand into Wurm territory. They couldn't just leave it alone in case someone else conquered it . . .' He shrugged. `It was something like that, anyway. They probably forgot themselves after the first few centuries of war.'

`The Wurms forget nothing,' said Faltato. `They have crushed the Valnaxi's last efforts to resist and now they will seize the final spoils.'

At the sight of the Wurms, the golems pressed forwards, screeching, roaring and howling towards the enormous mud pile and the writhing invaders.

`So Africa becomes the final battleground,' the Doctor murmured, as the carnage and chaos began.