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shifted_logs2009-11-27 09:21 pm
rude-not-ginger.livejournal.com) wrote in shifted_logs2009-11-27 09:21 pm
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Characters: The Proper Doctor ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rude_not_ginger and his Improper Companion handysparehand
Location: The TARDIS, Earth
Time: Before
Warnings: Adventure
Notes: PART TWO. Seriously backdated. The Doctor = brown and Handy = blue
He hesitated.
"I -"
He didn't want to leave Him here, but there really wasn't any other way, was there? The icy patches were spreading further and further.
"All right, I'll be back."
He gave the Doctor and the room one last look before running out.
As he rushed down the corridor, he could feel the entire ship getting colder and colder. Whatever this was it was spreading quickly. Too quickly.
He finally rounded a corner and rushed into the console room, straight towards the console. As he was ready to start working with the console, he watched as ice seemed to splinter out across the console. He pulled his hand back quickly before touching anything.
The lights in the room began to flicker, growing dimmer and more muted, almost bluish.
This was very very bad, but still not impossible.
The Doctor struggled with the old-fashioned sonic screwdriver he'd found in the check trousers. It had almost no battery life, which was one of the main reasons why he switched to the newer style. It also didn't have a very large range for the vibration. There was either "big vibration" or "too small to crack this ice" vibration. Swearing under his breath, he abandoned the sonic back to his trousers and gave a tug to his now-numb feet in an effort to pull them free.
This was bad. Very bad. On the best of days, the Doctor didn't like having his ability to run taken away from him. And this was most certainly not the best of days. He tugged again, but the ice only seemed to grow thicker, before slowly creeping its way up his leg, coating him up to the knee with icy numbness.
The TARDIS in his mind gave a startled lurch of pain. The Doctor scrambled for the sonic again and raised it over to the tiny, disused intercom system on the end of the panel of switches. He vibrated one of them very slightly, turning it on. His voice would---well, should---then go straight to the console room.
"How's it going up there?" he cried.
He stared at the console, then finally pulled off the bathrobe the Doctor had given him. He wrapped his hand in it, hopefully if he could be very quick about it that might provide some protection. As he did so, something dropped out of a pocket of the robe and rolled across the floor.
He grinned as he saw the sonic roll across the floor.
As he moved across the room to retrieve it, he heard a faint tinny voice.
"What the hell?"
He grabbed the sonic up quickly then went back towards the console towards the source of the noise. One of the intercoms, He had gotten the one in the engine room working. He used the Doctor's sonic to boost the signal.
"You had your sonic in your bathrobe. Is there anyplace you don't take the thing?"
Perhaps he could do this without even having to risk touching the console. He set the sonic to setting 63, that should do it, then turned his attention towards the temperature controls, diverting as much heat as he could to the engine room. He kept a good amount in the Console Room as well, hoping that might at least stop the ice spreading further in there as well.
"Is that where it ended up?" he called back, sounding more than a little disinterested. "Good to know. Have you got the heat coming down here, yet? I think the situation is spreading faster along the TARDIS than I thought."
No real use panicking his human self about the Doctor's legs (of which, both were now completely covered in ice). If worst came to worst, the Doctor would just regenerate. The TARDIS, however, she wouldn't. And, well, without her they'd both die.
The Doctor looked back to the wall where the ice had come from. That blue light again. Pulsating this time. A slow, steady pulse. Like a heartbeat. The Doctor struggled to lean forward to see, but his hips were starting to freeze.
"It should be coming down, do you feel anything down there yet?"
He adjusted the sonic and tried again on a higher setting. He sent the majority of the heat down to where the Doctor was, still trying to reserve a bit for the Console Room as well. He watched as the icy patches spread across the walls. They needed more heat, at least he knew that he needed more up here. He increased the heat some more. He wondered briefly if maybe he had increased it too much as he finally felt a gush of warm air fill the room. It was a relief after the cold. It was also a bit suffocating. Still the ice seemed to stop spreading, which was good. He could only hope it was starting to melt down where the Doctor was.
He looked towards the TARDIS doors, that strange bluish light now seeming to glow around the frame. He stepped closer, cautiously then opened the doors.
He shielded his face with his arm, a bright blue light filling the entire room.
A brief blast of heat came from one of the vents and the Doctor twisted awkwardly to warm his frozen fingers. He couldn't operate the sonic like this, and he needed to operate the sonic. He needed to get out of this mess, somehow. The heat increased exponentially, then seemed to radiate out in a blast, sharp and hot. The Doctor's fingers, closest to the vent, blistered with the sudden heat, but the ice around his legs thawed. It seemed to melt backwards in a stream of water towards the hole at the bottom of the console.
The heat did it! His human self did it!
Or did he? Why was whatever it was running away so quickly? Had something happened? "Is everything all right up there?" he called through the comm link. "Are you there?"
The ice around his feet melted and the Doctor fell down to the ground, his legs still numb from the cold. He had to help. Had to get this right. Figure out what was going on! He dragged himself towards the door. Waiting for him at the door was an old-fashioned electric wheelchair, seemingly fallen from a stray cupboard. The Doctor grinned.
"Transport of delight."
He stood in the doorway for another minute, looking out at whatever it was that was out there. He couldn't tell what it was, but he couldn't quite look away. A voice broke through, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand. He slammed the door quickly then rushed back over to the intercom.
"Here. I'm here."
His eyes moved back over to the door. He knew it was probably a bad idea, but despite himself he moved back towards the door, opening it up again.
The Doctor wheeled towards the console room, the rubber gripping on the wheels occasionally slipping on the nearly-frozen corridor floors. Whatever this was, it was spreading and fast. Without warning, the ice moved away from the floors as if retreating. Again? No heat this time. What did that mean?
He pushed open the door to the console room and struggled to get in. It was warm here, but there was still ice on the console. And, most importantly, the door was open!
"What are you doing?" he cried.
He turned around to acknowledge the Doctor, but then turned back around to the door.
"What is that? It's - you can't even see anything out there."
It was almost complete emptiness, save for the light. No stars, no vortex, no space or light or darkness or up or down. Just that blueness with no real contrast.
With one final look, he finally shut the door, and turned around and went back to the console. It was still covered with the ice, although it looked to be thawing.
He thought too soon it seemed, because after a minute it started spreading again. He looked at the console, then back at the door.
He rushed back over, opening it again, then moved back to the console. The spreading stopped for a moment, and then the console began thawing again.
"It's trapped. Whatever it is, I think it wants to be in here as much as we want it in here."
"But there's nothing out there!" the Doctor said. "It's the vortex! I thought the cold might come from the lack of space outside, but if it's thawing and trying to leave..."
He struggled to get out of the wheelchair, wiggling his toes to return life to them. The wheels in his head were turning at something just short of a million miles per minute, but he had to focus. Had to figure out what---
"Hold on a tic," he said. "The time fungus was unusually overgrown this time. What if---just say if---somehow we picked up a hitchhiker in that fungus. Something sitting dormant in the spores and growing and growing until when I cleaned it out it woke up. And now it wants to make a run for it. Out to time and space."
But why latch onto organic matter like this?
"You think it's dangerous, then?"
He looked down as the ice seemed to thaw itself.
"Or it could be like a mouse trapped in a wall. Couldn't get out until now, but really it's perfectly harmless."
He walked along, watching the ice, then stopped at the open door looking out into the blue nothingness.
"Suppose we can't do anything one way or the other until we find out what exactly it is."
"Considering the lack of feeling in my feet, I'm not entirely certain it's harmless. And it's found itself to the TARDIS engine room, hottest place on the ship. But what for?"
The Doctor limped over to the door, squinting against the light.
"Right. Only one thing to do." He held out his hand. "Sonic."
"Or it could've been scared, natural instinct, locked away for so long under all that fungus it was just bursting to get out. Look at the state you were in after just a few hours down there cleaning. How many showers did you end up taking?"
He made room for the Doctor to come over.
"What are you planning on doing?"
He gave the Doctor an uncertain look, keeping a firm grip on the screwdriver.
The Doctor sighed. "You always do want to take the position of Devil's Advocate, eh? Right, right, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt."
He reached over to the robe and plucked out his glasses. He held them aloft and extended his hand for the screwdriver again.
"Fixing these."
"It's not Devil's Advocate, I was just saying..."
He looked back out, then made a face and handed the Doctor the screwdriver.
"There."
He stood against the doorway looking between the world outside and the Doctor.
"Fixing them for what? What happened?"
"Well, I can't exactly see like this, can I?" He waved the sonic over the lenses and they tinted to a very dark shade. He slipped them on and limped towards the light.
"Right. If I'm not back in five--nah, say ten minutes. Jettison the engine, the lower parts of the hull and press emergency program two. Should send you right back to Earth," he instructed.
"Oh like hell you are," he said, grabbing the Doctor's arm and pulling Him away from the door.
"You can barely walk first of all, second, we're not having any of this I'm the Doctor and I will be noble and sacrifice myself idiotically nonsense. So just think of something else."
The Doctor struggled, pushing his human self's arm away. "Someone has to go out there and see what they're trying to get to, or get away from. Blue light like that? Not exactly natural for this part of the Vortex." Beat. "Any part of the Vortex!"
And he didn't want to sacrifice himself! What a silly thing to think. He was never like that! Never!
"You're right, someone does have to go out there."
The Doctor didn't seem in any shape to do any of that though, not at the moment at least. He looked back at the open doorway, then the Doctor. He thought of perhaps pulling a River on the Doctor, but well, he'd at least try to talk to Him reasonably. Perhaps that might work?
"I'm still right too, though. You're not in any state to be going out there, as it is you really are barely staying upright. Give over the glasses and the screwdriver."
He held out his free hand, waiting. He still tried to keep a grip on the Doctor with his other hand.
The Doctor looked at his human self's free hand for a moment, then shook his head easily.
"No, that won't work, it'll have to be me. You head back to the console, I'll start onwards. I'll keep a comm link open with the console, so you'll know where I am." The question of his human self going wasn't even a question. It wasn't even a possibility. It was the Doctor's responsibility to a) take care of the TARDIS and 2, er, b) protect his companions.
He looked again at his human self's extended hand. "Is there some part of 'I might die out there' that you suddenly think won't apply to you?"
"Is there some part of it that doesn't apply to you?" he asked, irritated now, too.
His chest felt a little tighter, that strange sort of sensation that comes with anxiety and frustration and maybe fear too. He couldn't always quite identify the individual components, it deserved it's own name really.
"Because what you're saying, you think you might be as dead dead as I would be, leaving you behind here, initiating emergency program two. And right now I might have a better chance of surviving out there than you will. Look at you, you're still half frozen it seems. You're barely standing, the only reason you don't completely topple over is because you've got the walls to hold you up. So just stop it right now, and give them over."
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something terribly clever and slightly witty and undoubtedly just the right sort of thing to have his stubborn human self realize how wrong he was. However, outside in the bright light, something growled.
It was low and hollow-sounding and the Doctor froze, turning back towards the light. It was as if the outside was immersed in the opposite of darkness. A thick blueness. The Doctor reached out to the light only to find there was a solid surface outside the doors. He slipped on his glasses.
"It's liquid," he said. "Out there. Like water. The TARDIS's defense barrier is keeping it out."
He walked over as well, looking it up and down before reaching out a hand experimentally himself.
"Yeah, but how long you think that barrier will stand?"
There was another growl, closer than before. Seeming to envelope them almost. The blue seemed to ripple slightly, freezing and fracturing around the edges of where the barrier had to be, much like what they'd seen throughout the TARDIS so far.
"It's the same as whatever is inside too, isn't it? Bigger too, by the looks and sound of it. Part of a whole maybe, like that sun before? Someone come to collect whoever we've got inside with us?" Another growl, louder and closer still. "Or, whoever we have inside is hiding from that."
The Doctor looked back at the ice, now just a puddle of water on the console.
"That blue light was in the engine room," he said. "I just assumed it was part of the creature, but it was moving away from the light. Attached to the TARDIS, attached to me. Maybe they were both trapped in the fungus. Or maybe they were just hiding there."
The Doctor pressed his finger against the light, breaking the surface. It felt cold against his skin, like ice water. He pulled his hand back, and the light came with him in a long string, like cheese from an overhot pizza.
"Interesting."
He scrunched up his face watching it.
"Interesting is one word."
He looked at the puddles on the console, on the floor, water dripping in random places.
"It's killing it, whatever that blue thing is, it's killing what's inside here."
He tried to pull the Doctor back inside and away from that thing out there.
"We need to keep that thing out."
"If we keep it out, the ice will take over the TARDIS again," the Doctor said. "Course, if we let it in it might kill us. More likely than not, with my luck."
He looked back to the console, then to the outside.
"We need to communicate with them."
He sighed, but then finally nodded. The Doctor was right.
"All right, and how do you suppose we might do that. You're not going out there, and you seem completely against the idea of letting me out there."
"You think either of us could survive out there?" the Doctor barked. "No. No, we need to find something else. Talk to both of them. Which means we'll need a translator, something that can pick up on sentient thoughtwaves."
The Doctor shut the front door again and the ice began to reform automatically. Instinctually.
"If it even has sentience."
"The TARDIS would usually do the trick. Are the translators down?"
He moved back over to the console to check, but that ice was forming again. He backed away from the console.
"Torchwood maybe, do you think they have translators. Call them up on the mobile then they can feed through whatever technology they have down there?"
He rooted around in his pockets, pulling out his mobile. He dialed the number, there was nothing but dial tone. He looked at his mobile, then thought to try Martha down at UNIT perhaps. She was meant to be on her honeymoon though, wasn't she? He thought better of it, trying UNIT's main number instead. Still more dial tone.
"It must be doing something to our reception. I can't dial anyone down there, Torchwood or UNIT."
"We're on our own," the Doctor said, staring at the freezing console. He shrugged. "Still, we've both been through worse, come on!"
He wiggled his toes again, then made a run for it, down the hallway and up the slippery stairs.
"Maybe we should get some shoes, perhaps?" he yelled after the Doctor, but still didn't make a detour in his path as he followed after the Doctor.
He nearly slipped on one of the stairs, but caught himself on the rail, continuing the run. That wasn't clumsiness, that was just slipperiness. Difference.
As he righted himself he looked down the stairs behind him which were slowly freezing up again. The speed of freezing was increasing though as the ice began to catch up with both men. He really should've gone back for his shoes.
"Hurry it along, would you," he said, pushing the Doctor a bit to get him up the narrow stairs faster.
The Doctor turned another hallway and threw open the doors to reveal: The Wardrobe Room.
"After that last incident, you don't think I'd be stupid enough to go walking around without shoes, do you?" he asked. He hopped over to the snowshoes and threw on a pair, tossing another pair (this one in a lovely shade of pink) to his human companion. "Might want to think about getting a coat, too. We'll need to go to the heart of the matter for the ice, and that means the engine room."
After that, he threw on one of his coats and led the way towards the Bits-And-Parts room, secretly wishing that, at some point in the last century, he had organized it like he promised himself he would.
"You're part me, so you've got a bit of genius in you. Think you can create a dampening sub-atomic dinoculiar oscillator from this rubbish? I'll create a coalation heatwave drive to try to keep the ice from spreading while we talk to it."
He scowled at the Doctor as he caught the shoes. "No."
He tried rooting through the snowshoes, but it was taking entirely too long to find another matching pair, so with another scowl he put them on, rushed to the coats and grabbed a parka and followed the Doctor along to the Bits-And Parts room.
"This room is a complete mess," he lectured as he moved around grabbing the parts he needed, "would it have been too much to organize it a bit. You've had oh the last how many centuries?"
He put aside the things he didn't need into piles, wouldn't hurt to sort as he went along at least.
"I planned on doing it! I just never had the time!" the Doctor snapped back. He rummaged through a few parts himself then, not finding what he wanted, left the room only to come back a few minutes later with the microwave and toaster from the kitchen. He began cobbling them together with a few of the bits-and-parts.
"Right, I think if we can reoscillate the frequencies to suit the TARDIS's communication systems, we should be able to speak to them as though we were talking through the TARDIS comms." He paused. "Though, I...suppose you already figured that."
He gave the Doctor a look as he reemerged with the microwave and toaster.
"First we lose the coffee machine to your impostor detector or whatever that was you were making, I feel like I should draw the line right now, but considering the circumstances..."
He put the finishing touches on the dampening sub-atomic dinoculiar oscillator, but it was a bit sloppy. Considering the time restraints and the total lack of organization in the room, he thought he did a decent job.
"That's of course assuming they are sentient, of course. If not...."
Well he wasn't really sure what happened if not.
The Doctor scowled. "I got you a french press! It's not as efficient as the coffee machine, no, but it works!" The Doctor turned the dial on the coalation heatwave drive and attached a funnel to the end. "For better spray control," he explained.
He didn't want to think that they weren't sentient. If they weren't, or if they couldn't be reasoned with, well, then they'd have to do something drastic. He'd have to figure out what eventually, but he would.
He missed Jack very much in that moment. Jack would know just the right wisecracking remark to make this whole thing seem a little less serious. Still, he had his human self, and that made things a lot easier. (He'd never admit it, of course.)
"Right. Let's go talk to some ice."
"Oh the french press is rubbish and you know it! First things first, when we're done with this we're getting that kitchen properly restocked. Coffee machine, microwave, toaster, the whole works."
Hopefully there would be a chance to do that once they were finished with all of this. He wasn't sure what they would have to do if he creatures weren't sentient. He didn't much care to have to find out. Still, he had some faith in the fact the Doctor would know what to do. (He'd never admit it of course.)
He rolled his eyes at the Doctor's remark but followed after.
"Any clue what you're going to say, or do you want to keep it a surprise, wow me with your keen diplomatic skills?"
"I was actually hoping you'd have an idea," the Doctor said, biting the inside of his lip as they walked. "Never much for diplomacy, me. But Donna was always good at it. Talked down that big blob thing on that planet, remember? Sort of hoped some of those skills had passed to you. Besides the shouting. You've got the shouting down pact."
Still! The Doctor'd figure something out. He...well, he sort of had to, didn't he? He turned the corner towards the engine room. The floor was caked with ice which spread in sharp, angled juts out along the wall, reaching out like talons. The Doctor ducked and deftly avoided the heavily-iced doorframe of the engine room.
He gave the Doctor a look. He still hadn't gotten a straight answer on that Donna discussion.
"Course I have an idea what to say, just figured I'd give you a chance to embarrass yourself first, but if you want me to, I'll take the lead straight off."
As they walked down the corridor the temperature got noticeably colder. He pulled up the hood on his coat as he ducked under the engine room door frame.
He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets, but first he needed to find a place to set down the oscillator that wasn't covered in frost.
"Gloves, we should've grabbed gloves."
The Doctor tugged off the coat and used it to wipe away the snow along the walls. The mechanics were hidden by half a foot of ice. Oh, that was bad. Very bad. He tugged back on his coat, and then aimed the heatwave drive for the mechanisms.
"Right. Get that ready, I'll get their attention and keep them away from you," he said. "Ready?"
Ready or not, he turned the dial on the mechanism, setting the heatwave into overdrive. The toaster dinged loudly and the small LED display that once let the crew know how long until their food was burned now timed out 05:00 worth of heat. 04:59. 04:58. Ice started to melt and reform and melt again.
"Right."
He got to work, cranking the device to start re-oscilating the wave length frequencies. He dashed around looking for that comm system the Doctor must have used when communicating with him in the Console Room. Finding it, he punched in the matching frequency codes, then recallibrated the device. A popping sound, and then a high pitched sound filled the room, which nearly made him drop the device.
He found a nearly frost free shelf near the intercom, punching in a few more codes which seemed to make the feedback ease away to a quiet hum.
"Right. Sorry about that. Hello then, anyone in here that might possibly be liquid based - not entirely sure if that's what it is - but either way anyone here besides my companion and I feel like having a nice chat and getting this all squared away?"
He waited for the creature to respond, there was quiet for a moment, then a new voice in the room, barely audible. He moved back to the oscilator, boosting the frequency.
"....won't stop."
They must've missed the first part. He looked around the room from floor to ceiling, not sure where to look when addressing the creature.
"What won't stop?"
"It, apparently," the Doctor murmured to his human self. "Whatever it is. And I'm not your companion, you're mine."
Not that that really mattered, but the Doctor felt the need to say it.
A fork of ice moved towards his human self's feet and the Doctor turned the heatwave drive downwards, melting it instantly. Well, at least his human self had their attention. That was a start.
"That is very helpful."
He stepped back at the ice, then looked at the Doctor, then back towards where the ice had come from.
"Right, well lucky for me my companion stopped you right there, not much I, no sorry we - can't discount the help of an assistant of course - not much we can do to help you if you're going around freezing me up like that. Now then, you need help I gather. Is the thing that won't stop, is it that blue thing outside?"
"Across time and space and years it followed us. For centuries we hid and they hid but there was safety. Until it was released again."
"The time fungus, you were hiding in that. If you were hiding together, why didn't it attack you there. Unless the time fungus was acting as a buffer of sorts or...."
"It is hungry. It will consume."
"And I'm assuming we are what's up for consumption?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, you're saying whatever it is will consume? But whatever's outside isn't consuming anything, it's just sitting there." The Doctor shook his head and tried to wrap his mind around what the creature was saying. It didn't make sense.
"Whatever's out there didn't attack me when it touched me, but you half froze my legs off and what do you mean assistant???" the Doctor spun around, nearly blasting his human self with the drive.
"I'm not your assistant!"
"You'll have to excuse my assistant, He can get a bit hot headed. His age I imagine, impulse control goes down with it I've heard. Wasn't nearly as bad in His younger years, I remember. But He does have a point, happens every now and then. You did nearly paralyze him, while what's out there hasn't done much of anything as of yet. Of course we're not jumping to any conclusions, sure there is a perfectly reasonable...reason to that."
"It is consuming all ready. Consumption then digestion."
"What, so we're inside it? So you're getting consumed as well, or are you part of the process, part of the whole?"
The Doctor blasted away another stream of ice, this one coming down from the top like a stalactite. It was definitely getting colder. The Doctor checked the timer on the machine. 02:12. They were swiftly running out of talking time.
"If you want to talk, why are you attacking us?" he barked.
"They consume. We contain."
"Contain? How are you -"
He stopped, looking at the blue light emanating from the room.
"You're not the cold, you're the blue light, aren't you? So what is this, containment? Quarantine? You're letting it run it's course, aren't you? The process has all ready started and now..."
"We must contain."
"All right. I get it, you have a job to do. Dedication, while usually a brilliant quality, sometimes, maybe, just a bit of flexibility instead?"
"Without containment it will spread."
The Doctor looked to his human self. "Good talk," he said.
Then, to the light below the ice. "It's already spread. It's killing the TARDIS, it's killing the machine that's containing it. And if the TARDIS dies, we all die. You, me, it, my companion here. We have to get it out. How do we move it out of the TARDIS? Speed up its course? Contain it further?"
There was no response. The Doctor turned to his human self.
"I said I was rubbish at this."
"Obviously, I could've told you that much."
He pulled his hood a little tighter then stuffed his hands into his pockets. The temperature was getting colder and colder by the second.
"Right, but my assistant, sorry companion, does have a point. There has to be an alternative, especially considering I'm guessing this would be a temporary solution at best. Perhaps we can come up with a solution that is a bit more solid?"
"It has become accustomed to time energy. It will consume. We will contain."
"Well, at least it seems to recognize me as the authority figure," he offered the Doctor a bit smugly, "seeing as it didn't have the time to answer you."
He returned his attention to the light. He put his hood down this time, the words having been a bit muffled with it up. He didn't want to risk missing anything they said.
"So time energy. It needs some sort of....oh!"
He turned around to face the Doctor.
"The Rift! It's a solid source of time energy, can't be destroyed or created, it just exists. If we dropped off whatever we have inside into the Rift, it'd end up feeding off of that. Because the Rift has all that excess energy too. It's how we're able to fuel up with it, but at times, at times that energy can get too much. Get this there, it'll be almost symbiotic. The thing we have here, feeds off the energy, the Rift has a safe way of containing excess Rift energy. As for the cold, well I'm sure they wouldn't notice a bit more cold up in Cardiff."
"It could work," the Doctor said, "If we could get there. Riding the rift requires a lot of control and right now we don't even have the full TARDIS under our control. This only has a minute fifteen seconds before it runs out of energy and we won't melt the whole console by then."
He turned and blasted a larger hole in the already closing entrance to the engine room.
"It's getting more aggressive. If this light here can contain the creature further, just outside of the console room. Or even just outside of the console, we could do it. Drop off the ice creature, get this little bloke back where he belongs. No one has to get hurt, but we can't fight it while we work!"
"Right, everybody lives. That's always the goal. You think you can do that, keep it at bay long enough to see if we can drop him off somewhere else?"
There was a moment of silence, then the blue light intensified, nearly filling the entire room, melting the ice away from the dooway to the engine room.
"I'll take that as a yes. Right. Thank you."
He pulled his hood up again and made his way out of the engine room. It was impossible to move quickly with the snow shoes on so he pulled them off, then made a run for it towards the console room. The TARDIS walls were bathed in the blue light too. The frost seemed to be gone, but the coldness remained, as if it was lingering right under the surface still.
He turned a corner into the Console Room, heading straight for the console.
"Little damp, but no frost in sight, at least as far as I can see."
He went for the door, pulling it open.
"Right, better safe than sorry, figure we can use as much help keeping our icy friend here away as possible."
"I'm not even sure that's safe," the Doctor said, flicking off the drive and rushing to the rapidly-appearing console. He grabbed a few dials and struggled to turn them, the cold keeping them stiff and unyeilding. After a moment, the blue light seemed to grow even brighter and the keys felt like they were softening.
"Oh, that's brilliant," he said with a whoop of excitement. He nodded to his human self. "Right, you take that side. Let's ride a rift."
He pulled back on the parking brake.
"Not sure anything is particularly safe at this point."
He moved onto the other side of the console, grabbing a hold. There was a good rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins. He grinned up to at the Doctor, then flipped a few switches.
"Ready?"
The Doctor mirrored that grin with one of his own. "Allons-y."
With a push of a lever, the TARDIS tumbled violently down the time vortex, heading straight for Earth, 21st century. It was a route the ship knew well so it put very little strain on her. But the Doctor still gripped on the console for stability as they went. Bit bumpy, but that was normal.
There was a sudden spark of pain in the Doctor's hand. He looked down to see a chunk of ice appearing and gripping onto his fingers, trying to stop him from changing a dial.
"We're trying to help you!" he said to it, trying to shake it away.
The ice still seemed to be under control on his side of the console. He pulled one of the controls then moved to the Doctor's side, turning the dial He was going for. He pushed a couple buttons on the Doctor's side, then returned to his side of the console.
"Think you can give Him a little help over there?" he asked, not looking away from what he was doing.
To the Doctor's surprise, the light around him seemed to glow brighter, and the ice melted, leaving a red mark on the back of his hand from the cold.
"Thanks," he said to the light, then he turned back to the console. A little twist here, a turn there, a silent reassuring voice to the TARDIS, and---bang. The TARDIS didn't quite materialize, it more surfed into existance right above the crack in the rift.
"Ready? We're going to lower her down. One, two, three---"
The TARDIS landed, a bit bumpy, but there was still a landing. The force of the landing made him fall backwards against one of the walls. He bounced off quickly as some more of the ice seemed to form.
"We just need to filter him out into the rift. If we just -"
He stopped as he looked out the open doors.
"Why are there military vehicles in the streets?"
He moved out towards the outside, the blue light almost translucent at this point. As he looked out towards Cardiff, he could feel the chill passing him by. The blue light, whatever he/she/it was, the blue light was filtering out the ice creature into the rift for them.
He looked up the way, rubble above where the Hub once stood. Jack. No wonder he couldn't get a connection.
"Doctor," he called a little uncertainly.
Behind a convoy of military vehicles were a couple buses filled with children. While it was unsettling, he knew Jack would be all right. This though, this was worrying at best, on a number of levels.
"Since when did the military escort school buses?"
The Torchwood center. It was gone, a great smoking crater. The Doctor stared at it, horrified. Jack. His whole of, well, everything was in that place. And what about Jack? Could he survive an explosion? His mind informed him that yes, of course he could. He was a Fact with a capital "f". That meant forever. But what had happened? Where was he?
The Doctor leaned towards the doors. Military units followed alongside the buses, down the street towards the rougher parts of Cardiff. Where were they going? Why were there so many?
"We need to go down there," he said. "This can't be right, this shouldn't be happening." He flicked another switch as the ice dissipated, a long stream of blue-cold going deep into the energy of the rift. That's one good use for it, he thought.
"Right, tell your friend that once we've got the creature out, we're going to land. After we've sorted this out, we'll take him back to his home world. Shouldn't take too long." As the ice melted away from the screen on the console, the Doctor's eyes widened at the readout. Something was altering the Rift.
As if on cue, the TARDIS jolted, knocked by a wafe of Rift energy. "Hold on!" he called.
The TARDIS doors shut, as if on cue. Her systems were back online and she was taking some sort of defensive measures it felt like.
He tried pulling on the door to open it again. It was stuck shut. Deja vu hit him for a moment before he moved back to the console.
"Do something, send her back, somewhere off the Rift, anything."
There was a strange wail then, filling the ship. The creature from before, the blue light, they had practically amputated him. Cut off and away from the Rift, the creature had finished transferring the parasite out, but hadn't properly been able to disconnect.
The blue light that had been in the Console Room flickered.
"We're killing him, he's dying. There has to be a way around this, we need to get back there. All those people - children, just do something."
He was the Doctor, He had to have a way to fix all this. Wasn't the point of coming here to have everyone live?
"I'm trying!" the Doctor called. He tugged the brake, gave up on that, then spun around to the other side of the console to try to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, get the TARDIS heading backwards.
"Hit the lever, there!" he called. The TARDIS kept moving, thrust away from the rift. "No, no, no!"
The wailing ceased abruptly, the silence in its absence ringing in the Doctor's ears.
"No!" he shouted. "No! It---punch in Cardiff's coordinates! Reassert the binary matricies!"
He did everything the Doctor said. Nothing. He began just hitting buttons randomly. Still nothing.
He back away from the console, then kicked it in frustration.
The room was too warm now. Too warm and too quiet. He pulled off his coat, tossing it on the floor. He looked over at the Doctor.
"You convinced me everything would work out. No one gets hurt, you said that."
Perhaps later he might think that was unfair, but now, now there needed to be someone to blame.
He looked away from the Doctor and went to the door and opened it to get a view of where they might be. He didn't feel like going anywhere near the console. Cardiff was long gone, but that wasn't a surprise. All that was there was space, just space. They were now a few hundred galaxies away from Earth at least from the looks of it.
The Doctor shook his head, staring at the console. "It should've worked. It should've worked! Something was---something was altering the rift's energy fields. Something big."
He reached around to the other side of the console and began punching in coordinates. "We have to go back," he said. "We have to find Jack, figure out what's happening."
No response from the guidance systems. Nothing. The Doctor grabbed the mallet and banged it on the side of to jostle the wires about.
"No! It's an engine malfunction. I need---I need to---" He turned to run back towards the engine room.
He looked out the doors for another moment before shutting them. He moved back to the console, looking at some of the readings on it as the Doctor ran for the engine room. Another look, and perhaps a silent apology for the kicking, and then he walked to the engine room.
"We should go take care of that restocking of the kitchen. We're not getting back down there, whatever is happening there it's effecting not just the Rift, but communication and outside travel as well. It's some sort of something I don't know, but it's blocking anything from outside Earth. We're not getting back right now, either way."
He randomly flicked a few switches.
"It will be all right though, whatever is happening, even if we can't get back down there. Jack and his team, I'm sure they're out there still stopping whatever is happening. And humanity, they foul up every now and again, but they're good at righting themselves, even if it is at the last minute. They'll work it out."
He wasn't entirely sure how right that was, but losing hope when they were helpless wasn't going to do anyone any good. Even if it was a forced sort of hopefulness adopted to cope with the situation.
"If they're alive," the Doctor said, ominously. He pulled open the engine room door. No ice, no water, no blue light. The TARDIS was healing, he could feel it, but they didn't win. They didn't have a day where everyone lived.
He knelt down next to the hole under the controls. "This'll take a while to fix," he said. "Even then, you're right, the area's cut off. We can't get down there. Hard to determine how long that interference'll last. Might take months and if Jack needs us..."
If Jack needed them, he'd be on his own.
He looked down at the Doctor underneath the controls. He was killing whatever small sense of optimism he had, and he resented Him that right then. Would it have been so difficult for Him to maybe offer a small spark of hope in all this, too?
"Yeah, I suppose you're right."
He paused ready to make his way out of the room, but stopped.
"Jack though, he's brilliant. I'm sure he's faced much worse than this and you and and I, we never even knew about it."
"Yeah, yeah, 'course he has," the Doctor said, trying to force optimism into his voice and failing rather miserably. The Doctor had seen where the Torchwood base had been. He saw what crater was left there. Even if Jack did manage to survive it, the people he cared for back there...they might not have. But they might've gotten out, like his human self suggested. Maybe they found another way.
Maybe.
Was it better to deal in maybes, or to be realistic?
He looked over to his human self. He could coddle him now, tell him everything was all right. It would be the right thing to do, but it isn't what he wanted, was it?
"I think we should..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Prepare ourselves for the worst. Always best, in the end."
"Yeah, course, prepare for the worst."
He moved to leave and then stopped.
"No. You know what, no. What is wrong with hoping for the best? I don't want to prepare for the worst. Maybe it might happen, you're probably more right than I am - you always say you are, so it must be true - but is it so terrible to hope for something better instead?"
"No," the Doctor said. "Nope. Nothing wrong with that at all."
He turned a few dials, keeping his eyes on his work. "But you didn't want me to coddle you anymore. I'm not. The best...it doesn't happen. Not for us."
"You can't really mean that, or what's the point in anything?"
He turned around to look at his human self. They didn't really look alike, he decided. His human self, he looked...younger. The Doctor often thought of him as younger, even though they both had 900 (1,400 if they were honest) years worth of memories.
Maybe his human self didn't feel them. The Doctor hoped he didn't.
"You know the day we stopped the nanogenes? The day back there, when everyone lived?" he said. "For days like that. There are days like that. It makes everything worth it."
"And the rest of the time?"
"The rest of the time we...hope for the other times. Do our best with what we've got. It's all we've got." And, after a moment, he added: "Doctor."
It felt odd, Him saying that name. It wasn't at all how he wanted to hear it, it sounded almost patronizing in a way, although he had a good idea that's not how He meant it at all. It still felt hollow.
"And that's it? That's as good as it gets?"
"Short of Jack Nicholson saying it, yeah," the Doctor said with a little sniff. "I've seen too much bad to really think that there's much good left for me this regeneration. Too much time alone."
"You choose to be alone. That's a choice, so don't even try that one."
"I didn't choose what happened to Donna, I didn't choose for Martha to leave, Rose to leave. It happens." His voice was bitter, and with good reason, in his opinion. "I didn't take Christina because she...wouldn't fit in, not really. Full house now, and all that."
And she reminded him too much of Lucy Saxon. Not that he'd admit it, of course.
"You're just a coward, aren't you? I never noticed it before, but you are."
The words weren't accusatory. More disappointed than anything else. Well perhaps a bit accusatory, the sort that comes when you find out someone isn't who you thought they were.
The Doctor bristled for a moment, then stood up straight, his expression offended.
"I think you should get some sleep. I've got a lot of work to do here." His voice was cold, but it didn't answer his human self's question. Not directly, at least.
He laughed. Hollow and a little angry.
"We're back to that? If I don't, are you going to order me off to my room again?"
"You wouldn't go if I ordered you," the Doctor replied. "So I won't. You'll go when you're tired. But I'm busy here. All right? We'll find Jack soon. Things will be all right or they won't, but we won't know until this is fixed and the TARDIS has had time to heal."
The Doctor put his hand on the side of the wall. The TARDIS ached, deep down. She also hated it when he fought with his human self, a fact which really irritated the Doctor. She was supposed to be on his side.
He sighed. "I'll see if I can't drift the TARDIS towards Mercathia. They have coffee there. Well, a drink very like coffee."
"I don't want to go to Mercathia, I don't want coffee."
He looked away, ready to turn around to leave, but stopped, looking at the Doctor again.
"It's not just you, you know. You think you have the market cornered on suffering. It's as if you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you weren't punishing yourself. You're a coward."
"And you're a brat," the Doctor spat back. "When things don't go your way, you get all...contrary and obstreperous. You make wild observations and act like you a) Know everything or 2---sorry, b) Didn't ask to be grown. Are you trying to act your age?"
He stared at the Doctor for a good minute or so, unsure what he wanted to do or say. Fight or argue would've been the choice he would make, but something in the Doctor's words, and he couldn't even identify which part, stung a little too much.
Maybe it was the day, maybe it was everything, maybe it was being called the Doctor and feeling the need to live up to the name.
He sniffed, then turned around leaving the room.
The Doctor watched him go and then, satisfied, turned back to his work.
It would be a good couple of hours before he realized that he'd just out-insulted the only real friend he had left.
rude_not_ginger and his Improper Companion handysparehandLocation: The TARDIS, Earth
Time: Before
Warnings: Adventure
Notes: PART TWO. Seriously backdated. The Doctor = brown and Handy = blue
He hesitated.
"I -"
He didn't want to leave Him here, but there really wasn't any other way, was there? The icy patches were spreading further and further.
"All right, I'll be back."
He gave the Doctor and the room one last look before running out.
As he rushed down the corridor, he could feel the entire ship getting colder and colder. Whatever this was it was spreading quickly. Too quickly.
He finally rounded a corner and rushed into the console room, straight towards the console. As he was ready to start working with the console, he watched as ice seemed to splinter out across the console. He pulled his hand back quickly before touching anything.
The lights in the room began to flicker, growing dimmer and more muted, almost bluish.
This was very very bad, but still not impossible.
The Doctor struggled with the old-fashioned sonic screwdriver he'd found in the check trousers. It had almost no battery life, which was one of the main reasons why he switched to the newer style. It also didn't have a very large range for the vibration. There was either "big vibration" or "too small to crack this ice" vibration. Swearing under his breath, he abandoned the sonic back to his trousers and gave a tug to his now-numb feet in an effort to pull them free.
This was bad. Very bad. On the best of days, the Doctor didn't like having his ability to run taken away from him. And this was most certainly not the best of days. He tugged again, but the ice only seemed to grow thicker, before slowly creeping its way up his leg, coating him up to the knee with icy numbness.
The TARDIS in his mind gave a startled lurch of pain. The Doctor scrambled for the sonic again and raised it over to the tiny, disused intercom system on the end of the panel of switches. He vibrated one of them very slightly, turning it on. His voice would---well, should---then go straight to the console room.
"How's it going up there?" he cried.
He stared at the console, then finally pulled off the bathrobe the Doctor had given him. He wrapped his hand in it, hopefully if he could be very quick about it that might provide some protection. As he did so, something dropped out of a pocket of the robe and rolled across the floor.
He grinned as he saw the sonic roll across the floor.
As he moved across the room to retrieve it, he heard a faint tinny voice.
"What the hell?"
He grabbed the sonic up quickly then went back towards the console towards the source of the noise. One of the intercoms, He had gotten the one in the engine room working. He used the Doctor's sonic to boost the signal.
"You had your sonic in your bathrobe. Is there anyplace you don't take the thing?"
Perhaps he could do this without even having to risk touching the console. He set the sonic to setting 63, that should do it, then turned his attention towards the temperature controls, diverting as much heat as he could to the engine room. He kept a good amount in the Console Room as well, hoping that might at least stop the ice spreading further in there as well.
"Is that where it ended up?" he called back, sounding more than a little disinterested. "Good to know. Have you got the heat coming down here, yet? I think the situation is spreading faster along the TARDIS than I thought."
No real use panicking his human self about the Doctor's legs (of which, both were now completely covered in ice). If worst came to worst, the Doctor would just regenerate. The TARDIS, however, she wouldn't. And, well, without her they'd both die.
The Doctor looked back to the wall where the ice had come from. That blue light again. Pulsating this time. A slow, steady pulse. Like a heartbeat. The Doctor struggled to lean forward to see, but his hips were starting to freeze.
"It should be coming down, do you feel anything down there yet?"
He adjusted the sonic and tried again on a higher setting. He sent the majority of the heat down to where the Doctor was, still trying to reserve a bit for the Console Room as well. He watched as the icy patches spread across the walls. They needed more heat, at least he knew that he needed more up here. He increased the heat some more. He wondered briefly if maybe he had increased it too much as he finally felt a gush of warm air fill the room. It was a relief after the cold. It was also a bit suffocating. Still the ice seemed to stop spreading, which was good. He could only hope it was starting to melt down where the Doctor was.
He looked towards the TARDIS doors, that strange bluish light now seeming to glow around the frame. He stepped closer, cautiously then opened the doors.
He shielded his face with his arm, a bright blue light filling the entire room.
A brief blast of heat came from one of the vents and the Doctor twisted awkwardly to warm his frozen fingers. He couldn't operate the sonic like this, and he needed to operate the sonic. He needed to get out of this mess, somehow. The heat increased exponentially, then seemed to radiate out in a blast, sharp and hot. The Doctor's fingers, closest to the vent, blistered with the sudden heat, but the ice around his legs thawed. It seemed to melt backwards in a stream of water towards the hole at the bottom of the console.
The heat did it! His human self did it!
Or did he? Why was whatever it was running away so quickly? Had something happened? "Is everything all right up there?" he called through the comm link. "Are you there?"
The ice around his feet melted and the Doctor fell down to the ground, his legs still numb from the cold. He had to help. Had to get this right. Figure out what was going on! He dragged himself towards the door. Waiting for him at the door was an old-fashioned electric wheelchair, seemingly fallen from a stray cupboard. The Doctor grinned.
"Transport of delight."
He stood in the doorway for another minute, looking out at whatever it was that was out there. He couldn't tell what it was, but he couldn't quite look away. A voice broke through, bringing his attention back to the matter at hand. He slammed the door quickly then rushed back over to the intercom.
"Here. I'm here."
His eyes moved back over to the door. He knew it was probably a bad idea, but despite himself he moved back towards the door, opening it up again.
The Doctor wheeled towards the console room, the rubber gripping on the wheels occasionally slipping on the nearly-frozen corridor floors. Whatever this was, it was spreading and fast. Without warning, the ice moved away from the floors as if retreating. Again? No heat this time. What did that mean?
He pushed open the door to the console room and struggled to get in. It was warm here, but there was still ice on the console. And, most importantly, the door was open!
"What are you doing?" he cried.
He turned around to acknowledge the Doctor, but then turned back around to the door.
"What is that? It's - you can't even see anything out there."
It was almost complete emptiness, save for the light. No stars, no vortex, no space or light or darkness or up or down. Just that blueness with no real contrast.
With one final look, he finally shut the door, and turned around and went back to the console. It was still covered with the ice, although it looked to be thawing.
He thought too soon it seemed, because after a minute it started spreading again. He looked at the console, then back at the door.
He rushed back over, opening it again, then moved back to the console. The spreading stopped for a moment, and then the console began thawing again.
"It's trapped. Whatever it is, I think it wants to be in here as much as we want it in here."
"But there's nothing out there!" the Doctor said. "It's the vortex! I thought the cold might come from the lack of space outside, but if it's thawing and trying to leave..."
He struggled to get out of the wheelchair, wiggling his toes to return life to them. The wheels in his head were turning at something just short of a million miles per minute, but he had to focus. Had to figure out what---
"Hold on a tic," he said. "The time fungus was unusually overgrown this time. What if---just say if---somehow we picked up a hitchhiker in that fungus. Something sitting dormant in the spores and growing and growing until when I cleaned it out it woke up. And now it wants to make a run for it. Out to time and space."
But why latch onto organic matter like this?
"You think it's dangerous, then?"
He looked down as the ice seemed to thaw itself.
"Or it could be like a mouse trapped in a wall. Couldn't get out until now, but really it's perfectly harmless."
He walked along, watching the ice, then stopped at the open door looking out into the blue nothingness.
"Suppose we can't do anything one way or the other until we find out what exactly it is."
"Considering the lack of feeling in my feet, I'm not entirely certain it's harmless. And it's found itself to the TARDIS engine room, hottest place on the ship. But what for?"
The Doctor limped over to the door, squinting against the light.
"Right. Only one thing to do." He held out his hand. "Sonic."
"Or it could've been scared, natural instinct, locked away for so long under all that fungus it was just bursting to get out. Look at the state you were in after just a few hours down there cleaning. How many showers did you end up taking?"
He made room for the Doctor to come over.
"What are you planning on doing?"
He gave the Doctor an uncertain look, keeping a firm grip on the screwdriver.
The Doctor sighed. "You always do want to take the position of Devil's Advocate, eh? Right, right, we'll give them the benefit of the doubt."
He reached over to the robe and plucked out his glasses. He held them aloft and extended his hand for the screwdriver again.
"Fixing these."
"It's not Devil's Advocate, I was just saying..."
He looked back out, then made a face and handed the Doctor the screwdriver.
"There."
He stood against the doorway looking between the world outside and the Doctor.
"Fixing them for what? What happened?"
"Well, I can't exactly see like this, can I?" He waved the sonic over the lenses and they tinted to a very dark shade. He slipped them on and limped towards the light.
"Right. If I'm not back in five--nah, say ten minutes. Jettison the engine, the lower parts of the hull and press emergency program two. Should send you right back to Earth," he instructed.
"Oh like hell you are," he said, grabbing the Doctor's arm and pulling Him away from the door.
"You can barely walk first of all, second, we're not having any of this I'm the Doctor and I will be noble and sacrifice myself idiotically nonsense. So just think of something else."
The Doctor struggled, pushing his human self's arm away. "Someone has to go out there and see what they're trying to get to, or get away from. Blue light like that? Not exactly natural for this part of the Vortex." Beat. "Any part of the Vortex!"
And he didn't want to sacrifice himself! What a silly thing to think. He was never like that! Never!
"You're right, someone does have to go out there."
The Doctor didn't seem in any shape to do any of that though, not at the moment at least. He looked back at the open doorway, then the Doctor. He thought of perhaps pulling a River on the Doctor, but well, he'd at least try to talk to Him reasonably. Perhaps that might work?
"I'm still right too, though. You're not in any state to be going out there, as it is you really are barely staying upright. Give over the glasses and the screwdriver."
He held out his free hand, waiting. He still tried to keep a grip on the Doctor with his other hand.
The Doctor looked at his human self's free hand for a moment, then shook his head easily.
"No, that won't work, it'll have to be me. You head back to the console, I'll start onwards. I'll keep a comm link open with the console, so you'll know where I am." The question of his human self going wasn't even a question. It wasn't even a possibility. It was the Doctor's responsibility to a) take care of the TARDIS and 2, er, b) protect his companions.
He looked again at his human self's extended hand. "Is there some part of 'I might die out there' that you suddenly think won't apply to you?"
"Is there some part of it that doesn't apply to you?" he asked, irritated now, too.
His chest felt a little tighter, that strange sort of sensation that comes with anxiety and frustration and maybe fear too. He couldn't always quite identify the individual components, it deserved it's own name really.
"Because what you're saying, you think you might be as dead dead as I would be, leaving you behind here, initiating emergency program two. And right now I might have a better chance of surviving out there than you will. Look at you, you're still half frozen it seems. You're barely standing, the only reason you don't completely topple over is because you've got the walls to hold you up. So just stop it right now, and give them over."
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something terribly clever and slightly witty and undoubtedly just the right sort of thing to have his stubborn human self realize how wrong he was. However, outside in the bright light, something growled.
It was low and hollow-sounding and the Doctor froze, turning back towards the light. It was as if the outside was immersed in the opposite of darkness. A thick blueness. The Doctor reached out to the light only to find there was a solid surface outside the doors. He slipped on his glasses.
"It's liquid," he said. "Out there. Like water. The TARDIS's defense barrier is keeping it out."
He walked over as well, looking it up and down before reaching out a hand experimentally himself.
"Yeah, but how long you think that barrier will stand?"
There was another growl, closer than before. Seeming to envelope them almost. The blue seemed to ripple slightly, freezing and fracturing around the edges of where the barrier had to be, much like what they'd seen throughout the TARDIS so far.
"It's the same as whatever is inside too, isn't it? Bigger too, by the looks and sound of it. Part of a whole maybe, like that sun before? Someone come to collect whoever we've got inside with us?" Another growl, louder and closer still. "Or, whoever we have inside is hiding from that."
The Doctor looked back at the ice, now just a puddle of water on the console.
"That blue light was in the engine room," he said. "I just assumed it was part of the creature, but it was moving away from the light. Attached to the TARDIS, attached to me. Maybe they were both trapped in the fungus. Or maybe they were just hiding there."
The Doctor pressed his finger against the light, breaking the surface. It felt cold against his skin, like ice water. He pulled his hand back, and the light came with him in a long string, like cheese from an overhot pizza.
"Interesting."
He scrunched up his face watching it.
"Interesting is one word."
He looked at the puddles on the console, on the floor, water dripping in random places.
"It's killing it, whatever that blue thing is, it's killing what's inside here."
He tried to pull the Doctor back inside and away from that thing out there.
"We need to keep that thing out."
"If we keep it out, the ice will take over the TARDIS again," the Doctor said. "Course, if we let it in it might kill us. More likely than not, with my luck."
He looked back to the console, then to the outside.
"We need to communicate with them."
He sighed, but then finally nodded. The Doctor was right.
"All right, and how do you suppose we might do that. You're not going out there, and you seem completely against the idea of letting me out there."
"You think either of us could survive out there?" the Doctor barked. "No. No, we need to find something else. Talk to both of them. Which means we'll need a translator, something that can pick up on sentient thoughtwaves."
The Doctor shut the front door again and the ice began to reform automatically. Instinctually.
"If it even has sentience."
"The TARDIS would usually do the trick. Are the translators down?"
He moved back over to the console to check, but that ice was forming again. He backed away from the console.
"Torchwood maybe, do you think they have translators. Call them up on the mobile then they can feed through whatever technology they have down there?"
He rooted around in his pockets, pulling out his mobile. He dialed the number, there was nothing but dial tone. He looked at his mobile, then thought to try Martha down at UNIT perhaps. She was meant to be on her honeymoon though, wasn't she? He thought better of it, trying UNIT's main number instead. Still more dial tone.
"It must be doing something to our reception. I can't dial anyone down there, Torchwood or UNIT."
"We're on our own," the Doctor said, staring at the freezing console. He shrugged. "Still, we've both been through worse, come on!"
He wiggled his toes again, then made a run for it, down the hallway and up the slippery stairs.
"Maybe we should get some shoes, perhaps?" he yelled after the Doctor, but still didn't make a detour in his path as he followed after the Doctor.
He nearly slipped on one of the stairs, but caught himself on the rail, continuing the run. That wasn't clumsiness, that was just slipperiness. Difference.
As he righted himself he looked down the stairs behind him which were slowly freezing up again. The speed of freezing was increasing though as the ice began to catch up with both men. He really should've gone back for his shoes.
"Hurry it along, would you," he said, pushing the Doctor a bit to get him up the narrow stairs faster.
The Doctor turned another hallway and threw open the doors to reveal: The Wardrobe Room.
"After that last incident, you don't think I'd be stupid enough to go walking around without shoes, do you?" he asked. He hopped over to the snowshoes and threw on a pair, tossing another pair (this one in a lovely shade of pink) to his human companion. "Might want to think about getting a coat, too. We'll need to go to the heart of the matter for the ice, and that means the engine room."
After that, he threw on one of his coats and led the way towards the Bits-And-Parts room, secretly wishing that, at some point in the last century, he had organized it like he promised himself he would.
"You're part me, so you've got a bit of genius in you. Think you can create a dampening sub-atomic dinoculiar oscillator from this rubbish? I'll create a coalation heatwave drive to try to keep the ice from spreading while we talk to it."
He scowled at the Doctor as he caught the shoes. "No."
He tried rooting through the snowshoes, but it was taking entirely too long to find another matching pair, so with another scowl he put them on, rushed to the coats and grabbed a parka and followed the Doctor along to the Bits-And Parts room.
"This room is a complete mess," he lectured as he moved around grabbing the parts he needed, "would it have been too much to organize it a bit. You've had oh the last how many centuries?"
He put aside the things he didn't need into piles, wouldn't hurt to sort as he went along at least.
"I planned on doing it! I just never had the time!" the Doctor snapped back. He rummaged through a few parts himself then, not finding what he wanted, left the room only to come back a few minutes later with the microwave and toaster from the kitchen. He began cobbling them together with a few of the bits-and-parts.
"Right, I think if we can reoscillate the frequencies to suit the TARDIS's communication systems, we should be able to speak to them as though we were talking through the TARDIS comms." He paused. "Though, I...suppose you already figured that."
He gave the Doctor a look as he reemerged with the microwave and toaster.
"First we lose the coffee machine to your impostor detector or whatever that was you were making, I feel like I should draw the line right now, but considering the circumstances..."
He put the finishing touches on the dampening sub-atomic dinoculiar oscillator, but it was a bit sloppy. Considering the time restraints and the total lack of organization in the room, he thought he did a decent job.
"That's of course assuming they are sentient, of course. If not...."
Well he wasn't really sure what happened if not.
The Doctor scowled. "I got you a french press! It's not as efficient as the coffee machine, no, but it works!" The Doctor turned the dial on the coalation heatwave drive and attached a funnel to the end. "For better spray control," he explained.
He didn't want to think that they weren't sentient. If they weren't, or if they couldn't be reasoned with, well, then they'd have to do something drastic. He'd have to figure out what eventually, but he would.
He missed Jack very much in that moment. Jack would know just the right wisecracking remark to make this whole thing seem a little less serious. Still, he had his human self, and that made things a lot easier. (He'd never admit it, of course.)
"Right. Let's go talk to some ice."
"Oh the french press is rubbish and you know it! First things first, when we're done with this we're getting that kitchen properly restocked. Coffee machine, microwave, toaster, the whole works."
Hopefully there would be a chance to do that once they were finished with all of this. He wasn't sure what they would have to do if he creatures weren't sentient. He didn't much care to have to find out. Still, he had some faith in the fact the Doctor would know what to do. (He'd never admit it of course.)
He rolled his eyes at the Doctor's remark but followed after.
"Any clue what you're going to say, or do you want to keep it a surprise, wow me with your keen diplomatic skills?"
"I was actually hoping you'd have an idea," the Doctor said, biting the inside of his lip as they walked. "Never much for diplomacy, me. But Donna was always good at it. Talked down that big blob thing on that planet, remember? Sort of hoped some of those skills had passed to you. Besides the shouting. You've got the shouting down pact."
Still! The Doctor'd figure something out. He...well, he sort of had to, didn't he? He turned the corner towards the engine room. The floor was caked with ice which spread in sharp, angled juts out along the wall, reaching out like talons. The Doctor ducked and deftly avoided the heavily-iced doorframe of the engine room.
He gave the Doctor a look. He still hadn't gotten a straight answer on that Donna discussion.
"Course I have an idea what to say, just figured I'd give you a chance to embarrass yourself first, but if you want me to, I'll take the lead straight off."
As they walked down the corridor the temperature got noticeably colder. He pulled up the hood on his coat as he ducked under the engine room door frame.
He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets, but first he needed to find a place to set down the oscillator that wasn't covered in frost.
"Gloves, we should've grabbed gloves."
The Doctor tugged off the coat and used it to wipe away the snow along the walls. The mechanics were hidden by half a foot of ice. Oh, that was bad. Very bad. He tugged back on his coat, and then aimed the heatwave drive for the mechanisms.
"Right. Get that ready, I'll get their attention and keep them away from you," he said. "Ready?"
Ready or not, he turned the dial on the mechanism, setting the heatwave into overdrive. The toaster dinged loudly and the small LED display that once let the crew know how long until their food was burned now timed out 05:00 worth of heat. 04:59. 04:58. Ice started to melt and reform and melt again.
"Right."
He got to work, cranking the device to start re-oscilating the wave length frequencies. He dashed around looking for that comm system the Doctor must have used when communicating with him in the Console Room. Finding it, he punched in the matching frequency codes, then recallibrated the device. A popping sound, and then a high pitched sound filled the room, which nearly made him drop the device.
He found a nearly frost free shelf near the intercom, punching in a few more codes which seemed to make the feedback ease away to a quiet hum.
"Right. Sorry about that. Hello then, anyone in here that might possibly be liquid based - not entirely sure if that's what it is - but either way anyone here besides my companion and I feel like having a nice chat and getting this all squared away?"
He waited for the creature to respond, there was quiet for a moment, then a new voice in the room, barely audible. He moved back to the oscilator, boosting the frequency.
"....won't stop."
They must've missed the first part. He looked around the room from floor to ceiling, not sure where to look when addressing the creature.
"What won't stop?"
"It, apparently," the Doctor murmured to his human self. "Whatever it is. And I'm not your companion, you're mine."
Not that that really mattered, but the Doctor felt the need to say it.
A fork of ice moved towards his human self's feet and the Doctor turned the heatwave drive downwards, melting it instantly. Well, at least his human self had their attention. That was a start.
"That is very helpful."
He stepped back at the ice, then looked at the Doctor, then back towards where the ice had come from.
"Right, well lucky for me my companion stopped you right there, not much I, no sorry we - can't discount the help of an assistant of course - not much we can do to help you if you're going around freezing me up like that. Now then, you need help I gather. Is the thing that won't stop, is it that blue thing outside?"
"Across time and space and years it followed us. For centuries we hid and they hid but there was safety. Until it was released again."
"The time fungus, you were hiding in that. If you were hiding together, why didn't it attack you there. Unless the time fungus was acting as a buffer of sorts or...."
"It is hungry. It will consume."
"And I'm assuming we are what's up for consumption?"
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, you're saying whatever it is will consume? But whatever's outside isn't consuming anything, it's just sitting there." The Doctor shook his head and tried to wrap his mind around what the creature was saying. It didn't make sense.
"Whatever's out there didn't attack me when it touched me, but you half froze my legs off and what do you mean assistant???" the Doctor spun around, nearly blasting his human self with the drive.
"I'm not your assistant!"
"You'll have to excuse my assistant, He can get a bit hot headed. His age I imagine, impulse control goes down with it I've heard. Wasn't nearly as bad in His younger years, I remember. But He does have a point, happens every now and then. You did nearly paralyze him, while what's out there hasn't done much of anything as of yet. Of course we're not jumping to any conclusions, sure there is a perfectly reasonable...reason to that."
"It is consuming all ready. Consumption then digestion."
"What, so we're inside it? So you're getting consumed as well, or are you part of the process, part of the whole?"
The Doctor blasted away another stream of ice, this one coming down from the top like a stalactite. It was definitely getting colder. The Doctor checked the timer on the machine. 02:12. They were swiftly running out of talking time.
"If you want to talk, why are you attacking us?" he barked.
"They consume. We contain."
"Contain? How are you -"
He stopped, looking at the blue light emanating from the room.
"You're not the cold, you're the blue light, aren't you? So what is this, containment? Quarantine? You're letting it run it's course, aren't you? The process has all ready started and now..."
"We must contain."
"All right. I get it, you have a job to do. Dedication, while usually a brilliant quality, sometimes, maybe, just a bit of flexibility instead?"
"Without containment it will spread."
The Doctor looked to his human self. "Good talk," he said.
Then, to the light below the ice. "It's already spread. It's killing the TARDIS, it's killing the machine that's containing it. And if the TARDIS dies, we all die. You, me, it, my companion here. We have to get it out. How do we move it out of the TARDIS? Speed up its course? Contain it further?"
There was no response. The Doctor turned to his human self.
"I said I was rubbish at this."
"Obviously, I could've told you that much."
He pulled his hood a little tighter then stuffed his hands into his pockets. The temperature was getting colder and colder by the second.
"Right, but my assistant, sorry companion, does have a point. There has to be an alternative, especially considering I'm guessing this would be a temporary solution at best. Perhaps we can come up with a solution that is a bit more solid?"
"It has become accustomed to time energy. It will consume. We will contain."
"Well, at least it seems to recognize me as the authority figure," he offered the Doctor a bit smugly, "seeing as it didn't have the time to answer you."
He returned his attention to the light. He put his hood down this time, the words having been a bit muffled with it up. He didn't want to risk missing anything they said.
"So time energy. It needs some sort of....oh!"
He turned around to face the Doctor.
"The Rift! It's a solid source of time energy, can't be destroyed or created, it just exists. If we dropped off whatever we have inside into the Rift, it'd end up feeding off of that. Because the Rift has all that excess energy too. It's how we're able to fuel up with it, but at times, at times that energy can get too much. Get this there, it'll be almost symbiotic. The thing we have here, feeds off the energy, the Rift has a safe way of containing excess Rift energy. As for the cold, well I'm sure they wouldn't notice a bit more cold up in Cardiff."
"It could work," the Doctor said, "If we could get there. Riding the rift requires a lot of control and right now we don't even have the full TARDIS under our control. This only has a minute fifteen seconds before it runs out of energy and we won't melt the whole console by then."
He turned and blasted a larger hole in the already closing entrance to the engine room.
"It's getting more aggressive. If this light here can contain the creature further, just outside of the console room. Or even just outside of the console, we could do it. Drop off the ice creature, get this little bloke back where he belongs. No one has to get hurt, but we can't fight it while we work!"
"Right, everybody lives. That's always the goal. You think you can do that, keep it at bay long enough to see if we can drop him off somewhere else?"
There was a moment of silence, then the blue light intensified, nearly filling the entire room, melting the ice away from the dooway to the engine room.
"I'll take that as a yes. Right. Thank you."
He pulled his hood up again and made his way out of the engine room. It was impossible to move quickly with the snow shoes on so he pulled them off, then made a run for it towards the console room. The TARDIS walls were bathed in the blue light too. The frost seemed to be gone, but the coldness remained, as if it was lingering right under the surface still.
He turned a corner into the Console Room, heading straight for the console.
"Little damp, but no frost in sight, at least as far as I can see."
He went for the door, pulling it open.
"Right, better safe than sorry, figure we can use as much help keeping our icy friend here away as possible."
"I'm not even sure that's safe," the Doctor said, flicking off the drive and rushing to the rapidly-appearing console. He grabbed a few dials and struggled to turn them, the cold keeping them stiff and unyeilding. After a moment, the blue light seemed to grow even brighter and the keys felt like they were softening.
"Oh, that's brilliant," he said with a whoop of excitement. He nodded to his human self. "Right, you take that side. Let's ride a rift."
He pulled back on the parking brake.
"Not sure anything is particularly safe at this point."
He moved onto the other side of the console, grabbing a hold. There was a good rush of adrenaline pumping through his veins. He grinned up to at the Doctor, then flipped a few switches.
"Ready?"
The Doctor mirrored that grin with one of his own. "Allons-y."
With a push of a lever, the TARDIS tumbled violently down the time vortex, heading straight for Earth, 21st century. It was a route the ship knew well so it put very little strain on her. But the Doctor still gripped on the console for stability as they went. Bit bumpy, but that was normal.
There was a sudden spark of pain in the Doctor's hand. He looked down to see a chunk of ice appearing and gripping onto his fingers, trying to stop him from changing a dial.
"We're trying to help you!" he said to it, trying to shake it away.
The ice still seemed to be under control on his side of the console. He pulled one of the controls then moved to the Doctor's side, turning the dial He was going for. He pushed a couple buttons on the Doctor's side, then returned to his side of the console.
"Think you can give Him a little help over there?" he asked, not looking away from what he was doing.
To the Doctor's surprise, the light around him seemed to glow brighter, and the ice melted, leaving a red mark on the back of his hand from the cold.
"Thanks," he said to the light, then he turned back to the console. A little twist here, a turn there, a silent reassuring voice to the TARDIS, and---bang. The TARDIS didn't quite materialize, it more surfed into existance right above the crack in the rift.
"Ready? We're going to lower her down. One, two, three---"
The TARDIS landed, a bit bumpy, but there was still a landing. The force of the landing made him fall backwards against one of the walls. He bounced off quickly as some more of the ice seemed to form.
"We just need to filter him out into the rift. If we just -"
He stopped as he looked out the open doors.
"Why are there military vehicles in the streets?"
He moved out towards the outside, the blue light almost translucent at this point. As he looked out towards Cardiff, he could feel the chill passing him by. The blue light, whatever he/she/it was, the blue light was filtering out the ice creature into the rift for them.
He looked up the way, rubble above where the Hub once stood. Jack. No wonder he couldn't get a connection.
"Doctor," he called a little uncertainly.
Behind a convoy of military vehicles were a couple buses filled with children. While it was unsettling, he knew Jack would be all right. This though, this was worrying at best, on a number of levels.
"Since when did the military escort school buses?"
The Torchwood center. It was gone, a great smoking crater. The Doctor stared at it, horrified. Jack. His whole of, well, everything was in that place. And what about Jack? Could he survive an explosion? His mind informed him that yes, of course he could. He was a Fact with a capital "f". That meant forever. But what had happened? Where was he?
The Doctor leaned towards the doors. Military units followed alongside the buses, down the street towards the rougher parts of Cardiff. Where were they going? Why were there so many?
"We need to go down there," he said. "This can't be right, this shouldn't be happening." He flicked another switch as the ice dissipated, a long stream of blue-cold going deep into the energy of the rift. That's one good use for it, he thought.
"Right, tell your friend that once we've got the creature out, we're going to land. After we've sorted this out, we'll take him back to his home world. Shouldn't take too long." As the ice melted away from the screen on the console, the Doctor's eyes widened at the readout. Something was altering the Rift.
As if on cue, the TARDIS jolted, knocked by a wafe of Rift energy. "Hold on!" he called.
The TARDIS doors shut, as if on cue. Her systems were back online and she was taking some sort of defensive measures it felt like.
He tried pulling on the door to open it again. It was stuck shut. Deja vu hit him for a moment before he moved back to the console.
"Do something, send her back, somewhere off the Rift, anything."
There was a strange wail then, filling the ship. The creature from before, the blue light, they had practically amputated him. Cut off and away from the Rift, the creature had finished transferring the parasite out, but hadn't properly been able to disconnect.
The blue light that had been in the Console Room flickered.
"We're killing him, he's dying. There has to be a way around this, we need to get back there. All those people - children, just do something."
He was the Doctor, He had to have a way to fix all this. Wasn't the point of coming here to have everyone live?
"I'm trying!" the Doctor called. He tugged the brake, gave up on that, then spun around to the other side of the console to try to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow, get the TARDIS heading backwards.
"Hit the lever, there!" he called. The TARDIS kept moving, thrust away from the rift. "No, no, no!"
The wailing ceased abruptly, the silence in its absence ringing in the Doctor's ears.
"No!" he shouted. "No! It---punch in Cardiff's coordinates! Reassert the binary matricies!"
He did everything the Doctor said. Nothing. He began just hitting buttons randomly. Still nothing.
He back away from the console, then kicked it in frustration.
The room was too warm now. Too warm and too quiet. He pulled off his coat, tossing it on the floor. He looked over at the Doctor.
"You convinced me everything would work out. No one gets hurt, you said that."
Perhaps later he might think that was unfair, but now, now there needed to be someone to blame.
He looked away from the Doctor and went to the door and opened it to get a view of where they might be. He didn't feel like going anywhere near the console. Cardiff was long gone, but that wasn't a surprise. All that was there was space, just space. They were now a few hundred galaxies away from Earth at least from the looks of it.
The Doctor shook his head, staring at the console. "It should've worked. It should've worked! Something was---something was altering the rift's energy fields. Something big."
He reached around to the other side of the console and began punching in coordinates. "We have to go back," he said. "We have to find Jack, figure out what's happening."
No response from the guidance systems. Nothing. The Doctor grabbed the mallet and banged it on the side of to jostle the wires about.
"No! It's an engine malfunction. I need---I need to---" He turned to run back towards the engine room.
He looked out the doors for another moment before shutting them. He moved back to the console, looking at some of the readings on it as the Doctor ran for the engine room. Another look, and perhaps a silent apology for the kicking, and then he walked to the engine room.
"We should go take care of that restocking of the kitchen. We're not getting back down there, whatever is happening there it's effecting not just the Rift, but communication and outside travel as well. It's some sort of something I don't know, but it's blocking anything from outside Earth. We're not getting back right now, either way."
He randomly flicked a few switches.
"It will be all right though, whatever is happening, even if we can't get back down there. Jack and his team, I'm sure they're out there still stopping whatever is happening. And humanity, they foul up every now and again, but they're good at righting themselves, even if it is at the last minute. They'll work it out."
He wasn't entirely sure how right that was, but losing hope when they were helpless wasn't going to do anyone any good. Even if it was a forced sort of hopefulness adopted to cope with the situation.
"If they're alive," the Doctor said, ominously. He pulled open the engine room door. No ice, no water, no blue light. The TARDIS was healing, he could feel it, but they didn't win. They didn't have a day where everyone lived.
He knelt down next to the hole under the controls. "This'll take a while to fix," he said. "Even then, you're right, the area's cut off. We can't get down there. Hard to determine how long that interference'll last. Might take months and if Jack needs us..."
If Jack needed them, he'd be on his own.
He looked down at the Doctor underneath the controls. He was killing whatever small sense of optimism he had, and he resented Him that right then. Would it have been so difficult for Him to maybe offer a small spark of hope in all this, too?
"Yeah, I suppose you're right."
He paused ready to make his way out of the room, but stopped.
"Jack though, he's brilliant. I'm sure he's faced much worse than this and you and and I, we never even knew about it."
"Yeah, yeah, 'course he has," the Doctor said, trying to force optimism into his voice and failing rather miserably. The Doctor had seen where the Torchwood base had been. He saw what crater was left there. Even if Jack did manage to survive it, the people he cared for back there...they might not have. But they might've gotten out, like his human self suggested. Maybe they found another way.
Maybe.
Was it better to deal in maybes, or to be realistic?
He looked over to his human self. He could coddle him now, tell him everything was all right. It would be the right thing to do, but it isn't what he wanted, was it?
"I think we should..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Prepare ourselves for the worst. Always best, in the end."
"Yeah, course, prepare for the worst."
He moved to leave and then stopped.
"No. You know what, no. What is wrong with hoping for the best? I don't want to prepare for the worst. Maybe it might happen, you're probably more right than I am - you always say you are, so it must be true - but is it so terrible to hope for something better instead?"
"No," the Doctor said. "Nope. Nothing wrong with that at all."
He turned a few dials, keeping his eyes on his work. "But you didn't want me to coddle you anymore. I'm not. The best...it doesn't happen. Not for us."
"You can't really mean that, or what's the point in anything?"
He turned around to look at his human self. They didn't really look alike, he decided. His human self, he looked...younger. The Doctor often thought of him as younger, even though they both had 900 (1,400 if they were honest) years worth of memories.
Maybe his human self didn't feel them. The Doctor hoped he didn't.
"You know the day we stopped the nanogenes? The day back there, when everyone lived?" he said. "For days like that. There are days like that. It makes everything worth it."
"And the rest of the time?"
"The rest of the time we...hope for the other times. Do our best with what we've got. It's all we've got." And, after a moment, he added: "Doctor."
It felt odd, Him saying that name. It wasn't at all how he wanted to hear it, it sounded almost patronizing in a way, although he had a good idea that's not how He meant it at all. It still felt hollow.
"And that's it? That's as good as it gets?"
"Short of Jack Nicholson saying it, yeah," the Doctor said with a little sniff. "I've seen too much bad to really think that there's much good left for me this regeneration. Too much time alone."
"You choose to be alone. That's a choice, so don't even try that one."
"I didn't choose what happened to Donna, I didn't choose for Martha to leave, Rose to leave. It happens." His voice was bitter, and with good reason, in his opinion. "I didn't take Christina because she...wouldn't fit in, not really. Full house now, and all that."
And she reminded him too much of Lucy Saxon. Not that he'd admit it, of course.
"You're just a coward, aren't you? I never noticed it before, but you are."
The words weren't accusatory. More disappointed than anything else. Well perhaps a bit accusatory, the sort that comes when you find out someone isn't who you thought they were.
The Doctor bristled for a moment, then stood up straight, his expression offended.
"I think you should get some sleep. I've got a lot of work to do here." His voice was cold, but it didn't answer his human self's question. Not directly, at least.
He laughed. Hollow and a little angry.
"We're back to that? If I don't, are you going to order me off to my room again?"
"You wouldn't go if I ordered you," the Doctor replied. "So I won't. You'll go when you're tired. But I'm busy here. All right? We'll find Jack soon. Things will be all right or they won't, but we won't know until this is fixed and the TARDIS has had time to heal."
The Doctor put his hand on the side of the wall. The TARDIS ached, deep down. She also hated it when he fought with his human self, a fact which really irritated the Doctor. She was supposed to be on his side.
He sighed. "I'll see if I can't drift the TARDIS towards Mercathia. They have coffee there. Well, a drink very like coffee."
"I don't want to go to Mercathia, I don't want coffee."
He looked away, ready to turn around to leave, but stopped, looking at the Doctor again.
"It's not just you, you know. You think you have the market cornered on suffering. It's as if you wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you weren't punishing yourself. You're a coward."
"And you're a brat," the Doctor spat back. "When things don't go your way, you get all...contrary and obstreperous. You make wild observations and act like you a) Know everything or 2---sorry, b) Didn't ask to be grown. Are you trying to act your age?"
He stared at the Doctor for a good minute or so, unsure what he wanted to do or say. Fight or argue would've been the choice he would make, but something in the Doctor's words, and he couldn't even identify which part, stung a little too much.
Maybe it was the day, maybe it was everything, maybe it was being called the Doctor and feeling the need to live up to the name.
He sniffed, then turned around leaving the room.
The Doctor watched him go and then, satisfied, turned back to his work.
It would be a good couple of hours before he realized that he'd just out-insulted the only real friend he had left.