Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ War and Peace ❯ Chapter One ( Chapter 1 )

The weary old renegade warrior walked up to the flight console and activated the time rotor. He was now leaving his future selves behind; or ahead to be more accurate. His time line would now start to revert to its original form, and with that would come the belief that he had succeeded in his mission to destroy the warring factions.

Gone would be the knowledge that he had saved Gallifrey at the end of days. Certain would be the conviction that he had unleashed the maelstrom of destruction on Daleks and Time Lords alike.

With the TARDIS safely in the Vortex, he took his hands off the controls and looked at them, the veins highlighted with a golden glow. `Of course…. I suppose it makes sense,' he said to himself. Around a hundred years of fighting had taken its toll on his body and his soul. But he didn't want to regenerate; he didn't want to survive what he had done.

What had he done? It was getting hard to remember, the time lines must be correcting themselves. He had saved his people hadn't he, encapsulating Gallifrey in its own universe. `Wearing a bit thin,' he observed with humour. `I hope the ears are a little bit less conspicuous this time.'

The fire burned, but didn't consume. It was a fire of cleansing, of change, but not of solace or comfort. Would it hurt again, like it did when the sisterhood gave him “that” incarnation? That one not only renewed his cells, it changed his personality. No longer was he the Doctor, the man who makes things better, he was the Storm, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse, the Destroyer of Worlds.

The intense golden fire engulfed him, flying from his fingers and running around the TARDIS walls. The large white circles in a hexagonal configuration, contracted into yellow roundels in hexagonal recesses. The whole TARDIS took on a subdued, Gothic feel, which matched the changing mood of the Time Lord.

As his cells settled into their new configuration, the Doctor was reborn. Gone was the cynical, acerbic renegade Time Lord, born of the need for a saviour who would do what was needed to end the Time War. `Careful what you wish for,' he chuckled to himself without mirth.

He had done it, served notice to both sides that he would end it if they didn't, hoping that his reputation would be enough to make them stop and think. But it had the opposite effect; they intensified the fighting in an attempt to once and for all end it, before he did.

And now there were no more Daleks, no more Time Lords….

“No more”. Where had he heard that before? It was like an echo from a dream. He remembered taking “The Moment” from the archive, and looking for the control interface in that barn. He expected there to be a button, a big red button. Yes, there was a big red ruby as a button.

How on Gallifrey had he survived pressing the big red button? “That will be your punishment”, a woman's voice had said, but who? The TARDIS? It had to have been, how else could he have survived the holocaust and ended up here?

`Why didn't you let me die?' He asked the ceiling as he collapsed to his knees, `I did what was needed, I don't need to dwell on it, I just want to die with the rest of my people.'

A sledgehammer blow of pain hit his forehead, causing him to keel over on the floor grating in convulsions. His personality was being rewritten, his motivations, his convictions…. His emotions. He pulled himself to his feet using the console, and staggered from wall to wall, towards the bedroom.

The TARDIS watched over her love as he staggered to the four poster bed and collapsed onto the duvet. She hoped that her “old” Doctor was coming back, the one who had a sense of humour, the one who could take a joke. This crotchety old goat never cracked a smile in all the time that he'd been haunting her. She'd gotten into trouble when she gave him an electric shock when he tried to adjust the controls.

For centuries now, he'd known that she would always take him where he needed to be (which he didn't always agree with at the time), and not necessarily where he wanted to go. But this renegade was all plotting and scheming, anger and temper. He knew where he wanted to go and he was going there, even if it wasn't the right place or time for him to be. It was the first time since she had chosen him that she had wished for a regeneration, because this “him” was mean and miserable.

She mentally nudged him to get under the duvet, and released some aromatic incense into the room that would ease his pain and promote sleep. She could feel that his personality was being rewritten, and that would be “uncomfortable” for him. In 15 hours, she would know what she had got, she could already feel guilt and self loathing coming from him, he was going to need all her love and understanding. She had waited a long time for him to come back; she could wait a bit longer.

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The Powell Estate.

Saturday 1st January 2005.

Midnight.

`I'm late now. I've missed it. It's midnight. Mickey's going to be calling me everything. This is your fault,' Rose Tyler said to her mother as they walked across the snow covered courtyard.

`No, it's not. It's Jimbo. He said he was going to give us a lift, then he said his axle broke. I can't help it,' she protested.

`Get rid of him, Mum. He's useless,' Rose told her. She wanted her mother to be happy. Her father had died nineteen years ago, and Jackie had sacrificed a lot so that she could have a great childhood. But her mum seemed to attract the wrong sort of men.

`Listen to you, with a mechanic. Be fair, though. My time of life I'm not going to do much better,' Jackie admitted to herself. She knew she wasn`t getting any younger.

This upset Rose, she didn't want her mum thinking she was on the scrap heap. `Don't be like that. You never know. There could be someone out there.' She rubbed Jackie's upper arm and moved a strand of hair of her face.

`Maybe, one day,' she said wistfully, and then smiled. `Happy New Year.'

`Happy New Year!' Rose replied, hugging her mum. She pointed a finger in an act of role reversal. `Don't stay out all night.'

`Try and stop me,' Jackie said with a mischievous grin and heading for the local pub, which had an all night party. Rose went in the opposite direction, heading for the door to Bucknall House. Her boyfriend Mickey Smith was coming over to celebrate the New Year with her, as she'd missed it in the pub.

Before she got to the flats though, she heard someone gasp in the shadows. It sounded like he had been over celebrating the New Year.

`You all right, mate?' She asked the shadowy figure. She didn't approach, as she knew she could run to the flats if he was some sort of weirdo.

`Yeah,' the quiet, gentle voice said. There was no threat or menace in the voice. It sounded full of sadness and regret.

`Too much to drink?' Rose suggested. He'd probably had an argument with his girlfriend or something she thought.

`Something like that,' he said.

`Maybe it's time you went home,' she said kindly.

`Yeah.'

`Anyway, Happy New Year,' she said cheerfully, trying to lift his spirits.

`And you,' he replied `What year is this?'

`Blimey, how much have you had?' she asked with a laugh. `2005, January the first.'

`2005,' the stranger said as though it was a surprise. `Tell you what. I bet you're going to have a really great year,' he said with such conviction that made Rose wonder how he could be so certain.

`Yeah?' she asked and then gave the stranger in the shadows her beaming smile. `See you.'

She went through the security door to the block of flats, and started to run up the stairs. Little did she know, that when she said `see you', the stranger knew that she would… in about three months from now.

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48 Bucknall House, Powell Estate.

Wednesday 2nd March 2005.

Jackie was doing the weekly wash when her mobile phone rang. `Hello?'

`Mum?' It was Rose; she was at work at Henrick's.

`Oh, what is it? What's wrong? What have I done now?' she asked as she pulled items out of the machine. She held one of Rose's top's up and inspected it. `Oh, this red top's falling to bits. You should get your money back. Go on. There must be something, you never phone in the middle of the day.' She rattled on without giving Rose chance to speak; Rose started to giggle at her Mum's motor-mouth.

`What's so funny?' Jackie asked, slightly indignant at being laughed at.

`Nothing. You alright, though?' Rose said affectionately.

Jackie was a bit puzzled by Rose's question, I mean, she'd only seen her a couple of hours ago, and everything was fine. `Yeah, why wouldn't I be?'

`What day is it?' Rose asked.

This conversation was getting weirder by the minute. `Wednesday, all day. You got a hangover?' Why would she phone her to ask what day it was? That girl had got her head in the clouds half the time.

`I tell you what. Put a quid in that Lottery syndicate. I'll pay you back later,' Jackie told her.

That threw Rose a bit, because in her timeline, Henrick's had been blown up last week, and there was no syndicate, no job. She realised that she was talking to her Mum in the past. `Yeah, er, I was just calling 'cos…. I might be late home.'

Jackie thought that Rose sounded a bit emotional. `Is there something wrong?' She wondered if she and Mickey had been arguing or something, I mean, that Jimmy Stone incident wasn't all that long ago, and there was bound to be some underlying resentment.

`No. I'm fine. Top of the world.'

Jackie looked at the phone with a raised eyebrow, “how weird was that?” she thought. She shrugged her shoulders and continued to empty the washing machine.

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`Der-der-der-der'

Friday 4th March, 07:30, and a hand appeared from under the pink duvet and fumbled across the top of the bedside cabinet, silenced the alarm clock, and retreated back into the warm cocoon of the slumbering teenager.

Urgh! That Shareen and Keisha and their “just another one” at the club last night, mind you, it was a brilliant girls night out. Their respective boyfriends were at the local pub, watching the football on the big screen, leaving them to have a night of dancing, harmless flirting and having a laugh.

Their nickname when they were out on the town was "The Fabulous Freesome", that was Keisha's idea, and it was a pretty good description. There were three of them, and they did look fabulous. By day, Rose wore hoodies, jeans and trainers, but by night she was transformed. Her mum did her hair, while she did her nails, she had her face on, and she wore her little black dress with high heels.

Rose always worried that the mini dress made her bum look big, but Keisha would give it a gentle slap and tell her it looked perfect. Shareen had held up a shot of Lambrusco and proposed a drunken toast to "Rose's perfect posterior". They giggled and knocked back their drinks.

Rose had then raised her glass. "To Keisha's brilliant boobs" she toasted, deliberately leaning towards her and looking down her cleavage. They howled with laughter and downed their shots. And then Keisha had raised her glass. "To Shareen's luscious legs". Shareen had got a stunning pair of legs that were long, toned, perfectly proportioned, reaching from the floor, all the way up to her bum.

Rose pulled the quilt off her and slowly sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and sweeping her hair back over her head and out of her eyes. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head, before pulling her fluffy slippers on her feet.

She shuffled out of her bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen like a zombie, unthinkingly picking up the kettle and carrying it to the sink. She looked out of the window at the block of flats opposite, where people were doing the same as her and preparing to start their day.

It was the same every day, wake up, cup of tea, shower, get dressed, and catch the bus to work. She reached her own, and her Mum's favourite mugs off the draining board and put a tea bag in each. Her Mum was still asleep when she took her tea in and put it on her bedside table.

`Mum, don't forget you've got Debbie comin' around this mornin' for a wash and set.'

`Mmmmnn, yeah, okay sweetheart, thanks.'

Rose went through to the bathroom and took a quick shower. Wrapped in a bath towel, and with a turban of a towel on her head, she returned to the inner sanctum of her messy room to sit at her dressing table to dry her hair.

She looked at herself in the mirror as she sipped her tea. `Hmm, not looking too bad after a night out on the lash,' she said to herself as she put the mug down and picked up the hair dryer.

Jackie was in the kitchen, wearing a shiny pink dressing gown over her nighty when Rose came in dressed in her black trousers and pink hoodie. `D'ya want another cuppa?' Jackie asked as the kettle clicked off.

`Please Mum,' she said as she put two slices of bread in the toaster, and two on the breadboard to make her sandwiches for lunch.

`Are you still busy with that sale?' Jackie asked her as she put the mug on the worktop.

`Yeah, you wouldn't believe how people pull all the displays about, and then you have to fold it all up again and restock.'

`Well, it'll be over soon, and the extra money from the overtime has been useful,' Jackie said as she went through into the living room and curled up on the sofa.

Rose finished her breakfast and came through to pick up her bag off the back of the dining chair; she kissed her Mum and headed out of the flat to catch the number 14 on the main road.

The bus dropped her off at her stop that was around the corner from Henrick's, an up market department store where she worked as a stock room assistant. She walked down the street and around the corner, carrying on towards the store entrance on the opposite side of the road, passing an out of place, wooden blue police box in a recess of the building opposite Henrick's without even noticing it.

She crossed the road to the main entrance, where a security assistant let her in. She crossed the shop floor to the “staff only” doors at the back and made her way to the staff room, where some of the sales assistants were putting the finishing touches to their smart uniforms. The stock room girls like Rose wore their ordinary clothes.

The sales girls went on to the shop floor, whilst Rose and the other girls, joined the lads in the stockroom. The stock controller allocated them their departments for the day and indicated the piles of stock that needed to go on to the shop floor. Rose had been given part of the clothing department again, which meant putting things back on hangers, re-stacking the scattered pre-packed shirts, blouses and jumpers, and refolding the loose garments.

Didn't they realise she was a stroppy, 19 year old girl who didn't even fold her own clothes. And don't get her started on neat and tidy displays; her Mum will bear witness to how tidy her room is (not).

Trade was brisk that morning, and they had been making regular trips to and from the stockroom. Without noticing, Rose had passed the same man a few times that morning. He had short hair, big ears, and a pleasant smile, that didn't quite reach his ancient eyes. He was dressed in black, with a cool, leather jacket that blended into the crowd.

The benefit of being busy was that the morning flew by, and before she knew it, it was lunch time. She went to the staff room to pick up her sandwiches and bag of crisps, before hurrying out of the store and heading for Trafalgar Square, where her boyfriend, Mickey Smith would be waiting.

They had known each other at school, and when Rose had a disastrous “fling” with that waster, Jimmy Stone, Mickey was there for her to pick up the pieces. Like Rose, he hadn't performed well at school, but he had gone to night school and got his City and Guilds in motor vehicle engineering, which got him a job at a local garage on the estate.

Lately, Rose had been thinking about how she had wasted her time at school and left without any real qualifications. If Mickey could go to night school and get a vocational qualification, then why not her? She'd enjoyed gymnastics at school, she could train to be a fitness or aerobics instructor, it would certainly help to keep her weight down with all the chips that she ate. Or childcare, she liked kids and felt that looking after them was something that she could do well. Anything would be an improvement on what she was doing now, even if it was bringing in money.

Mickey had a day off today and for March, the weather was unseasonably warm, so they had arranged to meet by the fountain and have lunch together. They were comfortable together and got on really well, chatting about anything and everything (except for football).

The lunch hour seemed to pass quicker than the morning had and it was time to head back to work. (What was it about time that made it pass at different speeds?) They kissed and went their separate ways for now, arranging to meet up later that evening.

When Rose got back to Henrick's, the afternoon was a bit quieter, and dragged a bit (there was that different speed thing again). A sales assistant named Tracey, asked Rose if they had a certain outfit in a size 12 for a customer.

`I'll just go and check.' She headed to the stockroom thinking “size 12, in your dreams love”, with a smirk on her face, not being unkind, just honest. She came back with the dress in a 12 and handed it to Tracey, who shared a knowing smile with her. Rose busied herself with tidying the items on a plinth display, whilst the customer went into the cubicle to try on the dress.

`What do you think?' The customer asked as she pulled the curtain back to look in the full length mirror. Rose and Tracey exchanged glances of amazed astonishment. The frumpy outfit that she had worn hid her shape well, because the dress did fit, and fit well. `Do you think my partner will like it?'

`Blimey,' Rose said, `it looks gorgeous.'

The woman turned her back to the mirror and looked over her shoulder. `You don't think it makes my bum look big do you?'

`Not at all madam,' Tracey said.

`I wished my bum looked like that,' Rose laughed. `Too many chips,' she added.

The customer laughed with her. `With me, it's chocolate,' she confided.

`Oh don't,' Tracey said, `I only have to look at a bar of chocolate and my thighs put on an inch.'

`Well, if you think it looks alright, I'll take it.' The customer went back into the cubicle to turn back into an ugly duckling.

The pace of work slowed right down until it was time to close the store. The man in the leather jacket that no one noticed remained unnoticed in the staff areas as the staff left the store. Rose and a couple of the other stockroom girls were crossing the shop floor to the front entrance when the security assistant held up a plastic bag.

“Oh heck”, she thought to herself, the lottery syndicate money. It was her turn to collect it this week and she'd left the bag with Geoff on the door to get the money off the security staff. That meant she had to go down to the basement to give the money to Wilson, who purchased the tickets.

The man in the black jacket heard the doors being locked down and waited, listening with acutely sensitive ears. The store was closed, time to go to work. He quietly opened the cleaner's cupboard and peeped out into the corridor, it was empty. He made his way to the stairs so that he could go up to the roof, where there was an alien relay device that he had to destroy.

He started up the stairwell, when he heard a muffled voice calling out from below.

`Wilson?'

“Damn, why do these things never go to plan?” he thought to himself. “No wonder I don't make plans, they never bloody work.”

`Wilson…. I've got the lottery money.'

He started scanning with his sonic screwdriver. It was a young, human female in the basement, and, damn it, the Auton relay was already active. Whoever she was, she was in mortal danger.

`Wilson, are you there?'

He changed direction and started heading down the stairwell to the basement, the relay would have to wait until he could get the female safely out of the building. He took the stairs two at a time until he reached the bottom and exited into the basement corridor.

He quietly entered the stockroom and made his way along the rear wall until he could see the female, who had blonde hair, and was wearing black trousers and a pink hoodie. She looked scared, but there was something about her body language that said “defiance”. If someone was mucking about like she thought, she wasn't going to let them rattle her.

That impressed the man in the black jacket no end, even if she didn't realise she was in danger, she faced it with fortitude. He edged his way along the wall unseen, as a plastic manikin raised its arm to strike the female. He carefully reached out and held her hand so as not to startle her too much.

At the touch of her hand he felt it, a tingling up his spine that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was the coming together of cosmic events, time lines intertwining. It wasn't the Autons that had brought the TARDIS here, it was her. Somehow he was supposed to meet her and rescue her, but why? That question he couldn't answer, because she was now part of his time line, and that view was now closed to him.

Well, there was only one thing for it.

`RUN!'