Doctor Who Fan Fiction ❯ War and Peace ❯ Chapter Five ( Chapter 5 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

So this is it! The Doctor goes back to ask Rose again. The second part of this chapter contains text from the story THE BEAST OF BABYLON, by Charlie Higson, which was commissioned for the 50th celebrations.

Non Anime: Doctor Who Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 03.12.2016 | Updated On: 03.12.2016 | Pages: 17 | Words: 7.1K | Visits: 322 | Status: Completed

Rose Tyler roused sluggishly from her slumber, and instinctively reached across the bed to hug her lover. She was hoping for another fantastic shag that would really wake her up and start her day off on the right foot. The birthday party gig last night at the community centre had gone really well, and Jimmy had met that woman again whose uncle owned a recording studio in Amsterdam. It wouldn't be long now before his band hit the big time, and they would be living the rock and roll lifestyle that he kept promising her.

Instead of hugging her lover though, all she got was his pillow, and she realised that she was alone in their love nest. This had been happening more and more often, as Jimmy got excited about getting into a studio and recording an album. She had to admit that his excitement was infectious, because she couldn't wait to start living the high life. She rolled onto her back in frustration and smiled as she thought about the last six months.

She had first met Stone at the end of term school disco, where a group of former pupils had formed a band, and had been hired to play. He was the lead guitarist, and Rose had been star struck by his `boy band' good looks. Her attention had stroked his inflated ego, and a pretty blonde on his arm would be good for his rock star image.

Her childhood sweetheart, Mickey Smith had been gutted when she left her mum's flat on the Powell estate and moved into Stone's bed-sit a month later. Her mum was none too pleased either, predicting that it would all end in tears.

`Oh Rose, you're a clever girl, and your A levels are important Love. D'ya want to be stuck in a dead end job for the rest of yer life?' Jackie had asked her, trying to make her see sense, as her daughter packed to leave. `I wanted so much more for you Sweetheart.'

`But we love each other Mum, and I want to be with `im. You wait `til he gets a recordin' contract, we'll be tourin' the world,' she had forecast. “The only record he'll have is a police one”, Jackie thought, which, unknowingly was another accurate prediction on her part (2-0 to Jackie so far).

Rose yawned and stretched, before quickly trotting naked across the bed-sit and into the bathroom. She was trotting not because she was worried about being seen naked; there was no one else there. No, the fact was the bed-sit was cold, due to the fact that they couldn't really afford to heat it all the time.

She wrapped a bath towel around her shoulders and turned on the shower over the bath. She heard the gas boiler kick in with a `whump', and a minute later, hot water was pouring out of the shower head. She made appreciative groaning noises as the hot water cascaded over her body, and she rubbed the shower gel into her hair.

Wrapped in the bath towel, with a towel `turban', and warm, fluffy slippers, she padded over to the kitchen area of the bed sit to switch the kettle on and make some toast. She pressed the play button on the cassette player, and listened to a recording the band had made on an ordinary cassette recorder. It was low fidelity, but she could hear the tune, and Jimmy's voice singing the lyrics.

`Dah-dat-dar, dat-dar-dat-dar,' she sang to the beat, while playing air guitar and mimicking Jimmy as he would strut his stuff on stage.

`Oh girl I love you so mu-u-uch,' she sang to the chorus. `Yeah girl I love you so muuuuuch.' He told her that she had inspired that song, and it gave her a warm feeling below the waist when she thought about that.

The kettle clicked off, and she poured the boiling water into her mug with the tea bag, before the toaster popped up, which she spread with a soft, butter-like spread. She took her mug and small plate over to the table and sat down to have her breakfast. There were a number of envelopes on the table, and she picked them up to inspect them. She knew that they would either be bills, asking for their money, or mail shots, selling services or products that were also asking for their money.

As she put the envelopes back on the table, she noticed that the electricity bill had some writing on the back of it in Jimmy's untidy scrawl. She smiled at the thought of one of his hastily written declarations of love for her. However, the smile slowly faded as she read the words on the envelope. She tried to read them again, but the tears filling her eyes made it difficult.

`Sweetheart, Noosh has managed to get me some time in her uncle's studio. We're taking the camper-van on the ferry to Amsterdam. Not sure when we'll be back.'

Noosh….? Noosh….? He's taken this woman Noosh to Amsterdam? Why didn't he take me with him? All sorts of answers to that question were rolling around her head, and the most obvious was that he'd dumped her and taken off with that trollop Noosh. And the thing that made her feel sick to her stomach was that she had liked Noosh on the few occasions that she'd met her.

She wiped her eyes with her fingers, and read the note again, it said that he was going to Amsterdam, what about the band? She went over to the phone on the sideboard and found Eddy the bass player's number on the jotter pad. Her fingers trembled as she pressed the numbers on the keypad.

``Ello,' the soft, low voice of Eddy said.

`Eddy? It's Rose, Jimmy's Rose.'

`(Who is it honey), it's Rose…. (Oh)' That was Steph in the background, and she sounded like she knew something bad was going down.

`Eddy, Jimmy's gone, and all I've got is a note to say he's gone to Amsterdam. What's happenin' with the band?'

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. `Er…. I take it he didn't talk to you about leavin' the band and goin' solo then.'

`Goin' solo, what the hell are ya talkin' about?' Rose asked, dread rising in her chest.

`The bastard! He said he was goin' to sit down with you when you got back from the gig last night and tell you about it,' Eddy said quietly, slightly embarrassed at being the one who had to tell her the news.

Rose started to cry. `No, he lay down with me, shagged me, and then buggered off without sayin' a word. All I got was a note scrawled on the back of an envelope, how romantic was that?'

`I'm sorry Rose; I thought you knew what he was like. When he was at school, he had a string of girlfriends; I think he saw it as collecting trophies. I'm really, really sorry Love, you're such a nice person, I thought he'd left his old ways behind him.'

Rose was really sobbing now.

`(Eddy, does she want us to come over), Steph wants to know if you want us to come over?'

`No,' she sobbed. `Thanks, but no. I'll ring Mum….'

`Okay Rose, you take care now. If you need anythin', give us a call, an' I'm really sorry.'

`Yeah, thanks Eddy, say hello to Steph for me, bye.'

She went over to the bed and collapsed onto it in a fit of sobs.

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There she was, just walking across the pedestrian area between the flats. She had a large rucksack on her back, and was trailing a wheeled suitcase behind her. The Doctor increased the zoom on his digital binoculars to try and see her face. Oh dear, she looked decidedly unhappy and had obviously been crying.

She had finally finished with that waster Jimmy Stone after

a five month tumultuous affair, which the Doctor was desperate to interfere with and stop, but that would have meant that she wouldn't have left school before sitting her A levels, wouldn't have got a job at Henrick's, and would never have met him.

Unbeknown to the Doctor, a handsome man in an RAF uniform had shadowed Rose as she left the flat and moved into the dingy bed-sit, watching over her like a guardian angel, not interfering, but just making sure that she came to no harm. Just like the Doctor, this stranger knew that interfering with timelines was a dangerous thing.

Well, when he said not interfering, there was that one time at a gig, when a fight broke out. The stranger had rendered a member of the audience unconscious and relieved him of the switch-blade in his pocket, which he would have used to put an unattractive scar across Rose's beautiful cheek.

And now, five months later, here she was coming home, wiser and poorer for the experience. Stone had asked for a sub for petrol, so that they could get to the gigs, and a sub for a round at the pub, and a sub to order a pizza. The savings that her Granddad Prentice had left her, had very nearly all gone, and so had Stone.

The Doctor watched her pull open the security door to the flats and disappear inside. She would struggle up the stairs to her mum's flat, and be welcomed back with `I told you so', a hug, and a cup of tea. He was about to put his binoculars away, when something caught his eye. He focussed across the pedestrian area, and saw a young man in a black, padded jacket heading for Bucknall House. It was Mickey Smith, and he was ready and willing to pick up with Rose again.

Mickey had suddenly gone up in the Doctor's estimation of him. There weren't many men who, after being dumped by their girlfriend, would come running back the moment she realised she'd been a silly girl. He might not be any good in a crisis, but he was a true, reliable friend, and that counts for a lot. He stood up, collapsed his binoculars, and put them inside his leather jacket. He walked across the roof and opened the door of the TARDIS, before stepping inside.

Studying Rose Tyler, he was starting to get a feeling for her reluctance to leave her flat and her life behind. A disastrous affair with a man who had betrayed her, had made her wary of trusting strangers, and to be honest, there were none much stranger than him.

Her mum had readily taken her back, and she would feel a debt of gratitude for that, which would make her reluctant to leave her mum again. And then there was Mickey, who like a loving puppy, had been only too happy to have her back again. No wonder she said no, she was full of guilt for leaving in the first place. He would have to offer her something that would free her from that guilt; he would have to think about that.

On the roof of a block of flats, opposite Bucknall House, and adjacent to the flats where the Doctor was stationed, a handsome man in an RAF uniform, put his off world, digital scope in his pocket and headed for the door to the stairwell. Had he waited another minute, he would have heard a familiar sound, a sound that he desperately wanted to hear, because he desperately wanted to meet the Doctor again, even if at this moment in time, he wouldn't have a clue who Jack Harkness was.

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“What is this place?” the newly born being thought to itself, not realising what a difficult question that was to answer. Which place in particular, in which of the many dimensions it inhabited was it talking about?

It didn't know that the Time Lords of Gallifrey called it a Starman, a cosmic being with primitive consciousness. They could travel through space and time on the energy they received from eating stars, and sometimes, if you were unlucky, they would escape from their own time and go trampling through existence, wiping it clean and rewriting history, rewriting the laws of science itself.

They're dangerous entities, born when stars collapse, when they become black holes and white dwarfs and red dwarfs and wormholes. When they collapse they alter the shape of space and they alter the shape of time, and sometimes a Starman is created. Primitive societies call them gods, and it was always one of the duties of the Time Lords to police the universe and snap the cuffs on them when they popped up where they shouldn't.

The distortion of space-time that had created it in the collapse of the white dwarf, had deposited one of it's transdimensional facets in a galactic `crossroads', near a planet called Karkinos, and it was hungry, Karkinos would make a nice snack.

There was only one problem with that, Karkinos was a busy, teeming metropolis of a planet, a sort of galactic Constantinople, and there was a man in a blue, wooden box who was going to keep it that way. He had a weapon, no; it was more of a tool, a silver orb with the power of a collapsed star in it. It was made by a very clever, and not very nice, character called the Exalted Holgoroth of All Tagkhanastria. The Doctor had stolen his orb right out from under his nose (but that was another story).

The Doctor used the orb to send the Starman into the twenty-sixth dimension, where he'd be safely out of the way for a while. `Can't do much damage - space and time's always been a right mess in there', he'd told Ali, a young Karkinian girl. `Might even sort things out a bit. Who knows?'

The problem was, there was a side-effect of using the orb. Unforeseen consequences. It turned out the magic orb was not as special as the Holgoroth claimed. `Should have read the small print - `This item may not work as advertised!'' he told Ali.

There was another Starman, a worse one, a more powerful one, heading for Earth, and the Doctor needed to stop it. In fact, it was probably already there.

`Can't you just do what you did with the twins and grab it before it arrives?' Ali asked. The Starman on Karkinos had appeared as a giant man, taller than any building on the planet. And because he was transdimensional, there appeared to be two of him, in fact, there were hundreds of him, in hundreds of dimensions.

`No. That's the thing. Me and this new Starman exist in the same time stream, until I send this new Starman packing, the two of us have a time tag on us. We're linked.'

And so, the Doctor followed the new Starman to Babylon, four thousand years before he'd met Rose Tyler. Why did he think about her again? Oh yes, that was because the young Karkinian, Ali, had invited herself on board and like a typical teenage girl was asking him all about Rose, who she accused him of being in love with.

To say she was a typical teenage girl was pushing it a bit. She stood a whole head taller than any man, and there was something of a beetle about her and something of a crab or a crayfish from the river. She had six legs but only stood on four. Her segmented body was arched backwards so that her two front legs were held up and out like arms, one of them ending in a huge knobbled claw. She had a head of sorts with four black bead-like eyes, and a gaping hole in the centre of her face, filled with row upon row of tiny sharp jagged teeth, surrounded by waving feelers that seemed to claw at the air.

But the Doctor was never one to judge someone on their appearance, she was smart, quick witted, unfazed by a ship that was bigger on the inside, and had all the makings of an excellent companion…. that was, except for her physiology.

When humans had adrenalin coursing through their veins, it elicited the `fright, flight, or fight' response in their bodies. When the equivalent of adrenalin coursed through Karkinian's veins, it elicited the `maim, kill, destroy' response. Rational thought would disappear in a puff of anger, and they would go berserk, and the females were worse than the males.

When they arrived in ancient Babylon, the Doctor had told Ali to stay in the TARDIS, while he went and sorted out the Starman when he arrived. How many times had he said `stay here', in his considerable lifetime? He should have it printed on a T-shirt for all the good it would do.

The Babylonians, not unreasonably, he thought, had come to the conclusion that he was the threat from the heavens, and attempted to sacrifice him to appease the gods. Ali had got a bit upset about this and the red fog of Karkinian equivalent adrenalin had caused her to leave the TARDIS, and a trail of destruction, behind her.

The Doctor was convinced that he could have talked his way out of having one of his hearts cut out, but was grateful anyway for Ali's help, if not upset about the carnage she had caused. It wasn't her fault, it was just the way her body's physiology worked, and if it was anybody's fault, it was his for bringing her along. After all, he knew what Karkinians were like.

Ali had brought the orb with her when she left the TARDIS, and the Doctor had ridden on her back as she leapt on to the Starman, so that he could throw the orb into its mouth, banishing it into one of the multitude of dimensions it existed in. That done, it was time to do what the Doctor did best; clear off and let the locals clean up the mess he left behind, although this time, most of the mess was Ali's doing.

Having returned to Karkinos to take Ali home, the Doctor stood in the doorway of the TARDIS. She could tell he was anxious to be gone. This was difficult for him, saying goodbye.

`Where will you go now?' she asked.

`Wherever I'm needed, I suppose.'

`You are so pompous.'

He gave a single laugh. `Yeah, I am, aren't I?' There was that mad grin of his, the one she'd grown to love. `One man - off to save the universe!'

`Alone again, or …?'

`Alone for now.' An oversized cockroach-crayfish with a blood-lust would take a bit of getting over.

Ali moved closer to him, her feet sinking into the soft mud. How good it felt: cool and moist and full of life. `You know that girl,' she said. `The one you were telling me about? Rose Tyler?'

`What about her?'

`You should try again. Now you're free of the time tag.'

`I gave it my best, Ali. This life wasn't for her.' He had thought of nothing else since she had said “no”, that's why he'd been visiting her, trying to work out why she had been reluctant to come with him, and it was her complicated past that stopped her.

`I didn't have you down as a quitter, Doctor.'

`It's too late.'

`Ha! You're a Time Lord!' Ali laughed at him. `How can anything be too late? I thought time had no meaning in your infinite, immortal, immaterial box of tricks. Too late, indeed. You just get back there.'

`Ali …' he started to protest.

`No, listen. Us girls, we might all look different, but we're pretty similar underneath. We like to appear responsible, to do what's expected of us, we're not supposed to be reckless and wild and go running off with dodgy space tramps like you. But give us a nudge and -'

`Ali -' She didn't realise that Rose had already run off with a dodgy tramp once, and it had hurt her.

`No. You go straight back there now and you ask her again. But you've got to offer her more than just - well - you. I mean, you're a Time Lord, but you're not all that. Sell it to her.'

Now the Doctor laughed.

`That's why I need a companion,' he said. `To keep my feet on the ground, and my head out of the clouds. To keep me from myself. It's people like Rose, and crustaceans like you, Ali, who keep me going, who remind me that it's not all over and it's not all about me. My people may have gone, but you have your people … and Hammurabi had his people, and everyone has their own people. And every one of them is precious.'

`Go on then,' said Ali. `What are you waiting for? We're done here. Hurry back. And don't mess up this time. She sounds very special, your Rose.'

`Oh, she is. I really think she is.' He'd felt it when he took her hand and told her to run.

They said their goodbyes, and the Doctor turned and entered the TARDIS, walking up the ramp to the console and activating the door lock mechanism. He selected the 3-dimensional spatial coordinates from the destination history menu. He was going back to somewhere he had been before, and he wanted to get it `spot on'.

He also selected the temporal coordinates from the history menu, he was going to land a few seconds after he had left, and he felt that the TARDIS was going to do her best to get it right.

He powered up the atom accelerator, released the time rotor handbrake, activated the inertial dampers, engaged the harmonic generator, released the locking down mechanism, pulled the engine release lever, activated the materialise/de-materialise function, and gradually increased the space-time throttle as the time rotor started to pump up and down, taking him into the Vortex.

He checked, and double-checked his time readings, his place readings, and his face in the mirror. Practised a smile, a serious look, a sad face … settled on the smile, or at least the closest thing to a genuine human smile that he could manage. He took one last look around the TARDIS, made sure the old girl was looking - how would Rose put it? - Awesome.

Yes. She was looking well awesome.

He gradually decreased the space-time throttle and activated the harmonic generator to stop the TARDIS from drifting as it materialized. He activated the materialise/de-materialise function and felt the TARDIS gently caress the ground of planet Earth, and relished the familiar scraping noise of the TARDIS doing her thing.

Then all was silent. He put the engine to sleep, closed down the systems, and set the lights to an attractive warm orange glow. He realised he was still grinning and it was starting to hurt his face. Not long now. He took a deep breath and strode over to the door. Pulled it open. He'd timed it just right. Rose was almost exactly where he'd left her, there, standing with Mickey, who was looking more than a little confused.

He grinned wider at Rose, relishing her surprise. He was a cheap magician sometimes, but it worked.

`By the way,' he said. `Did I mention? It also travels in time.'

And he stepped back inside, leaving the door open. Was it enough? Rose wasn't the type to fall for a hard sell, but had he undersold it? He reckoned that after all she'd been through in her nineteen years, if she knew she could come back to this point in time and space, and pick up where she had left off, and then she might just go for it.

From the shadows behind the open door he spied on her. Watched her turn to Mickey and say something, kiss him, and then she was running towards the TARDIS, her hair flying, and as she ran up the slope to the console, he knew that everything was going to be all right.

The End