FIC: Passwords (Stargate Universe/Doctor Who)
I found this strange little thing on my Mac today. Evidently, I'd started writing it just after "Justice" aired, and promptly forgot about it. Oddly enough, "Space," while answering some questions, still leaves a neat little spot for my tiny fic. How about that?
Title: Passwords (Stargate Universe/Doctor Who)
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Rush, Rose (gen)
Rating: PG-13 (for swearing)
Timeline: immediately following "Justice."
Spoilers: for DW up to and including 4x11 "Turn Left," for SGU up to and including 1x10 "Justice."
Word count: 1,800
Summary: but how did Rush get into the crashed alien vessel?
"There's no justice in the universe, and there never was." - the Doctor (The End of TIme)
The first time he sees her, Doctor Rush assumes he's gone mad. He's fallen into a hallucination, a waking dream, stumbling blearily along the heat-cracked surface of the rock they've left him on.
His vision blurs, the sun in his eyes and bright lights are searing his skull, burning after images against his retinas. There's a gust of wind, searing, hot. He hasn't seen another human being in weeks. He stumbles and feels the jolt when his knees dig into the dirt and sand.
He's been alone for so long, even before this, he was alone, this is just so much more literal. The silence has been cruelly present, like a knife, and in it he hears, or imagines he hears, voices of friends, loved ones (yes, he had loved ones, once) whispering just maddeningly beyond the ability of his ears to reach.
And now her. Hallucination. Someone he doesn't know. Why? She's blonde.
Several weeks earlier.
On the first night, he stands alone under the vast, black sky with its alien stars. He screams and curses until his throat is hoarse. Stupid. He knows it's stupid, but something stronger, primal, guttural, is clawing its way up his belly and out of his throat anyway. Rage. And fear.
His limbs shake and his breath catches in his throat. His face is covered in blood, drying over his cracked lips and his mouth tastes of dirt. His hands have been scraped raw by the rocks and his fingers are numb in the sudden, bitter cold.
They left him. It's the one thought pounding relentlessly at his head. Was he that fucking bad? They fucking left him to die? Colonel Young didn't even have the balls to put a bullet in his head, he just fucking left him to madness and starvation like something you would do to a dog.
He begins pacing. He makes his way back to the crashed remnants of the alien vessel. He tries to tell himself he's not dead yet. But the sky is very black and the air is very silent and cold.
The present.
He sees her. She's real. Another real, actual, flesh-and-blood person, not a memory, not a figment, not a dream. She's young, and blonde, and she makes an entrance in an explosion like an ugly livid gash in reality. He stands his ground and she doesn't disappear, doesn't fade away.
She's young, too young, blonde hair whipping across her face in the torrent of sizzling air. She's wearing a violet jacket and her arms are wrapped around a really big gun.
She stumbles forwards shakily, the gale subsides, the light fades until the air regains its tepid stillness, except the silence of the desert landscape is broken by her sharp little breaths, and the sound of her shoes scuffling in the sand as she regains her balance.
She clutches the gun possessively for a minute, seeing him, but she doesn't raise it. He says nothing, watching her, waiting for her to make the first move. He watches her wide brown eyes slowly take in the barren landscape, punctuated only by the alien craft, which seems not to surprise her, and then they come back to him.
He's become so used to soldiers and scientists, and despite the ridiculous proportions of her gun and her apparent teleportation abilities, Rush immediately deduces this girl is neither.
She lets the gun fall against her side, brushes the hair out of her face, licks her lips absently and smiles. "Hey mate, hope she's not yours," she greets him, nodding at the alien ship half buried in the rock. "Rubbish bit of landing, though."
The smile seems a little weary, and doesn't quite reach her liquid brown eyes, but there's a forced cheeriness infused in her words that surprises him, because he doesn't remember the last time he heard someone make the effort to pretend.
"So, mind telling me where I am, then?"
For a minute he can only stare at her. She looks back, looking a bit worried for the first time.
"Uh, are you okay? 'Cause, seriously..."
He can see her really take in his appearance, the blood stains on his clothes, the dirt caked into his hands and face, his long hair and beard, for the first time.
"You got stranded, yeah?" she asks, when he would have expected her to turn and run. "Well, we can call for help, can't we? No? Shite, man..." she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, peering into the distance. "Lonely place, innit? So is it just you?"
"How did you get here?" the question comes out harsher than he intended, like he's forgotten how to control speech, the words snarled. His throat rasping painfully.
Her eyes widen in surprise, but she still doesn't lift the gun.
"I just sort of..." she gesticulates vaguely with her hand. "It's complicated. Alien tech."
"Try me."
"We call it a dimension canon. Parts of it were salvaged from alien machines that came through a fissure in time and space, we called it the Rift. I work with an organization that cannibalizes alien software and hardware for parts."
"Dangerous." He can't help but wish they had someone like her working at Icarus Base.
"Better than sitting around doing nothing back on Earth."
"You're from Earth?"
"Yeah, one Earth, anyway," she looks heavenward for a moment, "great big cosmos out there, dimensions fraying around the edges now, cause the Darkness is coming, and I can't just sit around, stand still."
It's hard to follow her words - he doesn't know why, he shouldn't have trouble understanding this babbling child, perhaps its the exhaustion or the hunger or the cold brittle grip of terror buzzing through every cell of his body telling him he will die unless he gets away from this place.
But he hears words like 'darkness' and 'chaos' and something about the stars going out, and she sounds sad and tired and far away. He stumbles, without realizing he's fallen until he feels her supporting his weight, even though she has to maneuver her gun awkwardly out of the way to do it, she lets him rest against her, seeming untroubled.
"You know, most people go through the lives doing nothing but eating chips and watching the telly, but you and I got to see stars and space ships and alien worlds. That's gotta count for something, yeah? Sorry, I can't help you. I don't know what to do. Isn't anyone comin' back for you?"
"I don't think so," he says slowly. He wonders what she would say if he told her the truth, that they left him here, that they thought he was to dangerous or too horrible to let live.
She unclips a water bottle from her belt and passes it too him. The gun dangles uselessly against her hip and she helps him stagger towards the stranded alien craft. They sit together in the dirt, in the shadow cast by the hulking wreckage, and she props her elbows on her knees and fingers a golden discus held by metal chains around her throat.
"When this recharges, I'll have to go."
He grunts.
"I'm trying to find this man. This wonderful man. Cause he can save us all from the Darkness, only that's not the real reason. I just wanted to find him again. But he's one man in a multitude of universes, and I've already been traveling for so long, and here I am, lost, stranded, just like you."
"Except you can leave," he says dryly.
She shrugs. "I just keep walking. Planets of ice, planets of smoke, planets of fire...On and on and on. I've been to Earth, a hundred Earths, a million Earths, but I can't get back to the one he might by on. Might be too late. I existed in a dream, once. Not his. Someone else's. A woman's. She was nice, but her dream was sad, and it all gets very bad for her, in the end. Sorry," she says suddenly, shuddering, "I haven't had anyone to talk to in awhile."
He wonders if she's mad, this girl who exists between universes and claims that she's walking in and out of other people's dreams. He wonders if he's mad, sanity wrenched from his bloody dying hands like everything else, the final insult. It was a great mind, while it lasted.
The sun is hot, but his bones still feel cold from the bitter night, and he's sure he's dying, she might just be a chemical reaction triggered by his fried brain, after all. He looks at the alien ship, he's been trying to get it open for - how long now? In his desert of pain and starvation and thirst, time has lost much of its weight and meaning.
"It needs a password," she says softly, following his gaze.
He's startled. He'd almost forgotten she was there. If she is there at all.
"A password?" he grumbles. It seems so childish. God, his entire body hurts.
Weeks of living like this. Weeks and weeks. He reaches a hand out, strokes the sun-baked steel and feels the grit of dirt and sand beneath his fingers. "Open sesame?"
A password. He doesn't even know who built it, or what language they speak.
She leans over, so that their shoulders are touching. She's staring at it, too. "Do you know any alien languages?" she asks.
He smiles bitterly. "A few. I doubt they'll do any good in this case."
"Wow. You're kinda screwed, aren't you?"
He looks back at her sharply. She doesn't blink or look away.
"I took words once," she tells him, looking him straight in the eye (and she's real, he knows she's real, he feels it somewhere in his blood and his bones) "I took words, and I scattered them, all through time and space..."
She looks back at the alien ship. She leans even closer, so that he can feel the feather-light brush of her golden hair on his cheeks and her breath tickling his ear. "Try...try..."
He says it, simple words, English, words plucked from fairy tales, and against all odds, flying stark in the face of all possibilities, the alien craft shudders and hums a low vibrating keel as the metal becomes alive, a hatchway slides open and interior lights flicker and come to life.
Rush turns back to her. "Who are you?"
But she's already melting away into the haze of heat and the wisps of desert sand. Soon he'll be able to dismiss her as a figment of his imagination. A hallucination. The alien ship thrums and buzzes beneath his hands as he drags himself inside the dull metal chamber. How did he open the door?
He rests his head against the cold floor, exhaustion and relief rolling over him in waves. He can hear her voice in his brain, whispering. "Bad Wolf...try the words...Bad Wolf."
FINIS
Title: Passwords (Stargate Universe/Doctor Who)
Author: eternitywaits
Characters/Pairings: Rush, Rose (gen)
Rating: PG-13 (for swearing)
Timeline: immediately following "Justice."
Spoilers: for DW up to and including 4x11 "Turn Left," for SGU up to and including 1x10 "Justice."
Word count: 1,800
Summary: but how did Rush get into the crashed alien vessel?
"There's no justice in the universe, and there never was." - the Doctor (The End of TIme)
The first time he sees her, Doctor Rush assumes he's gone mad. He's fallen into a hallucination, a waking dream, stumbling blearily along the heat-cracked surface of the rock they've left him on.
His vision blurs, the sun in his eyes and bright lights are searing his skull, burning after images against his retinas. There's a gust of wind, searing, hot. He hasn't seen another human being in weeks. He stumbles and feels the jolt when his knees dig into the dirt and sand.
He's been alone for so long, even before this, he was alone, this is just so much more literal. The silence has been cruelly present, like a knife, and in it he hears, or imagines he hears, voices of friends, loved ones (yes, he had loved ones, once) whispering just maddeningly beyond the ability of his ears to reach.
And now her. Hallucination. Someone he doesn't know. Why? She's blonde.
Several weeks earlier.
On the first night, he stands alone under the vast, black sky with its alien stars. He screams and curses until his throat is hoarse. Stupid. He knows it's stupid, but something stronger, primal, guttural, is clawing its way up his belly and out of his throat anyway. Rage. And fear.
His limbs shake and his breath catches in his throat. His face is covered in blood, drying over his cracked lips and his mouth tastes of dirt. His hands have been scraped raw by the rocks and his fingers are numb in the sudden, bitter cold.
They left him. It's the one thought pounding relentlessly at his head. Was he that fucking bad? They fucking left him to die? Colonel Young didn't even have the balls to put a bullet in his head, he just fucking left him to madness and starvation like something you would do to a dog.
He begins pacing. He makes his way back to the crashed remnants of the alien vessel. He tries to tell himself he's not dead yet. But the sky is very black and the air is very silent and cold.
The present.
He sees her. She's real. Another real, actual, flesh-and-blood person, not a memory, not a figment, not a dream. She's young, and blonde, and she makes an entrance in an explosion like an ugly livid gash in reality. He stands his ground and she doesn't disappear, doesn't fade away.
She's young, too young, blonde hair whipping across her face in the torrent of sizzling air. She's wearing a violet jacket and her arms are wrapped around a really big gun.
She stumbles forwards shakily, the gale subsides, the light fades until the air regains its tepid stillness, except the silence of the desert landscape is broken by her sharp little breaths, and the sound of her shoes scuffling in the sand as she regains her balance.
She clutches the gun possessively for a minute, seeing him, but she doesn't raise it. He says nothing, watching her, waiting for her to make the first move. He watches her wide brown eyes slowly take in the barren landscape, punctuated only by the alien craft, which seems not to surprise her, and then they come back to him.
He's become so used to soldiers and scientists, and despite the ridiculous proportions of her gun and her apparent teleportation abilities, Rush immediately deduces this girl is neither.
She lets the gun fall against her side, brushes the hair out of her face, licks her lips absently and smiles. "Hey mate, hope she's not yours," she greets him, nodding at the alien ship half buried in the rock. "Rubbish bit of landing, though."
The smile seems a little weary, and doesn't quite reach her liquid brown eyes, but there's a forced cheeriness infused in her words that surprises him, because he doesn't remember the last time he heard someone make the effort to pretend.
"So, mind telling me where I am, then?"
For a minute he can only stare at her. She looks back, looking a bit worried for the first time.
"Uh, are you okay? 'Cause, seriously..."
He can see her really take in his appearance, the blood stains on his clothes, the dirt caked into his hands and face, his long hair and beard, for the first time.
"You got stranded, yeah?" she asks, when he would have expected her to turn and run. "Well, we can call for help, can't we? No? Shite, man..." she raises a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, peering into the distance. "Lonely place, innit? So is it just you?"
"How did you get here?" the question comes out harsher than he intended, like he's forgotten how to control speech, the words snarled. His throat rasping painfully.
Her eyes widen in surprise, but she still doesn't lift the gun.
"I just sort of..." she gesticulates vaguely with her hand. "It's complicated. Alien tech."
"Try me."
"We call it a dimension canon. Parts of it were salvaged from alien machines that came through a fissure in time and space, we called it the Rift. I work with an organization that cannibalizes alien software and hardware for parts."
"Dangerous." He can't help but wish they had someone like her working at Icarus Base.
"Better than sitting around doing nothing back on Earth."
"You're from Earth?"
"Yeah, one Earth, anyway," she looks heavenward for a moment, "great big cosmos out there, dimensions fraying around the edges now, cause the Darkness is coming, and I can't just sit around, stand still."
It's hard to follow her words - he doesn't know why, he shouldn't have trouble understanding this babbling child, perhaps its the exhaustion or the hunger or the cold brittle grip of terror buzzing through every cell of his body telling him he will die unless he gets away from this place.
But he hears words like 'darkness' and 'chaos' and something about the stars going out, and she sounds sad and tired and far away. He stumbles, without realizing he's fallen until he feels her supporting his weight, even though she has to maneuver her gun awkwardly out of the way to do it, she lets him rest against her, seeming untroubled.
"You know, most people go through the lives doing nothing but eating chips and watching the telly, but you and I got to see stars and space ships and alien worlds. That's gotta count for something, yeah? Sorry, I can't help you. I don't know what to do. Isn't anyone comin' back for you?"
"I don't think so," he says slowly. He wonders what she would say if he told her the truth, that they left him here, that they thought he was to dangerous or too horrible to let live.
She unclips a water bottle from her belt and passes it too him. The gun dangles uselessly against her hip and she helps him stagger towards the stranded alien craft. They sit together in the dirt, in the shadow cast by the hulking wreckage, and she props her elbows on her knees and fingers a golden discus held by metal chains around her throat.
"When this recharges, I'll have to go."
He grunts.
"I'm trying to find this man. This wonderful man. Cause he can save us all from the Darkness, only that's not the real reason. I just wanted to find him again. But he's one man in a multitude of universes, and I've already been traveling for so long, and here I am, lost, stranded, just like you."
"Except you can leave," he says dryly.
She shrugs. "I just keep walking. Planets of ice, planets of smoke, planets of fire...On and on and on. I've been to Earth, a hundred Earths, a million Earths, but I can't get back to the one he might by on. Might be too late. I existed in a dream, once. Not his. Someone else's. A woman's. She was nice, but her dream was sad, and it all gets very bad for her, in the end. Sorry," she says suddenly, shuddering, "I haven't had anyone to talk to in awhile."
He wonders if she's mad, this girl who exists between universes and claims that she's walking in and out of other people's dreams. He wonders if he's mad, sanity wrenched from his bloody dying hands like everything else, the final insult. It was a great mind, while it lasted.
The sun is hot, but his bones still feel cold from the bitter night, and he's sure he's dying, she might just be a chemical reaction triggered by his fried brain, after all. He looks at the alien ship, he's been trying to get it open for - how long now? In his desert of pain and starvation and thirst, time has lost much of its weight and meaning.
"It needs a password," she says softly, following his gaze.
He's startled. He'd almost forgotten she was there. If she is there at all.
"A password?" he grumbles. It seems so childish. God, his entire body hurts.
Weeks of living like this. Weeks and weeks. He reaches a hand out, strokes the sun-baked steel and feels the grit of dirt and sand beneath his fingers. "Open sesame?"
A password. He doesn't even know who built it, or what language they speak.
She leans over, so that their shoulders are touching. She's staring at it, too. "Do you know any alien languages?" she asks.
He smiles bitterly. "A few. I doubt they'll do any good in this case."
"Wow. You're kinda screwed, aren't you?"
He looks back at her sharply. She doesn't blink or look away.
"I took words once," she tells him, looking him straight in the eye (and she's real, he knows she's real, he feels it somewhere in his blood and his bones) "I took words, and I scattered them, all through time and space..."
She looks back at the alien ship. She leans even closer, so that he can feel the feather-light brush of her golden hair on his cheeks and her breath tickling his ear. "Try...try..."
He says it, simple words, English, words plucked from fairy tales, and against all odds, flying stark in the face of all possibilities, the alien craft shudders and hums a low vibrating keel as the metal becomes alive, a hatchway slides open and interior lights flicker and come to life.
Rush turns back to her. "Who are you?"
But she's already melting away into the haze of heat and the wisps of desert sand. Soon he'll be able to dismiss her as a figment of his imagination. A hallucination. The alien ship thrums and buzzes beneath his hands as he drags himself inside the dull metal chamber. How did he open the door?
He rests his head against the cold floor, exhaustion and relief rolling over him in waves. He can hear her voice in his brain, whispering. "Bad Wolf...try the words...Bad Wolf."
FINIS