1x14 : Terror in the Deep (1/3)
Title: Terror in the Deep
Author: wotcher_wombat
Pairing: Ten II/Rose
Summary: Rose decides to take the Doctor on an adventure, and they wind up someplace very familiar.
Rating: PG
A/N: Thanks to Debbie for the beta and Lisa for the science-y advice. Also thanks to shinyopals for the britpickery and her endless patience.
Episode 14 of the the_altverse following The Taste of Fear.
Virtual Series Masterlist
It was too important not to work. The child had spent too much time-poured his literal life’s blood into this message. He refused to believe that it was futile. The elders didn’t believe in miracles, of course. They said there was no one to save them. They said there was no point in trying. But the boy couldn’t give up hope. Surely someone out there must be able to help. He clutched the message tighter with his cloaked tentacles, holding it very near his beak to mask its oscillating glow.
With great trepidation, the boy passed through dark water, his wide, pale eyes searching for any signs that he was being followed. He swam over the abandoned crustacean farm, through the empty shells where a grove of tube worms had once thrived, and across the frigid current from the western water. He looked away as he crossed the bone-white remains of the coral gardens where he’d played in happier times. He’d found many peers there-his best friend, a pretty girl, a bully. They were dead now, of course, like so many others. He tried not to think of their picked-over remains lying somewhere beneath him in the ooze of the ocean floor. He refused to consider that his body might soon rest beside them.
Once clear of the village and in total darkness, he began a steep ascension. He swam on with nothing to guide him save his increasing dizziness as the water pressure lessened. Many times he had the uneasy feeling that large and strange creatures were moving around him in the dark water, and he though he trembled with fear, he did not stop. He swam until the pain was crippling, his body swollen, his pulse erratic. Then he pushed himself further.
At last an extraordinary sight unfolded above him, and the boy stared in wonder. Everyone at home said it was impossible; there was nothing but darkness in the world. All his life he’d been told that their isolated community was surrounded by miles and miles of nothingness-dark water stretching on forever-and every time he’d said otherwise he was shut down by the elders. Now, here at the farthest distance anyone in his world had ever traveled, he looked up to see the faintest glimmer of light filtering down through a fathomless stretch of water. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Carefully, he pulled out the message and looked at it with reverence. Running his tentacles over it one last time, he struggled to control his emotions. Everything depended on this message. Everything. He released it into the water, watching it float toward the light with a desperate joy in his heart.
He could never tell the elders what he’d done, of course. If they believed him at all, they would scold him and tell him it was pointless. They were resigned to their fate in a way that he could never be. He was simply too young to wait patiently for a slow, agonizing death. Let the others face the end with composure and dignity. Let them live in their darkness. He would fight. He would hope.
The message floated upwards into strange, unknown seas while the boy sank back into the darkness below.
***
The Doctor was playing, and it was making Rose woozy.
“Excellent!” he cried as the TARDIS dipped and hurled around a small asteroid. “But can you do… this?” He made a mad dash across the console and slammed down on a lever, causing the ship to rocket upwards. “Ah! Molto bene!” he said in delight. “See what I’m doing, Rose? I’m using all the directional thrusters at once, but I’m giving seventy-five percent more power to the upward thrusters-that’s what really gives her a kick-don’t you think?”
“Mhmm,” she grunted with a weak nod.
If Rose weren’t already seated and clutching the side of an open roundel with a white-knuckled grip, she would have toppled to the floor as the Doctor sent the TARDIS into a dizzying spiral. She heard a crash from the kitchen, and suspected they’d find their dishes all over the floor. “How much more of this?” she asked. “Are you going to break all our stuff just because you want to trip up the TARDIS?”
“Eh, we’ll get new stuff-better stuff-alien stuff! Your mother will love that!” said the Doctor. He gave her a manic grin, and then made the TARDIS plummet. “I’m just putting her through her paces. It’s good exercise! You never know when quick maneuvering will come in handy. Like, say, yesterday on our trip to Volney Five-we could have been ambushed by their carnivorous ground squirrels-don’t laugh, it could happen! Did you know I once had to fly the TARDIS over a motorway to rescue Donna Noble from Santa Claus? Well-I say Santa Claus-”
Rose smiled fondly as her husband babbled on, then let out a shriek of laughter as her body rose from the chair in momentary weightlessness. Even when feeling slightly motion-sick, even after enduring explosions and grueling recoveries, she could always see the joy in this mad, dangerous life she’d chosen.
“Aha!” the Doctor said, bending down to peer under the console. “Gravity boosters should have been able to handle that! I’ll have to give it a look-have you seen my boost-diagnostic-thing?”
“You mean the one you made out of our microwave?” she replied with an arch look. “It’s still in the kitchen-next to the mini pizzas I can’t make.”
He gave her an almost-apologetic smile, and stopped to kiss the top of her head as he passed her on the way to the kitchen. “Fear not. Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and the TARDIS will have added a real oven?” he called over his shoulder.
Rose snorted. That wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. While the TARDIS had quickly added a laundry room shortly after they’d first moved in, there hadn’t been many developments since then. The Doctor was content to wait patiently for a library to appear, but Rose had a feeling he’d be waiting for a while. After being stranded in the middle of nowhere and with the looming fear that someone was tampering with the ship, she had a different appreciation for the comforts the TARDIS did manage to provide. Sometimes it seemed greedy to hope for more.
On the other hand, her wardrobe had seemed a smidge roomier this morning, just as the Doctor had been claiming for weeks. She should give credit where it was due. With a sheepish look around the console room, Rose tried not to feel silly as she whispered, “Keep up the good work. You’re amazing.”
The old TARDIS would have practically trilled at the praise, but this one gave no such obvious response. Rose could still sense it, though. It was only subtle niggling at the back of her brain-barely more than her imagination-but it was definitely there, alive, and vital. She had to believe in it to even feel the sensation, and that made it all the more precious.
Without her husband at the controls, the TARDIS drifted serenely across space. Rose stood up, relaxed her grip on the roundel, and went to inspect the monitors. They definitely weren’t in the Vortex, she was certain of that. A cursory glance at the surrounding planetary systems told her she wasn’t remotely near Earth, but that was all she could tell. She studied a symbol on the corner of the screen, and after several minutes of scrutiny, she decided that it looked vaguely like one the Doctor had pointed out as meaning, among other things, “far future.” Rose knew the symbol indicated far more intricacies that that, but couldn’t guess at the rest of its meanings. In her brief lessons about Gallifreyan she’d learned one thing for sure: the language was bloody difficult.
She waited for the Doctor to return from the kitchen, but when he didn’t come back, she figured he’d gotten distracted by a detour to the spare parts cupboard. Time passed, and Rose started to get restless. They’d been working on the TARDIS for a while now, and while she appreciated the lessons, it was time for something different. Wanderlust was stirring in her heart, and she wanted to explore something, get into trouble, and run for her life. The lighter, safer trips the Doctor had taken her on since her leg healed were nice, but Rose missed their real adventures. She wondered what strange and mysterious planets were around them and what promises these worlds held.
One day, when she could fly the TARDIS on her own, she would take the Doctor to new exciting places. She would plan and surprise him on anniversaries, open the doors and play tour guide for a while, and maybe she could find something so amazing that it would render even her husband speechless. She would probably get it wrong just as often as he, but even so, she would appreciate the symmetry in their mistakes. She smiled as several pleasant fantasies flashed through her mind. She couldn’t wait.
An idea hit Rose like a snap of static electricity. Even if she couldn’t fully operate the TARDIS, the Doctor had given her a way to move it without his help. Suddenly frantic, she looked through a stack of parts and papers beside the console until she found a small stack of disks designed to let her take the TARDIS to three specific locations.
She’d been wary of these disks when the Doctor had first brought up the idea. It seemed too much like one of his emergency protocols, and her first instinct was to recoil. The Doctor had given them to her quite skittishly, and she didn’t say much in return. However, the more she thought about it, the more she appreciated the agency these disks would give her on the TARDIS. She wouldn’t be stranded, or trapped without options. She would never face a situation like the one in Alexandria again. It wasn’t like the emergency protocols; these disks gave Rose a real choice.
The first disk was programmed to bring her back to 21st Century Earth, but she had no interest in going back home so soon and tossed it back into the pile. The second disk, designed to simply reverse to the last place the TARDIS had landed, went back to the pile as well. She held the third disk carefully and watched the stark white light of the console room shine off its metallic surface. This one would take her directly to the nearest planet. A whole new realm of possibilities opened up. This disk wasn’t just for emergencies, it was also for fun.
Having no idea which planet was nearest, Rose couldn’t possibly study up on the place enough to play tour guide. She couldn’t plan ahead. She couldn’t know where they might land. However, she could surprise the Doctor.
She popped the disk into the console, and after a moment’s hesitation, the TARDIS began to dematerialize. No explosions so far, no power outages, no emergency phone calls. Rose started to laugh out loud.
“What’s going on?” the Doctor yelled, skidding into the console room with an odd assortment of alien whatnots draped over his arms and twined around his torso. “Why are we moving? She shouldn’t take off like that on her own, it-”
He ran to the console with a look of pure panic, but Rose intercepted him with a kiss. “Relax. I thought I’d take her for a spin, yeah?”
“You… what?” He gave her a look that was part skeptical, part wondering. “You haven’t looked into her heart or-or-”
She laughed and started to disentangle the Doctor from the alien whatnots. “No, silly. I used one of the disks you made me. Hold still and let me get this stuff off you.”
“You used a disk?” The Doctor was suddenly very still, and when he spoke, his voice was careful. “I thought-well-I thought you weren’t too keen on the idea.”
Rose unwound the last cord from his torso and replaced it with her arms. “You thought wrong,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “I’m taking you on an adventure. Nearest planet, here we come!”
The TARDIS finished landing, and the Doctor gave an appraising look to the wooden doors. “We’re here,” he said, setting down the last of the spare parts. He scratched the back of his neck and turned to Rose. “You didn’t happen to take note of which planet was closest back there, did you?”
“Nope.” She popped the “p” in imitation of him.
“So, no idea what’s out there?”
“Not a clue.”
“There could be anything on the other side of those doors, then?”
She grinned in a slightly teasing way, sticking her tongue between her teeth and knocking her hip against his. “Anything at all. Sort of like Planet Roulette.”
The Doctor gave her a smile, looking like a kid about to pilfer a candy shop. “You’re brilliant,” he whispered, and pulled her close for a kiss that was slightly sloppy around the edges.
Breaking away with giddy laughter, Rose grasped her husband’s hand and pulled him out into the world.
***
They burst through the doors of the TARDIS and onto a familiar beach scene.
“Oh wow, does this take me back,” muttered the Doctor as he raked his fingers through his hair. “This was a great idea!”
Rose took a step past him, catching her breath in the frigid air. The late afternoon sun cast the shore in a pinkish light, a little too rosy to match any sunset on earth, and the barren landscape seemed stark, strange and beautiful. However, the shore was nothing compared to the sea. Stretching out into the distance, the ocean stood majestically still, its dark waves transformed into solid ice, the turmoil of the heart of a storm frozen in an instant. “Woman Wept,” she whispered. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong? Still amazing, isn’t it?” the Doctor asked. He turned to her with a worried expression. “Not as good as you remembered?”
She smiled apologetically. “No, it’s not that. I was just hoping to take you somewhere new.”
He shrugged. “New planet, new universe. It still counts.”
“No it doesn’t.” She shook her head sadly. “Been there, done that. You already know everything about it.”
“I do not-” the Doctor started.
Rose smiled and adopted a more teasing tone. “Yes you do. You told me so yourself. You also said that you were much more impressive than Captain Jack, and then you might have called me a stupid ape.”
“Slander! I most certainly did not!” the Doctor protested. “I may have had some choice words about Jack, but not you-not on that trip.”
She laughed, and the wind made an eerie moaning echo as it whipped around the frozen waves. “Yeah, but even so, this can’t be exciting for you.” Rose sighed. She should have known it was a daft idea, trying to show him new planets when he’d already seen so many of them. What was the point of exploring a place they’d already been? She started to shiver in the cold.
“Eh, but that was lifetimes ago,” the Doctor said, failing to sound nonchalant. “I was a different man back then. I may have forgotten all that. Regeneration’s a dodgy process, you know. And metacrisis… well…” He scratched the back of his neck.
She felt the corners of her lips pulling up into an involuntary smile. “You liar.”
“Come on, now.” He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Rose was glad for the warmth. “I’m a new man, on a new shore. And since you know so much about this place, why don’t you tell me a bit about it?”
Rose grinned. “Are you saying you want a tour guide?”
“Nothing would delight me more.” He tightened his arms around her.
“Well, if you must know,” Rose began, a faux-smugness creeping into her tone. “We’re on a planet called Woman Wept-”
“Fascinating!” His smile was apparent even in his voice. “Why’s it called that?”
“Oh, a great reason. This bit of land here, when you see it from up above, it looks like a woman who’s crying.”
“Marvelous! Tell me, tour guide, why are the waves frozen?”
Rose blinked and turned her head to look at her husband. “But you said-before-you said that no one knew why it froze. It was a scientific anomaly.”
“Hmm,” he sighed, burying his face into her hair. “Make it up,” he murmured in her ear. “The tourists will never know.”
Rose’s heart started to beat faster, and she improvised wildly. “Legends say that long ago, there was this woman, yeah? She wept because she was kept apart from her the person she loved, separated by all these obstacles. People said they couldn’t be together-said it was impossible-but the woman wouldn’t give up. They said the lovers wouldn’t be together again until-until hell froze over and reality fell apart around them. So, she built a device that would freeze hell, only it froze the whole planet in an instant.”
The Doctor chuckled. Rose was so close to him that she could feel the reverberations all along her back. It made her shiver, not with cold, but with delight. “So, are we supposed to assume that Hell was located on Woman Wept all along?” he asked.
She stuck her tongue out at him, though she knew he couldn’t see it from his angle. “It’s a legend. The stories don’t always make sense.”
“What happened to the woman?”
Rose gave it a moment’s thought. “She was frozen, too. She waits, undisturbed and unknowing of the centuries passing around her. One day, when this planet sees its final hours, she will awaken and will finally reunite with her lover as reality falls apart around them. But they won’t care, because they’ll have each other.”
He kissed the nape of her neck. “That’s quite sad, really.”
“But they’re together in the end, yeah? That’s what really matters. Besides, it’s a planet called Woman Wept. Its stories are going to be sad, Doctor.”
“True.” He sighed again, his tone far more somber than she would like.
“Maybe they’ll escape at the last minute,” she added. “Maybe we’ll swing by and pick them up on the TARDIS. Who knows what will happen.”
“Ha! I like that ending.” He rubbed Rose’s arms as another cold gust of wind caused her to tremble.
“Right,” she said as her teeth started chattering. “I’m going to pop back into the TARDIS, so you won’t be the only one with a coat, and then we’ve got a lot of sight-seeing to do.”
He released his hold on her, and gave a joking bow. “Don’t argue with the designated driver-and tour guide as the case may be.”
Now clad in much warmer apparel, Rose led the Doctor down the shore, swinging their clasped hands between them. She told him every fact she could remember from their first trip so many years ago, gesturing to several points of interest along the way. The Doctor would occasionally pepper her with questions, and when Rose didn’t know the answer, she would make up something ridiculous. She had a feeling that the Doctor liked the fake answers much better than the facts.
“And, of course, the sunset here is so pink because this particular sun is made of a compound that’s similar to pink lemonade,” she invented with a snicker.
“Sounds accurate enough,” said the Doctor. “You know, there’s a planet where the entire atmosphere smells like raspberries because its sun has a-” He shot her the briefest of wary glances and broke off. “Sorry. Your trip. I’ll stop talking and just enjoy the sights like a good companion.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “You can talk all you like, Doctor. And since when did a good companion merely enjoy the sights?”
He laughed at that. “So you’re saying that if I wander off and get in trouble, you’ll come swooping in to rescue me?”
“Always do, don’t I?” She winked and was about to lead them onto the water, when an unexpected commotion pulled their attention back to the barren landscape.
At first glance, there was nothing on the land at all save a handful of large, jagged rocks along the shoreline. On closer inspection, though, part of the atmosphere seemed to ripple up from the ground like a haze. Suddenly, a portion of the sky and horizon peeled back like a tent flap as a rather tall, overbearing woman stepped forward and flung an electronic device out towards the frozen sea. There was a faint crack when it smashed against the ice.
Even from a distance, Rose could clearly hear this woman’s shouting. “If I ever catch any of you making personal calls on company time again, it’ll be a lot worse than a broken handheld. Do you hear me?” With that, the woman let the flap back down and disappeared into the horizon, leaving nothing but a nearly imperceptible shimmer in the air behind her.
“Well, that wasn’t here before-well, on the other Woman Wept, that is. Want to give it a closer look?” The Doctor turned to grin at Rose, but she was already halfway out to sea.
“Looks like some kind of video phone,” Rose called over her shoulder as she skidded down an icy wave to look at the thrown electronic device. “It’s smashed to bits, though. Think you could fix it, Doctor?”
“Possibly.” He slipped down to join her and gave the pieces a good inspection. “Definitely,” he amended, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and setting to work.
Rose looked back to the slightly undulating portion of the shoreline. “What do you reckon that was-a portal of some sort?” she wondered aloud.
The Doctor glanced back to the place where the shouting woman had disappeared. “Nah, I’d say it’s something physically here. Looked like a tent under a shimmer.”
Rose considered going back to shore and exploring while the Doctor worked, but a few minutes later a pair of people came sneaking out of the invisible tent. A woman with violently purple skin pulled forward a lanky, bespectacled man. The approached Rose and the Doctor, but apparently couldn’t see them amongst the frozen waves.
“We shouldn’t-what would Ussick do if she found us out here?” whispered the man as they walked further out to sea.
“What else could she possibly do to us?” said the woman. She tied back her curly hair at the nape of her neck. “Come on, I said I’d help you look. Did you see which way she threw it-Oh!” The woman jumped back as she spotted Rose and the Doctor for the first time.
“Who are you? And what do you think you’re doing here?” demanded the man. He puffed up his chest and tried to stand at his full stature-an effect that was ruined when his glasses slipped off his nose and he had to scramble around to find them on the ice.
Rose tried to give the pair a winning smile. “Hello! I’m Rose, this is the Doctor.” She gestured back to her husband, but he was still bent over the broken device. “We’re just taking in the sights. Traveling through. You know how it is.” She reached down and picked up the man’s glasses and offered them back to him.
The man looked a bit bewildered, and snatched back his spectacles with a huff.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You’re scouts aren’t you? You’re from that rival company we ran into before-that-what was it called? 05-Opop something or other-”
“Gnits Division,” supplied her coworker.
“Yes, that’s the one.” The woman tilted her head and considered Rose and the Doctor. “You should know that it’s the official policy of the Yacs Ma Corporation that I should cease all communication with you and report you to my superiors.” She tightened her fingers around an electronic device attached to her belt, and then relaxed her grip. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter much now, does it?”
“Tarina don’t,” the man said between clenched teeth. “It’s against policy.”
“Oh, come off it. We break policy all the time.” The woman rolled her eyes at her coworker. “They’re all going to find out anyway.” She turned back to Rose. “It’s not that I blame you for snooping. I know you’re just doing your job. And it’s not as if you’re going to find us using some undercover tech. We’ve just got lots and lots of hours in tedious, thorough work. There’s no big secret-just toil and dedication. We have nothing to hide-our findings will go public as soon as we’re finished here. We’re geologists, not cooperate insiders.”
“We’re not cooperate insiders, either. We’re…” Rose looked back to see the Doctor giving her a wide grin. He always loved this part, watching Rose smooth out the situation. “We’re sort of freelancers, I suppose. We didn’t know there’d be a team here. Just having a look around, you know. On holiday.”
“And we fixed your handheld,” the Doctor added, holding out the small device. “No industrial espionage intended.”
After a moment the tension broke. The man reached forward and took back the handheld, a little more gratefully than he’d taken back his glasses. “Thanks for fixing it,” he said. “Please excuse me.” He walked a little ways away and started fiddling with the buttons.
The purple woman smiled invitingly. “My name is Tarina Cornelius-Feng, by the way. My distracted colleague is Jounnate Sasmira. Sorry if we came off a little… hostile. We didn’t think we’d come across anyone way out here-aside from our team, that is.”
The Doctor studied the rippling atmosphere, as if to determine the tent’s invisible size. “How many in your team?” he asked.
“Fifteen in the scientific team,” explained Tarina. “Another ten from Yacs Ma. There was a prep team, came out here about a year ago, started drilling down into the ice for closer observation. We don’t have a lot of people, but we manage to get on-give or take some attitudes.”
“Ah, so who’s the ogre?” Rose joked. “The one who likes to smash up phones?”
“Oh yes. That would be Professor Ussick. Doesn’t make a good impression does she? It’s a wonder we have investors at all with her heading up all our projects.” Tarina’s laugh showed more frustration than amusement. “She’s-well, you’ve noticed the yelling and the threats and the general hatefulness? That’s just her way.”
“Sounds delightful,” said the Doctor with a grin.
“Well, it’s more annoying than anything else. She’s not part of our team either, not really. The Yacs Ma Corporation put her in charge-it’s part of the stipulations for our funding. It’s… a trying experience. Ussick pushes us and stands over us night and day-as if we haven’t worked for years to get here-as if we weren’t all just as dedicated to this mission as she. We’ve all voluntarily given up our break times, and reduced our scheduled sleeping hours, just to get as much done on this project as we can. And yet, if one of us takes a phone call-even an important one-she’s jumping all over us and chucking our handhelds on the ice.”
At that moment the man-Jounnate-walked back into the conversation, a buoyancy in his manner that wasn’t there before. “Sorry about that. I had to take a call.”
“What’s so important that you risked your job?” Rose asked.
Jounnate smiled and flipped on his handheld. “My husband, Yom,” he said, pointing to the holographic projection. “He just called to tell me-he just found out-it’s twins. We’ve gone from a family of three to five. Six if you count our pet Frette, which we do, of course.”
“Congratulations!” Rose said, giving him a clap on the shoulder.
“I don’t know what to think,” Jounnate said with a nervous chuckle, his eyes dazed. “That’s two more than we were expecting-twice the work, twice the money-it’s terrifying, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my whole life. Yom says he feels like a beached whale-he says I wouldn’t believe the size of his ankles. He’s amazing-and I-I just-it’s just so completely-” He stopped and covered his mouth with his hands, letting out a nervous laugh.
“Overwhelming?” supplied the Doctor.
Jounnate nodded. “I wish I were home,” he whispered between his fingers, his smile obvious in his eyes. “I know I shouldn’t say that. I’ve spent a huge hunk of my life trying to get here, to study this place-but I can’t get back fast enough.”
His purple companion shook her head warily. “I’m glad for you-and I hate to sound like Professor Ussick-but don’t rush it, Big Daddy. We’ve all got to concentrate and buckle down.” Tarina sighed. “Soon, we’ll all be home, anyway. The company’s cut our funding-essentially terminated this project-and if we can’t get results in the next week… We were supposed to be here a year, and now they want results after five weeks.” She looked out to the frozen ocean with longing in her eyes. “I’ve worked for fourteen years to get here. We’ll never get this chance again.”
Rose smiled in commiseration, thinking back the trouble she went through to fund her Dimension Cannon-or rather the trouble her mother and Pete went through to keep the project funded. “I know how that goes.” She laced her fingers through her husband’s and squeezed.
The Doctor looked at her somewhat mystified, but pleased nonetheless. “What kind of study are you doing?” he asked.
“We’re trying to determine why the ocean froze-what else?” Tarina laughed. “But somehow I doubt we’ll be any more successful than the last team of scientists out here.”
Jounnate gave a dismissive snort. “But that was centuries ago-I mean, they thought the ocean was frozen all the way down to the sea floor. What a ridiculous notion! They might as well have chucked a rock at the place to determine its makeup, the technology has improved so much since then.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Tarina. “Our readings have been all over the map since we got here. It’s like the equipment’s got a mind of its own. It all makes no sense. There’s something strange going on at the planet’s core. I’d hoped to sort it out-but now it doesn’t look like we’ll have time.”
“What kind of equipment are you using?” the Doctor asked, his interest clearly piqued. “Is it sonic?”
While the Doctor and the scientists discussed virtues of sonic technology, Rose spotted something bizarre. Just for an instant, from the corner of her eye, she though she saw something flash from beneath the frozen waves. Curious, she slipped away from the conversation and walked further out to sea in the direction of the flash. However, as she climbed all around the area she didn’t see it again. She knelt down onto the ice and wiped at its cloudy surface with her hand, trying to somehow peer into the darkness below. The flash did not reappear.
Her detour had not escaped attention. “What are you looking for?” asked the Doctor as he led the scientists towards her.
“I thought I saw something-under the ice. It was just for a moment, but I’m pretty sure it was there.” She wiped at the ice with her hand again. “Is there anyway to get down there and look?”
“There’s a few holes drilled for observation, but they’re far away from here. The closest one’s up on the north point of the continent,” Tarina offered. “It won’t do you much good anyway. The ice goes down for miles. It’s probably just a bit of minerals stuck in the ice-I promise you, it’s nothing exciting or valuable.”
Rose considered that, but it didn’t feel right. “Yeah, but it flashed once, and I haven’t seen it again since. If it was just catching the light, then I could have found it again, right? I think it might be alive, whatever it is. A fish, maybe?” She grinned at the Doctor. “It could be something we haven’t seen before.”
Jounnate shook his head. “That’s impossible. There’s no life on this planet.”
Rose wasn’t about to give up so easily. “Well, but you said there’s water down there, yeah? It’s not frozen all the way down. It’s possible-I mean, who knows what might be at the bottom? Don’t you think it’s worth a look? It might be interesting.”
The Doctor nodded in support. “Where’s there’s water, there’s life-that’s how it usually goes.”
“Wanna check it out?” Rose asked, slipping forward on the ice.
The Doctor chuckled and grabbed her hand to help her up. “Allons-y!”
“But, even if there was something to see, you can’t get down there,” said Tarina in bewilderment. “There’s no way-not from here.”
Rose smiled. “Oh, we have a way.”
Letting out a laugh, Tarina shook her head and said, “You might be the strangest holiday-goers I’ve ever come across! Well, go for it, if you think you can. Far be it from me to stand in the way of exploration-I’ve devoted my life to it.”
They said their farewells to the scientists, and a soon as they were out of sight, Rose and the Doctor started to run. They ran all the way back to the TARDIS, hand in hand, leaving strange trails behind them in the frozen sand.
***
“They probably think we’re mad,” said the Doctor, gasping for breath.
“Aren’t we?” Rose laughed, leaning against the railing in the console room. “Oh, it felt wonderful to run. And that wasn’t even running for our lives!” She subtly flexed her muscles in the leg that had been broken so the Doctor couldn’t see. When they’d been running, she hadn’t even thought of her recently-healed injury; she’d been swept up in the joy of exertion. On impulse, she skipped across the room and kissed her husband.
“What was that for?” said the Doctor. He gave her a wide smile that made his eyes crinkle in the corners. She could feel his heart thrumming wildly in his chest, his face was still flushed from their run.
She nuzzled into his chest. “It’s nice, isn’t it? The running, the exploring, the adventures-doing it all together. There’s nothing better.” She closed her eyes in contentment and felt him kiss her temple.
He stepped back and pulled her towards the console. “Come on. We’re going to take the TARDIS underwater. And you’re going to pilot.”
Rose gave him a skeptical look. “Me?”
He wagged his eyebrows. “It’s your trip, remember? I’m just the passenger.” He got down on his knees and took apart one of the panels on the bottom of the console. “I’ll help, too,” he said before diving into the tangle of wires underneath.
“Can the TARDIS even go underwater?” Rose asked, leaning down to see where the Doctor disappeared into the technology.
“She should,” came the Doctor’s muffled reply. “I’ve just got to put a little more juice in her atmospheric shell.” He slid out to the floor and sat up. “You don’t need to blow dry your hair for a while, do you? Or translate obscure languages? Or put in a load of laundry? I transferred that energy into our shields.”
“I think I can live without a blow dryer for a few hours.” Rose helped him to his feet. “So, how does this work, then? Do we just materialize under the ice and have a look around?”
“Right in one.” The Doctor beamed. “With our extra-robust shields, the water and the pressure shouldn’t faze the TARDIS a bit. If we got it wrong… Well, we’ll know from the way water rushes through the door, and then we’ll just high-tail it out of there.”
Rose nodded. “And then dry off… everything. An inspired plan.”
“All right, so we’re not traveling through time. We just want to move about a mile to the northwest and down until we’re under the ice. What controls do you need to use?” The Doctor leaned back and rubbed his hands together.
Rose stepped to the console and made her best guesses. The Doctor shadowed behind her, praising her correct choices, and explaining her mistakes. When they’d finally sorted everything out, he let her flip the lever to start the materialization. They watched on the monitor as the rosy sunset faded from view and was replaced with the faint blue light filtered down through the vast frozen waves.
The Doctor hovered by the reversal switch, his shoulders tense, but when no water poured through the Police Box doors, he relaxed his stance.
“Underwater TARDIS,” Rose said with an excited grin.
“Underwater TARDIS,” echoed the Doctor. “Looks like it worked just fine-”
At that moment, the TARDIS shuddered and pitched to the side, throwing its passengers across the room. An eerie creaking came from the sides of the ship.
“Woah,” murmured the Doctor from the floor. He gently stroked the grating. “It’s okay.”
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked, picking herself up, looking for either water or fire. “Is she-is it like before? Are we stranded?”
“No, it’s not that-at least, I don’t think so.” The Doctor turned to give her a preoccupied look. “I think she-well, I think she’s scared.”
Rose blinked. “Scared?” Could the ship even feel emotions yet? “The TARDIS has seen much worse than this-”
“Yes, but remember that she’s a space ship. I think she doesn’t like being underwater.” He leaned down and began whispering sweet nothings to the floor.
Feeling like she needed to do something, Rose started to pat the walls of the ship. In the back of her brain she felt a slight trembling. “Don’t worry,” she said in the same kind of voice she used to soothe Tony. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
After a moment, the TARDIS seemed to compose herself-or at least Rose hoped that she’d composed herself. The trembling in the back of her mind seemed to subside, but Rose wasn’t sure that she hadn’t imagined it. A moment later, Rose felt silly when she realized that one of the stabilizer levers had come loose, and that’s what was causing the trembling.
Beside her, the Doctor was climbing back to his feet and tightening the bolts on either side of the loose lever. “Well, since we’re already here, it seems a waste not to take a peek outside.”
They opened the doors to darkness. Their eyes adjusted, but even then they could only perceive a glimmer of light from above, casting the water in a dim blue hue no brighter than starlight.
“How stark and… dark.” The Doctor leaned as far out the doors as he dared, looking up. “Can’t even see the ice-not really. Let me see if I can find some lights-” He dashed back inside the TARDIS.
Without her husband’s chatter there was nothing but the sound of water slowly churning around their atmospheric shell, but then she heard a soft noise in addition to the moving water. “Do you hear that?” Rose asked when the Doctor returned with two spotlights from the spare parts room tucked up under his arms. “That static sound? Can you hear it?”
“Yeah, I do, yeah,” he muttered distractedly. He turned on the blindingly bright spotlight and pointed out into the dark water. “Ah, there’s the ice. You know, I don’t think it’s as deep here as our scientists seemed to think.”
Rose took hold of her spotlight. “Changes the look of things, doesn’t it?” She crossed her light with his and grinned at him.
He bumped his shoulder against hers in the doorframe. “Now that we can see, maybe we can find what you saw up on the shore-or at least what’s making that noise.”
They looked all around them, but couldn’t find anything, so the Doctor moved the TARDIS, little by little, as they searched the empty water. The sound became very loud, but still they saw nothing. They drifted a bit to the right, trying to spot the source of the noise. However, the sound only got fainter as they moved, so they repositioned the TARDIS back to where the static was loudest.
“Bizarre,” mumbled the Doctor, running his hand through his hair. “Do you think it might have been a sonic anomaly? Let me go check if the-” He wandered back into the ship without finishing his thought.
Rose pointed her light at the dim blue world outside the TARDIS doors, about to give up her search, when suddenly in the corner of her eye she saw another flash. This one was much, much clearer than the flash she thought she’d seen from the surface. Knowing for sure that something was there, she turned her spotlight and scoured the edge of the ice.
Finally, she spotted something small, nearly-transparent, and gelatinous-looking hovering near the edge of the ice.
“Doctor! Doctor, look!” she called over her shoulder.
He came to the door and Rose pointed out the small translucent blob. He gave a sharp nod and again sprinted away. “Let me make a containment field-I think it will work for something that small. Besides, we don’t know what would happen to it without the water pressure,” he said hurriedly from the console room. “There, that should do it. Now we’ll bring it in.”
Rose watched as a spherical shell formed over the object and it started to move towards the TARDIS. After a few tries, she was able to reach out and pull the object into her arms. The containment field felt cold and tingly against her skin. She set it down near the console and the static was louder than ever. Rose held her hands over her ears.
“Well, at least we know what was making that noise,” the Doctor shouted over the din. “Now, let’s see if we can figure out why.”
“This is what I saw up on the surface, too,” Rose bellowed back. “It’s like it’s calling to me.” She walked back towards the blob inside the bubble, and sensed a residual tingle across her skin that had nothing to do with the containment field. She felt like she was on the right track. Perhaps this little blob was calling to her. “Oh!” she cried. “Doctor, what if it’s a message?”
He looked at her like she was the most extraordinary person in the world, his face split in a satisfied smile. “And I’ve got the translator circuits turned off! Of course!” Without a pause, he dashed back under the console. “Of course, it’s strange that it’s static-we should hear the native language-of course, its native language might sound like static-well, I say static-but even that doesn’t make sense-unless it’s telepathic, like the Skimmymars-or maybe-”
The Doctor continued jabbering away beneath the console, but Rose only heard a few words here and there over the static. He must have found a way to bring the translation back because suddenly the static stopped. She turned to congratulate her husband, but then the high clear voice of a child sounded through the TARDIS. The terror in this child’s voice made her stop in her tracks.
“PLEASE, PLEASE HELP US. SOMEONE. ANYONE. THE WORLD IS ENDING AND I’M SCARED. I’M SO SCARED. I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE MY FRIENDS. WE’RE SO WEAK AND SO MANY ARE DEAD. PLEASE COME. SAVE US. PLEASE.”
Rose and the Doctor turned to look at one another, their smiles wiped completely from their faces.
Author: wotcher_wombat
Pairing: Ten II/Rose
Summary: Rose decides to take the Doctor on an adventure, and they wind up someplace very familiar.
Rating: PG
A/N: Thanks to Debbie for the beta and Lisa for the science-y advice. Also thanks to shinyopals for the britpickery and her endless patience.
Episode 14 of the the_altverse following The Taste of Fear.
Virtual Series Masterlist
It was too important not to work. The child had spent too much time-poured his literal life’s blood into this message. He refused to believe that it was futile. The elders didn’t believe in miracles, of course. They said there was no one to save them. They said there was no point in trying. But the boy couldn’t give up hope. Surely someone out there must be able to help. He clutched the message tighter with his cloaked tentacles, holding it very near his beak to mask its oscillating glow.
With great trepidation, the boy passed through dark water, his wide, pale eyes searching for any signs that he was being followed. He swam over the abandoned crustacean farm, through the empty shells where a grove of tube worms had once thrived, and across the frigid current from the western water. He looked away as he crossed the bone-white remains of the coral gardens where he’d played in happier times. He’d found many peers there-his best friend, a pretty girl, a bully. They were dead now, of course, like so many others. He tried not to think of their picked-over remains lying somewhere beneath him in the ooze of the ocean floor. He refused to consider that his body might soon rest beside them.
Once clear of the village and in total darkness, he began a steep ascension. He swam on with nothing to guide him save his increasing dizziness as the water pressure lessened. Many times he had the uneasy feeling that large and strange creatures were moving around him in the dark water, and he though he trembled with fear, he did not stop. He swam until the pain was crippling, his body swollen, his pulse erratic. Then he pushed himself further.
At last an extraordinary sight unfolded above him, and the boy stared in wonder. Everyone at home said it was impossible; there was nothing but darkness in the world. All his life he’d been told that their isolated community was surrounded by miles and miles of nothingness-dark water stretching on forever-and every time he’d said otherwise he was shut down by the elders. Now, here at the farthest distance anyone in his world had ever traveled, he looked up to see the faintest glimmer of light filtering down through a fathomless stretch of water. He’d never seen anything so beautiful.
Carefully, he pulled out the message and looked at it with reverence. Running his tentacles over it one last time, he struggled to control his emotions. Everything depended on this message. Everything. He released it into the water, watching it float toward the light with a desperate joy in his heart.
He could never tell the elders what he’d done, of course. If they believed him at all, they would scold him and tell him it was pointless. They were resigned to their fate in a way that he could never be. He was simply too young to wait patiently for a slow, agonizing death. Let the others face the end with composure and dignity. Let them live in their darkness. He would fight. He would hope.
The message floated upwards into strange, unknown seas while the boy sank back into the darkness below.
***
The Doctor was playing, and it was making Rose woozy.
“Excellent!” he cried as the TARDIS dipped and hurled around a small asteroid. “But can you do… this?” He made a mad dash across the console and slammed down on a lever, causing the ship to rocket upwards. “Ah! Molto bene!” he said in delight. “See what I’m doing, Rose? I’m using all the directional thrusters at once, but I’m giving seventy-five percent more power to the upward thrusters-that’s what really gives her a kick-don’t you think?”
“Mhmm,” she grunted with a weak nod.
If Rose weren’t already seated and clutching the side of an open roundel with a white-knuckled grip, she would have toppled to the floor as the Doctor sent the TARDIS into a dizzying spiral. She heard a crash from the kitchen, and suspected they’d find their dishes all over the floor. “How much more of this?” she asked. “Are you going to break all our stuff just because you want to trip up the TARDIS?”
“Eh, we’ll get new stuff-better stuff-alien stuff! Your mother will love that!” said the Doctor. He gave her a manic grin, and then made the TARDIS plummet. “I’m just putting her through her paces. It’s good exercise! You never know when quick maneuvering will come in handy. Like, say, yesterday on our trip to Volney Five-we could have been ambushed by their carnivorous ground squirrels-don’t laugh, it could happen! Did you know I once had to fly the TARDIS over a motorway to rescue Donna Noble from Santa Claus? Well-I say Santa Claus-”
Rose smiled fondly as her husband babbled on, then let out a shriek of laughter as her body rose from the chair in momentary weightlessness. Even when feeling slightly motion-sick, even after enduring explosions and grueling recoveries, she could always see the joy in this mad, dangerous life she’d chosen.
“Aha!” the Doctor said, bending down to peer under the console. “Gravity boosters should have been able to handle that! I’ll have to give it a look-have you seen my boost-diagnostic-thing?”
“You mean the one you made out of our microwave?” she replied with an arch look. “It’s still in the kitchen-next to the mini pizzas I can’t make.”
He gave her an almost-apologetic smile, and stopped to kiss the top of her head as he passed her on the way to the kitchen. “Fear not. Maybe we’ll wake up tomorrow and the TARDIS will have added a real oven?” he called over his shoulder.
Rose snorted. That wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. While the TARDIS had quickly added a laundry room shortly after they’d first moved in, there hadn’t been many developments since then. The Doctor was content to wait patiently for a library to appear, but Rose had a feeling he’d be waiting for a while. After being stranded in the middle of nowhere and with the looming fear that someone was tampering with the ship, she had a different appreciation for the comforts the TARDIS did manage to provide. Sometimes it seemed greedy to hope for more.
On the other hand, her wardrobe had seemed a smidge roomier this morning, just as the Doctor had been claiming for weeks. She should give credit where it was due. With a sheepish look around the console room, Rose tried not to feel silly as she whispered, “Keep up the good work. You’re amazing.”
The old TARDIS would have practically trilled at the praise, but this one gave no such obvious response. Rose could still sense it, though. It was only subtle niggling at the back of her brain-barely more than her imagination-but it was definitely there, alive, and vital. She had to believe in it to even feel the sensation, and that made it all the more precious.
Without her husband at the controls, the TARDIS drifted serenely across space. Rose stood up, relaxed her grip on the roundel, and went to inspect the monitors. They definitely weren’t in the Vortex, she was certain of that. A cursory glance at the surrounding planetary systems told her she wasn’t remotely near Earth, but that was all she could tell. She studied a symbol on the corner of the screen, and after several minutes of scrutiny, she decided that it looked vaguely like one the Doctor had pointed out as meaning, among other things, “far future.” Rose knew the symbol indicated far more intricacies that that, but couldn’t guess at the rest of its meanings. In her brief lessons about Gallifreyan she’d learned one thing for sure: the language was bloody difficult.
She waited for the Doctor to return from the kitchen, but when he didn’t come back, she figured he’d gotten distracted by a detour to the spare parts cupboard. Time passed, and Rose started to get restless. They’d been working on the TARDIS for a while now, and while she appreciated the lessons, it was time for something different. Wanderlust was stirring in her heart, and she wanted to explore something, get into trouble, and run for her life. The lighter, safer trips the Doctor had taken her on since her leg healed were nice, but Rose missed their real adventures. She wondered what strange and mysterious planets were around them and what promises these worlds held.
One day, when she could fly the TARDIS on her own, she would take the Doctor to new exciting places. She would plan and surprise him on anniversaries, open the doors and play tour guide for a while, and maybe she could find something so amazing that it would render even her husband speechless. She would probably get it wrong just as often as he, but even so, she would appreciate the symmetry in their mistakes. She smiled as several pleasant fantasies flashed through her mind. She couldn’t wait.
An idea hit Rose like a snap of static electricity. Even if she couldn’t fully operate the TARDIS, the Doctor had given her a way to move it without his help. Suddenly frantic, she looked through a stack of parts and papers beside the console until she found a small stack of disks designed to let her take the TARDIS to three specific locations.
She’d been wary of these disks when the Doctor had first brought up the idea. It seemed too much like one of his emergency protocols, and her first instinct was to recoil. The Doctor had given them to her quite skittishly, and she didn’t say much in return. However, the more she thought about it, the more she appreciated the agency these disks would give her on the TARDIS. She wouldn’t be stranded, or trapped without options. She would never face a situation like the one in Alexandria again. It wasn’t like the emergency protocols; these disks gave Rose a real choice.
The first disk was programmed to bring her back to 21st Century Earth, but she had no interest in going back home so soon and tossed it back into the pile. The second disk, designed to simply reverse to the last place the TARDIS had landed, went back to the pile as well. She held the third disk carefully and watched the stark white light of the console room shine off its metallic surface. This one would take her directly to the nearest planet. A whole new realm of possibilities opened up. This disk wasn’t just for emergencies, it was also for fun.
Having no idea which planet was nearest, Rose couldn’t possibly study up on the place enough to play tour guide. She couldn’t plan ahead. She couldn’t know where they might land. However, she could surprise the Doctor.
She popped the disk into the console, and after a moment’s hesitation, the TARDIS began to dematerialize. No explosions so far, no power outages, no emergency phone calls. Rose started to laugh out loud.
“What’s going on?” the Doctor yelled, skidding into the console room with an odd assortment of alien whatnots draped over his arms and twined around his torso. “Why are we moving? She shouldn’t take off like that on her own, it-”
He ran to the console with a look of pure panic, but Rose intercepted him with a kiss. “Relax. I thought I’d take her for a spin, yeah?”
“You… what?” He gave her a look that was part skeptical, part wondering. “You haven’t looked into her heart or-or-”
She laughed and started to disentangle the Doctor from the alien whatnots. “No, silly. I used one of the disks you made me. Hold still and let me get this stuff off you.”
“You used a disk?” The Doctor was suddenly very still, and when he spoke, his voice was careful. “I thought-well-I thought you weren’t too keen on the idea.”
Rose unwound the last cord from his torso and replaced it with her arms. “You thought wrong,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “I’m taking you on an adventure. Nearest planet, here we come!”
The TARDIS finished landing, and the Doctor gave an appraising look to the wooden doors. “We’re here,” he said, setting down the last of the spare parts. He scratched the back of his neck and turned to Rose. “You didn’t happen to take note of which planet was closest back there, did you?”
“Nope.” She popped the “p” in imitation of him.
“So, no idea what’s out there?”
“Not a clue.”
“There could be anything on the other side of those doors, then?”
She grinned in a slightly teasing way, sticking her tongue between her teeth and knocking her hip against his. “Anything at all. Sort of like Planet Roulette.”
The Doctor gave her a smile, looking like a kid about to pilfer a candy shop. “You’re brilliant,” he whispered, and pulled her close for a kiss that was slightly sloppy around the edges.
Breaking away with giddy laughter, Rose grasped her husband’s hand and pulled him out into the world.
***
They burst through the doors of the TARDIS and onto a familiar beach scene.
“Oh wow, does this take me back,” muttered the Doctor as he raked his fingers through his hair. “This was a great idea!”
Rose took a step past him, catching her breath in the frigid air. The late afternoon sun cast the shore in a pinkish light, a little too rosy to match any sunset on earth, and the barren landscape seemed stark, strange and beautiful. However, the shore was nothing compared to the sea. Stretching out into the distance, the ocean stood majestically still, its dark waves transformed into solid ice, the turmoil of the heart of a storm frozen in an instant. “Woman Wept,” she whispered. “Oh no.”
“What’s wrong? Still amazing, isn’t it?” the Doctor asked. He turned to her with a worried expression. “Not as good as you remembered?”
She smiled apologetically. “No, it’s not that. I was just hoping to take you somewhere new.”
He shrugged. “New planet, new universe. It still counts.”
“No it doesn’t.” She shook her head sadly. “Been there, done that. You already know everything about it.”
“I do not-” the Doctor started.
Rose smiled and adopted a more teasing tone. “Yes you do. You told me so yourself. You also said that you were much more impressive than Captain Jack, and then you might have called me a stupid ape.”
“Slander! I most certainly did not!” the Doctor protested. “I may have had some choice words about Jack, but not you-not on that trip.”
She laughed, and the wind made an eerie moaning echo as it whipped around the frozen waves. “Yeah, but even so, this can’t be exciting for you.” Rose sighed. She should have known it was a daft idea, trying to show him new planets when he’d already seen so many of them. What was the point of exploring a place they’d already been? She started to shiver in the cold.
“Eh, but that was lifetimes ago,” the Doctor said, failing to sound nonchalant. “I was a different man back then. I may have forgotten all that. Regeneration’s a dodgy process, you know. And metacrisis… well…” He scratched the back of his neck.
She felt the corners of her lips pulling up into an involuntary smile. “You liar.”
“Come on, now.” He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her. Rose was glad for the warmth. “I’m a new man, on a new shore. And since you know so much about this place, why don’t you tell me a bit about it?”
Rose grinned. “Are you saying you want a tour guide?”
“Nothing would delight me more.” He tightened his arms around her.
“Well, if you must know,” Rose began, a faux-smugness creeping into her tone. “We’re on a planet called Woman Wept-”
“Fascinating!” His smile was apparent even in his voice. “Why’s it called that?”
“Oh, a great reason. This bit of land here, when you see it from up above, it looks like a woman who’s crying.”
“Marvelous! Tell me, tour guide, why are the waves frozen?”
Rose blinked and turned her head to look at her husband. “But you said-before-you said that no one knew why it froze. It was a scientific anomaly.”
“Hmm,” he sighed, burying his face into her hair. “Make it up,” he murmured in her ear. “The tourists will never know.”
Rose’s heart started to beat faster, and she improvised wildly. “Legends say that long ago, there was this woman, yeah? She wept because she was kept apart from her the person she loved, separated by all these obstacles. People said they couldn’t be together-said it was impossible-but the woman wouldn’t give up. They said the lovers wouldn’t be together again until-until hell froze over and reality fell apart around them. So, she built a device that would freeze hell, only it froze the whole planet in an instant.”
The Doctor chuckled. Rose was so close to him that she could feel the reverberations all along her back. It made her shiver, not with cold, but with delight. “So, are we supposed to assume that Hell was located on Woman Wept all along?” he asked.
She stuck her tongue out at him, though she knew he couldn’t see it from his angle. “It’s a legend. The stories don’t always make sense.”
“What happened to the woman?”
Rose gave it a moment’s thought. “She was frozen, too. She waits, undisturbed and unknowing of the centuries passing around her. One day, when this planet sees its final hours, she will awaken and will finally reunite with her lover as reality falls apart around them. But they won’t care, because they’ll have each other.”
He kissed the nape of her neck. “That’s quite sad, really.”
“But they’re together in the end, yeah? That’s what really matters. Besides, it’s a planet called Woman Wept. Its stories are going to be sad, Doctor.”
“True.” He sighed again, his tone far more somber than she would like.
“Maybe they’ll escape at the last minute,” she added. “Maybe we’ll swing by and pick them up on the TARDIS. Who knows what will happen.”
“Ha! I like that ending.” He rubbed Rose’s arms as another cold gust of wind caused her to tremble.
“Right,” she said as her teeth started chattering. “I’m going to pop back into the TARDIS, so you won’t be the only one with a coat, and then we’ve got a lot of sight-seeing to do.”
He released his hold on her, and gave a joking bow. “Don’t argue with the designated driver-and tour guide as the case may be.”
Now clad in much warmer apparel, Rose led the Doctor down the shore, swinging their clasped hands between them. She told him every fact she could remember from their first trip so many years ago, gesturing to several points of interest along the way. The Doctor would occasionally pepper her with questions, and when Rose didn’t know the answer, she would make up something ridiculous. She had a feeling that the Doctor liked the fake answers much better than the facts.
“And, of course, the sunset here is so pink because this particular sun is made of a compound that’s similar to pink lemonade,” she invented with a snicker.
“Sounds accurate enough,” said the Doctor. “You know, there’s a planet where the entire atmosphere smells like raspberries because its sun has a-” He shot her the briefest of wary glances and broke off. “Sorry. Your trip. I’ll stop talking and just enjoy the sights like a good companion.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “You can talk all you like, Doctor. And since when did a good companion merely enjoy the sights?”
He laughed at that. “So you’re saying that if I wander off and get in trouble, you’ll come swooping in to rescue me?”
“Always do, don’t I?” She winked and was about to lead them onto the water, when an unexpected commotion pulled their attention back to the barren landscape.
At first glance, there was nothing on the land at all save a handful of large, jagged rocks along the shoreline. On closer inspection, though, part of the atmosphere seemed to ripple up from the ground like a haze. Suddenly, a portion of the sky and horizon peeled back like a tent flap as a rather tall, overbearing woman stepped forward and flung an electronic device out towards the frozen sea. There was a faint crack when it smashed against the ice.
Even from a distance, Rose could clearly hear this woman’s shouting. “If I ever catch any of you making personal calls on company time again, it’ll be a lot worse than a broken handheld. Do you hear me?” With that, the woman let the flap back down and disappeared into the horizon, leaving nothing but a nearly imperceptible shimmer in the air behind her.
“Well, that wasn’t here before-well, on the other Woman Wept, that is. Want to give it a closer look?” The Doctor turned to grin at Rose, but she was already halfway out to sea.
“Looks like some kind of video phone,” Rose called over her shoulder as she skidded down an icy wave to look at the thrown electronic device. “It’s smashed to bits, though. Think you could fix it, Doctor?”
“Possibly.” He slipped down to join her and gave the pieces a good inspection. “Definitely,” he amended, pulling out his sonic screwdriver and setting to work.
Rose looked back to the slightly undulating portion of the shoreline. “What do you reckon that was-a portal of some sort?” she wondered aloud.
The Doctor glanced back to the place where the shouting woman had disappeared. “Nah, I’d say it’s something physically here. Looked like a tent under a shimmer.”
Rose considered going back to shore and exploring while the Doctor worked, but a few minutes later a pair of people came sneaking out of the invisible tent. A woman with violently purple skin pulled forward a lanky, bespectacled man. The approached Rose and the Doctor, but apparently couldn’t see them amongst the frozen waves.
“We shouldn’t-what would Ussick do if she found us out here?” whispered the man as they walked further out to sea.
“What else could she possibly do to us?” said the woman. She tied back her curly hair at the nape of her neck. “Come on, I said I’d help you look. Did you see which way she threw it-Oh!” The woman jumped back as she spotted Rose and the Doctor for the first time.
“Who are you? And what do you think you’re doing here?” demanded the man. He puffed up his chest and tried to stand at his full stature-an effect that was ruined when his glasses slipped off his nose and he had to scramble around to find them on the ice.
Rose tried to give the pair a winning smile. “Hello! I’m Rose, this is the Doctor.” She gestured back to her husband, but he was still bent over the broken device. “We’re just taking in the sights. Traveling through. You know how it is.” She reached down and picked up the man’s glasses and offered them back to him.
The man looked a bit bewildered, and snatched back his spectacles with a huff.
The woman narrowed her eyes. “You’re scouts aren’t you? You’re from that rival company we ran into before-that-what was it called? 05-Opop something or other-”
“Gnits Division,” supplied her coworker.
“Yes, that’s the one.” The woman tilted her head and considered Rose and the Doctor. “You should know that it’s the official policy of the Yacs Ma Corporation that I should cease all communication with you and report you to my superiors.” She tightened her fingers around an electronic device attached to her belt, and then relaxed her grip. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter much now, does it?”
“Tarina don’t,” the man said between clenched teeth. “It’s against policy.”
“Oh, come off it. We break policy all the time.” The woman rolled her eyes at her coworker. “They’re all going to find out anyway.” She turned back to Rose. “It’s not that I blame you for snooping. I know you’re just doing your job. And it’s not as if you’re going to find us using some undercover tech. We’ve just got lots and lots of hours in tedious, thorough work. There’s no big secret-just toil and dedication. We have nothing to hide-our findings will go public as soon as we’re finished here. We’re geologists, not cooperate insiders.”
“We’re not cooperate insiders, either. We’re…” Rose looked back to see the Doctor giving her a wide grin. He always loved this part, watching Rose smooth out the situation. “We’re sort of freelancers, I suppose. We didn’t know there’d be a team here. Just having a look around, you know. On holiday.”
“And we fixed your handheld,” the Doctor added, holding out the small device. “No industrial espionage intended.”
After a moment the tension broke. The man reached forward and took back the handheld, a little more gratefully than he’d taken back his glasses. “Thanks for fixing it,” he said. “Please excuse me.” He walked a little ways away and started fiddling with the buttons.
The purple woman smiled invitingly. “My name is Tarina Cornelius-Feng, by the way. My distracted colleague is Jounnate Sasmira. Sorry if we came off a little… hostile. We didn’t think we’d come across anyone way out here-aside from our team, that is.”
The Doctor studied the rippling atmosphere, as if to determine the tent’s invisible size. “How many in your team?” he asked.
“Fifteen in the scientific team,” explained Tarina. “Another ten from Yacs Ma. There was a prep team, came out here about a year ago, started drilling down into the ice for closer observation. We don’t have a lot of people, but we manage to get on-give or take some attitudes.”
“Ah, so who’s the ogre?” Rose joked. “The one who likes to smash up phones?”
“Oh yes. That would be Professor Ussick. Doesn’t make a good impression does she? It’s a wonder we have investors at all with her heading up all our projects.” Tarina’s laugh showed more frustration than amusement. “She’s-well, you’ve noticed the yelling and the threats and the general hatefulness? That’s just her way.”
“Sounds delightful,” said the Doctor with a grin.
“Well, it’s more annoying than anything else. She’s not part of our team either, not really. The Yacs Ma Corporation put her in charge-it’s part of the stipulations for our funding. It’s… a trying experience. Ussick pushes us and stands over us night and day-as if we haven’t worked for years to get here-as if we weren’t all just as dedicated to this mission as she. We’ve all voluntarily given up our break times, and reduced our scheduled sleeping hours, just to get as much done on this project as we can. And yet, if one of us takes a phone call-even an important one-she’s jumping all over us and chucking our handhelds on the ice.”
At that moment the man-Jounnate-walked back into the conversation, a buoyancy in his manner that wasn’t there before. “Sorry about that. I had to take a call.”
“What’s so important that you risked your job?” Rose asked.
Jounnate smiled and flipped on his handheld. “My husband, Yom,” he said, pointing to the holographic projection. “He just called to tell me-he just found out-it’s twins. We’ve gone from a family of three to five. Six if you count our pet Frette, which we do, of course.”
“Congratulations!” Rose said, giving him a clap on the shoulder.
“I don’t know what to think,” Jounnate said with a nervous chuckle, his eyes dazed. “That’s two more than we were expecting-twice the work, twice the money-it’s terrifying, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my whole life. Yom says he feels like a beached whale-he says I wouldn’t believe the size of his ankles. He’s amazing-and I-I just-it’s just so completely-” He stopped and covered his mouth with his hands, letting out a nervous laugh.
“Overwhelming?” supplied the Doctor.
Jounnate nodded. “I wish I were home,” he whispered between his fingers, his smile obvious in his eyes. “I know I shouldn’t say that. I’ve spent a huge hunk of my life trying to get here, to study this place-but I can’t get back fast enough.”
His purple companion shook her head warily. “I’m glad for you-and I hate to sound like Professor Ussick-but don’t rush it, Big Daddy. We’ve all got to concentrate and buckle down.” Tarina sighed. “Soon, we’ll all be home, anyway. The company’s cut our funding-essentially terminated this project-and if we can’t get results in the next week… We were supposed to be here a year, and now they want results after five weeks.” She looked out to the frozen ocean with longing in her eyes. “I’ve worked for fourteen years to get here. We’ll never get this chance again.”
Rose smiled in commiseration, thinking back the trouble she went through to fund her Dimension Cannon-or rather the trouble her mother and Pete went through to keep the project funded. “I know how that goes.” She laced her fingers through her husband’s and squeezed.
The Doctor looked at her somewhat mystified, but pleased nonetheless. “What kind of study are you doing?” he asked.
“We’re trying to determine why the ocean froze-what else?” Tarina laughed. “But somehow I doubt we’ll be any more successful than the last team of scientists out here.”
Jounnate gave a dismissive snort. “But that was centuries ago-I mean, they thought the ocean was frozen all the way down to the sea floor. What a ridiculous notion! They might as well have chucked a rock at the place to determine its makeup, the technology has improved so much since then.”
“I don’t know about that,” replied Tarina. “Our readings have been all over the map since we got here. It’s like the equipment’s got a mind of its own. It all makes no sense. There’s something strange going on at the planet’s core. I’d hoped to sort it out-but now it doesn’t look like we’ll have time.”
“What kind of equipment are you using?” the Doctor asked, his interest clearly piqued. “Is it sonic?”
While the Doctor and the scientists discussed virtues of sonic technology, Rose spotted something bizarre. Just for an instant, from the corner of her eye, she though she saw something flash from beneath the frozen waves. Curious, she slipped away from the conversation and walked further out to sea in the direction of the flash. However, as she climbed all around the area she didn’t see it again. She knelt down onto the ice and wiped at its cloudy surface with her hand, trying to somehow peer into the darkness below. The flash did not reappear.
Her detour had not escaped attention. “What are you looking for?” asked the Doctor as he led the scientists towards her.
“I thought I saw something-under the ice. It was just for a moment, but I’m pretty sure it was there.” She wiped at the ice with her hand again. “Is there anyway to get down there and look?”
“There’s a few holes drilled for observation, but they’re far away from here. The closest one’s up on the north point of the continent,” Tarina offered. “It won’t do you much good anyway. The ice goes down for miles. It’s probably just a bit of minerals stuck in the ice-I promise you, it’s nothing exciting or valuable.”
Rose considered that, but it didn’t feel right. “Yeah, but it flashed once, and I haven’t seen it again since. If it was just catching the light, then I could have found it again, right? I think it might be alive, whatever it is. A fish, maybe?” She grinned at the Doctor. “It could be something we haven’t seen before.”
Jounnate shook his head. “That’s impossible. There’s no life on this planet.”
Rose wasn’t about to give up so easily. “Well, but you said there’s water down there, yeah? It’s not frozen all the way down. It’s possible-I mean, who knows what might be at the bottom? Don’t you think it’s worth a look? It might be interesting.”
The Doctor nodded in support. “Where’s there’s water, there’s life-that’s how it usually goes.”
“Wanna check it out?” Rose asked, slipping forward on the ice.
The Doctor chuckled and grabbed her hand to help her up. “Allons-y!”
“But, even if there was something to see, you can’t get down there,” said Tarina in bewilderment. “There’s no way-not from here.”
Rose smiled. “Oh, we have a way.”
Letting out a laugh, Tarina shook her head and said, “You might be the strangest holiday-goers I’ve ever come across! Well, go for it, if you think you can. Far be it from me to stand in the way of exploration-I’ve devoted my life to it.”
They said their farewells to the scientists, and a soon as they were out of sight, Rose and the Doctor started to run. They ran all the way back to the TARDIS, hand in hand, leaving strange trails behind them in the frozen sand.
***
“They probably think we’re mad,” said the Doctor, gasping for breath.
“Aren’t we?” Rose laughed, leaning against the railing in the console room. “Oh, it felt wonderful to run. And that wasn’t even running for our lives!” She subtly flexed her muscles in the leg that had been broken so the Doctor couldn’t see. When they’d been running, she hadn’t even thought of her recently-healed injury; she’d been swept up in the joy of exertion. On impulse, she skipped across the room and kissed her husband.
“What was that for?” said the Doctor. He gave her a wide smile that made his eyes crinkle in the corners. She could feel his heart thrumming wildly in his chest, his face was still flushed from their run.
She nuzzled into his chest. “It’s nice, isn’t it? The running, the exploring, the adventures-doing it all together. There’s nothing better.” She closed her eyes in contentment and felt him kiss her temple.
He stepped back and pulled her towards the console. “Come on. We’re going to take the TARDIS underwater. And you’re going to pilot.”
Rose gave him a skeptical look. “Me?”
He wagged his eyebrows. “It’s your trip, remember? I’m just the passenger.” He got down on his knees and took apart one of the panels on the bottom of the console. “I’ll help, too,” he said before diving into the tangle of wires underneath.
“Can the TARDIS even go underwater?” Rose asked, leaning down to see where the Doctor disappeared into the technology.
“She should,” came the Doctor’s muffled reply. “I’ve just got to put a little more juice in her atmospheric shell.” He slid out to the floor and sat up. “You don’t need to blow dry your hair for a while, do you? Or translate obscure languages? Or put in a load of laundry? I transferred that energy into our shields.”
“I think I can live without a blow dryer for a few hours.” Rose helped him to his feet. “So, how does this work, then? Do we just materialize under the ice and have a look around?”
“Right in one.” The Doctor beamed. “With our extra-robust shields, the water and the pressure shouldn’t faze the TARDIS a bit. If we got it wrong… Well, we’ll know from the way water rushes through the door, and then we’ll just high-tail it out of there.”
Rose nodded. “And then dry off… everything. An inspired plan.”
“All right, so we’re not traveling through time. We just want to move about a mile to the northwest and down until we’re under the ice. What controls do you need to use?” The Doctor leaned back and rubbed his hands together.
Rose stepped to the console and made her best guesses. The Doctor shadowed behind her, praising her correct choices, and explaining her mistakes. When they’d finally sorted everything out, he let her flip the lever to start the materialization. They watched on the monitor as the rosy sunset faded from view and was replaced with the faint blue light filtered down through the vast frozen waves.
The Doctor hovered by the reversal switch, his shoulders tense, but when no water poured through the Police Box doors, he relaxed his stance.
“Underwater TARDIS,” Rose said with an excited grin.
“Underwater TARDIS,” echoed the Doctor. “Looks like it worked just fine-”
At that moment, the TARDIS shuddered and pitched to the side, throwing its passengers across the room. An eerie creaking came from the sides of the ship.
“Woah,” murmured the Doctor from the floor. He gently stroked the grating. “It’s okay.”
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked, picking herself up, looking for either water or fire. “Is she-is it like before? Are we stranded?”
“No, it’s not that-at least, I don’t think so.” The Doctor turned to give her a preoccupied look. “I think she-well, I think she’s scared.”
Rose blinked. “Scared?” Could the ship even feel emotions yet? “The TARDIS has seen much worse than this-”
“Yes, but remember that she’s a space ship. I think she doesn’t like being underwater.” He leaned down and began whispering sweet nothings to the floor.
Feeling like she needed to do something, Rose started to pat the walls of the ship. In the back of her brain she felt a slight trembling. “Don’t worry,” she said in the same kind of voice she used to soothe Tony. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”
After a moment, the TARDIS seemed to compose herself-or at least Rose hoped that she’d composed herself. The trembling in the back of her mind seemed to subside, but Rose wasn’t sure that she hadn’t imagined it. A moment later, Rose felt silly when she realized that one of the stabilizer levers had come loose, and that’s what was causing the trembling.
Beside her, the Doctor was climbing back to his feet and tightening the bolts on either side of the loose lever. “Well, since we’re already here, it seems a waste not to take a peek outside.”
They opened the doors to darkness. Their eyes adjusted, but even then they could only perceive a glimmer of light from above, casting the water in a dim blue hue no brighter than starlight.
“How stark and… dark.” The Doctor leaned as far out the doors as he dared, looking up. “Can’t even see the ice-not really. Let me see if I can find some lights-” He dashed back inside the TARDIS.
Without her husband’s chatter there was nothing but the sound of water slowly churning around their atmospheric shell, but then she heard a soft noise in addition to the moving water. “Do you hear that?” Rose asked when the Doctor returned with two spotlights from the spare parts room tucked up under his arms. “That static sound? Can you hear it?”
“Yeah, I do, yeah,” he muttered distractedly. He turned on the blindingly bright spotlight and pointed out into the dark water. “Ah, there’s the ice. You know, I don’t think it’s as deep here as our scientists seemed to think.”
Rose took hold of her spotlight. “Changes the look of things, doesn’t it?” She crossed her light with his and grinned at him.
He bumped his shoulder against hers in the doorframe. “Now that we can see, maybe we can find what you saw up on the shore-or at least what’s making that noise.”
They looked all around them, but couldn’t find anything, so the Doctor moved the TARDIS, little by little, as they searched the empty water. The sound became very loud, but still they saw nothing. They drifted a bit to the right, trying to spot the source of the noise. However, the sound only got fainter as they moved, so they repositioned the TARDIS back to where the static was loudest.
“Bizarre,” mumbled the Doctor, running his hand through his hair. “Do you think it might have been a sonic anomaly? Let me go check if the-” He wandered back into the ship without finishing his thought.
Rose pointed her light at the dim blue world outside the TARDIS doors, about to give up her search, when suddenly in the corner of her eye she saw another flash. This one was much, much clearer than the flash she thought she’d seen from the surface. Knowing for sure that something was there, she turned her spotlight and scoured the edge of the ice.
Finally, she spotted something small, nearly-transparent, and gelatinous-looking hovering near the edge of the ice.
“Doctor! Doctor, look!” she called over her shoulder.
He came to the door and Rose pointed out the small translucent blob. He gave a sharp nod and again sprinted away. “Let me make a containment field-I think it will work for something that small. Besides, we don’t know what would happen to it without the water pressure,” he said hurriedly from the console room. “There, that should do it. Now we’ll bring it in.”
Rose watched as a spherical shell formed over the object and it started to move towards the TARDIS. After a few tries, she was able to reach out and pull the object into her arms. The containment field felt cold and tingly against her skin. She set it down near the console and the static was louder than ever. Rose held her hands over her ears.
“Well, at least we know what was making that noise,” the Doctor shouted over the din. “Now, let’s see if we can figure out why.”
“This is what I saw up on the surface, too,” Rose bellowed back. “It’s like it’s calling to me.” She walked back towards the blob inside the bubble, and sensed a residual tingle across her skin that had nothing to do with the containment field. She felt like she was on the right track. Perhaps this little blob was calling to her. “Oh!” she cried. “Doctor, what if it’s a message?”
He looked at her like she was the most extraordinary person in the world, his face split in a satisfied smile. “And I’ve got the translator circuits turned off! Of course!” Without a pause, he dashed back under the console. “Of course, it’s strange that it’s static-we should hear the native language-of course, its native language might sound like static-well, I say static-but even that doesn’t make sense-unless it’s telepathic, like the Skimmymars-or maybe-”
The Doctor continued jabbering away beneath the console, but Rose only heard a few words here and there over the static. He must have found a way to bring the translation back because suddenly the static stopped. She turned to congratulate her husband, but then the high clear voice of a child sounded through the TARDIS. The terror in this child’s voice made her stop in her tracks.
“PLEASE, PLEASE HELP US. SOMEONE. ANYONE. THE WORLD IS ENDING AND I’M SCARED. I’M SO SCARED. I DON’T WANT TO DIE LIKE MY FRIENDS. WE’RE SO WEAK AND SO MANY ARE DEAD. PLEASE COME. SAVE US. PLEASE.”
Rose and the Doctor turned to look at one another, their smiles wiped completely from their faces.