Rose

[just_the_doctor]

The signal was getting stronger. It was definitely coming from the roof. The Nestene Consciousness had a relay device up there; he was sure of it. All he had to do was sneak up there and take care of it. He had the explosive all set -- a little something he picked up from Ace, naturally.

Halfway up the stairwell, a small alarm starts beeping in his pocket. "Hell," he mutters before heading back down. Someone's tripped one of the sensors in the basement. Which is not, on the whole, good. And while part of him would love to shrug it off and call it 'collateral damage', he knows he's better than that. The relay will still be there after he escorts whatever blundering ape is down there out of the building.

The Doctor tracks the human signal with a palmheld device and is almost on it when it cuts out suddenly. Sure enough, he turns the corner and sees the fallen body, clearly beaten to death. He's about to head back to the stairs when his device begins beeping again. There's another one. He hastily tosses a blanket over the body and sets off in search of the new signal, hoping that this time, he's not too late.

Comments

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Just her luck to get saddled with the lottery money again, thinks Rose. Down in the basement, hardly the most welcoming of places in the middle of the day, let alone just now. And of course ("y'there?") Wilson's nowhere in sight, and ("I can't hang about cause they're closing the shop") isn't opening his door, or answering ("--hello? Wilson, 's Rose!") her shouts from somewhere else.

There's a noise from behind her and she whirls her head round, expecting to see Wilson finally wandering back -- but no one's there. Still, someone's making noises, so she heads for them warily, and realises they're coming from the stock room where the dummies are kept.

It's dark in there, though, and she can't see anyone moving. Maybe the lights went out -- but they turn on for her fine, and she still can't see anything that isn't plastic. So she starts to look, still calling for Wilson -- when the door shuts of its own accord. And she runs to it, and tugs on it, but it refuses to open no matter how hard or frantically she pulls.

"You're kiddin' me--"

There's another noise ("is that someone muckin' about?") and she's frightened now, though she's trying not to be, because it's probably just a joke, isn't it? Yeah, so she calls to whoever's making noises and shutting doors--

Then the plastic shop dummies move.

Rose stumbles backwards, swallowing as she watches them. "--y'got me," she manages eventually, still heading backwards. "Very funny." They don't stop. "Right, I've got the joke! Whose idea was this? Is it Derek's?"

She's starting to panic, now, and she's still stumbling backwards and ("Derek, is this you?") wants to know what's going on but most of all wants them to stop it, and she wants to get out. She falls over something and scrambles to her feet, and for a moment she's absurdly pleased that she's still got a hold of the plastic wallet of lottery money, because that's important when you're being attacked by walking shop dummies, isn't it?

And then there's a wall and she's stuck and they're there and she doesn't know what to do.

[just_the_doctor]

He's running now, trying to catch up with the signal, because he can see that the relay's active again, which means they know and they're on the move. And he'll be damned if he's late twice.

Finally, he catches up to it, just on the other side of the door. Quick fiddle with the sonic screwdriver to pop the lock, and he's in.

And there she is, scared out of her mind and trapped, but it's okay now because he's here and he's the Doctor, and he knows what to do even if she doesn't.

He reaches out and takes her hand, firmly, reassuringly. He looks into her eyes warmly when she turns, and he smiles.

"Run."

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Some stranger's just appeared where there was nowhere to appear from, Rose could have sworn it, and he's got her hand and--

She runs, because when he puts it like that it sounds like an incredibly good idea.

When she turns her head back quickly and sees the ... things chasing after them down the corridor, it seems like an even better idea to run faster, and her grip on this stranger's hand tightens. She has no idea who he is or where they're running to, but as long as it's away, she'll trust him to take her there.

[just_the_doctor]

And so they run. Elevator first, to get out of the basement. It requires tearing the arm off of one of the manniquins, but they get out of immediate danger.

He leads the young woman through the back passages, knowing that burning out the elevator isn't going to hold them for long. He explains what he can along the way, knowing she won't understand the lot of it. Blah blah living plastic yadda yadda relay device yammer yammer don't worry. Mainly it's just so she has something to focus on -- a smile and a pleasant tone of voice. Something soothing to keep down the panic that he knows is rising just below the surface.

That's me, he thinks. The Human Whisperer.

Finally, he gets them to the back stairs. She can get out easily, and he can finish his task. The door closes behind him and he's halfway up the flight of stairs when he checks the palmheld and sees she hasn't moved.

Right then, something to break the spell. Something normal. Like introductions.

He pops the door open again.

"I'm the Doctor, by the way. What's your name?"

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

It's all a bit unreal. It's all very unreal, in fact, and now she's standing in the alley behind the shop, clutching a very much not-alive plastic arm, she can't believe anything really happened.

But he's real.

"Rose," she tells him, with that same sense of unreality.

Normality's a bit of an odd thing after being chased by living plastic.

[just_the_doctor]

Odd, yes, but familiar. And familiarity brings sensibility. It cuts through the haze of strangeness and forces you to focus on something you know. And in that moment of focus, you can do what needs to be done.

"Nice to meet you, Rose," he says cheerily, waggling the explosive. "Run for your life."

And then he's gone again, up the stairs without a second look back because they're closing in and this is his only chance to knock out this relay. They'll move it if he doesn't do this now, and who knows how long it'll be until he can track it again.

He does spare a glance down to his palmheld to make sure the human -- Rose -- was well away, but not until he gets all the way to the roof. He sets the explosive just as the dummies break through the door, cutting off his exit.

"Fair enough, then," he calls out to them. "I can change the rules, too." He resets the timer for 30 seconds, waves cheerily, and throws himself off the building, hoping that being chased by living show window dummies is enough of a distraction to --

It is. He utterly and completely fails to miss the ground, bobbing instead a few feet from the pavement.

The Doctor spares one more glance to the roof and sees the dummies looking down after him. Then, with a push off the side of the building, he flies off down an alley as fast as he can.

3... 2... 1...

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose stares as the man -- the Doctor -- disappears again, then what he's told her trickles through -- particularly "blow up" and "run for your life". And again, she does, slowing a little once she hits the main street. She's still in London and this is still Regent Street and there are still people and she's not in a bad science fiction movie, it's all definitely real, including the bus that nearly runs her over.

Including the massive explosion that follows.

Her first reaction is to stare a bit; second's to think, He blew up my work!

Her third is to run again like he told her, to get away and on a bus home. And from there, from the warmth and safety and (unreal) normality of home, she can curl up on the couch and watch the events on the news, like every good Brit. With a mug of tea, naturally, because tea solves everything.

Mickey asks about it and she says she knows nothing; her mother talks about compensation and Rose rolls her eyes. Normal and familiar all right.

When morning rolls around, and she's "got no job to go to!", she's sitting at the kitchen table contemplating an apple when something skitters at the door.

Bloody stray cats, and she scolds her mother about it as she crouches down and peers at the discarded nails by the catflap.

[just_the_doctor]

It's not until morning that he remembers the arm -- the one he tore off and tossed at Rose. She'd still been clutching it as she ran out, hadn't she? If she'd only dropped it... Ah, well, no use worrying about could'ves.

So he narrowed down the frequency and got a lead on it. Then he was off, tracking it down: a disembodied plastic arm with enough sense to retrace its steps, double back on itself, and generally be damned hard to follow.

When the Doctor finally chases it up to the row of flats, he's not thinking about the girl at all. That is, until the door opens in his face and there she is.

There's a struggle -- there always is. Not between himself and the girl, of course, but the arm he was tracking. Somehow it had gotten itself mixed up, turned around, and had locked onto the wrong signal. Her, not him. But, that was okay and there was no harm done in the long run, although that coffee table would need to be replaced at some point.

Then, as before, he got what he came for and left.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose stares as the Doctor leaves, then follows him quickly. "You can't just go swanning off!"

Down the stairs of the flats, across the estate, towards the park. She's not leaving him alone until she gets some answers, some sort of explanation -- a name would be a good start. So she keeps badgering and badgering until she gets something -- only it's some story about that living plastic and the world revolving around him. She doesn't believe it.

And yet he's right -- she's still listening. She's still hearing him out because there's something in her telling her to give him a chance, and maybe it's her curiosity telling her there might be something to it all. But she wants to know more.

"Really though, Doctor," with an imploring sort of look. "Tell me -- who are you?"

[just_the_doctor]

He's already halfway to the TARDIS when the question hits him. He doesn't know what compels him to stop and turn back to her. He really doesn't know what brings him back to her. But something does. He has to tell her something. He has to tell somebody.

"Do you know like we were saying," he finally replies, "about the earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world's turning, and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the earth."

He takes her hand. Something concrete, something real.

"The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. And the entire planet is hurtling round the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it."

The words spill out of him, and no one is more amazed than he. She doesn't understand; she can't understand. She doesn't know what he feels, and nothing he says can make her see, but he tells her anyway. The words have been stuck inside his throat ever since he left Milliways, and they demand to be said.

"We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go..."

And he does. He releases her hand, leaving the rest of the sentence unsaid. The implication was clear. She has a planet; she has a home. Someplace she belongs. But he doesn't. His planet let him go, and now he's spiralling away, thrown to the winds. And he can't do that to someone else.

He makes his decision.

"That's who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home."

The Doctor leaves her. He returns to the TARDIS. Alone. He has to.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

She watches him walk away again, thinking about what he's told her, then she turns to head home herself. But there's a grating sort of noise that makes her glance back and -- the Doctor's gone. And ... she could've sworn there was a blue box there before.

Still not satisfied with the answers -- forget him? Not likely -- she goes to Mickey's instead of home, where she can search the Internet. Doctor obviously brings up nothing useful; Living Plastic is just scientific research; then she tries Doctor Blue Box and -- that's exactly what she's looking for.

A few e-mails later, Mickey's driving her to meet the "internet lunatic murderer", or Clive as he's more commonly known. He seems nice enough, odd but informative at first. Stories, pictures ... then he explains his theory.

Immortal? An alien from another world? Maybe the guy's not a murderer, but he sure is a lunatic.

Exasperated now, she leaves with Mickey, conceding the point to him. Pizza sounds good, so they head to a restaurant and while they're waiting for their food, Rose thinks about things out loud. But then Mickey asks about the Doctor, offers to help, but she doesn't want him to: it's a bit annoying, really. The Doctor's dangerous, she thinks, and maybe she shouldn't--

Something's up with Mickey. He can't seem to decide on one thing to call her and it's -- creepy, to be honest. Confusing. A bit suspicious.

"--what are you doing that for?"

Not to mention the appearance of champagne they didn't order.

[just_the_doctor]

There is a old saying. 'Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.' Which is why the Doctor is highly suspicious when he realizes that the creature he was tracking has once again brought him to that same girl, Rose.

This time, it was more than an arm. It was a whole form. Which was just what he needed. So, he grabbed the first thing handy, which happened to be a champagne bottle.

"Just toasting the happy couple," he quipped, confusing the creature long enough to pop the cork at him.

Which... didn't work. Okay, they've gotten smarter. So, plan B, brute force. It's the work of only a moment to twist the head off, and it's done.

Or... not. Now, there's a headless plastic creature with cleaver hands coming straight for them. And it's up to him to save the day again.

Only... Rose gets to it first. She pulls the fire alarm and clears everyone out. The Doctor is impressed. She keeps her head in a crisis, thinks of other people first, and doesn't run off with the rest of them. That's... surprising.

But, not time to think about that now. Now, he's got to get the head back to the TARDIS. Which, luckily, is just out back.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose leads the way, checking the Doctor's following -- but so's the thing with Mickey's body, and the door's locked just in time. Rose heads for the gates, then stares as the Doctor goes into that blue box instead. What is he, a lunatic too? "You can't hide inside a wooden box!"

She tries the gates again, then runs to try and get the Doctor to help -- but when she gets a look at the inside of the box -- it's bigger than the outside. That's not right. So she runs out again in shock, checks the outside -- but when the choice is between being killed by a plastic thing or hiding in the weirdest phone box ever, it's not a hard one.

The Doctor rambles but she's too busy staring, not quite believing this is real. Then he asks a question, so she answers with another -- "Um ... the inside's bigger than the outside?" -- and gets answers, and he's really an alien, and her whole world's been turned upside down and it's very hard to handle this--

But she has to know about Mickey, if he's all right -- but the Doctor didn't even think about him? Not until the plastic head starts to melt anyway, and then he seems to panic, runs around flipping switches. Rose has no idea what he's doing, but that weird noise comes and things tilt and -- then the idiot runs outside again, apparently planning to get himself killed.

"You can't go out there, it's not safe!"

Exasperated, she runs out after him, intending to pull him back-- whoa. Shutting the TARDIS door behind her, she steps out and looks round at ... the riverside?

"We've moved. Does it fly?"

[just_the_doctor]

"Disappears there and reappears here. You wouldn't understand," he adds, annoyed. Damn it all. He'd been so close! If he'd started just a little earlier; if that girl...

No, that wasn't fair. He offered to answer her questions. He wasn't expecting them to cut the signal so quickly, and she couldn't have known either. But she just keeps prattling on! Mickey this, Mickey that... Caring about nothing so much as her own little meaningless life when the whole world was on the line!

And then... she surprises him. Again. She gets past it. Focuses on the problem. Asks questions -- important ones, this time. And, perhaps even more important, she sees what he doesn't see. He'd looked past it, through it, a dozen times or more since getting here. It just blended into the landscape, but she saw the transmitter where he saw only background.

So he takes off, and she follows him, and it suddenly feels good to be able to share this with someone again. This moment -- the chase, the hunt, closing in on the objective. When the pretense and the preamble is done and it's just the confrontation... that feeling that everyone should feel, and he's sharing it with her, and she's loving it. Her eyes light up, her expression beams. She squeezes his hand when he takes hers, and they just run.

She finds the access down below the transmitter, too -- sharp eyes, that one -- and they descend.

And there it is. The Nestene Consciousness. He takes a deep breath and addresses it, opening negotiations. The antiplastic is nestled in his pocket, but he hopes he won't have to use it. There's been enough unintentional victims of this war. There's no need for more.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose looks round as the Doctor speaks, taking it all in -- the big thing that looks like lava and--

--there's Mickey, and he's alive, he's okay. For a given value of 'okay'. And when it turns out that was always a possibility, she almost wants to strangle the Doctor for letting her think he was dead.

But this isn't the time to be worrying about that, not with the -- what, Nestene consciousness? -- there. She reassures Mickey again and follows the Doctor as he descends closer, glancing back at her boyfriend keeping close.

[just_the_doctor]

The Consciousness is predictably reticent at leaving the planet. Where else would it find a planet so rich in all the things it needed to survive? Earth was an all-you-can-eat buffet, and they were just settling in. Nevertheless, the Doctor presses on, trying to appeal on behalf of the humans, who deserve a chance to develop and reach their potential.

But it all goes wrong. He's recognized as a Time Lord, and therefore blamed for the decimation of their worlds. It wasn't his fault, he pleads, knowing with a sick certainty that there's no one else left to blame. And then it's even worse, because they know about the antiplastic. Before he can react, he's held fast by one of the mannequins, while a second pulls the vial from his pocket.

And the invasion begins. And he can't stop it. He struggles against the figure holding him, but he might as well try to break through steel. His mind races, his eyes dart around the room.

There has to be a way. There has to be an answer.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose doesn't panic, she can't panic, no way. What good would that do? No, first she has to phone her mum, warn her to go home, but of course Jackie Tyler doesn't listen. Frustrated, Rose returns the mobile her pocket and looks round as a signal's transmitted. "It's the end of the world..."

The stairs have gone, so she and Mickey run for the TARDIS, but they can't get in without a key. And the Doctor's in trouble, those things are going to kill him ... she can't just do nothing, there must be something she can do. So she looks round, thinking. And there's no way she can leave him, so she steels herself and runs to the side-- grabs an axe--

"I've got no A-levels, no job, no future -- but I'll tell you what I have got--"

Swing of the axe and a crash as the chain breaks free.

"--Jericho Street Junior School, under 7's gymnastics team--"

She pulls the chain, gets a solid grip on it, and turns to face the others, determined now.

"--I've got the bronze!"

And with a running start she leaps, swinging down towards those plastic things and kicking the one holding the Doctor enough for him to throw it over the edge, continuing through to kick the other one -- and the anti-plastic it's holding -- over as well, into the consciousness itself. The chain swings back again, and once the Doctor's caught her and she's standing and she's safe (from a certain point of view) again, then she looks to see if she's done any good.

She should probably be terrified. She's exhilarated.

[just_the_doctor]

He just beams at her. She's saved the world, and he'll bet she doesn't even know it. And neither does that simpering boyfriend of hers.

The death throes of the Consciousness are threatening to bring the place down around them, so the Doctor decides it's time to make a hasty retreat. He doesn't take them far, just far enough to get clear. Which is just as well, considering the way the boy (Ricky? Mickey? Skippy?) all but throws himself out of the TARDIS, jibbering on madly and not bothering for a moment to thank the Time Lord for saving his life.

Which is why, when he makes the offer to Rose to come along, he makes the point that he is not invited. Someone that jittery and jumpy would surely get them all killed within a few minutes of landing anywhere the least bit interesting.

But she turns him down. So, he shrugs and shoves off. He makes it as far as temporal orbit when the temptation is just too great. He drops back down and opens the door, seeing that they've not even made it to the end of the alleyway yet.

"Did I mention it also travels in time?" he asks.

Please come, Rose. This planet doesn't deserve you.

[whats-bad-wolf.livejournal.com]

Rose knows, as she turns down the Doctor's offer and watches him disappear for the last time in that blue box (TARDIS), that she'll regret this for the rest of her life -- so when she hears him coming back, she can't turn back round fast enough.

She grins at the Doctor when he repeats his offer, then turns to Mickey, thanks him (for what?, exactly) and leans over to kiss him on the cheek quickly. She'll miss him, she thinks, but at the same time -- probably not nearly as much as she should.

And then she's turning round again, running to the TARDIS and not looking back, never looking back: at home, she's got no job, no future.

With the Doctor, there's the whole universe ahead of her.

It's really not much of a choice.