New Earth

[just_the_doctor]

The TARDIS doors open on a windy landscape. A grassy plain on the shore of a lake, with all manner of short-range atmospheric crafts buzzing about their tasks.

"It's the year five billion and twenty-three," the Doctor explains. "We're in the galaxy M-87, and this? This is New Earth."

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[just_the_doctor]

The Doctor tries to warn the nurses, but can't lose sight of Cassandra/Rose, so he takes off after her.

A moment later, there's the sound of an electrical explosion, and every cell opens up, disgorging thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of disease-carriers into the narrow passageways.

Cassandra swears she didn't do it, and right now, the Doctor doesn't have time to argue the point. His first priority is to keep Rose safe, and that means, as it usually does, that they have to run.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

And run, they do, down the stairs, while alarms go off and the PA system announces a quarantine as doors slam shut on every floor. The Doctor's still shouting at her to keep going down, as though there were anywhere else to go. As if she were in any hurry to stick around.

They descend the last flight of stairs and burst through a door into the cellar, and Cassandra starts pushing the lift button frantically until the Doctor reminds her it won't work because of the quarantine.

"This way!"

She runs the other way, the Doctor on her heel, as well as a bunch of those plague people. She hears Chip whimpering somewhere behind her, but she can't stop, she needs this body safe, too. As long as she's in it, anyway.

[just_the_doctor]

They burst through into another room, this one full of equipment, and the Doctor begins to put things together.

Cassandra wails that they're trapped -- and they are, a bit -- and asks him what they should do.

"Well, for starters, you're going to leave that body," he says, pointing toward the machine in the corner. "That psychograft is banned on every civilized planet! You're compressing Rose to death."

She, in turn, gestures to another machine, this one containing the remains of a brain in a jar and some bits of skin. "But I've got nowhere to go. My original skin's dead."

"Not my problem. You can float as atoms in the air. Now, get out." He holds the sonic screwdriver in front of him like a weapon, pointing it at her menacingly. "Give her back to me."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"You asked for it."

She breathes herself out in a cloud of light, and suddenly Rose can think again, though just barely.

"Blimey, my head..."

The room's still spinning a bit as she looks around, confused.

"Where'd she go?"

[just_the_doctor]

There's an instant of vertigo, and then the Doctor's shrinking, melting, being drawn and pulled down, like being stuffed into a box.

"Oh, my. This is... different," says Cassandra with the Time Lord's voice. "Goodness me, I'm a man. Yum. So many parts! And hardly used... Ah.. ah! Two hearts! Oh, baby, I'm beating out a samba!"

Rose, predictably and tiresomely, commands her out of him, but Cassandra is too taken with the new form to notice.

"Ooh, he's slim. And a little bit foxy. You've thought so too. I've been inside your head... You've been looking... you like it."

And that's about the time that the plague carriers break through the doors. Cassandra looks around the room frantically, realizing with a start that she's currently compressing the only mind who would get them out of this fix.

"What do we do? What would he do?? The Doctor-- what the hell would he do?!"

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

Run, Rose thinks. He'd tell her to run, but there's nowhere to go but...

"Ladder... we've gotta get up."

Of course Cassandra shoves her out of the way to get to the ladder first, and Rose tries not to see the Doctor in that action because the Doctor'd never do that. But if the Doctor's gone then she's alone again and she just got him back and what if Cassandra won't leave? She hadn't been able to fight back, but the Doctor's stronger than that, but there's no time to consider it because there are plague-carriers behind them and all she can do is follow and keep trying to make Cassandra listen before they both get pulled down to their inevitably slow and agonizing deaths.

"If you get out of the Doctor's body, he can think of something. We're gonna die if--"

And then something grabs her ankle -- one of the cat-nuns -- and she screams and tries to kick the cat off as it rants on about how this is all somehow her fault.

Then the plague-carriers catch up and one of them grabs onto the cat woman like she'd been grabbing onto Rose, and her face breaks out into horrible boils before she falls down the latter, shrieking in agony. There's no time to feel sorry for her (though Rose does a bit anyway), because they've got to keep climbing.

[just_the_doctor]

At a locked door, Cassandra looks back down at Rose to see what to do next. Rose suggests the sonic screwdriver, which, naturally, Cassandra has no idea how to use. So, at Rose's suggestion, she crosses the gap back into the "chavtastic" one.

Back in control of his faculties, the Doctor is able to hold his knowledge hostage. As long as Cassandra is in Rose, the Doctor won't help, and as long as Cassandra is in him, he can't help.

After going back and forth a couple of times, Cassandra relents and passes Rose by in favor of one of the plague carriers climbing toward them.

"Oh, sweet Lord... I look disgusting!" comes a voice from below them, just as the Doctor sonics open the door and pulls Rose through behind him.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"Oh no you don't!"

Rose just has time to catch the words before she's being shoved back down into the recesses of her own mind, and Cassandra's back in there, taking up all the room.

And the Doctor's shouting something about it being her last warning, but she's on the floor, shell-shocked, distant.

"Inside her head... they're so alone... they keep reaching out, just to hold us... all their lives and they've never been touched."

All those people. It's even more horrific than the diseases they carry. The sympathy isn't like Cassandra, and maybe that's a bit of Rose bleeding through or maybe she's just got a conscience after all. She takes the hand the Doctor offers, pulls herself to her feet.

The diseased people bang on the lift doors, but don't break through. They walk back onto Ward 26, where some woman menaces them with a chair as the Doctor insists that they're fine, clean, not diseased.

[just_the_doctor]

The Doctor asks the status of everyone in the ward, and (instead of being helpful) the Duke's assistant explains how she's trying to get a signal over to New New York to send a "private executive squad" to break in. No amount of pointing out how breaking quarantine would mean putting ten million people at risk makes a difference to this sniveling woman trying to save her own skin.

Which, of course, means, "I have to stop you lot as well. Suits me."

He barks orders for everyone to bring him the intravenous solutions for all the diseases. Everything that anyone is using, everything that's in cold storage on the ward. There are fewer than he'd expected, but then again, many disparate diseases share root causes. With enough (and the bile rises in his throat to think the word) research, those links could be discovered, the remedies distilled.

All of this rushes through his mind as the IV bags are strapped to him like bandoliers. He uses the sonic screwdriver to open the lift doors, reminding Cassandra that just because they aren't moving doesn't mean they aren't still working. He pops a winch free, sticks the sonic screwdriver in his mouth and takes a running leap into the shaft, grabbing hold of the cable and reattaching the winch.

"Going down!" he calls over his shoulder. "Come on!"

"Not in a million years," Cassandra replies, aghast.

The Doctor insists. "I need another pair of hands. What do you think?" Then, with a little smirk, he adds, "If you're so desperate to stay alive... why don't you live a little?"

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

As it turns out, she may have no choice, as more plague-carriers emerge from the quarantine and the Duke of Manhattan's assistant starts shouting at someone to seal the doors, which then close, leaving her trapped with no way to go except down.

Again.

She jumps into the lift shaft and onto the Doctor's back with the sinking sensation that she's really going to regret this.

"You're completely mad. I can see why she likes you."

"Going down!" is the Doctor's completely mad reply, and then they're falling and she has no choice but to cling to the Doctor and hope he's got enough self-preservation instinct to avoid getting them both killed.

[just_the_doctor]

The winch works as a brake to slow their descent right near the bottom of the shaft, on top of the parked elevator car.

"Now, listen - when I say so, take hold of that lever," he says, pointing to the disinfection system on top of the elevator. Cassandra protests, but he stays firm. "I'm cooking up a cocktail. I know a bit about medicine myself."

One by one, the Doctor rips open the IV bags with his teeth and pours them into the disinfectant tank.

"Now, that lever's going to resist. But keep it in position. Hold onto it with everything you've got."

"What about you?"

He opens the door atop the lift and drops down, sonicing open the doors. The plague bearers are clustered in the main lobby, huddled together in small groups. The Doctor looks back up at Cassandra/Rose and can't resist the pun. "I've got an appointment. The Doctor is in."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

She watches him drop down into the lift, disappearing from her direct line of sight. She can't hear anything except the lift doors opening, and if she cranes her head far enough she can sort of see, but not enough, not really.

"I'm in here, come on!" That's the Doctor, from below, presumably to the plague-bearers.

"Don't tell them!" Cassandra hisses, having had enough running for one day, but she stays where she is and pulls the lever at the Doctor's command as he continues to encourage them to come closer. There's no way back up, no way out but through all those people. Nothing to do but trust in the man who'd already gotten her killed once. And maybe it was just Rose in there pushing a bit, but she very nearly did trust him.

[just_the_doctor]

They come to him, into the stream of chemicals, and walk away changed. Cassandra asks if the Doctor's killed them all, but he reminds her that's her way of things, not his.

"I'm the Doctor and I cured them."

He helps her down into the elevator and walks out into the lobby. The plague-carriers are now cure-carriers. Just a touch and the diseases are cured. It doesn't take long for it to spread throughout the whole lobby. A woman comes up to the Doctor, looks up with childlike eyes, and hugs him. He murmurs to her soothingly, then ushers her off to go sit with a man on his own.

"It's a new sub-species, Cassandra! A brand new form of life! New Humans! Look at them, look! Grown by cats... kept in the dark, fed by tubes... but completely, completely alive!"

The euphoria of the moment sweeps him up. It's not a total win, but it so rarely ever is. The majority, though, have survived. Life will out, he tells her. It finds a way. That's its nature.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

A voice comes over the loudspeaker: it's the NNYPD, demanding that all staff submit themselves to immediate arrest. The hospital is full of police officers, taking the cats away, helping to herd the new humans into managable groups so that they could be catalogued.

One of the nuns, that Novice the Doctor had spoken to, is lead away by a police officer. The look shared between her in the Doctor is something Cassandra's glad she's not on the receiving end of.
The crisis is over, and she's hoping she can make some sort of escape before the Doctor remembers that he's supposed to be stopping her, too. But she still feels oddly compelled to follow him when he exclaims something about the Face of Boe and dashes off to speak to the supposedly dying creature. Perhaps it's curiosity, perhaps just a desire to hear what the last of Boekind had to say for itself, so that by the time she reached that age she could avoid being similarly dull.

[just_the_doctor]

Despite his fears, the Doctor finds the Face of Boe alive and well, floating in his tank, eyes open and alert.

"You were supposed to be dying," he says with a smile.

The Face of Boe seems to smile, though his expression doesn't change. "There are better things to do today," he replies telepathically. "Dying can wait."

Cassandra rolls her eyes and complains about "a head full of big face". The Doctor shushes her and listens as the Face of Boe continues.

"I have grown tired with the universe, Doctor, but you have taught me to look at it anew."

The Doctor teases him with the same old legend of him being millions of years old, and -- there's no mistaking it this time -- the Face of Boe chuckles.

Sobering, the Doctor adds, in a hushed tone, "I got the impression... there was something you wanted to tell me..."

"A great secret," the Face of Boe answers, similarly reverent.

"So the legend says."

"It can wait."

The Doctor breaks the somber mood then by pulling a sour face and almost pouting, "Oh, does it have to?"

"We shall meet again, Doctor, for the third time... for the last time... and the truth shall be told. Until that day..." The Face of Boe teleports away.

"That is enigmatic," the Doctor notes, impressed. "That-- that is - that is textbook enigmatic." He turns, then, to Cassandra, who has been completely disinterested in the whole conversation and is picking at her -- Rose's -- nails.

"And now for you."

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

"But... everything's happy," Cassandra protested. "Everything's fine... can't you just leave me?"

She's not really all that hopeful. Meddling seemed to be his job, which he proves by ordering her to leave Rose's body, claiming that she's lived long enough. Long enough? Who's he to judge. She starts to cry, protesting that she's not ready, that she doesn't want to die. She begs for his help, but even as she catches something like sympathy in his eyes, he's adamant that he can't.

Then a familiar voice brings hope back.

"Mistress!"

It's her Chip. Still alive. He'll help. He has to.

[just_the_doctor]

"I kept myself safe," Chip says adoringly. "For you, mistress."

The Doctor can almost see the wheels turning in Cassandra's mind as she says, "A body... and not just that, a volunteer..."

"Don't you dare," he snaps. "He's got a life of his own."

Chip protests. He worships Cassandra. He would willingly welcome her into his body. The Doctor tries vainly again to stop her, but Cassandra doesn't listen. She ejects herself from Rose and enters Chip without a flinch.

Rose gasps, and her knees buckle. All the words he might have spoken to Cassandra in that moment flee the Doctor's mind as he lunges forward to catch Rose, checking if she's all right.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

It takes a few minutes to get her balance back. It's the opposite of before, suddenly theres too much room in her head and she's dizzy. She manages to affirm that she's all right, and then looks, really looks at the Doctor and smiles in relief.

"Hello!"

[just_the_doctor]

He beams at her. His Rose. "Hello. Welcome back."

They share a moment until, predictably, Cassandra interjects her self-serving observations into the mix, this time complaining about how she's "a walking doodle".

It breaks the spell, and the Doctor turns and, more subdued -- more grounded now that Rose is there, whole and complete -- he explains, "You can't stay in there. I'm sorry, Cassandra, but that's not fair. I can take you to the City. They can build you a skin tank and you can stand trial for what you've done."

"Well, that would be rather dramatic," Cassandra begins drolly. But she points out that Chip has been through so much, and was only a half-life to begin with. The body collapses, and both Rose and the Doctor move to catch him/her.

She's dying. Cassandra and Chip, they're both dying. But it's fine, she insists. The Doctor offers to bring her to the city, but Cassandra shakes her head. "Everything's new on this planet," she says. "There's no place for Chip and me anymore. You're right, Doctor. It's time to die. And that's good."

The Doctor considers for a moment, then nods with decision. "Come on. There's one last thing I can do." Rose helps him lift Chip/Cassandra to his/her feet and together, they head for the TARDIS.

[ibringlife.livejournal.com]

It's still so sad, Rose thinks, just like she had at Cassandra's first death. Maybe it's because she'd had her inside her head, felt that desperate will to survive, to live again. To feel something again with hands instead of just nerve endings. She couldn't help but sympathize, as horrid as Cassandra was.

The TARDIS lands again and the Doctor steps out ahead of them. Rose and Cassandra, in the body of Chip, follow after. It's that party, the one Ros e had caught a glimpse of on that recording. Cassandra, the real, human Cassandra was there, and there was something bright and glittering and brilliant about this one that made Rose hurt for her just a little bit more.

"Thank you," Cassandra says, in Chip's voice.

The Doctor tells her to go, and Rose wishes her luck.

She genuinely means it.

[just_the_doctor]

They watch from the TARDIS door as the older Cassandra, in the failing body of the half-life Chip, approaches the younger and compliments her beauty. The younger waves it off at first, but Chip's voice persists. She is truly beautiful. Just the way she is. It's self-effacing, but it's a warning, too, and a plea to remember, to keep that knowledge with her and not allow herself to end up as she already knows she will.

The body collapses then, all the life exhausted, draining away. Cassandra the younger catches the falling form, easing it to the ground. She calls for help, then rocks the dying (her) Chip, murmuring soothingly.

Rose turns away and goes back into the TARDIS, but the Doctor watches for another lingering moment. The fear of death, of ending, is a powerful motivator.

Especially when you're the last of your kind.