For the last time, Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"Oh no, dear sweet baby..." Rose was rather startled at the words coming out of the Doctor's mouth as she stepped out of the TARDIS and saw him come running towards her. It took a few seconds for her to realize that he was talking about it, not her. She wanted to give a quick quip, seem smart in response at his emotional outburst, but something in her was actually a tiny, little bit sad that she felt so surprised at thinking of anyone using those words to describe her. Which made her a bit mad at herself! It was a conflicting set of emotions, to say the least.

"Whatever you have been doing, Doctor, you must have been taking one hell of a beating while doing it. She... it had nearly torn through a forest just to brake properly, too!" she said, trying to ignore the flood of attention he was giving the big, blue box while apparently ignoring her. "Well, you need not thank me so overwhelmingly, Doctor, we are in public, after all," she said, her arms crossed and her lips pressed thin in a tense frown. He turned from the TARDIS for a moment, clearly having trouble keeping his attention on anything other than it, his eyes jumping back to it so obsessively she thought they might just pop out and stick to it.

"Rose, thank you so much for bringing her back. The poor baby has taken such a beating, haven't you?" he said, turning entirely back to the TARDIS as he mentioned it. Her. Whatever! Feeling a little less underappreciated, Rose handed him the key again. "What's with all the..." She hesitated, for a lack of words, and made a waving gesture with her hand at the TARDIS. "All the... inside?"

The door provided a bit of resistance as the Doctor went inside. He seemed to be well and on his feet again, though Rose noted that he gripped the various railings harder than usual, and he had a sway in his walk, hard to place, like a sailor the first few moments on shore. He also twice nearly hit his head against the many modifications, which seemed a bit distracted even by his own standards.

"I had to have modifications done to her for the trip," the Doctor half shouted as he ducked and bent his way through the chaos of parts and wires. "It's really quite amazing, you know." Rose stood for a while, this time expecting him to suddenly remember that she did not know the full story and that he would, at some point, have to bring her up to that level of the conversation.

And then, silence. After several seconds of hearing no stream of words or outbursts from the Doctor, she started to fear he might have collapsed from his sudden excitement, or something even worse. The strong sense of leaking psychic energies was even worse than before, making her feel a bit on edge, as if she might start to cry for no apparent reason. The Doctor rarely reacted to anything with the same emotions as a human being, so she could only guess at what a sudden burst of the same energies would do to him, or make him do!

Walking carefully around all the new clutter, she found him standing on the level below, simply looking into the center of the TARDIS. He did not seem sad, but he was unusually quiet, which was a warning sign in and of itself. "Is it alright?" she asked at him, but for the first few moments, he made no indication that he even heard her. Then, with a soft "no", he walked forward, disappearing from her sight, under the walkway that she was standing on. Carefully, fearing the worst, Rose walked down the stairs to see what he had been looking at so mutely, but even when she spotted it, she didn't quite know what to make of it.

Pink and green mists were flowing out of the central pillar of the controls, the main link to the deep inner core of the TARDIS. They looked like escaping streams of gas, shimmering faintly in the air, except that they moved softly, as if they were limbs or even hair caught in a breeze. The Doctor was standing quite near them, his one hand held forward, as if to sense the colored streams.

"No, she is not alright. But at least, she is alive still," he said, in a low, concerned voice. "I thought we'd weathered the worst together when we got out of there, but the strain seems to have been too much." He paused, but Rose could hear that he had more to say. His voice dropped to half its strength. "I should never have had you pick her up," he mumbled, sounding very much like a man plagued by guilt.

Rose tried desperately to find something to say that could lighten the mood, raise his hopes somehow. "Can't you fix it?" she asked, "you still have your sonic..." She did not even finish the sentence before he held a brass cylinder out, his fingers tenderly holding onto it, as if it might shatter. "The first casualty in a long chain of events, I'm afraid." He muttered something very low, clearly meant for the TARDIS and not for Rose. It seemed odd, and yet not, but she had the very clear feeling that he was comforting it. The feeling of sadness and pain that flowed through the interior of the TARDIS diminished slightly, too, as if it understood that it was in safe hands now.

-

"I was looking for a present for a friend of mine, an old friend that I used to talk about time paradox and other such topics with," the Doctor said while holding his cup steady for Rose to pour tea into. "I wanted something a bit fancy, a bit futuristic, but not too much, so I just went a few years ahead of now." He sipped, leaning back in a way that looked a little less than comfortable for a man his height sitting in that chair. "As I arrived, however, the TARDIS noted some oddities about the time. It seemed someone was altering it at the precise moment we arrived. That makes it a bit hard for the TARDIS to lock onto the point in time it is going for."

They had left the TARDIS outside, in the spot it had arrived in. The Doctor had assured her that it was, although badly damaged, not in dire peril. It simply had to repair a lot of damage. It seemed some of the many modifications were even meant to help it do just that, although he did not seem to have expected things to look as bad as they obviously did!

"So naturally, I looked into it. It could be a whole series of nasty things, after all, and we don't want unidentified nasties wriggling about in our little piece of space-time, now do we?" In his own, odd way, he seemed both chipper and bitterly serious at the same time. Rose had learned that this was a sign that he was either frustrated, angry or worried about whatever he was talking about, and she made sure to keep an eye out for clearer signals of what it was.

"Turns out it was quite a shady bit of timeline alterations, barely to be noted for a long time, but I caught up with it fully in 5137." His voice dropped as he spoke towards the end of the sentence. His arms fell down to his side, the cup now on the table, tea slowly going colder. As his words ran out, his eyes became distant. This was the point Rose hated in their adventures, the point where something had clearly happened of great importance, but it was on the level of time travel technicalities that she would be able to contribute next to nothing to. She wanted to say something comforting, but nothing came to mind.

"Is it something your friend can help you with?" she asked, shaking him out of his thoughts so abruptly that it even startled herself. "My friend?" he asked, looking at her. She nodded. "The friend you said you discussed these paradoxes with." Her words clearly confused him a bit, but his distracted mind soon caught up with it. "Oh, no, not paradox, it was no paraadox at all!" he reassured her. Which ironically made her worry a great deal more. "No, it was, it was something else. Something I had not quite expected."

Using the tea as an excuse, Rose got up. He was impossible in these situations, half lost in his own thoughts, and she had come to simply accept that. It still got to her, making her feel left out of his doings and goings like that, but still dragged into them, as well. Most of all, she was not up for just sitting there, debating a topic he did not feel like even explaining to her.

"Doctor, let me put this a bit bluntly," she said, loudly from the kitchen. She was being as quiet as she could in pouring out the tea, allowing herself an excuse for some distance from the man before he drove her around the bend entirely. "Tell me what you need to do to fix this, so I don't just wander about like some dim secretary of yours."

There was nothing but silence from the living room. Then, he finally spoke. "I need a psychic."

"What, like one of those phone ladies that tell you about how this week will be good for your work life but poor in romance? Because my mum has some magazines with those numbers on them, if you need it," she said in a slightly taunting tone as she reentered the room. She knew he meant somethng else, but she felt a bit like the mother of a young child, trying to teach it to state clearly what it wanted, if it really wanted it.

"No," he replied, in a tone of voice that indicated he knew she was pulling him on, "I need someone who can make a scan of the overall globe for certain mental signatures. Someone who reads minds, but a lot of them, and at a great distance." Rose plunked down on the couch in her best let's-talk-serious fashion. The Doctor was catching on and being clear and concise about his needs. Good boy! She almost felt like getting him a small treat or something, or at least a pat on the head.

"I thought the TARDIS could do a scan like that easy," she half stated, half asked him. He took a sip of tea, frowning that it had turned a bit cold in his mental absence, then shook his head. "The TARDIS needs to be alone. It needs to heal, or it will..." He turned quiet, clearly not liking where that sentence was going. "I need something else." Rose sat for a second, thinking. "Maybe not something else,"she said, "maybe someone." The Doctor looked at her. "Someone? Do you know a verified psychic of such power here in London, by any chance?" Rose shook her head. "No, but I do remember you mentioning a powerful psychic in New York once!" The Doctor smiled, the kind of smile that was nearly a smirk, just arrogant enough to annoy but still kind enough to keep one pretending not to be annoyed. "Dear Rose, the TARDIS is going nowhere. We are stuck with what we can find locally." For once, Rose was now the one putting on a patronizing face and tone. "Doctor," she said, "there are other ways to travel than the TARDIS."

The Doctor's eyes widened. "No." Feeling a bit sadistic, Rose simply continued to taste her tea, leaning back as far as the couch would let her. "No, Rose, no, no, no, no." Rose just smiled.