Chapter SEVEN
‘Yes. It’s me.’
He had never been quite so relieved to talk to himself. Even
if doing so in the fetid darkness while chained to the floor was more than a
little disconcerting. It was all rather familiar, now that he thought about it.
All that was missing was Jamie McCrimmon. Ah, Jamie. Good man, Jamie.
‘You’ve been unconscious a long time. They hit us both
pretty hard--and hit you more.’
‘Why?’ he asked, making his first attempt to sit up.
‘You were fighting back.’
‘And you weren’t?’ He spit the dirt from his mouth as he
attempted for a second time to rise and having scarcely more luck than he had
had at the first go. At least this time
he didn’t pitch forward into the slime.
‘There were seventeen of them and only two of us.’
‘Only seventeen?’ he asked.
‘I thought instead of being knocked out or dragged off
straight away to be drowned in the Thames, that I’d try to convince our lovely
hosts that we are not in league with Satan, were not engaging in the
transmutation of lead to gold, are not Prince Rupert’s spies, familiars, or
even his tailors. That last was not difficult to sell seeing how you’re
dressed. And to think I used to wear suits. Have you examined yourself in a
mirror lately? And when was the last time you had a cut and trim?
‘While I was at it I also attempted to express to them the
futility of the war and why deposing the king wasn‘t going to work in the long
run as, unknown to most of them, Parliament was also abusing power and had
their own issues regarding fiscal responsibility, corruption, and in any case
it was pig-headed foolishness to pit brother against brother over religious
ideals.’
‘You said all that?’
‘I don’t remember,’ the Doctor said, chains and shackles
clinking as the Time Lord shifted in the darkness. ‘I was talking fast and
might have been a bit difficult to understand seeing as they were dragging me
by my hair.’
‘Were they swayed?’ he asked.
‘Not so much,’ the Doctor replied, sounding rather sad. ‘And
now I have a terrible headache. Almost as bad as when I met you.’
‘Thanks for that, mate.’
‘Don’t mention it. I am afraid I may have misquoted their
scriptures. It has been rather a while since I read it. Only just chewed
through the sock they stuck in my mouth,’ the Doctor told him with a loud
smacking of lips. ‘My tongue tastes like a wet sheep.’
He struggled for a third time to sit up. The Doctor scooted
toward him, offering what little assistance might be got when both parties are
inconvenienced with shackles. Their solitary source of light emanated from a
crudely fashioned stoneware lamp high on a ledge. Judging by the odour and the
smoke, efficient fuel was not being wasted on prisoners. As his eyes adjusted,
he slowly focused on the Doctor’s face and one blackened eye. He cringed.
‘Believe you me, you look worse. I’ll have you know I asked
for a room with a view, but you see where that‘s got us.’ After a pause the
Time Lord added: ‘I was concerned. I… couldn‘t hear your hearts beating.’
‘Heart.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Heart. Singular. One. One heart. One, human heart.’
‘Ah…yes. That would explain it,’ the Doctor sighed.
‘Well, then. Aside from the eye thing there, and your mouth
tasting like a wet sheep, are you all, right?’ he asked, genuinely concerned.
‘I’m always all right,’ the Doctor responded with practiced
ease.
‘You‘re lying,’ he shot back.
‘Yes. It was a stupid question. Have any more?’
‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat?’ he asked.
The Doctor began to laugh. ‘Peckish at a time like this?’
He shrugged helplessly. One did work up an appetite running
for miles in the rain, climbing yew trees, and fighting off seventeen
Roundheads. No spaghetti rings and hot dogs for Tea after all.
‘Well, it depends on your definition of food,’ the Doctor
told him, nodding toward two bowls on the floor, the contents of which matched
the contents of what passed for a toilet, and no doubt left over from the last
unhappy inhabitants. ‘If recollection serves… no. Not even for you.’
‘Right… so…,’ he rattled chains like the Ghost of Christmas
Past, ‘manacles, shackles, chains and a really dark, smelly dungeon. Well, just
a cellar, really. Lord Wynn’s cellar I imagine, and with Lord Wynn not in
residence we‘ll have little chance of appealing to any kind of real authority.
Have we thought of a brilliant plan yet?’
‘Several,’ the Doctor told him smugly, then sighed.
‘Unfortunately, I haven’t got a case of lemons, a box of shortbread or a
llama.’
‘The best plans always seem to go to waste,’ he said,
twisting about to test his restraints. They were more than adequate, but…
‘Hello, what‘s this? It feels like I still have the horn caps in my pocket and
my sonic screwdriver,’ he said, surprised by the discovery.
The Doctor twisted around to look. ‘Indeed, you do. And mine
is in my coat pocket if I‘m not mistaken. After our little show down, they were
afraid to touch them. Something to be said of bluffing after all.’
‘Wait. I’ve been lying in the dirt and,’ he wrinkled his
nose, ‘other things, on my face, and you just sat there with a sock in your
mouth? You could have sprung us free by now!’
‘Where’s the fun in that? Oh, fine. Have it your way, but
it‘s going to be a hell of a game of Twister.’
He knew he should have studied longer with Harry Houdini.
Their captors had obviously planned for their eventual
attempt to escape, and while they had not been chained to either end of the
room, they had been chained in such a manner so as to impede their efforts to
assist one another without considerable contortion. As they twisted about,
grinding ever more dirt into their clothing, thunder rolled overhead, shaking
the house to the foundation. He felt the dissipated charge of unearthly energy.
‘There’s something intensely unsettling about these storms,’
the Doctor said.
He had to agree. Given its inherent instability, the open
Rift might be exacerbating the storms, but if that were the case, the influx of
temporal energy from this time might also provide the Tardis an unprecedented
feast of artron energy. If the internal power regulator was functioning
properly. A big if. And a vital necessity. If he failed to get enough thrust
the next time, he piloted her, they might not be so lucky with their landing.
And it wasn’t the only problem still facing the Time Ship. The Doctor had been
right. Dimensional instability meant an ever-increasing danger of time
spillage, an event which he had begun to suspect was already affecting the
present day. If they failed to remedy the situation, he would have more to
worry about than dying in 1642 and never seeing Rose Tyler again.
‘We did, you know,’ he said suddenly, thoughts of Rose and
how much he wanted to be home flooding his mind. ‘We got married. Rose and me.
You asked before.’
‘So, I gathered. You’re not wearing it now, but it’s obvious
you had a ring. That‘s a nasty scar on
your left hand, by the way.’
‘Discharge from a faulty capacitor, just about the time the
briode nebuliser failed and about six minutes before I crashed in Pete Tyler‘s
garden,’ he said, angling his body so that the Doctor might retrieve the sonic
screwdriver from his back pocket. The chariot fittings in his front pocket dug
deeply into his groin and he let go a painful yelp before shifting the other
way.
‘Oh! I almost had it!’
He groaned and leaned again. ‘It was rubbish,’ he said
through a grimace. ‘Not the ring. Well, it was rubbish after it melted, but the
wedding. Well, not the wedding. Well, I was rubbish.’
‘We’re always rubbish at weddings.’ The Doctor sounded
remorseful. ‘Did you dance?’
‘I… after a fashion,’ he said, worming his way closer.
Perhaps it would be easier for him to fish the screwdriver from the Doctor’s
coat pocket. ‘They made me dance with Jackie!’
‘They didn’t! Regeneration would be easier.’
That was a fact.
‘I wondered if you’d do it.’
‘I’m sorry?’ he asked.
‘Get married. I wondered if you’d get married. If that’s
what she wanted.’
‘You never considered what I wanted,’ he pointed out.
‘I assumed you’d want what I wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘It’s a little fuzzy now.’
‘There you have it. I honestly didn’t have an opinion one
way or the other, but after a while, well, why not? I wasn’t going anywhere,
was I? When Jacks got wind that we were going to run off to America, though, it
just sort of happened. It’s not like I was going take Rose to New Vegas City to
be married by an Elvis impersonator. But, oh no. I wasn’t going to cheat Jackie
out of her only daughter’s wedding. So, we had one. A big, posh English country
garden wedding with those crinkly paper bows, and balloons, and confetti and
sky lanterns, and little napkins with our names printed on them. I mean,
seriously? Our names on napkins. Why, I ask you? And cake. Lots of cake. Lots
of really good cake, actually.’
‘Last time I got married we didn’t even have Jammie
Dodgers…’
‘You what?’ He could not see the Doctor’s expression to know
whether or not that statement was facetious.
‘Oh, never mind. This is your story. And I’m sure it’s
better than mine. Tell me about Rose. She… she must have been lovely.’
Something in the Doctor’s tone gave him pause, but he chose
to go on. ‘Too right. She carried roses. Blue roses. And wore a blue dress.’
‘I’m noticing a theme here. Were the balloons and the bows
blue, too?’
‘Oh, belt up. It’s what she wanted. We did it her way.
Mostly. There were... some concessions. She wanted it to be Gallifreyan, too.
But you know. That would have been...’
‘Difficult?’ It was more of a statement than a question.
‘Yeah,’ he agreed. Some things were best left in the past.
‘But it all turned out right in the end. I even took her to Barcelona. Finally,
Barcelona. Can you believe it? Not the planet, but Barcelona, nonetheless.
Seemed like I owed her that much. It was that or Port Adventura but the last
time we’d been there she got sick on the loop-de-loop. And we were happy.
Really, really, happy…’ the words trailed off. ‘Everything I ever dreamed. It
was like Christmas. Every day. With snow.’
‘And snowmen?’ was the Doctor’s earnest question.
‘Oh yeah. Armies of snowmen,’ he grinned, remembering those
days. Days he had never dreamed would actually be his to live. Life on Pete‘s
World hadn‘t been all bad. Some days had even been… fantastic. ‘It was the
best. Until… it stopped snowing.’
Words slipped away from him then. He did not want to admit
it to the Doctor any more than he wanted to admit to himself, but there it was.
It stopped snowing. It just. Stopped. Snowing. The Doctor was evidently too
occupied with their weak plan of escape to notice the change in his tone.
‘Can you reach now and get—'
‘--almost have it—'
‘Ow!’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Lean to the left. No, your left.’
‘Sorry. Ow!’
His fingers slipped past the sonic screwdriver and he tried
again, almost, almost. Then he stopped moving. He had to tell the truth. Why
did those moments of personal revelation always seem to coincide with his life
being in peril?
‘I haven’t seen Rose in months.’
‘Ye what?’
‘I took the Tardis and left Scotland. Not quite as dramatic
as when we left Gallifrey behind, but there you have it.’
‘You left Rose in Scotland?’ the Doctor asked,
incredulously. ‘Scotland?’
‘Well, it's not like I painted her blue and made her eat
deep-fried porridge! It's part of the modern world, Scotland. They've got cars
and indoor plumbing and everything.’
‘That’s where our house is, you muppet. Well, not so much a
house as an estate. Well, Torchwood actually. The house I mean. It was her
idea, not long after you left us here. Move to Scotland she said. I’d forgotten
how much it rains. But she loved it. There are more stars there than in London.
When it isn’t raining. You walk on the moors late at night and you almost
forget you still can’t touch them.’
That‘s where he imagined she would be. That was if she had
saved the planet from the sheep-stealing-alien-threat she had been dispatched
to investigate. He was glad he wasn’t going to be asked to fill out that
paperwork.
‘Well, that explains your accent.’ A sonic screwdriver
clattered to the ground. He wasn’t sure which one. ‘But you left her? After the
wedding and the balloons and the dress and the--the--the--napkins? You left
her?’
‘Whoa, Sunshine! It wasn’t like that!’ Trust himself to
suspect the worst of himself.
But the Doctor was not going to let him explain. Why should
he? It struck him, quite suddenly, that the Time Lord harboured some guilt
regarding the matter and it provided him some perverse pleasure to realize that
even now, after so many years—ever so many more for the Doctor, if he
understood correctly how old the Doctor was--it still hurt. And so, it should,
after all the hurt, he’d endured himself. Not that they hurt for the same
reasons. Not anymore.
‘I punched a hole back into a parallel world to bring her
and her mum back safely to Pete--not to mention putting 27 planets back in
their rightful places, and saving the Earth by towing it back from the Medusa
Cascade and then,’ the Doctor sputtered, not even pausing for breath, ‘I leave
her with me, well, you, which I thought was what she wanted to ‘grow old along
with me’ and you left her? You told her. You told her what I couldn‘t. You told
her that you loved her!’
‘Oy! I helped with saving those planets, if you remember,’
he yelled back.
‘And it was 26 planets and one moon, to be precise. And I do
love her. You‘re the one who couldn‘t say it!’
‘I didn’t think it needed to be said.’
‘Yeah? Well, put that one on your list of epic fails, Time
Boy.’
‘You left!’
‘I… ‘
‘You left Rose? How could you leave Rose?’
‘I… she… we had… It‘s complicated.’
‘What did you do to her?’ the Doctor demanded, low, level,
and threatening.
‘Do?’ he gasped, not only at the accusation but at the sharp
tug on the chain attached to his manacled wrists. He tripped over his words,
trying to make sense of it all, but how could he? How would it ever make any
sense? His entire existence made no sense.
‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said in his most measured tone.
‘I couldn’t do anything. That was the problem. I couldn’t do anything. It
didn’t matter how much I wanted to, I just couldn’t. But it wasn’t my fault!’
‘What then? It was hers?’
‘No,’ he stated firmly, fervently. ‘No. It was not hers.’
‘So, what? You’re saying it was mine?’
‘Well, you made me Time Boy!’ he snarled.
‘Believe me, it was not intentional! But here we are. And
you know what? I gave you everything. I gave you Rose. And stop calling me Time
Boy!’
‘She wasn’t yours to give away--and neither was I!’ he
shouted back, feeling a degree of anger he hadn’t felt in oh so very long.
Anger… and despair. How frequently were they bedfellows. ‘You had to have known
it wouldn‘t work. You left me here, for her. To have the life you wouldn’t give
yourself. I get that. I trusted you. Hated you but trusted you. I have one
heart. I’m part human, but I‘m also Gallifreyan. A pathetic, halfling mutant.
The Time Lord That Isn’t. I wasn’t sure what else that meant.’
‘What else what meant? What do you mean what else?’
They both struggled to get free then, their total lack of
cooperation making it impossible for either one of them to achieve their goal.
The sonic screwdriver was drawn from his back pocket at last, only to clatter
to the ground. He felt a hot sting on his hand when one of the devices was
accidentally activated. He suppressed the urge to cry out but only just.
‘What the hell kind of setting is that? Give it here before
you burn a hole in my—'
Another blast and the manacles were hot, the chain between
then hotter still. He twisted his hands, attempting to break free, instead
pressing the fingers of his right hand against the scorched metal. He pitched
sideways in pain, knocking the sonic screwdriver out of the Doctor‘s hand. They
both scrambled to retrieve the fallen devices in the dim light, pushing and
shoving one another until the chains that bound them were tangled about their
legs and they were left sitting back-to-back, completely spent.
‘I couldn’t look at it anymore,’ he whispered at last,
thoughts of home raw in his mind. Thoughts of the nursery he and Rose had never
finished decorating. ‘I stayed as long as I could. For her. To make sure she
was all right. But then I just… had… to leave.’
‘Couldn’t look at what?’
He stared into the gloom, tears streaming silently down his
face. It had been so long since he had allowed himself the luxury to cry. So
long since he had given himself permission to grieve at all. He kicked out
savagely, driving the heel of another ruined trainer into the wet ground,
resenting having been brought to tears this way. Here. Now. With him.
‘An empty cradle, all right? He died. My son died. Our son.’
The Doctor’s back stiffened against his.
‘Your son? You lost your…? Rose had--your baby?’
‘Yes, my baby. What did you think I meant?’ he rasped,
battling raw emotion. ‘Small person. Slippery when wet. You remember those?’
‘I—yes, yes...’ The words trailed off in a sad whisper. ‘I
remember.’
How stupid to think otherwise. He took a long, ragged breath
then let himself collapse. A strong back held him up as he wept.
Never had he expected to be a father again. He had abandoned
any thought of that long before the end of Gallifrey drew nigh. Even here, with
Rose, it was out of the question. Not with this insane biological profile. The
man that shouldn’t exist. Never been another like me he thought bitterly. For a
reason! Though he looked like the same man on the outside, under the microscope
he might as well have been Frankenstein’s Monster. Part human. Part Time Lord.
And his son. Their son. Their dear, small boy… Not enough of either. What began
as a miracle ended in a nightmare. And he without the time or resources to
devise a viable genetic solution. Cleverest mind on this world, but not clever
enough to save his own child. Not even a time machine helped in the end. He
would have smashed his way through the Time Lock to Gallifrey itself had he
come up with a way.
Such a fool he had been in the aftermath. He’d never broken
so many things in his life. Not intentionally. Never punched so many holes in
so many walls. He would never have guessed just how intense human anger could
be, being so accustomed to his own, dark fury. Combined… they were terrifying.
Words betrayed him, first refusing to come and then, when they did, it was
every wrong thing. Stupid alien brain in a human head saying stupid things
about destiny and genetics and biological imperatives to the grieving mother of
his child. Rose. His precious, precious Rose. Strong to the last, stepping from
the ashes to focus on the future. She never blamed him. Not once. But he did.
And he would not let her forgive him for not saving their child.
‘I couldn’t save him,’ he said, voice hoarse, eyes stinging.
‘Of all the people in the world, I couldn’t save that one. She said I needed
time to sort myself out. Imagine! Me,
sort myself out. As if I’d know where to start.
‘She made me better before. You said so yourself—that day in
Norway, when you left us there together. She made me better, but not this time.
Imagine what that felt like, for both of us. You gave us a fairy tale. We
should have known the Trickster would be first in line after you left.’
‘Time can be rewrit—'
‘Don’t. Just… don’t.’
‘But—'
‘I said don’t.’
After a long pause the Doctor spoke again, gently. ‘I‘m
sorry. I am so, so sorry.’
This time they both knew it was true.
