Chapter Fourteen
At first, the Doctor refused to talk to them. Nor would the Time Lord accept any assistance with the controls as the ship was pressed for increased speed. On they raced through the Vortex in pursuit of the other
Tardis. One that had apparently run amok and stolen its pilot. When pressed, the Doctor told them, in no uncertain terms, to shut up and let him think. A moment later those words were tempered with gushing techno-babble explanations about what could happen within the Vortex if the other
Tardis was mortally wounded. The words
annihilation and
The Howling figured prominently. Neither sounded remotely promising to Rory. Not a heartbeat later they were told to shut up again. After which the Doctor told
himself to shut up, following the words with a sound smack to his own face. Mad, Rory thought. Utterly mad. Box or no box. The Doctor was utterly mad. Perhaps they
all were.
“No…” the Doctor whispered, riveted by something the Time Lord alone could interpret as screens of looping Gallefreyan code flowed over every monitor. For the briefest moment, a smile played about his lips, only to be tempered by an expression of near horror in grey-green eyes.
“Doctor!” Amy called over the din. “What is it? Is he all right?
The Doctor looked at her, hard. Rory knew that look. Their world was about to go pear-shaped. Again.
“Amelia Pond, do you trust me?”
“What? Is this really the time for--”
“Do. You. Trust. Me?”
“Yes!” she shouted across the control panel, then repeated it more quietly. “Yes.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Rory asked, gripping the flight console as the ship continued to pitch and rock. “Or doesn’t my opinion matter?”
“Why?” the Doctor asked, flipping switches and mashing buttons. “Has the answer changed? You’ve never completely trusted me. Quite right, too.”
“But--”
“That’s it!” the Doctor cried. “I’m bringing them onboard!”
“Onboard?” Rory gasped, struggling to keep both feet in contact with the floor. “You’re bringing the other
Tardis inside this one? I thought you said it was dimensionally unstable?”
“Not--any--more!”
And with that the Doctor slapped the final controls and bounded down the stairs. Typically, Amy was off like a flash, Jackie Tyler’s West Highland Terrier in pursuit. Rory stared after her. The Doctor was off on a lark and Amy Pond was right behind him. Even now, after so long. After so much. And in spite of a thousand mixed feelings, Rory loved her for it.
They raced after the Doctor, following down endless white corridors that seemed to shift as they ran, as if the
Tardis itself were creating the shortest possible route. Lights guttered and a gust of air swept past them. Leaves… leaves? scattered down the passageway as they pushed open towering doors to reveal a great cathedral of a room and … the other
Tardis.
The Doctor pressed a hand against the other ship’s door release. Nothing happened. A second attempt met with the same result. The sonic screwdriver was employed next. Internal mechanisms tumbled like some great, complicated lock, but the door remained closed. Another sonic blast revealed an access panel beneath the isomorphic touch pad containing an array of Gallifreyan symbols which the Doctor rapidly tapped in a series of codes, none of which worked.
“
Come on!” the Time Lord roared, pounding the lot, all semblance of calm ebbing away as Rory and Amy watched, unable to assist.
Rarely had they seem him so angry. So desperate. Amy attempted to make a case against force, citing what they already knew to be the younger ship’s preferential nature, but the Doctor shook her away, kicking the unyielding door savagely. Petunia cowered.
At last, the Time Lord placed both palms against the shell-like plasmic surface, forehead bowed against the outer hull, entreating the ship in low, measured tones to permit them entry. An eternal moment passed before the hatch slid away. Steam and smoke and the smell of electrical fire accosted them. The interior of the Time Ship was barely recognisable from the space in which they had laboured to transform into a functional command hub, wedding circuit boards and a hodge-podge of everyday items to pre-existing onboard systems. The cool, blue light that had illumed the chamber earlier had dimmed, the air choked with fumes Rory could not identify but had no doubt were toxic. Grey-green light cast shadows on the jungle of organic and inorganic circuitry spilling from fractures in the ceiling.
Amy gasped.
A body hung above them, suspended in the tangle of living circuitry.
Though visibly shaken, the Doctor climbed on top of the console, shimmying partway up the lattice, reaching, but unable to touch the man held in the
Tardis’ strange embrace.
“Please. Please, you must release him. His body can’t withstand this. You know only a Time Lord can. Please.
Please.”
At once, the silken byssi begin to unfold and withdraw, lowering their part-human conduit slowly to the floor. Even with crisis centre training, Rory was taken aback. Jon Noble, the man they can come to think of as being as much the Doctor as the Doctor they knew, looked small and fragile, his body now broken and bloody. Seizing on professional training, Rory rushed forward, unsure where to begin to assess the myriad injuries but determined to do something. The man’s clothes were shreds of denim and cotton, exposed skin peppered with blisters where the ship’s living circuits had connected to flesh and nerve. The Doctor knelt beside him, touching a shoulder first, then gently, with both hands, turned the burned, bruised face toward them. The Time Lord sat back heavily, staring at the blood on his hands.
After a moment, Rory stood slowly and turned to face Amy.
“Do something,” she whispered, eyes brimming with tears. “Just,
do something.”
“Oh, Amy,” Rory murmured against her hair, resting a check against her head, unwilling to admit that there was nothing to be done. Nothing any of them could do.
“But you can treat him, can‘t you? Rory? Doctor? Can‘t you? No… no…” she pushed away and knelt beside the Doctor, gently stroking the handsome, battered face of the man before them. Petunia crept forward on her belly, trembling.
As they held their silent vigil, more of the pale, fleshy tendrils swept up and down along the injured man‘s body, passing gently over Amy’s outstretched hand to caress the fallen man’s hair before moving on to entwine the Doctor.
“Yes. Yes, I hear you. Yes, it’s me,” the Doctor said, voice hushed, head bowed. “No one is supposed to do that. Not even a Time Lord. It was abolished long before even the Dark Times because of what happened… what could happen…” his words trailed off
.
“But you could save him. You could save him the way River saved you.”
The Doctor slowly shook his head, seemingly preoccupied by the blood on his fingers. “I
can‘t…”
“Why?” Amy demanded, gripping his arm. “Why can’t you? You promised Rose that he would be all right! You went back for him! Won’t you even try? River asked if you were worth it. We told her that you were. Isn’t
he?”
The Doctor turned toward her, slowly shaking his head. Rory could see pain mixed with confusion on the Time Lord‘s face. “You like him. Why? Why do you like him so much?”
“Of course I like him,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I like
you, don’t I?”
Before the Doctor could reply, a thorny protuberance erupted from one of the otherwise smooth tendrils, drawing blood from the back of the Time Lord’s hand.
“
Ow! What was that for?” The Doctor clambered to his feet, shaking his hand in evident pain.
Rory pulled Amy back quickly. The little dog ran for the safety of the Cloister Room.
A flicker of energy spread like living fire from the drop of blood, racing along the entire length of the offending ganglia, spreading throughout the tangle of living circuits. A golden shimmer danced across the ceiling like fairy lights on a winter night—stars falling from heaven itself . Dozens of the delicate silver filaments brushed against the dying man’s blistered cheeks, and the light began to travel his body, closing his wounds, erasing his bruises, drawing away all evidence of blood. Rory shielded his eyes as the coursing energy grew in intensity, almost blinding them as the wounded man‘s body twisted and convulsed. Beside them, the Doctor staggered against one of the buttresses, gasping, arms wrapped about himself as if in sympathetic agony.
When he could see clearly again, Rory realized that the large, primary tendrils that had been lying like coiled snakes throughout the room had all but disappeared back into the hidden depths of roundels which closed up like the petals of flowers. The Doctor laughed nervously, and they all let go pent breath, then stopped. There was no change in the man lying before them. He was still like unto death, his clothing in tatters, his eyes closed. Rory stooped to check his pulse, nearly jumping out of his skin when Jon Noble,
the Doctor, gasped, a cry parting his lips as his chest heaved, his body twisting a moment in anguish. All at once, he sat up with a mighty shiver, his head bowed forward, dark hair cascading around his bearded face, dancing light scattering like golden water droplets.
They stared as he gave himself a mighty shake, like a wet dog coming out of the rain. He swallowed deeply, then gazed up at the light display along the ceiling. Rory couldn’t help but follow his gaze. They all did. It was beautiful. It was like...
“Oh, hello. Is it Christmas?”
“Oh, I should say so,” the Doctor replied with an enormous laugh. Were those tears on his cheek? “And Easter, and New Year‘s, and your birthday. Better than your birthday. Who counts at our age anyway?”
*
The Doctor switched the monitor off and flopped down between Amy and Rory, propping his long legs up on the railing. They were out of range of Pete’s World now, passing not only into the Vortex, but, if the Doctor’s calculations were right, back into their own Universe. Home in time for Tea was the promise. Rory would believe it when he didn’t see any more zeppelins.
Amy scrolled through the dozens of pictures on her camera phone. She opened one labelled
Jon Noble that showed their new friend standing in the warm light of Pete Tyler’s orangey, tall and cheeky and ever so much the Doctor. The fledgling
Tardis loomed like a monolithic nautilus shell in the background.
“Wait--what—“ Amy protested when the Doctor took the phone from her and walked away. “Give it back. You’ll erase everything.”
“No I won’t. I’m fixing it,” the Time Lord said, bending over the keypad, thumbs tapping away. “There. Better.”
Rory leaned over when the mobile was returned to his wife. The caption merely read:
The Doctor.
“Could he Regenerate?” Rory asked suddenly, forced to make room as the Doctor again wedged between them. “The energy that restored him, it looked like some sort of Regenerative energy.”
“It did look that way,” the Doctor agreed, but offered nothing more. Oh. It was going to be one of those conversations. Rory hoped the Tardis didn’t tarry in returning them home.
“Well,” Amy pressed the point. She slipped her arm around the Doctor’s arm and tugged playfully. “Could he?”
The Doctor shrugged in oblique answer.
“
Doctor. Could he?”
The Doctor smiled that small, sly smile that was so difficult to interpret. At least for Rory. He made a mental note to ask Amy later.
“Let’s hope he never finds out.”
“Will we see him again?” Amy asked, leaning her head against the Doctor’s shoulder. “Will
you see him ever again?”
“No. Impossible. Maybe. But highly unlikely, exceedingly dangerous and--”
“And you’d like that wouldn’t you?”
The Doctor gave a dismissive puff of air and stood back up, too busy jiggling controls to answer properly. “What would you say to some tea?”
“Admit it,” Amy said, arms crossed over her chest. She lifted an eyebrow at Rory and gave him her watch this face. “You liked him. You thought… he was pretty fantastic.”
“Amelia Pond, do you take me to be so vain as to admire myself?”
Rory and Amy looked at each other and answered in unison. “
Yes.”
“Oh, shut up Ponds.”
