Into the Howling: Chapter 3

[timelord1]

Title: Into the Howling
Rating: Teen
Pairing: 10/Rose
Category: Drama, Romance, Humor, Action/Adventure
SPOILERS: AU on end of Doomsday and points west.
Summary: What if things had happened just a bit differently there at the end, with the levers?
Notes: This chapter was posted with the help of a panicked skype-aided in-process beta by onabearskinrug - which mostly involved me sending her great chunks of text saying "What's WRONG with it?" and fixing from there. Lots of love to you, homie! Still, any errors and, you know, overall blah-ness are entirely my fault. Epigraph credits to T.S. Eliot for his poem "The Hollow Men." The BBC own everything else, except for the Abzath, and who would want 'em?

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
--T. S. Eliot “The Hollow Men”--
 
The Void ship touched down on the surface of the planet and the sensors went berserk with readings. The atmosphere was mainly sulphur dioxide, and the air pressure was akin to walking on the bottom of the ocean, so the Doctor adjusted their air supplies to provide a nice trimix of oxygen, nitrogen and helium for optimum breathing, then went to configure the airlock for a slow internal compression. He set the compression to run a bit slower than was actually necessary, to give him more time to think. And to find the door.
 
He pressed the button on the com again. “Thank you for your patience. Acclimation process initiated; should only take a few minutes.”
 
“Have all paperwork…prepared for inspection upon…disembarking,” the halting crow’s voice crackled back in reply.
 
“Right,” the Doctor muttered, making sure the com was off before going on. “Because even though I just said we’re from another bloody universe, I probably have at ready hand every piece of identification that you require in order to not kill us.”
 
“You just spoke Gallifreyan, I think.” Rose squeaked, sounding like a cartoon character. The Doctor hurried to her side and adjusted the levels of her air mixture.
 
“Apologies,” he said with a chuckle. “Too much helium.”
 
“That’s all right,” she said, giggling at the lingering squeak in her voice. “What are we looking for?”
 
He shrugged. “Access panel? Erm, the word…” he looked up at the ceiling. “Doorknob!”
 
They found the door at last, hiding behind the giant viewscreen. Rose poked a green button and the screen retracted into the ceiling, revealing a rectangular seam in the sphere, along with an access panel on the side.
 
“You are so much bright,” the Doctor said with a laugh, patting her helmet as the screen ascended. He went to work on the access panel for the door, configuring it so that it would open and close only with the sonic, and then tucked the tool into the utility pocket on the leg of his spacesuit.
 
“What do we do now?” Rose asked.
 
“We do as we are told,” the Doctor said. “I know nothing of this planet or the creatures who live on it, so we must be pleasant and…what is the word…behave? No. Comply. Oh!” he cried, slapping the faceplate of his helmet. “Intuitive paper is in my pants. We will need that.” He unzipped his suit and fished the psychic paper out, stuffing it into the utility pocket with the sonic.

"Um," Rose began, trying ever so hard not to laugh. "You don't mean pants. You mean trousers."

"They are not the same?" He asked. Rose shook her head. "You must explain the difference."

"Maybe if we get out of this alive," Rose said. He took her gloved hand in his.
 
“I promise you that we will get out of this alive,” he said, holding her hand against his chest.
 
Rose smiled at him. “You haven’t let me down so far,” she said. He hoped this excursion would not be the first time he did so.
 
Within a few moments the indicator light for the airlock went from yellow to green and the Doctor put the sonic to the access panel and the door slid open. They were treated to a view of a sickly yellow sky with greenish-gray clouds gathering at the horizon. The ground was orange-yellow, the color of cheddar cheese, and little orange-yellow dust devils swirled around them in the hissing wind.
 
“You will go to the ground with your distal appendages behind you!” The crow’s voice screamed to their left. The Doctor and Rose lay facedown on the ground, clasping their hands behind their backs. The Doctor listened to the sound of the shuffling footsteps approaching and counted perhaps twenty pairs of feet, assuming the approaching beings were bipedal. It did not sound as if they had an easy time getting around. That would give him and Rose the advantage if they needed to run for their lives.
 
He heard Rose’s breath catch in her throat as the creatures came into view. None were more than three feet tall, and all were dressed in identical dark robes, their arms obscured. Twenty creatures stared down at Rose and the Doctor’s prone forms; twenty chalk-white bald heads with rumpled, sagging skin; twenty pairs of wide, lolling eyeballs with nothing but dark pinpricks for pupils staring down at them; twenty mouths sewn shut with filthy black thread.
 
The Doctor had seen weird. He knew weird, was on a first-name basis with weird. This was beyond almost anything he had ever seen before. He had no frame of reference by which he could dismiss their horrible appearance, no past history with similar creatures in this universe. The rules of their home universe did not apply, and if he was willing to admit anything, he was at least as frightened as Rose probably was in that moment. Possibly, probably moreso. The thing was, he had to appear as if he were as fearless as he usually was, or Rose might panic. If she knew how terrified he was in that moment, she might well have a heart attack. He felt on the verge of a couple himself.
 
When the crow’s voice spoke again, all the heads moved, as if the voice belonged to all of them at once. “You will present your identification!” they screamed in Default. The Doctor moved his right hand to the utility pocket on his spacesuit and the twenty creatures took a threatening step forward. Rose whimpered and scooted away from them.
 
“I am reaching for our identification,” he explained, pulling the psychic paper out of his pocket. He opened the leather folder and held it out in front of them. The creatures approached as one and examined the paper.
 
“Blank!” The crow’s voice shouted. “Lies!” The creatures swarmed on top of the Doctor and he felt a sharp yank on his helmet. The planet’s atmosphere rushed into his lungs and he had time to detect the strong presence of ether in the air before he lost consciousness.
 
***
 
“Give it enough air to keep it alive,” the crow’s voice warbled in the Doctor’s left ear. His mouth was burning and he felt the tightness of a strap across his cheeks, holding an oxygen mask in place. When he tried to move his mouth he felt pull of the fresh stitches holding his lips shut and his eyes opened wide. He tried to sit up but was pinned to a table by some unseen restraint. He was still wearing his spacesuit and he could hear what sounded like Rose’s voice shouting in another room. She sounded more angry than frightened, which meant that she was all right for now. A bright light was shining on him from overhead, throwing the rest of the room into darkness, but he could see half a dozen creatures immediately surrounding the table, staring down at him with their wide, rolling eyes.
 
“It wakes,” they whispered in their singular voice, exchanging glances amongst one another. The Doctor scowled at them, growling behind the stitches.
 
When I can move again, there is a good chance every one of you will die.
 
An instant later, another thought occurred to him.
 
Why are they still speaking Default? Do they want me to understand?
 
One of the creatures touched the Doctor’s forehead. Its fingers were like frozen rubber. “Its mind is like a live wire,” the collective voice said. “It will give us limitless knowledge.”
 
“Its strength is dangerous,” the voice went on. The Doctor closed his eyes to concentrate on moving something. There was nothing physically holding him to the table, preventing him from sitting up and tearing the creatures to pieces, but he couldn’t get a single muscle to move. A quick analysis of his system indicated there were no chemicals paralyzing him; it was coming from something external. The light.
 
“Are you listening?” the voice gargled close to his head. “Acknowledge with your eyes, or you will be dispensed with instantly.”
 
He blinked once, hard and deliberate. The stitches were pulled so tight his lips were folded in on themselves and he couldn’t work himself free without tearing something, and he wasn’t that angry. Yet.
 
“You are to be tested.  Your life form is unknown to us, like that of your companion’s. Her fragility warrants further study, but we cannot subject her to our usual battery of tests without damaging her first, and as you are both viable vessels, you must not be broken,” the voice said. The frozen finger tapped the Doctor’s forehead. “It is a pity we will not be able to hear the full complement of your screams.”
 
***
 
Rose slammed her shoulder into the glass of her holding cell. The horrid, shrunken puppet monsters had nicely filled her cell with a mix of air she could breathe without her helmet, which they’d let her keep in the cell with her, probably because they didn’t understand it wasn’t a part of her body.  Judging from the sound of her voice when she shouted, there was a tad too much helium in the mix again.
 
“Lemme out!” she screamed, hitting the glass as hard as she could. “Where’s the Doctor?”
 
One of the pasty little creeps came to the glass, its eyeballs lolling around in its head independently from one another. Rose punched the glass and the thing flinched. Good. The gloves and spacesuit were helping her feel even more badass than usual, and she could hit the glass fairly hard with the gloves on without it hurting her hand.
 
“Where’s the Doctor?” she roared. “What did you do to him?” They’d ripped the hoses off his helmet and dragged his limp body away, facedown in the dust, while they’d politely escorted her, screaming for the Doctor, in the same direction. They were brought to a mound of cheddar-yellow dirt that opened to reveal a set of cement steps. Mercifully, they’d carried the Doctor’s body down the steps rather than dragging him, and they went several levels down before the majority of the things took the Doctor one way while she was brought to her glass prison.
 
“If you hit the glass hard enough, it will shatter,” the creature said. “You will then breathe our air.”
 
Rose stopped her assault on the glass for the moment. “How comes I can understand you now?” she asked.
 
“Your language has been assimilated,” the creature answered.
 
Rose sighed, blowing loose strands out of hair out of her face. “Why the hell can’t the Doctor just do that?” she muttered to herself.
 
“What is ‘Doctah?’” the thing squawked at her through the glass.
 
She punched the glass again, more gently this time. “My friend!” she shouted, kicking the glass for good measure. “Where is he?”
 
“Would you like to see it?” the thing asked. Before she could answer, the front wall of her cell became a viewscreen, showing her a dark room with a table at the center, surrounded by more of the creatures. The Doctor was on the table with his mouth sewn shut, arching his back in agony. Rose’s hand flew to her mouth and she watched one of the creatures jab him with something that sent waves of blue electricity crackling over his skin.
 
“You require sound,” the thing outside her cell said. A moment later she could hear the sizzling snap of electricity and the Doctor’s muffled, tortured screaming. His eyes were wide and looking around in a panic as if trying to find her in the darkness. Tears sprung to her eyes but she would not let her captor see them.
 
“Let him go!” she cried, hitting the glass with both fists. “Why are you doing this?”
 
“The subject must be tested,” the creature answered.
 
“Tested for what?” she snapped. “To find out if electricity hurts him? The answer is yes! Stop it!” She touched his writhing image on the screen as if her touch could comfort him.
 
“We test to expand our understanding. It is a new life form.”
 
“What are you?” Rose asked. The testing had stopped for the moment and the Doctor relaxed on the table, his chest heaving with his labored breaths.
 
“We are the Abzath,” the creature said. “We survived in our earliest form while the creatures of this planet destroyed one another in global conflict. When the last of their kind fell, we emerged. We took their dead and made them our vessels, using the knowledge stored in their minds to expand ourselves. When we have finished with the testing, Doctah will become a vessel. Then it will be your turn as well.”
 
Those weren’t their real bodies – they were nothing more than withered flesh puppets, which meant they might only be strong in numbers. One little Abzath on his own, standing outside her easily-shattered cell might just be no match for her. In that instant something snapped in Rose Tyler. She had saved the Doctor before; their very first adventure together she had freed him from the shop window dummies before they could fling him into the terrible maw of the Nestene Consciousness. She’d once shot out a window on a spaceship in flight to launch Satan into a black hole, and walked bold as brass through the front door of a Cyberman factory in an attempt to save a stranger who looked like her mother. In return, he had shown her the miracle of time and space, stared down an atomic bomb and plunged with her into the Void to save her from dying alone. Now, she was going to kill anyone who got in the way of her getting to the Doctor to stop his suffering.
 
She backed away from the front wall and put her helmet back on, snapping the seals into place. The Doctor on her viewscreen thrashed and bucked with the fresh pain the creatures were inflicting on him and she kept her eyes on his face as she ran towards the glass with her head down. Her neck was jarred a little at the impact, but the glass wall burst in jagged shower of confetti and she grabbed the startled Abzath puppet by the throat, lifting it off the ground so she could look it in its creepy eyes. It was afraid, and its fear gave her courage.
 
Her smile was vulpine. “Take me to the Doctor, and I just might let you live.”

Chapter 4

Comments

[larxene-12.livejournal.com]

You're really getting into the halloween spirit! This chapter spooked me D:

Poor, poor, poor Doctor... That's torture of the highest order right there! Go Rose, go!

[timelord1.livejournal.com]

I like to make it scary when I can. :) And it is SO Rose's turn to kick some booty. She's going to tear it up come the next chapter. :D Unless, of course, more Bad Things happen... :D