Into the Howling: Chapter 8

[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 is posted without a beta, because I felt reckless. :) Which means it's probably rambly and strange, but I take full responsibility.

The Doctor woke when he felt something gently poking his shoulder. The room was dark, except for the dim light behind the Doctor’s empty bed. His neck was stiff and his back ached from sleeping as hard as he’d done, folded up crazily in the chair next to Rose’s bed. It took him a moment to recognize the clerk from the front desk without her uniform on, but when he saw the long points of her ears and the brilliant green of her eyes, his memory jogged and he smiled at her.
 
She set a covered dish on a table near his bed and pointed at it. “I made you some food,” she whispered. “Come eat some. And then you should be in this bed, getting some rest.”
 
“I am resting,” he whispered back, rising from the plastic-upholstered chair with the grace of a zombie. He dragged his IV pole with him to the table and uncovered the dish. It looked like some sort of blue casserole with crystalline crumbs on top, and smelled so good the Doctor’s mouth actually started to water and he felt a greedy twist in his stomach. “This smells wonderful.”
 
“You’re not allergic to khafetha, are you? Some people are sensitive.” She said. The Doctor was looking around the room for a spoon when the clerk produced one.
 
“Never heard of it, and honestly I don’t care right now if I am,” he said, taking a hearty spoonful into his mouth. It was warm and melty, somewhere between shepherds’ pie and a lamb hotpot with just enough alien spice to make it a spoonful of pure gastronomic rapture. Either that, or he hadn’t realized how hungry he was until that moment. “That was very kind of you to do,” he said.
 
“You looked so lost when you came in this afternoon,” she said. “I deal with refugees all day, so I’m used to seeing a certain amount of confusion when people come into the hospital. But there was just something in your eyes that made me want to go home and cook food for you. Speaking of, you might want to save some of that for your friend.”
 
The Doctor looked down and saw that the casserole was half gone. He set the spoon down and grinned. “I told you it was delicious.”
 
“You take care of yourself,” the clerk said. “Don’t tell anyone any more than they absolutely need to know. Your papers mark you as alt-world refugees. The fact that your papers say you’re human will probably keep you safe, but don’t go announcing to the world that you came here across the Void. I didn’t like how easily you handed your papers over to me all in one bunch. Get them out; I’ll read them to you so you know what you’re displaying to people.”
 
The Doctor kicked himself internally for not having taken the time to examine the papers before now. He slid everything out of the envelope and laid it out for the clerk to read. Even though he’d declared his language as Default, he saw now that there wasn’t a word written on any of the colorful paperwork that was in that language. Why would a refugee processing center issue papers to someone in a language they didn’t speak?
 
“I’m the Doctor, by the way,” he said, offering her his hand.
 
She took it, put it to her lips and kissed his palm in such an offhanded way the Doctor couldn’t help but smile. Qennda handshake. “I’m Mujeskaia Flen. Just call me Mu for short.” She picked up a transparent blue sheet the size of a greeting card. “This is your Refugee Identification Paper. Some people call it a ‘Rip’ or a ‘Rip card.’ Lists your name as Doctor, your species designation as human. And I’m just going to mention that, as a Lindelle, I can smell that you are most decidedly not human. You might want to put on some cologne to cover that up. Don’t know how to hide that noisy double heartbeat, though. Try layering your shirts.”
 
“How do I smell?” the Doctor asked, venturing a sniff of himself.
 
Mu smirked at him. “It’s how you don’t smell that’s the problem. Humans reek, like all primates. You’re telling me you can’t smell the stench radiating off that woman? I don’t know how you can stand to mate with her.”
 
“Well, sometimes love is blind, and other times love is anosmic,” the Doctor answered, scratching the back of his head.
 
“Anyway, it also says that you are a mated pair with Rose, and that the two of you came across the Void from another universe in your own ship, which is currently moored in Refugee Zone 386. Do not go waving this Rip card around willy-nilly. Unless someone specifically asks for it, hide it away and guard it with your life. These green forms are your medical vouchers; good for your initial visit and follow-ups related to the initial visit. Come give these to me when you are discharged. The pink ones are housing vouchers, and according to this you drew the lucky, lucky stick,” Mu said. The Doctor had in mind that he and Rose had instead drawn the very, very unlucky stick, and they’d been beaten with it constantly since Rose lost her grip on the lever.
 
Mu continued with her reading. “You are going to be housed in Folgrath House, which is the best refugee housing in the city. Not far from here, either. It’s a beautiful old home. The only downside is the shared bathroom. You’ll get six months in Folgrath, and if you haven’t found housing by then, you’ll be moved to one of the not-so-nice units on the bad side of the city. So, get housing before your six months are up.”
 
‘Six months in Folgrath’ sounds like a prison sentence. The Doctor put all the papers back in the envelope, except for the Rip cards, which he tucked into his pocket. “If there are so many species on this planet, why is it such a concern that I’m not actually human?”
 
“It’s because you’re listed on your papers as a human when you’re not,” Mu said. “That screams ‘I’ve Got Something to Hide!’ And some people on this planet can be quite curious about those who have something to hide.”
 
“Why was I asked about the Gilthonian Confederacy when we were first processed?” the Doctor asked. A look of fear swept across Mu’s face before her eyes went hard and she leaned in close to him to whisper.
 
“If you know what’s good for you, those are two words you won’t say aloud again. The GC want to overthrow the government. They’re tired of all the refugees mixing in with native-born Qennda. They want to close the borders and send everybody back where they came from. I don’t know what they plan to do with people like me. I was born on Quennda, but I’m not human. They’re religious extremists. Everybody knows about them, but nobody knows who they are. They say we’ll know just how many of them there are on the day they take the planet.”
 
Rose shifted in her bed and asked for the Doctor by his Gallifreyan name. He went back to his seat beside her and took up her hand again, kissing the back of it. Mu frowned.
 
“You need to rest,” she said. “I’m going to come see you again tomorrow.”
 
“Thank you for the dinner, and for the help,” he said.
 
“Blessings,” Mu whispered as she shut the door on her way out.
 
“What smells so good?” Rose asked, stretching. Her color was improving all the time, and her hand was beginning to have weight in his when he held it. He lifted it to his face on the premise of another kiss and gave her hand a quick sniff. He couldn’t smell anything overly primate-y about it. He took a second sniff, a little deeper this time.
 
“Did you just smell my hand?” Rose asked.
 
“I was checking your...something” The Doctor said with a dismissive wave. “Someone brought tasty food. Would you enjoy some?”
 
“Are you kidding? I’m starving,” she said. The Doctor helped her to sit up, then brought the casserole over to the bedside. He got a spoonful and brought it to her mouth. She gave him a look. “You planning on feeding me, Doctor?”
 
“Well, no,” he said, handing her the spoon and turning his head so she couldn’t see his pinkening cheeks. “I think I will lie down.”
 
Rose ducked her head and smiled. “You can feed me if you’d like, Doctor.”
 
Seeing Rose well enough to flirt with him was like seeing the sunshine for the first time in months. He grinned like a sap and took the spoon out of her hands again. She opened her mouth and the Doctor brought the casserole to her, making little airplane noises. She was hungry enough to eat the other half of the casserole all at once, and the more she ate, the more her color came back.
 
“That is good, isn’t it?” she said as he scraped the last of the dish onto the spoon. He took one more bite for himself and gave the rest to Rose. She sighed. “I’ll have to get the recipe so I can make it for myself every now and then.”
 
“For yourself only?” the Doctor asked.
 
Rose’s smile was sad. “How long are you going to stay with me here? I can’t go with you across the Void, and you’re going to want to get back to the TARDIS eventually.”
 
“I will take you safely across the Void,” the Doctor said, looking straight into her eyes. “We will make it home, do not fear. For now you have to rest, as also do I.” He leaned over the side rail and gave her a long, gentle kiss before heading back to his own bed. He watched Rose settle down and close her eyes, and once he could tell by the rhythm of her breathing that she was asleep, he closed his own eyes and surrendered to his thoughts and, eventually, to a deep and restorative sleep.
 
He woke with a start when he felt something pressing against his chest. The nurse that was at his bedside jumped nearly a foot in the air when he flinched. The room was flooded with sunshine.
 
The nurse pulled the stethoscope out of her ears. Something about the way she was looking at him made his blood run cold. She looked at his chart and wrote something down, never saying a word.
 
“Hello,” he said, offering his most endearing smile.
 
She shook her head and spewed a stream of unintelligible syllables at him, her eyes tight.
 
“I’m very sorry,” he said, keeping the smile in place. “I can’t understand what you’re saying. I would try if I could.”
 
The nurse sighed and rolled her eyes. When she spoke next, she spoke Default. She also spoke as if she were addressing someone with a marginally functioning brain stem. “You lied on your paperwork. You are not human. That is bad. I’m going to report you.”
 
“Why?” he asked. He hated not knowing exactly why he felt such a surge of rising panic, but he knew to the marrow of his bones that he had better do whatever he had to in order to stop the nurse from reporting him, short of killing her. He hoped.
 
She did not answer, but snatched something out of the pocket of her scrubs and jabbed it into the access port on the Doctor’s IV. The Doctor had been expecting as much, given their recent luck, and yanked the IV out of his hand before whatever she’d injected could make it into his system. She stabbed at him with the needle and he caught her wrist neatly, putting just enough pressure on the tendons to make her hand open so the needle fell free and broke on the floor.
 
She opened her mouth to scream and the Doctor was out of the bed, still holding her by the wrist, but now his other hand was over her mouth and he had her against the wall. He did so as gently as he could, careful not to hurt her. She tried to struggle free so the Doctor bent her arm delicately up behind her back. She didn’t wince, but her scowl deepened and she bit into the palm of his hand.
 
He squeezed her wrist tighter by a fraction. “Miss, you can bite down until your teeth touch, but I’m not letting go,” he spoke into her ear, now addressing her as if she had a marginally functioning brain stem. “Understand that I haven’t hurt you yet, and I will avoid it if I can, but you are not going to be reporting anything to anyone.”
 
“What’s going on?” Rose asked from her bed. “Doctor?”
 
“Good morning. Everything is all right,” he said, keeping his voice level and pleasant as he escorted the nurse to the bathroom. “I need you to call for a nurse and then ask to see Doctor Whut. Do not speak to anyone but her.”
 
Rose frowned. “I can’t even speak to her. I don’t know how.”
 
“Oh,” the Doctor groaned, grimacing at the ceiling. “Repeat after me, quickly; Khe-tho cruska slavak Whut.”
 
Rose repeated the phrase with halting uncertainty, but she pronounced the words perfectly. She even got the accent mostly right. Despite clutching a stranger to his chest who was trying to eat her way through his hand, the Doctor felt a warm surge of pride in Rose that almost brought tears to his eyes. With her beside him, he knew there was nothing to fear.
 
“Brilliant!” he said. “Practice it. Also, please keep anyone from opening the door to the can.”
 
“Can?” Rose asked, picking up her call button.
 
“Is it not ‘can?’” he asked as he nudged the bathroom door open and took the nurse inside. “I was certain that was correct.”
 
“Loo,” Rose answered.
 
The Doctor threw his head back. “Loo! That is the word. Keep anyone out of the loo, please.” He gave her one more charming grin before shutting the door behind him. The nurse was trying to bite a chunk out of his palm and it hurt so much his eyes were starting to water. He held her close to him, keeping her arm bent up her back, and waited. The nurse was crying, slobbering as she tried to chew on his palm, though she had given up trying to struggle out of his grip. He didn’t know how sympathetic Doctor Whut was going to be now that he had a hostage, but he was rapidly running out of options.
 
“Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a hostage,” he said with a sigh. “I mean, it feels like a long time. Probably hasn’t been half as long as it feels. I’d forgotten how much they like to bite. If you would stop that, and you promised not to scream, I would take my hand away. I’d like to take my hand away, because I’m not much a fan of your chomping, but I know you won’t keep quiet. So there we are. An impasse. You’ve got fabulous incisors, I would like to point out. It’s a good thing I have such a high tolerance for pain.”
 
He went quiet when he heard someone coming into the room. The nurse in his grip became frantic, trying to scream against his hand, but he reached up with his foot to hit the lever on the toilet and the sound of it flushing masked the sound of her struggle. Of course, it also made it so the Doctor couldn’t hear what was going on with Rose and whoever had come in, but he heard footsteps walk back past the bathroom door and into the hall a few moments later.
 
The nurse in his grip began to resign herself to her fate and stopped biting down as hard. His hand was going to be a mess by the time Doctor Whut arrived. He was going to have to boil it in antiseptic to get all the alien germs out of it. Twenty minutes went by. His arms were starting to hurt and his hand was dripping all manner of blood and drool and snot from the nurse’s frustrated sobbing. It was a good thing that his biology was brilliant at fighting off infection. Thirty more minutes passed. The Doctor was leaning against the back of the bathroom door, just about ready to let the nurse go and do whatever she wanted to him rather than stand there for another minute with her wet, nasty mouth on his hand, when he heard the door to their room open and the odd, toddler-voice of Doctor Whut said hello to Rose as she shut the door behind her.
 
The Doctor worked the bathroom door handle with his elbow and stepped out, dragging the nurse with him. The nurse started panicking anew, thrashing in his grip and starting in on his palm again. Doctor Whut stared at the two of them for a long moment, her head tilted slightly to one side, two hands on her hips while the other pair of arms were crossed in front of her chest. Her wings twitched.
 
“Good morning, Doctor,” Whut said at last. “That’s one of my nurses you have there.”
 
He nodded. “She listened to my hearts while I was sleeping.”
 
Doctor Whut eyed the nurse with disapproval. “You took vitals on a patient without their consent, or even waking them first? You know better than that, Croia. Now we have quite a situation on our hands. First of all, look at this mess on the floor. There are pieces of broken needle here. Were you planning on giving this patient an injection without his doctor’s authorization? I ordered a course of D5 and two draughts of Morphidol H-20. Those were administered hours ago, according to the chart. What were you planning on giving him?”
 
The nurse scowled and said something into the Doctor’s hand, but it came out in a wet, spattering array of unintelligence.
 
Doctor Whut snorted a humorless laugh and shook her head. “How exactly can I be a race traitor when I’m not human?”
 
The nurse went on a long, frothy tirade. The Doctor looked at Rose, pulling an expression of exaggerated disgust. She chuckled, but her brow was knitted with concern as she watched the scene play out.
 
“They aren’t hurting anyone – they came here because they were sick and their ship was broken down. They don’t want to take up permanent residence here,” Doctor Whut said.
 
The nurse waved her free hand and pointed behind herself at the Doctor, then balled up her fist and shook it at Doctor Whut as she raved on for nearly a minute. When she pointed at Rose, the Doctor’s hackles went up. Doctor Whut’s tiny mouth fell open and her compound eyes got a little wider as the nurse went on.
 
“Doctor,” she said, taking a step towards them. “You and Rose are going to have to get out of here as quickly as you can.”
 
“What did she say?” the Doctor asked. He was starting to tremendously hate being at the mercy of others. He felt his first real twinge of longing for the comfort of the TARDIS's translation circuits, along with the rest of her.
 
“Gather your things. You have to leave immediately,” Whut went on. She turned her attention to the nurse in the Doctor’s grip and spat a stream of angry-sounding syllables at her, her compound eyes bulging with fury.
 
“Rose isn’t well enough,” the Doctor began.
 
“Rose is well enough to escape this planet before something terrible happens to you both. I’ve heard the rumors, but I never believed they were true until now,” Whut said. She was pacing around the room, two hands gripping the top of her head while the other two arms flailed around in desperation. She wheeled around and started saying things to the nurse again. The nurse gurgled back, pulling against the Doctor’s hold on her. When Whut realized the Doctor was still standing there, she turned her attention to him, waving her wings along with all four of her arms. “Move, man! Do you want your minds wiped?”
 
“Well, no,” the Doctor said, too baffled by the suddenness of what Whut had said to respond any other way.
 
“It’s either that or you’ll be purged along with the rest of the sole survivors,” Whut said. She began disconnecting Rose’s IV and helping her to her feet. The nurse was thrashing around, spraying words and biting him anew. He was about ready to throw her out the window just to be rid of her.
 
“What am I supposed to do with her?” the Doctor asked, indicating the nurse in his arms with a nod of his head. Whut stopped moving and regarded the nurse for a long moment before she spoke. The hardness in the doctor’s childlike voice made the Doctor’s stomach curdle.
 
“Break her neck.”

Chapter 9