Into the Howling: Chapter 10

[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: Sorry for the delay in chapters - I hate that! Special thanks to the mighty beta troika: kelkat9, onabearskinrug and who_in_whoville for helping me keep this going!        ***In case you need a refresher since it's been so long, here's Chapter 9***

The standoff began to attract the attention of those who had been pulling victims into the Purge fire, which gave the Doctor an idea.
 
“Come on!” he bellowed, firing the blaster into the air. He turned around to Rose and Doctor Whut. “I want you to get to the refugee camp. I’ll meet you there.”
 
“No!” Whut shouted. “We go together or none of us go at all.”
 
“What are you saying?” Rose cried, looking from the Doctor to Whut. “You are so teachin’ me whatever language that is soon as we get off this planet!”
 
“Get her out of here!” the Doctor roared at Whut. He turned back to the advancing crowd and shot into the air again. As more people started in his direction, more and more of those who would have been thrown into the Purge fire were able to run away. He turned to Whut and Rose again, and whatever look they saw on his face made them both take an involuntary step back from him. “Now!”
 
Whut grabbed Rose by the arm and began leading her away. Rose shouted protests and tried to run back to the Doctor, but Whut was stronger and dragged her down the street. The Doctor blocked out the sound of her throaty pleas for him to come with them and brought his focus on the group coming his way. There was no time to think about Rose; the only way he would not see her again was if the group advancing on him tossed him into the Purge fire. There were easily twenty of them now, approaching with the predatory slowness of those who knew they were on the outnumbering side. He could see dozens of people running from the flames in the distance. At least he had done something to save some of them.
 
He stuck his hand in his pocket and fumbled for the sonic while keeping the blaster pointed at the group with his other hand. Their pace towards him was starting to quicken. He could widen the laser’s dispersal pattern, which would lessen the beam’s effect, making it more a stun gun than a laser, but it would give him a chance to get away, and that was all he needed. As they got closer he kept walking backwards, trying to keep one eye on the group and one eye on the sonic, while trying to watch to make sure no one came up on him from behind. He set the sonic up with his thumb and held it against the side of the blaster and it buzzed, resonating against the vibration of the photon cartridge.
 
He fired a sweeping blast into the crowd just as they were almost on top of him. He winced at their cries of pain but didn’t let up on the trigger until the last person was on the ground and the photon cartridge nearly stopped vibrating all together. For a blazing second he thought he might have slaughtered the lot of them, until he saw one already starting to regain consciousness. He should have kept the dispersal pattern a bit narrower so the stun lasted longer. He would have shot them again if the photon cartridge had recycled enough, but it was still weak and there wasn’t time. All he could do was run and try to find Rose. Unencumbered by the need to slow his natural speed down so companions could keep up, he became a blur in the smoke-wrought early afternoon darkness. He made his way into another alley and crouched down behind a stained and battered couch to gather himself.
 
He was still holding the gun, and judging by the vibrations in the handle, the photon cartridge was starting on its way towards being fully recharged. He soniced it again, changing it back from a stun weapon to something deadlier, then sat on the ground and rubbed his hands through his wild hair. The biggest problem with combat was it left so little time for him to think properly. His dress shirt was tattered flutter of ragged fabric that would serve more as a hindrance than anything else, so he stripped to his vest, wadded the shirt up and stuffed it in with the rest of the junk in the alley.
 
Now, to find Rose. He closed his eyes, shutting out the sounds of the revolution surging around him, and concentrated on her. He could not read her mind per se, but he could sense her sometimes, like a bright beacon in the fog. He’d tried to explain it away many times as the remnants of Bad Wolf still clinging to her after all this time, but he knew that had nothing to do with it. He had sensed her presence in the world from the moment he’d first set foot in Henrik’s Department Store with the intention of blowing it to bits. He’d been en route to the roof when he’d first felt the pull and had slowed and turned, almost trancelike, to run downstairs instead of up, drawn to her even before he knew her.
 
He focused on the beacon now, straining to find her amidst the bedlam. His eyes rolled back and his head sank backwards towards his shoulder blades. Usually, the beacon pulled him, leading him to her when she was in the direst situations. It was foreign to try to work the other way, but after a few moments the beacon shone brightly inside his mind and he got to his feet to run towards it.
 
******
 
“We shouldn’t’a left him!” Rose fought Doctor Whut every step that they ran through the burning streets. “He could be dead – what if they threw him into that fire? We have to go back!” She tried to run back the way they’d come, but her insectoid companion’s arms were like iron bars and she couldn’t get out of her grip.
 
“I can’t understand a word you’re saying, but you need to stay with me!” Doctor Whut snapped, giving Rose a shake. “We have to keep moving if you’re going to get out of here alive!”
 
They continued down the street, dodging blasts and steering wide around pockets of rioting people. Rose kept looking behind them, waiting for her Doctor to find her. He always found her, just when things were darkest. It was hard to imagine things getting any darker than they were at the moment, with the world exploding around her, bits of brick and burning wood raining down through the thick smoke and the shouts and panic all around them. She looked down every corner expecting to see him, sonic screwdriver out in front of him like a weapon, glasses on, trenchcoat flapping wildly behind him as he ran towards her. He would take her hand mid-stride, confident grin firmly in place, and lead her straight to safety.
 
There was no way he was dead. Not after everything they had been through. No matter how many times her brain wanted to replay the image, there was no way that mob had overtaken him and dragged him into the fire. Not the Doctor – not her Doctor. He would find her and they would leave this nightmare of a planet together. That thought was the only thing that kept her legs moving as she got dragged down the street by a four-armed fly-creature who kept screeching at her in a language she couldn’t understand.
 
A storefront exploded half a block behind them and the concussion from the blast sent her and her bug friend stumbling forward. Rose turned to see if anyone had been hurt in the blast and her heart nearly jumped out of her mouth and landed on the sidewalk. The Doctor, clad in his brown pinstripe trousers, white trainers and a white vest streaked with soot and what looked a bit like blood came barreling through the remnants of the fireball, blaster clutched across his chest. Not for the first time since she’d met him, he looked every bit the Oncoming Storm and Rose had never seen anything more beautiful in her entire life. When his eyes met hers the formidable scowl that had taken up residence on his face melted into a delirious grin and he sprinted up to her, moving faster than she’d ever seen him move, until he had caught her up in his arms and swung her around in a circle, laughing and shouting words she couldn’t understand.
 
“I knew that I would locate you!” he gasped at last in English, wiping sweat off his face with the back of his hand while he looked around to make sure they were safe for the moment.
 
“How did you find us in all of this?” Rose asked.
 
He took in another deep gulp of air and cupped her face in his hands. His eyes were shining. “Do you not recall when I said you were my lacraidh? Are you insane to think that I could lose you so easily? Come,” he said, taking her hand and running again, following Whut’s lead through the burning tumult.
 
As they reached the gravel road that led to the refugee camp they began to leave the chaos of revolution behind them with the burning city. From time to time as they walked they would stop and turn back to watch the fires reaching further and further skyward. Whut never said a word, but her anguish was apparent in the way she looked at the city as it burned, wincing with every explosion. Sometimes she would stand for several moments, shaking her head and muttering to herself in a language neither Rose nor the Doctor understood. When that happened, the Doctor would eventually take her by an elbow and gently lead her away from the sight, reminding her that they had to keep moving. They went down into a ditch that ran alongside the road, shallow enough that they could see the road untrammeled, but deep enough that if someone passed along the road, they could duck down and go unseen. The Doctor kept hold of Rose’s hand and gripped the blaster tightly with the other the whole time. One he held to comfort, and the other he held to comfort himself.
 
The gravel relented to grass after a few minutes of walking and evening began to accompany the change. The shadows thickened along with the grass and by the time the gravel had dissipated they were in darkness, and the Doctor was glad for the extra cover it provided. The nocturnal creatures began churring and singing around them. If it weren’t for the smell of burning city in the air and the occasional rumble in the distance, it would be hard to know there was anything amiss going on at all. They drifted further from the road until the ground began to slope downward towards the fence of the refugee camp.
 
When they reached the fence he sheathed the blaster in the waistband of his trousers, grabbed handfuls of chain link and climbed over, Rose and Whut following suit. When he hit the ground he drew the blaster again, covering his companions as they came safely over to follow close to him. They crept along the fence line, swift as shadows, the Doctor in the lead, scanning the darkness for the next threat. Suddenly he lifted the blaster and fired into the blackness in one quick, fluid motion. The flash from the laser lit the darkness for a split second, quick as lightning, and Rose and Whut cried out with surprise and jumped back, clutching each other.
 
“Get on the ground!” the Doctor barked, his blaster still raised.
 
Rose couldn’t understand what he was saying, but she heard the combination of fear and rage in his voice. She squinted into the dark to see if she could see whom the Doctor was shouting at. She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the quick, shaky breathing of someone a distance away. Judging from where the sound was coming from, whoever it was had obeyed the Doctor’s instructions.
 
“Please, don’t shoot,” the voice said. Whoever was speaking was trying to keep his voice as level and calm as possible, but every word trembled at the edges. “I’m unarmed.”
 
“Yeah, I saw to that,” the Doctor snapped as he got to his feet. “Hands behind your head.” He walked towards the voice in the dark, holding up his hand to indicate Rose and Whut should stay where they were. As he approached the voice, the oscillating blue diode on the front of the Doctor’s blaster lit the ground until it illuminated the prone form of what looked to be one of the camp guards. The light from the blaster’s diode was casting a dancing blue light pattern across the back of the guard’s head. The guard had his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes squeezed shut.
 
“All the guards have blasters,” he said, not opening his eyes. “We’ve been ready for you for months. You’re not going to get to our refugees, even if you do kill me.”
 
“We’re not part of the Confederacy,” the Doctor said. “We’re refugees and we’re trying to get to our ship so we can get off the planet.” The guard relaxed slightly at this news and tilted his head back to look up at the Doctor. His face reminded the Doctor of Jake from Pete’s world.
 
“They’ll blow you out of the sky,” he answered. “They’re firing ion blasts at anything that tries to exit the atmosphere.”
 
The Doctor offered the guard his hand to help him up. “That’s why ships have defense systems. Mine came through the Void; I’m certain it can take a jolt from an ion cannon. You all right?”
 
The guard shrugged and took out a small torch to shine into the grass so he could find the lost weapon. “That was a pretty impressive shot. You should enlist.”
 
The Doctor smirked. “I don’t like guns.”
 
The blaster had landed several yards away. The guard retrieved it and when he came back he was laughing and shaking his head. “And very good indeed,” he said, showing the blaster to the Doctor. The center of the weapon was twisted and melted, with a large hole blasted out of one side. “You hit the power supply.”
 
“That was luck,” the Doctor answered, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know that I’m that good in the dark at twenty meters any more. Maybe I am.”
 
“Doctor?” Rose said, touching his arm.
 
“Yes, beloved?” he asked with a grin.
 
“I don’t know what you’re saying to this man, and I’d hate to interrupt what looks like a big old festival celebrating how fabulous a shot you are, but we were sort of in the middle of escaping this planet that’s all caught up in fiery revolution and stuff, and I was wondering if we could get back to that.”
 
“Of course,” he said, taking her hand once again. They started running along the fence line towards the part of the camp where the ships were docked. “I shot out the power supply on his weapon,” he said to Rose, his voice almost giddy. “In the dark, at a considerable distance. Earlier you were quite impressed with my skills.”
 
“Earlier,” Rose began, but her snark was cut off when several bombs detonated along the fence, throwing clods of dirt, hunks of chain link and burning bits of who knows what into the air. The guard looked at the Doctor and his companions for a beat before running to join his comrades in defense of the blown gates. The Confederacy were running inside the camp in droves, practically scrambling on top of one another to fire their blasters and throw homemade incendiaries at the tents and the rows of ships. Some of the refugees were rushing to help in defending the gates while others ran for the protection of the waiting ships. The Doctor urged Rose and Whut onward, shooting into the fray to cover their escape. The rows of ships quickly became a primary target for the Confederacy’s attack. Several dozen were already burning, and the incendiaries were getting closer and closer to the Void ship.
 
They sprinted towards the ship, and as they ran the Doctor caught sight of several Toclafane running towards the fighting; teeth bared, claws extended, eyes bright and fixed on the fray. His hearts swelled with pride at the sight. In any universe, sons of Gallifrey were born protectors. He felt a twinge of guilt that deepened as they neared the ship. He needed to stay and fight, as much as he needed to get Rose and himself to safety. Perhaps more. He couldn’t abide running away in the middle of a fight, while there was still a chance. A firebomb spun towards the spherical hull of the Void ship and the Doctor shot it out of the sky. Bits of broken glass and fire rained down on them as they ran to the door and he soniced the panel to open it. Rose tumbled inside, but Whut didn’t follow. She was standing outside the ship, staring as she had at the burning city, watching the fires and the bedlam spread through the camp. People were running, screaming in every direction. It was impossible to tell who was on what side, except that most of the members of the Confederacy seemed marginally less panicked than those on the other side.
 
“What are you doing?” the Doctor shouted at Whut, pulling on one of her arms. She turned and looked at him, her compound eyes flashing.
 
“Now it comes to it, I can’t leave it to burn.”
 
The Doctor sighed. He’d had to make that choice once, and he had chosen to leave. He’d been living his life regretting that decision ever since. He looked back at Rose, who was sitting on the floor of the ship, looking expectantly at him. She was not going to forgive him easily for this one. He strode into the ship, hit the button to raise the shields, and walked out again, sonicing the door before Rose understood what he was doing. He pointedly ignored the sound of her banging on the door and begging to be let out. All that mattered was that she would be safe. He would come back for her when the camp was secure. He hoped that she would still recognize him when he came back; the last thing they needed was for him to get shot and have to regenerate on top of everything else.
 
“This isn’t your world,” Whut said as they ran back towards the fighting.
 
“It’s not yours either,” he answered.
 
It was clear from the moment they reached the fighting that the camp was doomed. The sheer numbers of the Confederacy were pushing against the guards and the throng of refugees willing to fight and forcing them further and further back into the camp. The fence was destroyed, the tents and most of the ships were burning, and more and more Confederates were coming into the camp by the minute. The battle was lost before the Doctor and Whut had even arrived. They crouched beside the ruined hull of a ship and watched the surviving guards and refugees go to their knees in surrender, hands clasped behind their heads. The Doctor’s thoughts went back to the last Time War and he remembered crowds of terrified Gallifreyans gathered together and mown down by Dalek exterminator bolts. There was nothing he could do for these people, but as bad as he felt for them, he was not stupid enough to line up and join them when he had a way out.
 
“We’ve got to get back to the ship,” he whispered. He craned his neck back the way they had come to see if he could see the Void ship from where he was. The Confederates wouldn’t be able to get inside to get to Rose, but he wasn’t certain he would be able to get back to her, either. He stood up to peer in that direction and saw that half a dozen people were gathered outside the ship, probably drawn by the sound of Rose’s shouting protests.
 
A laser blast from the opposite direction ricocheted inches from the Doctor’s elbow and he jumped, turning to find a group of Confederates advancing on them, blasters raised. Whut looked up at the Doctor and smiled tenderly, and then she leapt out from her hiding place, wings spread wide, arms flailing, hissing and spitting and screeching. She bent over so she was running on four legs, while the remaining two arms blazed with bright blue luminescence. A wide, spiked hood popped out of the sides of her neck and served to amplify her throaty screeching so that several of the Confederates gripped their ears and turned away.
 
“Run!” Whut shrieked to the Doctor as she ran towards the Confederates, screaming and flailing and spitting all over the place. With their attention drawn, the Doctor was able to duck under the ship and crawl along the ground back towards the Void ship. A few moments later the sound of Whut’s frantic attack stopped with sudden, chilling finality. He closed his eyes and pushed the thought of her out of his head, fixating his mind on getting to the ship and getting himself and Rose safely off planet. He had been in this situation enough times to know the worst thing he could do was waste her sacrifice and let himself and Rose get captured.
 
He paused under the hull of a craft close to the Void ship and flattened onto his stomach. He brought the blaster sight to his right eye and marked the position of the six Confederates surrounding the ship. He fired six shots. When the last body hit the ground he scrambled out from under his hiding place, soniced open the door and dashed inside, locking the ship behind him. He pushed Rose away from the controls to activate the boosters and heard the sound of a hail of laser fire hitting the shields.
 
He checked the flight controls and started the engines. “Are you well?”
 
Rose answered by slapping him hard across the face. His freshly re-set nose took the brunt of the blow and his eyes started watering immediately.
 
“What in the world?” he cried, clapping one hand over his face as he stared at her in shock. “Why would you do that at this time? We are being fired upon!”
 
“You left me here – you could have been killed out there!”
 
“I did it to keep you safe, you imbecilic woman!” He shouted, firing the thrusters to commence takeoff. The laser blasts increased considerably as they pulled away from the surface of the planet.
 
Rose wiped the tears away from her eyes. “Where’s Doctor Whut?” she cried, waving her arm at the door.
 
“She is dead,” he said, lowering his hand from his nose to pilot the ship with both hands. Rose saw a drop of blood forming in one of his nostrils. “The Confederacy has taken the camp, and I would assume the rest of the planet as well. She caused a distraction so I could get away and back to you.”
 
“Did I hit you that hard?” Rose asked, reaching for his face. He jerked away. She flinched.
 
“I need to concentrate,” he said. “A broken nose will tend to bleed more easily right after it has been set.”
 
Just then an alarm blared over the speakers. The Doctor looked over his shoulder at the combat controls and squinted at the flashing readout. “Rose, what does that screen say?”
 
“A bunch of spinning mauve circles,” Rose said with a frustrated shrug. “I can’t read Gallifreyan.”
 
“Blimey,” he grumbled. “I cannot see it from here. Come here and hold this just like this.” He grabbed her hands and put them on the thruster lever and ran over to the combat controls. The circular readout was flashing in time with the alarm.
 
“’Target Lock,’” he read aloud in Gallifreyan. “What’s that mean? We’ve locked on to a target, or someone’s locked on to us?” He was in the process of examining the combat controls to see if a targeting system had been inadvertently engaged when a shuddering boom rocked the inside of the ship. His neck jerked hard to the right and he slammed against an instrument panel. Rose fell into him and he caught her before she could strike her head against the wall. The ship spun wildly, flinging them from wall to wall, to the floor and up to the ceiling. All the instrument panels went dead and the Doctor fought his way to the controls to try to bring them out of the inexplicable spin they were in, but before he could get anything to respond the ship began to vibrate and he felt them going back through the gap in the universe from which they had come and back into the Void.
 
“Nonononono!” he shouted, shaking the thruster lever as hard as he could. The controls were unresponsive, all the lights on the instrument panels out. The moment the ship reached the Void the spinning stopped and the ship righted itself and went still. The Doctor took out the sonic and did a quick scan of the control panels.
 
“Ion shock,” he said, following his declaration with a particularly nasty Gallifreyan curse about the mother of whoever shot them with the ion cannon. The instruments would be down for several hours, possibly days, before the shock wore off and they came back online.
 
“What’s going on?” Rose asked, sitting down hard on one of the pod beds.
 
“We stranded,” he said, flapping his arms. “The ship is no to working. Also is my English!” he kicked the control console several times as hard as he could and almost threw the sonic in a fit of rage, but stuffed it into his pocket, crossed his arms across his chest, and gave the console one more hard kick for good measure.
 
“Your English gets worse the more upset you are,” Rose murmured, one word sliding into the next until the sentence trailed off into a sigh. She closed her eyes and collapsed, flopping off the edge of the pod to the floor.
 
“Rose!” he cried, rushing to her side. He lifted her up and felt the same airy weightlessness in her body he had felt when he’d carried her to the hospital. Void wasting. Doctor Whut’s prognosis burned in his mind. The Void’s effect is cumulative. If you take her in there, within minutes she’s going to deteriorate back to this state, to get worse from there. You will kill her if you take her into the Void again.
 
He’d known then what he was going to do to bring her across the Void. He had hoped for more time to do it properly, to make sure he had all the right defenses in place, but there wasn’t time. He wasn’t even certain he knew what he was doing, but there was no time for a practice run. He laid her body out in one of the pods and took a cleansing breath. Rose’s eyelids fluttered open and she looked at him.
 
“What are you doing?” she asked. He stood over her and put his hands on the sides of her head, closing his eyes. The link was easy to build between them; she was always open to him. The beacon burned brightly from inside her and he moved towards it, drawing her near.
 
“Just let go,” he whispered, pulling her consciousness towards his own. “Trust me and let go. That’s it…” He brought the beacon that was his Rose closer and closer to his mind, using psychic muscles he had never used in his long life to go beyond the link, to draw her into himself. If he broke concentration at the wrong time he could draw her out of her body but not into his own and kill her in the process. He pulled with everything he had, consuming her to protect her, shielding her from the Void inside himself until the beacon that was Rose burned not in front of him, but behind his own eyelids. The link vanished as Rose’s consciousness moved from her mind fully into his, not overtaking him, but residing within him and beside him.
 
Rose opened his eyes and saw her body lying in the pod and gasped with his lungs.
 
They were one.

Chapter 11