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"Well, can't we just smash through?" asked Mickey.
"Hyperplex this side, plate glass the other. We need a truck." The Doctor was running desperately back and forth, sonic screwdriver in hand, pointing it at wires and screens.
"We don't have a truck."
"I know we don't have a truck!" the Doctor roared.
"Well, we've got to try something!" Rose shouted back.
"No! Smash the glass, smash the time window. There'd be no way back." He aimed his screwdriver at another piece of machinery.
No way back. Rose stared at him for a second, then turned to look at Reinette through the time window.
So this was the dilemma. If they did nothing, Reinette would die — and who knew what the repercussions would be for history.
But if they saved Reinette, they would be trapped in 1758 without the TARDIS.
If they even could save her. How would they get through? We need a truck. Or maybe something like a truck. In Reinette's world they didn't have trucks, they had —
Horses! They could use the horse to smash through!
But if they used the horse... Rose closed her eyes as the realisation hit her. If they used the horse, then she and Mickey would have to stay behind. One horse couldn't carry three people, and the only one who would know how to save Reinette was the Doctor. And she wasn't going to abandon Mickey on a fifty-first century spaceship by himself.
This was the choice, then. Staying with the Doctor and letting Reinette die, or saving her and giving up the Doctor, possibly forever. How could she make such a choice?
On the other side of the window, Reinette was calling for silence, calming the tumult in the ballroom with graceful authority. Her composure was remarkable, Rose thought, given how afraid she knew Reinette must be. She felt a flash of fury — how dare this woman come and steal her Doctor away, make him have to choose between the two of them? Just when Rose had been starting to think that there was something truly special between her and the Doctor... first there had been Sarah Jane, and now this. She was learning over and over again that she was far from the only woman to have loved the Doctor.
Some things are worth getting your heart broken for.
The Doctor is worth the monsters. You and I both know, don't we, Rose?
Yes. She knew. And so had they.
(And the Doctor... did he love them, too? Did he love any of them?)
"We've got seconds." The Doctor ruffled his hair frantically. "Come on, think think think think think."
Rose looked at the window again. The ballroom had fallen silent, and Reinette was facing the droids in defiance, refusing to follow them to her death.
A dull weight settled in the pit of Rose's stomach. No matter her own feelings about Reinette and the Doctor, it wasn't Reinette's fault that these droids had invaded her life. And how could she sit here and watch someone die when she could think of a way to save her?
She turned from the window to the Doctor, and spoke. "What about the horse?"
"What? The horse? We'll take it with us in the TARDIS, drop it off somewhere later. I haven't got time to worry about the horse," said the Doctor impatiently, brandishing his screwdriver at some more wires.
"No," said Rose. "You could use the horse to break through the time window."
"I told you, if we smash the time window, there'll be no way back!"
"What other choice do we have?"
That put a stop to his frantic fiddling. He looked back at her, astonished and uncertain.
"Mickey, go find the horse," Rose added, not shifting her gaze from the Doctor's face.
"But we can't —" Mickey protested.
"We haven't got time! Just go!"
She heard him run away down the corridor, but kept her eyes on the Doctor, who had abandoned his work on the console and come to stand very close to her.
"Rose," he said in a low, urgent voice, "if I'm trapped in the eighteenth century, then you'll be trapped here. You won't have any way to get home. I can't just leave you."
A tiny part of her registered satisfaction at these words, but aloud she only insisted, "You'll find a way back somehow."
"And if I don't?"
An image of a hologram, a memory of desperation, popped unbidden into Rose's mind, but she pushed it away with a shake of her head and a quick breath.
"You've got that Emergency Programme thing on the TARDIS, haven't you?" she answered resolutely. "The one you used to send me home from the Game Station? Use that."
The Doctor stared at her for a moment, seeming to finally realise what she was suggesting, and what it would mean.
"Rose," he said. "Are you sure about this?"
She looked at him steadily. "Do it."
The sound of hooves echoed down the corridor. Suddenly galvanised, the Doctor spun around with his sonic screwdriver held aloft and buzzing. "Right. I'll put the programme on a time delay, just in case I manage to find a way back. If I don't come back in twenty-four hours, it'll take you home."
And then I'll find a way back to you, Rose resolved. No matter what happens or how long it takes. I will come back to you. I always will.
The Doctor ran to the doorway to meet Mickey, grabbed the horse's bridle, and swung himself on.
"Stand out of the way!" he called from his perch on the horse. "Rose..."
He looked into her eyes, and for just a moment Rose saw a flash of all the things he could not say.
Then the horse was galloping past her, and he was gone.