Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1
Veneration

Music.

It was faint, a crackling, gritty old sound that was barely audible over the painful ringing in his ears, and it vaguely registered in the Doctor’s head that it was a Glen Miller song. He tried jerking his hand up to knock the needle off of the record, but he discovered his hands were bound to something long, smooth and decidedly armrest-like. The Doctor lifted his head, wincing at the pain in his neck from having it bowed for too long, and opened his eyes, blinking haze from his vision, and the confusion made him frown at his surroundings. He was in a darkened room so dimly lit that he could barely see— had it been a human in his position, the room would be completely pitch-black to them. The wavering old song seemed to be playing from an intercom or a speaker, since he couldn’t see a phonograph or a record player, and the room was bare of anything save for a couple of dust balls in the corners. He gave his arm another fruitless tug, looking down and noticing his hands were bound with deadlock shackles to a silver, iron chair.

Concern filled him when he realised he couldn’t remember being abducted; the last thing he remembered was being in the TARDIS with Clara. Clara was missing as well, so he could only assume that she’d been abducted as well and was somewhere else in the vicinity. Either that, or she’d been lucky and was still in the TARDIS, although at this point it would be foolish to hope for the latter.

“Hey,” the Doctor said loudly, wincing when the sound reverberated through the empty room and made his head hurt. Pushing his own discomfort aside, he drew in a deep breath and shouted, “HEY! WHERE AM I? WHERE HAVE YOU TAKEN CLARA?” There was no answer, at least not that he could hear over the ringing in his ear. He shook his head like a dog trying to dry off in an effort to get the ringing to stop, before continuing to shout. “WHO ARE YOU? LET ME OUT OF HERE AT ONCE!”

Once again, nobody answered. Letting out an annoyed growl, the Doctor struggled with his shackles in an attempt to pry the screws loose. After a full ten minutes of fighting against his bindings he started to become horribly aware that these shackles seemed to be custom made for him. Which meant that whoever or whatever had abducted him hadn’t done it by accident, so if he had any chance of escaping he’d have to be particularly creative. He tried to rock the chair in an effort to maybe push it over and knock open one of the shackles, but the chair wouldn’t budge. He craned his neck over the armrest, only to curse loudly in chiming Gallifreyan when he realised his abductor had also bolted the chair to the floor.

Lovely.

The Doctor twisted his body around and wriggled in his seat, trying to feel if his sonic was still in his pocket, but his abductor seemed to have thought of that as well, since he couldn’t feel anything in his pockets. Granted, they were bigger on the inside like most things he owned, but he’d still had a fair amount of emergency items in his pockets that could have been useful in his escape. He cursed again, taking another look around the room to see if he could spot any doors or anything that could help him. As he’d noticed earlier, the room was completely bare, but there was a steel door to his left that was also deadlocked.

“LET ME OUT OF HERE AT ONCE!” he shouted again, thrashing in his chair and glaring at the walls as if they could see him.

A faint hissing sound started up in the room, making him whip his head around and stupidly expect to see a snake slithering towards him. He couldn’t see anything at all, which greatly worried him, so he opened his mouth to yell some more. Yet when he took another deep breath, his chest seared with pain, his joints seized up and a bitter scent like powdered medicine clogged his nose. His eyes went wide as he struggled to breathe, but whenever he managed to draw in breath the pain seemed to only get worse. His respiratory bypass did absolutely nothing to aid him, almost as though it were nonexistent, and just as his throat closed and he was surely about to pass out, he felt fingers press against his lips and something shoved down his throat. As it passed over his tongue, his fogged and near unconscious mind vaguely registered that it was chocolate of all things before his swallowing reflex kicked in. The pain in his chest and the asphyxia waned away at once, making him gasp for breath.

“Well that was eventful!” said a cheery voice right in front of his face.

Panting heavily, he blinked the tears from his eyes and, upon discovering that the dim lights had brightened considerably, took in the grinning man in front of him. The Doctor recognised him as an Ophelia Omicronian, with pale white skin and equally white hair that reached his shoulders. He was slender and wearing a spiked breastplate from the early Omicronian era, and his eyes were an almost disturbing, coal-black colour that clashed horribly with his babyish, rounded cheeks and crazily delighted expression.

“What—” The Doctor gasped for another breath, coughing for a brief moment. “What the hell was that?!”

“Aerosolised aspirin!” the Omicronian beamed, clapping his hands and bouncing a little as though the very thought was as wonderful as the thought of Christmas. “Isn’t it brilliant?”

Aerosolised aspirin. That explained why his respiratory bypass failed at once, and why chocolate had stopped his symptoms, although it was far from brilliant. “Who are you?” the Doctor demanded, glaring at him and giving his shackles a rattle. “Where have you taken Clara and why am I here?”

“Well, which question do you wish to be answered first?” he said lightly, must to the Doctor’s astonishment and annoyance.

“ANY OF THEM!” the Doctor shouted, trying to pitch himself forward in the chair.

“Well then,” the alien said, looking falsely affronted. Placing a dramatic hand on his breastplate, he said with air, “My name is Beratt.” The name made a light go off in the back of the Doctor’s mind, and Beratt seemed to notice and giggled happily. “Ooh, so you remember me?”

“Not really,” the Doctor said, scowling at him.

“Oh,” said Beratt, looking a bit put out. “Well, we have met before, you know. It was a long time ago for me— although I’m sure it’s been ages for you. You, my friend, stopped me from planting an explosive charge in my planet’s core and blowing it up.” Memories flooded the forefront of his mind, from his seventh incarnation, and he gaped at the Omicronian, whose expression lit up again. “You remember now! Lovely, lovely…” With an exaggerated pointing motion, he said happily, “You were the only person smart enough to stop me, besides realising there was anything going on in the first place! All the other idiots on my godforsaken planet didn’t even know I existed, let alone know I was planning to blow it up.”

“Yes, yes, so what?” the Doctor said impatiently, rattling his shackles yet again. “What does all that having to do with you kidnapping me? Is this out of revenge?”

“Revenge, my dear Doctor?” Beratt laughed, patting him on the shoulder. “No, no, no, not at all! I don’t want revenge— the resulting war that was caused after my plot was foiled was revenge enough.” The Doctor gaped at him, wondering if he’d really caused the worst and only war on Ophelia Omicron by stopping Beratt, but the unstable alien continued, “You see, the Persei Government exiled me from the planet in the year 799/X, about three years before the start of the war, and I devoted the last sixteen years to learning absolutely everything I could about you, Doctor.”

“Why?” the Doctor said in astonishment, looking Beratt up and down.

“Because I’m your biggest fan, of course!” Beratt said with glee, spreading out his arms as though expecting a standing ovation.

“My biggest fan,” repeated the Doctor with irritation.

“Yep!”

“Honestly?”

“Yes,” said Beratt with a brilliant grin.

“Are you insane?”

“Completely!” Beratt beamed. “Why?”

“You kidnapped me because you’re my biggest fan?!” the Doctor snarled with fury. If looks could kill, Beratt would already been ashes in a jar, but he simply kept grinning. “What the hell do you expect us to do— have a bloody sleepover? Or is this a date? Is that why you’ve chosen Glen bloody Miller to play in the background— are you setting the mood?”

Beratt actually laughed, and the Doctor was uncertain if he’d heard the sarcasm or not. “Don’t be silly! We’re going to play a game, of course.”

“A game,” echoed the Doctor, slumping in his seat and scowling. “Lovely. What are we playing, Cluedo?”

“No,” chuckled Beratt. “We aren’t playing anything— your friends are!”

“My friends?”

“Yep!” He pulled out a shiny black remote and wiggled it slightly between his long fingers. “I’ve gathered some friends of yours to play a game I’ve cobbled together. Bit proud of it, actually,” he added, looking pleased. “And the outcome can only end in something you’d undoubtedly like— a reunion with one of your friends!”

“What are you talking about?!”

“Your friends, Doctor, your friends!” Beratt said impatiently. “I know you’re probably a thousand years old or something and have had hundreds of friends, but you must remember some.”

Sending the confused Doctor a stern look, Beratt pressed the button on the remote. A whirring, electronic sound echoed through the large room and a gigantic monitor lowered out of the ceiling and positioned itself less than a metre from the Doctor’s visage, almost too close for comfort. The screen was black up until Beratt sent him yet another gleeful expression and pressed another button on the remote. This time the screen lit up at once with several different images from multiple video cameras— eleven of the images were that of empty, identical corridors, but the biggest one in the very centre was clearly footage of a room full of eleven different people, all unconscious and all lying spread-eagled on the floor as though they’d been tossed into the room with indifference.

“What is this?” the Doctor snapped, with a sideways glare in Beratt’s direction.

“I told you—” began Beratt with exasperation.

“Yes, yes, they’re my friends,” the Doctor interrupted with annoyance.

“Look closely,” Beratt insisted, unconcerned with his interruption and rudeness. “Don’t you recognise any of them?”

The Doctor glared one final time at him before obediently leaning forward in his seat and scanning through the throng of unconscious people. Most of them were lying on their stomachs, face down and unrecognisable, but his hearts dropped into his stomach when he managed to distinguish Clara lying crookedly in the corner from the outfit she’d been wearing the last time he’d seen her. And, he realised with utter horror, the two people closest to her were none other than his old companions Peri Brown and Jamie McCrimmon.

“So you do recognise them!” Beratt said with delight. “Wonderful!”

“What is this?” the Doctor snarled, rounding on Beratt with a mixture of anger and horror in his expression. “You’ve kidnapped them?”

“Yep!”

“You took them from their timelines?” the Doctor gaped, unable to believe that anybody could be so stupid and insane. “What the hell have you done?!”

“Well, my dear Doctor, it’s really very simple!” Beratt beamed. “I’ve personally handpicked one companion from each and every one of your past incarnations. And I’ve brought them here to compete against each other and see who’s worthiest of being your companion.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 2
Introduction

The Doctor wasn’t certain how much time had passed while he was in an astonished stupor; all he knew was that the second the fuzz cleared from his head and he snapped out of it, his rage returned like a landslide of suffocating dirt and tumbling boulders and he started shouting again, wishing very much that his hands were free so he could throttle the utterly stupid, completely insane alien grinning before him.

“YOU FUCKING IDIOT!” the Doctor screeched, his voice clashing horribly with the Glen Miller song still crooning in the background. He struggled with all his might against his bindings, so hard the shackles tore open the skin of his wrists. “HOW COULD YOU BE SO STUPID?”

Beratt looked completely unashamed and unconcerned at the Doctor’s rage. “This was all done for you, you know.”

“I DON’T CARE!” he yelled, spit flying from his mouth. “TAKE THEM BACK TO THEIR ORIGINAL TIMELINES AT ONCE!”

“I’ll do no such thing,” said Beratt with air, looking dramatically shocked that the Doctor could ever ask him to do that.

The Doctor hissed out through gritted teeth, “You will, by bloody Rassilon, or so help me I’m going to tear you to pieces and feed you to the Andosian Ho’tha!”

“But if you do that,” Beratt said gaily, “you’ll never get to see who I’ve chosen!”

“I don’t care!”

“Of course you do!” Beratt gave the Doctor a stern look. “Don’t you lie now.”

“You crazy fuck,” spat the Doctor.

“Oh, just admit it,” said Beratt. “You are curious to see who, out of all of your friends, I’ve chosen to play this game! You have to be— it’s in all of our natures to be curious.” Ignoring the Doctor’s smouldering expression, Beratt pointed to the image of the room of unconscious people on the screen. “Now, who here did you recognise?” The Doctor stayed completely silent, continuing to glare at the alien, who sighed with exasperation. “You’re going to learn one way or another who’s in that room, Doctor. May as well answer the question and get all of this done quicker.”

“Fine,” the Doctor snapped. “You’ve tossed Clara, Peri and Jamie in there.”

“Well, ‘tossed’ isn’t really an accurate word to describe it, but very well,” Beratt shrugged. He clicked the remote once and the multiple video camera footages disappeared, replaced with numerous tabs in the background of what the Doctor assumed were companion profiles. Peri, Jamie and Clara’s profiles were all in the forefront, accompanied with a picture undoubtedly taken from a distance, like Beratt was some sort of insane stalker. The Doctor wouldn’t put it past him. “You already know where I got that Oswald girl from, since you were there,” said Beratt, “so we’ll start with Mr. James McCrimmon. You met him in 1746 in your first body, although I took him when he was travelling with your second incarnation so he counts as number two. Miss Peri Brown, meanwhile, I took from your sixth even though she also met you in the previous incarnation. Still listening?”

“Intently,” scowled the Doctor.

“Good, good,” Beratt said vaguely, clicking the button again so that other people’s profiles flickered over the screen as he narrated. “Besides those three, we also have Tegan Jovanka, whom I took about a month after she left you — I do apologise for that, I bet it hurt a lot — and Ace McShane. She didn’t go quietly, I’ll tell you that much.” The Doctor felt sick to his stomach, seeing his old companions paraded around like test subjects on the monitor. “Then we have dear Sarah Jane Smith— took her when you abandoned her in Aberdeen. For shame, Doctor, she was very devoted. And we also have Grace Holloway, whom I took from the hospital a year after she told you she wouldn’t travel with you — I apologise for that as well — and Liz Shaw. She’s a horribly sharp woman, don’t know how you dealt with it.”

“Are you done?” the Doctor snapped.

“Not at all!” said Beratt cheerfully, clicking the remote again. “I’ve also taken your granddaughter Susan!”

“WHAT?” he screamed, both from rage and from horror. “YOU TOOK MY GRANDDAUGHTER?!”

“I just said that,” said Beratt vaguely, waving a dismissive hand. “I’ve also taken Martha Jones— remember her?”

“PUT THEM BACK AT ONCE!”

“But you haven’t even heard the best part!” he said in earnest, trembling a little with excitement.

“I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE— SEND THEM BACK!”

“I’ll do no such thing,” Beratt repeated with the same amount of astonishment as earlier. “Besides, you haven’t even heard the best part! No, no, don’t go shouting again,” he said quickly, when the Doctor looked ready to do just that. “I guarantee you’ll like her!” With a gleeful little squeal and a silly bounce backward, he clicked the button so that the final profile lit up the screen, swept his arm out and shouted with delight, “Rose Tyler!”

His limbs seized up, ice flooded his insides and a horrible, painful mixture of hope and shock seared through his chest, a pain he’d only ever once felt back when Donna Noble had returned from an alternate reality and whispered the message into his ear on that godforsaken Chinese street. Her picture, in all of its pink-and-yellow glory, flooded the screen, and his hearts sped up to a gallop looking at it. There were creases and lines in her face that hadn’t been there when he’d last seen her on that damnable beach in the other universe — they were unnoticeable to human eyes, but not to him, so it’d only been between five and ten years for her — and her hair was considerably longer, now falling down to her mid-back. She was also posed as the others had been, like they were unaware someone was taking their photo, except she had a concerned frown on her mouth that did not fit the smiling, brilliant Rose Tyler he’d known. Her two fingers were pressed to a communications device on her left ear and she was clearly in mid-sentence.

“No,” he breathed, flinching when his voice sounded hollow even to his own ears.

“Yes!” Beratt said with excitement, severely misreading the Doctor’s intended message.

“No,” the Doctor repeated, his sliver of hope bleeding away like water through a cup full of holes, and his fury returning full force. “You can’t possibly have taken her— she’s in a parallel universe and the walls are sealed.”

“But I did take her!” Beratt insisted, looking put out. He pointed insistently at the picture. “Look, look at the photo!”

“How dare you fake a photo of her?” the Doctor snarled, not listening. “How dare you?”

“It isn’t fabricated!” he gaped, now truly insulted. “I’ll have you know I went all the way through the Howling to get her!”

“SHUT UP!” the Doctor yelled.

Beratt stuck out his jaw in a childish scowl, remarking with bitterness, “Thought you’d be happy to see her again.”

“It isn’t her,” he snapped stubbornly.

“It is!” Beratt insisted. “I promise! I found her in a parallel universe where there were zeppelins in the sky and all the telephone boxes were mauve — not dangerous though — and she was all by herself!” He giggled. “Ooh, you won’t believe where I found her!”

“It-it’s not her,” the Doctor said, although doubt was creeping into his tone. What if it was her? Beratt described Pete’s World in great detail, and where else could he have gotten that type of information? “It can’t be her.”

“I know it’s hard to believe, my dear Doctor,” said Beratt knowingly, giving the Doctor’s shoulder a pat. “After all, you’ve probably spent the last hundred-something years trying to get over her, haven’t you?” The Doctor clenched his teeth, deeply wishing his hands weren’t bound so he could smash in a couple of Beratt’s facial bones. Who the hell did this arsehole think he was? “Don’t blame you, myself,” he continued, oblivious to the Doctor’s growing annoyance. “Although I don’t exactly approve of using River Song to do it. Of all the women in the universe, you choose the most bothersome person in the history of ever— that’s why I chose Miss Oswald instead of her. Far less annoying.” The Doctor glared, but Beratt kept going. “Now, Rose Tyler, she’s definitely something to fight over. Brilliant woman, her— at least, from what I’ve seen of her. I truly can’t wait to see how she fares in the games. As a matter of fact—”

Just as the Doctor was about to shout Beratt into silence, a gentle beeping started up on the side of the monitor. Beratt paused mid-sentence, though he didn’t seem particularly disgruntled about being interrupted, for an almost disturbingly delighted grin cracked over his pale mouth again. “What?” the Doctor demanded.

“The sedative I injected them with is wearing off,” said Beratt with glee, bouncing in place. “Now we can start! And,” he added, with an almost pitying look in the Doctor’s direction, “you’ll see that I wasn’t lying about obtaining Rose Tyler from the Howling.”

With another silly bounce and a quick circle around the Doctor’s chair, Beratt placed himself right next to the Doctor’s face and clicked the remote again, switching the screen back to the original picture.

*

Consciousness returned to her slowly and sweetly, floating back to her like a gently moving cloud. The gentleness evaporated in seconds when her mind caught up with reality— her entire body felt like it’d been beaten on for days with an iron pipe, there was a throbbing pain behind her right eye and all her joints felt seized up and frozen. A strangled whimper gurgled out of her throat and she tried to sit up, but her limbs wouldn’t cooperate and her efforts only made pain shoot through her body again. She vaguely registered hushed, panicked voices in the background, echoing oddly in whatever room she was in, and she opened her mouth to call out to them. The only noise she made was a strange gurgling sound, but it caught somebody’s attention nonetheless, since an ice-cold, slender hand slipped over her shoulder and a suspiciously familiar voice spoke next to her ear.

“Rose?”

Rose whimpered in response, flinching away from the cold hand and wincing when the movement made more pain erupt through her limbs.

“Rose, it’s me, Martha,” said the voice again.

Rose frowned, trying to force her eyes open and succeeding only slightly, enough to see Martha Jones’ concerned face looming over her, blurred but nonetheless there. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly and opened them again, trying to clear her vision. “M-Martha?”

Martha nodded, slipping her hand underneath Rose’s back and saying kindly, “Here,” before gently helping her sit up. “How are you feeling?”

“Feel like I’ve been run over by a lorry, honestly.” Rose’s limbs still hurt like hell, so she leaned heavily against Martha’s shoulder. Coughing slightly and wincing yet again when the action made her already scratchy throat feel raw and burned, Rose wheezed out, “How are you here?”

“I think the better question is, how are any of us here?” Martha said darkly.

Rose’s frown deepened and she blinked a couple more times, taking in the room. It was like a cellar, cold and box-like but with steel grey walls instead of cement. There were nine other people in the room, seven of which were properly awake and hugging themselves for warmth and comfort, looking wary; two of which were leaning against looking as conscious as Rose felt.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked vaguely, shaking her head to try and clear it.

Before Martha could answer, a slight crackling noise sounded through the room before a cool but utterly pleased voice sounded through an intercom in the top corner of the room, his voice punctuated by the old-sounding music in the background. “Wake up, everyone!” a man trilled happily, making everybody jump. “My name is Beratt, lovely to meet you all. Well, I say meet, but only one of you will actually see me when this is all over.” Rose blinked dazedly, wondering if she was hallucinating this. “You’ll be feeling groggy for a few more minutes but that should clear up soon. Might be a bit worse for you, Rose Tyler—” the man called Beratt added an unusual amount of emphasis on her name, “— since I took you from across the Howling.” Through the haze of her mind, Rose’s stomach flooded with shock and she opened her mouth to respond, but Beratt continued, sounding even more delighted than he had earlier, if that were possible. “Now you’re probably all wondering why you’re here.” Someone in the corner snorted, but Rose didn’t see whom. “Well, the answer is that I’ve handpicked each and every one of you, from all of the Doctor’s companions.” Rose snapped her head up at the mention of the Doctor, but Beratt kept talking, getting more and more excited. “You’ve all got ten minutes to gain a bit of strength back.”

“Before what?” said the voice that had snorted earlier, a young girl with an anger-hardened face and what looked like an old bomber jacket.

“Before the games begin.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 3
Inception

Everyone else in the room seemed struck dumb by Beratt’s announcement, but the pudgy-faced girl in the bomber jacket was the only one who seemed nothing but enraged. Taking a deep breath, she screeched with righteous fury, “OI, YOU! GET YOUR BLOODY ALIEN ARSE DOWN HERE SO I CAN BLOW IT ALL THE WAY TO DARJEELING!”

Her screaming seared through Rose’s ears, the pain in her head doubling like her brain was on fire. Slamming one hand on her ear, Rose hissed, “Will you shut the hell up?!”

“I’m trying to get us out here,” the girl snarled. “What’re you doin’, Blondie?”

“All right, that’s enough,” snapped a sharp-looking woman in a scientist’s lab coat. “We’ll not solve anything by nattering at each other.”

“D’you have a better idea?”

“Actually yes,” said a Scottish brogue coming from the only male in the room. He was wearing a kilt, of all things, and his eyes were bright and boring holes into the girl. “We could try keepin’ our voices down an’ figurin’ out a way outta here.”

“There don’t seem to be any doors,” piped up another petite girl in the corner, a sweet-faced girl with a pixie haircut and a loose-fitting woollen jumper.

“Well, we have to have gotten in here somehow,” said yet another woman next to the man in the kilt, in a thick Australian accent.

“All right, before we start looking for imaginary exits,” Rose said, massaging her throbbing temple with her two fingers, “let’s try and figure out who everyone is.”

“And how exactly is that gonna get us out of here?” the pudgy girl scoffed.

“If we can figure out who we all are, maybe we can figure out why we’re here and who took us, and then maybe we can make a plan to get out of here,” said Rose, trying to keep her voice patient and her face expressionless even in the direction of the girl’s look of utter contempt. “All right— we know the bloke’s name is Beratt and that he took us ‘cos we’re all affiliated with—” She paused, looking troubled, “— the Doctor. Does the name ‘Beratt’ sound familiar to anyone?” Everybody in the room shook their heads, and Rose frowned. “Doesn’t sound familiar to me either, and he clearly knew who I was— he called the Void ‘the Howling’.”

“How do we know you’re not working with him?” the girl demanded.

This time Rose couldn’t help but send her a patronising look. “‘Cos I’m in here with you, remember? Now will you tell us your bloody name, please?”

The girl glared at her, slumping back against the wall and said abruptly, “Ace.”

Rose huffed out a sigh. “Nice ta meet you, Ace. Got a last name to go with that? Or a real first name, maybe?”

“Dorothy McShane, then,” she snapped. “Called me anything but Ace and it’ll be your arse I’ll blow straight to Darjeeling.”

“Mm,” replied Rose, exchanging exasperated looks with Martha. “All right then, where were you when you were taken?”

“Just came back from Perivale with the Professor—” Ace ignored all of their confused looks, “— when Captain Nutjob grabbed me. Don’t remember anything after that ‘cept waking up here.”

Rose nodded. “‘Kay, who’s next?”

The man in the kilt raised his hand. “Jamie McCrimmon. Was back in the Highlands when I was accosted by… er, Captain Nutjob,” he added, with a sideways glance at a petulant Ace.

“I’m Liz Shaw,” said the sharp woman. “I was in my lab when I too was accosted.”

“I-I’m Grace Holloway,” stammered a brunette in the background who, up until now, hadn’t said a word. Her accent was American, and Rose felt a brief stab of old bitterness when she wondered just how diverse the Doctor’s list of companions was. “I-I was on my way home from work.”

“Er, I’m Peri,” said a second brunette, who was also American. “Peri Brown.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?” said Rose kindly.

“The Doctor dropped me off for a visit back home in California. I just remember blacking out after that.”

“Same with me,” piped up the Australian girl. “I was finally at my job at the airline when I blacked out.”

“An’ you are?”

“Tegan,” the girl answered. “Tegan Jovanka.”

“I’m Clara Oswald,” waved a baby-faced girl behind Tegan. “I was in the TARDIS with the Doctor, I think.”

At Rose’s nudge, Martha jumped and added, “Oh, um, I’m Martha Jones. I was—” She blushed and glanced at Rose, before saying in a rushed tone, “Iwasathomewithmyhusband.”

Despite the situation, Rose grinned, nudging Martha’s side in lieu of a hug, since she still wasn’t certain if she could lift her arms. “Go Martha!”

Martha went beet red, pressing her lips together since this really wasn’t the time or place to announce that she was married to Rose’s ex and best friend. Meanwhile, yet another brunette girl who hadn’t spoken thus far added, “I’m, er, Sarah Jane Smith.”

Rose’s grin dropped off her face at once, whirling her already pounding head around so quickly she actually winced at the pain she caused herself. She and Martha both gaped at the very young version of the headstrong woman they both knew well, who was fidgeting nervously at all the attention she was getting. “Oh, look at you, Sarah Jane,” Rose breathed, wide-eyed and smiling nostalgically.

“You know me?” Sarah Jane said tentatively.

“It’s… a bit in the future for you,” Martha said, as she beamed at the woman.

“An’, erm, where were you when you were taken?” Rose added, trying to school her face back into earnestness and failing.

“The Doctor had to go to Gallifrey, so he dropped me off since humans aren’t allowed,” Sarah Jane said, her voice taking on an irritated tone as she added, “Dropped me in Aberdeen instead of South Croydon.”

Rose’s smile vanished like smoke a second time in the same minute, frowning at the floor. “So you just left the Doctor?” Before Sarah Jane could elaborate, Rose continued, “Then that means all of this is one big bloody paradox.”

“Apparently Veratt doesn’t care about the laws of time travel,” said the pixie girl.

“Beratt,” Rose corrected idly, looking up from the floor to stare at the person who’d spoken. “An’ you are?”

“I’m the Doctor’s granddaughter.”

Everybody’s jaws dropped to the floor, the room practically radiating astonishment as they all stared at her to the point of obvious discomfort. Martha turned to Rose, only to see that she wasn’t mirroring everyone else’s expression. Hers was her own brand of shock mixed with an expression that was almost apathetic, up until she said in an almost despondent voice, “You’re Susan.”

She blinked at Rose. “Yes. You know who I am?”

“Yeah, the…” she paused yet again, “the er, Doctor… told me. A-about you.”

“Who are you, then?” demanded Ace, crossing her arms and looking Rose over suspiciously.

“You already know my name— the bloke said it on the comm.,” Rose frowned.

“Yeah, but who are you to the Professor?” Ace said, once again making everyone in the room frown with confusion. “‘Cos apparently none of us knew about Tinkerbell over there—” Susan looked stunned and everyone else shot Ace a glare that she ignored, “— so why’d he tell you? What makes you so special?”

Rose’s face blanched of all colour, and as much as Martha wanted to rescue her and make up some excuse so she wouldn’t have to answer, Martha was also curious as to why Rose looked like she’d just seen a ghost. “I—” Rose started, before her voice cracked. She swallowed before saying, awkwardness thick in her voice, “I was… sort of his wife.”

There had been considerable surprise when Susan introduced herself as the Doctor’s granddaughter, but it was nothing in comparison to the pure astonishment sent in Rose’s direction by everyone in the room except Martha— even Susan was looking shocked, though her mouth wasn’t gaping obnoxiously like everyone else’s was.

“You’re his wife?!” Jamie gasped, his Scottish thickening with his amazement.

“You married my grandfather?” said Susan, blinking at Rose.

“Wasn’t expecting that,” Ace said, looking stunned instead of hostile for the first time.

“He kissed me when he was married?” Grace hissed to herself, unheard by everyone else.

“I didn’t even know the Doctor could love,” Liz said.

“Of course he can!” hissed Rose, Susan and Martha all at the same time.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Clara in a hollow voice, making everybody turn to her. She was almost as white as Rose, staring hard at her knees. “The only wife I’ve ever heard of was River Song.”

Rose barely smiled at the mention of River; the action was weak and behind it was clear sadness and pain. “The Doctor doesn’t talk about people.”

“Not even his wife?” Ace snapped, once again looking furious— thankfully this time it wasn’t directed at Rose, but rather for Rose.

“I think it’s a bit after your time, mate,” said Rose, the tired tone in her voice matching her expression. At this point Martha just had to sling an arm over Rose’s shoulders. “‘Sides, it wasn’t really the Doctor.” She paused. “Well, it was, but it was a human-Time Lord biological metacrisis of him.”

“What?” echoed everyone in the room except Martha and Susan.

“Essentially an identical copy of my grandfather,” Susan supplied, with an awkward sideways glance at a very despondent-looking Rose, “but with a human body.”

“It was still the Doctor,” said Rose in an adamant voice, more to herself than anyone else.

“So basically the Doctor got cloned, feelings for you and all?” Clara said, a hint of something in her voice that made Rose snap her head up and stare at the woman, who stared right back.

Martha glared at Clara briefly before giving Rose’s shoulders a squeeze and saying kindly, “What happened to your Doctor, Rose?”

Rose was silent for a full minute, glancing between each and every person in the room from Susan’s still astonished gaze to Ace’s impatient stare, before swallowing and saying, with a tone like she was determined to keep her voice steady, “He died.”

“How?” Ace demanded.

Martha shot her a look, but Rose continued anyway. “In-in a zeppelin crash, along with my family. ‘Bout two years after we were left in the parallel universe.”

There was a very awkward silence that settled over the room like a heavy thundercloud, in which Susan looked like she was about to be sick and Martha tried desperately to figure out a way, any way, to comfort Rose, but could only settle for squeezing her shoulders. There was a crackling sound before Beratt’s voice clanged through the room, his cheerful tone clashing with the mood.

“Well, that was touching,” he said with delight, giggling, “but it’s time to begin. Now, everybody get up.” Nobody moved, glancing at each other uncertainly, up until Beratt said impatiently, “Up, now, up!” Using Martha’s arm for leverage, Rose stood, encouraging the others to do the same as they all stared in the direction of the comm. “Good.”

There was a loud whooshing noise that made everybody jump, as the metal walls suddenly separated and then sank into the floor with a clang, revealing a slightly larger area with eleven different doors, all marked with shiny black numbers. The group huddled in the very centre of the room like penguins, wary of the prospect of case anything coming through the doors.

“Now everybody, open the door according to which Doctor you travelled with,” Beratt explained.

“You wish,” scoffed Ace.

“I suggest you listen,” said Beratt airily, apparently unperturbed.

“What’re you gonna do, eh?”

“Well, I have the Doctor here with me,” said Beratt with glee, “and if you don’t listen I’ll asphyxiate him with aerosolised aspirin.”

Rose didn’t even hesitate before obediently moving to the door marked ‘9’, while Susan followed her lead and detoured to the door with the ‘1’ on it. Everybody else blinked, looking confused, and Beratt sighed over the intercom before directing everybody to his or her respective doors with exasperation. Once everybody was properly in place, Grace trembling in her doorway, there was another loud noise as all of the doors slid open. As everyone spared each other one last glance, they each stepped into their own corridor, Beratt’s wily voice grinning through the comm., “Let the games begin!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4
Abjection

Once the Doctor’s companions had finally started to sit up, Beratt, who had placed himself behind the Doctor’s shoulder two minutes prior, giggled gleefully right in the Doctor’s ear and pointed to a spot on the monitor, positively hopping in place.

“Look, Doctor, look!”

The Doctor resisted the urge to shut his eyes disobediently, since anything he did in defiance might spur Beratt to hurt his companions. His gaze travelled along Beratt’s finger, which was positively shaking with excitement; another flood of strangled fear swept through his insides when he saw a bottle-blonde head with dark roots rising gingerly, with great aid from Martha Jones. His face blanched of colour, which somehow made Beratt even more excited, since he giggled again and gave the Doctor’s shoulder a tight squeeze.

“Still not convinced, eh? Well, you’re getting there, at least.” Beratt pressed a button on the monitor, so that the two of them could hear the companions’ conversations, and with an exaggerated movement he flipped the remote around, pressed another button on it and began to speak. “Wake up, everyone! My name is Beratt, lovely to meet you all. Well, I say meet, but only one of you will actually see me when this is all over.” The Doctor tried very hard to suppress a sigh of exasperation and only succeeded mildly. “You’ll be feeling groggy for a few more minutes but that should clear up soon. Might be a bit worse for you, Rose Tyler, since I took you from across the Howling.” The blonde’s head snapped up at the mention of her name to stare at the camera, shock evident on her face.

And oh God, it was her.

It was really, really her, umber eyes wide and framed with lashes thick from several layers of mascara, lips full and parted as she prepared to respond. His insides clenched with anticipation at hearing her voice, even if it was through a crackling, grainy speaker, but Beratt, who was practically clutching onto the Doctor’s shoulder for dear life, interrupted with some more monologue about his plans for them. Everything felt surreal— it was like having an out of body experience, no longer able to feel the aching in his lower back from the stiff backrest, or the cool metal of the deadlock shackles chafing the circumference of his wrists. He barely registered the end of Beratt’s speech, punctuated eventually by Ace’s loud screeching about blowing something up, as per the norm with her. As the companions started to speak inwardly, Beratt pulled the remote/microphone thing away from his mouth and positively squealed like a child with a new toy.

“Ooh, you believe me now!” The Omicronian did a little jig in place that, had the Doctor not been semi-catatonic, he would have laughed at. “How wonderful! Thank Nysondre— I did try very hard to get her specially for you, you know!”

“How?” The Doctor’s very soft, very apathetic voice echoed through the room, startling himself— he hadn’t even realised he’d spoken.

“Hm?” Beratt hummed, glancing at the Doctor’s still ghostly expression. “Ooh, you mean how did I manage to get her?” He grinned smugly, tugging at the sleeves of his tunic as he began to prattle happily. “Bit brilliant, if I do say so myself. You see, I scrounged for certain metals and built a ship that could survive a journey through the Howling — took a good long year, you know — and then I stole a vortex manipulator from a Time Agent so that I could go back in time and steal some DNA from Miss Tyler there.” He tapped the monitor with his knuckle. “Then I scoured the universe for a crack in space and time so I could enter the Howling, planted a beacon in this universe so I could find my way back — would be a bit silly to get lost, don’t you think? — then I used her DNA to track her down and then I grabbed her when she was on the frontlines.” The final word of Beratt’s sentence brought the Doctor vaguely back to reality, and he frowned and was about to comment when Beratt remarked, “Ooh, listen to this!”

Beratt raised the volume on the monitor, allowing Rose’s voice to permeate the room with an earnest, half-finished sentence, “— who took us, and then maybe we can make a plan to get out of here. All right— we know the bloke’s name is Beratt and that he took us ‘cos we’re all affiliated with… the Doctor.” Her painful-looking pause before she positively forced herself to say his name was like a knife to his hearts. “Does the name ‘Beratt’ sound familiar to anyone?”

“Oh, she’s clever,” said Beratt with delight, nodding in approval at the monitor as the other companions shook their heads in response. “I definitely see why you chose her.”

His comment sparked irritation in the Doctor again, and he wished for a brief moment that he could go back into whatever hypnotic state he’d gone into earlier, but Rose continued to assume the role of the leader — which invoked a reluctant stab of pride in his chest — and try to sort everything out with the other companions, so he concentrated on her instead. He watched her go back and forth with his other companions, tolerate Ace’s snapping with great patience (he felt the briefest flicker of painful amusement when he remembered the old Rose Tyler, who had never been particularly patient) speak kindly to a nervous Peri Brown and briefly cheer on Martha when she admitted her marital status. Her smile made his heart clench and he momentarily wished it was the tongue-touched one that used to drive him mad, although he’d deny it if anyone asked. He watched her face blossom into sweet nostalgia when she discovered a young Sarah Jane Smith, then crash into seriousness when she began theorising about temporal paradoxes, and then mirror the room’s astonishment when Susan revealed herself to be his granddaughter.

His stomach already felt tight and painful, but when the companions began to interrogate a now nervous-looking Rose and she announced that she’d married the metacrisis copy of him, the feeling worsened. When she adamantly defended him for having feelings, tightness in his chest joined the other sensations. When she admitted in a determinedly steady tone that he and her family had died in a zeppelin crash, his stomach churned. With a hasty movement impaired horribly by the Doctor’s shackles, he ducked to the side and vomited over the edge of the chair.

The Doctor barely heard Beratt’s disgusted exclamation as he leaned his sweaty forehead on the cool metal armrest as best he could, trying to fight off the urge to be sick again. Throwing up was one of the things Time Lords rarely had to worry about, but this new discovery made him pale, shuddering and feverish. It’d been over a century since he’d last seen her, and he’d been relatively able to let go of her with the knowledge that she was happy and growing old with the human version of himself— now he knew he’d been content with his life while Rose had lost him and her family and was forced to live by herself for at least three years, at most ten, and that abhorred him.

His initial disgust having worn off, Beratt made a tutting noise and patted the Doctor’s shoulder compassionately. “I know, it’s terrible, isn’t it?” Beratt said, as the Doctor spit out the foul taste of bile and tried to labour his breathing so he didn’t get sick again. Beratt’s crazed, delighted tone clashed horribly with his gestures. “I’m sure you think it’s your fault that she lost everything she ever had—” The Doctor’s upper lip curled in a snarl at the obvious emphasis in a possible attempt to provoke him, “— but she did say it was a zeppelin crash, so it was just an unfortunate accident, really.” With an exaggerated motion, Beratt whipped the remote back to his mouth and said, with a happy giggle, “Well, that was touching, but it’s time to begin.”

The Doctor, although his forehead was still pressed awkwardly into the armrest, watched the monitor from his peripheral vision as Beratt directed his companions to rise and head to their respective doors. Ace refused, Beratt threatened to suffocate him with aspirin, and Rose immediately obeyed without a second’s hesitation.

The Doctor’s stomach flipped again, but this time for a different reason.

*

Rose’s door shut with a loud slam behind her, making her nearly jump out of her boots and causing the corridor to be blanketed with complete darkness. Instinctive fear made her heart pound, and she automatically reached for the gun from her hip holster, only to curse Beratt to hell when she realised he’d taken it. Thankfully the corridor soon lit up with bright lights lining the ceiling, causing Rose to wince as it made her headache flare up again.

Forcing back her own discomfort, she blinked away any blurriness that may remain and scanned her surroundings with care. The corridor she was in didn’t have any doors save for the entrance and seemed to stretch on continuously for a long while before making a sharp turn to the right, and it was about two metres wide and four metres tall. The walls seemed to be made of the same reinforced steel as the room she’d woken up in, and there were two visible speakers and cameras pinned on the wall with several metres in between.

“Now then, everyone,” Beratt’s voice came from the speaker. “Here are the regulations. Rule number one: participation is mandatory, or you’ll be eliminated.” Rose rolled her eyes and glared in the direction of the camera. “Rule number two: while there’s no particular time limit, you can’t run the course slow as a snail.” The way he said it was almost fond. “There is no finish line, since this isn’t a race— you’ll all be set against a series of obstacles. If you fail even one, you’ll be eliminated. Any questions?” Before anyone could answer, he said happily, “Good, good. Now, off you trot!”

Rose scowled and opened her mouth to shout, but jumped when she heard a terrified wail through the wall to her right. “Hello?” she called.

“Rose?” Martha’s voice came from her left, making her positively deflate with relief.

“Martha,” Rose breathed. “This is brilliant— seems we can hear each other through the walls.” Raising her voice, she called, “Whoever can hear me, respond!”

“I can hear you!” said Susan’s voice loudly.

“Me too,” said Sarah Jane, her voice a bit fainter.

“I can too,” Clara called.

“Well this is good,” Rose sighed. “At least we can hear each other. Pass it on to everyone else you can hear, so that nobody’s left on their own.” After everybody had complied and all companions were accounted for, another sob was barely heard from her right, making Rose frown and call out, “Who’s that crying?” Nobody answered save from another suppressed sniffle. “What’s the matter? Peri, is that you? Grace?”

The second her name was said, Grace’s terrified shriek bounced through Rose’s corridor, making her headache sear yet again. “I don’t want to be here! Let me out!”

Pressing her fingers to her temple again, Rose called back with urgency, “Grace, it’s all right, calm down—”

“I don’t even really know the Doctor— we only met for a few hours!” Grace continued to wail, ignoring Rose completely. A banging sound started up, flesh slapping metal as Grace undoubtedly pounded her fists against the walls. “Please, let me go, I have to get out of here, I—”

“Now, now, Miss Holloway,” tutted Beratt’s crackling voice through the intercom. It wasn’t being broadcasted through every comm., most likely just through Grace’s, but it was loud enough so that Rose and most likely a few other companions could hear it through the walls. “You were chosen specially for this game— you ought to be grateful.”

“Please,” sobbed Grace. “Just let me go, please.”

“Don’t be silly. Now be silent and run the course like everyone else.”

“I won’t!” Grace shrieked, giving the walls another pound with her fists.

“Get up at once, Miss Holloway,” Beratt sighed, sounding exasperated. “Don’t be a child.”

“I’m not moving!”

There was a pause, in which Rose fidgeted nervously, not liking the hush. Then, with another heavy sigh, Beratt said, “Very well then, Miss Holloway. I hereby declare you as disqualified from the running.”

Rose’s stomach swooped with horror at Beratt’s words, but what really made her blanch a pale white was the loud clanging noise, followed by silence. “Grace?” Rose croaked, her voice shaky. She cleared her throat and called out louder, “Grace?”

“Are you all right?” Martha added a bit more quietly, since she was closer.

“Grace, are you there?” Rose shouted, heart pounding against her ribcage.

The comm. beside the camera crackled and Beratt’s voice chimed into the conversation. This time he was broadcasting on all speakers again, making his voice echo oddly. “I’m afraid Miss Holloway isn’t going to answer. She’s been disqualified and is no longer in the running.” He paused, whether to let his words sink in or to assess all of their colourless faces, none of them knew. “There are now ten people left in the games. Have fun!”

His voice vanished, and another eerie silence set over the companions. Martha broke it by saying, in a trembling voice, “Rose? What d’you think he meant by ‘disqualified’?”

Rose stared hollowly at the camera, as though she were gazing with horror straight into Beratt’s face. “I-I think it means he’s killed her.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 5
Perception

“Rose? What d’you think he means by ‘disqualified’?”

“I-I think it means he’s killed her.”

“Ooh, she’s clever!” Beratt squealed yet again, hopping around like a little schoolgirl and leaving unnoticed the Doctor’s pale, ghostly and once again sickly expression. “Absolutely brilliant— how wonderful that she caught on so quickly! I praise you for falling in love with her.” Beratt glanced at him, smile turning into a perturbed expression when he finally took in the Doctor. “Oh dear, you’re not going to throw up again, are you?”

“HOW DARE YOU?” the Doctor shouted, the noise so loud and sudden it made Beratt actually jump.

He frowned. “How dare I what? Ask you if you were going to thr—?”

“NO, YOU BLOODY IDIOT!” As Beratt stuck out his chin in a scowl at the insult, the Doctor flailed against his restraints again, continuing to yell. “I SWEAR TO RASSILON, IF YOU’VE KILLED GRACE I’LL MURDER YOU!”

“Oh, but I wholeheartedly admit I’ve killed off Miss Holloway,” Beratt said with airy confusion, blinking. “And I’m going to kill off all the other losers in the running.” As the Doctor’s face paled again despite his progressing rage, Beratt smiled good-naturedly again and added, “Oh, but of course the winner will be kept safe. You have my utmost promise that the last person standing will be brought to you, and both of you will be sent on your merry way to traipse through the universe ‘til kingdom come.”

As he emphasised himself with a tiny hop, the Doctor snarled, with only a slight crack in his voice, “And how exactly are you going to determine the… losers?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Beratt grinned, and when he directed his attention back to the monitor, the Doctor was pretty certain that was all he was going to get for now.

*

The corridors were deathly silent after Rose had finished speaking, an eerie ambient noise hanging like a heavy blanket over all of them. The silence, solitude and her own realisation made gooseflesh erupt over her neck and arms and her heartbeat speed up.

“So that’s how one of us is gonna ‘win’,” Martha said, her voice sounding as hollow as Rose felt.

“He’s gonna pick us off one by one.”

Anger started bubbling up in her chest like a volcano, making her clench her fists and shake with the effort of tamping down her desire to punch a hole through the wall— the universe really was a bitch, dumping the last six years of hell on her head and then dragging her back to her universe only to be taken hostage by a psychopathic alien and plopped into an obstacle course of doom.

And, for the first time in just over half a decade, Rose worried for the Doctor’s safety as well— if Beratt had taken her from all the way across the Void, there was no doubt he’d gotten to the Doctor as well.

Rose clenched her eyes shut, counting down from ten so she didn’t do something stupid like punch the camera, before saying, in a voice that only wavered once, “Okay, let’s start walkin’, then. Keep talkin’, tell me if you see anythin’— an’ tell the others to do the same thing.”

“Right,” Martha replied, before passing on the message to the others within earshot.

Rose scanned as far down the corridor as she could with her eyes, looking cautiously for anything even remotely out of place before taking a few careful steps forward, walking stealthily with one foot directly in front of the other. Nervousness clogged in her throat, but she kept her eyes locked ahead of her, slightly mollified by the sounds of Martha’s vigilant footsteps over the ominous ambient noise.

The briefest flash of silver on the ground made her pause in her steps and call out urgently, “Martha.”

Martha’s footsteps paused. “Did you see something?”

“I dunno.” Rose carefully stepped forward, prompting another swift flash across the floor like a miniscule shooting star. She leaned forward to better examine it, only to spot a needle-thin tripwire that was the same steel-grey colour as the floors. “It’s a tripwire.”

“That’s creative,” muttered Martha sarcastically.

“Nobody said he was smart, just bonkers,” Rose supplied, reaching down and slipping her fingers around the wire in an effort to follow it, only to gasp out in pain and tear her hand away when the wire slipped gently over her fingertips and sliced open her skin.

“Rose?” Martha called worriedly. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Rose said, sticking her injured fingers into her mouth with an annoyed look in the wire’s direction. “Just cut myself on the wire.” Her gaze narrowed as a theory occurred to her. “Seems like it’s a little too thin to be just a tripwire— s’like Beratt wanted me to slice open my ankles too.”

“Does the wire lead to anything?”

Since she couldn’t follow it with her fingers, Rose instead struggled to accomplish the task with her eyes, only to have her mouth drop open in shock when she found two gigantic, equally sharp-looking axes, suspended by the same cord that made up the tripwire.

“Well that is fantastic,” Rose cursed, glaring in the direction of the camera and hoping to God that Beratt was watching her.

“What?”

“The tripwire’s holdin’ up two bloody pendulums,” Rose announced darkly, hands on her hips. “If I’d tripped over it, it would’ve broken and the axes would’ve sliced me in half.”

“Blimey,” Martha said in a hollow voice. “He’s definitely trying to kill us in as bloody a way as possible.”

“Looks like,” Rose muttered, before lifting her foot and bringing it down hard on the tripwire.

It snapped, thankfully not slicing through her boot like she’d feared, which brought down the axes with a loud whooshing noise where they embedded themselves into the wall. The resulting bang echoed through the corridor, and Martha’s startled gasp sounded from beside her.

“It went through the wall!” she announced with shock in her voice.

“The walls are that thin?” An inquisitive look grew over Rose’s face, and she stepped carefully by the now curled wire and grabbed onto the handle of one of the axes, tugging with purpose. “Maybe we can use one of these to break open an entrance to each other’s corridors.”

The corridors crackled with static from the speaker again, before Beratt’s cheerful voice chirped, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Rose whirled her head around, looking in the direction of the camera, but before she could say anything Beratt added, “Oh, it’s a brilliant idea — I myself didn’t even think about that when I set this little course up, so praise to you — but it’s still technically cheating, and I’d have to disqualify you.” He said the last two words in a singsong voice, making Rose glare just as the speaker turned off.

“Well that’s brilliant,” Martha said shortly.

“S’just as well,” Rose sighed, giving the axe one last tug before relenting. “This thing’s never gonna come out of the wall— s’in too deep.”

“Great.” A small thumping noise sounded from Martha’s end, like she had just slumped against the wall. “Wonder if anybody else has seen anything like this.”

“We should probably check in,” Rose said, before calling out as loudly as she could, “Is everybody all right?”

*

Liz Shaw stood positively frozen in place, staring ahead of her with eyes wide as coins. The seemingly endless corridor was lit well enough, but since that mad alien had announced through the intercom that Grace Calloway — or something like that — had been disqualified, every minuscule shadow looked as though it were hiding something ominous. Her foot kept inching forward but instinct kept yelling at her to stay put, despite the fact that she knew full well if she didn’t move, she’d most likely be the next person to be ‘disqualified’. And, from the way the other companions had been muttering to each other in frightened tones, ‘disqualified’ didn’t mean a time-out on the bench.

Swallowing her fear and trying hard to school her expression into one of brave determination, Liz stepped forward, the heel of her shoe making an unnerving clacking sound. What little bravado she’d just conjured up vanished and she nearly jumped out of her own skin when a young girl’s voice called out from beside her, “Hello?”

Pressing a thin hand to her sternum as though trying to prevent her stuttering heart from bursting out of her chest, Liz glanced around despite herself and called back, voice only cracking once, “Hello?”

“Who’s that?”

“Liz Shaw.” Liz wracked her brains for a name to put with the American accent, remembering only Grace something-or-other. “Who are you?”

“Peri Brown,” the girl answered. “Um, I’m not sure if you heard but that Rose girl said for us to watch out for anything that looks suspicious.” Suspicious. Liz laughed hollowly to herself, placing a hand over her mouth and trying to ignore the fact that she was shaking. “Uh, hello?”

“What?” Liz basically snapped.

“Is everything all right?”

“We were all kidnapped from different times by a certifiably mental alien and are all being forced to run a potentially booby-trapped relay race of death,” Liz said shrilly, trying to keep her voice quiet and failing. “Everything is just lovely, thank you.”

Peri was silent for a moment, and Liz immediately felt horrible for snapping at her. Before she could apologise, the young girl piped up, “We’ll be all right. We just have to follow what Rose said and keep our eyes out for anything that looks like it might want to chop off our faces.” Liz chuckled without mirth again. “And,” Peri added, “we can pass the time by discussing how it’s possible that she’s married to the Doctor.”

“That is a rather strange thing to grasp, isn’t it?” Liz said, a smile reluctantly forming on her mouth. Her smile faded almost as quickly as it’d come, and she confessed to Peri in a quiet voice, “I’m a scientist, not a soldier— I barely even leave my lab. I think it’s guaranteed I won’t be making it to the finish line.”

“Don’t say that,” Peri said earnestly. “I’m not a scientist or a soldier— I’m just a college student from California. Besides, who says we’re not going to encounter some kind of obstacle that need a scientist’s expertise?”

“Like what?” Liz snorted, imagining for one humorous moment a table full of chemicals she had to mix in the correct order to blow up the wall.

“I dunno— maybe you need to mix some chemicals and blow something up?”

Liz couldn’t hold back a laugh, telling her, “That was precisely what came to my mind as well.”

As Peri started to laugh as well, Liz shut her eyes, once again trying to gather up some courage. To hell with being a mere scientist— she was a companion to the Doctor, damn it, and she had gone on many adventures with him and saved the world countless times. Although, she couldn’t help but muse, she’d rarely left the safety of her lab at UNIT during those times.

“All right,” Liz said with determination. “We’ve got to start moving, lest we end up like that Calloway girl.”

“I think her name was Holloway,” Peri remarked, but her footsteps told Liz she’d complied.

Liz took a few tentative steps forward herself, eyes locked in front of her just in case a booby trap was ahead. Nothing jumped out of nowhere as she’d expected, so her steps quickened, bravado taking over as she grew more confident.

Horror flooded her insides when she took a swift step forward and nearly collapsed when the floor beneath her right foot suddenly sank with a clicking sound. Her eyes darted to the ground, spotting a conspicuous, sunken tile the same grey colour as the rest of the corridor, before something darted out of the wall and jammed itself against her side.

Electricity zapped through her body at once, making pain crackle down her bones; her limbs seized up and her whole body jerked uncontrollably, and she was barely aware of Peri’s voice shouting her name. White spots dotted her vision and a loud buzzing sound started in her ears, before the thing finally retracted back into the wall and she fell forward, her vision going black far before she hit the floor.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6
Abolition

Liz’s quickening footsteps were easy to hear through the corridor walls thanks to the clicking of her heels, so when they suddenly stopped Peri halted as well, concern welling in her chest.

“Liz?” Instead of an answer she heard a quiet, gut-wrenching grunting sound, like Liz was being jerked around by something, and a near-silent buzzing to boot. Terror washed through her, making her breathing ragged and causing tears to prick at the corners of her eyes as she covered her mouth with shaking hands. “Liz?!”

The sounds ended with a loud thud, like Liz had just collapsed, and Peri bit back a sob of fear as Rose’s voice just barely reached her corridor.

“Is everybody all right?”

A flurry of uncertain affirmatives echoed through the corridors, and Peri shouted back in reply, “I-I don’t think so!”

She faintly heard Rose’s confused, “What did she say?” prompting Sarah Jane, who was in the neighbouring corridor, to pass on the message. Rose added, calling loudly again, “What’s the matter?”

“Liz has gone quiet!” Peri said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice and barely succeeding. “We were talking through the walls, and then her footsteps just stopped and she didn’t answer!”

As Sarah Jane passed on Peri’s words again, Clara’s voice piped up with concern, “That’s not good. What else did you hear?”

Peri opened her mouth to tell them about the disturbing noises, but the speaker crackled on again and Beratt’s voice rang through each of their corridors, making them all nearly jump out of their shoes.

“We have another loser!” he said gleefully, and there wasn’t a single companion listening who didn’t feel their heart drop into their stomach at his words. “Miss Liz Shaw has just met a very… ah, electric ending—” Peri pressed her hands to her mouth harder with a choking noise, trying desperately not to throw up when she realised just what those grunting noises had been, “— and is the second out of the running. There are nine of you left— I wish you all luck!”

Rose loud exclamation of, “Fuck,” reached nearly every companion’s ears— including Beratt’s, since he gasped like an affronted old lady and chided, “Language, Miss Tyler.” As Rose glared hard at the camera, Beratt added with his earlier cheer, “Now, while you have all been very productive by speaking through the walls — very intelligent, good on all of you — some of the corridors will be splitting in different directions, so you may not be able to hear people.”

The speaker shut off with a clicking sound, and Rose kicked the wall angrily, swearing one more time just to piss Beratt off some more.

“That’s another one of us gone, then,” Clara remarked, voice wavering a bit.

“And now we won’t be able to hear each other,” Susan reminded them from a corridor near Rose’s, sounding frightened.

“That’s a bonus,” Rose muttered.

“It’s literally been five minutes since Grace was—” Martha paused for a moment, struggling to find the right word, “— disqualified.”

“At this rate we’ll all be dead by the end of the hour,” Rose mused with concern.

“All but one,” Clara reminded them darkly.

“Maybe we should just stay behind,” Sarah Jane suggested.

“And end up like Grace did?” Susan said.

“We could all stay behind,” Sarah Jane said earnestly. “He can’t kill all of us off, not if we all refuse to play his game.”

“Actually I wouldn’t put it past him.” Rose shook her head, despite there being nobody to see her. “We’re in a no-win situation. If we stay behind, he’ll definitely kill us, and if we don’t we’ll all get picked off one by one by his bloody traps. We’ll just have to press on, keep talkin’ to each other as long as we can and be careful not to set anythin’ off. S’not like this course can be too long— not if he’s tryin’ to kill us off so quickly.”

Everybody muttered their agreement, even Sarah Jane, although hers was still uncertain. Rose clenched her fists and aimed another glare in the direction of the camera, before resuming her walk. She hadn’t seen anything since the two pendulums held up by the tripwire, but it wasn’t for lack of trying— her eyes were burning with the effort of keeping them open and looking alertly for anything decidedly booby trap-like, like she was in a staring contest with a Weeping Angel.

“Fuck!” Rose heard Martha cry out, making her freeze in her steps.

“Martha?” she called out in alarm, listening for anything significant.

“‘M all right,” Martha grunted, her reply followed by a few thumping noises. “Bloody alien git put another tripwire. He’s not very imaginative.”

Rose snorted, remarking, “Not smart, just bonkers, remember?”

As Martha echoed her snort, Rose relaxed her stance for the briefest of moments and took another step forward, only to tense up again when the tile beneath her feet sank into the ground with a whoosh. Rose threw herself backward and onto her bum at once, just in time to dodge a particularly nasty-looking alien taser that looked determined to dig itself into her stomach. With a swift movement and another curse at Beratt, Rose picked herself up off the ground and kicked the taser out of its socket, where it flew forward into the corner, still sparking slightly but otherwise harmless.

“Rose?” Martha said with concern.

“‘M fine too,” Rose assured her, striding forward and picking up the now motionless taser with a scowl. “Bet this is the thing he used on Liz Shaw.”

“What is it?”

“Some kind of alien taser.” Rose rolled her eyes, tossing it behind her shoulder.

“Really doesn’t have a lot of ideas, does he?”

“At least this means he’s predictable,” Rose said. “Pass it on to the others, so they at least know what to look out for.”

Martha complied, and as the repeated message grew fainter as it passed from companion to companion, Rose sent one last glance full of promise and determination in the direction of the camera before continuing on with her head held high.

*

The Doctor watched, eyes glazed and mouth agape as his pink-and-yellow girl expertly dodged the taser in a whirlwind of black, before picking herself up off the ground and honest-to-goodness kicking the thing off its handle. Beratt giggled hysterically as he watched, hopping up and down and pointing insistently at Rose’s figure on the screen.

“Did you see that?!” he said gleefully, actually spinning in place for a moment like a ballerina. “I just knew she’d make this fun!” He exhaled loudly with satisfaction, clapping the Doctor on the shoulder and beaming down at him. “Was she always so able?” The Doctor didn’t answer, eyes still locked on Rose’s form as she and Martha swiftly insulted Beratt (which remained unnoticed by said Omicronian). Beratt then proceeded to poke the Doctor in the shoulder, much to his annoyance. “Hello?”

“What?” he snapped, steadfastly keeping his gaze forward.

“I said,” Beratt huffed, sticking out his jaw in irritation, “when you first met her, was she this impressive?”

“I—”

He swallowed hard, mind flickering back against his will to the day he’d grabbed the hand of a nervous shop girl with too much mascara and told her to run. He desperately tried to lock away the memory, like this self and his last self had both been so good at doing, but it stubbornly lodged herself in the forefront of his mind, remembering the day she told him something he hadn’t known he’d needed to hear back then.

“There’s me.”

Beratt glanced at him, his expression turning to delighted inquiry as he took in the Doctor. “You…? Speak up, Doctor.”

“No.” He exhaled, a long and decidedly sad noise. “No, she— no.”

“Oh?” Beratt circled around the Doctor’s chair like a vulture, his fingers steepled and his eyebrows raised. “Then what was she like? Talented but closeted? Abhorrent towards violence, perhaps?”

“No,” he answered, voice hardening.

“Ah, just unusually intelligent, then?”

“No,” he repeated, starting to glare but still refusing to move his gaze.

Beratt scowled, pausing in his steps and clearly growing increasingly frustrated. “Fine then, what is it? The fact that she makes a good breakfast or the wonderful, amazing way she holds a spanner?”

“No,” snapped the Doctor, stiffening in his seat.

“Then what in the name of Nysondre made you choose her? If she wasn’t special in the slightest then why did you pick her, out of everyone, to be your companion— after the War, no less?”

“Shut up,” the Doctor snarled, fists clenched tight.

“I will not,” Beratt said indignantly. “What was she then, just another faceless nobody that you shut your eyes and pointed at and that’s how you chose her?”

“Shut up!” he shouted, spit flying from his mouth and his arms struggling against his bindings again in an effort to strangle the alien that was insulting his Rose. “You know nothing about Rose!”

Beratt actually tossed back his head and let out a loud laugh that sounded more like a disturbing cackle, his armour shaking. “My dear Doctor, I’ve spent the last several years gathering information and the means to fetch her from across the Howling.”

“That means nothing.”

Beratt barked out another laugh, this one sounding slightly condescending. “On the contrary— I daresay it means I know more about her than you do!”

The Doctor’s anger subsided to make way for suspicion and confusion. “Like what?”

But Beratt merely smirked at him, his self-righteous I-know-something-you-don’t expression making the Doctor’s earlier desire to crush the alien’s windpipe with his hands return with a flare. As the alien turned his back on him with an airy, “Excuse me,” and exited the room, the Doctor was left alone, his unanswered question hanging over the room like a fog. He watched Beratt leave the room, the door shutting behind him with a loud slam that reverberated through the large, relatively empty room.

When his eyes finally drifted back to the monitor, he was startled to find Rose’s gaze boring straight into his, umber eyes narrowed and blazing with fortitude. He exhaled on one long, shuddering breath, the promise in her expression searing through his hearts and making them swell with hope, of all things.

And, if he tried really hard, he could imagine that she could see him, and was promising him that she would stay safe, no matter what, and return to him.

*

A loud curse bounced off the walls of Jamie’s corridor, his accent thickening with frustration as the Highlander fell down onto his arse, smacking his head hard against the steel wall. The last hour or so had been entertaining, to put it mildly— besides the alien’s continued transmissions, and despite the fact that he’d stated some companions were able to speak through the walls, Jamie had heard nothing but faint, indistinguishable hollers from the others. When he’d attempted to shout back, hoping they’d be able to hear him, he’d received no answer whatsoever.

He’d been completely alone since he’d first stepped into the corridor and the doors had slammed shut behind him.

That hadn’t stopped him in the slightest, of course— especially considering he hadn’t been able to take more than a few steps before something tried to wallop him over the head or shove him into a fire pit. Admittedly, when he realised he was alone in this — and when Beratt announced that others had been communicating with each other — he was initially nervous and a little bit irked, since that wasn’t fair at all, but so far he was alive and, while it was a horrid thing to think, that was more than what could be said for two other companions.

Picking himself off the floor with another annoyed mutter of, “Stupid effin’ bag of stinkin’ shite…” Jamie dusted off the backside of his kilt and pressed on, counting the steps in between booby traps like he’d been doing for the past hour. His maximum so far had been thirteen.

Jamie reached a total of nine steps before he was forced to slam himself to the ground and roll at the perfect time to avoid being sliced in half by a swinging pendulum, and as he grimaced into the floor when he felt the blade tear open the fabric of his turtleneck he honestly wondered if anybody else was experiencing this flurry of traps or if the bloody alien just had a grudge against him. Well, it wasn’t going to be that easy to knock him out of the running.

He scrambled up off the floor for the umpteenth time, wincing at the pain in his knees from being scuffed one too many times before restarting his counting.

One… two… three…

Jamie paused in his steps the moment he heard a near-silent rumbling noise, heart thudding with alertness and adrenaline yet again. His mind instinctively tried to put images to the noise, but the only things he could think of were angry animals and giant stone blocks being pushed against the floor, although that last one seemed rather unlikely.

He took another tentative step forward, steadily sweeping the corridor for anything that could be the source of the noise and finding nothing, prompting another few steps. His pace stuttered at once when he finally spotted a glowing pair of shockingly scarlet eyes within the dimmest of shadows, and he went completely rigid when he finally realised those eyes belonged to some type of alien dog; its coat was a violently dark indigo, almost black, and there were slits on the sides of its neck like gills.

And, he was simultaneously shocked and disgusted to discover, a greyish-green foam was spilling from its bared jaws and dripping onto the steel floor. Brilliant— an alien dog with alien rabies.

Jamie’s hand twitched instinctively to fetch his thick-hilted knife from the pocket of his kilt, making the dog twitch as well and causing its snarling to raise in volume for a moment, but he froze again and silently cursed when he remembered Beratt had stripped him of his weapons. He cursed again, upper lip curling over his teeth in frustration. Well then, he’d just have to do what he’d been forced to do a few times during the Battle of Culloden— run into it with nothing but the clothes on his back.

His stance lowered aggressively, keeping his eyes locked on the dog. “All right then, ya howlin’ bampot,” Jamie muttered, before hurling himself towards the dog with a loud scream of, “CREAG AN TUIRE!”

The dog bolted towards him at his shout, leaping on top of him gracefully and, to Jamie’s surprise, knocking him down and pinning him to the ground with more strength than Jamie had anticipated. His head slammed back against the steel of the floor, and before he could recover from the shock, the dog’s snarling jaws locked around his neck, canines sinking into his throat.

Jamie screamed.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7
Detonation

Forty minutes before Jamie McCrimmon was potentially torn to shreds four corridors down, Sarah Jane was stumbling down her own corridor in — to her annoyance — her only pair of two-inch, designer heels. As her ankle twisted for what had to be the bazillionth time, nearly sending her flying into the wall, she sank her teeth down into her lower lip to keep her from shrieking out a curse, tears stinging her eyes. It was just her effing luck— after she’d discovered the Doctor had dropped her off in the wrong country, let alone the wrong city, she’d had to scrounge together what little money she had in the bottom of her trunk to buy a train ticket back into England, and ended up having to change her clothing in the station’s loo. She’d also ended up stepping in a murky puddle outside the station, which had forced her to change from her colourful converse into her only other pair of shoes— in hindsight she truly regretted not keeping her sullied but stable shoes.

She cried out for the first time when her ankle twisted again, finally snapping the heel on her right shoe and nearly sent her flying towards an honest-to-goodness flamethrower. A pair of footsteps she hadn’t even known were there stopped in the background, and what she recognised as Clara Oswald’s voice called out, “Are you all right?”

“Fine,” choked out Sarah Jane, even though that was far from the truth. Leaning against the wall for leverage (and eyeing the flamethrower warily) she leaned down with one hand and picked up the broken piece of her heel. “Heel broke.”

“You’re wearing heels?” Clara exclaimed in astonishment.

Sarah Jane laughed shrilly and mirthlessly before positively shrieking, “Well it’s not like I expected to be kidnapped and forced to run an obstacle course!”

Clara was quiet for a moment, before saying meekly, “Sorry.”

Sarah Jane’s lower lip trembled with guilt, and to vent her frustration she hurled the broken heel towards the flamethrower, which fired up at once at the object’s proximity and incinerated it on the spot. “No, I’m sorry,” she said, kicking both of her shoes off so she could stand properly. “We’re both in the same predicament, after all.”

“‘Cept I’m not wearing heels,” Clara supplied, and Sarah Jane chuckled weakly.

“I just…” Sarah Jane gave her shoes one last regretful glance before festering on barefoot, ducking for a moment to avoid the wrath of the flamethrower. “He leaves me behind to go home, and he tells me not to forget him and I see a room full of future assistants to the Doctor. It just makes me think…”

“What?” Clara egged, when she trailed off.

“That he’s not coming back.”

The words whooshed out of her on a single breath, making the idea seem too real.

“What makes you think that?” said Clara gently.

Sarah Jane snorted. “I noticed everyone’s looks. Rose reacted strangely when I told her he’d dropped me off in Aberdeen, and that Martha lady didn’t look too ignorant about it either. And I wouldn’t put it past him,” she added, voice bitter.

“I could never imagine the Doctor leaving me— or any of us,” Clara said, before chuckling to herself. “Even after he regenerated into a crotchety old grump, he still cares about me. Plus we all know he’s a terrible driver—” They both shared a laugh over that, “— so that’s probably why he landed you in Scotland instead.”

Sarah Jane shrugged, even though she knew full well Clara couldn’t see it. “Still… why else would Rose suddenly look like she’s seen the Ghost of Christmas Past?”

Clara snorted at the quip, and now it was her turn for her voice to turn bitter. “Mrs. Doctor seems like she’s seen more ghosts than a gravedigger. I wouldn’t take it to heart.”

Sarah Jane frowned, glancing at the wall that Clara was behind. “Are you in love with him?”

A huffed sigh was heard, more forlorn that frustrated. “No. I mean, not anymore. I was, though.”

“What changed?”

“He did,” Clara scoffed. “Before he regenerated he was sweet, and childish. And younger,” she admitted, and Sarah Jane giggled. “When he changed the first thing he told me was that he wasn’t my boyfriend, and never would be.” Her tone was grudging again, muttering to herself, “Never said I thought he was.”

“Then why don’t you seem to like that Rose Tyler woman?” Sarah Jane asked. “She seems nice enough.”

“I know, I just…” As her voice trailed off for the briefest moment, Sarah Jane had the feeling like Clara was about to go into full-on rant mode, which was confirmed when she continued, “I met River Song once, and that was hard enough. But he actually made a something-crisis human clone of himself and moved to another universe so that he could be with her. What exactly makes her so special that he’d make himself human just to be with her?”

“I dunno,” Sarah Jane replied lamely, because she had a feeling that was the kind of answer Clara was looking for.

“And what makes it worse is that he even told her about having a granddaughter!” Clara huffed, and Sarah Jane pictured her with her arms crossed in a corridor identical to hers. “Never said anything to me about it, but he’ll tell her.”

“I’m getting the feeling this is less about Rose and more about something else,” Sarah Jane supplied.

Clara was silent for the briefest of moments. “I met somebody.”

Sarah Jane frowned, confused at the change of topic. “Who?”

“An ex-military sergeant turned maths teacher at my school. His name’s Danny.” She paused again, and when she did speak again her voice sounded nervous. “Was a bit awkward at first, but now we’re properly together. I’ve been thinking about… leaving the Doctor to stay with him.”

Sarah Jane let out a loud, continuous ‘ohh’, Clara’s heated rant finally making sense. “And you think being angry with him will make it easier to leave without feeling guilty.”

“Maybe,” Clara admitted in a tiny voice. “Since he’s changed, I’ve really been wondering if I should be around him.”

“Why?”

“He’s… been so merciless. Frightened me half to death sometimes.”

“He can be a little scary on occasion,” Sarah Jane admitted, pausing for a moment to inch past a carefully placed tile of needles that would have pierced through her shoes, had she been wearing any. Perfect bloody timing. “Anyone as smart and powerful as him would be. Just give it a bit of time and see if you still want to leave.”

“If I even get out of this alive,” Clara reminded her darkly.

Sarah Jane cringed when she realised she’d almost forgotten their dire predicament during their almost normal conversation. “True.” After turning a sharp corner, she halted in her tracks with a loud gasp at the sight of an honest-to-goodness maze of knives, the hilts having been soldered to the wall in varying lengths, starting from the height of her neck down to the floor. It would be a definite miracle if she didn’t come out as grated cheese on the other side. “Oh, you must be joking.”

“What?” Clara said worriedly.

Sarah Jane directed her glaring gaze towards yet another one of the cameras lining the wall, this one placed directly beside where the knife maze began. “Oh, nothing, really.”

Bracing herself against the possibility of the knives not staying put and happily digging their way into her organs, Sarah Jane tossed one last regretful glance at her bare feet and began worming her way through the maze, sucking in her stomach and arching her back in an effort to become as thin as a toothpick. Both sleeves of her blouse and the hem of her skirt were shredded in seconds, and every time the fabric caught on the knives Sarah Jane’s heart nearly leapt out of her throat. The maze wasn’t long, thankfully, and after a few minutes that felt more like eons Sarah Jane could see a knife-less stretch of corridor from beyond the silver blades coming precariously close to her throat. Despite herself, she quickened her pace, wincing as she nicked her arm a couple of times in her haste. When she reached the last few flurry of daggers, she half-hurled herself towards open air, only to feel the burning slice of a blade digging from her ankle up her calf to the back of her knee. She shrieked out in pain, instinctively hurling herself away from the source of her injury and past the end of the maze.

Instead of the floor being there to catch her fall, her gaze was met with a hollowed-out pit full of metal spikes.

*

As Martha was tentatively sidestepping a net, camouflaged to blend in with the colour of the floor, she nearly jumped out of her boots when she heard a woman’s loud shriek of terror. Before she could open her mouth she heard Rose’s voice — which, to her slight discomfort, sounded significantly farther away than it had been a few minutes ago — shout out, “Is everyone all right?” and Clara’s voice wail out concurrently, “Sarah Jane?!”

There was a moment of tightly coiled anticipation, before Sarah Jane’s weak voice called out, “I’m fine!” Martha let loose the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding, up until Sarah Jane’s terrified but relieved voice choked out, “Blimey, that was close…”

“What happened?” Martha asked.

She could have sworn Sarah Jane snorted. “Well, I was manoeuvring through a maze of knives—” Martha spared an annoyed look at the umpteenth camera, sarcastically praising Beratt in her mind for his imagination, “— and I got cut at the end of it, but when I tried to get out he’d put a pit full of spikes at the end—”

“WHAT?” Rose, Martha and Clara all echoed at the same time.

“— but I managed to grab onto a bar on the wall,” Sarah Jane finished, and again Martha exhaled with relief.

“Well at least he sor’ of wants us to survive,” Rose said faintly, and Martha snorted in agreement. “Are you hurt bad?”

A brief pause, before she said tentatively, “I’m not certain. I can walk, but it looks a bit deep.”

Martha’s mind briefly flickered through the many medical textbooks she’d devoured over the years, but when she opened her mouth to give Sarah Jane instructions on how to bandage her wound, Rose beat her to it, to her surprise.

“Tear off the longest bit of fabric you have an’ bind your injury as tight as you can,” she said as loudly as she could, apparently also aware that her corridor had, as Beratt had promised, started to curve away from everyone else’s. “An’ make sure it’s clean,” she added quickly, before saying sarcastically, “No use getting’ an infection while you’re fightin’ for your life.”

Sarah Jane let out a hollow chuckle as she complied, and Martha frowned at the wall, wondering what exactly Rose had been doing in the other universe. As she opened her mouth to ask, a loud male scream was heard, and a split second later, before anybody could react to the scream beyond chilly horror turning their insides to ice, a near-deafening explosion rocked the floors and knocked all of them onto their arses.

“What the hell was that?” Martha shrieked.

*

Ten minutes earlier, Ace was storming down the corridor like a herd of rampaging elephants, a scowl on her face and steam practically pouring through her ears. As annoying as it was to be ripped away from her life and wake in a cramped room full of know-it-all blondes (who married the biggest know-it-all in the universe), she’d then discovered that the arsehat who’d kidnapped her had also raided her pockets and taken away all of her explosives.

When she got out of here, she was going to take them all back, stick one or seven in ear, blow up his head and use his brains for Christmas decorations.

She hadn’t encountered any obstacles save for the occasional pathetic thing like a gigantic blade that had tried its very best to decapitate her where she stood, hadn’t bothered answering any of the other companions little role-check calls and, when Captain Nutjob had announced that two people had already died, she hadn’t exactly paused to weep for them. Some might call it heartless, but stopping to mourn for people Ace hadn’t wanted to know even existed wasn’t exactly going to get her out of there quicker. Besides, she really wanted to blow up his head— the sooner the better.

While Ace stomped down the corridor, boots making loud thudding noises with every step, she mentally took an inventory of what he’d stolen— two bound packages of Nitro-9 along with several boxes of matches from the pockets of her bomber jacket; some kind of alien dynamite with an extremely short fuse that she’d found on an asteroid bazaar, which had ‘inadvertently’ ended up in her trousers pocket; and a whole pack of regular dynamite.

Something occurred to her, making her pause in her tracks. She hadn’t checked one place. Grinning to herself and tossing a quick glance at the camera, she turned her body out of view before reaching down into her boots, letting out a triumphant whoop when her fingers closed around a spare box of matches. Apparently Captain Nutjob had forgotten to check inside her shoes— which also meant, she mused with a grin as she plopped down onto her rear and took off both of her boots, he’d had no reason to check her soles either. Along with the alien explosives she’s stolen, she’d also been ecstatic to discover a pair of boots that had soles large and thick enough to hollow out and hide one stick of dynamite per shoe, without it being uncomfortable as hell (like all her other attempts). The Professor hadn’t been pleased when he’d initially found out, up until Ace had used one to break them out of a prison cell made of solid stone, so he’d let it slide in the end.

Pulling out both sticks of dynamite and yanking her boots back on, Ace scrambled off the floor with a smirk and immediately began searching for somewhere to stick it. Her initial thought was to put it in a crack in the wall so she could blow her way out of there, but as the walls were made of solid steel she was out of luck on that idea. Huffing out her slight annoyance and gripping the dynamite tighter for comfort, she glanced around some more only to have her eyes fall on the camera and speaker duo. Another smirk grew on her face, and she idly shoved the dynamite into her pocket for the time being before standing on tiptoe, wrapping her hands around the speaker and trying to yank it out of the wall.

To her surprise it gave way at once— and it was heavy. She stumbled back, slamming down onto the unforgiving floor and grunting out in pain when the speaker landed atop her and practically caved in her chest. Ace shoved it off with annoyance, massaging her chest and trying to catch her breath for a moment before sitting up with a wince and regarding the gigantic hole in the wall she’d created, full of severed, sparking wires. Grabbing the matchbox and the two sticks of dynamite out of her pocket, she idly lit them both and tossed them into the mess of wires.

Yet just as she prepared to dart down the corridor to safety, not noticing the faint scream of terror from somewhere in the background, to her astonishment it exploded within seconds, sending metal and wires whipping in all directions and tossing her backwards like a rag doll. She was allowed the briefest moment of thought, in which she vaguely realised she’d used the alien dynamite instead of the regular kind, before her head slammed hard against the opposite wall and she was unconscious at once.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8
Asphyxiation

Hearing Clara’s unfiltered admission of her opinions of the new him — and her debate over whether or not to leave him — was a more than familiar stab to the hearts, and for the briefest, most shameful moment his chest flared with anger and hatred towards Clara. She was just like everybody else— ready to scarper back to their little comfort blanket of a planet full of menial jobs and beans on toast if he changed, or made a bad choice, or frightened them. And she was insulting Rose. Then, when she reminded both him and Sarah Jane about the direness of their situation, he returned to just hating himself.

“Oh dear. This looks intriguing.”

Beratt’s voice, which had miraculously silenced itself for a full thirty minutes, was so unexpected it would have made him jump had he not been bound to a chair. He turned his head to look at Beratt, who was squinting at the one of the middle monitors, and followed his gaze towards the image of Jamie McCrimmon seemingly having a staring contest with what appeared to be some kind of alien animal. He looked away at once, feeling sick to his stomach, up until Beratt also exclaimed, this time with horror, “And what in the name of Nysondre is she doing?”

The Doctor once again traced his gaze towards the bottom right monitor, where Ace was plopped on her rear, clad in sock feet as she stuck her hand in her soles. He couldn’t help but hide a smirk— apparently Beratt had forgotten to check everyone’s shoes. Clever Ace.

“What? No!” Beratt said loudly, stomping his foot like a child when Ace tore the speaker off the wall. “She’s destroying my things!”

The Doctor’s smirk grew, but it wasn’t long before it dropped yet again when he watched Ace light two sticks of three-second premium Athionian dynamite, apparently unbeknownst to her since she stuck them far too calmly in the hole in the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut at once, flinching at the mixture of Jamie’s screams of pain and a gigantic explosion that made the speakers crackle with static. Beratt burst out laughing at once, a high-pitched, disturbing giggle that made the hairs on the back of the Doctor’s neck stand up and caused his stomach to churn with disgust— one person gets mauled, another blown up, and all he can do is practically wet himself laughing?

“Did you see that?!” Beratt squealed, collapsing onto the chair and using the Doctor’s shoulder for leverage. Apparently he hadn’t yet noticed the Doctor had his eyes resolutely closed. Sucking in a gigantic lungful of air and whipping the remote up to his mouth, Beratt announced gleefully, “We have an unexpected twist, everyone!” The remaining companions, all of whom had fallen down at some point in time from the force of the blast, turned their heads to stare at their own respective cameras. “Mr. Jamie McCrimmon and Miss Dorothy McShane have both left the running— seconds apart from each other! How lovely is that?” Before several stony-faced companions could voice their true opinion, Beratt added with a sort of sickly fondness, “There are now seven of you left. Enjoy.”

Seven companions left out of a grand total of eleven in the spawn of an hour and a half. His stomach churned again, guilt and hatred towards himself and Beratt pooling in his gut. What the hell had he done while Jamie was head to head with a rabid dog, or while Liz was getting tasered to death? He’d moped in a chair and entertained stupid fantasies about reuniting with a woman he’d spent the last thousand years trying desperately to forget. His brow furrowed into an expression of determination— no more. It was high time he started fighting back, if not for his sake then for theirs.

Beratt, satisfied with his little announcement, turned his back to the screen and addressed the Doctor again, frowning when he finally noticed his tightly shut eyes. “Why on Earth are you sleeping at a time like this?”

The Doctor opened his eyes reluctantly, though he didn’t give the Omicronian the privilege of his gaze. “I’m not.”

“Well, good,” Beratt said, mollified. “Would be a bit silly to take a nap whilst your friends fight for their positions, hm?” The Doctor’s subsequent glare of death whizzed right over Beratt’s head as he clapped his hands in delight, returning his focus to the events that had just unfolded. “A tied loss! How wonderfully unexpected— I had no idea when I set this up that it would be this much fun! Of course I should chastise Miss McShane for hiding explosives in her boots— and you for choosing a companion that has a tendency to play with bombs.”

“You tried to blow up your own planet,” said the Doctor shortly, discreetly starting to wriggle his stiff wrists.

“I suppose that’s fair,” sighed Beratt dramatically, circling the Doctor’s chair again. The comparison between Beratt and a vulture returned to the Doctor’s mind. “However I wasn’t playing with bombs for my own amusement. I do assume that could be the only reason why this little female child would actually go so far as to hollow out her own boots for a hiding place!”

“Mm,” said the Doctor dismissively, flexing his fingers a couple of times before using his elbows to try and push up on his bindings.

“Truth be told, I was nigh terrified when I was loading my shuttlecraft full of Marauder 550/X explosives. Nearly wet myself whilst piloting it through the tunnels, you know— every bump made me feel like I’d blow up prematurely. Can’t imagine hiding them in my shoes!” As he laughed heartily at his own ranting, apparently enjoying the topic, the Doctor was given plenty more leeway to struggle with his shackles, since Beratt insisted on talking while simultaneously striding about the room like he was performing a play. “Still, it would have been so worth it,” Beratt sighed with nostalgia, as though he were recounting the story of his long-lost lover instead of his plans to destroy his planet. “All those utter idiots pecking around on that godforsaken globe like hens looking for grain… they positively wasted precious air by existing.”

“You’re the same species they are,” the Doctor reminded him shortly, trying to keep him talking.

“An unfortunate accident of nature,” said Beratt with a sniff, sweeping back his ivory hair. “Truly, I’ve always thought I ought to have been born into a higher species… perhaps a Time Lord like yourself.” The Doctor snorted, knowing full well there were far too many Time Lords like Beratt— the Master being one particular Time Lord that came to mind. They would have been great friends, he surmised. “Then again, perhaps not, since they did meet a rather unfortunate end by your hand. Maybe one of the Guardians! I would do well in a position that powerful, I think.” As Beratt stroked his own ego incessantly, the Doctor’s forearm began to ache with the strain of pushing against the shackles. It wasn’t in vain, however, which he discovered some few seconds later when he saw, out of his rather impressive peripheral vision, one of the screws start to come loose on his left shackle. He hid a triumphant grin, but was also forced to stop his struggles when Beratt turned around again, something on the monitor interrupting his monologue. “Ooh, what have we here?”

Beratt parked himself back into his previous spot next to the Doctor, far too close for comfort, eyes stuck intently on the monitor. The Doctor reluctantly followed his gaze again, afraid to see yet another companion already going face-to-face with the possible throes of death, but instead he saw Sarah Jane on one of the left monitors. She was sitting on the floor and appeared to be speaking with someone, which he later discovered was Clara leaning against the wall in the neighbouring corridor, when Sarah Jane paused and Clara was the one to start talking, before they both started to laugh. Despite himself the corners of the Doctor’s mouth quirked up a little— leave it to those two to bond with a wall between them in such a dire situation.

“That Sarah Jane Smith,” Beratt said stoutly, shaking his head in disapproval. “She can’t seem to stop from chattering. There’s a game to be played— doesn’t she know? And that Oswald girl is no better.” The Doctor eyed him warily as Beratt pulled out his remote again, flicking a switch on the side of it. “Let’s give them both a little incentive to focus, shall we?”

“What did you do?” the Doctor demanded in a menacing tone.

He only received a bright grin for his troubles, and a nod in the screen’s direction.

*

Clara was astutely aware of the strange fact that, for the last two hours, she’d had a grand total of three rather pathetic obstacles. The first two had been tripwires, which apparently others had also seen, and an obviously placed sinking tile. She wasn’t entirely certain if this was on purpose, or if Beratt had gotten so lazy by the time he reached her corridor that he’d just hadn’t bothered; either way she was kind of relieved, since Sarah Jane, it seemed, was having no such luck. It didn’t help that Sarah Jane had a leg injury, but it seemed like every two minutes Clara was tensing up when she heard Sarah Jane’s gasp, cry or scream of alarm. She was seriously fed up with repeatedly asking if she was all right, and Sarah Jane seemed equally sick and tired of assuring her that she was fine, so they both agreed to just continue speaking in a constant manner— it would cease the hassle and, though Clara was a bit embarrassed to admit it, it was a small comfort.

“God, I wish I could just sit down for a moment,” Sarah Jane puffed.

There was a gentle tapping sound, like she had just placed her hand on the wall, so Clara paused her walking, not wanting to risk going ahead and losing track of her neighbour. With a brief glance in the camera’s direction, she supplied, “Maybe we could stop for a second… let’s just hope His Majesty doesn’t have a problem with it.”

Sarah Jane snorted at the quip, lowering herself onto the floor carefully so as not to put too much strain on her bad leg. She had, upon Rose’s orders, torn off the hem of her skirt as best she could and used it to tightly bandage her injury, so when she sat down she had to tug hard at her skirt to stop from flashing her knickers to the camera. Rubbing along the sides of her injury to get it to stop throbbing, Sarah Jane said, a bit grudgingly, “I noticed you’ve barely had any obstacles at all.”

“I can count on one hand how many I’ve had,” Clara snorted, not sitting down but leaning against the wall instead. “Dunno why.”

“Maybe he’s sweet on you.”

Despite herself, Clara started to laugh. “That’s probably it.”

Sarah Jane joined her in laughter, shoulders shaking, and it felt good to finally smile properly, brightly and brilliantly for the first time in almost three hours.

She stopped laughing abruptly when, over the sounds of their laughter, she heard a quiet hissing noise. Sarah Jane quickly yanked herself up off the ground and whirled her head around in a panic, expecting to see the ground covered in snakes or something but seeing nothing.

Clara also went silent for a moment, before asking with fear in her voice, “Do you hear that?”

“The hissing?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Do you reckon there’s a pit full of snakes somewhere around here?” Clara asked, and Sarah Jane snorted.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” she muttered, looking down at her bare feet regretfully and hoping no snakes decided to slither out and bite her toes. She frowned and blinked when she noticed that her view of her feet and her ankles was slowly starting to get cloudy. “Something’s wrong.”

“The corridor’s getting all foggy,” Clara exclaimed in alarm. “We should run!”

“I don’t know if I can—” Sarah Jane said desperately, but Clara’s footsteps were already thudding away. Tossing a remorseful glance at her bandaged leg, she took off running as well.

Her leg started to throb after just a few seconds, but when the murky cloud of gas around her feet started to flood the room, breathing suddenly became the real issue. The second she inhaled the first gulp of pale white air, a bitter tang coated her tongue and her airways suddenly slammed shut. Her heart pounded a rhythm against her ribs when it made her head spin, and her vision became obstructed as well— both from the opacity of the gas and from the black spots appearing in her eyes. Blood roared in her ears and panic set in when every breath she took in required a lot of effort and made a disturbing wheezing noise, and she was only half aware that she wasn’t even running anymore, just stumbling like a tired zombie.

“Sarah Jane!” Clara’s voice faintly called out through the mist, making Sarah Jane jerk her head up. “There’s a mask on one of the walls— look for the mask! It’s inside a plastic box thing. Sarah Jane, can you hear me?”

She wheezed in another breath before pressing on, trying her hardest to scan the walls for something decidedly mask-like as Clara shouted encouragements that were starting to increase in volume the closer she got. Through the white haze she spotted something that looked a bit like a box perched high up on the wall a metre ahead, and she stumbled towards it, trying to lift up her arm to reach for it. Her arm felt like a hundred pound block of lead, and she managed to lift it high enough to knock the mask out of the box before her knees gave out and the floor was suddenly flying towards her face.

Her forehead collided with it when she collapsed into a heap on the ground, the force knocking what little air she had left and making the image of the mask, which had fallen an inch from her face, dissolve into darkness.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9
Demonstration

It was two hours since Beratt asphyxiated Sarah Jane and then gleefully announced his accomplishment over the comm. to the other companions. They all reacted differently— the two that didn’t know Sarah Jane simply groaned with frustration at the idea of another person being gone, but Martha pressed a hand to her mouth, Rose sank to the ground and cradled her head in her hands and Clara actually dissolved into tears for a brief moment, having bonded with her over an hour and a half.

Since then, nobody had died or gotten injured, thankfully. There had been a close call with Susan, who had nearly been impaled by a spike shooting from the wall, and the Doctor had nearly been sick again before Susan successfully rolled out of its wake, fear and panic evident on her face as she took a moment to calm her breathing, as did the Doctor.

Beratt was fascinated with the Doctor’s granddaughter— still a juvenile Time Lord, only just having been taken out of the Academy to study on Earth and so, so young, but still bright enough to fight her way through this insane myriad of obstacles. He cheered when she dodged the spike and praised the Doctor for raising her to be so ‘agile’, as he’d put it. For a moment the Doctor thought it was a less than innocent observation, and he ended up shouting at Beratt until his voice went hoarse, vision blinding red.

His chosen favourite, however, seemed to be Rose— unsurprisingly, after his approving monologue about her at the beginning of this whole ordeal, and after he’d gone out of his way to get her. Beratt practically had a heart attack every time Rose did something impressive; at point he’d nearly keeled over and died right there in the room when Rose shocked them all by purposely setting off a sensor so another sharp pendulum would swoop down, allowing her to grab onto it and use it to swing across a gaping chasm to safety.

He’d already decided, when making the resolution to finally start fighting against Beratt, not to entertain anymore silly and pointless fantasies about Rose Tyler and all her dangerous glory— the thought of her dying already terrified him more than it should, which was a red flag already, and if or when she eventually perished from Beratt’s so-called ‘game’, he’d just have his hopes and his hearts crushed under a gigantic stone block. And if she did, by some miracle, turn out to be the one who reached the end and found him… well, he didn’t want to think about how he’d react in that situation, but his traitorous brain had conjured up the most likely scenarios, ranging from being so impassive it bordered on cold and monstrous to seizing her by the shoulders, dragging her into his hold and blubbering on her like a child.

The Doctor was hoping he’d be able to escape before any of those things were forced to happen. Every time Beratt either turned his head, bounced around the room while he chattered or, on rare occasions, left the room to ‘take care of things’ as he put it, the Doctor would strain against his shackles again. He put more effort into the left one with the loosened screw, which rattled and inched itself upward with each struggle, and at one point he’d been making considerable progress with it, up until Beratt flounced back into the room and he’d been forced to stop again, much to his annoyance.

Since Beratt had returned he hadn’t left again, neither the room nor his post at the Doctor’s shoulder. He’d been trying to tune out Beratt’s running commentary on Rose’s every move, keeping his eyes steadily locked on the wall behind the monitor (although, with his superior Time Lord peripheral vision and lack of will, he wasn’t succeeding very much) but Beratt seemed insistent on shouting every little detail, from Rose’s actions to how she was bloody positioned.

“Ooh, look at that!” squealed Beratt for the quadrillionth time, very shrilly and right next to the Doctor’s ear. He still hadn’t figured out that the Doctor hadn’t once ‘looked at that’. “How brilliant was that, hm?” He finally glanced at the Doctor and noticed his stony glare, frowning at him. “Have you been watching her at all this whole time? She’s been quite impressive and I daresay she deserves your praise, at the very least!” The Doctor glared steadily at Beratt’s knees, anger burning his chest. “You know, in hindsight it seems rather unfair of me to have chosen Miss Tyler as the candidate representing your ninth self,” Beratt said to himself thoughtfully, once again going from upset to airy like the flick of a switch. “I should have known when I observed her on the frontlines—”

“What?” the Doctor tried to interrupt, but Beratt ploughed on, oblivious.

“— knew she was going to make the game fun, but I hadn’t anticipated her strategic advantage against the others—”

“What are you talking about?” snarled the Doctor in his loudest, no-nonsense voice.

Beratt was effectively silenced, frowning down at him. “About what?”

“What do you mean, ‘frontlines’?” he demanded, hearts thudding. “How does Rose have a strategic advantage?”

Beratt’s face slackened at once, like he’d just realised some beautiful, godlike truth, before it split into an astonished, room-brightening, lopsided grin. It looked disturbingly like a grin the Doctor would wear during an adventure, which freaked him out a little.

“I’ll be right back,” Beratt said, voice radiating excitement as he started to bounce towards the door. “You’ll want to see this, so don’t go anywhere,” he added quickly, running his fingers through his pale hair.

The Doctor glared at him, rattling his cuffs to remind the idiot alien that he couldn’t if he wanted to (which he very much did) but Beratt ignored him and took off through the door, nearly tripping in his excitement. He left the door ajar, which spurred the Doctor into struggling with all his might against the cuffs, swearing quietly when the loose screw hovered between the hole and its freedom. He was just about to start an attempt to rock the chair and maybe knock the screw loose, but Beratt flounced into the room again like a ballerina (and giggled like one).

Relaxing his body so Beratt wouldn’t know he’d just come close to escaping, the Doctor said, a bit resentfully, “And where did you swan off to?”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Beratt said happily, before sending him a sharp look. “At least, if you actually take the time to look at Miss Tyler.”

If it meant finding out what the hell he meant by ‘frontlines’. The Doctor pressed his mouth into a thin line, glancing at Beratt with annoyance before huffing out a breath and flicking his eyes towards Rose’s monitor.

Beratt smiled, apparently mollified, and took his place by the Doctor’s side again. He pointed, unnecessarily, at Rose’s form on the monitor, which was currently weaving (a little too expertly) underneath a mess of barbed wires. “It’ll come up soon. Just wait.”

The Doctor frowned, turning away from the screen to look at him instead. “What did you do?”

“I just set something up,” Beratt said, a bit crossly. “And I told you to look at Rose, not at me!”

“Did you set up a trap for her?” the Doctor demanded with warning.

Beratt looked at him with incredulity. “Of course not! Spent plenty of hours setting up the perfect ones for her— I rather think I oughtn’t mess with perfection.” The Doctor relaxed, rolling his eyes in annoyance, until Beratt tensed beside him and said excitedly, “Ooh, look, there it is!”

*

For the last hour or so, Rose hadn’t been able to hear Martha, and it was seriously concerning her. They’d continued speaking through the walls for as long as they could, until finally Martha’s shouts were so incoherent they ended up giving up. She’d made a mental map of their two corridors based on the rate the volume had decreased, and all she could imagine was two parallel corridors that flared out in different directions like a fork in the road. Rose mused, as she wriggled her way underneath a long stretch of barbed wire with a stony look on her face, that she sincerely hoped those two paths reunited again. Thanks to Torchwood, Rose had been through many kiss-the-mud-type of barbed wire obstacles, so it wasn’t too big of a problem, but her hair kept getting caught on the spikes and she really missed having someone to complain about it to.

When she reached the end, Rose stood up and stretched gratefully, scratching at her scalp that was aching from the places that had caught on the wire. She cringed for a moment at the hole in her now rather dirty-looking tank top, before ploughing on around the curve of the corridor. She came to an abrupt halt when she spotted, of all things, a long metal table pushed hastily against the wall.

Strewn across the tabletop was what looked suspiciously like her uniform, of all things.

“What the hell…?” she mumbled, approaching it cautiously just in case Beratt had suddenly developed a sense of humour and put it there just to lure her into another trap.

She recognised each piece that was issued to her in Pete’s World— a thick black belt with at least a dozen tools hanging from the hooks or tucked into pockets (the weapons that’d been there had been stripped), a silly-looking but efficient black helmet, a bulletproof vest with only two or three bullet holes in it, her bullet harness with all the bullets taken out of it, the tight but wonderfully stretchy t-shirt with the Torchwood logo stamped across the sleeve and a pair of thin black gloves that were less standard and more of a personal choice. The last time she’d worn that, it’d had so much dust and dirt on it the black colouring looked more like pale brown, but it seemed like Beratt had actually taken the time to wash her things. Rose snorted with amusement— imagine, the alien that had kidnapped her from another universe also did her laundry.

The speaker crackled for a moment before Beratt’s voice, most likely broadcasting only in her corridor, said cheerily, “Hello, Miss Rose Tyler!”

“What d’you want?” snapped Rose in annoyance.

“How hostile,” Beratt gasped in mock offence.

“Reckon it’s warranted, since I’ve just spent the last four and a half hours trying not to die,” Rose replied sarcastically, hand on her hip. “Now what d’you want?”

Beratt harrumphed but obediently let the matter drop. “Well Miss Tyler, why don’t you tell us what I’ve left for you on the table there?”

“You know full well what it is, you arse!”

“Humour me,” Beratt insisted, ignoring the insult.

Rose huffed out her annoyance, glaring at the camera. “It’s my uniform an’ tools.”

“Hm, uniform you say?” he said in a fake airy voice, and if she knew what he looked like she would have imagined him with a stupid smile on his face. “Interesting. Would you mind perhaps showing us how it works?”

“Well, you put it on, an’ it helps kick alien arse an’ protect you from nutters tryin’ to shoot you with subsonic bullets,” she said stonily, picking up the bulletproof vest and waving it in the direction of the camera to emphasise her point.

“That isn’t what I meant, but fair enough,” Beratt said patiently.

“Then what—?” she started to say, but then she realised just what he wanted and it made irrational rage bubble in her chest. “You want me to put it on?”

“There, now you’ve got it!” Beratt said with triumph.

“Why?” Rose asked, frowning.

“Just do it,” he sighed, more exasperation than patience in his voice now.

“No!” She tossed the vest back onto the table as if it’d stung her. “I’m not puttin’ anything on unless everyone else is gettin’ the same protection as me!”

“It isn’t for use in the games!” Beratt exclaimed. “I wouldn’t have confiscated them from you in the first place if my intention was to just give them back to you.”

“Then what, you want me to model it for you?” As Beratt made a cheery noise of affirmation, Rose’s fury flared again. “I’m not gonna play dress up for you like a fucking Barbie doll!”

“While I don’t know what that is,” he replied delicately, “you will put on your strange-looking armour, or I’ll disqualify you from the running.”

“By all means,” Rose muttered defiantly, crossing her arms. “I’m sick o’ this shit anyway.”

“Ooh, well that’s interesting,” Beratt cooed, giggling so hard to the point where Rose started to get a little creeped out. When he finally relaxed, he added, “However, that would put a strain on my plans, and I’d much rather you just comply.”

“No.”

“If you don’t, I’ll asphyxiate the Doctor with aspirin,” he reminded her in a singsong voice.

“Fuck,” Rose swore in annoyance, but despite the steady glare she sent at the camera again she reached over and snatched up the bulletproof vest first.

Beratt erupted into delighted giggles again, making incoherent comments to himself or to someone else as Rose clipped on the vest, settling it over her dirty tank top before yanking the shirt over her head as well and wriggling her way into the bullet harness. She caught the smallest bit of dialogue from Beratt — “… see soon enough, my friend…” — but wasn’t able to get anything particularly definitive out of that.

Finally properly clad in her uniform, Rose turned to the camera and sarcastically spread her arms out as though waiting for praise, punctuated only by the look of death on her face. “Well? Am I up to your standards, ya bloody alien git?”

There was a pause, as though Beratt was considering her question, but there was nothing but delight in his voice when he said, “I believe you’ll do— your armour looks lovely.”

“Unless you pulled me from the Middle Ages, this ain’t armour, mate,” Rose said shortly.

“Whatever,” he said, as dismissively as he could with his voice shining with the beam he was probably wearing. “Now, would you perhaps mind telling the tale of where you obtained your armour?”

Rose rolled her eyes but said obediently, “S’not anything unique— it’s standard issue for squadron brigadiers.”

A sharp but faint gasp was heard, and at first Rose thought it’d belonged to Beratt but said alien chattered on, the glee still present in his voice. “Excellent. And, just for the hell of it, what were you doing when I found you in the other universe?”

She fidgeted with her gloves to avoid answering at first, something heavy and decidedly shame-like settling in her stomach. Beratt was taking far too much delight in asking her questions he already knew the answers to, so she was seriously starting to suspect the Doctor was witnessing her every word.

“I was… in the field,” Rose finally answered vaguely, not looking at the camera just in case he really was watching her.

Beratt sighed, clearly exasperated. “Doing what?”

“Fighting,” Rose said lamely.

“Fighting in what?” When she didn’t answer immediately, Beratt egged her on by saying earnestly, “Miss Tyler?”

“I was fighting in a war, all right?” Rose snapped, feeling angry tears prick the corners of her eyes. “The other universe’s Earth got invaded by the Krellat six years ago. We’ve been fighting them ever since.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 10
Compaction

The Doctor had been itching to know Rose’s story ever since Beratt had first let it slip that he’d found Rose in the other universe on the ‘frontlines’. As Beratt had either chattered his ear off or stayed silent at his side, the Doctor had given it quite a bit of thought as to what he could possibly mean.

He couldn’t possibly have expected this.

When Beratt pointed excitedly at the monitor, the Doctor had reluctantly dragged his eyes back up to Rose, who was standing confusedly in front of a table piled with what looked like clothes and tools.

When Beratt started speaking with her — in a voice that reminded the Doctor of a smug child with an I-know-something-you-don’t tone — and asked her airily what he’d left on the table for her, she’d replied with her familiar Rose Tyler feistiness, “You know full well what it is, you arse!”

Beratt seemed unperturbed by her insult. “Humour me.”

Rose took a moment to glare at them through the camera, before saying shortly, “It’s my uniform an’ tools.”

The Doctor’s mouth fell open in shock. That bullet harness belonged to her? A rather stupid image of her wearing it over one of her old pink jumpers flashed through his mind, upsetting his stomach.

Beratt seemed insanely pleased by his reaction, smirking at him from beside the monitor before saying with false airiness, “Hm, uniform you say? Interesting. Would you mind perhaps showing us how it works?”

“Well, you put it, on an’ it helps kick alien arse an’ protect you from nutters tryin’ to shoot you with subsonic bullets,” she said sarcastically, snatching up a bulletproof vest and waving it in front of the camera.

She’d been shot at. That was certain, judging by what looked like three circular bullet holes in the chest area— one was even right where her heart would be, to his horror.

A steady, sick feeling kept growing in his stomach, which worsened at once when he listened to Beratt bully Rose into playing dress-up with her uniform, threatening to disqualify her if she didn’t comply, and she replied, “By all means. I’m sick o’ this shit anyway.”

The Doctor wasn’t certain if she was just saying that out of defiance or if she truly meant it, Rassilon forbid. Beratt sent him a gleeful look, chirping out, more to the Doctor than to Rose, “Ooh, well that’s interesting.” The Omicronian then proceeded to go on a giggle tirade that disturbed both the Doctor and Rose, judging by the expression on her face. “However, that would put a strain on my plans, and I’d much rather you just comply.”

“No,” she said stubbornly.

“If you don’t, I’ll asphyxiate the Doctor with aspirin,” Beratt trilled, giving the Doctor’s shoulder a squeeze to emphasise himself.

His stomach swooped when Rose cursed before obeying almost at once, a kind of strangled warmth creeping up his chest like a blossoming vine. As he watched Rose angrily yank on her shirt, he asked Beratt, in a monotone voice that shocked even himself, “Where did you find her?”

“Hm?” Beratt hummed, finally tearing his eyes off of Rose.

“You said she was on the frontlines,” the Doctor said hollowly. “Where was she? Why was she wearing… that?”

“You’ll see soon enough, my friend,” Beratt said happily, squeezing his shoulder again. “I promise you that.”

Rose, finally properly dressed in her uniform — including, to his distaste, the empty bullet harness — spread her arms out sarcastically for their approval and saying, “Well? Am I up to your standards, ya bloody alien git?”

The Doctor’s hearts lodged themselves in his throat as his earlier question bubbled behind his lips. Where on Earth could she possibly have been to be wearing something like that? Beratt beamed at him, apparently pleased by his expression when he replied, “I believe you’ll do— your armour looks lovely.”

“Unless you pulled me from the Middle Ages, this ain’t armour, mate.”

“Whatever,” Beratt said, almost happily. “Now, would you perhaps mind telling the tale of where you obtained your armour?”

Rose rolled her eyes at his deliberate use of the wrong word, but the Doctor sat up a little straighter in his seat, eager to have his question answered. “S’not anything unique— it’s standard issue for squadron brigadiers.”

An involuntary gasp burst from his lips, which Beratt seemed to take an insane amount of pleasure in. The words ‘Brigadier Rose Tyler’ floated in front of his eyes despite himself— she was a military officer? He tried wracking his brains for a logical explanation, hoping that Torchwood in Pete’s World used the position of brigadier for something different. Like a desk job.

“Excellent,” Beratt grinned, and the Doctor almost snarled at him. It was far from excellent. “And, just for the hell of it, what were you doing when I found you in the other universe?”

Rose fiddled with the hem of her gloves, eyes set stonily on the floor. The Doctor’s legs were starting to twitch with the instinctual urge to run away from what possible answer she could have, growing worse the more Rose deflected Beratt’s question— much to the alien’s clear frustration, which was about the only upside.

“I was fighting in a war, all right?” Rose finally snarled, looking significantly upset. “The other universe’s Earth got invaded by the Krellat six years ago. We’ve been fighting them ever since.”

His stomach churned with horror and he let loose the breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding in. Beratt’s delighted squeal was drowned out by a roaring sound in his ears.

“Oh dear,” Beratt said with false concern, poking the pale-looking Doctor in the shoulder in an effort to get his attention.

“Yeah, oh dear,” Rose replied sarcastically, unaware that Beratt hadn’t been talking to her.

“A war with the Krellat, you say?” Beratt answered, returning his attention to her. “What happened?”

“We… found a group of Krellat spies snooping around on Earth,” Rose explained darkly, leaning against the wall adjacent to the table. “We tried makin’ a treaty with them to keep them from invading, but by then they’d already found Torchwood’s arsenal of weapons that could overpower their own. They rejected the treaty and bombed Torchwood. Killed most of our agents.” The Doctor’s breath hitched in his throat. “They invaded a month later,” she finished, yanking off her bullet harness and tossing it back onto the table with clear frustration.

“Oh Rose,” he couldn’t help but whisper despondently, feeling ready to be sick again.

It’d been bad enough that the universe he’d sent her to then proceeded to steal away the metacrisis and her parents. Now it’d turned her into a soldier— the one thing his past self had hoped she’d never, ever have to become. He remembered the threat of war between Earth and the Krellat, a full three centuries in the future from Rose’s time— in their universe they’d managed to erect a shaky treaty that eventually strengthened into a permanent thing. Earth and Krellat Prime were never quite friendly, but they left each other alone and that was enough.

Beratt looked utterly thrilled at the Doctor’s slip-up, all but shoving the microphone underneath his chin and encouraging on an excited whisper, “Go on!”

Despite the fact he knew he was only heartening Beratt further, the desire to actually speak with Rose was practically clawing up his insides, so he said, shakily but with raised volume, “Rose.”

It got her attention, making her visibly stiffen. His hearts thudded quickly, anticipating her gaze to be sent in the direction of the camera, but she didn’t turn her head at all. “Doctor?” she said, with equal hesitation.

Rassilon, he wished he could just get the hell out of this stupid chair, go down there and drag her into his arms to safety. This body had never (ever) been a hugger, but his wonderful pink-and-yellow girl was always making him want to break his rules.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” he mumbled, ignoring Beratt’s Cheshire grin. “For everything.”

For the first time since the beginning of this damned race, her face dropped its stony protective mask and let vulnerability shine through, eyebrows arched upward and a sad smile blossoming on her face. “S’not your fault, Doctor,” she said gently, and he wanted to both sob and shout at her that of course it was his fault— he’d put her in that godforsaken universe! “An’ you know what?” she added, voice wavering a little from possible tears.

“What?” he breathed, hanging on her every word.

“I wouldn’t’ve missed it for the world.”

Her smile grew, and he drank it in with his eyes, letting it fuel his determination to escape, to save her and the others. He knew it was insane and potentially devastating to hope, but if he was lucky, he’d spend the rest of eternity making it up to her.

Beratt, who was practically trembling with the effort of keeping himself silent, hands pressed firmly against his grinning mouth, finally let loose the shrill giggle that startled both the Doctor and Rose. “Well, I absolutely despise to have to break this up, but unfortunately I must.” The two of them sent Beratt an utter furious glare, at which he actually looked apologetic. “Take off your armour and set it aside— don’t want you running off with something that’d give you an advantage, do we?” Rose’s protective, cross mask settled back into place as she tore off the rest of her uniform, tossing it back onto the table haphazardly. “Off you trot now, then, there’s a dear.”

Rose sent the camera one last vulnerable look, meant just for the Doctor, before stalking off. The Doctor became irrationally furious with what little time he’d been granted, and opened his mouth to start shouting.

Beratt interrupted him before he could say anything with a genuinely remorseful, “I do apologise for having to break up your moment, my dear Doctor.” He grunted in response, only slightly mollified. He wasn’t anywhere near willing to forgive this idiot— not just because he’d ‘broken up their moment’. “It looked intense.” Glee lit up his voice as he asked, “As a matter of fact, you positively lit up like a Pherran glowfly when she said that last thing. What exactly did Miss Tyler mean by that?” The Doctor responded by sending the expectant-looking Beratt one long, stony stare, making it fully known that he was not, and never would be, included. Beratt, surprisingly, never lost his grin. “I understand, Doctor— it’s between you and Miss Tyler.”

That’s right, the Doctor thought with determination, turning his gaze back to Rose’s monitor. And nobody, not even this unmitigated nutcase that’d kidnapped the both of them, could ever steal it away from them.

*

About a half an hour later, Martha was just about as level-headed as Rose had been, manoeuvring her way through the corridor with care from her own Torchwood training but was also missing the stability of having Rose for company. After she and Rose had lost contact, Martha had had the luxury of at the very least still being able to speak to the Doctor’s current companion Clara. Said companion hadn’t exactly made the best first impression when she’d acted like a jealous girlfriend towards Rose — Martha knew it hadn’t been the best time to dwell on it, but she was loath to let one of her friends be in the path of unwarranted hostility — but due to the direness of the situation and Martha’s instinctual fear of being by herself, she’d kept in contact with Clara until their corridors also split apart.

The only sounds that kept her company was an almost deafening ambient noise, sounding almost like a horrifying roar in the background and making panic creep up her neck. She tried taking steady breaths to tamp down the fear, mentally chastising herself for being frightened by solitude like a child. Her mind flashed back to a field trip to the zoo her family had taken, when she was a little girl, terrified and decidedly lost in the throng of chattering people. Martha snorted to herself— at least then she’d had people for company, even though those people couldn’t have bothered to even glance at the seven-year-old with fuzzy pigtails wailing for her mother by the monkey cages.

She was so lost in thought that she didn’t notice the floor suddenly wasn’t there; Martha gasped out in alarm when her foot didn’t hit the floor as she’d expected, like climbing stairs in the dark and mistakenly thinking there’s another step— instead she pitched forward into a pit full of spikes.

*

Meanwhile Tegan, who was a few corridors down, nearly jumped out of her shoes at Martha’s resounding scream. She heard Susan and Clara’s concurrent shouts of concern, which she also thought of doing up until she realised with a jolt that their voices had sounded far too distant for her taste. And, to top it all off, Tegan wasn’t able to hear Martha’s response, if there had been one.

Tegan held her breath, waiting for the speakers to crackle and Beratt’s voice to announce Martha’s death, but the only thing she heard was the noises from her own worried fidgeting. Taking that as a good sign, Tegan exhaled with relief and clutched her trembling hands to her chest to try and will them to steady. She was still clinging on to hope that the Doctor would escape from Beratt’s clutches and rescue them all, and her biggest regret was doubting that fact in the past after Adric’s death.

Brave heart, Tegan.

Tegan inhaled through her nose to steel herself, repeating the Doctor’s fond phrase in her mind like a mantra— if the Doctor thought she could do it, she bloody well could. Clenching her fists, she took a determined step forward only to nearly hit the ceiling for the second time in less than five minutes when a loud clanging sound nearly popped her eardrums. Tegan whipped her head around, only to spot a small, ovular black disk placed at waist-level on the wall. She stumbled away from it, frowning— what was it? Some kind of sensor?

There was another clanging sound, followed by an ear-piercing scraping noise like nails on a chalkboard. Tegan winced, lifting her hands to jam them onto her ears only to freeze halfway through when she noticed the scraping sound was coming from the corridor walls slowly closing in on each other.

“Oh, shite,” Tegan breathed.

*

Martha whimpered as she hung onto the side of the pit for dear life, arms shaking from effort— and from pain. Upon almost falling into the pit the first time, Martha had managed to push herself off to the side using the wall and grab onto the ledge, but she failed to miss one of the taller pikes. It had sliced its way through her shirt and left a jagged cut from her tailbone up between her shoulder blades, making her scream out in pain and nearly lose her grip. She’d heard something faint in the background, which might have been companions calling out to ask about her welfare, but when she’d tried to shout back she’d received no answer.

She tried to hoist herself back onto steady ground, sweaty hands squeaking on the steel floors. Grunting with the effort, Martha gave up for a brief moment and instead craned her neck around carefully to check her wound, since she could feel blood leaking down her back and over her bum, but the only thing she could actually see — which didn’t help at all — was the depth of the pit and the ominous appearance of the sharp, metal pikes.

Turning away, Martha gulped and allowed herself the briefest moment of panic before attempting a second time to pull herself up, gasping when she lost her grip.

*

Had Tegan not been terrified out of her mind, she would have scoffed sarcastically at the utter cliché of putting a trap taken right out of a corny old Star Wars movie. But she was terrified, and quite frankly the only thing she could think of was to run like hell.

Her panicked breaths were loud and wheezing as she sprinted down the slowly narrowing corridor, the screeching noise from the walls scraping against the floors sounding like tainted, tortured souls screaming at her. It wasn’t long before her elbows started knocking into the walls, making her chest seize with panic as her traitorous mind flitted through images of her being squished into a pancake, picturing against her will the pain that would come from it.

Squeezing her eyes shut for the briefest second and tucking in her elbows as best she could, Tegan sucked in another painful breath and panted out to calm herself down, “Brave heart, Tegan…”

*

Martha scrambled for purchase as her right arm slipped off the ledge, flinging out and nearly sending her into the pit to become Swiss cheese. She dug her nails on the hand still gripping the ledge into the steel, trying to stop from slipping further. Her dangling arm felt like it weighed a million pounds, making it difficult for her to lift it, so instead she gripped the floor even tighter and swung her arm over like it was nothing more than a bag of sand.

Thankfully her efforts were successful, and she blew out a relieved exhale that made an escaped strand of hair flutter over her face. Taking another brief moment to gather her wits, Martha gathered what strength she had left beyond the burning feeling in her muscles and, pushing her foot against the same pike that’d sliced open her back for leverage, hoisted herself over the edge at last.

Martha flopped face first onto the ground, squirming like a caterpillar as far away from the pit as possible, panting heavily into the steel. “Holy shit fuck,” Martha gasped bluntly, trying to push herself up into a sitting position and failing because of her trembling limbs.

She’d been on hundreds of missions in Torchwood, some of which had gone seriously awry, and travelling with the Doctor had ensured many a near death experience, but how close she’d just come to dying was hitting her like a hailstorm. Martha allowed herself a couple of seconds to calm herself down, pressing her forehead to the cool metal and clasping her hands together to try and stop the shaking, before she successfully managed to roll herself onto her side and pull herself up onto her feet. She swore again, this time a little more eloquently than earlier, mentally chastising herself for getting so distracted she didn’t notice a gigantic gaping hole in the floor.

“Way to go, Martha,” she muttered to herself, wincing as she tried to turn her head in a failed attempt to examine the severity of the cut on her back.

Another scream — this time not her own — sounded faintly through her corridor, startling Martha to the point where she actually jumped, stumbling backward and crying out when her back bumped into the wall. She gingerly straightened herself, trying to unstick her shirt from her wound when Beratt’s voice rang through the speaker above her, happily as usual, “Attention all remaining companions!” Martha groaned, already knowing what was coming. “Miss Tegan Jovanka has left the running! We’re left with five competitors— enjoy!”

Chapter Text

Chapter 11
Perforation

If there was one thing Peri Brown hated, it was feeling alone among people. Being in her own enclosed corridor aside, after her (very) brief friendship with Liz ended horribly, Peri had ignored all attempts from the other companions to check in, not wanting to go through that again. She’d still balked when Beratt had announced that some of them wouldn’t be able to hear each other, not realising until after she was all by herself that she’d been unconsciously taking comfort in the sounds of movement from the people in the corridors beside her.

As the hours went by, the only breaks in the silence were the ever-constant announcements of companions being picked off like fish in a barrel. It was almost maddening, knowing that people in the same situation surrounded her but she wasn’t able to speak to them, or see them, or know what they were doing— except dying, she mused bitterly.

She ended up just humming to fill the silence. Despite her horrible voice — and despite the fact that most of the songs that came to mind ranged from show tunes to the latest terrible pop song she didn’t even like — it was a small comfort, lulling her into a false sense of calm… at least until she came across the next trap and was forced to concentrate on not dying painfully.

So caught up in her idle humming was Peri that she didn’t even hear the sounds of shuffling movement in the next corridor, until it paused and someone’s voice called out, “Is anyone there?”

Peri screamed out in alarm, before almost immediately deflating with embarrassment when she realised it was just that Clara girl. Clapping a hand to her chest, heart bouncing off of her palm, she breathed out, “You just scared the hell out of me!”

“Sorry.”

Clara’s voice held a slight hint of a grin in her voice, and Peri felt her face flush, mumbling a bit grumpily, “It’s fine.”

“Why were you humming?” Clara asked.

Peri hid her face in her hands despite herself— God, this was embarrassing. “It was the only thing keeping me from freaking out,” she answered quietly.

Clara didn’t answer for a brief moment, and Peri imagined her in her own corridor with an amused I’m-so-superior smirk on her face, but the image was shattered when Clara admitted in a tiny voice,
“I’ve been trying to name characters from all the books I’ve read in my head.”

Peri relaxed, grinning a bit. “At least you haven’t had to sing ‘Scarborough Fair’ forty billion times.”

Clara laughed. “I have had to resort to naming off all the characters in Twilight.”

“What’s Twilight?” Peri frowned.

“Er, maybe it’s a bit after your time,” Clara said.

“Maybe.” Peri halted in her tracks when something shiny flashed by her feet, and she stumbled backward a step only to spot a thick silver tripwire. She’d seen several in her travels, except this one wasn’t needle-thin, it was higher up off the ground, and it didn’t look like it was meant to slice open her ankles. “There’s a tripwire here,” she announced to Clara.

“Another one?” snorted Clara. “I’ve seen like, three, and didn’t Martha and Rose get some too?”

“Yeah,” Peri agreed. “This one doesn’t look like the others, though.”

“The ones that look like they’re trying to cut off your feet?”

“Yeah,” she repeated. “This one just looks strange. Like it just wants to trip me.”

“Do you see anything else around it?” Clara asked her.

“No,” Peri said, scanning the floor and walls around the tripwire.

“Must be booby trapped then. Try going over it, carefully.”

Peri swallowed but obliged, lifting her right foot and cautiously swinging it over the tripwire. She lifted her other foot to repeat the action, and her breath hitched in a panicked gasp the moment she felt the toe of her sneaker make contact with the thick wire. It was barely a scrape, but it was enough for it to snap like it was nothing but a thin thread.

At once, two long metal pikes shot out of the walls on either side of her and impaled themselves with purpose into her sides, sliding in with the same ease as running a knife through a strawberry. Searing hot pain licked up her waist and down her legs; something warm and decidedly blood-like bubbled its way up her throat, and she had the brief sense of mind to wonder with a kind of airy curiosity if she was on fire, before the smoke made her vision go black.

In the next corridor over, Clara’s already tensed figure flinched when the horrifying sound of metal scraping metal met her ears. Fearing this was Sarah Jane all over again, Clara whispered, not bothering to keep the terror out of her voice, “Peri?”

There was no answer, and Clara’s bottom lip trembled, tears welling up in her eyes and spilling down her cheeks unashamedly. Wringing her hands together, Clara waited anxiously for yet another announcement of death from their kidnapper, but there was nothing but silence. If Peri were dead, Beratt would have announced it by now, wouldn’t he? Tentative hope blossomed in her chest.

“Peri?” she tried again, louder this time. Maybe she was just unconscious. Or maybe—

The speaker crackled, and Beratt’s voice said quickly, “My apologies for my tardiness.” He sounded a bit irritated, and slightly out of breath. What the hell had he been doing? “We have another loser.” Clara’s heart sank into her stomach. “Miss Per… Perpu… By Nysondre, what kind of a name is that?” He huffed an annoyed sigh and continued, “Miss Peri Brown has left the running. There are four of you left. I wish you luck!”

As Beratt shut off the speaker with a grumpy, incoherent mutter, Clara let another wave of tears streak down her face. “I just talked to her,” she whispered, but once again there was no one there to hear her.

*

Minutes earlier, the Doctor had shut his eyes again when both Martha and Tegan looked like they were going to lose the running, not knowing which one had lost until Beratt cheerfully cooed his usual announcement from beside him, before giggling out, “Oh, how positively dramatic!” The Omicronian paused and then said again, with exasperation, “Are you sleeping again?”

“No,” growled out the Doctor.

“Well open your eyes then, there’s a good man,” Beratt said, disconcertion in his voice. “There’s a reason I placed your chair in front of the monitors, you know.”

“I’m certain,” the Doctor said shortly, obligingly opening his eyes.

He hated the sight of the monitors in front of him, six of which — now including Tegan’s — were black. The other five were still alight, cameras switching between each other as the remaining companions made their way down their respective hallways.

“Hmm,” Beratt hummed, but switched from slightly annoyed to his usual chipper self in a quarter of a second. A stupid but somewhat disturbing grin curled over his face, and he practically hopped over to the Doctor’s side, sticking his face far too close to the Doctor’s for comfort. “What was that thing that Miss Jovanka said before she lost?” The Doctor merely glared at him, but Beratt was insistent. “Go on. What did she say again— er… Tegan’s brave heart or something?”

“Brave heart, Tegan,” the Doctor mumbled.

“Ah yes, that,” Beratt grinned. “What does that mean?” The Doctor stuck out his jaw in a scowl, glaring hard at one of the darkened monitors. Beratt emulated his expression when he realised the Doctor wasn’t going to give anything up, crossing his arms over his chest and whining, “That isn’t fair!”

“Deal with it,” the Doctor snapped.

Beratt harrumphed with irritation, looking very much like a petulant child— if petulant children wore spiky armour and had sallow cheeks. “How rude.” The Doctor rolled his eyes and was about to remark on the rudeness of being cuffed to a chair, but Beratt beat him to it— to his surprise, the alien’s looked of annoyance dropped at once into shock, and he exclaimed, “Oh dear, I’m rude! I haven’t given you anything to eat or drink!” Beratt was blissfully unaware that the Doctor’s jaw had dropped into his lap. “You must be utterly famished. How terribly inconsiderate of me!” He clapped his hands once, walking backwards in the direction of the door, and the Doctor’s hearts soared with hope. “I’ll return in a moment. Don’t go anywhere!”

The Doctor tensed in his seat, watching Beratt flounce out of the room again. He didn’t even wait a split second after the door properly closed before he resumed his long-halted struggles against his cuffs. Thankfully the loose screw hadn’t settled back into place when he’d been forced to stop, so it took only a half dozen rattles against it before it popped out of its socket, shooting across the room as the Doctor’s wrist tore out of its confines and nearly clocked him in the face. Letting out a near-silent, triumphant whoop, he took the briefest second to flex his stiff fingers before attacking his other cuff with ferocity. With the combined strength of both his hands instead of one, it was easy to tear open his other cuff.

He hurled himself out of his chair— too quickly for his stiff limbs, since he crashed to the ground at once when pain shot up his knees. Despite himself the Doctor didn’t give himself even a moment to regain proper use, scrambling up straight away and only tripping once when he made a beeline for the door and grabbed onto the doorknob. Terror, hope and excitement made his hearts pound a rhythm in his ears, and it was almost so deafening he didn’t notice the familiar hissing noise that started up the second he tried to turn the knob, to no avail.

He jiggled the handle desperately, swearing when it wouldn’t open, and he walked back a couple of steps in preparation to kick the door down, but for the second time his chest seared with a stitch-like pain, the tang of medicine coated his tongue and the inside of his nose. He doubled over for a moment, trying to just close off his airways instead, but the instinct to struggle for breath overcame him to his immense frustration.

Limbs feeling heavy and painful, he stumbled towards the door again in an effort to knock it down with his shoulder, failing horribly when his endeavour proved to be a hell of a lot weaker than he’d expected. The Doctor attempted to take another step back to try again, but his legs barely moved despite his efforts and he ended up tripping over his own feet, his back hitting the ground and making pain shoot through his chest when the force stunned his lungs. He gave up any hope of escaping, wheezing noises tumbling from his lips as he gasped for breath. His view of the ceiling, made partially opaque by the white tint of the gas, started dissolving into what looked like tiny black clouds, and the last thing he heard before drifting away on those clouds was a voice saying next to him, “Oh dear.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 12
Inundation

It was an hour after Beratt’s self-proclaimed ‘tardy’ announcement for Peri’s death, and Rose, Susan, Clara and Martha were all hyperaware that they were now the only ones left, out of eleven people.

Their corridors, unbeknownst to them of course, were significant distances apart from each other, making the prospect of potentially reuniting before anyone else died slim to none. Despite the fact, all four of them seemed to be fighting their way through their corridors with a new sense of resolve— Clara was ploughing through her obstacles with a constant sense of fury, determined to beat the living daylights out of Beratt for taking away whatever brief friendships she formed; Martha, upon tightly bandaging her injury with the remnants of her own shirt, fought with the thought in mind of Mickey and, though she hadn’t revealed it to Rose, their seven-month-old baby boy; and Susan just wished desperately to reunite with her grandfather, well aware that he was probably watching her fight for her life and not wanting to fail him.

Rose meanwhile had apparently been invigorated by her extremely brief talk with the Doctor. Beratt, she mused with a smirk, had made an enormous mistake in letting them speak, let alone being eager to see it. The last six years had been her own special kind of hell, starting with losing both her parents and the metacrisis and continuing with the war, and if there was one thing she was thankful for, it was that her wonderfully doting husband didn’t have to see her turn into what the war forced her to become. Her only comfort had been shattered, as now the Time Lord Doctor was fully aware, but she dared to hope by the sound of his voice that he still cared for her, at least a little.

It was probably insanely stupid for her to wish for it, let alone assume she’d make it out of this alive (and, as she’d revealed quite honestly to Beratt, she half-hoped she didn’t). It was also stupid of her to concentrate on something other than the hundreds of death traps waiting for her, but Rose couldn’t help but wonder what this new Doctor was like. He had a deep, gravely voice with a hint of Scottish in it (she cracked a smile at the thought) so he was no longer brown pinstripes and stick-uppy hair. Was this the next regeneration, or was this several bodies later? No, her human Doctor had told her that he’d been in his second to last body, so this would have to be his last regeneration, right?

Huffing an annoyed sigh at the pointless complexity of Time Lords, Rose tried to picture a face to go with his kind-of-Scottish accent, but all she could think of was an aged version of that bloke in the kilt she’d met earlier, Jamie Crimmond or something like that. She felt a swoop of guilt in her stomach for not remembering his name, not even after he’d been one of the first ones to die. It seemed like a hundred years ago.

Her foot suddenly caught on something, making her gasp out in alarm as she crashed to the floor in a heap. Rose’s whole body tensed as she whipped her head back to inspect what had tripped her, ready to roll out of the way just in case. She snorted in amusement when she realised it was just her own shoelaces that had come undone, leaving her boot open and gaping. If Rose made it out of this alive, she was never again going to be able to trip or stumble without immediately going on mauve alert. Sitting up properly, Rose hunched over and grasped each shoelace to retie them.

She froze at once when she noticed the silver glint of a knife hilt inside her boot. Her mouth fell open as she reached inside the hidden pocket and pulled out a small Swiss army knife that Beratt had stupidly forgotten to confiscate from her. She’d completely forgotten about it, having been used to the sensation of it pressing against her ankle, where it’d made a rectangular imprint.

Rose sat up a bit straighter, flicking the knife out of the hilt with ease. She could’ve used this that one time she’d been caught in that rope net. Smirking slightly at her own fortune, Rose was about to set it aside and resume tying her boot shut, but she froze again instead. Her triumphant expression slowly waned, and was replaced with a frown.

It was just… wrong.

None of the other companions had this benefit— and, she had to face facts, she already had a massive advantage over them all. Martha may be a Torchwood agent, Susan was a Time Lady (though she hadn’t graduated from the Academy, as the Doctor had told her once) and Clara was at the least clearly companion material, but Rose had the assistance of several years of training and several more in the field.

Expression hardening, Rose shoved the blade back into its slot and stuck it back inside the secret pocket, finally lacing her boot properly. The speaker just above where she was sitting crackled, and at first Rose tensed, afraid she was going to hear another announcement that one of the others had perished. Instead, Beratt’s cheerful voice broadcasted, over what was probably all speakers, “Hello, everyone! Don’t get excited; nobody else has left the running. Not yet, anyway.” Rose could just picture Martha and the others slumping over with relief. “I just wished to pop in and announce a rather interesting development that has just happened. Miss Tyler has just discovered a knife in her boot, which I admittedly forgot to check.” Rose smirked despite herself— his tone sounded grudging. “In any case, she has evidently decided not to use it.” The glee returned to his voice. “Would you care to explain, Miss Tyler?”

“No,” Rose replied with annoyance, and she could hear Martha’s faint giggle of amusement through the speakers as well. Apparently Beratt wanted the others to weigh in on her decision.

Lovely.

“Too bad,” he said happily. “You must do so anyway.”

Rose huffed, standing up and yanking down her shirt, which had hiked itself up over her hip. “S’not fair to the others. I’ve already got an advantage.”

“Ah yes, indeed… Brigadier Rose Tyler, wasn’t it?” Beratt beamed.

Through the speakers, Rose could hear Martha and Susan’s echoing gasps and Clara’s annoyed exclamation of, “Are you serious?”

“Indeed, Miss Oswald,” he replied, before returning his attention back to Rose. “However, you seem to be the sole one who has this mentality. Miss McShane had hidden — and this is quite amusing — two sticks of Athionian dynamite in her boots.” Rose raised her eyebrows despite herself, and Beratt apparently took her expression for interest because he gaped like a gossiping old lady, “I know, right? Anyhow, all was resolved when she ended up blowing herself up.” He giggled manically. “How ironic!”

“Oh God,” Rose groaned, pressing a hand over her mouth when her mind involuntarily conjured up the image of the pudgy-faced girl splattered all over the walls.

“Indeed,” Beratt sighed again. “In any case, I give you my express permission to use that odd compact knife you have there.”

“I don’t care,” Rose said defiantly.

“Rose, just use it,” Martha’s voice said, with exasperation.

“No! ‘M not gonna give myself another advantage just ‘cos the alien git was too stupid to check our boots!”

Beratt, instead of being insulted (did anything ever faze this bloke? she wondered) tutted under his breath and reminded her in a singsong voice, “I’d watch your tone if I were you, Miss Tyler. Remember, I have your Doctor at my mercy!”

“He’s not my—” She paused, frowning at his tone. “What did you do to him?”

Beratt merely laughed, a creepily lilting thing that didn’t suit his demeanour at all. “It’s rather complicated, you see. I left to bring him some nourishment, and when I’d returned I found he’d attempted to flee. How he escaped his bindings is beyond me; I had them custom made for Time Lords, you know. I shall be getting my sixty klempins back, I think.”

She heard somebody snort with amusement, but Rose was far from amused. Clenching her fists tightly, Rose demanded again, “What did you do to him?”

“Oh, nothing drastic, I assure you,” Beratt said dismissively. “I was admittedly angry when I discovered him out of his chair and on the floor, but—”

“Why was he on the floor?” Rose interrupted, trying to keep the shrill tone out of her voice and succeeding only slightly.

Beratt grumbled at being cut off but answered nonetheless, “The door he attempted to exit through had a metabolic detector that, if anyone but me tried to open, would flood the room with aerosolised aspirin.”

“You said you didn’t do anythin’ to him!” Rose fumed.

“I didn’t,” Beratt insisted. “He’s alive, but unconscious. I have him right here.” There was an odd noise, as though the alien was patting the Doctor on the shoulder, which seemed just weird. “I’ve reinforced his bindings to something more fitting— I ought to have used chains earlier.” Rose’s mouth fell open. “Don’t worry, Miss Tyler. He’ll be rousing soon. Now, off you trot, with or without your knife thing.”

Rose glared one last time at the camera but obediently turned her back to it. The Doctor had attempted to escape once and was nearly killed (despite Beratt insisting otherwise) and the idea of ‘reinforced bindings’ and booby-trapped doors made the prospect of another escape nearly impossible.

It was up to them then, to fight their way through and hope the opportunity for one of them to escape and bring this insanity to an end.

*

This time, when the Doctor woke, it was even harder than before to open his eyes— and this time there wasn’t any Glen Miller playing in the background, having finished hours ago without a second’s thought. There was another ache in his neck from having it bowed down, chin resting on his chest, and when he lifted it pain seared up his head. He smacked his tongue, grimacing at the foul taste of medicine mixed with chocolate, and he blinked the remnants of the drug from his eyes to better focus on a grumpy Beratt standing in front of the monitors, with his back turned to the Doctor.

He shifted slightly in his seat, frowning when he found that he could barely move. The Doctor craned his aching neck to see what was restraining him and almost groaned aloud when he noticed honest-to-goodness chains criss-crossing his chest, securing him to the back of the chair tightly, and brand-new manacles keeping his wrists restrained to the chair along with another pair of chains that wrapped around the leg of the chair— as a precaution, the Doctor was certain. He slumped in his seat; Rassilon, he was a failure.

His movement made the chains rattle, alerting Beratt to the Doctor’s state of consciousness. When he turned around, the alien’s face sported a blank expression punctuated only by the annoyed grimace on his mouth.

“You’re awake,” he said lightly, more of a statement than anything else. “Wonderful.”

“Doesn’t feel that way to me,” the Doctor scowled, attempting to give his manacles a rattle and not succeeding even a little.

“Ah, yes, that. I’ve taken the liberty of reinforcing your chair to better fit your standards.” The Doctor merely grunted in response, jaw sticking out as he lamented his failed escape. It would be nigh impossible to escape this time, especially with his ‘reinforcements’. “You know, Doctor, I’m rather cross with you,” Beratt announced.

“Who would’ve guessed?” the Doctor muttered sarcastically, but Beratt aimed a glare in his direction, and he wasn’t sure which was worse— his glower or his happy-go-lucky mania.

“I’m being earnest. I expected some resistance, but because of your little stunt you missed Peri losing the running!” Horror flooded his stomach, mouth hanging open. “You also missed a rather interesting decision from Miss Tyler.”

Despite himself, he asked, feigning irritation to cover up curiosity, “And what was that?”

Beratt’s face smoothed out at once, a small smile gracing his mouth. “Oh, well, she had done what Miss McShane had and hidden a knife in her boot. Rather clever, if I must say, but she chose not to use it! I even gave her my express permission and she refused. Said it would be ‘unfair’ to the others.”

Warmth suffused through the Doctor’s joints, and despite the grim circumstances he felt the corners of his mouth tug upwards. Only you, Rose Tyler.

“Of course, I have said earlier that the odds were already unfair with her in the running, being a soldier and all—” That sobered him up at once. “— but truthfully, if it were me, I’d use whatever advantage I had to win.” Beratt sighed, deeply. “All of that aside, I suppose I could forgive you.”

“Thanks,” said the Doctor stonily.

“After all, you’ll probably need it, seeing as your granddaughter’s looking likely to lose the running.”

The Doctor’s hearts dropped into his stomach. “What?”

“Take a look,” said Beratt blankly, oblivious to the Doctor’s terror.

He pointed towards Susan’s monitor, where the young Time Lady seemed to be trapped between two walls that didn’t quite reach the ceiling, boxing her in. Her hands were clutched to her chest and she looked nervous over what would come next.

“What trap is this?” the Doctor said, eyes wide.

“You’ll see,” Beratt said with a shrug.

“No, not I’ll see. What—?”

He stopped his sentence short when Susan suddenly cried out, hands flying over her head to shield herself as something began pouring out of a pipe in the walls, knocking her to the floor from the force. She scrambled up hurriedly before whatever it was could bury her, pressing herself to the wall and staring at it in horror as more of it poured in.

“What is that?” the Doctor demanded, hearts thudding rapidly against his chest.

“Sand,” Beratt replied. “I spent several hours gathering them from Reina’s south-westernmost desert.”

The Doctor watched, stunned, as Susan tried to push away the sand, which had risen already to the height of her knees. At one point she shoved away a pile and it retaliated, pouring back onto her with such force that it knocked her off balance and made her fall onto her side, momentarily getting submerged by the sand. “No!” the Doctor cried out, struggling against his chains in an effort to reach his granddaughter and help her, pull her out. Thankfully Susan’s sand-caked but unharmed head emerged from the sandpit, gasping out for breath as she tried foolishly to swim through it. “SUSAN!”

“She can’t hear you,” Beratt said airily, hands clasped behind his back as he observed the stricken-looking Doctor with faint interest.

“SUSAN! SUSAN!” the Doctor continued shouting, ignoring Beratt completely.

As the sand continued to rise, nearly at the top, Susan pressed her cheek to the ceiling, hands flailing out in search of something that might help her. There was a brief moment of earth-shattering hope when her hand inched towards the opening near her side, her only escape route, but her fingertips disappeared underneath more sand and she simply inhaled deeply, screaming out, “GRANDFATHER!” before being submerged completely.

Oh, God.

The Doctor stared wide-eyed in horror at where the last of his granddaughter had disappeared, until the screen flicked itself off and all he was staring at was his own astonished reflection. Beratt shifted from foot to foot awkwardly, glancing at the stoic Doctor a couple of times before raising the remote to his mouth and announcing vaguely, “Er, attention everyone. Your numbers have now thinned to three left— Miss Susan Foreman has left the running.”

Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor in his numb trance could see the other companions. Martha gaped, Clara covered her mouth with her hand, and Rose. Her face immediately crashed into an expression that mirrored the Doctor’s, except hers soon dissolved into what were most definitely tears.

Seeing Rose weeping for his granddaughter was the final straw. His face screwed up and he hunched forward as best he could, letting out sobs that would have been frantic and wheezing had he not had a respiratory bypass to regulate his breathing. Beratt, wrinkling his nose in distaste, said, “Oh dear… I’ll leave you to grieve, shall I?”

Without waiting for an answer, Beratt stepped backwards and out of the room in a rush, leaving the Doctor to cry over the loss of his granddaughter and the great-grandchildren she’d no longer present to him.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13
Obstruction

Beratt hated to admit it, but he was actually feeling a little emotional.

It was a strange sensation, to be certain. He’d always been a (tremendously) jovial and incredibly patient person, preferring to focus on how to make even the direst of situations fun — at least, for him — no matter how long it took, and he despised being angry or upset. What he despised even more than that was when people got all sentimental. Families getting soppy over memories that happened two forevers ago and held no meaning whatsoever in the present, lovers touching each other in uncomfortable places (in public, no less! Honestly…) and friends weeping over losses with other friends that would probably end up estranged in the future anyway. Once, in his youth, he’d come across a couple who’d been looking deeply into each other’s eyes, and Beratt had approached them and asked if they were searching for imperfections in their retinas.

Snorting and shaking his head at the foolishness of his younger self, Beratt stepped away from the door where the Doctor was bawling like a child over the loss of his granddaughter. Honestly, it wasn’t that big of a deal— she was just a relative. Still, Beratt wondered what it was like to have people in one’s life like that. He hated children of all ages and sizes — disgusting little cretins, mussing everything up, refusing to listen and getting their germs all over everything — and had never once contemplated having any of his own. Besides, his follies with women were less than stellar as well.

That was another interesting topic as well. He’d observed from the sidelines when the Doctor and Rose had spoken; both of their faces had let emotion and vulnerability shine through, which confused and bothered Beratt. Confused, because why anyone would want to show weakness for any reason was beyond him, especially as a sign of affection. Bothered, because it was the one thing he didn’t know how to do. And he didn’t handle it well when people could do something he couldn’t— that was a major factor in the reason why he’d been so desperate to blow up his planet, besides the gut-wrenching truth that his entire species were idiots.

It’d been another annoyance when he’d come back with a generously filled tray of food and the key to his cuffs only to find the room cloudy and the Doctor suffocating on the floor— out of his chair, no less. Beratt had scowled the whole time, having to stick another piece of chocolate into his mouth so he wouldn’t die, lug him back into his chair and cobble together a brand new set of manacles. He’d added in an extra couple of chains he’d found in the cargo bay, just to ensure the Doctor wasn’t going anywhere this time.

Still, despite all of the setbacks and horrid mushy stuff, the experience so far had been greater than he could have imagined. And, despite the minor discomfort from Beratt’s favourite, almighty alien actually breaking down, this was probably a blessing in disguise. After all, it opened up time to take care of the disqualified companions.

He smiled, hopping a little as he strode down the corridor.

*

Beratt’s announcement that Susan had died made Rose’s heart crumple in her chest, and despite having met the young Time Lady for a total of ten minutes a lump immediately formed in her throat and made tears spring to her eyes.

The metacrisis had still been the Doctor, and his long-ingrained tendency to keep his history to himself had never waned, but he had told her the basics about himself — the name of his home planet, where he’d lived, a few friends he’d had at the Academy and how he’d come to obtain (steal) his TARDIS — and one of those things had been his granddaughter. He’d barely revealed enough to fill out a pamphlet— she was a teenager by Gallifreyan standards, unable to regenerate because she hadn’t graduated the Academy, and had run off with a human boy they’d met on one of their adventures called David Campbell, eventually marrying him and having several children. Still, his eyes had shone when he spoke about her, and Rose knew full well the Time Lord Doctor was being forced to watch everyone’s movements, so when the idea occurred to her that the Doctor had also just watched his granddaughter die she couldn’t help but dissolve into tears.

Rose had slid down the wall onto her bum, hugging her knees and having a good cry. At first it was for the Doctor’s sake, but it ended up turning into just for everything’s sake— over her parents, her late husband, the trauma of having to become a soldier and the shame of the Doctor finding out. When she finally quietened, it had to have been a half hour later, but Beratt hadn’t chastised her for dawdling yet. Not wanting to play with chance and have him disqualify her, Rose reluctantly stood up off the floor and set off again, wiping her face and her nose with the back of her hand.

About another half hour down the road, Rose tensed up when she heard movement beside her. Lowering herself into a defensive stance, she said warily, “Hello?”

“Rose?” Martha’s voice gasped out.

“Martha?!”

They both let out concurrent laughs of relief, and Martha said, “Looks like our corridors reconvened!”

“That’s bloody convenient,” Rose replied, grinning despite her earlier melancholy. “Did you hear from that Clara girl? The Doctor’s current companion?”

“No, I didn’t. Looks like she’s still on her own.” Rose grimaced, pitying her. “I was talking to her earlier though, just before our corridors split apart. She seemed fine.”

“Let’s hope she stays fine.”

Despite having just reunited, they fell silent for a few minutes as they manoeuvred through their own respective corridors. Martha broke the silence by saying, rather bluntly, “S-Susan was the Doctor’s granddaughter, yeah?”

Rose paused in her footsteps, staring dully at the floor. “Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that mean she’d regenerate?” Martha asked, sounding hopeful.

Rose swallowed. “No. Th-the Doctor told me that she hadn’t finished the Academy, so the Time Lords didn’t give her the ability to regenerate.”

“Oh.” There was a shuffling sound, like Martha was fidgeting. “I always just assumed that Time Lords were just… like that. Born with the ability, or something.”

Rose hummed half-heartedly in response, resuming her walk. Her eyes were on the ground, which was why she didn’t see the suspended metal beam hanging on the ceiling until it was too late. The moment she strode underneath it the cord holding it up snapped, making it swing down and strike her directly in the back of the head, knocking her out cold far before she crumpled to the floor.

Martha, meanwhile, heard the dull thud and the resulting grunt from Rose, followed by the sound of something hitting the floor hard. She paused, heart instinctively quickening to a trot. “Rose?”

Rose didn’t answer, and when the nearest speaker crackled Martha’s breath hitched with a growing sob, but when Beratt’s voice came through it sounded slightly concerned instead of cheerful. “Oh dear. It appears Miss Tyler is on the floor.”

Martha tensed, so alarmed that she didn’t even question why Beratt was even talking to her. Voice shrill, she demanded, “Did you kill her?”

“I think not!” Beratt exclaimed, actually having the audacity to sound offended. “I believe she’s just unconscious.” He cleared his throat, before saying loudly, “Wake up now, Miss Tyler. No dawdling!” There was still no answer from the adjoining corridor, and Martha wrung her hands, waiting for Beratt to just give up and announce her loss, but he instead surprised her by saying, “Let’s just wait a moment, shall we?”

Martha bit back the retort that she didn’t really have a choice, but Beratt was showing a moment of impromptu kindness towards the only real friend she had left in this game and she didn’t want to jeopardise that. To help the situation along, Martha kicked the wall that joined with Rose’s corridor, shouting her name to try and get her to wake up. Rose still didn’t respond, and Beratt’s voice said despondently, “Well, that’s extremely unfortunate. I suppose I’ll just have to—”

“Wait!” Martha said urgently, when she heard a noise.

*

Somebody talking rudely brought Rose back to consciousness. She scowled into her pillow, opening her mouth to tell the Doctor to shut up so she could sleep, but the only noise she found she could make was a gurgling sound. Rose realised several things at once— one: her husband was long dead; two: whatever she was lying on was less pillow-like and decidedly more like a floor; three, her head was killing her. She shifted, garbling out another upset noise when she realised, while the focal point of her pain was on the back of her head, the rest of her ached almost as bad. Rose rolled onto her side, whimpering slightly and reaching a hand up to touch the injury; she winced when pain shot through her head and down her neck, and when she pulled her fingers away she saw they were stained with blood.

“Fantastic,” she groaned, slumping back down and curling up into a ball on the floor.

“Rose?” Martha’s voice called, sounding relieved. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she said truthfully, letting her eyes slide shut.

“Up you go now, Miss Tyler, there’s a good girl,” Beratt said cheerfully, and Rose’s chest flooded with annoyance.

“Piss off, ya bloody wanker,” she growled, squeezing her eyes shut tighter in retaliation.

“What happened?” Martha asked.

“Got nabbed in the head by something,” she mumbled. “S’lots o’ blood. Fuck, I’m tired,” she added unnecessarily.

“Rose, no,” Martha said loudly. “You’ve probably got a concussion— do not fall asleep.”

“Mrghl,” Rose replied, scowling but obediently lifting herself up off the floor, at the very least sitting up.

“Are you up?” Rose grunted in affirmation, scooting backwards and leaning against the wall. “Good.”

“Indeed,” Beratt chimed in. “I truly did expect you to be out of the running. We gave you a moment to see if you’d awaken.”

“Brilliant, so I’m the bloody teacher’s pet,” Rose snapped, and Martha snorted despite herself.

“What is that?” Beratt asked curiously.

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Rose answered irritably, opening her eyes long enough to glare at the camera.

He huffed out a sigh but grudgingly said, “Very well, I’ll leave you to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” Rose frowned.

“Well, I suppose you wouldn’t celebrate. It seems to me that whenever somebody was disqualified everyone is upset instead of happy that they’re closer to becoming the winner. It’s an odd reaction, truly— not one I’d ever have, to be truthful, but—”

“Do you ever stop talking?” Martha said sarcastically, just as Rose yanked herself properly onto her feet and demanded, “What d’you mean?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention?” Beratt said airily. “No, I suppose not… Miss Oswald’s lost the running. You’re the only two left in the race.”

*

Just as Rose was taking a falling beam to the head, Clara Oswald was carefully jumping over a pair of thin, almost invisible spikes in each wall near the floors— basically, if she’d set off the sensor, they’d dig right into her ankles.

Lovely.

It’d been so, so long since she’d spoken to anyone, and when Peri had gone the same way as Sarah Jane she’d pretty much sworn off trying to form another friendship with any of the remaining three companions. Still, it wasn’t easy for her— she felt like she was alone in the entire universe instead of just the corridor, and she almost anticipated another announcement from Beratt just so she could hear something other than the roaring ambient noise and her own movements. At least, up until the person who’d ‘left the running’, as he’d put it earlier, turned out to be the Doctor’s granddaughter.

Truth be told, when all eleven of them had first woken in the steel room and revealed information about each other, Clara had been more upset about the fact that the Doctor hadn’t told her about his other wife than his granddaughter— which, in hindsight, ashamed her a little. Still, she’d almost cried when the reality of the Doctor’s granddaughter dying properly hit her; admittedly she was really just feeling for the Doctor’s sake instead of for Susan’s. If he didn’t know already, it’d probably destroy him when he found out.

Clara halted in her steps the moment she heard a creepy-sounding mumbling noise, like a radio stuck between two stations but without the static. Her heart immediately leapt when she realised it was people. She tried swallowing down her excitement, knowing full well that if she didn’t perish first then they would, and leave her alone again, but she couldn’t help but quicken her pace considerably. She recognised Beratt’s voice, which was the loudest — evidently he was talking to somebody on their own respective speaker — and, the closer she got, she could also hear Martha Jones’ voice as well.

Her pace quickened again into a jog, which rapidly turned into a sprint the louder the voices got. She was going so fast she didn’t even notice the needle-thin cord placed at a specific height until she felt it hitch around her neck and slice into her throat.

Her knees suddenly seized up, halting her in her tracks. Her eyes went wide and her hands flew up at once, tugging the cord out of her neck instinctively before her knees finally gave way, making her collapse onto her back into a heap. She tried screaming, only succeeding in making a gurgling noise as blood bubbled over her lips and down her chin, before the corridor suddenly went black.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14
Ammunition

It was a lot harder for Rose to manoeuvre through her corridor with a probable concussion and the insane urge to flop down onto the floor and sleep. Martha did her absolute best to keep Rose from giving into that urge by chattering about complete nonsense, from what she’d had for breakfast before being kidnapped to an upcoming film she’d been excited to see.

“… and this one time, when I was sleepin’, I wake up and I find all the chores done!” Martha snorted. “Considering he avoids cleaning like the plague, it was bloody shocking.”

“Sounds like something Mickey’d do,” Rose panted, unaware that her words had made Martha tense up. “Used to clean his flat on national holidays only for when his mum came over and then be a slob the rest of the year.” Head spinning like a top and stomach churning, Rose paused in her steps and leaned against the wall, trying to steady herself and labour her breathing so she didn’t get sick. “Could we just stop a mo’? Feel like ‘m gonna pass out.”

“Yeah, no problem.” Rose crouched down near the floor, lowering her head to rest on her knees and groaning a little. Martha fidgeted for a brief moment before saying, “Rose?”

“Yeah?” she croaked in response, neck straining with the effort of keeping her head mildly upright.

“I sor’ of… neglected to tell you this,” she said hesitantly, “but I might’ve… married Mickey.”

“Did you really?” Rose said in amazement, lifting her head up as best she could. There was nothing but delight in her voice when she added, “Oh, Martha, that’s wonderful.”

“Really?” Martha said, sounding reassured.

“‘Course. If there’s anyone that’d be best for him, s’you.”

Martha beamed, clutching her clasped hands to her chest in relief. “Thank you.”

Rose grinned too, a bit weakly but a grin nonetheless. “Anytime.”

This time she didn’t even pause before blurting out, “We’ve got a little boy.” Rose’s jaw dropped open at once, eyes wide. “Seven months old.”

“What’s his name?” Rose asked quietly.

“James Alex Smith.”

“That’s lovely.”

Martha hummed. “When we get out of here… maybe you could stay in this universe and see him?”

Rose shook her head despite knowing Martha couldn’t see her. “If anyone’s gettin’ out of here, it’s you, Martha.” Martha stayed silent, even though Rose had to take a couple of moments to catch her breath again. “Don’t exactly reckon I’ll be making it with my head split in half.”

“Don’t talk like that, Rose,” Martha ordered.

Rose opened her mouth to retort, but the nausea she’d been feeling suddenly increased tenfold and she managed to gasp out, “Think ‘m gonna—” before doubling over and throwing up what little she had left in her stomach by the wall.

“Are you all right?” Martha asked.

Rose took a moment to cough violently, spitting out residual bile and grimacing at the utterly horrid taste in her mouth. “Fine,” she wheezed, curling in on herself to try and settle her churning stomach, far away from the puddle of sick. “My mouth tastes like death though.”

“Throwing up’s usually a symptom of a concussion,” Martha supplied, a little unhelpfully.

“I know,” Rose breathed out, coughing again. “I’ve had my fair share of concussions.”

“You have?”

“Soldier, remember?” Rose chuckled mirthlessly— at least, she tried to, but it came out as more of a wheezy exhale. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve been whacked over the head with a two-by-four. Bet my skull probably looks like a patchwork quilt.”

“That sounds horrible,” Martha said in a tiny voice, suddenly seriously regretting telling Rose about her brilliant family life.

“Is what it is,” Rose shrugged. Stomach finally settling, Rose lifted herself out of her crouched position and scooted backward to sit upright against the wall. Blowing out air through puffed cheeks, Rose added, “At least this time it doesn’t hurt as much. Last time, there was this Krellat field officer that came outta nowhere and literally blew up the foundation of the building I was in. Whole thing came down on top of me.”

Martha gaped. “How’d you not die?”

“Dunno. Woke up at the camp like two weeks later. God, my whole head felt like it’d been pieced back together with tape.” As Martha tried not to also be sick as she pictured Rose’s story, Rose stood up off the ground as carefully as she could and exhaled, “We should probably start movin’ again.”

“Er, right.”

Despite Martha’s earlier habit of chattering out nonsense to keep Rose alert, the both of them continued their trek in uncomfortable silence. Martha watched the floor as she walked, chest heavy with pity as she imagined the most horrible of possible scenarios that Rose must have gone through. Her experience as the Doctor’s companion had been less than stellar, mostly because he’d been seriously grieving her loss and had constantly compared her to Rose, making her feel inferior and as though she were living in the other woman’s shadow. Upon actually meeting Rose when the stars were going out, though only for a brief moment, she couldn’t exactly see what was spectacular about her— sure she had a big gun and talked tough, but she’d seemed relatively normal and there didn’t seem to be anything special about her, besides when both the blue-suited Doctor and the brown-suited one had taken turns staring at her longingly when her back was turned.

Add into the throng Mickey Smith’s explanation about his ex-girlfriend and Martha had felt thoroughly ashamed of herself for the chip she’d carried on her shoulder. Learning that Rose Tyler had been nothing more than a lower-class shop girl who’d been scammed by a boyfriend and hadn’t even finished high school shattered whatever goddess-like image Martha had remaining in her mind. She’d eventually come to the conclusion that, for some reason only he could explain, the Doctor had fallen arse over teakettle for the blonde, and he’d just taken out his grief on her.

Then she was forced to reacquaint herself with Rose, and learned that Rose had managed to actually become the tough-as-nails soldier picture Martha had once imagined her to be, and it was horrible. If there was anything Martha Jones ever wanted to be wrong about, it was Rose being forced to become exactly what she’d become.

After all… a bloody building fell on top of her?

Rose’s footsteps paused beside her, making Martha freeze as well. “I know what you’re thinking.”

“What’s that?” Martha said.

“Rose Tyler, becomin’ a soldier,” she said a bit bitterly, and Martha hung her head in shame. “How the hell did that happen, right?”

“Would be lying if I said I wasn’t,” Martha admitted.

“S’all right,” Rose said, warmth in her voice. She sighed, flexing her aching shoulders for a moment. “To be honest, about four years into the war I stopped one day and realised it too. Just thought to myself, ‘Holy shite, I’m a bloody soldier’.” Martha let out a completely humourless laugh. “Y’don’t even notice it when it happens, an’ when you do, it’s the most surreal thing ever. Think about it— after you joined Torchwood, did you ever have a moment where it properly hit you that you’re an actual government agent?”

“Yeah, I did actually,” Martha said, an amazed smile in her voice. “About six months in.”

“S’weird, right?” Rose said, grinning a bit as well.

She took a step forward to resume her trudge, only to gasp out in pain and jump back when a sharp pain suddenly shot up her cheek. She froze in place, lifting a hand to her cheek to press against the stinging spot and frowning when her fingers came back stained red yet again, though there was a significantly lower amount of blood than there had been earlier.

“What is it?” Martha asked worriedly.

“I dunno. Got cut on my face somehow.”

Rose took a couple more steps back towards a safer distance, ignoring the remaining throbbing in her head and ducking down a bit to try and examine what looked like a completely empty corridor. The second she moved there were several silver flashes that shot in diagonal directions before her eyes, like she was seeing stars, and Rose frowned, reaching her hand out towards one of the flashes only to gasp out in pain again and yank her hand back abruptly. Her fingers had encountered what felt like the thinnest but strongest string ever created, which had sliced through her fingertips so easily it was almost frightening.

“This is new,” Rose muttered.

“What?”

“Beratt’s set up some kind of maze of string.”

“String?” Martha said, scoffing.

“S’like some kind of weird alien string that’s really thin and has the ability to slice me into cheese cubes if I try and go through it,” Rose elaborated, swiping at her bleeding cheek again with the back of her wrist.

“Use the knife,” Martha suggested.

Rose frowned with confusion. “What?”

“The knife, the one Beratt said you found in your boot. You can use it to cut through the string things.”

“No,” Rose said at once, but before she could say anything further Martha said insistently, “Yes, Rose. It’s the only way you’re gonna get through that thing. And technically it is fair— you’ve got a serious injury, which means you’re at a disadvantage, so usin’ it would level things, yeah?”

“No,” Rose repeated stonily.

“Rose, use the damn thing,” Martha ordered just as callously.

Rose sighed loudly but obediently lowered herself to the floor — slowly so it wouldn’t worsen her headache — before unlacing her boot and slipping out the Swiss army knife. She flicked the blade out of the hilt and carefully approached the near-invisible string maze, blindly running the blade through the air from the ceiling to the floor, hearing high-pitched little twanging noises when the strings snapped.

“Is it working?” Martha asked, as Rose took another tentative step forward and repeated the motion, hoping she wasn’t missing anything that’d dig its way into her face.

“Sounds like it,” Rose said.

She repetitively continued the action over and over again through the strings; a bizarre thought occurred to her that, the way she was posed with the knife outstretched in front of her, she felt a bit like she was fencing. Thankfully it wasn’t long before she was swiping her knife in front of her and she found there were no more strings to cut, much to her relief.

“Think that’s over with,” Rose said, relaxing her stance

“That’s good,” Martha replied, sounding relieved.

“Yeah.” Rose lowered herself onto one knee again, pocketing the knife in her boot. “Wonder how Beratt expected me to get through that without the knife.”

“Maybe he didn’t,” Martha reminded her.

“That’s true,” Rose snorted, raising herself up and starting to walk again.

There was a foreboding clicking sound that made Rose tense up yet again, and she glanced down quickly at her feet to see if she’d stepped on another rigged tile, but the floor beneath her was smooth and normal.

“Martha? Did you hear that?” Martha didn’t answer, which made Rose swallow hard. “Martha?”

There was a pause, before Martha said in a tiny voice, “I-I stepped on a tile.”

Horror permeated Rose’s guts, but she noted in as calm a voice as she could muster, “Nothing’s happened, though.”

“I don’t think it’s like the one that Liz woman stepped on.”

“D’you see anything around you?” Rose asked her urgently.

Martha paused for another moment, before a sharp gasp nearly made Rose jump out of her shoes. “I think it’s a weight sensor.”

“What?”

“Th-the tile.”

“Why would you say that? Martha, what d’you see?”

“There’s a line of arrows in the walls right next to me,” Martha revealed, sounding terrified. “Didn’t see them, they’re so far in. I think if-if I try to move, they’ll—” She didn’t finish her sentence, but Rose knew full well what it meant. Tears sprang to her eyes again— Martha was all she had left. “Rose,” Martha said, voice thick but firm. “You’ve got to save the Doctor.”

“No.” Her lower lip trembled, eyebrows arching upward. “No, Martha.”

“Rose, I’m serious,” Martha said loudly. “It’s up to you. There’s no way I’m makin’ it out of this alive.”

“You’ve got to try, Martha!” Rose stomped her foot, tears splashing down her cheeks, the salt of them making her cut sting. “You can’t just give up!”

“Rose,” Martha started to say in a warning tone, but Rose cut her off, now properly sobbing.

“I said no!” Gulping in a lungful of air, Rose choked out, “What about Micks? And your baby? James, you said his name was, yeah?” Martha let out a muffled sob, spurring Rose on. “You’ve got them to live for, Martha. I don’t!”

“Wh-what about the Doctor?” Martha whispered, tears in her voice.

Rose’s heart cracked a little. “Martha… I’ve got nothing. It should be you getting out of here alive, not me— you’ve got so much to live for.”

The two women cried in each of their corridors, both of their sobs reaching each other. Martha pressed her lips together to tamp down her tears and said, in a voice so quiet it was almost inaudible, “I’m sorry.”

Rose flinched violently when there was a quiet thudding noise, followed by the sound of something whooshing through the air, a loud bang and then silence. Heart pumping so quickly it was making her dizzy, Rose whispered in terror, “Martha?” There was no answer, and Rose let out another sob before screeching, “MARTHA?!”

Silence stretched on, and just as Rose let out a pathetic-sounding whimper the speaker above her crackled, Beratt’s excited voice ringing out seconds later. “Congratulations, Miss Rose Tyler— you’ve won the game! You’ll be transmatted out of your corridor shortly, so stand by!”

Another sob burst from Rose’s lips, and she crouched down onto the floor, cradling her head underneath her arms to try and block out his voice.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15
Absolution

The transmat was quick and, unlike others she’d encountered, relatively painless, so much so that she didn’t even notice it’d happened until the temperature of the room dropped slightly. Lifting her tearstained face from her arms, Rose saw that Beratt had transmatted her back to the room where she’d originally woken, with the exception of a brand new door opened at the other side. Despite the anguish at the knowledge that Martha was gone, her heart leapt at the sight of escape and the prospect of seeing — and saving — the Doctor. Disentangling her arms from herself, Rose stood up slowly and cautiously inched her way towards the door, having been exposed to the possibility of anything and everything being booby trapped for too long.

She warily stepped through the doorway and out into a dimly lit corridor that sloped upwards for a little while before levelling out. It was unsettling, walking through yet another corridor almost identical to the one she’d been trapped in for the last six hours— the only difference was there weren’t cameras and speakers along the walls, and the lights were a futuristic type of glowing blue pipes lining the middle of the walls.

Thankfully it wasn’t long before the corridor opened into a large ovular room, empty save for two doors on either side and a gigantic window in the middle of the wall. Rose gaped at it, stumbling properly into the room and reaching out towards it. She pressed her face to the glass, mouth open wide.

They were in space.

She craned her head in all directions, trying to see even a glimpse of ground but finding none. Shock flooded her system when all she saw was an endless stretch of starry sky and a dark matter nebula off to the side— they’d been on a spaceship this whole time. Rose hadn’t even though about the possibility, having automatically assumed they were underground or in a facility on an alien planet. Well, this definitely made the possibility of escaping slim to none, unless the ship had escape pods.

Rose stepped back from the window and frowned, wondering where to go next. The number one priority at the moment was to find the Doctor (avoiding Beratt coming in as a close second) but she wasn’t sure which door to choose. She mentally wished for a coin to flip before making her decision and tentatively stepping through the right one.

Barely a minute of walking down another, more brightly lit corridor proved to be fruitful. The corridor opened up into a cavernous room— and, to her delight, the walls were lined with blinking computer consoles and monitors. She even recognised the configuration being Ophelia Omicronian, which she could thankfully read— hopefully it was the same simple language of slashes and dots that’d taken Rose all of a week to learn fluently.

She hastily plopped herself into the seat and started pressing buttons on the console, trying to sort out the system and see if she could maybe find the Doctor’s location. Rose quickly found a map of the ship, which was far smaller than she’d expected. Suddenly the monitor lit up with the image of another room — according to the schematic, the next room over — and a frown of confusion graced her face when she saw several uncomfortable-looking metal beds being occupied by unconscious people. At first the dim lighting made it difficult to distinguish their features, but the room suddenly lit up with a bright blue light that passed over them all like a scanner and Rose’s heart stuttered when she recognised Clara on the closest bed. Her hair was hanging off the edge and there was an angry pink line stretched across her neck, which disappeared when the light passed over her a second time with a gentle humming noise— a dermal regenerator, evidently, but on a larger scale.

Rose desperately scanned the room for others, recognising the rather mangled-looking, angry girl from earlier, Peri Brown with fading wounds on either side of her, even the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, who looked completely unharmed save for looking a little dusty. A relieved breath whooshed out of her when she finally spotted Martha receiving the same treatment, several different bloodstains on her shirt from the arrows.

She turned around, hoping to see a door leading to it so she could go and help, but to her distress the only door was the one she’d arrived through. Well, Rose mused, they’d be fine for now— she had to find the Doctor. Rose brought up the ship’s schematic again, trying to find which room the Doctor could possibly be in. The monitor lit up again, switching from the medical bay with all the companions to a dim room with a single, hunched person chained to a chair.

“Doctor,” Rose gasped, eyes widening.

She tossed herself out of the chair and ran out of the room, ducking through the left door this time and sprinting down the corridor. The room he was being held in wasn’t far, so she reached it in seconds; the door had been left suspiciously ajar, and she paused in the doorway when she spotted him in the very centre, chains crossing over his chest and the metal chair bolted to the floor.

Her stomach clenched with nervousness, and the combination of her breathing and tentative footsteps sounded extremely loud in the silent room as she approached the statue-like Doctor. He flinched but didn’t lift his head when she finally reached his chair, making her hesitate for a moment. Finally she reached out, gently laying her hand on his arm and whispering, “Doctor?”

He flinched again, this time a lot more violently, and his head jerked up to stare at her, and Rose was finally able to see his face. It was a little older than she’d expected, lines creasing his cheeks, with flyaway silver hair peppered with grey and equally silver eyes, blown wide with shock.

“Rose,” he breathed out, sounding so amazed it made her gut swoop.

A terrified half-smile quirked up the side of her mouth, and she said quietly, “Long time no see.”

He whimpered, leaning his head towards her to press his forehead against her shoulder, and she couldn’t help but hesitate, unsure of their boundaries now, before lifting her hand up and trailing her fingers gently over his cheek. “‘M gonna try an’ see if I can get your chains off, okay?”

His chains rattled when she pulled away and he seemed to try and keep close to her for as long as possible, which she pretended not to notice as she circled around to the back of his chair and examined them. All the chains were fastened together by a single iron padlock, but to her surprise a single key hanging on a broken chain link was hooked conveniently next to the lock. She grabbed it despite knowing full well Beratt had placed it there deliberately, sticking the key in the lock and yanking it off with trembling, eager fingers. It clattered loudly on the floor when she threw it aside, pushing the chains away and off of the Doctor’s shoulders before circling back around and using the same key on both of the Doctor’s manacles.

The moment his hands were free, the Doctor shoved the remaining chains off of his lap before hurling himself unsteadily out of the chair and towards Rose, arms flinging around her and locking her into his grip. She grunted when her chest hit his, the injury on her head throbbing with the sudden contact, but she was reluctant to voice her discomforts when the Doctor buried his nose into her neck and breathed in deeply, exhaling on a shudder, “It’s you… you’re here.”

After the last six years of having physical contact that only extended from being tossed around by bombs to the occasional incidences of knocking elbows or getting pinned to the ground by other soldiers trying to stop her from taking a bullet to the head, the sensation of being held was a foreign one. She melted into it eagerly, one hand spreading over his back and the other one at the back of his head. “Yeah, ‘m here.”

His hands wandered over her back, her waist and up her neck as though trying to confirm it, and she couldn’t help but let her eyes slide shut, resting her cheek on his shoulder. Rose basked in the glowing ember of happiness she hadn’t felt in ages, knowing that it’d probably be yanked away from her like everything else and that it was probably stupid of her to hope, but he was holding her like the ground was crumbling and she was the only anchor and she just couldn’t push him away— not him, and especially not now.

“Well, this is absolutely touching!” Beratt’s voice chirped from the doorway.

The two of them jumped apart at once but the Doctor quickly swept her behind him with his arm, keeping his hand resolutely around hers. She sent him a slightly annoyed look that he couldn’t see, but her expression slackened when she properly took in the glory that was Beratt. He was relatively impressive with his armour, up until her eyes reached his beaming face with its smooth, rounded babyish cheeks and his pin-straight silver hair, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the person who’d orchestrated this whole thing was twelve years old or a white-haired version of Loki from Thor.

“Congratulations, Miss Tyler, for being the victor!” he chattered on, oblivious to their stance as though expecting him to attack them. “So, Doctor, are you glad to be reunited?”

The Doctor’s hand suddenly tore away from hers and he leapt across the room, so quickly that it took Rose a moment to process it. His hands wrapped around Beratt’s collar and slammed him into the wall — extremely hard, which was apparent by the loud bang of Beratt’s head making contact with the steel — and the Doctor’s righteously furious glare clashed horribly with Beratt’s expression of utter shock, as though he couldn’t possibly fathom why the Doctor was so clearly enraged.

“What are you doing?” Beratt exclaimed, looking too stunned to react beyond that.

“Take a guess,” the Doctor growled.

“I know I kept you chained to a chair for a quarter of a day, but it was just to stop you from interfering with the games,” Beratt said earnestly.

“Games?” Rose said incredulously, ready to wallop him. “You put us all through hell!”

“I reunited you!” Beratt reminded them, his expression one of utter disbelief. “You, dear Doctor, would still be wallowing in self-pity and you, Rose Tyler, would still be bathing in the blood of your enemies—”

The Doctor pulled Beratt forward and slammed him back against the wall, effectively silencing him as the Doctor snapped, “Don’t you dare speak to Rose like that!”

A little apprehensive at the Doctor’s sudden violent side, Rose took a step forward to try and calm him down, but she halted in her steps the moment she saw his hands lock around Beratt’s neck and start squeezing with purpose.

“What—” Beratt choked, clawing at the Doctor’s hands to try and get them to release him. “What are you doing?!” he managed to gasp out.

“What does it look like?” the Doctor snarled, tightening his fingers until Beratt’s windpipe was properly crushed.

The alien grasped for purchase along the wall, making tiny wheezing noises as he tried to fight back. Rose had been watching the Doctor slowly suffocate Beratt with a kind of stunned horror — the Doctor, almighty hater of violence — and, truth be told, the thought did cross her mind to just let him die. She’d been put through a special kind of hell because of him, after all. She felt bile rise up in her throat in disgust at her own horrid thought, and she rushed forward, hands wrapping around the Doctor’s arm.

“Doctor, stop,” she said, loudly and clearly. Beratt’s eyes, wide and nearly popping out of his skull, darted to hers frantically at her words. The Doctor didn’t look at her; he didn’t even acknowledge that she’d spoken. “Doctor, stop.”

“No, Rose,” he said through gritted teeth, lips barely moving, expression staying the same. “He deserves it.”

“He deserves a lot of things, but not this,” she told him, tugging at his arm to try and pull it off to no avail. Beratt was starting to turn violet, which was worrying her. “Not like this.”

“Yes,” he snarled.

“No, Doctor,” Rose snarled back, face hard as she assumed her authoritative persona. He at least glanced at her, though no anger left his visage. Her grip on his arm turned gentle, her thumb brushing over the exposed skin of his straining wrist, and her voice was mild. “What’s wrong with you? You don’t kill.”

The Doctor stared at her, looking horrified that she’d even say such a thing. His grip loosened ever so slightly on Beratt’s neck, allowing him the briefest wisp of air. “Rose, I—” He swallowed, eyes blazing with anger again. “He hurt you! And-and he killed Susan!”

“No he didn’t,” Rose said urgently. “I saw all of them, Doctor— they’re all fine.”

He gaped her properly now, fingers loosening yet again. “But… Susan—?”

“Susan’s fine too. He did some kind of gigantic dermal regenerator thing on them all— I saw it. She’s fine.”

“She’s—”

The Doctor relinquished Beratt at once and hurled himself backwards, staring with horror at the alien choking and gasping for breath on the floor as though he’d been stung. Rose recognised the look that was starting to grow on his face, one of disgust and self-loathing, so she hurried forward and tossed herself into his arms before he could start thinking she hated him. He immediately curled into her, face in her neck again, and although he wrapped his arms around her to bring her closer he kept his hands resolutely away from her, as though worried he’d sully her with them.

Beratt, meanwhile, had apparently caught his breath to the point where he could think clearly. Hoisting himself up onto trembling legs using the wall, he rubbed at his neck with one hand and gasped out in fury, “What the hell was that for?”

Since the Doctor seemed too ashamed of himself to answer, Rose turned to Beratt with a scowl. “Are you really askin’ that, mate?”

“After everything I did for him?” Beratt exclaimed furiously, stomping his foot like a child. The action was so odd Rose wasn’t sure if she should laugh or not. “I spent the last sixteen years putting this together — I flew across the Howling, by Nysondre — and he decides to fly off the handle like a madman? Why—”

Rose, before Beratt could even think of finishing whatever sentence he was about to say, extracted her arm from around the Doctor’s waist, drew it back and punched Beratt square in the temple. His head smacked against the wall again and he crumpled to the ground, out cold.

She winced at her split knuckle, rubbing at it with the palm of her other hand before catching the Doctor’s incredulous look. Rose shrugged, saying, “I never said anything about not hittin’ him.” He let out a breathy, mirthless chuckle, still staring at her to the point of discomfort. She fidgeted in place before stammering, “I-I found a map of the ship close to here—”

“The ship?” he frowned.

“We’re on a spaceship,” she elaborated. “Saw it on my way here. There was a computer console down the corridor that gave me a schematic, so maybe we could use it to find the TARDIS.” Rose glanced at Beratt’s slumped form. “What do we do with him?”

“Lock him in that thing,” the Doctor said stonily, and Rose followed his gaze towards the chair covered in unlocked chains.

She knew it was probably just another way for the Doctor to get revenge, but truth be told it was a convenient way to make sure Beratt stayed put, so she shrugged and helped the Doctor drag Beratt into the chair. Once the Doctor clamped the manacles around both of Beratt’s wrists and secured the chains as well, Beratt’s head lolling on his chest the whole while, Rose held out her hand for him to take. “Let’s find the TARDIS.”

Her heart was pumping nervously, and she almost felt like she was subconsciously testing the waters to see where they stood. He took a moment to stare at her fingers underneath deeply furrowed brows (she got the feeling frowning was a habit for this Doctor) before he took them obligingly, cradling them in his hand as though she was made of delicate china. “Yeah.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 16
Completion

Rose led him quickly into the room with the giant computers, where the schematic of the ship and the image of the room where the Doctor had been held were still on the monitor. The Doctor tossed himself into the chair at once, so quickly he nearly slid off it and onto the floor, hands flying rapidly over the console.

“The ship isn’t very big,” the Doctor frowned, pressing buttons.

“Maybe it’s a shuttle?” Rose suggested, and he glanced at her with wonder in his eyes.

“It’s too big to be a shuttle— probably a stolen Persei cargo vessel.” He twiddled a dial, squinting his eyes at the monitor. “There. The TARDIS is two decks down from here.”

“The others are in the med bay, but there’s no door,” Rose said, pointing to it on the monitor. “How do we get in?”

“The door’s on the other side.” The Doctor pointed as well. “We’ll just have to circle around.”

“All right— you fetch the TARDIS and I’ll go to the med bay,” Rose said.

He nodded but didn’t say anything more. They doubled back the way they’d come, bypassing the room the Doctor had been held in for several hours and parting ways when the corridor split in two— Rose going right, the Doctor going left. She knew it was insanely irrational, but she couldn’t help but swallow nervously when the sound of the Doctor’s footsteps disappeared. She’d been almost completely alone in a similar-looking corridor for the last six hours, the shock having been pushed aside at the utterly amazing fact that the Doctor was here, but now her breaths sounded panicky and loud in the silence of the corridor. Pressing her lips together to silence herself, she forced her feet forward and set off down the corridor, but still kept herself in a wary stance just in case Beratt had booby-trapped the corridor for whatever illogical reason.

Rose thankfully managed to reach the med bay without being blown up or something along those lines, just as the giant dermal regenerator switched itself off. The light in the room darkened considerably, so Rose felt around on the wall for a light switch. Her fingers hit a button by the doorway and the room lit up again, the brightness making some of the companions wrinkle their noses although nobody actually woke. Rose spotted her uniform and tools on a table in the far corner, which she’d assumed Beratt had left behind in the corridor, but ignored them for now.

She walked down the aisles of beds, pressing two fingers to each person’s jugular and sighing out in relief when she found that everyone was alive and had a strong pulse. When she came to Martha’s bed, she squeezed her hand, beaming down at her unconscious face when she thought of the prospect of bringing Martha back home to Mickey and their baby.

Rose spotted another smaller computer console and monitor in the corner with what looked like everyone’s profiles lined up on the screen, and she headed over to it to scan through them all. Each of their profiles held the order in which they’d lost Beratt’s stupid game, their location and exact time when they’d been taken, right down to the very last second. She also found her own profile at the very end of the list, despite not being a patient (she was slightly annoyed to see that it stated her status as the ‘winner’) and to her astonishment she noticed that every profile had a photograph paired with it— all of which were clearly taken from far away. The one on her profile was clearly another candid shot, of her with her fingers pressed to the communications device on the side of her neck. She remembered that instance— she’d been outside the northernmost camp, announcing to the neighbouring squadron’s captain their plan to merge and storm the nearest Krellat encampment.

“Ugh,” Rose said in disgust, wrinkling her nose at the screen. She just bet Beratt had been hiding up in a tree with a camera like a creep.

Rose pressed a couple more buttons, searching through the system to see if she could access the other monitors across the ship so she could see if the Doctor had found the TARDIS yet. She nearly jumped out of her skin when the signature loud grinding noise Rose thought she’d never hear again echoed in the hall outside, and she headed towards the doorway only to see the Doctor storming out of the TARDIS.

Recognising the look on his face, she said gently, “I checked everyone— Susan’s fine. They’re all fine.”

His eyes softened as he looked at her. She took his hand and led him over to the bed where Susan was lying; she looked peaceful and calm, no longer covered in sand. The Doctor hunched over her unconscious frame, one hand cradling the side of her face, and Rose bit her lip to hide an endearing smile, turning away to give him a moment with his granddaughter only to spot something flashing on the monitor. She frowned, approaching it and leaning over the console.

“What is it?” the Doctor’s voice said directly behind her, and she jumped again, tensing up at once.

“Don’t do that,” she breathed, neglecting to mention that she’d been extremely close to whirling around and clocking him over the head. Ignoring his frown and turning back to the monitor, she pointed to the screen and said, “It looks like a transmat. We could use it to send everyone back home.”

For a moment a lump arose in her throat, her own words reminding her of the question that had been hanging over their heads like a cloud— would she being going home as well? The Doctor, however, didn’t seem to notice her distress. “Should we even trust Beratt’s transmat? What if it sends them somewhere dangerous?”

“He already healed them all,” Rose said. “What would be the point?”

“I suppose,” he said grudgingly, tossing another worried glance at Susan.

The corner of her mouth quirked up, and she said, “If it really bothers you, you could sonic it.”

His frown deepened. “Beratt confiscated my sonic. Wonder where he put it.”

“Was gonna ask that later. I want my gun back.” She turned back to the monitor, pretending not to notice his look of discomfort. “We could just use the TARDIS to bring them all back…”

“I don’t know where or when they were taken,” the Doctor said.

“Beratt’s database has that information,” Rose said, bringing back everyone’s profiles so he could see. “But it’ll take a while to ferry everyone back home. Especially since it says Sarah Jane was on a train when Beratt took her.” Rose frowned at the screen. “Wonder how we’re gonna catch that train.”

“All right, we’ll use the blasted transmat,” the Doctor grumbled, and she stepped aside so he could fiddle with the console. He snorted as he examined the system. “Looks like he stole it from the Time Agents.”

“Wouldn’t put it past him,” Rose said. “Speakin’ of Beratt, where are we gonna dump him?”

“In a black hole,” the Doctor answered stonily.

Rose couldn’t help but grin. “I was thinkin’ of somewhere more like a prison, or something.”

“I suppose we could put him in Stormcage,” the Doctor said grudgingly.

Rose snorted. “I dunno about this universe’s Stormcage, but in Pete’s World it was notorious for its prisoners escaping.”

The Doctor opened his mouth but shut it at once, frowning as he thought of River Song and how easy it was for her to escape multiple times. If she could do it, Beratt could as well. Cringing, he said, “All right, Stormcage is out.”

His frown deepened, wondering where they could possibly put him. Rose, to his shock, suggested, “Instead of prison, why not put him in a mental institution or something?”

“Why?” the Doctor gaped.

“‘Cos he needs some serious help!” Rose said, raising her eyebrows. “I’m not sayin’ he ought to get special treatment, I’m just sayin’ that somebody who spends a whole sixteen years setting up an obstacle course of doom isn’t sane.”

The Doctor stared at her with a half-scowl, half-look of endearment, before saying reluctantly, “There’s a maximum security mental health facility on a space outpost in the Draconian Galaxy— the Miton outpost. We could put him there, I suppose.”

“Good.”

She stepped away from the console, heading towards the doorway. The Doctor hurried forward, following her with a worried look on his face. “Where are you going?”

“‘M gonna go get Beratt,” she said.

“It’s too dangerous,” the Doctor said at once, frowning deeply.

She sent him an annoyed look, one that he actually recoiled at. “Doctor, you know full well that I’m a soldier.” He flinched at the word but didn’t comment. “I think I can handle escorting one chained-up megalomaniac down the hall.”

“Right,” he mumbled, hanging his head and staring at his feet. It was so adorably like what her pinstriped husband would have done that her heart clenched, and she had to smile.

Usually when her Doctor had done that — more often than not after he’d messed up a mission or ate all the banana pudding when she explicitly told him not to touch it — she would have stepped forward and taken his hand, rested her head on his shoulder, murmured that she loved him, and he would have beamed at her like he was lost at sea and she was a light in the distance.

Unfortunately she had to remember that this was not her husband— this was the person who’d once loved her long ago, who’d left her in another universe because (and she knew this as a fact) the idea of her living happily with another version of him while he was forced to live without her was impossible to deal with, and who’d married someone else not long after, at the very least because he knew he had to.

“I’ll be fine,” she said instead, sending him a tongue-touched smile that, to her astonishment, made his eyes light up. “You start programming the transmat. I’ll be back in a mo’.”

He nodded wordlessly but still looked displeased about the idea, keeping his eyes locked on her until she disappeared from view. Rose paused for a moment to place her hand on the TARDIS parked in the hallway, raising an eyebrow at the St. John’s Ambulance sticker on the right door.

Walking down the corridor this time was a lot easier this time, now that she knew there were no tripwires or trick tiles lying around anywhere. Her mind was full of the Doctor’s form leaning over Susan, the Doctor looking at her with a hesitant but familiar warmth in his eyes, the Doctor flinching at the mere declaration of her being a soldier and his grimace when she mentioned owning a gun. Well, she mused, jaw hardening, he was just going to have to deal with it. She was Brigadier Rose Marion Tyler of Torchwood One, Division Three, leader of Squadron Alpha Sixteen and decorated with honours — and she was a hell of a shot now — and if the Doctor was uncomfortable with it he could dump her back in the parallel universe like he had eight years ago.

Rose paused in her steps, frowning at her feet and feeling horrible at her awful thought. He had every right to hate what she represented — hell, she used to hate it too — and truth be told she truly wanted to stay with him. How could she not? Six years of being forced to concentrate on planetary-wide warfare didn’t make her miss the Doctor any less. However she was more terrified at the prospect of being rejected yet again, so whatever his choice was, she’d take it with stride. Holding her head a bit higher and schooling her features into a war-hardened mask, Rose turned into the room.

Rose paused in the doorway, surprised to find Beratt awake in the chair. He was hunched over as far as the chains would allow, pale white hair only half-obscuring the despondent look on his face. Rose snorted softly, unable to feel even a shred of pity for him.

Beratt lifted his head slightly when Rose approached him, looking up at her with large doe eyes. “Miss Tyler?”

“I have good news,” Rose said sarcastically, crossing her arms. “I’ve managed to convince the Doctor not to send you out the airlock. We’re dropping you off at the Miton outpost.”

Beratt looked uninterested by the news, lowering his head back into his lap again. “The Doctor hates me now, doesn’t he?”

Rose stared down at him incredulously. “You’re honestly shocked about that?”

“Yes,” said Beratt, sounding confused she’d even ask.

Rose narrowed her eyes at him, amazed that he was actually so stupid. Could he really not grasp the concept that he’d chained the Doctor to a chair, forced him to watch what he thought was ten out of eleven companions die — one of which was his very own granddaughter — and nearly asphyxiated him on aerosolised aspirin, twice. Rose opened her mouth to ask him this, but all she could get out was a stunned, “You’re insane.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Beratt frowned at her.

“You can’t actually see what you’ve done, can you?” Rose said incredulously.

“What I have done is an immensely complex competition that could have only ended in the Doctor happily reuniting with one of his friends!” Beratt said indignantly, before his pout came back. “At least… I thought so.”

Rose gaped at him, which was left completely unnoticed by Beratt. Her head was throbbing again, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was because of her injury or of sheer incredulity. Shutting her mouth with a click, Rose lifted a hand to try and massage away the ache, saying, “Okay, clear this up for me… all of those traps you placed were deadly.”

“I suppose,” Beratt shrugged.

“But you never intended to kill any of us?”

“Of course not,” he replied, as though she were mad for even thinking it. “I’ve installed metabolic transmitters underneath the skin of everyone’s wrists; they activate the transmat the moment anything severely disrupts anyone’s metabolic functions.”

Rose snorted, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms again. “Thought of everything, didn’t you?”

“Evidently not,” Beratt said, once again reverting back to despondence as he rattled his chains.

“Listen,” Rose said, trying to keep the frustration out of her voice. “Imagine things from the Doctor’s point of view. Imagine suddenly waking up one day chained to a chair, with some bloke forcing you to watch your old friends die.”

“They weren’t—” Beratt started to insist.

“But he didn’t know that,” Rose interrupted, eyes serious. “Think about it. In a way, the Doctor literally grieved Susan’s death.” Beratt stayed silent this time, lower lip still sticking out but a contemplative expression on his face. Hoping she was finally getting through to him, Rose knelt by his chair and added, “Try also imaginin’ things from my point of view. You’re locked in a corridor for ages, by yourself, and you know full well that every step might kill you. All your friends are droppin’ like flies around you and you don’t know if you’ll be next or not.”

“I… suppose I should have taken the time to clarify things with everyone,” Beratt admitted grudgingly. “Emphasised that it was just a game.”

Well, she supposed, it was a start. Rose opened her mouth to point out that he’d also pulled everyone from their timelines and that, had anything gone wrong, time itself would have unravelled, but she decided against it since Beratt already looked like a kicked puppy. It was shocking to realise the evil mastermind behind everything was literally just a big kid.

“Yeah, you should’ve,” she said instead, circling around to the back of his chair.

Just as she was starting to unlock his chains, keeping a careful grip on them just in case Beratt decided to pull a fast one on her, the Doctor practically threw himself through the doorway, brandishing both his sonic and her gun in both of his hands.

Rose raised her eyes at him. “What the hell are you doin’? Why are you holdin’ my gun?”

The Doctor blinked at her, mouth agape. “You were… gone a long time, I thought—”

His face flamed red, and Rose had to take a moment to desperately bite back the onslaught of giggles bubbling behind her lips. “I told you, I can take care of myself,” Rose reminded him, before glancing at Beratt — who was now averting his gaze from the Doctor’s — through inquisitive eyes and saying, “We were just… talking.”

“Oh,” he said dumbly.

He looked so lost that she couldn’t help but grin. “Could you help me, please?” she said airily, giving Beratt’s chains a rattle.

The Doctor nodded wordlessly, stuffing his sonic into his pocket before heading towards the chair to help her. He almost pocketed her gun too, but she sent him an annoyed look and he reluctantly handed it over. Once Beratt was free of his bindings, the two of them escorted him out into the hall. Awkwardness settled over them all; the Doctor still seemed embarrassed over his failed rescue attempt, while Beratt seemed ready to shrink into himself, leaning away from the Doctor and closer to Rose than was probably appropriate.

“Is the transmat ready?” Rose asked to break the uncomfortable silence.

“Er… I’ve already transmatted everyone back home,” the Doctor said.

Rose frowned at him. “Everyone?” He nodded, not looking at her. “Even Clara?”

His eyes hardened, even though he still didn’t look at her. “Yes.”

“Why? She’s your companion now, isn’t she?”

“I think it would be best if she spent some time at home with her family after this ordeal.”

Beratt shrank a little more, and under any other circumstance Rose would have marvelled at the display of remorse, but she was too focused on the Doctor’s blatant lie. “You really think it’s best for her — for everyone — to just wake up in their beds after this?”

“They won’t remember it,” the Doctor said stonily. “I’ve suppressed their memories.”

She was far too aware that the old Rose Tyler would have stopped the Doctor in his tracks, shouted at him a bit and demanded to know why he would do that without asking anyone’s permission. Now, though, she almost envied them— it was also best for the timelines. “I s’pose that’s best,” she said quietly, ignoring his sideways glance of shock. When they reached the med bay, the Doctor went into the TARDIS with Beratt to lock him up while Rose went over to the table that held her uniform. Her fingers swept over the stretchy fabric of her shirt, desperately wishing she could peel off her utterly filthy clothes and change into fresh ones, suddenly feeling itchy and disgusting. She decided against it— there would be plenty of time to bathe on the TARDIS.

At least, unless the Doctor decided to leave her behind somewhere.

Hugging her shirt to her chest for some level of comfort, Rose slung her tool belt and her bullet harness over her shoulder, wincing when the back of her head started throbbing again. She lifted a hand to rub at it, just as the Doctor exited the TARDIS alone and spotted the motion.

“What happened?” he said softly.

“You didn’t see?” Rose asked him.

“No, I was—” He swallowed. “No.”

She shrugged, lowering her hand. “Was just a trap Beratt set. Hit me in the head an’ knocked me out for a bit.”

His eyes hardened, and he bit out, “Infirmary.”

Rose wasn’t sure if his anger was directed at her or Beratt— either way the idea of being ordered around didn’t sit well with her. She rolled her eyes but obediently approached the TARDIS; the Doctor opened the door for her, letting her step inside before following her in as well.

Rose raised her eyebrows at the brand new layout. Admittedly she’d been foolishly expecting the same coral interior from years ago, but now it had changed to a weird silver-blue, technological design. The TARDIS’s fluorescent blue lights flickered excitedly and the tone of her familiar humming changed into something ecstatic. Rose bit back an equally ecstatic beam, settling for a tempered smile and a whispered, “Hello, old girl.”

“Rose?” said the Doctor quietly, standing in the doorway adjacent to the hall.

She hummed in response, turning away from the new sights and following him down the corridor. The TARDIS had generously made the nearest door the one that led to the infirmary, where Rose obediently hopped on the bed and waited patiently as the Doctor fetched a tiny, palm-sized dermal regenerator from the drawer. Leaning over uncomfortably to reach the back of her head, the Doctor activated the device, keeping his eyes steadily locked on her wound.

Being forced to focus on finding the TARDIS and getting everybody home ensured that they wouldn’t have to address the thousand-pound elephant in the room, but now that they were totally alone together with nothing else impeding them the awkwardness was so thick it was almost suffocating. The Doctor was barely touching her, and Rose had a desperate, conflicting urge to both lean away and reach towards him.

Instead, she sat so tensely it made the Doctor flick his gaze towards her face for a millisecond. The buzzing from the dermal regenerator stopped and he practically croaked out, voice cracking, “Is-is there anything else?”

She wordlessly held out both hands, where her first and last trap had sliced open the tips of her fingers. He took them with painstaking care, as though she’d shatter if he showed any more force, running the device over her fingertips and making them tingle slightly. Without repeating his earlier question he slid his hand over the line of her jaw, raising the regenerator to the cut on her cheek and carefully manoeuvring the small blue light over it. Rose’s eyes fluttered shut from the brightness, lashes brushing her cheeks, giving him the courage to ask the question that had been eating away at the both of them.

“What’ll you do now?” he half-whispered, averting his eyes just in case she opened hers and saw his look of terror.

She didn’t, too afraid of what expression would be on his face. “I… dunno.” She worried her lower lip, which the Doctor stared at unabashedly. “Can’t go back,” she added unnecessarily.

There was another uncomfortable pause, but this time it wasn’t so lengthy. The Doctor broke the silence by saying, letting vulnerability creep into his voice, “You… could stay.”

Her eyes shot open at once, seeking out his and searching for some kind of hidden meaning. The self-proclaimed coward that he was, he immediately dropped his gaze and instead stared at her neck, face steadily growing redder.

“D’you want me to?” she asked in a tiny voice, allowing her own fear to shine through as a twisted sign of good faith.

He swallowed hard, Adam’s apple visibly straining against the skin of his neck, before nodding curtly. Delight blossomed in her chest and, without thinking even a little bit about the possible consequences, she shoved herself forward and pressed her mouth against his. He tensed up in shock but didn’t pull away, lips gently moving against hers in an almost stunned manner at first. Then the sound of the dermal regenerator clattering to the floor met her ears before the Doctor’s body was suddenly flush against hers, lips slanting against hers as he practically tried to merge with her. She scooted forward so she could get closer, legs twining around his waist and fingers finding their way into his hair despite the nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be doing this, not so soon. Her wakeup call was when he let out a deep, throaty noise, and she pulled away slowly, feeling him tense up again underneath her as though he expected rejection.

Rose, lips tingling and chest tight, said breathlessly, “Y-you still?”

It was a half-finished question, but he knew full well what she meant.

“I still,” he admitted quietly, meeting her eyes this time.

The Doctor had fought against it with all his might over the last several centuries, more so in the last several hours than in any other moment, but he just couldn’t help it. It didn’t matter though, because when she kissed him again, a thousand times more desperately than earlier, he knew it was invariably worth it.

Chapter Text

Epilogue
Exoneration

Rose’s heels clicked on the white tile floors, punctuating the quiet fidgeting of the guards and the occasional angry screech from patients farther down the hall. She walked past the guards, nodding politely at each of them in turn before heading towards a sleek white desk fixed with a Plexiglas window, behind which a blue female with green spots and slicked back antennae.

“Hello Rose,” she said upon spotting the blonde, immediately pulling up a sheet of paper she’d set aside and pushing it and a pen under the arch cut into the glass.

“Hello Tyrande,” Rose said, signing her name with ease on the bottom of the paper. “Himself ready?”

“Ready and set up in Containment Hold Thirteen,” Tyrande said, wrinkling her blue nose. “You’re a miracle worker, Rose. How d’you manage to talk to him for two seconds, let alone for fifteen minutes every two weeks?”

“Very patiently,” Rose grinned, tongue at the corner of her mouth.

She set the pen down and pushed the sign document back towards Tyrande before setting off down the hall with another guard accompanying her closely. Rose turned the corner down another hall, this one lined with identical-looking doors save for their designations stamped across them in bold black letters. Upon reaching the thirteenth door, the guard patted her down to make sure she wasn’t hiding anything and pulled out a large ring with hundreds of keys on it; he took barely a second to select the right key and swipe it over the lock before opening it for her.

Rose handed him her bag and stepped into the room alone, the guard clicking the door shut behind her. The cell was plain, white and separated into two halves by a long table stretching from end to end and a large, clear force field. Beratt sat on the opposite end of the table, half asleep and leaning heavily on his hand while his other hand idly poked at the force field, which lit up underneath his fingers.

When he glanced up, boredom in his eyes, he sat up straight as a pin, beaming at her brightly enough to light up the room. “Miss Tyler!”

“Hello,” she greeted him, sitting down in the plastic chair directly in front of him. “Sorry’m late— the Doctor tried stalling me again and then landed on the wrong end of the station.”

His baby cheeks dimpled with a grin. “Where’d you end up?”

Rose grimaced. “Health and body care. There wasn’t a single nurse in there that didn’t try offering me some kind of body oil. Smelled awful.” Beratt giggled gleefully. “What did you do this week?” His smile faded, and his eyes darted guiltily into his lap. Rose narrowed her eyes and said warningly, “What did you do this time?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled.

“You know I can just ask Tyrande at the front desk if you’ve been doing bad things,” Rose reminded him.

He fidgeted for a moment in his seat. “I don’t like arts and crafts,” he confided grumpily. “It’s stupid. Everyone in here is stupid. The nurses gave everyone ammonium nitrate-based paints and didn’t believe me when I said it was explosive and shouldn’t be left next to the hotplates. So I blew it up! It painted all of them blue.”

He looked almost proud of himself, up until Rose shot him an exasperated glance. “We talked about this.”

“I know,” he mumbled, staring at his knees, before adding in earnest, “I did say I was sorry afterwards!”

“Were you?”

“No,” Beratt said bluntly. “But I still said it. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“I suppose,” Rose sighed, blowing a strand of hair out of her face. “Just try not to blow anything up next time, all right?”

“Okay,” he chirped, pleased now that the subject was dropped. He hesitated before asking, “How are you and the Doctor?”

She smiled at him, properly this time. “Brilliant. The Doctor took Clara, Danny and I to Akrenvale for a holiday that turned into an uprising.”

“Are they married yet?” Beratt asked.

“Not yet— they keep changing the date. Reckon it’ll be next March.”

“And what about you?” Beratt said. “How are things with you?”

“Fine,” Rose said vaguely. When Beratt raised an inquisitive eyebrow at her deliberate ambiguity, she admitted with reluctance, hand drifting towards her stomach, “We’re expecting.”

“Are you?” He let out a delighted, borderline disturbing giggle, clapping his hands and bouncing in his seat. “How absolutely wonderful! Congratulations, Miss Tyler!”

“Thanks,” she said, granting him a half-smile.

“How did you discover it?”

“Well, knew something was odd when I kept throwing up my breakfast,” Rose muttered, and he made a face. “The Doctor’s been actin’ half mad since we found out. Barely lets me walk by myself without him holdin’ my hand, like he thinks I’m made of sugar.”

“Was he happy?”

“He is now,” Rose shrugged, giving her stomach another pat. “Wasn’t sure at first, ‘cos he turned white as a sheet, started shouting in Gallifreyan at the ultrasound and tripped over himself about a hundred times.”

“How lovely,” he giggled again, before looking tentatively hopeful. “Do you think he’ll maybe come visit?”

Rose hesitated, wondering how to phrase her words. “I don’t think that’ll be anytime soon.”

He slumped in his seat like he was trying to melt into himself, looking like the world had just crashed around him. “He’ll never forgive me, will he?”

“I dunno,” Rose admitted. She didn’t voice that she was doubtful, since Beratt was never a topic to be mentioned in the TARDIS unless it was to ask him to pilot the TARDIS to Miton’s maximum-security mental health ward— and she’d had to fight tooth and nail and refuse to speak to him for a week for him to agree the first time.

“Do you forgive me?”

“I do,” Rose said, and a delighted smile nearly cracked his face in half. “‘Cos of you I’m happy again, even if you—”

“Even if I went about it the wrong way,” he chimed in, reciting her words from memory.

“Right,” she said. “Just give the Doctor some time.”

“It’s been a whole five years!” Beratt scowled, picking at a nonexistent spot on the sleeve of his jumpsuit.

“This version of the Doctor isn’t exactly the friendliest of sorts,” reminded Rose, and Beratt smiled reluctantly.

“No, I suppose not.”

The door suddenly opened behind them and the guard stepped in halfway, eyeing Beratt warily. “Miss Tyler? Your Doctor bloke’s here to pick you up in his box.”

Rose ignored Beratt’s whiny, “Aw!” and nodded, saying, “Thank you.” Turning back to Beratt, who wasn’t trying to hide his pout even a little, Rose stood up from her chair and said, “See you next month, yeah?”

“Okay,” he said grudgingly, poking at the force field again.

“Behave,” she reminded him firmly, and he nodded with a glower at the table before Rose properly stepped outside.

The Doctor was waiting for her at the end of the hall, the TARDIS sitting in wait next to him. He brightened the moment he spotted her after the guard gave her bag back, claiming her hand the moment she was in reach. “Had to drop Clara off at her place for a family emergency,” he told her, ushering her into the TARDIS as though expecting somebody to attack them from behind at any moment.

“Is everything all right?” Rose frowned, setting down her bag on the jump seat as the Doctor piloted them into the Vortex.

“Yes, yes, just some nonsense about her daughter getting teased at preschool,” the Doctor said, striding away from the console so he could drag her into his arms and plant a couple of kisses on her shoulder. He wrinkled his nose. “You smell like a hospital.”

Rose rolled her eyes, swatting his arm. “I just came back from a mental health facility.” He grumbled out an incoherent response against her skin, and she huffed out exasperatedly. “Y’know, you could at least say his name.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the Doctor sniffed, but he didn’t let go.

“I’m talkin’ about Beratt,” Rose said, emphasising his name deliberately. “He asked about you again today. Wants to know when you’ll be coming to visit him.”

“Tell him when Daleks become universal ambassadors promoting peace,” the Doctor said grumpily, and Rose chuckled before schooling her expression back to seriousness.

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

“He’s not the evil mastermind you think he is,” Rose told him, turning thoughtful. “He’s… like a ten-year-old kid with entitlement issues. And an insanely high IQ,” she added. “He feels awful for what he did— he really does.”

“Only you would be able to make an evil genius feel ashamed of himself,” the Doctor said endearingly.

“I reckon he’s felt ashamed for long enough, yeah?” Rose slipped her hand downward and squeezed his bum, making him squeak in what was definitely not a girlish manner.

“I’ll think about it,” he mumbled, ignoring her smirk. Unravelling himself from her, he grabbed her hand and led her out of the console room. “Now, I reiterate that you smell like a hospital, so to the en suite with you.”

“Suppose I could soak in the bath for an hour or six,” Rose shrugged, following him.

The Doctor sent her a heated look. “Good, because that’s how long I’m keeping you in there.”