Chapter Eight – Fire

"Doctor."

He blanked her. Whether the action was intended or a consequence of his distraction she was not sure, but it worried her. Rose envisioned him doing something rash to his captive in this fit of absolute rage that had taken him. This man in front of her, slamming into the controls with all the patience of an angered bull, was not someone she knew. Right now, in the face of this consuming fury he was so driven by, Rose seriously doubted that he would take his own morals into consideration when dealing with the Incubus. Dust and air.

"Doctor, where are we goin'?" Again, no response. He wouldn't leave the controls alone. The TARDIS juddered under the force of his delivered command, as though she did not want him to carry through the act Rose suspected he had in mind.

"Doctor!" Everything blazed red for Rose, just for a slip, but it was enough to power her to grab his arm and spin him round to face her. He stumbled away from the consol, clamping her eyes with his fierce stare. She refused to pale under their focus, refused to back down. Then after a moment, he blinked. It was as though he had not been looking at her at all. The Doctor's eyes softened, and his face lost its hardness. "Rose…"

"Don't you ignore me!" she snapped, upset and fright lighting her eyes. "Tell me, where are we going? What are you going to do to it?"

He just looked at her, as though the question was beyond him. Rose's hands were still wrapped around his upper arms, her grip mildly painful to him. But then his eyes found something in her, something he never thought he would witness, and his brows furrowed lightly in hurt. "You think … you think I'm going to kill it," he murmured. "You think I'm capable of that."

Rose faltered. Those words shook her, right through to her core. He had read her face like her doubts in him were clawed across her fair skin. Her gut twisted with the realisation of what she had done to him. Her grip lessened, her mouth silently trying to find the words to make the situation better for him, for her. There was nothing she could say.

The Doctor's eyes stayed with her only for a moment longer, then he was gone, back at the controls without a word her way. Rose felt the keen burn of the distance between them, mere feet feeling like the entire of space. One shove of doubt, just one, and she had turned her back on him. She should have known him better than that, she thought she did know him better than that…

You will not destroy me. There was near glee in the words as they penetrated his skull. Your compassion ruins your chance for vengeance.

No, I won't kill you. The Doctor's tone was level, dangerously level. But don't think for one moment that I am showing you mercy in letting you live.

The central column grew still, the TARDIS offering a final shudder before settling.

"Rose."

She turned to him, hoping he would in turn look at her. But the Doctor's eyes were on the Incubus. Despite its apparent smugness in his mind moments before, it writhed and spat in fear. The black holes could not hold focus with the Doctor, and it again sought a way out, flinging itself at the forcefield and not relenting at the shocks it received from the action. "Don't come near the doors."

"Why?" Fear clamped her voice down to a near whisper. "What's outside the doors?"

He didn't answer her. The Doctor strode down the ramp, passed the squealing wretch housed in blue, and tugged the doors open.

Black light rushed the interior like a virus, staining everything in its dampening shadow. The aqua glow of the column dulled and strained to remain under its press. The entire room found itself invaded by an aggressive wind, every surface rasped under its malicious ice palms. It found her, invading every stretch of her skin and pulling relentlessly at her, trying to drag her towards the open doors. But the sound it made … it was screaming. Rose fell into a frightened crouch under the overhang at the back of the consol. The screaming peeled back her skin and fabricated itself into every part of her being. Every heartbeat cried past her ears, every breath screamed an unknown, boundless pain to her. Rose tried to shield herself from the screams, but they had become a part of her now, an element of experience that nestled itself deeper in her core than she would ever be able to banish.

The Doctor shied from the blackness that soaked through him, forcing himself to look into the dark heart that thundered in this desolate and bitter part of the cosmos. He had thought he would never see it again, had wished with all his soul that he would never see it again. But there it was, sprawled under the TARDIS like a black ulcer in Time and Space.

And he had come to it willingly.

The gaping maw of the Nightmare Child yawned at him, an impossible stretch of dark and fear. Its breath whipped his face with contorted images of fear and pain and malice. He pulled himself from the consuming snare, dragging his eyes to the Incubus. "You like nightmares. I'll give you nightmares."

The forcefield lifted. The daemon looked about itself, apparently stunned by the sudden freedom. Its lips peeled back to flash its yellowing fangs. It prepared itself for a triumphant leap into the Doctor's consciousness once again, the one final stab to deliver his mortality … but then the TARDIS dispelled it from her protective field. The feline form became wreathed in blistering darkness, thicker than anything the Doctor had seen since the Time War. It screamed its protest, trying to find a purchase on the grilling … but the pull of the Nightmare Child was too strong for something so small as a scavenger of dreams to resist.

The Doctor fought with the doors to close them from the invading force, slamming out the questing arms of blackness. When the doors clicked together, the room eased back to normality. He could hear his link with the TARDIS, and the steady, audible hum ran comfortingly through his senses again. The Doctor all but collapsed into the stained wood, panting. His eyes closed as he leaned deeper into the comforting hold of his ship. Nothing could have happened to them, not with the shields of the TARDIS protecting them … but the Nightmare Child had been able to search and feel, the questing darkness likened in his mind to a pack of starved wild dogs. And he had given the jaws of the darkness a feed. Did he feel remorse? No. The Incubus would not die in the clasp of the dark. But nor would it ever escape from it, and all those images it had been feasting on within the Doctor's head, all of those memories that it had laid bare, were now as much a part of the Incubus as they were a part of him. The Nightmare Child would force it to live his nightmares out until the despair drove it insane. No second chances. The universe needed to learn that the threat behind that warning would be carried out. The Incubus, at least, knew that now...

The light came back, serene and peaceful as ever. Above all else, though, the screaming stopped. The peace bathed her gently, like a parent soothing an infant. Her breathing no longer clawed at her senses, her heart no longer burned to beat. Rose became aware that she had hidden her head under her arms in an attempt to shield herself under the bank of the consol plinth. She nearly jumped out of her skin when a hand rested gently on her shoulder. Rose tore her head from her arms to find him crouching in front of her, a sad smile draped over his pale countenance. "C'mon." Rose took his offered hand and allowed him to pull her up onto her feet. "Are you alright?"

She took a moment to consider the question, and looked him squarely in the face. Her head shook. "No."

The Doctor moved her to the jump seat, placing himself next to her. He hadn't taken his hand from her shoulder, not yet. "What was that? What did you do with the Incubus?"

"That, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said quietly, lifting his eyes to the central column, "was the Nightmare Child. It's a wound in Time and Space created by the struggle of the universe. It's a negative force, an eternal trap. Nothing comes out of it. Not ever. I sent the Incubus into its mouth because it lives on nightmares. I've given it its own personal nightmare to live through for all eternity. It passed up its chance for peace." He looked back at her. "I'm sorry it touched you, but there was nothing I could do to shield you. The TARDIS kept the power of the Nightmare Child out, but she couldn't protect us completely and dispel the Incubus from her protection at the same time."

"And you let it fall in there?"

He sighed heavily. "No second chances, Rose. Not for something so bent on killing for its own entertainment."

Silence seeped between them. He looked inattentively around the room, maintaining the touch, but not looking at her. His reluctance to look at her burned, and she knew it was entirely her doing…

"Doctor… Doctor, I…" He turned to her then, his eyes questioning. There was nothing she did not recognise in him now, no part of him scared her. The fire was out, blasted into nothing and leaving him looking, in her view, as drained as ever. Rose swallowed. "I'm sorry." He opened his mouth, but before he could counter her words, or sweep her apology under the carpet to remain as another thing unsaid between them, Rose cut him off. "I was scared, and you weren't talking to me, and I just thought that-" her throat began to close her off "-I didn't recognise you, back then. You were so … so angry, and I…"Her H She tried to turn her head away as the tear tumbled. He noticed, anyway.

"Oh Rose," he sighed, brushing the trail left on her skin with his thumb. "You should never be in a position where you feel frightened of me, and I'm sorry, so sorry. I'd never meant to upset you, and I don't blame you for feeling the way you did."

"But I hurt you…"

"Don't worry about that," he said gently. "I'm -"

"-Fine?" she cut in. "Don't say that." The Doctor's eyes raised to a point over her head, his brows smoothing in a not-this-again manner. "Rose…"

"No, Doctor, please." Her eyes roved his face, every shadow, every line, every prominent freckle. "You're not alright, you're not fine. Please, can … I just want to go home."

A spark of fear and surprise lit in his dark eyes as they snapped back to hers. "You want to go home?"

Rose smiled, despite herself. "We, Doctor. I meant can we go home – y'know, as in the two of us?"

He practically deflated through sheer relief. He didn't know how he would have coped if she had meant it in a singular context. "Yes, yes of course we can. How long for?"

She noted that he did not make a jibe against her mother at that point, passing by the presented opportunity that would normally have been too alluring to miss. They both needed to rest, that was no secret, and seeing her mother for a couple of days was exactly what the doctor ordered, as it were. "A day or two, y'know, just to recoup. Besides, I haven't seen Mum for ages, and I'm sure you're missing her." She couldn't help that last playful comment, thrown in to try and ease him further back into himself. True to form, the Doctor gave a snort, rolling his eyes and suddenly throwing himself to his feet, flitting round the consol and throwing levers with a touch of his usual vitality leaking back in. "As you wish, Rose Tyler," he said, releasing the handbrake and sending the TARDIS into flight. "If you want to see the Gorgon, that's what we'll do – just watch out for the hair, it bites on bad days. And it may offer you a beverage it likes to call tea, a loose term for poison. The Gorgon may offer you tea, that is, not the hair," he added, throwing himself down a tangent like a rock down a well. "That would be weird … although I was served beer by a waitress' hair, once. Her two heads got on perfectly well, but her hair fought all the time; used to get in tangles and tear off everywhere. Needless to say, I didn't drink the beer."

Rose couldn't help laughing at his babbling, even as she got up from the jump seat to give him an admonishing bat over the arm for the since passed quip at her mother. The Doctor paused to look at her fondly, that old grin that she felt she hadn't seen in days back in its usual place. Rose smiled up at him, a trace of sadness and regret lining the corners of her mouth. The Doctor's grin softened, and he opened his arms invitingly to her.

He had been so, so close to losing her. It had been frightening for him to consider a life without Rose by his side, lost to a creature of impossible spite. But even that paled next to what he had thought she implied moments before. Holding her, right now, was like clinging to a long harboured hope, a hope that only Rose had been able to nurture within him. It had lain so very close to the surface these past months, vulnerable and naked to the whims of the creature that had so ravaged his emotions. He felt stripped bare. Everything was so raw for him, and that element of his personality that he tried so hard to quash had raised its ugly head within his chest. It had screamed and burned with all the ferocity of what he had once been … and then there was Rose. His Rose, the only one able to dampen the fire and ease the scorch left in the aftermath. How he needed her … more completely than he could ever reveal.

And how he had pushed her back.

He was frightened of popping this bubble he now found himself drifting in, this happiness and relief with her wrapped in his arms, alive and smiling. He could feel her upset at hurting him fluttering through her mind still, am uncertain leaf caught in the wind. She wondered if he still hurt at her lack of belief in him. He tried to tell her he was fine, that this simplest of contacts between them was all the help he needed. It had already been forgiven. Not forgotten – he didn't feel he could ever forget it – but forgiven. He knew what he was like, and he knew what she had seen … he had doubted himself, and he felt a keen hatred of that side of himself burn at having caused the doubts in the first place. Still. Everything was alright now, her sheer presence soothing the keening pain to nothing.

And then there were those words he so wanted to say to her. Holding her now completed him, if only for a time. The connection they had shared, despite being under the Incubus' grasp, had been a final piece to him. Their souls had entwined for a short time, and, without regard to the magnitude of the danger in their situation, he had relished it. He had known her so absolutely, and she him, that the break of the connection had felt like a tear, a fissure pulling him apart. And those little words, with all their power to destroy their current little world with a barrage of syllables and meanings that, once said, would be irreversible. The damage could be cataclysmic … or it could be the final bridge, the journey through to a wholeness he never believed he would feel again. Before he could slip that dagger through the perfect skin of fantasy, Rose sealed the words inside his lips with one quiet observation...

"See? Cuddles make everything better."

The Doctor groaned theatrically. "Cuddles?" he complained, happy she provided him an escape from anything deeper than he was willing to explore. "Why cuddles? It sounds so … well, cuddly. Like fluffy rainbows and revolting kittens. Why can't you call it something, I don't know, a bit more manly? Like 'embrace'. I like 'embrace'. Or, if you really have to, 'hug'. Not as good as 'embrace', but 'hug' would do the manly-manly trick."

"Oh yes," she mumbled, privately relishing the light heartedness he had initiated between them. All the tension, the arguments, the fear, pressed between their closeness into nothing more than a shade, but by no means a current condition. "Because 'embraces make everything better.' You're such a bloke -" the Doctor opened his mouth to pass comment, but she cut the words away from him "- and no, before you ask, that's not a compliment."

He chuckled, nestling his cheek into her hair. His eyes closed, memorising her more completely than she was allowed to know. "Ah, Rose Tyler," he smiled, "ever the one to keep me in my place."

--(0)--

"… And you know Judy down the pharmacy? Well, she's only gone and got herself pregnant again. Wasn't her fella neither, Margaret said it's that smarmy git what runs the chippy down Cotting Close…"

The Doctor had his eye out the window, observing the urban scape that was so familiar to him now, cradling a mug of half-drunk tea on his knee, cheek propped as though caught in a state of silent contemplation and thoroughly enjoying being very much in the background. His attention slipped between his own thoughts and Jackie's gossip, unable to focus on either for long. His body ached from its recent altercation with the Incubus, that dull throb still working at his shoulder. He shuffled back slightly, feeling the deep give of the armchair surround him. And that cushion was in just the right place in his side, too. He drew his legs up into himself far as he dared on the chair, feet just over the edge. It felt so good, sitting in a frumpy old chair…

"So is she keepin' it, then?" She knew the Doctor was trying to hide the fact that he was getting comfortable in her mother's flat. He forgot, sometimes, that Rose knew most of his tricks; really, she was more observant than he gave her credit for. Just to keep him happy in his delusion, she paid him no obvious attention. She could see him well enough in her peripheral vision.

"Margaret doesn't know. Not that I asked her, o' course. I never pry."

The Doctor snorted into his wrist as his head grew heavier on his hand. Jackie hadn't heard him, fortunately, and proceeded to tell Rose about "that ginger fella's daughter, Nadine, and Greg the cleaner. You know, Barbara's ex brother-in-law. Greg the cleaner! Only twenty-eight years her senior!"

Rose silently observed to herself that the Doctor was nearly a good nine hundred years older than she was. "Nadine two-years-younger-than-me Nadine?" Rose kept the conversation going as she lifted herself silently from the settee, crossing the living room to gently lift the slowly tipping mug of cold tea from the Doctor's slackened grip. She was met with no resistance, his fingers falling to rest on his leg loosely. Rose analysed his face closely: he was well and truly gone, his breathing slow and deep. He needed a good sleep just to lift those care lines, if anything.

"He asleep?"

"Yes! Don't be so loud!" Rose loosened the red Converses and slid them off gingerly, and wasn't that surprised when he instantly tucked his feet under a cushion.

Despite her previous misgivings concerning the Doctor – punctuated by that good slap she had given him nearly two years ago – Jackie Tyler had found herself warming to the man who had taken her daughter away on a fleet of promises. Rose was happier than she had ever been in her new life travelling with him. She had matured and blossomed into an image Jackie barely recognised as the nineteen year old with a department store job and history's clingiest boyfriend. That remained an undeniable fact. But it had worried her senseless when the doorbell had rung and the pair had wondered in. He had edged his way through the doorway, accepting her wet kiss to the cheek without so much as a grimace. She only ever did it to wind him up, and the lack of reaction coupled with his silence while Jackie gossiped with her daughter concerned her. "Where did you go, sweetheart?" she asked softly as Rose settled herself back down next to her mother with a heavy sigh. "What happened?"

She could never tell her mother the full truth about their travels; primarily because she was convinced that Jackie would tie her down in chains and throw her into a pit with cotton wool walls, and quite possibly do something similar to the Doctor. Steal spikes as opposed to cotton came to mind. But her mother did deserve some measure of the truth … she appreciated the worried glances she kept throwing the Doctor's way. "We were attacked by this … thing that fed on nightmares. It's alright," Rose added hastily, seeing her mother's alarmed movement. "He got rid of it. But it was in his head for months, and he's…" Rose nestled her head on her splayed hand, her hair roughed into steaks of gold between her fingers. She watched him for a time. He hadn't so much as twitched. He looked so utterly at peace, and she became painfully aware that she had not seen him so contented in what felt like an age. She smiled wanly to herself. "He's such a bloke, Mum."

~ Fin ~