Chapter 8

Stories

… then it stuck out a hand and there was a green flash of light, and another, and then he was lying dead on the sand. The ginger girl cried a lot. The other guy—I think he's Ginger's boyfriend or something—he just stood there. And the woman... she kind of reminded me of the Doctor, the way you could tell he was dying inside, but he just went on taking care of business because nobody else would...

The Doctor closed the book gently. He'd read the whole thing, but the only part that struck him was this part. The part where he—his parallel, rather—died. He'd done well enough with the rest of it. But if the Time Lord was dead... no, he told himself, it didn't mean anything. He had something to live for here and now. Better than that, he had something to fight for.

He heaved himself up out of his seat and went to find his little vacuum cleaner to clean up the glass dust, and a small cardboard box for the bigger shards. He took the glass out to the rubbish dumpster and went back to his flat, now uninterested in the Boskek genolexer that was sitting in pieces in his kitchen.

The cover of the book was so ordinary, it was almost impossible to believe it held so much. And Rose had seen it all. Rose! It had been three hours, forty-six minutes since she left. He hadn't even gone after her. He'd just stood there for a minute (two, actually, and thirteen seconds), and then picked up her notebook and just... read it. Pages and pages of Rose's handwriting and sketches. Then, because he could hardly believe it, he'd read the whole thing over again. He sighed and took his jacket off the hook. If the contents of that book were what Rose had been seeing for two weeks, what she might still be seeing... He carried it securely under his arm and went to her flat. She didn't answer her buzzer, so he let himself in with his screwdriver. At the door, he knocked a few times, but got no answer.

"Rose? Are you in there?" He pulled out his mobile—a device he'd started carrying at Pete's insistence—and called Jackie. "Jackie, is Rose with you?"

"No, she's at her flat. Tony and I were just over there this morning."

"Okay, thanks." He hung up; he didn't want to explain, and Jackie hadn't started pestering him about it yet. He knocked on the door again. "Rose, I know you're in there. Please just let me in."

"You got into the building, didn't you?" came Rose's irritated voice from the other side of the door.

He turned the door and found it unlocked. Rose was curled up at one end of the sofa, eyes red-rimmed and wet. She stared blankly across the room.

"You left your notebook."

She didn't answer.

He shoved his hands into his pockets. "I looked inside."

More blank staring.

"I didn't know that's what you'd seen."

She looked at him.

"Shall I make some tea?"

She shrugged and returned to her blank staring.

He walked over and crouched next to her. "Rose, I'm trying to help. I can't help if you don't say anything."

"He's dead."

"Rubbish."

"The other Doctor's dead. Gone."

"He's not dead. Trust me, I know him. He found a way out."

"How?"

"Oh, there are loads of ways to fake your own death. Loads more if you're a Time Lord. I mean, regeneration is basically faking your own death. Well... it's not really faking. It's cheating, but—"

"He did."

"Did what? Regenerated?"

"And then it shot him again. I left that bit out."

"Well, I dunno, maybe it was a trick."

"He's dead, okay?"

"Okay." The Doctor sat on the floor. "He's dead. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I'll—" She stopped. "I can't do anything."

He brushed a few stray hairs out of her eyes. "If there was even the slightest chance we could do something, I would do it in a heartbeat. But we can't. Dead or alive, we can only do one thing: move on."

"But—" Rose sniffled. "The Doctor's dead."

"Yes." He set the notebook on the table. "Here's your book back. Just in case."

Rose went back to staring blankly at the wall. The Doctor stayed for a few more minutes, but Rose was being stubbornly unresponsive, so he said something about "later" and left her flat.

In an obscure corner of the universe, the last gap between realities coughed once and snapped shut, leaving a tiny shuttle and its single pilot lost in an unfamiliar world.

A/N: Keep an eye out for the sequel to this story, The Ticking Tower, which I hope to start posting within the next week or so.