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Link to Part 6
http://amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com/36584.html
Link to Part 8
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The Doctor worked frantically on the Delta wave generator, knowing that it was so close to being finished. A portion of his mind was also working on another problem, his companions. He needed to get them out of here before he triggered the Delta wave, he couldn’t let them die that way, not at his hands.
He reached out to the TARDIS as he worked, asking her to bring up the emergency protocols he had set up some time ago, feeling her reluctance, as she obeyed him. The protocols would return the TARDIS to the Powell Estates, taking Rose back to her mother, to safety, Jack would hate it, but he could make a life for himself there. And if he figured out what he was, opened the watch and awoke the sleeping Time Lord, then the TARDIS would be there for him. She liked him, she would accept him as her new ‘master’. His sharp ears picked up Jack’s footsteps hurrying along the corridor, back to him and Rose, and he knew it was time.
He checked that Rose was focused on the task he had given her, then slipped away to intercept Jack.
“Hey, all of the doors for two levels are secured, but it isn’t going to take long for them to break through. I thought that as you wouldn’t let me go with the security teams heading off to fight them, then I could set up a last line of defense here,” Jack said, turning his back on the Doctor to gesture to the corner where he wanted to make a stand against the Daleks.
The Doctor didn’t reply, closing his eyes in guilt as he quickly pressed the sonic screwdriver to the nerve center at the back of Jack’s neck, sending a jolt through him to knock him out.
“I’m sorry.” He whispered, cradling the slumped body against his chest for a long moment. He had hoped to be able to explore a possible future with this young man, Time Lord or not, but now, the Daleks had taken that from him too, as they had taken everything else.
Pulling himself together, he dragged Jack back to the other room.
“Rose. Jack’s injured, we need to get him into the TARDIS.” He called.
“What happened?” Rose asked, dropping the bundle of wires she was working on and hurrying over to help him with the limp figure.
“I don’t know.”
The got Jack into the TARDIS, laying him down on an overstuffed sofa that the TARDIS had produced in the console room.
“Stay with him Rose, I just have a few things to finish on the Delta wave.”
“You managed to sort out a remote trigger, so you could do it from in here then?” She asked, sitting on the edge of a cushion beside her unconscious friend.
“Yes.” He lied, turning for the door again.
She would be angry, they both would, but they would be safe. Stepping outside, the Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver once more, turning to face the TARDIS, he pointed the screwdriver at her, and hit the button. The doors slammed closed, and he heard the powerful time engines kick in, at the same moment that he heard Rose slam into the door, screaming for him, trying to get out. He turned away, swallowing his emotions down as he moved back to the Delta wave generator. He might be consigning Earth, spinning below them, to death, but he would stop the Daleks once and for all, if he could.
***
Rose ran to the console as they dematerialized, desperately throwing switches and levers, trying to make the TARDIS go back to the station, to go back to the Doctor, but none of them had any effect at all, the console was cut off from any interference now. Rose hurried to the sofa, to try to wake Jack up. The Doctor had given him lessons in flying the TARDIS, maybe he could get them back, but Jack was still out, what ever had happened to him, he wasn’t waking up.
From the corner of her eye, she caught a shimmer in the air, over by the console and turned to see a pale, translucent, wavering image of the Doctor appear. After a beat, the image began to speak.
This is Emergency Program One. Rose, Jack, now listen; this is important. If this message is activated, then it can only mean one thing. We must be in danger. And I mean fatal. I'm dead or about to die any second with no chance of escape. And that's okay. Hope it's a good death. But I promised to look after you, and that's what I'm doing. The TARDIS is taking you home, Rose. I’m sorry I’m stranding you there too Jack, but you’ll understand why I had to keep this promise to Jackie Tyler, you met her. I bet you’re fussing and moaning now-typical. But hold on and just listen a bit more. The TARDIS can never return for me, Emergency Program One means I’m facing an enemy that should never get their hands on this machine. So this is what you should do: let the TARDIS die. Just let this old box gather dust. No one but a Time Lord can operate it; no one will even notice it. Let it become a strange little thing standing on a street corner. And over the years, the world will move on and the box will be buried. And if you want to remember me, then you can do one thing. That's all. One thing. Have a good life. Do that for me, you two. Have a fantastic life.
Rose stared at the space where the hologram had stood long after it winked out, tears running down her face. She couldn’t believe the Doctor had done this to them, sent them away in the middle of a battle, sent her home. How was Jack going to react too, used to traveling the stars, traveling through time, to be trapped in 21st century
The TARDIS landed with the slightest bump, the engines stopping, and Rose moved blindly over to the doors, opening them to see Mickey and her Mum pounding along the pavement in her direction. She leaned back against the TARDIS, watching them coming, and wondered how she was going to react to being trapped back here again, after all she had seen, all she had done. She hadn’t been ready to leave the Doctor, and now he had sent them away.
“Rose.” Jackie cried, hugging her.
“We heard the engines all the way down the parade.” Mickey grinned.
“So, where’s the Doctor?” Jackie asked.
“Long story. We’re going to need to move Jack, he’s unconscious, and I don’t think we can take him to hospital. Who knows what they would find if they looked at him too closely.” Rose muttered, trying to pull herself together. For now, she could focus on her injured friend.
***
Rose was sitting beside the bed they had laid Jack in, sleepily watching him in the graying pre-dawn light. He had been unconscious for a very long time, and she was worried about him. She almost jumped out of her skin when his eyes snapped open, darting around the room before landing on her.
“Where are we?” He asked, his voice hoarse where his throat was dry.
“My house, you’ve been unconscious for ages,” she said, helping him sit and handing him a glass of water.
“Doctor?” He asked.
The tears started again as she looked at him, steeling herself to tell him that he was now trapped here, in her time.
“He sent us away, he stayed behind to fight the Daleks, and he sent us away in the TARDIS. There was a message, she’ll probably play it again, if you want her to, but he said that the TARDIS couldn’t go back for him, and that we were to have a good life.”
“I want to see the message, where’s the TARDIS?” He asked, starting to get off the bed, she pushed him back gently.
“Get a couple more hours rest, you need it. I’ll take you when its properly daytime.”
Jack lay back, but didn’t close his eyes again, staring at the ceiling. He couldn’t believe it, that somewhere far in the future the Time War was still going on, that the last survivors of both sides were facing off in battle once more. The last Time Lord, and one slapdash Delta Wave generator, against who knew how many thousands of Daleks. He closed his eyes finally as his own tears threatened.
***
Jackie and Mickey waited outside the TARDIS as Rose and Jack went in, to see if they could get her to play them the message from the Doctor again. Jack shook his head as he went in, something felt different, a pressure, a whispering inside his head. He tried to push it aside, thinking it was just from the absence of the Doctor, and turned his head, to ask Rose if she felt anything. She was leaning over the console, trying to figure out what she had been pushing the night before, to bring the message up, and Jack couldn’t seem to make his brain connect to his mouth, to get the words out.
The pressure in his head was increasing rapidly, the whispers growing louder, and he could hear what they were saying now, pounding into his brain over and over again, merciless as the waves of a stormy sea battering the shore.
*Open the watch, open the watch, now, open the watch.*
The pressure and the noise was reaching a raging crescendo, threatening to sweep him away, growing louder and louder, until the whispers became a loud roar of voices, the words unchanging.
*Open the watch, open the watch, now, open the watch.*
He was unaware of pulling the watch from his pocket, unaware of his fingers skating over the hidden pressure points in the case to release the catch, unaware of Rose, seeing his face contorting in pain, screaming his name. Only the pounding hammer of the words inside his skull.
*Open the watch, open the watch, now, open the watch.*
He crashed to his knees as his fingers slid over the last pressure point, and the screaming in his head stopped finally as a golden light rose from the watch, swirling around him for a moment, reflecting from his glazed pupils. The light poured into him, and then he screamed, feeling more pain than he could ever remember as his body and mind changed forever.
Rose knelt by Jack’s side as he crashed down to lie on the grating, screaming as though his every nerve ending were on fire, and she was almost hysterical when the screaming finally stopped.
“Jack?” She whispered in a trembling voice, a shaking hand reaching out toward his shoulder.
He pushed to his knees before her hand reached him, breathing hard, his head hanging low against his chest as he tried to steady himself, calm his breathing.
Finally he looked up, his eyes fixing on her.
They seemed a shade darker, she thought, still shaking, darker and older, but still familiar. So very familiar, like the Doctor’s eyes, she realized.
The door slammed shut, cutting off the Powell Estates as she knelt there, her eyes fixed onto the eyes of a Time Lord.
tbc
Not too disappointing to anyone, I hope. A little longer than the last chapter.
