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butterflyStory Title: Two Coins, Silver (3/10)
Series Title: part of the Realignment universe
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
butterfly
Summary: It's not exactly the honeymoon of anyone's dreams.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG-13.
Warning: AU after Doctor Who 3x13 - "Last of the Time Lords". Some plot elements and lines from "The Voyage of the Damned", written by Russell T Davies.
Previous Parts: One; Two.
Two Coins, Silver
“And they've been acting strangely this entire trip?” Rose asked quietly, glancing over at one of the... Host, her new friend Damins had called them. She made certain to keep a smile on her face. She didn't know how well they might read people, so she couldn't afford to give anything away.
“Dangerously so. One of them nearly broke Lady Jamilla's neck,” Damins confided in her. He was a robotics engineer, he'd told her a bit earlier, but the crew had refused to let him look at the inner workings of any of the Host. They'd told him to go back to the party and not worry about anything. “And then the crew dragged it off. It's all quite suspicious.”
“But you haven't told anyone else about it,” Rose said. She tried not to let her frustration with that show – would he really have done nothing if she hadn't been here? “Why not?”
“The crew clearly aren't going to be of any help,” he said. “There's no one to complain to, not at the moment. That planet down there is a Level Five planet, a primitive planet under the protection of the Shadow Proclamation. They'd be of no help in an emergency. And the only person with enough power to contact Sto or any responsible party from this distance is... well, to be perfectly frank, he's a wanker and I wouldn't trust him with my drink, let alone my life.”
“Well, I can help,” Rose said, not mentioning that she was a native of the planet that he thought was so useless. He gave her something of an astonished look.
“You really believe me?” he asked. Perhaps he was used to being ignored. His people skills could use a bit of work – she'd been able to tell that he was scared right off, but it had taken minutes of pointless conversation to work around to what had been bothering him. Not to mention the way he kept taking glances down her dress, even now.
“Of course I do,” she said. One of the other guests looked their way, so Rose laughed gently, as though Damins had told her a good joke, though she wasn't sure yet whether or not he was capable of something like that. “We need to investigate the situation. Do you know how to get to the... bridge... the control room of the ship?”
“I should be able to find it, yes,” he said. “Do you think that they'll listen to us?”
“If they don't, we'll just have to take care of things ourselves,” Rose said firmly.
“You're... something else, miss,” Damins said, with an unmistakable glint in his eyes.
“You're not the first person to tell me that,” Rose said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Just a moment – I'll be right back.”
She looked around the room for the Doctor – it took her a bit, but she spotted him talking to a couple dressed in purple fancy dress. He was occupied, then. They actually appeared to be about to set off on the shore leave that was being announced.
As she was watching, she saw the Doctor bump into the blonde waitress that she'd noticed earlier – he relieved her of her drinks tray and appeared to be escorting her to the tourist group, with a sure and familiar touch.
Rose blinked, feeling a bit like she'd been kicked in the stomach. All right – Lynda hadn't really had a chance and Reinette had been a dead historical figure with surprisingly good hygiene. What was blonde waitress's excuse?
She closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips over her bracelet. She didn't have any good reason to be jealous. She was being silly and petty and she was almost thirty – she should have outgrown this kind of irrational fear by this point. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes in time to watch the Doctor teleport away with the rest of the shore leave group. She turned back to Demins.
“We should go find the bridge,” she said. “Somewhere, there's something wrong with this ship and if we can fix it, we should.”
“Thank you,” he told her as they headed toward one of the doors. “I'd almost convinced myself that I was being a fool. Thank you for taking me seriously.”
“Not a problem,” Rose said. Slipping out the doors was as easy as it had been with the Doctor, though she had to reach out and tug Demins along when it looked like he was about to give up as they passed one of the Host. “I'd like to make one brief stop.”
It wasn't easy to convince him to wait outside the door while she went into the room with the TARDIS, but he finally gave in with ill grace and she hurried to grab her Torchwood bag from where she'd dropped it when she'd first come home. Had it really only been a couple of days ago?
It would still have the shed Opanilick skin in it but, more importantly, it would have her crude Torchwood equivalent of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. It was nowhere near as powerful, but if she and Demins ran into a locked door, she'd likely be able to open it.
She hoisted the bag over her shoulder and headed out the door, wishing that she had time to change into her trousers.
“Lead the way,” she told Demins. “And we should probably try to avoid running into the Host at the moment.”
“Who are you?” he asked, as he glanced around a corner. He waved a sloppy 'all clear' to her and they kept onward.
“Just someone who heard that there might be something dangerous up here,” Rose said.
“Not an authorized passenger, then,” he said. He shot her a delighted look. He did have nice eyes, Rose decided – they were deep, dark blue, like looking into the heart of the ocean on a winter day. “You seemed a bit too sensible for most of this crowd.”
“Thanks,” Rose said, grinning at him. She spied a member of the crew around the next corner and snagged at Demins's sleeve, both of them pressing back against a nook in the wall until the other woman had passed them. Demins was warm against her side, which shouldn't have surprised her, but even in the brief time that she'd been reunited with the Doctor, she'd already readjusted to his lower body temperature.
“Who was it that you were looking for?” Demins asked, a little too casually. He was trying to flirt her up, then. And in the middle of a crisis. “Back in the main hall.”
“My husband,” Rose said, and she could actually feel Demins wilt at her words. She might have felt bad about that, but she wouldn't have been attracted to this particular man even if she didn't have the Doctor. “He and I often do this sort of thing together.”
“Not this time?” Demins asked.
“He's looking into another angle,” Rose said, trying not to let her annoyance seep into her voice. She wasn't going to get mad at Demins because the Doctor was... being the Doctor. “He knows that I can take care of myself.”
Rose took another peek around the corner and the hallway was empty now – she and Demins headed down it quickly. About halfway down, she stopped when he touched her on the shoulder.
“There should be a hatch over here, somewhere,” he told her. “It'll lead us to the stair system and we can go all the way to the control floor, where the Captain should be. Best of all, the Host shouldn't be on the stairs. Guests are allowed, but mostly don't bother. Only the staff tend to use it.”
“How do you know all this?” Rose asked – they found the doorway and made their way into the stairwell and started upward. It was a massive thing, this set of stairs, and it made her feel the enormity of the ship in a way that she hadn't thought about before.
“I memorize the plans to every transport that I travel on,” he said, a bit nervously, as though afraid that she would judge him for it. “As well as the rules and guidelines of travel.”
“Well, it's good for us that you do,” Rose said. Though it meant that he was likely the sort of man that she'd never have noticed, before travelling with the Doctor had given her more of a sense for who was aware of danger and might be able to help. From what he was saying, while knowing about the danger, he would have just... stood around, hoping for someone else to save them all. “Do you know how far up it is?”
“We'll know when we get there,” Demins said. “The door should be labeled. Unfortunately, it will also be locked to anyone not on the crew.”
“That's what this is for,” Rose said, patting her black bag. “I should be able to get us through just about any lock that exists... though I can't repair barbed wire.”
“Are you... are you a thief?” he asked. “Is this... did you...”
“I'm not using you to steal something,” Rose said. “Is there even anything worth stealing on this ship?”
“I'm not sure,” he said. “You could want to steal the entire ship. You could be a pirate!”
“Rose Tyler, space pirate,” Rose said, testing out the sound. “I can't really see that striking fear into my victims' hearts.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Rose has that rolling 'r' at the beginning – sounds a bit dangerous.”
“You don't have roses?” she asked. Apparently, the Doctor could go on and on about this ship not having humans on it and it took this for her to understand what that meant – he didn't know what a 'rose' was and why it shouldn't scare off people. “It's a type of flower. My mum loves them.”
“Ah,” Demins said. “Is that from the southern continent? I'm not familiar with their flora, I must admit.”
“Bit further than the southern continent,” Rose said.
“You're not from... Hela, are you?” he asked, his nose wrinkling up with distaste.
“No, I'm not,” Rose said. “I can promise you that much. Though... what would be so wrong about being from Hela?”
“They're trying to steal our rights,” Demins said, darkly. “They've already started.”
“What are they doing?”
“Cyborgs are allowed to marry now, because of them,” he said. He made it sound like the worst crime imaginable. “Soon, they'll even say that cyborgs will be able to intermarry with normal people.”
“What would be so wrong with that?” Rose asked.
“Are you one of those, then?” he asked. “One of the Opposition?”
“If you're asking whether or not I think everyone deserves the same rights, even if they have bits of machinery stuck in them, the answer is yes,” Rose said. He'd stopped on one of the landings and was staring at her in shock. “Am I going to need to do this on my own?”
“Oh, no!” he said, quickly, hurrying past her. “I'm sorry. I just... you seemed so reasonable.”
“So did you,” Rose said. And there, that door ahead actually had a sign on it, rather than a number. “I think we've reached the right level – though it bothers me that none of the crew are around. Just that one woman and she was going to the main hall, where the party is. There should be... someone about, carrying tools or going off to fix something. This can't be good.”
The door was small and the sign on it read, simply, 'Crew Level; No Guests'. There was what appeared to be a keypad next to it and a place to swipe a card. Rose opened up her bag and pulled out her screwdriver – it was bigger and clunkier than the Doctor's and it didn't perform the eighty-thousand trillion different things that his sonic could, but it was fantastic at opening doors.
“Did you make that?” Demins asked, possibly trying to get back on her good side. She decided to extend a bit of goodwill in return.
“A colleague of mine did, actually,” Rose said. She turned it on and started tuning the frequencies, listening for the subtle shift in sound that would tell her when she'd hit the right setting. “Toshiko Sato – absolutely brilliant. I told her what I wanted and she was able to figure how to make it. It took her five years to create this version, but it was definitely worth it.”
“Colleague... do you work for the government?” he asked. “Is this a test?”
“No test,” Rose said. The pitch went down slightly – there it was. She pointed it at the keypad and activated it – a light above the cardswipe turned yellow. They were in. Rose turned the handle before their time ran out and eased the door open.
The hallway was still and quiet, not a soul to be seen.
“Do you know where to go from here?” she asked.
“We'll want to turn left at the end of the hall, then it should be a door straight ahead of us. That one shouldn't be locked, though.”
They moved even more cautiously now, but with less apparent reason – no crew, no Host, and certainly no guests. The door at the end of the corridor was closed, with just a small round window breaking the smooth surface.
Rose waved Demins over to the side and edged up to the window, glancing in – it didn't look so different from a modern-Earth ship, really. Buttons and switches all over the place, but that was common enough now. The unnecessary but pretty wheel was definitely present. There were two men in the room – a man with white hair looking down at some kind of monitor in the center of the room and another man with his back to her. All she could really make out of the second man was that his ears stood out a bit. They appeared to be talking.
“There's just two blokes in there,” Rose said, pulling away from the window to face Demins. “Bet that the older one's the Captain. Now, we'll need to warn them that if they aren't taking this Host problem seriously, they need to – but may not be the problem that I'm here about. I can't be certain. Something else could happen at any moment. You need to be ready.”
“I'm fairly certain there's a proverb about the impossibility of preparing for uncertainty,” Demins said. “Maybe they don't have it on Hela.”
“I'm not from Hela,” Rose said, turning back to the door and holding up her screwdriver – nothing. This door was still locked, but not the same way as the other one. She swore under her breath and started adjusting the frequencies again.
Demins was standing just a little bit too close to her and she shifted away as she continued running through the settings until... ah, there it was. She pressed the button.
The door slammed open, unnaturally fast, and Rose blinked, wondering just how much juice Tosh had put into her screwdriver. She looked up – both the men in the room were staring at her, but that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that the captain was holding a gun on the younger man.
“Get out of here, miss!” the young man said, and he started reaching over to the side for something – Rose could see the other man taking aim and she couldn't let this play out.
She dashed forward, crashing sideways into the young man – she heard one shot taken and rebound off metal and then another shot went off, but she was falling hard against the floor and it took her a moment to get her bearings.
“Rose, I've got him,” Demins shouted. She looked up and saw him holding the captain, the gun on the floor next to them.
“Good job,” she said. She hadn't even needed to tell him to do that. Maybe she'd misjudged him earlier.
“Thank you, miss,” the man she was on top of said. “You've just saved my life. Perhaps all of our lives.”
“Don't thank me yet,” Rose said, sliding off of him. “What's your name?”
“Alonzo,” he said. He looked much better from this angle. Young and with great big eyes. “Alonzo Frame.”
“I have a friend who'd love to meet you,” Rose said, taking in an uneven breath and pressing a hand against her stomach. That fall had knocked the wind right out of her. “Now, you should find out what's wrong.”
“The shields are down,” Alonzo said, paling. He stood up quickly, turning to face the console. “I just need to-”
“No!” Demins yelled and Rose looked over to see him struggling with the captain. They fell down to the deck with a thud, both reaching for the gun.
“Hurry, Alonzo,” Rose urged, reaching back to brace herself so that she could stand.
Her hand slipped.
“It should only take a moment,” he said, but he was glancing nervously at Demins and the captain. He needed to concentrate. Rose needed to get up so that she could get him focused. Rose wiped her hand off against the front of her dress. She felt soaked – she must be sweating from the adrenaline. She reached backwards again. “I'm not sure how much time we have. That man said-”
The gun went off, sparks flying from the console near Alonzo – he ducked away, and it looked like Demins was losing that fight if the captain had gotten his hands on the gun again. He needed her help.
Her hand slipped a second time.
She had to get up – why couldn't she do that? Rose reached up and wiped at her face and-
Oh, no.
Her hand was covered in red.
She risked a look downward. There was a tiny hole in her dress. Radiating out and down from the tear was a wet darkness that couldn't be anything but blood.
An automated red alert started up. Lights were flashing and a female voice was warning about danger. She wasn't kidding, Rose thought.
“Alonzo, you need to get back to the console,” she said. Whatever had happened to her didn't matter right now – she had to stand up. She wiped her hand off against a clean part of her dress and gingerly managed to get to her knees. “We need to get the shields up so that we're safe. From anything outside, at least. And then we need to contact the guests. Please, Alonzo. We might not-”
The ship shook around them and the force of the hit laid Rose flat against the floor.
They hadn't stopped it, whatever it was. Whatever Rose had been warned about, it was happening. Right now.
Part Four
Series Title: part of the Realignment universe
Author:
butterflySummary: It's not exactly the honeymoon of anyone's dreams.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Rating: PG-13.
Warning: AU after Doctor Who 3x13 - "Last of the Time Lords". Some plot elements and lines from "The Voyage of the Damned", written by Russell T Davies.
Previous Parts: One; Two.
“And they've been acting strangely this entire trip?” Rose asked quietly, glancing over at one of the... Host, her new friend Damins had called them. She made certain to keep a smile on her face. She didn't know how well they might read people, so she couldn't afford to give anything away.
“Dangerously so. One of them nearly broke Lady Jamilla's neck,” Damins confided in her. He was a robotics engineer, he'd told her a bit earlier, but the crew had refused to let him look at the inner workings of any of the Host. They'd told him to go back to the party and not worry about anything. “And then the crew dragged it off. It's all quite suspicious.”
“But you haven't told anyone else about it,” Rose said. She tried not to let her frustration with that show – would he really have done nothing if she hadn't been here? “Why not?”
“The crew clearly aren't going to be of any help,” he said. “There's no one to complain to, not at the moment. That planet down there is a Level Five planet, a primitive planet under the protection of the Shadow Proclamation. They'd be of no help in an emergency. And the only person with enough power to contact Sto or any responsible party from this distance is... well, to be perfectly frank, he's a wanker and I wouldn't trust him with my drink, let alone my life.”
“Well, I can help,” Rose said, not mentioning that she was a native of the planet that he thought was so useless. He gave her something of an astonished look.
“You really believe me?” he asked. Perhaps he was used to being ignored. His people skills could use a bit of work – she'd been able to tell that he was scared right off, but it had taken minutes of pointless conversation to work around to what had been bothering him. Not to mention the way he kept taking glances down her dress, even now.
“Of course I do,” she said. One of the other guests looked their way, so Rose laughed gently, as though Damins had told her a good joke, though she wasn't sure yet whether or not he was capable of something like that. “We need to investigate the situation. Do you know how to get to the... bridge... the control room of the ship?”
“I should be able to find it, yes,” he said. “Do you think that they'll listen to us?”
“If they don't, we'll just have to take care of things ourselves,” Rose said firmly.
“You're... something else, miss,” Damins said, with an unmistakable glint in his eyes.
“You're not the first person to tell me that,” Rose said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. “Just a moment – I'll be right back.”
She looked around the room for the Doctor – it took her a bit, but she spotted him talking to a couple dressed in purple fancy dress. He was occupied, then. They actually appeared to be about to set off on the shore leave that was being announced.
As she was watching, she saw the Doctor bump into the blonde waitress that she'd noticed earlier – he relieved her of her drinks tray and appeared to be escorting her to the tourist group, with a sure and familiar touch.
Rose blinked, feeling a bit like she'd been kicked in the stomach. All right – Lynda hadn't really had a chance and Reinette had been a dead historical figure with surprisingly good hygiene. What was blonde waitress's excuse?
She closed her eyes and rubbed her fingertips over her bracelet. She didn't have any good reason to be jealous. She was being silly and petty and she was almost thirty – she should have outgrown this kind of irrational fear by this point. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes in time to watch the Doctor teleport away with the rest of the shore leave group. She turned back to Demins.
“We should go find the bridge,” she said. “Somewhere, there's something wrong with this ship and if we can fix it, we should.”
“Thank you,” he told her as they headed toward one of the doors. “I'd almost convinced myself that I was being a fool. Thank you for taking me seriously.”
“Not a problem,” Rose said. Slipping out the doors was as easy as it had been with the Doctor, though she had to reach out and tug Demins along when it looked like he was about to give up as they passed one of the Host. “I'd like to make one brief stop.”
It wasn't easy to convince him to wait outside the door while she went into the room with the TARDIS, but he finally gave in with ill grace and she hurried to grab her Torchwood bag from where she'd dropped it when she'd first come home. Had it really only been a couple of days ago?
It would still have the shed Opanilick skin in it but, more importantly, it would have her crude Torchwood equivalent of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. It was nowhere near as powerful, but if she and Demins ran into a locked door, she'd likely be able to open it.
She hoisted the bag over her shoulder and headed out the door, wishing that she had time to change into her trousers.
“Lead the way,” she told Demins. “And we should probably try to avoid running into the Host at the moment.”
“Who are you?” he asked, as he glanced around a corner. He waved a sloppy 'all clear' to her and they kept onward.
“Just someone who heard that there might be something dangerous up here,” Rose said.
“Not an authorized passenger, then,” he said. He shot her a delighted look. He did have nice eyes, Rose decided – they were deep, dark blue, like looking into the heart of the ocean on a winter day. “You seemed a bit too sensible for most of this crowd.”
“Thanks,” Rose said, grinning at him. She spied a member of the crew around the next corner and snagged at Demins's sleeve, both of them pressing back against a nook in the wall until the other woman had passed them. Demins was warm against her side, which shouldn't have surprised her, but even in the brief time that she'd been reunited with the Doctor, she'd already readjusted to his lower body temperature.
“Who was it that you were looking for?” Demins asked, a little too casually. He was trying to flirt her up, then. And in the middle of a crisis. “Back in the main hall.”
“My husband,” Rose said, and she could actually feel Demins wilt at her words. She might have felt bad about that, but she wouldn't have been attracted to this particular man even if she didn't have the Doctor. “He and I often do this sort of thing together.”
“Not this time?” Demins asked.
“He's looking into another angle,” Rose said, trying not to let her annoyance seep into her voice. She wasn't going to get mad at Demins because the Doctor was... being the Doctor. “He knows that I can take care of myself.”
Rose took another peek around the corner and the hallway was empty now – she and Demins headed down it quickly. About halfway down, she stopped when he touched her on the shoulder.
“There should be a hatch over here, somewhere,” he told her. “It'll lead us to the stair system and we can go all the way to the control floor, where the Captain should be. Best of all, the Host shouldn't be on the stairs. Guests are allowed, but mostly don't bother. Only the staff tend to use it.”
“How do you know all this?” Rose asked – they found the doorway and made their way into the stairwell and started upward. It was a massive thing, this set of stairs, and it made her feel the enormity of the ship in a way that she hadn't thought about before.
“I memorize the plans to every transport that I travel on,” he said, a bit nervously, as though afraid that she would judge him for it. “As well as the rules and guidelines of travel.”
“Well, it's good for us that you do,” Rose said. Though it meant that he was likely the sort of man that she'd never have noticed, before travelling with the Doctor had given her more of a sense for who was aware of danger and might be able to help. From what he was saying, while knowing about the danger, he would have just... stood around, hoping for someone else to save them all. “Do you know how far up it is?”
“We'll know when we get there,” Demins said. “The door should be labeled. Unfortunately, it will also be locked to anyone not on the crew.”
“That's what this is for,” Rose said, patting her black bag. “I should be able to get us through just about any lock that exists... though I can't repair barbed wire.”
“Are you... are you a thief?” he asked. “Is this... did you...”
“I'm not using you to steal something,” Rose said. “Is there even anything worth stealing on this ship?”
“I'm not sure,” he said. “You could want to steal the entire ship. You could be a pirate!”
“Rose Tyler, space pirate,” Rose said, testing out the sound. “I can't really see that striking fear into my victims' hearts.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Rose has that rolling 'r' at the beginning – sounds a bit dangerous.”
“You don't have roses?” she asked. Apparently, the Doctor could go on and on about this ship not having humans on it and it took this for her to understand what that meant – he didn't know what a 'rose' was and why it shouldn't scare off people. “It's a type of flower. My mum loves them.”
“Ah,” Demins said. “Is that from the southern continent? I'm not familiar with their flora, I must admit.”
“Bit further than the southern continent,” Rose said.
“You're not from... Hela, are you?” he asked, his nose wrinkling up with distaste.
“No, I'm not,” Rose said. “I can promise you that much. Though... what would be so wrong about being from Hela?”
“They're trying to steal our rights,” Demins said, darkly. “They've already started.”
“What are they doing?”
“Cyborgs are allowed to marry now, because of them,” he said. He made it sound like the worst crime imaginable. “Soon, they'll even say that cyborgs will be able to intermarry with normal people.”
“What would be so wrong with that?” Rose asked.
“Are you one of those, then?” he asked. “One of the Opposition?”
“If you're asking whether or not I think everyone deserves the same rights, even if they have bits of machinery stuck in them, the answer is yes,” Rose said. He'd stopped on one of the landings and was staring at her in shock. “Am I going to need to do this on my own?”
“Oh, no!” he said, quickly, hurrying past her. “I'm sorry. I just... you seemed so reasonable.”
“So did you,” Rose said. And there, that door ahead actually had a sign on it, rather than a number. “I think we've reached the right level – though it bothers me that none of the crew are around. Just that one woman and she was going to the main hall, where the party is. There should be... someone about, carrying tools or going off to fix something. This can't be good.”
The door was small and the sign on it read, simply, 'Crew Level; No Guests'. There was what appeared to be a keypad next to it and a place to swipe a card. Rose opened up her bag and pulled out her screwdriver – it was bigger and clunkier than the Doctor's and it didn't perform the eighty-thousand trillion different things that his sonic could, but it was fantastic at opening doors.
“Did you make that?” Demins asked, possibly trying to get back on her good side. She decided to extend a bit of goodwill in return.
“A colleague of mine did, actually,” Rose said. She turned it on and started tuning the frequencies, listening for the subtle shift in sound that would tell her when she'd hit the right setting. “Toshiko Sato – absolutely brilliant. I told her what I wanted and she was able to figure how to make it. It took her five years to create this version, but it was definitely worth it.”
“Colleague... do you work for the government?” he asked. “Is this a test?”
“No test,” Rose said. The pitch went down slightly – there it was. She pointed it at the keypad and activated it – a light above the cardswipe turned yellow. They were in. Rose turned the handle before their time ran out and eased the door open.
The hallway was still and quiet, not a soul to be seen.
“Do you know where to go from here?” she asked.
“We'll want to turn left at the end of the hall, then it should be a door straight ahead of us. That one shouldn't be locked, though.”
They moved even more cautiously now, but with less apparent reason – no crew, no Host, and certainly no guests. The door at the end of the corridor was closed, with just a small round window breaking the smooth surface.
Rose waved Demins over to the side and edged up to the window, glancing in – it didn't look so different from a modern-Earth ship, really. Buttons and switches all over the place, but that was common enough now. The unnecessary but pretty wheel was definitely present. There were two men in the room – a man with white hair looking down at some kind of monitor in the center of the room and another man with his back to her. All she could really make out of the second man was that his ears stood out a bit. They appeared to be talking.
“There's just two blokes in there,” Rose said, pulling away from the window to face Demins. “Bet that the older one's the Captain. Now, we'll need to warn them that if they aren't taking this Host problem seriously, they need to – but may not be the problem that I'm here about. I can't be certain. Something else could happen at any moment. You need to be ready.”
“I'm fairly certain there's a proverb about the impossibility of preparing for uncertainty,” Demins said. “Maybe they don't have it on Hela.”
“I'm not from Hela,” Rose said, turning back to the door and holding up her screwdriver – nothing. This door was still locked, but not the same way as the other one. She swore under her breath and started adjusting the frequencies again.
Demins was standing just a little bit too close to her and she shifted away as she continued running through the settings until... ah, there it was. She pressed the button.
The door slammed open, unnaturally fast, and Rose blinked, wondering just how much juice Tosh had put into her screwdriver. She looked up – both the men in the room were staring at her, but that wasn't the problem.
The problem was that the captain was holding a gun on the younger man.
“Get out of here, miss!” the young man said, and he started reaching over to the side for something – Rose could see the other man taking aim and she couldn't let this play out.
She dashed forward, crashing sideways into the young man – she heard one shot taken and rebound off metal and then another shot went off, but she was falling hard against the floor and it took her a moment to get her bearings.
“Rose, I've got him,” Demins shouted. She looked up and saw him holding the captain, the gun on the floor next to them.
“Good job,” she said. She hadn't even needed to tell him to do that. Maybe she'd misjudged him earlier.
“Thank you, miss,” the man she was on top of said. “You've just saved my life. Perhaps all of our lives.”
“Don't thank me yet,” Rose said, sliding off of him. “What's your name?”
“Alonzo,” he said. He looked much better from this angle. Young and with great big eyes. “Alonzo Frame.”
“I have a friend who'd love to meet you,” Rose said, taking in an uneven breath and pressing a hand against her stomach. That fall had knocked the wind right out of her. “Now, you should find out what's wrong.”
“The shields are down,” Alonzo said, paling. He stood up quickly, turning to face the console. “I just need to-”
“No!” Demins yelled and Rose looked over to see him struggling with the captain. They fell down to the deck with a thud, both reaching for the gun.
“Hurry, Alonzo,” Rose urged, reaching back to brace herself so that she could stand.
Her hand slipped.
“It should only take a moment,” he said, but he was glancing nervously at Demins and the captain. He needed to concentrate. Rose needed to get up so that she could get him focused. Rose wiped her hand off against the front of her dress. She felt soaked – she must be sweating from the adrenaline. She reached backwards again. “I'm not sure how much time we have. That man said-”
The gun went off, sparks flying from the console near Alonzo – he ducked away, and it looked like Demins was losing that fight if the captain had gotten his hands on the gun again. He needed her help.
Her hand slipped a second time.
She had to get up – why couldn't she do that? Rose reached up and wiped at her face and-
Oh, no.
Her hand was covered in red.
She risked a look downward. There was a tiny hole in her dress. Radiating out and down from the tear was a wet darkness that couldn't be anything but blood.
An automated red alert started up. Lights were flashing and a female voice was warning about danger. She wasn't kidding, Rose thought.
“Alonzo, you need to get back to the console,” she said. Whatever had happened to her didn't matter right now – she had to stand up. She wiped her hand off against a clean part of her dress and gingerly managed to get to her knees. “We need to get the shields up so that we're safe. From anything outside, at least. And then we need to contact the guests. Please, Alonzo. We might not-”
The ship shook around them and the force of the hit laid Rose flat against the floor.
They hadn't stopped it, whatever it was. Whatever Rose had been warned about, it was happening. Right now.
Part Four
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-25 01:03 am (UTC)Very her to get in that sort of situation and I don't blame her at all for the slight jealousy.
Am impressed with the sonic screwdriver and yay for the Tosh mention!
Was Demins a canon character? I can't remember! XD (I haven't seen the ep since Xmas!)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-26 02:22 am (UTC)Very her to get in that sort of situation and I don't blame her at all for the slight jealousy.
One of my main character notes for writing DW fic is 'Rose is a very active character'. She goes out and does stuff. Not always the right or best stuff, but she doesn't sit around and wait for things to happen. She acts.
(and she definitely still gets jealous. *pets her*)
Am impressed with the sonic screwdriver and yay for the Tosh mention!
I *heart* Tosh so much and love the notion that she worked with Rose in my version of Pete's world. It fills me with feminist-style love.
Was Demins a canon character? I can't remember! XD (I haven't seen the ep since Xmas!)
Nope -- he's an OC that I created so that I could give Rose a handy information source and a character to play off. She notices different people than the Doctor sometimes, so I thought it would be believable that she would find someone that the Doctor hadn't noticed. In the original episode, he'd probably be one of the background characters in the dining hall that dies in the first impact.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-25 04:44 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-26 02:23 am (UTC)*hugs Rose*
Thank you for the feedback.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-25 07:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-26 02:23 am (UTC)