Well, as you can imagine, I jumped at the chance, because a) Doctor Who, b) writing stories, and c) it was for a good cause! How could I resist? So, I sent in my entry in late May/early June and waited for the results.
Well, I just received an email from the Logbook staff last night: "While we thoroughly enjoyed your story and were impressed with how well it was written...unfortunately [it] wasn't chosen as the representative of this era and we won't be proceeding further with it at this time."
Obviously I'm a bit disappointed. Still, I did make it into the top five finalists in the Tenth Doctor category (my story was about the Tenth Doctor and Rose, my favorite Doctor and companion) and I still think it was a pretty good story. If I was ever to write an episode for Doctor Who (which, frankly, would be a dream come true), this is what it would look like.
So, without further ado, here is my story, "Timeless":
He looked over at Rose just in time
to see her toss the book to the floor with an aggravated sigh. Intrigued, he
slid out from underneath the console and sat down next to her. Flipping the
edges of the book that lay between them, he grinned suddenly. “Reading some of
the books I recommended?”
Rose shook her head in defeat.
“Trying to. You know I told you I was never great at reading. I think school
just sucked all the fun out of it.”
“Yeah, but they made you read all
the boring books!” the Doctor exclaimed, snatching up the volume from the floor
as he sprang to the other side of the console, where a huge wooden chest carved
with Gallifreyan symbols lay open, filled to the brim with books, some
Earth-origin, most not. “These are the books with real adventure!” He started
digging through the chest, holding books aloft as he named them. “The Lord of
the Rings!” he crowed, holding up a worn copy of The Two Towers.
“I tried it. You didn’t tell me
those books are nearly four hundred pages long,” Rose said, getting to her feet
and crossing her arms. “Who in their right mind writes something four hundred
pages long? Let alone reads it!”
“The Chronicles of Narnia!” the
Doctor cried.
“I’ve read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” Rose said. “You know those
books are for children?”
“Never underestimate the power of a
good children’s book!” the Doctor said, “They’re better than adults at most
things, but especially at appreciating good stories.”
He flicked the book Rose had been
reading around in his hand so he could see the cover, and looked up at her with
a wide grin. “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
by L. Frank Baum. You know, I would love to meet that man.”
“I’ve already seen the film,
though,” Rose said. “Why do I need to read the book?”
“Oh, Rose,” said the Doctor, with a
twinkle in his eye, “the book is a hundred times madder. And when something
that mad and ridiculous stands the test of time, you know it’s something
wonderful.”
“Mad and ridiculous and wonderful,”
Rose mused, letting her gaze wander around the TARDIS. It lingered on its walls
and beams and heights before returning to rest on the Doctor. “Just like you
and the TARDIS.”
The Doctor eyed her with a cheeky
grin, slipping his thumbs into his jacket lapels. “I am pretty wonderful.”
Rose smacked him playfully on the
arm, and then craned her neck around to look at the base of the console. “What
are you working on, then?”
The Doctor’s eyes lit up. “Well, you
know how we can never, ever cross into parallel worlds?”
“Yeah.”
He held the sonic screwdriver aloft
in triumph. “Now we can! Well, we could. We should be able to. Probably.” A
sinister crash came from inside the console. The Doctor paused, then dashed
underneath the machine, the sonic buzzing as he tried to locate the source of
the crash. “No, no, no, no! Come on!” His left hand reached down and scrabbled
for the small hammer that lay at least a foot out of his reach. Rose pushed the
hammer into his grip, and twisted her neck to see up into the console as the
Doctor began performing some percussive maintenance.
Raising her voice above the din, she
asked, “Wait, how? When we were in my dad’s universe, didn’t you say that
traveling through dimensions, it was like making a rip in time?”
“I did,” the Doctor said, slipping
back out from under the console. “But now we should be able to seal the rip, as
it were. Of course, it may make getting back a bit more difficult, but that’s
all part of the fun, isn’t it?”
Rose could feel her heart swell in
her chest. “You mean…you mean we can go see my dad again?” she said. She
couldn’t help it; she broke into a huge smile. The Doctor smiled back,
obviously incredibly pleased with himself.
She threw her arms around him,
hugging him as hard as she could, and he hugged her back. When they separated,
she ducked her head to wipe away the tear that slipped down her cheek; the
Doctor pretended not to notice.
“So, when can we go?” she asked.
“Oh, soon, very soon. I just need to
work out some of the blips in the system and then we’ll be off,” he said.
Suddenly, what sounded like a clap
of thunder boomed from within the console, shaking the TARDIS and throwing the
Doctor and Rose to the ground. The shaking rattled everything inside the box,
smacking Rose’s head against the floor.
When it finally stopped, she
gingerly sat up, holding her head. “What was that?”
The Doctor hauled himself to his
feet, stretching his hand out to Rose as he stared at the console. “Probably
one of the blips.”
No sooner had he pulled Rose up than
the TARDIS lurched again, sending them toppling over as the room started
wheeling like a top.
Rose clutched tightly to the floor
grating; out of the corner of her eye she could see the blue glow of the sonic
as the Doctor pointed it at the console while clinging to one of the support
beams. The sonic seemed to have no effect, though; the console crackled to
life, spitting white sparks, and the TARDIS doors burst open and flapped wildly
as the police box spun out of control. Through the whirling, Rose could see the
time vortex outside the doors, purple and pulsing and spinning as well, leaving
her head muddled and her stomach heaving. She closed her eyes and held on
tight, feeling as though they were being drained down a deep black hole. She
held on until, with a shudder, the TARDIS came to a stop, its engines still
fizzing and sparking as it settled.
Rose stood slowly, trying to
convince herself the room had stopped spinning even as her head continued to do
so. She shook herself and looked around. “Doctor?” Books from the chest lay
scattered about the floor. Rose kicked a copy of And Then There Were None out of the way as she ran towards the
Doctor, who was lying on the other side of the console.
He dusted himself off and coughed
almost sheepishly. “I’m fine.”
“What was that?” Rose asked as she
hauled him to his feet.
“I don’t know,” he said, studying
the screens around the console. “And the TARDIS doesn’t seem to know, either.”
He turned one of the screens so she could see. “Look at that. No readings! Not
even a date. We could be anywhere.” He froze for a second. Slowly he turned to
her, a sly smile spreading across his face. “We could be anywhere.” A mischievous glint came to his eye. “Shall we go have a
look?”
A wide smile spread across her face
as well, and they both dashed for the door, which stood slightly ajar. A single
golden ray of sunlight shone through.
Placing her hand on the door panel,
Rose met the Doctor’s gaze. He nodded, eyes twinkling. With the same impish
smile, Rose threw open the door, and stopped to stare at the bewildering sight
before her eyes.
The brightness of the colors smacked
against her eyes; the sky was so blue it hurt to look at. Glimmering sunlight
filled every corner of the space – a rosy-bricked village between the edge of a
green field and the winding spiral of a long paved road of yellow brick. What
was the most bewildering about the world they found themselves in was not the
overpowering brightness of the colors, or the curiously tiny size of the
bricked buildings beyond the yellow road, but the crowd of tiny people that
stood in a gathering a few feet from the TARDIS doors, staring at them in what
could only be awe.
Before Rose could think of a single
word to say, one of the spectators scuttled forward, removing his purple top
hat and revealing his shining bald head, which only came up to Rose’s chest.
With a twirl of his many moustaches, he announced, “The Wicked Witch of the
East is dead!” The rest of the crowd erupted into cheers.
Rose gaped at them. “What?” She
glanced to the side, and saw two feet in ruby-red shoes sticking out from
underneath the TARDIS. For a second her mind went blank.
She turned to the Doctor, who looked
as stunned as she felt.
“What?” The Doctor stared at the
ruby-red shoes, and then back at the Munchkins celebrating their good fortune.
“What? What?”
[Disclaimer: If this were an actual episode, this is where I think the theme music would play]
The
head Munchkin darted forward and grabbed Rose’s hand, pulling her out of the
TARDIS. “Follow the yellow brick road!”
“Whoa, hang on a minute!” the Doctor
said, breaking his hold on her hand. “Sorry, um, before we go down that
particular road, could I have a minute to talk with my friend?”
“You must be a wizard!” the Munchkin
exclaimed. “The Wonderful Wizard came down from the clouds, too!”
“Well,” said the Doctor, “I did say
I was wonderful.”
“And you must be a good witch!” the
Munchkin said, beaming at Rose. “Only bad witches are ugly!”
Rose couldn’t help flushing a
little. “Well…thanks.”
“Right. The witch – the good, pretty witch,” the Doctor amended at a
look from Rose, “and I have some things to discuss.”
“About magic,” Rose added.
“Yes, about magic,” the Doctor
continued.
“And time travel.”
The Doctor turned to give her a
look. “Yes, and time travel…”
“And faulty navigation systems that
can’t be fixed by banging on them with a hammer,” she finished with a cheeky
grin.
“Who says I didn’t fix it?” the
Doctor retorted.
The Munchkin continued looking at
them, an expectant smile frozen on his face.
“Sorry,” Rose said. She stepped back
in just in time as the Doctor swung the door shut.
“Were we seriously just in Oz?” Rose
demanded as the Doctor dashed over to the console and flipped down a lever. The
engines started, wheezing and groaning, although the TARDIS still shook ever so
slightly. “Can we do that? Go into fictional worlds?” She suddenly grinned, and
clapped her hands together once. “Oh, I know exactly where I want to go!”
“It’s not possible,” the Doctor
muttered, bent over the console, studying it intently. “Even if it is, it
shouldn’t be.”
“Why, what’s wrong with it?” Rose
asked, coming up to him.
He looked up at her, his eyes dark
and intense. “Imagine if every book you ever read came to life.”
“You fixed it so the TARDIS could go
into parallel universes!” Rose said, “Is it really that much worse if the
universes are fictional instead of real?”
“Fiction has its own rules!” the
Doctor said, “It’s constantly recreating itself; it’s not stable enough to
exist in reality. If it is becoming
real, then…”
“Yeah?”
“Well, then we have a real problem!”
“But you can rewrite time!” she
said, “That still applies to fictional universes, doesn’t it?”
“I’m a Time Lord, not a
Book…Warden!” the Doctor exclaimed as the TARDIS began rattling harder. “Books
are outside of time; each of them contains their own time, their own universe. If
they’re starting to break through into reality, there’s nothing I can do to
stop that!” The TARDIS began wheeling like a top again; the Doctor hung onto
the console while Rose wrapped her arms around one of the support beams and squeezed
her eyes shut.
“Can’t you just undo what you did to
the TARDIS?” she yelled.
“No,” he called back, desperately
trying his best not to be flung across the room as the spinning intensified.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t know what I did!”
Rose braced herself as the TARDIS
crashed into the ground. She opened her eyes just in time to see more white
sparks fly up from the console base. The Doctor was desperately fiddling with
knobs and levers, but the screens remained blank.
“The TARDIS is lost; she can’t get a
lock on where we are,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “All of time
and space inside her, and she doesn’t know where we are.” They both jumped as
the doors flew open with a bang.
Rose and the Doctor exchanged
glances. Rose slowly stepped over to the entrance. Outside the TARDIS doors was
a strange sight – not so much because of what they saw, but where they were
seeing it from. They sat at the end of a small, square, wooden tunnel that
opened its doors on pale daylight a few feet away. Between them and the
daylight were racks of long brown and black fur coats, all hung up on wooden
hangers and smelling strongly of mothballs. Holding the sleeve of one of the
fur coats as if she’d forgotten she grasped it was a little girl in a blue dress,
staring at Rose in wonder.
“Where is the back of the wardrobe?”
the girl whispered.
It took Rose a moment to realize.
“Oh, my god.”
“Wrong wardrobe!” the Doctor cried,
coming up behind Rose. He frowned apologetically at the wide-eyed girl. “Sorry,
Lucy.” He slammed the door shut, and the TARDIS took off on its own, rocking
erratically from side to side.
“We were just in Narnia?” Rose
cried, “We have to go back!”
“Oh, not such a bad book now, is
it?” the Doctor said, weaving his way back over to the controls as the TARDIS
continued to whirl incessantly. “No, we can’t go back. We’re damaging her whole
timeline. Look.” He snatched up one of the scattered books from the floor,
flipped the pages, and then held it out to Rose, catching himself as the TARDIS
pitched forward and back. Rose took the book, looking at the illustrations;
where Lucy had once gazed upon the glowing lamppost and the snowy woods of
Narnia at the back of the wardrobe, now in their place was a blue police box
with its glowing light at the top.
“Did this happen with the Oz book,
too?” Rose asked.
In answer the Doctor nudged The Wonderful Wizard of Oz across the
floor with his foot before sliding underneath the console. “Whatever I did, I’m
sorry,” he confided to the TARDIS.
Rose picked up the book. Sure
enough, on the cover, the TARDIS had replaced Dorothy’s house in squashing the
Wicked Witch. Rose opened the book and turned to the page where Dorothy had
first entered Oz:
“Well,
I did say I was wonderful,” said the Doctor.
“And you must be a good witch!” he said to Rose, who
blushed at his words. “Only bad witches are ugly!”
“Well, thanks,” said Rose.
Rose clapped the book shut. A cloud
of white and red sparks spewed out of the bottom of the console, and the Doctor
emerged, coughing, his hair slightly singed.
“I don’t understand,” he said,
dusting off his suit. “It’s like I can’t reach her. We’re flying blind.”
Suddenly the TARDIS smashed into the
ground again, the impact shuddering through every board.
“Don’t open that door!” the Doctor
cried, but it was too late; the doors flew open of their own accord.
From across a barren plain, a huge,
yellowed eye, wreathed in flame, stared down at them from a dark mountain. It
fixed its gaze on Rose, and for a moment she felt as if it could see straight
through to the very depths of her soul.
With a fierce cry the Doctor slammed
the door on the eye’s penetrating gaze, and he steadied Rose as the TARDIS took
off again, shaking and shuddering. “Are you all right?”
Rose leaned heavily against the
wall. “Yeah, I just…When I read about it, I never realized the Eye, when it
looked at you, would feel like that.”
The Doctor started beaming. “I
thought you said you didn’t read that far!”
“I skipped ahead,” Rose admitted,
looking up at him sheepishly. “So, now we’re in that book, too?”
The Doctor gazed around at all the
books scattered across the floor, shifting and sliding as the TARDIS shook. “If
I could find my copy of Fellowship,
somewhere within all those hundreds of pages, yes, you would find us.”
Rose held her gaze steady even as
the room pitched and rolled around them. “So every time we land, we’re
rewriting a book?”
The Doctor nodded, a grim expression
on his face. “I keep trying to stop her from landing, but she has a mind of her
own. Well, no, she’s always had that – it’s like she’s lost her mind!” The
Doctor suddenly cocked his head, as if deep in thought. “Wait – why is she taking
us to these particular places? There has to be some kind of connection– They’re
all books that I gave you to read!” the Doctor said in triumph, gazing at Rose,
eyes agleam. “We’re connected through you!”
“What?” Rose braced herself against
the floor as the TARDIS pitched violently. “How do we know it’s not through
you? You’ve read all of them, too!”
“Yes,
but remember when you said you had seen both the films and the books?” the
Doctor said, “I’ve seen and read all of them so many times I can keep them
separate in my head; you’re mixing them up. Like in Oz – in the film the
witch’s shoes are red, but in the book they’re silver!”
“Is it my fault I liked the film
better?” Rose said wryly as the TARDIS spun and rolled.
The Doctor laughed. “If it was through
my mind, we wouldn’t just be landing in old Earth classics – no, we’d see books
from the far future, from different planets, from all across the time-space
continuum. Not that I’m criticizing your choice of destination.”
“Well, it’s not really my choice, is
it?” Rose called out above the noise as the engines began scraping and
screeching for an incredibly bumpy landing.
“Try to hold the doors shut!” the
Doctor cried, stumbling as he wended his way over unsteady ground. “I’ll see if
I can get her to take off again before we cause any more damage!”
Rose wrapped her hands around the
door handle, pulling back with all her might, but the TARDIS had other ideas.
With an ear-splitting screech the doors threw themselves open, flinging Rose
out with them.
She hit the ground with a surprisingly
soft thud, and was relieved to find
she had landed on carpet. She struggled to her feet, and froze when she
realized two men were staring at her. They were seated in armchairs in a
comfortable sitting room lit by the moving light and shadows of a roaring fire.
One was stout and mustachioed, holding a journal in one hand that contained
copious scribbles; the other man was thin, though well-built, holding a pipe in
his mouth, with a deerstalker tossed casually on the arm of his chair. He
stared intently at Rose, who could do nothing but stare back. His eyes moved
from her to the TARDIS. The portly man followed his gaze, obviously having
trouble taking everything in, as the thin man commenced to calmly relight his
pipe. At last, the stout man cleared his throat, and asked, “Holmes, what is
it?”
From within the TARDIS Rose could hear
the Doctor’s shouts: “Rose, we have to leave before it–” The Doctor stepped out
of the TARDIS, and his jaw dropped. “Oh.”
“It is a police public call box,
Watson,” Sherlock Holmes said serenely.
“But how do you know?” Watson said in
astonishment.
Holmes pointed with the end of his pipe.
“It says so there, above the doors.”
The Doctor’s face lit up. “Sherlock
Holmes. I’ve always wanted to meet you. I’m the Doctor.” He stepped forward and
shook the detective’s hand rigorously. Holmes returned the handshake, along
with a polite smile.
The Doctor chuckled at Watson’s
taken-aback expression. “Dr. John Watson. Writing away, as always. I’m a big
fan; never stop!” He shook the doctor’s hand, too, who accepted the handshake
with a warm, albeit bewildered smile. Beaming with delight, the Doctor turned
back to Holmes. “Oh, the adventures you have. I’ve read them all. The
Red-Headed League – marvelous! A Scandal in Bohemia – brilliant! Got to love
the Woman, Mr. Holmes – oh!” The Doctor spun to face Rose. “Speaking of which,
allow me to introduce my lovely companion, Miss Rose Tyler.”
Feeling a bit sheepish, Rose came
forward and held out her hand. Instead of shaking it, as she assumed he would,
Holmes turned her hand in his and brought it to his lips. The gesture made her
cheeks burn, and she saw his small smile as he released her hand.
“I assume, where you are from, that is
no longer the custom when greeting a lady,” Holmes said, meeting her eyes with
a gaze that was both intent and distant.
“It should be,” Rose blurted out.
“But where are they from, Holmes?”
Watson asked. “Who are they?”
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Holmes
said, his eyes settling on the Doctor. “Judging by their clothes, their manner
of speaking, and most obviously their mode of transport, they are time
travelers from the future, come to tell me of cases I have yet to solve.” He
said this quietly and calmly, drawing on his pipe and puffing out the smoke.
Now the Doctor seemed almost as taken
aback as Watson. “You mean you haven’t – oh,” the Doctor said, finally snapping
back to reality. “Rose, we have to go. Before we change anything else.” He
paused, and addressed the heavens in frustration. “Why did it have to change Conan Doyle?”
“I’m sorry, who?” Watson said, rising
from his chair.
“He’s right; we have to leave,” Rose
said. She watched as Holmes rose to his feet and bowed slightly, meeting her
eyes again with his deep gaze.
“I’ll try to read more of your books,”
she said. Flustered, she turned to Watson. “I mean, your books.”
“My books?” Watson gasped, “You mean
they still exist in the future?”
Rose quickly boarded the TARDIS before
explanations could get any more complicated, and the Doctor followed, still
talking at Holmes even as he stood inside the doorframe. “Silver Blaze – you’re
going to love that one! Oh, and The Adventure of the Empty House – what a
twist! You sly–”
It was Rose’s turn to slam the door, and
the TARDIS took off again, although this time the shaking seemed muted; Rose
dared to hope that this was a good sign.
“Ah! There, see?” the Doctor exclaimed,
“Even then, you’re mixing up books with film and television. The Holmes in the
books never actually said ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’”
“Doctor!” Rose cried.
The walls of the TARDIS seemed to be
fading. Rose could see the outline of the time vortex around them, pulsing and
tumbling in blue and purple, flashing with silver lightning.
“The TARDIS is disappearing without us!”
she yelled, “How do we stop it?”
The Doctor scrambled to take the
controls, but his hand went through the console as if it were smoke. The TARDIS
walls faded in and out, leaving them nearly exposed to the time vortex; Rose
was terrified that any minute they would be pulled into its swirling depths.
“Fiction and reality can’t coexist –
they’re two separate entities,” the Doctor muttered, “As fiction becomes real,
reality fades. In essence, we’re going to be erased! Unless–”
“Unless what?” Rose cried, edging away
from the vortex that seemed to spin closer and closer.
“Oh.”
Rose snapped her head around and gazed
in horror at the Doctor. He stood staring at his right hand, which glowed white
and then started to shift in and out of focus. The Doctor’s eyes met Rose’s,
and for a second she was struck by the pain she found there, the ache that
leapt from his eyes to her heart.
Rose tore across the TARDIS, seizing his
other hand, desperate to keep him there. He grabbed her hand tight, though his
eyes couldn’t help watching as the rest of his right arm began to glow as well.
“You said reality is fading; how do we
make it real again?” Rose gasped, breathless with fear. “How do we keep
ourselves from vanishing from time?”
The Doctor looked straight at her, as if
struck by a momentous thought. “The way all great times and places and things
are immortalized!” He darted forward, tugging her with him, snatching up one of
the books that lay on the floor, which, strangely enough, stayed present even
as the edges of the floor started to fade in and out. He grabbed something from
the overturned book chest and pushed it into Rose’s other hand: a pen. She
looked up at him, heart pounding so hard she thought it would fly out of her
chest, as she watched the white glow spread slowly to the rest of his body.
“You want me to write us into time?”
“You need to re-write us into reality,
Rose,” the Doctor said in earnest, “We’ve stretched the boundaries of time and
space; whatever is written down becomes real. This is all connected through
you; you need to write down our story so things can go back to the way they
were.”
“Right,” Rose said, “Okay.” Hands
shaking slightly, she released her grip on the Doctor’s hand to take the book.
Turning to a blank page, she took a deep breath, and uncapped the pen. No
sooner had she touched the pen to the page, though, than the Doctor started
flickering in and out of focus. “Doctor!” she cried, grabbing for his hand. It
was there, but his grip felt lighter, as if he were slipping away.
“Rose!” Even his voice sounded hollow,
distant. “I’m right here.” He looked her in the eye and squeezed her hand
tight. Even then, she had to hold back a sob; she could barely feel it. “You’re
not going to lose me,” he said, reading her mind, “and I’m not going to lose
you. Now, you remember how we first met?”
Rose smiled even as her heart pounded –
she could disappear, too. “Attacking shop-window dummies in the basement at my
job,” she said. “The first thing you said to me: run!”
The Doctor laughed. “That’s right.” He
smiled warmly at her as she returned to the page. “Write down our story, Rose,”
he said softly, “It’s worth writing down. Oh, one for the ages!”
She smiled at him one last time, taking
him in, memorizing every detail of his face, before turning her attention to
the task at hand. As she wrote about their misadventures with the Nestene
Consciousness, the dangers at the end of the world, the ghostly gaslight
creatures in Victorian London, she held the Doctor’s hand tight in hers, trying
not to notice his grip gradually fading away. She wrote through every blank
page, in the margins, in the headings, about the Dalek imprisoned underground,
the gas mask child, the Doctor at the Game Station and a hazy cloud of memories
gilded in gold, a half-remembered dream, where she felt the universe pour
through her, empowering her and killing her, until she felt a gentle kiss draw
all that poisonous power from her to him. A tear landed on the page as she
remembered him changing, leaving her with this stranger who called himself the
Doctor, but looked and acted nothing like him. It took time, but she found
herself falling in love with him all over again; together they faced the
Sycorax, the Cybermen, the Ood, even – she still shook her head at the
absurdity – the devil himself. On and on she wrote, between the lines of type,
until she couldn’t feel her hand anymore. She rested her head on her
outstretched arm as she kept writing and writing, wanting to capture every
single detail, every shining moment from the time the Doctor had taken her hand
and shouted “Run!” to this very second, with the Doctor by her side, even as
they both disappeared from view. The pen dropped from her hand as she felt
herself fade, but the last words she wrote pulsed through her mind even as her
eyes fell shut:
The
Doctor found me, and I found him. If I had an eternity to spend, I would spend
it with him. Since I may only have a few seconds, I’m glad they’re with him,
too. It’s not often you find someone you think you could spend forever with.
But he and I could go on and on, to the end of time and back…
Rose’s eyes fluttered open. The first
thing she saw was a pair of white Converse next to her head, and, as her eyes
traveled upward, she took in the figure of the Doctor crouched beside her. When
he saw that she was all right, a grin spread across his face from ear to ear.
“Rose! You’ve done it!”
“I…I did,” she said, sitting up quickly,
her head spinning, her arm aching. She looked up at him, breathed a sigh of
relief, and laughed. “Thank God.”
He helped her to her feet, and they
hugged as he squeezed her tight and kissed her on the forehead. “Rose Tyler,
you are absolutely brilliant! Everything back the way it was, never better!” He
gestured around to the whole of the TARDIS, and then to himself, eyes
twinkling. “You remembered me perfectly!”
“I don’t know; I may have changed a few
things,” she said with a sly smile.
For a second the Doctor looked
uncertain. “What? Really?” He looked down at himself, as if afraid of what he
might find.
“No, you idiot. I didn’t change
anything,” Rose said with a laugh. Her smile softened as she looked at him.
“Honestly, I couldn’t have imagined you any better.”
The Doctor grinned. “Quite right, too.
Now,” he said, bounding over to the TARDIS doors, “where are we? Shall we have
a look?”
Heart beating fast, Rose stepped over to
the other door, and together they pushed them open. What greeted them was the
lot behind Rose’s mum’s flat, a blue sky overhead with a few gray clouds.
“London, 2007!” the Doctor cried, “No
fiction or fantasy about it.”
Seeing her mum’s flat in all its
solidity made Rose breathe an even bigger sigh of relief; it also made her
think of her dad. Suddenly numb, she turned back inside and walked over to the
TARDIS console. All of its screens and readings were up again, as if nothing
had happened.
Rose could feel the Doctor next to her.
“Rose?” he said.
“So we can’t cross into parallel
universes anymore,” she sighed.
“Well…” the Doctor started, sliding
underneath the console, the sonic screwdriver glowing blue in his hand. She
heard some banging and crashing, and one muttered interjection from the Doctor,
but when he emerged again his face was set in a frown. “The chance of the
fictional universes leaking through again is too great; I have to shut
everything down that I was trying to fix. The seal between the worlds will have
to stay sealed; ripping it open will only cause everything to start pushing
through all over again.” He seemed to struggle for words as he stood there,
slipping the screwdriver inside his coat. Finally he said, with regret in his
voice as he touched her arm, “I’m sorry. About your dad. I know you wanted to
see him again.”
“It’s all right,” she said, taking a
small step away. “I got to see him once; I should be grateful I even had that.”
She bent down, picking up the book she
had written in. The words inked in blue pen flowed across the pages, taking up
every spare inch of blank paper. She flipped it over to look at the cover: A Tale of Two Cities.
“Sorry about that,” she said, turning
back and showing the Doctor the book. He chuckled.
“Charles Dickens saved our lives twice
now. Don’t worry; we’ll just pop back to 1860 and I can get a new copy.”
“I never did read this book,” Rose said,
turning it over in her hand again. She went to open it, but then stopped as if
wary of the consequences.
The Doctor watched her in earnest,
taking a step towards her. “It won’t become real, Rose. That’s all behind us.”
“I know,” Rose said haltingly, but she
couldn’t help staring at it, as if it would come alive in her hand.
“Well, it will be real,” the Doctor
amended, in a quiet voice, “inside your mind, where the story never ends, even
after the last page has been turned. The best stories stay with us, and, if
they are true enough, good enough, loved enough by anyone who reads them, they
become real to us, as real as you or me. Stories possess their own time and
space; when they have changed how you see the world, how you see other people,
they have changed a part of you. They become a part of you, a part of every
person whose life they have touched. They become a very part of the universe;
they become timeless.”
Rose looked up at him, her eyes alight.
“Just like you.”
The Doctor took her hand, smiling
softly. “Just like us.”
