Storm Winds Blowing

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Title: Storm Winds Blowing
Series: A Storm Is Coming
Character(s), in order of appearance: Ten, Rose
Pairing(s): Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Dedication: For catsfiction.
Summary: Because sometimes it’s difficult to remember that the Beast lied.
Disclaimer: Not Mine.
Setting: Set during Season Two, this sends Doomsday AU. Following on from Storm Breaking, this is an A Storm Is Coming story. The text of the cut is from The Satan Pit.

Finished with words both spoken and unspoken for the time being, Rose and the Doctor busy themselves with attaching the Magnaclamps on to the wall of the Rift Chamber – with one on each side of the room, as is the case with the levers. The Doctor – never keen on taking short cuts where Rose’s safety is concerned at the best of time – is fussing around her with the harassed air of a mother hen trying to improvise some sort of harness out of the contents of his suit pockets.

Rarely before has he been so grateful for his skills in jiggery-pokery as he puts together something that might, just might, help if Rose’s grip on the Magnaclamp doesn’t hold. Even as he refuses to let himself think on that scenario, the Beast’s taunt about “the valiant child who will die in battle” rings around his head. He is terrified, utterly terrified, but determined that he will make it so the Beast’s prediction will not come true – whatever he has to do or say to make it happen. Rose is finally attached to the Magnaclamp in a manner that satisfies him and he leaves her to attend to his own Magnaclamp – wildly confident that he will not need a similar harness.

“Press the red button,” he says to her as he does so himself, and he grins at her as he tries to tamp down the mushrooming fear that threatens to choke him.

He starts speaking again as a way to stop himself thinking about it. Unlike last time, when his sentences were short and abrupt, his words come out very quickly, tumbling over each other in their insistence on being heard.

“When it starts,” he says, “it shouldn’t be too bad for us but the Daleks and the Cybermen are steeped in Void Stuff. Remember: whatever you do, do not let go of that clamp. Are you ready?”

Without stopping for an answer, he scrambles over to his position; turning to look over at Rose when he doesn’t hear her move. She seems transfixed by something outside the window as she moves towards her own lever.

“So are they.”

Four Daleks appear at the window. Damn; he thought he would have a little more time to reassure himself that Rose was as safe as he could make her, but he supposes beggars cannot be choosers and all that so he pastes a manic grin on his face to hide his nervousness. He is adamant that he will not let her know how frightened for her he is, and so the tone he uses when he next speaks is unnaturally cheerful:

“Let’s do it!”

The two of them push the levers up until they lock and then hurry to take hold of the Magnaclamps.

“Online,” the computer says.

The Doctor, who has seen many a planet with androids – a fair number of which he has had to run from as fast as the TARDIS can get him away – finds this strangely anthropomorphic voice oddly unsettling. But he wrenches his mind away from thinking about it, knowing that he needs to be completely focussed on what he is doing when there is so much at stake.

Just as his mind begins to co-operate with him the area is filled with strong white light and the sound of a howling wind; he feels his sense of foreboding increase exponentially at hearing this at the same time as the hairs at the back of his neck stand up. He watches Rose holding tightly to the clamp, struggling to hold on to it, and again his mind wanders from the task in hand; to him nothing is more important than Rose surviving this and the Cybermen and Daleks crashing through the room on their one-way ticket into the Void are almost irrelevant.

Rose must have seen him looking at her as she smiles across at him as they rock to-and-fro in the wind from the breach. He grins back at her, intent on hiding his true feelings to the last, when suddenly there is a small explosion on Rose’s side of the room and the lever she’s been looking after slowly starts moving back towards the “off” position.

“Offline,” the computer says – stating the obvious once again – and as the suction starts to ease, the Doctor feels his smile fade from his face as he sees Rose reach for the lever whilst trying to maintain her grip on the Magnaclamp. He shouts at her, not through anger but because there is no other way to ensure he’s heard over the howling of the “wind”.

“Rose! Rose, what are you doing?”

There’s no answer from her, although what she is trying to do is obvious even to him. The lever is too far away for her to reach it as things stand. Full of dread he keeps his mouth shut and his attention riveted upon her as, in straining to reach the lever, she ends up letting go of the Magnaclamp completely – all the better to reach it – and thus falling onto the lever itself.

“I’ve gotta get it upright!”

She pushes the lever upwards, straining with the effort. He knows that the jiggery-pokery he used to create it means that the harness he’d made to protect her does not have the flexibility to let her complete the action still wearing it; he watches in horror as Rose deliberately releases herself from it in order to finish the job.

Finally she manages to push the lever upright and the Doctor, panicking now, watches her with his heart in his mouth. This is what he’d feared, what he’d dreaded happening and why he’d told her over and over to keep holding on to the Magnaclamp whatever happened.

“Online and locked,” the computer says, but he ignores it completely; as the suction increases again, he wills Rose to keep hold of the lever.

“Rose,” he shouts in desperation, “hold on!”

She tries to hook her foot around the discarded harness, but fails; she tries a second time and, again, fails before concentrating all her attention on keeping her grip on the lever against the Void – which is pulling at her and making it increasingly difficult for her to hold on.

He curses under his breath for not foreseeing that she would behave like this and for not doing more to stop her.

“HOLD ON!”

He screams at her, so consumed with reaching out to try to protect her that he completely misses the fact that the “wind” is starting to ease. His entire attention is monopolised by Rose’s predicament and he stares at her in utter terror, completely powerless to do anything to help her, as he sees her grip on the lever start to fail.

He sees Rose notice that her grip is slipping, sees her try to compensate for it and in doing so lose the grip completely, and screams her name as he sees her being pulled away from him. She moves inexorably towards the Void, and he can do nothing at all except watch her fall. It’s slow, which in some ways makes it worse, and when the two of them lock eyes with each other he discovers that there are so very many things you can say with your eyes when words are superfluous. Things like “I’m sorry”, and “I love you” and other important things.

Neither of them notice that the “wind” has lessened and that she is moving increasingly slowly.

He mouths her name again – she is just about to reach the breach to the Void – and for a few moments neither of them see that she has almost stopped moving. Then the Doctor realises that the breach is closing itself, and the “wind” is dying down fast – it is the end of the Ghost Shift.

“Systems closed,” the computer announces just as Rose slithers to a stop by the cold, white wall that had once been the mouth of Hell itself; the Doctor stares at her for a second, weak with relief and breathing very heavily, before he is by her side and pulling her into what is probably the tightest hug he’s ever given her.

And everywhere is silence.