Chapter Text
In sore and in pain, she slowly woke up from a sea of darkness where her sensations evaporated, her body and her soul left separated and stranded in endless void. Several bones must have been broken - that was the very first of her thought after her sensation slowly slipped into her body.
The room where she laid in was dim, as she could tell. An eerie scent of smell filled in, not the smell of rotten mold clinging to the dampen corner of walls, but rather a bizarre feeling of comfort and consent going with it. A smell reminded her of home, of ancient machines roaring into life right beneath her feet, trembling with her with synchronized heartbeats. Finally it came the whispers in the dark and the sound of fabric rubbing, dragging on the metal floor. The tone of these whispers was familiar. Far too familiar to her, like she was listening to it just five minutes ago -
- she snapped her eyes open. In a blurred, periphery vision, she saw the Doctor in his brown stripped suits, anxiously wandering around in a circle.
"Doctor?"
He almost turned to her immediately when she called his name in pure surprise. His fanatic steps stopped. His furious flow of emotions subsided. All of a sudden, every sharp, fatal edge of him softened just because of her very existence. He strode to her bedside only too frantically, as if they were once centuries apart.
"Oh, my Rose," the Doctor whispered. His voice cracked at the very last end of his words. "You're here. Alive."
She was still dizzy, but she managed to braced herself with one side of her arm so that she could sat straight in bed. "Yeah, I'm alive. Is that news to tell?"
She smiled, half-hearted, and the heaviness between them had been relieved a bit. He beamed at her too with his lips pursed a little, but the smile didn't really reach the depth of his eyes. Casting her eyes across his shoulder, she studied the whole picture of the room they were in: it looked like an infirmary to her. The white walls were well-clustered and extremely neat, without even a hint of any mark that was ever left on it. Across the room there was another bed, supposedly being the Doctor's, covered with white sheets without a wrinkle, as if nobody had even touched that bed for just a moment. A door inlaid with rough glass stood beside his bed, and she assumed that must be the bathroom.
The only problem was: why was she there with the Doctor? The last thing she could remember was the three of them standing on the beach of Bad Wolf Bay. The moment when she kissed the human Doctor uncontrollably like she was right inside the stormeye of a car accident with her brake broken. Then she heard the TARDIS buzzing, and that was the finale where the Doctor left her again all over. And now here she was, staying with the Doctor with two hearts in a room of nowhere. She finally stared at her Doctor, who seemed to be patiently waiting for her questions for a long time.
"Where are we, Doctor?" She asked, restlessly. "And where is he? The human Doctor. He's not with us, isn't he?"
His eyes darkened. His face turned ineffably melancholic, a sense of feeling she couldn't really tell. As if not being able to stand the weight of her eyes, he averted them.
"No, I'm afraid not. He's not here, and as long as I know, I woke up with only you in this room. So, no, there's no human version of me."
"What do you mean by saying you woke up with just me?"
"I don't know what happened," the Doctor replied. He looked fidgeted and anxious. Couldn't stop moving for even a second. "We were carried here - no, probably teleporting. We were knocked out, I don't know exactly how and when, but as long as I remember I still had a short memory after me and Donna walked into TARDIS. Then what happened was wiped out from my brain. Time itself was erased from my life, and Rassilon knows how long that was! And you are here, too. I haven't figured out any reasons for us being teleported here, but somebody must be behind all this. A trap. A conspiracy! A -"
"Chill, Doctor," she interrupted his franctic mumbling. He became quiet in almost an instant. "I know you are so mad about this, but we can figure it out together, 'kay? Like we did in the old times."
He finally held his head up, gazing deeply into her eyes.
"No. You should be with him, not me."
At first she thought she had misheard. But he never broke their eye contact, and he stayed unwavered. Gasping, she couldn't believe what he had said to her, after what they'd been through all along. His words were death execution, with no ways to escape, no means to survive. How could he so firmly believe that she would've been better off with the human Doctor? Always like this, the Doctor - condescendingly decide everything for everyone, like he's the only God of human beings, of mediocity. A current of pain stroke her heart, and it was him who was clenching her heart tightly in both hands.
"How could you?" Moments after did she have the courage to gather up the words. "What do you mean by saying 'you should be with him'? That was the reason you gave him to me, right?"
He opened his mouth as if he wanted to explain, but the room was suddently filled with a loud beep of alert. They both snapped their head to where the sound came from, startled, and a line of scarlet, glowing words slowly appeared on the opposite white wall:
Welcome to the GAME STATION
Congratulations! You were both chosen to be the players on this GAME STATION - to win the final prize, you need to accomplish all the tasks in the following 10 days.
Fortunately, you've got alternative choices in each day.
WARNING: Any sabotage to the room or any behaviour equivalent to escape will be regarded as a violation of rules and will be eliminated immediately.
Good luck for your first day on the station!
They both glared at the greeting words, if they still counted as so-called greetings. Neither of them moved, or spoke, their gazes fell into nothingness, sucked into the hole that suddenly appeared in the middle of the room. They remained silent for a while, before she turned to the Doctor.
"'The game station'?"
"Yeah... I suppose so."
The name reminded them of something ancient. Something catastrophic, chaotic, with pain and those lost feelings - something long gone. The Doctor stood up and went over to the walls to check the words. For sure, they were nothing special, just some projections floating over the walls. He knocked the wall three times before his eyes turned into a sullen, disappointed look.
"Seamless walls. No cracks, no exits or entrance," he said defeatedly. "This place was a cube. There's even nothing behind those walls, like we're trapped in the centre of Earth, yet we both know it can't be true."
She hesitated.
"It mentions tasks. What do you think about it?"
"About the tasks?" He said. "I have no idea what those are."
She never saw the Doctor so bewildered, so lost - like he wasn't even recovered from the latest war he'd gone through. She felt an urge to hold him, to embrace him in her arms, and she didn't resist the temptation. "It's gonna be alright," she reached for the Doctor and buried her face in his shoulder, feeling his tensed muscles relaxed. "It's gonna be alright, Doctor. It's always better with two. We will go through this as long as we are together."
In her embrace, she felt like he wanted to put something into words - he was making subtle moves, like wings flattering. He didn't say anything in the end. Instead, he just slowly held her back with his hands on her waist, caging her up in the lock of his body. Like he would not let her go. Like he would never let her go.
"Yes, " faintly, he whispered. "I will bring you home safely, and we're gonna be alright."
When they let go of each other, she lifted her eyes and immediately found that the lines of words had automatically refreshed. He sensed her sudden tension, so he also turned back and casted his eyes on the walls.
For Day 1, you have two options to choose:
A. Rose must draw 500cc blood from the Doctor.
B. The Doctor must kiss Rose for 15 seconds.
Food and water will only be provided if you've finished one of the two tasks.
*You have only 24 hours. The clock is ticking.*
For one moment, the words all seemed unreadable. She stared at them, with her mind totally blank. Would it not be some ridiculous mischievous joke, the host, or anybody peaking out at them hidden behind those walls - they should be damned. The manice was slowly soaking the whole room through the indeceivable cracks of the wall, and the air was just too heavy for her to bear. She didn't even realise the Doctor had approached to her side, until he reached out and held her hand.
"Rose."
"No, no - it must be some kind of joke. No alien technology would make those things up out of nowhere, wouldn't it? They - they even know who we are. They know us. They know our names. Somebody must have - "
"Rose, just listen to me," the Doctor said softly and she abruptly bit her lips to stop herself from mumbling nonsense again, when tears sprang to her eyes. "Just calm down. Tell me this, how are you feeling right now?"
She didn't know why she was overreacting like a kid who didn't get to buy a new toy in the shopping mall. All she knew was that she was sad, and angry, being fooled around by some mysterious host behind the wall. However, deep in her hearts did she know, she was just too horrified to see his reactions after reading these words - something was going to turn upside down after one of the tasks was completed, an ending she could never dare to carry on for the rest of her life. She smiled sadly to herself.
"Starved to death. I don't know how many days have passed in this room, but I felt like I haven't eat or drink in days."
The Doctor curtly nodded to her. "That's what I have been worried all along. I don't need much food or water to make a living, but you humans do. I can see how dehydrated and starved you are, and I couldn't take the risk of losing you again in front of my eyes, " he spared a quick look to the words on the wall. "I guess we could at least try. If they don't provide us with what we need, then we'll stop there and I'll figure something out."
The moment of no turning back inevitably fell between them: were they going to choose A or B? It was not like the truth-or-dare tactic where you could always look for the easier. The two options were both difficult, in different ways. But before she could say anything, the Doctor already left her bedside and rushed to the corner, where a set of medical device appeared all of a sudden. Two minutes ago, that place was empty for sure. He grabbed those stuff and placed them on the nearest desk to do a quick examination. It now seemed clear for her that the Doctor had already made his choice.
She slowly slid off the bed and stood up on the solid ground again, only to find herself too pale, too exhausted to support herself to stand still. Her ankle went limp and soft, but she still managed to move to his side, staring at what he was doing.
"Doctor, you know - you don't have to do this," gritting her teeth, she made her very best to stop shrivelling. "I know you don't want to do the second option. I always do. But you should think of which option is less desirable right now -"
He snapped his head to her, too quickly that he almost terrified her. The look in his eyes was dark and sunken, laiden with deep desire and unwavered fury, so heavy and so desperate that no one could survive after the potential outburst of such a dormant volcano. "I never said - I never wished - " He drew in a sharp breath, then ducked his head again to the medical device he was paying attention to. He became quiet. His voice became low and coarse, slow and velvet to make every word of it clear enough for her to listen.
"Yes, I suppose you're right. But option A is nothing to Time Lords. Remember? We have two hearts that can produce enough blood to maintain the basic metabolism. No worries at all!"
He beamed at her, but the smile was slightly twisted. She knew he had already determined what he would do, and she was not the one who could change his mind. The old, stubborn Time Lord. She just quietly walked to the other side and studied all the devices they had. A needle and a syringe. Scissors. Knife. Bondage and strings. Basically all they were going to need were placed on the tray.
"I must be the one to do it. Am I?"
"Yes."
Speechlessly, she grabbed the needle and the huge syringe after the Doctor had sterillised those deivices and handed them over. He rolled his left sleeve up to his elbow when Rose tied the bondage just above it so that she could identify his vein. When her fingers gently touched his arm and traced along his blue-ish vein, he tensed, and she could even read his nervousness from his gritted teeth. Just do it, he murmured. His voice was scarcely detectable. Breathe, my dear Rose, just breathe.
She drew one last deep breath, and pushed the needle into his vein. He closed his eyes. Blood flowed into the syringe smoothly, and she quickly changed it once it was filled with the Doctor's blood. She kept her hands and the needle still, so he would not be much pain due to her clumsiness. Once when five syringes were filled up, she carefully pressed the cotton ball against his arm and quickly pulled it out and that was the moment she noticed that she was holding her breath all along.
The alert beeped again. This time when they lifted their eyes to see what happened, the words disappeared line by line. They stared at the void, and a small channel suddenly opened at the bottom of the wall where a tray of supplies was pushed inside. The Doctor turned over and strode to where it appeared as quickly as he could, but the channel was already closed without a trace to be found. He went down on the floor to check if there was an exit and knocked it three times before he stood up again. A thin line of blood was running down his arm.
"Solid. Huh," he said sarcastically and doubtfully. "How did they design such a cage with no exit at all?"
She didn't care. Her eyes were drew to the string of blood on his arm. And honestly, that was all she cared at the moment. She didn't care about the food supplies or the impossible room design. She just needed her Doctor, and her Doctor also needed a doctor. She ran to his side and bondaged him up without a word.
"Rose?"
She didn't reply, didn't say anything. He shut himself up, so they stayed in silence until she had done what he needed. After he rolled his sleeve down, she met his eyes with a grave look on her face.
"Don't you ever do that again," she demanded. "I couldn't stand it anymore. If any task like this shows up tomorrow, we won't do anything that could possibly harm you. Am I making this clear?"
His lips pressed tightly. His eyes casted down at her, almost too sadly.
"As long as the alternative option don't harm you as much," he said. "I need you to be safe, so no, I don't think I can agree with you on those terms. "
"The other option won't kill me, for god's sake!" She yelled. She knew she became irritated all over simply because she hadn't eaten or drank for a while, but the man in front of her eyes was the one who irritated her most. Why was kissing me so hard for you was the real question she wanted to ask, yet those words hanged in her throat and clutched into her so tight that she couldn't even breathe. He didn't make a sound, just stared deeply at her, as if she would know what he was going to say, as if she would always know what he was going to say. She hated him every time when he put that look on his face and left all the unspoken to her to decipher. She was so defeated, so tired that she couldn't speak, just looking back at him with a rather sad face. He cleared his throat, seemingly feeling uneasy under her stare.
"Are you hungry? We now have the food supply. I guess we could support for a while with them."
"No, thanks," she turned her back to him, dragging her feet to the bed. "I need some sleep, really. If you are hungry, I won't care if you have those food."
He fidgeted right behind her. His voice panicked.
"But, Rose - "
"Please, Doctor," she said exhaustedly. "Just leave me alone, 'kay?"
"Okay," he said quietly behind her, after a moment of silence. "I will keep them for you in case you want to have some food when you wake up."
She curled herself up in the duvet and embraced herself. Her heart turned cold and rigid, a snowfall awaited. The darkness gathered up around the hole inside of her, devouring her from flesh to bone. She could feel the heat emanating from the Doctor just lingered around, drawing her so close to ask him to stay with her, to lay just next to her, to hold her like they were the very last being of the whole world. Yet she bit her lips, swallowing all the words she would like to say and letting them to burn in her throat.
The Doctor quietly dragged the chair to her bedside. She heard him sat down, guarding her like a knight. She closed her eyes, and for this time, she let the image of her Doctor live rent-free in the sea of her mind.