Title: Phantom

Genre: Angst, Romance, Drama

Rating: PG-13

Couple: Ten/Rose

Spoilers: Spoilers for season 2 through Doomsday

Summary: Hope. Simultaniously Humanity's greatest strength and greatest weakness. He might have said it was impossible, but he had also taught Rose not to believe in that word. Not even if it destroyed her. Post Doomsday.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6




Disclaimer: Well...no. I don;t own DW

AN: Ah, the chapter I've been waiting oh-so-long to write. And it's 7-of-9. How my inner-Trekkie squees!

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Phantom

Chapter 7 : Twilight




"It takes alot of power to send this projection, I'm in orbit around a super-nova..." He smiled softly, eyes devoid of any glimmer of happiness. "I'm blowing up a sun just to say goodbye."

She shook her head softly, it was almost hard to focus on him, the way he was translucent. "You look like a ghost."

He frowned and fiddled with his screwdriver. "Hold on..." Like always, it seemed to work magic, this time 'solidifying' his image.

She walked slowly toward his expectant form, still half un-believing that he was really there. That she had another chance to see him. She wanted to reach out and touch him to make sure. She didn't need to ask, of course. The TARDIS couldn't just push him through. He'd said he'd come for goodbye. So he couldn't be here, or he'd have stayed. But she asked anyway.

The sadness in his eyes told her he was not lying.

She blinked once, twice. But the clock still said it was past-midnight. That was when the Doctor suddenly burst into laughter.

"Oh...Oh my..." He seemed to have found something absolutely hilarious, but she couldn't see what was so funny at all. "I've been in your head too long! I'm going daft."

"Hey!"

He shook his head, and waved a hand at her to ward off any attack. "The rift didn't open midnight. It opened 3 o'clock in the morning. We have three more hours!"

Then...all of that...all of the tears...

"You...you..."

He backed up further, expression serious and apologetic. "I'm sorry, Rose! I really did think it was Midnight as much as you did!"

She huffed. "Some Time Lord you are. You just wanted an excuse to kiss me."

He gave an exaggerated shrug, avoiding her gaze. "Weeell...."

She rolled her eyes and grinned at him. "Well then, Doctor...I think we have a certain 900-year-old-with-a-failing-memory to save."

"Hey!"

--

Mickey gripped the steering-wheel tightly. He knew cruising around town wasn't going to do anything but waste gas and raise neighborhood eyebrows and suspicions...but he couldn't stand sitting there in that tomb-like mansion among sulking faces any longer.

If she got home, they could call him (though they probably wouldn't remember for at least an hour), if she were wandering the streets he might spot her, and if she were holed up somewhere, then he could at least feel like he was doing something, rather then twiddling his thumb, arguing whos fault it was, and exchanging false platitudes.

And that was really what it boiled down to. He hadn't felt so useless as he did these past couple of days, since when she had first swanned off. It seemed like he could do nearly anything he wanted if he applied himself--and then he would run across Rose and realize just how little he really could.

And oh how it killed him.

--

"That's it!" He announced excitedly, pumping his fist in the air, and snapping his fingers. "A stream of anti-matter pulsating at that frequency for exactly 2.00057 seconds from this spot right here!"

He looked immensely pleased with himself when he looked up from his arrayed pages to grin at her. So now all they needed wss an anti-matter-ray. Did Torchwood have one?

"Can the sonic screwdriver do it?" She asked, tilting her head slightly.

"Naw. It has to be from this side of the field." He said, jabbing a finger at one of the read-outs in an attempt to accentuate his point. "We've still got an hour and a half, you can make it there in time, Rose."

"But--I don't have any anti-matter phaser things!"

He rolled his eyes. "An anti-matter transmitter is all you need. And for one of those, if you've got me, all you really need is a handy matter-transmitter."

She frowned. "There's an experimental one in a nearby lab...but I don't think its functioning."

He gave her a rougish wink. "Good thing I'm here, ey?"

"Wouldn't that be...interferin' with natural development or somethin'?"

"Not if we put it back like we found it, like good kids." He smirked. "Now, come on, lets do this!"

--

Jackie glanced at the clock on the mantle, and sighed. Jake had passed out an hour back in the recliner, and Mickey still hadn't returned from his patrolling around the city.

She looked up at her husband, who was running a hand along her hair softly, soothingly. "Don't worry, Jacks...I'm sure he's just found Rose and the Doctor, and you know that one...Mickey probably hasn't been able to get a word in edgewise for a half-hour."

"Do you really believe that?" She asked, frowning up at him. "Do you really have that much faith in his abilities?"

"No. I don't know him well enough to tell." He shook his head. "I believe in Rose."

--

She grinned across the car at the Doctor, who was reclining in the passenger seat in a way that would have been entirely unsafe for someone who was physically there, legs crossed, and arms behind his head.

"You're so sure this is gonna work then?" She asked teasingly.

"Of course I'm sure!" He retorted, smirking over at her. "Am I ever wrong?"

"Should I show you the list?"

"You wrote one?" He scrunched his nose in disbelief. "I'm hurt."

"Oh, come off it." She snorted. "Every time you're wrong is like a moment in history--course I wrote a list!"

"Ah, flattery!"

"Where are you, anyway?" She asked curiously, as she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, waiting for a light.

"Told you. Somewhere along the very edge of the Void. Hard to pinpoint without any sort of existance to tell you where."

"No, I mean physically...you know...you're running around and all that, so you can't just be in the TARDIS consol room or such."

"Who says there isn't a special comm room just for this sort of thing?" He grinned over at her, then shrugged. "I guess you could say I'm in a sort of stasis. There're alotta dodgy things going on with the TARDIS at the moment--she seemed to think it was unsafe for me to be up and workin on her."

She arched an eyebrow. She never could fully comprehend just how sentient the TARDIS was. It certainly didn't seem like computers from TV shows, like Hal...yet there were other times when it seemed downright moody, sometimes he seemed to talk about 'her' like it was wholly sentient and alive, and other times he referred to 'it' like it was just another piece of equipment--very dear, but still.

"In other words she released some sleepy-sleep-sleep gas in the room I was in and locked the doors." He grinned. "I never really fancied going out in my sleep, so I took a gamble and tried going along the 'line'. Was a bit shaky at first."

"Ah...so this is like one big dream to you."

"But a good one, so far." He winked at her. "I can think of a few better ones I've had. though."

She would have asked what exactly those dreams were, but they had arrived at the part of the rift that the Doctor had calculated would be the best place to use the anti-matter ray gun thing. Which was really some sort of projection device thing that mounted on a tripod. She really needed to come up with a better name for it.

By the time she got out of the car, matter-gun in hand, he had already walked out in front of the car and was staring up into the sky where the rift might be if it were visible. Then again, to him it probably was. She tried not to think too much about the fact that he had walked through the car to do it.

"How come you didn't just fall through the car?"

"Just a figment of your mind, remember?" He said, swirling a finger round next to his head. "Was easier to ride with, than to run after."

She shrugged noncommitedly, and wrestledd with setting up the transmatter...meter...mitter...whatever. The Doctor walked a few steps off absently, staring up into the sky and emitting a low whistle.

"Are we running out of time with the rift?"

"Hm?" He looked down from the night toward her, an expression of mild surprise on his face. "Oh no. I was just thinking...the stars..."

"They're all funny, I know."

He grinned. "I was thinking 'uncharted, and just waiting to be explored'."

She returned his grin. "You're gonna stay on this side, then?"

He arched curious eyebrow. "You'd prefer I go back?"

"I dunno...I figured you'd just pop in and out."

The click-whirr-humm of the device said it was finally set up properly, and the Doctor stode over to her side, pointing at a few dials she had rigged up on it (with his careful instructions). "Turn those half way, then press the big button."

"Simple..."

"I like things simple." He grinned.

Returning his smile, she followed his instruction, and a prismatic beam began to pulse into the sky, lighting up the entire rift with a breath-taking similarity to an aurora.

"We'll want to be getting back to the car and driving very fast now."

--

He'd been almost ready to give up, when the sky had charged with a glorious plasmoid electricity. At first he was too stunned to form proper thought, but then he remembered something from long ago--almost two years now. A rift along Cardiff, originating from long, long ago. The first Doctor had said it, back when that alien woman had tried to blow up the world.

He wasn't sure how it was there in this universe, or even vaguely what it was doing, but he would bet good money that he knew who was doing it. Although, whether that meant the Doctor really was there, or whether Rose was simply more ingenious than anyone gave her credit for, he didn't know.

In the end, as he slammed his black mini into the next gear, and roared through the empty streets of the city, that didn't really matter. All that really mattered, was that he was going to make a difference again. This time to the one person he'd been trying to make a difference to for far too long.

--

"Okay...so an explosion at the rift is not a bad thing, how?"

"Ahh...its only a tiny little thing." He eyed the seatbelt next to him consideringly, ruining the nonchalance he seemed to be going for. "Its just closing up the wound, is all!"

"And the raygun thing will survive, right?" She asked, glancing at him.

"Ah..."

"Fantastic."

"Rose..." He said cautiously.

"Are you coming through at that spot?"

He shook his head. "There's a beach near here. Looks alot like that place in Norway, actually."

She nodded. "I've seen it before."

"That's where the trajectory will probably end up--juuust outside the rift's edge."

"So--"

She did not get to finish her question, before the Earth exploded behind her. A scream she was not entirely sure was hers echoed in her ears as her white, Torchwood-issued taxi-interceptor was sent spinning several feet through the air, and crashed violently on its roof.

When the world finally stopped spiralling, she found herself hanging perilously upside down, fiercely sore, woozy, and nose full of the smell of gasoline.

"Small explosion my foot, Doctor!" She snapped, glaring at the seat next to her. To her alarm, there was no one there. "Doctor? Doctor?!"

--

The teacup in her hands crashed to the floor as she screamed in sudden terror, as the house shook with a powerful exposion. Jake leapt up out of the recliner faster than she previously thought possible, and Pete dashed out of the room.

"What's goin' on?!" Jake asked quickly, expression alert and intense as he looked over at her.

"I...I..." Jackie shook her head. "I don't know! It came out of nowhere!"

"My...God..." The voice of Pete filtered through from another room. "The sky....it's...on fire."

--

He was only a few blocks away when it happened, when the entire Cardiff Square erupted into multicolored plasmoid fire. It was strangely silent and peaceful at first, when he put on the brakes and stepped out of the car to get a better look. Then all at once it sort of...swelled outward and collapsed into nothingness with a deafening crash. It was all he could do to dive to the ground before the shockwave sent his car pinwheeling through the sky, and shattering all of the nearby windows.

As silence settled into the city once more--save for the car alarms across the city that had been set off by the explosion or the resulting shockwave--he pulled himself up to a standing position, and felt his mouth fall open as he took in the aftermath.

Nothing flimsier than a street light stood still, the streets were littered with sheets of shattered glass, street-sign either hung in awkward positions, or lay strewn carelessly across the streets or sidewalks. But what most caught his attention was the multi-colored fire blazing along where the rift should be in the sky.

--

Rose winced as she nursed a rather bad cut on her leg, gained from scrambling out of the twisted wreck before it decided to be tempermental and explode in her face or such. Her head throbbed painfully, and she just might have fractured a femur. When she got her hands on the Doctor, she would throttle him. Little explosion indeed!

She hadn't seen a hint of him since the explosion, so she could only assume the TARDIS had woken him when they left the Void--meaning he would be waiting at the beach only a half a mile from where she was walking. And when she got there, she would kill him for making her walk all this way. And for not having nanogenes to fix up something that was absolutely, entirely his fault.

People were starting to fill the streets as they migrated sleepily out to see what on earth had woken them up so rudely. The rather scary looking fire along the rift had reduced to something akin to smoldering, as it repaired itself from her rather rude prodding.

"Never been slapped by someone's mother he said..." She grumbled to herself. "I'll show him slapping...his head's going to be ringing twice as long as mine."

--

Jackie shivered slightly, as her husband hugged her tightly, staring up at the sky. Jake had turned on the telly in a nearby room, and the new anchor was going on about some containment leak at a nuclear facility reacting oddly with the atmosphere, and how 'it was all taken care of, all thats left is to enjoy the light show while it lasts'.

But she knew better...she knew what it sounded like when they covered up for something the Doctor caused, or Torchwood...or Rose. It was no coincidence this happened tonight of all nights.

She shook her head slightly. "Oh, Rose...be safe...be safe...please..."

--

"Doctor!" She sighed, and turned around, scanning another part of the beach. "Doc-torr?!"

Where was he? Hadn't he made it through? Where had he gone? Why wasn't he waiting for her? He couldn't not be here...

"You promised me..." She said softly, wandering deeper into the beach, heart sinking with each step. "You said you'd be here!"

She did a slow circle in place, scanning everywhere on the tiny little beach--it was barely more than a little cove you could drove a boat-car off into the water with. The colors in the sky were almost gone now, and even from here she could hear the faint sound of emergency workers rushing through the city, assessing damage, searching for the wounded.

Torchwood would not be happy. So where was the Doctor to make it all right?

"WHERE ARE YOU?!"

--

Mickey shifted uncomfortably as he tried to get used to the handling of the corvette Pete had let him borrow for the purposes of finding Rose. And oh how they were searching. It had been a day since anyone had seen her, even the spooks at Torchwood were searching for her--though that was less of a mission of kindess, and more of a mission of retribution for taking one of their devices and trying to blow up the city.

He sighed and thumped his head on the steering wheel as he waited at a light. Where could she be hiding? Where would she be? Was she alive? Was she okay? He grimaced at the thought that she might have swanned off with the Doctor without saying one word, and no one would see her in this time period for another year.

He couldn't write it off as that yet, though...not until he had looked everywhere. Where did she like to be that he hadn't checked? Nowhere! No place in the city of Cardiff! She didn't even like Cardiff that much in the other universe....

And then all at once it came to him.

--

Minutes turned to hours, and maybe even days. It didn't really matter to her. She had waited for what seemed like forever, watching the sun slowly color the sky as she sat patiently on a rock, hoping desperately against all reason, all sense, all of reality, that he would pop in any minute and gurgle on about how he'd over shot, and how the TARDIS decided to take him on a trip through Caemelot, and how he was so very, very sorry, and would never ever leave her again.

But he never came.

She wasn't certain when the tears started, when her hope faded to empty and blind despair, when she sunk to the sand, and lost herself in staring at a distant and vague part of the ocean. It didn't really matter. They had gambled everything, they had done it all together against what everyone told them.

And they had lost.

He was gone. He was really...really...really gone.

At some point someone lifted her up, holding her tight, murmuring comforts, saying how thankful they were that she was alive, telling her everything was going to be alright, but she didn't dignify them with any sort of response.

Because they were wrong.

He was gone.

And nothing would ever be alright again.

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AN: NOT The end! If you kill me now, you'll never know how it resolves! *dashes away*