Chapter Text
When you’re a Time Lord, your companions are your responsibility, whether they like it or not. You’re the one piloting the timeship. You’re the one with the time sense. You’re the one who knows when things are moving too far, too fast. When you’re a Time Lord, you’re the one who’s responsible.
Especially if you’re a Time Lord called the Doctor.
The Doctor has a rather overdeveloped sense of responsibility, one that’s gotten him in quite a bit of trouble. Because when you’re the Doctor, every little thing you can’t fix is your fault.
Especially if it’s in any way related to the Time War.
And with Big Ears and Leather, everything was related to the damn Time War.
Lilith had insisted that they let Rose at least take a nap before they continued on to their next destination, leaving the Doctor to think on their shouted conversation as he brooded beneath the console. A few hours later, the TARDIS jerked and shook as it flew through the time vortex with her passengers gripping tight to their handholds. Lilith, as always, was having the time of her life despite the unstable flight.
“Hold that one down!” the Doctor yelled at Lilith.
“I"m trying to keep us stabilized!” she protested. “Rose! Grab it!”
Rose rushed around the console. “Is this absolutely necessary?”
“Oi! I promised you a time machine, and that"s what you"re getting!” the Doctor snapped. “Now, you"ve seen the future, let"s have a look at the past. 1860. How does 1860 sound?”
“What happened in 1860?” Rose asked.
“Beats me,” he beamed. “Let"s find out. Hold on, here we go!”
The Doctor moved to set the coordinates, and Lilith flung her leg up onto the console to hold down the lever he had abandoned. The ship whipped through the vortex towards their destination. As the TARDIS materialized, she gave one last jolt, throwing the Doctor, Rose, and Lilith to the floor.
They broke into laughter. “Blimey!” Rose choked out, getting up.
“No kidding,” Lilith chuckled. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I think so. Nothing broken. Did we make it? Where are we?”
The Doctor checked the monitor. “I did it! Give the man a medal,” he said happily. “Earth, Naples, December 24th, 1860.”
“That"s so weird,” Rose said, and then smiled. “It"s Christmas.”
“All yours,” the Doctor gestured towards the door.
Rose turned back to look at the Doctor. “But, it"s like, think about it, though. Christmas. 1860. Happens once, just once and it"s gone, it"s finished, it"ll never happen again. Except for you two. You can go back and see days that are dead and gone a hundred thousand sunsets ago. No wonder you never stay still.”
“Not a bad life, we have,” the Doctor said softly.
Rose grinned. “Better with three. Come on, then.” She dashed towards the door.
“Oi, oi, oi,” he called after her. “Where do you think you"re going?”
“1860,” Rose said.
Lilith shook her head. “In a sweatshirt and jeans? No way. You’ll have to stop in the wardrobe before we go anywhere.” She grabbed Rose’s hand and pulled her back towards the TARDIS halls.
“First left, second right, third—” the Doctor started to call out.
“I’ll just ask the Old Girl to bring it closer,” Lilith dismissed.
“She doesn’t move rooms just because you ask her to!”
“No,” she smirked, “she doesn’t move rooms just because you ask her to. Come on, Rose.”
Lilith led Rose into the halls of the ship, keeping her eye out for the wardrobe room door. Rose’s wide-eyed gaze seemed to be trying to take in everything beyond the door she’d gone through to sleep a few hours prior before settling hesitantly on the brunette. “Lil… the TARDIS…”
“What about her?”
“You and the Doctor mentioned something about telepathy? It getting inside my head?”
The Time Lady’s steps faltered at Rose’s tone of voice, and she took a moment to remind herself of when exactly she was. “Well, first of all, you should know that she’s not an it. She’s a she.”
“Like sailors call boats women?” Rose asked.
Lilith chuckled. “Not quite. TARDISes are sapient beings. I’m not entirely sure if they’ve got a concept of gender so maybe the feminine pronouns are something that the Doctor had originally given her, but that’s what she prefers now. Companions who refer to her as a thing tend to get the short end of the stick.”
“It’s… she’s alive?”
“She’s aware and has a heart.”
Rose glanced around the hallway again with a new sort of interest. “And the telepathy thing?”
“Well, she’s still a ship. She can’t talk per se. She communicates with a form of telepathy for those who can understand her and audible frequencies and light levels for those who can’t,” Lilith explained. “She’s not reading your mind; that’s not something she’s capable of, even if you weren’t human. But she can alter your perception of things if she wants. It’s not something the Old Girl really does, though, beyond using her translation matrix to make things a little easier on our friends. Oh, here!”
The two of them stopped in front of a set of double doors. Lilith stroked the frame in thanks and pushed the doors open.
“Blimey!” Rose breathed, marveling at the expansive room filled with floors upon floors of clothing from every era she could think of and then some.
Lilith grinned. “Better than your average closet.”
“You’re telling me,” Rose said, still looking around.
“Try up there, on the third rack.” Lilith pointed up to the second level. “That’s your best bet for the 1800’s.”
“What about you?”
Lilith looked down at her outfit. Having forgone her jacket thanks to the fans on Platform One, she was wearing a flowy, plum-colored peasant top she’d gotten while in London and a denim miniskirt that had undoubtedly belonged to Amy Pond at some point in time.
She didn’t have to change—she still had the Doctor’s perception filter in her skirt pocket, so comments on her outfit were not even on her radar— but dressing up was always fun. “I can make do with a corset and a better skirt,” she decided, scanning the racks nearby. The TARDIS kindly offered what she was looking for, as well as a brown-checkered cloak for the weather.
Once she was dressed, Lilith took a moment to look around the Wardrobe. When they were little, she and Kelly liked to play hide-and-seek in here, but that had stopped long before the last time she had set foot in the cavernous room. The TARDIS hummed, and a light glowed brighter, illuminating an old dresser in the corner on which sat a burgundy bow tie. Lilith’s heart sank, and, for a moment, she was hit with an inexplicable feeling of homesickness.
What was the point of being homesick in her own home?
“Ready to go?” Rose asked when she came back down the stairs. “Love the cloak. Very Sherlock Holmes.”
Lilith forced a smile. “Much thanks, Watson,” she joked. The two girls laughed all the way back to the console room.
The Doctor looked up from tinkering with the console, and his jaw dropped when his eyes landed on Rose. “Blimey!” he gasped.
“Don"t laugh,” Rose giggled.
“You look beautiful,” he said. Rose grinned at him shyly, and Lilith did her best to hide a satisfied grin behind her hand before the Doctor continued, “Considering.”
“Considering what?”
“That you"re human.”
Lilith rolled her eyes, and Rose frowned. “I think that"s a compliment. Aren"t you going to change?”
“I"ve changed my jumper. Come on.” The Doctor pulled himself up.
Rose poked him with her umbrella. “You stay there,” she said and swung it to point at Lilith. “You"ve done this before. This is mine.” She opened the door and stepped gingerly out into the fallen snow.
The Doctor followed, and Lilith closed the door to the TARDIS behind them. “Ready for this?” he asked, offering Rose his arm, which she accepted. Lilith threaded her arm through Rose’s other one. “Here we go. History.”
The Doctor, Rose, and Lilith walked down the street, a nearby choir singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. It was a reasonably peaceful night, and Rose was practically skipping with excitement, but Lilith could feel unease starting to seep off the Doctor in waves.
He split off to buy a newspaper and returned with an even more unsettled look on his face. “We got the flight a bit wrong,” he said.
“I don"t care,” Rose said.
“It"s not 1860, it"s 1869.”
“I don"t care.”
“And it"s not Naples.”
“I don’t care.”
“It’s Cardiff.”
That stopped Rose in her tracks. “Right.”
“Hey, don’t knock it,” Lilith said, trying to lighten the mood. “Great things will happen in Cardiff one day. You’ll see.”
“Well, that’s one way of looking at it.” Rose shrugged.
Lilith pulled the Doctor aside while Rose continued to soak in the sights. “What’s wrong?” she pressed.
The Doctor scowled. “I don’t know. I was so sure I’d gotten the landing right and…. I can’t put my finger on it, Lilith, but there’s something in this city. Something that feels off. It’s grinding on my nerves.” He cast his eyes around nervously, and Lilith did the same, her eyes drawn to someone disappearing into an alleyway.
Lilith"s breath caught in her throat, and she prayed that the Doctor hadn’t noticed. “Go find something to do with Rose, alright? I’ll poke around and catch up with you.”
“You sure?”
“Positive!” She forced a grin and locked her mental walls around her mind tightly. “It’s Christmas, you sulky killjoy, go have fun.”
Once the Doctor and Rose had moved on, Lilith crept into the alleyway, her heart beating wildly in her chest. One glimpse of a retreating figure and a hunch was a lot to base an assumption on, but if the Doctor felt something, then maybe… “Jack?” she called out, voice barely above a whisper. There was no answer. Lilith’s shoulders slumped. Wishful thinking was what it was. It had been too long since she’d last seen–
“Lilith.”
“Jack!” Lilith threw her arms around him. “What are you doing in 1869? Is everything okay? Dad didn’t…” she stepped back, realizing that, for once, Jack was actually dressed appropriately for the era. “Where’s your coat?”
“Where’s my coat?” Jack repeated in a chilled voice. “Really? That’s it? After you left me to die?”
Lilith blinked. “You can’t die.”
“So you knew, then?” he demanded. “Was that the last straw? Two immortal time lords is just fine, but now that I can’t die anymore–”
“Anymore? Jack, you’ve never been able to die. What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?”
Lilith stared at Jack in complete confusion, but after a moment, she started to sort out precisely what was going on, why her father had left most of her memories of Jack intact, and how her mother even knew a man from the 51st century that well in the first place. “You were a companion,” she breathed. “You were… now? With him ? And, what, they left you behind? Why ?”
Jack opened his mouth to respond, but Lilith jumped on him, slapping her hands over his mouth. “No! Don’t tell me! If I’m there, I can’t have any details!” She let him go and spun around, starting to pace. “But that doesn’t make any sense! Why leave you behind if you’re one of the Pack?”
“The Pack?”Jack repeated. “Lilith—”
“Sure, it would’ve been a shock the first time, but the TARDIS could’ve quarantined you. We have the zero room for a reason. Well, not this reason, obviously, but it would’ve been perfectly functional unless…” With the pieces all falling into place, Lilith stopped pacing and leaned back against the alley wall. “Unless she needed to reroute the power.”
“To what?”
“Energy containment,” she groaned, sinking into a seated position and putting her head to her knees. “If someone was regenerating, the energy backlash would be capable of tearing the console room apart if not properly contained. The damage alone–”
“Lilith, what are you talking about?”
“I don’t know; it hasn’t happened to me yet!” Lilith snapped. She took a deep breath. “Look, how long had Rose been with me and the Doctor when you joined?”
Jack frowned. “Not sure. Months, I’d assume, based on how close the two of them were.”
“Right. That Rose out there with the Doctor? This is her second trip. Ever .”
“They haven’t met me yet.” He stayed quiet for a few moments. “But you have. You knew me when we met, too. You know what happened to me, don’t you?”
“Jack…”
A scream pierced the air. Lilith leapt to her feet, ready to hunt down the source, but Jack grabbed her wrist to hold her back.
“Lily, I need to know.”
She pulled her hand back, recoiling from his grip on instinct. The look on Jack’s face was almost enough to keep her in place, but she needed to get back to the other two. “I’m sorry, Jack. If you don’t know, I can’t tell you. It has to be Rose. You have to find your Doctor, not mine.”
“But you didn’t know,” he said, his voice breaking. “You didn’t know that I traveled with them.”
“But I knew you,” she reassured him. “It’ll all work out.”
Jack’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, alright.”
Lilith turned towards the entrance to the alleyway, ready to run, but turned back one more time to offer a smile. “Love you, Jack.”
“Love you, Lily.”
With that farewell, Lilith dashed from the alleyway. The cold air stung her face as she ran towards where she thought she had heard the screaming.
People were pouring out of a nearby theater in a panic. With a quick scan of the crowd, Lilith was able to locate Rose– unconscious and being shoved into a hearse.
“Hey!” she shouted, picking up the pace as much as she could on the icy cobblestone. “Undertaker!”
“Rose!” she heard the Doctor’s voice shout. The man in question rushed out of the theater, a stranger on his heels.
“You"re not escaping me, sir!” the man insisted. “What do you know about that hobgoblin, hmm? Projection on glass, I suppose. Who put you up to it?”
“Yeah, mate. Not now, thanks. Lilith this way!” The Doctor ducked into a nearby carriage and addressed the driver. “Oi, you! Follow that hearse!”
“I can"t do that, sir,” said the driver.
“Why not?”
The man who had been following the Doctor stormed up to the carriage. “I"ll tell you why not. I"ll give you a very good reason why not. Because this is my coach.”
“Well, get in, then. Move!”
The man got into the carriage, and Lilith climbed up behind him. The driver cracked the whip, and the carriage moved down the street.
“Come on, you"re losing them.”
“Everything in order, Mister Dickens?” asked the driver.
Lilith’s eyes widened. “Dickens?”
“Let me say this first. I"m not without a sense of humor—”
“Charles Dickens?” the Doctor gaped.
“Yes,” said the man.
“The Charles Dickens?”
The driver glanced back. “Should I remove them, sir?”
“You"re brilliant, you are!” the Doctor said with a wide grin. “Completely one hundred percent brilliant. I"ve read them all. Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, and what"s the other one, the one with the ghost?”
“A Christmas Carol?” Lilith offered.
“No, no, no, the one with the trains. The Signal Man, that"s it. Terrifying! The best short story ever written. You"re a genius.”
“You want me to get rid of them, sir?” the driver asked again.
“Er, no, I think they can stay,” Dickens said.
The Doctor continued, a mad grin locked on his face. “Honestly, Charles. Can I call you Charles? I"m such a big fan.”
“A what? A big what?”
“Fan,” the Doctor repeated. “Number one fan, that"s me.”
“How exactly are you a fan?” Charles Dickens frowned. “In what way do you resemble a means of keeping oneself cool?”
“It means fanatic, devoted to,” Lilith explained. “And he’s not joking. He’s got your entire collection in our library.”
“Mind you, I"ve got to say, that American bit in Martin Chuzzlewit. What"s that about? Was that just padding, or what? I mean, it’s rubbish, that bit.”
“I thought you said you were my fan.”
“Ah, well, if you can"t take criticism.” The Doctor shrugged. “Go on, though, do the death of Little Nell. It cracks me up.
Lilith kneed him in the leg. “Doctor.”
“No, sorry, forget about that. Come on, faster!” the Doctor yelled at the driver.
“Who exactly is in that hearse?” Dickens asked.
“Our friend,” he answered. “She"s only nineteen. It"s my fault. She"s in my care, and now she"s in danger."
“Why are we wasting my time talking about dry old books? This is much more important. Driver, be swift! The chase is on!”
“Yes, sir!”
The Doctor knocked on the door to the funeral parlor. Lilith could hear two people having a hushed conversation on the other side before the door opened to reveal a familiar-looking young maid. Lilith did a double take and shook her head. First Jack, and now Gwen Cooper? Cardiff never changed.
“I’m sorry, sir. We"re closed.”
“Nonsense,” Dickens said. “Since when did an Undertaker keep office hours? The dead don"t die on schedule. I demand to see your master.”
“He"s not in, sir.” The maid said, avoiding his eyes. She started to close the door.
Dickens slammed it back open, taking a few steps closer to the girl. “Don"t lie to me, child! Summon him at once!”
She jumped back, shocked at the harsh response. “I"m awfully sorry, Mister Dickens, but the master"s indisposed.”
A gas lamp behind her flared with a strange hiss. “Having trouble with your gas?” the Doctor asked lightly, nodding to the flickering flame behind her.
“What the Shakespeare is going on?” Dickens said quietly.
The Doctor pushed past the girl to the flaring gas lamp. The maid tried to protest, but he didn’t listen to her. Instead, he pressed his ear against the wall and turned to Lilith with a wide grin. “There"s something inside the walls. The gas pipes. There’s something living inside the gas.”
“Let me out! Open the door!” someone screamed from deeper into the building. The maid closed her eyes and slumped in defeat. “Please, please, let me out!”
“That"s her!” Lilith exclaimed, rushing past the girl and the Doctor further into the building. The group ran down the corridor, and the Doctor bumped into the man who had taken the old lady’s body.
“How dare you, sir!” the man said, trying to bodily block the hallways. The Doctor and Lilith just shoved past him as he called after them, “This is my house!”
“Let me out! Somebody open the door! Open the door!”
Rose’s voice came from the other side of the door to the chapel. The Doctor kicked the door in. “I think this is my dance,” he said, pulling Rose away from where she was trapped between a deathly pale young man and an equally pallid old lady.
Both well-dressed figures stood at attention. Their eyes were void and cloudy, and their muscles were as stiff as a board. “Corpses,” Lilith realized, gaping at the two, “they’re corpses. They’re dead.”
“It’s a prank. It must be. We"re under some mesmeric influence,” Dickens said from behind Lilith.
“No, we"re not. The dead are walking.” The Doctor turned to offer a smile to Rose. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Rose was breathing heavily. “Who"s your friend?”
“Charles Dickens,” He told her happily.
Rose raised her eyebrows. “Okay.”
“My name"s the Doctor,” the Doctor said, addressing the walking corpses. “Who are you, then? What do you want?”
The male zombie was the only one to reply, but he did so in several voices—one presumably belonging to the man but the rest higher-pitched and far younger-sounding. “Failing. Open the rift. We"re dying. Trapped in this form. Cannot sustain. Help us.”
Both corpses tilted their heads back and let out bloodcurdling screams. A glowing, blue, gaseous substance streamed out of their mouths and into a nearby lamp, leaving the two bodies to collapse. Lilith stared at the bodies prone on the floor and dimly registered that the Doctor had suggested everyone go have some tea. She waved a hand, a bit numbly, to indicate she’d be right behind them. The homeowner and the maid gave some sort of protest but were dragged away.
Lilith knelt down on the floor to study the corpses. Biology was never her strong suit; she was much better with tech, so she wasn’t exactly certain what she was looking for. She had a dim memory of an old story of her dad’s—something about Charles Dickens and ghosts? Or was it William Shakespeare and Witches?— but the details eluded her.
“This is going to happen a lot more often now that Rose is on board, isn’t it?” she asked the dead humans. “Haunted by bedtime stories, just what I wanted out of twisted timelines.”
With a sigh, she stood and hefted both corpses back into their respective coffins. Once she was confident that the dead were once again peacefully at rest, she made her way to the parlor, desperately trying to remember anything she may possibly know about the gaseous creatures and why they had just tried to kill Rose.
The homeowner’s name was Sneed, and the maid’s was Gwyneth—because, of course, it was— and Charles Dickens looked like he was about to have a mental breakdown. Rose, for her part, seemed to have moved past the shock of almost being killed again and graduated to quietly seething into her cup of tea and glaring at Sneed.
It only took one more token protest from the undertaker for her to explode. “First of all, you drug me, then you kidnap me, and don"t think I didn"t feel your hands having a quick wander, you dirty old man!”
“I won"t be spoken to like this!” Sneed said gruffly.
“Then you stuck me in a room full of zombies! And if that ain"t enough, you swan off and leave me to die!” Rose yelled. “So come on, talk!”
“It"s not my fault; it"s this house! It always had a reputation. Haunted. But I never had much bother until a few months back, and then the stiffs, the er, dear departed,” he corrected, seeing Lilith’s glare, “started getting restless.”
“Tommyrot,” Dickens dismissed.
“You witnessed it! Can"t keep the beggars down, sir. They walk. And it"s the queerest thing, but they hang on to scraps.”
The Doctor had been hovering in the corner by the fireplace, his grin getting wider the more uncomfortable Sneed seemed. Gwyneth placed the Doctor"s cup of tea on the mantelpiece beside him. “Two sugars, sir, just how you like it,” she murmured.
Both the Doctor and Lilith frowned at the maid. Humans didn’t often show signs of any telepathic ability, especially not in the 1800’s. The Doctor shot a confused look at Lilith, who shrugged in return.
“…Almost walked into his own memorial service,” Sneed was saying. “Just like the old lady going to your performance, sir, just as she planned.”
“Morbid fancy,” scoffed the author.
“Oh, Charles, you were there,” the Doctor said.
“I saw nothing but an illusion.”
“If you"re going to deny it, don"t waste my time. Just shut up,” the Doctor snapped at a rather taken aback Dickens. “What about the gas?” he asked Sneed.
“That"s new, sir,” the old man said. “Never seen anything like that.”
“That means it"s getting stronger,” Lilith said thoughtfully. “The rift here must be getting wider, letting something worm its way through.”
“What"s the rift?” Rose asked.
“A weak point in time and space,” the Doctor explained. “A connection between this place and another. That"s the cause of ghost stories, most of the time.”
Sneed nodded in understanding. “That"s how I got the house so cheap. Stories going back generations. Echoes in the dark, queer songs in the air, and this feeling like a shadow passing over your soul.”
Dickens rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him as he left. Lilith, curious about his thoughts, followed behind. Back down in the chapel, the author took the lid off one of the coffins and waved his hand in front of the dead man"s face. Lilith watched from the doorway as Dickens searched the coffin. “Checking for strings?” she asked.
“Wires, perhaps. There must be some mechanism behind this fraud,” he said.
She stepped into the room. “Skepticism is a healthy trait to have, and it will serve you well—right up until too much of it gets you dead. You saw what happened, Mr. Dickens.”
“I cannot accept that.”
“Think about it for a moment. What does the human body do when it decomposes? It breaks down and produces gas. It’s the perfect home for gaseous creatures. They follow the trail to the source and slip inside to use it as a vehicle, like your driver and his coach.”
“Stop it,” Dickens pleaded. “Can it be that I have the world entirely wrong?”
“Not wrong,” Lilith said gently, “there"s just more to learn.”
“I"ve always railed against the fantasists. Oh, I loved an illusion as much as the next man reveled in them, but that"s exactly what they were. Illusions. The real world is something else. I dedicated myself to that. Injustices, the great social causes. I hoped that I was a force for good. Now, you tell me that the real world is a realm of specters and jack-o"-lanterns. In which case, have I wasted my brief span here, young lady? Has it all been for nothing?”
Lilith smiled at him. “A life lived is never wasted. You’ve been given the gift of knowledge, of clarity, and now that you have it, you can use it. Take what you know and use it to continue to live what life you have left to the fullest. My father taught me that,” she said.
With that, she turned around and returned to the parlor just in time to hear the last thing she expected to hear come out of the Doctor’s mouth. “We"re going to have a séance.”
And that is how Lilith found herself sitting in the living room around a table with an old man, a woman who was not Gwen Cooper, the Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Charles freaking Dickens.
“This is how Madam Mortlock summons those from the Land of Mists, down in big town,” Gwyneth said. “Come, we must all join hands.”
Dickens stood. “I can"t take part in this,” he dismissed.
The Doctor was quick to take a shot at the author. “Humbug?”
Lilith kicked him under the table. “We’re learning new things, Mr. Dickens,” she tilted her head towards Dickens’s chair. “Join us.”
“This is precisely the sort of cheap mummery I strive to unmask,” Dickens protested. “Séances? Nothing but luminous tambourines and a squeezebox concealed between the knees. This girl knows nothing.”
“Now, don"t antagonize her,” the Doctor chided. “I love a happy medium.”
Rose chuckled. “I can"t believe you just said that.”
“Come on, we might need you,” Lilith insisted.
Dicken resigned and took his seat between Rose and Lilith. The Doctor nodded. “Good man. Now, Gwyneth, reach out.”
Gwyneth took a breath to steady herself. “Speak to us. Are you there? Spirits, come. Speak to us that we may relieve your burden.”
That’s when the whispering started.
“Can you hear that?” Rose questioned the author.
“Nothing can happen. This is sheer folly.” Dickens insisted.
“But look at her.”
“I see them,” Gwyneth said, rocking back and forth, her head tilted back and eyes locked on the ceiling. “I feel them!”
Gaseous tendrils drifted above their heads, distorted and muffled voices echoing throughout the room.
“What"s it saying?” Rose asked.
“They can"t get through the rift,” the Doctor said. “Gwyneth, it"s not controlling you. You"re controlling it. Now, look deep. Allow them through.”
“I can"t!” the girl whimpered.
“Yes, you can. Just believe it. I have faith in you, Gwyneth. Make the link.”
Then, after a moment, Gwyneth whispered, “Yes!” Blue outlines of people appeared behind Gwyneth. There were three, one right behind her and two more a bit further back. Only the one in front had visible lines on their face, indicating eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
They did look very human-like, but the uncanny valley of their faces set Lilith on edge. “I do not like this at all,” she murmured to herself.
“Great God! Spirits from the other side!” Sneed exclaimed.
“The other side of the universe,” the Doctor corrected.
The figures spoke in the voices of children, and Gwyneth spoke with them. “Pity us. Pity the Gelth. There is so little time. Help us.”
“What do you want us to do?” the Doctor asked the Gelth.
“The rift. Take the girl to the rift. Make the bridge,” they responded.
“What for?”
“We are so very few. The last of our kind. We face extinction.”
“But why?” Lilith questioned, not wholly trusting the gaseous creatures. "What happened?”
“Once we had a physical form like you, but then the war came,” said the Gelth.
“War? What war?” Dickens asked.
“The Time War. The whole universe convulsed. The Time War raged. Invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms. Our bodies wasted away. We"re trapped in this gaseous state.”
Lilith looked at the Doctor. She saw the way he tensed when the Gelth mentioned the Time War. She knew how he saw the aftermath; he believed the responsibility of fixing it all rested on his shoulders. Lilith knew the Doctor would agree to almost anything to help the Gelth, but she wasn’t too sure. “So that"s why you need the corpses.”
“We want to stand tall, to feel the sunlight, to live again,” the Gelth claimed. “We need a physical form, and your dead are abandoned. They"re going to waste. Give them to us.”
“But we can"t.”
The Doctor looked at Rose, confused. “Why not?”
“It"s not… I mean, it"s not—”
“Not decent? Not polite?” he interrupted. “It could save their lives.”
Lilith shook her head. “If all they want are existing corpses to use as physical forms, why did they make the old lady kill her son? Why did they make her son try to kill Rose?”
Before the Doctor could respond, the Gelth seemed to get more agitated. “Open the rift. Let the Gelth through!” they pleaded. “We"re dying. Help us. Pity the Gelth.” The blue forms shifted and were sucked into the gas lamps, and Gwyneth collapsed across the table.
“Gwyneth!” Rose jumped up and ran over to the girl’s side. “Gwyneth, are you okay?
“All true,” Dickens breathed, leaning back in his seat. “It"s all true.”
The Doctor shot Lilith a thunderous look. “What was that about? They need help.”
“They have a body count that nearly included Rose,” Lilith argued. “Forgive me if I don’t want to offer them permanent residence.”
“They’re desperate. Because of the War, their kind is gone, Lilith. They’re the last of their kind.” Just like us, floated in the air between them, unsaid.
“Being alone is not an excuse,” she said gravely.
“Oi!” Rose shouted. “Can we focus a moment?”
Lilith gave the Doctor one last disappointed look and then joined Rose in fussing over the unconscious Gwyneth.
A little while later, Gwyneth was lying on the chaise longue. Rose sat beside her while Lilith paced around the room. Sneed and Dickens were sitting down–Dickens having started drinking–and the Doctor was leaning with his back against the wall.
“It"s all right,” Rose told the servant girl. “You just sleep.”
“But my angels, miss, they came, didn"t they? They need me?”
“They do need you, Gwyneth. You"re their only chance of survival,” the Doctor said.
“I"ve told you, leave her alone. She"s exhausted, and she"s not fighting your battles,” Rose snapped at him. The Doctor leaned his head back, exasperated.
“Well, what did you say, Doctor? Explain it again,” Sneed said. “What are they?”
“Aliens.”
“Like foreigners, you mean?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Pretty foreign, yeah. From up there.” He pointed up.
“Brecon?” Sneed asked, confused. Lilith snorted.
“Close. And they"ve been trying to get through from Brecon to Cardiff but the road"s blocked. Only a few can get through, and even then, they"re weak. They can only test drive the bodies for so long, then they have to revert to gas and hide in the pipes."
“Which is why they need the girl,” Dickens added.
Rose spun to face everyone else. “They"re not having her.”
“But she can help,” the Doctor insisted. “Living on the rift, she"s become part of it. She can open it up, make a bridge, and let them through.”
“Incredible. Ghosts that are not ghosts but beings from another world, who can only exist in our world by inhabiting cadavers,” Dickens slurred.
“The worst part is that it would work,” Lilith admitted bitterly. “At least for a little while.”
“You can"t let them run around inside of dead people!” Rose protested
“Why not?" the Doctor retorted. "It"s like recycling.”
“Seriously though, you can"t .”
“Seriously though, I can .”
“It"s just…” Rose struggled for a word. “Wrong. Those bodies were living people. We should respect them even in death.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Do you carry a donor card?”
“That’s different,” Rose argued.
“It is different, yeah. It’s a different morality–”
“No, it’s not,” Lilith cut in. The Doctor whirled on her. “It’s not! It was Rose’s decision to be an organ donor. If someone took her organs after she died, it would be with her consent. These people didn’t agree to share their corpses with aliens before they died.”
“You heard what they said; time"s short. I can"t worry about a few corpses when the last of the Gelth could be dying,” the Doctor said. “They lost everything in that war, or have you forgotten what it was like?”
“I get it—their species were victims of the Time War, and our species were victims of the Time War—but you are not considering this with your head on straight! Rose was right—these are people we’re talking about—human people who had lives and people who loved them. I refuse to believe you would in good conscience call this recycling if, instead of that old lady and her son in the chapel, it was Brax and Romana!”
The Doctor recoiled as if she had slapped him. “That’s different.”
“No, it not.”
“They’re dying .”
Rose stepped back into the conversion. “They"re not using her.”
“Don"t I get a say, miss?” Gwyneth asked.
“Look, you don"t understand what"s going on,” the blonde said gently.
Gwyneth looked at her. “You would say that, miss, because that"s very clear inside your head that you think I"m stupid.”
Lilith sat next to her. “You’re not stupid, Gwyneth, but intelligence has nothing to do with this. Whether it"s you, Mr. Dickens, or Sir Issac Newton, humans had no part in the Time War and have no reason to be involved in its fallout.”
“Except that it’s human bodies in question,” the maid reminded her.
“This could be dangerous. You call these creatures angels, but the difference between angels and demons is how much they have to lose. And the Gelth have nothing.”
“It"s true, that’s why they need to be helped,” Gwyneth said. “Things might be very different where you"re from, but here and now, I know my own mind, and the angels need me. Doctor, what do I have to do?”
With a look at his two companions, the Doctor admitted, “You don"t have to do anything.”
“They"ve been singing to me since I was a child, sent by my mam on a holy mission. So tell me.”
The Doctor seemed to make up his mind. “We need to find the rift. This house is on a weak spot, so there must be a spot that"s weaker than any other.” He walked into the other room to reengage the other two men. “Mister Sneed, what"s the weakest part of this house? The place where most of the ghosts have been seen?”
“That would be the morgue,” Sneed answered.
“No chance you were going to say gazebo, is there?” Rose grumbled. Lilith raised her eyebrows at her.
Down in the morgue, the recently departed lay under white sheets. “Huh, talk about Bleak House,” the Doctor commented.
“The thing is, Doctor, the Gelth don"t succeed,” Rose said. “"Cuz I know they don"t. I know for a fact there weren"t corpses walking around in 1869.”
“Time can be rewritten,” Lilith said dully. “History is in flux, changing every second. What you consider to be irrefutable can shift in the blink of an eye. Very little of what you consider to be history is fixed, especially when time travel is involved.”
“Doctor,” Dickens spoke up, “I think the room is getting colder.”
“Here they come,” Rose muttered.
One of the Gelth emerged from a gas lamp by the door and stood under a stone archway. “You"ve come to help. Praise the Doctor, praise him,” it said in its multiple, child-like voices.
“Promise you won"t hurt her,” Rose demanded.
The ghost ignored her. “Hurry! Please, so little time. Pity the Gelth!”
“Don’t pity the dead, pity the living,” Lilith quoted under her breath. "And above all, pity those with no physical form so they murder innocent people to possess their corpses."
The Doctor shot her a ‘ really?’ look. “I"ll take you somewhere else after the transfer,” he said aloud. “Somewhere you can build proper bodies. This isn"t a permanent solution, all right?”
“My angels. I can help them live,” Gwyneth breathed.
“Okay, where"s the weak point?” the Doctor asked.
“Here,” the Gelth answered. “Beneath the arch.”
“Beneath the arch,” Gwyneth repeated. She stood under the arch, inside the Gelth.
Rose rushed forward and took Gwyneth’s hands. “You don"t have to do this.” Gwyneth just shook her head, and Lilith gently pulled Rose away from her.
“Establish the bridge. Reach out to the void. Let us through!” the Gelth cried.
“Yes, I can see you. I can see you. Come!”
“Bridgehead establishing,” said the translucent alien.
“Come to me. Come to this world, poor lost souls!”
“It is begun. The bridge is made.” Gwyneth opened her mouth, and multiple blue gas creatures flew out. Lilith was overcome with a sense of dread. She shared a terrified look with Rose. “She has given herself to the Gelth. The bridge is open. We descend.” The blue apparition snarled as it turned a flaming red. Its voice deepened and hardened–no longer child-like at all– now sounding far more like a creature of nightmares. “The Gelth will come through in force.”
“You said that you were few in number!” Dickens cried.
“A few billion. And all of us in need of corpses.” The dead bodies began to get up, each of them turning and starting to make their way towards the group.
“Now, Gwyneth, stop this. Listen to your master. This has gone far enough,” Sneed begged, taking a few steps towards the archway. “Stop dabbling, child, and leave these things alone, I beg of you!”
“Mister Sneed, get back!” Rose yelled.
A corpse grabbed Sneed and snapped his neck. Rose looked away quickly as the Doctor pulled her behind him. A Gelth zoomed into Sneed’s open mouth. “I think it"s gone a little bit wrong,” the Doctor said.
Lilith sneered at him, placing herself between the Doctor and the hoard. “Is this a bad time to say ‘I told you so’? Because I freaking told you so !”
“I have joined the legions of the Gelth. Come, march with us,” Sneed’s body growled. “We need bodies. All of you. Dead. The human race. Dead. “
“Gwyneth, stop them! Send them back now!” the Doctor called.
“Four more bodies. Convert them. Make them vessels for the Gelth!” said the red Gelth. Dead Sneed backed Rose, Lilith, and the Doctor against a metal gate.
Dickens backed against the door. “Doctor, I can"t. I"m sorry. This new world of yours is too much for me. I"m so—” A screaming Gelth flew past him, and he fled.
The remaining trio hid behind the metal gate, where the corpses couldn’t reach them. “Give yourself to glory!” the demonic creature demanded. “Sacrifice your lives for the Gelth.”
“I trusted you,” the Doctor yelled. “I pitied you!”
“We don"t want your pity. We want this world and all its flesh.”
“Not while I"m alive,” he growled.
“Then live no more.”
The corpses advanced, reaching their hands through the gaps between the metal bars of the gates, grasping at the air between them and the three travelers.
“But I can"t die. Tell me I can"t,” Rose pleaded. “I haven"t even been born yet. It"s impossible for me to die. Isn"t it?”
“I"m sorry,” the Doctor said.
“But it"s 1869. How can I die now?”
“Time isn"t a straight line. It can twist into any shape. You can be born in the twentieth century and die in the nineteenth, and it"s all my fault. I brought you here.”
Lilith focused on the timelines, watching them shiver and shift before. They couldn’t die, not there, not in a basement in Cardiff, not before all the adventures she’d dreamed of having. She had to live to get back to her Doctor– to her father and mother, her siblings, and her Jack. She had to get back to River.
“We"ll go down fighting, yeah?” Rose said.
“Always,” Lilith said, biting her lip.
Rose turned to the Doctor. “Together?”
“Yeah.”
She took his hand.
“I"m so glad I met you,” the Doctor said.
“Me too.”
At that moment, Dickens ran in. “Doctor! Doctor! Turn off the flame, turn up the gas! Now, fill the room, all of it, now!”
“What are you doing?”
“Turn it all on. Flood the place!”
Understanding dawned on the Doctor’s face. “Brilliant! Gas!”
“What, so we choke to death instead?”
Lilith lit up. “No, he’s right. The Gelth are gaseous.”
“Fill the room with gas; it"ll draw them out of the host,” the Doctor explained. “Suck them into the air like poison from a wound!”
The corpses turned away from the Doctor and Rose and started shambling towards Dickens. “I hope, oh Lord, I hope that this theory will be validated soon, if not immediately.”
“Plenty more!” the Doctor crowed, ripping a gas pipe from the wall. Screeches, along with the gas, filled the room as the Gelth left the corpses.
“It"s working,” Dickens said.
The Doctor rushed out of the alcove, Lilith and Rose behind him. “Gwyneth, send them back. They lied. They"re not angels.”
Gwyneth lowered her arms. “Liars?”
“Look at me. If your mother and father could look down and see this, they"d tell you the same. They"d give you the strength. Now send them back!”
“Can"t breathe,” Rose choked.
“Lilith, get them out.”
“I"m not leaving her,” Rose protested.
“And there’s no way I’m leaving you,” Lilith added.
Gwyneth looked at the Doctor, her eyes almost as empty as those of the corpses. No regret, no sorrow. Something in LIlith’s stomach twisted. “They"re too strong.”
“Remember that world you saw? Rose"s world? All those people? None of it will exist unless you send them back through the rift.”
“I can"t send them back,” Gwyneth said, “but I can hold them. Hold them in this place. Hold them here. Get out.” She took a box of matches from her apron pocket.
“You can"t!” Rose yelled. She rushed forward, but Lilith and the Doctor held her back.
“Leave this place!”
The Doctor gripped Rose’s arms. “Rose, get out. Go now. I won"t leave her while she"s still in danger. Now go!”
Lilith dragged Rose towards the stairs. After one last look at Gwyneth, she stopped resisting, and Dickens followed the two out of the morgue. The two girls and the author raced down the hallways.
“This way!” Dickens coughed into the handkerchief he was holding over his mouth. Lilith spared a glance at Rose, who had nothing to lessen the gas she was inhaling nor a respiratory bypass to hold her breath. They made it out of the house and had barely gotten into the street when the building exploded behind them.
Lilith ran to the Doctor’s side and fussed to double-check that he was okay. Rose approached them slowly. “She didn"t make it?” she guessed.
“I"m sorry,” he said. “She closed the rift.”
Dickens sighed. “At such a cost. The poor child.”
“I did try, Rose,” the Doctor promised. “But Gwyneth was already dead. She had been for at least five minutes.”
“How do you mean?”
Lilith looked away. “She was already dead, wasn’t she? She suffocated the moment she stood inside the Gelth.”
“But she can"t have,” Rose protested. “She spoke to us. She helped us. She saved us. How could she have done that?”
“There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy,” Dickens said. “Even for you, Doctor.”
“She saved the world, a servant girl, no one will ever know.”
“We’ll know,” Lilith said, putting her arm around her friend’s shoulders. They stood together and watched the building burn for a moment before the Doctor turned and started to make his way back to the TARDIS.
“Right then, Charlie boy,” the Doctor said as the group reached the ship. “I"ve just got to go into my, er, shed. Won"t be long.”
“What are you going to do now?” Rose asked the author.
“I shall take the mail coach back to London, quite literally post-haste. This is no time for me to be on my own,” he decided. “I shall spend Christmas with my family and make amends to them. After all I"ve learned tonight, there can be nothing more vital.”
“You"ve cheered up,” the Doctor noted.
“Exceedingly! This morning, I thought I knew everything in the world. Now I know I"ve just started. All these huge and wonderful notions, Doctor. I"m inspired. I must write about them.”
Rose glanced at Lilith before addressing Dickens again. “Do you think that"s wise?”
“I shall be subtle at first. The Mystery of Edwin Drood still lacks an ending. Perhaps the killer was not the boy"s uncle. Perhaps he was not of this Earth. The Mystery of Edwin Drood and the Blue Elementals. I can spread the word, tell the truth.”
“Good luck with it. Nice to meet you. Fantastic!” the Doctor said.
“Bye, then, and thanks,” Rose shook Dickens"s hand, then kissed his cheek.
“Oh! How modern.” Dickens smiled. “Thank you, but I don"t understand. In what way is this goodbye? Where are you going?”
Lilith grinned, “You"ll see. In the shed.”
“Upon my soul, young lady, it"s one riddle after another with you. But after all these revelations, there"s one mystery you still haven"t explained. Answer me this. Who are you?”
“Just a friend passing through.”
“But you have such knowledge of future times. I don"t wish to impose on you, but I must ask you. My books, do they last?”
“Oh, yes!” Lilith said with enthusiasm.
“For how long?” Dickens asked.
“Forever,” the Doctor said. “Right. Shed. Come on, Rose, Lilith.”
Dickens frowned. “In the box? All three of you?”
“Down boy,” the Doctor growled. “See you.”
“Doesn"t that change history?” Rose asked as they walked over to the console. “If he writes about blue ghosts?”
“In one week, it"s 1870, and that"s the year he dies,” Lilith said somberly. “Sorry. He"ll never get to tell his story.”
Rose looked at Dickens on the monitor. “Oh, no. He was so nice.”
“But in your time, he was already dead,” the Doctor shrugged. “We"ve brought him back to life, and he"s more alive now than he"s ever been, old Charlie boy. Let"s give him one last surprise. Lilith?”
“To the vortex we go,” Lilith said, pulling a lever with a grin. The TARDIS dematerialized and smoothly slipped into the time vortex.
Rose and the Doctor chattered away happily, but I remember staring at the door, thinking about Jack alone in nineteenth-century Cardiff. Left behind after a fatal disaster without a way to find home. I remember trying to wrap my mind around even being on the TARDIS with him and this version of the Doctor and Rose at all.
Like I said, despite ten years with the Doctor in leather, clearly, the real adventure was just beginning. -L