CHARLOTTE ::: DW¹

xviii. another ghost story part two

"The rift. Take the girl to the rift. Make the bridge."

The Doctor looked up to them, continuing to question further, "What for?"

"We are so very few. The last of our kind. We face extinction."

"Why?" The Doctor asked them. "What happened?"

"Once we had a physical form like you. But then the war."

Intrigued, Charles looks up to the Gelth. "War? What war?"

"The Time War." Both Charlotte and Rose glanced at the Doctor, who looked back at them with outwardly no reaction.

"The whole universe convulsed," the Gelth continued. "The Time War raged invisible to smaller species but devastating to higher forms. Our bodies wasted away. We're trapped in this gaseous state."

"So that's why you need the corpses," the Doctor realized.

"We want to stand tall. To feel the sunlight. To live again. We need a physical form, and your dead are abandoned. They're going to waste, give them to us!"

Rose's eyebrows furrowed together, "But we can't."

The Doctor looked over to her. "Why not?"

"It's not... I mean, it's not..."

"Not decent? Not polite? It could save their lives," the Doctor tells her. Looking away from the Gelth and to them, Charlotte saw an unhappy Rose giving him no arguments.

"Open the rift. Let the Gelth through. We're dying. Help us. Pity the Gelth!" Quickly, the Gelth return to the lamps and disappear, leaving Gwyneth to collapse forward onto the table from holding the connection up so long.

"Gwyneth!" Charlotte gasped, standing up from her spot, she held the woman up- easily seeing she fell unconscious.

"Is she alright?" Rose worried, moving to stand close behind her.

Charlotte nodded her head, thankful for her concern. "She'll be fine, just help me get her to the couch." Rose then aided her in helping Gwyneth up and to the couch.

Charles, meanwhile, was still awestruck at what happened in front of him. "All true... it's all true..." he said to himself, while the Doctor remains as silent as a doorknob.

---

Sitting down beside the couch, Charlotte watches Gwyneth carefully as Rose patted her forehead with a cloth. Noticing her fidgeting ever so slightly, Charlotte leans in her seat as Gwyneth's eyes open... growing when she realizes she's laying on the parlor's couch.

"It's alright," Rose tells her. "You just sleep."

"But my angels,"- Charlotte quailed at Gwyneth's use of the word- "miss. They came, didn't they? They need me?"

The Doctor, who leaned against the doorframe, watching intently, spoke up, "They do need you, Gwyneth. You're they're only chance of survival."

Charlotte turns to face him angrily. "You need to let her rest a moment. She's exhausted." Turning back to Gwyneth, she couldn't see the Doctor sigh exasperatedly. "Here, drink up." Charlotte handed her a glass of water, and Gwyneth took it.

"Well, what did you say, Doctor?" Sneed, sitting down in the room beside the parlor, asked. "Explain it again. What are they?"

"Aliens."

"Like... foreigners, you mean?"

"Pretty foreign, yeah. From up there." He pointed up to the ceiling.