The TARDIS moaned, sounding as if the machine itself were breathing, every exhale a whirling, whooshing sound, and every inhale the inverse. The Doctor stood by the controls, romping around the console, flipping several lever and pushing buttons. Rose leaned against the railing watching him show off. When the TARDIS's breaths finally fell short, The Doctor turned to her and smiled a wicked grin.
"Where are we?" Rose inquired.
The Doctor made no reply, instead he simply raised an eyebrow and dipped his head toward the door.
"Oh, come on, Doctor, where are we?"
He grabbed his coat and pulled it over his head, moving toward the door.
"Why don't we got find out?"
Rose returns his smile and laughs, skips to the doors, and flings them open.
The air is suddenly rich with a deafening scream, as Rose turns despeartely in the Doctor's direction, she yells once more
"DOCTOR!"
Rose vanishes from sight, appearing to have disappeared without a trace, the air around her empty, the only thing in view was, exactly where Rose had been standing, a lone stone angel.
The Doctor's hearts miss a beat, for one second he stands completly still, unable to process wht he just witnessed. Sentient beings are like that. They deny the things that are too difficult for their minds to process. He simply stood there, staring at the place where she had been, now occupied by the angel. Eventually, reality closed in, fear and realization struck the Doctor, hard. Rose was gone.
"Rose!"
The TARDIS, having, just a few seconds ago been completely silent, began ot breathe again. But this time every inhale came out rasp and a feeble beeping sound. There was another sound, like nails against a chalkboard or tires slipping in the rain. The TARDIS was screaming. The floor began to shake, in fact the entire room began to shake violently, then it whirled and spun tossing The Doctor about like he was but a little toy rag doll. He was thrown about, eventually grabbing hold of one of the coral-shaped pillars and wedging himself between it and the chair. He was silent and hurt was caught in his eyes. The loss of Rose still fresh, he felt as if he had been torn open, a jagged wound across his entire body, and that he was somehow empty and hollow. He was still having trouble believing it. But deep inside he knew it was true. Rose was gone. He just didn't want it to be true. It couldn't be true. Not Rose. Never Rose.
Sparks begin to shoot from the console, flying about wildly, fire spreads around it. Flames lap around the control room. The TARDIS lights begin to flicker, then die, leaving no light but that of the hungry tongues of fire shooting out from the console. Rose is gone. Rose is gone.
The quaking motion of the TARDIS slows, and eventually comes to a stop. The TARDIS's screams die away, and the fire that had been consuming the TARDIS whole, blinks out like it and never been there in the first place. The Doctor is left alone in the darkness. The Doctor looks up from where he had wedged himself, safely unharmed, with the exception, of course, of the gaping hole Rose had left in his hearts. He let his head drop back onto the floor, lolling slightly to the side.
"Rose..." he whispered it like it was a forbidden word. The loss still struck him.
He could see no point in getting up. But of course, he is the Doctor, and the Doctor had suffered enough loss to know that lying around wasn't helping anyone, certainly not Rose. He heaved himself to his feet, with difficulty, and cleanses the emotion from his face, replacing it with a faraway, unearthly expression. He walks over to the console at a deliberately slow pace, runs his finger over some of the controls and attempts to move them. Nothing happens. The Doctor sighs and turns to face the doors, knowing perfectly well he had to go outside but not really wanting to. Reluctantly, he opens the doors, revealing a sloping hillside, and spread out below him the jagged peaks of high rise buildings and towers. The sky is a restless gray, the color of slate and roaring seas, ominous arsenic clouds gathered at the horizon, keeping watch over the city below. Beneath him, in infinite splendor, lay the city of Los Angeles.
The Doctor, having apparently seen something, rushes out of the TARDIS and down the hill, his converse making muffled thuds on the yellowed grass. It's obvious what has caught his attention. There, laying just downhill is Rose, spreadeagled, the tall grass bowed around her.
"Rose!" The Doctor can't refrain from keeping the excitement and relief from his voice.
Rose is just lifting her head up, pulling her legs beneath her in an attempt to sit up, she puts a hand to her head.
"Doctor...... I... I was....I can't remember."
"It's okay, just relax, you have Nerphothemial amnesia. You've got short term memory loss, memories should be returning soon, but I'm afraid you'll forget everything from the last 10 minutes or so. Are you okay?"
"Yeah.... I think so..."
A sudden look of confusion dawns on her face, and she looks at the Doctor.
"How do you know all that?"
The Doctor gives her a smug smile
"I'm brilliant."
He takes Rose's hand and helps her to her feet, Rose almost falls into teh Doctor at first, her legs as unsteady as a newborn foal's. Eventually, Rose's legs become more steady and she is able to stand on her own. She crosses her arms over her chest.
"Well then, tell me"she adds ina sarcastic emphasis"Oh, brilliant one,"
"Where are we?"
The Doctor looks out at the LA skyline inquizitively.
"Los Angeles, I think"
Even Rose looks shocked, she then says in a annoyed mutter,
"I can't even tell, and I'm the one from this planet."
The Doctor elbows her arm teasingly.
The TARDIS gives a deep guttural groan and begins screaming again, the horrible sound ringing in the Doctor's ears. It dematerializes, its shrieks fading away into nothingness, until the TARDIS disappears from sight.
The Doctor rushes to the spot where it had been, yelling.
"What! No, no!"
Rose looks equally scared and appalled by the TARDIS's sudden absence.
"What is it doing?"
The Doctor rubs the back of his head fiercely, his ruffling his hair into a mess.
"The TARDIS, something's wrong with it, it dropped me off here, presumably to find you, but its broken, on emergency setting, I don't know why it just went crazy, could blow a hole in the universe bigger than the sun."
He blows out a large breath of air.
"And that's bad, yeh?"
The Doctor looks at her and says in a higher-pitched sarcastic voice,"Yeah, pretty bad!"
The Doctor looks off into the distance for a moment.
"It's not just a hole in the universe but in teh fabric of reality itself, it'll punch straight through teh time vortex, tear it apart. The entire time-space continum is going to be sucked up into, well, into who knows what."
"You mean you don't know?"
"And I really don't like not knowing."
"That sounds kind of like a balck hole."
The Doctor shook his head, which would ahve left anyone feeling unappreciated, but Rose was used to the Doctor's denial of her ideas. He was smarter than her. It could be a little, well, excessive, and a lot of times came off as a bit arrogant. But it didn't bother Rose. It was a part of the Doctor's charm.
"No. A black hole is a dying star. It collapses in on itself, compresses space, eats it whole, consumes whole galaxies. This is like punching whole in reality itself. We're all going to be tugged into the void if we can't stop it. Or, you know, eternal relay loop. Black holes, are a crash of collateral space, pulling it all in. The TARDIS blows up, either we fall into nothingness or we're set into Cercalaurus, or a Neutral Galaxy Collapse Timing Malfunction Reversal Relay Loop, depends on how you look at it."
"What?"
" Every world is sucked up into paradoxical repeat cycle. Some moment, exactly the same, always the same, keeps playing over and over simultaneously and nothing can ever change it. Ever."
"Doctor...."
Rose's eyes aren't fixed on the Doctor, but rather at some area directly over his shoulder. Her face is blank, like she's staring off into space and not listening to a word he says. Noticing this the Doctor looks at her frowningly.
"Are you listening to me at all?"
Rose's focus doesn't shift, but her face is now clearly a picture of terrified awe, a painting of wonderment and fear at the same time, the very colors of her emotions mixing together.
"No, Doctor, that statue just moved..."
The Doctor turns, following her gaze, standing almost where the TARDIS had been, no more than 15 feet away, was a statue of an angel, its statue hands cupped over its face of stone, as if it shed silent tears into them. The Doctor, now looking at the angel, turns back to Rose, confused.
"Moved?"
"Yeah, like I was looking at it, then I looked away-" Rose turns her head away form the statue, miming her prior self. When she turns back to the statue, her eyes widen, their bronze irises now larger than Gallifrey's suns.
"Oh my god."
She grabs the Doctor's hand, forcefully turning him to look at the statue, pointing at it accusingly.
"Doctor, it did it again."
The Doctor steps in front of Rose and puts an arm out protectively, saying quietly,
"Rose, stay back."
He reaches into the inner folds of his suit, withdrawing his trusty sonic screwdriver. The screwdriver, being "sonic" whirs in its signature little way. The Doctor holds it up, reading it like a book invisible to the eye.
"Nothing... just stone."
"But Doctor, it moved, I saw it!"
The Doctor, seriously frowning now holds his screwdriver near his face and looks at it in the affectionately concerned way one would a hurt child.
"I know...."
"Doctor!"
Rose taps the Doctor's arm furiously. He looks up, bewildered from his beloved sonic screwdriver.
"Look."
The lone angel has once again moved closer to them, a silent scream frozen upon its face, contorted in a vicious snarl, its hands like claws snatching at the air.
The Doctor grabs Rose, and thrusts her backward with a sense of urgency. He too moves back from the angel, now standing mere 3 feet from them. He puts his sonic screwdriver carefully back in his suit pocket. Rose hides slightly behind the Doctor. Trying to gather all of the bravery she can muster, she steps out from behind him, acting far more bold than she really feels. The Doctor is like that. He makes you want to impress him, never let him down. He makes you act a certain way. Rose was very accustomed to this and she accepted it. Again, the Doctor had a unique charm, it was part of what she liked about him.
"Doctor, what is it?" She winces inconspicuously, her voice sounds small and scared. It wavers and shakes. It was not at all how she meant to sound.
"I don't know, and, again, I really don't like not knowing..."
He backs up, stretching out a hand to press Rose back.
"Step back, but keep your eyes on it."
The pair moved backward slowly, the gruesome angel figure was kept in sight. Not one soul was brave enough to blink. Once they had a gap the size of a football field between them and the angel, the Doctor took Rose's hand and pulled her into the city of Los Angeles.
The damp air of the alleyway smelled of old. The spires of steel that rose around them seemed to stretch on forever. Rose shivered. She was only wearing a pink blouse with dark green trim and some charcoal gray jeans with her favorite flat white tenis. Her hair was slightly wavy, she'd curled it not long ago. It fell just below her shoulders. She was no match for the Los Angeles chill.
"Doctor, what are we going to do?"
The Doctor himself seemed to have no idea of what to do. Then a great smile spread across his face. He turned to Rose, something new dawning on him.
"What we always do."
He grabbed her hand, pulling her forward and she let out a girly shriek of surprise. They dashed down the deserted alley into the crowded street, the fog closing in behind them.