Some Go Mad

The noise hadn’t stopped but it had dulled and it no longer sounded like a sick dog. Rose still had the sense that they were moving. The man, still standing at the complicated controls, seemed unaffected. It must have been like sailing, Rose reasoned. This man…this Doctor man, as he had introduced himself, must be very used to the pitching and rumbling of his…

Of his what?

“You want to ask what it is,” the man stated, nodding his head with each word. He flicked a whole row of switches upwards then turned to face the frightened girl.

Rose had no response. She shifted where she stood, avoiding looking at the man and trying to keep her legs steady enough to hold herself up. She heard him sigh and knew he had turned again to the strange controls.

The Doctor bustled around the steering controls, for all of the twisting knobs and frayed wire were indeed in control of the steering. His eyes flew between his immediate task and the brown-haired girl standing a handful of feet away from him. Her eyes continuously glanced at the doors that he had led her through and he knew that she was, at that moment, wondering just how sturdy the lock that held them closed was.

“It’s a ship.” He finally said, focusing fully on one of the many screens that decorated the exotic place that he had just named his ship.

“It’s a Police Box.” Rose shot back weakly.

The Doctor grinned. “Right you are, Rose Tyler.”

He stopped.

Rose continued to stare at the doors, oblivious to the man’s words. And, honestly, she wouldn’t have even cared about the misnaming if she had heard it.

The Doctor, however, was not granted such a luxury as unawareness of his mistake. His eyes were on Rose and only Rose.

It was funny, he supposed, running into a girl like this. She held absolutely no similarities to the girl he had known long ago. She was small, clearly younger, her hair very near black, and her eyes a chocolate brown. She held herself with a constant nervousness, a bubbling self-doubt that seemed to never weaken.

Far from the spirited blonde that her name brought to mind.

Rose, feeling an unrelenting stare aimed her way, turned her head. She caught a glimpse of the stranger’s face before he turned away from her. She took a physical step back at what she saw. It had almost been the same look that had clouded his eyes back on the London streets. His eyes had dimmed from the sparkling brown that he had showed her in Jacob Hammond’s office. But her mind reeled further back to a face that was much closer to her.

Rose had been nine when her uncle had stood over his wife’s coffin.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice much more gentle compared to the first time she had voiced the question.

The man turned his attention on Rose once more, leaning back against the console. His smile was back in place. “The Doctor. Didn’t I already clear that up?”

“The Doctor?” Rose asked as if she had heard wrong.

“The Doctor.” He nodded his head in confirmation.

“Doctor who?”

“Just the Doctor.” He grinned at her as if keeping her from an inside joke.

“No,” Rose denied. All of her feelings of being uncomfortable and frightened began fading to frustration and denial. “you’re a temp.”

“Not a Doctor, the Doctor.”

“Look, I don’t care what you call yourself. Just take me home!”

“Well, now you’re just being difficult and rude,”

Rose’s jaw dropped open. “You’ve just kidnapped me and I’m the one that’s being difficult and rude?”

“Well…”

“I’m leaving.” Rose announced bluntly. She strode with determination towards the door that she now hoped wasn’t locked too tightly.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“And why not?” Rose ground out through gritted teeth. Her hand was gripping the handle to the door in a death grip. The Doctor only replied with a hesitant look. In truth, part of him wanted to see what Rose’s reaction to what was outside would be. Many in the past had simply denied it and called him a madman. Others had stared in awe and accepted it in stride. This girl was unreadable.

The silence was all the encouragement that Rose needed. She pulled.

And she fell back, not enough strength left in her lungs to even gasp.

She stumbled, her feet catching on nothing and throwing her to the ground. The pale girl landed in front of the mini flight of stairs that led to the ship’s main platform. Her head was inches from splitting open on the top step’s glass corner.

“But…but that’s space!” she gasped, one shaking finger pointing at the yawning darkness, pinpricked with light, which enveloped the Police Box. For even Rose’s scattered mind could register the outside appearance of the doors as they finished swinging inwards with a bang.

“’It’ll be a bit of a shock,’” The Doctor stepped forward to stand beside Rose, hands placed in his pockets. “That’s what I was going to say.”

Rose didn’t respond. Her eyes were stinging as she continued to stare helplessly outside. This was all a dream. It was a bad, bad dream born from the nerves about that day’s job interview. That would explain Mr. Smith’s presence. Any moment now she would wake up and the first thing she would do was check on Matty. Then she would peek in to Andrew’s and Daniel’s rooms on the way to her father’s office. There he would sit, book still open in front of him, not even having turned the page. Finally she would have a drink of ice cold water, go to bed, and dream about something normal like famous actors or giant bugs.

She was not in space. That was simply impossible.

“I had a friend named Rose,”

For all of the fear, confusion, and denial storming in Rose’s mind, something in the man’s voice made her look up at him. His own gaze was fixed on the scattered stars. To Rose, he looked as if the ancient pyramids themselves stood spread out before him. He was entranced. Maybe it was because she wanted to have that look or maybe it was because she had finally accepted the events as being some sort of lucid dream, but Rose looked at those same stars again with a new found calm.

“Was she the same friend that taught you not to leave the brakes on?”

The Doctor laughed and grinned down at her. “Bet I like you,”

“I’m brilliant,” Rose replied dryly after remembering his words to her when they first met on the street.

The Doctor clapped, spun, and took his place again at the ship’s console. Rose turned her head to watch him. He flicked more switches, pushed more buttons, and, at one point, kicked a lever that was placed underneath the main controls. Rose stared at the rows of pedals and the forests of wires wondering all the while how this man had any idea what he was doing. He did know what he was doing, didn’t he? Rose thought with a jolt.

The Doctor hit another button and the doors slammed shut. Rose jumped to her feet at the sound of the loud, finalizing boom. Another length of whirring struck up before stopping abruptly just a few moments later.

The Doctor turned to regard Rose with his widest grin yet. He reminded Rose very much of Matty when he found a new hiding place.

“Now, Rose Jackson, have you ever seen the birth of a star?” his hand hit one last button in a practiced manner and Rose heard the doors creaking open behind her. She gave the man in front of her a skeptical look. He had to be insane. He nodded in encouragement. Slowly, Rose turned.

The colors were dazzling. Clouds of shining dusk twirled in a frozen dance, dipping into grand canyons and towering in pillars that blew away any rivalries they had with the grandest structures on Earth. The blue and red backlight gave everything a glowing life that seemed to wash with warmth and cold all at the same time. Pricks of light, both distant and close, surrounded the colors in a sea of light that left Rose feeling blinded. At the center of everything, there spun one point of light, small but demanding in attention. Rose was unsure if its surface was shifting or if it was simply spinning in its own dance, miles faster than the one happening around it.

Rose could only stare silently, afraid that the smallest of noises would turn the beauty into a monster that would easily swallow her whole without even a thought. If this was a dream, she found herself suddenly wishing that she wouldn’t wake. Even as she made the wish, though, she knew just how unnecessary it was.

“You’re not dreaming.”

The soft confirmation pulled Rose from her drowning daze as if being pulled from a cold ocean. She saw that her feet had unconsciously carried her closer to the open doors and the strange Doctor man stood beside her, watching her. She also became aware of the wetness drawing clear lines down her cheeks.

Unwilling to face the man beside her just as much as she was unwilling to take her eyes from the sight that same man had given her, Rose kept her eyes forward.

“This isn’t all that’s out there.” The Doctor continued in the same careful voice. “Space is something of an unsolvable puzzle for humans – at least in this moment of time. Even in the future, even on different worlds, I’ve seen it drive men mad. It’s happened to more than I can count. Some of them were the strongest beings I’ve known. But it still wins. The unknown is still too much once it’s known.”

Rose vaguely felt a warm hand wrap around hers. She squeezed back, wanting nothing more than an anchor at that moment.

“Some let it consume them while others run away. Rose Jackson,” he pulled on her hand, gently demanding her attention. She turned her head towards him and he saw her tears still running free.

He didn’t need to ask the question. His voice grew quieter, smaller. “We’ll go home.”

He pulled her away from the doors so that her could properly close and secure them.

Rose was silent.

The Doctor had seen Time and Space because the Doctor was something extraordinary. To anyone and everyone on Earth, on many planets, he was something different – something alien. And of the subject that was Time and Space, the Doctor knew many things.

But he understood little.

One thing the Doctor knew was that Time never stood still. Time moved, it lived, and it tempted. Because for all of Time’s vastness, for all of its eternity, Time was a lonely thing.
The Doctor had learned many things in his travels across that vastness; he had seen many things when he himself had looked into that eternity as a child. One of those things was to ignore Time’s temptations. You never played with time.

Because Time always won.

Never in his years had Doctor really acknowledged what he knew about the tricks of Time. Never had he turned away from a challenge presented by Time. And never had the Doctor beaten Time.

As the Doctor, experienced and scarred, looked at Rose Jackson, her eyes still wet and still watching the doors as if she could see through them, he somehow knew that he would soon lose again.

The Doctor knew, but he didn’t understand.