40. A Life Like That

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~unedited~

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Once the Doctor had everyone safe inside the old church, he began shouting orders for everyone to check the rest of the doors and of course Jackie followed him and started shouting. Rose was keeping herself busy, checking doors and windows, trying to distract from the creeping thoughts in her head, it was mostly ‘what happened to Ella’ she heard the Doctor shout at her mom. A man approached the Doctor just as he said, “I should have done that ages ago.”

“My dad was out there,”

“You can mourn him later. Right now, we've got to concentrate on keeping ourselves alive.” The Doctor was just reciting words from a script inside his head, the same one he uses in these situations, but the words never resonated with him until now.

“My dad had,” the man started to say but the Doctor cut him off with a sentence that physically hurt him.

“There's nothing I can do for him.” Or her.

“No, but he had this phone thing. I can't get it to work. I keep getting this voice.” He handed over the huge mobile phone and the Doctor put it up to his ear. “Watson come here. I need you. Watson come here. I need you.”

The Doctor had a small smile on his face because of what he heard, “that's the very first phone call. Alexander Graham Bell. I don't think the telephone's going to be much use.”

“But someone must have called the police.”

“Police can't help you now,” the Doctor projected his voice so everyone in the church could hear him. “No one can. Nothing in this universe can harm those things, time's been damaged, and they've come to sterilize the wound.” He slowly approached Rose and she realized he was talking to her, “by consuming everything in sight.”

She gulped, “is this because … is this my fault?” the look he gave her told her that it was her fault but that he also didn’t blame her. He didn’t need to, she blamed herself enough, she turned and walked up to the altar to sulk. The Doctor went to the room towards the entrance of the church where there was a window, there was smoke rising from somewhere in the city. He needed time to think about how they were going to get out of this and get Ella back.

A car kept driving by and disappearing as it rounded the corner of the church, an idea came to the Doctor, I could fix this! … but could I? Ella would come back but Pete would die. As if his thoughts summoned the man he walked into the room and joined him by the window. “There’s smoke coming up from the city but no sirens. I don’t think it’s just us. I think these things are all over the place … maybe the whole world.”

The Doctor stayed silent as he watched the car disappear again, Pete noticed it finally, “was that a car,” the Time Lord was debating and weighing his options, not much to think about but it caused a small headache to spring up. Rose or Ella … maybe I could think of a way to get her back and Rose could keep her father. The Doctor watched the timelines as they raced across his mind, not impossible but still out of reach.

“It’s not important, don’t worry about it.” He finally decided and his hearts broke at the possibility that he probably wouldn’t see Ella again. He couldn’t be responsible for Rose losing her father twice and he knew which one Ella would have chosen. She would gladly be forever lost if Rose could meet her father and have a life with him. Just then the thought of going home without Ella made his body go numb, Jackie was definitely going to slap him.

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