Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘You can’t do that, I wasn’t…’ the Doctor glanced at the time rotor and away from the red headed woman who had just appeared in the Tardis. He didn’t understand. It should be impossible, whatever she’d just done, people couldn’t just materialise in the Tardis. Sure the Tardis could materialise around you but that was a whole other matter. He didn’t need to look at the time rotor as it bobbed up and down to know they were still in flight. The Old Girl was whirring away and he could feel the movement under his feet but that just made the situation all the more impossible, something which he tried to explain to the stranger as he gestured at the rotor, ‘we’re in flight, that is - that is physically impossible, how did-’

She cut him off with a harsh voice and an ever harsher look on her face. ‘Tell me where I am. I demand you tell me, right now, where am I?’

He stared at her, his mouth agape for a second before quietly replying, ‘inside the Tardis’.

Apparently his answer, though truthful and really did explain everything in his mind, wasn’t satisfactory for the woman. ‘The what?

‘The Tardis,’ he repeated just as calmly and as quietly as before, whereas the woman only got louder and more demanding.

‘The what?’

‘The Tardis,’ he repeated once again, now with a bit of bite to his tone. He started to edge around the console to fiddle with a few controls, checking their settings as he tried to work out how the hell this woman could just appear on board.

‘The what?!’ She asked incredulously as she followed a little.

Leaning on the console he looked over at her and shot back, ‘it’s called the Tardis’.

‘That’s not even a proper word. You’re just saying things,’ she loudly told him.

The Doctor moved a bit closer to her, his voice lowered once again though still with a hiss of annoyance as he asked, ‘how did you get in here?’

‘Well, obviously, when you kidnapped me,’ she accused, looking absolutely furious with the Time Lord. He gazed at her, his brow still drawn in confusion, as his eyes trailed over her appearance taking her all in as though it would give him a clue or perhaps some answers. ‘Who was it? Who’s paying you? Was it Nerys?’ She fired at him. ‘Oh my God she has finally got me back. This has got Nerys written all over it.’

Scratching the back of his head, he stared at her bewildered by her ramblings. ‘Who the hell is Nerys?’

‘Your best friend!’

He brushed over her statement because he only saw it going into a repeat of the back and forth’s they’d already had and returned to the question he was going to ask before she started going on about this Nerys person. ‘Hold on. Wait a minute. What are you dressed like that for?’

‘I’m going ten pin bowling,’ she replied with what the Doctor observed as an eerie calmness because he’d known this woman for less than a minute and she had never spoken so quietly. This quietness was soon forgotten in her irate exclamation of, ‘why do you think, dumbo! I was halfway up the aisle’. He stared at her as she had a go at him in a manner that would make Jackie Tyler proud before catching himself and working his way around the console, fiddling with a few controls and still looking for some sort of explanation as she continued on with her rant. ‘I’ve waited all my life for this. I was just seconds away and then you - I dunno, you drug me or something!’

‘I haven’t done anything,’ the Doctor insisted, looking at the furious bride from around the time rotor. She of course didn’t believe him.

‘I’m having the police on you,’ she stated, stomping closer to him. ‘Me and my husband, as soon as he is my husband, we’re gonna sue the living backside off you!’

It was at that moment that the bride-to-be spotted the white wooden doors of the Tardis and the Doctor, distracted with the controls, didn’t catch sight of her as she dashed towards them as quickly as she could in her wedding dress. It was her footsteps clanging on the grating that caught his attention, his head shooting around to see her nearing the doors. He yelled at her trying to make her stop but why would she listen to the man she thought had kidnapped her? She swung back both of the doors but luckily didn’t immediately step outside. Instead she gaped at the sight before her. The sight of the supernova. It’s blues and purples having faded into red, pink and gold meaning that even the colours of it reminded him of Rose as he came to stand beside the bride, explaining this obviously bizarre experience to her.

‘Who are you?’ She asked once he had told her a little of the Tardis.

He took in a breath. ‘I’m the Doctor. You?’

‘Donna,’ she whispered.

After eyeing her up and down once more he said, ‘human?’ It was more of a statement than a question because he had a very good inkling she was but it was always best to confirm.

‘Yeah,’ she said as though it was obvious and then clearly thought better of it as she added, ‘is that optional?’

‘Well, it is for me.’ He stared out at the bright colours and the beauty before him trying not to think of the reason he was there. The Doctor felt Donna’s gaze upon him, knowing she was looking at him for any physical differences, not that she’d find any. Her gaze was only brief and soon she too was eyeing the supernova as he confirmed that he was an alien, or at least in her eyes he was. Donna claimed it was cold with the doors open, which he saw through immediately, but obliged and closed them anyway before shooting off towards the console, his next words spilling out of his mouth rapidly. ‘I don’t understand it, and I understand everything! This - this can’t happen.’ He spun round to see that Donna had followed him up the ramp and continued directing his fervent ramble at her. ‘There is no way a human being can lock itself onto the Tardis and transport itself inside. It must be…’ Trailing off he turned back to the console and reached inside his tool bag he had hung up on the underside of it, pulling out an ophthalmoscope before facing Donna once more. He continued voicing his thoughts aloud as he used the optometrist tool to check her eyes, getting very much in her personal space as she stood still before him rather bewildered by what was happening and what he was babbling about. ‘It must be some sort of subatomic connection, something in the temporal field. Maybe something pulling you into alignment with the chronon shell. Maybe something macrobinding your DNA with the interior matrix.’ He lowered the tool, gesturing wildly with his hands as he spurted out more techno babble that went right over Donna’s head. ‘Maybe a genetic-’ She slapped him right across the cheek, stopping the Doctor in his tracks. ‘What was that for?’ He asked indignantly, his voice rather high with the shock of being hit.

‘Get me to the church!’ She yelled, uncaring if she’d hurt him because she was angry with the entire situation and didn’t want to deal with whatever nonsense was coming out of the Doctor’s gob.

‘Right. Fine.’ He dropped the ophthalmoscope back into the tool bag and dashed around the console ready to punch in the coordinates for her destination. ‘I don’t want you here anyway. Where is this wedding?’

‘St. Mary’s, Haven Road, Chiswick, London, England, Earth, the Solar System,’ she listed off, her voice lowered a little after her yell but her frustration was still clearly evident. Then her gaze fell upon the railing, the railing that still had Rose’s purple shirt slung over it from their morning on the Tardis before they went to Jackie’s, before they saw the ghosts, before she became trapped in the parallel world. ‘I knew it,’ Donna stated in an accusatory tone as she strode over and snatched the shirt up from the railing before going over to the Doctor to continue her accusations. ‘Acting all innocent. I’m not the first, am I?’ She held up the shirt she had clutched in her fingers so he could see as she angrily asked, ‘how many women have you abducted?’

He glanced up at her confused at what she was talking about, then his gaze dropped to the purple shirt and the Doctor’s face fell. Images of Rose flickered before his eyes. He saw her standing in his arms on the grating, a big smile on her lips, excited about the trip to Barcelona. He felt those soft, plush lips on his when he kissed her to stop her teasing. He remembered walking her backwards until she was up against the railing, his fingers undoing the buttons on that shirt and sliding it off her body so he could caress the beautiful skin hidden beneath. Her fingers were on him too. His tie was loose and draped around his neck as she undid a few of the buttons on his shirt and then her warm touch ignited his skin when she stroked over his shoulders and chest delicately. Her hands came to rest over the hearts that would always be hers before he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the console room, the shirt remaining behind, forgotten on the railing until now. All of the imagery only took about a second for the Doctor to process and he swallowed a little thickly at the reminder of Rose. His eyes were dark and stormy when he addressed Donna and corrected her accusations. ‘That was my partner’s.’

She clearly didn’t catch his look and replied rather sarcastically, ‘where is she then, popped out for a spacewalk?’

‘She’s gone,’ he said quietly, admitting it out loud for the first time. It made it seem more real, more true, but it was the truth and they had just said goodbye.

‘Gone where?’ Donna asked, her voice incredulous.

The Doctor gazed at the shirt in sadness for a moment before sniffing and looking away at the console, pointlessly fiddling with one of the controls, simply trying to distract himself because it was the only way he knew how to cope. ‘I lost her.’

Donna, still not reading him, yelled, ‘well, you can hurry up and lose me!’ Finally she began to catch onto the Doctor’s change in demeanour and lowered her voice a little as she asked, ‘how do you mean, “lost”?’

Glancing up at the woman with a dark and dangerous look in his eye, he stalked towards her and grabbed Rose’s shirt out of her grasp. He placed it on the jump seat before going around the console and pulling the dematerialisation lever. ‘Right! Chiswick!’ He announced with vigour, moving the topic swiftly on as he always did when he didn’t want to talk about something.

Donna stared after him but didn’t say anything else and soon she was hastily making her way down the ramp and through the wooden doors when he told her they had landed. She stepped outside and took one quick glance around before her complaints started up again. There wasn’t a church in sight. Instead they appeared to have landed in a courtyard of some sort around the back of office buildings and flats. The Doctor, however, was more concerned about the Tardis; he’d felt the unease over their bond and was standing just beyond the doors stroking the edge of her wooden panelling in a soothing motion. Donna heard him muttering about something being wrong with her and glanced back to see him caressing the blue box before he dashed inside still talking away to the ship. It was then that she took in the full size of the Tardis or more the full size of the exterior of the Tardis compared to the interior. As the Doctor fired out questions as to what Donna could have possibly done to have appeared in the Old Girl let alone affect her as she had, the bride paced around the outside of the ship. She wasn’t listening to the Doctor at all as her hands ran over the blue panels in utter bewilderment of the size difference. Once she’d made a lap of the exterior she popped her head back though the doors as if to confirm that the inside was as big as she thought it had been. It was. She stumbled backwards, her hands over her mouth, her eyes welling up a little at the frightening absurdity of it.

It was at this moment, as the Doctor was describing what a Slitheen was and asking if her husband-to-be was possibly one of them, when he eyed her through the open doors. He caught her shocked expression just before she turned and ran away, too overwhelmed by everything that had just happened to cope with it. Legging it out of the ship he easily caught up to her, calling out her name as he followed.

‘Leave me alone. I just want to get married,’ she told him, her run turning more into a quick walk with her wedding dress labouring the action.

He strode alongside her, his hands casually in his pockets, as he asked her to, ‘come back to the Tardis’. She adamantly refused to do such a thing because the “box was too weird” to which he pointed out, ‘it’s…bigger on the inside, that’s all’.

‘Oh, that’s all!’ The sarcasm was easily heard in her tone, let alone visible in the look she gave him before she checked her watch. ‘Ten past three,’ she said, her voice a little choked up at the reality of missing what should have been the greatest day of her life. ‘I’m gonna miss it.’

The Doctor thought she was missing a rather easy solution to her problem. ‘Can’t you phone them, tell them where you are?’

‘How do I do that?’

‘Haven’t you got a mobile?’ In his mind he was being perfectly reasonable. Apparently in Donna’s he was being anything but.

She stopped immediately and stared at him, admonishing his suggestion with vehement sarcasm. ‘I’m in my wedding dress. It doesn’t have pockets. Who has pockets? Have you ever seen a bride with pockets? When I went to my fitting at Chez Alison, the one thing I forgot to say was, “give me pockets!”’ Donna yelled the final word of her rant at the Time Lord who looked rather like a school boy having been just told off.

He nodded, very much in understanding of her predicament, because he and Rose had been through a rather similar situation. Except, of course, it had been over a regular dress and not a wedding dress and it had been more of a conversation rather than him being argued with and shouted at, something which the woman before him now seemed incapable of going without for five minutes. ‘This man you’re marrying, what’s his name?’

‘Lance,’ she answered, her tone now filled with affection.

Tilting his head to the side as he thought about what sort of a man this Lance would have to be to marry such a combative woman he commented, ‘good luck Lance’.

Donna’s calmer demeanour flicked like a switch and she was back to chastising him again in no time. ‘Oi!’ She pointed a threatening finger at him as she went on angrily, ‘no stupid Martian is gonna stop me from getting married. To hell with you!’

The Doctor watched as she ran off. ‘I’m - I’m not - I’m not - I’m not from Mars,’ he feebly protested before tailing her.

Together they ran onto the high street where they attempted to attract the attention of a Taxi cab. The Doctor tried not to notice the sight of the refurbished Henriks as he darted by, failing to get the driver of one of the cabs to look his way as he waved madly whilst Donna hollered at them. He thought it was strange that even though many cabs were driving down the street none seemed willing to stop. Donna put it down to the fact that she was in a wedding dress and the cabbies believed she was either in fancy dress, drunk or in drag. One cab did stop when he thought to whistle, putting his finger and thumb between his lips to do so and producing a long and piercing sound. They both clambered inside, after the taxi ground to a halt before them, but that was when they encountered their next problem: neither had any money.

The pair were swiftly shooed out of the cab with Donna ranting at the roadside and glaring after the taxi. ‘I’ll have him. I’ve got his number. I’ll have him. Talk about the Christmas spirit.’

‘Is it Christmas?’ The Doctor asked, his voice a little high in disbelief as he let himself look around the street properly, finding it was indeed decorated for the season. As he turned on the spot to take it all in he saw that behind him the windows of Henriks proudly displayed some of their fashion collection and it too was covered in tinsel and twinkling lights. His first time outside of the Tardis since he’d lost her and he’d managed to end up here of all places. The universe really was cruel. Practically just a few feet below him and a few years prior and he’d be seeing his pink and yellow human for the first time. He’d be grabbing her hand and telling her to run and boy could she run. Donna then unintentionally made it worse by first mocking the Doctor, for not knowing it was Christmas, and then by telling him of the date. It was Christmas Eve. He wished himself a crappy birthday and tried not to imagine what the day could have been like had Rose still been there. Luckily he didn’t get to torture himself too long because Donna lightly hit him and pointed to the nearby telephone box before making her way over to it. He used his sonic so she could use it before he told her he was going to get some money. Having a credit stick may be all well and good but it was no use on Earth in the twenty-first century.

There was a man already using the nearby cash machine in the wall and the Doctor waited impatiently behind, bouncing a little on his toes and looking over his shoulder at the bride in the phone box. He was an impatient man in any case but this was amplified by the flight risk he perceived Donna to be. She’d already run from him once so it was highly likely that she would again but he couldn’t just let her leave, not after her impossible appearance that he still needed to get to the bottom of. Finally the machine let out a whirring sound as it printed the receipt for the man in front and the Doctor darted to the machine before he’d fully stepped out of the way. The Time Lord gave a glance around then surreptitiously used his sonic screwdriver to withdraw some funds. Had he got his psychic paper on him he would’ve used it to access the bank account UNIT had set up for him all those years ago when he first started working for them. He wasn’t entirely sure how much was in there but assumed it must be a reasonable sum as he hardly ever dipped into it and the interest rates would only add to the amount. He wondered if his most recent involvement with UNIT in France with Kate Stewart had also added to his account; it wasn’t like he was constantly working for them anymore so wasn’t sure he was even on the payroll. Either way it didn’t matter because his psychic paper must have been in his coat as he couldn’t find it in his suit pockets when he gave himself a quick pat down.

The Doctor took the notes when they appeared from the machine and was putting them in his pocket when something caught his eye. He did a double take, hardly believing that the world would be so cruel as to throw another reminder of his time with Rose in his face. Three robotic Santas were slowly walking in his direction playing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen on brass instruments. He’d met those Santas exactly a year ago when he’d regenerated and they were after his regeneration energy. They certainly wouldn’t be getting their hands on any now, not unless they caused him a lot of harm to make him regenerate. He was puzzled as to why they were here and why they seemed interested in him. It wasn’t like he was releasing extra energy into the atmosphere anymore but perhaps they had picked up on his Time Lord scent.

It turned out it wasn’t him they were after at all. It was Donna. He spun around as he heard her yell for a cab which she was soon clambering into after firing another annoyed remark at him. After their trouble in getting a taxi to stop initially it was strange how willingly this one did though when the Doctor glanced at the driver he found that it wasn’t strange at all. The cabbie was another robotic Santa. He wasn’t sure why they wanted Donna but he had an inkling that it involved whatever had caused her appearance in the Tardis earlier.

After helplessly yelling her name as the cab pulled away from the curb, the Doctor looked back at the Santas who had stopped and were looking straight back at him. They all lowered their instruments, holding them more like the weapons he knew they were. Rose had told him as such after her run in with them whilst out Christmas shopping the previous year. They were going to tail him if he went after Donna now. He needed a distraction. Pulling his sonic screwdriver back out he aimed it at the cash machine and instructed it to expel all the money it contained. Notes were fired out rapidly, swirling and floating through the air like massive snowflakes before landing on the pavement. Of course it wasn’t everyday that a cash machine behaved in such a way, and human beings did love money, so a crowd was soon gathering, each attempting to either catch the notes in mid air or gather them up from the ground. It was the perfect distraction and the Doctor legged it back to his ship before the Santas could get by the people to follow.

Luckily enough for Donna, he’d been performing a scan of her in the Tardis to try and understand her random appearance. This had given him some biometric data, enabling him to track her down and give chase. Unluckily, although the Old Girl could fly like any other ship, her preferred method to get from a to b was dematerialising and then materialising at their destination which wasn’t exactly beneficial when, as he saw on the monitor, the cab Donna was in was driving along the motorway at speed. The Old Girl was greatly protesting this other method of travelling, sending sparks firing at the Time Lord, as the time rotor bobbed up and down in flight. He whacked her controls with his mallet telling her to behave but the next moment found himself on his back on the grating having been flung there when she bounced off the tarmac just a few cars behind the taxi to get him back. ‘Stop it,’ he growled as he jumped back upright, fiddling with a few more controls only to receive another shower of sparks. ‘Oi!’ The Doctor complained, taking his hands off the console to root around in his pockets, hoping to find some string. ‘The sooner you behave, the sooner we can save Donna and the sooner we can stop, alright?’ It was more of a huff than a hum which he received in reply but he knew the Tardis had got the message even with her attitude. Upon finding the string he began knotting it around some of the controls so he would be able to operate them without being by the console. His traitorous mind kept reminding him of how much easier this would have been had Rose been on board. She could have been by the console piloting the ship, with far fewer complaints too knowing her relationship with the Old Girl, whilst he got Donna out of the cab. Everything would be a lot easier if she was still here.

The Tardis lined herself up with the side of the taxi just as the Doctor pulled open her front doors, the end of the string in his hand ready to pull or slacken depending on what direction they needed to go to keep up with the vehicle. The wind buffeted him as he stood there jamming himself into the doorway as best as he could so he didn’t fall out, such a thing would really be a tragic cause for a regeneration.

‘Open the door!’ He yelled and then had to repeat himself as Donna couldn’t hear him, not that she could actually do much about opening the door in the first place as she informed him that it was locked. Grabbing his sonic from his pocket, with a little more difficulty than normal as he tried to keep himself in place, he aimed it at the door and unlocked it, also apparently unlocking the window which Donna pushed down to speak to him easier.

‘Santa’s a robot!’ She shouted at him, as if he didn’t already know. He didn’t have time to get into all of that anyway, so instead he told her to open the door again. ‘What for?’ She asked.

‘You’ve got to jump!’

‘I’m not blinking flip jumping!’ She yelled shrilly. ‘I’m supposed to be getting married!’

Then the taxi pulled ahead, the robot Santa putting its foot down and speeding off down the motorway leaving the Doctor staring after it. He’d seen this eventuality play out though and pulled on the string to send the Old Girl after the cab. The ride was a bumpy one with the underside of the Tardis scraping on the top of a car as they travelled over the top of it a little too closely. That bump was nothing in comparison to what happened next. She lined up with the side of the taxi and hit the tarmac once again as she got into position, nearly sending the Doctor flying out of the doors with the jarring impact. Thankfully he managed to find some purchase and gripped onto her wooden panelling as the Old Girl settled before he eased back into a similar position as he had been in before. Using his sonic he disabled the robotic Santa driving the taxi so the vehicle would maintain its current speed on the road and not break away from him again.

‘Listen to me! You’ve got to jump!’ The Doctor insisted.

Donna, however, was very adamant about doing no such thing. ‘I’m not jumping on a motorway!’

Why did no one ever listen to him? They didn’t have time for explanations but he covered the most pressing points as quickly as he could in order to show her why she needed to follow his directions. ‘Whatever that thing is, it needs you. And whatever it needs you for, it’s not good. Now come on!’

‘I’m in my wedding dress!’ She yelled at him as though that simple fact would make him rethink his entire plan for getting her out of there.

‘Yes, you look lovely,’ he shouted back with exasperation before bellowing at her to, ‘come on,’ once more.

Finally Donna opened the door and the Doctor opened his arms, ready to catch her when she jumped, but jumping was a lot harder when you were in a moving vehicle that was speeding down the motorway. Now that she had the door open she could now see the tarmac whizzing by just beneath her feet and feel the wind buffeting her entire body. It was all too much. ‘I can’t do it,’ she cried out.

He eyed the bride with as much assurance as he could muster. ‘Trust me.’

Donna caught his gaze before asking a question that made the Time Lord’s hearts stutter. ‘Is that what you said to her? Your partner, did she trust you?’

The Doctor was pulled out of the sojourn into the grief which he felt whenever he was reminded of Rose by the ridiculousness of the question. Did his partner trust him? Of course Rose trusted him. They were a team, a pair, a duo. She was the Holmes to his Watson, the Shiver to his Shake, the Lewis to his Morse. But then he realised the true implications to Donna’s words. She thought that “lost” meant Rose was dead. She thought that this was the life he led, the life that they had led, and that Rose had died during some harebrained scheme of his. He pushed down the thought that she nearly had died and focused on the fact that she hadn’t and that Rose Tyler was oh so alive. She was living her life day after day, an excellent life he was sure, and she got to spend those days with her family. It was a brilliant outcome and he tried to assure Donna of such. ‘Yes she did. And she is not dead. She is so alive. Now jump!’ His words clearly hit home because the next moment Donna was hitting him, screaming as she did so, and causing the pair to fall backwards and onto the grating with a thump. He exhaled in relief as Donna looked down at him in shock that she had actually made it. ‘Come on Girl, take us away,’ he said aloud to the ship, receiving a brief odd look from the bride still on top of him, before the doors slammed shut and the pair were jolted a little as the Tardis took off towards the sky, finally leaving the motorway behind.

Donna decided not to ask and began to push herself upright a little unsteadily in the juddering console room. She clung to the railing by the door, feeling a bit safer with something to hold onto, as the Doctor jumped up. He was hardly affected by the slightly bumpy ride which Donna was about to comment on but found her eyes widening at the view before her. She pointed a finger behind the Time Lord and said, ‘is it - she - whatever…’ She rolled her eyes at her own corrections as she tried to refer to the machine they were in. ‘…is it meant to be doing that?’

Turning on the spot, his eyes also widened at the sight Donna was pointing at. ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he muttered with annoyance, running over to the console which had caught fire in a couple of places. The flames weren’t drastic but they would soon spread if he didn't handle them. He pulled up one of the floor panels that hid a small storage area below, leaning into it and rooting around for the fire extinguisher he knew he had somewhere. Bits and pieces, including the brown backpack and the traffic cone like forcefield, went flying behind him as he flung them out of the way, mumbling about the Old Girl being attention seeking and a drama queen.

From the relative safety of her position by the doors, Donna watched on, a bit frightened by it all because a fire was not good in anyone’s books and she was in some mad sort of spaceship. This was all chaotic enough without the addition of burning or crashing. She heard the Doctor yell for the extractor fans to turn on which she thought was a good call as the smoke was starting to build up, covering the domed ceiling of the room. The smoke, however, didn’t dissipate; it only seemed to waft around as more was produced. It was then that the Doctor leapt back up, a silver fire extinguisher in hand, and he began firing carbon dioxide out of the canister, quelling the flames that were burning through the controls on the console. Of course the CO2 only added to the smoke in the room and soon Donna heard a string of lyrical mumblings coming from the alien which she couldn’t understand before he muttered something about the filters needing changing. She hardly got the chance to think about what those lyrical mumblings were before there was a thump beneath her feet and the Doctor was yelling at her to get out.

On the other side of the doors was a rooftop. Donna stepped out of the blue box and walked towards the building’s edge, looking at the London skyline all around her. It wasn’t long before the Doctor joined her, coughing and spluttering as he appeared out of the Tardis in a plume of smoke because said smoke had been drawn towards the doors and out into the atmosphere once Donna had opened them.

He walked up beside the bride, sliding his hands into his pockets as he said, ‘the funny thing is, for a spaceship, she doesn’t really do that much flying. We’d better give her a couple of hours. You alright?’

She shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

Catching onto her solemn mood he asked, ‘did we miss it?’ Glancing down at her watch, Donna nodded. It was half past three and the wedding would be long over by now. ‘Well, you can book another date,’ he suggested, trying to brighten her spirits.

‘Course we can.’

Donna still sounded rather disappointed by it all so he thought of another thing that might buoy her mood. ‘Still got the honeymoon.’ She’d told him she was going to Morocco because it would be sunny and removed from the Christmas holidays which she apparently hated. He rather liked Christmas, well he did like Christmas, at the moment he was certainly not feeling in the spirit of the season and couldn’t see himself feeling it for some time. He’d now managed to dampen his own mood and Donna’s still wasn’t much better as she told him the honeymoon would just be a holiday now. He looked over the city as he nodded in agreement saying, ‘yeah. Yeah…sorry’. The guilt of Donna’s predicament was starting to seep in now that her mood had changed from angry to sombre. It wasn’t his fault, he hadn’t summoned her into the Tardis but he also hadn’t managed to get her back to her own wedding in time. Rose would have been telling him off about now. He could hear her light reprimands about him carrying the weight of everyone’s problems on his shoulders and being insistent on the situation not being his fault whilst he tried to prove otherwise.

Donna was also apparently on Rose’s side as she softly said, ‘it’s not your fault’.

‘Oh,’ he breathed in surprise, not expecting to hear those words from the woman who had tried to accuse him of all sorts earlier on. ‘That’s a change.’ He laughed a little weakly but there wasn’t much humour to it.

‘Wish you had a time machine, ‘she started, glancing over at him as she continued her thought, ‘then we could go back and get it right’.

‘Uh - yeah - yeah,’ he agreed awkwardly and then shrugged, saying, ‘but…even if I did, I couldn’t go back on someone’s personal timeline’. A frown grew on Donna’s brow and he added the word, ‘apparently’, to see if that would help and make him sound more convincing. He wasn’t sure it had worked but she didn’t say anymore and was soon ducking down, carefully lowering herself into a seated position with her legs dangling off the rooftop. He watched her get comfortable then began to undo his jacket before draping it over Donna’s shoulders and plopping himself down on the roof felt next to her. It was Christmas Eve and she was just in a dress, he didn’t need to have a brain the size of his to know she would be cold and it wasn’t exactly like he needed to keep warm as a Time Lord. Rose would have snuggled into the fabric, thanking him and calling him chivalrous or a gentleman, he should have expected Donna’s words would be nothing of the sort.

‘God you’re skinny. This wouldn’t fit a rat,’ she commented.

He glanced over at her, finding her reaction a little amusing but then another thought came to mind. ‘Oh and you better put this on.’ Rooting through his trouser pocket he pulled out a ring, he glanced down at it and quickly tucked it and his hand back into his pocket. He swallowed a little thickly as he returned Pete’s wedding ring to his pocket and tried to find the correct ring he was looking for. Pulling out a near identical ring, he proffered this one to Donna.

‘Oh, do you have to rub it in?’ She complained.

‘Those creatures can trace you. This is a biodamper. Should keep you hidden,’ he explained before gently taking her left hand and slipping it onto her ring finger. ‘With this ring, I thee biodamp,’ he said, popping the “p” and trying to make light of it.

‘For better or for worse,’ Donna said, completing the fake nuptials. It made the Doctor smile that she had joined in with his humour. She smirked too before moving the conversation onto the madness of the day. ‘So come on then. Robot Santas. What are they for?’

He took in a breath and went into his explanation. ‘Ah, your basic robo-scavenger. The Father Christmas stuff is just a disguise. They’re trying to blend in. I met them last Christmas,’ he added at the end, though this fact seemed to confuse the bride beside him.

‘Why, what happened then?’

His head shot round to her not understanding how she didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘Great big spaceship,’ he slowly started saying, trying to jog her memory of what should have been an exceptionally memorable event for the average human. ‘Hovering over London? You didn’t notice?’

She shrugged and dismissed him. ‘I had a bit of a hangover’.

He raised his eyebrows at Donna’s excuse but decided not to pursue it. Instead his gaze went back to the London skyline and his mind travelled back to the previous Christmas. ‘I spent Christmas Day just over there, the Powell estate’. He nodded ahead in the direction of it. Of course first you’d have to cross the Thames to be in the correct part of London to begin with but it was generally in front of them from where they sat on the roof. ‘With this…’ He started to continue but found himself stuck on the next word. The Doctor swallowed and finally managed to get it out, ‘...family…my partner, she had this family. Well, they were…’ With a shrug he had begun to amend himself before trailing off, his next words of “they were my family too” drying up on his tongue. He’d never admitted it out loud to anyone before. Not even to Rose and certainly not Jackie. Oh he could never admit such a thing to her. But that was what he felt, what he’d been feeling for some time since being accepted into their lives. He hadn’t really taken the time to realise that it wasn’t just Rose who he’d miss, there was Jackie too. He’d miss how she could have a dig and be nice to him in the same sentence. He’d miss the taunts they threw at one another but never actually meant. He’d even miss her mothering of him because in the end their relationship made him feel…well Rose had told him many a time that her mother did love him and he supposed he felt the same. It was strange to think that she wasn’t over there at the flat anymore, that none of them would return to the flat. There’d be no shared dinners in the living room as they chatted and sat around the television that would be showing some soap or something of the likes. No popping round for a cup of tea, which truly was a Tyler speciality in his opinion, where he and Rose would give a censored run through of recent adventures and Jackie would tell them the gossip of the estate and of general other things they’d missed since their last visit. Even no more being yelled at by Jackie when he and Rose accidentally woke her up in the middle of the night as they were being too loud when they had been stopping over. It had only happened the once but her sleep deprived anger was really rather memorable in the Time Lord’s mind. Said anger had only added to the pair's amusement and he ended up having a fluffy slipper thrown at his head whilst he and Rose tried to hide their giggles at the situation like naughty school children and only ending up annoying Jackie further. Really, he supposed he would have to return to the flat. Many would have been killed in the Canary Wharf battle and many would be unaccounted for and put down as missing. The Tyler’s would just be another couple of names on a list. The estate would eventually find out and open up the flat, clear out their stuff and then try to rent it out to someone else. The Doctor didn’t like that idea at all. He could always put a few months rent down as he figured out what to do. He’d probably end up going through most of their stuff himself and putting it in the Tardis for safe keeping. Then he’d close the door to that room and never return because doing so would make it that much harder and it was already hard enough. He managed to claw himself back to reality with a weary sigh. He could feel Donna’s gaze on him, waiting for him to continue but he’d run out of things to say, just like he’d run out of time with those who he loved like a family. ‘Still…’ He started to conclude. The following words were a struggle to admit, to say aloud, but he managed them eventually, ‘...gone now’.

Donna eyed him sympathetically, seeing the man before her was struggling with his pain. She couldn’t help but want to know more though, more about this partner who would go out with a mad alien like him. Was she human if she had a family at this Powell Estate or was she an alien too and they all just blended into human society? She wouldn’t have guessed if she’d seen the Doctor walking down the street that he was an alien, perhaps he was a little eccentric but some humans could be, really it was just because of the spaceship that she believed him. It didn’t take her long to toy with the idea of asking him more because she hoped it might help him if he opened up about it. ‘Your partner…who was she?’ Clearly the Doctor thought otherwise as he immediately changed the topic back to herself.

‘Question is: what do camouflaged robot mercenaries want with you?’ He glanced over at her with a furrowed brow, his voice becoming exasperated at his puzzlement as he continued, saying, ‘and how did you get inside the Tardis? I don’t know…’ He shook his head and trailed off as he contemplated her, catching Donna’s roll of her eyes but ignoring it. Well there was always one way to get answers, his mind supplied. The Doctor pulled open one side of his jacket that was still slung over Donna’s shoulders so he could reach into his pocket and grab his sonic screwdriver. ‘What’s your job?’ He asked, quickly fiddling with the settings and then trailing the sonic up her body performing a scan.

‘I’m a secretary,’ she answered. She’d been a little shocked by him suddenly yanking at the jacket but chose not to complain at his actions because it was his jacket after all and he had grabbed whatever it was that he wanted pretty quickly. Her eyes kept flicking over to him whilst he slowly drew the sonic higher up her body with it emitting short buzzes as it scanned her.

The Doctor frowned a little at the readings he was getting. ‘It’s weird. I mean you’re not special, you’re not powerful, you’re not connected, you’re not clever, you’re not important-‘

The complaint she chose not to voice earlier came back though this time due to the quite offensive mutterings the Doctor was saying about her. ‘This partner of yours, just before she left, did she punch you in the face?’ She slapped his hand away and snapped, ‘stop bleeping me!’

He lowered his hand to his side, looking away from the woman and raising his eyebrows at her annoyance with him. The thing was this bride was a puzzle, one he was itching to solve and annoyance with him or not he was determined to get to the bottom of it. ‘What kind of secretary?’ He asked, not letting her snappish ways put him off for long.

Donna closed her eyes as he spoke, slowly tilting her head to the side as though trying to dispel her irritation so she could answer him calmly. ‘I’m at HC Clements,’ she told him, and then a smile grew on her face as she continued. ‘It’s where I met Lance. I was temping.’ Donna told the Doctor about thinking that she would feel out of place at the firm because it was a bit posh and then explained that Lance, the head of HR, had made her a coffee and that was how they met. She couldn’t believe that he was making coffee for her, a secretary, a nobody, but found that they actually got along really well.

‘When was this?’

‘Six months ago,’ she answered, still smiling after reminiscing about herself and Lance.

‘Bit quick to get married,’ he commented. He and Rose may have only been in a relationship for around that same amount of time linearly before he was going to ask her to marry him but they had known each other a lot longer than that and he had loved her a lot longer than that too.

A slight crease formed on Donna’s brow as she considered his words but she was soon telling him her account of what had happened; or a slightly altered version of it anyway. ‘Well…he insisted…and he nagged and he nagged me…and he just wore me down. And then finally I gave in.’

Having only known Donna briefly the Doctor had managed to garner quite a good read on her personality meaning he didn’t believe her story about Lance nagging her one bit. He rather thought it would have been the other way around but chose not to comment about it. Instead he turned the topic away from Lance and towards the company she worked for to see if that was the angle to go down to try and understand Donna’s random appearance on the Tardis. ‘What does HC Clements do?’

‘Oh, security systems,’ she said with a shrug, ‘you know…entry codes, ID cards, that sort of thing. If you ask me, it’s a posh name for locksmiths’.

‘Keys,’ he mused, though Donna didn’t let him sit with his thoughts quietly for long.

‘Anyway, enough of my CV. Come on, it’s time to face the consequences. Oh,’ she sighed, shaking her head at just the thought of it, ‘this is gonna be so shaming’. Donna then had an excellent idea because really what do you tell people when one minute you’re walking up the aisle and then suddenly you’re glowing gold and appearing in a spaceship? She had no words to describe that experience but luckily there was a man with her that probably could. ‘You can do the explaining, Martian boy.’

‘Yeah,’ he began, giving her a bit of a look for having to repeat himself once more. ‘I’m not from Mars.’ He saw a smirk tug on her lips as she nodded at him before he got up from the ledge, offering his hand to the bride to help pull her upright too.

‘Oh I had this great big reception all planned,’ she said, releasing the Doctor’s helping hand and passing him his jacket. ‘Everyone’s gonna be heartbroken.’ She walked across the rooftop and towards the ladder that she had spied earlier. The Doctor followed and they made their way down to the street where they managed to get a taxi after a few tries and, happy that it was a human driver, they got in and were driven the short distance across London to the reception venue near the Church.

Chapter Text

The gravel crunched beneath Donna and the Doctor’s feet as they walked up the path to the entrance of the venue where her wedding reception was to take place. Each crunch of the gravel was punctuated by the bass notes of Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody which was playing over the speakers from within. As they neared the door the music was joined by the sounds of chatter, laughter and joy. These were all the sounds of a party taking place, or rather a wedding reception and the bride walking just ahead of the Time Lord knew as much. The tension in her muscles and the ferocity in the way she yanked the door open told him she was none too happy about it either. He followed her inside, the vibration of the music and the happy sounds of the guests only growing as they walked through the entrance hall and to the event room.

The room was alive with people; most were up and dancing, some were sitting and chatting and the children were running about and playing. It was decorated for both the holiday season and the wedding with Christmas trees and tinsel as well as streamers, balloons and banners congratulating the newlyweds. Round tables, adorned with red table cloths and covered with the evidence of a buffet, lined the edges of the room leaving a good sized wooden dance floor for the guests who were lit up by the strobe lighting as they danced along to the music blasting from the DJ booth. There was also a bar, just off the dance floor, where more guests were getting drinks to continue the party spirit.

Donna looked rather furious about said party spirit. She stood just inside of the room outraged that her family and friends would simply carry on without her - her, the bride! She crossed her arms and waited as, one by one, the guests started to notice her arrival. As the last person turned to the bride the music cut off, making the situation all the more awkward not just for the guests but for the Doctor too who was standing behind Donna. He ran a hand down his face, feeling rather uncomfortable about the whole thing, just as Donna began to let her rage be known.

‘You had the reception without me?’ She asked, her voice surprisingly quiet for such a loud woman but every word was laced with that anger bubbling inside.

‘Donna. What happened to you?’ It was the man who had turned last who spoke. Going by his suit and rather ornate waistcoat, the Doctor thought he was probably Lance the husband-to-be.

She didn’t answer his question. Instead Donna repeated her own in a much more demanding and loud register. ‘You had the reception without me?’

Everyone stared back at her with no idea what to say, something which was far too awkward for the Time Lord. He tried to ease the uncomfortable situation by introducing himself. ‘Hello, I’m the Doctor,’ he announced with a cheery smile.

Donna turned to him. ‘They had the reception without me!’ She said as though it needed pointing out to the man who had been standing behind her the entire time.

He nodded a little in agreement, still eyeing up the guests as he said, ‘yes, I gathered’.

‘Well, it was all paid for, why not?’ The Doctor’s gaze fell upon the blonde woman wearing a blue dress who had just spoken. His eyes didn't linger there for long; he let them wander across the other party guests instead whilst internally he fought back the images of Rose at the party for her friend which this woman had unwittingly supplied due to the similarities in their appearances. The women looked nothing like Rose yet the images still came. Would this happen with every blonde woman he saw or was this just because she too had her hair up in a similar way and because she wore a blue dress even though the shade was completely different to the one Rose wore that evening?

‘Thank you Nerys,’ Donna hissed, helping to drag the Doctor out of his mind.

Then an older blonde woman stepped forwards wearing a fascinator and quite the floral number. ‘Well, what were we supposed to do?’ She said as she strode closer to the bride, her annoyance easily heard in her tone. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this was Donna’s mother, their similar demeanours made that pretty evident to the Doctor. ‘I got your silly little message in the end,’ she continued, ‘“I’m on Earth”?! Very funny. But what the hell happened?’ She cried out, raising her arms up in question as the other guests crowded around her. They all started to talk over one another, talking of Donna’s vanishing act and asking her how she had managed it. The questions came thick and fast, getting more demanding and ever louder as they tried to make themselves heard over the angry kerfuffle.

Donna’s head shot around at all of the people, her mouth agape at their reaction. Then she glanced back at the Doctor who was simply staring at the group, looking as much out of his depth as she felt. So Donna did the only thing she could think of to make them all stop. Letting out a high pitched cry she began to sob. The group immediately quietened and a chorus of “awww’s” left their lips as they looked on at the bride now not with annoyance but with sympathy. Lance stepped forwards and wrapped his arms around his fiancé and she held him just as tight whilst the crowd began to clap at this show of love.

The Doctor stared at the bride as she sobbed into her partner’s shoulder in disbelief at her reaction because she had always been so feisty since he’d known her and he hadn’t expected her to act this way. But that was the thing, it was all an act and Donna proved to him as much when she tilted her head his way and gave him a wink. The Doctor caught the signal intended for his eyes alone and tried to hide the smirk tugging on his lips as his gaze moved to the clapping crowd in front of him. She was rather crafty and he liked that about her, he found it quite amusing.

It was Donna who got the party going once again, telling everyone that the show was over and hollering at the DJ to turn the music back on because she wanted to get her money’s worth. This got a laugh out of the guests and soon the dance floor was filled with joy and laughter as the people pulled out their best moves, whilst others went back to the tables or to the bar for a drink.

Wrapped up in her man Lance, Donna didn’t see the Time Lord slink to the edges of the party. No one had questioned him being there; in fact they all seemed too fascinated with Donna’s reappearance to even notice him which suited him fine. He wasn’t there for the party anyway, he was there to watch over Donna and solve the mystery that she was. Perhaps observing the guests would give him answers; one of them might not be who they seemed but how that would end up with Donna appearing in the Tardis he still had no idea. He decided that the bar would be an inconspicuous place to observe from and walked to the end that was empty. The Doctor leant with his back up against the bar and his arms crossed. Letting his eyes trail over the party before him, he caught sight of Donna and Lance dancing happily amongst the others. A small smile graced his lips at the joyful couple’s fun.

‘Can I get you anything sir?’

He turned to see the bartender briefly glancing at him before looking back to the pint he was pulling for one of the guests. A moment later he looked up again at the Time Lord who shook his head and said, ‘no thanks’. The bartender nodded and walked down to the other end of the bar to deliver the pint. It was then, when the Doctor turned back to the crowd, that the familiar upbeat tune and trumpet introduction to the song Love Don’t Roam played over the speakers. His hearts stuttered in his chest and the blood whooshed loudly in his ears but not loud enough to block out the lyrics as Neil Hannon began to sing, the same lyrics that the Doctor had sung at Rose at that birthday party after she’d asked him to dance. He’d taken her hand and twirled her into his arms and then had embarked on a highly energetic dance that left both with their cheeks aching as they laughed and smiled goofily at one another.

He’d told her that she looked beautiful that day, told her without using the “for a human” pretence but had chickened out when Rose had asked about it. Always a coward. Perhaps if he had been braver they would have been in a relationship sooner and maybe he would have asked her to Barcelona sooner too. Those what ifs were pointless though because the Cybermen would still invade Earth and would have come through the void fully whether he was there or not. He didn’t want to imagine Jackie’s fate if she had been in the flat thinking that her “dad” was arriving as a ghost and suddenly it was a very threatening Cyberman instead.

The Doctor tried to tear himself out of his mind and get back to reality but what he saw before him only sent him spiralling once more. On the dance floor a brown haired man in a plain brown suit was dancing a blonde woman in a deep purple dress. The couple weren’t exactly alike he and Rose but their appearances were all too similar and sent images flashing before his eyes, especially when the man dipped the woman just like the Doctor had with Rose a few times before. It was the purple dress that first sent his mind back to catching Rose on New New Earth when Cassandra had left her body. He recalled the way her body felt in his new new arms, the way her newly cut blonde hair flowed through the air as she fell and how it came to rest just on her shoulders when he held her upright. Then there was her relieved smile and the breathy hello that she offered him afterwards which he returned with a big relieved grin of his own.

Then the man dipped the blonde woman again and two further memories ran through the Doctor’s mind in quick succession. First flashed the image of a younger him, with much shorter hair and a northern accent, dipping Rose whilst they danced around the console room just after Jack joined them onboard. Those memories were soon replaced by his current self dipping Rose when they were once again at that party for her friend. He’d dipped her and then pulled her in close, the swift movement wafting her beautiful aroma of vanilla, honey and citrus towards him. It was a scent that he could imagine now if he focused hard enough. But he didn’t want to focus on that or on her overall, he simply couldn’t let himself. Instead he tore his gaze away from the dance floor and looked down at his chuck clad feet, his crossed arms tightening around his chest as though he was trying to wrap them around himself in comfort. It was hardly the comfort he was looking for and now without the visual input of the party stimulating his mind, the music in the room seemed to grow even louder. The lyrics of the song bored into him, into his very soul, tearing at the invisible yet gaping wounds left by his loss.

I have wandered, I have rambled
I have crossed this crowded sphere,
And I’ve seen a mass of problems
That I long to disappear.
Now all I have’s this anguished heart,
For you have vanished too.
Oh, my girl, my girl, my precious girl,
Just what is this man to do?

Sniffing, the Doctor lifted his head back up, though he didn’t particularly see the room before him. His jaw was tightly clenched and his eyes glossy. His throat felt like it was burning and he tried to swallow past that thick feeling, unable to give into the release that it so wanted. There was a time and a place for a breakdown and this was neither. He needed a distraction and he needed one quickly before the music and memories he was hardly holding at bay tipped him over the edge. Letting out a shuddering breath, the Doctor scrubbed his slightly shaking hands over face before shoving them into his pockets. He then cleared his throat a little and nodded to himself, ready to be focused on nothing but the puzzle of Donna.

The company she worked for had intrigued him earlier and if he wasn’t watching over the bride he would have gone back to the Tardis to research her place of work. But as it was, with the Old Girl cooling off a bit of a distance away on that rooftop, that wasn’t a possibility. His eyes fell upon a man further down the bar, a man using his mobile phone. He’d be able to get some answers from that at least. Just as the man made to put his phone away the Doctor made his move. He sidled up to the man and both asked to borrow the mobile and used hand gestures to signal his intentions so he would be sure the man understood his request over the blaring music that the Time Lord was doing his best to ignore. Thankfully the man agreed and the Doctor went back to his previous position at the bar. He flipped open the phone and put on his glasses as he started the internet application before typing in the company name: HC Clements. To speed up the search and to get straight to the information he was interested in, he pulled out his sonic screwdriver. Using his body as a shield and trying to be as inconspicuous as he could whilst he sonicked the phone, the Doctor eyed the room to ensure no one was watching. The search didn’t take long and the results got his hearts stuttering and his jaw clenching once more. The sole proprietor of HC Clements was none other than Torchwood. After staring at the screen for a moment he pressed the return button and flipped the phone closed before passing it back to the man he’d borrowed it from with a word of thanks.

It was then, as he was wandering back to his position at the bar once more, that his eyes fell upon an interesting sight across the other side of the dance floor. There was a videographer with his camera all set up capturing the party and if there was a videographer here at the reception then it was likely that they were also in attendance at the wedding. The Doctor changed course and made his way around the dance floor to the cameraman who was more than willing to show him the footage of the moment Donna disappeared as she walked down the aisle. What the Time Lord saw didn’t make this puzzle any clearer, it only deepened it further. Donna had begun to glow gold just before she vanished but what the Doctor knew those glowing gold particles to be was impossible. They were called Huon particles and they were so ancient that they don’t exist anymore, or they shouldn’t have at least. They were so ancient that, as the Doctor suddenly realised, the biodamper he’d given Donna wouldn’t work.

The Time Lord legged it out of the room and back through the corridor to the entrance hall where, through the window, he saw two robotic Santas walking towards the building. They were here and that meant everyone was in danger.

‘Donna!’ He yelled as he ran back into the event room, pushing past people on the dance floor until he reached the redhead who stood out in her white dress. ‘Donna! They’ve found you,’ he told her urgently once he was by her side.

‘But you said I was safe.’ She tried to catch the Doctor’s gaze but he was too busy looking about as though expecting those Santas to enter the room at any moment and this only frightened her further.

‘The biodamper doesn’t work. We’ve got to get everyone out.’

If Donna wasn’t already frightened enough by the panicked alien before her, his words only made it worse as a realisation hit her. ‘My God, it’s all my family,’ she breathed.

He grabbed her arms and started tugging her off the dance floor. ‘Out the back door!’ The pair reached the doors and swung them open only to see two robotic Santas walking towards them with their instruments held like weapons as though ready to attack. ‘Maybe not,’ he decided, pulling Donna back and swiftly closing the doors before leading the way to another possible escape route from the events room. However, a peek behind the curtains covering this door only showed another two Santas, one holding a trumpet and the other a remote control. The Santa lifted the control towards the building as though about to activate something within so the Doctor turned his head back to the interior. Before him was a large and well decorated Christmas tree. ‘Christmas trees,’ he muttered, understanding the robot’s plans immediately.

‘What about them?’ Asked Donna.

‘They kill,’ he told her before running towards the tree yelling, ‘get away from the trees!’ Donna dashed after him, shouting out the same warning because, as mad as it was after their rocky start, she now trusted the Doctor. He’d kept her alive so far and seemed to be the only one who knew at least something about what was going on with her and these Santas, even if he didn’t fully understand yet. Plus it was her family with her in that room and she would do anything to protect them so even if it sounded mad to her that Christmas trees could kill she believed him. Of course not everyone had been through the somewhat enlightening if not bizarre day she had so didn’t know why they should believe their yells. This included her mother.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, the man’s an idiot!’ Donna’s mother Sylvia argued. ‘Why? What harm is a Christmas tree gonna…’ She trailed off, her eyes on the large tree standing behind the Doctor. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, shocked but enjoying the surprising spectacle before her.

The Time Lord spun round and Donna joined him by his side as baubles began to detach themselves and float away from the tree. The other trees in the room were losing their baubles too and they all rose towards the ceiling and spread out across the room. The crowd watched in awe at this magical display, wondering aloud how it was possible. Only the Doctor and Donna eyed them cautiously and with good reason. Only a moment later the first of the baubles shot downwards and into a group of spectators, exploding on impact when it hit the ground. Other baubles immediately did the same, creating explosions all around the room whilst the guests screamed and huddled together for safety. Then came the chaos. As more and more of the baubles exploded, destroying furniture and creating fires, the humans became frantic, running about and looking for shelter or a way to escape.

Donna also ran and found cover by a table that had been knocked onto its side and soon dragged an unsuspecting Lance down into her shelter too when he appeared by the table. She huddled under that table, her heart pounding wildly and a terrified look on her face, hoping that the attack would stop - that her new alien friend would make the attack stop.

This was something the Doctor was trying his very best to do. After being thrown to the floor, due to the impact of a nearby explosion, he found that he had ended up by the DJ booth. He pulled himself up so he could peek over the top of the booth and out at the rest of the room. A group of six Santas had appeared, all holding their brass instrument weapons except for the one with the controls. Their appearance inside gave him an idea. ‘Oi,’ he yelled, standing up and trying to attract their attention so they would focus on him and not the humans. ‘Santa! Word of advice.’ He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and held it up so they could see. ‘If you’re attacking a man with a sonic screwdriver…’ He paused not just for dramatic effect but so he could pick up the microphone lying on the DJ controls before him. He did so, flipping and catching it once before bringing it up to his mouth and completing the rest of his speech, his voice ringing out all around the room over the speakers, ‘...don’t let him near the sound system’. Jamming the sonic into one of the ports by the controls, the speakers let out a deafening, high pitched squeal causing all the humans to scream and hold their hands to their ears in an attempt to block out the horrible noise. For a human the sound might be horrible but for a robot the sound was deadly. All the Santas shook where they stood, pieces of their disguises and their metal bodywork beneath falling to the floor as they broke down. As soon as they had all collapsed the Doctor removed his sonic, much to the relief of the rest of the room, and ran over to the pile of Santa covered metal parts. He skidded on his knees across the polished wood, coming to a halt by one of the robot’s sides before rooting around in search of the controller that one of them had been holding. Next he grabbed a robot head that had become detached from the body. He could hear Donna jabbering on somewhere behind him, ensuring her guests were alright and complaining at Lance to stop asking questions about what had happened and to just help their family and friends instead. The Doctor glanced back to her, and finding her looking at him, he began to tell her of his findings. ‘Look at that. Remote control for the decorations but there’s a second remote control for the robots.’ He studied the head intently as Donna stepped closer to him. ‘They’re not scavengers anymore,’ he commented, ‘I think someone’s taken possession’.

What those robots were and where they had come from didn’t matter to Donna now that they had been stopped. ‘Never mind all that. You’re a doctor and people have been hurt.’

‘Nah, they wanted you alive, look,’ he told her and chucked a bauble to her from over his shoulder which she caught easily in her hands. ‘They’re not active now.’

‘All the same, you could help,’ she insisted to his back as he lifted up the robot head to his ear as though listening for something.

‘You’ve got to think of the bigger picture,’ he mumbled, concentrating on the faint beeping he had just heard from within the head. ‘There’s still a signal!’ He yelled out as he scrambled to his feet and legged it to the nearest door to get outside.

Donna made to follow him, but Sylvia calling her name from behind stopped her and made her turn.

‘Donna, who is he?’ She asked breathily, scared for her daughter and terrified after what had just happened. ‘Who is that man?’

The bride could only stare at her mum, not really knowing the answer herself, but knowing only that he would be the one to sort it all out. With that knowledge coursing through her she turned and ran off to follow the Doctor leaving her mum, and the watching Lance, behind.

Outside, her feet crunched on the gravel as she jogged towards the Doctor who was using his sonic screwdriver on the robot head trying to get a fix on the signal.

He didn’t need to turn her way to know it was Donna approaching, his olfactory organs told him as much, so he immediately began explaining himself as she neared. ‘There’s someone behind this, directing the roboforms.’ He moved his sonic away and stared at the mess of burnt out wires at the back of the head.

‘But why is it me? What have I done?’ She asked fervently.

‘If we find the controller, we’ll find that out.’ He began to scan the head again and this time picked up something on the sonic. ‘Ooh!’ Holding the sonic higher into the air, he stepped around Donna before tilting his head up and pointing at the sky with the screwdriver. ‘It’s up there.’ Donna followed his lead and looked upwards too seeing nothing but a mixture of blue and clouds as she listened to him continue to mumble his thoughts aloud. ‘Something in the sky.’ He stood there for a moment longer before striding off, his hand with the sonic still held aloft as he tracked the signal.

Lance exited the building, alongside some of the guests, and went straight over to Donna reporting to her about the ambulances being on their way and then once more he moved back onto questions about the Doctor and the chaos that had just occurred. True to his word, the first of the ambulances turned up a moment later but Donna didn’t really give Lance much of an answer to his questions and soon cut herself off to stare at the alien who was biting out some more of those lyrical words she’d heard him use in his spaceship earlier on. The man was soon running over to her, his now English words spilling out of his mouth rapidly.

‘Donna! I’ve lost the signal. We’ve got to get to your office, HC Clements, I think that’s where it all started.’ He didn’t know that for certain but with Torchwood as the company behind this one it was more than likely that this was another terrible scheme of theirs. As if what they had done with the ghosts wasn’t bad enough. He turned to the man by her side. ‘Lance! Is it Lance? Lance, can you give me a lift?’ Without waiting for a reply he darted off towards the car park which he waited at the edge of knowing that they would follow because Donna was just as intrigued as he was in solving this mystery and she was a very persuasive woman. He was proved right by the sounds of Donna hollering at him that the car was a black Fiat when she rounded the corner of the building with Lance in her wake. After quickly scanning the car park with his eyes for the car, the Doctor made his way over to it, internally groaning that he was going to have to get into the back of the three door Punto. Donna wouldn’t be doing so with her dress and he didn’t think Lance would take kindly to him taking the keys and driving there himself, plus he didn’t know the way unlike Lance.

‘Why are we going to the office?’ Asked Lance when he got to the car the Time Lord was impatiently waiting by, bouncing up and down a little on his toes. He could have unlocked it himself with his sonic but again he didn’t think Lance would have appreciated such a thing and then he would be even less likely to be getting a lift.

‘Because we are,’ replied Donna exasperatedly, gesturing to the car before saying, ‘come on,’ wanting him to unlock it.

Lance put the key in the lock and did just that but was still not happy about this arrangement. ‘But who is he?’ He asked as though the Doctor wasn’t there or able to answer himself and waved a hand in his direction. ‘I don’t even know him, how can we trust what he’s saying?’

The Doctor opened his mouth to reply but Donna’s tugging hand on his elbow stopped him. She had opened the door, yanked forward the passenger seat and was now pulling him towards it. ‘Just get in,’ she told him. He clambered into the back feeling like his long limbs had grown even longer with the tight space the backseat offered. ‘It doesn’t matter, let’s go,’ Donna said over the roof of the car to her partner before righting the seat and getting inside herself. Lance grumbled a little before doing the same and driving them to HC Clements.

The ride wasn’t long which was good for the restless Time Lord cramped in the back who had jabbered on about pilot fish and sharks for the entire journey. He awkwardly extracted himself from the car, irritatedly muttering about it being smaller on the inside, something which made Donna smirk as she closed the door behind him. She didn’t process that it was odd, as the Doctor ran ahead of her and Lance, that he managed to open the front door of the building. None of them should have been able to get into the building as it was Christmas Eve; it was closed and locked and it wasn’t like either she or Lance had positions within the company that granted them a key either. But Donna was too caught up with the mystery and with not losing sight of the mad alien in front of her that the strangeness didn’t hit her. Said mad alien waited, held the door open and let her lead the way after that. ‘I’m on the third floor,’ she called out to him over her shoulder as she ran into the lobby. He easily caught up and darted ahead to the left of the bride who glanced over to see where he was going. ‘I’m not taking the bleeding stairs Dumbo,’ she said, seeing him heading in the direction of the tall spiral staircase, ‘I’m taking the lift’. Donna watched as he skidded to a halt and turned, nodding a little dumbly at her. She nodded her head forwards in the direction of the lifts, her hands both otherwise busy holding her dress up so she didn’t trip, and the Doctor slowed his frantic pace to a jog, choosing to keep in line with the couple instead.

He tapped his foot on the floor of the lift as it sailed upwards, the calm music inside rather jarring with the atmosphere the trio brought to it, what with the human’s panting as they recovered from the run plus the Doctor’s impatience that was practically radiating from his pinstripes. As soon as the lift dinged and the doors slid open he burst into the office. He’d already received directions to Donna’s desk, which was near the printers, on the ride upwards and was soon before her computer. He was rambling on about what he found suspicious about the company to the couple who had stopped around the other side of the group of desks to watch him. ‘To you lot this might just be a locksmith’s, but HC Clements was bought up twenty-three years ago by the Torchwood Institute.’

‘Who are they?’ Donna asked, having mostly caught her breath back by now.

The Doctor glanced up from the computer and darkly said, ‘they were behind the Battle of Canary Wharf’.

She frowned at this information. He’d announced it like she should have known about such a thing, but Donna had no clue what he was talking about.

He read the blank look, his eyebrows rising a little at her lack of recognition. ‘Cyberman invasion,’ he tried, hoping to jog her memory but when her confusion only deepened he added, ‘skies over London full of Daleks?’ Finally Donna seemed to know what he was talking about.

‘Oh, I was in Spain.’

Or perhaps she didn’t. The Doctor didn’t understand how Donna didn’t know, especially because, as he pointed out to her, ‘they had Cybermen in Spain’.

‘Scuba diving,’ she challenged.

Frowning, he commented, ‘that big picture Donna, you keep on missing it’. They didn’t have time to go into this now. He darted around the desk, pushing into Lance on his way round to one of the other computers, words spilling out of his mouth as he moved the topic back to the company. ‘Torchwood was destroyed, but HC Clements stayed in business. I think someone else came in and took over the operation.’ He frantically typed on the keyboard and whacked the top of the monitor as he tried to hack into the software.

Donna leaned towards him, urging him to finally tell her the answer to her question: ‘but what do they want with me?’

There was something in her tone that made him stop and stand upright so he could face her and give her his full attention. ‘Somehow, you’ve been dosed with Huon energy. And that’s a problem because Huon energy hasn’t existed since the dark times. The only place you’d find a Huon particle now is a remnant in the heart of the Tardis. You see, that’s what happened.’ Donna’s face was a picture of shock and he could tell she was overwhelmed by what he had told her. To help his explanation make more sense he leaned over to the desk beside him and grabbed some props, namely a mug and a pencil. ‘Say that’s the Tardis.’ He held the mug up. ‘And that’s you.’ He held the pencil up. ‘The particles inside you activated. The two sets of particles magnetised.’ He waggled the pencil and then the mug to demonstrate the active particles. ‘And whap!’ He threw the pencil into the mug to finish his explanation. ‘You were pulled inside the Tardis.’

She stared at the mug and weakly said, ‘I’m a pencil inside a mug’.

‘Yes you are. 4H. Sums you up.’ The Doctor swirled the pencil around in the mug before setting it back down on the desk and directing a question to the other man in the room. ‘Lance, what was HC Clements working on? Anything top secret, special operations, do not enter?’

Lance walked around the still shocked bride, lifting his hands up with a shrug as he followed the Doctor towards another computer which he used his sonic on to gain access. ‘I don’t know, I’m in charge of personnel, I wasn’t project manager.’ The computer took the Doctor to the exact page he wanted to be on and he skimmed through a history of the company whilst behind him Lance only got louder and more defensive over what was happening and why he was explaining himself to the Doctor.

‘You make keys, that’s the point,’ the Time Lord murmured, his eyes on the screen as he clicked onto a new page that showed a 3D rendering of the building and its floor plan. ‘And look at this. We’re on the third floor. Underneath reception, there’s a basement, yes?’ He shot back up, not waiting for an answer and not really wanting one anyway, and darted back to the lift they came up in having now, upon seeing the plans, noticed the glaring inconsistency between them and the building in reality. The couple followed in his wake, awaiting the rest of his explanation which he began as soon as the lift arrived and the doors slid open to allow him entrance. ‘So how come when you look on the lift there’s a button marked lower basement?’ He pointed to the button and the pair leaned a little closer to see what he was gesturing at without actually stepping foot in the lift. ‘There’s a whole floor which doesn’t exist on the official plans. So what’s down there then?’

‘Are you telling me this building’s got a secret floor?’ Asked Lance, giving him a sceptical look.

‘No, no I’m showing you this building’s got a secret floor.’

‘It needs a key,’ Donna pointed out.

‘I don’t.’ He lifted his sonic screwdriver up and the light shone blue over the keyhole next to the button. ‘Right then, thanks you two, I can handle this. See you later.’ He pocketed the sonic, glancing back up at the couple who both looked like they were about to start complaining about his actions.

‘No chance, Martian.’ Donna strode into the lift with determination. ‘You’re the man who keeps saving my life. I ain’t letting you out of my sight.’

With his finger poised over the button, the Time Lord raised his eyebrows at her but didn’t say a word about her decision. Instead he said, ‘going down,’ to try and hurry Lance up when he didn’t enter the lift straight after his partner, something he seemed rather reluctant to do.

‘Lance!’ Donna called to him, fiercely insinuating that he should join them in the lift. The man still didn’t seem keen on the idea and started saying that he could go to the police instead. ‘Inside’ she demanded, cutting off his protests and giving him no choice but to enter the lift.

‘To honour and obey,’ the Doctor said as Lance joined them and turned to face the doors.

‘Tell me about it mate.’

‘Oi!’ Donna cried out as the doors slid shut and began to take the trio down.

The Doctor had been trying to make light of the situation with his comment but really he thought that there was something a little off with Lance. With the man’s complaints about the Time Lord earlier on, regarding him being a stranger and if they could trust him, he thought it was rather peculiar that Lance didn’t want to join Donna in the lift. In a lift with a strange man on a trip to a secret floor where there would presumably be danger if those robot Santas were anything to go by. Surely he should want to be by Donna’s side, the woman who he should have been marrying today, the woman who should be the love of his life and the person who he’d do anything for no matter what. Surely he should have wanted to support and protect her himself and not leave it to a stranger to do so if it came to that, something which, seeing as Donna was the target in whatever scheme she had gotten mixed up in, the Doctor rather feared he would have to. If he was in Lance’s position and Rose had been in the lift then he would have been in there straight away with no questions asked. He’d always been rather protective over her and he’d come to recognise the jealousy he’d felt regarding her and other men which was something that struck his past leather wearing self much more often than his current self. His jealousy had dampened down the closer they got and when they officially started a relationship it became a rather rare feeling for the Time Lord. Perhaps it was the Doctor’s personality and his deep love for Rose, but he felt that Lance might not be fully committed to his relationship with Donna. Or perhaps he was reading the entire thing wrong, Lance was a human after all and sometimes their behaviour did baffle him. The Doctor didn’t get the chance to ponder the couple before him any longer because the lift dinged and the doors slid open to reveal the secret lower basement.

Chapter Text

‘Where are we?’ Donna’s voice echoed a little around the large underground corridor that the now open lift doors revealed. She stepped out, swiftly followed by the Doctor and Lance, their footsteps loud and damp on the slightly wet floor. Ominous green lighting dimly lit their way but to both the left and right there seemed to be only further corridor with no end in sight. It smelt musty, looked rather dank and overall gave Donna the impression that they were about to be walking into some secret evil lair like in a scary film. ‘Well, what goes on down here?’

‘Let’s find out,’ the Doctor said, stepping ahead of Donna, to get a better look at their surroundings.

‘Do you think Mr Clements knows about this place?’ She asked.

He turned to look to the right as he answered. ‘The mysterious HC Clements. Oh, I think he’s part of it.’ His eyes fell upon a short line of Segway self balancing scooters pushed up against the wall of the corridor, all plugged into their charging points. ‘Ooh, look. Transport!’ He announced, his voice filled with intrigue because he’d never ridden one before or even seen one at this point in Earth’s history; it wasn’t like he kept up to date with the invention of everything. He rushed off towards the scooters leaving Donna and Lance staring after him.

‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ Donna grumbled under her breath but followed him anyway, watching as the Doctor unplugged one and stood upon it, reversing it out of its parking spot with apparent ease. He rode around on it performing a figure of eight and a small noise of happiness passed his smiling lips. This was the happiest Donna had ever seen him and it warmed her as she unplugged her own scooter and gingerly stepped upon it. After a bit of an initial wobble, she found it was as easy as the Doctor had made it out to be.

‘Come on Lance, shake a leg,’ the Doctor called out to the other man who was looking at the Segway he was standing before very cautiously.

It wasn’t long before they were all up on two wheels and the trio were soon whizzing along the corridor at five miles per hour. This was something which Donna found rather amusing because after everything she had been through that day with her vanishing, seeing space and being in a spaceship, meeting an alien, being chased and attacked by killer robots dressed as Santa plus jumping out of a cab on the motorway, somehow this moment of riding along on Segways in her wedding dress with aforementioned alien and her husband-to-be seemed just as bizarre. Hilariously bizarre. After her initial stifled laughter, she let out a cackle which was soon joined by the Doctor’s own chuckles that he couldn’t hold back either. Lance looked at the other two as if they had gone mad, not understanding the amusement they were seeing at the situation at all.

‘Ooh, what’s this?’ The Doctor said curiously. Their laughter had died down and the trio were coming upon a door on the right of the corridor. It was a door secured with a locking wheel and a large notice stating: Torchwood - Authorised Personnel Only. If he didn’t think they were in the right place before then he certainly did now and he needed to check it out. ‘Hold up,’ he called out, the tires to his Segway screeching to halt shortly followed by the other two just behind him. He quickly moved to the door and turned the wheel to open it revealing a small room which simply contained a long ladder leading upwards to a hatch. ‘Wait here, I just need to get my bearings,’ he said as he turned back to the humans. Raising a threatening finger and plastering a stern look on his face, the Doctor added, ‘don’t do anything’. It was a warning he’d given to Rose many a time, not that she ever really listened to him and occasionally he was rather thankful for that. But at least she had experience dealing with whatever they had encountered on their adventures. She was a seasoned traveller and had proven herself more than capable in numerous situations. These two before him were anything but. They were liabilities and although the Time Lord didn’t have much of an opinion on Lance, he found he rather liked Donna and didn’t want her getting into more trouble than she had already unwittingly found herself in. After a warning that he had better return from the feisty bride, the Doctor scooted up the ladder and towards the unknown. The trip didn’t take him long and he was soon jumping off the last rung of the ladder beside Donna and Lance announcing his findings. ‘Thames flood barrier! Right on top of us. Torchwood snuck in and built this place underneath.’ Really it made a lot of sense with the long, slightly curving corridor plus the endless damp that must be seeping through from the Thames.

Apparently this news was not what Donna had been expecting at all. ‘What, there’s, like, a secret base hidden underneath a major London landmark?’

‘I know,’ he breathed, shaking his head a little, ‘unheard of’. Rose would have liked his comment. She would have giggled at the sarcasm that Donna simply couldn’t understand because she hadn’t been there the day he and Rose defeated the Nestene Consciousness in the hidden base beneath the London Eye. Instead the bride wore a shocked look and soon followed the Doctor when he set off on foot to the door at the end of the corridor which wasn’t far away.

The trio left the eerie green lighting of the corridor behind them when the Doctor led the way into a large laboratory. ‘Oooh, look at this!’ The room was filled with equipment, most of it consisting of long thin cylinders containing a clear bubbling solution within. ‘Stunning!’ The Time Lord commented as he strode into the room, his eyes darting over the bubbling capsules with intrigue.

‘What does it do?’ Asked Donna.

He stopped before one of the cylinders and said, ‘particle extrusion. Hold on…’ He darted off to another one, tapping on one of the smaller cylinders with a knuckle as he compared the liquid within with the previous capsule. ‘Brilliant,’ he breathed and then went on to explain what it was in a voice loud enough for the others to hear as he continued to peer at the liquid. ‘They’ve been manufacturing Huon particles. Course my people got rid of Huons, they unravelled the atomic structure.’

‘Your people?’ Said Lance. ‘Who are they? What company do they represent?’

‘Oh, I’m a freelancer,’ the Doctor replied with ease and moved the topic back to the particles. ‘But this lot are rebuilding them. They’ve been using the river,’ he explained whilst he wandered around, ‘extruding them through a flat hydrogen base so they’ve got the end result…’ Pulling out a more test tube like container from the bottom of one of the cylinders he turned and held it up to Donna as he finished his explanation. ‘...Huon particles in liquid form.’

She nodded towards the clear vial in the Doctor’s hands. ‘And that’s what’s inside me?’ Instead of answering he twisted a small nozzle at the top and the clear liquid turned gold. Donna felt a tingling within her body as he did so and glanced down at herself, letting out a cry of surprise when she found that she too was glowing.

The Doctor watched this process in awe. ‘Genius. Cos the particles are inert, they need something living to catalyse inside and that’s you. Saturate the body then…’ He trailed off, his mouth dropping open as he came to a realisation. ‘Oh! The wedding! Yes! You’re getting married! That’s it!’ His words spilled out fervently and he gesticulated wildly throughout his rapid run through of his thoughts. ‘Best day of your life, walking down the aisle. Oh, your body’s a battleground. It’s a chemical war inside. Adrenaline, acetylcholine, wham go the endorphins. Oh, you're cooking! Yeah, you’re like a walking oven, a pressure cooker, a microwave, all churning away. The particles reach boiling point, shazam!’ He cried out, raising his arm in triumph. Donna raised hers too and her palm came into swift contact with his cheek for the second time in one day when she slapped him once again. He stumbled backwards a little at the impact, not expecting such an action. ‘What did I do this time?’ The Doctor asked, his voice high and indignant.

‘Are you enjoying this?’ She yelled fiercely, thinking his enthusiasm meant he wasn’t taking what looked like a rather dire situation from her point of view seriously. Once the Time Lord looked suitably admonished she stepped closer to him, her voice lowered and her breaths coming out in heavy pants as she said, ‘right, just tell me. These particles, are they dangerous? Am I safe?’

He could see the fear in her eyes and even though it wasn’t unwarranted he didn’t want Donna to be any more scared than she already was. So he lied. Or at least he tried to. His, ‘yes,’ came out rather unconvincingly because another part of him thought that she deserved to know how much danger she was really in. The look she gave him and the sighing way she said his name told him she didn’t believe him one bit.

Donna took a deep breath and said, ‘if your lot got rid of Huon particles, why did they do that?’

‘Because they were deadly,’ he admitted.

Her face contorted and she looked a little as though she might faint or be sick or perhaps both. ‘Oh my God…’ She uttered. She was going to die.

‘I’ll sort it out Donna,’ the Doctor promised, lowering his head a little so he could lock his eyes with hers so that she could see the absolute determination within him to fulfil that promise. ‘Whatever’s been done to you, I’ll reverse it. I am not about to lose someone else.’ His mind never got the chance to take him through the nightmarish memories of his most recent loss because there was a crackling and a banging and another voice that seemed to reverberate from all the walls of the room.

‘Oh, she is long since lost,’ the voice hissed as the Doctor’s and Donna’s heads darted around the room looking for the source. Then their eyes were drawn to what they had assumed to be a wall. It was not. The wall rose upwards revealing another grand room behind it. ‘I have waited so long,’ the voice continued, ‘hibernating at the edge of the universe until the secret heart was uncovered and called out to waken.’ They paused. Possibly for dramatic effect as the wall/door had now fully risen allowing Donna and the Doctor to see the scale of the room before them. It was a double story space with scaffolding and gangways lining the edges. A massive hole took up most of the floor space, leading so impossibly deep into the Earth, and the ceiling was well in need of a dust with the amount of cobwebs that were up there. The pause the voice had taken could have also been to demonstrate the amount of danger Donna and the Doctor were in with the number of robots that lined the scaffolding and gangways above them. This time their disguise was no Santa costume but a long black cloak with a hood covering most of their metal faces, their brass instrumental weapons had been replaced too with actual guns. They all turned in unison and pointed their firearms at the pair who stood in the doorway watching as the scene unfolded before them.

The Doctor eyed the hole curiously, stepping forwards to take a closer look as he commented, ‘someone’s been digging. Oh, very Torchwood. Drilled by laser. How far down does it go?’

‘Down and down. All the way to the centre of the Earth,’ the bodiless voice supplied.

‘Really?’ He said, screwing his face up a little. ‘Seriously? What for?’

‘Dinosaurs.’

His head turned to Donna who had stepped beside him and voiced her confusing suggestion. ‘What?’

‘Dinosaurs?’ She repeated with a lot less assurance than her first utterance whilst the Time Lord stared at her as though she had gone mad.

‘What are you on about, dinosaurs?’

‘That film. Under the Earth. With dinosaurs,’ she tried but his frown only deepened. ‘I’m trying to help,’ Donna pointed out.

The Doctor shook his head at her. ‘That’s not helping.’

‘Such a sweet couple,’ the voice commented and the pair turned to the room once more though they were still unable to locate the owner of said voice, something that the Doctor wanted to amend.

‘Only a madman talks to thin air,’ he began, speaking loudly to the room at large. He shoved his hands in his pockets and wandered just a little, only beginning to get into his stride. ‘And trust me; you don’t want to make me mad. Where are you?’

‘High in the sky,’ they replied, making Donna and the Doctor look up to the ceiling where the owner of the voice could still not be found. ‘Floating so high on Christmas night.’

‘I didn’t come all this way to talk on the intercom!’ The Doctor bellowed. ‘Come on! Let’s have a look at you!’

‘Who are you with such command?’

‘I’m the Doctor.’

‘Prepare your best medicines, Doctor-man, for you will be sick at heart.’ The voice was bodiless no more. A large red spider had teleported into the room just beyond the gaping hole. It was the most giant of creatures with beady black eyes and sharp white fangs. She hissed and snarled at the pair, rearing up a little to show off her prowess.

Donna stared at the creature as though she couldn’t believe it existed because what human would? However, the Doctor stared at the creature as though he couldn’t believe it existed because he thought they were extinct.

‘Racnoss,’ he breathed and continued softly, ‘but that’s impossible. You’re one of the Racnoss’.

‘Empress of the Racnoss,’ she corrected with grandeur and a snarl for good measure.

The Doctor collected himself and stepped forwards, loudly demanding, ‘if you’re the Empress, where’s the rest of the Racnoss? Or…’ He lessened his fierce tone as another thought crossed his mind. ‘...are you the only one?’

‘Such a sharp mind.’

‘That’s it - the last of your kind.’ He then leant down to Donna and gave her a rapid run through of the species. ‘The Racnoss come from the dark times, billions of years ago. Billions. They were carnivores, omnivores, they devoured whole planets.’

The Empress hissed loudly in complaint of the Time Lord’s words. ‘Racnoss are born starving, is that our fault?’

The spider’s agreement of what the Doctor had just told her made Donna’s eyes grow wide. ‘They eat people,’ she stated as though she couldn’t believe such a thing. The Doctor then went on to demonstrate that such a thing was the truth by pointing out Mr. Clements whom he had spotted wrapped up in the cobwebs near the ceiling. His body was in a cocoon of webbing with only his distinguishable black and white shoes poking out. ‘Oh my God,’ Donna cried out at the sight whilst the Empress simply licked her lips and told them that he was her Christmas dinner before cackling madly.

‘But you shouldn’t even exist!’ He exclaimed before once again turning to Donna to give her a bit of background information on the race. ‘Way back in history the fledgling empires went to war against the Racnoss. They were wiped out,’ he added a little louder so said Racnoss survivor would hear.

Donna wasn’t really taking in the Doctor’s words though having found herself rather distracted by what was happening behind the large spider. Up on one of the gangways was Lance. If she was honest with herself she had sort of forgotten about him having been swept up in it all. But when did anything like this ever happen? Especially to someone like her. The Doctor had said it earlier, she wasn’t anything special, she was just ordinary. Ordinary Donna with her ordinary life and now here she was in front of a massive spider that her husband-to-be was sneaking up on. She watched as he noticed her gaze on him and signalled for her to keep schtum with a finger to his lips. Donna had no idea what his plan was other than to use the axe she spied in his other hand. It didn’t look like much of a weapon compared to the giant creature but it seemed like the best idea they had at the minute so she tried her best to help. ‘That’s what I’ve got inside me,’ she said loudly, interrupting the Empress, ‘that Huon energy thing. Oi!’ She bellowed when the Racnoss glanced over her shoulder, trying to draw her attention back to herself and away from Lance. ‘Look at me, lady, I’m talking! Where do I fit in? How come I get all stacked up with these Huon particles? Look at me, you!’ She demanded of the creature once more as Lance crept ever closer. ‘Look me in the eye and tell me!’

‘The bride is so feisty!’ The Racnoss proclaimed with a laugh.

That didn’t scare Donna though because Lance was nearly there. ‘Yes I am!’ She yelled back. ‘And I don’t know what you are, you big…thing, but a spider’s just a spider…and an axe is an axe. Now do it!’ Donna commanded Lance who pulled back the axe to take a swipe at the Empress.

Hissing wildly, the Racnoss snarled at the axe wielding man who, instead of striking the spider with his weapon, lowered it as he let out a rather evil laugh. Donna stared at him, dumbfounded by his actions and the Doctor stood silently beside her, watching as the man and the spider laughed together, finally understanding the true reason as to why something had felt off about Lance all day. The Time Lord had seen it multiple times earlier, seen the way Donna had gushed about this man whenever she spoke of him. She was in love with him and now here he was betraying her, bearing his true self for all to see and he knew how that could crush a heart or hearts. He may not have been through the exact same experience but love, platonic or romantic, all stemmed from the same place. Koschei, his childhood best friend, had turned into the mad and power hungry Master, a Time Lord who had tried to kill the Doctor on many occasions. That was a betrayal that still stung now and gave him a small insight into what Donna might be feeling. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to her, interrupting the beginning of her questioning.

‘Sorry for what?’ She quickly asked before turning her attention back to Lance and yelling at him. ‘Lance, don’t be so stupid. Get her!’

Lance, of course, did no such thing. ‘God, she’s thick,’ he commented, gazing at Donna pityingly. ‘Months I’ve had to put up with her. Months. A woman who can’t even point to Germany on a map.’

After all of the craziness of the day, this change in Lance was the most baffling. Her mouth worked but no words came out as she stared at the man she thought she knew, stared at the man that she thought loved her. She glanced over at the Doctor and then back at Lance and finally three quiet words left her lips, ‘I don’t understand’.

The Doctor stepped in to help her comprehend what was going on now that the pieces were falling into place in his Time Lord brain. He explained that over the six months that she and Lance had known each other he had been dosing her with the liquid Huon particles, spiking the coffee he had made for the woman each day.

Donna understood the Doctor’s words but still couldn’t get a grasp on her relationship with Lance or, as it was starting to appear, the fake relationship with the man. He was now hurling abuse and insults at her, once she had reminded him that they had been about to get married and, in her mind at least, spend the rest of their lives together. Lance simply put the marriage down to the fact that he couldn’t risk Donna running off and spoiling the plan. ‘But I love you,’ she stated softly, the truth of it clear to see.

‘That’s what made it easy,’ Lance cruelly began, ‘it’s like you said, Doctor. The big picture. What’s the point of it all if the human race is nothing? That’s what the Empress can give me. The chance to - to go out there. To see it. The size of it all. I think you understand that, don’t you, Doctor?’

The Racnoss hissed. ‘Who is this little physician?’

‘Like she said, Martian,’ Lance replied, nodding his head in their direction.

‘Oh, I’m sort of…homeless,’ he said lightly, waving off their incorrectness but not making a move to amend it. Now that Lance’s crookedness had been revealed, as well as the explanation as to how Donna had been dosed with Huon particles, there was just one big question left for the Time Lord: why? What purpose could those particles have now that they had been activated in Donna? The elephant, or rather the gaping hole in the room, was clearly involved in the Racnoss’ plan so he stepped around the bride and had another look down into the abyss. ‘But the point is: what’s down here?’ He said, aiming his question at the Empress. ‘What’s gonna help you four thousand miles down? That’s just the molten core of the Earth, isn’t it?’

‘I think he wants us to talk,’ Lance said smugly and the hissing Empress agreed. ‘Well, tough! All we need is Donna!’ He proclaimed.

‘Kill this chattering little Doctor-man!’ The Racnoss ordered.

Donna, who had since been rather understandably subdued after the revelations, gained some of her fight back as the threat to the Doctor’s life echoed in the air. She made a move to stand in front of the man as she shouted, ‘don’t you hurt him!’

‘No, no, Donna, it’s alright,’ he quietly told her but the woman was having none of it.

‘No, I won’t let them!’

‘At arms!’ Cried the Empress and all of the robots followed her command and turned to the Doctor with their weapons pointing threateningly at him.

Instinctively he raised his hands, a few words falling out of his mouth whilst his brain scrambled to form an escape plan or a good enough point that he could ramble on about so he could reason with the creature. ‘Ah…now…except…’

‘Take aim!’

‘Well, I just want to point out the obvious,’ he tried, his head shooting from side to side and assessing the threats of the armed robots.

‘They won’t hit the bride,’ the Racnoss informed him as though that was the flaw the Time Lord was seeing in her plan, ‘they’re such very good shots’.

His hands flailed in the air as he begged for her to hear him out and give him enough time to enact the new idea he had just formed. ‘N - just - just - just - just - just hold on - just a tick - just a tiny little - just a - a - a tick. If you think about it, the particles activated in Donna and drew her inside my spaceship.’ His voice calmed a little, becoming less high in pitch and less frantic too now that his audience seemed to be waiting for him to finish his explanation. He lowered his hands, putting one of them into his pocket so he could withdraw the small vial of liquid Huon particles that he had taken earlier. ‘So reverse it…’ He twisted the top of the container and once more both Donna and the particles inside the vial glowed gold. ‘...and the spaceship comes to her.’

‘Fire!’ The Empress bellowed as the Tardis formed around the Doctor and Donna, her wooden box protecting them from the bullets without even gaining a scratch.

As soon as the console room was visible around him, the Doctor darted off to the controls, pocketing the vial as he said, ‘and off we go!’ He left Donna standing in a stunned silence whilst he dashed about sending them to their new destination, rapidly explaining where they were going whilst he did so. ‘Oh. Do you know what you said before about a time machine? Well, I lied. And now we’re gonna use it. We need to find out what the Empress of the Racnoss is digging up. If something’s buried at the planet’s core, then it must have been there since the beginning. That’s just brilliant. Molto bene!’ He cried out, so enthused with his plan and where they were heading. ‘I’ve always wanted to see this,’ he added, more to himself than to Donna, who he glanced at next to say, ‘Donna, we’re going further back than I’ve ever been before’. He could only see her back from where she had sat down on the edge of the jump seat with her body turned away from him, but it was then that he noticed her shoulder’s shuddering. Realising that she was crying, his enthusiasm waned a bit and he continued piloting them the rest of the journey in silence. People who were upset were not his forte by any means. He wasn’t entirely sure how to offer the comfort wanted by whoever it was. With Rose he had learnt over time what she needed, whether it was simply a hand to hold or an embrace, or sometimes even her mother. But at other times all Rose wanted was a distraction and he was good at distractions. The entire adventure that he was having now was a distraction and he hoped that the wonders of the universe would prove to be a big enough distraction for Donna and an informative one for himself at that. ‘We’ve arrived,’ he announced rather calmly not long after the Tardis’ wheezing quietened. He poked his head around the time rotor to see the bride wiping her eyes. ‘Do you want to see?’

Donna shrugged. ‘Suppose.’

Reaching over and grabbing the monitor, he dragged it towards where he was standing and eyed the live feed of the exterior of the ship. It didn’t half make what should have been a magnificent sight look a bit underwhelming. Then an idea popped into his mind. ‘Hold on, scanner’s a bit small. Maybe your way is best.’ With that the Time Lord set off towards the doors, stopping halfway down the ramp to encourage Donna who hadn’t made a move from her perch on the jump seat. ‘Come on,’ he said softly to the bride who simply stared back at him for a moment before finally relenting and getting up with what looked to be a gargantuan effort. She sighed as she plodded towards him so the Doctor tried a little more encouragement to try and excite her with this once in a lifetime experience. ‘No human’s ever seen this. You’ll be the first.’

‘All I want to see is my bed.’

Not dissuaded by his passenger’s retort, the Time Lord stepped before the doors, his hands ready to pull them open. ‘Donna Noble. Welcome…to the creation of the Earth.’ The doors creaked as he swung them back and allowed Donna to step in front of him to take in the view whilst he stood just behind, leaning on one of the doors, rather entranced by the sight himself.

They had travelled back four point six billion years, before even the birth of the Solar System. The Earth, yet to be formed like the rest of the planets, was floating outside the doors simply as bits of rock, dust and gas that would eventually come together to create the planet. Further in the distance the brand new sun, which had only just begun to burn, shone brightly surrounded by a large orange aura, lighting up the nearby gas clouds and tinging them in shades of purple and green.

He went on to explain to his passenger how the Earth was formed, about how gravity took hold and one large rock would pull others towards it along with all the dust, gas and elements until they formed one whole. To understand what was so important for the Empress to dig all that way to the core of the Earth, they had to watch the process to find that first rock and it wasn’t long before a new rock came into view. It was certainly no ordinary rock that floated out of the gas clouds with its long, spiky protrusions that made it look more like a star than anything. But the Doctor knew that wasn’t a rock at all. It was the Racnoss. He darted up the ramp to the console to speed along the process of the Earth’s formation before rejoining Donna by the doors and watching as the Racnoss ship started to drag other rocks towards it, beginning to build the Earth around it. The Racnoss was the first rock and now he understood why the Empress would go to so much effort to reach it.

The Tardis jolted violently, nearly knocking her occupants to the floor but luckily Donna grabbed hold of the doors, the Doctor grabbed the railings and they found they were able to hold themselves mostly upright.

‘What was that?’

‘Trouble,’ the Doctor replied, reaching past the bride to close the Tardis doors before either of them could fall out if the ship shuddered again. He turned back to Donna and ushered her up the ramp to the console. ‘Hold on to something.’ No sooner had she followed his orders, the Old Girl rocked to the side throwing the Doctor onto the grating because he had yet to heed his own advice.

Donna managed to hold herself up and watched as he scrambled back upright and continued around the console frantically fiddling with the controls whilst the ship jolted and shuddered continuously. ‘What the hell’s it doing?’ She cried out.

‘That little trick of mine,’ he began to explain as he stretched his leg up to the interface and used his foot to activate one of the levers whilst his hands worked on some smaller switches. ‘Particles pulling particles. Well it works in reverse. They’re pulling us back.’

‘Well, can’t you stop it?’ The bride asked urgently, holding on for dear life. ‘Hasn’t it got a handbrake? Can’t you reverse or warp or beam or something?’ She didn’t know what was possible, just pulling all of her spaceship knowledge from anything sci-fi that she’d seen or read, but she was hoping that the alien could do something. She hadn’t had the best experience on his ship so far after her sudden appearance. It was nice when the trip did go to plan but otherwise he’d landed her in the wrong place, the controls had caught fire and now she felt like she was at the start of a washing cycle in the washing machine. Donna only hoped that they wouldn’t start spinning around next.

He eyed Donna as he furiously pumped one of the controls muttering about her being a backseat driver after her comments, but then an idea came to mind. ‘Oh! Wait a minute!’ He exclaimed, dashing around the console and then bending down to pick up the tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator. ‘The extrapolator!’ The Doctor cried out falling back onto the jump seat luckily positioned behind him as he held the surfboard like device with both hands. Since having acquired it, or perhaps confiscated it, from Blon the Slitheen whilst in Cardiff with Rose and Jack, he had integrated it into the Tardis’ systems. It had a proper place just beneath the interface and was powered via a long black cable when required. The Old Girl clearly liked the addition as coral had grown over the lower part of the device, claiming it as her own. He plonked the extrapolator upon the console. ‘Can’t stop us, but it should give us a good bump,’ he explained as he began to subvert some of the Tardis’ power into the device. It would create a protective bubble to surround the ship which could subsequently be burst and used as a shockwave of energy to send them further away from the position they were being dragged back to, thus giving the Doctor and Donna an upper hand on the Empress. The Doctor grabbed the mallet from where it was hanging up on the underside of the console and used it to whack the extrapolator once the ship had stopped rocking about having reached their destination of the Racnoss’ lair. The Tardis whirred and soon jolted as she landed once more in the underground corridor they had walked and ridden down earlier.

Flinging back the door, the Doctor left the ship followed by Donna. ‘We’ve gone about two hundred yards to the right,’ he said, glancing around and deciding which way to go before setting off at a run and yelling, ‘come on,’ over his shoulder.

She tailed after him as quickly as she could without tripping over her dress and came to a stop beside him when he halted by a door with a locking wheel. ‘What do we do?’ She panted out.

The Doctor shrugged as he took out his stethoscope from his jacket, placing one of the earpieces in his ear and the chestpiece against the metal of the door. ‘I don’t know. I’m making it up as I go along. But trust me, I’ve got a history.’

‘But I still don’t understand,’ she said, shaking her head at him, ‘I’m full of particles, but what for?’

Still focusing on the stethoscope he was using on the door, the Doctor rapidly answered Donna’s question. ‘There’s a Racnoss web at the centre of the Earth, but my people unravelled their power source. The Huon particles ceased to exist but the Racnoss are stuck. They’ve just been in hibernation for billions of years. Frozen. Dead. Kaput! So you’re the new key. Brand new particles - living particles. They need you to open it. And you have never been so quiet,’ he finished, changing his words having realised that the usually loud woman hadn’t spoken in some time. He turned around, as he hooked the stethoscope around his neck, to see nothing but an empty corridor behind him. ‘Agh!’ He cried out in annoyance and quickly went back to the door and used the sonic on it to unlock it instead. Beyond the door stood one of the cloaked robots who immediately pointed their gun at the Time Lord. ‘Ah, sorry, wrong door.’ He tried to close it but the robot stepped forwards and blocked him from pushing it fully shut, shooting two laser beams from its gun as it did so. The beams whizzed past the Doctor and scorched the far wall of the corridor behind him. ‘You want to be more careful with that, you might hit something,’ he quipped as he battled with the robot, shoulder barging the door to keep it at bay for as long as he could whilst rapidly flicking through the settings on his sonic. It emitted multiple buzzes of different pitches until finally there was a short whirring sound from just behind the door which was now no longer being forced open. The Doctor stood back upright and peered around it to see the powered down robot, its head bowed and its arms lowered but still holding the gun in its hands. ‘Got the right frequency in the end, didn’t we big fella? Now you won’t be needing this.’ The Time Lord took the gun and flung it onto the floor behind the robot. ‘Might have this off you too,’ he continued, pulling the long black cloak from its metal shoulders and shrugging it on over his suit. Next he used the sonic on the robot’s head, muttering away to himself about subroots and networks before finding the data he was looking for and grabbing the remote control, which he’d taken from the robot back at the reception, from his pocket and transferring the data from his sonic onto it. He pocketed the control and his sonic and stepped back a little. ‘Now, be honest, how do I look?’ The Doctor flicked the hood on and stood before the robot for a second before quickly adding on, ‘yeah, let’s face it, you’re probably right’. He reached up and unclipped the metal face and put it on over his own like a mask. Pushing the robot backwards he closed the door and spun the locking wheel before heading off in the direction of the laboratory and where the Racnoss, Lance and presumably the kidnapped Donna were.

‘My children are climbing towards me and none shall stop them,’ the Empress proclaimed as the Doctor, dressed in his robot disguise, ascended a set of metal stairs near to the laboratory side of the hole in the Racnoss’ lair. He had managed to find an alternative entrance into the room which had kept him out of sight but now he was more exposed to the spider’s gaze even if he was partly in shadow and dressed up. ‘So you might as well unmask, my clever little Doctor-man’.

He paused halfway up the stairs on a landing and turned, feeling the Racnoss’ gaze on him and knowing the game was up. ‘Oh well, nice try.’ Taking off the robot mask, slipping the cloak from his shoulders and letting them both fall to the floor by his feet, the Doctor took the sonic screwdriver from his jacket and aimed it at Donna. He’d had a brief glance around the room before he stepped into it and had spotted the redhead wrapped up in the mass amount of webbing that hung from the rafters. She was positioned just above the hole to the core and would fall to her death if this plan that he had just cooked up didn’t work, but he saw no other way. ‘I’ve got you Donna.’ The sonic buzzed and the web around the bride began to fray, leaving nothing but a long line of it for her to grab on to.

She screamed in fright as the web started to give way. ‘I’m gonna fall!’ Donna cried out.

‘You’re gonna swing,’ he corrected and sure enough the bride screeched as the last of the web broke, her hands grasping onto that long strand that would enable her to swing over the gaping hole and towards the Doctor. He stretched out his arms ready to catch her, saying, ‘I’ve got you,’ as he watched her heading in his direction. Except it wasn’t quite going to plan. Donna was too far down on the rope like web strands she was swinging on making the angle all wrong. He grimaced as Donna continued to swing below the stairs, her screaming cutting off when there was a loud thunk and a clatter as she collided with something solid enough to stop her momentum instantly. Peering over the railing he saw her flat on her back on the floor with bits of broken webbing covering her wedding dress. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he apologised after a moment.

Donna simply sighed with annoyance. ‘Thanks for nothing,’ she told him and started to get back onto her feet.

‘The Doctor-man amuses me.’

He turned his gaze back to the Empress, now knowing that Donna was alright because she was aiming her seemingly usual grumpiness at him, and stood fully upright, cutting himself an imposing figure from his position on the stairs. ‘Empress of the Racnoss, I give you one last chance,’ he began to tell her firmly, for he wasn’t a man of second chances. ‘I can find you a planet. I can find you and your children a place in the universe to co-exist. Take that offer and end this now.’

She hissed at him. ‘These men are so funny.’

‘What’s your answer?’ He demanded.

‘Oh,’ she breathed before stubbornly adding, ‘I’m afraid I have to decline.’ She laughed evilly and the Doctor sighed.

‘Then what happens next is your own doing.’

‘I'll show you what happens next,’ she retorted. The Empress hissed once more and then bellowed, ‘at arms!’ At her instruction all of the cloaked robots raised their weapons. ‘Take aim!’ Their guns all pointed towards the Doctor at this point, but he wasn’t worried about the situation at all. He’d seen the eventuality playing out and he was prepared for it. As the Racnoss shouted, ‘and...’ he finished her sentence for her.

‘Relax,’ he calmly instructed and, like the robot he met earlier, all of the robots in the room slouched forwards as they powered down.

From her position just below the Doctor, Donna glanced around both relieved and confused about the threat to their lives that was suddenly non-existent. ‘What did you do?’ She called up to him.

‘Guess what I’ve got, Donna,’ he said with his hands in his jacket pockets. He pulled the remote control out of his right one and waved it about a little so she could see as he announced the answer. ‘Pockets!’

This only confused the bride further. ‘How did that fit in there?’

He frowned as he glanced down at her. ‘They’re bigger on the inside,’ he said as though that should have been obvious.

The Racnoss decided to pipe up at that point, drawing their attention back to the spider as she told the Doctor, ‘robo-forms are not necessary. My children may feast on Martian flesh’.

‘Oh, but I’m not from Mars,’ he told her with a shake of his head.

‘Then where?’

‘My home planet is far away and long since gone. But its name lives on…Gallifrey.’

She snarled and hissed widely as the Doctor named his lost home, her anger clear for all to see. ‘They murdered the Racnoss!’ The Empress yelled at him.

‘I warned you,’ he told her darkly, his voice low and with an edge of the oncoming storm in his words. ‘You did this.’ Out of his other pocket he pulled out three of the baubles from the wedding reception.

The Racnoss, knowing what they were and what devastation they could cause, immediately panicked and cried out, ‘no. No. Don’t!’ But it was already too late. She had received her warning, refused the Doctor’s offer of help and now she had to deal with the consequences of her actions. As he threw the baubles into the air, she let out a deafening cry which was followed by further anguished wails as he drew out two more handfuls of baubles and flung them upwards as well. A few encircled the spider to stop her from escaping whilst he took the controller in both hands and began to set the baubles to work. They flew around the room, following his commands, and smashed into a few of the walls which gave way to the cold torrent of the Thames that the base was situated under. Other explosions caused fireballs to shoot up into the room as the water began to seep in. Like a drain in a bath, the water rushed towards the hole and flooded it, washing away the climbing baby Racnoss and forcing them back downwards where they would drown. ‘No! My children!’ The Empress screamed whilst the babies screamed alongside her, their voices crying out from the hole in the floor. The Doctor stood stoically, completely soaked as he watched the chaos that he had caused unfurl around him with an impassive look on his face. He was angry. Angry at the Empress for using the Earth as a would-be feeding ground for her young. Angry at her for harming Donna and nearly causing him to lose her; a loss that he really couldn’t take right now. It was wrong and bitter of him but he wanted someone else to feel the pain that he was going through, to feel the absolute anguish of losing everything because that was how he felt right now. The loss of Gallifrey, the Time Lords and Rose, he blamed himself for all of them and as he stood in the devastation of his own making he hoped it would somehow make him feel better that someone was feeling a morsel of what he felt. It didn’t.

She was soaked, the room was flooding and the Racnoss and her children were screaming in such agony that Donna couldn’t take it anymore. She hadn’t known what to expect. She hadn’t known what the Doctor’s plan was to stop the creatures but she couldn’t deal with the pain in their cries. Donna understood that they needed to be stopped but surely there was another way. She looked up to the man on the stairs above her, not seeing the Doctor but seeing another man there wearing his suit. This wasn’t the alien who she had accidentally met earlier, the man who had helped and saved her. This man scared her. ‘Doctor!’ She bellowed, trying to attract his attention. When he glanced down at her she shouted, ‘you can stop now!’

He looked back on the scene before him, taking it in for another moment before he called back to her, ‘come on! Time I got you out!’ He rushed down the stairs and cleared the debris that was blocking the landing below his. Donna had climbed up the stairs as far as she could and once he’d made a safe passage he grabbed her hand and dragged her up the stairs ahead of him. They climbed higher until they found another door with a locking wheel on it. The Doctor spun the wheel and pulled it open. It revealed another small room with a ladder going upwards just like the one he had ventured into earlier. He ushered Donna to climb it and quickly followed on behind her, the pair still getting drenched with the Thames as it seeped through from above them. They reached the top of the ladder and, once Donna had made space so he could climb onto the same rung as her, the Doctor managed to undo the hatch with a bit of a struggle due to the dampness. He forced it open but didn’t push it further upwards than a few inches. In the sky the Racnoss’ ship, which she had transported back to once the Doctor and Donna had made their escape, was being fired at by tanks. The star shaped ship exploded spectacularly in the night sky sending debris raining down on all below. It was only when the flames lighting up the sky had dissipated that the Time Lord pushed the hatch open fully and allowed the bride to climb outside first. He wasn’t fully out of the hatch before she was grabbing a hold of his arm as she struggled to keep her balance on the flood barrier they were now standing upon. She squealed and the Doctor laughed loudly at their escape.

‘There’s just one problem,’ she panted out, trying to catch her breath after the mad dash out of the secret basement.

‘What is it?’

‘We’ve drained the Thames.’ They both looked around at the river bed below them and chuckled at the absurdity of it all.

After a few moments the Doctor asked, ‘got your breath back?’

‘Just about. Why?’

‘Come on then, back down we go.’ He nodded his head to the hatch. ‘The water should be drained down there too by now so we’ll be able to get back to the Tardis.’

Donna grumbled a little but followed the Doctor back down the ladder and then the stairs, through the laboratory and into the corridor where the Tadis sat looking just the same as when they had left her. She was sure that there must have been some flooding into the ship that would affect it and told the Doctor as much as he unlocked the doors. ‘Won’t it be waterlogged or something?’ She asked, stepping inside a little warily because her minimal experience inside the Old Girl had been rather eventful so far.

‘Waterlogged?’ He asked incredulously, scrunching his face up at the thought of such a thing as he walked up the ramp. His eyes fell on two towels draped over the railing and he grabbed them, turned back to Donna and threw one towards her which was something she hadn’t been expecting but she caught it anyway. ‘Thanks dear,’ he mumbled to the ship patting a nearby coral strut, making the lights in the room glow a little brighter, before returning back to the bride’s earlier comment and saying, ‘she’s not a car, she doesn’t need to dry out after driving through a ford’. He saw Donna’s shrug and chose not to reply to her comment of his ship simply being a wooden box before he began towelling his hair dry. Donna dried her face and arms but couldn’t really do much else, something that was pointed out by the Time Lord a moment later. He slung his towel over one of the other railings before darting around the console, getting the Old Girl ready for flight. ‘Right, Donna, home time I think because, quite frankly, I can’t see a towel cutting it with your dress.’ Around the room the Tardis hummed darkly and the Doctor groaned. ‘Oh, don’t start this again.’

She watched, bemused by the alien and his ship, and told him her home address when he asked where she wanted to be taken. He appeared to type it in before making a few more adjustments to the controls and flipping a lever that got the Tardis groaning and whirring around them as she transported them to their destination. Donna let go of the handrail where she’d rested her used towel when the ship landed and stepped outside the doors, soon followed by the Doctor. After the incorrect landings earlier she was happily surprised to find herself on the street just outside of the house she lived in with her parents and Granddad.

‘There we go, told you she’d be alright. Survive anything,’ he told Donna as the door creaked as it swung to behind him, just open ajar so that the Time Lord could get back in with ease.

‘More than I’ve done,’ she replied, rather subdued. Getting back home had really sobered her after her experiences and she knew that she was going to have to face the music. Plus, now that the adrenaline had worn off, what had actually happened over the course of the day was really starting to settle in.

He took out his sonic and aimed it down at Donna’s legs before raising his arm and scanning her body. He left it scanning her face a little longer than he needed to as he tried to lighten her mood by reminding her of her previous annoyed retorts when he’d done such a thing earlier. She smirked slightly. ‘No, all the Huon particles have gone,’ he told her as he pocketed his screwdriver once more. ‘No damage, you’re fine.’

Clearly the Doctor had been taking Donna’s talking of not surviving the ordeal quite literally but that wasn’t what she had been meaning at all. ‘Yeah, but apart from that,’ she said with a sigh, ‘I missed my wedding, lost my job and became a widow on the same day…sort of.’

Gazing at the woman before him with a new understanding the Doctor softly said, ‘I couldn’t save him’. He may not have seen what had happened to Lance, but he had heard enough to gather an understanding as he made his way back to the room with Donna and the Racnoss whilst wearing his robot disguise. The man had done some bad things, made some bad choices, but that didn’t mean he had to die for what he had done.

Donna took in a breath and nodded to herself as she determinedly said, ‘he deserved it’. She watched as the Doctor’s eyebrows rose and her determination waned. ‘No, he didn’t,’ she whispered after a moment, bowing her head, ashamed that she had thought such a thing of Lance. Now feeling a little awkward she raised her head and glanced back at her house before turning to the Doctor again. ‘Better get inside. They’ll be worried.’

He smiled at her and nodded towards the window of her house where her mother and father could be seen hugging and comforting one another in the front room. ‘Best Christmas present they could have.’ Then he raised his brows again and amended himself. ‘Oh, no. I forgot. You hate Christmas.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Even…’ he began, stepping back and slipping his hand just inside the door to a switch that lay just beyond the top of the doorframe. ‘...if it snows?’

Donna watched as the light on top of the blue box glowed brightly before sending what looked like a fireball into the sky. The fireball exploded like a firework. Her face lit up as that firework began to send cold, white flakes back to the Earth. She stuck her hands out, her palms catching the snow as it drifted downwards, laughing at the absurdity of it as she did so. ‘I can’t believe you did that,’ she told the man who was leaning in the doorway of his ship with his hands in his pockets and his ankles crossed, her voice high and still full of mirth.

‘Oh, basic atmospheric excitation,’ he said as he glanced upwards at the snow, his mind drifting back a little to his previous Christmas where he stood just outside the Tardis with Rose in the not-snow whilst they discussed which way they wanted to travel next. Then he dropped his gaze and it fell upon Donna who was gracing him with a small smile.

‘Merry Christmas.’

‘And you,’ he returned, making the bride’s smile just a little brighter. ‘So…’ he awkwardly began, ‘...what will you do with yourself now?’

‘Not getting married for starters,’ she replied with a bit of a sigh, but her mood was not as darkened by the thought of it as it was earlier. ‘And I’m not gonna temp anymore. I dunno.’ She shrugged. ‘Travel. See a bit more of planet Earth. Walk in the dust.’ Donna grinned at that, remembering watching the formation of the planet at the Doctor’s side. ‘Just go out there and do something.’

He had raised his eyebrows a little upon hearing Donna’s plans. He didn’t really know if he was particularly prepared to take on a new passenger, a new companion, but he did like Donna and thought she could make a good friend. She was funny and grumpy and boy could she shout and with her by his side he hadn’t forgotten about Rose but her loss became a little less overbearing in his mind. ‘Well, you could always…’ He trailed off, still not certain in his suggestion himself let alone knowing what the woman before him would think of it.

‘What?’ She whispered.

‘Come with me,’ he said almost as quietly.

Donna gazed at him a little sadly before gently saying, ‘no’.

‘Okay.’ His voice was louder and he glanced away, not willing to let her see the slight hurt but mainly the embarrassment of the refusal.

‘I can’t.’

‘No, that’s fine,’ he continued unconvincingly.

She smiled as she explained herself a little to him, thinking back over all the madness that had happened. ‘No but really. I mean, everything we did today. Do you live your life like that?’

He stared at her, his eyes a bit wide as he tried to work out where this was going. ‘Not all the time,’ he told her quietly.

Donna gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him and backed that look up with her words. ‘I think you do. And I couldn’t,’ she added with a shake of her head.

‘You’ve seen it out there. It’s beautiful,’ he tried to remind her.

‘And it’s terrible,’ she retorted quickly, making a crease form between his brows as she went on. ‘That place was flooding and burning, and they were dying, and you stood there like-’ She shook her head, unable to know how best to describe him in that moment. ‘I don’t know. A stranger. And then you made it snow,’ she added as she glanced around them briefly. ‘I mean, you scare me to death.’

He swallowed as her words sunk in. ‘Well then.’

After another sad smile at the man, Donna decided to offer him something else. ‘Tell you what I will do though. Christmas dinner.’ At his wide eyed, concerned look she said, ‘oh, come on’.

‘I don’t do that sort of thing,’ he told her because he didn’t. It was domestic and he didn’t do domestic. There was only one person, one family, who he would do domestic for and they were gone.

‘You did it last year, you said so. And you might as well, because Mum always cooks enough for twenty,’ she said, trying to encourage him.

‘Wellll.’ He groaned and sighed a little, putting on his act of reluctance before seemingly giving in. ‘Oh, all right then. But you go first, better warn them. And…don’t say I’m a Martian.’ He turned to his ship a little. ‘I just have to park her properly; she might drift off to the Middle Ages. I’ll see you in a minute.’ He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. He didn’t do domestics or goodbyes and this would be goodbye. Even if he was up for Christmas dinner he wouldn’t be good company right now, especially not with all the memories of the previous Christmas with the Tyler’s and Mickey coming back at full force. He flipped the dematerialisation lever to send the ship in the vortex. The time rotor had just begun to bob and the Old Girl had just started to whirr when he heard Donna bellowing his name. He lowered the lever back down and returned to the doors. ‘Blimey, you can shout,’ he commented as he opened the door to see the bride.

She gave him a fond look. ‘Am I ever going to see you again?’

‘If I’m lucky.’

‘Just…promise me one thing,’ she began softly, the sad and sympathetic look making a return to her face. ‘Find someone.’

‘I don’t need anyone,’ he said with a shake of his head.

‘Yes you do,’ she told him knowingly. ‘Cos sometimes I think you need someone to stop you.’

Oh he understood that, more than Donna could ever know. ‘Yeah,’ he whispered and gazed unseeingly for a moment before taking a breath and brightening his tune. ‘Thanks then Donna. Good luck. And just…be magnificent,’ he told her with a grin.

Smiling at him she nodded in agreement, her voice catching a little as she said, ‘I think I will, yeah’.

With one last grin he left the doorway of his ship and had just closed the door behind him when Donna called out his name once more. ‘Oh, what is it now?’ He complained.

‘That partner of yours.’ She began softly and immediately the Doctor’s face fell. ‘What was her name?’

He stared at the woman unseeingly, his hearts thudding hard in his chest as his eyes glossed over. For a fleeting moment he could see her standing nearby to Donna in the snow. She was wearing that black puffy winter jacket she had, the snow landing in her golden hair as she looked up in awe at the beauty of it, her grin wide and her giggle light with her enjoyment. The image faded just as quick as his mind had created it then he finally answered Donna’s question in a voice thick with the tears he was about to shed. ‘Her name was Rose.’

Donna’s smile was full of sorrow as she watched the Doctor retreat into the Tardis for the final time before vanishing, the only trace that he and his ship had been on the street being the snow that now covered it. She turned and headed to her house, ready as she ever would be to face Christmas.

Chapter Text

‘That partner of yours. What was her name?’

‘Her name was Rose.’

Rose.

He’d seen her. He didn’t have the ability at the moment to comprehend how it was possible. It could have been a vision of a timeline showing him what could have happened, what should have happened, if she was still with him. Or he was starting to lose it, well, if he ever had it in the first place could be up for debate, but seeing people who weren’t actually there was never a good sign. It was that vision that sent him over the edge.

The Doctor managed to send the Tardis into the vortex before the first sob escaped him. With one shaking hand still clinging onto the dematerialisation lever and the other with a white knuckle grip on the console edge as though it was the only thing holding him up, the Time Lord finally let himself grieve his loss. He stood there with his head bowed and his shoulders shuddering as the sobs wracked through him. His cries, although not loud, appeared that way in the otherwise near silent console room. The tears fell one after the other leaving salty trails down his cheeks and nose before they dripped down to the grating below. Oh he had tried. He had tried to go on, carry on with his normal adventuring life, albeit said adventure had appeared unexpectedly and had been rather forced upon him, but he had still tried to give it his usual gusto and enthusiasm. It had worked a little. It had distracted him some of the time. What he hadn’t anticipated were the near constant reminders of Rose and their life together. He hadn’t appreciated how much his universe revolved around her, how his everyday life was shaped by her very existence and by her being a constant by his side since just after the Time War. Now that was gone. Now she was gone. And now his body played tricks on him, and not just through this Rose vision he’d just witnessed, his hearts stopped whenever he saw a similarly built blonde woman whilst a morsel of hope grew within him that it might be her. His eyes told him that it never was. His brain told him that it never would be.

He knew there was always the zero room. He could go in there and forget, forget everything, but it would only be a temporary relief. He’d have to leave the room eventually and, like they had when he’d left there after just losing Rose, the memories would simply come flooding back and overwhelm him once more. Every time he entered it would consistently have the same outcome and that wouldn’t make coping easier in the long term. At the moment he couldn’t imagine coping in the long term, it didn’t seem like a possibility because currently coping at all was unbearable. He nearly hadn’t made it back to the Tardis after all. The Doctor had wondered, as he escaped upwards to the Thames flood barriers with Donna, if he would have stayed there had she not been with him. Wondered if he’d have let himself get swept up in the floods. It hadn’t been his intention with his plan when he started to enact it, not like at Henriks, but in the moment when he was surrounded by the devastation he had caused, a perfect visual representation of his inner turmoil, he hadn’t particularly felt the urge to leave. Perhaps it would have come had the water started lapping at his feet rather than simply soaking him like a heavy rain shower but then again perhaps it wouldn’t. Who was he to know what would have happened had Donna not been there? Maybe she was right. He did need someone to stop him. If he hadn’t met Rose that day in 2005 he wouldn’t be here and perhaps the same could be said about Donna stopping him today. It wasn’t just about his own mortality either. Any mercy he did have was long since gone for the Racnoss even if she had been the last of her kind until she was able to free the others. That would have swayed his past self and had done with the Gelth when he thought there were so few left of them because of the Time War. They had used that against him, used his sympathy and understanding to conduct their real plan. Rose had seen through it but he didn’t listen until it was too late and the innocent life of Gwyneth was taken in the process. He could say he just didn’t want to repeat the same mistake. That he didn’t want to lose Donna because he had been a bit more lenient with the Empress. But that wasn’t really it. He was cruel because he was hurting and he knew it. He’d taken things too far and that had scared Donna. Now he was alone once again with his tsunami of emotions lacking the one thing he needed. Rose.

The Doctor wasn’t sure how long he had stood in the console room. He hadn’t consciously taken note of the fact that his feet had slowly shuffled him into the corridor nor noticed the closest door swinging open for him and guiding him inside. It was a wooden door that the Tardis had placed before him. A wooden door with a complicated engraving of a large rose with a wolf howling at a moon that was mostly covered by storm filled clouds hidden within the flower’s petals. The room beyond was exactly the same. On the blue plush armchair lay the pink overnight case, still open and containing a few items that Rose had begun to pack. One of the drawers was open as was one of the cupboard doors revealing a few of her dresses like the yellow one that the Doctor had returned to the bazaar to buy for her. Her Live Aid shirt was draped over the bedpost at the foot of the bed nearest the wardrobes from when she’d taken it off to get changed that morning. There was a small bundle of clothes on the floor near the door to the en-suite, namely Rose’s underwear and the sleep shorts she had worn that morning too, which had been discarded along with his own clothes on their way to the shower.

The Doctor hadn’t seen any of this; he’d simply trudged into the room and found himself standing before her side of the bed staring down at the still unmade covers. It almost looked like she could have just gotten up to make a quick trip into the en-suite and she was expected back at any second. They normally righted the duvet when they got up. His side was as made as it could be when you arose before your partner but she’d never gotten round to making her side. He’d rushed Rose out of the room after their shower so they could go to her mother’s and get back, packed and be on the way to Barcelona as soon as possible. How he wished he hadn’t rushed her now. Wished he had lived those moments with her at half speed so he could have appreciated them more thoroughly. Wished he had begged her to stay longer in the shower together until their skin was thoroughly prune-like so he could have spent more time with her. Wished he had crawled back into bed after secretly visiting Jackie just so he could have held her for longer even though he was far too excited to lie still enough to not wake her which was why he had continued to tinker with the Old Girl so he kept himself busy whilst Rose slept that morning. He wished for a lot of things these days. It didn’t mean that they could happen though.

The mattress lowered under the Doctor’s weight as he sat upon it going through the motions of untying his laces to toe his chucks off. His numb fingers fumbled a little with the two buttons he’d got done up on his suit jacket when he took that off next. He threw it the short distance to hook onto the other bedpost at the foot of the bed. It reached its target and stayed there for a second or two before sliding to the floor where it stayed in a crumpled heap. He didn’t care. Picking up Rose’s top pillow and putting it on his lap, he reached behind him for his own and dragged one over to fill the space he had just made. He sat there for a moment, lost in thought, his fingers idly playing with the pillowcase on his legs before he made up his mind. The Doctor sniffed then settled into the bed, he pulled the covers up to his shoulders and curled up on his side, his back to the still open door. Wrapped tightly in his arms was Rose’s pillow. Burying his face in the soft white fabric he inhaled deeply, overloading his senses with her. The scent was almost as strong as it was when he hugged her, the bouquet of vanilla, honey and citrus; a fragrance that he would forever cherish as hers. It would fade over time, logically he knew that, but he didn’t care much for logic anymore.

The Doctor eventually fell into a restless slumber, still hugging that dampened pillow, and was lured into dreams that seemed far too lucid to be just dreams. It was as though he was drifting in and out of consciousness with Rose’s light touch on his back and arm, drawing him from his sleep. Her touch was affectionate as always but so tender like she was trying not to wake him whilst she ran a hand over his waist and wrapped her arm around him, her warm fingers splaying out upon his chest just like she often did when they were in bed together. She whispered words he could not quite hear, yet he felt her breath tickling his neck and the feel of her hair falling onto his exposed skin as she leant in closer. Far too soon she was pulled away from him and he was paralysed to prevent it, quite literally unable to move or speak. All he could do was watch as she was dragged away from him once again.

He actually woke up a few hours later with her name on his lips and a head that ached, an affliction he was hardly affected by as a Time Lord. He didn’t get out of bed, instead he groaned and turned onto his other side, the pillow still tightly pressed up against his chest, and he lay there until sleep gradually took him once again. More strange dreams plagued him, though this time they were about Bad Wolf Bay. There were dreams of Rose not being able to see him on the beach or the sands between them multiplying so much that no matter how fast she ran she never got closer to him. He had found himself unable to move, even though he had actually made it to the bay, because he was trapped in quicksand and was slowly sinking with no hope of getting back out. The one that woke him involved the tide coming in. Rose stood on that beach unaffected yet with every cold splash of sea on his toes he was dragged further into the icy embrace until his whole body was in the water. It didn’t stop there though. He saw Rose watching him from the beach whilst the waves crashed over his head. With every call of her name more salt water entered his mouth and forced its way into his lungs until, after one last bellow, he was finally pulled under.

The Doctor awoke coughing and spluttering with the crashing of the sea rushing through his ears. He sat upright with a gasp, trying to breathe yet every breath hurt his lungs and only brought with it a sickly salty smell that made him gag. He’d never been on that beach in reality, never smelt that particular salty scent yet still it felt so real to the Time Lord. He leant over the side of the bed and retched a few times but brought nothing up. It didn’t surprise him as he wasn’t sure when it was that he last ate. As the smell of the sea gradually dampened the Doctor sat back, his clothes sticking to him as though he had actually been in the water. He pushed his clammy hair back from his forehead whilst he scrubbed his hands over his face still breathing heavily and his hearts still beating rapidly after his startling wake up call. Releasing a shuddering breath he leant his elbows on his crossed legs and sat there with his head in his hands willing himself to get up. He didn’t quite do such a thing. After sitting still for quite some time whilst his hearts settled, he crawled to the foot of the bed so he could reach his jacket and picked it up before settling back where he was sat before. Fumbling with the striped fabric until he found the breast pocket, the Doctor stuck his fingers inside and pulled out a Polaroid of Rose. It was taken on the twenty-seventh of April and Rose was looking beautiful in the 1950’s pink dress she wore when he’d attempted to take her to see Elvis for her birthday. He stared at the photograph for a while, his eyes mainly focusing on her joyous smile whilst his ears replayed the laughter that accompanied it after he’d said something that had amused her. Eventually he set the picture down on her bedside table, resting it up against a half filled glass of water and pushing Rose’s watch that she occasionally wore up against the bottom of the photo to ensure it wouldn’t become displaced and slide down.

Dragging himself out of bed, the Doctor stripped off and got into the shower. The whole process took him longer than normal because, even though he’d slept for about double the amount of time that a Time Lord needed for a full sleep, he still felt lethargic. He dressed in a fresh pair of pinstriped trousers and wore a maroon undershirt with a cream button up over the top then pulled on a pair of socks and his chucks.

His next destination was the galley where he went through the motions of making tea. He filled the kettle and let it boil whilst he grabbed the mugs, teabags, milk and sugar. It was only when he brought his Tardis blue mug up to his lips that he realised his mistake. On the counter sat Rose’s mug filled with steaming tea. It had come so naturally to make two mugs, so naturally that he hadn’t noticed what he was doing until it was too late. Chastising himself in Gallifreyan, the Doctor turned his back to the mug adorned with her name and the pink flower. The Tardis let out a questioning hum to which he answered with a shake of his head before walking away and heading to the console room. Well, that had been his intention anyway. The galley had a door; it was a regular wooden door just like most rooms on the ship except for the zero room, swimming pool and a few other exceptions. It wasn’t as though he had exactly forgotten it was there but he didn’t use it, hadn’t used it since the Tardis’ last big makeover when he’d regenerated into his last body. The Doctor was certainly reminded of said door when it was slammed in his face preventing him from leaving the room. He groaned. The Old Girl’s attitude was not what he needed right now. ‘What?’ He snapped, his eyes glaring upwards. There was a small noise behind him and he turned to see the fridge door easing open. He huffed and stepped over to it a little begrudgingly. ‘You’re getting worse than Jackie,’ he muttered, ‘she was always trying to feed me up’. When the Tardis flashed an image through his mind showing him how long it had been since he had eaten a proper meal his voice turned all high and whiny. ‘Yes, alright, I’m here now aren’t I?’ She replied with a low, grumbling hum and he shot back, ‘do you want me to replace those parts after your strop on the motorway earlier or not?’ There was silence and the Time Lord, a little pleased with his win in the argument, turned his attention to the contents of the fridge wondering what he actually fancied.

After his sandwich, the Doctor had been allowed to leave the galley and had wandered into the console room ready to distract himself with the repairs. He tutted to himself as he looked at the melted mess of buttons and switches one of the panels had become and made a mental note of what he would need to search for in the storage rooms so they could be replaced. Once he’d returned with a box of parts he grabbed a tool from his tool bag and started scraping away the melted remnants from the console. It was good conducting Tardis maintenance. He could get lost in it for hours. This time, however, his mind was trying to get lost down a different path, a dangerous path that would send him spiralling again if he didn’t try and stop it.

Haven’t had a dream in a long time
See, the life I’ve had
Could make a good man bad
So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows it would be the last time
Lord knows it would be the first time

The song Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want, covered by Deftones, finished playing and the Doctor sighed as he worked through a clump of frazzled wiring, all of which would need to be replaced. ‘How about something less depressing?’ He suggested to the Old Girl who then began playing Careless Whisper. He sighed again. ‘You know what, never mind. No music.’ The saxophone introduction was cut off and there was silence apart from the general hums of the Tardis and the grunts from the Doctor who was getting frustrated with the wiring. He’d thought asking for some music would help distract him but apparently her current repertoire consisted of songs that would only darken his mood further. He knew she wasn’t in the happiest of moods at the moment because she also missed Rose so perhaps her sad song choices were her way of expressing that. There wasn’t much he could do about that though. If there was, he would have done it; he would have gotten Rose back and wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place.

**********

‘Now if we could move on and discuss your diary entries. I noticed one of them…’ Andi paused as she flicked through the diary until she found the mostly blank page. ‘…ah here it is, yes, all you have written is “the worst day of my life”. Do you think you could expand upon that for me?’

Rose shrugged and shuffled a little in her seat, tucking one leg under herself whilst resting her elbow on the arm of the chair so she could fiddle with her earring. She sat across from her therapist who was scrutinising her movements but for some reason it never felt that way. Maybe it was because Andi had such kind eyes. Perhaps that was why Rose had agreed to keep coming back. She knew she wasn’t being judged from both Andi’s outward appearance as well as her overall demeanour. That still didn’t make some topics easy to discuss, especially not this one, but this was the whole reason why Rose was here. ‘That sums it up really.’

By the end of the session she hadn’t really explained that day to Andi, the day that she and the Doctor had said goodbye. She’d given her an overview, just like she had to her family, but nothing more. It had been just over two months since that day and she’d never properly spoken about Bad Wolf Bay to anyone. Rose had tried to with Andi over their sessions but she always ended up getting lost part way through, too caught up in her emotions and in reliving the moment that she couldn’t continue and get to the end. It was what happened at the end that really killed her.

‘I hope I can expect to see you online as we did before,’ Andi told her as she opened the door to let her out.

Rose nodded a little numbly. ‘Yeah, I’ll let you know my schedule.’

Andi wished her luck with returning to work and her move back to Cardiff and then they said their farewells. Rose walked down the stairs, away from the external Torchwood therapist offices where Andi was situated, and out of the building. It was a mostly overcast day but they were due for some sun in the afternoon and the forecast had been right. Taking off her hoodie and tying it around her waist so she could feel the mild warmth of the mid June weather, Rose looked up and down the street for the familiar big black SUV but it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. After that talk with Andi she didn’t feel like sitting still and waiting, she was far too worked up to do such a thing. She had to move, she had to be doing something. Anything. Deciding on walking down the street to get into town, her growling stomach confirming her destination choice, Rose made her way to the small café she’d found earlier on in the year. They did excellent sandwiches, rolls, paninis, bagels; any sort of bread you could put a filling in, they had it and they were all delicious.

It wasn’t too busy inside with the lunchtime rush of the busy city workers mostly having abated and she ordered the ultimate breakfast bagel and picked up a can of cola and a blueberry muffin to complete the meal deal they had to offer. After collecting the hot bagel from the counter she headed outside to sit at one of the small tables they had set up but of course her phone had to ring two bites into her meal. She rummaged in her pocket and answered it without looking at the caller ID because she already knew who it was going to be.

‘What?’ She spoke into the phone with her mouth half full, a bit annoyed at the interruption because the bagel was really hitting the spot.

‘“What?” She says. Like I’m the one who’s just done a runner. I told you to wait there if I was ever running late.’

She sighed and swallowed her food. His sarcasm was getting on her nerves a little. ‘I wasn’t in the mood, Mickey.’

‘No little text saying that you weren’t overrunning and that you’d actually gone wandering off. Just left me sitting out here like a lemon whilst you, by the sounds of it, are stuffing your face.’

‘I didn’t think, alright? I just did,’ Rose shot back. She heard him open his mouth, about to fire something back but then he changed his mind and let out a breath.

‘Where are you? I’ll come get you.’

‘At Cassie’s, the one on the corner,’ she replied just as quietly. Mickey said he was on the way and then the line went dead. Rose looked at her bagel for a moment and then sighed, wrapping it back up. She picked up her drink and muffin and went back inside the shop to order something for Mickey as an apology. He didn’t deserve her attitude even if that session had left her feeling raw and she should have texted him so he didn’t worry whilst he waited needlessly. He certainly didn’t need to collect her but he had volunteered because he cared and she’d treated him badly because she was in a mood. Mickey was pretty used to her random snappishness these days but that didn’t mean he should be, didn’t mean anyone in her family should be. Just because she was hurting didn’t mean they had to suffer for it.

Rose stepped out of the shop just as the black SUV pulled up by the curb. She climbed in and had hardly done up her seat belt before they were back on the road. Turning to see Mickey she caught sight of someone sitting in the back out of the corner of her eye. ‘Oh, Jake. I didn’t realise you were there.’

He smiled back at her. ‘Clearly my stealth training is working out then,’ he joked.

She smirked. ‘If I’d have known I would’ve gotten you a sandwich too.’ Her words caught Mickey’s attention and he glanced at her briefly. ‘I would say maybe you could halve it between you but you might have to fight Mickey for it. It’s barbecue.’ She laughed when Mickey grabbed the wrapped baguette from her lap and put it in a cup holder that neither she nor Jake could reach.

‘That is what you get for taking the last slice of cake in the canteen earlier,’ he told Jake, eyeing him through the rear view mirror.

Jake raised his hands in protest, sighing loudly as Rose giggled a bit more at what had clearly been an ongoing petty argument between the pair. ‘I thought they had more in the back,’ Jake stressed once again.

‘On a Friday?’

‘Well, I didn’t know, did I?’

‘Rose,’ began Mickey, his annoyance with her behaviour earlier seemingly evaporated and replaced with amusement at this squabble he knew he was winning. ‘What are the kitchens like on the weekends?’

‘Self serve at best but probably wiser just to bring your own,’ she answered, causing an immediate groan from the backseat whilst Mickey beamed and gloated for the rest of the journey to the Tyler mansion.

Rose had been staying there for the past two and a half months but was finally going back to her flat in Cardiff the next day and to her work at Torchwood on the following Monday. She had helped out with a few translations over the past couple of weeks, just some simple things and only ones that could be completed online so she could get back in the swing of things after her impromptu break, but now she would be returning full time. Her whole new life in Pete’s world had been put on pause since that day on the beach. It was worse than being separated in the first place because even though the Doctor had said it was impossible she’d still had hope that there was a way. He was an impossible man who had done many impossible things, they had done some impossible things, so why not just one more. One last impossible thing. For a moment she’d thought that he had accomplished it when he’d called out to her, summoning her to the bay. It was the exact opposite. That was the day they said goodbye for the final time. That was the day that crushed her. Rose had been picking herself up, she had been getting on with a life, not the life she had chosen but it was a life nonetheless and in that life she’d had a purpose. Then that had all been ripped out from under her. Her purpose was gone. If the Doctor couldn’t get to her, him with his big Time Lord brain and the brilliant Tardis then she, Rose Tyler, would never accomplish such a feat. It wasn’t just the day they said goodbye and it was the day that she gave up.

It was only Jackie and her feisty personality that had kept Rose afloat. She dragged her daughter out of bed when Rose was adamant on vegetating under the covers. She made sure she was fed and got her out of the house on trips that mainly consisted of buying things for the new baby. Jackie didn’t let her sit and mope, no matter how much Rose wanted to, because her daughter was not a moper. Her Rose had never been one to sit still doing nothing. Jackie would have viewed a nice sit down on the sofa as a relaxing thing but clearly those genetics did not get passed along. Rose viewed it more as a punishment or she did do until Bad Wolf Bay, since then that’s all she had wanted to do. The one thing that did get her daughter motivated was the mural Jackie had asked her to create for the baby’s room which had been completed in the nick of time before the move back to Cardiff. The mural had started out as a cute fairy tale forest but ended up altering slightly to turn into a forest that she and the Doctor had visited once. The premise was still very much fairy tale, their entire adventure that day had been like one, but the trees now included a small village consisting of tiny treehouses with rope bridges that crossed between the branches. The residents of the real village also made an appearance in the mural, all appearing to look a bit like garden gnomes to a non time traveller. If one paid enough attention to the mural then a familiar blue box could be seen just poking out between a few trees and vines. Rose wasn’t entirely sure why she had felt the need to include the Old Girl; it wasn’t like her baby brother would understand it and what it meant. Maybe she would tell him about the Doctor, about their adventures in the Tardis together, tell him all the nice tales like some bedtime story. That’s all they were now, her travels with the Time Lord, just stories.

**********

Everyday life for Rose was menial. She woke up, went through her morning routine and then walked to Torchwood Three where she would make everyone a cup of tea before starting her work day. Everybody idolised her cuppa and it had become far more of a staple within the team than a cup of coffee had. The hours were long but Rose preferred them that way as it kept her busy and distracted. Her day to day activities ranged between manning the tourist booth, conducting in-base translation assignments for multiple Torchwood facilities plus some outside of base assignments, and sorting through the archive. In there she had managed to properly sort some alien artefacts that she had seen before but no one else could decipher as well as putting her translation skills to use to understand others. Occasionally the team would put bets on an object, giving guesses as to what it could be before Rose gave her final verdict. Only once had she had to pay up when Dr. Owen Harper, the medic at Torchwood Three, guessed that one shapeful artefact was a sex toy. It was his answer most of the time when they played that game so he was bound to be correct eventually. If Rose’s hours weren’t altered for whatever reason then after work on a Monday she would go to the local gym. She would do the same on Tuesday and Friday except on the Tuesday she would partake in her self defence classes. On Wednesday and Thursday were her driving lessons which she could now afford and had just about enough time in her schedule to complete. After learning how to fly the Tardis, driving a car was simple for Rose mechanically, it was just the judgement and skills of other drivers that were a pain because it wasn’t like you had to deal with them when you were mainly materialising and dematerialising in the ship.

The only new thing that had happened since she had returned to Torchwood was the training she had been completing under the sharp eye of Suzie Costello, commander at Torchwood Three. It was a small base compared to Pete’s London one and Suzie wanted everyone able to go out on the field when needed so the job was safer for the team and they were more efficient as a unit. Rose had been reluctant about the use of a gun, which Suzie wanted her trained in, but understood it was only for her protection and to be used as a last resort. She was still much more comfortable using a stun gun or tranquilisers if it did have to come to it. Luckily, since having been out on a few missions, she had yet to fire her weapon which she was thankful for.

There was one thing at Torchwood that Rose had yet to go back to: the dimension cannon. Malcolm Taylor, the chief scientist of the team, had secretly continued to work on it over the past couple of months since Rose’s return to Cardiff in between his other tasks. Even though he was incredibly keen, and the fact that the cannon had been ready since just before that visit to Bad Wolf Bay, there had been no test run. Rose had given up on the project and had unofficially shut it down. She had lost hope of ever returning to her proper universe that day and hadn’t wanted to try it out because she was adamant it wouldn’t work and it would only break her already fragile heart further. Malcolm lived in hope that she would one day change her mind, not because he wanted to get rid of Rose of course, but because he simply wanted to know if his creation worked.

**********

It was the sixth of September when everything began to change for the Tyler household. Rose had returned to the mansion for the weekend, triumphant at having just passed her driving test. A small celebration was held on the Saturday evening with her parents, Mickey and Jake, though the heavily pregnant Jackie, who was due in just a few days, had to cut her involvement short because she was exhausted. Jackie didn’t get much sleep overnight and was incredibly irritable and uncomfortable in any position, sitting, lying or standing, the next day. It was a bit of a relief when the pains started mid afternoon and Pete and Rose bundled Jackie into the Jeep and got her to the hospital as soon as they could. Pete had suggested she could use the Torchwood facilities where they had more advanced equipment, medicines and pain relief but Jackie wanted nothing to do with that alien nonsense and quite frankly didn’t trust it.

The sixth of September came and went. The labour was progressing slowly but steadily and Pete and Rose were doing their best to buoy Jackie and to encourage her without having their heads ripped off by the annoyed woman. If anyone thought Jackie Tyler was scary before they were lucky to have not met her during labour because it was a whole other level. They took it in turns staying up with the expectant mum and went on several walks through the corridors beyond the birthing suite to encourage the baby along. Eventually, at just after three in the morning on the seventh of September, Anthony Michael Tyler was born. He was named after Jackie’s uncle Tony and Pete’s father Michael, and he was a healthy baby of eight pounds and two ounces who could scream even louder than his mother. His fine, wispy hair was strawberry blonde and his eyes were hazel just like his sister’s. Everyone agreed that he was perfect.

‘That male midwife was nice wasn’t he?’ Jackie began as she eyed her daughter. It was just the pair of them awake in the room. Anthony, or Tony as was the nickname he had garnered merely hours after birth, was dozing in a small cot by his mother’s bedside and Pete was down in the cafeteria getting something for the three of them.

Rose looked up from the sleeping Tony and shrugged. ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘Good strong arms and hands.’

‘Mum,’ she complained with a deep crease in her brow at what her mum was alluding to. ‘You can’t be saying that, you’re married to Pete.’

‘Doesn’t mean I can’t look,’ she shot back. ‘Anyway, I wasn’t meaning for me...’ She raised her eyebrows suggestively at her daughter who scoffed at the idea.

Rose turned away, looking back at her little brother. ‘I’m not interested mum,’ she mumbled. ‘And do you really expect me to move on just like that? It’s not even been a year since we ended up here.’

‘Give it a couple more weeks and it will have,’ Jackie muttered before adding, ‘but no sweetheart, that’s not what I meant. Just because you aren’t ready to look for someone at the moment doesn’t me-’

Her head shot around to her mother as she interrupted her. ‘Ready?’ She asked incredulously. ‘What do you mean ready?’

Jackie wasn’t put off by Rose’s tone and answered her easily. ‘Well, one day you’ll find a nice bloke and settle down, have a family of your own.’

She was shaking her head before her mum had finished speaking. ‘I found my nice bloke, mum. There’s no point looking because there’s never ever gonna be someone else out there. Not for me.’

‘Never say “never ever”,’ Jackie scolded lightly.

A mirthless laugh passed her lips and Jackie looked at her in question. ‘The Doctor told me that once,’ Rose supplied, ‘I was saying we could never ever be torn apart and he said to not say never ever. Now look at us. He was right. He was always right’.

Jackie sighed as her daughter looked off into the middle distance getting lost in her melancholy thoughts about the Time Lord. She reached out and placed a comforting hand on Rose’s and they sat like that for a moment before Jackie spoke once more. ‘That damn alien making the rest of us humans seem worthless compared to himself,’ she complained quietly. There was no real malice in it because she knew what they had, the Doctor and her Rose, and it really had been a beautiful once in a lifetime love.

Her words brought Rose out of her reverie. ‘You’re not worthless mum, the Doctor would be the last person to say anyone was worthless,’ she told her seriously. ‘And it’s not like it was his fault, me falling in love with him, it was the last thing on his mind when we met.’ She let out a slightly shuddery breath that made Jackie look at her with concern. ‘Last thing I said to him was that I loved him,’ Rose admitted in a quiet, trembling voice. ‘First time I’d said it.’ Jackie held her hand a bit tighter as her daughter continued, ‘he never told me though, he got cut off before he could say it back, if he was gonna say it back. What if - what if - if he didn’t…’

Jackie held her daughter’s glossy eyed, sorrowful gaze as she corrected the direction Rose’s thoughts were spiralling down. ‘Of course he loved you sweetheart.’

‘How can you know?’

‘Well he told me himself but he didn’t need to put it into words for me to know. Might as well have written it on his forehead with how bloody obvious it was in his last body.’

Her mouth dropped open a little, dumbstruck by her mum’s statement. ‘What? What do you mean he told you? When?’

It was then that Jackie realised what she had said, having only been wanting to assure Rose and not intending on letting slip about anything to do with the Doctor’s secret visit to the flat that day. ‘He er - he came to the flat one day,’ she answered a little vaguely.

Rose didn’t buy that was the end of that story one bit. ‘What and he just happened to mention it?’ She shot back sarcastically, knowing that the emotionally repressed Time Lord would do no such thing. ‘What happened? Why was he visiting you alone?’

Jackie sighed deeply. Rose was as stubborn as she was and wouldn’t stop digging for the truth, she knew that much and if there really was no way across then the Doctor would never know she had broken his promise not to tell her. The biggest thing stopping Jackie was not wanting to cause her daughter further pain because the comfort that Rose wanted now from being reassured that the man she loved also loved her would be nothing in comparison to the hurt she would feel at this revelation. ‘It was that morning,’ she began quietly, her thumb rubbing over the back of Rose’s hand in a soothing motion whilst Rose stared, rapt by her mother’s words. ‘Before all the ghosts and Torchwood. You were still in bed, himself said. Said he was taking you to a planet called Barcelona when you were up but he wanted to ask me something first. Because it wasn’t just a holiday, love.’ She looked on at her daughter sadly for a moment. ‘He was going to ask you to marry him and he came to me to ask permission to do so.’ Jackie watched as Rose’s face crumpled and the threatening tears began to fall. ‘I’m sorry sweetheart. I’m sorry,’ she told her, her own voice trembling with emotion at her daughter’s distress. ‘Come here. Come to me, Rose.’ She tugged on their adjoining hands wanting to comfort her properly but unable to move much due to feeling very sore after the birth. Rose got the idea and managed to crawl into bed beside her mum who wrapped her up in a tight embrace, shushing and soothing her as she cried for the loss of a life that she would never lead.

Pete Tyler was having an excellent day. He was the proud father of a baby boy, Torchwood was doing fine without him and he had managed to secure the last BLT sandwich for himself from the fridge in the cafeteria. The coffee machine that had been empty the day before in the corridor near the room where his family were had also been restocked and his initial two sips of the hot beverage were delightful on his tongue. It really was an excellent day. He walked into the delivery suite with lunch and hot drinks for his two girls with a smile on his face. This immediately fell when he saw the sobbing Rose clutching Jackie in the bed. ‘What did I miss?’ Jackie glanced over at him sadly and gently shook her head at him. He knew what that look meant or rather who that look meant and he sighed a little as he quietly shut the door behind him.

Chapter Text

The next time the Doctor left the Tardis was because the scanners had picked up a temporal anomaly on Bhazuut-9B3. It was easily dealt with and it had kept him busy for a few hours which was better than the wallowing he had been doing. Not that he had been completely idle on his ship; in fact he had been spending an impressive number of hours under the console completing upgrades. There was a reason, after all, that he had managed to pick up on the signal from Bhazuut-9B3 when he was a few star systems over. He had been improving the range of the ship’s scanners. It was something the Time Lord was chastising himself for not having done sooner because perhaps with an increased scanning area he could have found a crack in the walls of the universe quicker, maybe even one that was big enough for the Tardis to squeeze in and out of. Then he wouldn’t be in this mess. Then he wouldn’t be alone. The Doctor hadn’t given up on scanning for any further breaches though. He wasn’t particularly hopeful but he ensured the Old Girl kept a watchful eye on the walls just in case. Really he shouldn’t be wanting for such a thing to happen and not just because it didn’t necessarily mean he’d find Rose with the multitude of parallel universes out there. What it did mean, however, was the highly likely event involving the entire collapse of the universe which was, you know, nothing much to worry about.

He swooped back into the Tardis from the dusty planet and moved straight to the console where he rapidly set the controls to take them to the next destination. ‘Where’re we going next, Old Girl?’ He crowed as he danced around twisting dials and flicking switches. ‘Somewhere fun hmm?’ He suggested before pressing the randomiser button so she knew she could take the lead. Earlier, the Doctor hadn’t particularly wanted to leave the Tardis and had gone out rather begrudgingly but in the end had found it a much better distraction than the maintenance and upgrades he’d been conducting. Now he was hoping to throw himself into another adventure and then probably another after that because if he constantly kept himself busy, especially in high octane situations, then he didn’t have the time to get locked inside his head and remember.

The Doctor flipped the dematerialisation lever and the Tardis whirred into life, the time rotor bobbing up and down as the ship shook and shuddered giving the lone occupant a bumpy ride. Clinging on tightly, he braced himself for impact but with a last violent jolt the Time Lord lost his footing and was thrown backwards onto the grating. A laugh escaped the Doctor as he lay there; it was a hearty laugh that was joined by a slightly higher pitched cackle from beside him. He tilted his head to the right and his laughter died. Of course she wasn’t there. He’d just imagined it. His mind had replayed one of the many memories of her amusement at such a landing which was far too common an occurrence but neither of them would have had it any other way because it was all part of the fun. Well, it had been. His eyes darkened at the empty spot beside him before he tore his gaze away and pushed himself to his feet with a sigh. He headed for the door next, swooping his long coat on as he walked down the ramp, needing that distraction that lay just outside more than ever.

The summer sun bounced off his pasty skin the moment he stepped out of the Tardis. The sounds of children playing and having fun emanated from just behind him as he brought out his sonic screwdriver and glasses and used the sonic to tint the lenses, darkening them so he could see better under the bright UV rays. He slipped them on, pocketed the screwdriver, and began to look around, something he didn’t have to do to already know he was in London. Ignoring the smell of freshly cut grass from the field he was standing in, there was the tang of limestone, smog remnants, exhaust fumes, the slight saltiness of the Thames depending on which way the gentle breeze blew and, as Rose had put it, that eau de piss. The combination left no doubt where he was in his mind and, from the distant beeping of car horns plus the general drone of those vehicles, he made an educated guess that he was in the late twentieth or early twenty-first century.

Walking around the side of the Tardis, the Doctor’s eyes fell on a fenced off playground full of equipment and the children he could hear. It looked disturbingly familiar and looking upwards he realised why. Not far away, looming over the playground, were the towers of the Powell Estate. He swallowed dryly at the now imposing sight, even feeling his knees weaken a little at the shock of his destination. He hardly tore his eyes away as he made his way over to the nearby bench that he’d noticed earlier just in case his legs gave out. The Doctor slumped upon it, his eyes finding the rooftop of Rose’s building, a rooftop filled with mostly much happier memories of their time together.

His mind was trailing through those memories when his hearts stopped at the familiar voice. Dropping his gaze to the playground, which he hadn’t particularly taken in even though he was sitting on a bench facing it, he looked past all the running and laughing children until he saw the two blondes by the gate.

The adult of the pair, easily recognisable as none other than a younger Jackie Tyler, bent down a little to speak once more to the even younger blonde, ‘alright sweetheart, go have fun with Mickey and the others’. She stood back upright as the child Rose Tyler opened the gate and ran into the park.

He shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t as bad as going back on your own personal timeline but a past him and a future Rose’s timelines would entwine, if only for a little while, and he didn’t want to muck that up by staying. The only thing was the Time Lord couldn’t tear himself away. His gaze was transfixed on the perhaps seven year old Rose running around in her lilac T-shirt and pale shorts, her shoulder length hair appearing especially golden in the sunlight. He watched as she chased after the other bigger children who were all probably a few years older just like Mickey who he’d spotted among them. Then she laughed. His stomach flipped and his hearts skipped a few beats at the joyous sound. Her beautiful giggle with a matching smile brought a smaller and sadder one to the Doctor’s face. It was a truly bittersweet moment and he couldn’t tell if it was healing or hurting him further. Probably hurting, he decided with a sniff, his head was starting to feel horrible and a small voice inside him was screaming that it was wrong but he still couldn’t drag himself away.

The single thing that averted his gaze was Jackie, who’d been outside of the fence watching over her daughter, calling out to say, ‘Rose, I’m just going to have a word with Sarah about next Wednesday, I’ll be back in a moment’. The Doctor’s gaze briefly flicked back to Rose who was hardly distracted from copying what the older children were doing on the play equipment. She did, however, nod a little to at least show she’d heard.

He sat up straighter, appearing more vigilant, as he watched Jackie’s retreating form before he focused completely on the younger Tyler. Or perhaps the younger younger Tyler. She was waiting for her turn on the swing, watching as each of the older children had a go at swinging themselves as high as they dared before jumping off. They flew through the air then landed on the ground, some of them shouting out “Superman” whilst they did so, clearly emulating the superhero. One by one the children had their go before running off to the climbing frames at the far end of the park. Then it was Rose’s turn. She had waited patiently and was now the only one left by the swing. She sat on it wearing a determined look on her face and pushed off, her little legs swinging back and forth just like the swing was as she began to gather momentum. The swing rose higher and higher and then she jumped. Well, that had been the intention anyway. She’d tried to jump but had gone too soon and had ended up catching her foot on the ground which caused her to come crashing down with a yelp.

The Doctor had leapt up from the bench and hurdled the fence before he’d registered what he was doing. At that moment he didn’t care about any possible consequences of his actions because his Rose was hurt and he wasn’t going to sit by and watch; evidently such lack of action was impossible for him. He rushed over and got down on one knee by her side, his hand automatically reaching out to her to offer some form of comfort. ‘Oh, sweetheart, are you okay?’ He asked softly, his hand gently resting on her shoulder as she shuffled a little on the dusty ground letting out a muffled reply that he couldn’t quite work out. ‘Do you think you could sit up for me?’ He removed his hand as she did just that, turning and sitting on her bum with her legs stretched out before her though the left one was slightly bent at the knee where there was a fresh graze. ‘There we go,’ he praised with a smile as he took off his glasses and slipped them into his pocket so he could see her better. Externally he was calm and collected, he was just a doctor helping out an injured child, but internally his hearts were hammering because this wasn’t just any child, this was Rose. ‘Let’s have a look at you, eh?’ Now he was close up he could see that her hazel eyes, now wide and a little glossy, were just the same. Her face was rounder, her cheeks fuller like all children had until they grew up and matured. Her nose was small and what people would describe as a button and her pouting bottom lip was just beginning to wobble. He wished he could make it stop. ‘Oh, Rose, please don’t be upset, it’s alright,’ the Doctor said gently, restraining himself from simply scooping her up in his arms and holding her close until she felt better. He couldn’t do such a thing though because this Rose didn’t know him; he was a stranger in her eyes.

That apparently didn’t deter her though. Sniffing as she tried not to let her threatening tears fall, Rose pushed herself up and threw her arms around the startled Doctor’s neck. She stood a little bit taller than him, with how he was positioned on the ground, and leant into him whilst the Time Lord’s respiratory bypass kicked because he had momentarily forgotten to breathe. Then he took in a shuddery breath, unintentionally mimicking the smaller ones he could feel against the crook of his neck where Rose was burying her face. Thankfully she was too wrapped up in her own emotions to notice his. Gingerly he curled his arms around her small body. When she didn’t push away and only clung to him tighter he relaxed into the hug, rubbing one hand up and down her back in what he hoped would be perceived as a comforting gesture whilst mumbling soothing words as he tried to calm her. She wasn’t crying a lot from what he could tell but she’d evidently wanted consoling after her fall. Why she had trusted him to be the one to offer it he had no idea. Surely she knew about stranger danger. There were some dodgy people about and not just on Earth but all around the universe. She shouldn’t just latch on to someone even if they were trying to help her. Perhaps this young Rose vaguely knew what they would be to one another in the future, knew that she could trust him, knew that he would always care and provide comfort for her no matter what. He recalled what Rose had said about the young Mickey’s reaction upon seeing her when they went to the wedding where her father was supposed to have died in the car accident outside. She’d told him that Mickey had come running up to her and had hugged her tightly until Jackie pulled him away. Perhaps he’d known too. The Time Lord sincerely hoped that Jackie wouldn’t come along now and drag Rose away. Oh the slap he’d get for being a strange man hugging her daughter would send him into his next regeneration he was certain.

Whatever the reason behind it, the Doctor cherished the hug. It helped hugging this younger Rose. It mended his hearts a little to be back in her embrace even though it was a bit different than the one he was used to. She didn’t know it but she was comforting him as much as he was hoping to comfort her and he hadn’t realised how much he’d needed that, not until she’d wrapped her arms around his neck.

Even though he didn’t really want to, he immediately lowered his arms when she began to pull back because what he wanted more was for her to be comfortable. He had to keep reminding himself that he was still a stranger no matter how Rose had reacted and he really couldn’t face her reacting badly to him now, not after that.

‘Better?’ He asked quietly as she leant back against his upright knee and rubbed her eyes with her small fists. She sniffed and nodded so the Doctor moved onto his next question. ‘Were you crying because it hurts or because it was a bit of a shock that you took a tumble?’

‘Shock,’ she answered simply. Her voice was higher and obviously childlike compared to the one he knew but her London accent was clear even in just that one word. Lowering her hands, she gazed at him, her red rimmed eyes trailing over his features whilst he offered her a sympathetic smile. He’d seen that look on her before, thankfully not many times, but it made his stomach clench a little more upon seeing it on her face so young.

‘Bit of a nasty surprise wasn’t it?’ He continued softly. ‘But that’s how we learn, learn to pick ourselves back up and try again.’ Leaning in a little, as though speaking to her conspiratorially, he added, ‘those older kids made it look so easy didn’t they? But that’s because they’ve practised and I bet they’ve fallen down a few times too’. The Doctor gave her a knowing look and Rose’s eyes widened at his words.

‘Really?’ She asked as though she couldn’t believe it.

The Doctor nodded adamantly. ‘Oh yeah, definitely.’ He warmed at the hope brewing in her eyes and the small grin that was trying to tug on her lips. Now she was starting to feel better he wanted to get back to checking her out for any injuries. He’d noted the grazed knee earlier but suspected her hands would be grazed as well from having taken the brunt of the fall in supporting her head from not hitting the ground. ‘Do you think I could see your hands, see if you’re hurt?’

Rose nodded and held her hands out to him, palms facing upwards. ‘I hurt my knee,’ she mentioned as he eyed her palms which were grazed as he had suspected but they weren’t that bad and would heal in no time.

‘Yes, I noticed.’ He looked back up at her with a reassuring grin. ‘Just a few grazes, you’ll be fine. Now,’ he drawled. ‘Let’s see what I’ve got in here…’ The Doctor trailed off, his right hand diving into his coat pocket in search of some antibacterial wipes for her minor injuries. He pulled out a ball of string, a rubber duck, a chopstick, half a packet of gum and the left shoe of the older Rose’s spare set of trainers before he found what he was looking for plus a packet of plasters he hadn’t realised he had with him. All the other items had ended up on the ground, the appearance of the shoe in particular making the young Rose giggle. The sound was delightful to his ears and he beamed at her, just catching a hint of her tongue touched grin before she reached down to pick up the shoe as though needing confirmation that it wasn’t some fake and easily malleable object that could fit into his pocket but the real and impossible thing.

‘You’re funny,’ she said, bending the shoe a little and turning it over in her hands like she was looking for a way to reveal its secrets.

He continued smiling at her as he ripped open the packet of wipes. ‘Well, they do say that laughter is the best medicine,’ he commented lightly as though Rose’s own laughter hadn’t just made his day, made his entire life since he had become separated from her future self. ‘Alright, hand please.’ He held out his own, palm up, and she placed one of her own into it. ‘It will be cold but it shouldn’t hurt, okay?’ Rose nodded and he began gently wiping the graze before moving onto her other hand with another wipe. ‘I’ve fallen off the swings too you know,’ he began as he disinfected her wounds. ‘It hurt but I got up and went back on them. I learnt from my mistake because like you I was trying to jump too early so, when I did it again, I counted to one at the point where I jumped previously and then I went for it. Then my foot didn’t catch on the ground. Just got to remember to bend your knees when you land and you’ll do brilliantly I’m sure.’ The Doctor glanced up from her leg, which he had since moved onto, and gave her a big assured grin. Then he opened the plaster box and applied one of them to Rose’s knee which had a deeper cut than the smaller grazes on her palms. ‘There you go!’ He exclaimed with another happy smile as he looked back at her. ‘All cleaned up and a plaster with some spaceships on it.’

Rose surveyed his handiwork before giving him a grateful smile of her own. ‘Thank you.’

‘No problem.’ His look now had faded a little into sadness because he knew this meeting with the younger Rose was nearly finished. His time with Rose Tyler was almost up and once again he’d have to say goodbye. He swallowed at the thought and quickly focused on gathering the items from the ground in front of him and putting them back in his pocket.

‘Will you watch me?’

The Doctor looked up at her words, just pocketing the final discarded object. He raised his eyebrow. ‘Watch you?’

She nodded. ‘On the swing. I wanna have another go.’

He saw her determined look, the one that she still wore when she was older, the one he found particularly hard to deny when it was aimed at him. ‘Oh, alright then,’ he answered with a groan as though it would be a hardship for him to do so.

Rose giggled at his behaviour, seeing through it for what it was just like she always did, before getting up from his knee and jumping on the swing. ‘You’ve got to move so I don’t hit you.’

He smirked. ‘Yep,’ he said, popping the “p” as he got up and stepped out of swinging range. ‘I’m moving.’

She dragged the swing back as far as she could until she was on the tips of her toes. ‘Ready?’

Giving her an encouraging look, he nodded his head. ‘Always.’

Rose lifted her feet and the swing flew forwards. Her legs were swinging back and forth, in time with the swing, giving it more height until it had built up enough for her to perform the jump. He watched her determined face as she mouthed the word “one” just before she let go of the chains and propelled herself through the sky. The jump was timed perfectly and her bent kneed landing was just as good. She turned immediately and ran towards him beaming, the look matching the one he wore on his own face at her accomplishment.

‘That was fantastic,’ he crowed, his voice full of pride.

Rose was ecstatic with her leap and the Doctor’s praise and couldn’t decide between hugging his legs, giving him a high ten or simply jumping up and down for joy. They ended up celebrating by doing a bouncy dance thing where she held onto his hands whilst they jumped on the spot together, laughing as they did so. ‘You’re very tall,’ she commented once they had stopped bouncing, craning her neck up to look at him.

‘I am, aren’t I?’ The Doctor crouched down. ‘That better?’ Rose nodded. ‘See, I knew you could do it,’ he told her, the pride still evident in his tone, ‘you can do anything you set your mind to and if it doesn’t work out the first time what do you do?’

‘Get up and try again,’ she answered without a moment’s thought.

The Time Lord grinned and nodded. ‘Exactly!’ He exclaimed, pleased that she had taken on his message. ‘Now, go on,’ he began, nodding his head over to where the other children were still on the climbing frames. ‘Go play with your friends and show them how good you are on the monkey bars.’ The Doctor didn’t really want this encounter to end but it had to at some point and he’d rather do it on his own terms which meant doing it before Jackie returned. That thought about Jackie made another pop into his mind. ‘And if your mum asks where you got the plaster from tell her that there was a doctor passing by who helped you up, okay?

Rose nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said quietly, looking a little disappointed that they were about to part.

‘Go on,’ he encouraged softly, giving her one last smile. She returned it with a bright one of her own before turning and running off in the direction of the climbing equipment. He was about to get up when Rose was running back and barreling into him, her arms wrapping tightly around his neck once more. The force knocked him backwards and he just caught himself with one hand splayed out on the ground behind him as the other curled around her small body. He wrapped his other arm around her too once he was more secure in his crouched position, returning the unexpected hug.

‘Goodbye, Doctor,’ she whispered. Then she was pulling back and offering him a quick tongue touched grin before racing to actually join the other children.

‘Goodbye, Rose Tyler,’ he whispered to her retreating form, knowing that she was too far and his words were too quiet to reach her ears. He felt a little bit healed and yet a bit more broken from the encounter. He dropped his head with a groan before shaking himself and getting up, intending to head back to the Tardis where he could watch over Rose from the external cameras and ensure she was safe until Jackie returned. The Doctor glanced over to the climbing frames for a final time, his eyes landing on the young Rose who had just reached the top where she was sitting proudly. A small smile grew on his face which brightened when she looked over at him. She beamed and waved and he returned the gesture before turning to head back to his ship.

The Doctor didn’t get very far. He had only taken a few steps before his gaze focused on who was standing just beyond the fence in front of him.

**********

Captain Jack Harkness was having a day off. As bizarre of an eventuality as that may sound for a Torchwood employee, especially for one at the small base of Torchwood Three, they did actually get holidays. This wasn’t something that Jack particularly took advantage of but he’d had a bit of a blow at the start of the week and decided he needed a pick-me-up. Well, his chosen destination was more bittersweet than anything but it was what he was feeling driven to do. He’d mentioned it to the boss, Alex Hopkins, the day before that he was hoping to have either Saturday or Sunday to himself and Alex had agreed, if nothing big came up the next morning, that Jack could have the following day off. Luckily the rift had been quiet so Jack borrowed one of the big, black, company SUV’s and got on the motorway heading east. That was a few hours ago now and, with Jack’s driving style, he had ended up in London quicker than any of the new satellite navigation systems would have predicted. It was only a couple of years ago that such a system had been built into a vehicle destined for public use but Torchwood was not the public nor was GPS new to them; they’d been using it in their vehicles since the eighties. Jack always liked to use the destination arrival time feature as more of a guideline that he should try to beat but today the arrival time was looking a lot more accurate than it normally did. He hadn’t realised it was the first day of the school holidays so the traffic of families trying to get out of London for a trip away, plus the influx of tourists to the capital, really clogged up the roads. At least his destination for the day wasn’t a hotspot.

He pulled up and got out of the car choosing to leave behind his great coat due to the hot temperatures; he may be immortal but the heat got to him like any other man. The day really was quite beautiful with the sun shining down and hardly a cloud covering the bright blue sky and the Captain smiled to himself, rolling up the sleeves on his light blue shirt as he stepped from the public footpath and onto the grounds of the estate. He’d visited the Powell Estate once before back in 1988 and had inadvertently bumped into Jackie Tyler and her baby. He grinned a little smugly as he thought about the older Tyler woman expressing quite an interest in the “American”, as she had called him. He had flirted back a little of course but didn’t give her the full Jack Harkness charm because she was Rose’s mother and he wanted to remain firm friends with the other Tardis companion when he eventually found the travelling pair again.

Since being left behind on the Game Station and discovering his immortality, Jack had done quite a lot with his already abnormally long life. He’d also spent a bit of that life looking for the Doctor but unsurprisingly an alien with a time machine that could travel all across the universe was quite a hard man to find. When his vortex manipulator malfunctioned leaving him stranded in the nineteenth and not the twenty-first century, where he thought he had a better chance of finding the Doctor due to it being Rose’s era, he had stayed in Cardiff because he knew that the Tardis would need to refill at the rift eventually. So far he’d either not been at Roald Dahl Plass, where the rift was located, when the Tardis had landed or that pit stop hadn’t happened yet. Who knew how long it took between refills for a time machine anyway? And it wasn’t like he could get much information on the ship like he could when he was a Time Agent.

Jack had heard the story of how Rose and the Doctor had met in 2005, back when they were all travelling together in the Tardis, and she’d told him a little about growing up on the Powell Estate. He had never learnt of her exact age though so when he just so happened to be in the area in 1988 he was happily surprised to quite literally bump into Jackie Tyler as she pushed a baby Rose in a pushchair through the courtyard. That meeting had given the Captain hope that his long wait would soon be over.

He guessed that Rose would only be about six or possibly seven by now but he thought that seeing the young girl would brighten his mood. Rose could always do such a thing when they were travelling together, her big beaming smile lit up any room and could even have a positive effect on a certain grumpy Time Lord. Jack also thought it would be nice to simply check in and see how she was getting on as she grew up. That was if he could find her of course. He didn’t know which of the buildings let alone which flat she lived in and wouldn’t go looking because he didn’t actually want to meet Rose, he knew enough about disrupting time lines from his time in the Agency, he only wanted to see her because he was missing his friend.

After a quick walk around the courtyard the sound of children playing drew his attention to the nearby park. Perhaps, if he was lucky, Rose would be over there enjoying the beginning of her summer and playing in the sun with her friends from the estate. As he crossed the grass what the Captain hadn’t expected to see was the familiar shape of a blue box partly obscured from his sight by a tall piece of play equipment. The Doctor was here? It was the early nineties, why would the Doctor be here? Perhaps he too thought to keep an eye on Rose as she grew up but why the Time Lord would need to do such a thing when he travelled with the older version Jack didn’t know, especially when he was the one always so overly cautious about the timelines. His eyes roamed across the park trying to spot the leather clad man but he was nowhere to be seen. Jack did, however, spot the familiar blonde figure of Jackie Tyler which assured him that Rose was at least in the park like he had hoped. Keeping to the side of the nearby sports hall, Jack had a quick look in the fenced off playground section and easily spied the young blonde that could only be Rose. She was smiling and laughing, playing with a group of slightly older boys and a couple of girls. The Captain, knowing how Rose had grown up with Mickey on the estate, guessed that one of the boys could have been him.

Having seen Rose he went to make his way to the Tardis but Jackie’s voice stopped him. She was telling her daughter she was going to leave her at the park whilst she spoke to someone and soon turned her back on the playground to do such a thing. He decided he could wait a little longer and watch over Rose, just until Jackie got back, and then go to the Tardis. His decision to do just that was proven correct in his mind when a movement caught his eye. There was a wooden bench not far from the railings of the park. It looked into it so that parents and guardians could watch over the children and have a bit of a rest on the bench whilst doing so. He hadn’t noticed the man sitting there before because he had been hunched over plus with his brown hair and coat he rather blended in with the brown bench. Now the man was sitting upright and he was watching the departing figure of Jackie before his gaze went back to the park. Being a man dressed in a suspiciously long coat, and even the fact that he was wearing a coat at all in this weather, should have at least raised Jack’s hackles. He should have been wondering if the man truly knew one of the children and wasn’t just a stranger being a creep. But even though he could only see the back of him, the Captain found that there was something about him that assured him he meant no threat.

This was confirmed only moments later when a small yelp filled the air followed by the man jumping up from the bench and vaulting over the fence to the fallen child. Jack hadn’t seen what had happened but Rose must have had some sort of accident on the still moving swing which she lay in front of. Jack found his feet moving closer to the railings as he gazed at the kneeling man comforting the crying Rose. As he watched, the identity of the man became clear to the Captain. He knew of regenerations from his time in the Agency and there was no doubt now in his mind, as the man brought a giggle out of Rose, who this supposed stranger was. Jack continued watching the Doctor tending to her injured knee and then as Rose demonstrated the jump she had been attempting to do from the swing in the first place. He laughed quietly as the pair celebrated together and smiled as Rose ran back to the Doctor to give him a final hug before re-joining the other children on the play equipment. Then the Time Lord got up and turned, taking a couple of steps before stopping in his tracks when he saw Jack, completely confirming his suspicions.

‘Doc,’ he greeted the newly regenerated Time Lord, in Jack’s eyes at least, who warily began to step closer. That wariness reminded the Captain of the reason he was here in the first place and it made him feel a little smug that he could garner such a reaction from the ever assured Doctor.

‘Jack?’ His brow creased painfully at the man before him, confused by his appearance. It explained something at least, the reason as to why his head felt so bad. He’d believed it was a warning about the timelines he was meddling with by attending to Rose but perhaps it was simply the appearance of the one and only Jack Harkness. A man who was impossible. A man who was wrong. ‘What are you doing here?’

Jack folded his arms, cutting himself an imposing figure as he shook his head and watched as the Doctor climbed back over the fence. ‘No, what are you doing here?’ He asked a little forcefully. He knew that the Doctor, in the previous body he’d met, loved Rose and that he oftentimes felt like a bit of a third wheel around them, but he hadn’t minded that. They were his friends and he loved them both. And then Jack had been abandoned by the pair of them on the Game Station. Going by this Doctor’s very emotive eyes which he’d seen flash with guilt, it had been a purposeful move. The Doctor before him took the time to visit a younger Rose but couldn’t be bothered to return for Jack. His anger was building because he wanted to know why, why a supposed friend could do such a thing.

The Doctor’s shoulders slumped and he let out a deep sigh because he really couldn’t face this confrontation right now. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to retreat from the universe inside his ship, just for a little while, whilst he processed his meeting with young Rose. Jack’s stance told him that he wanted no such thing for the Time Lord. ‘Jack,’ he groaned, drawing out the other man’s name in complaint at his atrocious timing.

Jack was about to go into a tirade about him being left behind but there was something that stopped him. He looked at the man before him. Properly looked. There were shadows beneath his eyes that spoke of a deep exhaustion. They also had a haunted quality to them that didn’t appear natural either, though it was a little hard to tell because this was a new face to Jack after all. There was something about his posture that didn’t sit right with him. The Doctor always stood tall and commanding, dominating even, particularly when complaining and arguing with Jack, but now he looked, well, defeated. There was no better word for it. It was like he had no fight left in him. The way he acted, from what the Captain could see, was not the same with the young Rose in the playground. The Time Lord had even jumped for joy with the young girl, but he recalled the way his entire body drooped once Rose had re-joined the other children and he wondered if she, the future Rose which Jack knew, had something to do with it. It was strange after all that the Doctor had decided to pay her younger self a visit. The Captain sighed a little and decided he’d do this on the Doctor’s terms and hoped that would make him more amenable to his own questions. He doubted it though with what he was about to say. ‘I wanted to visit Rosie. I - I have before actually but I try to stay out of the way, don’t get involved.’ He paused, waiting for the inevitable scolding from the Time Lord but it never came. Instead something barely perceptible crossed the Doctor’s face before he shoved his hands in his trouser pockets without saying a word. ‘I miss you guys,’ Jack admitted quietly, ‘I miss her’. The Doctor swallowed thickly causing a deep frown to furrow the Captain’s brow. Something was seriously wrong. ‘Why are you here, Doc? You should be the first to know you shouldn’t be in case it messes with the timelines. Hell, you should have shouted at me by now for admitting I visit her. What happened?’ Jack watched as the man before him tightened his jaw and shook his head, refusing to answer the question. Not answering a question was normal for the Time Lord but the sadness in his eyes as he refused was anything but. There was now only one thing running through his mind from the Doctor’s reaction. Something bad had happened to Rose. ‘Is she - is she…’ He stuttered, not wanting to say it, not wanting for it to be true.

The Doctor shook his head again. He may not be able to tell Jack what had happened but he could at least offer the man some comfort. ‘She’s alive,’ he managed to say through the tightness of his throat.

Jack looked at him with wide, incredulous eyes. ‘Then what the hell happened?’ He asked, raising his arms in the air in question.

‘I can’t tell you that, Jack,’ the Time Lord sighed.

‘Oh, so now you’re worried about the timelines,’ he shot back, his anger at the man making a brief reappearance before he dampened it again.

The Doctor looked at him for a moment, unfazed by the outburst before he nodded to himself and muttered, ‘you’re right. I shouldn’t be here’. He made to walk around Jack and to the Tardis but the other man was clearly not done with the conversation.

‘Wait, Doctor, I get that something bad has happened…’ At those words the Time Lord stopped. His back was still to Jack who hurried on quickly so he could get out what he wanted to say. ‘…something with Rosie and I’m sorry and I wish I could help or do something at least because she’s like a sister to me but I know I can’t. What I also know is that I have waited for far too long to find you again and I think I deserve at least an explanation as to why you abandoned me.’ He paused briefly but when there was no reply he continued. ‘And, oh yeah, here’s a fun fact for you,’ he said, his tone laced with sarcasm, ‘I can’t die. Learned that one the hard way. I managed to get off the satellite and aimed to try and find you in the twenty-first century but my vortex manipulator was busted up by the Daleks and left me in the nineteenth. I’ve been waiting out by that rift in Cardiff for hundreds of years thinking you’d pop up there to refuel, but now I end up running into you here. I need answers Doc, I’ve waited long enough.’ He crossed his arms and waited for the Doctor to say something, anything. Finally, with what appeared to be a gargantuan effort, he turned.

‘It was Rose, Jack,’ he said quietly. He paused as he worked out what to say. Jack was right, he did deserve an explanation and the Rose voice in the Doctor’s mind was telling him just as much, as well as scolding him for leaving the other man in the first place of course. ‘You know I sent her away but she found a way back to the satellite. She opened the heart of the Tardis and absorbed the time vortex itself. If a Time Lord did that they’d become a God, a vengeful one at that, but Rose was human. Everything she did was so human,’ he said a little wistfully, his eyes trailing back over to the park behind the Captain before settling on him once more. ‘The Goddess she became held all of that power and she used it to bring you back to life but she couldn’t control it so she brought you back forever. That’s something I suppose,’ he added with a shrug as he considered this line of thought that he had never ventured down before. ‘That the last act of the Time War was life.’

‘You knew?’

Jack’s slightly accusatory tone brought him back out of mind. ‘Why do you think I ran?’ He said, eyeing the man seriously. ‘You shouldn’t exist. You’re a fixed point in time and space. A fact. It’s not easy just looking at you, Jack. You’re - you’re wrong,’ he said plainly. ‘I’m a Time Lord. It’s instinct. It’s in my guts.’

The Captain took a moment to contemplate his words. ‘So, what you’re sort of saying is you’re prejudiced?’

A huff of laughter escaped the Doctor. ‘I never thought of it like that,’ he admitted, tilting his head to the side whilst he pondered it and rubbed his eye.

‘Shame on you.’ There was no harshness in what Jack was saying, really he was more pleased that he had managed to elicit a bit of amusement from the Time Lord who otherwise looked so broken. ‘Can she change me back?’ He asked, returning the topic to his immortality. ‘Can you change me back?’

‘I can’t do anything,’ the Doctor told him with a shake of his head. ‘And I took the power out of Rose. It was killing her,’ he added softly.

‘You sacrificed yourself for her,’ Jack stated. He wasn’t shocked by the revelation, really it made a whole lot of sense knowing the Doctor how he did.

He shrugged. ‘She only has one life.’ He watched as Jack nodded in agreement and the Doctor scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ‘Look,’ he said with a sigh, ‘Rose, she doesn’t remember any of this, at least I don’t think she does, but she definitely doesn’t know about you. That was all me leaving you there. Rose was unconscious, I was about to regenerate and you were - you were impossible and wrong and I - I ran,’ he admitted. ‘I wish I could help you Jack,’ he added quietly, ‘I of all people know what a curse a long life can be. Well, it is, I’m not going to sugar coat it. It’s not easy’.

‘Hey, at least you can get some free work done every once in a while,’ Jack joked, gesturing to the Time Lord who was smirking at his words.

‘Rose! Come on sweetheart!’ The voice of Jackie Tyler rang through the park and the Doctor warily looked over Jack’s shoulder.

‘I better go,’ he began, his eyes flitting between Jack and Jackie, assessing the situation whilst talking to the man before him. ‘I don’t think I’ve altered the timelines but meeting Jackie might just push them over the edge.’

Jack nodded. He knew he wasn’t going to get an offer to travel with the Time Lord again, he’d realised that quite early on into the conversation but it was still hard to hear and hurt him a little. Clearly his hurt was nothing on the Doctor’s though with whatever had happened in the future. ‘Are you gonna be alright?’

He sniffed, knowing immediately what Jack was referring to. ‘I will be.’ The Doctor turned to step around the side of his ship and to the blue wooden doors, rooting through his trouser pocket for the key as he did so.

‘Come find me,’ the Captain suggested, tailing after him. ‘When you’re back in linear time. We could talk about it if you want.’ The Doctor shot him a look as he fitted the key into the lock and Jack smirked. ‘Yeah, I knew you wouldn’t want to but the offer still stands. If you ever need me for anything and I mean anything, Doc,’ he said firmly, ensuring that the Time Lord understood that he truly meant it. ‘I’ll be in Cardiff, by the rift.’

‘Yep.’ His voice was a little weak. The Doctor swallowed as he nodded and stepped inside the Tardis before he turned and gave one last look at Jack.

‘Good luck out there, Doctor.’

A small smile tugged on his lips. ‘And you, Jack.’ He performed his customary eye roll as Jack saluted him and then the Doctor shut the door and sent the Tardis off into the vortex.

Chapter Text

Rose shot up in bed, the duvet falling to her waist whilst her heart hammered and her thoughts whizzed rapidly through her mind. She had been dreaming about the Doctor, as she usually did, though this dream was different. If it even was such a thing. Rose wasn’t entirely sure it had been.

She’d been just a kid. It was the summer and she was playing in the park by the estate as she normally did. Quite a few of the other kids there were older than her by a couple of years and she had been copying what they had been doing on the play equipment. This young Rose had only wanted to fit in, to show them that she was as skilled and as able as they were and it had all been going so well until it wasn’t.

That’s where the Doctor came in. He’d rushed in like some saviour or knight in shining armour and had looked after her, caring for her and fixing her up. If Rose thought about it now she could smell that glorious scent of sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon as her younger self hugged him. She could still feel the warmth of his embrace and hear the joy in his laughter. God she still missed him so much. She would always miss him.

But that was the thing. Rose remembered what had actually happened that day, couldn’t help but remember it because it was one of those memories that you’d rather forget but your brain brought up from time to time as though it was trying to torment you. There had been no Doctor swooping in to save the day. Instead she was upset and alone and when she’d picked herself up and joined the other children some had started picking on her because they could tell she had been crying. There were always kids who were just mean brats and because of them it was moments like that which stuck with you throughout life and taught you a lesson.

She hadn’t thought about that memory in such a long time so couldn’t understand why her brain would run through an altered version of events where the Doctor was there. Rose could easily picture the scene, could easily picture the Time Lord’s face as he studied her own younger one intently. That’s what really confirmed her suspicions. He looked different. It wasn’t because she hadn’t seen him for quite some time or because her memories of his face were seen through rose tinted glasses, as ironic as that was. He looked tired, worn out in a way that she hadn’t seen in this current face of his and his eyes held a darkness that still remained even when he smiled or laughed with her younger counterpart. Her heart clenched for the man because she knew this wasn’t just a dream. She knew it was real and that the Doctor who had visited her younger self was alone. This was what he looked like after. After their separation. After their goodbye. She’d seen him sad before, had comforted him through his retelling of the Time War which had been hard enough for her to watch him break down like that. But this was different. She was the cause of this. Rose could tell because she saw her own emotions written in that face of his like a mirror and it broke her heart to know that she had made him into a man who looked so broken.

Rose was reminded of a thought that had flashed into her mind once a little selfishly. She’d been having a day when that damned unfinished sentence wouldn’t leave her mind. It was back when she’d been having doubts that he did also love her the same as she loved him, something that had since been cleared up after her mum revealed the Doctor’s secret visit. Rose had thought that maybe knowing that he was struggling with their separation too would be a slight comfort to her, would prove to her that he cared just as much as she did. She had never been so wrong. She hated that she had caused his sadness and it only brought the guilt of her fingers slipping from the lever rushing back. If only she had held on, just a little longer, then he would not be going through yet another loss in his long list of many.

It wasn’t just the Doctor’s demeanour that worried Rose, it was the fact that he had been physically there by the side of her child self. Thoughts of the Reapers were at the forefront in her mind from when she’d learnt the hard way not to mess with the timelines. She knew his actions had partly altered them because she now had two different versions of events in her memories. It was just like the ones she had of her mum explaining to her younger self about her dad’s death. In one memory her mum told her that her dad died alone and in the other she told Rose of a woman who had been by his side until he passed. The Doctor had told her at the time that because she was at the eye of the storm, so to speak, she could remember both realities. He’d also been angry that she had stepped in like she had, so angry that it had scared her a little. He’d gone off on one about the importance of protecting the timelines and told her she should never have gotten involved. That begged the question as to why the Time Lord would involve himself in her childhood.

He’d never confirmed that it was him who bought her that red bike for Christmas when she was twelve but she thought it probably was. She’d loved that bike and could be often seen whizzing around the estate on it until she eventually grew too big for it. That was the only time that she knew he’d gone back on her timeline. But why had he done such a thing now? Was he really missing her that much? The thought warmed and hurt her a bit more. Perhaps he hadn’t intended getting involved and had just gone to see her younger self but it just so happened that she fell from the swing and him being the man he was couldn’t hold himself back from caring for her. Rose believed that was it. Oh how she wished that she could hug him now and offer him that same comfort he was clearly so needing.

Rose sighed and rested her elbows on her bent knees so she could hold her head in her hands. Ever since her mum had told her about the Doctor’s proposal on Barcelona an idea had been running through her mind rather incessantly. This thought had not been dampened in the slightest by the not-dream she’d just had. In fact what the Doctor had told her younger self made the idea more rampant. He’d told her not to give up, to get up and try again because she could do anything she put her mind to. Her younger self had heeded his words immediately, had trusted him explicitly even though she didn’t know who he was. She vaguely wondered if the Doctor hadn’t just been speaking to her past self, if he knew that she would see what had happened in the present but she pushed that thought out of her mind. The Doctor wouldn’t have risked the timelines just to speak to her, to tell her not to give up; he shouldn’t even know that there was something to give up on because she hadn’t mentioned it during their brief meeting on the beach. It was that day when it happened, when she gave up on the dimension cannon project, but that was the idea that had been stuck in her head, the thought of reopening the project and finally trying it out. Rose had promised him her forever and clearly the Doctor was going to promise her the same by asking to marry her. It was an idea that simultaneously filled her with both joy and sorrow. Now it was as though he was trying to motivate her by giving her this message and that made her want to reopen the project even more because she’d seen it in his eyes, he truly believed that she could do anything she put her mind to and she wanted to prove him right.

Apart from the obvious fact that she didn’t want to fail, it would break her even more if she did, there was something else that was stopping her from trying the cannon: her family in this universe. It was different now, since she and Torchwood had started building the dimension cannon. Back then she’d had her mum, the idea of a baby brother and a man who looked like her dad and acted like a father to her. Now she actually had a little brother who she loved dearly and Pete was more than just a father figure, he was her dad and she loved him just as much. It was the family that she had always dreamt of having as a kid and here it was, right in front of her, and she was going to throw it away. It made her feel guilty and selfish that she could even think about doing such a thing just to get back to the man she loved. Rose thought about everything that she would miss like Tony growing up and getting a second chance with her dad and of course there was her mum who she could hardly imagine not being a part of her life anymore. Rose didn’t know what to do. She wanted both lives but she could only have one.

Her alarm broke her warring thoughts. She reached out a hand to her bedside table and shut it off. It was time to get up for work. In a way she hoped it would be a hectic day at the Hub because that would keep her busy and distracted. On the other hand she hoped there wasn’t much to do so she could sit and process her thoughts; think about what it was she truly wanted.

She took in a breath and pulled the covers back so she could get ready for her day at Torchwood.

**********

Rose leant over the front desk of the tourist office, pressing the button that activated the secret door that led to the Hub. Part of what had appeared to be a regular stone wall opened up to reveal a corridor beyond and she walked through it and towards the lift that resided at the end. The lift whirred taking her downwards, the doors opening to reveal the large cog-wheel that slid sideways after a quick flash of her Torchwood I.D. on the control panel on the wall at the side. She stepped through the already open cage door as the cog-wheel clunked and squeaked, the orange light on the wall behind her flashing a warning that it was closing.

‘Gotta get some WD40 on that thing,’ she commented as she climbed the four steps to the left that led to most of the employee workstations. Tosh’s desk was first, followed by Rose’s, then Owen’s and just beyond that was Suzie’s office.

Tosh was busy, already tapping away at her keyboard, seemingly too consumed with whatever it was to answer. Owen, on the other hand, was not. He looked like he had only just come in and the first thing he’d done was get comfortable in his chair; he hadn’t even bothered to take off his coat or satchel bag.

‘“WD” what?’ He asked incredulously as though she had just spoken one of the numerous alien languages that only she could understand. Owen spun his chair around to face Rose, who was taking her own coat off by the side of her desk, and gave her a gone out look.

‘WD40,’ she repeated to receive only another blank look. ‘You know the oil thing in a spray bottle,’ she tried to no avail.

Owen shook his head. ‘I dunno what to tell you darling but you’re talking gibberish.’

Clearly this was just another thing that didn’t exist in this universe. Rose had met quite a few stumbling blocks like that since living in Pete’s world; most things were quite similar but there was always something to trip her up and make her look like a loon. This especially happened when it came to music. For instance The Beatles were all still alive and together but that wasn’t the name of their band over here, instead they were called The Ants. And once she’d asked a cab driver who was singing the Culture Club’s song Karma Chameleon because she thought they were doing a rather good cover of it. The cabbie gave her a funny look and told her it was the original singer Girl Georgia of course.

Owen’s confused look faded as an idea came to mind. ‘Maybe a cup of tea would help and you could make me one whilst you're over there too.’

‘Piss off, Owen,’ she muttered, tapping away on the keyboard to login to her computer. ‘At least I’m handy enough to know how to oil something.’

‘Oi,’ he retorted, ‘who says I’m not handy?’ He wheeled his chair closer and spoke a little suggestively as he said, ‘I’ll have you know that I’m very good with my hands’.

‘Bet that line gets all the girls,’ she fired back, never letting Owen get away with any of his sexual comments that he seemed unable to keep to himself.

From beside Rose, Tosh snorted, causing Owen’s head to shoot up to her. He wheeled back in his chair so he could confront the other woman. ‘Find that funny do you, Tosh? He asked snidely. ‘Go on then, what’s your best pick up line?’ He tilted up his chin in challenge, watching as she faintly blushed under his gaze.

Owen was a dick but he was a good medic who didn’t mind the crazy hours of the job or what it entailed. He could actually be a decent human being when he decided to be, it was just a shame that his default setting was being a prick. Rose knew that for some peculiar reason Tosh fancied him. She couldn’t understand it herself, especially with the way he treated her friend sometimes, but she’d noticed Tosh’s attraction to him quite early on in her career at Torchwood Three. She deserved so much better than Owen, in Rose’s opinion.

Rose always made sure to put him back in his place after his rude comments or behaviour, particularly when they were aimed at Tosh who would simply take it otherwise, though it didn’t sink in all the time. She saw the way Tosh was slightly squirming in her seat, clearly uncomfortable, and Rose quickly decided that she wasn’t going to let him tease her, especially with a topic like this. ‘I’m sure she’d love to but it’d only be going to waste. You wouldn’t understand it, Owen.’

‘Oh, ha, ha,’ he shot back sarcastically, giving up on waiting for Tosh to reply and wheeling back to his desk.

Rose smirked at the man backing down and got up from her chair. ‘Tea?’ There was a chorus of agreement with the only addition of manners coming from Tosh but that was hardly unexpected. The tea ended up either having to be left forgotten or drank at a practically scolding temperature because it wasn’t long once Rose had sat back down at her desk after delivering tea to everyone, including Suzie and Malcolm, that Suzie rushed out of her office telling them they had a call.

**********

Rose stepped out of the black Torchwood SUV wearing the navy blue faux leather jacket she always wore when going out on missions. She had spied the jacket in one of the shops in town near the Hub one day and thought it was the perfect combination of the Tardis’ colour and her first Doctor’s style. It was her mission jacket, her armour, just like his leather jacket was his armour.

Owen climbed out of the driver's side, Suzie the passenger’s and Tosh got out of the other rear door. It was rare for Malcolm to join them on a call-out and he was taking up his usual position in the Hub to provide any support they might need. They could easily communicate with him via the earpieces they all wore and could communicate with each other too if they split off for whatever reason. Rose was thankful that these earpieces were not like the ones created by Cybus Industries. In fact this sector of Torchwood never wore them at all apparently which was another reason why Rose preferred and trusted Torchwood Three far more than One even if Pete did run it. She probably still had a lot of bias against the building in general due to her memories of the Cybermen, Daleks and that damned white wall. She still couldn’t go into that room even though it had been redecorated now.

Suzie had given her team a briefing on the drive over to the large farmhouse in the countryside west of Cardiff. It was a pretty isolated spot that backed onto Dinas Powys Woods once you’d traversed a couple of fields. The call had come in from the police officer Suzie liaised with who had heard of an ongoing incident from that morning. The report was made by the Royal Mail after two of their postal workers were unresponsive at the address. They had only sent the second postal worker to check on the first after the tracker in their vehicle flagged up that they had been stationary at that location for an abnormal amount of time. It was when the company was also unable to contact that first postie that they sent out another to check in on them but they too became unresponsive. The police were called and a car with two officers went out to investigate. Since having arrived at the location the police were now uncontactable as well.

It was a known address to Torchwood because it was the home of an alien who went by the human name of Robert Young. They hadn’t had too many incidents with Robert since he fell through the rift many years ago as he was a rather quiet individual that simply wanted to grow flowers. He appeared human and with his translator device could communicate well enough that he had become well known in the flower world in the Vale of Glamorgan and his farm supplied flowers to florists and event planners around the local area. He’d even won first prize at the Welsh Flower Show that year, taking the title from the previous victor who had held it for five years in a row previously.

‘Weapons at the ready, set to stun; this appears to be a hostage situation so tread carefully,’ Suzie ordered as the team grouped together and began the walk to the house. They had parked on the bridge that ran over the Cadoxton River just behind what had become quite a queue of vehicles with two postal vans and a police car all parked in a line on the thin country road before the gate of the property. ‘Remember to look out for spores and do not touch anything swollen or glowing. I will not have another incident Owen Harper,’ she shot over her shoulder to the medic who put his hands up in a placating gesture.

‘I didn’t know it was going to explode when I bumped into it,’ he grumbled. Owen still remembered the incident well. It had taken six showers to get rid of the smell from whatever that slimy green gunk was that splattered him in the explosion. Rose had heard all about it even though it happened a couple of years ago and was quite sad that she’d missed it because the look on Owen’s face would have been hilarious. Less hilarious was the car ride the others had to endure with him. He may have stunk but they weren’t so cruel as to force him to walk back to the Hub when they were half an hour away with the car.

The farmhouse was quite a sight when the trees parted enough for them to see it. It reminded Rose of that Jumanji film, not that she could mention such a thing to the others as she already knew that wasn’t a thing in this universe. If she wanted to, she could make quite a pretty penny out of recreating all the films and television shows that she knew didn’t exist in Pete’s world. The trouble was remembering all of what happened within them.

Instead of mentioning the film, what Rose actually said was, ‘you weren’t kidding when you said he liked flowers’.

There was a large round flower bed that sat in the centre of a huge gravel driveway that would have once been a great space for multiple trucks to park for deliveries to the farm or for livestock. The flower bed looked a little like a fancy roundabout in the space and was filled with beautiful rose bushes of many different colours and varieties. They were tall, with some of the inner roses probably eight to ten feet in height and all were so well pruned that it really was quite an impressive sight. And quite a pungent one at that as they found when the Torchwood team walked around the bed of roses with their noses being assaulted by the very fragrant blooms. It would have been lovely had there been one type of rose or perhaps just fewer roses in general but, as it was, it was rather overwhelming.

The large farmhouse stood behind at the end of the drive, not that you could particularly see it. Really the only reason you could tell it was there was because of the general building outline. The lack of visibility was due to it nearly entirely being covered in plants. The roof looked to be made of ivy and the walls were a mixture of that ivy plus flowering wisteria plants. The entire house, spare for a few gaps where there was a window or the front door, was covered in green leaves and purple flowers, even the railings and supports that held up the front porch. It wasn't just those parts of the front porch either, Rose realised as they neared the building, even the steps and the wooden decking was green with ivy leaves. She thought it was a good job that the winter weather hadn’t quite hit this end of Wales yet because walking all over those leaves in the ice or indeed the rain would be a recipe for disaster. But that was a point wasn’t it? Flowers usually bloomed in the warmer months of the year and yet this property was covered with the purple of the wisteria plus all of the rose blooms in the flower bed. She wasn’t a gardener, having never had the opportunity on the estate when she was growing up nor was she genned up on her flower knowledge, but Rose knew that neither should be flowering in December. That was the first of the plant anomalies that she noticed if one was discounting the overzealous growth on the house.

Carefully the team climbed the steps to the porch with Suzie taking the lead followed in single file by Owen, Rose and Tosh. That’s where they found that it wasn’t just the slipperiness of the leaves that they had to watch out for but also the tangle of roots that led to the wisteria and ivy. Some were barely visible under the greenery so one could easily trip if you weren’t careful.

As they made their way towards the front door a second smell hit them and though the first was overly strong, it was still at least pleasant. This second smell was anything but.

‘Oh, what is that?’ Tosh complained quietly, holding a hand up to her nose as though that would mask the odour.

She had spoken at almost the same time as Owen, who whispered, ‘something’s gone off in the fridge’.

‘More like someone has gone off,’ Rose chipped in. Owen turned and gave her a brief incredulous stare but she simply shook her head at him. That had not been a good trip with her first Doctor. It had been Jack’s choice of destination when the Doctor eventually asked him if there was anywhere the Captain had wanted to go. A long list of “no’s” later and they were finally settled on a planet that the Time Lord deemed acceptable. Jack had then grumbled about the Doctor’s agreement because he hadn’t actually wanted to go to the planet Eden and had only mentioned it because of the Doctor’s constant dismissal of his other ideas. To Jack Eden wasn’t the most interesting of planets being a great jungle world without a large civilisation and even fewer places to drink in. In fact, just to top it off, the Time Lord took them to the Convent of Saint Eve in the year 2131. That was where they stumbled upon the rotting body of one of the nun’s hidden in the grounds, a smell that you never forgot, or that Rose didn’t anyway, and where the start of the adventure on Eden began for Team Tardis.

‘Focus,’ hissed Suzie. She then directed Rose to stand by the left of the front door, as she got into position on the right, whilst Owen and Tosh walked around to the rear entrance.

Whilst they waited for the others to get into position, Rose leant her back against the wall by the door and peered through a gap in the leaf covered window on her other side. She reported back to Suzie that it looked rather like a jungle inside and that there was a massive red flower just the other side of the window, one so large it must have nearly been hitting the ceiling. That flower explained the smell at least because it was colloquially known as a Corpse Flower. She remembered as much from the Doctor talking about them on their trip to Kew Gardens before the police tried to arrest her for being a part of the Suffragette movement that had burnt down the Tea House.

Rose pushed off from the wall a little because it was anything but comfortable and turned to look at the offending branch of wisteria that had been digging into her back. Except there was none. Innocent looking ivy leaves covered the patch of wall she had been leaning on. She pushed her hand into the greenery, a small poof of dust escaping from the leaves in the movement as her hand connected with something. After rubbing her hand up and down a little to confirm that it wasn’t just a replaced panel of wood on the old farm building, Rose pulled at the leaves, ripping them away from the wall to uncover what lay behind. A few tugs and one big yank at the stubborn ivy and she had revealed the lower half of a plaque. A name for the property going by the single word of “House” that she had discovered. The rest was revealed in one final pull that took Rose’s breath away. It wasn’t the action that had done such a thing, she was very fit and more than able to clear some ivy without feeling exerted, it was what the plaque said that shocked her. The farmhouse was called “Wolf House”. Most things that had the word “wolf” in them got her heart racing a little faster but she might as well have both of the Doctor’s hearts with how much her chest was palpitating at the graffiti. Clumsily etched into the stone plaque above the word “Wolf” was the word “Bad”. Bad Wolf.

Apart from the obvious one of Bad Wolf Bay, since being in Pete’s world she’d had no reminders of Bad Wolf except for her possible translation abilities, though that was if Bad Wolf was the cause of them in the first place and not just the Tardis. Then again that was where Bad Wolf had originated from so perhaps it didn’t matter either way. What did matter were those two words. Bad Wolf Bay had led her to the Doctor. It wasn’t quite the meeting with him that she had expected at the time but it was still him. She’d said it herself at the time, now that she could remember her experience as Bad Wolf, the words were a message so that she could lead herself there to the Game Station to protect her Doctor. But that clearly wasn’t all because why would that be the name of the beach where she saw him last? It wasn’t only to lead her back to him and save him from the Daleks only for him to then regenerate by saving her. Bad Wolf led her to the Doctor full stop. Could those words somehow lead her back to him from the parallel universe?

They had been so scared. So scared of those two words but maybe they had gotten it all wrong. Perhaps those two words instead of inducing fear should have induced hope. Since that incident in the Tardis when Rose remembered her time as Bad Wolf nothing bad had come out of that like the Doctor feared. She could see it in his eyes whenever something Bad Wolf related came up, no matter how little it did, but every time he would tense, his eyes would widen just a fraction and the look within them would be dark and stormy whilst he stared at her as though expecting her to glow gold just like she had that day. He was scared of it which is why she had kept it from him in the first place. Apart from the initial pain of the unlocked memories there hadn’t been any negatives, that she knew of anyway, and she had enjoyed communicating with the Old Girl. Thoughts of the Tardis made Rose wonder if she knew this would happen, if she knew that Rose would get trapped in Pete’s world. She pushed away the thought of wishing the Old Girl had told her so maybe they could have prevented it. It wasn’t the Tardis’ fault that she had ended up here and Rose was sure that if there had been a way of stopping their separation then she would have mentioned it to herself or the Doctor. Perhaps it was always meant to happen like this. Perhaps Rose getting trapped was a fixed point that couldn’t be altered no matter how much they tried. No matter how much they wanted to. She would have to ask the Tardis when she got back and wasn’t that a peculiar thought. It had been nearly nine months since that day on the beach, since the day any hope of seeing the Doctor and the Tardis again had not only dwindled but had been destroyed, but those two words had sparked something within Rose. It was only a few hours since she had awoken from a dream of the Doctor visiting her past self that had gotten her questioning her life in Pete’s world. Questioning whether she should try to make it home. Now here was a message, a message that could only be for her, and that message was the Doctor.

She was pulled rather violently from her thoughts by a yanking on her arm. It was so harsh that it twisted her body around and forced Rose’s back to the wall that she had been previously staring at. The air was ripped from her lungs at the sudden movement and she caught sight of Suzie raising her weapon at Rose’s sharp gasp. There wasn’t a culprit in sight when Rose turned her head, or not a humanoid one at least, wrapped tightly around her arm were a few vines of ivy. The rapid coiling of the plant continued until even the gun she held was covered in the leaves and further tendrils were crawling across her stomach. She tried to use her other hand to free herself, whilst Suzie was quickly informing the others of the developing situation and warning them of the ivy, but Rose’s efforts were soon halted by more vines grabbing her and holding her still. Before Rose could stop her, Suzie was attempting to free her but that only ended up with the ivy crawling up Suzie’s legs and tugging her backwards into one of the supports holding up the porch roof where further vines took a hold of her. Rose was really starting to panic, as the leaves wound further and further around her body, when there was a loud roar from within the building. A roaring that was getting nearer.

A man burst from the door so viciously that Rose was surprised it hadn’t come off its hinges and gone flying across the porch and down the stairs. It was most definitely rammed into the wall where Suzie had been before she had tried to rescue Rose so really it was quite lucky that she had moved.

‘Murder!’ He shouted. ‘Murrrrderrrrr!’

Even in her precarious position and with the sudden appearance of this clearly outraged and quite possibly dangerous man Rose appreciated his dramatics. She could picture the Doctor rolling his eyes at her, even tied up in ivy by her side, whilst he waited for the man to stop bellowing. Then the Doctor would say something like “blimey you can shout” or maybe “pipe down will you, there’s no point in shouting bloody murder, what’s that going to accomplish?” and Rose would be trying not to laugh at the Time Lord’s brazen overconfidence when he should really be the one on the back foot in the situation. He always had a trick up his sleeve though; he could afford his cocky attitude. Rose just wished she had a trick up her sleeve right now as the vines crept up her body ever closer to her neck. She also didn’t appreciate the little bit of spittle that flew in her direction and landed on her cheek as the man let out his final elongated cry.

‘Robert,’ began Suzie, her voice stern and commanding, taking charge of the situation since the man had stopped to pant after his shouting. ‘It’s Suzie, Robert, from Torchwood. Do you remember me?’

Robert growled at her and took one threatening step closer. He didn’t really have to do much to look threatening, his muscular build plus his probable six foot five inches in height did a lot for him in that respect. He towered above Suzie let alone Rose who was over a foot smaller than the man; she looked like a child still growing in comparison to him. ‘You all speak in tongues,’ he snarled. ‘I am being invaded by thieves. By murderers.’

Perhaps, Rose pondered, she did have a trick up her sleeve after all because from those words it sounded like Robert couldn’t understand what any of the humans had been saying. ‘Robert,’ she tried softly to see how he would react. He turned on the spot, his eyes slightly less fierce as he gazed at her. ‘That is your human name, right?’ The now stunned looking man nodded a little dumbly. Flicking her eyes back to Suzie, she saw the hint of astonishment that her commander always wore whenever Rose spoke another language before Suzie caught her eyes and gave her a look of encouragement. To Rose she was just speaking English, wouldn’t have believed that she was speaking anything but English if it wasn’t for the reaction she was garnering from her audience and, of course, all her other translation experience. ‘Do you want to be called Robert, or would you prefer I call you another name?’ She asked calmly, hoping to both build a rapport and calm him in the process.

‘You speak Umkasha,’ he said slowly, ignoring Rose’s question as he was still disbelieving his ears. She nodded because what else could she do but agree that she apparently did speak Umkasha? She tried to think if that name rang any bells from her travels with the Doctor but came up with nothing. Robert bent forwards, getting a little disturbingly close to her face whilst inhaling deeply. It wasn’t the weirdest thing to have happened but it was certainly up there. He stood upright once more and stated, ‘you smell…human…’ Rose didn’t know if the pause was him simply working out her scent or whether he doubted that was her species which was something she tucked away in her mind to ponder over later because Robert was talking to her again and asking, ‘how do you know Umkasha?’

This had never been an easy question to face. During her time in translations a few had asked how she could possibly know their language with a minority then going on to insult the human race and their lack of space travel in the early twenty-first century which should make it highly unlikely for her to have met let alone been taught by another of their species. Her answer was much the same these days. Rose shrugged and said, ‘I’m just good with languages’. It was never the answer they wanted but she couldn’t explain it to herself so how was she to know what to say to others? She quickly tried to move on to prevent him from asking anymore about her abilities by asking a question of her own, ‘why were you shouting about murder?’

A manic look returned to his eyes and he gestured wildly at the door he’d stormed through, his words coming out frantically as he did so. ‘The killer! Thieves!’ Then his gaze hardened and Rose couldn’t help but gulp as his pointing finger was slowly aimed at her. ‘You.’

‘Me?’ She exhaled.

He gave one definitive nod. ‘You rip.’ Robert took a step forward. ‘You tear.’ Another step. ‘You break.’ After one more step he was standing directly in front of Rose and her neck was craned so far back to see him that it hurt.

She could hear Suzie calling to Robert, trying to distract him but Rose knew it wouldn’t work because to Robert she was speaking nothing but gibberish. In her ear was the voice of Tosh telling her to stay calm as well as Owen asking her to tell him when she wanted him to take the shot. Clearly the other two members of Torchwood were in a hidden position watching everything on the porch unfold simply waiting for the moment to strike if needed. Rose hoped it didn’t need to come to that but right now her position wasn’t looking great especially not when the ivy was nearing her shoulders.

‘You kill,’ he bit and Rose took in a slightly shaky breath.

‘What - what am I meant to have killed, Robert?’

Brushing his hand against the ivy covered wall beside her, he smiled a little and then said, ‘you kill them, they kill you’.

Oh. The ivy. She had indeed ripped, torn and broken some of it so she could reveal the house sign. Rose hadn’t even thought, the idea had never entered her mind that doing such a thing was apparently such a crime. That doing such a thing could end her up in this mess. She wondered how he knew. Her back was covering the small patch she had tampered with so he wouldn’t be able to see the evidence of her apparent crime. Perhaps he could feel it; perhaps he had some sort of symbiotic relationship with the ivy, perhaps with all the plants. Maybe that was why he was so good at growing flowers.

A vine started to crawl through her hair and across her forehead distracting Rose from her thoughts. Words started falling from her mouth with the wish that something she babbled would stick with Robert and make him stop the ivy’s progress. Owen’s voice in her ear got more frantic, as did Suzie’s as the danger mounted. Robert frowned and looked just to the right of her face, to the ear in which she wore her earpiece. He reached up and plucked it from her ear with an unexpected gentleness which he soon destroyed alongside the earpiece when he crushed it in his palm. Then he raised his hand to the left of the porch and a second later the sounds of a struggle were heard from within the large shrub that resided next to the house. At that point Rose assumed that Robert could control the plants and make them do his bidding and that her Torchwood colleagues, her one hope of rescue besides him magically believing an apology for her hurting the ivy, were now indisposed and probably in a similar predicament as herself.

She had to think quickly. The brush of a leaf as the first vine of ivy wound its way around her neck tickled slightly making her gasp. She didn’t have long now before she would be unable to do such a thing. Death by ivy strangulation. That was a new one. Rose really didn’t want it to end like this, especially not now, not now that she had regained some of her hope at a reunion with the Doctor.

Soon the ivy was covering her mouth, muffling her words and it was then that she felt the pressure build. It tightened around her neck leaving her gasping with hardly the ability to intake any air with the leaves covering her mouth and nose. She writhed as much as she could, had been writhing pointlessly since this had all begun but now this action was so much more panicked because Rose couldn’t breathe. Her pleading and frantic eyes locked with Robert’s as the final strands of ivy crawled across her brow. The last thing she heard was a howl before the darkness took her.

Chapter Text

The wind blew across her body causing a shiver to run straight through her. Her chest hurt. It was as though there was a clamp tightening around her ribs and her heart was beating far too rapidly for simply lying there as she was on the ground. Rose could tell it was daytime through her eyelids but couldn’t bring herself to open them to face the storm she knew was out there with both the howling of the wind and the crashing of the waves from some body of water she must be near. The sea, she corrected herself, going by the salty smell in the air. God, how she hated that smell now.

Beyond those sounds she could just make out a voice repeatedly whispering her name, trying to attract her attention. It gradually grew ever louder and Rose realised that she recognised the voice. ‘Rose,’ he said once more in a soothing tone and his northern accent. It was a far cry from the gruffness he presented to others. This was a voice that she had only heard him use around herself as though it was reserved for Rose’s ears only. It calmed her somewhat. She felt safer, more secure, even as her chest felt like it was burning. Everything would be alright because he was here. A tentative hand came to rest on her cheek and she leant into his touch, exhaling contentedly as she did so. ‘I need you to open your eyes for me, Rose,’ he said, his calloused thumb gently brushing over her wind-slapped skin. She grumbled a little, refusing to do so, and he let out a sigh. ‘Rose.’ It was then that her mind finally caught up with what was going on and her eyes shot open to see the impossible sight before her. His blue eyes locked with hers instantly, his thumb paused in its movements and a small smile tugged on his lips. ‘There you are,’ he said happily, ‘thought you were never going to wake up’.

Her brow furrowed. ‘Doctor?’

‘I was the last time I checked.’ As Rose continued to stare at him, the Doctor began to feel a bit on edge. ‘What? Is there something wrong with my face?’ He drew his hands up to his cheeks as though searching for the answer but there would be none to find. His actions only left Rose’s cheek, where one of his hands had previously been, feeling bereft.

She blinked and shook her head, stuttering out a reply. ‘No, no, no, your face is er - it’s er - it's good.’

Her pinstriped Doctor would have sniffed, sulked and complained loudly at her words being the vain man he was, her leather clad Doctor’s reply was a far cry from the Time Lord he would become. He lowered his hands, shrugged and said, ‘well, it could’ve been worse’.

Rose wanted to tell him off for his comment. She might make the occasional joke about the looks of this regeneration but that certainly didn’t mean that she didn’t like the appearance of her first Doctor. She loved that daft face of his, how could she not when it belonged to the Time Lord. It was this him, after all, who she realised she had started to fall in love with. Then, after the initial adjustment period because he had failed to mention about regeneration and because it took a bit of time to get used to the new new him, she had only fallen deeper in love with the man. She didn’t call him out on it though because there were bigger things to talk about like how the hell he was here and where exactly here was. Going by the Doctor’s next words, Rose may have said some of her thoughts out loud.

‘I know I called you an idiot once but I didn’t mean it. You’ve got a good noggin on those shoulders,’ he told her, tapping his finger lightly on her forehead. ‘You don’t need me telling you where we are.’

Taking a moment to actually look around, it didn’t take her long to recognise the location, really she could have guessed it without looking but she needed to confirm her suspicions. She was right. Rose was lying on the beach, the beach of Bad Wolf Bay. She didn’t think it was possible for her heart to speed up even more so than the rapid pounding it was already doing but it somehow managed it. Just like the Doctor kneeling by her side had somehow managed to be here.

‘But how?’ She asked him, her eyes back on the impossible man. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Oh, I see,’ the Doctor said with a nod, his voice light as though he didn’t care about the words which he was misunderstanding. ‘You don’t want me here, that’s fine, I’ll just head off then,’ he shuffled on his knees, like he was about to get up, but Rose reached out an urgent hand to him, sitting upright as she did so.

‘No, no, that’s not what I meant.’ Her hand was wrapped tightly around his arm and he looked down at it before glancing back up at her. ‘It’s just…’ Rose sighed and ran her other hand through her hair before she gestured at him as she finally got her words in order. ‘You - you regenerated and I don’t understand how you - how this you - can be here, let alone that you’re here at all. You said it was impossible.’

He nodded once again, considering what she’d said, but he was clearly focusing only on one specific part. ‘So there is something wrong with my face, won’t be a mo.’ He gave her his brilliant grin and then the next second he was gone. One blink he was there and the next he wasn’t. Kneeling where her leather clad Doctor had been, Rose’s hand somehow still wrapped just as tightly around this new arm, was her pinstriped Doctor. ‘There, that better?’ He asked in his estuary accent, smiling at her brightly.

Her eyes bulged. ‘What?’ She breathed.

The Doctor shook his head at her, his eyebrows furrowed and his voice high and incredulous. ‘Seriously? I’m sure you’ve only seen these two regenerations. What more do you want?’

‘How - how are you doing that?’ She blinked again and suddenly he was her first Doctor once more.

‘What? This?’ His blue eyes twinkled with amusement as Rose stared in shock. The next second his eyes were brown and he was his spiky haired self once more. ‘Oh, it’s easy as Pi,’ he said with a smirk as though this was all a joke.

Rose thought it was anything but. She was confused and now a bit irritated with the man before her and his games. ‘Stop it, just stop it,’ she exclaimed, letting her annoyance show. ‘Just chose a face and stick with it, please,’ she extended the final word filling it with all of the exasperation she currently felt.

‘Alright,’ he said with a shrug, not at all phased by her attitude. ‘Which one would you prefer?’

She shook her head and then rested it in her hands, muttering, ‘I really don’t have a preference’.

‘Well then, you’re stuck with me, Rose Tyler.’

Her eyes widened at his words and she gazed up at him and his happy face. “That’s not so bad,” her mind replied dejectedly. Clearly that sadness was evident on her face as his own began to grow concerned.

‘Rose?’ He breathed, reaching a hand out to her. Resting it on her upper arm, he squeezed it a little as he asked, ‘what’s wrong?’

She offered a sad smile and shook her head at him again. ‘For a moment-’ Rose glanced down at her hands that were now wringing in her lap and tried again. ‘For a moment I thought all this was real.’ She raised a hand to gesture around them and then let it fall back down. Looking up at the Doctor she added, ‘I even thought you were real, but you’re not really here are you?’

The question didn’t need answering and the Time Lord knew as much. He let his hand trail down her arm until he was covering her fidgeting fingers. ‘I’m always with you, Rose,’ he told her softly, ‘I’ll always be here for you’.

His hand was cooler as it rested on her now stilled hands, just like it should be, just like it would be if any of this was real. She wrapped his hand up in her own as she asked, ‘why are we here? How are we here?’

He eyed her, his eyebrow arching with intrigue. ‘Well, what do you remember?’

In her mind Rose went through everything that had happened that day starting with the not-dream and working her way through arriving at Torchwood, to going to the house, to discovering the plaque and getting wrapped up in ivy. ‘Am I - am I dead? No. Wait.’ She shook that idea from her head with a frown. ‘About to die?’ Her voice raised in pitch as she questioned what was going on, not understanding what was happening.

‘Oh, you’re not dying on me, Rose Tyler,’ he told her with certainty, her name rolling off his tongue in that way only he knew how to produce. ‘Far from it.’

‘Then what’s happening? How come I’m here with you on this beach of all places?’

He smirked a little at her exasperation but then answered her. ‘It’s what your mind created from an agglomeration of memories and imagination. You were thinking about going back to our original universe so put yourself on the beach when you last had that hope of returning.’ At those words Rose took in a shaky breath but the Doctor wasn’t finished. ‘And you brought me here too because, well, you want me.’ He stated it plainly and in a way that the Time Lord had never done but this Doctor was of her own creation so he was only reflecting Rose’s thoughts back to her.

Rose gave him a watery smile and nodded. She eyed him for a moment before she quietly asked, ‘so what do I do?’

The Doctor didn’t need clarification on what she meant because he was a part of her mind, though being a part of her mind meant that he also didn’t have the answer she so desperately wanted. ‘It’s your choice and your choice alone.’ He cupped her cheek with his free hand and continued saying, ‘whatever you choose will be the right one’. Around them, mostly hidden in the sounds of the wind and the waves, a wolf howled. ‘You’re going to wake up soon,’ he stated softly as he withdrew his hand.

She shook her head, her own hands tightening around his in her lap as her eyes became glossy. ‘I don’t want you to go.’

‘I’m not going anywhere. I said I’m always with you, didn’t I?’ Rose raised a finger to her head, indicating that the Doctor would always be in her thoughts but the man before her smiled gently and reached out a hand. He placed it on her chest, over her rapidly thumping heart, and said, ‘no. In here’.

Her watery smile grew at his actions and then she pulled him into a hug. He felt oh so delightfully real and his body slotted around hers just like she remembered when he wrapped his arms around her waist. She even felt his content hum rumble through his chest whilst she threaded her fingers through his soft brown hair at the back of his head. Rose took a deep breath, inhaling his homely scent of sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon just before she felt herself begin to fade. ‘I love you,’ she whispered into the crook of his neck. The Doctor held her ever tighter as Rose departed from the world she had built in her mind and awoke with a gasp back in reality.

Her eyes flew open and she looked around feeling very disoriented. She was on the ground, slumped on the porch against the wall of the house. The ivy was still around her, growing over the decking and up the wooden slats of the building but she was no longer being suffocated by it, in fact there wasn’t a single leaf covering her. Rose’s chest still burnt as she panted from her lungs previous lack of oxygen. Her ribs felt sore, as did her neck which she brought a tentative hand up to so she could feel the imprints that the vines had made there.

‘Nyxa.’

She looked up, her gaze lingering on Suzie for a moment. She was still wrapped up in ivy but thankfully her predicament was not life threatening; the ivy’s tendrils seemed to have halted in their progress to completely cover those entrapped in its vines. Suzie’s face was projecting so many questions as she stared at Rose who then turned her head to the right in the direction of the whisper. Robert was kneeling on the porch before her, his eyes wide and his trembling hands clasped together. To Rose it looked like he was praying or perhaps begging, to whom or for what she did not know.

‘Nyxa, I meant you no harm,’ he said, directing his shaky words at Rose whose brow furrowed.

After glancing around properly just to ensure that there was no one else there he could be referring to, Rose drew up a hand and pointed her index finger at herself. ‘You mean me? I’m Nyxa?’ Her voice was hoarse, each word grating like grit or sandpaper as it left her throat. The words aggravated her windpipe causing a cough to run through her that had her leaning to her other side, her arm coming up to cover her mouth, whilst she coughed like someone who smoked a couple of packs a day and had done so for years. This, of course, only increased the ache in her ribs and she was soon resting heavily on the wall behind her once more, her gasping breaths uneven as she attempted to take in the air she so needed without irritating her throat or ribs any further.

When Rose finally tilted her head back to Robert, he nodded in answer to her question. It was a rather solemn agreement as though he was saddened by her current condition. ‘The Goddess Nyxa herself, here before me in the flesh, the shame.’ He bowed his head as though it was rude to look upon Rose’s apparent Goddess self.

She simply did not understand it. Why he thought she was some sort of Goddess she did not know but maybe that’s why she was released from the ivy. It had been strangling her and she must have passed out and then had that weird dream or vision with the Doctor but something must have happened whilst she was unconscious for her to now be free and alive. There were clearly some benefits of being this Nyxa person who Robert thought she was. After another glance at Suzie, who was still looking at Rose questioningly, she croakily began to question the kneeling man. ‘Robert, why do you think I’m Nyxa?’

He looked up at her quiet words, directly into her eyes as though searching her very soul. Then his gaze trailed upwards to the wall behind her. ‘I should have foreseen,’ he stated, ‘I should have known this would happen’.

‘Known that what would happen?’ She coughed again, though it was less forceful this time and Robert waited for her to be done before he answered.

‘It is the name, yes?’ Robert pointed to a spot on the wall above Rose who tilted her head back to see what he was referring to. She could see the edge of the plaque and didn’t need to get into a better position to reread what the name of the property was when it was as memorable as it was for Rose. Clearly Robert thought there was something about it too. ‘That is the English for the name of Nyxa’s companions. The wolf.’ He paused and Rose wondered how on Earth he knew of her connection to wolves or one wolf in particular. He shook his head morosely before he continued, his tone now rather resigned and sombre. ‘They howled and they howled and I freed you,’ Robert explained, waving his arms about and pointing behind him across the fields and towards the forest. ‘I attempted to take your life…’ He bowed not just his head but his entire body until it was pressed against the ivy covered decking. ‘…that was unforgivable. Take mine.’

Rose stared at him not knowing what to make of any of this. She had heard the howls but had assumed that they were all in her head but somehow Robert had heard them too. This was apparently a good thing because it was the reason why he thought she was this Goddess of the wolves or something and also why he had let her go. And, in letting Rose go, he had stopped the ivy’s entangling progress on Suzie and hopefully on Tosh and Owen too. She looked up at Suzie, who was still gazing at her with such concern in her eyes, and hesitantly asked, ‘you didn’t by any chance hear a wolf howling did you?’ Rose thought it was a long shot and that it would be perceived as quite a strange question, especially as she and Robert had been communicating in his native language Umkasha. Going by Suzie’s nodding, however, Rose began to think otherwise.

‘Your eyes,’ Suzie practically whispered, ‘they glowed gold before you passed out’. Rose sucked in a breath at her commander’s words before listening to the rest of the tale. ‘Then came the howling from over on the hill.’ Suzie nodded her head to the left in the direction of the woods Robert had been gesturing at previously. ‘That’s why this house has that name because of the folktale of the wolves on the hill in Dinas Powys Woods.’

Her eyes had glowed gold. The last time that had happened, to her knowledge, was after she had looked into the heart of the Tardis. When she had become Bad Wolf. Clearly she had shown that power again, if only for a brief moment, and in doing so that had saved her life. In Rose’s mind it was a rather lucky escape. She had no control over Bad Wolf and when they would or wouldn’t show themselves. How she wished she could be in the Tardis right now just so she could question her about it. Surely the Old Girl would give her some answers at least because it was her fault after all. Though Rose supposed she had been very insistent on getting back to the Doctor in the first place so maybe it was more of a joint effort but it had certainly not been one that Rose had signed up for. Even if the answers from the Tardis were a bit vague it would be something and something was far better than the nothing that she had at the moment. The Doctor would be great right about now too. After his initial freak out about the whole Bad Wolf thing he would be researching away to find out more about it. Rose just knew he would. Perhaps he already did know something or had done prior research after that day at the Game Station but hadn’t mentioned it to her for fear of her remembering the event. That certainly didn’t matter now, it had been over a year and a half since she had her memories unlocked by the Tardis and yet this now was the biggest Bad Wolf appearance to date. And she was still alive, just about, so she was even more certain that this wasn’t something to be scared of like the Doctor thought it was. Really it was more of a puzzle that she was trying to understand.

The other thing that Rose couldn’t fathom was the howling wolves. She recalled hearing a howling when she remembered her time as Bad Wolf but she really didn’t think there were any wolves aboard the Tardis. She was certain that the Doctor would have mentioned it, especially as she could have gone wandering around the ship one day and accidentally bumped into them. She could have been eaten alive and he’d be none the wiser tinkering under the console. Suzie said there was a folktale of wolves on the hill but it didn’t sound like much of a folktale anymore if they were all hearing the apparent howling. There weren’t any wild wolves in the UK and hadn’t been for centuries so there shouldn’t be any on the hill unless they had escaped from zoos or wildlife parks. Stray dogs perhaps? A mass hallucination? Were they drugged by one of Robert’s plants? Rose didn’t have the answer but perhaps a visit to said hill could provide her with some. Either way that would have to be a problem for the future because she was currently on a Torchwood mission and she was the only team member free of their restraints and the top suspect in the kidnapping of four people was kneeling before her thinking she was a Goddess. Rose could use that to her advantage at least. Hopefully she could persuade Robert to free everyone and then, later on, she could take a visit to that hill and search for some wolves.

‘Robert?’ She said softly to the man by her side. He didn’t move so she tried again. ‘Robert, will you look at me please?’ Slowly he pushed himself upright until he was sitting on his heels. He looked very much ashamed and even though he had tried to kill her Rose felt a bit sorry for him. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not gonna do that but I need you to understand that you shouldn’t have trapped us in this ivy. Because that was you, yeah? You can control it.’ Robert nodded in answer so Rose continued. ‘You did it because I ripped some of it and I’m sorry that I did but you should have spoken to us about it instead. Well, spoken to me because the others don’t speak Umkasha. We’re gonna figure out what’s going on with your translator, right?’ She aimed this question at Suzie who agreed that they would try to solve this breakdown in communication. ‘We want to help you Robert, but to do that you’ve got to free my friends. None of us mean you any harm, I promise you. Do you think you could do that?’

After seeing the truth in Rose, Robert turned his gaze to Suzie. He studied her thoroughly, contemplating whether she did mean harm to him. He wasn’t convinced. He looked back at Rose and quietly said, ‘the weapons’.

Rose glanced over at Suzie where you could make out the shape of the gun in her hand beneath the ivy. Then she looked to the decking and saw her fallen gun which was much closer to Robert than herself. She looked him in the eye and said, ‘they were just a precaution because we didn’t know what to expect when we arrived here. We’ve got reports of four humans at this property. Are there four other humans here Robert?’ He nodded once more. ‘Can you take us to them, me and the rest of the team?’ He eyed Suzie and her gun sceptically again so Rose added, ‘we’ll put the weapons away just as long as you don’t start tying us up in ivy or any sort of plant again’.

A moment later, Rose’s attention was drawn to Suzie who had made a small sound of relief as the ivy started to recede from her body. ‘It’s happening for the others too,’ Suzie told her, obviously hearing reports in her earpiece from Tosh and Owen.

Soon she was fully untangled and the other members of Torchwood joined the trio on the porch. The other two had complied with the no weapons request that Suzie had, a little reluctantly, agreed to and relayed once she was freed. Owen was eyeing the other man very warily as Robert and Rose got up from the decking whilst Tosh gave Rose a hand and asked if she was alright.

‘You got your translator Robert?’ Rose asked him once she’d quashed Tosh’s worries, holding out her hand for the device she could see attached to his belt. To the unsuspecting human it rather looked like a pager and that Robert had some sort of hearing loss because of the hearing aids he wore. Really it was the translator which had been made to blend in with current technology. He unhooked the hearing aids from his ears and unclipped the translator from his belt, placing both in Rose’s hand. ‘Tosh is good with this sort of stuff,’ she told him as she passed the items to her friend, ‘she’ll find out what’s wrong with it and get it fixed for you’.

Robert led the group into the house after that. It was quite an amazing sight to behold. The closest thing Rose could compare it to was, once again, the Jumanji house because it really was as though they were walking through a jungle within the walls of the farm building. First of all it was stiflingly hot; she thought that Robert must spend an extraordinary amount on the heating bill for the property and must have very good insulation because she never would have guessed it was this warm from her time spent on the porch. With the winter chill in the air it would have been easy for her to notice traces of heat seeping through the walls or through any potential openings in the seals where the door and the windows were. The walls were covered in creepers and the group, though entranced by the unusual interior, had to keep their eyes glued to the floor most of the time to save them tripping on the numerous roots that wound their way around the entirety of the ground floor. The corpse flower made all but Robert gag all the way through the hallway as he led the way into the living room and even in there it could still be smelt, though thankfully it wasn’t quite as pungent.

There was seating in the living room but that was where the similarities faded because the rest of the space was taken up with greenery and the bright, beautiful flowers of the jungle plants. The most notable difference to the room, from your average sitting room, were the thorny cages that contained the four people in uniform, two in the red of the Royal Mail and the others in the black and high visibility fluorescent yellow of the police. All but one of them let their relief be known when they saw Torchwood following Robert through the doorway. They started to complain about the man, all talking over one another as they tried to let it be known what he had done whilst calling him names like maniac and psycho. The more the voices rose in an effort to be heard the more agitated Robert became, something which Rose noticed.

From her position beside him, she stuck out a hand and gently wrapped it around his wrist hoping to get his attention and offer a little comfort at the same time. ‘Come on, let’s go back outside,’ she suggested, nodding her head in the direction of the door. They’d have to go past that horrid smelling flower again but that was the least of Rose’s worries. She was concerned that Robert would get wound up by all the clearly angry yet not understandable, at least to him, voices of the captured humans, something which might cause him to use his plant powers on them once more. Although she still didn’t know what had occurred earlier that morning with neither the initial postal worker nor the other following humans, Rose was rather thankful that they were all still alive even if they were very angry, though understandably so, about their imprisonment. She wondered if it was her hurting the ivy that had tipped him over the edge causing him to not only entrap her but to then go on and attempt to kill her. She would have to try and get the full story of what happened out of Robert by any means and him getting riled up by the others in the room would not be beneficial in that task.

Owen stopped her as she and Robert turned to leave by quietly calling out her name, making her pause and turn to the other man who was wearing an unimpressed look at what she was planning on doing. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’ He asked, not so subtly nodding his head at Robert in an attempt to convey his thoughts. It wasn’t like he had to be secretive with his word choices when the man in question couldn’t understand anything that was being said but his indicating to Robert really gave the game away.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she told him, her voice filled with as much assurance as she could muster.

This didn’t seem to appease him. ‘You wanna go get yourself killed then be my guest,’ he said, hiding his real concern within his light and sarcastic words. ‘Just don’t come and haunt me saying I didn’t tell you so.’

Rose easily saw through this façade. ‘Look, Tosh is gonna want a moment to fix the translator and Suzie is gonna need a hand sorting that out.’ She jabbed her thumb backwards to indicate to the loud mess of a situation behind her. ‘I’m the only one who can talk to Robert and get his side of the story whilst you get theirs,’ Rose pointed out.

He reluctantly nodded in acceptance before tapping his ear whilst telling her to, ‘keep in touch’.

Having forgotten about the fact she wasn’t wearing an earpiece anymore, due to it now being in crushed pieces lost between the ivy leaves on the decking, Rose agreed and finally led Robert back outside.

Even though she was tiny compared to this man and had been nearly choked by the plants he could somehow control, she didn’t feel particularly threatened by him. Perhaps the Doctor’s cockiness was rubbing off on her or perhaps it was all in her ability to read people, but she doubted he would do anything purposeful to cause her further harm. As they lowered themselves onto the steps to sit down there and talk, Rose noticed that the tension in his shoulders receded a little; it had definitely been a good idea to get him out of the living room and out of earshot of the irate humans before something worse happened.

Robert was rather tentative in recounting the events of the day but once he got into his stride the words were spilling out of him. They weren’t quite as fast as the Time Lord’s but Rose thought he could have given the Doctor a run for his money. He told her of the pain and the hurt that soon fell into anger and rage upon that first postal worker's arrival. Instead of simply delivering the mail, the woman, who Rose later learned was a new postie called Elaine, had taken such a shine to the roses in the flower bed in the driveway that she had started to cut a few of the blooms to take home with her.

Now a few stolen roses wasn’t the worst criminal act in the universe and in most circumstances did not warrant getting imprisoned by the owner of said roses, but there were multiple factors at play. Robert had this connection with all the plants on his property. He could feel the blade of scissors on the rose stems as each one was cut. Without a working translator, his confrontation with Elaine quickly got out of hand as he spoke to her in furious clicks and “oooh” sounds, according to the other members of Torchwood because all Rose heard was English, and of course Elaine understood none of this and Robert understood none of her English replies. Rose still didn’t particularly feel that Robert had acted in the right manner but she could understand his confusion with the language barrier and the frustration that would cause as well.

A long sigh left her as she wracked her brain around how such a thing could have escalated for Elaine to now be trapped in a plant cage inside Robert’s house. The only thing that explained it was that there wasn’t just a language barrier but a cultural one too; perhaps this was how things were done on his home planet. She didn’t want to tell him to forget his own culture and confine himself to the ways of Earth, of the UK, but clearly something had to give because this couldn’t happen again. It was already going to be a lot of work feeding some sort of cover story to the police and the Royal Mail, let alone the business of retconning all of the humans involved.

It was when Rose asked why the other postal worker and the members of the police force had also ended up confined within the farm house that Robert revealed a rather defining factor in his decision making that day. Robert had been receiving threats through the post. They were your typical cut up magazine letters which were stuck on some paper to form words; textbook film or television style threats. Evidently he had become too notable in the flower world of Wales because every week since his win at the flower show he had received a letter through the post informing him that they would sabotage the flowers he grew on his fields through one highly detailed way or another. Robert had the letter of the week in his pocket, along with his special glasses that could allow the words to be read to him in Umkasha, and he let Rose read it as he told her of a few of the other letters. It made a lot more sense as to why he not only detained Elaine but the other humans too because he believed that the day had finally come when the harasser was finally making good on their threats.

It was then that the calmer Robert became agitated and his head shot round to the right, towards his flower fields and the woods beyond.

Rose looked around too at his movement before her eyes fell back on the man whose wide gaze was studiously trailing over all that could be seen in front of them. ‘Alright Robert?’ She asked, wondering what seemed to have spooked him. After a moment the man slowly shook his head so Rose focused her sights on the horizon once more as she enquired, ‘what’s wrong?’ There was a tingle spreading across her body and a faint prickling at the back of her neck. They were the same sensations she always got when she travelled with the Doctor, that mixture of excitement and intrigue combined with unease and fear. Her nerves buzzed with anticipation and her legs itched ready to run at the drop of a hat whether that was to or from the danger that was lurking it didn’t matter. Rose was always ready to run and it wasn’t long before she was as she chased after Robert. He had jumped up from the steps with the words flying out of his mouth telling her that there was someone in the field before he ran off in the direction of that presumed someone. Rose hadn’t been able to see anyone but with Robert and his plant powers, as she was calling them, she didn’t know what sort of intuition they would give him, possibly enabling him to know that there was somebody unknown and trespassing amongst them. Either way she was up on her feet in a flash and bolting after him.

He was easy to catch up to even with his minor head start and the massive height difference. Robert’s run was a lot less finessed than Rose’s and involved a lot more of what she thought as lumbering along. Halfway through the thin soil pathway between the wildflower meadow and the sunflower field, again more plants that were not in season, Robert was panting rather heavily whilst they kicked up the mud from the previous week’s substantial rain showers that hadn’t dried up yet due to the lack of warmth in the winter weather. She was panting too as she ran beside him of course but less so as she was fitter than she had ever been, even including her time on the Tardis. She’d lost a little weight since the trauma of being separated and hadn’t put it back on with the training she had been doing at the gym and her lifestyle as a member of Torchwood. Rose was stronger and more capable physically than she had ever been and her frequent run-ins with the Doctor meant that terrain like this didn’t slow her down much either. She did, however, slow down for Robert because he was the one who knew where they were going and she still hadn't seen or heard anything untoward as of yet.

It had occurred to her that she should let the rest of Torchwood know what was going on but that thought had only popped into her mind after giving chase. By then it was far too late to shout and hope to get their attention after she remembered that her earpiece was in pieces when she brought her finger up to her ear to find it missing. Really she still wasn’t used to being in a team after having travelled just as a duo for so long.

As they neared the edge of the woods and the end of the fields, Robert made a break to the left creating his own path through the, at least, seven foot high wildflowers. Their stems and leaves were forced to separate to either side of his large body as he ran through them, his feet pounding and splashing in the mud but somehow never crushing any of the plants as though they edged out of his way. Rose followed behind feeling rather swamped by the meadow whilst the back of her mind compared it with some horror film with a scene in a corn field she had seen once.

The further they ran into the field the more the faint odour that wasn’t plant matter or some kind of manure, something which had been Rose’s first thought when the first whiff floated towards her, grew. Robert’s path became more of a zigzag that led them deeper into the meadow and that was when it hit Rose that she recognised that scent. It was lighter fluid. They were in the middle of a field full of plants doused in lighter fluid, the fluid of which would have run into the muddy puddles that they were splashing their way through, not only covering themselves in mud but in the accelerant as well.

‘Robert?’ She urgently called out to the man in front of her. ‘Robert, we have to get out.’ She didn’t know how long they would have before the field was set alight. She also wasn’t sure how much the dampness of the plants would affect the accelerant but she was certain that if enough was used the field would go up in flames in no time. Robert, however, didn’t seem to be listening, or was far too determined in his quest to catch the person behind this that he didn’t heed her words. ‘They’re gonna light the field on fire. We have to get out now.’ Her bluntness seemed to do the trick and he soon halted and turned to her with a fierce and concerned gaze.

‘What?’ He panted as Rose skidded to a stop before him.

‘Can’t you smell it?’ She asked quickly. He sniffed and nodded. ‘That’s accelerant; it’s what they use to start fires. Whoever you’re chasing is planning on burning this field and we can’t be in it when they do.’ Rose saw the brief indecision in his eyes of wanting to catch this person battling with the fear of your life being in danger and wanting to protect it. The fear won out and soon he was nodding once again.

‘Follow me.’ Robert ran in a different direction, presumably creating a new path to the closest edge of the field. Rose followed closely in his wake.

Ahead there was a slight cracking sound as though there was a movement of the stems and the leaves. Perhaps as though there was something, or more likely someone, moving through them. The cracking grew louder, like it was getting closer, and turned into a much more worrying crackling sound. Rose smelt the smoke just before she collided into the back of the slowing Robert who immediately turned and spun her around too, pushing her to encourage her to run back the way they had just come.

‘Fire! Fire!’ He yelled out.

Rose didn’t need telling twice and she legged it through the narrow pathway they had created. Her heart pounded in her chest harder with every plant she brushed against and with every splash of her boots in the mud, each of these movements possibly covering her in even more accelerant than she already was. She kept glancing back checking on Robert to ensure he was keeping up enough with her quick pace and to see if she could see any progress of the fire. Even with the blood rushing through her ears, combined with the light wind as she raced past the plants, she could still hear the crackling of the fire growing ever louder. After a few checks on its progress she did a double take as the flash of flames appeared a few feet behind Robert. Rose had no idea where they were in the field. She didn’t know how big it was in the first place let alone how far they had gone into it and how far they were from the end now. All she knew was that the plants ahead of her still looked as thick and unending as they had been five hundred feet ago. Clearly they weren’t close enough to the edge by any means but that fire was certainly closing in on them.

Then things got decidedly worse for the pair. Rose’s gaze was drawn upwards from the plants that were helpfully parting for her a couple of feet ahead of the direction she was running in. What had caught her eye were the wafts of smoke. Smoke that was coming from ahead of them. Smoke that was close enough that it could only be another fire within the field. Her head darted to the left and the right as her pace slowed but the grey plumes were visible in both directions as well. They were surrounded.

Robert’s heavy breathing alerted her that he was right behind her now so she called out to him saying, ‘we’re trapped. The fire’s surrounded us’.

He too looked at the smoke and then behind at the ever encroaching flames of the nearest fire as they kept running, still trying to get away from the most pressing cause of death whilst running towards others. When the smoke up ahead got thicker and the crackling of the flames didn’t just seem to be coming from behind he said, ‘stop. I have a plan’.

Rose had barely halted at his words before the compressing feeling of the meadow suddenly lessened. She spun around to see Robert’s strained face and tense posture as the plants moved away from where the pair stood. His arms were stretched out at his sides as though he was commanding the plants to move back to create this circle of soil around them. It was like he was creating a crop circle by simply removing the plants to make the shape rather than flattening them and Rose thought it was both an excellent idea and a great deal of luck that Robert could do such a thing. The frightening use of his plant powers to strangle her earlier were now long forgotten as he provided a lifeline for the two of them.

Behind him the flames began to engulf the flowers at the edge of the circle, she watched its progress before a whimper caught her attention. Her eyes darted back to Robert who she now noted was sweating profusely. This wasn’t just the sweat of an unfit man doing serious exercise for the first time in a few years; this was the sweat of someone who was burning up. He gritted his teeth but couldn’t help let out a grunt of pain and Rose’s eyes widened. Robert had told her of the feel of the blade from the postie stealing his roses and now he was clearly feeling the flames lapping at the plants and burning them maybe as though it was his own flesh. She wished there was something she could do to make it stop, to take his pain away but she had nothing. All she had was a gun. She was powerless.

When the flame circle was almost complete, a couple of the fiery plants collapsed forwards into their protective circle of mud. The flames danced as they burnt their way up the stems, engulfing the leaves and swallowing the petals whole. All the while Robert groaned, now unable to hide his suffering as Rose laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, her eyes glued to the fallen plant. There was a final spark as the fire died, after reaching the final flower, having eaten all it could. That spark, however, fell into a puddle. A puddle that was soon alright and soon spreading into other puddles within the muddy circle. Rose tried kicking some of the mud by her feet at it to dampen the flames but the fire was spreading too quickly for her to do anything. Now they truly were trapped and there was nothing they could do about it.

Chapter Text

The fire lit up the mud around them, crawling ever closer to their feet. It was so close and so vast that Rose could feel the heat of it surrounding them as it jumped to nearby puddles and roared across the soil until it was a mere eight feet away. And then seven. Six. Five…

Robert let out a gargantuan groan and the next moment the ground was shaking. Rose stopped kicking the soil at the encroaching threat as hundreds of roots were pulled from the earth. They entwined themselves together, more so than they already were, as they built a cage around the pair. Root after root was wrapped around and around and soon they could see nothing but the roots that now surrounded them.

‘Get rid of the top layer of soil,’ Robert said in a gasp whilst he struggled to create this protective barrier against the fire. ‘Push it to the edges so there is no more accelerant near us.’

Rose rushed to do what he said, digging her boot into the earth and shoving it to the base of the root cage. The space was large enough so that she could stick both of her arms out and not quite touch the sides. With Robert’s height to take into account, there was also a lot of headroom for Rose that helped her feel not too suffocated in their containment as well.

Once the soil had been moved, she and Robert stood close together in the centre of their protective prison of roots listening to the crackle of the flames as they licked the outer entangling layer. With the dampness of the roots, not from the lighter fluid but from the previous week’s heavy rain, the fire struggled to get a good hold on the root cage. After many tense minutes inside, the sounds of the burning fire receded and the pair breathed a sigh of relief when they realised that the plan had worked. Robert’s relief was not as fulfilling as Rose’s though because he was still feeling the effects of the fire on the other plants in the field. Sweat dripped off the man as he stood tensely beside her whilst they waited a little longer to ensure that it was safe before he took down the roots protecting them.

A couple of the puddles were still alight, the fire burning away the accelerant quite calmly compared to the aggressive flames that had threatened to easily engulf them earlier. The roots didn’t slither back beneath the ground because they no longer had the rest of the plants to support; instead they simply collapsed around them, the outer root layer smouldering within the heap having only just withstood the fiery barrage. The pair looked at the destruction around them, at the charred remains of the thicker stems that didn’t immediately burn up unlike the delicate flowers that once grew at the top of them. The fire raged on nearby but it was now travelling away from where they stood, still destroying everything it touched. Without the healthy growth of flowers, they could now see the metal chain link fence that surrounded Robert’s land and just beyond that were the woods.

Rose squinted into the distance. There was something that she couldn’t fully make out behind the fence, just on the edge of Robert’s property. She started to step towards it, her pace getting quicker and quicker, turning into a jog as she began to work out what it was.

Robert, who had been looking around at the devastation, caught Rose’s movement and lumbered after her, his movements more of a struggle now than they were earlier. His sombre expression altered to one of fierce determination as he saw what Rose was working her way towards. Parked on the thin grass strip that stood between Robert’s land and Dinas Powys woods were two motorbikes. His focus was so intent on the bikes that he tripped over a discarded jerry can that lay within the ash and charred plant remains. The can clattered loudly and skidded forwards whilst Robert’s jog turned into a stumble as he tried to save himself from falling.

Spinning around at the clanging metallic sound, Rose saw Robert catch himself on his unsteady feet before he looked up at her a little sheepishly. ‘I bet that was filled with lighter fluid,’ she commented, nodding her head towards the can. ‘Their bikes are still here, they’ve got to be around here somewhere.’

‘Nyxa,’ Robert practically growled, his eyes hardening as he jabbed his finger behind Rose before running off in that direction.

Rose whirled round to see two lads, who must have been barely in their twenties, lugging a jerry can in each hand, walking towards the field of sunflowers that was visible to the pair now that the fire had burnt away the flowers and had moved further along the field in the direction of the farmhouse. She immediately gave chase, easily overtaking Robert who was really trying his best but he was too exhausted to run with any speed. Her feet scampered across the ground, crunching on the burnt plant matter but it was those quick footsteps that gave away her position to the arsonists. Their heads flicked round in her direction, their eyes growing wide at the sight of her approaching from across the field with the huge form of Robert, still also giving chase, just a bit behind her. The jerry cans were dropped to the floor and the lads were soon legging it as fast as they could to the edge of the land.

‘Stop!’ Rose shouted as she ran, gaining on them a little but not enough with the distance between the boys and the fence. They scurried towards it and, after a few metres, she reached for her holster to draw her gun. She wasn’t planning on actually shooting them, just stunning them, but even then Rose wasn’t partial to the idea. She still hadn’t had the chance to shoot the gun on any field mission. She was glad about that and was rather hoping to keep it that way. The two lads, however, were rapidly nearing the fence and they’d soon be able to reach their bikes and whizz off out of her reach. Sure they might be able to trace them if they left any evidence of their identities behind such as fingerprints on the jerry cans, or potentially track them on CCTV in the area. It would be a lot more hassle to do so though and the sooner they were caught and Torchwood could get answers out of them the better, especially for Robert’s sake.

It was as Rose drew her gun, preparing to yell at them that she would shoot if they didn’t stop, that there was a gasp followed by a thud behind her. She slowed in her chase and looked back to see that Robert had collapsed face first into the mud. Deliberating between going to Robert and dealing with the boys, her decision was made immeasurably easier by the rest of the Torchwood team rounding the other side of the sunflower field. They all had their weapons to hand and, with Tosh in the lead, she waited until the lads had jumped up and began to climb the chain link fence before deploying her taser. The current ran through the metal of the fence and through both of the boys in a single shot, effectively downing them in a single shot.

Seeing that they were in control of the situation, Rose ran back to Robert who had now rolled onto his back, his chest heaving as he struggled for air. She didn’t care about the mud or ash as she knelt by his side putting a hand up to his damp forehead to check his temperature whilst her other hand flew to his chest to feel the hammering of his heart which she found was located on the right rather than the left. He looked incredibly flushed, worryingly so, and with how sweaty he had become since the fires Rose was concerned that he too was burning up due to his connection with the plants. He was boiling, but she didn’t think that it was any more than the temperature of a fever for a human; then again Robert wasn’t exactly human. She hoped it was just exertion but she wasn’t a medic and wanted a second opinion so she shouted for Owen. Robert tried to speak then, making an odd whimpering sound that Rose quietly shushed as she tried to calm him. ‘It’s alright Robert. It’s alright. I’m here and those two have been stopped,’ she said with one hand holding his, her thumb rubbing over the back of his hand in a soothing motion whilst she nodded to the side to indicate that she was talking about the two boys being apprehended by the rest of Torchwood. ‘Just breathe for me. Nice, long, calming breaths, yeah?’ Gripping tightly to her hand, Robert nodded, his heavy breaths still coming in quick pants that would do nothing to help him regain his composure. ‘Let’s do it together. We’ll take in a nice big breath, hold it for three and let it out again, okay?’ After he nodded once more, they did just that, completing that calming technique as one until Owen joined them. Robert had calmed down a bit by then and Owen agreed that the man had overdone it a little and had worn himself out to the point of collapse. When he was ready, Rose and Owen helped Robert back to the farmhouse which Suzie and Tosh were already heading towards with the arsonists in tow.

**********

It took quite some time but the Torchwood team managed to sort everything out and returned to the Hub a few hours later. Both the members of the police force and the postal workers were retconned and were fed stories as to why they had been at the house for such a long time, with the police’s story involving the arsonists who were probably locked up at the station by now. The pair spilled the beans on the threatening letters to Robert and the destruction of his property. With a bit of Torchwood persuasion from Suzie, who they told about their grandmother, they revealed that they were only following orders from the previous winner of the Welsh Flower Show. She had instructed her grandsons to remove her competition so she could regain the title which she had held for five years previously. Rose was rather glad she was never into gardening because apparently it was dangerously competitive. Torchwood made certain that she too would be arrested for being this mastermind behind the chaos that had taken place at the farm and Robert, now with his translator once more thanks to Tosh, was distraught for his loss but thankful that it would be all over. Suzie gave him a bit of a warning about his own behaviour in trapping the four humans, now that they could communicate easily, and Rose hoped he heeded her words because she thought he was a very nice guy overall. They had a bit of a rocky start with the whole strangling situation but he had redeemed himself in the end.

Rose had showered, changed into the spare set of clothes that she kept in her locker and had been down in the archives for a couple of hours now. She was never one to shirk from her duties, she would take a break when she needed it but it was never an excessive amount of time before she was back doing whatever task required her attention. At Torchwood her work was always varied and she liked that. She needed that. It was how her mind worked, needing varied stimulation so life wouldn’t get too mundane. Maybe that’s why she was so well suited to a life with the Doctor, ready to get stuck into any new adventure and almost always willing and raring to go. That was also what her mind was stuck on. What had been distracting her since she’d first stepped into the archives with the intention of collecting the artefact she had been working on before the call-out this morning. Rose had walked past it to get to the archives, walked past the room dedicated to the dimension cannon project, and now she couldn’t get it out of her head. To go or not to go, that was the question, and that was about as much of that soliloquy as she could remember, though obviously with the correct words. They’d never seen Shakespeare. She’d done enough at school where she thought his work was alright but seeing one of his plays in the flesh, in the Globe Theatre, now she was certain that would be more than alright. It’s got to be quite something to have lasted this long, to be so well known in modern culture.

Her thoughts about visiting Shakespeare with the Doctor were interrupted by the sound of Suzie calling for her. Rose walked to the end of the aisle and poked her head out to see her commander by the door where she asked her to come to her office. Rose bit her lip nervously but obliged. She followed Suzie through the Hub and took the seat in front of Suzie’s desk when it was offered to her. On the desk was a manila folder that her commander opened but Rose could not see the contents of it yet as she picked at her nails in her lap, waiting for Suzie to speak.

‘Rose Marion Tyler, born the twenty-seventh of April 1986 to Peter Alan Tyler and Jacqueline Andrea Suzette Tyler nee Prentice. Human.’ Rose frowned at this statement and leant forwards as Suzie removed a few pages from the folder, apparently about herself, and laid them down on the desk one by one for Rose to see as she spoke. ‘Torchwood medical exam, required before you can be recruited as an agent, passed. Human. Dr. Owen Harper’s reports in the months of April, May and October for minor injuries sustained in the field. All the data he acquired during those medical examinations all point to you being human. What I saw today suggests otherwise.’ She set the file down and leant her elbows on the desk, her hands clutching together as she looked at Rose with an intensity that worried her a little.

Rose spent the next half an hour bluffing and lying through her teeth about what Suzie had seen. She didn’t know if it was just her intensity or if it was a gut feeling or perhaps something different entirely, but she wasn’t going to tell Suzie about Bad Wolf. There would only be more questions and Rose hardly knew anything about it herself so wouldn’t be able to answer them anyway. Although she worked for Torchwood, she didn’t exactly trust them. There may have been a weird vibe around Suzie now but so far the rest of the team at the Hub seemed nice, if you discount Owen’s more dick-ish behaviour. Rose had become quite close with Tosh and, due to the cannon project, Malcolm as well, though he was still more of a colleague than an outside of work friend like Tosh was. She may trust them but that didn’t mean that the rest of Torchwood wouldn't want to ask her some questions about why her eyes glowed. Even if Pete was the boss and wouldn’t allow for such a thing to happen, it was still plausible that some rogue agents would go behind his back to get answers. They would probably do tests alongside the asking of questions, though this time they wouldn't be simple medical examinations, they would be invasive and thorough and Rose didn’t feel like being a lab rat. Maybe she was being paranoid but the thirty minutes of questioning got the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end and left a bad taste in her mouth the rest of the day.

**********

It was around six in the evening before Rose left the hub. The winter darkness had long settled over Cardiff Bay and there was a brisk chill in the air that made her pick up the pace on her walk back to the flat. She dumped her bag just inside the door as she got in and slipped off her black boots before heading to the bathroom to freshen up.

She’d ordered a pizza the previous evening because she had been too tired to even think about cooking anything but hadn’t been able to finish it all because they had a deal on if you ordered two sides with it. The temptation of the garlic bread and the chicken strippers was too much and she’d ended up with a feast. In the end she’d eaten the six breaded strips of chicken, half the garlic bread and about a third of the pizza because not only was she tired but she felt starved as well. Some may turn their nose up at leftover cold pizza but Rose loved it so she grabbed the remains of both that and the garlic bread and sat herself down on the sofa with her laptop. She sat there eating her meal whilst she researched as much as she could about Dinas Powys Woods and the folklore surrounding the wolves on the hill. It wouldn’t take her long to get there either as she found out when she got the directions for the woods up on the screen. She’d have to follow the A road out of Cardiff to Dinas Powys and then turn right at the school, then another right and then a left before pulling up somewhere at the roadside to venture into the woods.

Once she’d finished her meal, she left her glass and plate to be her future self’s problem and got her big torch from the cupboard which she’d bought after some idiot in the building managed to cut the power for all the flats when they were fiddling with the wiring in their own one. Rose put on her boots, a pink knitted pair of fingerless gloves and a matching beanie and slipped on her thickly padded brown aviator jacket that she got for the winter months not too long after arriving in Pete’s world. It reminded her of both incarnations of the Doctor with her first Doctor’s style and her second Doctor’s colour scheme.

She took the lift down and stepped out once it reached the underground car park before walking over to her allocated parking slot. In the bay was a 1970 Austin Mini Cooper S in a pale satsuma orange colour. Rose had talked about wanting a Mini when she passed her test and was going to look into getting one for herself but hadn’t really gotten much further than that. She had been very much surprised when Pete presented her with a set of keys and asked her to go and look in the garage a couple of weeks ago on one of her weekend visits to the mansion. Rose had looked between him and her mum, the keys loosely held in her hand after Pete had placed them into her palm, before her mum’s impatience and excitement for her daughter had bubbled over and she was pushing and encouraging Rose to take a peek. Inside the garage, parked next to Pete’s old Jeep, was the Mini; its paintwork shining beautifully under the bright lighting. Her parents went on to explain that it was a gift because she’d passed her test but also an early Christmas present. Even though it had been early December at the time so it was reasonable to present it as a seasonal gift, she knew that her mum had tacked on the part about Christmas to make Rose accept it. She hadn’t grown up with much. The pair of them had always got by with what they had and big expensive gifts like this one were never on the cards. Pete, being the founder of Vitex, had a lot of money; still had a lot of money even with taking more of a backseat in the company to start up and run the new and improved Torchwood. He was also a man of grand gestures such as this one and Rose knew he would have simply gifted the car to her as a well done for passing her test. Her acceptance was a little reluctant because it was expensive and it didn’t feel right just willingly taking it, but it wasn’t reluctant enough to be considered rude. It wasn’t long before she was taking it for a spin in the grounds with Pete in the passenger seat and her mum with little Tony in her arms in the back. Her baby brother had just woken up from his nap and seemed to adore the colour of the car if his loud gurgle and grabby hands were anything to go by when Jackie brought him into the garage.

Rose smiled at the memory as she turned the key, the engine purring into life. She pushed in the cassette of songs Mickey had made for her when she first moved to Cardiff and pulled out of the car park, setting off into the night.

It was only a fifteen minute drive because she’d thought to set off after the evening rush and Rose easily found an empty lay-by beside the woods where she could park. It looked rather ominous at this time in the evening; it was over three hours since sunset and there was only a streetlamp across the street that provided any light in the lay-by. Beyond that the trees were large and foreboding, their naked branches swaying slightly in the breeze creating movement in the shadows of the single light source. Rose was far too intrigued to back down because of a bit of dark and creepiness plus she didn’t really have any time to visit during the daylight hours. She was getting ready for work as the sun rose in the morning and returned back to the flat hours after it had set. There was the weekend but she was going back to London to be with her family and would be staying there for the week because of Christmas. She certainly wasn’t waiting until she’d returned to Cardiff to check out the hill.

After grabbing her torch from the passenger seat, Rose switched it on and clambered over the fence separating the road from the woods knowing that if she continued to head in a mostly north-westerly direction she would eventually find the incline that determined the start of the hill. The fallen leaves, which were more of a mulch as they deteriorated back into the earth, squelched beneath her boots. She dodged rogue branches and hopped over stumps and fallen tree trunks, only once getting slapped on the cheek by a twig when it prematurely sprung from her grasp as she held it out of her way. Rose hissed when the scratches began to sting after the initial shock of being hit subsided. Slowing in her walk, she tentatively reached up a finger and pressed it against the wound, feeling the warm droplet of blood on her cool, uncovered digit without needing to check for the colour of red on her pale skin under the torchlight. It was only a little cut; she had been through a lot worse and would be fine.

Rose increased her pace once more, walking as fast as she dared in the unfamiliar terrain with just her torch lighting the way until she reached a small clearing. She looked up, seeing the pale shape of the moon hidden behind the clouds and catching a glimpse of a twinkling star or two. Rose was always drawn to the night sky and couldn’t help but stare up at it longingly for a moment before taking a breath and carrying on with her journey.

The grassy expanse was only a brief relief from the woodland and soon she was back amongst the trees and shrubs as she ventured onwards and gradually upwards. The incline was rather steady at first but soon became a lot steeper and Rose was thankful for her boots that allowed her the grip she needed in the muddy and slippery terrain. Well, most of the grip she needed. She did end up catching herself with her hands a couple of times after stepping into some particularly bad patches and then wiped said hands on the front of her jeans to remove the cold mud and slimy leaf mulch from her fingers that weren’t covered by her now ruined gloves.

The trees thinned at the top of the hill to reveal a wooden bench and an engraved stone announcing that you had in fact made it to the top. The stone also had little arrows on it pointing out the direction of different landmarks and places of interest in the area such as the castle at the edge of the town and, a little further afield, the city of Cardiff. After a brief look around, the light of her torch illuminating nothing but the woods surrounding the clearing at the summit, Rose sat on the bench. It wasn’t as though she was disappointed. She hadn’t actually expected to see some wolves; really she was relieved that there weren’t any here after taking this trek in the dark by herself. She’d had a brief look at the news reports of the nearby town and found no mention of any sightings so had felt safe enough to go on the trip but that still didn’t answer her questions. They had all heard a howling back at Robert’s farmhouse with both Robert and Suzie saying that it came from where she was now. Rose didn’t understand it.

She sighed as she leant her head back, folding her arms across her chest so she could tuck her hands beneath her armpits to regain a little of the feeling in her fingers after turning off her torch and setting it on the bench by her side. The clouds above gradually rolled across the sky uncovering the edge of the moon. It bathed Rose in its light providing some semblance of warmth in the otherwise cold night even though it didn’t actually produce any heat. She felt comforted by it. Always had done. Some nights, back at the flat, she crept out and ventured to the roof when she couldn’t sleep for one reason or another; her problems back then all seemed rather trivial now. It had given her peace though. It had given her the space and clarity to think of whatever she was fretting about much better than she ever could by tossing and turning in her bed.

Her mind floated back to the Doctor, though really thoughts of him were never far away, and to her current dilemma. If she went back to the dimension cannon and if, now this was the big if here, if it worked she would be leaving behind her family. She’d be with the Doctor which was something that she wanted nearly more than anything in the universe but she’d be without her mum, dad and brother. Rose groaned and closed her eyes, her head still titled back to the sky. He had felt so real earlier, so beautifully real, and she had melted into his touch. He had smiled at her brightly, both hims had, and comforted her when he saw her sadness that it wasn’t reality. He’d told her that he was always with her, always there for her and Rose believed him. He may not have been the real Doctor but that was certainly something that he would do and say. She’d told him as much too. She’d promised him her forever and she had really meant it.

After quite some time, Rose opened her eyes. The full moon was now visible since the clouds had moved away and she stared at it as the conclusion to her thoughts settled within her. She still really meant it. Reaching into her jean pocket, her fingers first finding her mobile phone before falling on the thin wallet that she always carried, she withdrew both items and held one in each of her hands. Her fingers wrapped tightly, though not enough to bend it, around the psychic paper in her left hand as she flipped her phone open in her right. A smile tugged on her lips at the sight of baby Tony and her parents as her background picture before she went into her contacts and found the one she wanted before pressing the call button.

‘Micks?’ She said, when he answered his phone. ‘Are you free to talk?’

**********

When Rose was about to leave she heard the howl and smiled to herself as it echoed around her. She had just been taking a last look at the moon at the time before getting up from the bench to go to her flat after her phone call with Mickey. She may not have gotten answers on the definite cause of the howling from earlier, but the footprints of shoes alongside paw prints, which were too small to be considered a wolf’s, led her to believe that it was just a dog after all on a walk with their owner. The howling she heard now though was different. I came from within, from a deep recess in her mind, and it warmed her, soothed her even, because she knew what she was going to do now. She was going to try and get home.

**********

‘Mum?’ Rose shouted once she’d opened the front door of the Tyler mansion dragging a suitcase behind her that was mostly filled with gifts rather than the things she needed to bring with her for the week’s stay. That’s what her backpack was for and she caught it as it slid down her arm just before it could hit into the vase of flowers that stood on the side table by the door. At least then she would have made an entrance with the smashing of pottery and splash of water because her current entrance still seemed to be unnoticed. ‘I’m here,’ she announced loudly to the otherwise empty entrance hall. Her voice echoed off the walls and up the grand wooden staircase to the seemingly deserted house. It wasn’t like her mum didn’t know she was coming, they’d discussed at length when Rose would be heading over and for how long over the phone. She’d even texted her forty five minutes ago to say she’d be an hour at the most when she was stopping at the motorway service station to refuel.

It was only once Rose had fully dragged her suitcase inside, popped her bag on the floor beside it and closed the front door that there were finally signs of life in the big house.

‘Only me I’m afraid,’ Pete said as he wandered in through the left archway beyond the stairs. ‘I’m not quite your mum so I hope you don’t mind.’

Rose turned and the pair grinned at each other before hugging. ‘I didn’t think you’d be here at this time,’ she said as she pulled out of his arms only then noticing the small, and hopefully by now dried, stain on Pete’s green half-zip sweatshirt that was probably from feeding Tony earlier.

‘Managed to get home early with only a bit of paperwork when my four o'clock cancelled. Then Jacks took that as an opportunity to do some last minute shopping, but I thought she’d be back by now,’ he explained, glancing at his expensive Rolex on his wrist. ‘She said she wanted to get back in time for your arrival but you know how she is at the shops.’

Rose rolled her eyes at her mum’s predictable behaviour. ‘Tell me about it.’

They shared a knowing smirk before Pete glanced over to her bags and took a step towards them, gesturing as he did so. ‘Shall I take these up for you? It’s about time to get Tony up from his nap anyway.’

‘Oh, er - it’s alright, probably got more stuff for under the tree than anything in that one.’ Rose said as Pete took hold of the suitcase handle.

‘Just the backpack then?’ He asked, moving his grasp from the suitcase to one of the straps on the bag. He caught Rose’s nod of agreement and her sheepish word of thanks and slung the bag over his shoulder with ease. Her reaction was hardly unanticipated, it was how Rose always got around him as though she never expected him to dote on her but Pete always would, he’d do anything for his daughter. ‘You know there’s something different about you,’ he stated, narrowing his eyes a little as he studied her face. Rose’s brow creased in confusion just like Pete’s did when he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was that had altered. ‘Have you changed your makeup? Hair?’

Shaking her head she said, ‘no, I haven’t done anything’. Then, as though she’d had a light bulb moment, Rose added, ‘is it the scratch on my cheek, can you tell it’s there?’ Since the Monday when she got it, it had started to heal but she’d covered it in concealer and foundation to help hide the mark from her family, not that it was the mark that would scare them as much as the bruising on her neck would. She’d also tried to cover up those mainly blue marks, with a hint of green and yellow at the edges, with makeup and had put on a snuggly and warm cream cable knit turtleneck to ensure they were hidden. It was going to be an exclusively turtleneck Christmas for Rose but luckily it was the winter months and she could get away with wearing clothing that covered her neck so much.

‘No, that’s not it,’ Pete replied thoughtfully. His eyes roamed her cheeks then, looking for this mark she’d mentioned. ‘I can’t tell anyway, darling, not that I’m wearing my glasses,’ he said with an exasperated eye roll at his newly prescribed eyewear. The price to pay for getting older. ‘What did you do?’

‘It’s not bad or anything,’ she began, wanting to remove the concern that was starting to appear on his features. Rose shook her head again but this time with self depreciation as she went on to say, ‘it’s nothing exciting either, wasn’t even on a mission, I just got attacked by a tree on a walk.’

Pete let out a huff of laughter and Rose smirked at his amusement at her tale. ‘Happens to the best of us,’ he commented before they were both distracted by the sound of crying coming from his trouser pocket. ‘That’s my cue.’ He removed the baby monitor and turned it down a little as he stepped towards the stairs still with Rose’s bag over his shoulder. ‘Do you want to come and say hi?’ He asked, glancing back to his daughter. ‘He’s excited to see you.’

Rose grinned and followed Pete up the stairs. ‘Told you that himself did he?’

‘Oh yeah, us Tyler’s are very advanced in our speech development. Though that might actually be the Prentice side knowing your mother,’ he said, continuing the joke. He looked over at Rose when they reached the landing, before continuing up the rest of the stairs, where he asked, ‘when do babies start to talk?’

He sounded very uncertain, though Rose didn’t feel too knowledgeable on the topic either. ‘About a year I think?’

‘Nine months to go then, give or take.’

Rose agreed with a chuckle. ‘I see you’ve read that baby book I got you.’ She laughed a bit more when Pete blushed in the same way that she did whenever she got caught out and then listened to his excuses the rest of the way to his and Jackie’s bedroom.

‘Hello little man,’ Rose cooed as she lifted her wailing brother into her arms where he started to quieten in her comforting embrace. ‘Bet you’re hungry by now aren’t you?’

Pete, who was standing at the foot of the cot, watched the pair with a soft, loving smile which soured a little at Rose’s words. ‘Oh don’t get me started on feeding. We’re trying him out on a bottle now so Jacks can get a bit more freedom,’ he explained before looking down distastefully and pulling at the bottom of his sweater to show Rose as he indignantly added, ‘did you see what he did to my jumper earlier?’ He didn’t care really, it had been a little annoying at the time but it was only milk and it would come out easily enough in the wash.

‘Maybe he thought you looked hungry too,’ she joked as she rocked her baby brother who was staring up at her with his matching wide hazel eyes whilst he curled one hand around a lock of her blonde hair.

‘I don’t fancy Jackie’s breast milk much myself,’ he muttered before brightening and saying, ‘right, best get a bottle warmed’. He walked towards the door and added, ‘fancy a cuppa? I was just boiling the kettle when you arrived’.

They headed to the kitchen after that, with Pete making a quick detour to drop Rose’s bag off, where they each got their respective hot drinks. The pair chatted around the kitchen island with Pete sipping his tea whilst Rose gave Tony his bottle, their topic falling into their work at the two different Torchwood branches as it so often did. They swapped once Tony had finished his milk, giving Rose a chance to have her drink as Pete burped the young boy on his tea towel clad shoulder. He was just settling back into his father’s arms when there was the distant sound of the front door clicking shut. Not long after, Jackie Tyler was bustling into the kitchen and wrapping her arms over Rose’s shoulder giving her daughter a hug from behind like she couldn’t wait another second before having her in her arms.

‘Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry I wasn’t back in time, I didn’t expect to be so long,’ Jackie said as she held her daughter as close as she could with their slightly awkward positioning, rocking her body making the rotating leather stool Rose was sitting on swivel from side to side.

Rose cherished the embrace as much as she could and rested her hands on her mother’s arms, rubbing them up and down as some way of reciprocating. ‘It’s alright mum.’

‘The queue was dreadful in Sparks,’ Jackie began as she pulled back to greet her son and husband before returning to Rose and placing her hands on her shoulders as though she didn’t want to be apart from her. ‘Never seen such a queue, couldn’t believe it.’

‘What did you expect; it’s two days before Christmas?’

She ignored the slight cheek from her daughter and continued on. ‘Managed to get what I was looking for though. Last one too!’ At Pete’s inquisitive look, she added, ‘it’s none of your business what is it and I won’t have you seeing it until its wrapped and under that tree’. He looked a bit downtrodden at that but he and Rose shared a knowing smirk before she was distracted back to her mother by a squeeze of her shoulders. ‘And now you’re here we can finally get around to decorating that tree in the living room. Fobbing me off like that two weekends in a row,’ she muttered her final words as she finally stepped back from Rose.

‘I told you, it was work, I was busy,’ Rose said with mild exasperation having been through that conversation already. She spun around in her chair to finally face her mum who shook her head and mumbled something that sounded a bit like “bloody Torchwood” under her breath.

‘Never mind that, you’re here now,’ Jackie went on, her tune brightening. ‘I got the box down earlier so we could decorate it together, come on.’ She started to step back and turn so she could leave the kitchen, catching Rose’s movement to join her as she did so. Before she walked through the archway, however, she looked over her shoulder to see that her daughter was the only member of her family that had made any move to follow. ‘Don’t think you men aren’t helping out,’ Jackie lightly scolded them, throwing Pete a look that got him moving onto his feet pretty sharp-ish. ‘I need somebody on that step ladder to do the star…or should we have the angel?’ She pondered, absently watching her husband walking towards her with Tony in his arms as she debated with herself which ornament to decorate the top of the tree with.

He kissed Jackie on the cheek with a mumbled, ‘yes love,’ as he passed her to make his way to the living room. There was a vinyl record player in the room and he thought he had some Christmas songs amongst his collection that he could find and play to get them in the festive mood whilst they decorated.

‘Which one do you think, Rose?’ Jackie asked, wanting a second opinion on this clearly grand decision. It was the first time that she had truly looked at her daughter, looked at her face close up, and she lingered on the younger woman’s features, her eyes narrowing a little as she tried to figure it out. ‘You look different, you do,’ she stated slowly, still trying to understand what it was exactly. ‘Something’s changed…’

‘I told you,’ Pete called triumphantly over his shoulder from the entrance hall. ‘I said that earlier, didn’t I?’ Tony gurgled in his father’s arms and Pete could be heard saying, ‘yes I did, Tony, yes I did,’ as he and the boy moved further away, around the stairs and through the archway to the left.

Rose uncomfortably fiddled with her hooped earring as she stared at her mum, who was still weirdly staring back at her, confused as to what apparently everyone could see that was different about herself. She didn’t understand it. She hadn’t changed anything about her looks except for that accidental scratch on her cheek and that wasn’t even visible according to Pete. Shaking her head she said, ‘I don’t know what you two are going on about’.

Jackie’s face only grew more concerned. ‘What’s happened? Something’s happened. You can talk to me, sweetheart. What is it?’

In a way, something had happened to Rose, not that she knew at that moment that it was the cause of her parent’s concern. They did not know it either but they could at least take in the slight yet noticeable changes in Rose’s demeanour in a way that she herself could not. She could look at her reflection in the mirror every day and never notice but her parents, the ones who knew her best in this universe aside from Mickey, were the only ones who would be able to see it. The few weeks since they had last seen Rose benefitted their judgement of her appearance now, enabling them to see the minor alterations much clearer than if they had seen her more recently. Her eyes were brighter, not in colour as such, but they seemed more vibrant, more filled with life than they had done for such a long time. An invisible tension that had looked to weigh her down was somewhat lifted too, making her seem younger and more free than the trapped woman she had become.

Neither Pete nor Jackie could quite put their finger on what had changed about Rose but they both knew something had and the singular thing that kept running through Rose’s head, as she thought of what they could possibly be seeing in her, were the thoughts of her recent decision. Of her plan to go back home. She was going to tell them. Had been planning the moment and running through what she would say when the time came. Usually Rose would have gone straight to her mother when it came to making a big decision like this, needing to talk it through with her, using her as a sounding board and relishing in her opinions on the matter even though she might not take many to heart. This time was different though. She couldn’t go to her mum because she was the person Rose was frightened most about telling. Needing someone who knew the entirety of the situation, who knew her closely and who Rose trusted dearly, she had instead turned to Mickey. He’d understood, been encouraging even but, Mickey being Mickey, he hadn’t been much help with how to handle her parents. What he did tell her was to cherish her time with them and Rose took that advice to heart because it had come straight from his. It was only a couple of weeks after Tony’s birth, when the Tyler clan had been feeling so joyous about the little bundle of joy, that Mickey lost his gran. He’d gotten that extra time with her and he’d never forgotten how lucky that he was to have had that. At the time, Rose had spent her hours between worrying over Mickey and being an extra hand for her mum and Pete whilst still doing a more long distance version of her duties at Torchwood. It had been chaos; the only good thing about it was the reprieve from her mind taking her to dark, sad places at the fresh news of the Doctor’s proposal.

Rose was going to heed Mickey’s advice and cherish this Christmas with her family because, depending on how the testing of the dimension cannon went, it might be her last. That thought made her feel quite sick, something which must have shown on her face as her mum paled before her too.

‘Rose, talk to me,’ Jackie begged, bringing a hand up to cup her daughter’s cheek. ‘You’re scaring me sweetheart.’

She had planned on telling them after Christmas, not wanting to ruin it for them with her big news that she thought would rather mar the tone and festive cheer. Apparently her ability to hide her emotions had been left behind in Cardiff though and her mum was not going to let her off easy if she didn’t speak now. Rose sighed and saw that Jackie relaxed a little knowing that her daughter was giving in. ‘Let’s go through to the living room and I’ll tell you and Pete.’

The awkward walk through the entrance hall was made even worse by the happy, festive tune that was gradually filtering through from the living room as the Tyler women stepped closer. Beyond the archway Pete was swaying to the music with little Tony in his arms who he was showing some of the ornaments to from the box of them that sat next to the large Christmas tree that was near the far window. Feeling their presence, Pete looked up with a smile that soon faltered upon seeing their serious and worried expressions.

‘What’s happened?’ He asked, stepping closer to the pair.

Jackie nodded to the record player. ‘Switch that off Pete,’ she told him, her voice uncharacteristically quiet in her unease over whatever was about to be revealed. ‘Rose wants to tell us something.’

Pete nodded, his gaze briefly flicking to Rose who hadn’t moved from the archway, unlike her mother, and was wringing her hands together rather furiously whilst she worried her bottom lip with her teeth. He turned off the music and joined Jackie who had taken a seat on the edge of the sofa. Her hands automatically reached out for his and wrapped around the one that wasn’t essential in supporting their young son who was contently nestled between his father’s arm and lap considering another nap because having a feed always made him sleepy.

Rose walked around the glass coffee table to the armchair so she could face them whilst she spoke. God, she hated how nervous she felt. At the end of the day this might all be for nothing because the dimension cannon still hadn’t been tested. Who knew if it was even going to get her past the walls of the universe, let alone through the void and into the correct one, her original one. Then of course there was the trouble of finding the Doctor, a man who could travel in time and space, a man who could change faces. But that’s what her Tardis key was being used for, as a homing device of sorts. Rose couldn’t let herself think that far ahead, not yet anyway, first she had to tell her parents.

Her gaze fell to her fidgeting fingers as her mind whirred with how she was meant to start this conversation, with what she was meant to say. It was easy enough coming up with some basic script in your head but when it came to the moment when the words were supposed to leave your mouth and not dry up in your throat, that was the part that was particularly troubling Rose Tyler. She swallowed a few times and then took a breath as she brought her eyes up to look at her parents, her gaze filled with determination.

‘I’m er - I’ve decided to open the - the dimension cannon project back up. I want to try and get back.’ Her last sentence came out in a rush as she saw her parent’s expressions start to alter as they took in what she was saying. She glanced away then, suddenly finding the bare Christmas tree very interesting as though she was devising a plan for the decorations that they might get around to putting up eventually.

‘Well thank God for that.’

Her mum’s words startled Rose and her head shot towards the sofa not comprehending at all why both the older Tyler’s looked relieved and pleased about the news. ‘What?’ She breathed.

Jackie had brought a hand up to her chest as though she was trying to keep her heart from breaking out past her ribs with the rapidity of its beats. ‘Trying to give me a bloody heart attack, you are. With the way you were looking and going about it I thought you were seriously ill or something. Oh don’t look at me like that, I did!’ She added a little incredulously when she saw her daughter’s stunned face.

‘We always thought you’d try again,’ Pete began after a moment, taking Rose’s attention away from her mother. ‘Knew you hadn’t given up on the idea completely.’

Rose’s eyes flicked back to Jackie who was nodding along with what her husband was saying and she looked between the pair in disbelief. She hadn’t known what their reactions would be like but it certainly wasn’t this. ‘So you’re not mad or anything?’ She ventured, her words coming out a bit slowly in her uncertainty.

‘Of course not, sweetheart. We weren’t mad the first time you wanted to go back were we?’ After catching her daughter’s raised eyebrows, Jackie corrected herself. ‘Alright so maybe I was a bit but that was because I was scared for your safety.’

‘We know the risks,’ added Pete when it looked like Rose was about to say that what she was planning to do still wasn’t exactly safe. ‘We don’t know how the cannon will work. If the cannon will work. But it’s also your chance of getting back, of being with him. We just want you to be happy, darling.’

‘Even if it’s a universe away?’ Rose questioned with a doubtful frown. ‘Even if I’ll be leaving you guys behind and missing Tony growing up?’ She added as her guilty gaze briefly fell to her baby brother before her mother spoke and drew Rose’s attention back to her.

‘A smart young woman told me something once,’ Jackie started, a small smile tugging on her lips. ‘She said something about chances and not passing them by. She was right, you know. You’ve got to take that chance and I won’t let you miss out on it because of me, because of us, because you deserve your second chance with the Doctor.’ A watery smile grew on Rose’s face at her mum repeating Rose’s own words back to her, the words she had said to encourage her to go to the other universe and live a life with Pete. Jackie got up from the sofa wanting to comfort her daughter and she did so by pulling Rose into a tight hug. ‘He needs you, sweetheart,’ she said softly, rubbing her hand up and down her daughter’s back, ‘and you need him and we are going to appreciate every moment that you’re here with us before you get back to him’.

Rose sniffed and enjoyed the comfort of her mum’s arms. She loved the certainty in her words, how sure she was that Rose would return to their original universe. It wasn’t a certainty that she shared. ‘It might not work,’ she mumbled into her mum’s shoulder.

Jackie scoffed. ‘And when did you ever let that stop you? You’re a Prentice and a Tyler, you’re stubborn and you don’t give up, no matter if everything is against you.’ She pulled back, her hands resting on Rose’s shoulders as she defiantly told her, ‘you’re going to find that alien of yours and give him a hug from me’. Her words brought a grin out of her daughter that she matched with her own until her eyes fell upon the bare Christmas tree. ‘Now, if I didn’t know better I’d think you were just making up another excuse so you didn’t have to decorate the tree,’ she gave Rose a feigned stern look that garnered a watery chuckle and then stepped closer to the aforementioned tree. ‘So come on, let’s get to it, otherwise we’ll be taking down the other decorations before we’ve even put these ones up.’

**********

Christmas was a joyful affair at the Tyler mansion and one that Rose did cherish as much as she could. Her parent’s reactions, plus their demeanours over the holiday, helped to dampen the guilt that she had been feeling about returning home though it would always be there in the background, something which she couldn’t help because it was only natural to feel that way given the circumstances.

Mickey joined them on Christmas day where they all enjoyed the festive food and the gift giving. Rose had done particularly well in that department concerning her brother. Once he’d gotten his tiny fists around the fur of The Muppets toy she had bought him, a soft and fluffy Fozzie Bear, he could barely be prized away from it. They took pictures too, over the week of Rose’s stay, a heck of a lot of them. Quite a few were taken on her mobile phone so she could have them back in her original universe. Her mum also started leaving her voice messages on the mobile, including Pete and a babbling Tony in them as well so Rose would always know how much she was loved by the three of them.

Now in the early hours of the morning on the day that she was meant to be travelling back to Cardiff, thoughts of her family and the Christmas they had just spent together were keeping Rose awake. She was going to miss them like anything. She wasn’t entirely hopeful that the first trial of the dimension cannon would send her home but if it did then these would be her last memories of her spending time with them.

If her mind continued down that route she was going to end up crying so Rose climbed out of bed and decided on making herself some tea as a distraction. She crept along the hallway towards the stairs, after slipping on a pair of slippers and her dressing gown, but it was as she was making her way past her parents room that a sound made her halt in her tracks. There was a tiny whimper coming from the other side of the door. Rose stood in silence and then there it was again. There wasn’t the sound of any other movement so she carefully opened the door of their bedroom. As she crept inside she was greeted by another whimper which only grew louder as she neared the cot. Tony was awake and hadn’t started to make a big fuss and wake her parents up yet but he would start to if he didn’t get any attention soon. Rose leaned over a carefully picked up her brother, along with his blanket and his new best friend Fozzie, and crept back out of the room with him in her arms. Her destination was the kitchen where she made him up a warm bottle of milk and got herself a tea before they settled into the snug where the final embers of the fire glowed warmly in the grate.

Rose put her empty mug next to Tony’s empty bottle before leaning back into the sofa, the little boy now settled, comfortable and, going by his drooping eyelids, tired in her embrace. She rocked him gently, her voice soft as she began to tell him a story to help him get back to sleep. ‘Once upon a time, in a universe far, far away, there was a man called the Doctor. He wasn’t any regular man from Earth, he wasn’t even human. He was from the planet Gallifrey…’

Chapter Text

The Doctor wasn’t used to travelling alone anymore. Sometimes he’d catch himself mid ramble about something or other and realise that no one was listening. That there was no one there to listen. Well, no one but whomever he was passing who must think he was off his rocker as he walked by talking to himself. They probably weren’t wrong.

It had been just over a month since his meeting with the younger Rose and he had been trying to keep himself busy whether that was within the Tardis or on some random planet where he kept an eye out for any type of adventure he could sink his teeth into. Being the danger magnet he was he didn’t have to wait long before he was mixed up with something. Most of the time anyway.

His day hadn’t been overly danger filled. Well, there had been a little danger. Just a hint. A smattering of it if you will. There had been the whole joining a group of smugglers thing but it had turned out well in the end. He helped them deliver medicines into a city because the ruler believed that they were a great healer and would allow no medicines within the walls. This, of course, resulted in the people of the kingdom getting ill. They were about to fall into an epidemic with the easily treated measles-like disease so smuggling in the cure was essential for the survival of the entire population with the rate the disease was spreading. And yes they had very nearly been caught but that was the point, very nearly was not actually getting caught. It was more of a close shave, just to keep you on your toes.

That was how the Doctor ended up within the winding markets on Tiaanamat, an asteroid that was part of the Rings of Akhaten. His previous smuggling escapade meant that he hadn’t been far from the asteroid belt that surrounded the sentient planet of Akhaten and, after waving goodbye to his smuggling co-conspirators, he decided to set the coordinates for the asteroid so he could have a browse. Well, it wouldn’t just be a browse if he managed to find the right vendors because he had got a small shopping list in his mind; there were always some bits that he could do with picking up for the Tardis. What he hadn’t expected to cross off the list, however, was the tiny mechanism he needed to complete his repairs of the biodata module he had started work on quite some time ago. He hadn’t been actively looking for the missing part. It wasn’t as though he was in desperate need of the module, God forbid, whichever Gods were out there, that he ever had to use it, but he had kept an eye on the stalls wherever he went across the universe just in case. Most of the parts could be scavenged from actual fob watches but it being a Time Lord invention meant he was having to make do with scraping together other completely unrelated bits of metal to fabricate whatever broken bit needed replacing. Today’s find would allow him to attune the release mechanism to his touch so that only he could open the watch and free his trapped Time Lord consciousness. Others would be able to open it, some might even be able to detect him if that happened so it would always be best to keep it closed, but they wouldn’t be able to actually remove him from the module. Well, they could always knock him out and force his unconscious self to open it but there was really no need to be thinking along those lines. He certainly had no desire to connect it to the chameleon arch and become another species. Just the readings he had done on such an act sounded excruciatingly painful and he hoped that he would never have to endure such a thing and that he was repairing it as just a precautionary measure. The fact that he had stumbled across the biodata module one day in the Tardis implied otherwise; implied that the Old Girl inevitably knew more than he did about where he might be headed in his future. As ever, it all depended on what timeline he wandered down.

After paying the vendor for the part, he had a look around the rest of the market where he picked up some assabarras to munch on, whilst he ducked through the crowds, as well as a new type of tea to put in the cupboard dedicated to the flavoursome leaves in the galley. The tea had gained its own cupboard after he and Rose found themselves amassing quite a collection; there must be at least twenty different flavours stored in there now. Even though she was gone, the Doctor couldn’t help but continue this tradition of sorts by purchasing a canister of hopefully delicious tasting leaves.

She’d been on his mind quite a bit whilst he wandered around the stalls. Linearly on Earth it was April, the month of Rose’s birth. He would have been keeping an eye out for something to buy her if circumstances were different, though apparently circumstances didn’t make a difference as he’d already taken a closer look at a few items with her in mind. There was one that had drawn his eye so much that he ended up buying it and now in his coat pocket resided a thin, carved wooden box that held a necklace inside. The Doctor wasn’t sure of his intentions. It wasn’t like she was there to receive the gift but he’d bought it anyway. It had simply reminded him of Rose. The necklace was made up of a silver-like metal called viellenium. It was a metal that adjusted itself to the wearer’s temperature no matter what external forces it was put under, for example the wearer wouldn’t get scorched by the necklace if they were in intense heat. He’d thought the colour of it would go well with those silver hooped earrings she so loved to wear but that wasn’t the main reason he had bought it. It was a bit cheesy at the end of the day because the necklace was made of tiny links and each link was a small, pressed rose. There was no pendant or gemstone so it wasn’t flashy or showy but it didn’t need to be. It was minimalist and the intricate detailing on the roses spoke for itself. It was a beautiful piece of handcrafted jewellery and he found himself buying it just because he could.

The Doctor headed straight to the Tardis afterwards. Maybe it was a sign. Not that he believed in signs, or in coincidences, but perhaps the universe was telling him that it was time. He’d been putting it off for months but he’d have to do it eventually. He sighed and made his way around the console without his usual fervour, flicking switches and adjusting levers. His fingers entered the well known coordinates and the Tardis was soon whirring to life, materialising at a rather familiar location on Earth.

The blue wooden door was swung back and the Doctor stepped outside with a groan. He could immediately tell, without even so much as a hint, that it was a Sunday. He didn’t land on Sunday’s if he could help it. Sunday’s were boring. Though he supposed that the Old Girl was right because with his plan a boring Sunday would be best; he wouldn’t be distracted from his task then.

He took a deep breath and looked around the damp courtyard of the Powell Estate before his gaze travelled up to the looming sight of Bucknall House. His eyes roamed across the balcony to the door of number forty-eight where, according to the paperwork, a Dr. John Smith now resided. Him! With a house with doors and carpets! It was a bizarre notion but he couldn’t get away with simply continuing the monthly payments for the flat on behalf of Jackie now that she and Rose had been added to a list of the dead after they were pronounced missing for such an extended length of time. The Doctor had managed to convince the landlord to let him rent the flat and had insisted that he take care of all the belongings within it, telling the landlord that it would save him a job and that he really didn’t mind a bit of cleaning. It was those belongings, as well as the space in general, which were behind the reason why he now had the flat in his name. Well, his usual false persona. The Time Lord hadn’t set a foot inside of it since the Battle of Canary Wharf. He’d been meaning to but had never gotten around to it. In his name or not, the flat wasn’t his, would never really be his. It belonged to Jackie Tyler and her daughter Rose. It held possessions and memories of their lives from years before he ever knew them and was meant to hold many more over the many years he had hoped to spend in their lives. Going through their things and packing it all away in boxes to store in the Tardis meant that they were truly gone. They weren’t coming back. Some might call it closure and say that it would help him to move on but the Doctor wasn’t ready to move on. He wasn’t finished with that part of his life yet. It was far too short even by human standards let alone Time Lord ones.

Still, the walls between the universes were sealed and he was no closer to finding a way across than he was that terrible day so he wandered towards the entrance of the building, he climbed the well worn stairs and he begrudgingly walked across the balcony to the yellow door of number forty-eight. After rooting through his pocket, he pulled out the key to the flat. Attached to it was a key ring, a small bouncy ball of planet Earth. They’d won it at an arcade at this theme park they’d visited once. The machine had been full of planets, not just from the Solar System either, and of course the one they managed to win had been Rose’s home world. He thought it was appropriate and fitting to attach it to the key when he spied the key ring amongst the shelf of Rose’s mementos from their travels.

Now he squeezed that rubber ball in his fist like it was a stress toy whilst he stared at the door unseeingly. He knew what was going to happen if he walked through that door. It was going to be a repeat of his experience of walking onto the Tardis after he’d just lost her at Torchwood. All the memories from every time he had visited the flat would come rushing back. Memories of Rose dragging a leather cladded him through the door and telling her mum he was here about Henriks. Of getting slapped by Jackie Tyler for stealing away her daughter for a year and then running away because things got too domestic for him. Of Rose’s smile when he walked through the door wearing his new new suit and spending Christmas with the Tyler’s and Mickey. That thought made him swallow rather thickly. Oh he could shun domestics all he liked but he could admit to himself now that he had really loved that day. He’d just regenerated and scared Rose because he hadn’t warned her about it, though in all fairness he’d thought he would get a lot more time in that body so he hadn’t gotten around to explaining about regeneration. He’d lost her trust that day and him being in a regenerative coma when all hell's breaking loose, with the Santa’s and the Christmas tree and of course the Sycorax invasion, hadn’t helped either. But then he’d started to regain that trust on the Sycorax ship and, once they were dealt with unceremoniously by Harriet Jones, Rose had invited him in for Christmas dinner. It was a holiday to be spent with friends and family and she had included him in it. He was still rather wary of course but that smile she gave him when he walked through the door, oh he could have jumped for joy. Hope was bubbling within him that they would be alright and they were. She took his hand as they stood in the not-snow and agreed to travel with him once again and he had felt elated.

The Doctor groaned and leant forward the short distance until his forehead rested against the door. There were many more memories of their time inside the flat and he hadn’t even gotten past the door before his mind started revisiting them. It was different to going back to the Tardis after losing Rose. The Old Girl was his ship and his home of hundreds of years. Yes, he still might see Rose around the space, especially since the Tardis hadn’t gone through any room refurbishment recently, but there were centuries worth of other memories, of times before he met her, that he could look back on too. The flat wasn’t like that. He’d never stepped inside without Jackie or Rose being there. He didn’t have anything else he could bury the memories under because to him this had always been their flat, always would be their flat. Going in there now and not being greeted by a smiling Rose or an overly amorous Jackie was simply wrong. He didn’t want to be greeted by the emptiness. He didn’t want to tarnish his memories.

‘You alright mate?’

He didn’t startle, the Doctor would claim to never startle, but he would admit to being rather surprised by the sudden voice so close behind him. In truth, he hadn’t even registered the man’s footsteps, so lost within his own head that external input was dulled down to almost nothingness.

‘Not lost your key have you?’ The man went on and a vague thought crossed the Doctor’s mind that he should probably look back at the guy about now. ‘Cost me a small fortune to get the locks changed and new keys printed for a couple of the flats after all them people got killed by them robots.’

Ah, it was the landlord. This was only further confirmed for the Time Lord when he slowly turned to see the thinly haired and beer-bellied man standing behind him holding a cardboard box in his arms. Adrian…somebody…was it even Adrian? The Doctor couldn’t remember; he hadn’t deemed it important enough in the scheme of things. But whatever this bloke’s name was, the Doctor didn’t appreciate how blasé he was when talking about the Battle of Canary Wharf, of the lives that were lost that day. He was referring to Jackie and Rose within those who lost their lives and, although the Time Lord knew that they weren’t actually a part of those numbers, the man’s careless words angered him a little.

‘They’ve built that monument for them now haven’t they?’ The Bloke continued, oblivious to the impact his comments were having on the Doctor. ‘Near the Wharf they said. Not seen it myself mind, just heard about it on the news but it’s got all their names on there.’

That hint of anger drained from the Time Lord. Rose and Jackie’s names would be on that monument. Another permanent reminder, and one for all who visited it to see, that they weren’t here anymore. He inhaled sharply and scratched the back of his head, nodding as he did so. ‘Right,’ he breathed. ‘No, I hadn’t heard.’

The Doctor’s words drew a smirk from the bloke. ‘Where’ve you been living, under a rock?’ He paused briefly before adding, ‘nah just stuck in this place ain’t ya mate’. He laughed loudly at his own joke and nudged the Time Lord with his elbow trying to encourage him to see the hilarity in what he’d said. The Doctor offered a weak huff of laughter and a strained smile which seemed to placate him. Once the bloke had come down from his joviality he said, ‘did you manage to get all the junk shifted from the last lot? Must’ve been quite a bit, they was here before I was running the place’.

And there it was. The anger was back and more pronounced than it was previously. Junk? Junk?! Nothing inside that flat was junk. Everything in there was a part of their lives, part of who they were and their tastes, interests and experiences. There were objects that held beautiful memories and mementos that were reminders of things they had done, seen and achieved. None of that could be considered junk. And “the last lot”? Don’t even get him started on that phrasing.

Before the Doctor could reprimand the bloke for his callousness, he was answering a phone call and giving the Time Lord a wordless goodbye as he walked away along the balcony towards the stairs.

He glared at the man’s retreating form, the Earth key ring practically flattened by now in his clenched fist, before turning his gaze back to the door. He stared at it for a couple of minutes before shoving his hands in his coat pockets and swiftly walking away. Today wasn’t the day. The Doctor went back to the Tardis, ready to lose himself in another adventure.

**********

She’d said goodbye to her family and a rather emotional one at that, especially with her mum. They had come to Cardiff and were staying in the spare room of her flat on the insistence of Jackie wanting to be closer to Rose when she finally did use the dimension cannon for the first time. Tony was probably wondering why everyone was a blubbering mess that morning but the older Tyler women couldn’t help it and even Pete had gotten choked up and shed a few tears before quickly hiding any evidence of such a thing.

He’d walked with Rose to the Hub on the pretence that it was high time that Torchwood Three had a visit from their boss but Rose knew he wanted to be there for the cannon, knew that he’d use his influence to get himself into the room ready for her departure unless Rose really insisted that she didn’t want him there. Even then he’d probably wait just outside, listening through the door for news.

Over the past few weeks Rose, Malcolm and Tosh had been conducting tests on the dimension cannon to ensure that it was as ready as it could ever be to be used by Rose herself. They had sent through objects that were heavier and bigger than Rose, objects that were lighter and smaller than her and objects that were proportionally accurate to her weight and height. The results had been rather promising with all but the initial couple of tests returning the objects whole and unharmed though occasionally they were damp or dusted with dirt, sand or snow depending on where they had ended up. The auto recall function had been a great success with the only issue being the time difference between the universes. The cannon needed a thirty minute period of time to recharge before it automatically brought back the user. That meant a wait in Pete’s world of a day or even up to two days before it would return. Why there was such a difference in the wait times they didn’t know. What Rose did know, however, was that it would be a long and tortuous wait for her parents to see if she would come back.

Rose had left Pete lightly grilling Malcolm with questions about the cannon to go to the locker room. She tugged on her mission armour that was the blue, faux leather jacket and shoved a few things in her pockets that she wanted to take with her before catching herself in the mirror stuck on the inside of her locker door. Her face was steely and her hazel eyes determined. She took a breath, nodded to herself and closed the metal door. Time to go home.

‘Good luck Agent Tyler.’

Looking around to the owner of the voice as she left the locker room, Rose saw Suzie leaning against the doorframe of her office with her arms crossed over her chest. Thankfully Rose’s paranoia after the Bad Wolf incident seemed to be just that. Suzie had kept a closer eye on her that following week and had taken slightly more of an interest than usual in the medical tests Owen put Rose through in preparation for the jump but apart from that nothing more had come of it. They still weren’t really friends though with Suzie preferring to keep to herself unless training was involved or the missions required teamwork. It was definitely a basic boss and employee relationship and that suited them just fine.

Rose nodded and thanked Suzie before heading off to the dimension cannon room. The voices of Pete and Malcolm trailed off, Tosh looked up from the computers they had set up in the corner of the room and Owen, well, he continued tapping away at his phone but he offered a brief glance to Rose as she entered.

‘Are you ready?’ Pete asked, turning away from Malcolm who refocused his attention to the cannon that was sitting in the middle of a table covered in parts from previous upgrades and repairs.

‘Yeah,’ she answered with a nod. Her voice wasn’t as strong as she had hoped but it was probably the look Pete was giving her. His eyes weren’t as emotive as the Doctor’s but he still managed to convey a lot in them. His current display was of love for his daughter mixed in with a combination of sadness, worry, determination and hope for the jump Rose was about to take on.

He took a step towards her with a soft smile on his lips. ‘Well, good luck. I hope you find him.’

Rose’s word of thanks had hardly left her lips before Pete was holding up the hand he had hidden behind his back. She looked down at the item and immediately her heat shot up, her eyes fierce and incredulous as she locked them with his. ‘A gun?’ He nodded and offered it to her but Rose cut him off before he could say anything about it. ‘I’m not taking a gun.’ Pete sighed but she was insistent. ‘I’m going to find the Doctor I’m not going on some Torchwood mission.’

‘Rose Tyler.’ His voice was stern which was something he very rarely used with her. ‘I know you’ve embedded the key into the cannon in the hopes that it’ll help it home in on the Tardis but you two didn’t exactly have the safest adventures out there did you? You might not need it but take it with you just in case.’ He raised his eyebrows at her but softened his tone. ‘Please?’ He begged and Rose once more got caught up in his emotive eyes. ‘At least do it for Jackie’s peace of mind.’ With those words she relented and took the Torchwood issue handgun. ‘Thank you,’ he said, wrapping his arms around Rose once she’d tucked the gun away on her person.

She buried herself in his embrace and whispered, ‘love you, dad’. Rose heard his breath hitch in surprise and then he was holding her even tighter and pressing a kiss into her golden hair. It was the first time that she had called him dad and he clearly appreciated it.

‘I love you darling,’ he said as he pulled out of the hug, his hands still on her shoulders. ‘Now go get him.’ He smiled, squeezed her shoulders and then stepped back to the edge of the room.

The room was quickly buzzing as Torchwood prepared her for the jump. Owen was doing last minute checks, Malcolm was wrapping the dimension cannon around her wrist and setting it up whilst Tosh was busy at the computers readying everything for the go. It wasn’t long before Rose was standing alone in the centre of the room with her knees braced ready for impact when she landed on the other side.

‘All operations functional, we are ready to go,’ called out Malcolm.

‘Powering up the dimension cannon,’ Tosh added. A hum filled the room and everyone was silent for a few moments before she turned in her chair to face Rose as she said, ‘good luck Rose, whenever you are ready’. A chorus of “good luck” filled the room and then Rose was nodding her assent, a bit too emotional and nervous to form words. ‘Cannon go in five, four, three, two, one…’

Splash!

The golden light briefly shining through her screwed up eyelids vanished and, shocked by the unexpected soaking, Rose automatically took a sharp intake of breath and got a mouthful of salty seawater for her troubles when a wave rolled over her head drenching her entire body after landing in what would have been just waist high water if it wasn't for the coastal tides. She coughed and spluttered, removing the water from her lungs as best as she could whilst turning away from the oncoming waves so it wouldn’t happen again. You could prepare yourself as much as you liked to use the dimension cannon but a landing like that would always catch you off guard. The water itself wasn’t actually that cold, really it was a rather relaxing warm temperature that she would have loved to swim in if she was on a holiday and not trying to find the Doctor.

Once she’d caught her breath, Rose wiped her eyes and face, the minimal makeup she wore these days smudging or washing away with the water. Keeping her hand to her brow to block out the sunlight, she finally took the chance to look around. She was standing around twenty feet from a beautifully tropical beach. The inviting golden sand glimmered under the warmth of the sun, surrounding an amass of greenery that seemed to go on and on in both directions. As she waded forwards to get onto dry land, the sounds of the crashing waves and her own splashing legs were joined by the calls of jungle creatures, namely birds of some kind. She didn’t recognise her location, a relaxing beach getaway never being high on the Doctor’s list of destinations, but they had been to a jungle once or twice so there was the possibility that he could be somewhere within the trees. How she was meant to find him or the Tardis in some dense forest was beyond her and even if she could find him, would it be the correct Doctor? Deciding to head into the jungle in the hopes of finding some kind of trace of the man or the box, Rose squelched in her boots across the sand towards the tree line.

The humming and buzzing of insects joined the animal sounds of the jungle as she walked on and she was soon so far into the woodland that she could no longer see the beach she had come from, the only remnants of that being her soaked but dying clothes and the sand covered boots that were still uncomfortably squelching underfoot. It was darker under the canopy with the tall, leafy trees blocking out most of the sun and some of her pathway as she dodged around trunks and low hanging branches and clambered over the occasional moss covered log or rock. Dead leaves and dry plant matter crunched on the ground with each of her steps; her feet soon becoming lost in a mist that lingered a foot or so off the ground. Her eyes were drawn to the large ripe looking fruits that dangled from a few of the trees. There was even a tree covered in apples which didn’t quite make sense in her mind seeing as they were in the jungle but the apple tree was clearly doing well in its unusual environment. Rose wondered if they were actually apples or just an alien fruit that looked particularly similar, well, from the outside at least. They could have bright purple centres for all she knew but she didn’t think this was the time to go about testing the local produce as curious as she was.

There was an unusual sound in the air that she couldn’t quite place and as Rose pushed past some particularly large palm leaves she was met with a rather peculiar sight. It was the first sign of life that she had come across in the jungle apart from the ongoing sounds of the animals and insects that were still yet unseen but coming from all around her. Hung up between the branches of two trees was what looked like an extravagantly large wind chime. The sound it gave off was akin to a hum emanating from the long glass rods that wavered slightly where they hung jostling the rods next to them a little causing the sound to reverberate between the trees. There didn’t seem to be any other signs of life around as though the wind chime was simply built in the middle of the jungle. Rose thought it was rather strange. Still, she stepped closer to it, her curiosity getting the better of her as she stuck out a hand and gently brushed her fingertips over a few of the glass rods. The hum was not as comforting when she did that. Instead the sound was a little eerie and, in her mind, more metallic than she was expecting. Each rod echoed a little as it was played creating a tinkling vibration that easily broke through the forest sounds. Well, all except one sound.

Rose jumped at the crunching and brushing of leaves coming from ahead, the mostly clear glass rods offering her a view of whatever was with her in the jungle as it pushed past the leafy plants and came into view. It was a human looking woman holding a baby alongside an older child who was walking next to her carrying a selection of fruits in his arms. They were wearing long patterned wraps in red or yellow that went from their waist to their ankles, with the woman also wearing a smaller plain yellow wrap around her chest, and they each wore unusual necklaces in the same colour scheme that rather looked like they could have been crafted from sticks. The trio stopped as they entered the clearing and Rose carefully pushed past the wind chime, stepping the other side of it so they could see one another better. It wasn’t like she was hidden by the glass rods so there was no point standing behind them.

She put on what she hoped was a winning smile and introduced herself because what better way was there when meeting a potentially new species or perhaps humans from a different culture or time period to herself? ‘Hi, I’m Rose.’ She gave a little wave but was only met by stares. ‘Could I ask who you are?’ She tried but it was to no avail. In the back of her mind, Rose wondered if they could understand her but she didn’t think that should be a problem seeing as she was able to understand other species when in Pete’s world even with being in a completely different universe to the Tardis.

The woman proceeded to walk closer, just a couple of steps, before stopping, her dark coloured eyes intently locked with Rose’s. She then trailed the fingers of her free hand across her lips and copied the movement on her forehead.

Rose frowned at this gesture for a moment before coming to a realisation. ‘Can you not talk?’ She asked, the words leaving her lips before she thought about how the woman could get the answer across. Bringing her hand to her own forehead, Rose rubbed the skin there thinking that she had a headache coming on, maybe because of the constant buzzing from the wind chimes just behind her.

The woman stepped forwards again and stretched her free arm out towards Rose, her palm invitingly upwards for her to take. She didn’t seem to be a threat but Rose was still a bit wary. A little gingerly, she placed her hand into the woman’s and then her headache vanished. For the first time since being apart from the Tardis she felt that tickling in her mind and a sprinkling of emotions that she knew were not her own. There was warmth but also caution and uncertainty. These were the woman’s feelings, the feelings that she was projecting onto Rose through telepathy. Touch telepathy by the looks but perhaps the woman could do more than that. Perhaps that was what the short headache had been about as the woman tried to connect their minds. Rose’s previous experiences with telepathy hadn’t caused her to experience a headache though. The Aunafaun, the water creature that had crashed to Earth whilst she and the Doctor were in a French jail after their unexpected landing in the Louvre, had spoken directly into her mind, their voice suddenly there. Then of course there was the Tardis but her interactions had never been painful either except for the Bad Wolf incident. Rose had never asked much about the Doctor’s telepathy, she knew he was a touch telepath who could still communicate without touch if essential but he was not as good at it. He’d also told her once about there being barriers in his mind which must be a two way thing otherwise he surely would have said something if he’d heard the thoughts going through her head sometimes when they were hugging or holding hands. The Doctor had said that she had barriers too, whatever that meant, so perhaps that was what the brief headache was. Really, Rose just had a lot more questions and thought that she could maybe start by trying to talk with the woman. She didn’t know if she understood Rose’s words but could only communicate via emotions, a bit like the Old Girl in a way, or whether Rose would have to communicate in emotions to have any sort of conversation with her.

Thinking hard about nice warm feelings, Rose did her best to convey them to the woman finding herself soon receiving those same emotions in return. It seemed to be working so that was positive, the only thing was how to communicate the reasons she was here. The Tardis could talk to her in pictures too so Rose gave it her best shot and pictured the Doctor in her mind, hoping that the woman would receive and understand the message. There was a lack of confusion entering her mind through their connection, suggesting that the woman had understood what she was trying to convey, but there was a spike of sadness as though she was regretfully telling Rose that she hadn’t seen him. Rose nodded and tried again this time imagining the Tardis in all her wooden blue glory. Again there was the regretful no in reply and Rose sighed sadly. Her mind was suddenly filled with warmth and comfort, it wrapped around her as though the woman was giving her a mental hug. A light blush grew on her cheeks because Rose hadn’t realised that she was still expressing her emotions to the woman, but she projected her gratitude in return for the comfort.

They parted not long after and she was just waving the woman and her two children off when a golden light grew around her. The next thing Rose knew was that she was stumbling forwards into the dimension cannon room back at the Hub. It was rather disorientating and she felt a little sick and suddenly exhausted. An alarm sounded around her and then the door was yanked open and she was soon surrounded by the rest of the Torchwood Three team whose voices were all blurring into one. Rose slumped a little and Tosh and Owen grabbed her arms to steady her, Owen’s hurried medical questions sticking out amongst the noise but she couldn’t find it in herself to answer. Her heavy eyelids blinked lazily, the edges of her vision blurring and becoming darker. Then the world went black. Hands and arms lowered her to the cool concrete floor and Owen’s urgent orders that she be taken to the infirmary were the last things Rose knew before she fully passed out.

**********

It was a further two weeks before she was cleared to use the dimension cannon again. Her previous jump had taken her around twenty-two hours from the perspective of those in Pete’s world, even though the entire trip was only half an hour for Rose, and the following days were filled with a lot of questions about the experience, from both her family and the Torchwood team, intermingled with Owen’s medical examinations and queries. He’d chalked her collapse down to extreme and compressed jetlag which did make sense because she was travelling an incredibly long way in a short amount of time. Apart from the exhaustion taking a toll on her body there was nothing else physically wrong with her so Owen signed her off once he was happy with her and gave her the all clear for a further cannon trip. He also advised that she eat a lot of high energy foods before she did the jump in the hopes that they would combat the exhaustion when she returned.

Rose was a little disappointed that the jump hadn’t worked but not disheartened; she hadn’t expected it to work the first time in all honesty. She hoped that it eventually would of course but it was probably early days. It was still just a theory about the Tardis key being able to home in on the ship and they were unsure as to how accurate that was. Perhaps the Tardis was in that jungle whilst she was there or perhaps she had just dematerialised or had yet to even arrive. Who was to know? At least with every trip the team would gain more data and hopefully that would help them narrow down the jump window and transport Rose more accurately to a time that would be acceptable for her to meet the Doctor again. The time difference between the universes was really against them in that respect so any information about where Rose could be in his timeline during a jump was valuable.

After another emotional goodbye with her mum and Tony, who were staying at her flat again, as well as calls to both Pete and Mickey, who were both stuck in London at Torchwood One, Rose was ready for her second jump with the dimension cannon. Following Owen’s advice she’d had a thick and energy filled shake on her walk to the Hub. It mostly tasted of bananas but had other fruit in it as well as oats and peanut butter. She really hoped that it was enough to stop her collapsing again especially with how she was awoken in the infirmary. It was the ranting and raving of her mum’s voice that had drawn Rose into consciousness. Jackie wasn’t even allowed in the Hub but she’d found a way, very determined to see and protect her daughter upon hearing about her condition when Rose returned to Pete’s world.

Tosh counted her down again when all the setup had been completed for the cannon and soon gold was enveloping Rose once more as she travelled between the universes.

Without seawater immediately blocking her senses Rose could immediately tell she was in the correct universe. It smelt right. There was always something off about Pete’s world, no matter if it was a beach in Norway or a busy city street in London or Cardiff. It was hard to put into words the exact smell of that universe but perhaps plastic was the closest. There was only a hint of it. Just enough so that it was noticeable to the non natives to that universe but not enough to be overwhelmingly off putting. You could get used to it. Now with her senses filled, in her mind at least, with cleaner air, Rose felt like a weight was lifting off her shoulders. Yes the cannon had worked last time but she had ended up in the ocean before wandering into a jungle. The sights around her this time were so much more comforting and familiar to the Londoner.

As though trying to ensure that she had indeed gathered that she was in the capital, a large, red double-decker trundled by with an old fashioned advertisement for Typhoo Tea plastered on the side of it. She eyed the back of the bus where the name of the next stop was advertised and saw it said Shoreditch High Street. It was the wrong side of the Thames but it wasn’t too far out from the estate all things considered, though that was if it was even built yet. Rose didn’t need to see the older model of the iconic bus or the advertisement that was from a few decades before her time to realise that it wasn’t her era of London. The couple of cars that had also whizzed by on the road as well as the few people who had passed her on the pavement had already given her that idea. She was certainly no car expert so pulling information from the little she had learned about fashion at Henriks, her visits to the Tardis’ wardrobe room as well as general travels with the Doctor, Rose believed that she was in the sixties. The young fashion conscious woman who had just walked around Rose wearing a mini skirt really helped in her prediction too.

The street she was on wasn’t that busy. The three story brown brick buildings on either side of the narrow road were rather plain except for the green fronted greengrocers nearer the end of it. Rose decided to walk in that direction. There were more people that way with a steady stream of them crossing over at the top of the road. Some had the occasional shopping bag with them which suggested that she was headed in the direction of the shops at any rate, though whether that was the direction of the Doctor she had no idea. She kept her eyes peeled for signs of the Time Lord, her head darting all over the place as she looked around for the familiar blue box or indeed a long brown coated man striding between the locals.

Around the corner to the right were the shops Rose had anticipated. The electronics store on the corner advertising their televisions in the window gave her the creeps and sent a shiver down her spine as she recalled the trip to see Elvis on her birthday that had gone horribly wrong. She quickly moved on and walked quite a way up the high street with her eyes both on the shop windows and her surroundings. She eventually reached a record shop with a big handwritten poster in the window stating that they had records of songs by Roy Orbison, The Beatles and Frank Ifield, to name a few, as well as the new single Lucky Lips by Cliff Richard and The Shadows. Going by her inherited knowledge of Cliff Richard from her mum it was definitely the sixties.

Rose was just moving on from looking in the window when someone walked out of the door, with neither particularly looking directly where they were going the pair nearly ended up colliding with one another. They grabbed hold of each other automatically for support as a stream of apologies left their lips. It was a girl that she had bumped into. She was maybe a couple of years younger than Rose, perhaps about eighteen or nineteen, and had short brown hair, a pale round face and dark almond eyes. There was something about her that niggled Rose, something familiar, and she wondered if this young woman would grow up to be a celebrity of some sort that she had seen in films or an old magazine. She offered a sheepish smile to the woman who was soon offering one back as well as a little laugh at their antics that Rose ended up joining in.

‘I really am so sorry,’ the brown haired girl said after their giggles had died down.

She shook her head. ‘It’s alright. I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

‘Neither was I,’ the girl admitted.

Rose’s attention was quickly drawn by a flash of brown out of the corner of her eye and her head darted around to find it was just a businessman. She was just going to see him in every suit wearing man now wasn’t she? This was going to be a nightmare but at least it wasn’t the seventies when the colour was the peak of fashion.

‘You look a little lost.’

Glancing back to the woman, Rose smirked at the obviousness of her own behaviour to this complete stranger. ‘Oh, I’m just looking for someone.’

‘Can I help?’

She grinned but let out a bit of a heavy sigh as she shook her head. ‘Not unless you know the Doctor.’

The woman was just saying something about her grandfather when Rose caught sight of something blue parked on the street corner in the distance. It had been blocked from her view by a bus that had stopped to let people on and off but now the bus had moved and Rose was running. She shouted her apologies over her shoulder to the confused girl she’d left behind and ran as fast as she could, dodging around shoppers and gaining a few stares as she went. She didn’t care though because that was the Tardis. Near enough barrelling into the doors, Rose stopped herself from face planting the wood by putting her hands up against the wooden panelling. She didn’t immediately register the lack of warmth or hum from the usually emotive ship, her hands going to the handle next to try and get inside, hoping that the Old Girl would let her in even without the use of her Tardis key. The door easily swung open and Rose’s stomach plummeted. The police box was not bigger on the inside. The interior wood was painted white and there was just enough room for the wooden desk and chair that sat within. It was an actual police box, the type the Tardis had based her exterior looks on and that the Doctor became so fond of that he didn’t fix the broken circuit that enabled her to change the appearance. Rose sighed and pulled the door closed before leaning back against it heavily. For a moment she had thought she had found him. Thought that she was finally back home. She felt rather cheated, like a cruel trick had been played on her by the universe.

It wasn’t long before a rather dejected Rose was enshrouded by golden light as the cannon took her back to Pete’s world once more.

Chapter Text

The sun’s rays beat down upon the streets of Pisa, the Tuscan city that straddled the Arno River. It was an average day for the Italian people as they walked along going about their business never noticing the less than usual groaning and whirring sound that filled the warm air or the sudden appearance of a very out of place wooden blue box that landed just within the city walls.

The door opened and out the Doctor stepped, tilting up his head to bask in the sunlight. ‘Ah, bit of sun, lovely,’ the Time Lord commented before he turned his eyes to the scene before him. The people milling around the market square kicked up small plumes of dust from the pale gravel that covered the ground from which cream and white stoned buildings rose up to surround the stalls, their terracotta tiled roofs in shades of red and the occasional green. At the edge of the market a lady in a long red gown sang, her voice weaving in between those of the morning shoppers buying fresh produce for their homes. She had drawn in quite a crowd, a variety of admirers ranging from men in plain shirts and hose to those of a more upper class standing who wore bonnets as well as doublets over their fancier, voluminously sleeved shirts. There were also a few women in similar if not more heavily adorned gowns to the singer who stood by watching her performance. The Doctor could see why she had achieved such a turnout with a voice as beautiful as hers. He stood listening until the end of the current tune before deciding to wander around the city. Setting off to the left, he followed the city walls after a quick look around the market stalls where each of which were run by a vendor who tried their best to flog their wares to him.

Some people might say that danger follows the Doctor around and that he’s rather like a bad penny but it wasn’t strictly true. As Rose liked to say they didn’t always end up where they wanted to be but they ended up where they needed to be. This was something very much attributed to the Tardis and her all knowing ways sending the Time Lord to sort out events all over time and space that no others could handle. And yes, sometimes he did inadvertently trigger something and in a few specific circumstances the triggering was more purposeful, but more often than not he just so happened to be there. Then he got involved because he wanted to help or was curious or he simply couldn’t stop himself. It was certainly that combination that came over him today.

He was simply enjoying the culture and the sights of the Renaissance era when the murmur of the locals around him changed. Conversations faltered and turned to wonderment, curiosity and, in some cases, apprehension. His eyes fell on a group of men nearby who looked to be heading down to the docks. They had stopped in their tracks and were peering upwards either with a hand to their brow to see better in the sunlight or with a finger pointing to the sky. The Doctor stopped too and followed that finger, drawing his eyebrows together in confusion at the sight. There was a bird soaring through the air. A massive bird, even at the distance he stood from it on the ground. An impossibly massive bird.

‘It can’t be,’ he breathed more to himself than the group of men he was near. They wouldn’t have taken notice of him anyway too enraptured with the sight of those brown feathered wings that flapped every so often propelling the creature closer towards their side of the city. ‘What? But that’s…’ His words died in his mouth. He simply didn’t understand what his eyes were showing him.

Like the others around him, the Doctor stared a little longer before he tore his gaze away, his head darting behind him to the city walls where his eyes locked on one thing. The Time Lord ran, dodging around a few people who were in his way until he reached the stone steps that led up the side of the wall to the battlements at the top. He climbed them two at a time and didn’t stop when he reached the end. He ran the short distance along the top of the wall where he was met with the wooden door of a tower that was thankfully unlocked. Not stopping to look around at the small, round room that he certainly shouldn’t be inside since he was not a member of the city guard, he jumped onto the ladder that ran up the wall beside the door and scrambled to the top where he pushed open the trap door and clambered back out into the sunlight. As soon as he was upright, his gaze was back to the sky searching for the bird that would be quite hard to miss. It was a magnificent sight to behold. The bright sun tinted the edges of its brown feathers giving it a golden hue as it circled lazily, no longer flapping to retain its height having found a warm jet stream that would easily keep it airborne. Its wings were fully outstretched as it soared, the wingspan of which must have been around twenty-three feet, over double the length of the Andean Condor, the bird that should have been the largest in the world since the previous contenders went extinct. The bird that was flying closer above the city should have been part of that extinct category but clearly, as it loudly squawked causing a few people down below to scream, it was very much alive.

‘Impossible,’ the Doctor murmured. His hands gripped the pale stone wall at the top of the tower as he leant forwards to get an even better view of the creature from his vantage point. ‘Argentavis are from the Messinian of the Miocene epoch. You should have been extinct for millions and millions of years, but look at you, you’re beautiful...’ The Time Lord’s voice was full of a wonder that soon changed when the bird crowed before diving down to the groups of spectators down below. The actions caused a mass of screams and shouts as the people fled as quickly as they could. The Doctor couldn’t help but watch the actions in awe for a moment before deciding he needed to do something about it. ‘...and for a supposedly dead carnivore you sure are acting like you’re hungry,’ he said as he observed it flapping back up into the sky. He turned and jumped through the trapdoor, not bothering with the ladder because the distance wasn’t that great for a Time Lord, and then went back down the stairs attached to the side of the wall.

His eyes were back on the swooping bird as he ran in the direction of the Tardis that was parked back near the markets a little further along the city walls. This meant that he didn’t notice what he was soon tripping over, his converse cladded foot catching on the object and threatening to make him face plant the dusty ground had he not miraculously performed some manoeuvre that was anything but elegant yet still managed to keep him upright. Hopping on one foot and grumbling as he rubbed his smarting shin, the Doctor turned to the offending object finding himself easily distracted from the Argentavis’ appearance by something that was as equally puzzling. It was black suitcase; one of those with the hard plastic shell, little spinny wheels and an extendable handle. It certainly wasn’t what should be on the floor in the city of Pisa at the start of the sixteenth century. Like the bird, it was very clearly out of place and out of time, something that both baffled and worried the Time Lord.

There was something on the handle that caught the Doctor’s eye. ‘What’s that?’ He muttered as he lowered his bruising leg to the ground and stepped closer to it, leaning down so he could have a better look at the device. It was some sort of thick wrist strap with what wasn’t quite a watch face on it but it was akin to one in its appearance. Clearly it was much too advanced to actually be a watch with the numerous other small buttons that surrounded the round dial that only contained one handle. He was about to crouch down next to it and pull out his glasses for a closer study when one of the buttons flashed blue five times. The Doctor stared at the button but found himself tearing his eyes away and holding a hand up to shield them when there was a sudden burst of gold light. Lowering his hand a moment later, he looked at the spot where the suitcase had been. All that was left was an indent of its rectangular shape in the gravel. ‘What?’ Not knowing what else better to do, he glanced around in the direct vicinity just to ensure that no one had grabbed the suitcase and was running off with it whilst he had been covering his eyes. There wasn’t anyone of course. Had there not been a rather loud squawk he probably would have scanned the area with his sonic screwdriver to see if he could get some readings from the mysterious suitcase but the bird’s call brought him back to the much more pressing issue. ‘Right. Yes. Priorities.’ The Doctor glanced upwards briefly to see it circling the nearby streets and then managed to run back into the Tardis with no more hiccups.

He shucked off his coat, slung it over the coral strut and dashed around the console to the monitor so he could set up a scan of the area. ‘Disappearing suitcases and extinct species,’ he murmured as he tapped away beginning a search for anomalies. ‘Time is very wibbly.’ It didn’t take long for the Tardis to give some answers. ‘A time fissure? Well, that’ll explain our bird friend.’

He came up with a plan pretty quickly after his findings, a plan that the Doctor hoped would enable him to lure the Argentavis back through the time fissure so it could go back to its own time. He returned to the console room from the depths of the Tardis with a large chunk of meat stuck on the end of a set of long handled prongs and then proceeded to dart around the controls sending the Old Girl into flight. Like the bird, the Tardis soared through the sky above the buildings and once the Time Lord had yanked open her blue doors he was finally able to see the fissure in person. The circular tear shimmered in the sunlight, flashing and swirling where it hovered in mid air near the tower of Pisa at the other side of the city.

This was another scenario where Rose’s presence would have been valuable in sending the creature home. Akin to the situation when Donna was trapped in the taxi, having another person able to take over the controls would have left the Doctor free to be by the doors catching Donna or in this case luring the Argentavis to the fissure. Instead he was forced to deal with this problem by himself and resorted to tying string to the levers once more so he would be able to steer the ship from a distance. After the string was secured, he gripped one piece between his teeth and another in his hand and sent the Tardis towards the swooping bird, getting into position to start his plan. Next, he ran down the ramp, spreading his legs in the doorframe to give himself some stability whilst he clung to the door with the hand holding one of the pieces of string. The wind ruffled his spiked hair and suit even once the Old Girl had paused in her movements so that she hovered in mid air behind the bird. If the Argentavis looked large from the ground, or from the tower the Doctor had climbed, then being a mere few feet away made it look absolutely ginormous. ‘Oh you really are gorgeous,’ he mumbled between the string in his mouth, admiring the golden tinted plumage.

He didn’t take too long to gaze at the creature and was soon trying to attract its attention. The Doctor knocked one of his feet against the Tardis’ door and the Old Girl let out an echoing donging sound that drew the bird’s eyes from the panicking people below. It crowed loudly and swirled around so that it faced the mad man holding out a piece of meat from a wooden box floating in the sky. ‘Come on,’ the Time Lord encouraged. ‘Get the meat, Argie, get the meat.’ After another squawk, it propelled itself closer with a flap of its massive wings. The Doctor yanked the string in his teeth and the Tardis flew backwards, chased by the Argentavis that snapped its large yellow beak and crowed some more as its prey fled. No longer needing the string in his mouth he spat it out and exclaimed, ‘come on you beauty! That’s it!’ As the bird flew closer and closer whilst the Tardis reversed through the sky towards the fissure, it gained on the police box. The Doctor pulled on the other string in his hand making the Old Girl put on an extra bit of speed to get away quicker. Squawking, the creature flapped harder to keep up with the change of pace.

It was all going rather well, that was until the Tardis crashed. The side of the ship whacked into something, something very solid that sent the Time Lord flying as the Old Girl spun wildly through the air still being chased by the bird. Luckily the Doctor didn’t fall out of the Tardis. Instead he fell backwards, his shoulder hitting into the time rotor as his body careered through the console room, his arms flailing as he tried to grab hold of something, anything that would stop his fall. His bump into the rotor did nothing to slow his momentum and he fell into the corridor beyond the console room, through a set of open double doors and into the swimming pool that the Tardis had helpfully moved to catch him.

The Doctor’s head shot out of the water, his mouth spurting water like a fountain before he hastily swam to the edge of the pool, grumbling as he hauled himself out. He clambered upright and flicked his hair back, his suit absolutely soaked and dripping water everywhere as he began a squelchy run back to the console room to finish sending the Argentavis back to where it belonged.

His eyes widened as he rushed into the room. The bird was squawking loudly, its beak snapping wildly just outside the Tardis doors. ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ The Doctor yelled, dashing to the controls to turn the ship in case the creature tried to get inside. There was an angry cry from the Argentavis as its path was blocked and the Time Lord let out a little sigh of relief that there wasn’t about to be a massive bird on board.

After locating the direction of the nearby time fissure, he sent the Tardis towards it, his eyes darting between the monitor and the open doors watching the positions of both the fissure and the closely encroaching bird. Just before the Old Girl could travel through the tear in time he made the ship skirt to the side. The movement was too quick for the Argentavis and, as agile as it was in the air, it was far too big to be able to make any sort of manoeuvre that would allow it to dodge the time fissure. Instead the bird flew straight through the tear and the Doctor let out a cheer as he watched from the open doors of the Tardis. He then quickly made his way around the console, closing the fissure to prevent anything else from falling through time.

It was as the Doctor walked down the ramp to close the doors that the sight before him made him pause. The tower of Pisa was now leaning. It certainly hadn’t been before. His shoulder ached as he reached up his hand to scratch the back of his head and it reminded him of the Tardis’ crash. ‘Ah,’ he hummed a little awkwardly. ‘I don’t think anyone will notice…not really. It’ll be fine. They’ll just blame it on subsidence. Anyway, it’s much more interesting now it’s got a bit of a tilt.’

He landed his ship back in the city and, after drying off, he retraced his steps to the location of the disappearing suitcase. The sonic couldn’t reveal much about it. There was a trace of a signal but it was incredibly weak and tapered off before it reached its destination. He presumed it was some sort of teleport or even transmat but the fact that it was out of its time only baffled him further and made him more curious. ‘Why a suitcase?’ He muttered to himself, as he walked back to the Tardis. ‘Weird way to transport your luggage. Must have been quite something inside too, at least eight stones worth of bruising on my shin.’ He took out his Tardis key and let himself back inside with a final glance back over his shoulder at the deserted ground where the suitcase once lay. ‘Ah well, can’t solve all the mysteries of the universe.’

If the Time Lord had another pair of 3D glasses then they might have given him some answers to his current conundrum as well as quite a few more questions. The glasses would have revealed just a few remaining particles of void stuff that lingered around the area that the suitcase had landed in because it wasn’t just any twenty-first century suitcase. It wasn’t even from this universe.

**********

Rose’s second jump, though disappointing, did glean some information for the Torchwood team on the dimension cannon project, especially when she realised who that woman was that she met outside of the record shop.

She was at the Tyler mansion for the weekend during her recovery period after the jump. Rose felt perfectly fine now and had done for the last three days but Owen wasn’t signing her off until Monday at the earliest, a week after her last jump. Her return to Pete’s world hadn’t affected her quite as dramatically as previously. There had been no fainting this time which was a vast improvement, she was, however, still very weak and exhausted. Owen’s medical examinations and tests came up with no further answers and he still put it down to extreme jet lag. It took her a few days to get over it but now she was eager to put her disappointment behind her and complete another jump, but in the meantime spending some time with her family was a good distraction.

Rose was sitting at the kitchen island chatting to her mum who was making up a bottle for Tony when the identity of the woman outside the record shop came to her. With her brother in her arms, she was trying to quiet the tired and hungry boy who was wailing loudly, impatient for his food and his following nap. In front of her, in the middle of the island, was a newspaper that Pete had been doing the crossword in before he went to Torchwood for a meeting. There was a picture of a woman in the newspaper, not the same one of course but she vaguely resembled the one that Rose had met. The image sparked something within her and suddenly the face that had been plaguing her mind over the past week became clear.

‘It’s Susan,’ she breathed after passing Tony over to her mum who began feeding the now quietened boy.

Jackie looked up at her daughter with a frown. ‘What do you mean “it’s Susan”? Who the hell’s Susan?’

‘The woman I met in the jump outside the record shop. I knew I recognised her from somewhere. It’s the Doctor’s granddaughter.’

‘Granddaughter?’ Jackie repeated incredulously. ‘He has a granddaughter?’

‘Yeah,’ Rose said rather dismissively as she patted herself down looking for her mobile phone.

‘So, he’s had kids then. Was he married before?’

‘Mum!’ She complained, not appreciating her mother’s tone. ‘He’s over nine hundred years old. Do you expect him to have not had a life outside of travelling? Think he just sits there and twiddles his thumbs between adventures?’

Jackie sighed, backing down from the combativeness she was feeling as her protective streak for her daughter took hold. ‘No sweetheart, of course not’. She paused for a moment to adjust the bottle for Tony whilst she thought of the best way to explain her thoughts. ‘I’m just worried for you,’ she admitted, ‘I don’t want you becoming the next in a long line’.

Scoffing, Rose pulled out her phone that she’d finally located and gave her mum a look. ‘It’s not like that. He isn’t like that.’ Jackie couldn’t help but raise her eyebrow a little in challenge, making her daughter shake her head. ‘Look,’ she began, putting her mobile on the island and spinning on her stool to directly face her mum. ‘He told me his marriage on Gallifrey was an arranged one that benefitted the houses they came from and yeah they had kids who had their own in time but…’ She trailed off with a sigh. This wasn’t her story to tell. The Doctor was a very private individual and whatever he’d shared with her he’d done so in confidence, not that he’d said too much about his family life on Gallifrey. She knew the most about Susan and had heard plenty of tales of their adventures together. His other family members he was a lot vaguer about. One time they got onto the conversation of looming, the preferred practice to produce a Time Tot, as he’d called them, and that was how he’d had his two children. The process only required DNA from both parents, or TNA if it was from a Time Lord, to produce a child; no physical intimacy or pregnancy or giving birth. He’d said that it was looked down upon in his culture to be physically intimate with another, even with a partner. Simple touches could even be frowned upon because his people were an emotionally and physically detached race, trained to be that way in the Academy from a young age. For being such a tactile person, in both of the bodies that she’d met, Rose didn’t know how he’d survived a life like that for so long. The first thing he did when they met was to hold her hand but had they been on Gallifrey they would have been the talk of the town for such an action.

Her mum kept throwing her the occasional glance as she focused on feeding her youngest child, waiting for Rose to collect her thoughts and finish her sentence. ‘You gotta remember that he’s an alien from another planet, not just some bloke from down the street. He grew up in a whole other culture with loads of rules and regulations and whatever. But even still, that wasn’t him. That wasn’t who he was. He didn’t really fit in with his people, not even in his family. He was the odd one out.’ Rose had to pause and swallow at that statement. It made her a bit emotional to think about the young Time Lord being surrounded by his own kind and yet he was still so alone. She took a breath and began to conclude her thoughts. ‘When he eventually left Gallifrey in the Tardis, he finally found his place in the universe. He travelled around seeing new places, meeting new races and saving people, planets, whoever and whatever needed help. He has sacrificed so much for the good of the universe and he’s done that mostly by himself. By the time we met he’d just become the last of his kind, he needed someone more than ever and then he saved me in the basement at Henriks. He was so alone mum,’ she said, her voice beginning to waver. ‘He was so alone and broken and he needed someone, he needed me, and in a way I needed him just as much. By his side, I found my place in the universe too and he was no longer alone. He was happy. We both were.’ Her voice caught at her admittance that their happiness was now in the past and she blinked rapidly to try and prevent her glassy eyes from spilling her tears.

There was something about Rose’s wholehearted conviction when she spoke about the Doctor that quashed any lingering doubts that Jackie had about the man. Plus her daughter was right; he was an alien after all so she shouldn’t push her human ideas on him. She didn’t really think that the Time Lord was like that anyway, not with the way them pair had tiptoed around each other for so long before moving into a relationship. Then there was the way that he’d spoken about Rose when he was talking to Jackie about marrying her. His words plus his absolute assurance behind them told her all she needed to know about his love of her daughter. She couldn’t say she knew him overly well but she knew enough. She knew he was a good man and that he loved and would take care of her Rose. And there was no doubt in her mind that they were happy together. ‘And you will be again,’ Jackie said with certainty, ‘you both will when you get back to himself’.

Rose sniffed, unable to hold back the tears that were beginning to trickle down her cheeks. ‘I just don’t want him to be alone, mum,’ she said, her voice choked up with emotion.

‘I know sweetheart,’ Jackie said gently. She felt very much the same, especially after what her daughter had revealed about the Time Lord. Her maternal instinct was soaring. Jackie wanted to rip down those walls between the universes herself just so she could give him a hug. She settled for hugging Rose instead once she’d put Tony down for his nap. They cuddled up together in the snug and watched some comedy they found on the television to brighten their moods.

Eventually Rose got around to phoning Torchwood Three, having been planning to when she first realised Susan’s identity. She told Malcolm and Tosh about the Doctor’s granddaughter and how meeting her meant that Rose had landed too early in his timeline by a few hundred years. Malcolm immediately started making plans on how the cannon could be altered to make the jumps more accurate and hopefully align with the regeneration of the Time Lord she was looking for. He and Tosh got to work on that straight away and the improved dimension cannon was ready a week and a half later which was more than enough time for Owen to sign Rose off and give her the all clear to jump. That next jump, however, wasn’t quite like the others.

Golden light surrounded Rose as she opened her eyes to a new world. Going by the trees and the damp greenery it was another jungle but this time the golden light didn’t fade. Instead it pulsed and sparked as the dimension cannon on her wrist grew warm against her skin. In the distance between the trees she could see a familiar shade of blue, but before Rose could do so much as move an inch, she felt the pulling sensation of a jump except this time it did not combine with the compressing, squeezing sensation that usually arrived when she was travelling back to Pete’s world. For a moment, all Rose could see was that golden light and then, just as suddenly, her feet were back on the ground. There was no jungle around her now. She was somewhere new.

The air was filled with dust and smoke and she coughed a little as her feet shifted on the loose stones, the golden light around her finally fading completely to reveal a rather greyed out world. The sky was white like ash and the rocky ground a light grey, filled with undulations, craters and jarring rock faces that rose up high from the ground and looked sharp enough to cut you. It appeared as though she was up on one of those high rocks when she gazed to her right and noticed the angle of the stony ground veering downwards.

She had no idea what had just happened but she knew this was not Pete’s world. Even with the smell of the smoke in the air it wasn’t enough to block out that plastic taste of the other universe. Had the dimension cannon changed its mind about the destination or had Torchwood done something at the Hub? Or perhaps the upgrades were causing issues. Rose didn’t know the answers and suspected she wouldn’t find out until she returned. That was assuming that she could. Glancing down at her wrist, she pulled back her blue leather sleeve a little to reveal the cannon. It appeared to be functioning normally from what she could tell, the dial was accurate and none of the buttons were flashing in warning. She slipped the leather strap from her wrist briefly to check on her skin below. The cannon was no longer warm but her skin still felt hotter than it should where the strap had just been. It looked a little like she’d got sunburn but only around her wrist. It wasn’t painful though, not really, and there wasn’t much she could do about that either.

Her eyes turned to the world around her. As barren as it was, it was still too intriguing to jump straight back even if the cannon was acting a bit strange. Plus there was that voice in the back of her head that was suggesting that this jump could be the one. It had done that with every jump so far but it had to be right at some point, or at least she hoped it would. With the upgrades, as dodgy as they were, she should have a better chance at finding him and annoyingly she might have if that blue was the edge of the Tardis in that jungle she’d visited briefly before ending up here.

Securing the dimension cannon around her wrist once more, Rose decided to head in the direction of the ledge hoping that she would get a good view of the landscape from her vantage point. She had only taken a couple of steps towards her destination when there was a loud whistling sound followed by a bang. She near enough launched herself into the crater nearby when there was a second explosion, the rocks around her scattering and scraping against one another as they shifted with her sudden movements. Whistle after whistle and bang after bang echoed through the air, the shockwaves of the explosions reverberating through her bones whilst she lay as flat as she could within the crater hoping that none would get too close to her position. They definitely were pretty close though as she could see a couple of plumes of smoke that must be coming from the ground below the rocky cliff she was on.

Rose uncupped her ears when the artillery fire stopped, letting out a little sigh of relief that it had. Wherever she had landed definitely seemed to be a warzone and probably the sort of situation that Pete was imagining when he insisted that she take the gun with her, not that it would help much when the sky was raining shells or whatever firepower they were using. Slowly, she poked her head out of the crater and peered around. Nothing seemed different from her position though there was still a little bit of smoke lazily drifting upwards from the ground over the edge. Rose carefully scrambled out of the crater, the stones beneath her feet slipping and sliding and generally trying to scupper her movements but she managed it and then crept towards the edge of the rock face so she could look around below. As she neared the ledge, the sound of voices began to flow through the air. They were coming from ahead of her, from somewhere nearby on the surface.

‘Halt. Don’t move,’ commanded a male voice.

His instructions were immediately followed by a female asking, ‘what is it?’

Rose ducked down onto her stomach and shuffled just enough so she could see who those voices belonged to. The war torn land was much the same below as it was where she was, though the rocks surrounding the three people she could see down there were a little bigger than the loose ones beneath her. The woman had shoulder length brown hair underneath a grey beanie and was wearing a bright yellow rain coat that really stood out against the washed out world. Climbing over a rock near her was a brown haired man in a light brown duffle coat and grey trousers but he didn’t appear to be the one who had spoken before as the man in the lead of their trio had his hand in the air doing a halting motion to match the words that had been voiced. This second man wore a hat over his brown curls, a darker, long, brown coat and a ridiculously long striped scarf.

‘Could be a land mine,’ the scarfed man said in answer to the woman’s question. His head moved to the side as though he was taking a brief look around him before he amended his statement. ‘We’re in the middle of a minefield.’

Rose’s heart began to race at that statement. None of them looked like soldiers of any kind, especially not the woman with the brightness of her coat plus the man’s scarf would be quite impractical in a battle. Going by his tone of voice he didn’t expect to be in a minefield and Rose wondered what they were doing out here in the otherwise barren landscape.

The man took a moment to let that observation sink in and then said, ‘follow me and tread in my footsteps’.

‘Good King Wenceslas,’ the woman commented humorously as the group got on the move again, indeed doing just as the scarfed man had said and following in his footsteps.

Rose couldn’t quite put her finger on it but there was something about them that made her want to keep watching so she shuffled along the edge of the rock as they moved down below so she could keep up with them. Apparently she wasn’t moving quite as silently or invisibly as she’d hoped. The scarfed man looked up in her direction and Rose stilled and tried to melt into the ground. Luckily she wasn’t quite as close to the edge as she had been before so it was possible that he couldn’t see her now but Rose wasn’t going to move and test that theory.

‘What?’ The other man asked, wondering what the scarfed man had seen.

‘I thought I saw something move.’ Rose gulped but continued listening as the man went on to say, ‘I have a feeling we’re being watched’.

‘I get that feeling too,’ confirmed the woman. There was something, something about her voice, something familiar but Rose couldn’t quite place it.

‘I can’t see anything,’ said the other man.

Then the scarfed man added, ‘let’s hope it's imagination’.

Rose could hear the shuffle of their movements but didn’t dare crawl any closer to the edge. That was until their steps stopped as abruptly as they’d begun and the scarfed man let out a statement that made her heart sink.

‘Harry, I’m standing on a landmine,’ he stated in response to the question asked by the other man who was apparently called Harry. ‘I’ve let it shift. If I move my foot it might detonate it.’

‘Don’t move your foot,’ suggested Harry.

‘I won’t.’

Rose peered over the edge to see Harry carefully stepping around the scarfed man, his eyes on the precariously placed foot. He crouched down and appeared to touch the mine. ‘It’s rocking.’

‘Wedge something under it. Make it firm,’ the woman said.

‘Yes, I’m trying to Sarah,’ Harry replied, doing just that with some loose rocks.

Sarah! Oh, Rose realised how she knew that voice; it made complete sense really seeing as she was searching for the Doctor and now she was berating herself for not figuring out the woman’s identity earlier. The woman in the yellow coat was none other than Sarah Jane Smith, a previous companion of the Doctor, and if the other man was called Harry that left only one unidentified individual in the group. A tall, curly haired man with an incredibly long scarf. This too made sense now that she thought about it. The Doctor had never said much about his previous regenerations other than that his fashion sense wasn’t all that. There was only ever one man who would wear such an impractical scarf to go darting about the universe in.

Rose couldn’t believe it, she’d actually found him. The thing was this wasn’t the regeneration she was looking for either. She couldn’t just go dashing down there after him, especially not with a minefield separating them, and it wasn’t like he knew her before they met. Or perhaps he did and that was the reason he’d saved her in Henriks. Rose shook those thoughts out of her head. No, he most certainly didn’t know her and anyway Sarah Jane definitely didn’t, not with how she reacted in the corridors of Deffry Vale High School when they practically bumped into one another. He’d chastise her about crossing timelines or something if she did go down there, tell her she was endangering them both by meeting him out of sync. This made Rose think of the Reapers that she’d accidentally summoned after creating a paradox. She didn’t know if meeting the Doctor like this would cause such a thing but didn’t want to risk it in case.

After watching Harry’s efforts to free the Doctor from the mine, she let out a sigh of relief when the plan worked and the trio were on the move once more, being even more careful about their footsteps this time. Rose watched them go a little longingly, not planning to follow their path any further as she didn’t want to risk getting caught out by the observant eyes of the Time Lord. He was right there. She was so close and yet so far from being home. At least she was getting nearer to her Doctor and the jumps were going in the correct direction down his timeline. She’d had a bit of a dodgy jump but the upgrades had moved her in the right direction at least. That was going to be the tricky part about this, knowing where she was within his timestream if she saw him again, knowing which incarnation he was. Thinking about it, Rose wasn’t even certain about how many times he had regenerated. He’d certainly changed three times, once right in front of her, and perhaps this long scarfed version of him was a fourth. That could be all but then again there could be many more, she simply didn’t know because they didn’t focus all too much on their pasts. They had been revealing more about themselves over time, opening up to one another, but they’d thought they would have many more opportunities to do so before they were suddenly torn apart. Rose made a plan to ask him about his other selves when she did find the right one. She smirked as she wondered if that striped scarf was somewhere within the wardrobe room on the Tardis, abandoned just like his leather jacket had been after he’d changed into those brown pinstripes of his.

**********

The alarm went off again when she returned from her jump and the team rushed in with Owen barking out orders for them to back off whilst he checked Rose over after pushing a chair under her failing legs. Tosh passed her a shake as Owen went through his examinations and medical questions and Rose gulped it down greedily. She was tired as she always was when she got back to Pete’s world but this time she was returning with her head held high and a bit of a giddy grin that she couldn’t hope to dampen.

She brushed off Owen’s concerns about her slightly raised blood pressure, which he was going to monitor over the next few hours, excited to tell Malcolm and Tosh about the jump.

‘I take it the jump went well then,’ Tosh commented with a knowing smile of her own, ‘you can’t keep a straight face’.

Rose’s smile simply grew. ‘He was there. I saw the Doctor.’

‘You found him!’ Malcolm's urgent voice was filled with excitement and then he frowned. ‘But if you found the Doctor, why have you returned?’

His words reminded her that it was a bit of a blow that she had come so close but still, things were heading in the right direction and her grin only faltered a little as she answered. ‘Wrong one,’ Rose said with a light shake of her head, ‘still too soon’.

Malcom nodded and began muttering away to himself about the complicated processes that could be done to improve the chances of the jump landing at the correct point in time for Rose.

‘Do you know how close we were with this Doctor?’ Tosh asked, drawing Rose’s attention from Malcolm’s unfathomable ramblings.

‘Not exactly but he just so happened to be with a companion that I recognised. Met her in 2007 years after she last travelled with him. I’d like to say she was in her fifties, maybe early sixties when I met her so she was probably travelling with him thirty or forty years ago.’

‘In the sixties or seventies,’ Tosh said with a thoughtful nod.

‘I reckon so,’ Rose agreed. ‘But before you get stuck into doing any alterations I’ve got to tell you that this jump wasn’t exactly smooth sailing.’

This seemed to bring Malcolm out of the mathematical formula rabbit hole he’d gone down and his gaze locked onto Rose as she explained about the pulsating light and about travelling to two different places even if her landing was only brief at the first. ‘It got a bit warm too, Malcolm, when I landed the second time,’ she told him as he undid the strap.

He looked at her through his glasses, his brow furrowed as he stood back upright. ‘Overheating…I wouldn’t have thought that would cause the duel landing but I’ll look into it.’

‘Thanks,’ she replied and proceeded to scrub her tired face with her hands as Malcolm moved off to the workbench with the cannon.

‘You should get some rest.’

Rose nodded at Tosh’s words. ‘Any Weevils in the cells?’

‘Not at the moment, no,’ Tosh said slowly.

She didn’t need to open her eyes as a yawn hit her to hear the confusion in her friend's voice. ‘Good,’ Rose replied, rising from her chair on slightly wobbly legs. ‘I might take a nap down there then, I’ll be out of your way then if Owen decides to click his pen fifty million times whilst he’s going through his paperwork.’ The pair joked about his other annoying quirks all the way to the cells where Rose slept like a log for a few hours until Tosh turned up, sheepishly dragging a Weevil past Rose’s cell door whilst mouthing her apologies for the rude awakening.

Chapter Text

The pillow dipped in the shape of his head now and smelt more of him than it did of Rose. It wasn’t like he slept there often, or slept often at all, but it was where he found himself drawn when his body was beginning to fail him. Sleep grabbed him easily, demonstrating the level of exhaustion he would allow himself to reach before he gave into it and collapsed where Rose once let her body rest. His overactive mind didn’t need her lingering scent or the reminders of her touch to produce such things in his dream state.

Rose lay there beside him wrapped up beneath the duvet, her soft, blonde hair trailing over her shoulders, a bit mussed from sleep. Her cheek was pressed against his chest between his steadily beating hearts and she let out a small content sigh, squeezing his sides a little where her arms were curled around him. The Doctor hummed happily and rested his head atop of hers, inhaling her beautiful fragrance. His brain told him that the scent wasn’t as strong as it should have been given the position but he shook off that thought and held her a little closer. He smoothed out her adorable bed head with the delicate touch of his hand whilst his other lightly drew circles on the small of her back that told her of his love in a language she could not understand but he hoped the tender strokes of his fingers would get his words across. When a shiver ran through her, he halted in his movements. Rose managed to pull herself impossibly closer to him and she let out a whisper that she didn’t want him to stop. This brought a smile to his lips and the Doctor pressed a lingering kiss to her hair as he began his touches once more, knowing that he would do anything for the pink and yellow human in his arms.

It was when Rose’s hands began to delicately trace the muscles of his back that he repressed his own urge to shiver. A light finger trailing down his spine. Quick brushes over his ribs. A hand that danced its way downwards until it teased the waistband of his flannel pyjamas. In retaliation, the movement of his own hands altered and became more deliberate. He stopped writing his declarations of love and trailed his hand lower, bypassing her waistline completely. Her breath hitched when he gently squeezed her bum through the thin fabric of her sleep shorts and he smiled a little smugly at the effect he had on her.

A growl rumbled in his chest when Rose slipped a hand beneath his T-shirt and traced her short nails down his skin. He screwed his already closed eyes shut a little tighter at the tingling sensation that remained on his back in the wake of her touch. When that hand slipped from his back and ended up between their bodies, she cupped and gently palmed his burgeoning bulge over the top of his pjs. ‘Fuck, Rose,’ he gasped as he bucked against her, tilting his head backwards from its position atop of hers whilst waves of pleasure passed through him, mingling with the buzz of anticipation and the overwhelming desire he always had for her. As he squeezed and kneaded her bottom some more, he found his mouth wordlessly parting because of the combination of lips, tongue and teeth that were working on his neck and inching their way upwards. Then she placed her mouth over his Adam's apple and a groan escaped him as she sucked on the skin there. He could feel her lips quirk upwards at his reactions to her teasing touches and took it as a challenge to elicit a similar sort of response from her.

The Doctor pulled her back a little and took in the “innocent” look on that beautiful face of hers. Upon noticing his expression, she altered it into a triumphant grin, the tip of her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth like a taunt. His eyes zoned in on that teasing tongue as it slipped behind her lips once more and he pressed his mouth to hers to chase it. He kissed her slowly and tenderly, not rushing after his prey but revelling in the feel of her lips against his, something that the back of his mind told him hadn’t happened in a long time. The Doctor didn’t bother to listen to that thought though because Rose was here right now with one warm hand dipping beneath his waistband whilst her other snaked upwards and into his hair, her fingers grazing through his brown locks and tugging occasionally on them in the way she knew he liked.

With one hand on her heaving chest, he played with her nipples, pinching and rubbing them until she was squirming beneath his attentive fingers. He caught her gasps with his lips and, after trailing his tongue over her bottom one, she finally let him in to collect his prize. He stroked his tongue against hers and then sucked on it, drawing out a moan from Rose which only intensified when he pushed his leg between her own, giving her some friction that nearly reached the spot where she needed it the most. The sounds of her pleasure ran through him and set his nerves alight, shooting signals of their own straight down towards his groin.

At that point the Doctor and Rose were rudely interrupted by a loud donging sound from the Tardis. The Time Lord startled, his eyes shooting open as he sat bolt upright in the otherwise empty bedroom. There was no Rose beside him, there had never been a Rose beside him and he both hated and loved the Tardis for waking him from his dream. It wasn’t often that his dreams of her were so pleasant or that he woke before they could turn ugly, but it wasn’t real. None of the touches, sensations or sounds were real but his real body did not know that. Testosterone was flooding his system, mixing in with oxytocin as his arousal grew. At least their actions in his dreams had not gone any further leaving him only half hard as he groaned and flopped back onto the bed. With enough effort he could will away his bodily urges, although a cold shower would help considerably in that department too. He could have been painfully hard and that would have been so much worse. There was no way to deal with that than to follow it through until release. It would have been the saddest wank in the history of sad wanks and he really didn’t want to do that. It didn’t feel right coming undone like that with only the thoughts of Rose to help him there. He wanted her to be there experiencing it too. He wanted to watch her fall over the edge beside him, feel her lose control because of him, hear her begging as her arousal built whilst she writhed beneath him in pleasure.

‘Fuck,’ he mumbled beneath his palms as he scrubbed his hands over his face. The Tardis hummed sympathetically around him, reminding the Doctor of how he was awoken. ‘What?’ He asked his ship. ‘Were you waking me up just to get me out of that or was there something else?’ Her reply made the Doctor sigh. ‘Now? Really?’ He grumbled, exasperated by her insistence that they park up and refuel. Out of all the times she could have mentioned it now seemed the perfect moment? He knew it was coming; she was becoming grumpier and a bit groggy with her lack of energy. Take their collision with the Tower of Pisa a couple of days prior, she would have attempted to dodge the now famous monument had she been feeling able to perform such a manoeuvre. He’d been putting this moment off for a while, simply allowing them to plod along together but it was about time he gave in and got it over with, especially before the Old Girl demonstrated her insistence in other and more painful ways. ‘Alright,’ he conceded as he clambered out of bed. ‘Just let me get ready.’ She flashed her lights happily and the Doctor rolled his eyes. It looked like Jack Harkness would be getting his wish that the Time Lord would visit after all.

**********

The Doctor had barely closed off the engines, after letting the Tardis soak up the rift energy, when there was a knock on the door. After finishing toggling a few switches and buttons, the Time Lord wandered down the ramp, swooping on his long coat before opening the door to the man waiting expectantly outside.

‘Doctor! You came!’

Before he could do anything a beaming Jack was pulling him into a backslapping hug. He was rather taken aback by the gesture having honestly not expected such a thing with the way he had treated the Captain. Perhaps that had all been pushed aside after his apology when they last saw one another. The Doctor was a little awkward in his reciprocation but he patted the back of the other man’s great coat before he pulled back. ‘Jack,’ he said, returning the greeting.

As he took a step back from the Doctor, the Captain said, ‘I’m glad you took me up on my offer’.

The words were full of sincerity and, going by the look in his eyes, the Doctor could tell that Jack knew about Rose. Well, not that he knew everything because he was the only one in this universe who knew she had been trapped in another but Jack knew about the ghosts, about the Daleks and the Cyberman and the battle. About Torchwood. The look Jack was bestowing him with almost made him turn and run back into the Tardis but instead he steeled himself and stayed. He could get through this. The Doctor sniffed and nodded, tucking his hands in his pockets as he leant back against the closed doors of the Tardis. ‘Yeah. Well, the Old Girl needed a top up, thought I’d kill two birds with one stone so to speak.’ He was aiming for nonchalance and thought he’d managed it rather well but the Captain was easily seeing through the Doctor’s façade. He really hadn’t changed that much, even with a new face he was still the same man who tried to hide his feelings away from the world, from the universe. Jack understood. He understood the Time Lord’s behaviour now more than ever. As an immortal who’d been alive for nearly two hundred years, he’d been through his own share of loss; watching as those he loved grew old whilst he stayed the same. It was hard, downright awful at times, but he managed.

There was still that pain in the Doctor’s eyes that he recalled from when he last saw the Time Lord but Jack thought he did look a little bit better overall. It drew him to ask, ‘how long has it been since 93 for you?’

‘Oh, a couple of months near enough,’ he answered as he scratched the back of his neck and eyed the Plass in which he’d parked the Tardis. For once it wasn’t raining in Wales. There was a warmth in the spring air coming from the sun in the mostly clear sky. A few people milled about but otherwise it was quite a quiet place, a bit boring really. The Doctor could never imagine himself being happy cooped up here, then again he couldn’t really imagine Jack being happy here either. Before the Captain could say anything further the Doctor asked, ‘so what do you do around here? What keeps you busy?’ Then, as though only just realising who he was talking to, the Time Lord quickly added, ‘and that doesn’t mean I want stories where you somehow always end up naked’.

A smirk grew on Jack’s lips. ‘Aww,’ he complained jokily, ‘but they’re the best ones’. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and Jack’s smile only grew. ‘Alright, can I interest you in some alien tales instead? Some PG alien tales?’ As a look of agreement began to grow on the Time Lord’s face, the Captain put a hand on his friend's shoulder and nodded his head towards the great shining column that was the water tower. It stood at one end of Roald Dahl’s Plass, the mirrored monument glinting brightly in the sunlight. ‘Come on, I want to show you something. I haven’t been idle whilst I was waiting for you.’

‘Lead the way.’ The Doctor was glad Jack had taken the bait that drew the conversation away from Rose because even though he was expecting the questions about her he still wasn’t ready to talk about it. It had been over six months now since he’d lost her and it was still just as raw.

Jack released the Doctor’s shoulder and they began to walk in the direction of the tower as he explained himself. ‘The rift here is pretty active and we monitor it. There’s always alien artefacts or aliens themselves turning up and my team and I deal with them.’

‘When you say deal…’

He gave the Doctor a look. ‘Doc, you know me, I’m no monster. If we can help get them home then we will or we try to integrate them into society if that’s an option. We’ve even got a few communities set up in remote areas with perception filters and warnings about minefields or something similar to deter any humans. The people on Earth are not ready to meet other species unless they appear to be human, especially not after recent events.’

The Doctor nodded along to Jack’s words knowing he was referring to the Battle of Canary Wharf as well as the past two Christmases with the Racnoss and the Sycorax. He was a little surprised by what the Captain was saying. It really appeared as though his education on twenty-first century Earth organisations that dealt with aliens was lacking. First Torchwood and now this place, he was clearly getting slow and falling behind or simply being ignorant. He interrupted Jack’s speech about the less friendly aliens who fell through the rift to say, ‘so this group, this organisation of yours, what’s it called?’

This was the part that Jack was most reluctant about telling the Doctor for some quite obvious reasons. He knew that, although they were under the same name, Torchwood One and Torchwood Three were vastly different from one another. He and Yvonne Hartman had never seen eye to eye and had contrasting ways of running their individual Torchwoods. Jack just didn’t know if the Doctor would be able to accept that because of the battle. Because of Rose. Even if Jack didn’t know exactly what had happened to her, he knew it was Yvonne’s Torchwood that had somehow caused his friends to separate. The Captain loved his Torchwood though, he loved his team and all that they did and stood for. He wanted to prove that they were nothing like the Torchwood that the Doctor knew and show him that they were better than that.

At this point, Jack and the Doctor were beside the water tower and Jack stepped onto the stone paving slab that would take him down through the visitor’s entrance and into the Hub. If the Doctor was going to like Jack’s Torchwood he was going to have to pull out all the bells and whistles and this was the best way to show off the building.

‘A perception filter,’ the Doctor commented, not giving Jack enough time to answer his previous question as the Time Lord became distracted by the unexpected appearance of the futuristic technology. The Doctor’s words were filled with intrigue and just enough enthusiasm to ease the Captain’s worries a little, giving him hope that enough showing off might just do the trick.

‘The Tardis isn’t the only one with a few tricks,’ Jack replied with a smirk. ‘Come on up.’

He obliged and stood next to Jack. ‘Let’s just hope she didn’t hear you say that,’ he murmured, ‘she can get a bit jealous’. He was in the midst of throwing his own smirk to Jack when there was a painful throbbing in his head that made him cringe.

The humour on the Captain’s face fizzled out immediately and was replaced with concern. ‘Are you alright?’

Removing one of his hands from his pockets, he rubbed his forehead to ease the ache that was soon beginning to fade. ‘Word of advice Jack, don’t bond with a sentient ship, especially when she’s an incredibly stubborn one.’

‘I don’t think she’s the only stubborn one.’

The Doctor lowered his hand and glanced at the Captain’s all too knowing look before rolling his eyes.

Jack grinned a little brighter before flipping open the leather cover of the vortex manipulator he wore on his wrist and putting in the command to lower the secret lift they were standing on. ‘Going down,’ he announced as the slab of pavement beneath their feet began to ease downwards after a slight jolt.

The Doctor’s head darted around the Hub as he and Jack were lowered into it. The underground lair was surprisingly airy and spacious and was mostly built from a combination of red brick, stone and metal. The water tower continued downwards as they continued to descend towards the concrete floor where the space was split into two by a small furrow that contained the water running down from the tower and carried it away and out of the building. The furrow was crossable by a couple of bridges that were rather akin to the Tardis’ ramp in design. This theme in decor continued around the large space where there were at least three storeys of metal gangways and platforms above the ground floor. These all led off to other rooms beyond the one they were lowering into plus rooms built into the platforms themselves such as the conference room on the second floor.

‘This is what we like to call the Hub,’ Jack stated impressively, his voice full of pride. But before he could say anything else, there was a loud squawk and the flapping sound of a large pair of wings.

The Time Lord eyed the expanse above him, now that the lift had nearly reached its destination, and saw quite an unbelievable sight swooping around in the air. ‘What?’ He murmured in shock at the sight of the second prehistoric creature that he’d seen out of its time in the space of a few days. ‘But that’s…’ He trailed off, though was about to finish his sentence with the word “impossible” when Jack filled in the blank for him.

‘A Pterodactyl. I know.’ The Doctor looked over at him with confusion that Jack only answered with a grin. ‘She’s called Myfanwy. She lives at the Hub courtesy of one Ianto Jones.’ He pointed at a suited man who was walking towards the kitchen set up they had in one corner of the ground floor. Upon hearing his name the man looked over at Jack with a smile that Jack easily returned. ‘You should try his coffee by the way,’ the Captain said to the Doctor, ‘best coffee you’ve ever tasted. Trust me’.

There was a slight jolt as the stone slab came to a rest. Jack stepped off and down the couple of steps to the ground to where Ianto was standing nearby, followed by a still rather bewildered Time Lord.

‘Jack, you can’t just run off,’ a female voice chastised. Her Welsh tones came from the other side of the tower but her footsteps were soon clanging on the grating of the bridge to approach them. ‘I was in the middle of telling you about-’ She cut off and stared at the Time Lord next to Jack, her green eyes wide at the sight of the stranger. Then her gaze fell to the Captain who she asked, ‘who’s this then?’ Her words came out slightly more accusatory than intended but it wasn’t everyday someone new entered the Hub. In fact, no one new ever did.

Instead of answering, the Captain called out, ‘Tosh? Owen?’ The final two Torchwood employees appeared on the bridge a moment later, both looking between Jack and the Doctor in confusion and intrigue. ‘Everyone, this is the Doctor,’ he announced grandly with a slap on the other man’s shoulder. ‘Doctor, this is my team. Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones.’ He pointed to each member of his team in turn as he introduced them. Owen had a flicker of recognition in his eyes at the Time Lord’s name and shoved his hands into his white lab coat pockets as he nodded in greeting at him. Tosh looked a little more shocked after the introduction of the Doctor but managed a small smile. Gwen didn’t look mollified at all and was even more confused by Jack’s words that made it seem like she should know the newcomer.

Ianto, standing the closest to the pair, took a step forward and offered his hand to the Time Lord. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you sir,’ he said with sincerity as the Doctor took the hand and shook it. ‘Welcome to Torchwood.’

‘Thanks,’ he replied and then Ianto’s words hit him and his grip loosened, his hand falling to his side where it clenched together into a fist. His eyes gained a fierce quality as he stared at the suited Welshman. ‘What did you just say?’

Jack groaned internally. He’d been hoping to convince the Doctor of the good of his team and what they did before dropping that bombshell on him but Ianto had let the cat out of the bag. It wasn’t his fault, he wasn’t to know the aversion the Time Lord had and really Jack had been kidding himself by bringing the Doctor down here before he’d explained that they were a part of Torchwood. Apart from the massive name they had on the painted subway tiles by the sofa there were plenty of other things around the Hub that would tip the ever observant man off. There were the small logos they had plastered on some of the surfaces for instance or even the branded basketball hoop they had near the cog wheel door. Anyone else and he might have gotten away with the deception long enough to explain it on his own terms but this was the Doctor and one glance at that man’s face and his clenched jaw told Jack that those ideas were long gone. They were going to have to do this on the Time Lord’s terms now and that Time Lord was angry.

‘Doctor-’ he began but was cut off by the other man shushing him.

‘Torchwood,’ the Doctor said through gritted teeth, his glare focused on Ianto who nodded.

‘Yes sir. Torchwood Three,’ the Welshman confirmed, trying his best to look unaffected by the intimidating Time Lord.

The Doctor’s eyebrows rose a little at this admission. ‘Three?’ He said and then repeated the word, his voice going higher in pitch, his tone filled with disbelief.

‘Doctor, I can explain,’ Jack began before the Time Lord whirled on him.

He turned to the Captain with the beginnings of the oncoming storm etched into his face. ‘Oh I should think so and if I don’t like it I will stop you, Jack. I will stop this.’ He stuck his arm out to gesture at the Hub they were standing in as he bit out his final words. He might not have needed to shut down the London Torchwood, that was no longer a thing after the battle, but he was fully prepared to stop any further bases they had if it came to it. The Doctor didn’t think that Jack would really behave like Yvonne Hartman. He was a good man after all, an ex-con man and an insatiable flirt, but a good man. The Torchwood name, however, was blinding the Doctor of his knowledge about his friend and former companion. The Time Lord blamed himself for a lot of things but he heavily placed the blame on Torchwood for their actions that resulted in Rose being torn from this universe. Oh he blamed the Daleks and the Cybermen too but if Torchwood hadn’t insisted on opening that crack and constantly repeating that action to bring through the ghosts then maybe everything would have turned out differently. Yes the Daleks would still be there within the void ship but they might have been able to deal with them in a way that didn’t involve him and Rose getting separated.

Jack didn’t appear to be fazed under the Doctor’s steely glare. ‘Let’s take this through to my office shall we?’ It was a question but his cold tone implied that there was no room for debate. The Doctor might be a Lord of Time but Jack would fight him if he started to try and take down Torchwood Three. He’d worked hard to turn this place around over the years so he wouldn’t give it up easily; he didn’t think the rest of his team would take that idea too lightly either.

Owen, Tosh and Gwen made way on the bridge as Jack began to lead the way followed by the Doctor. They walked past the cog wheel entrance, up the steps to the workstations and through the double doors to Jack’s office. The Captain waited for the Doctor to step inside before going to close them but just as he was shutting the doors he saw the quick movement of four heads darting back out of sight again. His team were investigators of sorts after all and it made sense that they were curious about the Time Lord and what business he had with Jack. He shut the door anyway, belatedly realising that perhaps he should have suggested the conference room as at least that had blinds in it. His office had large windows that looked out at the workstations and the door was mostly glass too, really his gesture acted merely as a way of suggesting some semblance of privacy from prying eyes but offered nothing but a minimal sound barrier.

He turned to see the Doctor pacing in the small space and walked around him to the cabinet that sat against the brick wall opposite. Opening the doors, he briefly perused the few bottles he had in there before pulling out a rather fine scotch and a couple of glass tumblers. Then he turned to his curved mahogany desk and set them down in the gaps between the paperwork he’d been completing when Gwen had popped in to see him before he’d abandoned her in search of the Doctor and the Tardis. Pouring the amber liquid into the glasses he said, ‘can I offer you a drink?’ He twisted the cap back on the bottle and glanced up at the Time Lord who was offering him nothing more than a dark stare. ‘Okay then, I’ll take that as a no.’ Jack then moved around his desk to his office chair and sat down before gesturing at the chair opposite. ‘Please, take a seat.’

The Doctor was far too worked up to consider such a thing and instead leant his hands on Jack’s desk in a rather intimidating manner as he said, ‘just talk Jack’. He then stood back from the desk and eyed the man as he waited for him to speak.

The Captain picked up one of the glasses and swirled its contents around whilst he leant back in his chair and thought of where to begin. ‘Torchwood was made because of you…and Rose of course, her name was in the charter too,’ he added as an afterthought. ‘But you’re the alien threat that they wanted to combat. That’s how I got involved with Torchwood in the first place. A couple of agents captured me back in…oh the eighteen nineties I believe. They wanted to know your whereabouts after they overheard me talking about you and I told them I’d love to know your whereabouts too,’ he joked with a grin but soon sobered when he recalled what happened next. ‘So they end up finding out about my immortality and want to recruit me as a field agent which I eventually agree to because if they were also looking for you I might stand half a chance at finding you.’ Jack laughed a little humourlessly at his previous naivety before taking a sip of his drink. ‘I didn’t agree with all their methods and thought they were a bit ruthless but it was just sporadic work, I was more of a freelance agent than anything. This continued all the way until the start of the new millennium. It was New Year’s Day and I was the only Torchwood Three agent left. I had to recruit a new team and lead it so I decided to reform Torchwood into a more humane organisation.’ There was so much more that Jack could have said about that incident as the world celebrated the New Year but he didn’t particularly want to revisit one of the most horrifying things he had ever witnessed that led to him being the only one left. Instead, he looked up from his glass of scotch to the Doctor, who was now leaning against the far brick wall with his arms crossed, and carried on with the final portion of his speech. ‘I changed this Torchwood so much that Yvonne Hartman, Director of Torchwood One in London, didn’t deem this branch as being a proper Torchwood. The most I had to do with her was the occasional budget meeting and a few emails here and there, other than that we were completely separate. This is not the same Torchwood. We may work under the same name but that name and what it stands for are completely different things for us and them,’ he told the Doctor firmly, hoping that his words would be believed by the Time Lord.

The Doctor’s anger depleted as he listened to what Jack had to say. The speech, along with what Jack had mentioned before they’d entered the Hub plus the Time Lord’s memories of the man when he was a traveller in the Tardis, helped him to quash that burning resentment he felt whenever he heard of the Torchwood name. Those dark thoughts would always come first though, it wasn’t as though he was going to forget what had happened at Torchwood One anytime soon, but perhaps he could turn over a new leaf, so to speak, with Jack in charge of this other Torchwood. Rose had clearly done such a thing if she was working for Torchwood now, or at least he assumed she was still working there. As his thoughts turned to Rose, he found himself sitting in that chair he’d been offered earlier on the opposite side of the desk to Jack.

‘Are we good?’

‘Yeah,’ the Time Lord replied dully, his eyes on the coral ornament that stood at one end of Jack’s desk whilst his fingers absently drummed on one arm of the chair.

The Captain nodded and took another sip of his drink, eying the Doctor over the rim of his glass. He looked at the way he was arrogantly slouched in the chair as though he owned the place, something only the Time Lord could pull off, and it made him want to smirk at another reminder that he was still the same man, just in another body. But then Jack’s gaze got caught on the Doctor’s face, the dark, emotive eyes and the twitch of a nerve in his jaw as he stared off unseeingly, lost in his mind. The Doctor was never one to reveal what was going on in that brain box but Jack had a pretty good idea. They’d been talking about Torchwood One so of course the man’s thoughts had fallen on Rose. He understood why the Time Lord couldn’t tell him about what had happened to her when they met previously, he wasn’t sure if he would open up now either, but Jack still wanted to know the fate of his friend.

The pair sat in silence for a few minutes as Jack worked out what best to say so that he wouldn’t scare the Doctor off. He eventually went with, ‘I bought her flowers’. The words caused the Time Lord to stir and he looked up at the Captain in confusion. ‘I didn’t know if roses would be a bit too on the nose but it sort of felt right, you know?’ Jack smiled a little as he wondered what Rose’s reaction would have been had it actually been her who he gave them to before he continued. ‘Left them at the monument not long after it was built. Found her name, just underneath her mum’s…and Mickey’s was on there too,’ he added, remembering spying Rose’s old boyfriend just a few names above the Tyler’s.

He clung to that bit of new information about Mickey like a lifeline, otherwise drowning in thoughts about Rose and chastising himself for his cowardice because he couldn’t even bring himself to visit a bit of stone with her name on. The cowardice especially hit hard when Jack had taken the time to do such a thing. The Doctor knew he didn’t want to see her name engraved there because it proved that this was real but told himself that it was just because her name didn’t truly belong there. Neither of the Tyler’s nor Mickey belonged on that list because they weren’t dead, they were simply gone.

He nodded along to Jack’s words and said, ‘wellllll, I suppose it makes sense that they’ve added Mr. Mickey on there too. Just another disappearance on a long list even if he was gone for a while before the ghosts started showing up’.

Jack didn’t quite know what to make of the Doctor’s statement. He wasn’t sure what that meant for the man’s fate because “gone” could mean any number of things but he would ask about Mickey later. First, Jack wanted to know about Rose and there was one thing that kept troubling him. ‘You said she’s not dead.’

‘She’s not.’

The Doctor’s solemn words of confirmation were quick off his tongue but they didn’t ease the Captain’s worries or his confusion. He was now wondering if the Time Lord was facing a similar situation to the one that he and his team had to deal with when Ianto snuck his half converted girlfriend into the Hub to try and find a way of undoing what the Cyber conversion unit had done to her in Torchwood One. Ianto’s efforts were fruitless though because there was no cure. She ended up killing three people, Jack included, and they had to stop her the only way they knew how before she escaped from the Hub and tried to convert others too. Jack seriously hoped that there wasn’t a half converted Rose stuck in a room in the Tardis, or even worse a fully converted Rose. He wasn’t sure what lengths the Doctor would go to but he didn’t believe that there was a way to reverse the process. He’d seen with his own eyes the inhumane things Ianto’s girlfriend did and she was only a half conversion. He supposed that if there was anyone out there who could reverse such a thing then it would be the Doctor but even he had his limits.

Jack took a final swig of his drink, trying to push those thoughts out of his mind. There was no use speculating about a Cyber Rose especially if that wasn’t the outcome. He eyed the Doctor again and placed his empty tumbler on the desk as he said, ‘then what happened? How come she’s on a monument in remembrance of those who were lost that day?’ He waited for his answer for quite a while and regretted finishing his drink so soon so he would have something else to distract himself with instead of just watching the Time Lord, practically hearing the cogs whirring away in his head as the man thought of what to say. If he was going to say anything at all, Jack really wasn’t certain.

‘Because she is lost,’ the Doctor admitted quietly, his fingers knotting together in the same way that Rose’s used to do. ‘Because she’s just as dead as the rest of the people on that list, well, to this world she is anyway,’ he amended with a tilt of his head as he leant forward to rest his elbows on his legs, speaking his next words to the floor. ‘But she’s with her family now. And safe. That’s the most important thing. She’s safe.’ He was nodding his head as though he needed to convince himself of the words that were coming out of his mouth. ‘Couldn’t ever promise her that when she was travelling with me so that’s good. Very good. Brilliant in fact.’

The Time Lord didn’t convince Jack one bit. ‘Then why do you make it sound like it’s not a good thing?’ The Doctor tilted his head up just enough so he could eye the man on the other side of the desk but Jack didn’t really understand the look he was being given. To him it sounded like Rose had decided to stay with her family on another planet somewhere and was no longer travelling with him but unless they’d had some massive falling out then he didn’t know why the Doctor couldn’t just go over there and see her. It was clear he wanted to, how much he missed Rose was practically seeping out of the man’s pores. Perhaps he didn’t have that option though. Perhaps whatever had happened at Torchwood One had been a final straw for Rose and she never wanted to see the Time Lord again. ‘Do you ever visit her?’ Jack finally asked.

The Doctor sat back upright, throwing his head back as he laughed loudly and mirthlessly, his slightly manic reaction to the question startling Jack a little. ‘Oh yeah, I go round all the time!’ He exclaimed once his laughter had subsided, his words full of harsh sarcasm. ‘I pop over and she says “hello Doctor” and I say “oh, hello Rose” and then she says “fancy a cuppa?” and I say “sure, that’d be lovely, ta” and then we have a good old chinwag for a couple of hours about what we’ve been up to.’ His account of their imagined conversation even included quite a terrible impersonation of Rose’s voice but he finished off his chirpy speech with a glare at Jack. His tone grew dark and sombre as his next words left his lips, ‘no. No, I don’t visit. That’s the whole point. I can’t.’ With a sigh he slouched down into his chair again and scrubbed his hands over his face. Then he lowered one to the arm of the chair where his fingers began to drum against the wood again whilst he drew his other hand through his hair. The already mussed spikes were forced into more disarray than they already were before that hand ended up on the back of his head, scratching his scalp in the way he always did when he was uncomfortable. ‘She’s not just on some other planet, Jack,’ he began quietly. ‘She’s in another universe. Trapped there behind the walls I shut to get rid of the Daleks and the Cybermen,’ he said bitterly, reclaiming the blame for himself once more. ‘I can’t ever open them again, would cause both universes to implode, not that there should have been a way through those walls in the first place but the Daleks forced their way through and then the Cybermen followed. Now they’re stuck in the void, the hellscape between universes, and Rose is on a parallel Earth with her family.’

Well, Jack didn’t know what he was expecting but it certainly wasn’t that. ‘I don’t know what to say, Doc,’ he began, eyeing the Doctor sorrowfully, watching as the Time Lord adamantly looked down to his clasped hands in his lap. ‘I know it’s not going to cut it but I’m sorry.’

He sniffed and let out a weak, ‘yeah,’ as he turned his gaze to the room, his eyes never falling on the Captain. They sat there in silence but just as Jack opened his mouth to say something else, the Doctor promptly slapped his knees and said, ‘still, nothing to be done and I fancy a mooch around’. His words were back to their usual enthusiasm and lightness as he tried to quickly move on from the topic of Rose. He couldn’t say anymore and he certainly didn’t want to hear anything like Jack’s sympathies if he was going to keep his emotions in check any longer.

‘Doctor-’ Jack began but was cut off by the man in question because he could tell from the Captain’s tone that he was still stuck in the previous conversation that he was avidly trying to avoid.

‘Or a tour I guess if you think I’m going to nick some of your stuff. I bet you’ve hoarded a load of those alien artefacts you mentioned earlier. Got whole rooms of them.’ The Doctor stood up, ready to start this tour or solo wander around the Hub, and then noticed the glass of scotch that Jack had poured for him earlier. He grabbed it and downed it in one, hissing at the burn as he placed the tumbler back on the desk. ‘Cor that’s sharp,’ he commented, his voice a little strained. He pulled a face, sticking his tongue out at the flavour of it. He hadn’t tried scotch in this body and his taste buds appeared to not be the biggest fan of it. His past self would have appreciated it but this current regeneration was all about the sweet and sugary. There was a caramel quality to the scotch and a hint of vanilla but it wasn’t enough to please his palette.

Jack gave up on saying anything else about Rose knowing he would just get dismissed once again. Instead he smirked at the look on the Doctor’s face and his dislike of the drink. ‘You know, the best way to drink a scotch is to sip it, really coat your palette in the flavours so you can appreciate each one,’ he quipped, earning himself a disapproving look from the Time Lord that made Jack’s grin grow a bit wider. The Captain stood up from his chair and gestured to the door. ‘I’ll get you a tour of the archives. Ianto’s your man for that. He should be around here somewhere unless he’s manning the tourist office.’ He led the way into the main part of the Hub with the Doctor following in his wake asking if they happened to have a little shop in said tourist office.

Chapter Text

Rose had gone on three further jumps before she completed the one that she would never forget. There had been no more weird incidents with the dimension hopper, though it still got a little warm sometimes. The last jump had left her wrist red for days but Rose didn’t care. Getting a burn was a small price to pay if she made it back to the Doctor and the correct one at that. During her jumps she’d ended up on a planet called Segonax, running from Cybermen in the sewers of a past London and in a Sheffield a few years in the future where she helped a young police officer jump start her car. She’d not seen hide nor hair or the Doctor or the Tardis but she was rather thankful of that when she realised when she was during her Sheffield visit. Going by the sign outside of the pub, which was advertising coverage of the England games in the 2018 World Cup, she’d jumped a bit too far this time. She didn’t want to reunite with the Doctor that far into the future because she didn’t want him to have to wait that long if she could help it. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be without the Doctor for ten years, a year and a half was bad enough and she really didn’t want to put him through even that much. Especially not from the look of him in that altered memory from her childhood. All she wanted to do was hold him and never let him go. To see that beaming smile of his with those bright happy eyes to match instead of the ones that hid the sorrow buried within like she saw in the not dream. Hopefully that day would come soon but it wasn’t today.

Before the jump, Rose had asked Malcolm and Tosh to send her backwards, just a little, so she could hopefully be in with a shot of finding him. The alterations they made to the cannon worked and Rose was propelled through the void and into the correct universe. The back in time part, in relation to her previous jump, worked a little too well though. She wasn’t exactly sure when she was but the where became obvious pretty quickly.

The golden light was yet to fade from around Rose’s body but she could already hear the screams of terror and pain mixed in with blasts and explosions as the world around her was torn apart by war. She opened her eyes to the darkness where the only light came from the fires burning their way through the destruction, feasting on the rubble and on the flesh of those who were trapped within. The smell was acrid and it reminded her of being on that spaceship where they met Madame de Pompadour except this was so much stronger and so much worse because she knew what the pungent odour was; there was nothing else it could be in a place so ravaged by war. Rose tried her best to keep the bile from rising in her throat and took as deep a breath as she dared, tilting her head back as she did so to ensure she kept down the shake she’d had before the jump.

A sky that was not her own met her eyes, not that she could particularly make it out between the mass of spaceships that were whizzing about firing green lasers downwards past the cracked and broken glass dome that once protected the broken city where she found herself. Each laser blast was followed by an explosion, conjoined with the cries of the people and the crumbling of buildings. Some were close enough to shake the ground beneath her feet and, even more worryingly, rattle the dark metal skyscrapers that surrounded her in a claustrophobic embrace, towering high into the air as though taunting one of those lasers to hit them so they would fall and crush her like so many others on this planet.

Rose had to move, had to keep herself alive for the half an hour that the dimension cannon needed to recharge but it wasn’t as though moving would make her any safer from the overhead onslaught. She looked up again. The sky was still completely filled with the circular, disk shape of the larger spaceships and in the foreground were the smaller ones that were more of a diamond shape. These ships darted all about the sky their green lasers firing in all directions but all aimed at the planet. Red lasers were being fired back at them but the ships expertly dodged the attempts at defending the planet from their relentless attacks. Her only thought was to find some sort of air raid shelter and hunker down but it wasn’t as though she was back in World War Two, there might not be any shelters but there surely had to be some people hiding out somewhere.

Before she tore her eyes away from the sky to decide on a direction so she could hopefully find some semblance of shelter and safety, Rose squinted at the larger round ships. It wasn’t as though she was an expert in spacecraft. She spent more time inside of them than looking at them from the outside, but there was something about the shape of these bronze coloured ones that was familiar to her. Alarmingly so. She’d been inside one and had seen the exterior of them too on the screens at the Game Station when the Doctor brought her back there once he and Jack had rescued her in the Tardis. There had been an entire fleet of them but that fleet looked infinitesimally small compared to the sight before her now. There must be millions of Daleks up there, millions upon millions of them. If she was to hazard a guess, going by the vast number of them, these were Daleks at the height of their power. That made Rose think of only one thing. The Time War.

There was no red grass or dusty red soil beneath her feet because the ground was completely charred, nor were there any silver trees or the sight of a distant mountain because it was too dark and the smoke billowing upwards was too thick to see through the ruined landscape. This wasn’t like the world that the Doctor described to her but why would it be? You wouldn’t describe the war torn planet your home had become. You would look further back and recall it as it once was. A time before the conflict would decimate it. A time before you had to do the impossible. A time before you had to destroy Gallifrey.

It broke her heart even more seeing it now after the beautiful images the Doctor’s words had conjured in her mind. He had spoken of simpler times, of when he watched the sky looking out at the meteor showers and not for the direction of the deadly laser blasts. She had never thought she’d be seeing his home like this, never thought she’d see his home at all and could only imagine what that must have felt like for the Time Lord. Even though he never spoke highly of his people, always calling them pretentious and stuffy, they were still his people, his race, his species and this was the planet he grew up on. Rose wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him, to protect him from all the suffering that she believed he would be going through right now. From the way he had described it and from the look of the destruction around her, she could tell it was nearly time and soon a past him would sneak into a vault and steal the weapon that would end all of this terror. That wouldn’t be the end for him though. He had to live on. A broken man. An angry and guilt ridden one at that. And one that was so, so alone. Rose knew that she couldn’t. That it would be impossible for her to be there with him when he did it, when he chose to put an end to the violence for the sake of the rest of the universe, when he chose to kill not only all of the Daleks but his own people so that everyone else could go on. It was even worse that she knew his efforts did not stop all the Daleks and that they had met more time and time again on their travels and yet still no other Time Lords had survived. Rose wanted to hold his hand and tell him that he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t much, just her, Rose Tyler, human, but it was something, someone, and right now he needed someone more than ever. She couldn’t be there for him now but hopefully she would be there for him soon. She wasn’t exactly sure how long it was after the end of the Time War that he met her but she hoped he would find her shortly. Then he wouldn’t have to be alone.

After another close blast that got her automatically ducking down in case of any flying debris, Rose decided that it really was time for her to make a move. She chose to follow the thin trail between the rubble behind her rather than trying to clamber through the fiery wreckage up ahead. The trail wound around the edge of some crumbling stone walls where she ducked through a doorway that once led to someone’s house before climbing out of the window on the second floor after scrambling up the collapsed roof to reach the wooden frame. It led out to another wall that had fallen on its side and she clambered back down towards a wider but still rubble strewn trail.

A little further down that makeshift path were the first signs of life she had seen. There were a couple of tents crafted from whatever the owners had found lying about to create some semblance of shelter. There were a few blankets on the ground like makeshift beds, plus a few scraps of clothing and some fabricated food bowls and utensils. The tents were unoccupied now but it gave Rose some hope that there were still some people out there. Then she promptly corrected that thought because hope wasn’t the right emotion at all, not when she knew what was going to happen. These people didn’t have hope, would never have hope because none of them would survive and there was nothing she could do about it.

Rose tore her eyes away from the tents, the guilt really starting to eat at her now, and continued on. There were always innocent casualties in war, it was unfair and cruel but that’s what war was. It was just so much harder to see and experience it in the flesh instead of simply being told about it, especially when there was nothing you could do and when you knew the devastating outcome.

She was crawling on the dusty ground, making her way beneath a large metal panel, debris from one of the skyscrapers, when she heard a noise that set her on edge. Rose halted her movements immediately, not wanting to be found out and hoping that they couldn’t see her in the shadows that she was surrounded by in her current position. Her hands hurt because of the stones and small bits of debris that were digging into her palms but she could live with the pain. She wouldn’t be able to live if she got spotted. It was then that the deep mechanical whirring grew and the unmistakable metal shell encasing a hate filled creature moved onto the path ahead. It was more of a silhouette than anything with the large crackling fire behind it but there was no doubt in her mind what it was. There was nothing else in the universe that she and the Doctor had faced that haunted her mind just as much as a Dalek did.

There was a slightly higher pitched whirring that preceded the appearance of that blue lit eyestalk as it turned its head in her direction. She hoped, begged, that it couldn’t see her, that it didn’t know she was there and would just move on. For all she knew staying still in the darkness might not be a good tactic against a Dalek anyway. They could have infrared vision and be able to detect her heat signatures. Or there was that moment in the room with the Void ship in Torchwood One when Dalek Sec detected that her heart rate had increased upon seeing the Doctor up on the video call with the Cyber Leader. She would be screwed if this one was checking for signs of life like a heartbeat. Hers was currently frantically trying to escape her chest. She was quite surprised the Dalek hadn’t picked up on the sound of its thumping because, to Rose, it was thundering away in her ears far too loudly for her liking. She watched as the eyestalk wandered, the Dalek’s gaze passing over the rubble all around Rose before the deeper whirring sounded through the air as the Dalek moved away and continued down another path. She exhaled heavily in relief after a moment of staring at the spot where she saw it last, simply ensuring that it wasn’t going to reverse back and then notice her like some cruel joke. Sitting up as much as she could underneath the panel, she rubbed her not only sore but now sweaty palms over her black jeans-covered thighs to remove the stones that were trying to embed themselves into her skin before letting out another shaky breath. There were only so many times you could meet a Dalek and live to tell the tale and Rose really felt like she was pushing those odds right now.

It was then that she heard a whimper. She only just caught it over the sounds of the laser fire and the wreckage they were causing. It was such a weak and feeble sound that she almost dismissed it until it happened again. Rose looked to her left, the direction the sound was coming from, but she could see nothing in the dark. After another quick look around her, listening intently for the mechanical whirring of any nearby Daleks, Rose let out a whisper. ‘Hello?’ She said into the darkness. ‘Is someone there?’ Silently she waited for a reply. Just before she was about to give up and put the noise down to the metal scraping in a weird way as it settled in the ruins there was a louder cry. There was no denying the sound now and to make it even worse it sounded like the muffled sob of a child. ‘Hello? Are you alright?’ She tried again wishing she could see further into the rubble but it was no use. Now Rose wished she had gotten trapped in Pete’s world with the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver instead of his psychic paper. The wallet was in her pocket with the aim of returning it to the man but it would be of no use to her at this moment as much as the sonic would. She needed a torch and the sonic would be brilliant for that. Her mind went to what else she had in her pockets and came to a stop when she thought of her mobile phone. Rose’s fingers scrambled as she quickly tried to grab the mobile and turn on its flashlight mode. The light was pretty bright for such a small device and it lit up the darkness where that whimper had come from. Slowly moving the phone through the air, focusing the light in the gaps between the debris, Rose finally saw the source of the noise. Hidden beneath what looked a bit like a broken lift door was a young boy. He was curled in on himself, his legs tucked up tight in a foetal position, his red robes ripped and covered in grime. Going by the face she could see poking out just above his knees, he was only about four or five, but then again this was Gallifrey. The Doctor never told her how long it took for children, or Time Tots as he called them, to grow up. This young blonde boy could be older than her for all she knew. ‘Hi,’ Rose said softly, aiming a smile at the poor, scared kid. ‘Are you alright? Are you hurt?’ To her it didn’t look as though he was trapped by the rubble, it was more like he had crawled under there to try and get away from the chaos of the world outside. She didn’t blame the kid, she’d have probably done the same and going by his next words that was exactly what he had done.

‘The Daleks,’ he said, his voice tiny and a little shaky.

Rose nodded solemnly. ‘I know. They’re very scary aren’t they? But the one that was near has gone by now, sweetheart. Didn’t spot me and it certainly didn’t spot you...I nearly didn’t spot you,’ she added with a weak laugh.

The boy’s bright blue eyes narrowed in thought. ‘What’s sweetheart? What does it mean?’

‘Oh.’ She was a bit stunned by the question but her mind went straight back to the Doctor. It was both the boy’s curiosity and the subject of the question that reminded Rose of him. He’d told her about his people’s shun of emotions, how the race had tried to detach themselves from them. Perhaps this started at a young age or perhaps this kid’s family just didn’t use this sort of language. ‘Erm, it’s a term of endearment. Meant to show love or familiarity or comfort I guess,’ she answered with a shrug. ‘My mum always uses it with me.’

‘I don’t know where my mum is,’ he whispered sadly before sniffing loudly and rubbing his nose on his grubby, red sleeve.

Those few mournful words broke her heart. His mum might not even be alive anymore. The poor kid was so alone and frightened and there was not much she could do to make it better. But she would try. Rose was about to open her mouth to say something comforting when the high pitched squealing grew as the laser blasts flew through the air nearby. There was a loud bang followed by two further explosions that caused the ground beneath them to shudder violently. Those shots were far too close to comfort. When the ground stopped shaking, the partially destroyed building above Rose and the boy did not. It groaned and creaked ominously, the pieces of debris holding it up now shifting in the dirt to regain purchase. She didn’t know how long it would stay upright and didn’t want to risk staying around to find out.

‘What’s your name?’ She asked the boy urgently, her head swivelling around in each direction to check for Daleks before she made a move.

‘Roski.’

‘Right Roski, I’m Rose. Now we need to get out before your little hideout collapses, okay? I know it’s scary out there but we’ll find somewhere better to hide.’ He looked uncertain of this idea and Rose was silently begging that he would trust her and escape with her. She sighed in relief when he started to shuffle out of his hiding spot and towards where she was kneeling. ‘Good boy, that’s it,’ she encouraged. Rose shoved her phone in her pocket before she too started to crawl out from under the metal panel, looking back over her shoulder often to make sure he was keeping up. Once clear of the panelling, she pushed herself up to her feet. She turned and watched Roski do the same just as the collapsed building they had been under groaned ominously again. ‘Roski, we’ve gotta go. Take my hand and let’s go find somewhere safer, yeah?’ She held out her left hand and the boy took it, his small fingers only just curling around the back of her palm. ‘We’re gonna try and be real quiet, okay? Just like ninjas.’ Rose wasn’t entirely sure that he would know what ninjas were but that thought had only come to her after she’d said it. Roski didn’t acknowledge this, he simply nodded. His attention was more drawn to the ships in the sky, his green eyes wide and fearful as he stood close to Rose with his head tilted back to see them. ‘Come on.’ She lightly squeezed his hand, bringing his gaze back downwards and started them moving in the direction of that Dalek.

The pair walked as silently as they could, turning to the left at the makeshift crossroads. It was the direction that the Dalek had come from originally and not the way it had carried on when it thankfully passed them by. Rose helped Roski clamber over the debris when needed, with the only time that she let go of his hand being when they had to get on their hands and knees and crawl under some rubble once more to get to the other side. He didn’t seem pleased with that arrangement, very adamant that he clung to her hand at all costs. When Rose explained to him that it was quite impossible for them to fit through the gap side by side let alone the struggle it would be to crawl when holding onto someone’s hand he finally acquiesced and released his grip. It was strange but Rose felt rather bereft when he did so and it was only when he took her hand again that she realised why. Having been so caught up in getting them away from the collapsing building, Rose hadn’t particularly paid much attention to her feelings but when Roski held her hand once more, her mind was filled by these new emotions and thoughts. Neither of which were hers though, these were all coming from the boy. She could feel how scared he was and how determined he was to put on a brave face even though he jumped at every sound and ducked when the small Dalek ships were zooming overhead. She could feel his sadness and his loneliness as he missed his family but that he also felt comforted by Rose’s presence. He felt cared for and protected and that made her hold onto his little hand just a bit tighter whilst she thought to herself that she would do all she could to keep him safe.

It didn’t take a genius to work out how Rose was able to sense his feelings. The Doctor had told her that his people were touch telepaths, he’d said it was why he wore so many layers but he’d also held her hand. He always held her hand. He’d grab her hand and run, hold it when they walked or strolled and even take it when they sat together as though being side by side was never enough, as though he had to touch her, as though he struggled to be physically apart. This had never happened though. He’d never projected his thoughts and feelings unto her. In some cases she rather wished he had as he was never one for explaining them verbally. Sometimes she could read him like a book but at other times she would have no idea what was going on in that big Time Lord head of his and it was all guesswork and uncertainty. He’d gotten better over their time together with opening up about his feelings but he’d never crossed this boundary of touch telepathy, never lowered those mental shields he always spoke about and let her in. It was understandable that he hadn’t done such a thing. It was a very private thing to express, to reveal, to show your feelings in such a way was so personal and it wasn’t as though she could do the same and reveal her own emotions in return. Well, at least she didn’t think she could. Was Roski receiving her thoughts and feelings right now? Did the Doctor feel her emotions whenever he touched her? She didn’t think so, she’d have scared him off long ago if he could sense what was going through her mind some of the time, especially when she first started travelling with him.

Rose decided not to bring up the topic of touch telepathy with Roski, she didn’t want to make him feel awkward by pointing out that he was projecting himself to her nor get the questions about why she would bring up such a thing because it was probably normal for young kids to project like this before they learnt how to control it. She’d reveal herself as being a human then and she recalled the Doctor saying something about humans not being allowed on Gallifrey when he was talking to Sarah Jane about why he left her. Not that there was much Roski could do about it anyway. It wasn’t like he was going to rat her out to some Time Lord police or something, they were a little bit busy right now with the war to deal with some intruder like her. Perhaps he already knew. Her skin was quite hot compared to his small, cold hand so unless he thought she had a fever then he might know that they were not the same species. Either way, Roski didn’t seem bothered by this going by the waves of emotions he was expressing through their touch that demonstrated the safety and comfort he was taking from her presence.

As they continued through the maze of debris, the blasts from overhead were getting closer and more frequent. Roski clutched her hand even tighter as they ducked once again at a nearby explosion, the rumbling sound of crumbling buildings following shortly after along with plumes of dust and even more fires. Rose considered going back the way they had come because their current path only seemed to be leading them into further danger but that thought was wiped from her mind when another sound joined the fray.

‘Exterminate! Exterminate!’ A Dalek chanted up ahead. It was out of sight at the moment but the death cry was no less chilling. It was followed by the sound of its weapon firing and the screams of the poor Gallifreyan who had been shot.

Roski let out a whimper and Rose automatically hugged him to her side. She quietly shushed him whilst her head darted around looking for a little spot where they could hide as the Dalek passed. They didn’t have long, that deep mechanical whirring was getting louder as the metal shelled creature moved closer in their direction. She noticed a gap behind what looked like one of the wings from a small Dalek ship that had been shot down. Rose practically dragged the boy over to it before having to leave his tight grasp to haul the chunk of metal away. She was right. Behind the wing was a pipe that was just big enough for her to climb inside. It had probably been underground before the craters from the blast impacts had made it appear to be ground level.

‘Get in. Get in,’ she encouraged in an urgent whisper that Roski thankfully followed rather quickly. Rose scrambled in there after him, her heart pounding wildly, before hauling the wing in front of their hiding spot. The metal scraped a little too loudly against the edge of the pipe they were in for her liking but she hoped that the Dalek didn’t interpret that as someone’s movements and just put it down to the destruction it and the rest of its kind were causing on the planet. That wasn’t the only thing that sounded far too loud to her ears. The sounds of Roski’s muffled sobs were more pronounced in the tunnel. They reverberated around the cylindrical shape echoing a little as he tried to contain them the best he could. Rose shuffled around, turning her back to the wing covered entrance only hoping that it would be enough to hide them from the Dalek, as she turned her attention to the frightened boy. ‘Shh, shhh. It’s alright Roski.’ She pulled him into her, wrapping her arms around him in an effort to comfort the young kid. ‘I’ve got you sweetheart. You’re alright, we’re alright,’ Rose mumbled into the boy’s hair whilst he clung to her as though he would float away if he let go. It broke her heart how hard he hugged her back. She could feel his two thumping against her own chest with the way his own small body pressed tightly against her. He’d practically crawled into her lap but she didn’t mind and gently rubbed her hands over his back as the front of her t-shirt grew damp with his tears. Rose could hear the whirring of the Dalek getting closer as Roski shuddered in her arms. His cries were silent now at least, or near enough silent anyway. They would be hardly noticeable above the sounds of war outside of their tunnel. She could only hope that it would be enough, that their hidey hole would keep them safe from the Daleks.

Lifting her head from the top of Roski’s, Rose frowned as she strained her ears. It was a little hard to hear over the thundering of her heart but that was definitely the sound of footsteps nearby, multiple footsteps, and if she could hear them then that Dalek most definitely could. The whirring stopped practically just outside the tunnel entrance and Rose held Roski a little tighter, begging that it was just a coincidence. The sound of those scrambling steps only grew louder though. Then there was a sudden cry of shock as the people skidded and stumbled to a halt at the sight of the Dalek. Rose only knew this because of the robotic voice that echoed through the tunnel less than a second later.

‘Extermina-’

The Dalek never finished its death shout nor fired its weapon; instead there was the sound of another blaster being fired from a little further away. Eerie screams reverberated around their hiding spot as the Dalek was hit, the fiery explosion just visible through the small gaps around the edges of the tunnel entrance. A louder sob from Roski drew her gaze away from the flaming shell that she could just about make out. He was shaking, absolutely petrified, and Rose felt rather helpless to ease his terror. She wished she could take him with her, bring him back to Pete’s world using the dimension cannon and save him from this nightmare. Save him from what was to come. But she couldn’t. The cannon was barely stable at the best of times and that was with just carrying her. Roski was small but he was still another being, another body to pull through the dimensions. Rose dreaded to think of what would happen if she tried it; it would probably end up with a splicing incident like in Harry Potter. At least he would still be alive though, well hopefully he would. Staying here on Gallifrey only meant one thing for Roski, for him and the rest of the Gallifreyans.

So lost in her thoughts about the fate of the planet and its people, Rose hadn’t realised that Roski’s cries had become loud enough to attract attention. Luckily that attention was not unwanted. It was quite a relief to twist your head around urgently at the sound of the metal wing being moved to see a Gallifreyan soldier was the one dragging it out of the way. He looked between Rose and Roski, who had only buried his head further into her shoulder, and then nodded, gesturing for them to leave the tunnel.

‘Come with us,’ the soldier said, standing back from the tunnel to give them space to exit it.

Now he had stepped back, she could see the others who were with him. It was a group of men, women and children. There were around ten of them in total and they were all wearing similar red robes to Roski. It made the soldier look rather out of place amongst them with his black military uniform, helmet and the large, black gun he clutched in one hand. It appeared as though he was leading these civilians through the war zone and was doing his best to fend off any Dalek threats on the ground along the way.

‘Where are you going?’ Rose asked hoping that he wouldn’t name a district or building or something like that because that wouldn’t be of any benefit to her at all. Luckily the soldier did no such thing.

‘There is shelter northeast of here. It is safe for now.’ He had barely spoken his final word before two small Dalek ships went whizzing by overhead, green laser beams shooting in all directions causing more explosions nearby as they hit the ground. The group of civilians screamed and ducked and Roski quivered ever more in her embrace. ‘Hurry! We don’t have much time!’ The soldier urged, retreating back to his charges and beginning to lead them away.

Rose attempted to untangle herself from Roski’s grip but it was no use, he was very adamant about staying put, clinging to her as he was. It made getting out of the tunnel a bit awkward but she managed to shuffle out as the people bringing up the rear of the group passed the entrance. She quickly adjusted Roski’s hold so his legs were wrapped around her waist and his arms around her neck and she held him tightly against her whilst she ran to catch up. The people just in front of her looked like a family unit with a woman, two men and two children all huddling together as they moved through the rubble, the children’s hands tightly clutched in the hands of two of the adults. The little girl appeared a bit older than Roski but the boy was possibly around the same age, both also looked absolutely terrified as one would expect. They both cried out whenever the small Dalek ships zoomed closely through the sky, still firing out green lasers at the ground. This was happening much more frequently now as though they were jogging into more dangerous territory. Rose could only hope that they could get through it, that they could pass through all this danger and end up at the shelter with no further trouble. She should have known such a thing would never happen.

That familiar mechanical whirring was heard before she saw them. She could just about make it out between the screams, explosions and blasts. Daring to take a look over her shoulder and hoping that her ears were simply playing tricks on her, Rose’s stomach dropped at the sight of two Daleks emerging from around a corner about twenty feet away.

‘Behind us!’ She yelled out, alerting the rest of the group to the threat. She caught the quick glances and frightened eyes of the others as they confirmed the danger and their screams and shouts of terror filled the air as they ran faster in an attempt to get away. Rose didn’t have a better plan in mind so ran with them, holding a trembling Roski to her chest. As she ran she saw the soldier at the side of their makeshift path. He had stepped aside to let the group past and raised his gun to the encroaching threat behind her. ‘No! Don’t!’ Rose cried out when she realised what he was doing but it was too late. He screamed in agony before collapsing to the ground having been exterminated. She expected another shot to be fired by the Daleks and braced herself as she ran for the impact of it but it never came. She didn’t know why they weren’t simply mowing the group down but she wasn’t going to stop and question it and instead kept moving. Perhaps they had other plans for the people or, as the back of her mind pointed out, perhaps it was her. The Daleks wanted her alive the last time that she met them so that she could open the Genesis Ark so maybe they had a similar reason now. Rose didn’t really get much time to think about it before she was distracted by the rest of the group.

Their yells grew louder and more fearful as they reached a clearing. As the people started to scatter, Rose realised why. There were more Daleks there, appearing from different angles but all starting to encircle the ever shrinking group. A few Daleks broke off to round up those who had tried to escape but that still left plenty surrounding Rose, Roski and that Gallifreyan family who had been just ahead of her.

‘Exterminate.’

They scrambled to a stop and she quickly peered around for some impossible means of escape but there was none.

‘Exterminate.’

They were completely surrounded. This was it. She was actually going to die.

‘Exterminate.’

The young girl cried and shrank to the ground in fear, still clutching the hands of the adults on either side of her, whilst the little boy hid behind the grownups legs, his hands wrapped tightly around a toy he was carrying with him.

‘Please,’ one of the men begged. ‘Please just don’t.’

There was no use in begging a Dalek or much to be gained from trying to reason with one, Rose knew that much. She watched the twitching gunstick of the Dalek at the head of the group as it pointed between its hostages, her breath catching in her throat as she waited for one of them to finally fire. She didn’t know what to do. Her mind was at a complete blank as to how to get herself, Roski and the family out of there. Rose didn’t have anything in her arsenal. She couldn’t say she’d killed the Emperor because that hadn’t happened yet and even then that had only bought her a tiny bit of time before they attempted to kill her the last time she’d tried that trick. That was when the Doctor swept into the room and saved her and Mickey from extermination. The Doctor turning up right now was exactly what she needed. He would have the perfect thing to say to the Daleks and he would know what to do in that moment to give them time to escape. Oh he made it up half the time she knew but he came through when it mattered, he always did, and that was what counted in the end.

As though he was somehow sensing her distress even though he didn’t know her yet, the Doctor gave the group the chance to escape.

‘Alert! Alert! The Doctor is detected!’ Cried the front Dalek causing all the surrounding Daleks to look around for their greatest foe.

‘The Doctor is surrounded!’ Said another one.

Rose looked around too, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Time Lord but she could see nobody else in the vicinity. The Daleks had either somehow sensed him or another one had seen him and had communicated that fact to the others.

‘Inform high command we have the Doctor!’

The Galifreyans realised that this distraction was their opportunity to escape just as Rose did. The group all ducked down a little and ran through a gap in the debris and out of the gaze of the Daleks leaving their chanting robotic voices behind them.

‘Seek! Locate! Destroy! Seek! Locate! Destroy!’

But then there was another sound. A beautiful sound. One of the most beautiful sounds in the universe. Well, to Rose’s ears it was anyway. Her steps faltered as she heard those familiar groans and whirrs of the Tardis in flight shortly followed by a loud crash, the screams of the Daleks and a few explosions. Oh that was the Doctor alright; he was always one for a bit of drama. Rose couldn’t help but feel drawn to go back. Just to see the Tardis. The Doctor. She didn’t know what she was planning to do when she did but she just had to see them. Rose turned to the Gallifreyan who had nearly run into her when she halted at the sounds of the Old Girl and managed to peel Roski from her body and pass him over.

‘Can you take Roski for a sec? I won’t be a mo,’ she said, not giving the bewildered man any choice as she was already moving around him to go back to the clearing. ‘You can go on if you like, I’ll catch up.’

Rose ran to the clearing only to hear a dying Dalek say, ‘the Doctor is escaping. What are these words? Explain. Explain!’ A soldier, appearing out of the Tardis shaped hole in the wall where the Dalek was looking, shot it with his gun and killed the only survivor of the Doctor’s attack. It exploded, a fireball roared up into the sky from the metal casing and Rose’s footsteps faltered once more. Her shoulders slumped. He was gone. She’d missed him. Though perhaps he never stopped and just went off in the Old Girl to where they were needed next. This wasn’t her time to reunite with the Time Lord anyway but she just wanted a glimpse, she just wanted to let him know that she was there for him even though he wouldn’t know why. She drew her eyes up from that empty Dalek shell to the wall where it had been looking. There were words there. Two words: No More. Had the Doctor written this? No more…no more what? War? Violence? Fighting? Death? Was this him making that decision? Was he going to the vaults right now to steal the weapon that would end it all?

‘Arkytior!’

Roski’s voice drew Rose from her thoughts and she glanced around to see the man holding the small boy at the edge of the clearing. His little arm was waving to her, beckoning her to return.

‘Yep. I’m coming!’ She shouted back. After another glance at that wall she began to run back to them. Rose never made it.

A blinding flash of gold obscured her vision and then she was running towards the wall of the dimension cannon room in Torchwood Three. As the blaring sound of the alarm went off, she crashed into the wall, unable to stop herself in time due to the sudden weightiness of her body as the exhaustion of the jump began to hit. Rose didn’t feel the collision, not really, she was too drained both physically and emotionally to feel much of anything right now. She simply turned and sank down the rough brickwork until she was sat on the cold concrete floor. Drawing her legs up to her chest, she clung to them just as tightly as Roski had clung to her. She dropped her head down onto her knees at the thought of him. Her throat felt tight and her eyes burnt whilst her body shuddered with a mixture of grief, guilt and regret. He was gone now. He was dead. That poor little boy was dead. As were the rest of the Gallifreyans. They were all dead.

Rose barely heard the members of Torchwood as burst into the room, speaking to her and jostling her trying to check how she was.

‘Rose! Are you alright? Babe, what happened?’

Mickey’s voice was the only one who broke through to her. He was over in Wales to visit for a few days and must have been hanging around the Hub awaiting Rose’s return going by the fact he was kneeling down beside her. A sob escaped her when she felt his hand rub over her shoulder blades. Then his warm hand covered her own giving them a little squeeze. She could hear the movement of others around her again but then there was Mickey’s voice telling them off.

‘Just stay back. Give her some space.’

‘I need to run my exams on her. I need to check she isn’t injured,’ demanded Owen.

Rose heard Mickey huff before he turned to her and quietly said, ‘Rose, are you physically hurt?’ She shook her head and Mickey squeezed her hands once more. ‘See, she’s fine,’ he said, directing his words at Owen. ‘You can get your tests done in a bit, just give her some time.’

Owen didn’t sound particularly fond of the idea going by his grunts and murmurs but Tosh managed to drag him away. Malcolm followed suit and left the room once he’d retrieved the dimension cannon from Rose’s wrist and she made no attempt to either help or hinder the man in that task.

A few minutes after the door closed behind her work colleagues Mickey spoke up. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ She shook her head. ‘Alright. Well, I’m here if you need me.’ He let go of her hands to sit back against the wall at her side, one hand still rubbing gently over her back. It wasn’t long before Rose was leaning into him. He wrapped his arms around her as she cried on his shoulder for all the lives that were lost that day but most of all for one little Gallifreyan boy who she would never forget.

Chapter Text

The Doctor was rather disappointed by the lack of a little shop in the tourist office, the false front of the Torchwood Three base, and had spent the walk to the archives trying to convince Ianto and Jack of the benefits of such a thing. He was soon distracted by the contents of the archives though because, as he had predicted, Torchwood did have quite the stash of alien artefacts. Rambling away as he bounced between the shelves, he picked up and fiddled with a vast assortment of items, naming them and explaining their uses as he went along. This left Ianto trailing after him, gathering the objects in his arms and furiously writing down all that the Time Lord said so he could file the information, as well as the artefacts, away properly later on. Occasionally the Doctor would chastise Jack for keeping some of the things he came across or scold him for the improper storage of others and he laughed quite heartily at the futuristic pooper scooper that they had stashed in the weaponry section because they hadn’t known what it was.

‘You do know you’ve got an armed Enaphlesion mine down here don’t you?’ The Doctor commented as he twirled the metal square in his hands. ‘All it needs is the right stray radio wave to set it off and then bye bye Cardiff.’ His voice was light as though he wasn’t talking about the destruction of a capital city and more like he was simply talking about the weather. Jack and Ianto had just shared a wide eyed look when the Time Lord exclaimed, ‘oooh! Is that what I think it is?’ He tossed the mine to Jack, who tried to catch it as lightly as he could, and dashed further down the aisle.

‘Doctor!’ Jack called after him, both shocked and angry at the man’s blasé attitude and lack of care for the deadly weapon. ‘You can’t just throw a mine at someone, and an armed one at that, you could have set it off!’

‘Nahhhh couldn’t hurt a fly now,’ he absently replied, his attention more focused on the small musical instrument in his hands. It was similar in shape to a set of panpipes but was coloured in silver instead and it sat just a little larger than his palm where he had rested it. The last time he’d seen one of these was when he’d taught Henry Van Statten to play the one he had stored in his bunker in Utah. That was so long ago now and so much had changed. The Doctor brought himself back to the present and tilted his head as he considered what he’d just told Jack. ‘Well, I suppose it would hurt if you swatted it. But no, explosion wise it’s perfectly safe. I disabled it.’ He carefully drew a couple of fingers over the top of the instrument in a slow stroking motion and it emitted a few high pitched notes that had an electric twang to them. ‘I’m not in the habit of chucking around live explosives,’ he murmured whilst he continued playing a simple tune. ‘I’m not an idiot…though somebody around here clearly is.’ He lifted both his gaze and his fingers from the instrument and eyed Ianto and Jack who had come to stand beside him having put the mine safely back into storage. ‘Please don’t tell me you lot think this is a weapon,’ the Doctor said with a groan before reconsidering his words and adding in a higher tone, ‘although if you play it badly enough it would be murder on the ears’. He nodded along to his thoughts and listened to Ianto’s slightly embarrassed mumbles as he explained that they weren’t quite sure what it was. These were soon cut off by the voice of one Toshiko Sato coming through from the tiny speakers of Jack’s vortex manipulator.

Jack

‘Go ahead Tosh,’ he answered, pressing a button on the device and bringing his wrist towards his mouth so he could speak into the vortex manipulator.

I’m picking up some unusual readings originating in Cardiff Castle. It’s not the data we’d usually receive if something came through from the rift though. This is something different.

‘Alright, get the team ready to move out.’ Jack lowered his wrist and eyed the Doctor. ‘Fancy taking a look, Doc?’

The Time Lord grinned a little madly. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ He hastily deposited the instrument back on the shelf and followed Jack out of the archives leaving poor Ianto behind with an assortment of misplaced and mislabelled artefacts in his arms.

The pair turned to the right after leaving the archives and went through the other entrance to Jack’s office to grab their coats that they’d deposited there earlier. Swooping them on, they then walked through the door to the workstations where Tosh was busy on her computer. She barely looked around at their entrance before she started to address Jack and tell him of her findings.

‘CCTV at the castle is a little limited. I can’t really tell what’s going on.’

‘There’s got to be something there to produce such a reading. There’s nothing out of the ordinary?’ Jack asked as he walked behind Tosh, resting his hands on the back of her chair to look at the screen. The Doctor joined them as she flicked between different live feeds from the castle’s security systems. He squinted at the images whilst she moved from one to the next, each camera showing tourists and locals milling about enjoying the spring weather within the historical walls.

Tosh shook her head. ‘There’s nothing obvious but the reading is definitely centred on that location,’ she said, turning to the other monitor that did indeed pinpoint the castle as being the area where the anomaly was being detected. She turned back to the CCTV and flicked through a few more images before the Doctor stopped her.

‘Hang on,’ he called out, reaching into his pocket and pulling out his glasses. The Time Lord leant into the screen as he put them on and said, ‘go back a couple’. Tosh did as he asked and flicked back through the camera feeds until he told her to stop. The computer screen now showed a live video of the small bridge and open wooden doors that was the main entrance through the walls that surrounded the castle. ‘Can we reverse that?’

‘Yes. I have full control over the cameras.’

Once Tosh had rewound the footage far enough the Doctor shouted out, ‘there!’ It was rather loud in Tosh’s ear but she barely flinched at his outburst and stopped the feed immediately whilst the Doctor leant in even further.

The enthusiastic response brought a fond smile to Jack’s lips and frowns of confusion to the faces of Gwen and Owen who had just returned to the workstations from the weaponry as they got themselves ready to go out in search of this anomaly.

‘Zoom in a bit,’ requested the Time Lord who then repeated the word “zoom” as Tosh enlarged the image over and over until he was satisfied. ‘It is,’ he breathed, his voice full of disbelief.

‘What are we looking at Doc?’ Jack squinted at the screen and only saw a bunch of people leaving the castle. There was nothing obviously out of the ordinary to his eyes.

‘Is it?’ The Doctor murmured, his words were of a higher pitch than usual as he frowned deeply at the peculiar sight. ‘No, it can’t be…can it? No…but…’

‘Doctor.’

The man in question stood back upright from the screen at Jack’s demanding tone. He waved his finger at the image and said, ‘that’s Leonardo’.

‘What, DiCaprio?' Asked Owen.

Glancing over his shoulder, he said, ‘no. da Vinci’. He gave Owen a withering look that soon became darker when he noticed that the other man was currently conducting checks on his handgun but Owen didn’t seem to notice it.

‘The Leonardo da Vinci?’ Jack questioned, leaning in around the other side of Tosh to get a better look whilst she brought up an internet search full of drawings of the famous polymath so they could compare the two for likeness.

‘Yup,’ the Doctor said, popping the “p” as he turned back to the computer screens, crossing his arms whilst he stared at them with a furrowed brow. ‘Which begs the question as to what he’s doing in…what year is it again?’ He asked, his voice going high once more.

‘2008,’ Gwen answered with a quirk of her brow but she didn’t question him and instead added on her own as she came to stand next to the Time Lord so she could also take a look at the images. ‘But he was from the fourteen hundreds wasn’t he, so how can he be here? I know he invented a lot of stuff but it’s not like he invented time travel is it?’

The Doctor scoffed at the idea but didn’t say anymore because Owen decided it was time to make his point known. ‘For my money I reckon that’s just some bloke who’s gone out dressed like da Vinci.’

‘And the appearance of the anomaly at the same time,’ said the Time Lord, eyeing Owen as though he thought he was a bit of an idiot whilst nodding his head to the other computer screen that was still showing the unusual readings. ‘How do you explain that?’

Owen shrugged. ‘Just a coincidence.’

‘No such thing,’ he dismissed. The Doctor briefly scratched his side burn in thought, his mind ticking away. ‘He doesn’t have to be the inventor of time travel to use it though,’ he mumbled, simply going through his thoughts out loud. ‘Might not have been purposeful.’

‘But how would one travel in time accidentally if it wasn’t for the rift?’ Tosh asked, turning from the computer screens to look at the Time Lord. He didn’t appear to have registered that she had spoken, still trying to figure out the answer to that very question himself. After a moment, Tosh gave up on waiting for a reply and returned her attention to the computer before her.

Jack rubbed his chin as he stood back from the desk with his arms crossed, trying to come up with something. ‘It can’t be the Weeping Angels, they’d only send you backwards right?’ He’d never met a Weeping Angel, and he hoped he never would, but he had read about them during his time at the Agency.

The Doctor nodded vaguely, still lost in thought and then the answer hit him and his eyes grew wide at the solution. ‘A time fissure!’ He announced with such triumph that the rest of the Torchwood team turned to face him. ‘A couple of days ago I was in sixteenth century Italy,’ he began to explain, the words spilling from his mouth in a rush. It was only Gwen who looked completely baffled by what he’d just said with the rest rather taking it in their stride having already known or met the Doctor or, in Jack’s case, having been on those time travelling adventures with the man. ‘There was a time fissure, a weakness in time and space. They rupture at one point in time and stretch to another through the vortex. In the case of this one it connected somewhere between the late Miocene and the Pleistocene period with early sixteenth century Pisa and I only know that because of the whopping, great Argentavis that was flying around and scaring all the locals.’

‘What did you do?’ Tosh asked, rather intrigued by his tale.

‘Oh, just sent it back into the fissure and closed it behind them,’ he answered with a shrug as though it was nothing.

‘But seriously though, time travel?’ Gwen was still stuck on that previous point and was rather confused as to why no one else was, why they all just moved past it as though it was completely normal.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m a time traveller.’ He said rapidly, wanting to get back to this puzzle involving da Vinci.

‘But-’

God, he hated starting again. He cut Gwen off by saying, ‘I haven’t got time to explain’. It was ironic really, him being a Time Lord who could time travel but who didn’t have the time to explain himself. But he really didn’t, they needed to be out there searching for Leonardo and sending him back to his own time before anything bad could happen to the probably very confused and disorientated man. He watched as Gwen blinked, a little shocked by his dismissal and also a bit disappointed as she was curious to know more. Then he jumped on Owen’s line of questioning as it brought them back round to his theory of a time fissure.

‘That’s all you did, you just closed it?’ Questioned Owen, who was a little less impressed with the ending of the Doctor’s story than the others. ‘Don’t you need to follow it up or something?’

‘Nahhh time fissures occur all the…well, time,’ the Doctor finished a little lamely, scratching the back of his head before perking back up. ‘Most are so small they barely affect the space-time continuum. Except for the one I found of course, that one was certainly causing a ruckus which leads me back to good old Lenny here.’ He waved his hand towards the screen with the enhanced image of the man leaving Cardiff Castle and waved his hand some more as he continued with his explanation. ‘And that’s exactly the point. He is old in his timeline, only lived until 1519 and that’s around the period I found the time fissure. If another one had opened it would explain how he’s turned up in present day Cardiff at the very least.’

‘But why are the time fissures opening up like this if they’re hardly meant to be noticeable?’

The Time Lord’s eyes lit up a little and he turned his head back to Gwen, re-evaluating his earlier dismissal of her. ‘Now that is an excellent question, Gwyneth.’

She smiled gently at his approval though it didn’t quite meet her eyes. ‘It’s Gwen.’

He’d just begun to look away but his head snapped back round to her at her correction. ‘What?’ He breathed with a frown, staring at the woman who he distinctly remembered introducing herself as Gwyneth, but that was the thing, this wasn’t the same woman. Who he was remembering was a young servant girl from Cardiff in 1869 that he had met with Rose back in his old body. Gwyneth had died in her efforts to save the deceitful Gelth so clearly the woman before him was not the same person even though they looked virtually identical. The Doctor nodded to himself and a little awkwardly said, ‘right. Yes. Gwen…sorry’.

Jack clapped his hands together once, drawing everyone’s attention to him. ‘Okay team, we need to move out and find da Vinci so we can return him to his own time,’ he said commandingly before he began to dish out orders. ‘Tosh keep up on CCTV, I want da Vinci tracked down.’ Tosh nodded and was promptly engrossed in her given task whilst the Captain brought his vortex manipulator up to his face and pressed a couple of buttons before speaking into it. ‘Ianto, gonna need your baby blues up here, I want you to help Tosh.’ His voice, unheard by those in the main section of the Hub, would have rung out clearly from the speakers in the archives where Ianto was. Then Jack turned his attention to the final two members of his team but before he could deliver their orders the Doctor interrupted him.

‘Sorry,’ he quickly said to the Captain before he focused fully on Gwen, unable to shake off the fact that she was nearly identical in appearance to Gwyneth. ‘Tell me, Gwen, are you from an old Cardiff family?’

Her brow creased as she eyed him with both confusion at his question and disbelief that he should think that now was an appropriate time to ask such a thing. ‘Yes,’ she began slowly, really unsure as to where this was going. ‘All the way back to the 1800s.’

‘Ah yes, thought so,’ he said with a smile, delighted to have his theory proven correct. ‘Spatial genetic multiplicity.’ His words made complete sense to him of course but only seemed to confuse Gwen further. She didn’t get the chance to question him about it though because Jack was trying to bring his team back to the task at hand.

‘Right, you kids can talk genealogy later.’ He had no idea what the Doctor was going on about but he knew better than to ask about it because that would only bring on a ramble and now really wasn’t the time for such a thing. Jack finally finished giving his orders out to his team and said, ‘Owen, Gwen, let’s go to the castle. We can start the search for him there’. He got a couple of nods from the pair who started to walk towards the cog wheel to leave the Hub. Then he turned his attention to the Time Lord. ‘Doctor?’

‘I’ll go to the castle in the Tardis and close the fissure so we don’t have anyone else wandering out from the sixteenth century and once we find him I’ll drop him off home.’

Jack clapped the man on the shoulder and gave him a grin, simply happy to be working with the Doctor again. ‘Okay, we’ll meet you there. Take the lift,’ he advised jabbing his thumb behind him in the direction of the secret elevator. ‘It’ll take you back to the Tardis quicker.’

The Time Lord nodded and they parted. Jack jogged over to the cog wheel where Owen and Gwen were waiting whilst the Doctor returned to the stone slab and used his sonic screwdriver on the mechanism to get it to work. The red light flashed whilst the cog wheel groaned as it slid open and the trio left the Hub for the car park where they got into a black SUV and made the short trip to the castle.

**********

Every jump that Rose had completed was recorded meticulously in her diary. She didn’t write so much about her thoughts and feelings anymore, the original purpose of the diary after being asked to start writing one by her therapist Andi, but she found it a useful place to note down her experiences from whenever she used the dimension cannon. Andi had told her that doing so could be quite cathartic and Rose was hoping that would be the case, particularly in regards to her last jump. Stepping foot on Gallifrey and seeing it with her own eyes for the very first time, it wasn’t like anything she’d experienced before and she hoped she’d never experience something like that again. The absolute destruction, the terror, the hopelessness that still clawed at her now as she’d made her way through the war torn land trying not to die yet knowing that everyone else on the planet was about to and she could do nothing about it.

She loved travelling to the past with the Doctor, seeing what had been and experiencing the true reality of that time that you could never fully imagine from the history books. The downside of it was the knowledge you had of the future, you knew what was meant to happen, what should happen, and everything had to fall into place for it to be just so. There was no changing it, no matter how much you wanted to. You can’t alter history. She nearly had though.

The dimension cannon had a timer on it that counted down the thirty minutes that it would take to recharge before it would return her to Pete’s world. Rose hardly looked at the clock face though, usually so wrapped up in what was happening in the new world or time around her. This was definitely the case when she had been transported to Gallifrey during the final days of the Time War. She didn’t have a moment to spare a glance at the cannon to check how long she had been there with everything that was happening around her. Then she had met Roski, that young Gallifreyan boy, and her own safety soon became not her only priority. She wanted to keep him safe too. Rose had done so, up to a point, and then she’d passed him over to that Gallifreyan man who was fleeing with his family and that was the last she’d seen of him. She could visualise his little face now, willing her to return to him. If only she had been quicker, than she could have scooped Roski back up into her arms and the dimension cannon could have taken them both to Pete’s world. Or if she had kept him with her when she went to look for the Doctor then he would have still been in her embrace and they could have returned together. He’d be alive then, that poor little boy.

Rose kept wondering what would have happened if she had managed to save him. Would it have been the same as when she saved her dad from being hit by that car? Would the Reapers come to repair time? Would Roski have to have died anyway just like Pete Tyler? She understood why her dad couldn’t live on when she’d saved him. She understood the massive paradox it caused. If her dad had still been alive when she was growing up then things probably would have gone differently. She might never have gone out with Jimmy and pulled out of doing her A Levels so she could support and be with her budding musician boyfriend. She might not have put up with Jimmy’s abuse and be left in a heap of debt when he left her one night and never came back. She might not have then had to get a job at Henriks to try and get enough money to pay off those debts as well as earn some money to help her mum and pay her way in society. She might not have met the Doctor, the reason she could ever be in such a position to save her dad’s life.

Roski, however, was just a little kid so she didn’t think that saving him would cause such a paradox. The only thing that came to mind that could potentially be an issue was that the Doctor was the last of his kind. This wasn’t just guesswork, assumptions and hope as it was with the Daleks. The Doctor knew this for a fact because of the hive mind that the people of Gallifrey shared. He’d explained this to her once back when he was all ears and leather after he’d had to go into another’s mind on one of their adventures. Rose had asked what it felt like to be in someone’s head and that eventually led him into telling her about the Gallifreyans and their shared telepathic network. He didn’t speak about it for long, the pain of no longer having such a connection, one that had been a constant throughout his entire existence until he killed his race, becoming too much for him to bear talking about. Wanting to ease his pain, even if it was just a little, Rose had offered him her mind in a complete reversal of her previous opinions on the idea of someone being inside her head. This was different though. This wasn’t just someone randomly intruding in her mind without permission. This was the Doctor and she trusted him, plus if it would help him then she wanted him to do it even more so. He’d stared at her as though he was completely baffled by what she’d just said so then she went on to explain herself and of her trust in him. The Doctor refused her offer but Rose kept insisting that he could delve into her mind until she was met with a very gruff and adamant no. They fell silent after that and she knew she should have left it as such, that she shouldn’t have pushed and should have just accepted his refusal and been done with it. But then she’d quietly asked him why he didn’t want to. It took so long for her to get an answer from him that she never thought she would. He got up from the jump seat and took a couple of steps away before he softly said, ‘because it’s you and the feeling of going into your mind would be too much. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself’. The Doctor retreated from the console room after that, offering no further explanation as to what he meant. Rose had pondered over the Time Lord’s words so much that she’d lost every game of poker that she and Jack had played once she’d left the console room too and she still to this day has no idea of the plot to Hot Fuzz that the pair had gone on to watch before heading to bed. She hadn’t asked the Doctor about it again after that, hadn’t dared, and for quite a while she noticed that he would deftly change the topic of conversation whenever it got to the subject of telepathy or minds in general. Even now Rose didn’t understand what the Doctor could have meant. Stop himself from what? And why her, what was it specifically about her that made him refuse her offer? Maybe one day she’d know, if she found him of course, maybe she’d ask him about it and hopefully he would answer.

Well, if Rose wanted that answer then she’d have to go on another jump. She sighed a little heavily as she closed her diary and slipped it into the inner pocket of her blue, faux leather jacket that lay beside her on the bench. Then she stood up and pulled it on, being careful not to dislodge the bandage that was wrapped around her wrist. The burn from the dimension cannon had been quite bad after that last jump. She hadn’t noticed it at the time, hadn’t cared either and it was only when she and Mickey finally got up and he took her to visit Owen in the infirmary that she realised it was there. Owen was even less impressed with her initial refusal of medical checks when she returned to Pete’s world once he saw the reddened skin. It had blistered and required dressing changes every day but Rose wasn’t going to let that stop her from going on another jump. Malcolm was trying his best to sort out the overheating issue but was yet to solve it and she wasn’t going to be waiting around for him to do so when she could be out there finding the Doctor. She was so close now, she just needed to jump a little further forwards in time and then she’d find the right one.

**********

Opening her eyes once the flashes of gold had passed, Rose took a tentative look around, squinting a little in the sunlight as she did so. Her brow creased at the recognisable surroundings. She wasn’t far from the Hub. She was just around the other side of the Millennium Centre. The weather was about the same as it was on her walk to work too. The only difference that she had actually completed a jump, and had not simply teleported outside, was the smell. It was distinctly plastic free and there was just something that felt right within her when she was in her home universe.

Rose smiled as she set off on a walk around the grand bronze coloured building that sat beside Roald Dahl Plass. Even if she couldn’t find the Doctor there was at least Torchwood, maybe they’d be able to help her find him. It might take a bit of convincing for them to believe who she was and what she wanted but hopefully she’d be able to. She knew enough about parallel Suzie, Owen, Tosh and Malcolm that she might just be able to pull it off, plus she had her Torchwood I.D. with her too. If anyone was going to believe such a mad story as “I work for a parallel Torchwood in another universe but this is my original universe and I’m trying to get home” then it would be those who dealt with the craziness of the rift and what it spat out.

She caught sight of the water tower first as she stepped around the corner of the Millennium Centre, the sun glinting off the mirrored surface as the water rippled down it and into the Hub hidden below. It was then that her gaze fell on something blue and her steps faltered. It was the Tardis. She was parked right there in the Plass near the water tower. Her heart hammered in her chest. Was this it? Had she finally done it? Was she going home?

Running as fast as she could, Rose legged it towards the Old Girl. She could feel her hums in her mind, they were joyous and welcoming, jubilant even and Rose beamed as she ran closer and closer. Then the humming deepened, it became darker as though it was a warning. She slowed her quick pace just in time to see herself opening the Tardis doors and taking a step outside. It was the most peculiar thing to see yourself from an outsider’s perspective. Rose was just glad her younger self was looking up and taking in the sun so she could dash to the side and hide behind one of the large columns that were set around the Plass. Going by what her past self said, current Rose hadn’t been seen and she let out a sigh of relief as she overheard the words she’d spoken years ago.

‘It’s a bit cool but at least the sun’s out.’

Did her voice really sound like that? Rose poked her head around the column just in time to see the Doctor follow her younger self outside the Tardis. Her breath hitched at the sight of him, her first Doctor. He was slowly wandering forwards towards the younger Rose wearing his leather jacket over the top of a maroon jumper. He looked bigger somehow, perhaps taller, Rose wasn’t sure; it wasn’t as though her memory of him was entirely accurate. He certainly appeared more well built than his current self but she knew better than to doubt that the Doctor in pinstripes was any less muscular than his leather wearing counterpart before her. Both of them would pout and complain like anything if she told them they weren’t strong. Perhaps it was the image of seeing him fill out his leather jacket perfectly that made him seem bigger. The last time she’d seen that leather jacket in the flesh was when she’d been wearing it and it swamped her smaller body, it even swamped the Doctor after he’d regenerated, but here he was wearing it now as though it was tailor made for him. Rose couldn’t help but stare at the sight. He was right there, right there, holding his hands behind his back whilst a grin grew on his face. He was mere feet away and there was nothing Rose could do but fight the urge to run into his arms because she couldn’t do such a thing when her younger self was right there too. It was kind of cruel to be able to see this moment, relive it again in a way. Her hopes of returning home to the Doctor were just out of reach because she’d arrived just over a year too soon. A year! It was laughable really. He took her home a year late and now she can’t reunite with him because she’s turned up a year early. At least the cannon was heading in the correct direction. She was so close to being home. Now she had around twenty five minutes left before returning to Pete’s world so Rose decided to keep out of sight and enjoy seeing her first Doctor interacting with her younger self.

‘I do my best,’ the Doctor said with a pleased grin that made present Rose smile fondly at hearing his northern voice and seeing his face light up like that. Past Rose, however, soon wiped that look from his face when she turned and eyed him with her brows raised in challenge. ‘What?’ The Time Lord complained. ‘I do check the weather before we land.’ Rose crossed her arms, still unimpressed with his statement after their last few adventures showed that he did no such thing. He added on an, ‘occasionally,’ that made Rose huff.

‘More like rarely.’

Present Rose’s gaze was pulled back to the Tardis and she gasped at the sight of Captain Jack Harkness leaving the ship. Oh Jack. She really did miss him with all his charm and his jokes and she didn’t mind a bit of a flirt with him either though they both knew it wouldn’t come to anything; their relationship was more akin to siblings at the end of the day. He was rather easy going on the eyes too which became a point of contention with the Doctor, as well as Jack’s flirting and occasional amorous nature. There was a bit of a rivalry going on, a rivalry over her between a man who would do nothing about it and a man who knew he would never win because she was already falling for the other. She was twenty when they met Jack and back then she didn’t mind stoking the fire to try and get the Doctor to actually make a move. He never did though, not in that body anyway and when he did get there his actions weren’t ones forged in jealousy so it probably worked out for the best as much as her younger self would be loath to admit.

Jack’s appearance was seemingly unnoticed by the Doctor and her younger self who were too caught up in their teasing banter to see the man walk out of the Tardis with his old Polaroid camera in his hands.

‘I told you the temperature out here before we left the Tardis,’ explained the Time Lord, holding his arms out in question. ‘What more do you want?’

Rose’s eyes lit up. ‘Exactly,’ she said in triumph as she held up one end of her knitted, striped scarf in her red, fingerless gloved hands. ‘That’s why I put these on.’

He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. ‘A scarf and a pair of gloves? Yep. Don’t come complaining to me when your legs get cold.’

She looked down at herself. She was wearing a t-shirt and a pink fleece underneath a denim jacket and she’d been brave enough to go for the double denim look, pairing it with a short denim skirt that she wore over some black tights that she thought went well with her calf high boots. There was a twinkle in her eye as Rose looked back up to the Doctor, her two plaits bouncing on her shoulders with her head’s movement. She brought a hand up and began to fiddle with her hooped earring as she smirked and asked, ‘you got a problem with my outfit, Doctor?’

God, she was such a flirt. It was easier to see it in herself now that she was viewing it from an outsider’s perspective. That poor Time Lord never stood a chance. Rose could remember thinking that she looked cute in that outfit, and still thought she did thank you very much, and that gave her a lot more confidence in the way she acted around the Doctor that day. That newfound confidence was currently making his ears burn red and his mouth drop open a bit like a fish as though for once he didn’t know what to say. Which he didn’t. He didn’t do compliments on her outfits, not after the “beautiful for a human” incident, and perhaps she’d been trying to get something out of the man. Well, who was she kidding really; she was trying to get something out of him. Instead she’d forced a bloke who could talk for over an hour about the manufacturing of soft scoop ice cream into a silence that he had no idea how to get out of. Luckily, intentionally or not, Jack was there to save him.

‘Can you two stop bickering like an old married couple for just a second and let me get a photograph?’ He held up his camera to the pair who were standing in front of the water tower, poised to capture them in a photo.

The Doctor immediately turned to Jack like he’d been thrown a lifeline but did so with a groan because he was far from pleased by the man’s intentions. ‘Oh, not this again, you’re worse than the paparazzi.’

‘Just let him, Doctor, he’s documenting,’ Rose said, stepping closer to the Time Lord in preparation for the photo. They’d been over this before, in fact they went over it whenever Jack brought out his camera, and the Doctor got all huffy about it every single time. He was always a very dramatic man, always liked to put on a bit of a show before agreeing to anything. Rose knew he loved looking at the photographs really. Current Rose knew this even more so having put together a photo album with him using most of the photos they’d taken with the Polaroid camera he had gifted her for her twenty-first birthday. The ones that hadn’t made it into the album had either been attached to her standing mirror with her other favourites or been put in photo frames. Maybe one had been snuck into one of the Doctor’s pockets for all she knew, it wasn’t like she’d known about the one of them that Jack had given him until months later.

‘He doesn’t need to document,’ pointed out the Doctor with a wave of his hands, ‘he should be experiencing things, living in the moment’.

Jack crouched down a little to get the best angle as he squinted through the lens. ‘And I will once I’ve gotten a cute pic of you two.’

Rose saw the Time Lord’s eye roll at Jack’s words and caught his hand in hers, bringing his attention away from the Captain. ‘I think it’s nice. Helps us to remember where we’ve been.’

The Doctor gave her a look. ‘I can remember where I’ve been all by myself thanks, don’t need some visual reminder.’

‘That’s alright for some.’

‘Exactly,’ enthused Jack, jumping on a tag team with Rose. ‘What about the rest of Team Tardis and our non Time Lord brains?’

‘Team Tardis?’ The Doctor scoffed, his head shooting round to the Captain with an incredulous look plastered on his face. ‘Where’d you get that crap from?’

‘Me and Jack created it the other night when you went off for a sulk after losing at Monopoly.’

He turned and stared at her with such a look of betrayal that it made Rose grin cheekily up at him. ‘I do not sulk,’ he pronounced with a sulk before pointing a playfully threatening finger at her with his free hand as he said, ‘and you, Rose Tyler, are a cheat’. Her grin turned into her tongue touched one at his accusation but the moment was soon broken by the shutter sound of Jack’s camera as he took a photograph of them. That photo was one that had made it up onto the mirror; it was one of her favourites. The Doctor was giving her one of his tell tale unamused looks that he seemed to reserve for her antics when he was actually hiding his amusement and she was beaming up at him like she was loving every second of it.

‘Alright you two, I’m coming in,’ Jack said as he stepped beside Rose, throwing his arm around her shoulders, and raised the camera up, trying to take a selfie of the three of them. ‘Say cheese!’ Jack smiled, Rose smiled and the Doctor crossed his arms and offered a begrudgingly faint smile. ‘Perfect,’ the Captain announced once he’d taken the picture. He took the print and put it in his pocket with the other so the light didn’t affect it whilst it processed and made his way back to the Tardis saying, ‘I’ll just put this back inside’.

The Doctor made a disgruntled noise at that whilst Rose peered around them a bit more. She couldn’t help but notice the number of people who were having a takeaway breakfast, stuffing whatever food they had into their mouths as they rushed through the Plass on the way to their destination. The sight made her remember that they hadn’t eaten breakfast yet.

‘God I’m starved.’

The Doctor turned his head towards her, still stood by her side with his arms crossed. ‘What time’s Ricky getting here?’

‘You know it’s Mickey,’ she told him for what must have been the millionth time, ‘and his trains getting in at about midday I think’.

He grinned. ‘That leaves plenty of time for breakfast then...and I can probably sort out that loose wiring in the Tardis...’

‘We’re getting breakfast? I’m in,’ Jack said as he jogged back out of the Tardis and returned to stand in front of the pair.

‘What are you in the mood for?’

The Doctor’s question was aimed at Rose but the Captain couldn’t help but answer with an innuendo filled question of his own. ‘What aren’t I in the mood for?’ His words and accompanying smirk only rewarded him with a heavy eye roll from the Time Lord.

Rose, on the other hand, was back to eyeing the people bustling by and trying to work out what they were eating to give her some inspiration but that task was proving harder than it would seem. ‘Oh, I dunno,’ she replied with a bit of a sigh.

The Time Lord looked down at her once more and said, ‘I’m sure we can find someplace to your liking’.

Jack stuck his hands out in complaint. ‘Don’t I get a say?’

‘You’ll eat anything you will,’ the Doctor retorted.

‘Oh, nice.’

‘What and I won’t?’ Questioned Rose, a little annoyed at being singled out like some kid who was a picky eater that they always had to make exceptions for because that simply wasn’t true. She might have an aversion to mushrooms unless they were chopped up small and mixed in with something and oh that disgusting thing Jack made her try the other day but she really wasn’t that bad. ‘Just because I didn’t eat that blue, slimy-’

‘No. No, that’s not what I’m saying,’ the Doctor said quickly, cutting her off as he tried to placate her. ‘I was simply trying to…’ he trailed off, one of his hands grasping at the air as though he could pluck out the remainder of his explanation from it. He couldn’t, instead he shook his head and said, ‘oh, forget it’.

But now Rose was intrigued about what he was trying to say. ‘What?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ he replied with another shake of his head. He reached out and took her hand in his, slotting their fingers together perfectly before pulling her along by her side as he set off on a walk away from the bay. ‘Come on, there will be somewhere up here that does breakfast. I'm getting a faint whiff of toast.’

‘Wish I had your nose,’ she quipped, causing a huffed laugh to fall from the Doctor’s lips.

‘I wish your nose was smelling waffles,’ commented Jack, walking on the other side of Rose.

She moaned at the mere thought. ‘Mmmm or pancakes.’

‘With maple syrup?’ the Captain asked.

‘Or golden.’

He nodded in adamant agreement and then said, ‘favourite additional topping?’

She was practically skipping beside the Doctor at this point, enthused in this conversation about food with Jack when she was as hungry as she was. Unnoticed, the Time Lord was watching her with a soft smile on his lips whilst she carried on, saying, ‘oooh, something fruity like strawberries…or raspberries or - or - or chopped bananas!’

‘I like a little squeeze of lemon’

‘With the syrup?’ She turned her nose up at the idea whilst Jack grinned at her reaction as he nodded at her. ‘Nah you’ve gotta have lemon and sugar, that’s the classic combo.’

They were too far away for present Rose to hear anymore from her position behind the column. She sighed and turned around, leaning her back against it whilst a wistful smile lingered on her face. What she’d give to be that younger Rose, absolutely loving life with two men she adored. There was so much that she was yet to experience, both the bad but mainly the good. It was strange. She was actually feeling jealous of her younger self and the life she was living. Rose laughed out loud at the thought of it whilst her mind trailed back to the overheard conversation between herself and Jack. She’d always wondered how the Doctor knew what her dream breakfast was, having not recalled the topic ever popping up. Rose had been too shocked by the fact that it was her birthday, and wrapped up in easy conversation about other things, to question him about it when he presented her with breakfast on her twenty-first birthday. It turned out that it wasn’t a conversation she’d had with the Doctor at all but simply one he was present for. A conversation between her and Jack which she remembered had continued all the way until they found a little café that did both waffles and pancakes. The Time Lord didn’t have to listen, didn’t have to retain the information he’d found out about her at all but he had and it made Rose love him even more.

Chapter Text

The Tardis easily closed the time fissure once she had landed within the walls of Cardiff’s castle grounds. It wasn’t long before the Torchwood team, consisting of Jack, Owen and Gwen, turned up in the SUV and the foursome soon left the castle following in the steps of Leonardo da Vinci. They were also following the voices of Tosh and Ianto, who were still in the Hub, through the earpieces that all Torchwood members wore when out on missions. Jack had pulled out a spare one from his pocket and offered it to the Doctor so that he too could hear the directions and keep in touch if they split up.

With the guidance of Tosh and Ianto, the group crossed the road and headed towards the busy pedestrian streets lined with shops. They dashed forwards, dodging around the weekend shoppers until they reached a blind spot in the CCTV due to the vandalism conducted by local youths that had broken the cameras. Tosh and Ianto had no idea which way da Vinci had gone next. They were trying their hardest to find out but presently the group in the city streets were on their own. They decided to split up and head into the surrounding shops in the hopes of seeing the man, which turned out to be the right thing to do.

The Doctor was just leaving the da Vinci free Sports Direct when Gwen’s voice came through his borrowed earpiece informing everyone that she had found him. He rushed across the street, shouting out his apologies to one woman who had to skid to a halt to avoid a collision with the Time Lord as he barrelled by, only just missing more collisions with further shoppers. Primark, the store Gwen had informed them that she was in, wasn’t far away and he caught up with Owen at the front doors and heard Jack’s heavy footfall not far behind. The trio walked through the store as quickly as they could, which turned out to be a rather slow affair even with the Doctor pushing past a few people in his haste. Then their eyes fell on the escalators. A few feet away stood Gwen, her back to them as they approached and her gaze locked on the man who was standing at the bottom of the upwards escalator looking at it with wonder. There was no doubting that she had found the right man. He wore a long, dark brown robe and matching bonnet atop of his grey hair which trailed down his back, reaching a similar length to his grey beard.

Gwen must have heard their slowing footsteps as she turned to the trio with a look of relief. ‘Oh good, you’re here. That is him isn’t it?’ She asked, pointing her thumb over her shoulder at the man who was gaining a few looks from shoppers as he half blocked the entrance to the escalators forcing them to squeeze by to get to the next floor. ‘That is da Vinci?’ She lowered her voice as she spoke the man’s name so he did not hear.

‘Yeah, that’s him,’ the Doctor confirmed, peering over the top of her head at the cloaked man.

‘Did you speak to him?’ Jack asked.

She shook her head. ‘I didn’t think he’d understand me. It’s not like he speaks English or Welsh is it?’

‘Oh, that’s not a problem at all,’ the Doctor said with a knowing smile. ‘Time to make some introductions don’t you think?’ He walked through the middle of the group until he stood a couple of feet behind da Vinci with his hands casually resting in his pockets as though this was a situation that he dealt with every day. ‘You know, some people do reckon that you’ve travelled in time to be able to come up with such brilliant designs and concepts and inventions as you do,’ the Time Lord began, his words making Leonardo turn towards him because he was speaking in Italian. ‘Take the helicopter for example,’ he continued, taking one hand out of his pocket to wave it around, ‘or the “aerial screw” as you like to call it, that won’t take flight for another four hundred odd years but here you are sketching out the influencing designs that go on to inspire future inventors. Funny how things work out. There’s you doing all your helicopter drawings but when you actually travel in time you’re stuck in wonderment at the escalators in a shop’. He smiled, amused by his own ramblings but then he shrugged as he considered his own first experience with an escalator. ‘But, I mean, fair enough. Stairs don’t move back in Italy at the moment do they, Lenny? I must’ve gone up the one in Harrods at least a dozen times when I first came across it.’ Frowning as he rubbed his chin in thought, the Doctor added, ‘I don’t think that was the reason I got banned from the store. My memory’s a bit fuzzy of that day’. He contemplated what he could remember before slipping his hand back into his pocket with another shrug, perking up a bit. ‘Still, shouldn’t be a problem now.’ Grinning a little madly, he waggled his eyebrows at the very much confused Leonardo who had absolutely no idea what the Time Lord had just said. Well, the words were understandable at least but most of the meaning and context behind them went over his bonnet covered head.

He stared at the suited man, his mouth agape until finally the Doctor shut up and da Vinci managed to stutter out a few words of his own. ‘Where - where am I?’

‘Oh, you’re in a clothing shop on Queen Street in Cardiff. That’s the Capital of Wales by the way. Bit far from home by your standards but could’ve been a lot worse. I think the more pertinent question is when are we?’ The Doctor waited, rocking back on his heels a little as Leonardo glanced around the store.

Instead of asking when they were as the Time Lord had expected, especially with his prompting, da Vinci next asked, ‘who are you?’

This made the Doctor raise his brows a little before he said, ‘yes, that is another good question I suppose. And me? Wellllll, I’m your number one fan! Well, perhaps not number one, more like top five…or ten…anyway…’ He grinned widely. ‘I’m the Doctor.’ Leonardo stared at the Time Lord with a furrowed brow, blinking a little dumbly at him and the Doctor let out a slight chuckle at his reaction as he continued to talk. ‘And don’t worry. No, you haven’t lost the plot; you’ve just travelled in time. Stepped into a time fissure, nasty little blighters, and Bob’s your Uncle. Bam! Twenty-first century Cardiff! Like I said, could’ve been worse,’ he added, his voice and demeanour calming back down after his fervent explanation. ‘Anyway, back home don’t you think? More than enough excitement for one day. Come on.’ The Doctor nodded his head behind him and waited for Leonardo to move forwards a little before he started to walk with the man by his side towards the store exit. Of course, before they could get anywhere near the doors, they encountered most of the Torchwood team first who had been waiting patiently, watching their conversation. ‘Ah yes.’ The Time Lord gestured to each member in turn as he introduced them to Leonardo. ‘This is Gwen and Owen and Jack. Just don’t,’ he added to the Captain who threw his arms up in the air at his personalised warning. ‘They’re the reason we knew you were out here in the first place and helped track you down. Can’t have you wandering around the twenty-first century, a lot’s changed over the years.’

The group slowly made their way out of the shop with the rather baffled Leonardo in tow. He asked a few questions, once he’d gathered himself a bit more, and they had to stop a few times when he paused to stare at something such as the traffic lights and a person riding past on a bike. The Doctor and Gwen managed to strike up a conversation on artwork, which the man engaged with thoroughly, for most of the return walk to the castle. Gwen had completed a module about da Vinci in her history of art classes at school so knew a lot of what he had done, certainly more than Jack and Owen who got stuck past naming the Mona Lisa and, as Jack added, the Vitruvian Man.

‘Right. Thanks you lot,’ the Doctor said, turning around to face the rest of the group as he stopped before the Tardis. She was parked at the bottom of the steep set of steps that led up the hill to the castle that sat within the walled grounds. The time fissure, which he had closed earlier, had luckily been around the back of the castle and mostly out of the way of the locals and tourists who were visiting the historical sight. ‘Couldn’t have done it without you but I can handle it from here. I’ll just drop him off home and then be on my way.’

There was a round of farewells between the Torchwood team and Leonardo before the man turned to the Time Lord and said, ‘the light I walked through is around the castle’. He pointed in the direction that he had come earlier, as though he was showing him which way to go.

Chuckling softly, the Doctor put a hand on da Vinci’s shoulder. ‘No, that light’s gone out I’m afraid. Finito. Nil. Nada. But…’ he extended the word whilst fishing in his pocket and then pulling out the Tardis key. ‘...I’ve got a much better way of returning you to your own time.’ He slid the key into the lock and it clicked, the door easing open just an inch under the Time Lord’s touch. It was hardly enough to see through into the console room but it was just enough of a gap to be enticing or, in Leonardo’s case, confusing.

‘What do you mean? That’s just a box.’

A low hum emanated from within said box at da Vinci’s words and the Doctor patted her woodwork soothingly, smirking as he watched the man’s frown grow deeper at the noise. ‘Just a box you say? Well, why don’t you take a look?’ He poked the door, opening it a bit more so a little of the orange and green glow of the console room could be seen.

Leonardo eyed the door and then the Time Lord, his bewildered gaze flicking between the two. After another encouraging nod from the Doctor, who was mouthing the words, “go on,” at him, he finally pushed it open and stepped inside, the door swinging shut behind him.

‘Well, that’ll keep him busy for a little bit,’ the Doctor said with a smile, returning his gaze back to the Torchwood trio where all but one were looking just as baffled at what was going on as Leonardo was.

It was Gwen who spoke up first, pointing tentatively to the Tardis as she asked, ‘what erm - what is that?’

‘Oh, this is my ship,’ he said proudly, leaning back against her wooden panelling. ‘This is how I travel in time.’

‘Huh,’ she said, a little surprised by it because it wasn’t like any other space ship that she had seen before, but overall she was rather accepting of his words because of her time with Torchwood. Then she screwed up her nose a little and added, ‘a bit small isn’t it?’

Before the Doctor got the chance to answer, Owen folded his arms and snorted. ‘That is a wooden police box from the sixties mate.’

The Time Lord’s head shot round to the man, his offence at his words easily readable in his face. ‘It’s a disguise, a cloaking device if you will and…’ He turned to Gwen to finish his point. ‘...she’s bigger on the inside.’

‘Really?’ Gwen asked, highly intrigued whilst beside her Owen simply scoffed in disbelief.

‘Really,’ confirmed Jack, eyeing his two employees before his gaze turned to the Doctor. ‘But shouldn’t you be getting inside? I know how you get about people touching the controls.’

Pushing off from the panelling, he nodded at the Captain and moved to the doorway. ‘Yes, good point. Best be off.’ He opened the door and stepped inside but didn’t get any further than that.

He hadn’t come to see Jack today with any intentions of gaining a companion, or regaining one as it were, but the activities of the day had made it pretty obvious just how, well, just how lonely his life was now. Travellers in the Tardis would always come and go, that was just the way of life when the human companions he did so like to travel with had such fleeting lives compared to his own, but that wasn’t the case with Jack. Yes, the man gave him a headache, being the impossible being that he was, but he could deal with that. It had been easing the longer they had spent time around each other, the throbbing in his head still lingering but the effects were dampened somewhat. Anyway, he wouldn’t want to travel with him all the time and indeed Jack would probably feel the same, if he agreed to it in the first place, but right now the Doctor felt like he needed someone. He didn’t particularly want anyone else, there was only one who he did want, but perhaps Donna had been right when she told him as much. Especially now. It was coming up to Rose’s birthday linearly and boy would he need someone to get him through that. Someone to keep him distracted and make him leave the Tardis on adventures instead of wallowing around inside. It would probably help that Jack knew about Rose too, would understand more than most if he was moody or snappish, not that he’d let the Time Lord get away with it. What were friends for if it wasn’t to point out when you were being rude and help you to suppress your loneliness whilst you gave them a tour of the universe in return?

Having made up his mind, he swivelled back around and eyed Jack once more. ‘Would you er - do you fancy coming along?’ He enquired, his voice going a little high in his lack of certainty which was only exemplified further by the tugging of his ear. He watched as Jack glanced over at his team and then back at the Tardis with a look of longing, a longing which suggested that he was going to decline the offer. ‘Time machine remember?’ The Doctor hurriedly added. ‘Can get you back to the Hub ten minutes from now.’ It wasn’t begging, he would never go so low as to beg anyone to join him on the Tardis, but it was getting alarmingly close.

Luckily, the Doctor’s reminders of what his ship was capable of seemed to swing the offer in his direction and Jack gave the man a smile. ‘Alright. So long as you don’t pull a Rosie on me,’ he joked, thinking back to the memorable tale she had told him when they’d been swapping stories of their travels over some wine and chocolates in the Tardis one evening. The words had left his mouth before he realised what he’d been saying and he watched the hopeful look on the Doctor’s face slip into a sadness that he soon masked. Jack looked over at him with guilt written on his features. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

The Doctor swallowed a little thickly and then nodded his head, a bittersweet smile tugging on his lips as he recalled the many instances of Rose’s teasing after that colossal mistake. ‘It’s alright. Shall we?’ He nodded a goodbye to Gwen and Owen before retreating into his ship, leaving the door open for Jack.

‘I’ll meet you guys back at the Hub, alright? I’ll be back before you know it.’ With a big grin, he entered the Tardis leaving a rather bewildered Gwen and Owen behind. He closed the door behind him just in time to hear the Doctor yell out a warning to the temporary passenger.

‘Don’t!’ The Time Lord shouted, Leonardo’s movements catching his eyes as he quickly typed in the coordinates for the destination and time that he had just been given. ‘Are you trying to kill us? Just don’t touch anything. In fact…’ He trailed off as he swiftly moved to da Vinci’s side and took him gently by the shoulders, moving him backwards a little until the backs of the man’s knees connected with the jump seat. ‘...better still. How about you just sit down there, hmm?’

Jack smiled at the sight of the Doctor dashing around the console whilst Leonardo made his apologies. He smiled even wider at the warm hum of the ship in his mind and patted the coral strut near where the Time Lord had dumped his coat. The Tardis shuddered a little under his touch as though he was tickling her, an action that caused the Doctor to give Jack a quick once over before returning his gaze to the console. He removed his hand and went to stand by the railing near the jump seat instead where Leonardo promptly started up a conversation.

‘This truly is incredible. How does it all fit inside that little box?’

Jack opened his mouth to answer but the Doctor got in there first with a rather dismissive, ‘oh, it’s all extraordinarily complicated-’ He was cut off by da Vinci who began to try and work it out for himself.

‘It’s as though I have walked into another place. Like with the…’ He paused, unsure what that light he had walked through earlier actually was.

‘The time fissure,’ the Captain supplied.

‘…time fissure. Thank you.’ He smiled gratefully at Jack before he continued, saying, ‘you walk through a doorway and end up somewhere completely different’.

Jack caught the sight of the Time Lord’s pout at Leonardo’s basically correct explanation of how the Tardis worked and chuckled at his friend. ‘I think you need to give the man a bit more credit, Doc,’ he said with a knowing smirk.

It wasn’t that the Doctor wasn’t impressed with da Vinci’s reasoning, the man was heralded as a genius after all, it was just that he rather thought it took the fun out of it, the magic even, not that the Tardis was magic of course but there was an experience to be had being inside her wooden walls for the first time and it did have a magical quality to it from a human’s perspective. ‘Yes. Well, I suppose you weren’t too far off,’ he reluctantly admitted with an indignant sniff. ‘In a roundabout way if - if you want to take it back down to basics…and then dumb it down a bit more.’

‘Don’t take no notice of him,’ Jack told Leonardo. ‘He’s always gotta be the smartest person in the room but you’d give him a run for his money I’m sure.’

With one last press of a button, the Tardis was ready to go and, in the Time Lord’s opinion, just in time too. ‘Jack, you know the drill,’ he called out to his friend as he put his hand on the dematerialisation lever. ‘Len, hold on to something tight, this could get a little bumpy.’ After a quick glance at the others to ensure that his instructions were being followed, he pulled the lever and the Old Girl whirred into life. The time rotor bobbed up and down in time with her groans and the ship rocked and jolted only a little, providing a pretty smooth ride for the newcomer. After a few more circuits around the console, the Tardis shuddered as she landed. ‘Here we are then,’ the Doctor said brightly as he dashed down the ramp, ‘home sweet…home…’ His words became uncertain as he opened the door to reveal another door just beyond. This door was weathered, its dark wood showing early signs of a woodworm infestation at one corner whilst the lowest part that brushed along the dusty ground was beginning to splinter a little and come off in small chunks with the force used to open it. ‘Well, you can’t say I don’t deliver a door to door service,’ he said, unlatching this other door, which thankfully opened inwards, to reveal a dark room. He turned back to the console room, offering Leonardo a smile whilst throwing his arm out, gesturing for him to lead the way. Whilst da Vinci hesitantly got up from his seat and moved over, the Doctor rambled on, continuing to voice his thoughts. ‘Not that I’m a taxi service mind. This is just a one time thing because you decided to walk towards the mysterious light. “Don’t walk towards the light,” that’s what people always say isn’t it? But then there’s you lot, the ever curious humans, who throw caution and advice to the wind and do it anyway. Brilliant.’ He was grinning brightly, as he always did when he thought of the greatness of the human race, whilst a cautious Leonardo walked past him and took a few tentative steps into his home, gazing around in wonder.

‘This really is my house,’ da Vinci gasped, not needing any more light to recognise the familiar shadows of his furniture. He turned back to the brightness of the Tardis doorway where both the Doctor and Jack stood and asked, ‘how? We have moved not only in location but in time. How is that possible?’

‘Oh, I couldn’t possibly say,’ the Doctor said. He took out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it around the room, lighting any candle that the sonic waves came across. It created a warm, comfortable glow that rather matched the modest wooden furnishings that filled the small space between Leonardo’s clutter from multiple ongoing projects.

da Vinci laughed at the further impossible feats of the Doctor. ‘And now you wave your - your wand around my home and light the candles from afar as though it was magic.’

Returning his sonic to his pocket with a bit of a smug grin, he said, ‘not magic. Time Lord’.

‘Yes, you said,’ Leonardo agreed with a nod.

This reply rather caught the Doctor out and his brow furrowed as he stared at the man trying to recall when it was that he revealed that information about himself.

Jack also couldn’t remember the Doctor mentioning such a thing, the man didn’t go parading about and telling that to just anyone. He looked between the confused face of the Doctor and Leonardo, who seemed none the wiser as to what his words had done, and shook his head as he said, ‘I don’t think he did. I don’t think the Doctor mentioned anything about being a Time Lord’.

‘Oh no,’ Leonardo said with a chuckle at their confusion. ‘Not this time around but when I met you previously, Doctor.’ At the further look of bafflement on the Time Lord’s face, he went on to say, ‘it was quite some time ago now, I barely remember it myself, I was a young man back then yet you - you look the same’. He nodded to himself as he carried on, ‘yes, it has been bothering me since I first saw you. I knew you seemed familiar, that I recognised you in some way but it wasn’t until I caught the profile of your face in the candlelight that I knew where I had seen you before. It’s slowly coming back to me now’.

The Doctor shook his head and slowly started to explain himself. ‘I have never met you before Leonardo.’

He would have gone on to say more but da Vinci butted in to refute that claim. ‘Yes you have. You sat for me to have your portrait done, you and that nice blonde woman.’

For a moment it felt as though all of time had stopped. The Doctor stared, his hearts hammering in his chest. He couldn’t mean…could he…surely not… His mind raced as one word rattled around his head. Impossible. Yet even as impossible as it was he couldn’t quench the flames of hope that began to flicker from within, warming the cold empty spaces in his chest from which his hearts were torn from, just as she was on that dreadful day. ‘What do you mean blonde woman?’ He asked, his voice gaining a hard edge to it. Then he rattled off a stream of further questions because he just had to know, he needed to know who he was referring to. ‘Who was she? What did she look like? What was she wearing? What was her name? You said you did a portrait. Where is it? Can I see it?’ His head darted around the room as though this painting would suddenly pop up and reveal the answer that he so wanted to hear. Of course, it did not.

Leonardo’s eyes grew almost as wide as the Time Lord’s at the words barrelling off his tongue that he simply could not keep up with so he chose to answer the final questions that he had heard about the painting. ‘I cannot show you the portrait Doctor because you took it with you,’ he said with a frown at how the man didn’t remember this. His frown only deepened when he recalled where the Doctor said he was going to put it. ‘You mentioned you were going to hang it in your bedroom.’

Oh he was such an idiot, of course he would take the portrait with him, why wouldn’t he? Especially if…well, Leonardo was only further solidifying it in the Time Lord’s mind as to who this mysterious blonde could be. He wasn’t one to sit for portraits in the first place, he didn’t have the patience for it but he would if a certain pink and yellow human wanted one and who else would he have a painting of in his bedroom if it wasn’t of Rose Tyler? He wouldn’t have a picture of a random blonde woman on the wall, why would he? There was just one problem with all of this. One big, impossible problem. He knew for certain that he and Rose had never met Leonardo before, they had spoken about meeting him but they had never gotten around to it and now Rose was in a parallel world where it should be impossible for her to return from. Yet still, all the evidence was pointing in one direction, one beautiful but impossible direction. All the evidence was pointing towards him and Rose being together again and meeting Leonardo in the future.

The Doctor stalked towards da Vinci and rested his hands on the man’s shoulders, his fingers digging in a little in his desperation to know that his theory was true. ‘I’m a time traveller and sometimes time gets a little bit wibbly wobbly and I don’t meet people in the right order. I know for a fact that I haven’t met you or sat for a portrait which leads me to believe that this instance of us meeting is from your past and my future.’ He paused briefly and took a deep breath before locking eyes with Leonardo as he said, ‘I need you to tell me, Len, because I - I lost someone, someone very dear to me, and it sounds like you are describing her. What was her name? What was the blonde woman’s name?’

‘I - I - I - I don’t know,’ Leonardo stuttered, looking away from the Time Lord’s intense stare. ‘I can’t remember…it was such a long time ago, I…’

He gripped the man’s shoulders even tighter, his voice more of a growl as he repeated his question. ‘What was her name?’

‘Erm - something - something er - something to do with a flower I think,’ he gradually recalled.

Jack stepped forwards at this point, not wanting the Doctor to inadvertently hurt da Vinci with his urgent need for answers. ‘Was her name Rose?’ He asked softly, as he stood by the side of the Time Lord. ‘Was it Rose Tyler?’

Leonardo looked at Jack and nodded. ‘Yes, I do believe it was.’

Barely a second later, the Doctor was loosening his grip on Leonardo's shoulders and bolting into the Tardis, calling out, ‘Jack,’ over his shoulder in a command that the Captain should follow him inside.

‘Well, I guess I’ve gotta go,’ Jack said as he slowly backed away from Leonardo and towards the ship. ‘Thanks for your help da Vinci and don’t go wandering into any more time fissures, okay?’

‘Jack!’

At the further yell from the Time Lord, he offered da Vinci a quick salute and hastily made his way into the Tardis where the Doctor was whizzing around the console. He pulled the dematerialisation lever and the Old Girl shuddered into life rocking Jack to the side a little as he made his way up the ramp with a concerned look on his face. ‘Did you not want to retcon him or something?’ He asked the Doctor, worried about what Leonardo might do after having been given a glimpse of the future. ‘Make him forget what he’s seen so he doesn’t change history?’

‘Well, I might’ve suppressed his memories were the circumstances different,’ the Doctor replied as he flicked a few switches and then whirled around the controls and flicked a few more. ‘But no…he doesn’t have long, Jack,’ he added rather sombrely.

The Captain nodded in sad realisation whilst he clung onto the handrail as the ship jolted a little. Then he recalled the new information that had come to light and grinned a little. ‘So what are you going to do now?’

With a thud, the Tardis landed and the Doctor stepped around the console to face Jack with a brightness in his eyes that the Captain hadn’t seen in this regeneration. His voice was filled with hope and he smiled as he said, ‘I’m going to look for Rose. Because she’s out there, Jack. Somehow. Somewhere. Somewhen. And if old Lenny-boy has met us, has taken the time to paint us even, then that means the universe doesn’t collapse. I have no idea how that’s possible but right now I don’t care. I’m going to find her and I’m getting her back’. They beamed at one another for a moment before the Time Lord slipped his hands into his pockets and nodded at the doors behind his friend. ‘Right. Cardiff Bay.’

‘Cardiff Bay?’ Jack questioned a little incredulously. ‘You sure you don’t want any help? Two heads are better than one as they say, even if yours is a big Time Lord one.’

‘Oh no, you will be helping, Jack,’ he reassured the Captain, having seen the flash of hurt cross his eyes at what he thought was a dismissal so soon after being invited on board. ‘I don’t know how this is meant to play out,’ he admitted with a shrug. ‘I don’t know if I’m meant to get through to her or if she’s somehow finding a way back here but if she is coming back, she’ll be aiming for Earth and hopefully around this time. So while I’m off around the universe checking for cracks I’m gonna need you on Earth watch. Last I knew she was working for Torchwood in the other universe and with Torchwood One gone here she might head to Cardiff because Rose is smart and she knows you lot might be able to track me down.’ He locked eyes with Jack and placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder, hoping that he could count on his friend to help him out. ‘Anything, any little possible sighting or - or anything at all you call me, alright? Can I ask that of you Jack?’

Straightening up as though he was still in the army and being given orders from a commanding officer, Jack nodded and said, ‘of course you can’. He saw the relief in the Doctor’s gaze and smiled a little as he added, ‘I want that girl back here too, you know’.

The Doctor swallowed and nodded, patting Jack on the shoulder a couple of times before removing his hand. ‘Good man. Thank you.’

‘And if you find her first, I’m expecting you two to visit okay?’ He gave a stern look, showing he wouldn’t take no for an answer but there was no real need for it.

The Time Lord knew it was the least he could do if Jack helped him out and they managed to find Rose. ‘Yeah. Will do.’

Jack grinned but held in a chuckle at how the man before him could hardly keep still as though he was buzzing with a newfound energy. It was clear he was eager to get on with the task ahead of them and it was time for Jack to take his leave. ‘Good luck, Doctor.’

‘And you, Jack,’ he said, returning the smile.

The Captain pulled open the Tardis door before offering a salute to the Time Lord who rolled his eyes and gave him a playful one back. Jack did an about turn and left the ship which was soon disappearing from the Plass as the Doctor went off in search of Rose Tyler.

**********

Well, even if she couldn’t find the Doctor or the Tardis on this jump, it had at least been one of the more interesting planets that she’d ever been to visually. It was blue. The dirt was blue, the grass was blue, the leaves were blue, the sky was blue; there was a heck of a lot of blue. As bizarre as it was to feel like you were walking over frozen blueberries in this chilly world, which actually turned out to be gravel of the blue variety of course, it was all rather delightful.

Rose’s old English teacher would have a field day with this place. She’d be going on about how the colour blue was seen as sad and depressing and therefore so was the planet, whereas it actually made Rose feel rather the opposite. This was especially true when she walked up the hill and was able to see the trunks that held up all those blue leaves that were poking above the grassy peak from the other side. The trunks were what she would call a muddied rainbow colour. It was as though they were painted with all the colours of a paint palette that had been mixed together just a little, not enough to fully turn into that brown sludgy colour but just enough to cause a nice blend. The bark was incredibly soft when she ran a hand over it as she walked between the trees that now lined her path, a path that looked to lead to a cute, blue town.

She moseyed down the other side of the hill admiring the yellow and orange flowers that bloomed brightly in the occasional bit of blue shrubbery as well as the frequent patches of small pink flowers that were scattered throughout the short blue grass. Her head kept darting upwards to the trees and their overhanging branches, trying to catch sight of the birds that were producing quite a nice twittering melody. She had almost reached the other side of the tree line before she managed it. There on a bare branch, fluttering its blue feathers, was a bird. It wasn’t a surprise that she hadn’t spotted one before, their plumage was almost exactly the same shade as the leaves of the trees they were singing in. It was probably an evolutionary trait, a great defence against predators because they could blend in perfectly with the trees and, if it wasn’t for the twittering, you would be none the wiser that they were there.

The path led her to a wooden bridge that crossed over the top of a calmly flowing river. The water was green but was otherwise quite clear, clear enough for Rose to make out the numerous fish between the vibrant plant life. It would have made quite a relaxing spot to stop for a while and just take in the scenery but she had no time for such a thing, especially not with the daunting task ahead of her. The Doctor in his browns would be easy enough to make out but finding a blue box in a blue town, now that would be much harder to find.

The town was awash with lilac skinned people and Rose could feel a buzz of excitement in the air as she walked along street after street, continuously passing locals preparing for an event or celebration of some kind. They were hanging multicoloured bunting between the buildings of either side of the thin streets as well as lanterns and flags. Children ran past her, their long, deep purple hair flowing behind them as they raced between the adults and tried not to knock into them as they played their games. A few of the adults cried out warnings, especially those who were carrying large bowls or trays of food which they were taking to the centre of the town where tables were set around the large fountain that dominated the square that was thoroughly adorned with the bunting, flags and lanterns that she had seen elsewhere.

She had been right about it being a hard place to locate the Tardis in as she hadn’t spotted her. Nor had she seen the Doctor for that matter. At least it had been a calm jump for once. Such a thing was heavily needed after the visit to Gallifrey plus there were no bittersweet memories in seeing her past self with the Doctor again like the last jump either. Still, with seeing him last time, with being so close to finding the right him, it was rather disappointing that there had been no sign of the Time Lord. She really thought she was getting somewhere, but not this time. Not yet.

Rose checked the dimension cannon and saw that she only had a few minutes left before her time on this blue planet was up. She continued wandering and had just turned a corner onto a slightly quieter street when the person she was walking past spoke.

‘You’ve gone too far.’

Rose glanced over her shoulder and saw a man at the edge of a narrow alleyway between two of the houses. He was looking directly at her and there wasn’t anyone else nearby that she could see who he could've been talking to instead of her. That wasn’t the only thing that made her stop and turn to face him. He was an off-worlder too. His skin was not the lilac of the people from this blue town but a shade of brown and he had short black hair instead of the purple colour that the locals sported. He grinned at her, showing off a big smile and pearly white teeth. Rose simply blinked at him, perplexed as to what he meant by “too far”. Perhaps he thought she was lost and was looking for this party the town seemed to be preparing for. ‘What?’

His eyes twinkled, showing off his amusement at her confusion, whilst he continued to lean against the corner of the blue stoned building, his hands tucked in his trouser pockets and his feet crossed at the ankles. His whole demeanour screamed cool, calm and collected and it remanded Rose of someone else.

‘I said you’ve gone too far, babe.’ At her continued look of confusion, he smirked and raised his eyebrows as he added, ‘down the timelines?’

Now she was most definitely thinking of that someone else and that someone else was the Doctor. Who else would talk about timelines like that? Who else would know what she was doing; know that she had gone too far? Why he would know what she was doing when she hadn’t told him was a question for another time though because right now she needed confirmation of his identity. Rose gazed into his brown eyes. They weren’t exactly the same shade of brown as she had become accustomed to in the last body she knew but there was that same deepness, that same endlessness that came from a long, long life full of highs and lows and certainly from a life full of adventure.

‘Doctor,’ Rose whispered, his name leaving her mouth like a breath. It was so quiet that she wasn’t sure if she had spoken it or just thought it because she couldn’t hear herself over the blood rushing through her ears.

His grin brightened. ‘The one and only,’ he said, his voice full of joy.

All she could do was stare; her eyes raking down his differently clothed body. He was still wearing a brown coat, but it was shorter by a few inches and in leather. Beneath that he wore blue trousers and a vertically striped jumper that had a half zip which was fully open, exposing some of his chest and the necklaces he wore. She’d never seen him accessorise before, nothing past the watch that her first Doctor wore, but thought the look suited this him. ‘You’ve - you’ve regenerated,’ she pointed out because that seemed to be the only thing that she could focus on. Rose knew he could regenerate, had seen him regenerate and had loved him in both bodies that she had met. It wasn’t a question of whether she would love him in another body, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she would love him whatever he looked like because he was him, he was the Doctor, it was simply a shock to see that he had changed. She had hoped to reunite with her Doctor in pinstripes, had hoped that she could find him not too long after they had been separated, from his point of view anyway, so that he didn’t have to be alone. Clearly that plan had failed.

The Doctor pushed off from the wall, still smiling away. ‘That I have. So glad you noticed. This one’s fresh off the press so to speak. Still wearing it in. What do you think?’ He held his coat open and gave her a twirl but went on before she got the chance to answer his question. He suddenly became serious and he locked his gaze with hers as he urgently said, ‘no, never mind. We don’t have time for that. Just remember this for me Rose Tyler: you’re on Falthazoon-Six at the turn of the new century four thousand six hundred. Remember that for me yeah? Keep it locked in’. He tapped the side of his head with his index finger, his eyes darting down to something by her waist and then back up to her face. ‘And - and don’t forget to turn off your dimension cannon…’ The Doctor trailed off, squinting and holding his hand up to protect his eyes as Rose was enveloped in golden light. When he lowered his arm Rose was gone. ‘…next time,’ he said, finishing his sentence. ‘Never mind then.’ He sighed and absently fiddled with one of the rings he wore on his fingers.

‘Can I come out now?’

He brightened back up and turned back to the alleyway to see a woman poking her head around the doorway she had been hiding in. ‘Yeah, you can stop your lurking,’ he told her with a note of amusement in his tone. She grinned and stepped before him and he took her hands in his, giving her a playfully scolding look. ‘You, my girl, are a walking paradox machine.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, stop your whining. You told me all that last time.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘That was not a whine, that was a statement, and I know for a fact that the last time I told you, I said your meddling in my timeline was making things go a bit, “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey,” to be exact.’

‘And, remind me, was that a technical term again?’ She grinned up at him cheekily, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth.

The Doctor couldn’t help but smirk back. ‘Of course. Highly technical. Right, come on then.’ He dropped one of her hands and used the other to drag her along after him, out of the alleyway and back onto the street. His head darted to both the left and the right before he looked down at her and said, ‘do you remember where we parked?’

‘Near something blue I think.’

He gave her a glare that only made her laugh and he decided to set off to the left on a whim.

Her laughter died down and they were soon walking in comfortable silence. After a moment, she hugged his arm and quietly said, ‘thank you’.

The Doctor squeezed her hand, understanding what she was talking about immediately. ‘Oh, no need to thank me. I’m just completing the causal loop you created, simply following your orders.’

‘My orders?’ She scoffed.

‘Yes.’ He grinned at her and put on a posh voice as he announced, ‘orders from the Queen of Paradoxes’.

She giggled at his dramatic flair. ‘Says the Lord of Time.’

Chapter Text

They had rented out a bar that had an events room upstairs with floor to ceiling windows, two balconies and views over Cardiff Bay. She hadn’t wanted a fuss but, as Jackie Tyler said, “you only turn twenty-four once”. Rose kept insisting that she was only turning twenty-three. She didn’t count the year that she went missing as she hadn’t actually lived out a year of her life, instead she’d accidentally skipped it when she’d been travelling with the Doctor. Her mum had muttered something under her breath and then rolled her eyes before asking her who she wanted to invite; it was evidently still a sore point for the older Tyler woman.

In the end her family attended, as did Mickey and Jake, plus another couple of people that Rose had befriended at Torchwood One. The rift was being kind and allowed all members of Torchwood Three to join as well, though at least they weren’t far from the Hub if there was an emergency. Then a few people from her self defence classes and a couple more friends who she regularly trained with at the gym came to the party too. There were about thirty people in attendance overall which wasn’t bad for someone who hadn’t existed in that universe until about a year and a half ago and had spent quite a bit of that time either grieving the life she had lost and the man she loved or too engaged in her work to socialise.

There was a buffet, an open bar and an embarrassing speech by Pete that Jackie chimed in with which only added to Rose’s reddening cheeks. Of course, it wouldn’t be a party without music and there was a lot of dancing and even some karaoke as the night went on. All the guests thoroughly enjoyed themselves and most importantly so did Rose. It was rare for her to let her hair down these days or get the chance to dress up unless it was for a corporate Vitex event that she couldn't worm her way out of. The press always jumped on her whenever she was forced to attend one, constantly taking photographs and practically climbing over one another to ask her questions which were always pushing into the realms of her personal affairs. It wasn’t a life Rose was used to or one that she wanted and she was always incredibly relieved when she could make a swift exit after showing her face for a while.

Mickey and Jake crashed at Rose’s flat after the tipsy trio had left the party. Her parents usually stayed over at hers whenever they were visiting but Tony was teething and they thought it would be better to get a room at a nearby hotel instead to save Rose from having to put up with his crying throughout the night. She wouldn’t have minded it but Pete insisted saying that she certainly would mind it when she had a hangover. At least with this arrangement it would free up her spare room allowing both Mickey and Jake to stay over. The pair spent some time, after they’d arrived at the flat, fighting over who would have the spare bedroom and who would have to sleep on the sofa. Rose was exhausted, having worked late the previous night due to a thankfully diverted alien invasion, and decided it was best to leave them to it. She took her time in the bathroom letting her curled hair down, removing her makeup and going through her bedtime routine only to find them knelt around the coffee table in the midst of a thumb war when she walked past to go to her bedroom. There were grunts of acknowledgement as she bid them goodnight before shutting her door, slipping out of her dress, into her pjs and falling asleep near enough as soon as her head hit the pillow.

**********

Rose pulled the duvet over her face in an attempt to block out the blinding light streaming through her bedroom window. Evidently she had forgotten to close the curtains and was paying the price for that forgetfulness. She wasn’t the best at mornings anyway but with her heavy head from her slight hangover, she was struggling with such a thing even more so.

Going by the muffled sounds coming through her door, at least one of her houseguests was up. Rose groaned as she rolled over. Really she just wanted to hibernate in bed all day but that want was battling with the thought that she should probably get up and be a good host, especially after her lack of doing such a thing when they got to her flat in the early hours of the morning. Her decision was made for her, after she’d shut her eyes for another five minutes or so, when her neighbours decided to drill through the wall and into her flat. Well, that was what it sounded like to Rose anyway. The annoying, high pitched whirring and whining bored straight through her skull, forcing her hand and encouraging her weary body out of bed. Her head spinning a little as she sat up, she placed her aching feet on the rug and pushed off the mattress with a yawn which turned into a stretch that felt rather divine. Covering her mouth as another yawn escaped her, she opened her bedroom door to hear the familiar rumble of the late morning radio show that Owen liked to listen to when he was down in the infirmary conducting an autopsy or fixing up one of the other Torchwood members.

That was The Sound of the Wolf by Bad Girl, folks. It’s the number one single from her new album Second Chances.

The host's voice was far too chirpy for Rose’s ears at this point in her day so she tuned her out and let her eyes fall on the loser of the thumb war who was sitting on her sofa with his legs stretched out across the cushions. Jake’s eyes were glued to his mobile phone and he was wrapped up to his waist in a couple of blankets that either he or Mickey must have found. After taking a couple of shuffling steps into her living area, Jake finally noticed her presence and looked up from his mobile.

He grinned at her, all bright and cheery, and said, ‘oh, there’s the birthday girl! How’re you doing? Feeling your age yet?’

Rose wished she could tune him out too because of how awake he was and his currently annoying happiness. She didn’t though as she was trying to be a good host even through her morning grouchiness and he was smiling up at her far too expectantly, waiting for some sort of response. The part about being a good host was questionable, however, when all she managed was to mumble out a complaint of, ‘how are you so chipper?’ He laughed and Rose lightly shook her head at him as she walked behind the sofa in the direction of the kitchen area in her open plan flat where she planned on making herself a cup of tea. She might also make Jake one too in an attempt to get on the good host bandwagon. Plus maybe one for Mickey as well.

Jake swivelled around on the sofa so he could continue talking to her whilst she made the drinks. ‘I only had a couple,’ he answered with a shrug. ‘Never really like to have any more than that just in case something turns up. Now, I’m not saying that they couldn’t cope without me but…’

‘They couldn’t cope without you,’ Rose finished for him with a smirk as she stuck tea bags in three mugs.

‘Exactly!’ He agreed eagerly. ‘Got a lot of experience, me, with the Preachers and all and I was the first field agent when Pete opened Torchwood.’ He paused when there was the creaky sound of the floorboards outside of the spare bedroom and he looked over just in time to see Mickey pop his head around the corner.

‘Rose, I’m gonna take a shower, is that alright?’ Mickey caught her nod in reply and was about to make a move in the direction of the bathroom but Jake stopped him.

He jumped up from the sofa and announced, ‘hold on, I need a piss’.

Mickey rolled his eyes and decided to join Rose in the kitchen whilst he waited his turn. ‘You alright?’ He ventured as he leant against the counter beside her with his arms crossed. In lieu of a reply she slid one mug across the work surface towards him. He smiled at the gesture and picked it up. ‘Cheers.’ She clinked her mug with his and took a healthy swig as she leant against the counter next to him and let out a sigh. With a smirk at her predictable morning grumpiness before she’d had a cuppa, Mickey said, ‘better now?’

‘No,’ she replied with a groan. Rose had another gulp of her tea before tilting her head so it rested on Mickey’s shoulder. ‘My head hurts.’

He chuckled softly. ‘That’s probably the birthday Jagerbombs Claudia gave you, have some paracetamol and lie back down if you want.’

‘No paracetamol in this universe, Micks.’

Huffing as he rolled his eyes for the second time that morning, he said, ‘Yeah, well, you know what I mean and whilst you’re doing that I’ll shower and then I might go out and see if I can find us some breakfast.’

‘Pancakes?’ Rose asked, standing back upright and looking at him sweetly.

‘Now you’re just pushing your luck,’ Mickey said with a laugh.

It was a rather nice morning overall. Jake and Mickey playfully fought over the fact that Jake used the shower as well as the loo whilst he was in the bathroom and, after his eventual shower, Mickey did go out to find some breakfast that was a bit more than the cereal and toast that Rose could offer from what she’d got stocked in her kitchen cupboards. Whilst he was out, her parents turned up with baby Tony and they chatted about what happened at the party after they’d departed to the hotel so that her brother could get some sleep. Jackie had just started to try and set Mickey up with Rose’s gym friend Claudia when the man returned with breakfast. He’d managed to find a small café that did pancakes and brought more than enough for him, Rose and Jake so they shared them with the older Tyler’s too. They all enjoyed the food and a lot of fun laughing and joking about the party antics. Jake and Rose got the giggles at Mickey’s expense when he grew particularly red after Jackie brought up her idea of him asking Claudia out once they’d ran out of other stories to recall about that night.

It was the perfect breakfast for her final day in Pete’s world, not that Rose knew it at the time. She didn’t know that it would be her final time holding baby Tony and making him giggle whilst she pretended to fly aeroplanes, which were actually spoonful's of mashed banana, to his Fozzie Bear toy instead of him. She didn’t know that it would be the final time she’d see Mickey and Jake and their play fighting ways when they started to try and trip each other up as they walked down the corridor and away from the front door of her flat. She didn’t know that it would be the final time that she would call Pete “dad” when she hugged him goodbye nor know it would be the final time that she told her mum she loved her whilst wrapped up in her embrace. It was a day filled with finality for the life that she had made for herself because the next day she would return to her original universe. The next day she would return to the Doctor.

**********

Rose opened her eyes once the golden glow around her had dimmed. She tucked her long wafting strands of blonde hair behind her ears and took in a deep breath of that sea salty but plastic free air whilst looking out at a view she knew far too well. It felt like a déjà vu moment. She’d been through this before, turning up at Cardiff Bay in her home universe. She’d nearly met herself that time and had only just gotten away with it. It had been far too close of a call for Rose’s liking and yet the dimension cannon had thrown her back here again. Hopefully she had ended up in a different time on this jump though.

She stood at the far end of Roald Dahl Plass, next to the barriers that blocked people from falling in the sea or onto the decking that led to the Tourist Centre of the Hub. There were dark clouds hanging over the water which was rolling more fiercely with the breeze blowing quite a cool gust over the Bay. It looked like there was a storm oncoming and she hoped in her mind that it would wait half an hour for her to return before it broke.

What Rose didn’t expect was to get a mental reply to that thought. It wasn’t a reply in words, it was more in line with emotions, and currently two emotions that were not her own were being projected into her head. They were amusement and joy.

With a half smile, Rose turned on the spot, her eyes landing on that beautiful sight of the blue police box. As soon as she saw the Tardis, the Old Girl’s presence fell back into her mind, filling it completely in a way Rose hadn’t felt since being in Pete’s world. Even when she saw the Tardis near enough parked in the same place just a couple of jumps ago, the Old Girl did not return to her mind in the same way that she used to accommodate it. It was as though she had simply slipped into Rose’s head and gave her a quick hug before leaving her again, but now she was once more embracing her wholly in a way that made Rose realise just how bereft her mind had felt without her there. That half smile she wore broke out into a fully fledged grin and she embraced the Tardis back in her head receiving emotions of warmth and love in return. Rose was so caught up revelling in having the Old Girl back in her mind that she hadn’t noticed she’d been taking a few steps towards her. She stopped herself. She didn’t want a repeat of last time. The Old Girl seemed to question this choice so Rose tried to project her concerns which were soon quashed by the Tardis’ thorough reassurances. Well, she wasn’t about to start doubting the Tardis now.

With a beam on her face and a spring in her step, Rose ran. She ran across the entirety of the Plass until she reached the blue box parked next to the water tower. The Old Girl hummed excitedly and Rose could feel the emotions reverberating through her woodwork when she placed a hand on the door. Taking a deep breath, she pushed and was thankful for the sound of the latch clicking open as she no longer had a usable key. The door creaked in the same way it always did as it slowly swung back to reveal the sight of the console room.

Rose gasped. Her feet automatically guided her inside a little until the Tardis closed the door behind her with a soft click. She stopped her shuffling steps and basked in the new brightness and vastness to the space, her mouth gaping open a bit in surprise at the changes. The Old Girl hummed loudly and joyfully, sending what looked like golden ripples through the round lights that covered walls of the domed console room. They flickered on and off in a recurring pattern, the light dancing around the ship and illuminating the otherwise rather stark white decor with a warm glow which the Tardis emphasised even more so with her song.

She knew that the Old Girl could alter her interior. She recalled Sarah Jane saying that she preferred the look of the console room when she used to travel with the Doctor and Rose had experienced minor changes around the ship during her own stay on board. This, though, was nothing minor. She supposed the roundels in the walls were familiar and, even though it had altered, there was still the time rotor in the middle of the room surrounded by the controls. Everything else was just so different. Rose was used to coral struts and grating, used to exposed wires dangling precariously from above and wrapping around the walls and struts, used to tape patching up the jump seat and covering parts of the railing, used to the grunge look that shouldn’t have felt as homely as it did. Now the space was huge, white, pristine and filled with bridges and walkways that all led to round, metal doors that would take you further into the Tardis.

The roundels returned back to a steady white light and the Old Girl let out a questioning hum that pulled Rose out of her reverie.

She shook her head and walked across the bridge towards the console as she reassured the ship. ‘Yeah. I love it, Girl. You’re beautiful. Really outdone yourself this time.’

It sounded as though she purred in response and that only increased when Rose stroked a hand against the edge of the control panel.

Rose giggled at the Tardis’ preening and thought it rather reminded her of the Doctor. Speaking of the Time Lord, she’d not seen him yet. ‘Where is he?’ She asked the Old Girl. ‘Is he in here? Can you get him?’ It wasn’t all that likely that he was on the ship as it wasn’t often that they hung out in the Tardis when they were parked, they did that when they were floating around in the vortex, though there was a chance that he was still here if he was simply filling the Old Girl with rift energy.

She got the impression that the Tardis was asking her to wait and Rose huffed a bit at her answer. An amused hum bounced around the room but soon the Old Girl was filling her mind with such warmth that it dampened her impatience to see him. So she waited for the Doctor, her fingers trailing over the new controls of the panel opposite the door so she had something to do to ease her nerves about seeing him again.

Too enveloped in her perusal of the new Tardis console, Rose didn’t hear the key in the lock nor did she hear the minimal easing open of the door behind her so that there was just enough room for a skinny man to slip through without making it creak. He closed it behind him as quietly as he could before leaning back onto the white painted woodwork where he folded his arms and crossed one foot over the other in a pose of complete nonchalance. He smiled as he took in the sight of a young Rose Tyler in his console room for a moment but didn’t have the patience to draw it out any longer because his anticipation of her reaction was getting the better of him.

‘I was wondering when you’d turn up.’

Her intake of breath was sharp and her heart skipped a few beats at the sound of his voice. It was just as she remembered. That estuary accent. That slight smugness in his tone that told her he was trying not to smirk; probably pleased with himself about his sneaky entrance. She turned and there he was leaning casually against the Tardis doors as though this wasn’t a momentous occasion. Like the Old Girl, he was also different but still entirely the same. Rose didn’t really take in his new look, her eyes were stuck on his face as though if she looked away, or even blinked, then he would fade just like he had at Bad Wolf Bay. ‘Doctor,’ she breathed.

He beamed at the way his name passed her lips with such reverence before pushing himself off from the wooden panelling and taking a couple of steps towards her. ‘Rose Tyler. Come here.’ Opening up his arms, he didn’t have to wait long for Rose to join him on the bridge. She barrelled into him and he picked her up, a laugh bubbling out of his throat at her exuberance. She wrapped herself around him fiercely, her arms around his neck and her legs coming up to encircle his waist; or they would have if their positioning was right. He withdrew an arm from her back and grabbed at one of her thighs, using it to lift her body up a couple of inches so she could curl her legs around him more comfortably. He felt her ankles lock securely behind him in their new position and then the Doctor returned his arm to her back, his fingers stroking through her golden hair which was a bit longer than he remembered it being when he first met her. The soothing motion drew out a shuddering breath from her that tickled his neck where she’d tucked her face.

‘Doctor,’ she whispered against his skin, hardly believing that this was happening, that she was really here, that she was holding onto the Doctor as though her life depended on it.

His grip tightened a little in a reassuring gesture. ‘I’m here…you’re here…I’ve got you, Rose, I’ve got you,’ he told her softly.

She nodded and adjusted her arms a little, somehow managing to hold him closer too as she shifted her head, pressing her grinning face into his shoulder. ‘I missed you.’

He hummed and placed a kiss into her hair. ‘And I missed you,’ he replied just as quietly. The Doctor allowed her to take the comfort he knew she needed from his embrace for just a moment longer before he began to untangle her legs from his waist. ‘Come on,’ he said with a bit of a groan as he lowered her to the floor. ‘Down you get, you koala. Don’t use it all up on me, save it for someone who really needs it.’

His words made her speed up her otherwise reluctant withdrawal from his arms. Her hands still held onto him but now she looked up at him in confusion. ‘What do you mean?’

Raising his brows at Rose, who he knew was usually just as observant if not more so than him, he stepped out of her reach and gestured to himself. ‘Well, look at me.’

She did. She’d noticed the different clothing earlier. Now he wore a grey shade of chucks, a chequered brown and blue pair of trousers and a matching waistcoat that he did just the top button of. Beneath that he wore a white shirt, which he’d rolled up the sleeves of, and a grey tie. It was a look that was similar but yet so obviously different to the pinstripes she was used to. Now she was standing just before him, she could see the changes to his face too. His skin was more weathered. There were deeper creases on his forehead and between his brow but there were also more smile and laughter lines which she was glad about, having not wanted him to feel too much sadness in their, evidently longer than she’d hoped, time apart. His hair was somehow even bigger and spikier and he’d kept the sideburns but let the rest of his facial hair grow a little. Now he was sporting the short stubbly look that he’d had to put up with when he was recuperating at the estate after his kidnapping by the Drakkads. The Doctor had hated it at the time but she’d thought he suited it both then and now.

‘You look old-’ Rose started to reply before the Doctor cut her off.

‘Oi! Cheeky so and so.’

‘I hadn’t finished,’ she complained with a mixture of exasperation and amusement as they fell back into their teasing ways with ease. ‘I was saying old-er not just old and it’s not like you don’t still look - you know…’ She trailed off; shying away from actually saying what she was thinking and choosing to express those thoughts by simply waving a hand at him instead.

He raised an eyebrow and smirked a little wolfishly. ‘What? Devilishly handsome? Suave? Good looking? Just tell when I’ve hit the right one. Fetching? Striking? Spunky?’

‘Shut up,’ Rose laughed, automatically reaching out to hit him lightly on the chest in that playful way she always did.

Seeing her reaction coming, the Doctor managed to grab the offending arm and held it still. This drew him to notice the dimension cannon on her wrist which knew he had to get round to but was too caught up in the talk of synonyms to change the topic of conversation quite yet. ‘I really hope you’re just telling me to shut up and not saying that I’m spunky. I suppose by definition it does suit me down to a T but the word spunky?’ His brow creased as he tried it out, ‘spunky, spunky, spunky…’ He pulled a face as though he’d eaten a pear. ‘No, I don’t like it.’ The Doctor shook his head, his fingers absently drumming on her captured arm. This movement seemed to bring him back to what he was about to bring up before he had lost himself in a tangent. ‘Anyway, yes, glad you reminded me. You can stop the countdown on this thing now.’ He lightly tapped the leather strap and let a beaming Rose take her hand back to do just that. His face soured as he watched her turn off the automatic recall feature but he immediately brightened back up once she’d lowered her arm to her side and returned her gaze to him. ‘You’ve jumped a little too far along my timeline but not to worry, I can take you back to me about six months after I lost you.’

‘Really?’ She almost gasped. Her eyes were already twinkling brightly but somehow lit up even more at this plan. It wasn’t that she would ever complain about being with this older version of the Doctor because she really wouldn’t. He was the Doctor at the end of the day, the man who she’d travelled between universes to find, and she’d take whatever version of him that she could get. It was just that throughout the time she’d spent in Pete’s world, she’d been pining after one version of him, a version with a slightly younger face who wore pinstripes.

She could still very much remember the look on his face in that not-dream she’d had; how sad and tired he looked, how he’d clung to her younger self like her hug had meant everything. The Doctor in front of her didn’t look like that. His brown eyes gleamed and he smiled and laughed with ease in a way that made her believe he was truly happy. It made her happy too to see him so content as he was, to see him in such a completely different place both mentally and emotionally to the pinstriped Doctor she’d seen last. It wasn’t just his faux happiness either, that act he put on to make it seem as though he was alright when really he was anything but. His eyes said it all. Of course they still expressed the horrors he’d been through, the sharp pangs of loss and grief, but they were dampened now and not as raw. It was like he’d come to terms with his life, his lives even, and this was the real him. The unfiltered him. How long it had taken for the Time Lord to get to this point she didn’t know; this could be a Doctor who was from hundreds of years in the future which was something that added up when she took into account the physical differences that she could see between him and when he wore pinstripes. He’d told her that he aged slowly so what might have been about ten years worth of ageing for a human, going by his slightly more prominent lines and wrinkles, might be a few hundred years worth for a Time Lord.

She would have died a long time ago from his perspective if this was the case. Hopefully she managed to get old and grey. Hopefully she managed to give him her forever. Hopefully they weren’t torn apart and the Doctor wasn’t left alone once again. That was what Rose hated the most about this ordeal, that he was alone. She really hoped he wasn’t, hoped that he’d managed to find someone because he didn’t do well by himself. At least, if he had been alone, then it would have only been for about six months if this older Doctor did take her back. That was a mere pinprick of time for a Time Lord and she had the rest of her hopefully long life with him to make it up to him.

‘Mmhmm.’ He nodded, smiling gently at that look of hope in her eyes. If it were another occasion then he might have felt a bit jealous over Rose’s want to be with the younger him but not now. He would always want and need Rose Tyler but that other him needed her most of all. Even thinking about the hurt he’d gone through after he lost her to the other universe still tugged on his hearts. The Doctor tried to push those thoughts out of his mind, deciding to put on a playful front instead. He leant in a little, as though telling her a secret, as he said, ‘I can take you back because this place, wellllll, it might just be a time machine’.

Trying to hide a smile at his antics as well as not give away just how much she was loving that they fell so easily into the banter that they once had, she gasped in fake surprise. Rose even went as far as to raise a hand to cover her mouth just to add a bit more drama to her reaction. ‘No?’

His eyes glimmered with mirth, growing wide whilst he nodded adamantly at her. ‘Oh yeah. I know. It’s a shocker. But just think about it: anywhere, anywhen. Forwards, backwards and all the bits in between. We could, I don’t know, go to the year five billion and watch the end of the world…’ He cocked his eyebrow, grinning at the soft look that grew on Rose’s face as she too remembered their first date.

‘And then go and visit a very Welsh looking Naples and meet Charles Dickens?’ She countered with a cheeky smirk.

He decided not to take the bait with the dig at his driving and instead continued along this walk down memory lane. ‘As long as you’ve got room for chips in between.’

‘I’ve always got room for chips in between.’

‘You’re buying.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘You always were such a cheap date.’

‘Yeah but you-’ The Doctor cut himself off, catching himself just in time before those words slipped from his lips. They weren’t his to say, not at this point in time, but she would hear them soon. He easily covered it up by steaming into a long ramble about the first thing he thought of which was luckily still relevant to the conversation they’d just been having. ‘Oh, that’s a point, never did get round to taking you to Naples did I? Make sure you tell him to take you to Naples,’ he waggled a finger at her before darting to the console and performing a dance around it as he set up the ship so he could take Rose to where she needed to be, all the while continuing on with his enthusiastic babble. ‘You’ll love Naples. Home to the margherita pizza. Could pop back to the nineteenth century and eat one of the first if you like. Then we could go island hopping and see Capri and Ischia and Procida…oh yes! The sunken city of Baia! It was the Las Vegas of its time back before it started to sink. Volcanic activity. Well, Vesuvius is there so that speaks for itself. But now you can go scuba diving in the ruins…although I say ruins but some of it is rather well preserved, astonishingly so…’

Rose watched him with delight, taking in his movements and his rambling as though she was trying to memorise the moment. There was something troubling her though, as she walked across the bridge towards the controls, something that wouldn’t get out of her mind. ‘But what about you?’ She asked as she absently picked at her nails, cutting in when he paused for breath.

He quickly glanced up at her from the monitor, his eyebrow raised in question. ‘What about me?’

‘This you,’ she emphasised, stopping by the side of the console opposite him and wafting her hand in his direction. ‘I mean…you’re talking about all this stuff we’re gonna do but you’re taking me back to you in the past.’

His eyes lit up in realisation. ‘Oh! Don’t worry about me. I’ve already lived it all. Hold on,’ he added as he laid a hand on the dematerialisation lever. The Doctor watched as Rose did just that and then he pulled the lever. The pair grinned at each other across the console whilst the ship jolted and rocked, groaning and whirring away as she took them to their destination. The trip didn’t take long and, once they’d landed, the Time Lord was soon bounding around the controls to be by Rose’s side as he explained the situation they found themselves in. ‘You see, by ending up here you’ve created a little bit of a paradox.’ Her eyes grew wide and he immediately attempted to quash that panic, instantly understanding where her fears were coming from. ‘No, no, no. It’s nothing to worry about, not Reaper inducing or anything of the like as long as we complete it correctly. It’s more of a causal loop if you will. From my perspective, I have already reunited with you and you told me the story of how there was a me in the future, aka this me,’ he said, pointing his thumbs at his chest. ‘And that me brought you back in time to the younger me. So, because you told me about this…’ He waved his arms about to indicate that he was referring to the entire scenario. ‘...I retained that information and that’s the reason why I’m here right now, ready to pick you up and take you back in time and thus complete the loop!’ He grinned as he finished off his ever enthusiastic explanation but that happiness faded when he noticed Rose looking back at him as though she hadn’t grasped what he was saying. The Doctor nodded to himself and started to try again to get her to understand. ‘I feel like I lost you. Picture this: time isn’t in a straight line.’ He held up his hands as though he was holding a ball as he continued, saying, ‘it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff and-’

She smirked at his description and placed her hands on his, lowering them and inadvertently causing him to halt his speech in the process as he looked between her face and their hands in question. ‘It’s alright, Doctor, I got you. Just had to get my head around it. My brain isn’t used to processing your waffle anymore.’ The Time Lord started to mumble about how he didn’t waffle but Rose simply grinned at him and carried on with a shrug as she said, ‘I’m a bit out of practice, but I’ll get there’.

He stopped grumbling at that, a gentle smile growing on his lips as he held her hands and rubbed his thumbs over the back of them. ‘Yes. Yes you will,’ he promised.

She smiled back at him and they continued to simply gaze at each other for a minute with Rose taking a moment to truly appreciate that she was standing face to face with the Doctor once more. Plus, unlike the last time she saw him on that beach, she was able to touch him and wasn’t that just the best feeling in the world, the universe even? Rose wanted to wrap her arms around him once more but held back as she was reminded that he had told her to “save it for someone who really needs it”. ‘So, are you out there?’ She asked, tilting her head towards the door. He nodded but before he could say anything Rose added, ‘do I - do I stay with you?’ She swallowed and looked at him nervously, her eyes flitting between his in the hope of reading the answer in them.

The Doctor knew what she was really asking but couldn’t give her an answer even if he wanted to, which, of course, he very much did. He wanted to wipe that tentative look from her face and assure her of the future, of their future together, but all he managed was a jokey reprimand about time travel. ‘Now that would be abusing my privilege of being a traveller in time,’ he told her, dropping her hands and wagging his finger at her once more to aid the playfully stern look he was giving her. ‘And don’t get me started on the fact you’re asking me to tell you about your personal timeline. You know better than that, Tyler.’

Instead of brightening her demeanour as he had hoped, Rose simply nodded in reluctant acceptance. ‘Yeah, I know. I just…’ She waved a hand about and then let it flop back to her side, not finding the words she was after but she didn’t have to.

‘I know,’ he said softly. He gently cupped her cheeks, bringing her gaze back to his own. ‘Rose, this is your story to live, not my story to tell. I can tell you one thing though.’ A smile spread across his face as he said, ‘you, Rose Tyler, are going to have a fantastic life’.

The big grin combined with her first Doctor’s words could only ever result in one thing. She beamed at him, the hope of forever running rampant once more in her heart. ‘Yeah?’

He winked at her, his smile growing brighter when her grin morphed into her tongue touched one. The Time Lord impulsively kissed her forehead because as much as he wanted to, especially so after she grinned at him in that way, he knew that a proper kiss was off the books. He was meant to be returning her for a reunion with past him after all, not snogging her like he was the correct version of him she was reuniting with. Removing his hands from a giggling Rose’s face, he rested them on her shoulders as he said, ‘now, there’s a man out there who’s been looking for you. Go and surprise him’.

Still smiling away, she nodded at him. ‘Yeah, I just think I might.’ This time she no longer held back. Rose wrapped her arms around his waist and he returned the embrace just as enthusiastically. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered to his chest.

After placing a kiss into her hair, he pulled back. ‘I’ll see you later, Rose Tyler.’

‘Not if I see you first.’

He chuckled lightly and watched her walk along the bridge to the door. It was just as she pulled it open when he called out, ‘Rose’.

‘Yeah?’ She asked, glancing back at him immediately.

He simply beamed at her and she beamed back before slipping out of the Tardis.

Chapter Text

It was incredibly disconcerting to hear the Tardis wheezing out of existence once she’d walked about ten feet from the ship. Rose looked back and watched her dematerialise with a growing feeling of anxiety bubbling within because it simply felt wrong to not be inside the walls of that little blue box being whisked off to somewhere in any time or space. Now she was just out on some London street going by the passing taxi, the sirens coming from a few roads away and the bustling crowds of people pushing past her as they made their way to work. In a way it felt as though she had been abandoned. Her home had been right there and she had walked away. Not without reason though. The Doctor had promised to take her back to his pinstriped self and so here she was, surrounded by many and yet still so thoroughly alone, wondering how she was meant to find him once more. Rose regretted not asking for some sort of direction or a place to head towards and she was chastising herself about that when the groans of the Old Girl returned. She whipped around towards the sound that was emanating from the thin, deserted street that led out to the busy one she was on. Pushing her hair out of her eyes as it blew about wildly with the ship’s close proximity, Rose’s face lit up and she waited with bated breath whilst the Tardis materialised in the middle of the road, just before the junction. It was barely a second later before the door creaked open and out popped the Doctor.

‘Sorry, only me again.’ The Time Lord in his chequered brown suit, who was now also sporting a long, blue coat, looked a little sheepish as he apologised for getting her hopes up that it was his younger self. He took a couple of steps forwards, letting the door swing shut behind him before he started to explain himself. ‘It seems erm - well…’ He tugged at his ear, the tip of which was becoming tinged with pink, and then raised his hands up in a placating manner. ‘Now, don’t laugh but I er - I may have gotten the date wrong.’ He watched as Rose’s eyebrows went up and quickly added on, ‘only by a smidge. It’s just a teensy little bit wrong because I was only a day out. That’s not too bad when you think about it’. The Doctor paused, awaiting a response from Rose but none came. She simply stared at him looking as though she was unimpressed with the entire situation. ‘Could’ve been a lot worse,’ he suggested whilst scratching the back of his head, trying to dig himself out of this ultimately very minor and incredibly reasonable mistake that anyone could have made. ‘I mean, for me, that was pretty good. Just a day out…and what’s in a day really?’

The cackle that erupted from Rose startled him, well, almost startled him because to be startled by such a thing would be silly, especially for a Time Lord. With wide eyes, he watched as she laughed wholeheartedly, finally releasing her evidently well hidden, on this occasion, amusement with his driving ability. He caught her eyes glancing up at his dumbstruck face and that only made her laughter worse. ‘Hey, I said no laughing,’ he complained with a whine, not appreciating that the situation was apparently incredibly funny to her. As much as he didn’t love that the reason for her humour was his ever so minor incompetence, he would always love the sight of Rose Tyler giggling. The sound filled his hearts and gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling even now.

She managed to catch herself a little and eased back upright from her slightly leant back position. ‘I’m not laughing,’ she laughed whilst attempting to quash her remaining giggles.

His eyebrows rose as he gave her an unimpressed look of his own. ‘Really? That is the definition of laughing,’ he said, wafting his hand in the direction of her body that was still shuddering with her barely suppressed amusement. ‘I bet if you searched for an example on the internet, the top hit would be a little sound clip of your cackles.’

Rose, still smiling brightly and giggling softly, shook her head at him. ‘Shut up.’

‘It would,’ he insisted, his voice going all high as a grin started to grow on his face.

‘No, it wouldn’t.’ A smirk played on her lips as she began to slowly walk towards him.

‘Would.’

‘Wouldn’t.’

‘Would.’

‘Would-n’t.’

The pair were now toe to toe. Rose was glaring up at him with narrowed eyes whilst the Doctor gazed down at her with a dark, menacing scowl. It was a look that never worked on her, but he had to do something to best her in this battle of words. ‘Don’t test me, Tyler,’ he near enough growled. The entirety of his intimidating façade was depleted instantaneously when his eyes lit up with a newfound realisation. His voice was full of joviality as he exclaimed, ‘oooh! That’s fun to say! Test me Tyler. Test me Tyler. Test me Tyler.’ The repetition of this new phrase ended when he found Rose wrapping her arms around him. His mouth was slightly agape from where the words had dried up on his tongue and he stood awkwardly still for a moment before reciprocating. ‘Erm, not the expected outcome,’ he mumbled. ‘Not that I would ever complain, but what’s this for?’

Leaning back into his arms so she could look up at his face, she offered him a soft smile. In all honesty, she wasn’t entirely sure how to put it into words, especially not without sounding mad. Well, any madder, after her giggles from earlier. It wasn’t even that funny. He had only gotten the date wrong by a day which, although she wouldn’t admit it to him, was actually pretty good driving. For him anyway. It was just that she hadn’t experienced such a thing for so long, hadn’t had to listen to his murmured apologies or grumpy admittance that they hadn’t landed at their expected destination. She hadn’t had the opportunity to tease him about such a thing either. Rose had dreamt about being with him, being back in the Tardis and going off on adventures and now it was suddenly happening. She was actually here after so long of wanting this to be her reality and it felt easy. It felt like she was slipping back into it, like they hadn’t been apart. It was all a bit overwhelming really.

She shook her head, gazing up at him a little wistfully. ‘It’s just…all of this. You and the Tardis and - and just everything. I’m actually here…with you…’

‘Future me,’ he corrected as much for her as for himself because, with the affectionate look she was giving him, it was getting harder for him to make that distinction and recognise that she was a past Rose, from his perspective, and one who still needed to be returned to his past self.

‘Yeah, future you, whatever,’ Rose brushed off with a flick of her wrist before placing that hand on his chest in between his hearts. ‘But you’re still you.’

They thudded along under her palm, her words making them speed up just a little before settling once more. It meant a lot whenever Rose said something along those lines. It always reminded him that her love spanned through his regenerations, that she accepted and loved each body, each personality and new quirk. Obviously this regeneration would be an easier one to accept, if she knew he had changed at all, but he was still different even if the outside of him appeared to be pretty similar. But even when he did completely change his face, she simply saw and accepted and loved him as the Doctor and that was that. He didn’t know how he’d gotten so lucky.

‘I’m still me,’ he confirmed quietly, his voice full of reverence.

She gazed at him for a moment, the giddiness of earlier being replaced with a thickness in her throat and a warm glossiness that was beginning to cover her eyes. They were happy tears of course. She had never felt so overwhelmed with her emotions, hadn’t really expected to either. Well, that was a bit of a lie, Rose knew she’d be somewhat of a mess but that would be once the shock and disbelief had worn off. They were seemingly starting to if the tears that were threatening to fall were of any evidence. Pulling out of his arms, she took a step back and looked at anywhere but him, sniffing a little as she tried to keep her emotions in check. He didn’t need to see this. She could do this later once she was back with his pinstriped self; though hopefully the crying wouldn’t come until she could have a private moment to herself so he didn’t have to be subjected to her tears either.

‘Are you okay?’

The gentleness in his voice almost broke her, especially when combined with his fingers tenderly wrapping around her elbow. Taking a leaf out of his book, she steeled herself and attempted to ignore her emotions. Rose started to walk past him to the Tardis, patting him on the arm as she went by, saying, ‘right then, mister. Time to get me back in that box. And try to get the date right this time’. With her fingers around the door handle, she turned back to him with a smirk that she now felt confident enough to wear having pushed down her deeper feelings. She caught the way he looked at her apprehensively, his eyes narrowing minutely as he studied her briefly before accepting the fact that she clearly didn’t want to push the matter. Then he nodded and Rose turned back to the door. She had just pushed it open when he spoke.

‘Yeah, about that…’

It delighted her that she could still recognise his tells simply through the intonations in his voice. It meant that she didn’t need to turn around to know he would be rubbing his hand over the back of his head and neck, but she did so anyway, raising an eyebrow in suspicion as to where that sentence of his was going.

‘Erm, well, it wasn’t entirely my fault, the - the getting the date wrong thing. You see, the scanners picked up some alien activity. Not that I noticed until she started bleeping at me after I’d dropped you off,’ he explained with a wave of his hand at the Tardis. ‘And that’s when I saw the date. I think the Old Girl decided she wanted me to deal with this whilst I’m in the area so she took us here a day early. I would have preferred to drop you off first but that apparently wasn’t an option and now I can’t take you anywhere until this is sorted seeing as we’re now technically part of events.’ The Doctor shrugged, stuck his hands in his pockets and offered Rose a sheepish smile which broadened into a full one when a grin grew on her lips.

Alien activity? She couldn’t help but get excited at the prospect because now she truly did feel like she was back. ‘What sort of alien activity?’ As soon as the words left her lips, a fireball erupted into the sky. It must have been coming from a few streets away and she gasped at the unexpected sight.

The Doctor spun around, his entire body tensing as he watched the flames dissipate in the air leaving only a trail of black smoke behind. His jaw was clamped tightly and he took a slightly shuddery breath as he tried to ease himself out of his fears. He put on his best light voice and quipped, ‘that sort of alien activity, if I had to hazard a guess’.

‘Well, it’s lucky we’re here then.’

He turned to Rose, who had just come to stand by his side, with wide, disbelieving eyes. ‘What? No, no, no, no.’ Taking her by the shoulders, he started to move her back to the Old Girl. ‘It’s lucky I’m here, not you. I’ll deal with this and you can wait in the Tardis. I won’t be long.’

She pulled up sharp, refusing to be moved any further. ‘What? You can’t just expect me to sit and wait around for you whilst you’re out there having all the fun.’

The Doctor eyed her sternly. ‘This isn’t fun, Rose. This is dangerous and this is me keeping you safe.’

Raising her eyebrows and crossing her arms, thoroughly unimpressed with him making decisions on her safety for her, she said, ‘yeah, you really are you. You haven’t changed a bit. It’s not like I’m out of practice, I became a field agent with Torchwood but you’re just shoving me out of harm's way like I’d be slowing you down.’

‘Rose,’ he sighed, but didn’t say anymore as he watched her eyes flash dangerously.

‘This is what we do, yeah? This is what we do together. As a team. We go out there and we run into trouble or trouble finds us and we deal with it. Together.’

‘Yes, we do,’ he stressed, wanting her to realise that this was just a one time thing, or mainly just a one time thing anyway. ‘But this one is different. It’s dangerous-’

She snorted, cutting him off. ‘Of course it’s dangerous, but that’s never stopped us before and you’re not going to stop me now.’ Rose made sure of that by swiftly moving out of his reach and practically power walking into the street where the general public were mostly hurrying away from the direction that the fireball originated from. The same direction that Rose was heading in now.

He groaned and watched her get lost in a sea of panicky individuals. Oh, this was not good, not good, not good, not good at all. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why did she never listen to him? He couldn’t even explain it to her, if she’d let him, why he was so insistent on her staying behind in the Tardis. The timelines were right there with the strongest of them all converging on the reunion between Rose and his pinstriped self. That event was so bright in his mind's eye that it was almost a fixed point. But before that there were several paths that Rose’s timeline could take and now, with her stubbornly deciding on checking out this alien activity, they were heading towards some of the least desirable ones. They would still lead to the reunion, well, unless something extremely terrible happened which he was absolutely adamant that he would prevent, but she was much more likely to get hurt in the process. The Doctor took a deep breath. He could do this. He could keep Rose Tyler safe. He could protect her from whatever they were about to face. With those words running through his mind, he took off after her, pushing past and winding through the crowds until he was by her side, matching her quick stride.

Rose knew he was beside her but didn’t speak until they were walking down the next road over as she let her annoyance with him settle. ‘So, you said I told you about meeting this you and I assume I told you about this too. What are we facing?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted quietly.

‘You don’t know?’ Her head shot towards him in disbelief.

He nodded silently, trying to bring up some sort of recollection of the event but coming up blank. ‘I either can’t remember or I blocked out the memory for whatever reason.’

‘Well, fat lot of good you are.’

The Doctor glanced at Rose, noticing the smirk that was playing on her lips. Then her eyes caught his and he saw that teasing glimmer shining brightly within her hazel hues. Smiles appeared on their faces after that, their disagreement being left behind them. Those smiles only grew when the Time Lord held out his right hand and wiggled his fingers invitingly. Rose entwined them perfectly and the pair rushed across the road and down a further street that would lead them to a large park, seemingly the location of the smoke.

Before they were halfway down that street, however, they were interrupted by a mobile phone ringing. The Doctor sighed, slowing their jog to a walk as he reached into his trouser pocket with his free hand to fish it out. It was an iPhone 15, the latest model in what was now his linear time on Earth. He barely glanced at the caller identification before putting it to his ear and answering with an annoyed sounding, ‘what?’ Rose was already watching him with intrigue but now she was even more curious as to whom he could be talking to. This curiosity only increased, and morphed into amusement too, when his next words were, ‘well, don’t use that tone with me, Earthgirl. What do you want?’ She couldn’t hear the reply because he probably had the speaker on its lowest setting, what with his superior hearing, but he was soon throwing a sarcastic remark to the caller. ‘Oh, so now you decide to start noticing aliens, do you?’ There was a slight pause before he next spoke, backing down a bit from his previous reply. ‘Yes. Yeah, you’re right, sorry. But I can’t do anything about it. I’m busy.’ He glanced over at Rose, who gave him a small and slightly guilty grin, before speaking into the phone again. ‘Of course I’m not going to leave you. You’ll just have to hang tight and I’ll be there in a few minutes from your point of view…probably.’ He listened further before firing off an exasperated remark of, ‘well, duck if they’re shooting at you and don’t draw attention to yourselves’. They were nearing the park now and, upon noticing this, the Doctor said, ‘I’m going to have to leave you to it. We've got our own alien problem to deal with’. There was a very small pause before he said, ‘yes, “we”. I’m er…’ He trailed off, his eyes quickly darting to Rose and back to the park where something large and metal was smouldering further within. ‘It’s today,’ he said quietly, ‘just tell her that, she’ll know what it means. See you soon.’ With that he ended the call and pocketed the phone. He eyed Rose’s still curious gaze and softly said, ‘there’s no point in asking, I can’t tell you a single thing’.

Rose accepted that with no qualms and smiled at him, instead letting out the statement of, ‘you’ve got a phone’. The thought of him having a phone highly intrigued her and in a weird way it made him seem more human. It also made her happy. To have a phone meant that he had someone or perhaps multiple people out there who were a part of his life. He wasn’t alone and that thought warmed her and eased her remaining worry about leaving this him to go back to his pinstriped self.

‘I knew I called you Holmes for a reason, ever the observant one you are.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Shut up. I just mean that you didn’t used to have a mobile phone.’

He pulled them to a stop at the edge of the pavement opposite the park gates. Turning to her, the Doctor raised his brow, giving her a look as though she’d said something completely ridiculous. ‘Big, blue police telephone box that is extremely mobile throughout all of time and space?’

A huff of laughter escaped her and she nudged his shoulder with her own. ‘You know what I mean.’ Then she sobered a little and added, ‘I’m glad you have people that you need a phone for’.

It was easy to see the truth behind that statement and he gave her a soft smile and squeezed her hand. The sight of a fire engine whizzing by and pulling up a little further down the road brought them back to reality. He looked between the park and back to Rose. ‘Are you ready, Torchwood Agent Tyler?’

‘More than.’

‘Allons-y.’

The pair ran hand in hand across the road and through the park gates, heading towards the smouldering mound. They weren’t the only ones. They went past another group of fire-fighters who were unwinding the fire hose from their truck, beginning to trail it towards the smoking object. One of them shouted out a warning to the Doctor and Rose, telling them to stay back, but they didn’t listen. There was an adventure to be had. Glancing at one another with matching smiles on their faces, they continued to run forwards. It was towards the danger that the Doctor knew was coming but he pushed that thought to the side. Instead he focused on that buzz of excitement coursing through his veins and the look of joy on Rose’s face at the fact that she was back with him and they were back doing what they did best: being The Stuff of Legends.

They slowed on their winding path between the leafy shrubs and the occasional tree, plus the daffodils that surrounded their trunks, when they reached the beginning of a trail of roughly dug up turf. It led the rest of the way to the crater in the damp grass where the large, metal lump now resided after having scraped its way across the field before coming to rest at the edge of a grove of ancient oak trees. Some of the leaves had been vaporised in the fiery blast whilst others were still being claimed by the flames as they worked their way from leaf to leaf and branch to branch, eating and growing ever stronger the longer the flames were allowed to carry on.

‘Is it some kind of meteorite?’ Rose asked as she stared at the grey, elephant sized lump that was still thirty or so feet away. Smoke was wafting in the slight breeze from the evidently still hot metal surface, joining in with the plumes from the lightly burning trees.

The Doctor hummed, letting go of her hand to crouch down and study the indentations in the wet soil. ‘Could be, but I think there must be a little more to it if the Tardis wants us involved.’ He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and began scanning the ground.

Rose watched him, entranced by his performance after having not seen such a thing for so long. ‘Nice screwdriver,’ she said once he’d stood back up and began a slow walk alongside the torn up turf, still scanning away as he did so.

‘Thank you. Might’ve updated the software and added a few more inputs but it’s basically the same underneath the casing.’

‘Like regeneration then.’

‘Hmm,’ he confirmed with a nod, the sonic’s buzzing fading away as he brought it up to his eyes to take a look at the results. His tone was one of surprise as he continued, saying, ‘I’ve never thought of it like that’.

‘That’s not like you, not thinking about something,’ Rose commented as she came to a stop by his side where he was intently studying the sonic’s readings. ‘Go on then,’ she encouraged with a light nudge of his shoulder, ‘anything interesting?’

He lowered the screwdriver and turned to her, his face serious as he explained his findings. ‘A meteorite, no matter what it’s made of, is going to burn in the atmosphere, explode even, spreading debris all over the place. Bits of it would also break off during impact but there isn’t anything bar the faintest traces of space dust in that dirt.’

‘So, not a meteorite then.’ She said, fiddling with her earring as she thought. Then her hand fell away from her ear in her excitement to tell the Time Lord the idea she’d just come up with. ‘Was it planted?’

The Doctor frowned, returning his gaze from the “meteorite” to Rose. ‘Planted?’

‘A fake.’ She shrugged and then waved her hand from the crater and across the torn up ground as she said, ‘like does the impact sight look reasonable to you or does it look a bit staged?’

He followed her movements and then glanced back at her with an impressed look. ‘Someone’s got their little investigator hat on today.’

A sly smile tugged on her lips. ‘Shame you didn’t bring yours.’

The Doctor, of course, took that as a challenge. Arching his brow he said, ‘oh, you want some investigating, do you? I’ll show you investigating, Rose Tyler’. With a gleam in his eye he whirled around, his long, blue coat flaring out behind him. He was all hands, quick movements and even quicker words as he began his investigation. ‘So, we definitely know it didn’t originate from Earth, going by the particles I’ve picked up in the soil. It landed here…’ The Doctor gestured to the beginning of the indentations in the grass, his hand roaming further along these marks until he could point at the mysterious object whilst he went on with his speech. ‘...and ploughed its way through the grass about erm - about thirty seven point four feet before coming to a stop over there. And then boom! Big fireball! Or…’ he trailed off, extending the word as he lost himself in thought because something wasn’t quite adding up. His eyes grew wide as he came to a realisation. ‘Or, or, or it was already here! I didn’t hear the impact and an object of ohhhh - er with a circumference of about twenty five point two one feet, oh I wouldn’t have missed that! Did you hear anything? No, well, if I hadn’t then you certainly wouldn’t have.’ Rose had barely opened her mouth to reply before he came up with the answer himself, instead she ended up rolling her eyes at him and his superior biology and how he still so easily insulted the human race, intentionally or not. ‘That means it was here before we were. Not too long mind, no more than an hour or two by the fresh soil it’s dug up, but it had already crashed before we arrived. And that, that, is why this great, big, hunk of space rock doesn’t make sense.’ In a flurry of blue coat tails, he spun around and eyed Rose a little manically as he asked, ‘do you know why this great, big, hunk of space rock doesn’t make sense?’

She smirked at him; he was practically bursting with his need to tell her the answer. It was adorable in her opinion and Rose loved him when he was like this. Well, she loved him anyway, but there was always something so captivating and joyous about him when he was figuring something out. Boy had she missed this, missed him, and she couldn’t help but be eager to participate when he asked her to. ‘Why doesn’t the great, big, hunk of space rock make sense, Doctor?’

He beamed. ‘Excellent question! Because great, big, hunks of space rock don’t combust, that’s why!’ The Time Lord began walking backwards towards the massive rock, continuing on with his explanation as he did so. ‘Oh, it’ll be burning up a storm as it works its way through the mesosphere and the stratosphere and when it gets into the troposphere it’ll be a blinding ball of light. Then it’ll crash land and gradually put itself out. That begs the question as to how this supposed rock managed to reignite so spectacularly.’ After performing an about turn, the Doctor ran the rest of the way and halted by the crater’s edge. ‘I bet this is something much more complex,’ he announced loudly enough for Rose to hear as he removed his screwdriver from his pocket and started to perform another scan.

Rose had just begun to follow the Doctor when there was a voice calling out to her that made her stop and turn to face the speaker.

‘I’d ask you not to go any closer, Miss,’ requested an older fire-fighter dressed in his protective golden/brown suit and helmet. He was with two others, both adorned the same. They were a woman and a man and they were dragging the fire hose all the way over from the truck so they could put out the smouldering rock and gently burning trees. He continued walking closer to Rose whilst the others moved towards their goal.

‘Sir! Step away from the rock,’ called out the female, but it was to no avail, the Doctor was far too distracted by the mystery to take notice until she called out again. ‘Sir!’

‘What?’ He shot back, spinning around to see who wanted his attention and near enough performing a double take at the three fire-fighters that neither he nor Rose had noticed approaching, being too wrapped up in their own bubble and the puzzle of the rock. ‘What?’ The Doctor repeated, glancing between the fire hose and the woman, his eyes growing wide. ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Shaking his head, he dashed over to the woman, rooting around in his inner coat pocket as he did so. ‘You can’t! I’m studying it. I need it exactly as it is, not all damp and wet. You could wash away evidence.’ He finally pulled the psychic paper free of his pocket and flapped open the leather wallet to show it to her. ‘See? I’m a Fellow at the Royal Astronomical Society’. He was actually one of the founding members from all the way back in 1820 but he didn’t feel that was too prevalent to point out, especially when the fire-fighter was looking as puzzled as she was as she studied his psychic paper. He wondered if the paper was getting confused again, as it was so want to do after his last body, and pulled it back so he could take a look. There was nothing obvious on the identification card that the psychic paper had produced. It simply stated that his name was John Tyler and beside that, as well as a few other details, was a picture of him, all young faced in his tweed and a bow tie. That had been…a thing. It was still strange, even after all this time, how much his tastes altered between regeneration. He still didn’t mind a bit of fish custard every so often but the thought of wearing tweed now practically made him shudder. Before his body physically convulsed, the source of the woman’s confusion struck him. The Doctor hastily stashed the paper back in his pocket as he muttered his excuses. ‘Old picture,’ he told her to explain the differences in his appearance. ‘I was a much younger man back then and that lighting really didn’t do anything for my chin.’ She still looked sceptical and he would have continued babbling on but he was interrupted by the whooshing of water. The Time Lord spun around, letting out an indignant cry at the fire-fighter with the hose that he had been distracted from; it might not have been an underhand tactic by the crew but it certainly felt like one. ‘No! Stop!’ He shouted, running towards the young man who was spraying the trees to halt the flames. The water dripped down like a shower onto the rock which began to turn a darker shade of grey as the water washed over it. Just before the Doctor could reach him, the fire-fighter aimed the hose at the metal rock and fired.

Crack.

It was as loud as a gunshot. As though the water pressure was too strong for it, cracks started to appear and shoot across the dull, grey surface in unnatural looking patterns. That cracking sound altered into a more metallic scraping and grating noise that sent shivers down everyone’s spines. The group stared and watched as the rock began to shudder and shift, even without the influence of the water pressure with the fire-fighter having since turned off the hose at the water’s unexpected outcome. Instead of collapsing to the ground, the newly formed metal shards only got taller. It was as though it was unfolding and piecing itself back together again. Metal chunks that looked like plated armour shifted around and bolted together to form what could be none other than a head or a helmet. Then more metal pieces were added to form a neck and shoulders, shortly followed by a chest and arms.

The closest thing that Rose could identify it with were the Cybermen but this grey robot being built before her very eyes would easily tower over a Cyberman. It was only half formed at this point too. The metal rock was shrinking with every additional piece that was being added to the robot to create the waist downwards. It was intimidating not only in stature but in its shape with all its sharp angles that looked as though they could easily cut you if you strayed too close.

Finally their ears were spared of the piercing, metallic grating sound as the robot towered before them in all its fully formed, fifteen foot glory. After that racket, the world around them seemed silent but that didn’t last for long. They all stared at the robot who twisted its head around completing a three hundred and sixty degree turn as it scanned them and the area. This movement was apparently the final straw for the older fire-fighter near Rose, who took a squelchy step backwards in fear of the understandably intimidating metallic creature. Its head spun to the sound, immediately lifting one of its arms that apparently hid a weapon within because a moment later fire was shooting out of its giant metal palm, its aim directed at the fire-fighter.

He let out a yell that didn’t block out the Doctor’s cry of “run!” Whether the order was for her or not, Rose didn’t need telling twice. She ran in the opposite direction of the fire-fighter who was being protected pretty well by his suit as he too fled the flames. The robot’s aim was slower than the man’s pace; he now looked to be being followed by a flaming trail as the robot fired at the grass beneath his feet. Rose watched this from behind a nearby tree that she had taken cover behind before turning her gaze to where the other fire-fighters and the Doctor had been. They were long gone now, there was no sign of where they had gone but Rose guessed it was behind the oak trees in that grove near the robot. Her head shot round at the sound of a twig snapping nearby. It was followed by the thud of the Doctor’s back as he leant heavily against the closest to her, hardly out of breath after his sprint from the oak grove and over to Rose’s hiding place.

‘Okey-dokey?’

She grinned and nodded, both relieved to see him and exhilarated by the turn of events. Her heart leapt at his brief returning smile before he began to hastily root through his coat pockets. It was the same manic grin that he always wore during their adventures and it felt as though she had seen it only yesterday and yet also so long ago. Rose didn’t let this slightly melancholic feeling wash over her for long, soon bringing herself back to the present at the sound of the great, stomping feet of the metal creature. ‘It’s like some pyromaniac alien robot,’ she stated quietly. Her voice wasn’t quite a whisper but it was low enough so not to be too easily overheard.

The Doctor matched her hushed tone as he said, ‘like a Transformer’.

She frowned and watched him now going through his trouser pockets. ‘A transformer? Isn’t that in physics?’

‘Physics?’ He asked absently.

‘Yeah, I vaguely remember learning about them in physics. Something to do with voltage and electromagnetic currents.’

‘What?’ His furrowed gaze was solely on her now though he soon worked out where their wires were crossed and rattled off an explanation. ‘No - I mean - well, yes in physics they transfer energy from one alternating current circuit to another, either increasing or decreasing the voltage required in the process but that’s beside the point. I meant Transformer as in the films about the alien robots that can turn into cars.’ Going by her blank expression, she had no clue what he was going on about. ‘No?’

She shook her head. ‘Never heard of them.’

His brow furrowed even more so. ‘But it’s a huge hit in 2007 when the first one comes out.’

‘Maybe over here,’ she pointed out. ‘Might not have been a thing in Pete’s world and even if it was, it’s not like I spent time down at the cinema.’

That conversation was cut short when the Doctor’s face lit up and he brought his hand out of his pocket, triumphantly saying, ‘aha, there it is!’ He held up one of those wind up monkeys with the clapping cymbals which only gave Rose more questions than answers but pleased the Time Lord thoroughly. ‘Knew I had one with me somewhere.’ He wound the toy up using the metal key on its back before setting it down on the ground. ‘Run!’ He announced as he hopped back up, hastily grabbing her hand yanking her away at a spiriting pace. ‘We only have about thirty seconds before it’ll go off and draw the Transformer’s attention away from its target,’ he hurriedly informed her as they ran towards the oak grove.

Now his plan made sense to Rose but distracting the alien from that poor fire-fighter wouldn’t be an end to the problem. ‘How are we gonna stop it?’ She panted out.

Letting go of her hand, the Doctor reached into his pocket to remove his sonic screwdriver, the key feature of his brilliant plan, if he said so himself. That brilliant plan, however, was promptly put on hold when Rose lost her footing in the extremely muddy patch they’d come across next to the craters edge. Her right foot went skidding from beneath her, making her arms flail madly as she struggled to keep upright. Before the Doctor could reach out to her, she lost the battle, landed on the ground with a squelchy thump and ended up rolling down into the muddy crater.

‘Rose!’ The Time Lord cried out. Frantically, he skidded down the slope and into the crater, his chucks turning brown with the splatter. She was grumbling when he crouched down by her side, her utterances somewhat soothing to him when she was mainly complaining about her muddy state. ‘Okay?’

‘Can’t even make it a day before I’m caked in something,’ she muttered, wiping her hands clean on a couple of unaffected patches on her jeans. It was mostly her clothes that were caked in the mud. Her face was clear except for one tiny splash on her chin, which could be mistaken for a mole if you were none the wiser, and it was just the ends of a few of her blonde strands that had found themselves dipped in the mud.

He was relieved, when she looked up, that her eyes were filled with mirth and a grin was tugging on her lips. That was his Rose, ever the resilient, not letting the dirt drag her down. Well, it technically did but her spirits hadn’t faltered, unlike her feet in the mud, and that was just another reason why she was so suited to this lifestyle. This life. Their life together.

‘Come on, up you get.’ The Doctor held his hands out to her and she tentatively placed hers into his grasp as though he would care about them being a little damp and grimy, something that would never faze him at all, especially when it came down to her. He pulled her up to a crouching position like his own and then they stood up as one before promptly ducking back down and crouching once more.

‘Do you think it saw us?’ Rose whispered urgently.

The Time Lord dared to poke his head out of the crater to check on the giant metal creature who was stomping through the grass in their direction. The monkey distraction had worked at least, seeing as the alien was near the trees where he set it up, but now it had a new target and it wasn’t a fire-fighter, it was them. Ducking back down, he whispered, ‘yep, it saw us’.

‘What are we gonna do?’ There didn’t seem to be a good answer. Run and get roasted or stay in the crater and get roasted. Neither was an option in Rose’s mind. At least they would have a chance if they ran but the Doctor didn’t seem to be doing anything. ‘Doctor, we can’t hide in here,’ she told him, squeezing his hands a little urgently to get him back out of his head and into the present where the danger was.

‘I know, I know, I’m working on it.’ And he was; his mind was whirring away in an attempt to come up with something that would get them out of here unharmed and scratching that he’d do his best to keep Rose safe. He turned to her and began to urgently whisper his plan. ‘Okay, I’ll distract it-’ He’d hardly started before she cut him off.

‘You’ll get burnt to a crisp. You don’t have any fireproof gear on like-’

He shushed her and she thankfully stopped her hurried explanation as to why this was such a bad idea. ‘I’ll distract it and give you time to get to the hose. Start spraying it. That’ll draw its attention to you I’m afraid but it shouldn’t take me long to set up an electromagnetic pulse with the sonic that’ll fry its circuitry.’ Rose opened her mouth but he promptly gave her a look and spoke again before she could. ‘Don’t argue, we don’t have time.’ Releasing her hands he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead before pushing himself up on a more stable edge of the crater and clambering out to face the metal creature.

It was only about ten feet away now. He was probably within firing range and if he was then Rose was too and he needed to get it away from her pronto. He would not have her caught in the blast this time around. He could just point her in the direction of his past self instead. That wouldn’t be giving too much away, the timelines would cope with that, and then they could bump into one another just as they were supposed to. Easy. But first that meant being the distraction and being the distraction meant running. He was good at that, brilliant even, he just hoped the mud wouldn’t be his downfall as it was Rose’s because she was right, Time Lord or not he would get burnt to a crisp if he got caught in the range of the Transformer’s flamethrower arm.

Stepping away from the crater, madly waving his arms about as he did so to ensure he had its attention, the Doctor yelled, ‘Oi! Big fella! Over here!’ The stomping steps halted and it drew its arm up in the Time Lord’s direction. Before the creature could fire, the Doctor bolted, glancing over his shoulder occasionally to check that he was still the target. It was an action that soon became unnecessary when he felt the heat chasing him and heard the crackling of the grass as it shrivelled up and burnt in his wake.

Rose watched the madman from her spot in the crater, carefully peering over the edge of it so she was not seen in the process. Once the alien had turned away from the crater entirely, she climbed out of the other side and ran to the hose that had been abandoned on the ground. It was heavier than expected as she picked it up but she held it securely in one hand whilst wrapping her other around the lever. She pulled and the water came gushing out. The pressure was so immense that she struggled to keep standing on the same spot, the nozzle of the hose wiggling around in her hands and spraying water all over the place instead of aiming a direct stream at the creature. Luckily the fire-fighters hidden in the nearby oak grove noticed her struggle and came to her aid, even the one who had been in the Doctor’s current predicament earlier.

‘We’ve got it,’ the female fire-fighter told her kindly, taking over the reins from Rose whilst the others picked up the hose behind her to help keep it steady.

‘Thanks, just aim it at that robot, we need to distract it from the Doctor.’ Rose hoped that the spray would be enough to stop its fiery blast once it turned towards them, especially now that it wouldn’t just be her as its new target but the fire crew as well. This didn’t seem to be a problem though because the alien wasn’t turning and it never once aimed its flamethrower in their direction. No matter how much or which part of its metal body they sprayed, it only had eyes for the Doctor. ‘Hey!’ Shouted Rose, hoping to attract its attention another way. ‘Hey! Over here!’ Her continuous yelling had no effect and the longer the Time Lord was fleeing for his life the more anxious she got. He had a respiratory bypass and could run for longer than a human could but that didn’t mean he could run forever. She had to do something.

Rose wracked her brain for a way to stop the alien, thinking back to what the Doctor had told her he was going to do. He’d said was going to do something with the sonic to fry its circuits. Well, she didn’t have a sonic so that idea wouldn’t work but that metal robot was now covered in water and she did have the gun that her dad insisted that she brought with her. The special Torchwood issue handgun that had a taser setting built into it.

Quickly pulling it out, she turned on the taser function and altered its settings to produce the maximum voltage it could. She didn’t know if it would be enough to down the giant robot but metal, water and electricity were never a good combination so she hoped it would work.

‘Keep going,’ she told the fire crew, the woman of which caught her gaze, her eyes wide at the sight of the gun in Rose’s hands. Thankfully she never questioned her and continued spraying the alien and the fires it was creating around the Doctor's sprinting form leaving Rose to move a bit closer to the robot so she was in range.

The shot wasn’t loud between the scraping movement of the metal creature, the blast of the water on its body and the fire it was producing from its palm. In fact, it was hardly audible, but Rose could tell the moment her shot had hit the target. She’d aimed for a spot beneath its outstretched arm, an area that wasn’t protected by its metal plating, in the hope that the volts would have a greater effect. Still with her arms outstretched and the gun clasped in her hands, she watched as the electricity sparked over its body. It zipped all over the metal plating, starting near its right shoulder and skipping in blue flashes from head to toe. The flames coming out of its palm extinguished and its stomping steps came to a juddering halt whilst its entire body vibrated on the spot.

Sparks began to fly just as the Doctor noticed he was no longer being chased and he turned to see the giant creature swaying under the electric onslaught plus the pressure of the water from the hose. After taking a glance over to Rose and realising what she must have done, his gaze was drawn back to the alien when there was an inevitably mighty crash as it finally collapsed. Metal plating broke off at the extremities, some pieces flying a few feet before landing with a squelch in the now even muddier ground. This exposed some of its inner workings which the Doctor was keen to take a look at now that the fire crew had stopped the hose and he wouldn’t get soaked by stepping closer to the creature. It was sizzling away when he crouched down beside it, daring to poke at a few bits of wiring now it was no longer electrified. He was drawn away from his perusal by an increase in those sizzling sounds. They were joined by a worrying popping and the occasional crackle that drew his mind to only one conclusion.

The Doctor jumped up and ran towards Rose who was only a few feet away, currently making her way over to him without knowing of the danger. ‘Get back!’ He yelled at her. ‘Get back!’

With the panic in his voice and face, Rose immediately did just that. She turned and ran and was soon joined by the Doctor who dived, taking her body along with his, to the ground just as the alien exploded behind them. The action knocked the gun from her hand and it landed in a muddy puddle a few feet away just as they hit a thankfully drier patch of grass. The Time Lord covered her completely like a weighted blanket though, in her previous experience, weighted blankets didn’t normally pant into your neck nor have two hearts you could feel hammering through your back from the blanket’s chest.

‘Sorry,’ the Doctor mumbled as he pushed himself off her body, feeling like the present danger had passed and that it was safe to do so. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she confirmed as she got to her feet to join him. ‘Are you?’

‘Oh, me? I’m fine and dandy. A little singed and a little damp but other than that jobs a goodun. All thanks to you of course. Well done.’ He pulled a slightly blushing Rose into a hug, letting relief flood his system now that the threat had abated. They’d actually done it and she was alright, a little muddy and damp but not a burn in sight; a near enough perfect outcome. That perfect outcome dwindled a little when he looked over Rose’s shoulder and spied the black vehicles pulling up at the edge of the park. Soldiers dressed in a black uniform with red berets scrambled out of the cars and promptly made their way to the gates. ‘Come on,’ the Doctor said as he leant back. ‘UNIT’s here and I do not want to deal with them right now.

Rose looked behind to see the approaching soldiers and then noticed the fire-fighters once again manning the hose in an attempt to put out the burning wreckage that was once a rampaging robotic alien. ‘But what about the fire-fighters and the robot?’ She asked as she turned back to the Doctor.

‘Oh, they’ll be fine, UNIT will deal with them. Probably tell them it was students.’ He took her hand and led them away at a quick pace, dodging bits of Transformer debris as they went.

She smirked. ‘Students? Why students?’

‘Wellllll, it's something you humans are likely to believe isn’t it?’ The Time Lord kept a straight as he glanced at Rose, this soon faltered and they ended up giggling most of the way back to the Tardis, speaking about anything and nothing but finding most things amusing as their bodies ran on a relief high.

It wasn’t all raised spirits though. They bid farewell once more, when the Doctor finally dropped her off on the correct date, and he directed her to continue down Chancellor Street and look out for anything strange. The rest of the humans probably wouldn’t see anything odd going on until it was shoved in their faces but he knew that Rose would and, when she did, he told her to go and take a look. He wanted to give her more information than that but the timelines wouldn’t let him, he was already playing with them enough in this situation. That was also what was worrying the Doctor. When the Tardis doors closed behind Rose for a second time that day, he found that her timeline hadn’t particularly altered. There was still an element of danger between her leaving the Tardis now and getting to the past him. It was only a possibility of course but he truly hoped that she had managed to avoid it; he couldn’t stand his Rose getting hurt. Only time would tell, he supposed. If his memories of their reunion altered he would know for certain but that was something that would happen later on. For now, the Doctor had another alien invasion to crash. He typed in the familiar coordinates and dashed about the console getting the Old Girl ready for flight. Destination: Chiswick.

**********

Hours later, a lone soul trudged through the mud of the park, grumbling about the Tardis’ insistence on landing due to the alien activity that the scanners were picking up. They had just completed a search of Maffei 1 for a suitably sized crack when she returned them to Earth but why she had done such a thing wasn’t obvious to the Time Lord. Going by the state of the scene, what with the empty crater, burnt up grass and the numerous army surplus bootprints, any aliens had already been dealt with, presumably by UNIT. Still, with a sigh, he pulled out his sonic from his pinstriped suit pocket and, in a very Spock move as the Rose in his mind so liked to point out, scanned the area for alien tech. The screwdriver buzzed away in his hand, the sound altering just a little when he waved it over a nearby bush. Within it he found a fried bit of circuitry. It was alien alright but completely useless now. It seemed a waste of a trip, especially when the sonic didn’t pick up anything further, but that thought faded when he took in his surroundings a little further afield. Now that, that, was more like it. Proper alien activity. A couple of streets away, the top of a large hospital protruded above the other buildings around it, but what the Doctor found interesting were the plasma coils that surrounded it. He presumed that they were being produced by something within, but why? Well, he might as well go and find out, he was already here and the question would nag at him if he didn’t answer it. Returning to the Tardis, the Doctor re-parked her near the entrance of Royal Hope Hospital and, after pocketing his stolen striped pyjamas, left the Old Girl to check himself in. It appeared as though he was feeling under the weather.

Chapter Text

As if this week wasn’t going to be crazy enough for one Martha Jones. What with prepping for her upcoming medical exams, returning to general surgery and morning rounds with the pain that was Mr. Stoker, after having rotated through the other departments in the hospital, plus she was playing peacekeeper for her family who were all squabbling about her younger brother Leo’s twenty-first birthday party on Friday evening. That day was the craziest day of them all, the day her life changed, but really the major craziness started on the Thursday when she met Rose Tyler or, as she was led to believe at the time, Rose Smith.

It had been an average morning. She’d had a call from her mum who was complaining about some sort of mix up with the bakery making Leo’s birthday cake. The call had almost made Martha late but she just made it to the station in time to catch her regular tube that would stop not too far from Royal Hope Hospital where she was a student doctor. After getting off the tube, she dodged around puddles and oblivious people who were clearly too rude or not awake enough to notice her during their own walks to work.

She was nearing the Hospital when it happened. Initially it was the swearing that caught Martha’s attention. Drawing her gaze from the bustling street, she glanced to the side where a young woman was standing underneath a large arch that led to the car park of some grand office building. The woman’s face was mostly hidden behind her hair that had fallen down as she looked at the wrist she was frantically clawing at with her other hand. Her movements jostled the blonde strands allowing Martha a brief glimpse of the screwed up look that marred her features. It was a look that she couldn’t help but recognise after working in a hospital. It was a look of pain. The woman swore some more, or at least Martha assumed it was just swearing as a few of the words sounded foreign to her ears, and she finally removed what Martha thought of as a chunky watch from her wrist, dropping it to the ground by her feet. She caught the briefest glimpse of the red and blotchy skin that the watch had been covering before one of the most bizarre and terrifying things happened. The watch exploded. It was like a firework, not as loud but just as sudden and bright. Flames erupted from it as it burst into pieces, the force of which threw the poor woman backwards into the pale Portland stone of the office building’s wall. Her body collided with a sickening thud before slouching to the ground, limp and unmoving.

‘Oh my God,’ breathed Martha, hardly able to believe what her eyes were seeing. The others around her who actually bothered to lift their gaze up from their feet, stopped and watched with wide, disbelieving eyes too. She didn’t stand there gawping for long though, Martha was more than ready to find herself in emergency situations having just completed a rotation in the A+E department. She was good under pressure and, even though she was still a student, felt competent in her medical abilities. Well, that’s what she was telling herself anyway because this was a real life situation and that woman needed medical help and she was going to provide it.

Turning to the person to her right, who was simply staring at the scene, Martha asked them to phone an ambulance. It was always best to direct a single person to do such a task instead of generally requesting that someone should as it ensured that it would get done rather than people assuming that someone else would do it or, on the other hand, prevent swamping the emergency services with calls about the same situation. The man weakly nodded and pulled out his phone to make the call. It wouldn't take long for one to arrive with the hospital being so close, Martha just hoped that she could attend to this woman as best as she could whilst they waited.

Ensuring the woman was breathing and her airways were clear, she moved her into the recovery position after checking on her injuries. There was a head wound and Martha did her best with a pack of tissues that she had in her bag but head wounds always bled profusely and mostly looked worse than they actually were. She hoped this was the case for this poor woman too. She was very pretty, Martha thought, though her clothing and some of her long blonde strands were absolutely covered in mud. It was a wonder what she had been doing to be so filthy because otherwise she seemed healthy and her clothes suggested that she was not exactly the richest person but that she had the means to care for herself. Intrigued but also hoping to learn more about this woman so she could give whatever details she could to the ambulance crew, Martha had a quick look in the pockets of the woman’s blue leather jacket, pulling out a wallet. Flipping it open revealed the driving licence for a Rose Smith who was born on the twenty-seventh of April 1986 and lived at number forty-eight Bucknall House on the Powell Estate. She’d heard of the estate, had been warned to stay away from it when she was younger so that she didn’t fall in with the wrong type of people. That was very much her mother Francine’s influence although Martha really hoped that she hadn’t picked up her snobbish ways. The driving licence was the only thing in that wallet and Martha didn’t have time to garner any other information because the ambulance had arrived. Rose Smith was stretchered inside the vehicle and taken to the hospital and Martha followed on foot. She was late and Mr. Stoker would not be pleased in the slightest but that didn’t worry her, she was more worried about the blonde woman and decided she would try to find out about her whereabouts whilst on her breaks.

**********

Rose Tyler couldn’t find her clothes. She had agreed to change into a hospital gown after she regained consciousness the day before but now she couldn’t find them anywhere. The last she knew, her pockets had been emptied and her possessions added to a drawer at her bedside. Then her clothes were put in a large plastic bag but where that bag was now had become somewhat of a mystery. She didn’t particularly want to change back into them as they were filthy and probably still damp after her adventure with the other Doctor but she couldn’t really sneak around the hospital whilst wearing the gown they had given her. Rose had made it to the lobby yesterday evening before being escorted back to the ward she’d been placed in, making excuses of wanting to visit the little shop she had spied there before realising that it was a terrible excuse because she didn’t have any money. Any further ideas of another attempt were put to rest by her apparently being trapped in the busiest ward in the hospital overnight. Rose honestly did not know how the patients were meant to get a good night’s sleep with the amount of bustle going on with nurses coming in and out, a new patient that didn’t know how to shut up and the amount of monitor beeps that seemed a near constant. They were nearly as consistent as the presence of at least one nurse on the ward, something that really scuppered her intention of leaving.

Her memory of what had happened to land her in the hospital was fuzzy but, as the student doctor who had been to visit her yesterday had said, it was rather understandable given the head injury. It was that same student doctor, one Martha Jones, who had apparently found Rose and had even explained about how it was Rose’s watch, as Martha called it, that had exploded.

There was no way back now if the dimension cannon was in a million tiny pieces, not that she had intentions of going back. She knew what she was leaving behind, what she could never return to, and had made the choice to cross over to her original universe anyway. She had tried and failed to find the Doctor, the right Doctor, time and time again and now she was here. Rose had succeeded, she had gotten what she wanted, so losing the dimension cannon shouldn’t bring a tightness to her chest in the way that it did. Granted, she hadn’t completely succeeded but she knew the correct Doctor was close, somewhere in this building if those weird, shimmery coil things were the strangeness that his future self had told her to look out for. That wasn’t what made her heart clench though, it was the thought of leaving behind her family. Still, she didn’t regret it and felt like she never would, especially not once she’d found him.

The thought of finding him was one that was worrying her now, particularly the idea of him being in the hospital but having since left, plaguing her most. She could have put up more of a fight with the nurses yesterday and gone out wandering the hospital’s long corridors but she hadn’t had it in her. Her head had been pounding painfully, her right arm and hand stung where the dimension cannon had been burning through her skin before she’d managed to yank it off her wrist, plus the exhaustion of the jump had hit her. She hadn’t slept right through the night, not with the business of her ward, but sleep had taken her pretty early in the evening and she had slumbered until she was woken up at around seven by a nurse who was wanting to check her temperature and blood pressure, completing some of her final duties before she finished her night shift and could go home. Rose told Nurse Catherine that she was feeling much better when she asked and that sleep seemed to have done her the world of good. Her head now only throbbed dully when she was looking downwards, her arm felt, well, it felt like there was nothing wrong with it at all and, morning grouchiness aside, she knew she’d be back to full energy once she’d had her morning cup of tea. Catherine told her that breakfast would be delivered by the next nurse on shift but said she could shower in the meantime if she was feeling up to it. The nurse gathered a towel, wash products and a new gown for her patient and got to work changing the bedding whilst Rose was in the shower cubicle attached to the ward.

The ends of her blonde hair were singed and still smelt a bit fried even after the shower. The tiny travel sized bottle of soap, which was apparently both body wash and shampoo, had a very antibacterial and rather unappealing smell but she made do. The important thing was that it had worked. It had cleaned the mud from her skin as well as the blood from the tiny cuts that had littered her legs after the explosion. They were nearly all faded now but Rose didn’t take any particular notice, too busy rushing through her body wash so she could get to her hair. It had gotten the blood out of her blonde strands after some gentle teasing of her fingers around her now glued wound at the back of her head, an incredibly difficult place to attend to by yourself. Rose had been careful not to ruin the bandages covering her burns and had used the plastic bag and elastic band that Catherine had given her to stop any water from dampening them. Her thoughts were immediately taken back to her struggle with such a thing when she was on the Tardis after the injuries she had received on Drava-Five. Even putting the damned plastic bag on had been a bind let alone washing herself and in the end she’d had to call the Doctor in to help. Her skin flushed more from the memories than the heat of the hospital shower as the water pattered against her body whilst she remembered what had happened. She’d gotten an eyeful that day, had seen his chest with its perfect smattering of hair and his toned stomach for the first time. Well, there was that time when she’d changed him into Howard’s striped pyjamas when the Doctor was in his healing coma but Rose hadn’t particularly been looking back then. Not much anyway. But in her en-suite, as the Doctor’s unbuttoned shirt opened wider with his movement whilst he washed her hair, she had definitely been looking. Then he ran his fingers through her blonde locks, massaging her scalp in such a way that it had felt heavenly and Rose knew then that she was a goner. Well, it was already too late for her at that point. She fancied him, loved him even, but her forgiveness of him after the incident involving Madame de Pompadour came a lot quicker than she expected when he worked his fingers through her hair like that. It also helped that jealous part of her because she knew that Reinette had never experienced such a thing and she, Rose Tyler of the Powell Estate, had. Take that and shove it up your French court and perfect womanly ways.

Catherine came bustling over to her as she left the shower room, wishing her a speedy recovery because she was off for the weekend and probably wouldn’t see Rose again barring any complications. Rose was confident that she wouldn’t be here on Monday when Catherine’s next shift was; in fact, she was planning on an excursion around the hospital to look for the Doctor when the nurse left. She didn’t get the chance to though. After giving Catherine her thanks, they bid each other goodbye but the nurse was hardly out of the door before someone else Rose recognised was entering the ward.

‘Blimey, you must be feeling better,’ Martha Jones said as she walked over to where Rose was standing near the foot of her bed. The junior doctor smiled at her kindly, her brown eyes flickering over Rose’s body as though she was checking for injury. ‘How are you?’

‘Yeah, much better thanks.’

‘No nausea or light headedness? Dizziness?’

Rose had been feeling all of those symptoms yesterday afternoon when Martha had helped her into a more upright position in bed so it must look like a marked improvement in the young doctor’s eyes to see her up and about. What she didn’t know was that those symptoms had dwindled over the day and Rose had been wandering around the hospital in the evening before being escorted back to her bed.

She shook her head gently. ‘No, just hurts a little bit is all.’

Martha raised her eyebrow. ‘Well you did have quite the bump,’ she conceded, studying Rose’s face intently before seemingly appeasing her concern with Rose’s health and brightening up again. ‘Come on then, back into bed, I want to show you something.’ She watched as Rose clambered in before pulling up a chair to her bedside. Taking her phone from a pocket of her white doctor’s coat and flipping it open, she tapped away at it until she pulled up the pictures that she wanted to show Rose. They hadn’t known one another long, had barely spent an hour together but the two women had connected promptly when Martha came to visit her yesterday to see how she was doing. Once the topic of her health was finished, she had gone on to tell Rose about her brother’s birthday party and they’d discussed outfits and makeup until Martha had to get back to work. It might have been their closeness in age, or Martha simply feeling more connected to Rose than other patients after being the one to care for her immediately after the accident, but they conversed easily and found themselves in the early stages of friendship.

‘There’s that outfit and then two others,’ Martha explained, holding her phone out and leaning closer to Rose so they could both see the images on the small screen whilst she flicked between them.

Rose looked at each of the outfits that the young doctor had posed in once she’d gotten home the previous evening. They each featured an article of clothing that was a shade of burgundy, whether that was the dress, a leather jacket or a flowery, strappy top. It was evidently Martha’s colour and Rose had to agree that it did suit her. Rose felt like she was being thrown back in time to when she would discuss outfits with Shareen and Keisha before they went out clubbing or to a party. It was something she loved and missed out on when she was travelling with the Doctor and whilst she was in Pete’s world. She found it was nice to be brought back to the normalcy that she had once had. Perhaps, once she was back with the Time Lord, she could get in touch with Shareen and Keisha again. It would be good to retain friends who weren’t the Doctor and, even though she couldn’t currently imagine wanting to devote any time away from that man after being away from him, she could see herself wanting others in her life in the future. Plus, she needed someone who she could rant to about him when he inevitably infuriated her with something he’d done. Without her family, friends would be more important than ever, so connecting with Shareen and Keisha was a must and maybe she could find Martha again and build on their blossoming friendship.

‘Are you planning on bumping into any fit guys whilst you’re there?’ Rose asked, wanting to give an informed opinion to the other woman after having looked between the outfits.

Martha scoffed, her eyebrows flying upwards. ‘At my brother’s twenty-first? I wish. I’d be lucky to bump into a fit guy in the first place but I don’t want that guy to be one of Leo’s mates.’

‘Yeah, I get that.’

Tilting her head to the side as she considered what she’d just told Rose, Martha said, ‘although I did sort of bump into this guy on the way to work…or more like he walked up to me, took his tie off and said, “like so. See,” before wandering off again’.

‘I’m sorry, what?’ Rose stared in disbelief, not understanding what she was being told because it didn’t make sense.

With a chuckle, Martha shook her head. ‘I have no idea, it was mad.’

‘He was mad more like it.’

‘It’s always the attractive ones,’ Martha sighed a little wistfully and paused briefly before adding on, ‘or is that just me?’

Rose laughed. ‘Not just you, trust me, I’ve known my fair share of mad but attractive blokes.’

They decided on the flowery, strappy top and jeans in the end after discussions on being too warm in the leather jacket and too flashy for the pub in the dress. Rose ended up doing a bit of a tutorial with some mascara and eyeliner that Martha had on her when the topic changed to makeup and to this look that Martha had seen in a magazine but hadn’t been able to emulate.

She hadn’t particularly gone for makeup in Pete’s world, not like she had whilst she was still travelling with the Doctor, but it felt nice to be wearing it again. Rose felt a bit more like herself, her old self, and Martha had been very complimentary about it too which was nice. Then she noticed the time and had to rush off for rounds with Mr. Stoker but she promised Rose that she would visit later. Rose wanted to tell her that if all went to plan then that wouldn’t be an option, that she would have found the Doctor and would be far, far away in the Tardis by then. That plan didn’t come to fruition though. First there was breakfast, it was rather disappointing but it was some sustenance at least, and then her head injury was being checked over by attendings and she was put through all sorts of tests.

It had just gone midday when she finally got the chance to leave the ward. Being on the Burn Unit, she would have expected a visit from the burn specialists but there had been some sort of incident and those who were not priority on the ward would have to wait their turn. That didn’t bother Rose in the slightest because she never did like being prodded and poked by doctors, even the Doctor if she was honest; he just got away with it a lot more because it was him.

Walking through the internal corridor, Rose felt very self conscious. She hated the hospital gown she was wearing in all its white patterned, thin fabric, bum revealing glory. There was no one in that first corridor outside of the Burn Unit yet she still felt as though she was flashing herself to the world. She wandered past a discarded wheelchair and an abandoned trolley full of used bedding before taking two attempts just to grab the handle of the next door that led into a further corridor. The metal had given her an electric shock which she thought was strange but didn’t get to think about it any further because the building was shaking. It was as though she was back in the Tardis and on one of their more perilous journeys through time and space. Her body was thrown to the floor like a rag doll, the bandages around her right arm somehow getting caught on a loose screw by the handle and snagging as she was flung about. Screams erupted from the rooms around her, still clear above the rattling of the hospital building and all the contents within it. Rose yelped as a ceiling tile fell to the floor next to her prone figure and pushed herself across to the nearest wall as best as she could, wrapping her fingers around the handrail that ran the entirety of the corridor. She was now being buffeted into the wall but at least she felt more secure there. Her eyes darted upwards, noticing the wires that were now poking through the new hole in the ceiling whilst she searched for any more tiles that threatened to fall. Rose’s gaze was soon drawn back to the corridor when another movement caught her eye. The trolley filled with dirty bedding was squeakily rolling forwards with the jostling of the building. It was on a collision course and that collision course was with her. The earthquake, or whatever was going on, was too violent to allow her to stand and possibly dart out of the way and Rose did not fancy being squished by the metal grating of the trolley if she could help it. With one hand firmly on the handrail, she reached out for the handle of the doors that were swinging partly open as the building shook. Her hand urgently clasped around the air twice before she managed to grab the handle, yanking it enough for her to stumble through the gap just before the trolley crashed into the spot that she had been cowering in. Then the shaking stopped.

It was eerily silent; the only sound seemingly her panting breaths as she recovered from the ordeal. Rose looked down at herself, checking her body over for any further injury. She felt fine, though her system was now pumping with adrenaline which could mask any new wounds. Luckily, her quick visual check, as she gingerly stood back up and stretched her slightly aching limbs, brought back the same result. The only issue was the raggedy bandages that had unfurled, revealing some of her injured arm. Well, the should have been injured arm. She had seen the burns when she was receiving treatment the previous day. The skin was a patchwork of irritated red colours with uneven and crispy looking edges and it stung to high hell and back. Now that patchwork was simply defined by a slightly darker shade of pink than her natural skin tone. Just over twenty four hours and the burn was practically gone. Rose could have suspected that this hospital had some futuristic and utterly barbaric treatments like the hospital on New Earth but she knew better than that because this had happened before. She had forgotten all about it but the memory came back to her clearly, surfacing from beneath the more traumatic events from when the Doctor was kidnapped. During her mission to rescue him, Rose was confronted by a Drakkad whose acidic spit had burnt a small patch on her hand, a patch that had healed rapidly. This fast healing wasn’t something that had happened again in either universe, though quickly healing burns during all of her testing of the dimension cannon would have been a boon when she was in Pete’s world, but it was weird that it had now happened twice.

She didn’t ponder on that thought long as she disposed of the remnants of the now unneeded bandage in a nearby bin that was attached to the wall. There wasn’t much she could do about it to get answers at the moment and it was rather hard to concentrate on her musings now that the screaming, wailing and shouting had started up again. It didn’t take her long to find out what had the others in the hospital so distressed.

Rose stepped towards the nearest window, towards the near pitch black darkness that now covered the outside world. From her position in bed on the ward, she could see that it had perhaps looked a bit grey and stormy outside earlier but it was at least still daytime. Night hadn’t suddenly fallen around the hospital since the earthquake though; it was something a little more concerning than that. Yet, for Rose, it was just as equally relieving because, unless the Doctor was missing out on such a bizarre and troubling time, he was most definitely still in the hospital, the same hospital that was now, of all places, on the Moon. It wasn’t an earthquake at all; the entire building had been picked up and transported. She hadn’t been to the Moon before but it certainly looked like what she expected, all grey, dusty and full of craters. One thing stood out in the darkness of space surrounding the lunar landscape, the round, blue ball of a planet that was Earth. It looked so small now, so calm but also incredibly beautiful. It had been over a year since she’d last had the opportunity to leave the planet and seeing it from space still gave her that tingling buzz. It was the same buzz that she’d gotten so long ago on Platform One. Well, she was also highly freaked out at the time but that tingling was still there.

Speaking of highly freaked out, a man yanked the door at the far end of the corridor open and ran towards her yelling, ‘we’re going to die!’ He was very clearly panicking and quite an adept sprinter because he was through the door behind her before she got the chance to say something reassuring.

But that was a point wasn’t it? Were they going to die? She was so used to being in the protective oxygen field of the Tardis, pressurised buildings or colonies that breathed oxygen that she hadn’t properly considered that this was none of the above. The hospital was hardly a sealed building, in fact the next window over was slightly open. She shouldn’t be able to breathe and yet she was which could mean one of two things. Either the Tardis’ oxygen field was large enough to accommodate the whole hospital, or at least she hoped it was, or whoever had transported them here had provided some sort of force field around the building that kept the oxygen in.

Through the window, a blue ripple caught her eye before it vanished just as quickly into the darkness. It was as though something had hit what was definitely looking like a force field surrounding the hospital now. That meant that whoever had done this still wanted them alive, meant that they needed something or perhaps someone, but it also meant that there was only a limited amount of oxygen for everyone in the building. Whatever was going on would have to be sorted quickly before the entire hospital suffocated. Nothing like a high stakes situation to get you back into the swing of life with the Doctor, or at least it would be life with the Doctor if she could find him.

Before Rose could move away from the window, to either find him or find what was going on for herself, her gaze was drawn upwards and towards the rumbling sound of engines. For a moment, all she could see was the darkness of space but then three large silo shaped spaceships, their glowing white thrusters bright as they slowly moved overhead, landed on the Moon’s surface. The black metal ships were tall, intimidating and nothing she had ever seen before. The doors of the ships unfurled and soon there was a platoon of aliens, all hidden behind their black armour, marching towards the hospital.

Pushing off from the window, Rose ran down the rest of the corridor dodging debris as she went. She yanked the handle of the door at the end of it whilst trying to remember which way it was to the lobby that she had visited yesterday; it should have been a pretty simple thing to recall but she hadn’t taken a direct route there when she was wandering around the building. After a few lucky guesses before finally finding some signs that pointed the way, Rose ran down one final corridor before skidding to a stop just before the double doors that led to the lobby. She peered through the small glass panel to see the crowded room filled with cowering humans, all of whom were surrounded by the intimidating and gun toting, armour cladded creatures. Rose could recognise the aliens now that one of them, the one in charge by the looks of things, had taken off their helmet to reveal a large rhinoceros head. She had never met them before but the Doctor had told her about them and they had called on their assistance a time or two when dealing with criminals because these creatures were basically the space police and, if she was remembering rightly, they were called Judoon. The Doctor didn’t much like them, calling them thugs for hire, but they worked for the Shadow Proclamation who were in charge of setting laws around the universe. That didn’t explain why they were here though or why they had moved the hospital from Earth.

Watching and listening as a young, panicked doctor stood up to the chief Judoon, Rose was ready to burst into the lobby to stop the chief as they pushed the doctor up against a wall and pointed a cylindrical device at him. But then the device simply played back the poor man’s pleas like a recorder and then the Judoon plugged the device into its chest piece and was no longer chanting in some unknown language but speaking English. Why she couldn’t understand what the Judoon was saying in their own language was a puzzle after having the skill to translate alien languages for so long but there wasn’t time to ponder such things. The chief told the young doctor he was going to be catalogued and shone a blue light at the man’s head before declaring him as a human and drawing a cross on the back of his hand. The Judoon ordered all suspects to be catalogued and instructed the rest of the platoon to move to different departments of the hospital to do such a thing.

Rose quickly ducked down and pressed herself against the wall behind the door when a few of the aliens marched her way. Their stomping footsteps didn’t falter as they pushed the door open and continued down the corridor so she assumed that they hadn’t seen her and let out a breath when they turned the corner without looking back. They were marking off who was human which suggested they were looking for someone who was not. Clearly the Judoon had no image of who they were after and only knew that they appeared to be human. Perhaps it was a shape shifter or someone with a shimmer or maybe they were someone like the Doctor who looked human from the outside; although he would huff and tell her that she looked Time Lord because his race came first. She hoped it wasn’t him who they were trying to find, he was a trouble magnet after all, but it was equally bad news either way because the Judoon were going to search the entire hospital and scan every person inside as they looked for their fugitive. She might have evaded being catalogued so far but that didn’t mean she eventually wouldn’t and that would be the same for the Doctor. At least she was human so she could get away with it but he, on the other hand, wouldn’t and he would have to be careful to evade their scans. What would happen if he didn’t she had no idea but the fact that he called them thugs gave her a sense that the outcome wouldn’t be great.

Upon noticing the sign on the wall opposite, which informed visitors of the staircase through the doors next to it, Rose clambered up to the next floor. There would be plenty of panicked individuals throughout the rest of the hospital and she knew humans and how they usually reacted to aliens. It probably wouldn’t be a pretty combination. She hoped that giving the others a bit of a heads up about the Judoon, plus what they were going to do with the cataloguing, would hopefully ease the process a little. She would probably sound a bit mad, bursting into rooms and going on about rhinoceros headed aliens, but well, they were on the Moon, it was already a pretty bonkers scenario. And whilst she was warning the humans she could maybe have a look for anyone behaving suspiciously and hopefully weasel out the non-human so this ordeal could be over and the hospital could be taken back to Earth before the entire building suffocated. Plus, if she was lucky, Rose might spot the Doctor on the way and then all would be good.

Receiving the expected strange looks as she ran between corridors and wards yelling about the aliens, Rose covered as much ground as she could, listening out for the growing sound of clomping footsteps that signalled the Judoon conducting their scans in her wake. The humans didn’t sound as panicked as those did in the lobby earlier so she hoped that her efforts were calming them a little and making the process quicker. Of course, the Judoon weren’t going from floor to floor but were searching a number of them consecutively meaning that Rose’s warnings were not always needed. By the end of the fourth floor, which she had warned about the aliens unlike floors two and three, she was feeling quite tired and hauled herself up the stairs instead of running as she tried to catch her breath. It didn’t come back to her as quickly as she would have liked and that wasn’t due to her fitness levels, she’d never been fitter in her life, it was more to do with the hospital’s dwindling oxygen levels. It would be slower, but Rose decided to walk the rest of the way up the stairs. There was no point in needlessly using the limited oxygen up by exerting herself.

Rose walked around floor after floor telling any uncatalogued souls of the Judoon whilst still keeping an eye out for the elusive Doctor and the criminal alien in hiding. She was up on the seventh floor near the MRI rooms, walking straight on at a junction in the corridor, when a figure suddenly came out of the other corridor and collided into her. ‘Oi! Watch where you’re going mate!’ She complained, rubbing her shoulder where it felt like she had just been rammed into by a solid, brick wall but it was actually a biker covered head to toe in black leather. They were still wearing their helmet which had a solid black visor making Rose unable to tell if her glare was hitting the mark. She wiped that from her face when a small elderly woman appeared from behind the biker. Dressed in her nightie and light blue housecoat with her small, black handbag clutched in her hands, her grey curls bobbed a little as she looked up at Rose with a gleam in her eyes. She had met plenty of elderly people on her travels throughout the hospital, had even passed out small oxygen tanks and masks that she had found to those who looked to be struggling to breathe the most. Not many of them seemed to be doing well in that department and it broke Rose every time she passed one of the elderly patients either collapsed against a wall or on a chair in the corridors. She only wished that she could help them more but doing that would involve finding the criminal and the Doctor, two beings that seemed to be eluding her at the moment.

Bringing herself back from her thoughts, Rose aimed a compassionate look at the elderly woman. ‘How are you doing? Are you alright?’

‘Such a pretty girl, such a shame I’ve just had my drink.’ She patted her handbag and gave Rose a simpering smile that the younger woman didn’t know what to do with.

She blinked, decided to put the strange words down to the poor woman not being quite with it in her old age, and quickly moved onto warning her about the Judoon instead. ‘Right...yeah. Well, I don’t want you to panic but there’s gonna be these rhino headed ali-’ Rose halted when the woman lifted right her hand and showed off the cross on the back of it.

‘I have been catalogued,’ the lady announced proudly.

Rose nodded and started to back away. ‘Good. Then I’d recommend just taking it easy, yeah? Take a seat on those chairs.’ She waved a hand in the general direction of the line of seats not too far behind the woman. ‘This’ll all be sorted soon, I promise.’ With that, Rose smiled, turned and made her way down the corridor hoping that her promise would not be broken.

As she continued down the next corridor, informing people about the Judoon when she noticed the lack of a cross on the backs of their hands, she couldn’t help but get distracted by the niggling feeling at the back of her brain. There was something off about that woman, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on until she neared the end of the corridor where there was a junction that either led to a set of double doors or a corridor that looped back to the MRI rooms. There were quite a few people cowering near those doors, the more elderly looking ones of which were slumped on the ground, struggling to breathe. It hit her then, the thing that had been bugging her about that woman. Compared to the other elderly people, she was seemingly doing fine, looked almost spritely in fact. That didn’t mean that she wasn’t just in better health or something but that mixed in with her slightly weird behaviour and general off-putting vibe made Rose stop and turn. She started walking back the way she’d come, berating herself a little for having possibly had the chance to stop the criminal alien if her suspicions were correct.

She had almost turned the corner at the end of the corridor when there was a loud bang from behind followed by screams that didn’t block out the orders of the Judoon chief as they bellowed, ‘find the non-human. Execute’.

Rose looked around and watched the group of Judoon march through the panicked humans in the direction of the MRI rooms. They didn’t even bother to stop to scan them, leading her to believe that they actually had an idea of who they were looking for now. She made to follow them but someone grabbed her wrist causing Rose to instead glance down at the middle aged woman whose blonde hair and tracksuit top reminded her far too much of her mum for her liking. This wide eyed woman was huddled up against an abandoned metal tray holder, most of the slots of which were filled with patients' long forgotten lunches. She was breathing rapidly, possibly on the verge of a panic attack, as she clutched at Rose’s wrist and begged her not to go.

‘I don’t want to die,’ the woman wailed, ‘please…’ She sniffed loudly and brought her other shaking hand up to her cheek to wipe away the tear that was rolling down it. ‘Please don’t let me die.’

She could hear the Judoon marching further away down the other corridor but it was no decision really. Rose crouched down and put her free hand on the woman’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. ‘Hey, it’s alright,’ she said softly, ‘nobody here is going to die and they’re not going to hurt you. How about we just take a few deep, calming breaths, yeah?’

The woman weakly nodded but before Rose could start to help her get her breathing under control she let out a sob. ‘My Harry’s already dead isn’t he?’ Her face crumpled at the thought of her loved one’s fate as she babbled on, saying, ‘he only went down to the cafeteria to get us some lunch whilst I was waiting for my scan’.

‘He’s alright,’ Rose assured her, pulling the woman into a hug that was accepted gratefully. She rubbed a hand up the woman’s back whilst her own was clutched tightly by two shaking arms, mumbling more reassurances to the woman as she held her. ‘They won’t have hurt him. He’ll be fine. You’ll see him again when this is all over, I promise.’

Rose’s second promise of the day was broken merely moments after she made it when a salt and pepper haired man stumbled through the doors the Judoon had come through and began to weakly call out for someone called Vera.

The woman in her arms reacted instantly, pushing Rose back a little so she could find the source of the voice. ‘Harry!’ She cried upon noticing the man who looked like it had taken everything in him to get back from the cafeteria on the ground floor, something which didn’t surprise Rose one bit because they were currently on the seventh and oxygen deprivation really did take its toll after a while.

Harry brightened and, with a fresh burst of energy, swiftly made his way over to the older blonde named Vera who Rose was now helping to stand.

‘You’re alive,’ Vera whimpered, one hand held up to her mouth to stop a sob whilst the other clutched tightly to one of Rose’s. She finally released Rose in favour of wrapping both arms around Harry who held her tightly against him, huffing out a laugh.

‘Alive? Of course I’m alive you silly thing,’ he admonished gently, his voice full of love for the woman in his embrace.

Rose decided to leave them to it, knowing her help was no longer needed. She set off down the corridor in the wake of the Judoon whose marching footsteps she could just about hear somewhere further ahead. After turning down a couple more corridors, she finally caught sight of them. There were about seven of them, including the chief, being followed by a female in a white doctor’s coat as they stomped through the MRI corridor and towards one of the scanning rooms where a bright flashing light was flickering alarmingly through a frosted window. The group burst through the doors and piled into the room one after the other leaving Rose to pick up the pace as she tailed after the doctor who hadn’t quite caught up with the aliens either.

She could just about hear the noise of the Judoon scanner as the woman ahead entered the room. The scanning sound was shortly followed by the booming voice of the chief who said, ‘confirmation deceased’.

‘No, he can’t be. Let me through. Let me see him.’

She knew that second voice. That was Martha’s voice, that kind student doctor who’d visited her a couple of times. Come to think of it, she was the woman who’d been in front of her and she would have noticed that too if she’d been paying enough attention and not wondering what the Judoon were going to find when they went into the MRI room.

‘Stop. Case closed.’ The chief said as Rose turned into the room.

The area immediately in front of her was filled with the muscular, armour-covered bodies of the Judoon, two of which were holding a protesting Martha back.

‘But it was her,’ Martha complained quietly.

Rose stepped around the edge of the group until she could finally see past the bulk of bodies. She hardly spared a glance at that suspicious elderly woman she’d met earlier whilst Martha’s complaints grew louder as she told the Judoon that the elderly woman had killed him. It was the him who drew Rose’s gaze and made her stop dead. Lying on the ground, his eyes closed and his skin a sickening shade of pale as though he actually was dead, was the Doctor. Her heart stopped and she gasped at the harrowing sight but no one seemed to notice, they were too busy bickering over how that elderly woman had hidden herself as a human. As suddenly as she had stopped in her tracks upon first seeing the lifeless Doctor, Rose sprung back into action. She didn’t care about the Judoon, burly aliens with guns or not, they could try and stop her all they liked but nothing would hold her back from getting to the Doctor. She also didn’t care about the elderly woman stood beside the Time Lord’s body that Martha was in the process of scanning with a stolen Judoon scanner to try and prove her non-human identity. There was only one thing she cared about right now and that was the Doctor.

Lunging to her knees, she landed hard on the cold floor by his side, her shaking hands reaching for his pale face and carefully tilting his heavy head towards her. ‘Doctor? Doctor, it’s me,’ Rose whimpered, one hand slapping against his cool, even for him, cheek to try and spur him to life but it was no use. ‘Oh God. Don’t die.’ Her hands fought past his blue suit jacket, the colour of which raised questions in the very back of her mind as she’d only ever seen him in blue at Keisha’s party but she didn’t think about that as her hands failed to find his heartbeats through his shirt. ‘No!’ She cried, her eyes filling with tears whilst her hands pawed helplessly at his chest, pressing harder in the hopes of finding the faintest trace of life. ‘Don’t die, oh my God, please don’t die. You can’t. I came all this way. I came back.’

The sounds of blasters hitting the leather clad biker, who Rose hadn’t taken note of in the room, didn’t make her flinch as a coldness seeped through her. It didn’t matter that she had seen this face on an older version of himself because she knew that time could be rewritten, he’d told her that enough times. He could die here right now, was dead right now, and that was that. Or he could regenerate, that would be a much better option. She didn’t really want him to because she’d finally found him, this him, the one she had been looking for, but Rose knew she’d love him in any body at the end of the day. If he regenerated then he’d be alive and that was the most important thing.

As the elderly woman screamed, when multiple blasts from the Judoon’s guns hit her body vaporising her instantly, Rose’s panic over the Doctor increased because he still wasn’t glowing with regeneration energy. Her mind raced back to what he had told her before he regenerated the first time and her heart clenched at the words she recalled. He’d told her that he was dying, that every cell in his body was dying, so did that mean it was too late? Would it work now that he was technically dead since his hearts had stopped beating? Rose saw only one solution to that problem because she was not letting him go. She had crossed universes to find him and had promised him her forever. He was going to be alive for that forever if she had anything to say about it.

Putting one of her hands over the back of the other and interlocking her fingers, Rose began compressions on his chest, starting with his left heart, the closest heart to her. ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare die on me now,’ she gritted out as she moved to his right heart after thirty compressions on his left one. She pinched his nose and breathed into his mouth twice before starting the compressions on his left again. It was exhausting but she was determined to continue even if she was flagging by the time Martha knelt at the Doctor’s other side after shouting at the retreating Judoon when they refused to help with the malfunctioning MRI machine that the human-disguised criminal had fiddled with before being killed for her crimes.

‘She’s done something to the machine,’ Martha told her as Rose finished giving the Doctor mouth to mouth and pushed against his left side once more. ‘Anything?’

Rose regrettably shook her head in answer to the Time Lord’s state. She was breathing heavily and couldn’t afford to waste her breath on answering Martha when the Doctor needed it more.

When Rose reached the number fifteen, as she counted out the compressions in her head, Martha stated, ‘he’s got two hearts’. She said it as though coming to a sudden realisation and something in the very back of Rose’s mind questioned how Martha knew such a thing but she didn’t dwell on it, just simply carried on counting in her head. Martha had clearly noticed her struggle to continue because she placed her own intertwined hands over his right heart and said, ‘here, let me take over’. Rose glanced up and saw the kind eyes and the determined face of the young doctor and faintly nodded her approval at the idea, knowing inside herself that Martha would try her best. ‘Just tell me when,’ Martha told her.

She counted the numbers twenty-eight and twenty-nine in her head before letting out a breathy, ‘now,’ that told Martha to begin. Rose hardly managed to get her breath back as she watched his still lifeless face, the only movement of which was from his body being jostled by the pounding on his hearts. Rose continued to give him mouth to mouth between Martha’s compressions until she felt too weak to do any more. Slowly, she slid to the floor, taking in as much air as she could but failing to suck in much at all. Her hand rested somewhere between his chest and shoulder as she lay beside him, her heavily lidded eyes focused on his closed ones, hoping against all hope that he would come back to life. She heard Martha’s final gasping breath before she gave the Doctor mouth to mouth and then the darkness took Rose, swallowing her in its entirety as oxygen deprivation took hold.

Chapter Text

Sucking in a sharp gasp of air, an array of new information flooded his senses before the Doctor had even opened his eyes. The first was that it didn’t half hurt replenishing nearly all the pints of blood in your body after getting sucked dry by an alien intent on avoiding capture. But that was a point wasn’t it? He was feeling that pain and as horrible as the pain was it meant only one thing. He was alive. No death via a vampiric Plasmovore then. His chest hurt like hell too, like one or perhaps the entire platoon of Judoon had marched on top of him. He would have to check for rib fractures later. The additional pain of his ribs was not something particularly helpful when he was otherwise unable to breathe deeply because he felt like he’d finally made it to the top of Gallifrey’s Mount Cadon. The oxygen in the atmosphere was very poor. Probably around fifteen percent, if that; he was a bit too groggy to properly work it out, especially when he was so distracted by a certain smell. It was faint, hidden within the, quite frankly, stifling aroma of bleach and antiseptic but it was there. That beautiful bouquet of vanilla, honey and citrus. Oh how he wished he could breathe deeper, wished he could smother himself in that smell but it was probably his mind playing tricks on him again.

A warm hand lay on his chest, over his left heart, completely still but the touch was strangely comforting. Slowly, he dragged his eyelids open, his heavy head tilting to the left as he did so enabling him to trace the hand to the owner. The sight before him took his breath away more than the lack of oxygen. Now he was certain he must have climbed through the hallucinogenic snow to reach Mount Cadon’s peak because what he saw was impossible. Should have been impossible.

Blood rushed through his ears as his newly restarted hearts pounded for the blonde woman lying at his side. She had a well defined jaw, soft, plump lips, a small rounded nose and thick black eyelashes that dusted the top of her cheeks as she lay there with her eyes closed. She didn’t need to open them for the Doctor to know that hidden beneath those eyelids were two hazel eyes flecked with gold.

His mind may have supplied imagery of his pink and yellow human before but never had it gone as far as to give him touch in his waking hours. To allow for him to feel the warmth of her hand on his chest. And the scent was deliriously strong now that he was focused on it. He couldn’t bring himself to believe it but it was almost as if…

He reluctantly pulled his gaze away from Rose and turned his head towards the panicked voice of Martha on his right. It was this urgency that drew him to her as she tried to get his attention for probably the umpteenth time. She too was lying by his side, her eyes half lidded in her struggle to keep them open as she fought against the oxygen deprivation that was dragging her under.

‘Doctor.’ Her weak voice sounded relieved to have finally grabbed his attention. He vaguely wondered how long she had been trying to do such a thing, how long he had been staring at Rose. ‘The scanner, she did something,’ Martha managed to tell him before unconsciousness took hold.

His eyes flitted to the machine, the loudness of his hearts dimming to allow for the strange pulsating sound of the blue flashing light emanating from it to now be heard. That certainly was not meant to be happening, not at all, and he realised that the Plasmovore must have enacted her final plan. The hospital, moon and half of the Earth was going to be destroyed if he let the machine continue.

He knew he could still feel her hand on his chest but he stopped for one last look back at his pink and yellow human before he rolled away from her and onto his front, feeling as though he was hacking up his lungs as he did so. The lack of blood and oxygen, all combined with the pain of his chest, really was a cocktail for weakness. He groaned and grunted as he army crawled closer to the controls of the MRI, pulling himself upright when he made it beyond that protective clear screen separating the control area from the rest of the room. Reaching into his inner jacket pocket, his hand didn’t immediately come into contact with his sonic screwdriver as it normally did and he groaned again remembering the fate of his trusty tool. Instead his eyes darted over the bundle of wires that enabled the scanner to work. His fingers brushed over them whilst he quickly worked through each wire looking for the one that actually powered the machine. He decided on the big red one and picked it up in his hands, yanking at the wire to separate it at the connecting point. The MRI machine droned as it powered down, the blue flashing lights disappearing along with the ordinary white light of the powered machine as the electricity left it. He sighed in relief before coughing again, his lungs reminding him of the lack of oxygen. Hopefully, with the Plasmovore found by the Judoon, something he didn’t exactly know had happened but he assumed as much because of the situation when he awoke, they would perform another H2O scoop and the Hospital would be sent back to the oxygen rich Earth. He really hoped it would happen soon because the humans would start to suffocate from the lack of oxygen shortly and he would join them in the end.

Speaking of humans…

The Doctor turned, his hearts palpitating with fear and hope, the hope ending up outweighing his fears when his eyes fell on the sight of Rose still lying on the floor. He found himself kneeling by her side in no time but it was there that he paused. The fear took over. He wanted to touch her, to feel her warmth, her beating heart, the rush of her breath as it left her body before she took in what oxygen she could as she breathed in again. If he touched her though she would only disappear. That was what his mind was telling him because, hopeful future with Rose as told by da Vinci or not, she couldn’t actually be here. The real Rose was trapped in a parallel world whilst before him lay nothing but a figment of his imagination. His imagination had clearly gotten creative by dressing Rose in a hospital gown to integrate her into the setting, that was new but really it was a hardly unexpected development. He was actually going mad. This was the thing that had tipped him over the edge. He’d laugh if it wasn’t such a depressing thought.

He breathed in and there it was again, that fragrance of Rose. His imagination surely wasn’t good enough to recreate such an accurate scent and then there was the memory of her hand on his chest, her warm, human and oh so real feeling hand. He could still faintly feel where it had rested only minutes ago. Shakily, he reached out a hand of his own. It hovered above the bare flesh of her arm, too nervous to quite finish the movement. But he didn’t need to finish it to notice that he could feel the heat of her lovely human body radiating from her skin. No mind could recreate that. He either wanted her to be here so much that he was willing himself to feel such a thing or something great but so incomprehensibly impossible had happened.

Carefully, he lowered his hand, his flesh feeling as though it was on fire when it came into contact with her solid arm. The Doctor let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and with it came a weak sob that had crawled its way out of the thickness in his throat. Trying to swallow past that thickness, his fingers curled around the limb just a little tighter and his thumb caressed the skin feeling every minuscule undulation beneath his touch. He slid his hand lower down her arm until two of his fingers gently pressed against her wrist where from just below he could feel a weak but most certainly detectable pulse. His hearts soared at that feeling and the hope running through him urged him on. Still holding onto her with one hand, the Doctor delicately brushed his knuckles over her cheek, another needy sound of disbelief escaping from the back of his throat.

Simply touching her wasn’t enough for the Time Lord. He needed to hold her, to feel the weight of her real body in his arms. Shuffling so he was sat cross legged by her side whilst barely lifting a finger from her as he did so as though afraid she would vanish if he did, the Doctor carefully scooped Rose into his arms and cradled her limp form. He set her legs down and, still holding her head up with the arm around her shoulders, he brushed her golden strands of hair from her face and cupped her cheek with his right hand. Sniffing as his thumb tenderly caressed her soft skin, his eyes raked over her face, taking in every inch of it and committing it to memory once again. The final proof that she was real were the slight changes in her appearance. Her jawbone was even more defined and her cheeks weren’t quite as full which was either due to her features maturing or the fact that she had lost a little weight, or perhaps it was a bit of both. The Doctor knew one thing for certain though, that his Rose was still as beautiful as ever but how could she ever not be, he loved her with every fibre of his being.

So distracted by Rose, he hadn’t noticed that his breathing had become a little easier nor had he noticed the distant pattering sounds of the rain on the exterior of the building. Then the room shook, juddering as the hospital landed in its previous location on Earth. The Doctor held his love a little closer in his arms with a mixture of relief, jubilation, hope and so many other positive emotions running through him. Plus a little bit of impatience too. Now that they had returned to Earth, and the oxygen levels were rising within the building, he wanted nothing more than to see those beautiful hazel eyes of hers fluttering open.

It was the longest one minute and four seconds of his lives but finally those brown hues locked onto his darker ones. He let out a shaky breath and watched as Rose blinked away the bleariness and her brow creased a little at the sight before her.

‘Doctor?’ She whispered as she too had a moment of not believing he was real until the memories came flooding back. ‘Doctor,’ Rose repeated with more certainty, mirroring his gesture and reaching up to tenderly cup his cheek.

His chest reflexively tightened as she spoke his name. It was just two syllables, two measly syllables, but to him, his name passing her lips, oh it was everything. He only dreamt that he’d hear her voice again. Now here she was before him, speaking his name with such reverence that it made him feel as though that day he’d chosen his title, upon graduating the Academy, had been leading up to this moment. As though he’d chosen it for her. He let out an unsteady breath and took in another feeling like it was the first time that he’d properly done so since she’d gone. All he could do was numbly nod as he melted into her touch, his mouth seemingly too dry to make sound no matter how much he wanted and tried to.

With one swift movement, her hand had slid from his cheek and into his hair. Then Rose was pressed tightly against him, her other arm around his shoulders and her face in the crook of his neck. He spared no time in returning the embrace, curling his arms around her body so tightly that he was almost touching his opposite ribs whilst she sat there in his lap. He inhaled her beautiful fragrance and finally the words spilled from his lips and into her hair where his face was buried. Well, one word left his lips. He repeated her name like a chant or a prayer, never stopping his whispered utterances until he felt the shuddering of her shoulders beneath his touch. ‘Don’t cry, Rose. Please don’t’ cry, you’ll only make me cry.’

She couldn’t help it. She could hope all she wanted but hope never brought people back to life and she’d believed that he’d died. In the end, Rose thought that she was going to die too but, in the moment, that hadn’t worried her as much as it probably should have because at least she was with him, had found him. If she was going to go, she wanted to be by his side and she was, still was now, wrapped up in each other's arms as they were. But he was alive, they both were. Here, now, together. It was the best feeling in the universe.

She sniffed and leant back just enough so she could see the Time Lord. A flash of amusement crossed her glossy eyes and her hands came up to cup his face. ‘I think it’s already too late for you, Doctor,’ she said softly as her thumbs brushed away the evidence from his tear streaked cheeks.

He hadn’t noticed the dampness of his eyes but it didn’t surprise him either. Nodding faintly, he swallowed and rubbed his own thumb gently below her left eye attempting to wipe away the black line that was beginning to trail but only ending up smudging it and making it worse. ‘Your mascara’s running.’

Shaking her head, she mumbled, ‘don’t care,’ before smirking and adding, ‘yours isn’t’.

A breathy laugh left the Doctor at her remark. ‘Forgot to put mine on before I left the Tardis.’ Her watery giggle brought a beaming grin to his face that Rose was soon matching with her tongue touched one. It healed his broken hearts with its brightness. ‘Oh, Rose Tyler,’ he exhaled. He didn’t understand how she was here, he still didn’t fully believe that she actually was, but for now he didn’t care; her presence was the only important thing.

Her smile somehow brightened further at his words before she gently pulled his head closer, only stopping when their noses were brushing, their lips millimetres away from connecting. He could feel her hot, slightly shaky breath on his cooler lips and found his tongue quickly dabbing his in anticipation. Then her lips caressed his in a gentle and almost hesitant way that was far too short for the Time Lord’s liking. It was as if Rose was testing the waters, checking where they stood after the separation, and the Doctor spent no time in showing her his thoughts on what they were. He closed the gap and pressed his mouth against hers in a kiss that was perhaps a little desperate, filled with a lot of longing and desire after going without for so long. He sucked on her bottom lip greedily, humming into the kiss as her fingers slid into his hair. When he released her lip, she opened her mouth to him and the Doctor’s tongue tingled at the sensation as it met hers. She tasted of weak, milky tea and toast. It was the same thing he’d been offered for breakfast at the hospital and he distantly wondered if her toast had been barely warm like his and if she’d had the same measly ration of butter spread on it. But behind the flavours of her most recent meal was the taste that he could only describe as Rose. There was nothing else like it in the universe and he would know. He had tasted a lot of things from all over time and space, especially in this regeneration with his proclivity for using his tongue and the heightened taste buds of this body, but Rose was completely unique and completely brilliant.

He was drawn away from devouring her when she breathlessly pulled away from the kiss. As much as he wanted to, he didn’t complain because they had been starved of oxygen after all so it could never have lasted long. Well, perhaps a small grumble had rumbled through his chest but neither mentioned it. Instead, they were both smiling widely, their foreheads resting together and their panting breaths mingling in the small space between them. Rose’s cheeks were flushed and her eyes twinkled brightly in a way that he had missed so much. But that wasn’t the only thing he’d missed about her of course. He felt like he could spend hours upon hours listing all the things he’d missed about Rose Tyler but, to put it simply, he’d missed her in her entirety.

‘I missed you,’ the Doctor whispered, his tone filled with longing as he tried to make her understand just how much he had missed her. Needed her.

She had missed him too, of course she had, and she was going to reply as such when it suddenly washed over her that she could have been missing him forever. ‘You died,’ she choked out, her eyes glossing over again as she leant back and hit him once on the shoulder just so he knew how much of a world saving idiot he was.

His face dropped. The swift change in Rose’s emotions startled him before he gathered himself enough to try and take it all in his stride. ‘Ohhhh, it wasn’t that bad-’ He began, attempting to make light of the situation but Rose wasn’t having any of it.

‘No. You died, you did,’ she told him, her fierce eyes locked with his whilst her thankfully short nails dug into his shoulders as she clutched at him tightly. ‘You weren’t breathing, your hearts had stopped and you weren’t regenerating either. I’d finally made it back to you and you - and you were-’

She cut herself off with a sob and the Doctor had never felt so guilty. He could only imagine what it must have felt like to be in her shoes, in fact he couldn’t bring himself to imagine such a thing because it was too heartsbreaking to do so. He cradled her head in one hand and pulled her back into his embrace, a gesture which she accepted willingly and something that relieved him to no end. Her shoulders shuddered and he somehow held her closer, rocking them slightly whilst Rose’s face buried in the crook of his neck and his own head rested atop of hers. His breath drew goose bumps on her skin when he began to whisper in her ear. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t my intention.’ The Doctor took in a breath before he started to explain his true intentions to Rose. ‘I’m sure you know all about the Judoon and the criminal they were after. She was a Plasmovore you see, a bit like a vampire except she assimilates the blood she’s drained from her victims. That means she can appear to be their species, if you don’t go too in depth in your research of course. It was a trick that could fool a basic scanner, one like the Judoon had, but a more thorough check would start to crop up with some discrepancies. But that’s neither here nor there now…so, yes. Anyway, she’d been scanned and they’d marked her off as human but I needed her to be caught because if she wasn’t, they’d execute the entire hospital…or they’d execute me but we don’t need to go into that either,’ he added a little sheepishly.

‘You let her assimilate your blood so she would appear as an alien when they scanned her again,’ Rose calmly mumbled against his skin, her anger having since faded the longer the Time Lord rambled on. She was too relieved that he was here, alive and that she was with him, to feel properly mad. Plus she knew he’d have a good reason for his actions, he always did, it didn’t mean she had to like it though, especially not when she didn’t know his plan.

‘Yeah,’ he breathed out in relief before adding, ‘I’m sorry you had to see that’. She hummed against his shoulder, the meaning of which he found he wasn’t entirely sure of until her fingers began to tenderly stroke down his shoulder blades through the fabric of his suit.

‘Sorry for hitting you,’ she whispered.

‘I deserved it.’

‘No you didn’t,’ she immediately retorted.

He rather thought he did but he decided to let that point lie. Still feeling guilty as he thought of what Rose must have been going through when she found him as he was, he couldn’t help but make some comparisons to a rather famous piece of Earthen literature. ‘Never did much like the end of Romeo and Juliet,’ he murmured and soon found himself lifting his head from Rose’s when she started to lean back to give him an amused look.

‘You think you’re a Romeo do you?’

The Doctor swiftly pressed his lips to hers in an unexpected move that he was quite pleased with when it took her breath away. ‘I can be,’ he said as he pulled back with a cocky smirk and a waggle of his eyebrows.

Rose snorted at his expression. ‘You wish.’

He could have been put out by her swift recovery to his suave move and her amused retort, but not this time. After going without her teasing for so long, he couldn’t help but let a big, beaming grin grow on his face and he was just as delighted when Rose mirrored it with her own. Oh how he loved that smile. He leant forwards and pecked at her lips to try and encourage her to produce something else that he loved. And there it was that cute happy giggle she made whenever he was acting like a soppy bastard. The Doctor rested his forehead against hers, captivated by the replay of the giggle in his mind as well as the smile that had seemingly only grown wider on her lips.

Neither moved nor took their eyes off the other, but both were reminded of a third person’s presence in the room when there was a shuffling from behind the Time Lord. They had completely forgotten about the student doctor, having been so wrapped up in their own little bubble, and although they both knew that they should, neither had the willpower to pull away from the other quite yet.

Martha took a moment to gather her bearings before rapidly sitting upright, her eyes flying to the back of the Doctor who, even though he must be feeling better because he too was upright, she quickly asked, ‘are you alright, Doctor?’ She shuffled across the floor a little so she could see him properly and her eyebrows rose at the sight. He was just leaning his head back from Rose’s who was sitting in his lap wrapped up in his arms just as much as he was wrapped up in hers. Both of their cheeks were tinged pink and they were staring at each other a little giddily. There was no denying what the pair had just been up to and Martha couldn’t help but be confused at the sight. She was struggling between feeling jealous that it was Rose who had woken up first and had been scooped up by the Doctor who had kissed her, probably as a way of saying thanks for saving his life, or to be slightly disgusted to have been kissed earlier on by this man who clearly went around kissing whomever he wanted. As the memories of said, quite frankly spectacular, kiss went through her mind, she was interrupted by his voice.

‘Oh, Martha Jones, I am more than alright. Brilliant even. In fact…I’m fantastic,’ he told her, never taking his eyes from the woman in his arms. Rose let out a giggle, finding his words funny for some reason, and the Doctor made a happy noise in the back of his throat whilst he beamed at the blonde.

Martha frowned wondering how long she had been out for this development to have happened. ‘I see you’ve met Rose then,’ she commented, getting up from the floor and brushing off her clothes. Feeling like she was rather interrupting something, she decided that if both the Doctor and Rose were fine, as they seemingly were, then she should take her leave. There were plenty of other patients in the hospital who she could attend to after all and her help would probably be needed more than ever after the bizarre events of the day.

Clearly her movement stirred something in Rose as she began to untangle herself from the Doctor and get up whilst he said, ‘oh, you two know each other’. He sounded happily surprised before he quickly went on and added, ‘well, of course you do, you were both by my side when I woke up, though I guess you didn’t get much time for a good old chinwag’.

Rose shook her head at him fondly for nearly but not quite understanding and held her hand out to help him up. He didn’t need it of course but even having just extricated herself from his embrace she already felt a bit bereft. She supposed this feeling might last a while after the traumatic separation and was delighted that the Doctor seemed reluctant to let her go too with the way he stood so that their sides were touching and how he entwined their hands together perfectly, holding hers tightly but comfortably in his grasp. ‘We met before that,’ Rose began to correct, ‘when Martha was - well she was helping me out after I arrived back. Thanks for that by the way,’ she added, directing her final words to the student doctor who smiled under the praise.

‘I was just doing my job,’ she replied, brushing off the gratitude but also enjoying it because it was what the job was about, helping people and making them better with her skills, and it was nice to get acknowledgement from someone who she had done just that for. Martha’s cheeks reddened a little under the gaze of the Doctor though who was now aiming his grin at her, apparently pleased that she had helped Rose.

Rose nudged him to draw his attention back to her and, after complaining and rubbing his side where she had elbowed him, he saw her look and caught the meaning of her head tilting in Martha’s direction. He turned back to the young doctor, nodding his head, and said, ‘yes, thank you for helping Rose out, Martha’.

‘Not for helping me you Muppet,’ Rose chuckled and the Doctor’s head shot back to her with a frown. ‘For helping you.’

The whole matter of what he was meant to be thanking Martha for rather passed the Time Lord by as he focused on something else Rose had said. ‘Since when did you call me a Muppet?’

‘Since I got a little brother who is infatuated with this Fozzie Bear toy I got him,’ she answered, smiling warmly at the thought of little Tony and his cuddly sleep buddy.

The Doctor’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh, she’s had the baby!’

Now Martha definitely felt like she was imposing and thought it was best to take her leave before they got too caught up in a conversation that made it clear to her that they had certainly not just met like she had assumed. She still had a lot of questions, especially for the alien of the pair, though she was now having doubts about the human looking Rose as well, but she guessed she wasn’t going to get her answers. Clearing her throat drew their attention back to her and she said, ‘I better get back to work, I’m sure the hospitals in a right state and they’ll need all the staff helping out’.

‘Right. Yes,’ the Doctor exhaled as he scratched the back of his head with his free hand. ‘We should probably get going too; don’t need us pair getting in the way and interfering with the clean up.’

‘Seriously you don’t, he’s just good at making messes,’ Rose added in a stage whisper to Martha who laughed at the joke and at the Doctor’s indignant complaint at Rose’s words. She turned to her partner with a cheeky smile and winked at him but then another thought came to mind and she said, ‘oh, we can’t go home to the Tardis yet, gotta get my stuff first’.

Home. The Tardis was Rose’s home. Well, the Old Girl already had been, was, but hearing Rose refer to his ship as her home, now that she had come back, filled him with such warmth and joy. It had also probably put a gooey eyed look on his face which he tried to wipe off by raising an eyebrow and tilting his head towards the door. ‘Well then, allons-y Rose Tyler.’

Rose beamed and the trio all moved through the doorway and into the corridor beyond where Martha asked, ‘do you know the way? I can show you if you want?’

The blonde smiled gratefully. ‘No, it’s alright, I remember. Don’t want to take up anymore of your time anyway but thanks again for all your help, especially with this one,’ she said, patting the Doctor on his arm. It didn’t take a genius to work out that Martha hadn’t just helped the Time Lord by taking over the CPR when Rose had grown too weak to continue and she was grateful that he’d had someone there to aid in whatever mad schemes he’d come up with. Or to come up with some sort of scheme in the first place because she wouldn’t put that past Martha. She was smart, she was a doctor after all, well, a student doctor on her way to becoming a proper one, but either way Rose thought that she must be pretty intelligent to get to that point in life. Much brainier than a dropout like her.

Before bidding farewell, she wished Martha luck with her brother’s birthday party that evening and then the trio went off in separate directions with Rose tugging the Doctor along the corridor to the right and towards the nearby stairwell that she had used earlier.

Martha stood in front of the door of the MRI room watching their retreating backs, intrigued by the pair. Only when Rose pushed open the door to the stairwell did she turn to go in the opposite direction.

‘Oh and Martha…’

The Doctor’s voice made her spin back round immediately. She found him poking his head out of the doorway with a small smile on his lips.

‘Well done,’ he continued, now having got the student doctor’s attention, ‘you didn’t just help save the hospital today…you helped save the world’. He gave her a look that was full of pride before retreating fully through the doorway only to find himself on the receiving end of a similar look from Rose. ‘What?’ He questioned as they started down the stairs.

She lightly shook her head at him. ‘Nothing. It’s just that she looked up to you, I could tell. She’s always gonna remember this.’

He scoffed. ‘Well, it’s not every day you end up on the moon with rhinoceros headed aliens.’

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she said with an amused smile. ‘Course she’s gonna remember that, but she’ll remember you. You made a good impression on her, Doctor.’ She hugged his arm to her chest and he looked down at her bemused.

‘Of course I made a good impression, I’m brilliant.’

Rose laughed loudly and shook her head again whilst he beamed at her reaction. ‘God, you think you’re so impressive.’

His smile dropped at her teasing tone. ‘I am so impressive,’ he replied, straightening his tie a little as though its slight crookedness was the single thing letting him down.

She smiled in a placating manner. ‘Whatever you say, Doctor.’ He huffed a little but there was amusement in his eyes. Rose squeezed his hand, receiving one in return from the Time Lord, and they continued down the stairs all the way back to the ground floor. The further down the floors they went the busier the stairs became with patients, staff and visitors all making their way towards the nearest exit, all promptly wanting to leave the building after the ordeal. They popped out in the corridor just outside of the lobby but she led them in the opposite direction to the rest of the crowd, instead following the sign haphazardly dangling from the ceiling that pointed them towards the wards. She didn’t need to follow any signs though because this was the route she took earlier and it was an easy enough one to remember. ‘Right, nearly there now,’ Rose told him, pulling on their conjoined hands and tugging him along a little quicker as she led them towards the double doors of the Burn Unit.

The Doctor frowned when he read the name above the doors and slowed his steps just as Rose reached out to open them. ‘The Burn Unit?’ He muttered. ‘Why were you in the Burn Unit?’ His eyes flitted up and down Rose’s body, or what he could see of her from the back. Her hospital gown gave him a good view of her arms and legs and he knew her face was free of burns from his earlier studies. The way her shoulders tensed, however, told him that something had happened. Perhaps there were burns hidden beneath the gown. Oh and he had been hugging her so tightly, he really hoped he hadn’t hurt her. Just as the guilt was beginning to settle in for the Doctor, Rose spoke.

‘It’s a bit of a long story,’ she said, pulling him a little harder and leading the way through the doors.

He didn’t let her pull him along for long and soon stopped her in her tracks. ‘Rose.’

She knew that warning tone and sighed as she turned back to the Doctor. ‘I will tell you, I promise, but it is a long story.’ Stroking her hand down his lapel she said, ‘and don’t worry about me. I’m fine, yeah? I just want to find my stuff, get back to the Tardis and change out of this dreadful gown cos I feel like I’m flashing everyone all the time’.

He did have to agree that she did seem fine like she assured him. It was that, plus the sincerity in her eyes, which quashed his guilt, allowing him to smirk at her annoyance with her outfit instead. ‘Oh, I didn’t mind it,’ he quipped. She never actually flashed him, had revealed nothing more than the bare skin of her mid thigh to him, but two could play at the teasing game they so often took part in and he loved watching as her cheeks reddened at his words.

‘Git.’

The Doctor winked and Rose rolled her eyes at his smugness and pulled him into the ward she had been on.

He dropped her hand as they entered the room which contained eight empty, but recently occupied until the chaos had begun, beds. The Time Lord followed her, unbuttoning his blue suit jacket as his eyes trailed from their brief glance around the clinical space and back to Rose who had gone round to the side of the bed nearest the large window that took up quite a large proportion of the wall at the end of the room. She was taking items out of the drawer of the bedside table and laying them on the unmade blanket as he walked over to her, slipping his jacket off. There were only four of them but he recognised all but one of the items. They consisted of his 3D glasses, his black wallet, which contained some psychic paper, a notebook and her mobile phone. He slung the jacket over her shoulders and nodded his head at the items on the bed beside them when she glanced up at him. ‘You little thief,’ he lightly accused, raising his eyebrow at her, ‘I was looking for that everywhere’. Picking up the psychic paper he tossed it into the air before catching it in his opposite hand and pocketing it.

She could see he was teasing her but still let some of her guilt show as she said, ‘yeah, I’m sorry, I never intended on keeping it. I took it and used it to get into the sphere room and then…’ Rose frowned a little as she remembered. ‘…then it actually got me caught because the scientist guy in there had psychic training or something.’

The Doctor scrunched his nose up at that having been in such a predicament a few times before. ‘Oh, it is annoying when that happens.’

‘Yeah,’ Rose agreed with a nod. She slid her arms into the sleeves of the jacket, appreciating the warmth of it as, now that the adrenaline had worn off, she was starting to feel chilly just in the gown. Plus it smelt like him, smelt like home, the scent of sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon that she had been missing for so long. It embraced her and warmed her more than the jacket ever could. ‘Ta for this,’ she said, pulling on the lapels a little so it fit around her body better.

He tugged his ear to feign nonchalance as he commented, ‘wellllll, can’t have you flashing everyone now can we’.

‘No. Just a certain Time Lord it seems,’ she said, raising her eyebrows at him.

‘If you insist.’ He smirked when she rolled her eyes at him again before she grabbed the notebook, glasses and mobile and pocketed them in his jacket pockets. A small frown grew on his brow when she told him she was ready to go and held her hand out to him. He took the hand with no complaint but couldn’t help but say, ‘you somehow crossed over here from a life in another universe but only brought with you four things. Half of them aren’t even yours’.

She smiled up at him softly and gently shook her head. ‘My life sort of felt like it was on pause when I was in the other universe. I’m not saying it was all bad or anything or that there aren’t things or people I’ll miss because of course I will. I’ve got memories that I’ll cherish forever and my phone is full of pictures and voicemails that I’ll never delete and I’ll look and listen to them from time to time. But my life’s here, Doctor, with you. And I promised you forever didn’t I? I know we got separated but I’m back now and I’m planning on keeping that promise for however long we’ve got.’ Her words were said with such determination but that faltered when the Time Lord didn’t reply and simply stared at her. ‘If that’s what you want,’ she added with uncertainty and waited a little uncomfortably for something from the man who stood before her.

He knew what Rose had left behind to return to this universe but it hadn’t fully sunk in until she mentioned it. She had made that choice to leave her family and stay with him before they closed the breach but hadn’t been able to follow through with it. Since then she got to live out that other life and yet still somehow found a way across to him. She had chosen to return and had wanted it more than anything else that universe could offer. He really didn’t know what he had done to deserve Rose Tyler and he would never understand how she could choose him over her family but she had. Selfishly he was over the moon with her decision and at the moment he couldn’t bring himself to feel guilty about it because he was so happy she was back. If her choice told him one thing, it was a repeat of those three words she told him at Bad Wolf Bay. Those three words that he cruelly never got to say.

‘I love you too,’ he said softly.

Rose’s eyes widened. ‘What?’ She whispered, having been so sure that she had previously said the wrong thing and mucked everything up. But now here he was, saying those words she had wanted to hear for so long and she couldn’t believe her ears.

He took her other hand and wrapped them both in his own before bringing them up to his chest, resting them between his hearts. ‘I’m in love with you, Rose Tyler. I love you with both my hearts. I have done for a long time but I was too much of a coward to say it. Then I thought it had to be said at the perfect moment and before I knew it, it was too late. I’ve regretted not telling you sooner, I’ve regretted a lot of things since you’ve been gone, but loving you was never one of them.’ The Doctor would have probably rambled on a bit longer had he not been distracted by Rose untangling one hand from his grip so she could grab his tie. She yanked on it, pulling him forwards and sending their lips crashing together.

‘I love you, my Doctor. So much,’ she whispered against his lips when they separated from the kiss.

‘I know you do.’ He brushed a knuckle over her cheek and chuckled softly at the hint of intrigue at his word choice that flashed across her features. ‘You kind of have to, to end up over here. Unless, of course, you’ve made a grievous error using some fancy transportation technology when you were only trying to get to the shops.’

Her eyes lit up with mischief at his words. ‘And you’d know all about those errors wouldn’t you in your fancy transportation technology?’

He closed his eyes and sighed heavily whilst Rose cackled at his reaction. Tugging on their still conjoined hands, he began to drag her out of the room and guide them towards the front doors so they could leave. He did so whilst feigning annoyance at her mirth but was really secretly pleased because her laughter only made that feeling of love swell within him. ‘Did I say love? I think I must have misspoken,’ he quipped once her amusement had quietened.

She swung their hands between them happily, unable to wipe the smile that his proclamation had caused from her face. ‘You said you loved me, I heard you,’ she replied in a sing-song voice.

‘Nope,’ he said, popping the “p”, ‘you misheard’.

‘You love me with both your hearts,’ she countered a little smugly.

Their playful banter continued the rest of the way through the hospital with the Doctor at one point telling her she must have got the wrong man because he had seventeen hearts and her argument of both hearts clearly inferred that she was talking of a man with just two. Rose laughed and asked where he could possibly fit seventeen hearts into his body, finding two of the locations particularly amusing when he told her he had a miniature heart in his big toe of his right foot and another in his left ear lobe. She soon told him to shut up and they were both chuckling by the time they reached the front doors.

The slight difference in temperature, but mainly the difference in texture, reminded the Time Lord that he was without his shoes when they stepped from the chaos they had to squeeze by in the lobby and into the chaos just outside the entrance. He glanced down at his bare feet and caught sight of Rose’s as she walked beside him. Well, he simply couldn’t be having that. The Doctor extricated his hand from hers causing Rose to look up at him with a small crease in her brow. Her frown was soon displaced when he easily scooped her up into a bridal carry and she let out a surprised squeak at his actions.

‘What are you doing?’ She asked with a bit of a giggle, her arms coming to automatically wrap around his neck.

‘You’re not wearing shoes. I’m carrying you back to the Tardis,’ the Doctor explained as he stepped around groups of patients, relatives and medical staff in the general direction of his ship.

‘Well neither are you,’ she pointed out.

‘I’ll be fine. I’m not having you, on the other hand, catching tetanus, especially not before we’ve gotten home.’ He threw her a brief look that showed he wasn’t going to budge on the matter.

Rose decided to let it lie and soon found herself carding her fingers through the hair at the back of the Doctor’s head. As they made it through the crowds she asked, ‘so how come you ended up with no shoes on?’

‘Oh, I diverted roentgen radiation into one of them and Martha pointed out that I looked daft with just one shoe on so I took them both off and put them in the bin,’ he told her as though it was a common occurrence.

She chuckled softly at him. ‘Of course you did. Why didn’t I think of that?’

Any further conversation died when the Tardis came into sight. The Doctor felt and well as heard Rose’s intake of breath and he smiled warmly at the excitement brimming in her eyes. He could tell the feeling was mutual; the Old Girl was humming loudly over their bond, thrumming with joy and love for his pink and yellow human. He used to complain about their relationship, quite often acting annoyed that they seemed to be even closer than he and the Tardis were because she was his ship and they were the ones who had a bond. Really, he loved it. How could he not when they were the two beings who meant the most to him in the universe?

The Doctor glanced around as he walked up a side path towards the Tardis which was parked about twenty feet away. His gaze fell upon Martha who was just outside of the hospital surrounded by a few other people, one of which was animatedly talking to her going by the arm gestures. As though she felt his gaze, she looked over at him and he offered her a joyful smile before turning back and stopping outside the blue wooden doors. He was about to either put Rose down to get out his key or ask if she could use hers, having spotted a glint of the chain she usually wore it on around her neck earlier, but the Old Girl was apparently eager for them to get inside and swung both doors open which allowed him to carry Rose over the threshold. It rather reminded him of the human tradition of doing such a thing after getting married. His whole being felt warm at the thought because he could actually ask Rose to marry him now that she had returned. It would be one of the first trips they’d take once she had settled back in and if anything got in the way of him asking her once again then…well, he would not be happy to put it lightly.

He had barely lowered Rose to the floor, as the Tardis doors creaked shut behind them, before she was running up the ramp and towards the console. He stood and watched as she giggled at the warmth and love sent through the Old Girl’s hums but what happened next rather took his breath away. Rose was telling the ship that she had missed her and reached out over the controls and placed her hand upon the time rotor. The entire room glowed gold and the Old Girl did not just hum, she sang loudly, her eternal song harmonising with Rose’s joyful laughter in such a way that it made his mouth drop open in awe. He could bang on about having a bond with his ship but this was something else, this was a connection that he had never seen before; something he didn’t even know was possible. Being a renegade and an outcast, the Doctor had never had the experience of flying a Tardis with a full crew. It had always just been him, except for the odd helping hand over the years. But he knew enough, had read enough, to understand the relationship between Time Lord and machine. There was only ever one member of that crew who would bond with the ship and they, like him, were the captain. The others could still communicate with the Tardis but the relationship was never as strong or complete. Perhaps the best way to describe it was that it was a little like hearing one side of a phone call except that the one side also happened to be muffled as they were in another room. The Doctor could tell that what Rose was experiencing with the Old Girl right now was nothing one sided or muffled, it was so much closer to his bond if not near enough the same.

Then she turned. Her position, the way her hair flowed out behind her in the movement plus the golden lighting, reminded the Doctor of only one thing. ‘Bad Wolf,’ he whispered.

Rose bit her lip at the expression of panic that was growing on the Time Lord’s face. She’d known this day was coming when she was travelling with him but she’d never gotten round to it and really had been rather putting it off, fearful of his reaction and not wanting to concern him with it. But now with his worry evident, there was nothing she could do but tell him. Carefully, Rose walked over to him, watching how the Doctor’s wide eyes darted across her face, particularly focusing on her own hazel ones. She could see the way his chest rose and fell quicker than usual under the fabric of his pale blue shirt and caught sight of his hands clenching where they hung on either side of his body.

‘Doctor, look at me,’ she said softly, reaching up and cupping his cheeks. ‘I’m fine. I’m just Rose, yeah? Just plain old Rose.’ When he faintly nodded and didn’t retort about the way she had called herself “plain old Rose” she knew that he really was very worried. ‘I don’t think Bad Wolf is something we need to be scared of anymore,’ she tentatively said, watching as his brow creased. She took a deep breath before saying, ‘there’s something I need to tell you’.

‘You remember,’ he mumbled.

Rose nodded. ‘Yeah, I do.’ She shuffled a little uncomfortably on her feet, the small holes of the grating pinching her bare soles. ‘Can I get a bit more comfortable before we talk about it? Have a quick shower and put on some actual clothes and then we can chat?’ His eventual agreeing nod was strained and she assumed he was reluctant to wait as he always was rather impatient. Wanting to distract him so his mind didn’t start over thinking about what she was going to tell him, Rose dropped her hands from his cheeks and offered one to the Time Lord. ‘Come on, you can keep me company if you want and we can catch up.’ Her offer wasn’t only to distract him, it was also because she had just found him and didn’t want to be without him at the moment. It was a little silly because she was in the Tardis and if that wasn’t a massive reminder that she really was back then she didn’t know what was, but Rose still didn’t want to let that man out of her sight if she could help it. From the way some of the tension fell from his shoulders and the panic dwindled a little from his eyes when he took her hand, she guessed that the Doctor was feeling the same and didn’t want to be apart either. It made her feel a bit better about her own feelings on the matter and she smiled at him before beginning them up the ramp and towards the corridor.

Chapter Text

They had hardly made it out of the console room before the Doctor was drawn out of his apparent stupor. He dragged Rose back so he could take the Tardis into the vortex before allowing her to lead them down the corridors towards her bedroom whilst he rattled off question after question about Bad Wolf. She didn’t have a hope of answering any, as he hardly took a breath in between his torrent of words, but when he spoke about doing tests on her in the infirmary for at least the sixth time in the short journey to her door, Rose finally interrupted him.

‘Doctor, just chill out for a sec.’

‘Chill out? Chill out?! He asked incredulously, his eyebrows shooting upwards. ‘Rose you - I took it out of you, this - this - this power that day on the platform,’ he explained, flapping his hands a bit as he tried to grasp a good descriptor for what he saw that day. ‘There’s a reason you shouldn’t be able to remember this, why I ensured you couldn’t remember, because it was far too dangerous-’

‘Yet I do remember,’ Rose pointed out calmly, ‘and I’m fine so…’

The Doctor eyed her sternly, shaking his head as he said, ‘you don’t know that’.

‘I’ve had plenty of medicals at Torchwood that say otherwise.’

He scoffed. ‘Torchwood? You had the entirety of the vortex in your head, Rose. The time vortex. What would they know about that compared to me, a Time Lord? Ow!’ His hand shot up to his throbbing head where the Tardis had just given him a rather sharp mental jab. ‘Stop it,’ he growled at the ceiling above Rose’s bedroom door where they had stopped to finish this discussion.

Rose’s eyebrows were raised and her arms crossed as she stared at the Time Lord, unimpressed with his behaviour but understanding of the reasoning behind it. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it coming because she’d always known how scared he was whenever there was the slightest hint of Bad Wolf and his current reaction was being driven by that fear. That left Rose to be the sensible one of the pair but, with the Tardis apparently on her side, she knew she could get through to him.

‘Maybe she will stop if you start listening to me when I tell you that I feel fine,’ she told him, drawing the Doctor’s gaze back from the ceiling. Sighing, Rose gestured at him. ‘You see, this is why I didn’t want to tell you…not like this anyway.’

‘What? What do you mean? Why?’ He withdrew his hand from his head, leaving behind a mess of brown strands, though he retained his fierce frown as his eyes darted between Rose’s as though he was searching for answers.

‘Because I knew you’d go into some manic overdrive of worry or something.’

The Doctor gaped just a bit before catching himself. ‘I’m not - I’m - no, I - I just…agh.’ He grunted in frustration. Running a hand through the already mussed spikes, he began to pace a little in the corridor having found himself unable to voice what was going through his head, or rather the conglomeration of things going through his head that were all vying for the top spot of being spoken first. He could deny it all he liked but Rose was right, he was worried, he was downright petrified of what this could mean. All that power, he’d taken it out of her to save her life but even the memories of having been a vessel for such immense power could be too much for a human to handle. She could still burn. He couldn’t cope with that, clearly couldn’t cope with even the thought of that, especially not after only just getting her back. For once the universe had been kind, had allowed him to have the one thing he wanted and it seemed like it was only a waiting game before it would pull the rug from under his feet and take back what he didn’t deserve. But to do such a thing now, so soon after her return, it was beyond cruel.

‘Doctor, it’s alright.’ She spoke softly and took his arm as he passed, her fingers wrapping around his pale blue shirt sleeve and tugging just enough so he would stop his agitated steps. ‘I get it, I get why you’re scared, I really do. But I looked into the heart of the Tardis that day so I think you should probably listen to her when she agrees that I’m fine. If anyone knows then it would be her, yeah?’ There was an approving hum from the ship that seemed to ease the Time Lord’s taut muscles just a bit. He wasn’t looking at Rose but he did so when she took a deep breath to tell him the information that she had been dreading to do so. ‘And…’ she began quietly, her eyes flickering between his endlessly deep ones before dropping to his freckled cheeks and nose so she didn’t have to see the hurt she was about to cause for having kept this a secret for so long. ‘...me knowing, remembering about Bad Wolf, well, it isn’t exactly a new thing.’ After a moment of silence, Rose drew her gaze back to his only to find him staring at her impassively, then a second passed and he seemed to bring himself back to the here and now.

‘How long?’

His words were delicate in the air but they were loud in Rose’s ears because he really wasn’t going to like the answer. She regretted not telling him sooner, regretted not telling him at all. Her reasons for wanting to protect him from it were honourable in a way but still, it was a stupid decision to keep it from him and right now she didn’t think she’d forgive herself for handling it so badly. ‘Erm - you er - you remember the Drakkads?’ She asked tentatively, releasing his arm from her grasp so she could wring her fingers together instead. When he nodded faintly, she added, ‘so it’s probably been about - about two years now’.

The Doctor sucked in a sharp breath at her quiet admission. About two years. That meant he’d missed around a year and a half of Rose Tyler’s life whilst she was stuck in Pete’s world. Five hundred and forty seven days give or take. He decided he’d have to ponder about that one later and returned back to the fact that she’d been keeping this from him since, well, since the Drakkads imprisoned him on the evening of her twenty-first birthday. He knew he couldn’t really talk about secret keeping, he was the king of keeping things to himself, but Rose? It wasn’t like he wouldn’t understand, having been there the first time around when she had become the Bad Wolf. He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, feeling the need to pace once again whilst he processed this new information and battled with a whole swarm of emotions that he never expected to be feeling right now. He was hurt, hurt by her lack of faith in him, her lack of trust, hurt by the possibility that there were other things that she’d kept from him, her partner. Rose knew him more than anyone else in the universe but it appeared that he didn’t know her as well as he thought he did. Of course, he didn’t know everything about her, even before they were separated. She had a past and what she chose to reveal about that past was her choice to share and his privilege to learn but didn’t this involve him? Perhaps it didn’t. It was her life, her body, her mind and her creation, alongside the Tardis. He’d be having quite a few words with the Old Girl about this later but for now there was Rose. She was watching him carefully, lip being absently chewed to pieces by her teeth with an expression of both sorrow and guilt written on her face. Oh, how could he be mad at her? Upset? Perhaps. But he didn’t need to show it. He didn’t want Rose to be looking so upset either and, as well as that, the thing he wanted was to understand.

She was about to speak when the Doctor beat her to it, tugging on his ear as he asked, ‘why er - why didn’t you tell me?’

His words were soft and, to Rose, they reeked of disappointment and hurt. Her eyes followed his movement as he dropped his hand to his side, he flexed the digits a couple of times before shoving both hands in his trousers pockets for a lack of something better to do with them. She could tell that he was practically vibrating with the need to pace but he held himself back as she began to explain herself.

He listened as she apologised for not telling him earlier and spoke about that moment when her memories returned, about communicating with the Tardis, about wanting to tell him but knowing how much Bad Wolf scared him, plus she didn’t want to pile another thing on him when he should have been focused on his own healing as well as how they would stop the Drakkads. He found that he understood her actions more than he would have liked and knew that at another point in time he still might have lashed out with angry words that displayed his hurt. That anger would have also been a front that covered up how terrified he was that she might not have been alright, that she could have burned as he had feared. Inevitably, that response would have pushed Rose away and he was not about to do that, not now, not ever. Instead, when she began to trail off, he stepped forwards and took her wringing hands in his, separating her fingers from interlocking with each other in what looked like a painful manner. She blinked at him, evidently having not expected this to be the outcome of her revelation, but didn’t refuse the gesture, in fact, her shoulders sagged a little in relief.

‘Doctor, I’m - I’m sorry, I was stupid I-‘

‘Stop that.’ The words came out more like a gentle growl as he dropped her hands to wrap his arms around her. ‘You are not stupid, Rose Tyler. You never have been and you never will be,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘You’ve just…had a bad influence is all.’

She drew her head away from his chest and looked up at him with a crease in her brow. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ he began, reaching up to scratch at his sideburn. ‘We both know that I would have done the same had the situation been reversed. I would have kept it from you for as long as I could if it saved you from having to worry about me.’ The Doctor could read the silent agreement in her eyes even if she was reluctant to voice it out loud whilst she was still feeling bad for having not told him sooner. ‘Oh, come on, you know I would have,’ he said with a hint of a smirk, trying to encourage her to let her guilt go. ‘I would. You know I would. I know you know I would. You know I know you know I would.’ His teasing tone and silly behaviour gradually drew a small smile on Rose’s lips and she rolled her eyes when his own grin grew bigger as his plan succeeded.

‘Shut up,’ she mumbled, burying her head into his chest.

The Doctor laughed and held her closer, rocking their bodies a little as he swayed side to side. ‘There she is. There’s my Rose Tyler.’ Eventually, Rose relaxed completely into his arms as she let the tension slip away from her and now that she felt more at ease, so did the Doctor. Deciding that she was now comfortable enough to broach the topic, the Time Lord broke the near silence of the corridor, saying, ‘I would still like to give you a check up in the infirmary you know’. When Rose leant back in his arms to look up at him he promptly added, ‘not now obviously because, like you said, you stink and need a shower…’

‘Oi!’

‘...but at some point in the future if that’s alright?’ He tried his best not to show his amusement at the scowl Rose was currently giving him.

‘I. Do. Not. Stink,’ she told him sternly, emphasising each word with a prod of her finger on his shirt-covered chest.

His eyes glimmered with mirth as he continued to tease her. ‘Oh, but you do. You’re all…’ Leaning forwards, the Doctor quickly dabbed his tongue on Rose’s forehead before she could stop him. He leant back again, smirking as he compiled a list of ingredients in his mind whilst she complained, called him a couple of names and furiously rubbed her hand over the damp spot and promptly wiped that on his shirt. ‘It’s a mixture of aqua, cocamidopropylamine oxide, cocamidopropyl betaine, glycerin, hydroxyethylcellulose, phenoxyethanol, sodium chloride, lactic acid and octenidine, amongst a few others. A fine enough cocktail for a clean body. Very antibacterial. In fact, I can feel about half the bacteria on my tongue dying this very second. Yeah, the product itself is not very odious but then you’ve got the bleach and all the other chemicals that the hospital uses. Combine that all together and you’ve got a scent that is just not very you.’

Rose eyed him thoughtfully for a moment. ‘So you’re complaining because I smell like a hospital? But you’re a doctor, the Doctor, thought you’d called yourself that because you loved the smell of hospitals so much.’

‘Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s totally it,’ he said, his voice dripping in sarcasm. ‘Yes, when I graduated from the Academy on Gallifrey, I thought I’m going to name myself after those healer people on Earth, a planet that I had never been to might I point out, because I just so loved the smell of the hospitals that they worked in, which again were on a planet that I had never been to.’ She giggled at his explanation and he shook his head, a fond smile playing on his lips. ‘Have I ever told you how absolutely raving mad you are?’ Her resulting cackle at his words only proved his theory about her sanity correct and he couldn’t help but grin even wider because he did so love it when Rose laughed. Wanting to provoke more of that reaction, he continued along the same line of thought as he said, ‘bonkers you are. Completely nuts. I think the bleach has gotten to your head and you need to wash it off immediately before it makes you even more delirious’.

Chuckling softly as she stepped away from him whilst raising her hands in a pose of surrender, Rose said, ‘fine, fine, I get it, I’m showering’. She turned and opened her bedroom door before stepping inside.

‘Well, you’re the one who mentioned it in the first place,’ he pointed out, following in her wake.

‘Yet you’re the one who keeps banging on about it,’ she told him as she gave a cursory glance around the room whilst she walked to the en-suite. It was strange because it was just how she remembered, all the same except for that blue blanket box that sat at the foot of the bed. She didn’t ponder about it though in favour of replying to the Doctor’s indignant complaint.

‘I do not bang on.’

‘Yeah you do.’ Rose opened the bathroom door and found a small amount of steam just beginning to gather, the Tardis having evidently turned on the shower to get it to the perfect temperature for her. She smiled and patted the wall, mumbling out, ‘thanks Old Girl,’ as she did so. Glancing over her shoulder, she found the Time Lord with his arms inside the blanket box, rooting through the soft fabrics in a way that suggested that the object wasn’t just new to her, whilst he grumbled every so often about how he didn’t “bang on”. ‘You can tell me all about the adventures you’ve been having whilst I shower if you like,’ she hinted before leaving him to it.

After his perusal of the blanket box he did just that. Sitting down on the plush blue fabric of its lid so he could face the en-suite door whilst he waited, he told her about the more interesting and comedic adventures that he thought she would have enjoyed which eventually got him onto the topic of the intriguing appearance of a bride in the Tardis.

‘And then she slapped me!’ He told Rose, his voice indignant as though he still didn’t know what he’d done to provoke Donna to do such a thing.

Rose did feel a bit sorry for the Doctor, she didn’t like the thought of anyone hurting him, even if it was just a slap, but she could see the funny side of it as well. ‘Well if you will be shoving your ortha…scope in her face,’ she giggled as she rinsed her favourite conditioner from her hair, getting stuck pronouncing the name of the optometrist instrument he had been using at the time but uncaring about getting it right because he’d know what she meant.

‘It hurt!’

His complaint only made Rose laugh even more because of how alike he sounded to his last self. All he needed was a bit of northern in his accent and it would have been a perfect imitation. She could even see him rubbing his cheek at the imagined pain in the same way as his last self did whilst he waited just the other side of the wall in the bedroom.

‘It wasn’t the only time either,’ he carried on with a grumble. ‘She practically threatened me with a third and asked whether you’d hit me before you left which got me thinking that no you’ve never slapped me but oh, that mother of yours, she’s the one to look out for.’ He chuckled before realising what he’d said and cutting his amusement short. ‘Sorry, I er - I didn’t think.’

Rose stood still for a moment with the thoughts the Doctor’s words had stirred up about her family, before shutting the water off and squeezing out her hair. She grabbed a fluffy white towel and had begun to dry her body when she said, ‘please don’t apologise. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about mum or the rest of the family. I don’t want them to become this taboo subject just because it might make me a bit sad. And it will. I’m always gonna miss them but don’t for one second…’ She trailed off, wrapping the towel around her body before opening the door so she could make this point face to face. The Doctor glanced up immediately from his perch on top of the blanket box and Rose could see his surprise at her lack of dress. His eyes glazed over a bit as they wandered up her body but when he caught the seriousness in her expression he snapped himself out of it. Knowing that she’d got his full attention, she carried on and said, ‘don’t for one second think that I regret my decision, that I regret leaving them to come back to you because I know I never ever will. And don’t go on and say, “you don’t know that,” or, “don’t say ‘never ever’,” because I do know and I have done for a long time.’ Then she stuck her finger out at him and continued, saying, ‘and don’t you dare go feeling guilty about it either because I know you, Doctor, and I know you’ll think you’ve stolen me away from some better life or something but you haven’t. I made this choice. I chose the life I wanted and that life is with you’.

Sensing Rose was done, he nodded in agreement. She’d told him that she would never regret it and he wanted to believe her, he truly did, and maybe that belief would grow in time once they were back in the swing of their mad life. She’d also told him not to feel guilty about it either and he would try his best but right now that wasn’t happening. ‘I won’t stop looking, Rose,’ he began quietly, though his voice was filled with determination. ‘I never stopped looking for you and I’ll never stop looking for them. If there is some way, some way of - of communicating with them at the very least, then I will find it.’

She gave him a weak but appreciative smile. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. Rose took a breath, seemingly to steel herself, before pushing the door to, mumbling about how she was going to finish getting ready.

He wasn’t entirely sure where to go from here, as he stared at the door where she’d just been standing. ‘Do you - do you want to talk about them?’ He tried, scratching the back of his head.

‘Not right now,’ she quietly replied after a moment. There was a sadness in her tone but that vanished when she quickly added on, ‘anyway, you haven’t finished telling me about Donna yet. Did she travel with you?’

The Doctor knew an evasive topic change when he heard one, he’d practically invented the thing, but he happily let Rose guide the conversation whichever way she wanted it to go which was apparently back to Donna Noble. ‘No. I asked but she declined. One adventure was enough for Donna.’

‘Oh.’ Rose sounded a little saddened by that prospect before hesitantly ploughing on. ‘I just thought…maybe you’d travelled together because she knew about - about me.’

Right. Of course. That made sense. He’d never been very forthcoming about previous companions, even with Rose, but she wasn’t just a companion, in a way she’d always been so much more. The topic she was touching on, however, wasn’t one he really wanted to delve into, but he would. For her. He started unbuttoning his shirt cuffs and rolling up his sleeves for something to do with his restless hands as he began to explain. ‘Ah, well, you see the thing about Donna is - when I said she appeared in the Tardis, she erm - I’d - it was only moments after - after we’d said…goodbye.’ The word was thick in his throat and hung heavily in the air. Clearly what he’d said had affected Rose too because the steady rhythm of her hair brush, working its way through her blonde strands, cut off abruptly. He didn’t have to see her to know that this part of her routine was incomplete; he could still remember how long it took her to brush her hair when it was shorter than it was now. Wanting to fill the uncomfortable silence, the Doctor began to babble on. ‘She accused me of kidnapping you funnily enough,’ he said with a strained laugh. ‘She was angry and confused about the entire situation and, I mean, fair enough. I didn’t know what was going on either. But then she found that purple shirt of yours slung over the railing and jumped to some mad conclusion about me kidnapping you because she thought that’s what I was doing to her. We got that sorted out though. No harm done. And we were laughing at the end of the day once we’d drained the Thames. Accidentally of course. It was a side effect of stopping the Racnoss.’ The Doctor went on to tell her about the rest of that adventure and had just reached the point where he and Donna discovered that they’d drained the Thames when Rose opened the door. The rest of his sentence died at the sight before him. She stood in the doorway, one hand straightening the bottom of her peach camisole whilst the other gripped the door knob. Her hair was damp and beginning to dry in the natural gentle waves that he’d always liked and her face was makeup free. This was Rose Tyler raw and unfiltered, in her loungewear, simply stepping into her bedroom on the Tardis. It was a sight that took his breath away.

She blushed under the Time Lord’s rapturous gaze but decided not to comment on it and instead continued with the line of thought that she’d been having whilst he told her of his and Donna’s adventure. ‘Donna seems nice,’ she began, stepping closer to him and smirking at the Doctor's expression as he caught himself staring. ‘Budge up.’ He shuffled on the blanket box, making space for Rose to join him, though she still sat close enough so that their thighs pressed against one another. ‘Well, nice apart from the slapping you part,’ she corrected. Rose had no idea who this Donna Noble person was; had no idea of what she looked like or what she was like as a person apart from what the Doctor had told her, but she knew that her younger self would have been jealous. Alright, a tiny bit of jealousy was still there because Donna could have been the most intelligent and beautiful person in the universe for all she knew, but that feeling was nearly completely tampered down by the fact that she’d been a budding friend to the Doctor. He hadn’t been alone, even if it was only for a short while.

‘Oh, she only slapped because she was scared,’ the Doctor said with a shrug. ‘She was putting up a fight against me, her apparent kidnapper, and then the second time she thought she was dying, which she technically was, what with all those huon particles I was telling you about.’ He looked down at where his blue suit trousers pressed against Rose’s light grey joggers and caught her fingers picking at her nails. Placing his right hand over her fidgeting ones, her movement soon stopped except for the action of his hand entwining perfectly with hers. She had just covered their conjoined hands with her other, and let them rest comfortably in her lap, when he quietly spoke once more. ‘I bet you would’ve liked Donna.’

‘Yeah?’

He hummed in agreement. ‘She was funny, kind, assertive and she didn’t half have a gob on her and that’s coming from me.’ They both laughed at that and laughed again when Rose’s stomach grumbled. ‘Hungry?’

‘Starved.’

‘Come on then.’ He tugged on their conjoined hands and the pair stood up. ‘The galley awaits.’ They took about two steps to the door before the Doctor stopped in his tracks. He turned, let go of Rose’s hand and stepped back over to the blanket box. ‘Actually, I’ve got a better idea.’ Lifting the lid, he picked up a bundle of blankets and then pushed them into a curious Rose’s arms. ‘Take these to the console room and I’ll meet you there with some food. Won’t be long.’ He gave her a big beaming grin before darting out of the room ahead of her.

A smile grew on Rose’s face as she watched him go, that same smile was still tugging on her lips when she wandered into the console room. It faded a little when the grating started to pinch her bare feet and she regretted not thinking of putting some socks on earlier. Around her, the Old Girl hummed and dimmed the lights throughout the room, all except for one that was lighting up a specific point on the console. Rose glanced at the illuminated spot and her bright grin returned. ‘Thanks Girl.’ She shuffled the blankets in her arms so she could free one of her hands to grab the fluffy socks that the Tardis had procured for her then decided she should put the blankets down so she could put the socks on and turned to the jump seat to do so. Laying the blankets on the seat, Rose frowned at the sight of her neatly folded shirt draped over the backrest. She brushed a hand over the purple fabric remembering both their trip to New Earth and the most recent time she wore the shirt, the morning they were separated. ‘He said I was gone for about six months,’ Rose muttered aloud as she pulled the socks on. ‘But my shirt’s still here like I never left.’ A sad hum filled the room and Rose turned back to the console, placing a hand on the edge and rubbing it soothingly. ‘Was he alright when I was gone? Well, not alright alright because I certainly wasn’t but you know…’ Another muted hum filled the air and Rose sighed sadly. ‘I know you would have tried your best. Thanks for looking after him.’ The roundels covering the console room’s walls glowed and Rose giggled softly at the waves of love and comfort that surrounded her mind. It was as though the Tardis was enveloping her in a big, warm hug and she brushed her hands over the edge of the console hoping to project that feeling right back at the Old Girl.

‘Now, don’t complain to me if they’re not very good.’

The Doctor’s voice emanated from the corridor just beyond the console room and Rose looked over at the doorway expectantly.

‘Can you believe it? Nine hundred odd years and I’ve never used a deep fat fryer. Well, never owned a deep fat fryer, or at least I didn’t know I did, I certainly don’t remember buying one.’

His ramble brought a big smile to her lips and that only widened when the Doctor entered the room with a large plate of steaming hot chips.

Pride welled within him when he saw Rose’s face and he mentally patted himself on the back for being the cause of such a happy and loving look. ‘The most nourishing meal you will ever eat,’ he quipped as he stopped in front of her. ‘Chip, my lady?’

‘Don’t mind if I do,’ Rose plucked one of the smaller, and hopefully cooler, one’s from the top of the proffered plate and then popped it into her mouth. Evidently, the Doctor had tried to emulate her favourite chippy’s chips with drenchings of vinegar and salt but, though she didn’t know how he’d done it, he’d somehow managed to produce even better chips than them. The moan that escaped her was a little obscene but she couldn’t help it, they were just that good.

A cocky smirk grew on his face at her enjoyment. ‘Good?’

Nodding fiercely, she murmured the word, ‘gorgeous,’ around another chip that she’d put in her mouth.

‘Brilliant. Right, you hold onto these.’ He pushed the plate of chips into her hands before raising an eyebrow and giving her a playfully stern look as he added on, ‘and don’t eat them all before I’ve taken us to our destination’.

Her hand stilled in its movements and Rose’s eyes flitted between the Doctor’s pointed look and the chip halfway towards her lips. Deciding she could get away with eating another chip if she did this, she held the fried potato up to the Time Lord’s mouth so he could have it instead.

He smirked, grabbed the chip between his teeth and happily began munching on it as he turned to the console. ‘Oh, you’re right, these are gorgeous!’ He enthused as he raced around setting up the controls for flight. ‘You know, if this adventuring lark ever gets old I could open up a chip shop. Bet I’d get customers from all over the galaxy, no, galaxies! That’s how good they are.’

‘Careful, otherwise your head won’t fit through the doors when we get there,’ she quipped before sneaking another chip. Well, it was hardly a chip, more like one of those small crispy bits, it didn’t count.

‘Oh, we don’t need to leave the Tardis. Not where I’m taking us.’ He pulled the dematerialisation lever and laughed at the wide eyed look that Rose gave him from across the console as she blindly reached behind her for the railing so she had something to cling onto whilst they were on one of the smoothest flights he had ever completed. ‘Are you doubting my driving skills, Tyler? Do you really think I’m going to spin us out of control when there’s a plate of the best chips in the universe that could spill everywhere?’ The ship settled around them and Rose threw a chip at his smug face. ‘Oi! Careful!’ He complained as he caught the propelled potato and plopped it into his mouth. ‘These are worth their weight in gold.’ She rolled her eyes at him and he laughed a little giddily as he ran back around and scooped up the blankets. ‘Now, eyes shut please whilst I get this ready. Won’t be a sec.’ He pressed a kiss to her cheek when she obliged and left a giggling Rose by the console as he scooted over to the doors to set up the surprise. The Doctor found that he had taken six blankets from the box which was perfect for the cocoon of sorts that he was building just before the now open Tardis doors. Once that was done, he took the plate from Rose and set it down next to the blanket cocoon whilst he told her not to worry because she could have them back later. Then he took her hands and led her towards the doors. ‘Don’t open your eyes. That’s it. Nearly there. Now, big step. Lovely. And sitting time, down we go.’ He helped her into a prime viewing spot on top of the soft blankets and sat right beside her with one of her hands still entwined with his. ‘Alright, Rose Tyler, you can look now.’

She knew where they were on the ship and had heard the doors creak as he opened them but what they were looking out at beyond those doors was a complete mystery. Rose slowly opened her eyes and couldn’t help but gasp at the sight. Being on the Moon and looking out into space was fantastic but this was something else.

‘Where are we?’ She whispered as her eyes took in the gaseous red shape that brightened up the darkness of space.

The Doctor hadn’t been looking outside at all, instead his eyes were locked onto Rose’s face, watching every emotion pass over it as she opened her eyes and took in the view. He was so mesmerised that it took a moment for him to register that she had spoken; it was enough of a moment for Rose to turn her head and catch him staring. Clearing his throat, he promptly turned his attention to the view outside the doors, feeling the tips of his ears reddening as he answered her question. ‘We’re about five thousand light years from Earth, in the constellation of Monoceros, and this is the Rosette Nebula.’

She could see it now that he had named the gaseous formation. Amongst the thousands of stars, wisps of red began to come together, the colour solidifying and shaping into the flower of her namesake, a rose. It looked like it had five paler and more pinkish petals that formed the main recognisable shape, the colour of them fading away in the middle to create a darker spot where the stars twinkled brighter because the gas was at its thinnest.

‘It’s beautiful, Doctor.’

He hummed happily in agreement and they sat quietly taking it all in for a moment. ‘I wanted to show you this before,’ he began, his voice soft and a little wistful. ‘Wanted to show you a lot of places but I never got the chance.’

Rose squeezed his hand and drew his attention back to her. ‘You can now,’ she said, her voice filled with certainty and a desire to see what was out there. ‘We can go all over time and space, to anywhere you want to take me. We’ve got the rest of our forever to see it all. Together.’ The grin that broke across his face was huge and she matched it with her own, hugging his arm to her chest as she did so. ‘So, where are we gonna go first?’

His big brown eyes twinkled and he made a happy noise at the back of his throat. ‘Alright, Rose Tyler, erm…’ He trailed off as he eyed the thousands and thousands of stars that sat just outside the Tardis doors. Rose copied him and he drew up his free hand so he could point out into space. ‘That way - no, hold on.’ She giggled softly as he redirected his finger and spoke again. ‘That way.’

‘That way?’

‘Do you think?’

Rose eyed the Doctor. He was already looking back at her, waiting for her to finish her part of the call back to that Christmas evening at the estate when they agreed to travel together. It was a new start, and a new new him, just like it was a new start now after many, many months of being apart. Rose Tyler and the Doctor in the Tardis, running across the universe together, it was just how it should be.

‘Yeah, that way,’ she agreed and the pair grinned brightly at one another, just like they did that Christmas night.

Chapter Text

Eventually they remembered the chips, which the Tardis had luckily been keeping warm for them, and they had their fill whilst they sat together, enjoying both the view and each other's company. Between mouthfuls, the Doctor started pointing out the stars they could see, naming them, telling her what was there and occasionally saying that they had visited them before. This got them reminiscing about past adventures and the Doctor suggesting new ones they could have.

He didn’t mention the direction he had pointed in again. Didn’t go on to tell Rose that he wasn’t just gesturing randomly, even when he was first pointing at where they would go next, though that was at Clom and he was most certainly not taking Rose there. Who would want to go to Clom? But the second direction he pointed out, well, that was a destination they were definitely heading for because he was pointing at Barcelona, the planet of course. She had mentioned staying with him forever a few times now and she only found him a few hours ago. He wanted to show her that he felt the same, show her that he would be hers forever, even if their forevers didn’t match up.

‘I was meaning to ask, what’s with the blue?’

Rose’s voice brought the Doctor out of his thoughts and he realised he must have stopped rambling on about the fruit that tasted like a pina colada on the planet of Kobi-Koballa. Or perhaps he had still been talking and she had interrupted him, he wasn’t entirely sure because he had been lost in his head thinking about Barcelona.

She touched his leg, reminding him that he needed to stay in the present, so he glanced to his left and saw the humour playing on her features at his obliviousness. They were laying side by side at this point with their backs on the blankets and a few of them piled under their heads so they could comfortably look out at the stars and the nebula. He had his left arm around her shoulders and her hand was still on his leg because…right, she had asked him a question. Blue…he was wearing blue trousers on his legs, obviously, and that was why her hand was there.

Rose then raised her brows and he quickly opened his mouth to tell her the answer, a frown growing as he explained his choice of suit colour or his lack of choice rather. ‘We had an argument,’ he began, his voice more of a grumble than he would have liked. ‘She hid all my brown suits and this was the only thing I could find.’ Rose tilted her head back and laughed and it was the most beautiful thing. The rose shaped nebula outside the Tardis doors was beautiful, sure, but it had nothing on Rose Tyler.

‘What on Earth did you do?’ She turned onto her side to face him properly and propped her cheek upon her hand. A grin was on her lips and there was a fond twinkle in her eyes for the man before her because he could be a bit of an idiot sometimes, as was usually the case when it came to arguments between him and the Tardis, but he was her idiot and Rose wouldn’t have him any other way.

‘For starters, I wasn’t on Earth at the time.’ He tried his best to swat her attacking hand but Rose still managed to poke him in the side for his, well he thought it was anyway, hilarious comment. The Doctor chuckled and caught her rolling her eyes at him before he continued. ‘But that was rather the point because she wanted us to go to Earth and I didn’t. We were going from system to system, checking the universe’s walls for any cracks to fit through and I was in the shower whilst she was completing a scan. All of a sudden, I’m getting soap in my eyes and being thrown against the tiles because she’s lurching sideways and hurtling towards Earth. There was shouting and some things said, which probably resulted in my lack of suits, but then I stepped outside to see what all the fuss was about and that’s when I saw the plasma coils around the hospital. Decided to check myself in and you know the rest.’

‘So she was bringing you to Earth so you could find me?’ Her voice was filled with wonder but also a lot of gratefulness. She didn’t think she could love the Old Girl more.

‘Wellllll, it was really all you who did the finding because I was pretty out of - ow!’ He rubbed his shoulder where Rose had just lightly hit him because it was apparently still too soon for him to be joking about his near death experience. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

Rolling onto her back, Rose reached up to the railing and caressed the metal gently. ‘Thanks Girl.’ The Tardis hummed brightly, her lights twinkling happily as she projected her feelings of love towards her Wolf.

‘Don’t get too smug about it though,’ the Doctor called out to his ship. The answering hum of the console room turned into more of a titter and he sighed softly. ‘What?’ He asked Rose when she was on her side again and giving him a look. ‘She’ll be holding this over me for years, decades even.’

She shook her head at him fondly, a smirk playing on her lips. ‘You’re such a sore loser.’

He raised his eyebrow, the smugness he’d warned the Tardis of growing in his expression. ‘Oh, but you see, Rose Tyler, that’s where you’re wrong.’ He shuffled onto his side, mirroring her position. Reaching out, he tucked a loose blonde strand behind her ear and left his hand resting on her cheek, his thumb caressing her slightly pink tinged skin. ‘I very much think I’m the winner in this scenario.’

She laid her hand over his bare wrist, not to pull him away but more to keep him there so that she could fully appreciate this moment. His smirk was a bit cocky but his gaze was tender and loving and it was solely directed at her. Rose had never gotten used to being on the end of that look when they were together before, or even earlier than that, and she still wasn’t used to it now. That didn’t mean she could stop herself from teasing him though because it was just in their nature.

‘Do you now?’

‘Well, Plasmovore stopped, people saved, hospital returned and I got the girl.’ He waggled his eyebrows before adding on, ‘sounds like a winning outcome to me’.

His eyebrow waggle only made Rose raise hers. ‘Got the girl, did you?’

He inched forwards so that their noses were almost touching, his hand slipping from her cheek to cradle the back of her head. ‘If she’ll have me.’

‘She might,’ Rose said as she shrugged lightly, her gaze more focused on her fingers as they played with the folds on his rolled up sleeve.

The Doctor saw what she was doing and decided that two could play at this hard to get game. He stayed still for a moment, long enough for Rose to lose the act of her indifference when her eyes flickered to his face as she wondered why he wasn’t saying or doing anything. Then he started to pull back from her, removing his hand from her hair as he said, ‘nahhh, don’t really think she’s intere-’ The remainder of his sentence was lost when Rose yanked on his retreating arm, the force of the movement making her fall onto her back whilst he was pulled half on top of her. His nose nearly took her eye out and she laughed loudly in his ear at that, clearly not expecting him to be so easily manoeuvrable. With his arms now bracketing her head, the Doctor chuckled and pushed himself up enough so that he no longer posed a danger to her other facial features and looked down upon the giggling face that was Rose Tyler’s. As their laughter died, he noticed the flush of her cheeks, how her breathing remained slightly unsteady and the way her pupils dilated as she flicked her gaze between his lips and his eyes. He arched his eyebrow at his findings and murmured, ‘on second thoughts maybe she is interested after all’.

Wrapping her arms around the Time Lord’s neck, she said, ‘just shut up and kiss me, Doctor’.

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Dipping down, the Doctor pressed his lips against Rose’s. It was chaste but soon developed into something deeper and needier when he tilted his head and sucked on her bottom lip. She sighed, her arms slipping from around his neck so that her fingers could bury in his hair, pulling him impossibly closer and drawing a content hum from the back of his throat. When his tongue stroked a long line across her full lip, her body shuddered and her fingers clenched his brown spikes, drawing a moan from the Doctor which she soon followed with her own when his tongue began a tantalising dance with hers.

All too soon Rose was leaning her head to the side, inwardly cursing the Time Lord’s respiratory bypass as he carried on with no complaint, deciding to turn his attention to sucking on her ear lobe, whilst she needed a breather. She let her hands fall from his head and over his neck to his shoulders, running them across the broad expanse and enjoying the feel of his muscles beneath his shirt as he held himself up. It would be better to feel them without his shirt though, she decided. Fingers slipping to the front of his collar, she worked at the knot of his tie until she could slide the fabric free of his neck and throw it in the general direction of the console behind them. Then she started to work her way down his shirt buttons whilst he worked his way down her neck using his tongue, lips and teeth in a way that got her panting and aching for more. Pulling the ends of his shirt from his trousers once all the buttons were undone, she was a little shocked to find that she had already reached his bare skin. Rose pressed her palms to his chest, enjoying the feeling of his two pumping hearts before she started to push the shirt off his shoulders.

Finally the Doctor came up for air, all swollen lips and panting for breath. That didn’t stop him from planting a few kisses on Rose’s mouth though and she stopped trying to take off his shirt in favour of trailing her fingers along the back of his neck. The tender touches sent a shiver down his spine until he really did have to pull back from the kiss so he could breathe. He leant his forehead against Rose’s for a moment, their heavy breaths mingling in the small space between them before he kissed the tip of her nose as he sat back on her thighs.

Rose giggled at the nose kiss and then asked, ‘what happened to layers?’

He shrugged, finishing the task of taking his shirt off before slinging it in the same direction as his tie. ‘Was a bit distracted by my lack of suits to worry about underthings.’

With a smirk, she hooked her thumbs into the waistband of his trousers. ‘Remember your pants?’

A huff of laughter escaped him at the unexpected question. ‘Oh yeah, got those on.’

‘Well done,’ she giggled softly.

He cocked his brow as his eyes roamed down her still clothed body. ‘Seems I’m not the only one who’s forgotten some layers.’ He reached out and brushed the pad of his thumb over one of the hardened nipples he could see protruding from beneath her peach camisole. His eyes locked with hers when her breath caught and she sighed when he repeated the motion. Then the Doctor leant down and drew a circle with his tongue around her right nipple before sucking on it through the fabric of her top.

She arched her back, her fingers digging into his as a breathy moan escaped her. The sucking sensation, combined with the rough fabric over her sensitive flesh, made her writhe beneath him. It was only during the brief pause, as he moved to mouth her other breast, that she managed to catch herself enough to say, ‘wasn’t planning on going anywhere and I knew you’d only be taking it off lat-ahhh’.

As Rose’s final word turned into a moan, the Doctor smirked and continued to use his tongue, and a bit of teeth, to encourage more of those sounds he loved. ‘Did you now?’ He asked as he pulled back from her heaving chest, repeating the question that Rose had teased him with earlier and combining it with a rather smug look about the effect he had on her.

Calming down a little, now that he had sat back upright, Rose watched as he traced a finger along the line of skin that her camisole had exposed when it rode up a bit. Then he slipped his hands beneath it and gently ran them over her already fluttering stomach. She swallowed as the touch moved further upwards until his fingertips brushed the underside of her breasts. ‘Thought you might appreciate one less thing to remove,’ she told him, her voice a bit shaky with desire.

He pulled his hands back but only so he could take off her camisole as she had suggested. Rose arched her back and lifted her arms and head to help with the process and then he stared at the beautiful body he’d uncovered after chucking the garment elsewhere. It wasn’t that he had forgotten, because one could never forget the vision that was a topless Rose, but he needed a moment to appreciate her fully once again, to refresh the image that he rarely dared to glance at in his mind when she was gone. But she wasn’t gone now, nor was she just an image. She was here, blushing underneath his rapturous gaze and he could touch her and taste her if he so wanted. And he did. He reached forwards and cupped her breasts, marvelling at how they fitted perfectly in his hands and enjoying the small whimpers that escaped Rose when he squeezed and rolled his palms over them. Then he looked up at her face. He saw the parted lips, the rosy cheeks and the hazel eyes that were blackened with want and thought that there was only one word to describe her.

‘You’re perfect,’ he told Rose, his voice soft but husky with his own want. She smiled at him. It was a smile that he could remember from before, a smile that he had brought out of her when he had done something that had surprised her but which she had loved. Rarely had she smiled that way when it was a compliment about her body. Rose hardly took those compliments to heart, disbelieving of the beauty he saw in her. But this was one of those times when she did and he loved that he could make her smile that way, make her feel that way, because she was perfect. This perfection ran far deeper than her body though. The Doctor saw it in her personality, her mind, her soul, her heart and her nature. Her whole being was perfect and he had somehow got lucky enough to see it all.

Rose reached up and cupped the Doctor’s cheeks, gently tugging him closer. He planted his hands on either side of her head and allowed himself to be dragged back into a kiss.

‘So are you,’ she whispered against his lips when they parted. She could see it in his eyes that he didn’t believe her but she hoped that he would one day if she said it often enough. ‘I love you,’ Rose told him instead, knowing that this, at least, he would believe.

He smiled at her warmly and leant in again as he said, ‘and I love you,’ before kissing her once more.

It was a kiss that turned into a rather heated affair, particularly after Rose’s hands moved to his back and drew his body down so that their naked chests pressed against one another. It was an action that elicited a needy groan from both of them and resulted in a lot more caressing of bare skin and the desire for more friction.

Infuriatingly enough, there was still too much clothing on both of their bodies, so Rose trailed her fingers lower down the Doctor’s back to begin to rectify that. She tucked her thumbs into the edge of his waistband and followed the fabric around until she reached the front where she deftly popped the button and lowered the zip. This action caused the Doctor to pull back from her lips with a short, broken moan as his hard length was released from a layer of its constraints. He stayed there, panting heavily into her mouth, before a hiss escaped him as she cupped him. He squeezed his eyes shut and rested his forehead on her cheek whilst her ministrations continued and his head fell to her shoulder when Rose dipped her hand beneath his underwear, wrapping her burning hot fingers around him and stroking him in a leisurely rhythm. Muffling his groans against her skin, he couldn’t help but buck into her hand with the way she was touching him.

‘Fuck…Rose…’ He grunted breathily. ‘I - I…’ The Doctor trailed off and had to reach for her arm so he could pull her hand away from his crotch. He sighed in both frustration and relief when she obligingly rested her hand on his waist instead and pressed a few kisses into the crook of her neck before he said, ‘I er - embarrassingly enough, I wouldn’t have lasted much longer if you’d continued.’

Rose rubbed her thumb over his bony hip soothingly. ‘It’s alright, I won’t last long either.’

He lifted his head up to look at her. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, and I want you in me, Doctor,’ she said as she started to push down both his trousers and boxers as far as she could.

‘And you don’t want…’ His question diminished when he caught Rose’s adamant shake of her head and he climbed off her, deciding that it was far easier to remove their respective remaining clothes this way, particularly when he was so desperate to be inside Rose too. He helped tug her socks and joggers off from around her ankles and then climbed between her legs, both finally fully naked. From his position still by her feet, he could see just how ready Rose was for him. His cock twitched at the sight of the wetness between her folds and he leant forwards to place a kiss just above the neatly trimmed hair that covered them.

Rose saw the admiring look he was giving her and shook her head at him fondly, muttering the word, ‘idiot’.

The Doctor heard and glanced up at her with a cheeky grin as he crawled further up her body so that they were now in the right position. ‘Ready?’

‘Yeah,’ she said with a definitive nod. ‘I need you, Doctor.’ The Time Lord pressed a kiss to her lips, then pulled back and was about to take himself in hand when Rose said, ‘wait!’ He stilled completely, his eyes darting to hers. ‘What about-‘

He could tell where that sentence was going so interrupted and said, ‘oh, it’s alright. I gave myself a shot on the way to the galley, now I’ll be infertile for the next couple of months’.

Rose almost laughed because of course he did, it was such a Doctor thing for him to have done. Instead, she raised her eyebrows to tease him as she said, ‘bit presumptuous of you’.

His gaze flickered to her breasts and back up again. ‘You didn’t wear a bra,’ he said with a shrug.

This time Rose did laugh. ‘I really don’t think that’s on the same level as you giving yourself some infertility shot.’

‘Welllllll, a Time Lord can hope.’ He leant down and started planting kisses wherever he could reach, words falling from his lips between his attentions. ‘Especially when he’s just got the most beautiful woman in the universe back and he wants to show her how much he missed her.’

Her hands found the curve of his bum and she squeezed there before pushing him down. She matched that movement by tilting her hips up and they both gasped at the sensation of their bodies touching in such a way, so close to how they wanted to be connected.

‘Then show me.’

At her whisper, he growled lightly against the skin he had been kissing before rolling his hips. Their moans filled the air as he rubbed himself through her folds a couple of times, the sound only intensifying when he finally pressed inside her. Rose’s breathy sigh of relief tickled his neck as he filled her completely and the Doctor stilled because God was she warm and tight and perfect. She found his hand and entwined their fingers before giving them a squeeze and she didn’t need to use words for him to understand what she wanted. He pulled out nearly all the way before sinking back in beginning a slow pace that Rose matched with the movement of her own hips. They soon sped up, gasps, moans and words of encouragement escaping them as they lost themselves in the sensations.

‘Perfect. Perfect. Perfect,’ the Doctor gritted out whilst he thrust into her again and again and again, his teeth clenched as he tried to stop himself from toppling over the edge too soon. With his free hand, he trailed his fingers over and past her stomach until he could brush his thumb over her clit. Rose arched her back, a guttural moan bursting from her throat and the Doctor decided that he never wanted to hear anything else.

The mark she had been making on the Time Lord’s neck soon became forgotten as he continued rubbing her clit. That sensation, as well as the angle of his thrusts when she hooked one of her legs over his waist, rapidly tightened that coil inside of her.

‘God. Fuck, Doctor,’ she gasped, her free hand dragging her short nails over his sweaty back before trailing into his hair and tugging on the strands. The Doctor groaned into her shoulder at the combination of pleasure and pain and placed a sloppy kiss there. Then his thumb moved in quicker circles making Rose’s toes curl and fingers tighten around his where their entwined hands lay on the blankets beside her head.

‘Rose,’ he grunted when his hips began to stutter, losing his rhythm as the tension within him tightened.

‘Close,’ she agreed in a whisper. ‘So close.’ Her legs were shaking, in fact, her entire body was tingling, right down to the tips of her toes, and she felt fit to burst as she teetered on the precipice.

The Doctor gently nipped at her ear before murmuring in it. ‘Come for me, love’.

At his husky request, she couldn’t stop herself from doing anything else. She moaned loudly as the spasms wracked through her, her body writhing beneath the Time Lord who she clung onto like a lifeline as though she would float right out of the Tardis doors if she let him go.

As soon as Rose’s walls clenched around him, he toppled over the edge and joined her in ecstasy. He shouted her name, groaning as he came undone, his body alight with pleasure.

Panting, the pair stilled, their heaving breaths the loudest thing in the otherwise near silent console room. As the Doctor gently collapsed on top of her, the leg that had been wrapped around his waist flopped to blankets beneath them, her limbs feeling like jelly. She rubbed a soothing hand over his shoulders and down his back whilst they lay there. His puffs of breath were hot on her neck where he had buried his face but she soon felt him pressing kisses onto her skin. Then he began to nuzzle her there, an action that caused Rose to squirm a little when his hair tickled her.

‘Stop it,’ she giggled breathlessly, untwining their conjoined hands so she could push him away with both of hers. He chuckled and lifted up his head revealing a goofy grin plastered on his face before he leant back in and lazily kissed her lips.

‘That was…’ Rose began when they parted, the Doctor’s forehead resting against hers.

He swallowed and nodded, not needing her to say anymore. ‘Yeah,’ he agreed in a rough voice. ‘Yeah, it was.’

She giggled again, feeling a bit giddy after their activities. Make-up sex was good but it had nothing on reunion sex; that was on another level. ‘God,’ she exhaled, finally feeling like her heart was slowing back to its normal rate and she had legs, they were shaky but they were most definitely there.

‘No. Time Lord.’

Rose rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘Shut up,’ she told him, giving him a bit of a shove that resulted in the Doctor cracking up too. They lay there giggling together, revelling in the overwhelming happiness that they felt having found one another again.

**********

The Doctor cleaned them both up with some tissues from his trouser pockets, once he had found his trousers that is because the grating was a mess of discarded garments, and then laid back down beside Rose, pulling a blanket over them to keep them warm. As they lay on their sides facing one another he kissed her softly, his hand cradling the back of her neck where he could feel the thin chain she wore her Tardis key on beneath his palm. He brushed his thumb over the chain and then followed the metal, tracing it to her chest with his finger tips. It was then that he pulled away from the kiss with a small crease in his brow.

Opening her eyes as the Time Lord leant back, Rose was soon concerned when she saw the look on his face as his fingers brushed over the skin on her chest. Cupping his cheek, she softly asked, ‘what’s wrong?’

He glanced up at her, rubbing the chain between his thumb and forefinger, the frown still firmly in place. ‘This is the same chain. It’s the one you got specifically to hang your Tardis key on. You’re still wearing it but there’s no key.’

Rose’s hand slipped to his shoulder and she couldn’t help but look down as her cheeks reddened a little. It wasn’t as though the Doctor was accusing her or anything, he was just curious about the key’s whereabouts, and yet she was still a bit embarrassed that she no longer had it with her. ‘That’s because I don’t have it anymore, but it’s also part of the reason I managed to get back,’ she quietly explained, lifting her head to face the Doctor’s rapt gaze. ‘I still wore it on the chain every day, kept it safe and close to my heart, that was until we came up with the idea of using the key to hone in on the Tardis. Cos we built this device, you see. This travel machine - this dimension cannon, we called it. So I could - well, so I could come back.’ The Doctor made a happy noise at the back of his throat at her admission and she couldn’t help but join in with his beaming grin. ‘Shut up,’ she laughed lightly. ‘Anyway, it wasn’t like I was just gonna stumble across you because you could be anywhere in this universe, anywhere and at any time. But the key at least pulled me towards the Tardis, or to where she had been or would be, and then it was just a case of getting the timings right to end up here with the correct you.’

He shook his head at her slowly, his face full of wonder and disbelief. ‘My impossible girl,’ he whispered.

She snorted. ‘I’m going to buy you a dictionary for Christmas so you can learn what that word means.’

‘It should have been impossible, Rose, and I still don’t understand how you’ve done it,’ he told her, the softness in his look having reverted back to his usual curious gaze. ‘How does this dimension cannon of yours work?’

‘Oh, I’m not the person you should be asking. I was more like a project manager than anything. Malcolm and Tosh, now they were the brains behind it. I had this little team, you see, in the Torchwood Three branch. Did you know they have a secret base near the rift in Cardiff?’

The Doctor’s eyes widened just a fraction but Rose didn’t seem to pick up on it and he answered quickly enough not to arouse suspicion by saying, ‘yes, I've - er - visited it before’. He scratched his sideburn as thoughts about Captain Jack Harkness flashed through his mind, something he really didn’t appreciate due to his nakedness, Rose’s nakedness and the fact that they’d just had sex. He could picture the Captain’s face now, the man would be obnoxiously delighted and then he would probably try to… The Doctor internally shuddered and shoved that thought away, rather wishing that he could physically extract it from his brain and burn it and then throw that burnt thought into a black hole just to ensure it would never return.

He knew he would have to tell Jack about Rose eventually; he was their friend after all plus he had promised to keep an eye out for Rose’s possible whereabouts and there was no point in him needlessly searching for her now that she had found her way back to him. The Doctor appreciated Jack more than he would like to admit, especially after the Captain’s behaviour since he abandoned him. Jack didn’t have to forgive him, but he somehow had and then he went onto helping with the Rose situation and being supportive when the Doctor had thought he’d lost her forever. Jack had treated him much better than the Time Lord ever had and he really didn’t know how to deal with that. Taking Rose to the Hub would be a start. Even though the immortal’s mere presence made him uncomfortable he would learn to cope with it for their sake and wouldn't let it stand in the way of Jack and Rose’s friendship. That would be a future plan though because he still needed to tell her the truth about Jack, tell her about the Captain’s immortality and how he abandoned him. The Doctor was certain that she didn’t know about either because she would have brought it up when they discussed her recollection of Bad Wolf. He was going to have to break both pieces of information to her and that would not be an easy conversation but, right now, the Doctor wasn’t going anywhere near that topic. He was going to enjoy spending time with Rose, alone, just the two of them, and he was going to appreciate every second he had with her because he knew all too well what it was like when she was gone, knows what it will be like when she properly leaves him in the future.

Blinking, the Doctor brought himself out of his melancholy thoughts and back to the present only to find Rose staring at him expectantly. It was as though she had just asked him a question but he had no idea of what that could be. Quickly running through what she had been saying whilst he had been too wrapped up in his own head to listen properly, he recalled her telling him of Malcolm and Tosh, the two who had worked on this dimension cannon with her. He didn’t remember a Malcolm but assumed that this Tosh she spoke of was the same Toshiko Sato who worked at Torchwood Three in this universe. Meeting her would be a strange but hopefully nice experience for Rose once they got around to visiting Jack. Then Rose had been telling him of this journal where she had copied out the information about the dimension cannon so that he could read it. Now here she was waiting for an answer after having asked him if he would like to see it.

The Doctor was intrigued. Undeniably so. His thirst for knowledge and answers was always rampant but on the back of his melancholy thoughts, the ones that were still thrumming near the surface in his mind, he found that he wasn’t as impatient about getting those answers as he usually was.

He gave a noncommittal hum as he reached out and cupped her jaw, his thumb caressing the soft pink skin. ‘Maybe later.’

Rose lay her hand over his where it rested on her cheek, her eyes narrowed just a little as she watched him carefully. She had noticed how his gaze had glazed over and the way he had unconsciously clenched his jaw whilst he was lost in thought. Caught the way the brightness in his eyes dimmed and how his brow crinkled in the middle. Then he seemingly came back to himself and a mask was slipped on to hide the sadness he had let seep through for a moment. But it was a long enough moment for her to catch it. A long enough moment for her to worry.

‘Are you alright?’ She asked gently, lightly squeezing his hand.

‘Of course, always alright, me.’

Raising her eyebrow, Rose sighed at his slightly too perky reply which was clearly Doctor-speak for no. If he didn’t want to tell her then that was fine, she wasn’t going to push him, but she did want him to know that she was there if he did want to talk about it.

‘Doctor, it’s okay if you’re not alright-’ The rest of her sentence was lost when she was interrupted by the man himself.

‘Yes! Of course!’ Scrambling out of the blanket cocoon, the Doctor swiftly made his way to the nearby coral strut where his long coat resided. It was a trip that should have really been too short to cause him any problems but his foot ended up tangled in Rose’s joggers and he stumbled a little before catching himself and shaking off the offending article. It was the sight of the empty chain around her neck that had prompted the need for his coat, or more specifically, for a box that resided in his coat pocket. He rooted around for the item, letting out a triumphant, ‘ha,’ when his fingers connected with the carved wood. He made his way back to Rose with the box in hand, but stopped off to grab something from his trouser pockets too. She was watching him curiously as he shuffled back beneath the blanket and got comfortable. Holding the thin box flat in his palm, the Doctor said, ‘this is for you’.

Rose looked between the Doctor and the box not knowing what to think. Gone was whatever he had tried to cover up and gone was the faux happiness that was the cover, now the Doctor was buzzing with an excited energy as he eagerly waited for her to accept his offering. She eyed the box. It was intricately carved, slightly bigger than his palm and had the colour of varnished oak, though it was probably made from a tree on a different planet to Earth. At the front was a small latch and she flicked it open with her finger before opening the hinged lid. Inside, on a bed of black probably-not-velvet, was a silver coloured necklace. Her eyes grew wide as she took in the design, it was made up of interconnecting links and each link was in the shape of a small pressed rose.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Rose told him, running a gentle finger over the necklace where it still sat in the box balanced on his hand.

‘You like it? It’s not too cheesy?’

She could hear the eagerness for her approval in his voice so glanced up and gave him a tender smile that seemed to ease his nerves. ‘I love it, Doctor, and I love roses so of course it’s not too cheesy. Though maybe if it was big and in your face roses then it might be a bit much but this isn’t. This is delicate and intricate and I really do love it.’ He smiled brightly at the sincerity in her tone, his cheeks gaining the faintest touch of pink, something that Rose thought was quite an adorable look on him. ‘When did you get it?’ Unexpectedly, the pink in his cheeks darkened at her question and he started to scratch the back of his head with his free hand whilst he bumbled through his answer.

‘I erm - I saw it when I was visiting Tiannamat. You remember that market asteroid in the Rings of Akhaten?’ Rose nodded so he continued. ‘Didn’t really plan on visiting the asteroid, it just so happened that I was in the area and then I stumbled across this completely by chance. You see, I’d been helping out a group of smugglers deliver vaccinations into-‘

‘Doctor.’

‘Right, yes, the necklace. Well, I erm - linearly on Earth it was April which obviously got me thinking about - got me thinking about you.’ He ducked his head a little as he continued, his free hand now fiddling with the edge of the blanket. ‘I was just wandering around the stalls as you do and then it caught my eye. It’s silly really because I knew I’d never be able to give it to you but I still couldn’t stop myself from buying it.’

Rose brushed back the hair that had gotten stuck to his forehead with a soft smile on her lips and a heart that was clenching for the man she loved, the man who clearly loved her just as much as she loved him if his actions were anything to go by. ‘That’s not silly at all,’ she told him as she carded her fingers through his hair. ‘It’s sweet.’ With his head still tilted down, he glanced up at her through his eyelashes as though still unsure that she meant it. ‘It is sweet and I love it, Doctor. Thank you.’ She pulled him to her and pressed her lips against his. He relaxed into the kiss in a way that told her that he now did believe her, making Rose smile against his lips before she leant back. ‘I love you, my Doctor.’

‘I love you too, my Rose Tyler.’

She giggled at the reverence in his tone before pushing herself upright a little more and moving her hair so it all rested over my shoulder. Then she reached up and undid the chain around her neck as she said, ‘help me put it on?’

He grinned and took the rose link necklace out its box, undoing its clasp as he sat up too. As Rose turned her back to him, so he could put it on her more easily, the Doctor remembered what this new necklace was for. He quickly found his Tardis key that he’d taken out of his trouser pocket and tucked out of sight in the blankets, then he slipped it onto the necklace as though it was a charm.

Rose pressed her hand to the front of the necklace as the Doctor fiddled with the clasp after placing it around her neck. She’d felt something heavy connect with her chest when he’d put it on her and delighted in the feel of a key beneath her fingers. ‘You gave me a spare key,’ she said giddily as she turned back to face him.

‘Well, technically that’s my key,’ he explained as he tugged on his ear. ‘But you need a way to get back in and the reason why I brought the necklace was so you could wear your key on it.’

Her brow creased a little, her fingers still stroking over the metal. It felt as though it vibrated minutely and that the Tardis was enveloping her mind with warmth due to her tender touch. ‘Your key? But won’t you need it?’

He smirked. ‘Firstly, I’m not letting you out of my sight and secondly, like you say, I’m sure there’ll be a spare around here somewhere.’

If anyone was in doubt that humans were complex emotive beings then Rose Tyler would be a great example to study right now. Although the Doctor’s demeanour was playful, she could see the very real worry behind his words and how scared he was of potentially losing her again. It broke her heart that she could cause him such pain and yet it also felt like it was soaring with the meaning behind him giving her the key. Because it wasn’t just any Tardis key and he could have gone and gotten her a spare but he didn’t. He chose to give her his key to his ship.

Her smile was tender as she reached up and cupped his cheek. ‘Who would’ve guessed you’d be such a romantic, Doctor?’ She said softly. When the Time Lord looked like he was either going to refute or scoff at such a claim, Rose said, ‘no, you are, but I love it and I love you.’ His complaints died on his tongue and his eyes twinkled happily as he told her he loved her too. He leant into her touch and she brushed her fingers through the short hairs on the side of his head, the tips of them caressing over his temple causing an involuntary moan to fall from the Doctor’s lips. Rose gasped and pulled her hand back from his cheek as though she had been scalded, not simply because of the Doctor’s reaction but due to the strange sensation in her head. She didn’t understand what had happened, what that feeling was. It had been too much, too big, too loud, but also not enough. Now that the feeling had passed, her mind felt light and practically empty.

After pulling himself together, the Doctor’s brow was furrowed painfully as he stared at Rose and spluttered, ‘what? But - what? How? You - that should be…’ He knew he had been using the word impossible a lot lately and that it was losing all of its meaning because Rose kept redefining what was, but most definitely shouldn’t have been, possible, but it was the only word that was running through his head. With that gentle touch to his temple, she had brushed against his mind causing an embarrassing moan to slip from him due to both the unexpectedness and the overwhelmingly luxurious feel of such an intimate act. Just for a second he had felt her, all warm and comforting and brimming with love, love for him of all beings. He felt undeserving of such a deep love but also greedily wanted more because for that second he had felt so full, so complete even, and he desperately wanted to feel it again. For the first time since the death of the Time Lords his mind had not been empty. Of course this wasn’t his first telepathic contact since then, the Tardis was ever present in his mind with their bond, but apart from fleeting bouts of telepathy, in which some were more intrusive and non consensual than others, he had not had another beings presence fill that void that the Time Lord’s had left. It was an unintentional move, that much was clear by the confusion on Rose’s face, and one that shouldn’t have been possible because she wasn’t telepathic. She had, however, told him of communicating with the Tardis, an ability that sounded rather similar to his own and one that he’d seen in play when they first stepped onto the ship earlier. The link between the Old Girl and Rose was a remnant of Bad Wolf and in all likeliness not the only thing that still lingered within her. She had held so much power that day, who knew what else she had retained, what else had been unlocked when she finally remembered her time as Bad Wolf? It scared him, of course it did, everything about this was an unknown and it was happening to Rose, the woman he loved so dear. But they would figure this out together and who knows perhaps this will turn out to be a good thing. Perhaps Bad Wolf had simply enabled and enhanced Rose’s repressed telepathic abilities; an ability that was always there in the genetic makeup of humans, just turned off in nearly all cases and when activated their telepathy was underdeveloped and weak. Perhaps they could bond, he and Rose, have a marriage bond as he had hoped but now one that would be so much more akin to the one of his people with her telepathic abilities. Perhaps she would even go as far as accepting a true bond with him. That was a thought that had never once crossed his mind because it would have been very much impossible before, but now there was a chance that it could become a possibility, if it was what she wanted too of course.

‘Doctor, what was that? What just happened?’ Rose asked as she too stared at the Time Lord.

He blinked at her and brought himself back to the present. ‘It’s alright,’ he told her to try and smooth her wide eyed look. ‘Rose, you - I thought it was just something you had with the Tardis but no you - you entered my mind just then. Telepathically. That - that’s what that feeling was.’

Her mouth was slightly agape. ‘I did?’ She breathed.

‘Do you - erm - could you…’ The Doctor trailed off, he could feel himself flushing and ducked his head. He was embarrassed about how much he wanted her, no, longed for her to repeat that action, to touch his temples and delve into his mind. The desire was too much for him to handle but it was Rose after all. She had his hearts and they had connected in the most intimate ways of her people, but this was the way of his and their briefest of glimpses into it was just a mere tease of what could be. The Doctor found that he couldn’t stop himself from glancing back at her and saying, ‘could you do it again?’

‘What?’

She was gazing at him, baffled by his request and he wanted to dispel that confusion and the look of concern that was beginning to emerge on her features. ‘You don’t have to,’ he told her first of all. The possibility that she had hated the feeling began to simmer within and that hurt if he was honest with himself but this wasn’t about him. If she didn’t want to then he would respect that, he would never push Rose to do something she didn’t want to do, especially not when it involved matters of the mind. There was a strict etiquette after all and he wouldn’t break those rules. ‘I just - I just want to be sure of what happened,’ the Doctor began to explain, ‘because you shouldn’t be able to do that’.

‘But I went into your mind,’ Rose said slowly, figuring out what she had inadvertently done and coming to a regrettable conclusion. Her face twisted in remorse as she said, ‘oh my God, I’m like Cassandra or - or that Peace thing…’

‘What?’

‘Or Madame de Pompadour, you said she did it too, just went into your head without you-’

‘No. No, no, no, no, no.’ The Doctor cut her off and took her slightly shaking hands in his, his thumbs running over the backs of them soothingly. ‘You are not like any of them, Rose, not at all.’ His voice was filled with conviction and he locked his eyes with hers silently begging her to believe him, to heed his words and stop feeling bad for her actions. ‘What you did was an accident. You brushed against the edge of my mind without any intention of doing so, that was all. They forced their way into my head or chose to delve deeper than they should have. You are not like them,’ he said with certainty. Gazing at her as she took a deep, steadying breath, he saw her nod weakly at what he had just said. She still looked too remorseful for his liking though. ‘Please don’t apologise, I don’t regret it, in fact…’ He trailed off and ducked his head again, his hands still in Rose’s. This could go one of two ways and he took a moment to prepare to mask his emotions if it turned out to be the more regrettable outcome. ‘In fact, I rather liked it,’ he admitted quietly.

She looked at him for a moment, unsure whether he was still just trying to make her feel better that she had accidentally invaded his mind, but with the way he was acting she couldn’t help but believe him. What she didn’t understand was why he seemed so ashamed to admit it. ‘You did?’ Rose asked tentatively.

With his head still down, he nodded. ‘With the Time Lords,’ the Doctor began softly, ‘physical touch was frowned upon, even between partners. Not all, there are always exceptions to the rule, but near enough everyone believed themselves to be above such a thing’.

‘Like you,’ Rose said with a squeeze of his hands, the evidence that he was a very tactile person evident.

He glanced up and smirked a little but then shook his head. ‘No, that was one of the rules I actually stuck to. It wasn’t very me though and I gradually learnt that over the years after leaving Gallifrey. But there was a way to still be intimate as a Time Lord and in some ways it’s even more intimate than human sexual intercourse. Not that that’s what you just did,’ he hastily added. ‘That was more like brushing your hand over me, over my arm or something.’

‘You moaned,’ she pointed out with a curious and slightly teasing gaze.

The Doctor felt the blush growing across his cheeks, even felt the heat of it across his chest. He let go of her hands and rubbed one of his over the back of his head, his eyes finding the coral strut he slung his coat on particularly interesting as he said, ‘yes, well, it wasn’t like I was expecting it’. His words came out more like a huff and he glanced back to Rose who had raised her eyebrows at his sudden attitude. He sighed and lowered his arm to fiddle with the blanket instead. ‘To - to reach a level of telepathic connection that would be akin to sex there would have to be an emotional connection between the consenting partners. We have that so your touch could have been considered a more sensual one and then there’s the fact that we’ve just had physical sex. I can smell that we’ve had sex, can still smell the pheromones you’re giving off. My body’s buzzing with dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins and the visual stimuli didn’t help with the matter either,’ he explained, wafting his hand towards Rose’s bare torso. ‘So yes, maybe I moaned a little but, like I said, I wasn’t expecting it and it was rather a lot to take,’ he finished his point in a bit of a huffy voice again but he was feeling rather uncomfortable about the whole thing as he admitted his reaction.

Rose listened carefully as he opened her eyes to something that she had never thought about before, something that created a new realm of possibilities. ‘So are you saying we could have telepathic sex?’ She asked him, highly intrigued with the answer and what it would feel like. If that was the Doctor’s reaction to a simple touch, Rose could only imagine how phenomenal it would feel if things escalated further.

His eyes opened wider at her question. ‘Erm - I’m not sure.’ He tugged on his ear as he continued, not entirely sure how Rose would take it. ‘Really, I would like to examine your apparent telepathic abilities first.’

She saw where that train of thought was going a mile off. ‘You want to go to the infirmary don’t you?’

He nodded, a guilty look growing on his face. ‘Yeah.’

‘Okay.’

‘What? Really?’

Chuckling at his shocked reaction she said, ‘yeah, really. I just needed a moment to breathe earlier after everything at the hospital but now I’ve showered and eaten and settled back in a little I think I’m up to a bit of your prodding and poking’. Rose smirked and started to push the blankets off her legs so she could stand.

Blinking at the unexpected turn of events as he watched Rose find her underwear and joggers strewn behind them on the grating, he came back to himself and said, ‘what, now?’

‘Yeah,’ Rose replied as she pulled her joggers on. ‘Might as well get it over with and you’ll only end up banging on about it again if not.’

The Doctor grumbled as he stood and put on his own underwear and trousers. ‘I do not bang on.’

‘Yes you do.’

Chapter Text

The infirmary was just as she remembered, all white floors and walls, though one of them was lined with cupboards and counters in which the Doctor stored medicines and pieces of equipment that were small enough to fit through the doors. Rose was in no doubt that the cupboards were bigger on the inside with the way the Doctor rooted through a few of them, pulling out items that she had no hope of naming or knowing their functions but were clearly highly technical medical devices of some sort. Bigger equipment was filled rest of the space, laid out in some vague semblance of order that probably made sense to the Time Lord. It wasn’t the largest of rooms by any means but it was practical and the perfect size for what was generally needed and if that requirement changed than Rose knew that the Tardis would accommodate and alter the room to create a space that would suit them better.

He’d dragged the small rolling desk, on which sat a couple of screens, closer to the metal examination bed where Rose was sitting. Her legs were outstretched across the length of it whilst her upper body was more upright, supported by the alterable bed. She was watching the Time Lord, her eyes on his back as he sat on the little stool and hunched over the monitors going over some of her test results. His shoulders were stiff through the fabric of his shirt, something Rose happily noted that he’d slipped back on but hadn’t bothered to do the buttons of so it was left hanging open allowing her a great view of his chest when he leant over her as he set up some of his equipment for tests. The tension radiating from the Doctor, however, didn’t bring her happiness. At first he was all excited, eagerly listing the numerous tests he wanted to complete as a precautionary measure, as well as the ones examining her telepathic abilities, but that dimmed as he started to go through the results.

‘Everything alright?’ Rose asked tentatively after the Doctor let out a disgruntled grunt. He was starting to make her feel nervous now and she began to fiddle with the bottom of her camisole just so she had something to do to settle her nerves a little.

The Doctor rubbed a hand through his hair, somehow succeeding in creating a bigger mess of spikes than it already was, before pushing himself off the stool. It scraped along the tile, its spine tingling screech not doing anything for the growing tension in the room except building it even more. Then he turned to her and stepped next to the bed. There was a slight furrow in his brow, which was just noticeable behind the tortoiseshell frames of his glasses, and his jaw was tight. Apart from that his face was unreadable and that scared her because he was hiding something and whatever it was wasn’t good news.

‘Well, you’re definitely telepathic,’ he stated as he reached for the electroencephalogram skull cap. He gently prized it from her head, being careful of both her hair and the numerous wires that were attached to the electrodes on the cap which took her readings, and then deposited it next to a few spare bits of cotton wool and the tourniquet that were on the metal table by her bedside. The Doctor had already taken her blood and the haematology analyser on the counter at the far end of the room was humming away as it worked through Rose’s sample.

‘Yeah?’ she said slowly, waiting for the “but” that was undoubtedly coming from his demeanour.

‘Your cuneus lobe is bigger than I’ve ever seen in a human from your time.’ At her questioning look, he said, ‘that’s the part responsible for telepathy, sits at the back of the brain as part of the occipital lobe’. He tapped the back of his own head lightly, as though the location was the part of his explanation that needed expanding upon, and then settled his hands in his pockets. ‘You’ve got a fair few neurons there, not as many as a naturally born telepath, but they’ll grow new projections and connections over time should you choose to develop it.’

Rose nodded. ‘So it’s like a muscle, the more you use it the more capable it is.’

‘Well, the brain is an organ, not a muscle,’ he corrected. She gave him a look and the Doctor scratched his sideburn as he quickly added on, ‘but it works in very much the same way’.

‘So if I talk to the Tardis in my head, I’m improving it?’ Rose asked and the Time Lord nodded in agreement. She slowly continued with her next thought, uncertain if this was why he seemed more downtrodden than earlier. ‘Or - or if I talk to you…’ At her words, he scoffed loudly, both surprising Rose and adding more evidence to her burgeoning theory that he didn’t want some sort of telepathic connection with her after all. It hurt that the idea of communicating with her telepathically was so apparently laughable to him but she tried not to let that show because maybe it wasn’t that simple. Things with the Doctor rarely were.

‘Yes, well that would be a fine thing wouldn’t it?’ His words were bitter as he crossed his arms and glared at the ceiling.

She frowned at the man whose attitude wasn’t actually aimed at her but at the Tardis. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Ever communicate telepathically?’ He asked, lowering his fierce gaze to Rose. ‘Apart from with the Tardis obviously.’

‘Erm…yeah,’ she said slowly as she tried to remember. ‘A couple of times I think.’ Rose noticed the muscle in the Doctor’s jaw twitch and then he nodded his head as though what she had said confirmed something for him. ‘Doctor, what is it?’

‘All that time,’ he began, his words quiet but with a bit of a bite. The Doctor unfolded his arms so he could wave his hands about in agitated movements as he started to explain himself. ‘All that time between Game Station and Canary Wharf. Granted it wouldn’t have happened overnight, your cuneus lobe probably took months to grow to the size it is now, and maybe it was only then when your Bad Wolf memories unlocked that it had developed enough for telepathic contact but still…’ He made a frustrated noise and began to pace in front of the bed. ‘We had months afterwards. Months! Thirteen - fourteen months. Months of being together, of being closer than we ever have been both physically and emotionally.’ Halting his rant abruptly, the Doctor turned to Rose and eyed her with as soft a look as he could manage, worked up as he was, so she would know he wasn’t blaming her. ‘And no, this isn’t about you keeping this from me, it all comes in the realm of Bad Wolf and I get that.’ The sternness returned as he moved onto who he was blaming, his pacing steps back at full stride. ‘What I don’t get is how I didn’t know. Me, a touch telepath, and I had no clue. It’s laughable really, what a poor excuse of a Time Lord, no, a Gallifreyan, I must be. Except…’ He paused mid step. His voice was full of conviction as he continued to speak, but his words came out slower, more controlled and even more dangerous. ‘Except, I know how good I am. I know what I am capable of and this isn’t it. So whatever you are doing, stop it!’

Rose watched him practically spit his final words, the entirety of his anger aimed at a singular patch of coral on the ceiling, and then the Tardis replied with a sorrowful but weary groan. Whatever this argument was about was clearly to do with telepathy, Rose’s telepathy to be precise, but other than that she had no idea what the Time Lord was ranting about or why he was so angry with the Tardis. ‘Stop what, Doctor?’ She asked softly, sitting up fully now and swivelling around on the bed so her legs dangled off the edge. ‘What are you going on about?’ Reaching out, Rose took his hand in an effort to calm him, holding it loosely in her own in case he didn’t want her touch. He didn’t pull away though, instead he sighed, his shoulders sagging a little as he wrapped his fingers around hers. She squeezed his hand and ran her thumb over the back of it soothingly, patiently waiting for him to answer her questions.

‘You might not have told me but I still should have known,’ he said quietly, turning to face her as he did so. ‘I should have been able to tell you were a telepath, especially because you are untrained. Every time we touched, held hands even,’ he explained with a squeeze of their conjoined ones. ‘I should have been getting bombarded but all I ever felt were flickers of your general emotions which was what I usually got as a touch telepath.’

‘Then why weren’t you - aren’t you?’ Rose corrected with a frown, confused as to how she, he or perhaps both of them were being blocked from projecting through touch. Evidently the Time Lord believed it was the Tardis and she wondered if it was because of her, because she didn’t want to tell the Doctor about Bad Wolf, that the Old Girl had done this. She didn’t get to voice this thought before the Doctor was shaking his head and speaking once more.

‘Don’t do that. I don’t think this is because of you, Rose.’

‘What?’ She asked, bewildered as to how he knew what she’d just been thinking.

He squeezed her hand. ‘She’s stopped blocking it and now I can feel the guilt radiating off you in waves. Touch telepath,’ he told her with a little swing of their entwined hands. He watched her carefully as she blinked at him, processing this new information, then he himself began to feel guilty. The Doctor dropped her hand muttering, ‘sorry, that’s - that’s intrusive and you can’t help it. You don’t want me practically reading your thoughts’. Glancing away, he scratched the back of his head before looking back at Rose when she took his hand once more.

‘Hey, I don’t mind,’ Rose said softly, trying to project feelings of comfort and acceptance, though she supposed she didn’t need to project them as such as just feel them because she certainly hadn’t been trying to tell him about feeling guilty. ‘It’s you, Doctor, you can read my thoughts all you like, it’s not like I’m trying to hide anything.’ Anymore, she added silently whilst hurriedly attempting to dampen any guilt that she was bound to be projecting to him after that thought.

The Doctor ignored the new wave of guilt that he could feel from Rose and, not believing that she would actually appreciate projecting herself to him once she’d come to terms with everything, hastily said, ‘I can teach you to shield yourself to stop that from happening. Should probably do that before we go out exploring, you’ll be a lot more vulnerable to mental attack as a telepath and you’ll need a way of defending yourself’.

She nodded at him. ‘Right, yeah, that sounds good…like with that Peace thing,’ she added, remembering one of the early adventures with this Doctor where the Peace attacked both of their minds and took control of hundreds of others in the giant arcade.

‘Exactly like the Peace thing,’ he agreed darkly as he too remembered the genocidal entity. ‘My mental barriers were the only thing protecting me and keeping it out of my head.’

Rose thought for a moment and then said, ‘so if it wasn’t to do with me, was that what the Tardis was doing? Was she protecting us?’

His mood hadn’t brightened after being reminded of the Peace and now soured even further at the reminder of what the Tardis had done. He couldn’t believe his ship, couldn’t work out what right she thought she had to control them in such a way, to prevent them from discovering Rose’s telepathy together and learning to communicate using it. What was even worse were his thoughts that said things could have been different had he known. He didn’t know how, it wasn’t like telepathy would have made her hold onto that lever for a few moments longer, but it still made him angry that perhaps it would have been different, perhaps they needn’t have been separated. Before he could get lost down that rabbit hole, the Doctor felt a caress of his bond between himself and the Tardis and inwardly groaned as she tried to appease him.

For a being who could really only communicate in emotions and images unless external resources came into play, such as the tone of her hums or the flickering of her lights, the Tardis was incredibly skilled at getting her point across to the Doctor, though perhaps the fact that they had been bonded for hundreds of years did help matters quite a bit. She stroked along their bond soothingly, trying to stop him from working himself up again before she could explain herself. Once he was, well, not amenable but at least reluctantly willing to listen, she began.

The Old Girl showed him an image of the engagement ring the Doctor had made for Rose and followed it up with a projection of a handfasting ceremony. Throughout these images, she sent waves of love and joy across their bond but they came to an abrupt halt when she pulled up a memory of his. He didn’t need to see more than a millisecond of the whiteness in the imagery to know what she was making him relive. His hearts picked up as he watched himself place his hand upon that freshly sealed white wall whilst being bombarded with every emotion he had felt after seeing Rose get torn away from him. Then the Old Girl pressed on their bond in such a suffocating way that it felt as though it was being severed. He stumbled slightly where he stood at the agony of their breaking bond but when it felt like it was about to snap, she stopped. His mind was filled with her embrace, her love, warmth and apologies for what she had just put him through but now the Doctor understood.

His anger with his ship gradually began to fade and he begrudgingly admitted that she had done a good thing in blocking the telepathy between himself and Rose. Had he known about Rose’s telepathy he would have asked her to bond with him sooner, just as the Tardis had seen through their most probable timelines, but that bond would have been severed the moment the walls between the universes shut. The pain would have been unbearable for him and he didn’t want to imagine what it would have been like for Rose. Time Lords dying or becoming mad with grief after experiencing a severed bond was not unheard of, especially in the case of a true bond, though those were rare to come across by the time the Doctor was alive. He’d only ever read about true bonds but marriage bonds were commonplace amongst his people and did not result in death or mental frailty nearly as often as the less practised true bond. Of course, it just depended on how strong the bond was between you and your partner. He dreaded to think of how their separation would have impacted Rose if she had experienced the same sort of grief as he had even without a bond.

When the Doctor stumbled a little where he stood, Rose grabbed onto him and swiftly slid off the bed to try and hold him up if needed. His face contorted in agony as he held back the groans that were trying to escape him, apparently unable to either hear or respond to anything she was saying as she called out to him and asked what was wrong. Just as suddenly as it had begun, the pain faded away and the Doctor came back to himself. Rose loosened the grip she had on his waist to run her hand gently up and down his side whilst her gaze was fixed on his face, watching as he slowly opened his tightly screwed up eyes. When he looked down at her, she softly said, ‘hey, you okay? What was that?’ His bottomless brown eyes flitted over her face for a moment, pain and sorrow easily readable in the murky depths, and then he curled himself around her. Rose could feel the rumble of his affirming hum in his chest when he rested his cheek on top of her head and she easily embraced him back, giving him whatever comfort he required.

He was different from before, not bad different, but he seemed more fragile, more free with his emotions or at least more free with sharing his emotions with her. She loved that he felt safe and secure enough with her, that he trusted her enough to do so, but she hated the reasoning behind his more emotional state and understood it better than anybody else ever could. Canary Wharf had done a number on them both and Rose knew that it would take time for them to process it. They could do that together now though; they could work through it as a pair and come out of the other side stronger than ever.

‘She was protecting us,’ he mumbled into her hair after a moment of reminding himself that Rose was back and she was fine. There was so much love and warmth radiating from her through her touch that he felt better sooner than anticipated; the benefits of Rose being a telepath becoming evident rather quickly. ‘Showed me what could have been,’ the Doctor added as an explanation. He wasn’t going to say any more than that and couldn’t without revealing his plans to propose to her anyway.

Rose waited for anything further from the Time Lord but wasn’t surprised when he didn’t expand upon it and she wasn’t going to push him to tell her more either. Whatever he had just been through looked harrowing from her point of view and she didn’t want to make him relive it. It was what could have been after all and that potential timeline was gone, there was no need to dwell on it. Instead, wanting to lighten the mood, Rose quipped, ‘all sunshine and rainbows I’m guessing’.

His huffed laughter broke any remaining tension in the room and he leant back from Rose with a small smile on his lips. ‘Lucky guess.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, not all of us can be know-it-alls like you.’ His eyes twinkled with amusement but it wasn’t with the same brightness as she was used to. Rose gazed at him, noting both the darkness under his eyes and the cheeks that were slightly gaunter than she remembered. He hadn’t been taking care of himself well, she’d gathered that much from that non-dream she’d had back in Pete’s world but it was different seeing it in person and this close up. Rose decided to try and fix that now that she could. Stepping out of his arms, she took his hand and said, ‘come on’.

‘What?’ The Doctor blinked and looked down at the hand she was tugging on, back at the monitors and then to Rose, his head swivelling between the latter two a couple of times as he spluttered, ‘but - but - but - I thought we were - where are we going?’ His feet didn’t put up much of a fight as Rose pulled him towards the door, whilst his free hand wafted behind him to the room in an attempt to signal that they had been in the middle of something.

Rose giggled at his babble. ‘We can come back to it later; we’re just taking a break. Anyway my bloods are still processing so we’d just be waiting around for them.’ She nodded to the machine at the far end of the room that was indeed still humming away as it separated white blood cells from the red ones, amongst other things.

He longingly eyed the monitors with the results from the other tests that he hadn’t had the chance to peruse yet but then sighed and released a begrudging, ‘fine’. Rose Tyler could ask for anything and he’d try to make it happen. She, however, didn’t need to know that, although going by past experience she already did, so he had to at least make it look like she was working for it. She grinned at his attitude, even poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth in that way he loved so much. He decided then that the results could most definitely wait if it earned him that smile and he followed her willingly down the corridors to their destination.

This destination turned out to be the galley. The Doctor slipped off his glasses and tucked them in his trouser pocket as he watched Rose standing in the doorway beside him. She looked around the room with a big smile on her face, then dropped his hand and got to work like she was on a mission. The kettle was filled and flicked on, Fred, the yellow duck shaped timer, got a little pat on the head and the Doctor got a telling off about not watering the orange fern enough. He grumbled as he went about doing just that whilst Rose raved about the new teas he’d bought but ultimately decided on an English classic because the tea over in the other universe was never quite as good and she wanted to remind herself of what it should taste like before moving onto more alien flavourings. She was delighted to find her mug sitting next to his in the cupboard and took them down, putting them on the counter whilst he grabbed the milk from the fridge and slid it across the work surface towards her. Apart from getting her a spoon for the sugar, the Doctor didn’t offer any further assistance and instead leant his hip against the counter and watched, enraptured with the ritual of Rose Tyler making tea. It was a process that couldn’t be disturbed and shouldn’t be messed with and it was strange how he couldn’t put into words just how much he had missed it. The adding of the water, the tea, the milk, the sugar and then the stirring, it was hypnotic. The thing was, it wasn’t any different from anybody else making tea, not really, but somehow Tyler tea was the best and, quite frankly, he couldn’t wait to taste it once more.

Rose tapped the spoon against the Tardis blue mug after stirring in the Doctor’s sugars and then placed the spoon next to the sink for washing up later. When she turned back to the teas, she found that the Doctor had silently slid into the spot where she had standing, picked up a mug and was greedily gulping it down like he hadn’t drunk anything for weeks. ‘Doctor!’ She complained, resting her hands on her hips whilst watching as he swallowed the final dregs and removed the mug from his lips with a satisfied sigh.

‘Still the best tea that there has ever been,’ the Doctor remarked with no remorse for having drunk it like a fish. When Rose raised her eyebrow, he took that look as her not believing him so carried on, saying, ‘no seriously, it is! If we went to Ancient Greece and found a couple of “Gods”…’ He made quotation marks in the air and then finished his explanation. ‘…then the real ambrosia goes out the window and this would become it.’ Holding the mug in the air triumphantly, he grinned at Rose who still looked unimpressed with him.

‘That’s all well and good, Doctor, but that’s my mug you’ve just downed.’ She tilted her head towards the offending item still in his hand and watched as he slowly glanced at the rose imagery on one side before twisting it to see her Gallifreyan name written in the language of his people on the other. ‘Ah.’ The surprise on his face was evident and he turned back to Rose, giving her a sheepish grin as he said, ‘could I perhaps interest you in this perfectly good cup of tea?’ He poked his mug with his finger, edging it along the counter in her direction.

She watched him for a moment before letting her unimpressed façade drop with a roll of her eyes. ‘No, you have it, Doctor,’ she said, grabbing her mug from his fingers and putting it back on the counter near the kettle. There was water left and it was still hot, it was easy enough to make herself another. ‘You can get started on the sandwiches anyway,’ Rose told him as she went through the steps of making tea of the Gods.

‘Sandwiches?’

‘Yep,’ she said, popping the “p” just like the Doctor did. ‘You need something more sustaining than chips and they disappeared a few hours ago now.’ The Time Lord, seemingly amenable to this idea, stepped closer and opened the cabinet above them where the plates were. ‘You're more pole than bean these days,’ she commented jokily, poking him lightly in the stomach once he had safely put the plates down.

‘Oi!’ He flinched and batted her attacking hand away. Then the Doctor laid his hand on Rose’s side as he reached up to close the cupboard door. His fingers rested over her ribs which were slightly too prominent for his liking; she’d lost weight too since they had been separated, not an unhealthy amount but he worried that it was for similar reasons as himself. He decided not to mention it though and instead stepped away to get some bread as he said, ‘trying to feed me up, Tyler? You’re getting worse than your-’ He promptly cut off his teasing remark once he realised the dangerous territory that he was heading into. Rose had said that she didn’t mind talking about Jackie, but that probably didn’t equate to him taking jabs at her mother and especially not so soon.

The galley was silent for an awkward moment until Rose spoke. ‘Remember when…’

At her quiet voice, he stopped staring at the bread he was absently crushing and put the loaf down before glancing over to her. Even with only being able to see the side of her face, he could tell that her eyes were glazed over whilst she was lost in thought. Rose was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth but there was also a hint of a smile as she relived happy memories that were now laced with sadness. Reaching out, he gently rested his hand on the small of her back. It was a tentative touch, one just to let her know that he was there for her, for whatever she wanted or needed from him. When she instantly leant into him, he knew he could do better, could comfort her better than a simple touch. The Doctor stepped behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist so that his hands clasped together over her stomach.

Rose sighed, melting into him. With her back resting against his chest, she relaxed into his comforting embrace both appreciating the gesture immensely and loving the fact that he was actually there to support her physically as well as emotionally. She wanted to talk about her mum, about her dad and Tony and even Mickey. She wanted everything to be normal, for her and the Doctor to be able to make harmless jokes about her mum as they used to. He’d stopped himself before finishing that one but it was too late, there was no other ending to that sentence and Rose hated that he couldn’t complete it, hated that it made her heart clench as she thought about her mother. But she’d told the Doctor that she didn’t want her family to become a taboo topic and she really didn’t, so now she was trying to bring up an anecdote to prove that. The words had gotten caught in her throat though and, try as she might, nothing else was coming out. But then she’d felt the Doctor’s hand on her back before he’d curled himself around her and Rose felt like she could breathe again.

After swallowing down the thickness in her throat, she began her anecdote once more. ‘Remember when we turned up at the flat on Shrove Tuesday and mum wanted to make us all pancakes but ended up looking at the wrong version of the recipe so we had enough pancakes for about twelve people?’

The Time Lord hummed in agreement, a soft smile on his face as he recalled the feast they’d had sitting around Jackie’s dining table. ‘I felt like a Slitheen in a too tight skin suit after that,’ he mumbled near her ear, his smile growing when he heard Rose chuckle.

‘Tell me about it. The first time in my life I thought it might be nice to have a zip.’ They laughed at the thought and then Rose said, ‘we didn’t even finish them’.

‘She sent us back with about twenty.’

‘Saying you might fill out your suit more after having them,’ she added whilst the Doctor let out a huff of both contention and humour at the recollection of Jackie’s motherly nagging. ‘And then,’ Rose began with a big smile on her face as she turned her head enough so that she could see him. ‘And then you went and bought a load of pancakes the next day.’

The Doctor simultaneously sighed and rolled his eyes. ‘How many times? They weren’t pancakes they were-’

‘The alien equivalent of pancakes,’ Rose finished for him.

He gave her a look, his mouth still hanging open having been mid sentence before he was rudely interrupted. Rose giggled in his arms whilst he muttered, ‘that’s the equivalent of you telling a French person that crêpes are pancakes’.

She laughed some more and then said, ‘and I’m sure they’ll appreciate that you covered your crêpes with peanut butter and jam the last time you made them’.

Rose raised her eyebrows in challenge but the Doctor didn’t catch it as he released his hold on her to search through another cupboard. He triumphantly pulled out a jar of peanut butter and set it on the counter but then his eyes caught sight of the fruit bowl and he grabbed a banana from it before looking back at Rose.

‘Peanut butter and banana sandwiches?’

He gazed at her with his big brown puppy dog eyes, wide with excitement at what he obviously thought was a brilliant idea. This hadn’t been her idea of sustenance but Rose couldn’t deny him when he was looking at her like that. She shook her head at him fondly and chuckled. ‘God, you and your sweet tooth.’

‘Get something else if you don’t want it,’ he grumbled good naturedly, grabbing a knife and starting to slather peanut butter on enough bread for the pair of them, already knowing that she wouldn’t decline.

‘Don’t want it if it’s had your fingers in it.’

He turned to her with a cocked eyebrow to see her freshly filled mug of tea hugged in her hands and her badly hidden smile poking over the rim as she took a sip. ‘Now, you see this here is a knife,’ he told Rose seriously, holding up the peanut buttered covered utensil in one hand and pointing at it with the other. ‘Brilliant invention the knife-’

‘Shut up,’ she laughed and lightly bumped his shoulder with her own, making him chuckle too as he went back to making their sandwiches.

They took their food and drinks to the media room where they sat cosied up with one another. They didn’t particularly settle on a programme whilst they ate, simply flicking through the channels until the Doctor found he had a lot to say about the wildly inaccurate documentary on Roman Britain they’d stumbled across.

Rose put the remote down next to their empty plates and cups and curled herself around him, resting her head on his chest and her arms around his waist, content to listen to him point out what the historians had got wrong. She eventually drifted off to sleep, soothed by the Doctor’s presence. The steady beating of his two hearts beneath her ear, the rumble in his chest caused by his incessant babble, the weight of his arm around her, the circles he lightly drew on her hip with his fingertips and his scent of sweet tea with a hint of cinnamon which smothered her entirely with the way she was nestled against him. It all comforted her, reminded her that she had made it, that she was home.

It was another twenty minutes or so before the Doctor turned off the television. He was mumbling about how inaccurate that programme’s recreation of a Roman city had been when they featured it earlier on in the documentary. The historians hadn’t accounted for all of the traffic that built up in the cities of that era and he would know he’d been stuck in it after borrowing a chariot one time. And, yes, borrowing was the key word here because that's why he’d gotten stuck in traffic in the first place; he had been trying to take it back to its owner before they returned to their villa to find it missing. That plan had been truly scuppered by the congestion but it all worked out in the end. Well, there might have been an irate Roman who challenged him to a duel but after some swordplay, and wordplay on the Doctor’s part, all had been forgiven and he had wine and burgers with the owner and his family. Rose had laughed and told him that he was pulling her leg when he spoke about having burgers with them but it was true, he had. Lots of Romans didn’t have any means of cooking at home so they had to buy what were essentially takeaways and, needing a way to transport the meat and to keep it from burning their fingers, they had thought to use bread to surround the meat patty which resulted in burgers. It was genius. Even after his explanation, Rose had still given him a side-eyed look as though he hadn’t entirely convinced her that he was telling the truth, but that was some time ago and now she had been asleep for almost half an hour.

His chin was resting on top of her golden haired head and he tilted his head down so he could place a kiss there. ‘Rose?’ He murmured against her hair, the fingers of his left hand stroking through the long strands whilst his right hand gently rubbed her arm that was wrapped around him. It was no use, she was deeply asleep. He could have jostled her further and called out to her more loudly but he didn’t really want to rouse her if he was being honest with himself. She looked like she needed the rest. If he thought back to when he first saw her face in the MRI room then he’d have to say that she had looked tired then as well. It wasn’t the sort of tiredness that washed over you when the adrenaline wore off after an adventure, it was deeper than that. Possibly, it was the journey between the universes that had caused her exhaustion. The Doctor still wasn’t clued in on what that entailed except for the words “dimension cannon” and then again what that was, he had no idea. There was still so much they had yet to discuss, so much that there was to discover about their time without one another. But that was a matter to take up with an awake Rose and not the one curled around him who was fast asleep.

Tucking one arm beneath her knees and ensuring a good hold on her with the one already positioned around her shoulders, the Doctor scooped her up and arose from the sofa with the sleeping Rose in his arms. The door to the infirmary was open when he stepped into the corridor, the room having been placed just next to the media room so that they could continue after their break. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen anymore but the Doctor couldn’t help but stare through the doorway, his feet itching to walk in there and so that he could read through her results.

His mind hadn’t been completely occupied by the inaccuracies of the documentary. He might have been spewing out corrections and regaling a tale or two about the truth of the Roman era to Rose but his thoughts were also elsewhere, concerned with what he would find in the results when he got to read them. She had gained the ability of telepathy but what else had changed, what else had he not noticed since Bad Wolf?

That was the thing about that day on the Game Station. He’d checked Rose over the first chance he’d gotten once they’d made it through Christmas dinner after the ordeal with the Sycorax. Jackie had wanted Rose to stay longer but he’d refused to spend the night in the flat, still fearing domesticity much more than he did now, and Rose had chosen to come with him back to the Tardis. She certainly didn’t have to and he had explained that he would park at the estate for a day or two if that was what she wanted but she shook her head, put a bag of clothes together and off they went. It was then that he’d asked to have a look over her in the infirmary, completing all the tests he could to ensure she was alright, to work out how she somehow was alright after absorbing the time vortex because she really shouldn’t have been. The results said she was as fit as a fiddle and he couldn’t understand it. The moment the Doctor kissed her, taking the time vortex from her in the process, he had felt his cells start to degrade and die. The process wouldn’t take long, even for him a Time Lord, but Rose was human with a human body and human cells. She shouldn’t have lasted the trip inside the Tardis let alone have been able to step outside those doors looking like a golden Goddess and wielding the power of one too. The results had bugged him at the time, had ever since, but he’d pushed that aside because he was so relieved that she was okay. Plus Rose had needed his comfort and reassurance after believing that she had killed him and he would not allow her to think like that. The power of the vortex had but not her, never her, and he would make that choice to save her every time no matter the consequences to himself. The consequences to herself, however, hadn’t arisen until months later, or at least he didn’t think they had, but even then he hadn’t known. There were possibly more things that he’d missed, things that perhaps even Rose herself had missed, and maybe, just maybe, he would finally get answers as to how she managed to survive the time vortex.

The Doctor blinked and focused back on reality. He realised that he’d been standing by the sleeping Rose’s bedside for the past ten minutes, running through the maelstrom of thoughts in his head after absently carrying her to her bedroom and tucking her under the covers. The Doctor looked at the other side of the bed to the spot he’d called his, to the spot he hadn’t slept in since she’d been gone. For the first time in months, it looked inviting. He could curl up next to Rose and sleep and oh how he wanted to sleep. He’d take a human sleep cycle with no complaint about its frankly unbearably long number of required hours after his lack of quality sleep recently. But there was another want, one that was drawing him even more so, and one that would encroach on a peaceful slumber if he didn’t address it now.

The Time Lord turned and wandered back through the corridors towards the infirmary, intent on getting answers about Rose and Bad Wolf. He’d hardly made it into the room when an image from the Tardis flashed through his mind, an image of a distressed Rose wrapped in a tousled duvet with a pained expression on her face. Easily recognising what was going on, the Doctor sprinted back to her bedroom, his Time Lord ears hearing her feeble murmurs from a few doors away. He barged through the door, uncaring of the back of the door crashing into the chair of the dressing table. His boisterous entrance wasn’t enough to rouse Rose as she thrashed beneath the covers like they were purposefully strapping her down to the bed.

‘Rose? Rose?’ He quietly called, sitting on the edge of the bed where she lay illuminated from the light pouring in from the corridor through her open door. He gently rested a hand on her shoulder in an effort to begin comforting her but she twisted more violently under his touch.

‘No. No!’

Her cries would have hurt him had she not been in the throes of a nightmare and unaware of who he was, not that seeing Rose like this wasn’t already hurting him. He hated seeing her so scared and in such distress as she battled whatever she was facing in her restless mind. He wished he could battle it with her, for her, but he could only do his best to draw her out of it without causing her further anguish. Lowering his hand to the duvet, he pulled it down enough to free her arms from their clearly entrapping confines.

‘It’s alright, Rose,’ he told her softly. ‘It’s me, the Doctor.’

‘No! You don’t understand!’ She was still trying to battle the now non-existent hold of the covers but her face screwed up further when she choked out, ‘I have to…I have to find him’.

The Doctor’s hearts clenched even more so. He had caused this. He’d only left her for a few minutes, though it could technically be counted as longer if you included the time since he’d set her down on the bed. She had been fine before he’d decided to let his impatience for answers win out against climbing into bed with her. Maybe if he had, Rose would still be sleeping peacefully and not having what was quite possibly a nightmare about him. That only made him feel more guilty about the situation.

‘I’m here, sweetheart. It’s just a bad dream.’ His soothing tone seemed to be working when, much to the Doctor’s relief, Rose stilled her violent movements. But the nightmare had not passed. That much was evident with the pain still written in her furrowed brow and her pouting bottom lip that was just beginning to wobble.

‘Doctor,’ she sobbed, her voice wavering as she curled in on herself.

His hearts were no longer clenched, they were broken. It was unbearable seeing his Rose in such distress. To hear her hopelessly call out his name. To watch her make herself look so small as she curled up into a ball as though the only comfort that she could find was from herself. He couldn’t watch this any longer. The Doctor gently placed a hand on her head, his fingers lightly brushing through her hair as he spoke in a soft voice.

‘Hey, it’s alright. You found me, Rose. You’re home now. In the Tardis. It’s alright.’ After a moment of his quiet assurances, she gasped, her eyes springing open. The Doctor stilled his movements as he watched her orientate herself back to reality.

‘Doctor?’ Rose shakily whispered, her breathing harsh in the near quiet room. There was disbelief in her tone and in her teary eyes and it was only emphasised when she asked, ‘are you really here?’

Oh Rose. He was battling with that exact thought about her in his waking hours let alone being tormented by it when asleep. ‘I’m here, you’re here,’ he told her, nodding emphatically as he did so. The Doctor stroked his fingers through her hair a final time before tucking a loose strand behind her ear, lingering as his thumb brushed over her cheek to ensure he was reassuring her of his physical presence.

This wasn’t quite enough for Rose. She reached up to him, her hands cupping his cheeks which were cooler beneath her slightly sweaty palms. Then her fingers began to roam, caressing his skin, sideburns and eyebrows as though confirming that he was most certainly real. The method was clearly working as her breathing calmed and a shaky smile grew on her lips, but then she blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek.

The Doctor quickly wiped it away whilst looking at her with a sad smile of his own. ‘Oh, don’t cry, Rose. It’s alright. It was just a bad dream, that’s all.’ She nodded weakly but her bottom lip was still trembling. ‘Come here, love.’ He helped her sit upright and held her close, running a hand soothingly up and down her back. ‘I’ve got you, Rose, I’ve got you,’ he mumbled against her hair, pressing kisses there amongst his calming words.

She clung to him tightly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pressing her face into the crook of his neck so she could breathe in his comforting scent. ‘I thought-’ She began but her breath hitched and her throat closed up too tight for words. Rose swallowed past that thickness and tried again. ‘I thought I couldn’t find you, thought I was trapped in the void forever.’ At that thought, the tears began to fall once more and she felt the Doctor hold her closer as he gently shushed her.

‘You’re alright. You’re safe. You’re here with me in the Tardis. There’s no void, it was just a nightmare. You found me, sweetheart. You’re back. You’re home.’

His murmured reassurances continued until Rose had calmed. He gently pulled back and studied her intently, noticing her puffy, red eyes, tear stained cheeks and her generally drained appearance. After brushing his thumbs under her eyes to dry her tears, the Doctor planted a kiss on her forehead, which he happily noted caused the corner of her lips to twitch upwards. Then he scooted off the bed and headed to the en-suite, calling out over his shoulder and telling her that he would be right back. He promptly returned with a glass of cool water, which he passed to Rose, before stripping off his suit trousers and tear-dampened shirt. He slipped on a pair of blue and white striped pyjama bottoms and then clambered into the bed, manoeuvring himself and Rose so that he sat up against the headboard and she sat between his legs with her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her waist as she leant into him whilst sipping at the water and sniffing occasionally. The Doctor pushed her hair over one shoulder so that he could plant kisses on the other and more easily catch a glimpse of her face and ensure she was okay. It was more instinct than anything to watch her as he held her because, now with her telepathy, he could feel her emotions at every point their skin touched.

After she had finished her water, the Doctor suggested that she should try to sleep again and Rose tentatively agreed. They settled into the bed properly, the Doctor curling around her, mumbling words that she couldn’t hope to understand as she relaxed into his arms. She’d always found Gallifreyan soothing, just as much as the presence of the Time Lord himself. His soft voice and comforting embrace lulled her to sleep and for once Rose didn’t dream. She didn’t need to. She was already living it.

Chapter Text

It should have been the most relaxing sleep of his lives. He was both physically and mentally tired and Rose was back, all hot skinned and soft curves, the perfect combination in his opinion to curl up with. Her slow breathing, her beautiful scent and her steadily thumping heart, really her mere presence should keep away the nightmares that he was usually tormented by whenever he tried to sleep since she’d been gone. It would probably work too just as his presence was for Rose now that he’d stayed put in bed. Well, nearly constantly stayed put. After attempting sleep, only to be thwarted by his overactive brain, the Doctor had snuck out under the dull light of the bedside lamp, grabbed his suit jacket and trousers and carefully got back in again. The task took a minute at the most and once he’d settled himself, half propped up on his pillows, Rose had turned over and wrapped herself around him like a koala before returning to a deep, peaceful sleep.

His jacket and trousers were lying on the duvet over his legs and he dove into the trouser pockets first in search of his glasses. He slipped them on and allowed the trousers to softly fall to the floor no longer needed. Then he rummaged through the pockets of his suit jacket. The Doctor found the 3D glasses first, the white cardboard frames with the red and blue film lenses unassuming and harmless. He screwed them up and threw the crumpled remains into the bin by the dressing table. They only reminded him of one thing and he did not need help remembering any moment of that painful day.

His hand came across Rose’s mobile phone next. It was the same Samsung slider that he bought her to replace the one she’d given to Mickey when they accidentally landed in Pete’s World for the first time. There were a few scratches here and there and a couple of nicks around the edges but it wasn’t doing too badly after a few years of use. The Doctor slid the screen up and found his throat tightening at the sight. The phone background was a photo of Rose and her family, evidently Rose and her family on her twenty-third birthday going by the balloons in the background that he could just make out through the pixels. Pete and Jackie were standing on either side of Rose who was front and centre, carrying a giggling baby in her arms. The baby was undoubtedly little Tony Tyler. His hair was recognisably Pete’s shade of strawberry blonde even if Tony now had more of it than his father. The siblings looked absolutely smitten with one another, Tony’s face was scrunched up with laughter and Rose was beaming down at him, delighted that she could amuse her brother so. Jackie had a hand on the young boy’s back and looked to have just glanced up from happily observing her children in time for the photograph. Pete had an arm around Rose and appeared very much the proud family man that he had wanted to be back when the Doctor first met him. They might not all have been looking at the camera but it was the perfect family photo of what could only be described as a perfectly happy family.

The Doctor stared at the photograph for a long moment before sliding the phone shut and placing it on the bedside table. He then turned his gaze to Rose, the woman who was sleeping next to him in a completely different universe to her family because she had chosen to be with him instead. The woman who thought he was worth giving up a life with the father she lost as a baby, worth giving up knowing her little brother, worth giving up seeing her beloved mother ever again. He wasn’t worth it. He loved that she was here but he wasn’t worth all of that loss. Maybe one day she’d realise that, realise all that she’d given up because of him and start to resent him for it. He hoped she wouldn’t though; he wouldn’t be able to fix it if she did regret her decision between a life with her family or a life with him. The universe never got it right, he’d said that before and he’d say it again. He was selfishly overjoyed that it had allowed him this though, allowed them to be together once more, but the cost was heavy, possibly too heavy for them to bear.

The final item that the Doctor pulled from his jacket pocket was Rose’s journal. It was what he had been searching for in the first place because, if he wasn’t going to look at her test results until she was awake, he thought that he could at least take a peek at the dimension cannon plans that she had mentioned earlier. Rose wasn’t a journalist, preferring to catalogue her life through pictures rather than words, so he had no qualms about going through the little book. She had told him that he could look at all that she had written about the dimension cannon and that was honestly all that he had expected to find. Mathematical equations, diagrams, theories, test notes, all those sorts of things. They were all in there, page after page of scientific jargon that would go over most people’s heads, but that wasn’t what the Doctor found when he opened the journal to the first page.

November ???

My first diary entry. Yay!

Well, not my first overall, not if you count the maybe a week’s worth, if that, which I wrote down when I was younger. When Grandma Prentice was alive she used to give me a pocket diary each year in my stocking. Never got in the habit of it though. Felt a bit too much like school work for my tastes. Sometimes I could hardly make it through my homework let alone force myself to do some extracurricular diary writing.

That was sarcasm by the way. The yay. Bit hard to get that across when it’s written down. Really I don’t give a crap about writing in some stupid diary anymore than I did as a kid, only doing it because I have to. Mum and Pete are making me see this therapist because they’re worried I’m not coping…

Well.

No shit.

It’s some woman from Pete’s work, Andriana Coltr-Cault-Cotri…I can’t remember. She isn’t into all that formal stuff anyway, says “just call me Andi” and she’s nice enough I suppose. Pete says he trusts her and she’s part of Torchwood so I can say what I want about aliens and stuff and she won’t think I’ve actually lost it and put me in a psych ward.

So yeah, this is me doing a diary because it’ll supposedly make me feel less like crap. Sure isn’t working yet.

He knew he should either put the book down or skip to the parts that contained notes about the dimension cannon; the thing was he found himself unable to stop reading. His eyes darted across the lines, page after page, day after day as Rose recalled her life in Pete’s world. It didn’t take him long to realise that the entries were written to him, the Doctor didn’t know if they were ever actually meant to be seen by his eyes but it was evident that he was the intended recipient. Either way, he couldn’t seem to pull his gaze away.

Being a Time Lord, the Doctor was a quick reader but that was not the case when it came to Rose’s journal. She wrote about missing him, about not adjusting to the other universe, about not coping with a new life without him, about realising that she could still translate other languages and about her nightmares. Reading about her recurring nightmares of being trapped on the other side of that damned white wall was hard enough, but when he reached December the nineteenth he had to pause.

It had started well. Jackie had found out she was pregnant and Pete and Rose were learning how to be a father and daughter together, but then Jackie had taken Rose out shopping and then the entry took a turn. Rose had broken down in the tie section of a posh men’s store because they had reminded her of him. Full on sobbing because a few of the ties were a bit similar to the ones he wore. He vaguely wondered if she eyed every guy with spiky brown hair or ones that wore brown suits because that’s what he ended up doing with blonde women, especially if they were wearing jeans and a hoodie. He’d still been doing double takes a couple of days before they found one another again just in case it was Rose. It never was though.

Then Rose had written that she’d gone on to buy the tie that had reminded her of him the most, one similar to the red tie with the blue flowers that he’d worn to her friend Keisha’s birthday party. Unlike him she’d had nothing of his when she became trapped in the other universe, though of course she’d had nothing of her own either. It had been hard for him with the constant reminders of Rose’s presence in the Tardis but he hadn’t considered that he was lucky that he did have such tangible things to remember her by. He’d had her scent too. That had been the only thing that helped him to sleep when she’d first gone, being able to hug her pillow and almost imagine that she was still with him because that beautiful scent of Rose lingered there the most. She didn’t have any of that, nothing but those 3D glasses and his psychic paper, well, she’d had the Tardis key too but that had been used in the dimension cannon in the end. It was no wonder that they were looking so well cared for. He was losing the psychic paper all the time but Rose had kept it safe as though it was a precious artefact and perhaps she’d used it a time or two as well, he made a mental note to ask her about that.

The rest of the passage relayed how much she had enjoyed dancing with him at Keisha’s party and how much she wished for them to go dancing again, to get all dressed up in the wardrobe room and then simply dance the night away. He silently vowed to take Rose dancing and then raked his eyes over the final line:

I wish for a lot of things these days. Don’t mean they’re gonna happen though.

That was how Rose had finished that day’s entry, with a wish for a life that her younger self had never imagined possible and that her current self had merely been teased before it had been snatched away. Oh his poor girl. He had seen Rose sad before, devastated even, like after seeing her dad’s death, but this was…she was the bright spark, the one full of hope, a glass half full sort of person. That Rose wasn’t the one who had written this. That Rose had been left behind, trapped on the other side of that wall with him whilst she became lost to the other universe.

It had been sad entry after sad entry and the complete and utter hopelessness from that final line was the thing that tipped the Doctor over the edge. He closed the journal, put it on the bedside table, chucked his glasses on top of it and then rubbed his hands down his face. He couldn’t read any more, had hardly made a dent seeing as he’d only made it to the second month and she’d been there for at least eighteen, but reading about Rose’s pain was too much to handle. He could just skim through it until he found the entries that contained information on the dimension cannon, and maybe at another point in time he would because that was why he was reading after all, but he couldn’t do that now. He was scared that the passages would only get worse, they hadn’t said goodbye on the beach yet and he knew how much that experience had ruined him; he didn’t need to read about the aftermath from Rose’s perspective. He could still vividly remember how much it had broken Rose at the time; her despair that he wasn’t actually there on that beach, her tears when she asked if she’d ever see him again, her hitched breath and faltering speech when she told him that she loved him and her look of both hope and disbelief that just broke through her sorrow when he went on to tell her that he loved her too. Or at least he’d tried to before the closing cracks of the universe cut him off. He was cruelly too slow and he thought he’d have to live with that for the rest of his lives, never telling Rose that he loved her and never knowing if she knew that she owned his hearts probably from the day he took her hand and told her to run.

The Doctor let out a shaky breath as the memories washed over him and scrubbed his hands over face once more, wiping away the slight dampness that had collected in his eyes. He didn’t need to think about that anymore. She was back, right by his side sleeping peacefully. There was no point in dwelling on the pain of the past when his present was so much brighter now.

After carefully scooting lower down so that he lay flat on the mattress, he turned onto his left side and faced Rose. Her hand had slipped from his waist in his movements and had landed on the sheets between them. He gently picked it up and placed a kiss on her palm before replacing it around his waist so that it was out of the way when he curled both of his arms around her body and held her close. Her head was now resting against his chest and his arms were around her back with one near her waistband and the other gently combing through her long hair in a motion that he hoped was as comforting for her as it was for him. Apart from some faint murmurings and her hot hand pressing softly against his skin, Rose did not stir; she always was a deep sleeper. Leaning his head down, the Doctor pressed his nose against her hair and breathed deeply, inhaling that beautiful combination of vanilla, honey and citrus that he so loved. It helped to settle him, ground him, and confirm that she was here just as much as her warm body pressed up against his did.

‘I love you,’ he whispered into her golden strands. ‘I love you so much, Rose.’ He kissed the top of her head and then swallowed a little thickly. ‘Please…don’t leave me again...I need you.’ It was always easier to admit things in the dark, admit things when you knew the other person couldn’t hear them. He’d done it before, long before he lost her; he’d told a sleeping Rose that he loved her. He hadn’t had the courage to say it in the light back then, the courage to tell her properly and show her how much he meant it. He would now though because the regret of not telling her before it was too late had stabbed at him constantly. He would prove his love to her every day for as long as he was lucky enough to have her by his side.

That proof would start with her first trip after coming back. It would have to be something nice and pleasant with no danger or turmoil, or at least that was the plan. Rose’s diary had given him an excellent idea though. If she wanted to dance then she would dance, they would make a day of it even, a day of holding Rose in his arms whilst they swayed about the dance floor. Oh, he could get behind that. And if she wanted to dress up in something from the wardrobe room too then he would certainly not stop her. The Doctor’s mind trailed back to Rose’s first visit to the wardrobe room just before they met Dickens and dealt with the Gelth. She had looked beautiful, absolutely stunning in the dress she had chosen. His memories of her that day narrowed down his destination ideas for a venue where they could dance. They would go to Victorian Britain so Rose could pick out another spectacular number from the wardrobe room. In the diary, she had also suggested that he could wear his tux, his nose wrinkled at the very thought, they would not end up having as pleasant a trip as he intended if he did. The Doctor supposed that he could also find something from the wardrobe room if he must. His pinstripes were timeless but he could make an exception just this once if it would please Rose.

A smile grew on his face when the perfect place came to him. Oh Rose would love it he was certain. He’d have to get there year just right, it wasn’t open long in the scheme of things and became a bit of a scandalous hot spot as the years went by, but if he timed it well then it would make a fun trip. Or at least he hoped it would. He’d never been before, why would he with no one he’d want to dance with around? But the advertisements he’d seen and the stories he’d been told, whilst knocking around Victorian London, made it out to be a good evening of entertainment.

With those happier thoughts of twirling Rose around a dance floor now thrumming through his mind, the Doctor eventually drifted off to sleep.

**********

Rose awoke feeling very well rested. She had a fleeting moment of panic when she realised that she was in bed with someone but that soon faded when she realised that it was the Doctor. She’d made it back. She was actually here with him. It was still rather unbelievable and Rose hoped that she’d never get over the giddiness of waking up next to him once again. Or, in this case, partly on top of him or actually mostly on top of him going by the fact that she may as well have been a blanket with how she was draped over the Time Lord. Her head was just beneath his chin with her cheek pressed against his chest like it was some sort of hairy pillow. She could hear his hearts steadily beating away beneath her and feel the way he easily took slow and even breaths, clearly uninhibited by his weighted blanket of sorts. Her left leg was nestled comfortably between his and she had an arm wrapped around him in such a way that her hand was on the back of his shoulder and her fingers were poking over the top. Rose had thoroughly embraced him whilst she slept but the Doctor didn’t seem to mind seeing as his arms were loosely draped over her back and he was still asleep.

Slowly opening her eyes, Rose found the bedroom to be delicately lit by the Tardis’ morning light cycle. She’d missed this room, missed the luxurious feeling bed and the soft sheets, missed having all her things like her clothes and her momentos and missed having a space that felt like hers. Sure she’d had her flat, a place that had been completely hers, but it hadn’t felt that way. Perhaps if she’d put the effort into creating a space that suited her then it would have felt more homely but Rose never took the time to do such a thing. Even when she had given up hope of finding a way back to the Doctor or that he would get through to her, there was never a drive to make the flat more personable as though she always knew that she would never settle there, never settle anywhere in that parallel world.

She lifted her head from his chest so she could look around the room. She had taken a cursory glance around yesterday noting that it all looked the same except for the blanket box but that was the thing, it looked exactly the same. There wasn’t an item out of place from what she could remember from her rush to pack for the holiday they had planned to go that day before their lives were turned around. That small pink case was still open on the Doctor’s leather chair with a few of her things haphazardly thrown in there, one of the cupboard doors was still slid across revealing a collection of her dresses and t-shirts, even her underwear drawer was still open just how she had left it. And there on the bedpost closest to the cupboards was her oversized Band Aid t-shirt which she’d hooked over the post whilst getting changed that morning. It was like no time had passed at all.

Rose carefully climbed off of him and rolled over on the bed to eye the rest of the room. There was a small pile of her clothes by the door to the en-suite; they were there from that fateful morning too. Her dressing table was just as much of a cluttered mess as it was when she’d left it, it was the same thing with the accompanying chair and it made knowing if they had altered a rather impossible task. But then her eyes fell to her bedside table where there was still a half drunk glass of water which she knew hadn’t changed because of the slight lipstick smudge around the rim. What had changed was that there was now a photograph of her propped up against it, a Polaroid of her in that pink dress on her twenty-first birthday. That meant that the Doctor had been in here then because that was the picture he carried around in his suit jacket.

At first, Rose had assumed that he hadn’t entered the bedroom after she’d gone but that photograph told a different story especially because the Polaroid hadn’t simply been put down but purposefully kept upright as though on display. Really it was in the perfect position to be viewed if one was lying down in the bed, a thought that made her heart clench for the man beside her. But if the Doctor was still sleeping in this room then why didn’t he close the cupboard or the drawer or put some of her stuff back in their rightful places? It wasn’t like she was wanting him to have cleaned up after her but surely you’d get compelled to just nudge the drawer into place and maybe put the suitcase back because it wasn’t like it was going to get used anytime soon. It was the same thing with that purple shirt back in the console room; it was still there where she’d left it just like the mess she’d made of the bedroom. It was as though she hadn’t been gone a day, as though the Doctor had thought that if he didn’t clear up after her then it would be like she wasn’t gone at all.

She shuffled in the bed once more so that she was facing the Time Lord again. Apparently that was one movement too far because the Doctor let out a disgruntled sigh before blindly reaching over to where Rose was now lying on her side of the bed.

‘Get back here,’ he grumbled, his voice deep and his eyes still closed as he easily pulled her back on top of him.

Rose giggled at his manhandling and thought that maybe it wasn’t her who had basically tried to smother his body in her sleep after all, instead considering that he had done it to himself. As Rose settled on top of him, with one leg on either side of his body and her stomach flat against his, he hummed contentedly and lazily rubbed his hands up and down her back a couple of times before resting both of them around her waist. He had a hint of a smile on his lips, she noted as she leant up enough to see his face, and she was also glad to see that he too looked well rested.

‘Good morning,’ she said and then dipped her head down enough to briefly press her lips against his, making his smile a little bigger.

‘No mornings on the Tardis, Tyler,’ he mumbled. It was as though he heard Rose’s resulting eye roll with the way that smile of his turned into a smirk.

‘Shut up. At least you knew what was going on, I had a half second panic wondering what man was in my bed before I realised it was you.’

He cocked his eyebrow and gazed at Rose through half opened eyes, the smirk still playing on his lips as he asked, ‘get a lot of men in your bed do you?’ It was intended as a joke but there was a half serious question in there too.

She snorted. ‘Yeah right.’

The ease of her answer and the way she only saw it as a joke assured him and he laughed lightly alongside her before they fell into an easy silence. The Doctor rubbed his hand up and down her camisole covered back again when she rested her head upon his chest once more, though he was still going over what had just been said in his head. He pushed those thoughts further back into his mind when Rose spoke.

‘Doctor?’

‘Hmmm?’

‘Where did you sleep?’

He blinked and tilted his head down as though seeing the top of hers would help give him answers. ‘What?’

‘When I was gone did you move back into your room?’

Oh. His hand stilled on her back as he briefly pondered how to answer that question, or, more precisely, what she was inferring by asking that question. ‘Not exactly, no,’ he supplied as an answer. It was vague but he didn’t really want Rose to know what a pathetic mess he’d become in her absence.

She shrugged. ‘I was just wondering cos this room looks barely touched since I was gone.’ It was a statement, something that didn’t require an answer as such but she hoped that he would offer some sort of response. It wasn’t that she wanted him to relive those times; she just wanted something, something from him about how he’d coped or not coped as the case may be, something more than having to put the clues together herself. She was back and they were together and it was brilliant but that didn’t automatically fix their traumatic separation or all that time they’d had to spend apart. Rose knew that it would take time to properly heal those wounds and knew that talking about it would probably help. It was something that she’d begrudgingly learnt from her therapist Andi but had then come to rely on as time went on. Getting the Doctor to talk though, well, she might be better off talking to a brick wall. The mortar might crumble at a certain point and give her more insight than the Time Lord would. In some ways he had come on in leaps and bounds but in others he was still the same man she’d met who loved to bottle everything up. Again, she wasn’t going to push him, Rose felt like she’d been thinking that a lot lately, but if he ever did want to talk about it then she would be there for whatever he needed.

The Doctor gave a noncommittal grunt but didn’t acknowledge what she’d said any further. He really didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to look back at the sad man he’d become. That was the past and there was no point in trudging it up when the present was so much happier. He tried to come up with another topic to move onto but the other big thing going round his head was that brief conversation on other men in Rose’s bed. Well, it was surely better than revealing his pathetic self to her.

‘You could have, you know,’ he said after a moment.

‘What?’

‘Had other men in your bed.’ Yeah, no this wasn’t a better topic at all. He hated the thought of some other guy with Rose and really wished he hadn’t mentioned it but now she was propping herself up in his chest so she could frown at him, clearly not letting this go.

‘What are you going on about?’

He sighed heavily and scrubbed a hand over his face as he wondered about the right way to word this. ‘I know we’re partners but I guess you didn’t have to keep that up whilst you were over there, it’s not like you could really sustain a relationship with a person you can’t reach in another universe. That would be unfair of me to expect that of you.’ Rose’s eyebrows flew up her forehead and the Doctor quickly backtracked. ‘Not that I’m implying anything of you, I’m just saying it as a general - erm - general concept.’ That seemed to appease her a little and the Doctor scratched his sideburn as he continued. ‘What I’m trying to say is, it should have been impossible for you to get back here. You were meant to spend the rest of your life over there so…it would have been, you know, alright if you had moved on and found some - some pretty bloke in a bar or something.’

She gazed at him thoughtfully, a sad smile emerging on her lips, then let out a long breath. Slowly shaking her head, Rose said, ‘I’ll never understand how, for someone who’s such a genius, you can also be a right idiot. Doctor…’ She trailed off with a sigh, looking down for a moment before glancing back up at his face. ‘How many times? I promised you forever-’

‘I know, but Ro-’ The Doctor butted in but Rose got her own back and cut him off with a finger to his lips.

‘I meant it, Doctor, another universe or not, I still promised you. Because staying with you doesn’t just mean physically, doesn’t mean just being by your side, there’s a lot more to it than that.’ Her words were said with the utmost conviction that she could muster, something that seemed to shock the Doctor by the way he was unblinkingly staring. She removed her finger from his lips and cupped his cheeks with her hands instead, her thumbs gently rubbing over his stubbled skin. Once he’d blinked a couple of times and his eyes had softened, Rose added, ‘anyway, I’ve already found my pretty bloke. Thought he was pretty since the day he blew up my job. Such a move has given me rather high standards though and I don’t really think anyone else could beat that’. She smirked and watched as the Doctor stared at her with wonderment.

How he’d ended up with someone as devoted as Rose, he had no idea but he would never cease being thankful for her. ‘I love you Rose Tyler.’

He said it with such sincerity but Rose wasn’t quite ready to let that topic go. ‘And I love you too but you’ve gotta stop trying to fob me off with some other guy.’ The way the Doctor’s eyes widened was worth the ruined sincerity on her part. She shrugged and nonchalantly added, ‘might make a girl think you didn’t want her’. She started to pull away but the Doctor’s gaze narrowed as he tightened his hold on her, keeping Rose against his chest.

‘Don’t want you?’ He practically growled, arching his eyebrow and watching as she shrugged again, still continuing her act of indifference. ‘I can think of many, many ways to prove you wrong Rose Tyler.’

A teasing smile grew on her lips. ‘Yeah?’

‘Yes,’ he said, tangling one hand in her hair and pulling her in for a heated kiss.

Rose found out that she enjoyed being proved wrong multiple times by the Doctor and he enjoyed proving her wrong just as much.

**********

After getting ready for the day, they shared a rather giggly breakfast in the galley in which they made an appropriate number of pancakes for two people, well appropriate by their standards. A pancake flipping contest ensued with the winner being the one who flipped their pancake the highest. It was won on a technicality, according to the Doctor, by Rose whose pancake did reach the highest point in the room when an overzealous flip got it stuck on the ceiling. She claimed to have won because it was never specified that you actually had to catch it back in the pan again and the Doctor grumbled a lot as he pulled out a chair and stood on it to scrape at the ceiling with a spatula. He grumbled even further when said pancake landed in his face and Rose cackled loudly until he started pelting torn up bits of pancake at her, something which brightened his mood considerably after his losing pout.

This good mood of his didn’t last though. By the time the food was all gone and Rose was on her second cup of tea, the Doctor was getting twitchy. He impatiently waited for her to finish her cuppa before dragging her to the infirmary to finally read those results because, like he’d told Rose, he had been waiting for hours now and it was getting unbearable.

He heard Rose hop up on the examination bed, even heard the fabric of her jeans rustling in such a way that he could imagine her swinging her legs back and forth behind him as he sat on the stool in front of the monitors, pulling out his glasses and slipping them on. The Tardis had uploaded the completed bloods to the infirmary system and had compiled the results of all the tests that the Doctor had completed on Rose in an easy to read document, well, easy to read if you understood the medical jargon. He felt himself relaxing as his eyes roamed over line after line and skimmed over charts and other medical data, all of which deemed Rose as fit and healthy.

His relief ended when he reached the final page. He felt the blood drain from his face as his eyes darted across the text a few times before locking onto the attached image of her DNA. The double helix structure of her DNA was littered with Huon particles and had altered in shape. There were adapted base pairs, extra hydrogen bonds and, though the two strands were still entwined like a regular human’s, it wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen before. The Doctor wasn’t even sure she could be classed as a human anymore, not a full human anyway with the way her genes had been spliced and mutated and then there was the addition of the Huons. These changes caused her rate of cellular replication to increase dramatically which did not only mean that she would heal faster than a regular human but that she would age incredibly slowly, so slowly that a hundred years could pass and there would hardly be a line or a wrinkle on her skin. Her cells were basically going to continue regenerating for an extended period of time, the exact length was indeterminable without further data but it was certainly more like the length of his rather than a human lifespan. She wasn’t a Time Lord though, she’d need a triple helix structure to form TNA for that to be the case, but it was possibly the closest example that he knew of due to the mutations. She also couldn’t regenerate like he could, heal herself quicker yes, even quicker than him, but with a bad enough injury she could still die. She was still very much mortal but something more than human now.

The Doctor couldn’t believe what he was reading and was just thinking that he should redo some of the tests, because clearly this information was wrong, when the Tardis hummed through their bond. She assured him of the accuracy of the results and he let out a disgruntled huff, begrudgingly staying put and instead pouring over the impossible text and images once again.

Rose was waiting patiently for the Doctor to finish his perusal. Well, there was a little bit of impatience because he’d promised to take her out somewhere earlier and he had been looking rather chuffed with his secret destination of choice. That was, of course, going to happen after he’d looked at these results which seemed like more of a formality than anything at this point. The Doctor had been confirming that thought with his little positive hums or his occasional mumble of, ‘good’ but that wasn’t to last. Rose got an uneasy feeling when his hums deepened and this only grew when his knee started bouncing up and down. Then he huffed and soon raked his hand through his hair as his head twitched minutely from side to side with the rapidity of his reading. Over his stiff shoulders, she could see an enlarged picture of a double helix, presumably her DNA, but couldn’t tell if it looked any different from regular DNA without some sort of comparison. Clearly something was different though, something was wrong if the Doctor’s reaction was anything to go by.

‘What is it?’ She asked once he’d opened and closed that image a couple more times between reading over the text again.

The Doctor stilled before taking in a breath and slowly spinning on the stool to face her. He was going for impassiveness but his face wore more of a grave look as he rested his arms on his knees and clasped his hands in front of him. He eyed her for a moment before quietly saying, ‘Rose, why were you in the Burn Unit?’

Her eyes automatically darted to her wrist where she had once worn the dimension cannon which had burnt her when it exploded, the same wrist that had healed completely by the next day. Of course! The fast healing that she had incidentally discovered about herself, that was what he had found out. That was good because she had quite a few questions that she wanted to ask.

‘Sorry,’ she began tentatively, picking at her thumbnail with her other fingers. ‘I didn’t get around to telling you. Got a bit caught up in…’ Rose waved her hands about to signal everything that had happened but then finished off her sentence with a rather lame, ‘you know’. She paused briefly as she figured out where to begin and took a breath before saying, ‘the dimension cannon. I wore it on my wrist. It was a bit like Jack’s vortex manipulator but bigger, chunkier, and it worked, obviously, but it had a habit of overheating. I guess this was one journey too many because it got so hot that it sort of exploded. Luckily I’d managed to get back to this universe and in the right time and place when it did because who knows where I’d be then…’ Rose trailed off and bit her lip. She’d never had the chance to realise just how lucky she was that the dimension cannon decided to give up once she had made it back and not at some point before.

Watching Rose carefully, the Doctor unclenched his jaw and prompted her to carry on with her tale. ‘You were burned in the explosion,’ he stated.

Rose nodded a little vaguely. ‘I don’t really remember it. Martha said I got knocked back and hit my head. She saw it all and was why I ended up in the same hospital as you.’

He was not enjoying the story at all but it at least showed him that he had a lot more to thank that Martha Jones for than he initially realised. ‘How long were you there for?’ He asked, bringing his thoughts back to Rose’s subsequent injury.

‘Was admitted the day before I found you.’

‘Less than twenty four hours,’ he mumbled more to himself than Rose, his words both resigned and full of amazement as he scooted closer to the bed on the stool. ‘Can I see?’ The Doctor held his hand out and she placed her right one into it. He studied her wrist, arm and hand intently, even going as far as to attach a loupe to the frames of his glasses so he could magnify his vision even further.

‘Is it Bad Wolf?’ Rose asked as she watched him gently twist her arm so he could peer at her skin from all angles. He hummed in dark agreement, his face so close to her arm that goosebumps grew on her skin when his hot breath tickled her. ‘Is it just burns?’

The Doctor shook his head, still intently studying her limb. ‘No, all your cells are rejuvenating at such a rapid rate that you will heal quickly from most things. Why do you ask?’ He said, allowing Rose to have her arm back and glancing at her curiously.

‘It’s just that I got a few minor scrapes over there but they didn’t seem to heal any quicker,’ Rose explained but then frowned and added, ‘though the burns from the other times the cannon overheated didn’t go away any quicker either’.

After considering her conundrum for a moment and not coming up with answers, the Doctor said, ‘maybe it’s new. I’ll look into it’. He made a note in his mind to go over Rose’s medical reports from her time in the Tardis since Bad Wolf to see if he could notice any discrepancies.

‘Right, okay,’ she agreed with a nod as she thought everything over. ‘So Bad Wolf gave me the ability to heal quicker and made me telepathic? That doesn’t sound like too much of a bad thing…’ Rose trailed off, eying the Time Lord who was now back to leaning on his knees and gazing down at his clasped hands, still resolutely tense and looking rather solemn in his demeanour. Rose reached out with her foot, lightly brushing the edge of her trainer against his brown pinstripe trouser leg. The nudge caused him to glance up at her. His eyes were dark and brimming with something that filled Rose with foreboding for what she was about to ask. Steeling herself, she said, ‘so what aren’t you saying? What’s wrong?’

His jaw was clamped tight as he stared at Rose, trying to bring up the courage to reveal the true extent as to what was her new reality. ‘Your rapid cellular replication doesn’t just mean that you can heal quickly,’ he told her and then swallowed. His fingers knotted together tightly and then he finally said, ‘it means you’re going to live a long time, a very long time. You’re still aging but it has decreased to an infinitesimal amount which could mean you live for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Without further tests I can’t be more accurate, but it will be well beyond the lifespan of a human because that’s what you’re not anymore, you’re not human, haven’t been since Bad Wolf. I’m sorry, Rose, I’m so sorry’.

Chapter Text

You’re going to live a long time.

You’re still aging but it has decreased.

You could live for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years.

Well beyond the lifespan of a human.

You’re not human.

Bad Wolf.

Sorry.

I’m Sorry.

I’m sorry, Rose, I’m so sorry.

Rose’s head was spinning. There were too many thoughts whirling around her mind and the Doctor’s words echoed through them all as she tried to grapple with what she had just been told. She didn’t feel different, didn’t look different either but she wasn’t human anymore, hadn’t been human for years. All of this and she didn’t know, would never have known if she was still stuck in the other universe because although she had been through test after test at Torchwood they had never discovered this. Maybe they never would until it became undoubtedly noticeable that she hadn’t aged, forever looking around twenty years old.

What did it mean to be not human? What was she now? Clearly she was someone who was going to be around long enough to maybe figure that out. She now had hundreds, maybe even thousands of years ahead of her and not just another sixty odd as she’d assumed if she was lucky. That was…well it was a lot, a lot to get her head around, a lot to comprehend, far too much really for her to grasp and take in immediately. Shock and disbelief were the main emotions going through her but there was something else burgeoning underneath it all, there was hope.

I’m sorry, Rose, I’m so sorry.

Rose blinked and focused back on reality, back on the Doctor’s face. He didn’t look hopeful at all. He appeared sullen and there was something more like anger in there too, really he looked like he had just delivered her the news that someone she loved and cared about had died. In a way something had died, the concept of Rose being an ordinary human dissolving around her in just a few words, but that wasn’t the end for her. She wasn’t just a human now; she was more than human because she could now live for hundreds of years and…

I’m sorry.

And why did he keep on saying that? Didn’t he understand what this meant, what this could mean for them and for himself?

‘I - I don’t - I don’t understand,’ Rose quietly stuttered with a frown, her eyes raking over the Time Lord as she tried to comprehend his demeanour whilst he sat there on the stool before her practically vibrating with tension.

He let out a small, sad sigh and spoke softly as he said, ‘I know, it will take some time to – to-’ The Doctor looked away, his face twisting a little into what could have been a grimace, as though this change in Rose physically pained him. His eyes were now focused on the bed she was sitting on rather than on Rose herself as he continued. ‘To come to terms with an extended li-’

‘No, not that, I get that,’ she said, cutting him off. ‘I don’t get…’ The Doctor reluctantly turned his gaze back to Rose as she gestured at him, her hand waving up and down his tense body whilst she tried to find the words to describe him. ‘I don’t get this. Why you’re acting so, I don’t know, grim or something, so…’ She trailed off once more as she attempted to find a better descriptor for the Doctor.

‘Because it’s my fault,’ he said, his voice quiet and resigned.

Rose stared at him with wide eyes. ‘What?’

‘It’s my fault,’ he repeated, louder this time, and he grew louder still as he said his next words with a bitter conviction. ‘I did this. I - I ruined your life.’

Her frown only deepened. ‘Who said anything about anyone ruining my life?’

The Time Lord barked out a cruel laugh, letting his quiet rage show whilst shaking his head in disbelief as to how she could not yet see how he had destroyed her humanity. His glasses didn’t dampen his fierce gaze as he fixed it on her and said, ‘Rose, you don’t have to pretend-’

‘I’m - I’m not,’ she said weakly, so confused as to what he meant.

‘I thought-’ A growl of frustration bit off his words. He clenched his fists where they now lay on top of his legs, digging into his thighs. ‘I thought maybe you were the one person I hadn’t completely ruined by bringing into my life.’ An ugly sneer grew on his lips as he muttered darkly, ‘I should’ve known better’.

‘No!’ She exclaimed, wanting him to shut up and stop going down whatever dark road his mind was heading. His now unpleasant attitude made her even more impatient to understand what the hell he thought he’d done so she could know why he was acting like this. And then there was the question as to why anyone would be at fault at all because surely Rose having an extended life was a good thing, why couldn’t he see that? Why was her life in apparent ruins now that she could potentially match his lifespan? ‘How have you ruined my life?’ She asked, throwing her arms out and shooting a stern look of her own at him.

‘Because this isn’t what you want!’ He didn’t quite shout but his words were harsh and cut through the air like a knife. Then the stool scraped across the tiles as the Time Lord stood abruptly, the high pitched screech making Rose shudder involuntarily, not that the Doctor noticed. He was now pacing, every agitated step seeming to echo loudly around the room.

Shocked from his outburst, Rose simply stared at him, her eyes tracking his every movement. The clench of his teeth, the flexing of his fist and the raking of his hand through his hair; this was more like the reaction she had expected after telling him about Bad Wolf. Maybe it had been there all along, just simmering underneath the surface, and this was one Bad Wolf thing too many for him to handle. She could handle this though, she’d been around him and this behaviour many a time, but what she wasn’t appreciating was him dictating her life and telling her what she did and didn’t want. Rose had never been one for following authority, even the Doctor’s, and, in some cases, especially not the Doctor’s. He didn’t always know what was best for her, would sometimes get fixated on what he thought was best but really that could be far from what actually was. It could be very hard to prove that he was wrong at that point and with his current aggressive attitude it would be even trickier. She at least knew he wasn’t lashing out at her though. This rage was self inflicted, he’d made that much clear with all this talk about it being his fault, but that didn’t mean she had to like getting in the crossfire. Still, she thought she would try a calm approach first to get through to him.

‘How can you know that?’ She asked quietly. Her words weren’t too quiet for his Time Lord ears but he acted like he hadn’t heard her, choosing to ignore her so he could prove himself right, so he could prove himself as the apparent villain.

He began to mumble to himself as he stepped across the width of the room, his head dropped so that his gaze was on his pacing converse. ‘If you hadn't met me then none of this would have happened. You would still be at home on Earth; a normal human with a normal-’

Oh him and his bloody taking the blame and heaving the weight of the world on his shoulders. How couldn’t he understand that this had nothing to do with him? She couldn’t just explain that outright though, the Doctor would never listen, would never believe her over his masochistic ways. Rose cut off his dark mumbling and said, ‘if I hadn't met you I wouldn’t be here right now’. It may have sounded like agreement but it was anything but.

‘Exactly!’ The Doctor exclaimed as he came to a halt and stared at her as though he had just proved his point.

‘No, not exactly,’ she said steadily before going on to deal a blow she knew he wouldn’t like. ‘I wouldn’t be here because I’d be dead at the hands of the Autons in the basement of Henriks.’ Rose knew he struggled a lot with the concept of her dying, the way he clung to her and followed her around after some close calls spoke volumes, and it was clear that her words had the intended effect with the stormy look on his features. ‘You wouldn’t be here either,’ Rose continued softly, her words delicate as she tried to make her point. ‘But we saved each other, were there for each other, have been ever since.’ She watched him as he contemplated what she’d said, the dark look on his face growing a little fainter, but then his jaw twitched before he opened his mouth to speak and she knew she hadn’t gotten through to him.

‘I asked you to travel with me. Twice,’ he practically spat the final word and began pacing once again.

Rose rolled her eyes. Hard. ‘Best decision of my life,’ she argued. Her tone may have had a hint of sarcasm in there but it was hard to keep it out when he was being exasperatingly idiotic.

‘I should’ve stayed away,’ he murmured more to himself than to Rose as he gesticulated wildly. ‘I should’ve sent you back home to your mother and left you there.’

‘Yeah and you tried that. Sent me away in the Tardis remember? But I came back.’

His head shot to her, his face stony. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

Rose threw her arms in the air. ‘I wasn’t leaving you up there to die!’

‘But you could’ve had a normal human life…with your mother still here in this universe.’

‘For God’s sake, Doctor!’ She exclaimed having reached the end of her tether. ‘Can you not survive without taking the blame or guilt for something that has nothing to do with you for a second?’ She caught the Time Lord gaping at her briefly but then he came back to himself and snapped his mouth shut before promptly opening it again to make his next point. Rose saw that coming, however, and cut him off as she hopped off the examination bed. ‘No. Shut up. You’re gonna listen cos not everything revolves around you,’ she told him fiercely as she rounded on him. ‘You sent me back from the Game Station but I made the decision to return. Not you, me, I did that.’ Rose continued closing in on him as she spoke, forcing the Doctor to step backwards until he found himself against the infirmary counters with nowhere else to go. ‘I opened up the Tardis. I looked into her heart. I absorbed the time vortex and I became Bad Wolf.’ They were toe to toe now and Rose’s frustration was making her more emotional and her voice waver a little, but that didn’t stop her from carrying on until she’d drilled her reasoning into that thick skull of his. ‘It was me, Doctor, not you. I chose to do this. I wanted you safe.’

He shook his head at her, his words quieter now they were this close but still with some bite. ‘You didn’t choose to extend your lifespan.’

‘Maybe I did,’ Rose threw back at him. ‘I wanted you safe and maybe that didn’t just mean in that moment. Maybe it meant keeping me alive so you’d always have somebody by your side, somebody to look out for you.’

‘I’m not your responsibility.’

‘Never said you were.’ She retorted then sighed and glanced away for a moment to try and collect herself. Looking back at him, Rose fixed her gaze on his hardened brown eyes and spoke in a much softer tone than before, a tone that was still full of conviction as she told him, ‘but you are the man I love and I would choose to do this every time. And I don’t just mean for you, I’d do it for me too because this is what I want’.

His jaw twitched as he shook his head again. ‘No you don’t.’

Rose’s fingers curled around his lapels. She wanted to shake him, shake some sense into him. Why couldn’t he see this as a good thing? ‘Stop saying that, it’s not true, I do want this.’

‘You don’t,’ he told her firmly. ‘A long life is a curse.’

‘Is it really a curse if it means I get to spend longer with you?’

The Doctor groaned in frustration, his thumb and forefinger pushing up his glasses just enough so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. Then he began gesturing wildly as he argued, ‘this isn’t - this isn’t a game, Rose. This isn’t…romantic. This is watching everyone you care about turn to dust. It’s about being alone because other people’s lives are so fleeting that-’

‘Don’t you think I don’t know that?’ She fired back, releasing his jacket and taking a couple of steps backwards whilst she gave him as good as she got. ‘Don’t you think I can’t see what it’s done to you over the years? People wither and die so you go on alone because it’s easier than having your hearts broken again and again but this has happened, Doctor. This isn’t just me wondering what it would be like to have a longer lifespan; I’ve got it now so there’s no point in trying to fight it.’ Her chest heaved as she watched the Doctor begin to deflate. Perhaps she’d been a bit harsh, pointing out the brutal reality of his life whilst getting caught up in the moment, but at least he didn’t seem like he would be fighting it anymore. There really was no point in fighting it or fighting over it because there was nothing to do but to accept it.

They were both quiet for a moment with nothing but the low hum of the Tardis and their now calming breaths to fill the air. As they thought about what had been said, a tension grew in the infirmary, a tension that simply begged to be broken. It grated at Rose more than the Doctor as she became the one to quietly end the silence.

‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you-’

‘No,’ he interrupted gently with a shrug of his shoulders. He folded his arms and leant slightly more comfortably against the counter behind him, crossing one foot over the other. ‘What you said about me is true, there’s no denying it.’ The Doctor sniffed then bowed his head to the floor, watching one of his chucks scuff the tiles.

Rose gazed at him with her bottom lip trapped between her teeth as she plucked up the courage to voice her final thought, simply hoping that he wouldn’t combat her on this. ‘All of that about being alone though,’ she tentatively began. ‘That doesn’t have to be the case anymore…cos you’ve got me…living a long life will be better with two, yeah?’ Her eyes were glued on his face, or what she could see of it from his position, as she impatiently waited for an answer, luckily the Doctor didn’t keep her waiting long.

He let out a sigh and then hummed as he lifted his head to look at her. ‘Yeah, of course,’ the Doctor said softly, then he unfolded his arms, pushed his glasses back up his nose and raised a hand towards Rose as an offering for her to take. He was relieved when she took it with ease and stepped before him as he tugged her gently closer. His eyes flitted across her face for a moment before he turned his attention to the hand he was holding loosely in his own. The Doctor rubbed his thumb over the back of it, his gaze fixated on her hand as though he was studying it intently whilst really he was working out the best way to voice his thoughts. Eventually he settled on mumbling, ‘this isn’t what you expected from life. You expected to live maybe eighty or so-’

‘Didn’t expect to meet an alien who sounded like he was from the north either but stuff happens,’ she said with a shrug.

His eyes flicked up to her, his expression dark once more. ‘Yeah, me, I happen.’

‘Stop it,’ Rose scolded, her voice more one of quiet exasperation now that the main argument was over. ‘Stop blaming yourself. This isn’t your fault. No one’s at fault and if someone has to be then it’s me because I did this.’ She gazed at him pleadingly, really hoping that he would drop it because firstly, she didn’t want to fight with him, and secondly, what was the point? There wasn’t anything to be done; she had an extended lifespan now and that was that. ‘Can’t you just be happy?’ She tried instead to get him to see it from her point of view but then more tentatively added, ‘or do you hate the idea of me sticking around that much?’

‘What? No. Of course I don’t hate it,’ he answered immediately, his brows deeply furrowed and his hand unconsciously holding hers tighter.

Rose slowly raised her eyebrows at him in challenge. ‘You sure?’

‘Why would I hate getting to spend longer with you?’ The Doctor stared at her as though the mere suggestion of such a thing was preposterous.

Any doubts she did have were mostly put to rest at this point but she couldn’t help but drag him on a bit longer. There was a hint of teasing in her tone as she shrugged again and said, ‘I dunno, you were pretty against the idea a moment ago’.

‘That’s because - I wasn’t-’ He cut off his sputtering attempts at explanations with a heavy sigh. The Doctor raked his free hand through his hair as he glanced down at their conjoined ones and then, after taking a deep breath, he returned his gaze to Rose. His eyes held nothing but his deep affection for his pink and yellow human, well, mostly human, as he softly said, ‘don’t get me wrong, I am selfishly overjoyed that you could live for hundreds of years, that I could share my life with the one I love for so much longer than I ever dreamed possible’. The slightest of winces crossed his face as he swallowed and got to the truth of what was really bothering him. ‘I just don’t want you to come to resent it.’ Resent me, he silently added before voicing the rest of his thoughts. ‘A long life is not easy, it’s - it’s a lot and I would never wish it upon you even if I selfishly craved it so I could keep you with me.’

Rose fixed him with a determined look and laid her free hand upon his chest, gently pressing her palm against his deep blue shirt, right between his thumping hearts. ‘I just spent the last few months jumping through the void because I didn’t want to be without you. I’m not gonna wake up one day and hate that I get to be with you, even in hundreds of years.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘You can’t know that,’ the Doctor replied, his voice a little raspy at the sheer conviction in hers. He wanted to believe her, he truly did, but all he could really do was hope that she would be right, hope that he got the privilege of being by Rose Tyler’s side for such an extended period of time.

As much as she loved that they were no longer arguing, she didn’t want this conversation taking a sad turn so Rose tilted her head to the side and offered him a knowing but teasing look as she quipped, ‘if you don’t be an idiot and piss me off then I won’t anyway’.

The Doctor let out a huffed laugh. ‘I can’t promise you that. Pretty prone to idiocy, me.’

‘Yeah, you are.’

‘Oi!’ His playful indignation softened when he caught Rose’s tongue touched grin and it diminished completely when she released his hand to place both of hers upon his hearts. She gazed up at him with such adoration that he rather lost himself in those beautiful golden flecked, hazel hues until she spoke.

‘But you’re my idiot,’ Rose said tenderly, pouring as much love as she could into her words.

He placed his left hand on her waist and tucked a loose blonde strand behind her ear with the other, his hand slipping to rest gently on her neck so that his thumb could caress her jaw. ‘I don’t deserve you, Rose Tyler.’

She smiled up at him softly but rather ruined the tender moment when she couldn’t stop herself from saying, ‘after that display earlier, no you don’t’. She wasn’t mad at him about it and said it to lightly pester him more than anything, but she couldn’t help but feel a little triumphant for putting up with his earlier behaviour when his look became sheepish.

‘Yeah,’ he drawled, the word coming out like a heavy exhale as he drew his right hand back to tug on his ear, his gaze now wandering over her shoulder instead of remaining on her face. ‘Sorry,’ he added quietly.

Sliding her hands up his shirt so she could cup his cheeks and draw his gaze back to her, Rose’s gaze now twinkled with something else as she said, ‘I’m sure you can make it up to me’.

His embarrassment vanished and the Doctor cocked his eyebrow at her suggestive tone. ‘Yeah?’

Rose lowered one of her hands to his lapel, and slid the other into the hair at the back of his head, gently coaxing him to tilt his head closer whilst she leant in to whisper in his ear. ‘Yeah,’ she purred before gently nipping at his ear lobe, feeling the Time Lord’s grip on her waist tighten as his breath hitched. But then she broke the seductive spell by adding, ‘so this place you keep hinting at better be good because you can say I’m gonna love it all you like but that don’t mean I actually will’. Rose pulled back with a smirk that only grew when the Doctor growled.

‘Oh, you’re such a tease.’

With a cheeky wink, Rose slid out of his grasp and stepped backwards towards the door, easily continuing her thoughts on this secret destination whilst the Doctor collected himself. ‘I remember when you said I’d love…Hobu was it? I’m sure I don’t have to remind you of my feelings on that trip.’

He huffed. No, she certainly did not. ‘I didn’t mean to land in monsoon season,’ he whined as he pushed himself off from the counter to join Rose in the doorway, taking off his glasses and putting them in his inner jacket pocket as he did so. ‘The rest of the year it’s beautiful.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure I’ll think that when I’m having a look around and getting hypothermia,’ she said, her voice thick with sarcasm that made the Doctor roll his eyes. Then Rose frowned and lightly shook her head as she added, ‘I don’t understand how a place as cold as that even has monsoons. On Earth, aren’t they normally in real hot places like India?’

‘Welllll it’s all about the winds really.’ He stopped a couple of steps away from her and slipped his hands into his trouser pockets as he continued his explanation. ‘If there’s enough of a seasonal difference in temperature between land and water, they can happen just about anywhere.’

‘Right,’ she said with a bright smile. It was hardly a ramble on a scale of the Doctor, but Rose couldn’t help but appreciate his babble now that she was able to hear him do what he did best once again.

The Doctor stared at her blankly, unable to work out why she was grinning at him so. He’d hardly told her the most interesting of facts after all. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ Rose mumbled, blushing a little at being caught out and ducking her head down in an attempt to hide it. She watched his chucks close the small gap between them and then allowed her head to be tilted upwards when he gently grabbed her chin.

His eyebrow was arched and he gazed at her curiously, and with a hint of humour too, whilst he quietly repeated his question. ‘What?’

She could have answered truthfully but Rose took the easy way out and went with a teasing question of her own instead, bringing the conversation back to the day's adventure. ‘Any chances of monsoons today?’

The curiosity dropped from his face just like his hand did from her chin, whilst his expression grew more resigned but still fond. ‘No monsoons, but rain is a definite possibility. More of a definite than a possibility if I cock up the year.’ He tilted his head backwards, his eyes narrowing slightly as he began to think aloud. ‘Now, was it in sixty or sixty-one when they had particularly bad weather?’

‘What sixty?’ Rose asked immediately, impatient to find out more and to actually go on this trip in the first place. ‘Where are we going?’

The Doctor looked down at her, smirking at her eagerness. Then he leant closer, his breath ghosting her ear as he murmured, ‘that’s for me to know and for you to find out’. His eyes twinkled with mirth as he stood back upright and saw her pout. It was only fair after what she did to him earlier, he thought. After a short moment of savouring his victory, the Doctor more helpfully said, ‘the only clue you’re getting from me is to meet me by the console once you’ve finished in the wardrobe room’.

She beamed excitedly. ‘The wardrobe room?’

He tried his best not to let the full extent of his smugness show at Rose’s delight to such an idea. ‘Yep!’ He said, popping the “p”. ‘I want you in the prettiest dress, Rose Tyler, the occasion deserves nothing less.’

‘What’s the occasion?’ She knew he wouldn’t give out any more details but she couldn’t help but try as she practically bounced on the balls of her feet.

The Doctor leant in once more, but this time he got even closer. His lips brushed against her ear as he whispered a slightly husky, ‘you,’ and then he pulled back and quickly scooted past her through the doorway. He didn’t look behind him once as he walked down the corridor but he could feel Rose’s gaze on his back watching his every step. ‘Forty-five minutes max or I’m leaving without you,’ he called out to her and then turned a corner.

**********

As the Doctor fiddled with the collar that was tighter than how he usually wore it, he finally heard footsteps in the corridor just beyond the console room. It had been an hour and three minutes since he’d left the infirmary but he’d let her off, it was her first visit back to the wardrobe room after all and he knew the sheer range of choice could take up quite a bit of time let alone the time needed to get dressed. This would only be increased by the fact that Rose was attempting to change into a nineteenth century dress alone. The Tardis did have a corset machine which would make that experience easier, if Rose was choosing to conform to the era and wear one, but there were many other fiddly parts to dressing that would have to be considered too. In the past he had offered to help but she always shooed him away and told him to wait for the finished look.

So that was what he’d been doing. Waiting. Well, waiting and thinking. His mind was a battlefield with a war between the armies of elation and guilt. He’d deepened that guilt by lashing out at her, making her take the brunt of his anger which was really aimed at himself because he couldn’t help but feel responsible about Rose’s extended lifespan no matter what she said. At the end of the day, if he hadn’t whisked her away from her mum and the estate then it never would have happened. But that was the way with him; he tarnished every life he touched. All companions had their own burdens after travelling with the Doctor, scars they were left with, whether that be physical or emotional or both, and some were left paying the highest price of all and they never made it back home. Rose’s burden was to walk the same path as him, a long path where those around you turn to dust. She said she wanted to share that path though and the thought of having Rose by his side long into the future made him immensely happy. As much as he wanted her there, he didn’t want her to also share the trauma that came with such a long life. In the end, it might become too much for her to bear and she could come to regret it, come to resent the life she has been condemned to live. Maybe then she would resent him for showing her that life in the first place. Maybe then she would leave. That would break him, knowing that he had done this to Rose, knowing that if she didn’t want to be with him then she would be all alone in this universe because her family was trapped in another. His hearts would be broken too of course. It took just over nine hundred years but he had finally found the person that felt like home. The one person that made his hearts beat wildly and made him feel whole. The one person that he wanted to spend the rest of his lives with, that it was somehow actually plausible that he could spend the rest of his lives with. Maybe, just maybe, she really did want that too. She had crossed between the universes to find him again, had spoken about spending forever with him, had told him that she would want to be with him in hundreds of years and had tried to tell him that it was her choice because she was Bad Wolf and Bad Wolf had done this. That should be enough shouldn’t it? Enough to make him believe, enough to make him hope that it would all turn out okay in the end. They had each other and loved each other and they were one hell of a team together, not even the universe could keep them apart. No, they would be fine, they would take on whatever life threw their way, and they would come out stronger because they had each other. Better with two, as Rose had so aptly put it.

The happiness that he now felt bubbling within, due to the positive outcome in the battle of his warring thoughts, came long after he’d left his bedroom to wait for Rose in the console room. He’d visited his room, after leaving the infirmary, to dress in the three piece suit that the Tardis had procured for him to save him from having to bump into Rose in the wardrobe room. It was still brown but a much lighter shade, more of a warm honey colour, and there wasn’t a pinstripe in sight. It was a little plain for his tastes but the jacket did have a tail which boosted his opinion of it greatly. A big reason why he loved his long coat so much, apart from the fact that it was a gift from Janis Joplin, was because it swished and flailed behind him and did so even more spectacularly when he ran. He did so love to run.

Beneath the three piece, he wore a pressed white shirt which had a straight high collar and around that was a black bow tie. He was tweaking the tie, with the aid of his reflection in one of the more shiny controls on the console, when the sound of Rose’s footsteps came to a halt. He looked up to the entrance of the corridor and felt his jaw drop just like his arms did when they absently fell to his sides at the sight of one Rose Tyler. He didn’t have any ability to stop them, the only control he seemed to have were over his eyes which slowly trailed over her body taking in every aspect of her beauty.

Rose was wearing an extravagant, floor-skimming, silk gown in the prettiest shade of light pink. It was a rather muted colour, more pastel than anything else, but, with the warm glow from the lights in the console room, the silky fabric seemed to shimmer ever so slightly. The gown had an off-the-shoulder neckline that highlighted the smooth expanse of pale skin from her neck down to the top of her chest where the dress was trimmed with a bertha of pleated silk. It wasn’t revealing in the slightest but it felt like a tease to the Doctor who didn’t have to imagine what was hidden beneath the fabric there. The sleeves were short, trimmed with a fine lace and only just covered her shoulders, as was the style of an evening gown in the era. The fitted bodice highlighted Rose’s narrow waist, the smooth fabric drawing his gaze downwards to where it ended at a point before the silk continued into the skirts of the dress. Going by the sheer expanse of said skirt, Rose was wearing a cage crinoline, a device which allowed the user to create the effect of a wide skirt without having to form it with bulky layers. The smoothness of the silk from the bodice continued down the skirt until it was broken up by three rows of pleated silk, a continuation of the trim from the neckline’s bertha, which encircled the dress in an elegant wave pattern.

His enraptured study of her dress was broken when Rose picked up her skirts and twirled. The action allowed him to appreciate the full effect of her silhouette that the gown created and notice the way her blonde hair was smoothly pulled back into chignon which was covered with a thin silk net, a look very in keeping with the women of the era. She was grinning brightly when she came to face him once more and the Doctor, having pulled himself together and shut his gaping mouth, promptly swallowed and smiled back.

‘You look beautiful.’ He may not have spoken with a northern accent but the words came out very much the same as they did the first time he’d said them to Rose, though perhaps there was an increase of awe in his tone on this occasion because she really had outdone herself.

Somehow, her grin brightened even more so and then slipped into something a little more teasing as she slowly stepped towards him and said, ‘considering?’

The Doctor lightly shook his head. ‘Considering nothing, Rose Tyler.’ He held his hands out and pulled her towards him when she took them. ‘You’re absolutely stunning and that’s the end of it.’

‘Thank you,’ she whispered as her cheeks, which were already tinged pink with the light dusting of makeup that she’d put on, reddened further under his appreciative gaze and earnest compliments. Ducking her head down, her eyes trailed over his ensemble once again, just like she had done from the console room archway, except, now that she was closer, Rose noticed the shoes he was wearing. She glanced back up at him and let go of his hands to fix his slightly crooked bow tie whilst she got her blushing fully under control. ‘And you’re looking very handsome yourself,’ she said, returning the compliment, her fingers slipping from his tie to his jacket where she smoothed out his lapels. Then she caught his gaze and added, ‘even if you are still wearing your chucks’. Rose lightly tapped her shoe against one of his and giggled as his smug expression morphed into something more indignant.

‘Hey!’ He complained with a pout. ‘I happen to think they bring my outfit together, thank you very much. And I’m wearing my black ones,’ he continued, briefly glancing down at them before returning his gaze to hers. ‘My all black ones at that, and they go well with my bow tie and…’ He extended his final word and stepped to the side, reaching around the console to pick up the black silk top hat that had been hidden from Rose’s eye line by the time rotor. ‘...my top hat, don’t you think?’ The Doctor stood back in front of her, looking rather pleased with himself, and held it up so she could see.

‘Oh, wow, look at that,’ Rose commented, sounding impressed with the headwear as she reached out to lightly stroke the smooth fabric with a finger. ‘Now you’ll really look the part.’

‘That’s the plan.’ He flipped it, caught it, and then positioned the hat carefully on top of his head so that it completely covered his brown spikes. The Doctor threw a grin at her and opened out his arms. ‘What do you think?’

Rose giggled softly at his bouncy energy but then nodded in agreement. ‘Very dapper.’

‘Why thank you,’ he said in a faux posh voice, giving her a small bow that made her laugh again. After straightening up, the Doctor took a step back and held out his arm to Rose. ‘Dame Rose, would-’

The pair turned their gazes to the console when his question was interrupted by the Tardis making a dinging sound which echoed for a moment before trailing off into the usual hums of the room. The Doctor frowned, his eyes trailing over the controls until he came upon something that made his expression brighten immensely. ‘Oh, you beauty!’ He cried, dashing around a bemused Rose to reach the panel which had half of a new sonic screwdriver poking out of it. He plucked the sonic from the console and turned it over on his hands, admiring the same casing but knowing that the Old Girl was bound to have done some software upgrades and possibly added a few new settings. ‘Oh, this is brilliant,’ he praised, receiving a warm hum in return. ‘Just what I needed, thank you dear.’ He held it towards one of the roundels and pressed the button causing the screwdriver to whirr and the light to glow blue at the tip of it. It didn’t have any effect of course and he hadn’t expected it to, he was just excited to test it out. After flipping it up in the air, the Doctor slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket and turned back to Rose who was still looking at him with a rather bemused expression. ‘New sonic,’ he explained rather unnecessarily, then promptly added, ‘not that I’m planning on needing it today, it’s just…you never know’. He shrugged, slipping both of his hands in his pockets as he stepped back over to her.

‘And what happened to the old sonic?’ Rose asked with an arched eyebrow and an amused smile tugging on her lips.

‘Ah, yes, well, I might’ve fried it in an X-ray machine in that hospital.’ It was a statement, but the way his voice rose in pitch made it sound more like a question.

Her smile turned into a knowing smirk. ‘Might’ve?’

‘Errrr - wellllll…’ He pulled a face and scratched the back of his head awkwardly. ‘More like, did,’ he eventually admitted, making Rose shake her head at him fondly as a small laugh escaped her lips at his behaviour. ‘Anyway, no need to concern ourselves with that when I’ve got a new one,’ the Doctor said with a pat of his suit jacket where he’d just stored said new sonic, promptly changing the topic to less embarrassing waters. ‘Now, Dame Rose.’ He once again held his arm out to her hoping that this time he would not get interrupted. ‘Would you do me the honour of being my date for the evening?’

Rose graced him with her tongue touched grin which instantly brightened the smile that was already on the Time Lord’s lips. She hooked her left arm around his proffered one and said, ‘I would love to, Sir Doctor’.

‘Well then, an evening in eighteen-sixty-three awaits.’ He waved his free arm, indicating to the Tardis doors, before leading the way. With a tug on the handles, both doors were opened and the Doctor proudly announced, ‘welcome, Rose Tyler, to Cremorne Gardens’.

Chapter Text

The Doctor hummed happily as he led the way out of the Tardis with Rose on his arm. ‘Look at that, doesn’t look like monsoon season to me, just beautiful British summer weather.’ And it was. The sky was a brilliant blue, with only the occasional small white cloud, and it was a barmy twenty-four degrees Celsius according to his very accurate estimates. Perfect for his plans.

Rose was eyeing their surroundings a little closer to the ground, her gaze drawn to the red brick buildings that were tightly compacted along the muddy street. They were a mixture of bustling warehouses and noisy manufacturing buildings that led onto terrace houses for the factory workers, though her view of those homes, which sat just across the street, was blocked momentarily when a horse drawn carriage went past followed by a wagon carrying barrels. The carriage continued on its way but the wagon pulled up in front of a yard a couple of doors down. Three men, who were squished together on the seat at the front, jumped down to begin unloading those barrels, pushing them through the open wooden gates and into the storage area beyond.

The sight wasn’t anything spectacular in the slightest but Rose was beaming like a kid on Christmas day. ‘I don’t care if we’ve landed in completely the wrong place,’ she said as she took it all in, placing her free hand on his arm and giving it a light squeeze in her excitement. The Time Lord looked away from the sky, though it wasn’t Rose’s movements that drew his gaze to the woman at his side, it was more her words which were causing the beginnings of a pout to mar his features, not that Rose noticed, she was too enthralled with the world around her. ‘Just getting to be here with you and see something like this, a day that has long since gone, I’ll never get tired of it. I love it. All of it.’ The Doctor’s expression changed as she continued speaking and now he was watching her with a fondness that was easily visible in his gentle smile. However, Rose’s smile soon faded and she screwed up her nose in distaste as she amended her previous statement. ‘Though that smell is something I could live without. Blimey, what is that?’

He scratched the back of his head as she turned to him, still scrunching up her nose in a way that the Doctor thought was adorable. ‘Ah, yes, that’ll be the Thames,’ he admitted a little awkwardly then he lowered his hand and started them down the street, following his nose closer to the smelly river so that he could get his bearings. As Rose had hinted at, they weren’t exactly at the gardens that he was planning to take them to but if he brought them to the embankment then he was certain he could locate them. ‘Didn’t consider that when I thought of this place,’ he began to explain as they ambled along the paving stones. They were thankfully less dirty than the road which was a damp mixture of mud and horse manure. ‘Lovely idea for a great, big park next to the water but this lot haven’t got a handle on how to dispose of human waste yet, or other waste for that matter. I suppose the locals are used to the smell so it doesn’t faze them…though that was not the case in eighteen-fifty-eight.’ His eyes grew wider and he raised a finger as though he was making an excellent point whilst he said, ‘now that, that was a stench and a half! The Great Stink they called it so you know it was bad, so bad that they gave it a name. But what did they expect? Dumping waste in the Thames year after year, but then along came a blistering hot summer and they basically created faecal matter stew!’

Rose could cope with the smell, they’d been to more pungent places in the past and she supposed, like the locals, that she could get used to it too. But, after that comment, she wasn’t too sure anymore and really she felt a little sick. ‘Well, guess I won’t be having stew ever again…thanks for that.’

‘Right, yes, sorry.’ He gave her a brief guilty look before focusing on directing them the correct way when they reached the street corner. Luckily, that task was a rather easy one when he glanced to the left and caught sight of a schooner sailing along the river that ran beside the very end of the next road. The Doctor led them that way as he explained, ‘what I was trying to say is it could be worse, we could be in eighteen-fifty-eight before they’d improved the sewage system’.

‘This is after they’ve improved it?’

The Doctor missed the incredulity in Rose’s tone and nodded along a little absently, instead taking the matter of the date into consideration. ‘Should be. Not entirely sure when we’ve landed; it’s a lot harder to narrow it down without some bigger clues. I can give you a century easily and a twenty year window, give or take, but…’

As the Time Lord trailed off, his gaze more focused on the buildings they were surrounded by as though they would give him some clues, Rose took the chance to say, ‘and what about where we’ve landed because, oh I dunno, to me Johnson’s Coal Wharf doesn’t look or sound very garden like’. She waved her hand up at the large signage attached to the brick building next to them and flashed him a teasing grin when his eyes flickered over to her.

They had reached the end of the road and now stood on the pavement next to, and looking down upon, the Thames. The Doctor turned to the left and then the right before nearly letting out a sigh of relief at the familiar sights. Hiding away those feelings of ease at the visual reassurances, he looked to Rose and arched his eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t doubt me Rose Tyler,’ he playfully warned with a waggle of his finger. ‘That there is Battersea Bridge,’ he said, pointing out the fragile looking wooden structure that crossed the river.

‘Battersea? So that means we’re in, what, Chelsea?’ Rose asked as she gazed at the opposite bank, trying to work out which side of the Thames they were on.

‘Yup,’ he said, popping the “p” and agreeing with both of her questions. ‘This is Battersea before they knocked it down in eighteen-eighty-five and replaced it with the one you know. About time too. What’s the point of building a bridge if it’s so difficult to navigate underneath that they spent more time repairing it than not with the number of accidents that occurred within its lifetime?’ Rose shrugged and the Doctor shook his head lightly, trying to dislodge that thought; as much as the architect’s incompetence irked him he was getting off track. ‘Anyway, it all gets sorted in the end, but that’s not what we’re here to see.’ He turned them both back to the bridge and then positioned himself just behind Rose so he could point over her shoulder and more easily direct her gaze in the direction that they would be heading in. ‘Now, you see that green leafy bit along the bank just past the bridge?’ The Doctor asked. He felt Rose nod more than he saw her, being ducked down as he was so that he was at her height with his head poking over her other shoulder. ‘That’s where we’re going. That’s Cremorne Gardens.’ Standing back upright, the Time Lord practically puffed his chest out in pride as he happily said, ‘see? Shame on you for doubting me, Tyler’.

Rose turned, her head moving between the greenery in the distance and the way they had just walked before settling on the Doctor with a crease in her brow that dampened his smugness. ‘You couldn’t have parked a little closer?’ His resulting groan and glare made her cackle and her amusement only continued when he grabbed her hand a little roughly and tugged her along by his side in the direction of the gardens.

‘Oh, it didn’t take you long to change your tune did it? One minute you're singing its praises and the next you’re complaining about the smell, the location, the distance from the Tardis,’ he listed off with a wave of his free hand, glancing down at Rose with a barely hidden smirk when she bumped her shoulder with his, now chuckling away at his grumble.

‘Shut up.’

‘I love travelling with you, Doctor, I love every aspect of it,’ he mocked.

‘Give over.’

‘I’ll never tire of it…’

‘You’re gonna end up “accidentally” falling in the river in a minute,’ Rose threatened.

The Doctor cocked his eyebrow in challenge. ‘Oh yeah? Well, I hope you’re ready for a swim because you’re going in there with me.’ He held up their conjoined hands, gripping hers a little tighter. ‘I’m not letting you go, Rose Tyler.’

‘Okay,’ she said brightly and a little too quickly for the Doctor’s liking. There was a twinkle of something in her eye that was only explained when she poked him in the side with her free hand, her finger jabbing him in such a way that his body involuntarily lurched away.

‘Oi!’ He protested with a scowl but Rose only laughed and then did it again. ‘Stop it.’

‘Such a shame you can’t get away cos you’re holding my hand,’ she taunted with a light squeeze of their entwined fingers before going for his side again, the action causing a bark of laughter to escape the Time Lord when it tickled.

It was clearly an inbuilt skill of her nimble fingers to find the exact spot that tickled every time. The Doctor’s cries were a mix of protestations and laughter as he tried to dodge and block her tickling attempts, their walk turning into more of a stumble as his body jolted this way and that whilst he failed to bat her hand away and found his held one being used against him in the process. Eventually, more concerned with the efforts of avoiding her tickling advances, his grip on Rose’s hand loosened enough so that she could wiggle it out of his grasp. With a laugh of triumph, Rose picked up her skirts and ran away down the street before the Doctor knew what was happening.

‘Oh, you’re not getting away with that,’ he growled and gave chase after a giggling Rose.

Giving him a cheeky grin over her shoulder, she put on as much speed as she could in the dress and ran along the pavement, dodging around the occasional unlit gas lamppost and a couple of women who were taking a leisurely stroll by the embankment.

‘Such frivolity is indecent,’ the elder of the two remarked pointedly as Rose rushed past. She was soon followed by the Doctor who had to hold onto his top hat with one hand because it had tried to blow off with his quick pace.

The younger of the women was looking over her shoulder a little longingly at the sight. ‘But mama, they are in love,’ she said with a wistful sigh.

The elder woman either didn’t hear or chose to ignore her daughter and instead huffed and tutted. ‘A young girl like that and not a chaperone in sight’. With a shake of her head, she pulled the younger woman along a little quicker, as though frivolity was contagious and being too close would tarnish both her and her daughter, her steps turning into more of a trot when Rose let out a scream of laughter when the Doctor caught her and started tickling her sides.

He wrapped his arms around her waist from behind and the pair came to a stuttering stop in the middle of the pavement. Rose was breathing heavily but they were both grinning widely and chuckling away at their silly antics. ‘Blimey you can run fast for a woman in heels,’ the Doctor commented, giving her a final little squeeze before letting her go and coming to stand by her side instead.

Rose looked up at him with a smirk and quietly said, ‘want to know my secret?’ The Doctor gazed at her with intrigue and nodded so she lifted up her skirts again, just enough so that she could poke one of her shoes out from under them.

He threw his head back, a loud laugh bursting out of him at the sight of a pink chuck. ‘Rose Tyler!’ He admonished playfully once his amusement had quietened. ‘And you complain at me for wearing mine.’

‘I didn’t complain, I was just pointing it out!’ She said with enough complaint in her voice that the Doctor scoffed. Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes at him. ‘Anyway, I can get away with mine because no one is going to see them under my dress. I’m the picture of historical accuracy otherwise.’ She held her arms out, willing the Doctor to suggest any different.

Raising an eyebrow, he said, ‘you should tell that to your indecent behaviour’.

She snorted. ‘Indecent behaviour! She needs to let her corset out an inch or two and live a little. And don’t you go playing the blame game with me mister.’ Rose pointed a playfully threatening finger at him. ‘You know your behaviour was just as frivolous for that poor Victorian lady.’

The Doctor sniffed and took Rose’s accusing hand in his own, entwining their fingers and starting them down the street once more. He tugged on his ear, his face otherwise a picture of nonchalance, as he said, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about’.

‘Right,’ Rose extended the word, nodding in a slow and sarcastic manner. ‘Sure you don’t.’

**********

It was a twenty minute walk before they arrived at the gardens, the entrance of which was easily identifiable with the brightly lit star hung over the park gates. They joined the small queue for tickets but, when they reached the front, the Doctor simply flashed his psychic paper and they were passed a few tickets and waved on through. The largest ticket offered them access to every area of the park, allowing them to experience all the entertainment that was on show, whilst the two smaller tickets would give them access to dine in the upper tiers of the supper boxes. Rose told him he was still a cheap date for using his psychic paper but hung happily on his arm as they wandered into the grounds, her eyes wide and darting everywhere as she tried to take in all the sights.

The park was filled with greenery ranging from massive trees and painstakingly shaped shrubbery to hedge mazes and colourful, flower filled borders. Separated from a pale gravel pathway by those borders was a grand lawn that stretched on and on from the entrance gates and eventually ended at the front of a small theatre for marionettes. A great maypole was affixed in the centre of the lawn. Children were skipping around it with ribbons, twirling them around the large pole, although one young boy was tangling the ribbons more than twirling them as he raced around the rest of the group, howling with laughter whilst he was chased by an older sibling. A line of swinging boats sat beyond the maypole, the colourfully painted wooden structures big enough for two people to sit across from one another in a boat where there were a couple of ropes to manually propel yourselves. Closer to the entrance were a couple of seating areas and refreshment stands, both of which were clearly well revered by the patrons going by their popularity. A gravel path curved away from the lawn leading towards Cremorne house where guests could dine in the evenings should they so desire and beyond that, at the centre of the grounds, was an American bowling saloon, an attraction that opened up in the gardens only twenty years prior.

‘This is what the Victorians referred to as a pleasure garden,’ the Doctor told Rose as they strolled along the path beside the lawn, more and more of the park becoming visible the further they walked along it. ‘A place filled with spectacles, theatre and circus shows, fair games and rides, wining and dining and, when it gets dark, a fantastical fireworks display. Plus, it’s a space to be enjoyed by anyone, no matter your class or position in society, as long as you can afford the entrance fee that is, although it is priced rather reasonably considering.’

‘Not that you’d know a thing about that,’ Rose quipped, earning herself a glare from the Time Lord which only made her giggle.

‘Anyway,’ he continued rather pointedly. ‘There’s plenty to do so what takes your fancy?’

Rose tilted her head to the side as she thought an action that helped her to notice another attraction of the gardens. ‘Is that music?’ Beyond the chatter of the surrounding Victorian people, who were happily sauntering past the couple who had stopped beneath a large tree, a faint tune created by a live orchestra was wafting through the air towards them. ‘Is there a live performance we could see?’

‘That is a surprise for later,’ the Doctor said with a bit of a huff, gently taking her shoulders and turning her in the opposite direction to the sound. ‘How about something from over here first?’

With a smirk at having possibly, but quite accidentally, ruined the Doctor’s plans, Rose’s gaze fell on a few tents that sat just off the path further ahead. ‘What about those tents past the fountain, what’s in them?’

‘I’d hazard a guess at fair games but come on, let's go and see.’ He grabbed her hand and they took off on a quick walk towards the striped fabric of the tents.

As the Doctor had suggested, they were indeed filled with fairground games, most consisting of games of skill and luck. After rifling through his pockets for the few bits of loose change he did have which were appropriate to the era, the pair had a go on the hoopla. Rose was soon pushing the Time Lord towards the next tent when discussions between him and the game master about rigged bottles became rather heated. They didn’t win at the coconut shy either, though thankfully that game was a much calmer affair after a warning of not starting pointless fights from Rose. She did win at the next stall, however. It was a tin can shooting gallery in which she hit every single one of the targets with each shot of her cork loaded pretend rifle. The Doctor felt both impressed and a little uneasy about Rose’s show of remarkable accuracy whilst the stall holder gaped at her, having never seen a woman complete the game so perfectly, before presenting Rose with her prize. She thanked the man and stepped away from the tent, clutching a small porcelain ornament in her hands. It depicted a humorous scene where two girls, who had presumably been tucked up in bed before the chaos had ensued, were ruffled by the appearance of a mouse. One was on her knees on top of the bed, hiding in the blankets, whilst the other girl seemed to have fallen to the floor in her panic. Behind that girl was the mouse in question, scurrying along by the chamber pot. At the bottom of the scene was a caption painted on in fine black lettering, the words of which described the scenario perfectly as it said, “A Mouse! A Mouse!” Rose thought it was rather fun and told the Doctor just as much.

He hummed in agreement. ‘Before your cuddly toys and your goldfish, fairgoers were awarded with these,’ explained the Doctor who was standing by her side studying the ornament through his glasses just as intently as Rose was. ‘They’re called fairings and they could be collected at fairs all over Europe if you were good enough to warrant a prize like you were.’ His eyebrow arched and he drew his gaze from the ornament to Rose as he considered her. ‘Either you’re a scarily good natural markswoman or you’ve had some training at Torchwood,’ he commented as he pocketed his glasses.

‘That’ll be the latter,’ she began to explain as she glanced up at him. ‘I started out in translation because I could still understand alien languages but, when I moved to Cardiff, the boss Suzie wanted me trained up to go out on field missions because we were such a small team. I was mostly based in the Hub though, doing translations and sorting out the archives, but I’d join them out there if needed.’ Her eyes glazed over, her gaze more inwards as she remembered the missions she went on with the team over there. ‘Never actually fired my weapon,’ she mumbled more to herself than the Doctor. ‘I was quite proud of that.’ After a moment, Rose lightly shook her head and brought herself back to the present with a humoured look on her face as she said, ‘so you don’t need to worry that I’m some mad gun toting person now’.

The Doctor let out a huff of laughter, as though the thought of her being such a thing was ridiculous, an action that eased Rose’s nerves. She had been worried about him finding out about her firearm training and proficiency because of his distaste for weapons but that worry had gone out of the window when her competitive streak came into play. The Doctor had knocked down nine out of ten of the tin cans so Rose did what she had to in order to beat him without even considering that he would find out about her training. At least he seemed more surprised than annoyed or even disgusted at the revelation.

Affixing a soft smile on her face as she looked up at him, Rose said, ‘someone once taught me that there are other ways to resolve conflict situations without using a gun’.

He cocked his eyebrow, his eyes twinkling brightly. ‘Sounds like good advice; they must’ve been a smart mentor.’

‘Smartest guy I know,’ she said, receiving an adoring look from the Time Lord until she added, ‘not that I’d tell him to his face because it’d just go to his head’.

The adoration dropped from the Doctor’s face. ‘For a moment there I thought I was just getting a compliment.’

‘You’re the one who went fishing,’ Rose told him with a giggle. ‘You can’t tell what you’ve caught until you’ve reeled it in.’

Sighing heavily, he rolled his eyes as he said, ‘oh yes, and turn that around too so I get the blame, I see how it is. I don’t know why I keep you around, you’re so mean’.

He was pouting so Rose reached out to grab his tie but, of course, there was nothing to grab because he wasn’t wearing one and was wearing a bow tie instead. She covered this up quickly by resting her hand on his chest and using that as leverage when she went up on her tiptoes. Rose pecked at his protruding bottom lip before saying, ‘because you love me’. She felt his noncommittal hum against her lips when she briefly kissed him again and then she leant back and settled on the ground properly. ‘And you need someone to go on those swing boat things with you.’ Waving her hand behind her in the general direction of the ride, Rose watched as the Doctor’s face lit up, his faux moodiness completely forgotten.

‘You’re right I do want to go on those swing boat things.’ He eagerly peered over the top of her head, his eyes squinting a bit as he tried to work out if any of the boats were free. One couple seemed to be in the process of departing so he grabbed Rose’s free hand in readiness to run over there. First, however, he leant in and kissed her again before mumbling against her lips, ‘and I do love you, you’re right about that as well’.

Rose grinned and gave him another quick kiss. ‘Love you.’

‘Quite right too.’ The Doctor leant back with a soft smile, though this soon became a little more manic when he squeezed her hand and said, ‘run’. He took off towards the swings, dragging Rose along behind him.

She cackled and then stumbled, her feet getting caught in the long skirts of her dress. She still managed to stay upright but wouldn’t stay that way for long if the Time Lord kept up the pace. ‘Doctor, wait! Stop!’ She called out with laughter still in her voice as she pulled on his hand. He did so and threw a look of confusion at her for the hold up. ‘I can’t - can you…’ Holding the porcelain fairing out to him, Rose explained, ‘I need to hold my dress up or I’m going to fall, could you put this in your pocket please?’

He grumbled but took the fairing and slipped it into his jacket pocket, mumbling something about the lack of pockets in dresses. ‘Are you ready now or do you need me to tie your shoe or polish your earrings whilst we’re at it?’

Rolling her eyes at his sarcasm, Rose said, ‘stop your moaning’. She grabbed her skirts with her free hand, ensuring they were high enough so that she would not trip, and then started to run, causing the Time Lord to be the one getting dragged behind until he got his feet under him. ‘Come on slowpoke,’ she taunted over her shoulder with a giggle, an action that only resulted in the Doctor quickening his stride so that he could prove to her who the real slowpoke was.

The pair enjoyed themselves on the swings which they followed up with a viewing of the marionette theatre and then a race through the hedge maze to see who could reach the hermit’s cave in the middle. It was the Doctor who managed to locate the centre first, evening out their number of victories, not that either of them was competitive enough to be counting of course… After a stop at the refreshment carts for some drinks, the couple visited the circus in the far corner of the park, the performances of which took place in a large striped tent. They sat themselves amongst the Victorian people upon the tiered stands and watched jugglers, clowns, acrobats, trapeze artists and high wheel cyclists, each act a marvel in their own, and sometimes terrifying, way. There was a rapturous applause at the end of the show with each of the performers taking a bow before the crowd who were on their feet and loudly demonstrating their appreciation. Then the audience was settled and the ringmaster announced that there would be a final death defying act by Carlo Valerio that would take place just outside of the tent for those who wished to see the spectacle.

‘Carlo Valerio,’ the Doctor mumbled thoughtfully as he followed Rose outside along with the rest of the crowd. ‘The name rings a bell.’

She shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard of him,’ she told him over her shoulder. Soon the huddle of chattering people that they were amongst came to a stop and Rose found herself glancing at the Doctor who had come to stand by her side. He was still obviously pondering as to why he knew of the performer's name because the Time Lord had his tongue pressed up against the back of his front teeth in that adorable way he did when he was lost in thought. She’d quite forgotten this quirk of his until just now and couldn’t help but stop to appreciate it for a moment instead of immediately returning her gaze to the sky where she assumed the performance was taking place. There was a long wire that ran for quite some distance about sixty feet in the air, strung up tautly between two poles that had rungs attached to allow the performer to climb up and complete their precarious stunt high above a rapt audience.

That audience was quickly quieting and the Doctor mentally shook himself out of his reverie so that he could appreciate the act. Perhaps he had simply heard of this wire-walker during his previous travels, a good enough performance could spur quite a bit of conversation amongst the Victorian’s, after all that was how he had come to hear of this pleasure garden in the first place. His eyes caught sight of a movement halfway up the pole that they were closest to, it was Carlo Valerio climbing upwards with a long stick in one hand which he would use to help balance him when reached the top and traversed the high wire. The Doctor swallowed. He tried not to use his time senses on others, not wanting to see their timelines, but he couldn’t help but notice Carlo’s, even from his distance in the middle of the crowd. This was because Carlo’s timeline wasn’t normal for a Victorian human, it was in flux. At this revelation, the air around the Doctor pinpricked every inch of skin on his body, the hairs on the back of his hands, arms and neck standing on end as though affected by static electricity. It was a familiar feeling to the Time Lord, one he had no control over but one he felt nearly every day with his dangerous lifestyle. Something was going to happen, something bad, something that led to a turning point in Carlo’s life or, going by the stunt he was about to undertake, his death. Maybe this was the reason why Carlo’s name seemed so familiar to him, a tragic rope-walking accident would cause just as much, if not more, of a stir as a good performance would.

Leaning close to Rose so he could whisper in her ear, he murmured, ‘something's wrong’.

The Doctor’s sudden proximity didn’t make her jump but his hot breath on her skin did make her shudder. Then her entire body tensed when she comprehended what he had told her. She turned to him barely a second later but he was already gone, his light suit and top hat just visible as he pushed through the crowd on a mission to solve the problem. Rose glanced up at the high wire, Carlo had just taken up his position on the platform at the top of the pole and was about to begin traversing it. It would have been quite the spectacle to see, as the ringmaster had said, but there was no choice in it really. Rose picked up her skirts and took off after the Doctor, pushing through the crowd in a slightly more polite fashion than the Time Lord, the grumbles and words of complaints from the people up ahead guiding her in the direction he had taken.

After racing through the crowd as fast as he could, the Doctor found himself at the bottom of the pole. He glanced up quickly, noting Carlo’s position a few feet along on the wire, and knew he would have to get a plan together soon if he was going to save him. Luckily, the ringmaster was also near the bottom of the pole. He was a moustachioed gentleman with a potbelly and quite probably a drinking problem going by his rhinophyma affected nose. He startled a little when the Doctor appeared in front of him asking, ‘have you got any netting?’ Well, with his tone, it was more of a demand really but time was of the essence and there was a man’s life that could be quite literally hanging in the balance at any moment.

‘I beg your pardon?’ The man’s large bushy eyebrows furrowed as he blinked dumbly up at the Time Lord.

‘Safety nets? For the performers.’ His hands waved behind him in the direction of the large expanse between the wire and the grass where there were no precautions in sight.

The ringmaster scoffed. ‘Whatever for? Valerio is a master; he’s been doing this here for two months without an incident.’

The Doctor’s eyebrows rose with incredulity at the man’s foolishness. ‘That doesn’t lessen the likelihood that something will happen,’ he bit back, turning on his heel and returning to the pole. He grabbed hold of the rungs, willing his apprehension about heights away, after regenerating from a fall he knew one could never be too careful, and then he started to climb.

‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, man?’

He had hardly begun before the annoyed voice of the ringmaster made him pause and turn his head. ‘I’m saving yours and his skin,’ the Doctor told him with fierce conviction, nodding his head upwards towards the wire-walker. ‘You got a problem with that?’ The nod had caused his top hat to wobble, reminding the Doctor that he was wearing one. He quickly grabbed it and shoved it into the arms of the stunned ringmaster, hardly sparing the man a second to retort before scrambling up the pole.

Rose fought her way out of the crowd to see the Doctor climbing away from the frowning ringmaster who was watching the Time Lord, scratching the top of his balding head as he did so. ‘Doctor?’ She called out to him, wondering why he was going up there and wanting some guidance on what she could do to help. She wasn’t even sure what the problem was at the moment but it was easy enough to understand that it somehow involved the wire-walker.

‘Stay there. I’ll be back in a mo,’ he shouted over his shoulder without stopping his ascent. He turned his attention back to the task at hand, a quick glance over at Carlo telling the Time Lord that he was just under a quarter of the way across. There was still time for him to turn back and the Doctor saw no other way of ensuring the man’s safety than convincing him to do so. He clambered up the final few rungs and pulled himself up onto the small wooden platform. It was high, not high enough to kill him, but still high enough to hurt and most definitely high enough to kill a human like Carlo if he fell. ‘Carlo?’ The Doctor called out to him in a voice that was hopefully soft enough not to startle but loud enough to be heard. ‘Carlo Valerio?’

The wire-walker seemed to pause in his step at the unexpected voice. ‘Yes?’ He said tentatively, not turning back to face the stranger who had joined him high in the air. He wore all white and had short dark hair and a faint Italian accent, though his English was rather good. ‘What are you doing up here?’

‘You need to come back. It’s not safe.’

Carlo’s shoulders sagged slightly as he sighed in annoyance. ‘You’re not one of those complaining about Cremorne are you?’

‘Nope, just a visitor enjoying his time until he saw trouble.’

‘Seems to me that you sir are the one causing trouble. Now leave me be, I need to concentrate.’ He took a steady step forwards and then another.

‘No, you need to turn back. It’s not safe,’ the Doctor repeated firmly, reaching out a hand as though he could grab the man who wasn’t anywhere near in reaching distance.

Carlo scoffed and took yet another step, the wire lowering beneath his foot slightly more than expected but after a second of wobbling he felt assured with his footing once more, assured enough to retort, ‘of course it’s not, that’s what gives this act such a thrill’.

The Doctor, in his frustration, was about to retort with something probably highly unhelpful involving how it wouldn’t be a thrill when Carlo was plummeting to his death, when Rose’s voice cut through the air.

‘Doctor! This hook! It looks like it’s going to snap!’

She had been craning her neck upwards so she could watch all that was going on but when Carlo started to slowly walk along the wire once more, clearly dismissing the Doctor’s concerns, her eyes were drawn to where the wire was attached to the pole. Each of Carlo’s movements had a ripple effect through the wire making it wobble. The worrying thing was one of the hooks which secured the wire to the pole was bending. The wire wouldn’t simply fall to the ground if the hook did break, it was attached at multiple points a number of feet apart, but it would slacken the precarious pathway that Carlo was walking. A sudden motion like that would be enough to send him falling to the ground.

The Doctor groaned heavily. ‘See?’ He pointed out hastily, waving an agitated hand about. ‘I warned you, Carlo. You need to come back before this whole thing collapses.’ He was exaggerating, or at least he hoped he was, but Carlo needed to understand the danger of continuing his walk. The Doctor then turned his attention to Rose, peering over the edge of the small platform to see his blonde haired partner below. ‘Blimey that's high,’ he mumbled to himself whilst he reached into his jacket’s inner pocket and pulled out his new sonic screwdriver. ‘Rose?’ He called out to her, her little pink face soon in his eye line.

‘Yeah?’

‘Catch!’ The sonic left his fingers and fell fifty odd feet downwards and into Rose’s awaiting hands. ‘Setting 224-C! Should help stabilise it!’

‘On it!’

He could just hear the buzz of the sonic over the crowd who were starting to boo and complain now that Carlo had halted in his steps once more. Rose’s efforts with the screwdriver wouldn’t fix the problem though; it would only buy them time before the hook inevitably broke. The Doctor explained this to Carlo but the man was very much adamant that the only thing he could do was continue.

‘I cannot go back and I cannot turn back. The show must go on, sir.’

The Doctor resignedly watched Carlo start to traverse the perilous wire knowing there was not much more he could do. He was not an expert in wire-walking and if Carlo said that there was no other path than onwards then all he could do was regretfully agree. ‘Tread quickly but carefully, Carlo. I’ll do my best to keep it stable.’

‘I will, sir. Thank you.’

It wasn’t long before Carlo reached the halfway mark. Rose was biting her lip, the sonic absently revolving between her fingers as she watched his traversal with bated breath. The audience had calmed since he had continued and they were just as much on edge as she and the Doctor were. Only those closest to the pole with the breaking hook had some idea of the increased peril of the situation whilst others had received burning glares from Rose when they had shouted and jeered at the Doctor for the hold up.

Carlo was nearing the three quarter mark when the wire slackened a little, causing him to wobble for a worrying few moments before finding his balance once more. Rose’s gaze shot to the pole only to see the hook starting to bend once more. She aimed the sonic at it but it no longer seemed to be having any effect. ‘Doctor?’ She shouted upwards. ‘The hook is bending and the sonic isn’t doing anything! What do I do?’

There was a panic in her tone that the Time Lord could easily read, a panic that matched his more internal one, but there wasn’t much she could do. There wasn’t much he could do either but there was at least one idea going through his mind; it wasn’t the best plan by any means but it was something and it would have to do. Shuffling from his crouched position on top of the pole, the Doctor lay down on his stomach so that the tops of his feet hung off the edge of the platform behind him whilst his arms hung off the front. This allowed him to grab hold of the wire in both of his hands, being careful not to jostle it, and to do his best not to let it slacken any further as the hook bent and inevitably snapped. He was stronger than a human but strong enough to hold the wire tight enough for a man to walk across? The Doctor wasn’t sure, but at least Carlo was nearly there now and it wouldn’t have to be for long. That thought soon whizzed out of the Time Lord’s mind when, only a moment later, the hook snapped and he was left taking the entire weight of one side of the wire. He cried out the second it broke, his body being jerked forwards slightly as the weight dragged him towards the edge, only his converse cladded toes keeping him steady as the wooden planks of the platform dug into the top of his feet through the fabric part of his chucks. His shoulders felt as though they would pop out of their sockets, being pulled as they were, and his hands suddenly felt sweaty and as though the wire could slip between them at any moment. He wouldn’t let it though, the Doctor was very adamant about that. As his shoulders, hands and feet burned with the effort of keeping the wire taut, the Time Lord kept a close eye on Carlo’s progress. He could feel every step the man took through the gentle movements of the wire, but with every step the more his muscles ached for relief.

‘Come on, come on, come on,’ the Doctor growled, willing Carlo to reach the other side. His face was reddening and the veins on his neck and forehead were becoming clearly visible with the strain. ‘Just a little further,’ he said to himself under his breath. And it was, Carlo was merely a few feet from the opposite platform now, it was nearly over. But that was when the Doctor heard the creaking sound behind him. It was the sound of splintering wood, cracking under the pressure that he was forcing it to exert with his feet hooked around it. He begged Carlo to walk faster and reach the other side before-

Snap!

The Doctor was propelled forwards like some sort of Time Lord catapult his body flying through the air whilst his hands clung onto the wire for dear life. He heard the gasp and screams of the crowd and Rose’s cry of his name as the wind rushed past his ears and then, just as suddenly as it had begun, he stopped falling. The abrupt stop pulled on his arms and shoulders even more and his hands were definitely feeling worse for wear but he couldn’t release his grip yet. The Doctor opened his eyes, not really having realised he’d closed them in the first place, and discovered that he had dropped about fifteen feet before the wire had caught on the next hook down. He then turned his gaze to the opposite pole, the sight of which made him cry out with triumph because Carlo was hauling himself safely onto the platform. It looked as though the man had to take a leap to reach it, but he had and that was the most important thing. They’d done it, he was safe. Speaking of they…

The Doctor glanced down, his eyes soon finding Rose’s small, anxious face. Her hands were covering her mouth, the screwdriver clenched in one of them, and she was staring up at him with wide hazel eyes. He didn’t want her to worry, he only had to swing himself across the wire five or six times before he would reach the pole so that he could climb down, so he called out to her with an element of teasing in his tone which he hoped she would find relaxing and said, ‘stop panicking, Rose. I won’t be a mo’.

The lack of concern in his tone did ease her nerves as she watched the Time Lord dangling in the middle of the air. She’d hardly taken a breath since he’d been propelled from the platform, her heart leaping out of her chest as she willed him to hold on. ‘You better be!’ Rose shouted back to him, her voice pleasantly sturdier than she’d expected. ‘I want you back down here in one piece!’

Her shouts made him grin. ‘Yes ma’am!’ The Doctor began swinging himself to the safety of the pole, each swing aggravating his sore muscles and the skin of his palms and fingers, but he tucked those feelings to the back of his mind and focused on reaching his goal. A rapturous applause broke out when he wrapped himself around it and finally released the wire. He wasn’t sure if the audience thought that this was all part of the act and he glanced over at Carlo who was standing upon the opposite platform taking a bow. Then the wire-walker eased back upright and held an arm out to the Doctor. All of those who were not already watching the Time Lord swivelled towards him still clapping away so, after ensuring he was secure with one arm wrapped tightly around the pole and his feet steady on a couple of rungs, the Doctor grinned brightly and waved at the cheering crowd. Through their whoops, he could just make out the sound of Rose’s laughter. It drew his gaze and he was delighted to see her smiling and clapping along with the rest, her fears dwindling now that all was well. He threw her a wink and began his descent down the pole.

Evidently, the ringmaster had decided to act as though this was all part of the show as, when the Doctor was nearly back on the ground, he announced, ‘that was the spectacular Carlo Valerio and…’

The Doctor looked down. The ringmaster was a couple of feet below him, standing near the bottom of the pole and eyeing him fiercely, silently signalling for the Time Lord to give his name. ‘The Doctor,’ he supplied.

Without a moment of hesitation, the moustachioed man shouted, ‘and our guest star, the Doctor!’

The audience began to cheer again but the Doctor didn’t pay much attention to it. Two small but firm hands, one of which was still clutching his sonic screwdriver, were on his back the moment his feet touched the grass, they were moving him, turning him and then embracing him. He wrapped himself around Rose just as tightly, enjoying the firm feel of her arms around his shoulders and one of her hands finding the back of his head, her fingers splaying out in his hair whilst she gently pulled him closer until his face was nestled in the crook of her neck just as hers was in his.

She breathed him in, revelling in him being safe and securely in her embrace once more. ‘Bloody hell, Doctor,’ she said, the words coming out more like a whoosh of hot air causing the Time Lord to shudder a little when it hit his sensitive skin. ‘Don’t do that again.’

A low chuckle of agreement rumbled through his chest. ‘Didn’t really fancy doing it the first time but I’ll try not to make a habit of it.’

Rose grinned into his shoulder, relief happily bubbling within her, before she began to pull back. ‘You did save the day though so well done.’

‘Well, you helped but yes, not bad for a man without a bronze in gymnastics.’

She laughed heartily at his joke. ‘Yeah, remind me to give you a few pointers about your dismount later, it could do with some work.’

‘That’s what I was doing wrong,’ he said with a playful groan causing Rose to giggle some more. ‘I knew there was something.’

‘Excuse me. Doctor, is it?’

The pair turned to the owner of the voice, the smile on the Time Lord’s face brightening even more so when he saw who it was.

‘Ah, Carlo. Nice to finally meet you now you’re down on terra firma.’ He stuck out his hand to the man who took it firmly in his own and shook it. The Doctor found himself covering up a wince at Carlo’s strong grip with his hand feeling rather rubbed raw due to the wire.

‘And you, sir. Thank you for your help. I wouldn’t be here without it.’

‘Oh, it was no trouble,’ the Doctor said, easily playing off how much trouble it actually was.

Before either man could say any more though, someone was calling Carlo’s name and gesturing for him to join them.

‘I must go. Thank you again,’ he said hastily, beginning to step around the time travelling pair but the Doctor caught his arm, halting his movement.

Raising an eyebrow, the Time Lord firmly said, ‘the next time you do this make sure you’ve got a net. It doesn’t matter what the ringmaster says, you need precautions in place. It won’t take away from the danger of the show for the audience but it will ensure that you stay as safe as you can.’

‘Saves you from risking your neck like that again,’ Rose added helpfully.

The Doctor nodded. ‘Exactly. The act isn’t worth your life.’ He watched as Carlo swallowed at his and Rose’s warnings but then the man nodded. The fierceness fell from the Doctor’s face and he smiled gently at the wire-walker and patted him on the arm. ‘Good man.’

A moment later, Carlo was lost in the crowd and the Doctor and Rose were left alone, their gazes on the spot that Carlo had wandered towards after bidding them a quick goodbye.

‘Well, after that I could do with a drink,’ the Doctor said as he turned back to Rose and added, ‘and I’m sure you could too’.

She scoffed at the idea. ‘Alcohol from this time doesn’t even affect you.’

‘It will if it’s ginger beer.’

‘What?’ Rose stared at him, stunned by this revelation. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Now don’t go letting on that I’ve told you,’ he said, waggling a stern finger at her, his words half playful and half serious. ‘Highly guarded Time Lord secret that; could get into all sorts of trouble if the wrong people find out.’

She wasn’t particularly listening to his warnings, still reeling after the revelation. ‘Ginger beer gets you drunk?’

‘Ginger in any sort of alcohol will do it. The enzymes in the ginger prohibit my ability to counteract the effects of the alcohol so I end up absorbing it just like you lot.’

Rose frowned at him, unsure if he was just messing around or not. ‘And you’re deadly serious?’

He threw his arms in the air. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ Lowering them again, the Doctor aimed an arched eyebrow at her and said, ‘I’m trusting you with this information, Rose Tyler. One day it may prove vital to our safety or the safety of the world’.

Ignoring his message, Rose focused on the seriousness of his tone. It only proved to her that he was being truthful which led to one thought running through her head. ‘Oh my God, we are so getting you drunk!’

‘Really?’ He complained, his voice going all high. ‘That is what you’re getting from this?’

‘I bet you’d be a happy drunk,’ she carried on, not listening to his whining. ‘Probably flirty, well, flirtier. Giggly too. And God I’d bet you’d run your gob even more when you’re pissed.’ She was giggling at her imaginings whilst the Doctor groaned heavily at her side, acting as though it was a hardship to be around her teasing self. After retrieving his screwdriver and pocketing it, he placed a hand on her back to guide her forwards. As they made their way to the opposite end of the park, where the wining and dining opportunities were, Rose continued voicing her thoughts on what the inebriated Time Lord would be like, chuckling away as she did so.