Summary: She lost her original Doctor and her species on Satellite Five, She lost him altogether as well as her home-world at Canary Wharf. She has been searching dimensions for a very long time, seeking a version of the Doctor to whom she can belong...has she finally found him? ONESHOT, AU/AR

Tagging Along

This girl is very strange...in several ways. First, she really shouldn't be here at all. She's a human from the early 21st Century Earth and that means, before space travel, so how she got here I've got no idea. I'll be taking her away from this planet on the TARDIS with me, that's for sure: She doesn't belong here, she isn't safe here. Not alone, anyway.

Second, the minute she realized what I was up to, which took her all of five minutes, she started to help me. She's good at it too, got these idiots off their rumps but that didn't change when I started angering the locals. She helped there too...seemed to know what I'd do before I did it...that's really, really odd. It didn't seem as if she were picking up mental cues, it was more like she knew me really, really well. Like she'd worked with me in these kinds of Interventions before...and I have no idea who she is.

She distracted them long enough to get me in the clear and then ducked out herself. I saw she was away and started running once I was sure she didn't need my assistance...and she caught up to me as I raced out of there, took my hand and ran with me...side by side...oh, and how she ran!

She had a firm, long stride that ate miles like they were nothing and matched my speed...even to the point that I had to run a little faster to make sure I was leading the way. Had to, she didn't know where I was taking her, after all.

She was a trained runner, breathing as easily as though she ran off after actions that toppled tyrannical governments all the time. She winked at me, too, once I caught up with her place-jogging form after she cleared a stream that I missed and so got a good soaking in the process, the pink and yellow experienced little boon that she'd proven to be had politely waited for me, cheeky little pink and yellow human girl that she was. I chose to ignore the giggling that started up when she got a good look at me...and reaching up to remove some sort of soggy water-plant draped over my left ear just made her giggle more.

Well. I could hardly leave her there...obviously she's going to make one of the better companions...scarcely needed training, tweaking maybe, to get her used to my ways, but that's all, I thought, so naturally, I took her back to the TARDIS though my reasons had changed. And that was when I finally realized there was much, much more to this human girl that met the eye.

She didn't hesitate to enter the seemingly small blue box that is my TARDIS and next she wasn't surprised by the huge area on the inside. Instead, she simply got a firm grip on the support railing and grinned at me. Now, I don't think I was gaping...might have been, but I don't think so. Not yet, anyway, that was coming though, not that I knew that bit. Didn't matter. I took us out into the vortex and finally, leaning hip-shot against the console, studied her.

She spoke first. "So, I found me another Doctor in his Ninth go, yeah? Good, Nines are my favorite. Usually. I'm Rose Tyler, by the way."

Now, I was gaping. I could feel my jaw as it sagged in a very undignified way and couldn't seem to stop it from doing so. She moved away from me for a moment to run her hand lovingly over a patch of bare wall...and then she looked up at the ceiling with a long-suffering sigh and a saucy wink at me...and did I mention she was cheeky?

"Bit slower on the uptake than I'm used to, old girl. Usually, you've trained him better by this time." She told the TARDIS. "That sagging jaw is kinda cute, but it's not all that useful. He's over nine centuries old by the time he gets to this body...I thought he was supposed to get smarter with age."

"Oi! That's a bit rude, don't you think?"

"Well, I did learn from the best example, you. Various bodies, but still...you." She told me, but then she sobered, walked back over to me and gave me a sad little smile. "It's so good to be with you again, Doctor. I've missed you more than that big ol' brain of your's could ever imagine."

She raised her hand and softly traced my jaw with feather-light fingers that were so gentle..so loving...and so...damned lonely that I could feel my respiratory bypass suddenly kick on in response, as my breath caught.

"Can you stay?" Where did that come from? I mean, sure, I had intended to make the offer...but that was before she started making it clear she knew me...quite well, from the sound of it...and more than one of me at that, which could be dangerous. I mean, how many of my Time Lines did she have on her own?

"I hope so. But, I don't know yet. We're going have to discuss that, as always, it's your call. This isn't my universe of origin. You're not the Ninth Doctor of my youth, and while I was born human, I haven't really been one in a very long time. Not really sure what I am now. That hasn't been established as anything more than 'near human' or 'human plus'."

Rose pulled a thick tome out of her pack and gave it to me though I didn't take it from her, yet. "I got tired of repeating myself, so I wrote this up. If you decide not to keep me or if there' already a Rose Tyler in your life, present or scheduled, give it back after you add whatever bits occurred on your watch and I'll continue my search for a Doctor that I can belong to."

Her eyes were a bit bright, too bright really, but she tried to smile and managed by drawing strength from somewhere I couldn't really understand. Truly unhappy human girls shouldn't ever try to smile. It never ends well...there was a tremendous weight grief and pain in the smile that she gave me. There was a burden on her, that was clear. My TARDIS thrummed unhappily and I turned my head to reassure her just as the girl spoke.

"It's okay, girl. I didn't mean I was gonna leave that fast. You know I never want to...but so far I've always had to. But not this soon, no. That's what he has to find out, right?"

"You can hear her?"

"Yes, of course. All versions of all of your TARDIS' know what all the others know, see...so she knows me." Rose gestured with the book and I took it from her. "This way you get the information that you need and I don't wind up soaking your jumper and end up depressed for days."

I cleared my throat and offered, "Anything you need?"

"Yeah, one."

"Which is?"

"One of those nearly bone crushing, almost but not quite painful hugs you are so, so good at delivering?" Her question sounded wistful.

I put the book on the console and reached for her, I knew this was about and gave her the healing, channeling embrace she clearly needed. The kind she wants grounds someone badly in need of it. It will leave a human limp and shaking for a few moments after, she's going to remain in my arms until she gets her feet under her again. She surprised me, it took nearly an hour to get her grounded...and another fifteen minutes or so to get her shudders down to shivers. Altogether it took nearly an hour and a half before it was safe to find out if she could stand without assistance.

"Been a while, has it?"

"Too long."

She was at the drowsy stage now, no wonder. She'd cleared an incredible backlog just now. "Couch in the Library or a proper lie down?"

"Library, the wide cotton one...with the thick flannel throws...and the firm, fluffy one."

"What...oh, placing a request were you?"

"Yeah." She was nuzzling my shoulder, breathing deeply...inhaling what, I couldn't say. A moment later she told me anyway. Can't say I was all that pleased a the implications.

"Thank God, you're one of the good ones. All Doctors smell of Deep Space, Age and Time...but once in a while, there's one right on the edge of going down the Master' path, he's on it already or he's worse. Dark ones have an additional, sickeningly sweet under-scent, so strong almost as to be a flavor. You don't have that. Good. It's a relief...it's a perfectly horrible thing to do to such a wonderful fragrance. You smell so good."

She'd...tested me. I thought about that and decided that I didn't mind, a Doctor...any Doctor...on that path was perilously dangerous. Perhaps she'd had to learn a way to tell. I asked her about it and she shuddered, a glimmer of remembered horror still echoed in her eyes.

"Worse. I had to stop him. He'd already killed off anyone else who knew him well enough to do it...and me, well, I was a stranger. Couldn't know when I'd come or that I would because I didn't have a timeline there...so I was the only one who could. He had a nasty habit of cowing worlds by deliberately releasing reapers on them. Powdered some aspirin, dumped it in his tea at a restaurant he was in...forced him into his tenth body."

Now I was the one who shuddered. "You had to. No choice. None."

"I know. Knew it then. Did what I had to, took the onus upon myself and I was sick for years afterwards. I had an unbelievably close bond with my first Ninth Doctor and it hurt so much to have to..." She choked. "So, I forced the regeneration and made his TARDIS use my method of travel to move three universes to the left."

"Why?"

"Because that one had never had Daleks evolve, did have a Gallifrey to keep him in check, and never had a Doctor. By the time he finished regenerating, he was in tears and he smelled like he should. I left as soon as I could manage. It wasn't until after I left his TARDIS that I deliberately gave an account of it to an entirely different Time Lord, never met him before...he set up an intervention and helped me leave."

"Who?"

"Didn't ask his usename and when he tried to tell me I told him I had made sure that he wasn't the Master and other than that, I didn't want to know. Told him I'd placed the Tenth in his universe because I had a pretty damned good idea where his guilt was going to take him and he would need the lifeline Earth would be...and that's where I left Tenth, with orders to find that universe's ME. In London, of course."

"Bet he took that well."

"Not at all, insulted him, full of himself, he was...I'll take that from you, but not from any of the rest of those ninnies...told him so, too. I insulted him more when I told him I didn't mind insulting him, if it got his ass in gear faster."

I snorted laughter then. Finally got Rose to the requested furnishings and read her history while she dozed. The last thing she'd asked for, before she closed her eyes, was from my TARDIS. It was a band of her organic coral wrapped around the girl's bared mid-riff. Full skin contact there, for a purpose I didn't find out about until I read the chapter on Satellite Five.

"Is your 'wolf' stabilizing?" I said after that one.

"Yeah. Brings her into harmony with the local vortex, y'only took out about half of it, y'see. The rest settled in to live. Avatar for all vortexes, that's me. Th' TARDIS' is recharging her. It's odd, but I can only do that in a TARDIS and even then it had to be one of your's or Eighth's, because you're still so close to him in many, many ways...and because we've met. Several times, actually. Sometimes he has to be called to bail me out of a problem when I find myself with a Tenth whose Ninth didn't know me. That regeneration was a very...empathic one. He can ground just about anyone. If a Tenth's Ninth didn't know me, Tenth gets me about halfway through and can't pull me out again...so I keep dumping...without actually grounding. Empathy is fine...except when what's going on is sort of like a spigot that has been turned on and then the handle breaks off."

"Mine?"

"A Nine's. Usually only an Eight or a Nine can ground me, ...except if I'm there when..." Rose trailed off drowsily, then sunk into a final, restful sleep before she finished what she was saying.

When a Ninth regenerates, if she is there like she was with her first Ninth Doctor from her home universe, then that Ten can ground her. My TARDIS told me. An Eight can also ground her without aid. That's just the way Eights are. They can ground anyone. Fully functional empaths, Eights. That's one reason they tend to get hurt so badly and so easily...war zones are the worst places for empaths possible. She doesn't know if younger yous can, she's never had to try it. Very focused, is Rose.

Rose's Journal of Events was perhaps a fancy title, but it fit the thing quite well. The Ninth and Tenth of her home universe had been quite well beloved, this was made very clear. Most of the Doctors in the years since, she had been at least quite fond of if, not outright loved: Except for three, out of several hundred: Most universes had one of us, apparently, even if there were no other Time Lords and never had been, one of us showed up to baby-sit.

The first exception was the Master's Boy, the Ninth one she'd forced into regenerating into Tenth and then displaced him out of his home universe. No wonder it'd hurt her so much, after reading of the tight bond she'd had with her first Doctor, before Canary Wharf...that she had adored her version of my current body was undeniable. I raised my head to look at my own short cropped black hair and my big ears in a mirror on the opposite wall and just shook my head as I returned my eyes to the page and continued to read.

The second was one that the Master was using for a plaything...she simply dropped the Master into a live volcano...with a certain amount of relish and a lot a of protective outrage. He hadn't managed to make it to the edge before running out of the ability to regenerate. That Doctor had been a Third and she eased him with his many injuries, untreatable from having gone too long without care and so killing him, into his Fourth, coddling him all the while. But a Rose Tyler was not a good match for that badly traumatized Fourth Doctor. He just wasn't ready for anyone as could give me as good she got.

She'd moved on after making sure he met the best companion her own Doctor had had with him in his accounts and tales of his Fourth. Snuck her onto the TARDIS, in fact and had her already in the kitchen when she opened a personal rift in the console room and left him gaping at Sarah Jane in shock when Rose stepped through it.

It closed behind her usually, she said, and if it did not, well...the TARDIS contained it and she closed it after the girl, herself. Mine silently confirmed this.

The Third was a Seventh, a rogue, a flat filthy rogue, all of his regenerations were rogues, taking as they pleased, where they pleased and much of it involved raiding and rape. Any companions were male, shared his views and any females on board were slaves. He forced passion upon the unwilling and taunted them with the fact of it just to humiliate them. I was sickened at the account of an unsuspecting Rose entering the TARDIS of a Seventh of such a nature and finding herself in hell. She did not detail what happened, only the crawling skin she felt later after being passed from man to man.

He didn't know she could step through time and space without any help from him...or anyone else for that matter...and she arranged to put him in the path of a Dalek Flotilla...with no way out. Daleks do not save any material from the victims of their kills. That was the one that had taunted her with the truth of the sweetness of the extra scent borne by Dark Time Lords.

She had taken his badly abused TARDIS with her back to a previous Doctor she had encountered, whose TARDIS had been destroyed in the Time War...and introduced them to each other. The account described a successful bonding between Time Lord and Time Ship as she opened her rip and left them to it.

The rest was an unending odyssey of finding, aiding and being unable to stay with 'normal' Doctors, of the depression that followed leaving each of them and which gradually lifted somewhat, until the next time. Even after seeing the worst things a Doctor can do, she still wants me...because she has also seen the best.

"Any reason to prevent it?" I asked my timeship quietly.

No.

Then she'll need a room.

Already done. There is an unused time line from a deceased version of herself she can use: It is already trying to attach to her.

"So there is...I'll just tweak it a bit." And I did. Soon I had her firmly attached to this universe and when it connected correctly, when the balance that she had been missing for so long came, she cried out my name from the couch.

Awake, aware and staring at me with a dawning realization and increasing hope in her eyes that was so bright it nearly blinded me. I joined her there, drew her into my arms and held her as carefully as I could manage, as I'd laid down with dozens of companions in need of comfort, so I lay down with this one.

She didn't even need to ask it, not with the copious tears and reaching hands aimed in my direction.

She burrowed into my arms and laid her head over the center of my chest. Unlike many, she was not only comfortable with the louder, double echo of my heartsbeat, she was drawn to the sound and comforted by it. In two seconds, perhaps less, she was out cold. Trusting herself to my hands and my timeship equally, I rather thought.

Fourteen days of sleep that was so deep it was very close to a coma followed. She never even twitched as long as I was in the same room...if I left, however...now that was another story entirely. After two or three incidents of a sleepwalking Rose seeking me out I took another look at her Time Line and discovered a secondary bond forming between myself and her.

Is that a...

It is a Life-bond, my pilot. Yes. Best you stay with her until she wakes. Move her from room to room if you must, but keep her with you.

The Tome named Rose's Journal of Events went onto a shelf of the Library once she had me finish it with my claiming of her. There was no denying a Life-bond, after all. She asked the TARDIS to add any journal entries from both our diaries to the back pages and just leave it on the shelf, unless I needed it. At my raised eyebrow she had just shrugged.

"I never want to look at it again, if I don't have to, but there 's a lot of information in it you might actually need. All from lots of Doctors, lots of universes."

I nodded, for this was true and I merely ran my arm around her waist to lead her to the kitchen. She leaned against me in a way that fit, her own arm clenched tightly around me. She's been through so much...

"The TARDIS made you an office, but she put your clothes and things in my room."

"Good." She smiled. "I absolutely do not want to be alone. Had enough of it. I've been alone for nearly six hundred relative years...I need to know you're there...right there: Even in my sleep. I stopped counting how many times I had to leave a very, very long time ago."

"That's what I thought." I turned her to face me, pulled her close and set my chin on the top of her head. She stayed like that, tucked in tightly without moving for a long time.

Later, she made dinner, having somehow managed to hang onto her groceries in the marketplace where she'd first seen me. The TARDIS had put them away while Rose was out of it. We also dropped down to her rental out in the country, clearing it out and grabbing her dogs...all imports from this universe's Earth. She also had several pairs of small, gentle birds, too, for one of the Gardens that had been designed for some but which had never had any. These were several breeds of exotic finches, tiny little things, but they had beautiful voices.

Her dogs were collies, great standard ones of the rough coated variety. None were more than two years old, and there were four pair, four males and four females.

The TARDIS made separate kennels for each pair so they were not confused as to which mate Rose wanted the males with. It only mattered when the girls were in heat, the rest of the time they were out with us or the females would be with their pups.

Just now, all four bitches were pregnant...heavily so. I'd never been around breeding dogs so when I observed the girls were all quite plump, Rose looked at me, giggled and told me that it would 'wear off in about a week'. She was correct, it did...delivering pups tends to do that.

She was still making jokes and giggling at me days afterward: Love the cheek, really.

~ finis ~