"Can ya," Rose hesitated, looking at the other Doctor. If it hadn't been for his blue suit, she wouldn't have been able to tell them apart. "Just take over for a mo," she finished, nodding at the console. He gave her a very Doctor smile and Rose wished she could return it when he did. Instead she turned and locked eyes with the Doctor in the brown suit, the one who held himself much less easily. She plucked at his sleeve as she left the console room and he turned to follow.
A step behind, he entered the pool room to find Rose with one trainer off, working on unlacing the other. He watched as she finished, rolled her pants up and sat on the edge to dip her feet in. "You never once went swimming in here," he commented off offhandedly, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.
"I went skinny dipping in here all the time," Rose corrected, wiggling her toes in the pool's crystal blue water, "you were just never around when I did."
Much like Rose had moments earlier, the Doctor almost smiled. "What're we doing here?"
Leaning with both hands on the edge, Rose felt the agony that was pulsing through her very being start to show on her face. "I'm tryin' to pretend you're not about t'do exactly what ya said ya wouldn't the night we met Sarah Jane." The Doctor hung his head, crossed his arms more tightly about his chest.
When she looked over her shoulder a moment later, the Doctor saw that Rose's eyes were hard in her sorrow but free from even the threat of tears. "Can ya just tell me why?" She asked quietly, "'Cause I think you wanted it to be true when ya said it as badly as I did."
This is really seeing the future, you just leave us behind! Is that what you're going to do to me?
No. Not you.
Silently, the Doctor unlaced his plimsolls, rolled up his own pants and slipped his feet into the water alongside Rose, their shoulders brushing. "There's something about the first face I see after a regeneration," he said softly, both of them looking at the water instead of each other. "That person means more...no, that's not it." he stopped himself, frowning, frustrated. He had seen Sarah Jane after a regeneration and he had still left her, though, he had never promised not to. The promise was the key.
Slowly, as if not trusting himself, the Doctor looked aside at her jeans, the hem of her blue jacket, her shoulder, the blonde locks he had come to love. When his eyes strayed to her lips, grazed her cheekbones, two of her most striking features, he started to shiver. It was her, there, with him, and his hearts ached.
"I said it...because I did want it to be true," he whispered, averting his eyes again. "Because the thought of losing you back then...and now, still tears me down," he ground out through clenched teeth, "in ways it never has, not for anyone else."
Rose stared hard at the water a moment then wet her lips and nodded once. "In your head, I'll always be here...with a part of you," she snapped her head aside to look at him as he did likewise, shock in his face that she had deduced his plan. "Give me some bloody credit," she scoffed, "s'not hard to figure, is it?" And it wasn't, especially not with the deep melancholy she saw upon finally meeting his eyes.
She brought a hand up to his cheek, stroked at his sideburn and knew the misery in his eyes was reflected in hers. Opening and closing his mouth several times, she knew he wanted to say something. Perhaps he wanted forgiveness, wanted her to better understand, wanted to tell her this would kill him too, just a little less than watching her die of old age. Perhaps he wanted to say all of those things and more, but Rose knew the Doctor had always been bad with words.
"S'ok," she said, her voice shakier than she wanted, "I always knew you were a bit of a coward," his eyes started to shine and she twitched the corner of her lip in an almost smile, "s'one of the little human things I always loved about you." She finished in a whisper as she pulled him onto a crushing hug, both burying their faces in one another's shoulders. Their hands gripped and wrung the fabric of each others jackets and neither could see if the other was crying, though they both were silently.
The Doctor strode into the console room, Rose on his heels, and threw a lever, flicked a switch, span a dial and kicked the console. The ship lurched as Rose walked to the console next to the Doctor and laid a hand on the glowing time rotor. In her mind she saw the stars returning for everyone else as they were extinguished for her, thinking, last trip old girl.
When they stepped out onto the beach, Jackie looked hopefully at her daughter but Rose had only eyes for the man in the brown suit. She tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and surveyed him as his twin stood to the side with Donna. Again, Rose would've liked to smile for him but some things you cannot grin and bear. Likewise, the Doctor looked his age, mirroring her with his hands in his pants pockets.
Standing there observing the two of them, the blue suited Doctor suddenly stood a little straighter, realization dawning on him. He looked to his left at Donna who just smiled at him and before he knew it she was hugging him. Everything that followed happened too fast, he was too tired to argue, to speak at all really. In Donna's arms he saw Rose step to the other Doctor and slip a hand to his chest.
It wasn't that Rose didn't know what to say once more, as the last time she had stood on that beach with him. It was that she finally appreciated that words had limits and what she felt for him could never be expressed adequately by them. Her hand fell from the Doctor's chest to clasp his fingers, she leaned into him and whispered, "run!"
A spark lit in the Doctor's eyes and he clenched his jaw before yelling, "Donna!" He crushed Rose's hand one last time and disappeared into the Tardis, the swirl of his brown jacket whipping through the door.
Donna tore from her twin Doctor and was in the Tardis in a heartbeat, her twin watching her, speechless.
Rose and the blue suited Doctor observed the Tardis departing before their eyes slowly drifted to one another. Before they could move or speak, Rose was beset upon by Jackie, the other woman sobbing on her chest how happy she was that Rose had stayed. The Doctor saw in the hollowness in Rose's expression, even as she hugged her mother, that choice had not played much part in her staying.
-#-
The walk from the beach was quiet. Jackie thought it an awkward silence and tried to break it every so often with inane comments or questions. The Doctor was, for his part, actually tired and too busy trying to figure out what this sensation was and how to cope with it to think of much else, which was in and of itself alarming to him. Too tired to think was not a state of being he had ever experienced. And Rose...Rose marched, the Doctor noted from the corner of his psyche. She had to be exhausted, much as he was, maybe more accustomed to it, having been human all her life. But she marched like a soldier with a pace that left her mother and the Doctor struggling to catch up to her at times.
A comm device on Rose's wrist would chatter every so often and once in a while she would lift it to her lips and answer, something clipped and carrying in the empty countryside. Within about an hour a zeppelin appeared on the horizon of the blackening sky. Rose typed at the comm device, spoke into it and the zeppelin honed in on them. This one being a Torchwood transport, a rope was lowered down to which a harness was attached and Rose wasted no time in fitting it about her mother's hips as naturally as if she were tying her laces.
"Could've waited on the beach for them to get us, couldn't we?" Jackie complained as Rose looked up into the blaring zeppelin spotlight and gave the all clear into her comm device.
"Yeah? And you wouldn't have been half frozen by the time they got there." She smiled genuinely but not broadly up at her mother, crossing her arms as her hair whipped about her face.
In that smile, the Doctor saw her age, her exhaustion. Even on their roughest adventures, Rose Tyler had always had a brilliant smile waiting for him. He realised then that he hadn't seen her smile properly since first seeing her in the street.
Jackie halfway to the zeppelin, Rose looked over at the Doctor. "How're you doing?"
He looked slowly down at her, wondering himself how he was doing, now that she'd asked. "Uhh, tired, I think, really, reeeally tired."
Rose stepped in front of him, frowning in concentration as she gripped his wrist to feel his pulse, her other hand tilting his head toward the light to view his pupils. "Well, you've had a hell of a day for a newborn," she tilted his head side to side, still watching his eyes, before slipping her hand from his wrist to lace into his fingers, the hand at his jaw coming to rest on his shoulder. They gave one another the same weak smile as he gripped her fingers.
He should have felt overwhelmed by her presence, by what had happened, by the losses he had just suffered. But the Doctor was truly overwhelmed by his exhaustion, so much so that he only protested weakly when the harness returned and Rose began to clip him into it. "You should go first," he told her, a little surprised by her nonchalance at moving around some of his most intimate parts. The Rose he had lost at Canary Wharf would have blushed to be doing so, but not this woman.
"I always go last," Rose answered with a hard edge, looking briefly up into his eyes, before returning her attention to the harness.
"Why's that?" The Doctor asked quietly, grabbing onto the rope.
Rose looked up at him, finished, and brought the comm device to her lips. "Harness is locked, winch secured?"
"Winch secured, Bad Wolf," the comm crackled.
"Ascension's a go," she responded into it. She gave the harness one last tug at the point where it ran across his hips. "I always go last, I get everyone out alive, 'cause that's what I do," Rose said to him matter of factly as he started to rise away from her. He couldn't quite be sure if the look on her face made him sad or proud as he slowly spun, drawing away from her.
When he made it into the zeppelin, uniformed Torchwood officers were on him immediately, unhooking the harness and drawing him aside, sending it back out the hatch and chattering on similar comm devices to Rose's. In short order, she was through the hatch as well and an officer pulled the rope to bring her over the floor. After that, though, there was no fussing as there had been for the Doctor. She promptly stripped the harness, hung it up and strode over to the controls of the ship.
The Doctor watched her brush her hair aside and slip a microphoned ear piece over her right ear before clattering at a keyboard. A man's face appeared on the screen in front of Rose, youngish with curly dirty blonde hair, a white lab coat visible about his shoulders. "Bad Wolf!" He exclaimed in obvious surprise.
"Hello Danny," Rose replied with another wane smile.
"We didn't expect you back, I mean, we thought-" Danny began to babble before Rose cut him off.
"Didn't expect to be back, Danny," Rose said a bit sharply, stopping Danny's mouth in a heartbeat.
The Doctor watched her at these words, the forced straightness of her shoulders and back, exuding a strength he suspected she didn't feel. She hadn't expected to be back, he thought, she expected to be at the controls of the Tardis, not this bloody ship. He sighed. He felt the same.
Rose's gaze meandered between other screens which bracketed the main one Danny occupied and keyboards at her fingertips, her face never still long enough to betray anything to her co-worker. That wasn't uncommon for her, not in that place and time. "Update on Operation Black Sky," she commanded evenly, all emotion gone once more.
"Complete success," Danny jumped to supply, "planetary losses in the epsilon quadrant are reversing, the Horse Head Nebula is back in place, out by a par sec or so, but nothing big-"
"I want it monitored," Rose cut in, "a few planets a few parsecs out could create a Malo spatial anomaly that could wipe out the Milky Way. If that's gonna happen, I'd like to have a heads up."
The Doctor quirked a brow at her back. How did she know about Malo spatial anomalies?
"You've got it Bad Wolf. Operation Doctor, then, you found him?" Danny asked, a little hesitantly.
Rose met his eyes squarely and he looked away from the blackness in them before she answered. "The stars came back, yeah?"
Danny swallowed and nodded, only meeting her eyes briefly. "Anything else?" Rose shook her head. "Can I just say then...I think I speak for all of Torchwood when I say...I'm really glad you're back." He gave her genuine warmth in a smile that Rose couldn't return.
She used to smile easily. Instead she thanked Danny and cut the screen's link, letting her shoulder's hang a moment as she stripped the microphone from her ear and leaned heavily on the ship's console. No one else saw this but the Doctor and he made to rise from chair to go to her but she stood before he could, as thought the weight that had appeared on her shoulder's a moment ago was a figment of the Doctor's imagination.
Rose went and spoke to her mother, making certain she was comfortable, leaning against the seat in front of Jackie with her arms crossed. The Doctor, through his haze of exhaustion, watched her and thought how different she was. Running operations, directing personnel, worrying about hyperspace phenomena way beyond the ken of people of her time and place. He couldn't stop his eyes from drifting closed as he thought about this, his body mastering him in a way it had only ever done in a regeneration.
A few moments later, Rose looked up at the Doctor and laid a hand on her mother's shoulder, leaving her to walk to the Doctor's side. She knelt down on one knee beside him and watched the rise and fall of his chest, counting the breaths. Then she lifted a hand to his forehead, assessed his temperature, lowered her hand to his wrist, took his pulse again. Her medical field training told her that the human being in front of her was fine, her experience with the Doctor told her otherwise. The longest she had ever seen him close his eyes for was the time he had been knocked unconscious by a police goon in the fifties. The nights they had spent together on the couch in the Tardis library or in her bed, talking for half of it before sleep came to her, his eyes had always been open when hers closed and when hers opened again in the morning.
Remembering those simple sweet times they had lain in each other's arms, feeling the security of the Tardis about them, babbling into the small hours of the morning, Rose's heart ached in a strange way. That man was before her now, after so many years of sleeping alone. Her hand fell to his again and stayed there a while as she watched him, the zeppelin humming in her ears like the Tardis engines gone wrong.
-#-
She saw the lights of London before the radio chatter between the pilots and Torchwood's control tower picked up. Arms crossed, face turned toward the window, Rose should probably have been sleeping. She looked to her right, at her mother and the Doctor, both out like lights within minutes of their journey's start, then back to the window. She hadn't expected to be back, true, but Rose Tyler wasn't young and naïve, not anymore, not since losing the Doctor the first time, not since coming to this world where everything was almost the same. Almost. She was almost the same. But little things had changed. Her unshakable faith that things would work out in the end, fairytale-like, was gone. She still believed things would work out well enough, that was, she still hoped. Hope was a thing she maintained throughout all else, a lesson she took from the Doctor. Looking to her side again, she caught the Doctor's face in the growing lights of the city and smiled sadly.
If she was honest, this was exactly the type of thing Rose expected would happen, like their first farewell at Dårlig Ulv Stranden. Like being left at Aberdeen instead of Croydon. Life with and after the Doctor was not linear, sensible or fair. Life before him wasn't really either, perhaps you just noticed it more in his absence. Rose bit back a sigh, keeping her emotions in check having become a sad second nature to her in order to build up her reputation at Torchwood. No, she hadn't thought she would be back here, but she hadn't felt with rock solid certainty before she left that she would be out amongst the stars with him again, either. That was why she hadn't made arrangements for her flat and her things.
When she had left her universe, Rose Tyler hadn't known a thing for certain. She had hoped she would find the Doctor, prevent the darkness and that she would stay with him once she had. She shrugged to herself in her seat as the pilot looked over his shoulder at her and announced they were landing. All three of those hopes had been realised, after a fashion. But as she looked at the sleeping Doctor, Rose felt Time and Space, the only two gods she recognised these days, having a right good fucking laugh at her expense.
-#-
Rose had to shake the Doctor quite forcefully to get him to wake, so deep was his slumber. He looked up at her blinking and she gave him a small smile, none of her brilliant teeth peeking through, but enough. "We're landing," she said simply. The Doctor nodded, blinked some more, yawned, stretched and generally felt his systems coming back online, if begrudgingly so. Flipping a blanket aside he didn't remember placing over himself, the Doctor stood and wobbled. Rose caught him in an instant, steadied him as they walked toward the official entry and exit, a door with stairs cut into it that dropped down from the zeppelin cockpit's side.
The Doctor looked around, at the black of the night made too bright by blinding spot lights around Torchwood's air pad. They descended but Rose turned back at the foot of the stairs as one of the pilots called out.
"Bad Wolf, we haven't heard from Tin Dog. Should we keep on a delta rotation until we have word or-"
"No," Rose cut him off, the slight frown on her face easily if incorrectly attributed to the wind whipped up by the zeppelin. "Tin Dog is out, permanently. I'll be in touch with Secondary Operations about his replacement."
The pilot looked at her a second longer than he should have.
"He's not dead, Josh, he's just not coming back," Rose half-clarified to soften the blow. "Just tell everyone he's not coming back. I'll be 'round Secondary to explain it all, probably by Tuesday."
The pilot, Josh, nodded abruptly and ducked back into the cockpit, not wanting to risk his boss's understanding flashing to anger as could easily happen if things moved too slow. Everyone knew anyway, that if anyone had a right to mourn Tin Dog's loss, it was Bad Wolf.
Rose turned away just as quickly, not looking at either her mother or the Doctor, her face hard. The Doctor watched her out of the corner of his eye, knowing who she and Josh had been speaking of, realising for the first time that Rose hadn't quite expected to be saying goodbye to Mickey when he left the Tardis that evening. Rose didn't falter when speaking of him, her voice didn't catch. She could've been speaking about a piece of equipment going down for all the emotion she showed. That's new, The Doctor thought.
"Pete!" Jackie cried out, spotting the red head exiting a limousine 20 feet ahead of them and breaking into a run.
The Doctor looked aside at Rose who just stuffed her hands into her jacket and continued at the same pace.
Jackie and Pete hugged fiercely, the latter mumbling things along the lines of 'you stupid cow' into his wife's shoulder. Rose and the Doctor waited a moment after reaching them before they parted. Pete looked at Rose and the Doctor was struck by how similarly they wore their expressions, like masks.
"Wasn't expecting to see you again," Pete said more coolly than the Doctor expected.
"Gonna have t'change my codename, aren't we? 'Thought you was gone,' 'Wasn't expectin' ya,'" Rose mused, "not quite the same oomf as Bad Wolf." She didn't look amused. Neither did Pete.
The ginger looked to the Doctor. "Definitely wasn't expectin' you."
The Doctor looked askance at Pete, at the almost hungry gleam in the other man's eyes as he said you. "Long story," he said cagily, though airily. He needed to get his bearings in this place. He needed to talk to Rose and figure out what the hell was going on with Pete. She clearly wasn't at ease with him.
"Yeah an' one I'm really not keen to get into at three in the morning after the day we just had," Rose interjected quickly.
"Do you wanna come back to the house sweetheart?" Jackie asked hopefully. "There's room for the Doctor there."
Rose shook her head, "nah, I wanna go home." She looked aside at the Doctor, considering him for a second. "You could go to the mansion, with mum," she began, being deliberate in choosing the word mansion over house, "there's the cells at Torchwood, bunks are comfy enough, or there's my place." She said all of this without blushing, without a hint of her preference.
The Doctor found his inability to read her unsettling but his mind and his heart had only one answer. "With you," he said instantaneously, then paused, "I mean, your place, that is, if...if you're okay with that." He finished and swallowed, frowning at his lack of eloquence.
Rose nodded, "It's just the couch, is all-"
"I love couches," the Doctor cut in quickly, ruffling his hair, "my best mate is a couch, well, I say best mate, good friend, known her for ages." He smiled broadly at Rose and was pleased when he saw it returned in her eyes if nowhere else.
"Right," Rose said, turning from him. "Alistair! I need a lift back to Primary Ops.," Rose called over to a man in black Torchwood gear who nodded at her in return. She hugged her mother and nodded stiffly at Pete, "I'll be in day after tomorrow."
"Bringin' him with you, then?" Pete asked, nodding at the Doctor.
"His choice," Rose responded, the Doctor being otherwise engaged in a bone-crushing hug from Jackie.
"I'm so glad you're here, sweetheart," Jackie whispered to the Doctor and he didn't know what to say in response. He smiled at her and turned to follow Rose, grateful to escape Jackie and Pete and Torchwood, to get some bloody distance and spend a quiet moment with the only person he really wanted to see just then.
Alistair saluted Rose, "nice to see you again, Bad Wolf."
"And you, Alistair," Rose replied, not without a little warmth, wasting no time in climbing into the black Jeep.
The ride to Canary Wharf was quick that time of night and Rose and the Doctor were soon climbing into another black Jeep, shiny instead of matte, and setting off into the night, alone for the first time.
The Doctor watched her manoeuvre the brute of a vehicle with grace, her eyes focused on the road, still not looking tired somehow. "You drive a Jeep," was the first coherent question that came to his mouth.
Rose almost smiled again. "I like to be prepared." To drive her point home, Rose looked from side to side before driving the vehicle up and over the barrier that diverted traffic left or right and prevented direct crossings. "Short cut."
The Doctor raised a brow at her, a manic smile creeping into his features in approval.
"They all call you Bad Wolf."
"Code names're a bit of a thing at Torchwood," Rose offered dismissively.
"Yeeeaah," the Doctor conceded, "but...whotsit, Josh and Alistair, they probably have code names and no one used them."
"I don't like being called 'Tyler' much here," She replied, tone hard again, near angry.
He thought about this for a moment, deciding what question to ask next, whether or not he wanted to draw that anger out to see where it came from. "You know all their names," he said instead, softly, a little in awe of her.
Rose shifted down, turned a corner, "if I'm gonna ask people to die for me, I like to know their names." Said without hesitation, a truth.
He didn't know what to say to that.
The silence didn't last long, what with a few more shortcuts, the Doctor soon recognised they were on Clifton Parade. "Don't tell me you live at the ol' Powell Estates!"
Rose smiled genuinely for the first time but it quickly dropped from her lips. "Nah, close by though. Got a flat near Mickey's gran's place when I first came here, bit more posh than the Estate."
He followed her, up seven flights of stairs from the garage, feeling every step though she didn't seem to, to a door, number 723. It was remarkably ordinary, he thought. Just a flat, near the estate she had grown up on.
No, he reminded himself, she didn't grow up here, that was another universe and nothing about this is ordinary, not for her, not the way you think it is.
Flicking on the lights, Rose immediately went to a laptop on a sideboard in between the bedroom door and the kitchen. The Doctor looked around as he closed the door. It was small, the kitchen open to the living room with just a small grey couch and telly, a small table between the two. On either side of this main room were a bathroom and bedroom. That was it. It was mostly white, small splashes of colour here or there, a few photos in frames around the TV stand and on the living room table. He picked up a few and looked at Rose in them, trying to find the young woman who had first travelled with him. There was one of her and Jackie, one of her and Mickey. In both she was smiling, or, what passed for a smile. There were no hints of the brilliant grin he knew she was capable of.
The last two photos were of a small blonde boy, almost a baby still, and Rose. In these, with that boy, she grinned like he remembered and he found himself grinning right back at the Rose in those photos.
"Ya hungry?" She called to him, snapping the laptop shut and looking over at him.
He set the photo down and turned to her then looked blankly down at his stomach. "Yeeeaaaah, yep, think I am."
She quirked a brow at him. "Not sure?"
He wrinkled his nose, "never had to eat, not really, never been hungry in the human sense of the word. But I feel kinda...empty, like I've got a little Sonta Pelush gnawing at my tummy. What'dya think? Is that what hungry feels like?"
Rose smiled quickly before it faded. "Dunno about the Sonta Pelush part but the rest sounds about right." She walked to the kitchen and opened the fridge, grimacing at its contents. Binning most of it, she turned to the freezer and smiled.
Rose flicked on the oven before turning back to find the Doctor watching her with interest. "I need a shower," she proclaimed, "when the oven 'dings' put those in."
The Doctor looked at the small box on the counter she had pointed at before continuing to peruse Rose's flat. She was quicker than he'd thought she'd be, than he remembered her ever being on the Tardis. He couldn't help it when a small smile slid onto his lips at the sight of her in a loose long sleeved t-shirt and baggy pj bottoms, her damp hair hanging in strings.
When she pulled the food out of the oven, he tutted at her. "Really Rose, Fish fingers?"
"And custard," she said brightly, adding a carton from the fridge to the table.
"Your obsession with chips was bad enough, this is..." He waved at the fare, his expression bemused.
She swatted at him. "Shut up. I keep this stuff around for Tony, and lucky for us it'd outlast a nuclear winter, yeah?"
They went out to the walkway steps to eat in the night air, a little cooler than the Doctor would have liked, he realised with a bit of a shock, but still tolerable. Rose seemed to enjoy it, he thought, as he watched her dipping her fish fingers in the custard. She noticed him and raised her brows before taking another languishing bite. "Don't knock it 'till you've tried it."
He scrunched his nose again and ate the fish fingers sans custard, looking out at London's lights, hearing London's sounds and feeling vaguely at home. That was another shock. London, The Powell Estate particularly, had a homey feel to him.
Setting her plate on the step above them, Rose took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her pajama pockets and lit one with such finesse the Doctor stared at her for a solid minute before turning away. She hadn't noticed.
"You smoke?" He asked, the question clear and innocent in his voice.
Rose exhaled a stream of smoke, ran her free hand through her half-dry hair. "Picked it up when I was trying to find you. Keeps you warm on the long hauls, when the jump lands you four hours from the nearest town, say."
He turned his old eyes to meet hers and saw the age that had accumulated there in kind.
"Takes the edge off, too," she added quietly. He didn't ask what brought on the edge. He had ideas but didn't really want to know right then.
The Doctor bit viciously into a fish finger and wondered just how he had changed the woman who sat next to him. They sat in silence while she finished the fag and he polished off a bowl of custard, both staring out into the city and thinking about the days to come.
Rose hugged the Doctor before she went to her room and they gripped one another as fiercely as they had ever done after any adventure that had almost seen them separated. He knew when she drew him into the embrace that that she was stronger than he was or would ever be again. Whatever Rose Tyler had become, Bad Wolf was fitting. She was a force of nature, more than he had ever felt her to be before.
-#-
He awoke with her on the phone to her mother, telling the older woman she would have to see if he was up for it or not. From the couch, a leg hanging out from the covers, his hair sticking up in more directions than usual, the Doctor watched with bleary eyed fascination as Rose slipped a holster over her shoulders and clipped it around her rib cage. She ran a finger along a plain stretch of wall beside the door and a small compartment opened from which she withdrew a small, blocky blaster, slipped it into the holster under her left arm.
"You carry a gun?" He asked, his voice rougher and more unfamiliar than he had ever heard it.
Rose looked over at him. "I carry two," she said matter of factly, reaching back into the compartment to remove a snub nosed disruptor, no bigger than a pair of brass knuckles. She hauled up a pant leg and forced the weapon into a leg holster.
"That was mum," she carried on, ignoring the Doctor's gobsmacked expression, "she wants us over for tea tonight. I told her I'd see how you were feelin', budge up." Rose pushed him a little to the side to sit on the sofa, flicking on the telly with a remote and switching to a channel that was flashing all sorts of radio frequency signals, sonar blips and infrared scans.
"Oh God, tea with your mother," the Doctor began, drawing the blanket around his lower half before becoming distracted by the signals on the TV.
"I know," Rose said, equally distracted, "domestic. You don't have to go."
"Is that an X-ray orthomorphic field display?" The Doctor asked, leaning in as Rose had done.
"Mmm, monitoring Q-space near the Horse Head Nebula."
Patting his chest for the spectacles he soon realised were still in the suit he had hung in the bathroom last night, the Doctor continued to peer in fascination. "Not your standard package, then?" He nodded at the screen.
Rose flicked the TV off and ran a hand through her hair, looking up at the Doctor as she did so. "Had Danny configure it, easier'n turning on the laptop at the end of a long day."
He raised a brow at her. "Blimey, you must have some long days."
She smiled at him, still no teeth, but a good Rose Tyler smile. He grinned at her.
"You look all...ready to go. Are you going somewhere?" He inquired.
"Got a call from work, signal picked up from the lambda sector. Probably nothing but Matt asked if I'd have a go at translatin' it." Rose sighed and leaned back into the couch, stretching so her belly was visible between her t-shirt and jeans. "I think he just wants to make sure I'm really still here," she groaned through her stretch.
Withdrawing his eyes from her midriff, the Doctor nodded. "Sounds like the boys at Torchwood like you."
"They do. The ones that don't at least respect me, s'all I need."
He grinned at her again. "So, what'dya think? Bring-your-Doctor-to-work day?"
Rose became all seriousness again in an instant, sitting up and looking at him square in the eyes. "Torchwood has files and files on you, people've been talkin' about you for years, none more'n Pete. I'm not sure how you'll be treated there by some of 'em, like a person...or an asset."
"I can take care of myself," the Doctor said calmly, his expression as serious as Rose's.
She looked at him a moment. "I know you can. M'just givin' you the lay of the land."
He returned her silent gaze. "Tell me about Pete."
Rose inhaled steadily. "He'll want you to join Torchwood. No question."
"Should I?" He expected her to bite her lip or chew a nail, expressions of hers that used to be marks of uncertainty. Instead he had to find it in her eyes and even then, he couldn't be sure what he saw there.
"It's your life-"
"Rose-"
"You could work for UNIT-"
"Rose..."
There was background she clearly didn't want to divulge to him and he didn't know why. He hoped it wasn't owing to a lack of trust but he didn't discount the possibility.
"If you could have me anywhere, where would it be?" He asked softly.
Rose looked at him deeply then and he knew there was pain in her eyes, though she hid it quickly. I would have you in the Tardis, with me, Rose thought and for second she couldn't think of anything more truthful. Then it occurred to her. "I'd have ya safe," she whispered to him.
He leaned in then. "Isn't Torchwood safe?" A fierceness flashed in his eyes, more akin to his former self's icy granite glare than anything.
Her full lips pursed a second before Rose shook her head. She looked down to the comm device on her wrist, its display a watch face. "I should get goin.'"
The Doctor sat back and exhaled. "Can I come with you?" He asked simply. She looked aside at him, weighing things. "It's just...first day here and all...If I don't have to be without you I'd... I'd rather..."
Rose nodded after a moment. "Yeah. Get dressed quick then." She rubbed her forehead after he'd left the couch and stared at the empty TV screen. "This mean you'll come to tea?" She called over her shoulder after a few minutes.
Silence. Then, "guess so," muffled from behind the bathroom door. She smirked.
Upon his return, Rose stood and pulled on her black leather jacket. As they walked down the stairs, she looked him over. "We need to take you shopping today, get you some clothes, toothbrush an the like."
The Doctor looked at his suit, a little wrinkled and singed from the previous days excursion. "Quite right."
-#-
Torchwood tower. It made his teeth itch to be there again. He tried to be distracted, by Rose and the way all the burly men and women in full kit beamed at her before saluting her. Like a hero. Well deserved, he thought. He tried to be distracted by the way she glared at anyone who questioned who he thought he was, without any ID, to be just wandering around Torchwood, and made them cower. He tried to be distracted by the amazing things the institution seemed to be developing and utilizing largely, it seemed, under her guidance. He tried to just be amazed by her brilliance.
But he couldn't get over it.
Rose stopped before they entered a room labelled Signals and Processing, a hand on his chest to hold him back. "You all right?"
"Fine."
She peered up into his face. "You're glarin.'"
He thought about this and realised he was, had been, ever since they came here. "Sorry," he said quietly, softening his features. He gave her a small smile.
Rose wasn't placated but she looked away and slid her hand along the wall beside the door. It opened and allowed her access. They met Matt who nearly hugged Rose in his excitement to see her before Rose's expression drew him up short and she indicated he should be quick.
The Doctor watched her listen to audio of a language he understood well, watched her have Matt rewind it several times in key places, her brow raising a little each time, a smile threatening her lips. She looked over at the Doctor, at the smile mirrored on his face, before turning back to Matt. "It's an advert."
Matt looked surprised, his brows raising.
"For Rookshyakop, like a...delicacy? On Binyos Five. That signals old, must've come, what, equivalent of 2700 years away?"
Matt was typing up her assessment. "Sometimes I think she makes half this up...
"If only," the Doctor said quietly, wondering at Rose's linguistic ability.
The door hissed open and a young man peered through. He also grinned at Rose. "Hello Bad Wolf. I'm sorry to interrupt but Mr. Tyler is requesting your-" The young man paused when his eyes found the Doctor and he swallowed. The Doctor raised a brow at him. Rose clenched her jaw to hold back a smile. "Your companion join him top floor," the young man continued after a beat.
Rose looked over at the Doctor. "Principals office, young man."
He grinned at her. "Love getting in trouble my first day." They both stood. "Lead on..."
"Peter," Rose supplied for the Doctor.
"Lead on Peter!" The Doctor exclaimed.
Peter blushed, smiled and looked away. "Bad Wolf should be able to take you."
The Doctor shrugged, stuffed his hands into his pockets and left the room. Rose followed shortly after a brief exchange with Matt.
"Peter," the Doctor called after the retreating figure, causing Peter to turn and regard him. "What's your codename?"
The young man swallowed, his blush intensifying. "Blue Turtle."
The Doctor hummed in interest, then grinned.
"I think Peter fancies you," Rose said with amusement by his side as they began to follow in the young man's wake.
The Doctor watched Peter's back a moment before replying. "He's not half-bad looking himself." Then he frowned at himself. "Did I just say that? Did I just think that?" He looked at Rose, at the mirth he suspected she was carefully hiding.
"Wouldn't be the fist bloke you've fancied," was her only reply.
"Yeah, but-" The Doctor began but stopped. True, noticing men was nothing new for him but having a purely physical response to the appearance of anyone hadn't happened since...ever. He brought up a hand to rub at the hair at the base of his neck in slight agitation. Rose raised a brow at him in question but he merely shook his head. He didn't know what to say to her about the...very human thing that had just happened to him.
"I'll take you to his office but m'not stayin'. You gonna be okay?" Rose asked as they rode the lift.
The Doctor leaned against the lift wall, arms crossed against his chest. "Has Pete developed the ability to spit fire since I last saw him?" He raised a brow behind his specs, frowning slightly.
Rose didn't flinch from his gaze and he was slightly unsettled at how well she could hide what she was feeling, what she was thinking, from him. There was a time when the psychic connection between them had them sharing so much and now he could only guess.
"Pete n'I have different ideas of what Torchwood should be...what Torchwood could be."
"Difference of opinion is hardly a reason to treat your father the way you do," the Doctor countered.
"He's not my father," Rose said evenly, leaving the Doctor unsure what to ask or say. She stepped to within an inch of him, her eyes serious as they had been that morning when she spoke of Torchwood and alluded to its dangers. "Whatever else, don't forget that. My father?" She emphasised these two words, "died November 7th, 1987."
The Doctor gave her a curt nod, his eyes still attempting to appraise her. A man Rose emphatically did not want to be associated with. What kind of man must that be, he wondered.
The lift dinged, the doors opened and the Doctor's teeth itched worse than ever. He looked over at Rose and saw reflected in her eyes what he knew must be in his. No wonder she didn't want to stay.
He looked into the office that occupied the whole of the top of Torchwood Tower and memories came unbidden. It had been remodelled drastically, carpets put in, some walls torn down and some windows and furnishings added. But the wall he faced as he stepped from the lift, regardless of the new windows, sat opposite a wall in another dimension. A dimension where he had lain his face against that wall, felt the last whispers of the person who had promised never to leave after being separated from them by impassible distances and spaces. The lift dinged, the doors closed and the Doctor felt Rose leave him again. His heart raced, his palms sweat. He felt very human.
Swallowing, the Doctor strode lazily toward the desk, toward the former dimension barrier, and the man who sat there. "Hallo Pete!" He said brightly. "Just met another Peter, calls himself Blue Turtle, hell of a name, innit? What's your Torchwood nickyity-nick-name, then?" He grinned to hide the nausea he felt creeping up.
Pete didn't smile. "I don't need a nick name here, do I? I'm Pete Tyler. They call me anything they call me 'Boss'."
The Doctor raised a brow but didn't respond on that front. "Love what Rose's done with the place. Making leaps and strides with her, aren't you?" He prodded for information underhandedly.
"Suppose we are," Pete allowed grudgingly.
"So...who's in charge?" The Doctor inquired innocently. It was a very open question, could've been taken any number of ways.
"I am," Pete said sharply, anger sparking in his eyes at any insinuation otherwise.
The Doctor grinned at him, thinking of all of the people he had met at Torchwood so far, how they said Bad Wolf like the name of a vengeful God who was on their side and how Rose knew every one of their names. "'Course you are," The Doctor said. Pete was obviously sore about his not-daughter's presence, but recognised her usefulness. That was where he would fit, too, the Doctor guessed.
"And I want you to work for us," Pete continued, taking command of the conversation as the Doctor had expected.
"No wooing? Not even a drink!" The Doctor joked, rocking on his heels.
"We can pay you better'n UNIT, can't we? The UN's useless these days, completely underfunded." Pete countered. "Our facilities outmatch theirs, no question."
"Yeah," the Doctor conceded, distracted from unpleasant memories of the room, just a bit. "Could go work for the States, or Germany, love Germany. Bet both of them have some pretty wizard facilities devoted to watching the skies," the Doctor shrugged.
Pete raised a brow at him, a pleased smile drawing up a corner of his mouth. "Yeah, you could.
But you won't."
The Doctor stopped rocking, his smile fading to something much more menacing. "So sure are you?" He said softly. He gave Pete credit for not flinching under his gaze.
Pete stood, removed a package labelled 'special personnel' from his desk drawer and dropped it heavily on the desk in front of the Doctor. "You're not going anywhere without Rose. Rose isn't going anywhere without her mother an' brother." His smile faded to a wolfish sneer. "No, you're not going anywhere, Doctor."
The Doctor picked up the file, tucked it in the crook of his arm, his eyes never leaving Pete's. "Picked a hell of an office," he said quietly before slapping on a manic grin. "You've won me over, Pete! But reeeaally, be careful what you ask for. I would raise my insurance if I were you. I'm a bloody walking hazard."
Behind the Doctor's grin was a warning Pete couldn't mistake. The ginger watched the Doctor's back as he walked away, stood at the lift a moment. Their eyes met one last time and the Doctor's grin was gone. They stared one another down for the second it took the doors to close, animosity bristling between them.
-#-
The lift opened and the Doctor looked up to find Rose looking up to him in the same instant. He had to catch the door to stop it from closing so long did they stand there fixed by one another's gaze. Exiting, file under his arm, Rose fell instep beside him as they left Torchwood's benign glass front doors.
"Can see why you hate his office," the Doctor said quietly aside to her.
Rose simply raised a hand and rubbed his back briefly, a motion of solidarity, in recognition of shared remembrance.
"You signed up then?" She asked, noting the file.
The Doctor sniffed in slight distaste, looking at the file as well. "Look at that, 'special personnel.' Pete thinks I'm special!" He grinned at her.
Rose bumped him with her shoulder. "I was special personnel too. Just means we have no idea what the hell t'do with you just yet, ya wierdo from another dimension."
He looked aside at her before she left him for the other side of the jeep, looking for her smile again and again not finding it. She was amused, certainly, but guarded in a way he was sure she never had been before.
They drove to a few different shops, Rose pointing out some things she thought he might look good in. He rejected the first two outright but found a few suits he thought he could stand in the third, along with some jeans and t-shirts, the selection of which caused Rose to raise her brow at him in surprise. She wondered if he was that different from the Doctor or if it was simply that the Doctor's fashion habits had changed since she'd seen him last.
Her radiant smile and laugh threatened to break through a few times as she sat watching him rip out of dressing rooms in various outfits, some silly, some serious, striking outlandish poses worthy of the snootiest models. A few of them made her swallow as she realised how sexy he was. Still Foxy, she thought, a little amused. She helped him pick out ties and reminded him to get some underclothes, some pajamas and a jacket.
She frowned at the black wool coat he eventually decided on, slimming, cut to a length in between that of his favoured brown coat and the leather jacket she had first known him in.
"What d'you think?" He asked, noting her expression.
Rose snapped out of it. "It'll look good casual or with a suit. It works."
He looked at her a moment longer and she nodded, then plucked at the sleeve to move him toward the checkout.
The Doctor watched with mild curiosity as the figures multiplied on the register, leaning with an arm on the counter. He looked at the the teller, nonplussed, when she asked how they'd be paying.
"Riiight, money," he said, standing up and looking at the woman, slightly perplexed.
Rose handed her credit card over the Doctor and he followed her movements, ending up back focused on her. Rose looked at him, eventually shook her head. "What?"
He opened his mouth to respond and failed.
"That was a lot of digits," he finally managed as they deposited a heap of bags in the back of the jeep.
"Middling," Rose accepted, unperturbed.
The Doctor fidgeted a bit, frowning at the windscreen as they drove off. "I can pay you back with my shiny new Torchwood earnings," he smiled over at her.
Rose shrugged. "Think of it as payback for all your Tardis hospitality."
"Weeell, if we were gonna do that we should really pay her back. That was the Tardis, not me, technically, and-"
"Shut up," Rose stopped him. "It's fine, s'not like I'm spending it on much of anythin' else."
The Doctor wondered at this, at what her life was really like in this universe. Had he seen it all? The pictures she kept were of her family and Mickey. Did Rose have friends, go out on the town? Did she take vacations? It was beginning to look as though she worked, worked, saw her family and worked. Oh, and occasionally marched across parallel worlds to find a useless sod who couldn't even pay for his own knickers.
-#-
The Mansion was best described by the series of not-quite-words the Doctor coined during the not insignificant time it took them to traverse the driveway. "Blimey! They moved to a bigger place?" He asked, eyeing the monstrous structure.
Rose shrugged again. "Pete thought they needed more space what w'Tony an' all."
The Doctor shrugged. He was wearing a new brown suit with a t-shirt. Brand new white plimsolls completed his look and Rose found herself somewhat relieved at his choice of jacket. Just different enough.
Jackie hugged them both for inordinate amounts of time, fussing over them. Pete did not appear to greet them.
"Where's Tony?" Rose inquired, looking about her mother's feet.
Jackie put her hands on her hips. "You upset him, you did, tellin' him you was leaving and never coming back. He's barely left his room since."
Rose sighed and looked up the massive staircase to the second level. She looked aside at the Doctor and he saw a weight on her again, just for a second, before she reached for his hand. A little surprised, he took it after a moment's hesitation and they climbed the stairs.
"You told him you weren't coming back?" He asked, inwardly marvelling at the feel of her fingers in his.
"I didn't want him to be waitin' on me. That's a terrible feeling to hold onto for your life, innit? That someone might come back." She looked at him and he understood her comment not as an accusation, but as a fact he could appreciate from his own experience.
She stopped outside a brightly painted door, her hand parting from the Doctor's. She leaned on the door and tapped at the comm device that never left her wrist, brought it to her lips. "This is Bad Wolf to Crispy Ant, Bad Wolf to Crispy Ant," she smiled over her shoulder at the Doctor and his heart clenched at how near it was to the old Rose, "why've you not reported for rations?"
They heard scrabbling from the other side of the door, a loud thump, followed by a very young voice on the comm. "Wose?"
There was so much hope and longing and love in that mangled version of Rose's name that the Doctor found himself instantly commiserating with the child.
Rose smiled a bit sadly and leaned against the door, staring into the space in front of her as she responded. "I told you to take care of Black Pot, how comes I hear you've been neglecting your mission?"
The Doctor mouthed 'Black Pot' at Rose to which she mouthed back 'Jackie,' making him grin, before Tony answered. "But I missed you!" Came the petulant, heartbreaking reply.
Rose cracked the door in a second and looked in on her brother, smiling bitter sweetly herself at the small boy sitting on the floor in little robot print pajamas. "I missed you too, Crispy Ant."
"WOSE!" The boy launched himself at her and the Doctor look on in wonder as Rose bent down, picked Tony up and spun him about. She was smiling, like she used to, all teeth and high cheek bones, making satisfied noises in her chest like the Doctor remembered her making when they hugged.
Tony looked like he was about to break into a tirade at his sister when he caught sight of the Doctor over her shoulder and promptly buried his face into her hair. "Unknown Enty, unknown enty!" He whispered.
Rose turned to the Doctor and grinned, pressed a kiss into her brother's hair. "Got that, unknown Entity? Identify yourself," she said matter of factly. When the Doctor was slow to answer, grinning stupidly at her as he was, she reached out and poked him hard in the stomach.
"Owohyeah, right, I'm...um, do I have to use a code name?" He asked Rose with distaste on his features.
She tilted her head at him, signifying in no uncertain terms that the question was the stupidest one he had ever asked, considering the name he had chosen, the name he kept hidden and the alias he was fond of.
He shrugged, then looked at her and the child in her arms hard, making decisions that seemed too big for the moment. "I'm John," he decided finally. When Tony looked over his shoulder at the Doctor, he found the man grinning.
"Is he safe?" Tony asked Rose, looking up at her.
She didn't hesitate. "He's the safest," and she handed Tony to the Doctor.
The second Tony reached up to steady himself with small hands around the Doctor's neck, their skin touching, a powerful psychic connection formed. The Doctor hugged Tony to his chest a moment, feeling the bond like an anchor, before pulling back and grinning wildly at the boy again. "Hallo!" He said excitedly.
"Hello!" Tony grinned, "d'you want t'see my spaceships?"
"Ooh, I love spaceships! Can I see your spaceships?" The Doctor replied enthusiastically.
Rose, Tony and the Doctor played with spaceships on the floor of his bedroom for a spell. The Doctor bounced around the sizeable room, making every kind of incredible sound as the toy in his hand blurred about. Tony followed and the two of them fell off the bed and rolled across the floor in fits of laughter, their ships bouncing into one another. Rose acted as controller, calling out routes and warnings and sightseeing information along the lines of 'on your right hand side you will see the ignoble planet Clom' but generally watching the Doctor interact with her brother.
The Doctor collapsed, panting, on the floor next to Rose on the bed, Tony on his chest.
"Wanna see my favwite?" Tony asked, oblivious to how he constricted his new friend's breathing.
"I really do," The Doctor responded breathlessly, throwing a smile up to Rose as Tony dashed to his cupboard. "How do humans keep up with their offspring?" He panted, earning a small laugh from Rose.
Tony plonked back on the Doctor's chest and held up his prized toy. The Doctor froze, his face draining of expression. "That's a spaceship?" He asked quietly.
Tony nodded earnestly. "It's disguised!"
Taking the small blue box gingerly into his hands, the Doctor regarded it thoughtfully a moment before looking up at Rose. "Did your sister make this for you?"
"It's her favwite, too," Tony replied.
Rose nudged the Doctor with her toe, smiled warmly at him before she left the bed in response to her mother's calls. He looked back the child, then the tiny Tardis lovingly constructed from cardboard and painted with water colours. He grinned.
-#-
Rose called the boys down with her comm.
"John and Crispy Ant here, Bad Wolf, ETA two minutes," the Doctor responded. Rose smiled at the comm.
With a loud 'ZOOOM!' the Doctor ran with Tony on outstretched arms into the dining room and beyond into the kitchen, the boy adopting a superman pose. "Sccrrrch!" The Doctor intoned as they stopped before the sink. Rose watched the Doctor murmuring to her brother, the child kneeling on the counter before him, as they lathered their hands with soap, washed and dried them. Hauling Tony up onto his chest, the Doctor grinned at Rose as he walked back into the dining room, depositing the boy on a chair.
"Uh uh, no feet," the Doctor said, getting Tony to sit properly in his booster seat.
He sat next to Rose and beamed in response to her smile.
His first bite into dinner was understandably tentative. "Mmm," he murmured in surprise, looking aside at Rose.
"They got a cook," she whispered in explanation of edibleness of the meal.
The Doctor nodded, examining his forkfull. "Brilliant."
-#-
Rose found the Doctor and Tony asleep on the couch in the room she thought of as the greenhouse for all of its windows. The boy was curled up at the Doctor's side, the Doctor was stretched out, a hand hanging over the couch with the tiny Tardis clutched in it, the other arm slung over Tony. She stared down at the two of them feeling easier than she could remember feeling in years. Reaching down, she brushed the Doctor's hair before gripping a hunk of it and giving it a tug.
He awoke with a sharp inhalation and stared up at Rose in confusion before looking down at the small human. He looked back up at her. "Fell asleep."
"Can't get nothin' past you," Rose teased.
Groaning a little, the Doctor gripped Tony in one arm and sat them both up and off the couch. They walked from the room through the dark of the rest of the mansion, up the stairs and to his room. Laying him on the bed, the Doctor stepped aside and let Rose change him back into his robot pajamas. Sitting beside the child, Rose leaned down and kissed his forehead, let her face linger above her brothers a minute before she withdrew.
The Doctor flicked off the light and Rose closed the door behind them. Their shoulders touched as they walked down the stairs.
-#-
Rose gave the Doctor a long hard look before she left him with Peter for a proper tour of Torchwood's facilities. He grinned in return, not wanting her to worry about him.
"I'll find ya for lunch, yeah?" She asked.
"Sounds good," he murmured.
He watched her disappear into the lift before turning to Peter. "Bring it on, Blue Turtle."
"You don't have to call me that," the young man replied, indicating he'd prefer to be called anything but.
The Doctor sniffed and looked around, following behind Peter and half listening to him. Rose had left him in her junior's care because, as she bluntly put it, she had more important things to do. Peter got the Doctor's biometrics encoded at the front desk so he could do the hand-slidey-door-openy trick, as the Doctor called it.
They went beyond what looked like metal detectors, but which Peter explained actually checked for a number of things, the least of which was not whether or not you were human. Upon saying this, Peter lost the Doctor as he went back to look at the metal tubes, his glasses perched on his nose. He wondered, then, just how human his physiology was.
A second set of offices saw the Doctor introduced to the Comm People and he was handed a device similar to Rose's. He raised a brow at it's inelegant design and failed to slip it onto his wrist.
"Did you come through from another universe, John? Like Bad Wolf did?" Peter asked in a quiet moment on the lift. He looked hesitantly at the Doctor who regarded him closely for a moment.
"Seems to me...Bad Wolf," the Doctor said the codename with some distaste, "keeps pretty mum about a lot of things, am I wrong?"
Peter swallowed and nodded. The Doctor smiled and looked at the roof, "do you always call her Bad Wolf?" He asked, artlessly avoiding the original question.
"Of course. What do you call her?" Peter asked, looking perplexed as they stepped from the lift.
"Rose," the Doctor said simply, enjoying the feel of the name on his lips. Peter looked aside at the Doctor like he was mad. "What?"
"It's just...she stopped an invasion by these...Sycorax things when she first got here, single handedly, beamed onto their ship right from the Tower. Rumour has it she got into a sword fight for the planet n' won. We were scrambling, no way we could get our weapons systems online in time to stop them. She saved the planet. Everyone..." Peter shook his head, "we just started calling her Bad Wolf after that. I'm not sure who started it."
The Doctor grinned at him and they carried on. There were several floors all with similar layouts, big open affairs with massive computer banks lining their walls. There was Chem Division, full of bench tops and fume hoods with concoctions bubbling away. Tech spanned no less than three floors while Bio had two. He danced around like a kid in a candy store, looking at everything and peppering people with questions.
On the Second floor of Tech, Peter pointed to a blank stretch of wall in the corner. "That's Bad Wolf's, she calls it her 'Shed' but she doesn't get to it much." While he was shown around the rest of the Tech two with all of its exciting diversions, the Doctor's eyes kept returning to that blank stretch of wall and wondering.
Noon came and went. Peter somewhat awkwardly offered to show the Doctor to the mess and have lunch with him. The Doctor had to fish a bent up coat hanger, a sock, a handful of what looked marbles and a map of the London underground out of his coat pockets before he could locate the 40 quid Rose had lent him and pay for lunch. Half of him listened as Peter talked about the project he was working on, half of him wondered what had kept Rose.
After lunch, Peter showed the Doctor around the top floors. This was a quicker tour, owing to the fact that these were the floors where business happened. Dry meetings and appointments and conference calls taking place in dry offices with dull office furniture.
The Doctor had to smile when they passed Rose's office, notable by the black and gold placard which read 'Bad Wolf'. Peter motioned for them to be quiet on the next floor, one shy of Pete's floor, and they walked past several meeting rooms which all seemed to be crammed. Good insulation, The Doctor thought, noting that none of the bustle and conversation of any of them reached their ears.
They were turning back down the long hall when one of the doors opened beside them and the Doctor heard Rose's voice. "You can't send the Hercules probe there, s'a Class P planet! They've got rights." She sounded exasperated.
"Says who?" A gruff voice responded.
"Says me," Rose said without missing a beat, "says-" But she was cut off as the door closed.
The Doctor stepped into the elevator with Pete and the woman who had exited Rose's meeting, his eyes still on the door he had heard her through. He wondered how long she had been in that meeting, wondered what planet they were talking about, wondered if Rose spent most of her days trying to convince the human race that it didn't own the universe.
-#-
Six o'clock found the Doctor sitting alone at Peter's desk in Tech two, everyone else having gone home for the evening. He had pulled apart his comm device completely and, glasses on, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth, was soldering some bits onto its circuit board.
Rose approached silently, having forgone the lift to take the stairs like she often did. She paused and looked at the Doctor, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled to his elbows, alone in the vast space of Tech two, and felt guilty.
He only knew she was there when she let her footfalls become audible. He looked up and smiled, such a Doctor smile it made her heart ache after the long day. Rose sat down and breathed in deeply, exhaled. They regarded one another silently.
Truth was, she preferred dimension jumping, long hauls on foot and generally defying death and the odds to the day to day monotony that Torchwood could be. She would have preferred to have had lunch with the Doctor, too.
"Sorry I missed our date," she said, running a hand through her blonde locks.
Reaching out, an easy smile on his lips, the Doctor tugged at the collar of her white dress shirt, "you're the boss, had very important boss things to do, I imagine."
She smiled tiredly. "Yeah, like keeping this lot from blowing things up. What kind of a world is it where I trust you on your own more'n them," she flicked her eyes skyward, indicating the top brass of Torchwood. At the thought, she looked down at the comm device which lay in pieces on the workbench.
The Doctor looked at it likewise, then at Rose's face as she picked up the circuit board to examine it, waiting for a tongue lashing.
"Yeah, first thing I did when I got mine was remove the auto-tracking, too." She let it fall back onto the table with a clatter and they shared another smile. "You should put in a reroute though, to activate it when it's stationary, yeah? Then Torchwood'll get the signal if you're unconscious."
The Doctor looked down at the device, then at the one on Rose's wrist as she stood up and walked away from him. He turned in his chair, then rose to follow when he saw her heading toward the unmarked corner.
"So, of all the things Peter showed me today, he didn't seem to have the faintest idea where I'd actually be working..." the Doctor trailed off as he came to stand beside Rose, staring at the empty wall. "Pete happen to mention to you where he wanted me?"
Rose smiled looking at the wall. "Pete knows you'll gravitate some place useful, just like I did." She looked aside at him. "This is my Shed."
"So I heard," he replied softly.
Rose stepped up to the wall and slid her hand along a patch that was at her chest height. Cracks appeared in the outline of a door before the surface shifted aside and she stepped through, the Doctor following her. His eyes lit up and his jaw dropped open when he saw the room. Bits of alien tech littered shelves 12 feet high. Soft blipping, whirring and clicking noises were emanating from every corner. Some of it was dangerous, some practical from a human standpoint, some simply art. All of it was beautiful in some way to the Doctor. A grin drifted across his face when he realised that Rose must have thought so too. He looked aside at her.
Rose stood, arms crossed in front of her chest, a not quite smile threatening her lips and cavorting in her eyes. "Callin' this the Shed, you know, seemed appropriate, mostly just come in here t'tinker...only, don't have much time for it these days. Don't suppose you'd like to hang your shingle out here?" The insane glint in his eye and matching grin were rewarding to her. For the first time, Rose wondered if maybe it would be possible to make the Doctor happy somewhere stationary.
The Doctor's grin faded to just his trademark smile and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Wouldn't want to take over your space, seem to be doing a lot of that lately."
She considered him for a second, then gave the room a quick rounding glance before returning to his face. "I like you in my space." A quick smile, then.
He grinned again and was off, glasses on, a not so sonic screwdriver procured form his pocket, tasting bits of metal, peering into tubes, blowing off dust. Rose let herself watch him, for just a minute and for just a minute she pretended this was years ago, he was the same man and she was the same girl. But just for minute.
They ate fish and chips on the steps of the walkway outside her apartment late that night while he told her about everything he'd seen at Torchwood. While he babbled, Rose just listened, her eyes following his gestures, with a soft smile almost kissing her lips.
