The moment Rose steps out of the TARDIS, she sees the spectacular sunset framing the outcrop. Waves crash heavily against the rocks as if seeking out the closely-packed rainbow houses above. She decides she's glad that she wore proper running shoes. There's no way that something that looks this utterly perfect on the surface isn't going to end with them running for their lives.
"We don't always run into trouble," the Doctor says when she voices her feeling of foreboding.
"Name me one place we've been in the last few months where our lives haven't been at risk," Rose challenges.
"Well, there was... and then there was that place... Oh! When we visited your mother!" He looks pleased with himself.
Rose snorts. "Yeah right. That so doesn't count. She might like you better these days, but you still take your life in your hands every time you go within arm's length of my Mum."
The Doctor brings his hand up to his cheek, as if he can still feel the echoes of the Jackie Tyler Slap of Doom. "Yeah, well, maybe there hasn't been anywhere, then. But that just means that we're due for a break. Look at that nice little coastal town. Perfect place for a spot of relaxation, eh?"
Rose thinks that the only way he could have jinxed it any more obviously than that would have been to explicitly say that 'nothing can possibly go wrong'. She bends down and tightens her shoelaces, wondering whether she should think about stretching as well.
Whoever said that curiosity killed the cat would have immediately revised the saying if they ever met the Doctor. Rose has known a lot of cats in her time, including cat-people. None of them have anything on him. Or on her either, really, but Rose denies that fervently every time the Doctor tries to claim as much.
"I just want to check things out," the Doctor says. He uses the sonic screwdriver to break into what he assures her is an empty house on the outskirts of the little village. "Just to... you know... check things out."
"Right," she draws out the word. "You didn't bring us here on purpose, did you." She doesn't even phrase it as a question.
The Doctor hesitates. "I may have been aiming for ancient Rome, not the southern coastline of Italy in the mid-22nd century," he grudgingly admits. "But hey, at least it's the same country."
Rose often mocks him for being a terrible driver; she finds it hilarious (and somewhat comforting) that he, the self-proclaimed most brilliant man in the universe, didn't successfully get through all of his schooling either. However, to be fair, Rose isn't so blind that she hasn't picked up on the fact that whenever they end up somewhere other than where he intended, it's usually the exact time or place that they need to be to save the world or some such. The TARDIS obviously has more of a say in the destination than the Doctor will admit. Right now, she's clearly brought them here on purpose because something's wrong.
Even though Rose says as much, it doesn't stop the Doctor from practically bounding into the house. Well, Rose isn't really surprised. He wouldn't be the Doctor if he let a bit of logic slow him down. Rose thinks that they wouldn't be in danger half as often if he didn't walk about as if he's indestructible. Rose thrives on the constant peril, but she's already lost the Doctor once and isn't keen to go through that again anytime soon; she'd miss that hair.
Rose follows him into the house despite her exasperation. Knowing that something's about to go drastically wrong at any second, she's not letting him out of her sight.
The whole place creaks ominously as they shift about inside it. He's dragged them into a house perched on the very edge of a sheer cliff and the place is clearly unstable. And he calls her jeopardy-friendly?
"Blah," the Doctor says, grimacing. "Can you taste that? There's something tangy in the air."
The Doctor walks over to one of the windows overlooking the ocean and pushes it open. The bits of crusted salt that had caught around the edges of the window since it was last opened are caught in the breeze and scattered across the wooden floor at their feet.
"Yep," he says. "Definitely not a frequency of taste you'd usually find on Earth. It's even stronger out there, too."
"Don't –" Rose starts, even as he's leaning half his body out the window.
The whole house shifts. And keeps on shifting.
The next thing Rose knows, the Doctor's grabbing her hand and yanking her out the front door of the house without even breaking his stride. With a groaning sound and a large crack, the house splinters mere moments after they clear the doorway. Two thirds of it (the part they'd just been standing in, of course) follows a shower of rocks over the edge all the way down into the sea, with the rest of the place collapsing to the ground in broken shards of timber.
Rose gapes, then turns to the Doctor. "You just had to go out the window, didn't you?"
"It wasn't just me!" the Doctor defends. "If the place had been structurally sound, it would have taken several tonnes of pressure to do that. Are you saying I weigh several tonnes? Look at me. I'm perfectly slim, don't you think? In fact, if I was any lighter I'd float away."
"Yeah, you're definitely full of hot air," Rose mutters.
The Doctor continues, not having heard her. "Anyway, I only gave the place a little push. Unintentionally, mind. It's not as if I looked at the house and thought, 'You know, that would look better at the bottom of the ocean, so I should do something about that.' It would have fallen on its own, given time, and then someone might have been in danger." As opposed to the two of them, Rose thinks wryly, though she supposes that nearly falling off a cliff onto the jagged rocks below actually rates fairly low on their danger scale, all things considered.
"Tofans are responsible for the house falling down, not me," the Doctor concludes solemnly.
"Who?" Rose says.
"Tofans," the Doctor repeats, as if it will suddenly mean something to her the second time around. She stares blankly. "They're like termites," the Doctor explains, "if termites were purple, more intelligent, thirty times bigger, came from the other side of this galaxy, and ate rock instead of wood. Actually, they're not all that much like termites at all, now that I come to think about it."
Rose looks down at the rocky ground beneath them. "All right. So, just to be clear, these things've been chompin' away at this whole little island place we're standin' on, so it could give way at any minute?"
The Doctor looks around speculatively, as if the question were merely academic. "It's possible that the Tofans have only just started eating away at it. That taste is their residue, and it's only really strong around the outside edge."
Rose looks at the edge in question, just feet away, and isn't reassured.
"Still, no sense in taking that chance. We have to get everyone off the island immediately," the Doctor says. He goes to knock on the door of the well-lit house next to the remains of the ruined property.
"Ah, no. Don't do that!" Rose warns, and this time he actually hears her in time to stop.
"We have to evacuate them," the Doctor insists.
"I know," Rose says, "but this is a little village where everyone probably knows everyone. If some stranger comes knockin' on their doors in the dark tellin' them to get out of their houses, they'll be terrified. If we're very lucky, we'll be locked up. If our luck goes the way it usually does, though, then it's not gonna matter that we didn't go over the edge with the house, 'cause they'll just toss us after it anyway."
"Humans," the Doctor sighs. "You do tend to do silly things when you're scared."
"Oi!" Rose protests. "Not me, thanks."
"No. You're the exception," the Doctor concedes. He says it in a way that makes it obvious that he means that she's extraordinary. She's glad that her slight blush is hidden by the darkness.
"Still, we can't just leave them," the Doctor says.
"Well, maybe... My Mum dated this fisherman bloke one time," Rose says. Even in the near-dark, their faces barely lit by the lights inside the houses around them, she catches the Doctor's half-smirk and hopes that he can see her glare in return. "We stayed at his place down on the coast for a week. Since the houses were all close to the ocean and they got a lot of storms and stuff, they had this big siren thingy that went off and told them to evacuate."
The Doctor grins. "Rose Tyler, have I ever told you that you're a genius?"
"Not nearly often enough," she teases.
"I'll say it every day from now on, then," he promises.
She beams.
It doesn't take them long to find the tiny local weather station. Typically, the Doctor is not particularly sneaky about the whole breaking-in thing, and they're caught setting off the siren ("I hate guns," the Doctor remarks, holding his hands up peaceably as the two men train their weapons on them). While the men are distracted by the ensuing panic, though, the Doctor and Rose manage to make it out of the building and lose the men in the crowd of people speedily dragging their loved ones and their cherished possessions out of the village.
The Doctor breaks into laughter as he runs. High on their (relative) success, Rose joins in.
They watch to make sure everyone makes it off the rocky outcrop and onto more stable land. It turns out that there's a fortified building on the mainland that serves as the evacuation point for the whole village. Rose and the Doctor eye the locals apprehensively from a distance, noting how angry they look at being hauled out of their homes with no one able to tell them why.
"We'll still have to explain it," Rose says, sounding about as certain that that's a good idea as she feels.
There's a shout as one of the men who was chasing after them earlier spots them. Rose is surprised he can see them at all, let alone recognise them, in the dark.
"How about we just leave them a note," the Doctor suggests hurriedly, as the two of them find each other's hands and dash off towards the TARDIS.
Rose knows that the two of them have guns aimed at their backs the whole way back to the ship. She's also well aware that they nearly died once already today, and that they're really probably starting to push their luck.
Still, she wouldn't trade this life in for anything. The risk is half the fun, and there's nothing she loves more than the two of them running for their lives together.
~FIN~