Disclaimer: BBC owns the rights to everything recognisable in connection to Doctor Who. And seeing how it includes even the Police not owning the rights to their phone boxes anymore, what is the chance that I could actually have rights to anything DW related?
Summary: An impromptu trip inspired by Rose's idea leads to topics the Doctor never quite expected. Even though he probably should. Meant to take place sometime after The Idiot's Lantern, so events up to that episode might be mentioned in passing.
A/N: This is one of a few stories I have written a few years ago and published elsewhere, under a different penname, intending for them to be a warm-up before taking part in a writing project and experimenting a bit with my writing style. The project never took off and I decided that it might be as good a time as any to decide to add those stories to the rest of them for convenience's sake if nothing else.
Over the Moon
A Small Misstep
Rose sighed contentedly as she clung to her full shopping bags when she entered the TARDIS. Behind her trudged the Doctor, putting the 'Time Lords don't sulk' claim to very serious doubt.
"I just don't understand," she voiced closing the door.
"With you being a human, we might as well write it off as a genetic predisposition."
"Oi!"
"Right. What was it in particular that you found yourself not understanding?"
"You don't have to make it sound like that, you know. I just don't know how you can be this upset about coming here when it was you who proposed the destination in the first place."
"What I did, was say 'I can't believe you never had a puiuvi fruit, Rose. They are almost as good as bananas. Let's go get some. I know a really nice place where you can get great puiuvi smoothies too.' I most certainly did not suggest we hit the market afterwards so you can buy your weight in clothes."
"I didn't buy that much."
"Oh, yes, you did. And the fabrics on Krever are widely known for being delicate and very, very light."
"I needed some wardrobe change anyway."
He blinked as if the concept of wardrobe change was abstract to him. Then again, considering the only time she remembered him changing his style was as a result of his whole body changing first, it might have very well been.
"And that was the reason you decided to equip yourself with a huge amount of clothes made of fabric that will have you freezing to death in about ninety percent of places we are likely to visit, including London?"
"So you admit I will be able to wear them in the remaining ten percent of places?" she grinned him. "It's not like those were expensive anyway. Or are you worried we will run out of space in that wonderful, dimensionally transcendent wardrobe?"
She certainly knew how to corner him, the Doctor decided, as a melodic telepathic song let him know in no uncertain terms that the TARDIS would be listening to his response very carefully. His girls teaming up against him was just unfair.
"Next stop," he grumbled avoiding the answer, "will be somewhere where the clothing shops don't cater to humans."
"Oi! How's that fair? Can't a girl buy herself a new thing or two?"
"Try couple dozen."
"It's not that bad."
"Precisely three and five sixth of a dozen."
"Five sixth?"
"Forty six items of clothing and a scarf."
Rose blinked. "How come you aren't counting the scarf?"
"Scarves are something else, trust me, I would know."
She looked at him doubtfully. "If you say so. And out of curiosity, you personally told me how humans spread among the stars. How exactly are you planning to find somewhere without air poisonous to me or humans being shot on sight where they won't have a few things for humans?"
"Rose, you disappoint me. Not only do you forget that the TARDIS can travel anywhen, but you even forget the technological level of your own time. No human colonies all over the space in twenty first century, remember? And we could go back to before any progress with space exploration, even Galileo, let alone the Moon landing." To his surprise, Rose sighed at that. "What?"
"Moon landing. Mum told me how exciting it was when it happened. She was just a kid but she still knew something big was going on. Even the toy choices changed from western style to space related. I wish I could be there, then, to see it all too."
"Well then, why didn't you say something? Let's go!"
"What happened to your plans of finding somewhere without humans?"
"The stop after that."
"Right," she allowed doubtfully, but he was already throwing some switches on the console.
A couple of minutes later, with one final shake, the TARDIS landed and Rose skipped to the door. While with the Doctor's track record one could never be completely sure they were in the right place, there still was some underlying expectation that he actually got it right. After all, he did every, oh, two times out of three.
That was why Rose blinked confusedly when the opening the door revealed nothing. Well, perhaps nothing wasn't the best way to put it. Still, bare rock stretching to the horizon, no movement, no life, no atmosphere, no nothing, was pushing it, even by their standards.
"Doctor, are you sure we're where we were supposed to be? This place looks rather on the empty side. I-" she broke off as she suddenly registered that up in the sky she could see something very familiar. Perhaps not in the 'seen it like this often' sense, but still. The Doctor seemed not to notice her sudden muteness as he joined her in the door.
"Nah, seems about right. I just brought us a couple minutes early. Wouldn't do to have our arrival drawing attention. Especially with a well documented event like this."
"Nasty paradox?" she guessed.
"To say the least. No, don't step out. Footsteps take forever to disappear when there is no atmosphere and humans will soon be staring at the Moon surface looking for those. Not to mention, you don't want to annoy the TARDIS by forcing her to pointlessly extend her protective fields, do you?"
"Nope," she grinned in agreement. "No annoying the only being capable of still keeping you in check."
"Oi!" he protested before looking up. "Oh. There, Rose, see? There they are."
True to his word, the American landing module was slowly descending from the sky. Despite Rose knowing pretty well how it went, she still held her breath until it finally settled safely on the Moon surface.
"Wow," she whispered.
"Yes, pretty impressive for humans in this time, isn't it?"
"Oh come on, what is it with you and all those qualifiers?"
"Well, you have to admit, that's nothing compared to what humans do in, say, forty seventh century. And for once I don't mean cranberry chips. I still don't know why you like them so much."
"They are chips and they are pink. What's not to like? But that wasn't what I meant."
"What, you just like the idea of genetically hybridised potatoes?"
Rose glared. "Don't try to change the topic. You can go on for hours about how amazing that blue cat-thing playing with a ball of yarn was-"
"That was a tirgash."
"Whatever. But you feel obliged to point out it's impressive for humans. In this time."
"Well, you can't deny that the civilisations in the universe aren't all on the same level of development-"
"And I look pretty for a human too, huh?"
He looked startled. "Why would-? Well, I'm sure you realise that every species has its own beauty canons. Even within species those change from time to time. Remember those looks your hair got when I took you to the premiere of Aristophanes's 'Wasps'? So it speaks to reason that when one says someone is pretty, they refer to the standards of specific species."
She didn't answer, looking with strange determination to Armstrong and Aldrin. But when a sniff escaped her, she turned and walked quickly inside.
"Rose? Rose!" the Doctor tried calling after her as she crossed the console room and disappeared in the corridor. "What is it? Rose?"
She never even slowed down. He looked outside helplessly and then back to the corridor. If she didn't return, she'd miss most of what she wanted to see. Unless, of course, he put them outside of this timestream until he managed to resolve the situation. He sighed. The men outside were preoccupied and with no air the sound would hardly carry anyway. He closed the door, went to the console and started the dematerialisation sequence.
Outside, a wind-like dimensional disturbance shifted through the area, playing with the freshly planted flag.
TBC