In this AU, a mentally and emotionally badly damaged Rose is under the Eighth's care...plus the actions of the TARDIS in trying to get an unwilling Rose back to her Doctor's Pinstriped Eleventh Form may have done more damage than anyone can heal...and the prognosis does not look good. To even try, Eight needs a form of himself that knows what is going on, but which isn't Eleven. He, his version of the TARDIS and Rose's Beauty must seek out the 12th.

Okay, people, please remember, War Doctor is the actual 9th, Big Ears is Ten...think you can count on your own from here?

00

Second Hand Companion

Rehomed

"Found Pinstripes and chucks? I'm going to my TARDIS, please don't tell him I'm here." She told the older TARDIS. I want to stay with Eight. Safe, dependable, reliable, wouldn't hurt a flea."

The ship seemed to disapprove. Her daughter...sort of daughter, wasn't any happier when Rose entered her console room.

"I did the metacrisis thing, I did the watching him age and die thing, I did the outliving every intelligent lifeform on that Earth thing, I did the wandering the multiverse thing, I've done the 'abandoned by Eleven four times' thing, I've got you and I'm not willing to do it again, any of it. I've done my bit." She snapped. "He's not a real Doctor, real Doctors don't abuse people. I want to stay with a real Doctor...Eight will do nicely."

The younger ship, being the ship bonded to Rose, subsided, speaking to this universe's version of Eight's version of her dam on another level. Rose was afraid of the pinstriped one now, afraid to trust and felt that the pain he'd put her through would only be repeated should he ever get the chance. The younger TARDIS knew Rose should to go back to Eleven but if her bonded one was that afraid of any version of the Doctor...the ships could not force the issue: Her young ship would not and the elder one could not. Instead, both of them spoke to the Pinstriped one's version of the old TARDIS...and the old ship wasn't happy with the notion that Rose thought that any version of the Doctor had hurt her on purpose, but she understood that for Rose, blow after blow after blow, all originating from someone she loved as deeply as she did the Doctor had broken something in the young woman and none of the ships were entirely certain it could be healed. They did know that the pinstriped one had the best chance to be able to do it, if it could be done, because that version had dealt the damage to start with. Eight confirmed this, he'd tried, but she considered him 'safe'.

There was a room for his Tenth form in her mind, which was very nearly a shrine. A place of meditation on a love that could have been, that made his hearts ache with the strong cord frayed at the end where a lifebond had been forming and had been ripped away before it could finish. It showed signs of imperfect mending a few times, trying first to attach to pinstripes, then to the bow-tied one during a brief meeting when she'd found him, leaving her heart and emotions open to him...that was the day she first began to try to erect pathetic defenses from him, when he'd turned her away. The metacrisis had too much human in him...too much 'Donna' to need her and been unwilling to bond with her...he'd kept his promise to stay with her, but with every passing year that she remained the same and he aged, he had grown more distant.

Eights were empathic to the point of being literally unable to harm an innocent...which Rose most definitely was. Her ability to love him was remarkable but just this once she wanted to be with a self of his that she knew wasn't going to hurt her. His strong empathy and nearly as strong other mental abilities had found no closed doors in her mind the few times she'd invited him in. He'd seen a few that had Eleven's image inside a red circle with a diagonal mauve line across him, but no other form was barred from any memories. One door had a sign that read 'Enter At Your Own Risk: The owner of this mind does not enter this room...if you get stuck, not my fault.' He had proceeded, carefully, and found the things that made Rose unwilling to get within a TARDISshot of his Eleventh body. All of them could be described with the same word. Betrayal.

On his part, every one of them, repeated abandonment and on one occasion, he'd done something very cruel to her on the emotional level from which she still had lasting damage. Little wonder she wanted nothing to do with that self. He called his ship in and let her look, something only Rose's Beauty had done until now, but his TARDIS was keyed to Rose's shields, he found, surprising him. Rose's mind labeled and identified his ship as 'Sister' in one regard and 'Kin' in another. His ship had not been surprised, but then all of them also refused to explain it.

"If I had to break my Promise, did it have to be multiple times and with her?" He muttered.

She did make the sort of 'command' decision that only she could make and survive...Rose would have beaten the crap out of anyone else, except Beauty and the young ship wouldn't damage her bond with Rose by doing such a thing to begin with. Rose had a great many Doctor generated trust issues and the young ship wasn't about to add more. Her mother understood but insisted it was needed.

The older version of the Eighth's ship yanked the Eleventh's pinstriped ass into Rose's mind and made him take a good long look at just why Rose didn't trust him or want him anywhere near her.

"IF she is to heal, you must do it. She stays with Eight because of his empathy...a gift common in the human population. She knows he won't hurt her so she considers that form 'safe' and 'reliable'. The Elder Doctor's ship told him.

The younger ship pointed out the frayed end of the lifebond that had tried to attach. "You're killing Rose. Either let her go and allow Eight to attach the bond years before your tenure so that it will be there already when you find her, or attach it yourself. Before she gets to my console room...she has alarms set up in her mind to warn her of this yous presence...she's about to haul arse out of your reach. She thinks you've attacked her. I told mother bringing this you in here was a bad idea."

The two older TARDIS tried to get the special shield up that could trap an escaping lifeform within them. Eight's failed, Eleven's did not. Her Daughter reported this to Rose and shuddered at the cold eyes that the young woman turned to the front doors. Those doors vanished at the silent order. A few flicks had the ground shields up and then the ones usually only used in space. Nothing was getting in. She might be a prisoner, and her own ship far smaller than the one trapping her, but she had food-stores good for decades and room enough to manage with.

"Block calls, no matter who they are from. I've just been subjected to a mental rape by someone I used to trust. Well...I hope it was worth it for her. She won't be getting in again." She told Beauty, speaking of the oldest of the older ships. She kneed the Eleventh's mental form in the balls so hard it knocked his physical form to his knees clutching his crotch, when his mind slammed back into his own head. Separate Elder mum from younger mum and get inside younger mum...and make sure she has no outer door...but only if Eight is in her and Eleven isn't."

"What did you do?" Eight asked him sharply, "Her TARDIS just absorbed her outer door." His own explained and told him to get his rump in her...the younger one had just gotten an odd set of orders from Rose and he was needed in his own console room.

"Idiot, that self, seriously, he's an utter moron. I refuse to accept that self as set in stone, if I have to, I'll split myself just to make a new one." He told her, closing her door behind him, not seeing her absorb it as the younger one had done. His own gave a weird lurch as the younger one made a short, spacial hop to the other side of Eleven's console room and dematerialized, reappearing inside the Eighth's ship. "What the..." He noted his own outer door was missing about the same time that Rose's ship put her's back.

He didn't say a word, grateful she wasn't blaming him, when he walked into the young woman's ship and saw her staring at nothing with a lost expression. He just took her into his arms and pulled her in tight and close. He felt second hand the sense of violation she felt and shuddered. No wonder she'd crotched moron-him, he thought as the young woman began to shiver. He mentally picked up the frayed end of the bond and attached it to this himself. Eleven was still going to be the one to have to heal her fully, but she couldn't live in the state she was in, either...and the bond would help to stabilize her mind. She didn't seem to notice and that's when he realized that her mind had almost completely withdrawn behind formidable defenses.

He began to swear, turning the air mauve with his language choices.

Out in the older ship's console room, the elder self was doing much the same. First from pain, then from the realization that Rose thought he was a threat to her...to the point she'd defended herself at his presence...and then again, when the memory of Eight's understanding of her mind's withdraw behind diamond hard shields...with what looked like a bristling array of defensive weaponry on the shields surface, ready to take him out.

"Get us out of here. Seriously, she needs more aide than I can give her. She needs one that understands the things that happened that I'm not allowed to see unless I'm in her mind...and can't remember once I leave it. She absolutely will not accept it from the pinstriped self. Find the one after and get us to that me."

Eleven watched Eight's ship vanish with haste, his own ship was still shocked at Rose's response to the presence of her pilot's mind...she had felt the powerful shields come up in the blonde's mind and shove her out along with him, with a similar blow across imaginary tits. It hurt just as much when she realized she'd gone too far. Rose had lumped her in with her unstable pilot and the ship had watched helplessly as the trust she had enjoyed even when Rose had wanted nothing to do with the Eleventh form of the Doctor, fell away. She could not reenter through those kinds of defenses without destroying Rose's mind in the process of breaking through them.

Rose was truly remarkable, though, she mused, feeling from the past that she was still willing to trust the past version of herself as well as the next one...and knew Rose blamed Eleven's unstable mind for the ship's own misbehavior. She had no choice, though, not now. She dropped the shields containing Eight's version of herself as well as the younger ship, and let them go.

~12~

Eight's version pegged the Twelth when that self was in a self-imposed isolation atop a flat, hard cloud, wardrobe room ladder dropped to the ground for grocery runs but otherwise not leaving his version of the TARDIS, she materialized a scant six inches from his very started older form and Eight stuck his head out. "Twelve?"

"Yes."

"Do you have the memory of when Rose kneed us in the crotch while we were in pinstripes?"

"Yes, yes I do." Pain shone in his eyes clearly, that and sorrow. He'd had plenty of people afraid of him, but never before had he frightened someone who knew him well and whom he loved.

"I've got that her in here. I can only do so much without certain knowledge of why she's terrified of that self and then that self's SHIP did something stupid enough to make poor Rose stop trusting her too, enough that I can't allow him to try and heal her. You're the next best self for that."

"Yeah, I remember. Poor Rose." Twelve murmured, easing into Eight's ship and the grand old Gothic desktop he'd not had in ages. "I should have allowed her to stay when she was popping all over the multiverse, looking for last me, I suppose. But it would have re-written the wrong things."

"Ah, this is the her that outlived a, if I understand correctly, a metacrisis we will have?"

"Oh, oh dear, that's not good. Is she not aging?"

"No." And then Eight told him about the badly abused lifebond, of attaching it to himself although since he was a much younger self, even though that had it's own problems, in potential, to prevent her dropping into a catatonic state, that he, Eighth told Twelve, wasn't at all sure he could get her out of. It had been difficult enough getting her to lower her defenses enough to let the bond connect properly this time, mending as it did so. "So, let's find she's more willing to let your us near her than she is the one before you. I can't stay, after all. All of this is borrowed time for me."

"Yeah, it is." Twelve made sure he'd located the bond first and that it was secured in this self, then he took care that she saw him first, then approached her with a great deal of gentle care.

She let him, though the wary way she watched him hurt. He realized she thought he was going to send her back to last him, again.

"No, Rose Tyler. Not again. Not this time, alone, this time, taking a bit of a break from running just now, see? Before, there would have been some rather dangerous re-writes and universal collapse, when avoidable, should be. Avoided, that is."

It took a moment, but when she relaxed it was obvious...though there was still a wary barrier up against his ship. It wasn't the warzone array he'd last seen, but he was dead sure it would hold until she got that up by the sorrow the TARDIS gave off.

Brought it on yourself, she is fragile just now.

I know. She replied, watching as he drew Rose into his arms, cradling her gently.

Behind them, the Eighth departed to his own time and place and though she stiffened, flinching a bit as her best fit left, she stayed where she was and within the circle of the arms of the New, new Doctor the younger version had brought her to...the older one knew damned well that if she thought she could get away with it, she'd have followed Eight.

"I swear I will not send you back to last me, alright? I don't remember ever seeing you again until right now, after that incident, so relax okay? I don't sense any hidden memories either, I know when those are present, I just let them be, is all...and there aren't any."

He waited far more patiently that he thought he could, but when her body went limp with relief it wasn't just a little. It had him scrambling to catch her before she hit the floor...and that's when he remembered how long she'd been awake. Human plus she might be, but she still needed more sleep than he did by a good measure...and she hadn't gotten any. By the time he had her stabilized and secured his arms, Rose was sound asleep.

"No wonder she had to be sure...she's had no sleep in half of one of my sleep cycles...a good fifty hours" He told his ship. "Once she decided to trust this me, she relaxed and you can see the result: She's out cold. I'm putting her in my room, though. So just do the best you can to blend our styles in there, will you? Not quite willing to let her out of my sight...or out of arm's reach, for that matter." He sighed, then added plaintively, "I've missed her so much."

~ Resurgence ~

"Retired. You? Pull the other one, Doctor...that one hasn't bells, it's got self-playing kettledrums." She told him, not moving from where she was, curled up next to him on the jump-seat...the TARDIS had put it back for her since it was her favorite place to sit and he winced at the comment.

"Bit of, um, burnout." Sure, he'd told the Ponds and River that he lied a lot, but not now. Not with trust so very fragile for him as it was in Rose now. Regaining trust once you lost it require absolute honesty and she knew him well enough to see right through him anyway. That was seriously saying something because no one else had ever made the effort to love him that much. "Last time was after I lost Ace when I was Seven, so it's, well...overdue, I suppose."

"I wish I could claim I'm surprised." She told him seriously. "But seriously, do we have to do the relaxing bit here?"

"Where were you thinking?"

"Oh, not just where and when, but what...how about we get us a spot on the new 'couples' version of 'Survivor' that ABC is doing? My era, but it's in America...well, ABC is, they're doing this one in the Southern Pacific Basin on one of the islands down there. We'd never have an easier...or more artificial...adventure. Of course, we'd also be on television...but it's worth it."

He just looked at her. "Dunno, all our experience, it's almost cheating. They're only humans, after all."

"But?"

"I said almost and if that's what you want to do and where you want to go...while still taking it easy on me, sure. Why not? Could be we'll get a typhoon, though."

"So what if we do? We'll have everyone go into one camp have her raise her shields and if you want, bring them all inside. Of course, we'd get disqualified if we do it that way cuz nobody will vote us out. Until or unless that happens, though, they always allow for one set of late arrivals, so you're covered."

"Oi!"

"Well, is not your fault that being one of the lousiest navigators I've ever run across is one of the things that stays. Not just from body to body, but from universe to universe as well...a really strong trait, that. Just sayin'." But she was grinning at up at him with her eyes alight with mischief. "But then, there's another way we could probably do it.

He smiled down at her, just shook his head as he reached out and drew her close. "Rose, Rose, Rosmhmm." He mumbled her name the last time because he'd just buried his face in her hair. It was something that River had hated but Rose couldn't get enough of. She loved him breathing her in. After a moment she shifted so she could lay her head between his hearts without moving his face from her hair, slid both arms around his waist and did something of a vertical cuddle...this him let her, craving it himself.

~ Survivor Island ~

~ Couples Competition ~

They got themselves added as contestants easily enough, ABC needed one couple from each of several interested countries and UNIT wanted someone down there keeping an eye on things. To say that Kate was a bit shocked when the Doctor introduced Rose, explained where she'd really been all this time and that he'd married her was like saying the oceans of the world had just a bit of water in them. Eight had told her his name when he'd sealed the lifebond to himself and that was that, as far as the Doctor was concerned. Not that she minded.

"He's dealing with burnout but he still doesn't need to sit on his arse atop a cloud with the wardrobe room spiral ladder dropped to the ground in case he wants groceries. So, I thought this was a better idea."

"Sounds about right. The Doctor sitting around on his arse like that sounds wrong on so many levels..."

"True, yeah. It does. First thing we're gonna do is build a stilted hut, lots of bamboo, after all. We each get to pick three main tools, either from their supplies or our's. I think a gracup machete will suite me nicely. Plus, if we can successfully smuggle things in...well, stuff we can't just make from raw materials, anyway. All of us got to request one thing on the island we get put on together and I asked for pre-existing, large, well-established, possibly thousands of years old, breeding colonies of seabirds, chicken sized or bigger that we can legally hunt. There's several that fit the bill, apparently and they did make sure we got an island with one of the biggest."

"Heck of a hike for most people to get to it, though." The Doctor added. "My banana grove will be tons easier to harvest."

"Worth it. You and me can make mince of the miles at a medium jog and plus one plucked, field dressed chicken-sized bird looks a lot like any other one. And it's meat, not fish, meat. The TARDIS is putting 'anti-you humans look yummy and that Time Lord adds spice-type fish or other critters' shields up around the island waters, so that's good. She ticked me off enough last go, anything happens to you and I'm not going to be happy...I will make sure she experiences livable but uncomfortable mechanical difficulties, absolutely requiring your skill to repair, during any missing or down time..."

The ship paused, knowing exactly what Rose meant and they both felt the rather hasty mental agreement.

"What are you...?"

"Nevermind. Girlstuff."

"Rose..."

"Drop it, she's still female, after all."

He considered that for a moment and suddenly shuddered. He absolutely did not want to follow that thought any further. A PMSing timeship he really didn't need.

~TBC~