Title: Logic
Genre: humor
Characters: Ten, Rose, and Rose
Spoilers: Best to be familiar with the second season.
Summary: There is a Doctor, and he travels with Rose Tyler, in this and all universes.
Rose Tyler liked impossible. She'd been conditioned that way, having lived impossibly for the past two years: a hundred instances where she should have ended up dead, and she merely ended up captured/annoyed/heroic/passed out or, on one memorable occasion, naked.
("Not looking," said the Doctor, lying desperately.
"What've you done with my wardrobe!" screeched Rose, scrambling about in the time ship with his overcoat clutched ineffectually around her. "Me? I didn't do anything with your-- blame the TARDIS!")
She liked impossible, and she liked logic, and she reveled in the belief that the two are not mutually exclusive as the majority of mankind are led to think. The Doctor had taught her otherwise.
("And the ship just sort of-- hovers up there without anything to support it?"
"Wonderful, innit?" said the Doctor with a huge, breezy grin, rocking on his heels and flapping his elbows around, hands in his pockets. "Amazing, the technology: not only invisible, but arguably nonexistant!" "So can we walk up to it, then?" she wanted to know. He blinks at her. "Of course not, Rose-- haven't you ever heard of gravity?" "But--" "Honestly, you humans. 'Can we walk to an airship in the middle of the sky, Doctor?' What sort of sense does that make? Tell you what, get a ladder and we'll try it again, shall we?")
So deep in the back of her mind, in her most secret of places (well, not her most secret...
"Lets not quibble over terms," said the Doctor with a terse irritability, fending her slightly drunken advances off with the ease of a pro. "At the moment, to be precise, indicate which: are you thinking with your head? Or with your arse?")
...she wasn't all that surprised that she found the TARDIS appearing just there in front of her.
It was a sunny street in the middle of London, this new London that was so exactly like the old London, with the notable addition of airships (that she did not try to walk to). The zepplins manoeuvered above their heads in a timeless airial ballet, in which the petite ballerinas had been knocked over the head, cast behind the stage-sets, and their parts taken over by the vast Wagnerian opera singers from the theatre next door. They were large and graceful even in their pilot's abberations, and defied gravity with a regularity that some would say burgeoned on the stubborn. Rose cast them not a glance, even as one lost its moorings and floated amiably into another, like an inflatable cow.
There was the TARDIS. There. In front of her. Here. Here and there. Right here. Right now. Impossible. She loved it.
Of course, here in this other universe, there must be another Doctor. That's logic for you. She loved that, too.
Having moved to within a foot of the ship, that she might be as close as possible and might spend very little time in the "jumping" section of jumping his bones when he opened the door, she fell to pondering the question of his companion, should there prove to be one. Clearly steps would have to be taken in order to get rid of her. Or him. Probably her. Or him. Most likely, her. Rose wasn't sure, but she rather thought that a gun was in order.
She'd about-faced and swanned off in the direction of the nearest chemist's (chemists sold guns, in this London. It was that sort of universe) when the door behind her opened. Swinging about, she easily conquered the brief dizzy spell that her ambulatory merry-go-round brought on, and stared at the man who stood in the predatory doorway (viz., any second now the door could swallow him up. Suppose he'd landed in the wrong spot? Suppose he somehow recognized her and decided to run for it? Suppose she took off all her clothes and danced the Rubber Bunny to entice him to stay?)
Same Doctor. Or rather, not the same Doctor at all. Brown hair, yes, fluffy and bouncy and energetic, like a poorly-trained Pomeranian. Slightly weaselish face, albeit that of a weasel who'd just been signed on to be the new face of Calvin Klein's trouser adverts. But clearly, clearly, not the Doctor who'd once given in to her insistence that they spend the night together.
("Alright, alright," he said, hand held palm-first in a conciliatory gesture as with his other hand he helped her button her pajamas. "But I get the top bunk.")
For one thing, he was too short, and for another, he was clearly puzzled as to who she was. His eyebrows squinched together above his eyes like a couple of copulating caterpillars; lines appeared in the pristine faux-British skin of his forehead as though a few farmers had rented it, based on its obvious agricultural promise, for the purpose of planting corn. His lips pursed in a seducable wriggle, much like lines of thick skin that could be opened to reveal the main bodily orifice through which, presumably, a tactile and inquisitive tongue would protrude, as soon as he found anything worth licking. There would be teeth in there, Rose knew with the certainty of a lover, or at least with the certainty of someone who knows what's commonly found in a mouth, and there would be comments about how weird they were. He was the most easily-astounded man she'd ever met, she reflected: even teeth were a constant surprise to him.
She was certainly a surprise to him as well, and she had moved forward with the intent of surprising him in a new and different manner when the mouth opened-- as she'd known it would-- and he said, disconcertedly, "Rose?"
She stopped. She stared. Her mouth dropped open. She would have answered in the affirmative-- in fact, she was on the very verge of screaming, "Yes! Yes! YES!" but presumably that would have attracted some attention on the London street; and, she knew, had she been in a cafe, some innocent elderly woman would have glanced her way and in an effort to pretend a lack of naivity, would have instructed the horrified waiter, "I'll have what she's having." All these, plus one more, held her back from speaking.
The plus one was the little dog that trotted out from between the Doctor's well-formed trousers and cocked an inquisitive ear at Rose.
"Egah," said Rose. "Hrrngh. Bruah? Wha. Gah."
"Grrrrrr," said the little dog.
"I beg your pardon," said the Doctor to Rose-- the human Rose, that is. "Rose here appears to have taken a dislike to you. I don't know why, perhaps your smell--"
"Hmmph," said Rose.
"Grrrrrrrr," said Rose.
"I'm the Doctor, by the way," said the Doctor with a gleaming smile, "and this is Rose Tyler. She's my plus one. That alright?"
In that instant, Rose could not help but remember a certain conversation she'd had with the Doctor, some time ago.
("It wasn't funny," she said.
"I humbly beg to differ," said the Doctor, mildly, "but I'd hardly have laughed if it wasn't funny." "It wasn't!" "There's a Rose Tyler in every universe, you know; she just appears differently in some, that's all! Can I help it if the Tylers in the alternate universe decided to get a dog instead of have a daughter? Think about all the money they've saved on diapers and mascara-- not at the same time obviously-- and in return, what do they get? Hair all over the place and an occasional wee on the carpet. Mind you," he added, nodding furiously at her, "you could have made the difference moot if you'd shaved less--")
Following which Rose had sulked for quite some time until she got him to make it up to her.
("I will tell you this," he said solemnly. "You're much, much cuter."
"You're just saying that because I'm naked and lying underneath you," she grumbled muzzedly. "I'm not!" he objected. "I swear I'm not! Well, perhaps a little. Do that again?")
She backed away from them slowly, shaking her head. It would not do to imply that Rose Tyler was a pessimist, but at this point it can be fairly well assumed that dreams were shattered and lay in bloody shards around her. If one listened, one could practically hear the crunch as she took a step, and another.
"I beg your pardon," she managed at last. "I appear to have gotten the wrong TARDIS."
"Quite alright," said the Doctor, and grinned down at the dog. "We don't mind, do we Rose? Nah, not at all. Never you mind," he called after his companion's human counterpart, "I understand this sort of thing happens a bit. Wrong TARDIS, wrong Doctor, wrong Rose, wrong universe-- you'll catch up with practice, just wait and see!"
He'd evidently not arrived where he'd intended to, for as she walked on she heard the door shut and the TARDIS wheeze into movement. She whirled and squinted at the disappearing phone box, and fancied for a moment she could hear the Doctor baby-talk his newest companion into her basket. Biscuits were undoubtedly being partaken of liberally. Later that night, the brush would be gotten out. She pondered the strangeness of things: in that, just as the Doctor had squirmed beneath her hands when she tickled his ribs, it was likely that if you scratched Rose behind the ear, her hind foot would stammer on the ground, the tail would wag, she'd close her eyes in bliss--
("You think of me as a pet, don't you," she'd demanded of him tearfully. "Your pet human, your pet human Rose, to be left behind whenever you need to. Put in a boarding house. For pets. Patted when you feel like it. Throw the ball and watch her run to fetch--"
"Nonsense," he'd soothed. "That's patently ridiculous. Boarding house? Patting? Ball-throwing on my part and subsequent fetching on yours? When have I ever asked you to do any of that? Well, alright, apart from finding my slippers every now and then. No, no, Rose-- you're hardly a pet to me, and certainly not a dog." He smoothed her ruffled hair and leant in to plant a kiss on her forehead. She dried her eyes and tried to smile. "If anything," he added suddenly, "you'd be a parrot. Parrots are intelligent, you know. You can teach them to say things. I knew one who swore like a sailor, blue streaks of lightning in the air and all that, and you're very good at repeating things, Rose--" "A parrot?" she'd screeched. "You see?" he said with a patient smile, and at that point she hit him.)
Rose dashed away the tears of angst and remembrance like they were the words of some lesser-known novel by Vladimir Nabokov. She stared angrily at the London dirt and ground her teeth together with a noise like an asthmatic train trying to get started and failing. See if he ever treat her like that again! See if she listened to all that guff about the beauty of impossible logic, never mind what her mind was whispering to her about poetic justice!
It took a very short time to release an APB, and law inforcement all over England went on the watch for a good-looking man in a blue phone box. He was to be brought in for questioning. Charges: bestiality and rabies.
Rose Tyler hedged her bets.