SUMMARY: Rose overheard the Doctor persuading his clone that dropping Rose with him would work...and hid somewhere in the TARDIS at JE instead of debarking like she was supposed to. She ignored the injury she'd gotten during the emergency and stayed hidden until infection forced her out of her hiding place.

Hiding

Prologue

The TARDIS couldn't communicate with Rose well enough to let her know when they were back in the proper universe so she'd come out of that tiny, distant little garden where the Doctor had never gone.

Rose knew from the way the lights in the halls dimmed and turned purple when the Doctor finally took one of his rare rest periods, realized he wouldn't sleep until they'd left Pete's World, gave it a few hours to be sure and finally snuck out of her hiding place, moving slowly down the long corridor and into the infirmary. The TARDIS moved it closer and left out the right kind of ointment for the girl but didn't really like the look of the cut so she moved the infirmary next door to the Doctor's bedroom and put in an adjoining door...Rose was concentrating too hard on what she was doing and did not notice either the motion of the room nor the opening door. Rose had rolled some gauze so she'd have something to bite down on, surrounded the wound with towels and used one of the Doctor's scalpels to open and drain it. She'd gotten spoiled by his pain-free treatments over the bulk of the two years she'd been with him, but Rose was a child of the poor quarters, this wasn't the first time she'd had to perform some rough and ready bit of minor surgery or deal with a badly infected cut...her's or someone else's.

She hissed in near silence as she cut open the pus filled injury, holding a clean towel over it as the sudden opening caused an explosive release of pressure and pus shot up and into the cloth held ready to catch it. Tears of pain streamed down her face but she didn't make a sound as she finally folded the mess inside one towel and covered her wound with another as she tossed the first one in the trash. She continued to cut, to open the infection riddled injury, removing destroyed tissue and setting it on a third towel until it bled clean blood, but before it began to clot...now she applied a pressure bandage for a bit until the blood ceased to flow and rested for a few moments.

She closed her eyes against the pain and tried to gather her strength...and felt a hypospray against her neck and the agony she'd been in dissipated into nothing as other hands took over the task.

"You hid from me." The Doctor's voice shook a little. "You've never hidden from me. Especially not when you're badly injured."

"You were going to leave me. The first time nearly killed me, you know? After a couple weeks, I had headaches all the time and I stayed sick. I think the other one was rejecting my presence there."

He paused for a second and then continued to work on the cut. "You didn't tell me that."

"When did I have the chance? We were a bit busy."

"True. And you didn't tell me about this either." He sounded hurt and angry at her.

Normally, she would have said something to avoid a confrontation but her strength was all but gone, just now. She needed it for herself, just this once. "I was going to...and I found you telling the other one you wanted to throw me away." She bit back a sob.

He froze. "Rose, no...I never meant it like that. He could have aged with you...as I can't." He brushed her hair back away from her face. "I never wanted to leave you. I just thought I had to. When you love someone, you do what is best for them, not yourself." He told her quietly.

She said nothing else for a moment, refused to look at him even, just watched his hands as he worked on her leg. "I can't either, anymore. I was in Pete's World for twenty years before I found a way back to you." She finally said, in a near whisper. "I seriously doubt you can tell from looking at me. I heard what you said about him needing a leash, but there's another woman there already that'll do fine. There's an alternate Sarah Jane and our her kept a leash on how many of your regenerations?"

"Several. Yeah, he'll be fine." He finished up closing the deep gash and then continued, "I'll need to do some tests to see what's going on with you, but you still look nineteen to me, not thirty-nine."

"Yeah. Their Torchwood was starting to notice."

"Ah. Yeah, not safe." He nodded and confirmed, "Far safer with me."

She looked up at him with tears in her eyes and running down her face. "I love you, too."

~ TBC ~