Author's Note: For those of you who've been reading this, I'm heartily sorry! I just realized while posting that a lot of formatting disappears in the process. I usually separate my scenes with paragraph changes and line spacing. Oops! Forgive the new-to-fanfic!! So, this should make a bit more sense now.

Thanks .Enjoy.

1

Darkness. The silence was deep, absolute as the peace of deep space. Rose snuggled further into the warmth of her blankets. Her pale hair shone in the darkness, tumbled over the pillow. She sighed in her sleep. Her body felt the thrum of engines deep below her, and as she dreamed it became the lapping of a calm sea, waves breaking soft and slow against the…CRASH!

Rose sat up in bed, her own breathing harsh in her ears. What was that? Had they hit something? Wake up. No. They'd never hit anything before. Never…

Another crash; a sound like a bomb in a broom closet. Rose pulled herself out of bed, stumbling for the door. The walls suffused themselves with a dim light as her feet hit the floor, allowing her to navigate around her cast-off trainers and jeans. She stuck her head out of the door, the lace on her night gown ruffling as she peered up and down the corridor.

"Doctor?"

Another prolonged crash, and the Doctor stumbled out of a room several doors down the corridor, rubbing the side of his head. He winced, giving the room a hurt look.

"Ooh, decidedly not pleasant!" Hand against the side of his head, he turned. And his thin face broke into a grin.

"Hello! I thought you were snug in bed!"

Rose couldn't help but smile in return.

"I was, 'til you got to mucking about like a mad elephant. What time is it?"

The Doctor cocked his head."Time? Where?"

Rose rolled her eyes.

"Skip it. What… You're bleeding, y'know."

"Am I?" The Doctor put a hand to his temple, and winced again. Rose shook her head.

" 'Ere. Hold still."

Reaching in the velvet pocket of her night dress, she pulled out a linen handkerchief she'd found there earlier.

"Must have been that bust of Aristotle." Said the Doctor, holding his hands behind his back like a small boy as Rose dabbed at the long cut across his temple, lifting the mussed fringe of his hair to get at it. "Never did like him much. Nasty sort, him. Probably why I stuck the thing up out of the way."

"If the thing is made of stone," Rose muttered, "it really shouldn't get stuck up where it can fall."

The Doctor shrugged.

The handkerchief came away dotted with spots of bright, oddly orange-hued blood. Funny, Rose thought. All the things they got up to, all the times they'd been this close to dead, and she'd never seen so much as a scratch on the Doctor. But here he was, getting nearly brained by a trinket in his own TARDIS.

"And by the way, why were you pulling things down on yourself, hmm?"

"I was-ow!-I'm looking for a toolbox I stored back here. At least, I think it was back here. It was either the first or the third corridor on the left, I'm sure."

"I thought you said it was all bedrooms down this hall?"

"Nah, not all bedrooms. " The Doctor's eyes moved from door to door. "What'd you need that many bedrooms for? I stuck a few storage rooms down here too. Were you sleeping?"

Rose laughed. "I wouldn't be wearing this if I wasn't. Proper Victorian horror, this. Mind you, it's quite comfy."

The Doctor glanced at her, taking in the long green velvet and white lace.

"Oh, I don't know. Looks rather nice. Was high fashion when I picked it up. Idea for nightwear had just come over from India. Or was it Albania?" He ran a hand through his hair, making the dark spikes stand on end. "Always mix 'em up. Anyway…I think I just remembered!"

Spinning on his heel, he strode down the corridor. Rose hurried after him.

"I will say though, first proper night in a proper bed I've had in the TARDIS, and I don't get to enjoy even half of it. By the way; how come, in nearly eight months, you never told me you had bedrooms?"

The Doctor was glancing from door to door as he passed them, hands deep in the pockets of his dark suit. He cocked his head, thinking-then shrugged. "Didn't think of it, I suppose. But the second time you fell out of the chair in the console room-"

"When the TARDIS was shaking like billyoh-"

"Yep, second time you fell, I thought, that girl needs a proper old bed. Then I remembered. Like it?"

"Room's pretty posh." Rose replied, staring as they passed a bust of something like a cross between an elephant and a frog set in a niche in the wall, "Bit bare though."

"Bet you can change that fast enough. You ought to fix it up for yourself. We could pop back to London for some of those posters you love. Bring out the decorator in you. Right, here we are!"

Stopping in front of a door that looked, to Rose, like every other door in the hall, smooth and bronze-gold, he pushed it open.

"Ah. Apparently it's the spare parts I was keeping in here."

Rose peered in. The room was covered in row upon row of boxes, each labeled on the lid. She read 'Clock', 'Secondary Stabilizers', 'Kitchen Stove', 'Inductionary Thruster' and 'Bessie' at a glance. Littered here and there were bits that hadn't made it into their boxes; something that looked like a car's headlight, and a bundle of pinkish, organic-looking loops caught her eye. The Doctor closed the door.

"Must be the third corridor on the left, then." He smiled at Rose, and strode past her.

"Allonsy!"

They spent more than an hour poking into a kaleidoscopic whirl of rooms. Rose had never realized how many rooms the TARDIS held before. Mostly they only used the bathroom, the huge clothes room that the Doctor called the Wardrobe, a small kitchen and a grand library besides the console room. She'd seen the halls going on, and wondered a bit. But now she had a feel for just how much bigger it was inside than it seemed. And the variety! There was a laboratory that looked like a page out of Jules Verne, all oiled wood and gold, with modern bits of equipment interspersed with old-fashioned glass beakers and tools. They passed through two gigantic libraries, done in dark wood, on their way to somewhere else. There was a gallery where some of the art turned and looked at you, and even a room full of cricket gear, which made Rose burst out laughing.

"What?" said the Doctor, looking up from where he was fingering an old cricket batter's coat, "Don't fancy the good game?"

"Nah. Just…why in God's name have you got a cricket room?!"

"'Cos I love cricket, Rose! Used to play all the time! This way, I have the goods, I ever get a few friends together, we've got a ready-made match!"

He lifted the batter's hat and dropped it on his head, looking up at the brim that fell low over his brow.

"Once got in here to teach some Cheladons the game. Ever played with Cheladons? Eight arms and quick as anything. Made for one of the fastest matches I've ever played in. Put the Royal Leauge to shame!"

He grinned, swept the hat from his head, and left the room.

"Well, we've narrowed it down now."

"Just for a second," Rose said, following him down the hall, 'could you say why we're trying to find this toolbox?"

"The third bathroom's faucet is leaking. I'll need a wrench and a set of washers to fix it. And my toolbox has just the ticket."

"A faucet leak?" Rose said, incredoulous. The Doctor glanced at her, noticing her expression.

"A leak that's been driving me around the bend; drip drip drip constantly. It'd bother you too if you could hear it all the time."

"And the sonic screwdriver can't do the job?"

The Doctor paused, giving her a skeptical look.

"The sonic screwdriver can't tighten a loose bolt, Rose. Fuse it to the metal around it, yes. Shake it out of its socket, yes. Dizzolve it, yes. But it's using vibrations, basically. It can't make something move in sequence."

"Then why's it called a screwdriver?"
"Y'know, I don't know. That's a very good question, actually."

The Doctor was staring, rather vacantly, at a potted plant that appeared to be breathing. He gave himself a little shake, and looked at Rose, his dark eyes suddenly intense.

"I'm rather tired of all this hunting about. You?"

"Yeah." Rose smiled. Maybe the Doctor would give this whole thing up, and then she could go back to…

"Good. Hang on a tick."

The Doctor drew a breath, and closed his eyes. There was a tension in the air, a prickling on the skin something like the air before lightning strikes. And the Doctor's eyes snapped open.

"Right, that's got it. C'mon"

"What was that about?"Rose asked, keeping pace with him. The Doctor shrugged, his lips quirking up in one of his self-satisfied smiles.

"Just asking the TARDIS where the box is. The old girl's quite a bit more organized than I am."

"That's not exactly hard."

"Oi! You have more than nine hundred years of odds and ends, you'd have trouble keeping track too!"

He stopped suddenly, nearly making Rose run into him.

"Here we are!"

Behind the door was what appeared to be a work shop. The walls were covered with hooks and formed containers, filled with tools. Tables lined the walls. Here and there around the room, machines of all varieties sat ready for work. Rose noticed a scroll saw and something that might be a drill press, right next to something like a cross between a blender and a vacuum.

"We're in the work room." The Doctor announced, "Makes sense the tools would be in here!" Striding to the far wall, he opened a cupboard and began to dig through it.

Rose couldn't resist poking about as well. Here and there she saw bits of raw material; wood, plastic, glass, metals and a few bits that she couldn't identify at all. Walking between a band saw and a row of laser tools, her eye was caught by a pile of clothes lying in the corner; though everything else in the room was covered in what she assumed to be sawdust, the white gloves, pants, and tunics were spotless.

"These your work aprons?" she asked, holding up a shirt. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder.

"Self cleaning fabric. Absorbs all the mess. Cuts down wonderfully on the cleanup. Ah! The washers!"

He dived back in, muttering about the wrench.

Rose inspected the clothes. Self-cleaning? Wouldn't they have come in handy when she'd helped her mum paint the kitchen. Or when they'd redone the bedroom wall after that disastrous Christmas when the Doctor had regenerated. She lifted one of the white shirts, checking the fit.

Her hip nudged the pile as she moved, and the garments tumbled off their holder in a heap. Rose cursed. Now she'd have to fold everything up properly again, and she was a horror at folding. She started picking the bits up, muttering- and paused. Something else had fallen out between the white garments. A grey, long-sleeved tunic first, then a pair of pants, made from something that Rose assumed was Lycra. A funny little badge was pinned to the shirt's collar; something like a cross between a figure eight and a spiral, with little spirals extending from its waist. Rose held up the shirt, which looked like it would fit a twelve-year old.

"What's this, then? It's full of dust, so it can't be the self-cleaning stuff."

The Doctor glanced back, holding up a wrench. He'd probably enthuse about wherever it came from, and then they'd be off. He glanced at her… and stared. Jumping to his feet, he strode over and took the shirt in both his hands. Rose was taken aback; the Doctor was stiff, his brows drawn tight together. Slowly, his face worked itself into a look of shocked delight.

"Oh, fantastic! I haven't seen this in over two hundred years! I hadn't…" His wide eyes grew unfocused, and his smile faded slightly.

"Did you wear this when you were a kid?" Rose asked. "Bit small for you now."

The Doctor shook his head, his gaze fixed on the fabric.

"It wasn't mine."

Rose heard a note in his voice that made her pay attention. This must've been someone he'd liked. A half-smile played over his lips, and he ran the fabric through his fingers, still staring at it.

"It was Suzz's… Susan's. I'd almost forgotten that name she took up." He smiled to himself.

Rose lifted a little grey hat, which had fallen from the shirt pocket. "Who was she?" She asked, trying to be solicitous. There were a lot of things the Doctor ought to talk about, but he never would if you didn't ask him.

The Doctor looked up, and Rose was struck by the raw emotion in his eyes.

"Susan? She was my granddaughter."

Rose stared. She knew she was staring, but she couldn't help it.

"You were a granddad?"

The Doctor turned his head, fixing her again with that impossible depth of feeling.

"Yeah. Grandad at six hundred. A little young, I know. But my daughter… Well, she wanted kids. Only had the one, though."

"A granddad. Have trouble seeing that."
And the Doctor was grinning again, cheeky as a kid. The way he switched emotions was scary sometimes.

"What, am I too bad an influence for small minds?"
"No. -It's just-" Rose stared at the Doctor, trying to find words. He cocked his head, looking at her, probably reading her emotions. Damn. She had almost found the right words, when something fluttered out of the little hat. Rose caught it. A piece of paper. No, she realized; not a paper, a picture. An old photograph; or, at least, a photo from the nineteen-hundreds, all in black and white. In it, a girl of about fifteen sat, grinning, beside an old man in a long black coat who smiled the way you do when you really wish you weren't being photoed.

"Is this Susan?" she asked.

"Yes." Said the Doctor, looking at it.

"An' who's the old gent, her friend here?"

Again the Doctor grinned.

"Aw, that's me. Couldn't y'guess?"

"You?! When?"

"Very first body. Oh, but I was the young and pompous one. Only six-fifty there see. Thought I knew it all. How things change, hmm?"

Rose didn't know what to say to that. Her eyes returned to the girl, smiling straight into the camera. She looked like she might have been one of Hollywood's child stars. It was weird thinking that she was around fifty, when Rose's instincts put her at sixteen, tops.

"She was very pretty. " Rose said, just to fill the silence. The Doctor was starting to look somber again. He smiled a little.

"Yes. She was."

Suddenly, his head came up, and he looked at Rose.

"Like to see her better? C'mon."

Still holding the shirt, he strode from the workroom. Rose grabbed the wrench and washers he'd set down, and followed him.

"Mind you," he said as they turned into another corridor, "I'm surprised her uniform's even here. Amazing it survived the old fire. Workroom door must've sealed itself. Hang on-" They turned a corner, cutting through a junk room into yet another hall.

"Fire?" Rose asked

"A fire in here. About fifty years back. Quite a bad one, actually. In here."

A fire in the TARDIS? Rose opened her mouth to ask about it. But what she saw through the door made the words catch in her throat. The floor of the room wasn't wood, grilling, gold-coral flooring, or even the sixtyish Formica that had plated the cricket room. It was covered in grass. Bright, vibrant, red grass. Grass that looked like it needed a trim. A breath wafted out of the room; the smell of a summer day, mixed with the scent of …cloves? Yes, cloves, and something else, both familiar and wholly- well, there was no other word for it- wholly alien.

The Doctor hadn't so much as paused, bounding across the room to a small hillock, which opened into drawers when he touched it. He glanced back, slipping on his glasses.

"Well, c'mon. Don't be letting in a draft."

Slowly, Rose stepped through the door. It closed behind her, leaving barely an outline. Somehow, through some trick, the grass was made to extend to a far horizon, meeting an orange sky dotted with pinkish-yellow clouds. Feeling heat, Rose looked up. Hanging in the sky was a mockup of two suns, one a red-yellow orb, the other a bright blue-white star, hanging at what Rose thought of as the noon position. She could even see a moon off to one side, shining a pale pink.

"What….what is this?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor glanced at her, then up where she was looking.

"Oh. My room."
Rose stepped down. The grass sprang back underfoot.

"Is this grass- grass?

"What else would it be?" The Doctor said indistinctly, his head buried in the drawer he was digging through.

"I mean- is it alive?"

"Oh yes. I had some on board for the health benefits, and when I… well, after a while, I just got it growing in here. This and a few other things. Gives off an awfully nice smell, and it helps recycle the air."

He turned back to his digging, muttering and occasionally dropping cubes out onto the grass. Rose was standing quite still. She'd seen a lot with the Doctor. But this room was going to take getting used to. She looked around, noticing a thick, wide mat laid out in the grass. A set of shelves sat at one end, the cubbies filled with knick-knacks, books, and a few of the cubes like the ones the Doctor was pulling out.

"So, you sleep in here?"

"Erm…sort of, yeah."

"Sort of?"
"I come in here when I need to rest, yes. Helps me feel myself. Here we go!"

He lined six of the cubes up. They looked like mahogany to Rose, save that their surfaces glistened with an iridescent sheen. The Doctor's long fingers flashed over the lids of the cubes. But they didn't open. Rose looked closer.

"Mind your eyes." The Doctor said.

From the lid of the first box shot a column of light. After a moment, it faded, leaving behind an image; a small girl with dark, bobbed hair, standing in front of a window that looked out on a field in shades of red and yellow. The grey of her tunic made her stand out like a beacon against the color. The image was so perfect that Rose instinctively reached out to touch it. The Doctor gently stopped her hand.

"Don't touch. Listen."

The girl, her little hat strapped far back on her head, had begun to speak.

"My learning companions." She announced in a high, lilting voice, "Today we shall discuss our futures. Will you choose a path? Will you remain on Gallifrey and become deeply attuned to her? Or will you sail the waves of stars?"

"What is this?" Rose said, whispering. The Doctor smiled.

"Her graduation, from- oh, secondary school I suppose you'd call it. She hated that speech."

He ran a thin finger over the lid, and the scene changed. The same girl was laughing with a woman in a high half-circle collar and an old man in a thick, billowy robe, wearing a collar that swept over his shoulders and a rather self-satisfied smile.

"Is that you?!" Rose asked. The Doctor rolled his eyes.

"Powers forgive me, it was. The Thoughtful One- that's my daughter, the lady there- she said that since we were in the City of High Innovation, we should dress properly. She liked to make a good impression." He paused, and busied himself with another cube.

"Had a lot of her mother in her, that way."

Rose watched the image of the Doctor bow stiffly to another Time Lord, as his granddaughter hurried on in front of her elegant mother.

"You were a right old stick, weren't you?"

"Me?" The Doctor laughed, his boyish face wry.

"I was a frightful old codger. Course, the others called me a renegade!"

Poking through the cubes like photo albums, Rose was fascinated. The reddish sun set in the north as they talked and exclaimed over the images. Rose asked and the Doctor answered, divulging more than he had ever given away about himself. And Rose could see why he missed his home so much. It really had been beautiful; the things made and the natural world had blended with near perfection. The small towns had been idyllic, and the larger cities, encased in great glassy spheres, had floated like bubbles above the grass or over the silver seas. The whitish sun sank in the east as they sat, and the red sun rose again in the south. That explained why the Doctor slept so little, Rose thought, glancing at her watch. The Gallifrey night hadn't been more than two hours in length. It was fascinating watching the world of Gallifrey through the sights of one family. But amazed as she was, Rose found herself nodding forward. She shook her head. The Doctor looked up, though for a moment Rose didn't think he could see her. His eyes were unfocused and fathomless; for a moment he looked his age, old and far away. Then he shook himself, and smiled.

"You're going to nod off in the hologram, aren't you?"

"Sorry."She said, sheepish. He shook his head.

"Can't apologize for your biology. Well, you can, but that's just silly."

He jumped to his feet, still holding one of the cubes.

"C'mon. I'll walk you home."

Down the long corridor, Rose leaned on the Doctor's arm. He opened a door, and the console room's warm hum greeted them. The Doctor pointed at the door across from them. "Right down there, and you'll be snug in bed."

"Thanks." Rose said. She set down the wrench and washers on the console chair, and walked off, the door swinging closed behind her.

The Doctor watched her go. He let his smile fall away. How much effort it took, giving a cheerful face to the world. He set the cube he held down on the console, and stared at it a long moment, watching the image of a bright young girl striding across red grass. Two long fingers stroked the cube's sides, coming to rest on the TARDIS console. Thinking of Suzz had made him want to see her. Just that part of her he had kept. He'd wanted to remember, for once. He should have known better. The pain was worse, now, on the surface. All those old memories, called up tonight… For a moment, an observer might have seen into his hearts; cold, distant, and achingly alone. Alone. Always alone.

The Doctor took a long, thin breath. Then his head turned, and he grimaced

"Oh, that drip!" he muttered. "I can still hear it. Surprised a poet's never written a line about the horror of a drip. Where…Ah! Right, sort that out now."

Snatching up the wrench and washers, he bounded through another door.

Peace reigned in the console room. A lone voice cut the silence, singing a song from a world long gone. A girl in a deep grey tunic wavered in holographic memory.

The hum of the TARDIS engines changed in pitch ever so slightly, and the green light in its column began, slowly, to move with more speed.