A/n: Hello lovely readers! Welcome back to the continuing adventures of Rose and TenII. This chapter starts off shortly after my last story ended. This is the sequel to The Adventure Found Them and will refer back to events that took place in that story so you should really read it first. Just a little reminder TCB means Temporal Creature Below.
Disclaimer: Don't own or profit from Doctor Who or any of its characters and no place or person mentioned in this story is real, just an odd figment of my overactive imagination.
It's Not Easy Being a TCB
A month had passed since the ominous events in the fountain. Rose and the Doctor had settled into Dutton Manor although, being the Doctor and Rose, nothing was ever that simple. Settling in for the Time Lord meant, exploring each and every nook and cranny and pulling things out, examining them, and tossing them over his shoulder leaving a trail of debris throughout the house as he explored. The whole process nearly drove Rose spare, but at least it kept her busy and not worrying about orbs, eternals and prophetic dreams. At one point, Rose reached her breaking point and the battle lines were drawn.
It was decided for the sanity of everyone that certain areas of the house would be labeled Doctor, Rose or joint territories. The Doctor claimed the study, solarium, greenhouse, two of the six bedrooms and one bathroom. Rose, on the other hand claimed the kitchen (for protection purposes only), most of the garden, two of the guest rooms, the master bath (although this would be slightly negotiable), sitting room and master closet. They both agreed to share the remaining bathrooms, master bedroom, remaining guest bedroom, dining room, game room, basement and attic; although, Rose wasn't really keen on the attic, but she feared for the safety of the roof if she let him have it exclusively.
For all the Doctor's complaints about domesticity and its diminishing effect on his Time Lord sensibilities, he handled it all quite well. Of course, the Doctor's tolerance for this process may have been due to the necessity of upgrading and modifying certain elements of the Manor to secure it from snooping aliens and governmental agencies. The Doctor enthusiastically dove into the project of working with the TCB, maybe too enthusiastically. It wasn't uncommon for the Doctor to disappear for almost an entire day as he spent endless hours crooning to the TCB, developing systems and mechanisms to support her as well as developing the greenhouse into a facility suitable for supporting TCB offspring. Of course, Rose was along side him on many occasions and had developed her own relationship with the TCB. It wasn't unusual for Rose, while working in the house, to get mental images from the TCB of Jackie slapping the Doctor. She soon realized the TCB would not tolerate the Doctors repetitive and unnecessary tinkering without some sort of repercussion to him. It actually sort of tickled her, almost like a bit of gossip between the two of them. Although Rose enjoyed working with the Doctor, she was focused on making the Manor their home not to mention distracting Jackie from her plan to "help" them decorate and furnish their new home. Of course the day had come when Rose could no longer postpone the inevitable Jackie visit, much to the Doctor's displeasure.
"Why does she have to come nooooow," the Doctor whined during breakfast.
"I can't put if off anymore. She just wants to see where we're livin, that's all. After everything we went through to get this place, she's curious. You understand that right," Rose pleaded with him.
"Fine, I'll just be in the basement," the Doctor answered petulantly.
"Doctor. You have to come out and say hello, you don't have to stay, just say hello."
The Doctor signed. "Fine, I'll come up and say hello once the initial disparaging of our home is over."
"You don't know that she's comin over to complain, maybe she'll like it," Rose answered hopefully. The Doctor just looked at her. "Your right, its not exactly her style," Rose admitted.
"Just don't let her touch anything and we'll be fine," the Doctor said as he dashed off to the basement, jam covered toast still in his hand.
Later that morning, the dreaded visit had arrived. "Oh Rose couldn't you stop him," Jackie complained while staring at the entrance to the Manor with a look of horror on her face.
"Why would I do that, I love it." Rose told her with a huge smile on her face, pleased that they had found the exact shade of Tardis blue for their front doors.
"But Rose, its…blue, bright blue," Jackie winced.
Rose answered with a cheery "yup."
Jackie threw up her hands and walked into the rich, dark wood paneled entry examining the walls, parquet floors covered in old oriental rugs, old crystal chandelier and wall sconces and eventually ventured into the living room, which was filled with all manner and sorts of antique chairs, sofas and tables brimming with trinkets. She turned around in a circle taking it all in followed closely by Rose.
"Oh Rose, why didn't you let me help you. Its so so.."
"Historic, lived in, homey," Rose supplied helpfully.
Jackie turned to her in her immaculate designer pantsuit, Gucci shoes and bag. "That's not what I was thinking Rose. You know I could have Cynthia come over and do a walk through with you and make a few suggestions. Seriously look at the lighting in here. Dark and dreary doesn't suit you."
At that comment, the lights flickered and Rose felt a change in the air. Unbeknownst to Jackie, she had just insulted the TCB who had done her best to make sure the Doctor and Rose were comfortable in the old Manor. Rose immediately felt the TCB's hurt feelings and had heard enough.
"Mum this is our home and we love the old, musty feel of it, its lived in. The walls of this house have a story to them. We couldn't live in some glitzy, sterile place, it just wouldn't suit us"
"I'd say its got more than just history. Oh Rose you don't have to live in something so modern, but really at least you could have lighting from this century," Jackie said as she ran her finger across some of the paneling on the wall frowning at the dust on her finger. That was the instant that a war of wills was instigated between the Tyler matriarch and the TCB. Rose didn't know it of course, but soon there would be no question in her mind, the TCB had had enough.
"Why don't we have some tea in the kitchen," Rose suggested as she pulled Jackie out of the room. Unfortunately, things were about to get worse.
"Rose you can't be serious! Look at this place. That stove isn't fit for use and what's that smell," Jackie commented while scrunching her nose.
"What smell, I don't smell anything," Rose just looked at her not understanding.
"Oh, its worse than I thought," Jackie said shaking her head as she gripped roses forearm. "He's locked you up here for so long you can't see what a disaster this place is."
"Mum!' Rose exclaimed. All of a sudden Jackie's tea cup exploded splashing tea all over her beautiful beige suit dripping down onto her classic pink pumps.
"Blimey!" she yelled as she jumped up grabbing at the closest kitchen towel to dry herself off. Rose looked down at the shattered tea cup and then down at the floor. She focused on the TCB, apologizing and the asking her to settle down. Rose got up and cleaned up the spilt tea and asked Jackie if she was okay.
"He had to move you into a haunted house, I swear Rose, he did it just to spite me." Jackie answered indignantly. "Sweetheart, at least let me get you some help in here, just for a good cleaning. I just want to help you." Jackie looked at Rose pleadingly.
"Mum, I really appreciate it, really, its just, the Doctor and I want to do it ourselves." Rose went over and gave Jackie a hug trying to soothe her and make her understand.
"Tell you what, I was about to talk to the Doctor about hirin some help for the garden, maybe from the town nearby. If you want, you could help us with that. It really would be a big help." Rose hoped this would satisfy Jackie's determination to help them.
"Well, I suppose it's a start."
Just then the Doctor bounced into the kitchen, "do I smell tea?" he asked innocently. "Oh hello Jackie, fancy seeing you hear, uh, what happened to you?"
"What happened, I'll tell you what happened, my daughter was stolen away by an alien nutter who somehow convinced her to live in some haunted, dreary, dirty old manor in the back of beyond, that's what happened," Jackie huffed.
"uh okaaay, well I'll just leave you two to enjoy your tea and head to the uhh Rose?" The Doctor turned to her pleading for help.
Rose decided it was time for him to give her a hand. "pantry to get cleaning supplies so you can dust the livin room," she answered pointedly.
"Dust! Time Lords don't dust!" he answered haughtily.
Jackie turned and looked at him crossing her arms and was about to say something when the Doctor suddenly decided it was two against one.
"Dusting, right, I'll just head to the pantry and retrieve…. What do you actually use to dust again Rose?"
"cleaning cloths, second shelf from the top on the left."
The Doctor quickly went to the pantry, returned with said cloths looking at them like they were some new form of life and quickly exited the kitchen.
Jackie looked at Rose and shook her head, "I don't know how you live with im."
At the conclusion of Jackie's inspection err visit, Rose went into the living room to find the Doctor laying on the floor staring at the ceiling sonic in hand pointed at the ceiling.
"Doctor, what are you doing?"
"Dusting."
"Um, how 's layin on the floor with the sonic pointed at the ceiling dusting?"
"Oh I automated the dusting rags which are controlled by setting 560B, you may want duck."
Rose looked around and noticed several dusting cloths zipping about the walls and ducked just in time before she was hit in the face by one as it shot across the room. Rose found herself laying next to the Doctor watching the clothes dance about the room as they cleaned. She turned to him "ya mean I have been spending all this time scrubbin the house, when all it took was a sonic and a cleaning cloth?
"Well no of course not, your leaving out the key element of my magnificent brain," the Doctor turned and smiled at her. Oh his smiles did disarm her but still, she was a bit put out that he could have made this all so much easier not to mention cleaner.
Later that day, Rose heard something fall off the roof into the garden. She ran outside to make sure it wasn't the Doctor. It took her a while to find what fell as the state of the garden was more a mass of intertwined and overgrown greenery, but finally sitting in an old bird bath, she found something that definitely, didn't belong. It looked like a small rectangular blue glass butter dish with copper metal colored dots and lines etched into it. Rose was about to pick it up but stopped. She couldn't help but think about the orb from the fountain and how much trouble that caused. Better to be safe than sorry. She went back into the house and picked up some salad tongs the Doctor had left laying around in the solarium, leftover no doubt from some experiment. She went back to the garden and using the tongs removed the object from the bird bath. She was walking back into the house, the object held in the tongs in front of her when she hit an invisible wall which she couldn't get past. She backed up and looked at the door and tried again with the same result. She turned to set the object down so she could call the Doctor when he burst out the door.
"What are you doing?" he shouted.
"Nothin, just found this thing the garden and was going to bring it inside to look at it but then I couldn't get in the house. What's wrong?"
"Listen to me very carefully, gently and I mean gently set the Xani mobilizer down over there in the garden," the Doctor answered looking very nervous.
Rose carefully put the object back where she found it and backed away holding the tongs in front of her defensively. The Doctor pulled out the sonic and waved it in the general direction of the Xani. Suddenly Rose felt her hair stand on end as a static charge raced over her.
"Doctor what is that thing?"
"That is a Xani mobilizer which super charges any electronic devices within a meter of it. If you had brought that into the house, it would have super charged every mechanism in the house causing multiple explosions which would have been very bad."
"Where did it come from? I heard something fall off the house and found it sitting there."
"The rift was just active, it must have slipped through. I haven't gotten around to fine tuning the rift monitor to sound the alarm when something makes it through. You couldn't get in the house cause the TCB defense mechanisms were activated."
"You mean she can sense when something is dangerous and stop it from coming in the house?"
"Well, yes, sort of."
"So because I was holdin it, I couldn't get in either?"
"That's right. Uh rose, out of curiosity what was with the tongs?" the Doctor asked while scratching his head looking at her questioningly.
"Oh I didn't want to touch it in case it exploded or imploded or stopped time or something. These were the first thing I grabbed in the house."
"Ahhhh," the Doctor responded.
"Next time, do ya think you could just call me first?" the doctor asked.
"I'm supposed to call you every time I find something in the garden that I don't know what it is?" Rose asked a bit exasperated with him.
"Well, it would prevent problems like this or explosions or you know…."
Rose just stared at him arching her right eyebrow. "Right, so when will the rift alarm be workin?"
"Definitely this afternoon, maybe," the Doctor replied walking up to the now neutralized Xani. As he poked at it, Rose walked up beside him.
"Ya know it took me a while to find it in this jungle of a garden."
"Mmmm," was the Doctor's response.
"Maybe it's time we hired a gardener?"
"What, why do we need a gardener, everything's growing just fine."
"Yes, but it needs some clean up and a gardener would know how to make it nice and keep the flowers bloomin," Rose told him as she started caressing his arm.
"Rose, the flowers are blooming fine on their own and besides, its green and growing. What more could you ask of a garden," was his response.
"Well if it was a bit trimmed, we could have tea out here and it would be nice in the summer if we could walk around some garden paths and enjoy some of the plants that are lost in all the vines and stuff," she said smiling up at him.
The Doctor sighed and looked at the hopeful look in her eyes. "Fine, we'll find a gardener, but he or she has to pass muster with me and the TCB."
"Oh Thank you Doctor," Rose answered excitedly and threw her arms around him. "Mum will be so pleased to be able to help us." Rose told him as she dashed off to make arrangements to begin interviewing potential gardeners from the local town.
"Mum will be happy? Wait a minute what's Jackie got to do with this? Rose, Roooose!"
The next morning, Rose had several potential gardeners lined up for interviews. She decided to interview them in the garden and had a table set up in the small area that had not been overgrown with the massive bushes and vines that covered almost every other part of the garden. The Doctor, grudgingly agreed to sit in on the interviews.
The first applicant was a young 25 year old girl with ginger hair and brown eyes who had just graduated with a degree in horticulture. She arrived for her interview in jeans and a green jumper with her hair in braids. She was exceedingly perky, almost annoyingly so. She immediately showed she could identify the species of plants surrounding the table and gave the scientific name for each as well as discussed pruning techniques. Rose was bored to tears and the Doctor kept sniffing her hair. Finally Rose kicked him under the table and he stopped. Afterwards Rose asked him what he thought.
"Didn't you smell her hair?" the Doctor asked.
"Uh, no why?"
"Sour milk, her hair was definitely infested with gaggle of Kulotak parasites."
Rose just looked at him. "I'll mark her as a 'No' and put a note to call Torchwood and have em check her out."
Interviewee number two was a heavy set middle aged man who arrive in overalls, his long hair brown held back in a ponytail. He was very quiet and didn't talk unless a question was directed at him. Rose turned to the Doctor, "Doctor do you have any questions for Mr. Simpson?"
"Yes, so tell me Simpson if a sentient vine began invading the garden, what method of control would you use?" Rose dropped her pen on the table and just stared at the Doctor.
Mr. Simpson very calmly told the Doctor he would pull out a sprayer with muriatic acid and douse any plant that exhibited threatening aggressive behavior toward the garden and besides, everyone knows that talking plants are evil. Rose very quickly thanked him and showed him out the door releasing a sigh of relief when scary interviewee number two was gone.
The parade of interviewees was like a whose who of the odd, scary and perhaps slightly insane residents of an asylum. Only a few seemed somewhat normal people, but those deemed sane by Rose were quickly dismissed by the Doctor for one reason or another. Just when Rose was ready to give up, the doorbell rang. At the door was an elderly pale man dressed in a tweed coat and pants, wearing a bow tie and walking with a cane.
"Can I help you?" asked Rose.
"Yes maam, I'm here for the gardener position. My name is Peregrinus Hortus."
"How do you do Mr. Hortus," Rose shook his hand and immediately felt something different about him but she couldn't put her finger on it. "Why don't we head into the garden and talk." As Rose led him through the house into the garden, she could definitely tell something was up as the TCB was humming a new tune. As soon as they walked into the garden, the Doctor perked up and stared intently at Mr. Hortus but then broke into a charming smile.
"Mr. Hortus, this is the Doctor," Rose introduced.
"Mr. Hortus, why don't we start off with you telling us about yourself, for instance, your name's a bit unique. Where exactly are you from?" the Doctor asked getting straight into interview mode or perhaps that would be interrogator mode.
"It's a bit foreign, my family is not from this country," he answered elusively.
"I'm sorry, I can't seem to find your resume, could you tell us your qualifications." Rose asked.
"Do forgive my forwardness, you don't have my resume, I only just heard about the opening and decided to pay you a visit and see if the position is still available. I have been working with all manner of plants all my life, you might say I have an affinity for them. May I show you?" he asked politely.
"All right," said the Doctor his hand slipping into his pocket to grab the sonic.
Rose and the Doctor watched in amazement as Mr. Hortus walked over to a vine engulfed bush and began whispering something to the foliage. He then lifted up some of the vine and right before their eyes, it was like the vine unwound itself from the rose bush it had been engulfing and Mr. Hortus gently set it on the ground. He turned to them with a gentle smile.
"Now then Doctor, perhaps you would take your hand off your sonic device. It makes the plants a bit nervous."
The Doctor stood up, "You're not human, I've only seen one species with your abilities, but there extinct."
Mr. Hortus turned to Rose, "You are formerly of Torchwood, I am trusting you to not turn me in. You are known by certain individuals taking refuge on this world as a fair and honest creature. Please don't disappoint me Ms. Tyler. I have come here as I was drawn to this place for what reason I do not know. I only know that I feel this is where I am meant to be."
The Doctor walked over to Mr. Hortus and looked at him intently. "How did you come to be on this world?"
"There was a war and a few of us escaped by stowing away on a supply ship. We moved from world to world losing ourselves and separating so that we could blend in among other races. Eventually, I found myself here and began taking positions which this species found menial. They don't pay attention to the people that care for their herbaceous species so I was able to successfully disappear. I moved frequently so my skills would not be too noticeable but I grow weary of the need to constantly move and hide. If you will allow me the privilege to mentor the variety of growing species in this fertile space, I promise you my devotion and loyalty. I will not reveal your secrets, if you keep mine."
"Do you give me your word." the Doctor asked most seriously looking him in the eyes.
"Until the end of my days, I will keep you and all you hold dear, safe and secure," Mr. Hortus answered solemnly.
"Do you swear that on the holy ancient taproot of Verdana?" the Doctor asked
"I swear." Mr. Hortus answered.
"Then we are agreed," the Doctor answered smiling. "Welcome home. There is actually a small cottage the other side of the greenhouse. It's not much but it's yours if you want."
"Thank you, it will do I'm, sure."
"So what should we call you?" Rose asked.
"Just call me Perry. My things are outside, shall I bring them in?"
"I'll give you hand Perry, we have much to discuss." answered the Doctor walking with him to the door.
As the three of them walked to the entryway, they heard several loud knocks at the door. When they opened the door, they were surprised at what the found.
TBC
a/n: Thanks for reading, all reviews are appreciated!