A.N. This is just an idea I had that kind of evolved into something else. Let me know what you think. =]
"Where the hell is my husband?"
The doors to the TARDIS had just slammed open and in stormed a petite woman with flying blonde hair and fury in her – were her eyes golden?
Faces whipped around all over the console room. Amy and Rory shared shocked expressions, River looked equally mad as the blonde, and the Doctor could only stare open mouthed.
There were things the blonde woman should have been noticing. Rose should have noticed that she didn't know any of these people. Or she might have noticed how the entire interior of the TARDIS had been re-done. Or possibly that no one in the room looked even remotely aware of who she was.
None of this registered. Instead, she crossed to the console in six angry strides that left rolls of rage in her wake. Grabbing onto the man with ridiculous hair and quite a prominent chin's tweed lapels, she wrenched him down to eye level.
"Where the hell is my husband?"
His deep set hazel eyes were whirling in every possible direction, cataloging everything from her appearance, to the state of his other companions, to the undisguised anger in River's expression. Yes. This was definitely not going to be a good encounter.
"Sorry, what?"
Rose released him in disgust. "Where's the Doctor?"
"He's the Doctor." The voice came from behind them, decidedly Scottish. Rose spared a glance over her shoulder to see a red headed woman nodding in the direction of the man Rose had just been accosting.
"Who are you?" This time, the question came from her right. Flicking her attention to the side, Rose took in a woman with wild curls who was decidedly older than the rest of the occupants on the ship.
Rose crossed her arms over her chest. "I'm his wife."
Silence reigned on all sides. It belatedly occurred to Rose that she was being rather painfully unclear about everything, but that can happen when you're beyond frantic. As she was preparing to slow down and explain herself, the woman with wild hair interrupted.
"The hell you are. I'm his wife!"
Rose's brown eyes widened impossibly. She looked from the woman to the Doctor in question. Though he was standing motionless, his fingers were moving restlessly against the fabric of his trousers. This version didn't have her version's grace, but he'd managed to retain the easily readable expressions. The one he was currently wearing read: Caught.
A headache was beginning to pound its way into Rose's attention. This was really all too much. Closing her eyes, she pressed two fingertips to her temples, rubbing hard to try and ease the pain. Opening her eyes, she scanned the faces surrounding her.
"Look, I don't give a damn who you are or what you are. I just want my husband." Fixing a scorching gaze on the Doctor she added, "And if you don't help me, I'm going to get very unpleasant."
"Rose," there was awe in his voice, but it did nothing to abate the ire flaming through her veins. "Your eyes."
She blinked, held out her hands for inspection, and gave a frustrated growl. "It's nothing. Now. My husband?"
The Doctor ran a hand through his messy locks in an incredibly familiar gesture. This incarnation seemed much more similar to his last than his tenth had been to his ninth. Had they been meeting under different circumstances, Rose might have asked him about that. As it was, she wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of here and find her husband.
"Why do you think I would know where he is? I can't even understand how you're here." His accent was so much softer than it had ever been, scholarly sounding actually. This version of him probably would have left her in the shop, figuring she was too stupid to bring along, never having completed her A levels and all.
"Because he went off in that stupid TARDIS Donna gave us. Finally matured, didn't it, and he's off running. Now he's gone. It's your fault, so find him." Somehow her hands were on his shoulders and she was pressing him back against the console.
"Really, Rose," his hazel eyes shone earnestly, "you're eyes are golden!"
Rose released him, scrubbing one hand against her face, frustration raining down on her from every angle. "Help me!" she shouted, gold eyes blazing.
And out came the sonic. Incredibly different from the last one she had seen. There was the familiar squeaky hum and then he was scanning her, up and down with the green light. "I'm not sure what it is, Rose," he murmured, squinting with barely there eyebrows as he concentrated on the sonic.
She smacked it out of his hand; the sonic went clattering to the now glass floor, rolling to a halt at the Scottish girl's feet. "There is nothing wrong with me! The gold is the Bad Wolf, that's all, it's reacting to being this close to the TARDIS core again."
Panicked eyes took her in. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"Of course I am. Now, about my husband, Doctor?"
There was cough from behind them. They peered together back at the young man with the long face. "Uhm, sorry to interrupt. Rory by the way, and this is thrilling, but, just for clarification, who exactly is your husband?"
"The Doctor," they answered in unison.
"Right," Rory drew out the r sound. "And, which Doctor would that be?"
"The tenth and half," Rose said.
The eleventh Doctor frowned. "That's what you're calling him? Ten and half? He's not even a proper regeneration. Needed Donna's DNA to get the process started –"
"Help me find him," Rose interrupted, forcing herself to sound as calm and in control as possible.
"Uh, excuse me," now it was the Scottish girl. Rose turned around again, feeling her headache sneaking back up on her. She really hadn't expected all these companions, well, especially not a wife that wasn't her. "You said he left in the TARDIS, yeah?"
"Yes. The newly finished growing TARDIS."
"Well, when this Doctor's TARDIS finished growing, he said he'd be back in five minutes and I didn't see him for another twelve years. How long has yours been gone?"
"A month."
"Right, well, maybe you just need to give him more time."
"Don't be ridiculous," Rose snapped. "I'm not waiting twelve years for my husband to reappear."
There were coughs from all in the room. "I waited two thousand years for my wife," Rory said, slinging an arm around the Scottish woman.
"I keep waiting for mine," the wild hair woman added. "The fate of marrying a time traveler."
Rose pressed her hands against her temples. These people were all idiots. "My husband is in a time machine. He can't regenerate, he really shouldn't be on his own, and I am now in this time machine. We will find him, because that is what you owe me, Doctor," she said this last solely to him.
He dropped his hazel eyes from her gaze, not quite able to meet the anger and hurt shining there. "Rose, I don't know what you want me to do."
"Track him down! Have the TARDIS look for another TARDIS. Do something Spock!" Her voice was rising with every bitten out word until it reached a painful decibel and tears sprang into her eyes. She didn't want to cry, not in front of this Doctor, the one who had abandoned her and given her everything at once. Not in front of this Doctor who looked nothing like her Doctor. Not in front of this army of people who were giving her a migraine.
"Rose?" The Doctor's voice seemed to come from far away. His cold fingertips tilted her chin up to look into her face. "Rose, I need you to come with me, okay?"
"No!" she said fiercely, the word sounding so strange to her ears. "I am the Bad Wolf and I demand you find my husband." And those weren't her words, she hadn't even thought them, but they were coming from her lips and there was nothing she could do to stop them.
"I know," he said quietly, one hand finding its way to hers. "Come with me and we'll find him."
Her hand seized his and the Doctor was off, pulling her along after him in a jerky walk that didn't have any of the grace of either of his former selves that she had known.
The rest of the group made to follow after them, but the Doctor put an end to that. "I need you to stay here. River see if there's anything you can think of that would let us track the half me."
They were moving up a flight of stairs then down a hallway and finally arrived at a white walled room with a gurney in the middle. The Doctor nudged Rose in its direction and she stood beside it. Then he was clattering around the room, all elbows and knees, as he gathered random supplies, depositing them on the table beside the gurney.
She reached out, placing her hand on his shoulder and the Doctor froze instantly. "My Doctor." Her voice was ethereal.
The Doctor turned slowly around, worry deep in his hazel eyes. "Rose, my Rose, are you in there?"
She leaned forward, golden eyes glowing. "My Doctor."
"Rose, I can't," he whispered, "not this time. These people need me and they need me as this Doctor. I can't . . ." but his words trailed off and he was brushing the blonde hair from her cheeks.
She closed her eyes at his touch, the gold that scared him so much disappearing from view. "I need my Doctor."
"I am your Doctor," he promised. Then he was leaning in as well, because the only thing he had ever truly wanted, the one thing he really did try to do, was save Rose Tyler, protect her, keep her safe, because she was too beautiful, body and soul, and too purely human to ever lose.
His lips were a hair's breadth away from hers when the door to the MedBay swung open, jolting him backwards. Rose's golden eyes snapped open as well.
"I've got the TARDIS tracking the other TARDIS." It was River, looking for all the world like a hell god. "Now get the hell away from that woman, Doctor, because you are my husband, no matter what knock off she married."
The Doctor was fumbling helplessly with his bow tie, stuck between the two woman he would die for, a permanent death too, not a regenerational one. "River, this isn't what it looks like, Rose is – well, a long time ago she –"
"Doctor!" River shouted, pointing to the girl in question.
The Doctor whirled around to find Rose in the middle of fainting. His arms shot out and caught hold of her right before she would have collapsed. Hefting her upwards, he laid her out on the gurney.
"Rose! Rose, look at me," he pleaded frantically, one hand pulling out the sonic screwdriver while the other pressed against her chest to feel her heartbeat.
There was a soft moan, then brown eyes fluttered open, flecks of gold caught amongst the irises. "Doctor?"
"Yes, Rose, it's me, how are you feeling? Do you feel alright? What's going on? What happened?"
"Doctor," River interrupted, standing beside him. "You might want to give her a chance to answer the first question before you move onto the next five."
His wobbly smile was sheepish. "Right. Rose, how are you –"
"Please, please help me," Rose pleaded, tears crowding in on her eyes again. "I need him. He's all I've got."
There was a wild moment where River and the Doctor couldn't be entirely sure who Rose was talking to, River or the Doctor. It was preposterous, of course, she had come on board demanding to know what happened to her husband, but for that instant, secrets that had been meant to stay buried were uncovered and laid bare between River and her husband.
"We'll help you, Rose," and it was River who spoke. Because she knew that desperation, she knew what it was to be separated from the Doctor.
The Doctor's hazel eyes darted from one woman to the other, then around the room in general, his fingers moving constantly at his side. His energy was pent up, he needed to know what was going on with Rose, why was she glowing gold, the only other time she had done that . . .
"It's the TARDIS," Rose said quietly, her eyelids fluttering shut.
"But how?" he asked, not noticing as River faded from the MedBay and back into the console room.
"Bad Wolf," she repeated and he could hear the exhaustion in her voice. He fidgeted more rapidly, feeling awful for keeping her up but knowing he needed to get this sorted before she could rest.
"No, Rose, I took the Bad Wolf out of you, I saved you."
One brown eye peered up at him. "I create myself." One trembling pale hand swept in a downward gesture to herself. "You can take the TARDIS out of the girl, but you can't take the girl out of the TARDIS."
"I – I don't understand." He thrust a frustrated hand through his hair, rumpling it attractively.
"It's in me, she's in me, we are one, you took out the part that was too much, but the part that was just enough, the part that I created within myself, that remained. Dormant, but there. It's been flaring up lately, with Ten and Half, because we're both half or something. It happened when I went into our TARDIS for the first time, all those memories, impossible ones that I shouldn't have had came flaring back to life. You never explain it in simple English."
There was an accusation behind her words and the Doctor tried not to feel too chuffed that she'd referred to him and his half as the same man. Because if she loved the half than she –
"How do I fix it?"
A sleepy smile curved her mouth, the mouth he couldn't even begin to admit how much he missed. "Nothing to fix. Just got a little too angry. You should know, Oncoming Storm."
The Doctor felt as if he'd been jolted with electricity. He sometimes forgot that she had known him better than his other companions. She had been at his regeneration, she had been the last person he saw for his past two. She knew him, truly knew him, not his past, but him. She knew him better than even River claimed to, knew all of his dark secrets and still loved him.
"I – I'm not like that anymore." It was a blatant lie, but he wanted her to believe he was a better man than the one she had known.
A weak laugh assured him he had failed miserably. "Well, you definitely didn't used to stutter quite so often. Maybe a repeat of 'What? What?' when things got too hairy, but none of this 'I – I.'"
"Yes, well, you seem quite on your way to recovery," he answered frowning.
Before he could leave, her brown eyes landed on him. "I never thought I'd see you again."
"Not exactly who you were expecting, I presume?"
"No," and his heart dropped in apprehension he hadn't realized he felt, "you are always exactly who I'm expecting." She smiled at him.
The Doctor wasn't entirely certain what to make of that or the strangely familiar things it made him feel. He wanted to push those feelings down and away. This was Rose and she was married and she wasn't his anymore, or at least, not this version's and beside all of that, he had River. He lo- He cared deeply for River.
"Rest, Rose. I'm going to look for that husband of yours."
She closed her eyes again. "Thank you, Doctor." Her hand reached out and brushed his. Sparks shot from his fingertips up his arm and directly to his heart. Hurriedly, and with much tugging at his bow tie, he left the MedBay.
