"Where to next?"
It was a little game the Doctor played. Rose was sitting on the console room couch, the Doctor at the controls, and Jack had just walked through the doors. Jack and Rose exchanged a look. Rose stretched and yawned. "How about London?" she threw out.
The Doctor looked at her and then the floor. "Oh."
"No, I mean, I want to see some more history," Rose said, playing with the elastic of her blue hoodie.
The Doctor smiled. "All right."
"Preferably not the Blitz again," Jack said, motioning for Rose to scoot over.
"Count the nineteenth century out," said the Doctor. "We've just been."
"Oh yeah?" Jack asked, stretching his arm across the couch and not quite touching Rose. "What all did you see?"
"Cardiff," said the Doctor and Rose at once. Rose began to laugh and patted Jack's knee. "I met Charles Dickens, I did."
Jack grinned. "Oh yeah . . . Charles Dickens. Not a bad-looking guy."
"Get out."
"I mean, when he was young."
The Doctor rolled his eyes, and Jack gave a mysterious, leering smile. "You say that about everyone," Rose teased.
"No," said Jack. "Not everyone." Rose tilted her head back, slightly, staring at Jack as long as she dared.
"I'm waiting, here," the Doctor interrupted. "Give me a date."
"Oh, I'll give you a date," Jack said with exaggerated lewdness, pulling himself off the couch and sidling over to the Doctor.
Rose played with her rings. "I'd like to see the Fire. You know, 1666 an' all that."
Jack glanced at the Doctor. "Isn't that a little dangerous?"
Rose opened her mouth to balk. "Yeah, it is dangerous," said the Doctor. "A curious choice, too, 'siderin' that we've already seen the destruction of the Earth."
His glance was cutting. Rose looked away. "What?" Jack asked.
"Doctor, no one died in that Fire. It left a lot of people homeless, but no one got killed, yeah?" It was almost a dare, a brazen sally.
"It seems Rose's made her choice," the Doctor said seriously, looking at htem both. "London Fire it is."
Rose jumped off the couch. "I just want to watch, you know," she said appeasingly to Jack. "We can park some ways off, yeah, and just sort of look a' it." She glanced at the Doctor for confirmation. He was pushing a bellows on the console as he set the coordinates. "Maybe walk around a little—I'm kind of looking forward to getting dressed up again."
Jack gave her a tiny smile. "We just don't want that pretty face of yours getting singed." The Doctor gave him a dark look, and Jack stopped smiling.
Rose moved toward Jack, swinging her hips ever so slightly. "Is that all I am to you, Jack? A pretty face?" She grinned.
Jack gave her an all-encompassing look that left little to the imagination. "Absolutely not."
"Would you two knock it off?" By the annoyance in his voice, the Doctor has only half-teasing. Both Rose and Jack looked down guiltily. "Rose, hold down that lever. Jack, connect that cord into that socket." Holding down two handles himself, the Doctor was amazingly eloquent with just his chin to point out directions. Rose and Jack hurried to their respective tasks. "Crisis averted," the Doctor said, obliquely, after a moment. "Rose, you know the drill—go get dressed."
" 'Kay," said Rose, picking her way across the metal gantry.
"Wow, you look great!" Rose entered the console room in a light green gown, tight-bodiced, with ruffly white sleeves, a long, straight petticoat, the skirt drawn over the back.
"Do you really ffink so?" she said with a completely honest frown, trying to view the back of the skirt. The ruffly edges of the underchemise obscured the low bosom, and she had a shawl in muted colors wrapped around her shoulders. "I don't ffink it's as elegant as my 1860s frock." She turned to show Jack the back of the gown. She looked up at the Doctor. "Doctor?"
He looked up for the first time. "Very in-period."
Rose looked at Jack. "No, I mean it. You look great." Rose smiled tremulously. She seemed to notice for the first time that not only was Jack dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, he was holding a mug of tea with a box of Kleenex next to him on the couch. "What about you? Why aren't you dressed?" She grinned, her tongue swiping the front of her mouth cheekily. "I was looking forward to seeing you in tight breeches and stockings."
Jack glanced at the Doctor. "I'll bet you were." He sneezed, loudly, into a tissue. "Rose, you may find this hard to believe, but I think I've come down with a cold." He sneezed again.
"You've got to be jokin'. Haven't they eliminated the common cold by the fifty-first century?"
"Well—"
"Rose, are you coming?" The Doctor was at the doors with a distinctly impatient look.
"Yeah, just wait a minute." She turned back to Jack. "So, you're just going to sit here? While we . . . watch London burn?"
"You shouldn't be gone too long, it'll give me a chance to recuperate . . ." Rose opened her mouth to argue. "I'll be fine. Do some shopping if you get a chance," he said. "Bring me something cool, okay?"
"Rose?"
"Here, if you get into any trouble," Jack said, unfastening the band of leather from his left wrist, "use this."
Her eyes widened. "Your watch? Are you sure?"
"This is me leaving . . . "
"Yeah. Take it. Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he said with a wink.
Rose moved slowly toward the doors. "Feel better." Jack nodded. Rose reached the doors and walked out, reluctantly.
She was struck at once by the cold, as the Doctor locked the TARDIS door. "Did you make him stay?" Rose asked with barely-concealed anger.
"I didn't make him do anything! You heard him, he has a cold."
"Bollocks," Rose said.
The Doctor's look was cold and angry. "If my company isn't to your liking—"
"I just wanted for us all to go out together, tha's all," said Rose, embarrassingly close to tears. "To have fun, together."
"What, like one big happy family?" His sarcasm needled.
Rose hadn't minded the state Jack had put the Doctor in before—frankly, in her own thoughts she called it "captain envy moments"—but she certainly didn't want the Doctor to call her a stupid ape again. She took a deep breath and exhaled, watching her breath diffuse. "All right." She pulled the shawl tighter around her. "Are you gonna offer me your arm?"
The Doctor looked troubled for a moment before holding out his jacketed arm. She wondered what kind of stares they were going to get with him dressed the way he was—hadn't even changed jumpers this time, she noted. She took his arm, and they began to walk. The smell began to hit Rose, something that hadn't really been so big of a deal in 1869 Cardiff. She shivered. "Why's it so cold?"
"Because it's February," said the Doctor, deadpan.
Rose looked up. She hadn't been that pants in history. "I thought the Great Fire of London happened in the summer?"
The Doctor looked at his watch. "We've landed in February 1669. Sorry."
His disarming grin of innocence couldn't convince her. "Did both of you ffink I couldn't take care of myself?" She stopped and looked at the sleeping city skyline. "No wonder I didn't see anyffink burnin'."
"I didn't do this on purpose," he said, almost cajolingly. "You know the TARDIS—unpredictable as ever." He grinned again, to no avail. He cleared his throat. "If you'd like to go back and stay with Jack, you've got your key—"
"Who said anyfink about going back?" Her voice was too shrill; her disappointment too obvious. She moved briskly, toward the City. "What happens in 1669?"
"I don't know."
She wrapped her shawl tighter. "Well, Jack said there was good shopping to be had, and I'm sure I can find somefink pretty unusual for my mum."
"Yes." He laughed. "You just might." He looked down. "Are your hands cold?" She nodded. He started to chafe them in his. "Would you like to see them rebuilding St Paul's? There's a chance Christopher Wren himself might be there himself."
Rose's face lit from within. "Yeah," she said, and they were off.
