Author's Note: This is my first Doctor Who fan fiction, and though I love the show very dearly, I can't help but question whether or not I did it justice. I certainly hope so, but if not, PLEASE review and tell me, so I can work on it. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up soon, but I'm awfully busy at the time (*sigh*)… But I'll certainly post it as soon as possible. And remember, Reviews= Happiness! ;)
"How about Hulligatantica?" Asked the Doctor excitedly.
"Hulligatantica?" Repeated Rose, amused at his peppiness.
"Oh, you'd love it!" Exclaimed the Doctor,"It's this beautiful place with plants everywhere, and it's extremely near to a sun, making it warm all the time!"
Rose giggled. "Sounds great!" She said with a grin.
The Doctor started pulling levers, pushing buttons, and typing into a keyboard, and with one more flourishing flic of a switch, he sat back and turned to Rose. "Now, about Hulligatantica; it's a beautiful place, but there are a few things you have to watch out for. For example, there's-"
Suddenly there was a great jolt, and the Doctor's face darkened as he stared at a screen monitor. "What? No, no, no, that can't be right!" He ran a hand through his hair and pulled out his glasses. He squinted at the screen and began to type furiously at the keyboard.
"What? What's wrong?" Asked Rose anxiously, looking over the Doctor's shoulder at the screen, even though it was just a bunch of symbols that didn't make sense to her.
"Something's gone wrong- oh, if I could just lock on to Hulligatantica's gravitational field- Rose, go press that button!" He ordered, pointing to a green button on the console panel. Rose pounded her fist on it, and the Doctor yelled, "Now pull down that lever!"
"Which lever, the yellow one or the blue one?" She called.
"The yellow one!"
Rose pulled it down and the Doctor began typing again, his fingers flying over the keyboard. Finally he leaned back with a satisfied look and said, "There we go, everything's under control."
"Wha-what happened?" Asked Rose shakily.
"Well, I won't get into details you don't understand, so I'll just say that something broke down and we were almost stranded in space, but the TARDIS is programmed to lock onto the nearest gravitational field and land on the very same planet we happened to be going to. We'll be landing any second now, and then I can do some quick repairs, and when I'm done we can go take a look around."
"But what am I supposed to do while you're making repairs?" Asked Rose in a jokingly whiney voice.
"Ah, go read some of those magazines you have all over your room."
"How do you know I have magazines in my room?" Demanded Rose.
The Doctor waggled his eyebrows at her. "I know a good deal more than you think I do, Rose Tyler." He said.
"Great." Muttered Rose, "Now I'm never going to be able to sleep for fear you'll be staring at me with your little hidden cameras."
The Doctor chuckled. "Ah, just go do something time consuming; I should be done in a while- and hour and a half at the max, but it should only take an hour." The Doctor gave her a childish little wave and bounded down the steps and began to do some poking around.
Rose headed to her bedroom, daydreaming of the planet outside the TARDIS doors. What would it be like? She slipped off into fantasies of flourishing jungles and was soon too absorbed in her thoughts to notice much else. Suddenly a thought occurred to her. It was a wonderful, brilliant idea. Why should she wait for the Doctor to finish his repairs when she could just go out on her own? After all, he had never really told her not to, had he? He had simply suggested she read magazines, he had never told her she wasn't allowed to leave.
Since the Doctor had said it would be hot, Rose pulled her hair back into a ponytail, changed into shorts, and bounded from her bedroom to the TARDIS console room. She could hear the Doctor humming quietly to himself below, and had to suppress a giggle as she tip-toed across the floor. She felt like a ten-year-old again, sneaking off to see a movie her mum had forbidden her from watching. She had actually done this once, and it had resulted in terrible nightmares for weeks.
The TARDIS doors opened without a sound, and she was careful not to let them slam when she closed them.
The sight that beheld Rose took her breath away. There were lush green plants everywhere, and huge trees that made a canopy of leaves above her. Rose slipped her shoes off and felt the soft grass underneath her, unlike the prickly brown blades she remembered from home. A soft chirp came from one of the trees, followed by another. Soon, the whole forest was alive with the song of the alien birds that resided in the majestic trees around her. It was so like Earth, with grass and plants, and birds, and everything their proper color (The grass wasn't orange; the sky wasn't green, etc.), but it was like an Earth out of a fairy tale. Rose didn't think there was any way that a planet like her own could be as beautiful as this one. Or maybe it could, if there weren't so many humans trashing it up. She wondered if things besides the birds lived here. She doubted it was only the birds; they had to have something to live off of. And there had to be something that hunted them, prevented them from swooping down fearlessly upon her.
As she had been wondering these things, her attention had left the grass she was stepping in, which is why she very unfortunately failed to see the thorny plant right in front of her. Rose howled in pain as she stepped right into the prickly bush. She clutched her foot and looked down at it. Quite a few thorns were pushed into the flesh, and the sight of blood dripping made her dizzy. Swearing under her breath, she quickly sat down and began to pull the thorns from her foot, one by one. It was a nauseating experience, watching blood flow freely from her foot, and she knew she had to bandage it up somehow. Rose immediately decided not to tell the Doctor about it, not wanting to see the disapproval and disappointment in her in his eyes, so she ripped a bit of fabric from her shirt- grimacing as she thought of how her mum would react to find that the shirt she had bought Rose for Christmas was all torn up- and wrapped it around the wound. She gingerly put a little weight on it, resulting in a sharp pain. The Doctor would certainly notice her limping when he had finished with his repairs. And thinking of it, how long had it been since she had left? Surely not more that twenty-five minutes? He had only guaranteed her- what- an hour? That meant if she was going to clean the wound and bandage it more properly, she would have to hurry. With a groan, Rose stood up and half limped, half hopped back to the TARDIS.
The sight of the big blue box had never been more welcoming. She held her breath as she opened the door and looked around. She could still hear the Doctor working, so she tiptoed as quietly as she could through the console room, and to her bedroom, collapsing on the bed and letting out a sigh of relief. Her head swam and her foot throbbed, but she was determined not to let the Doctor know she had been out. She limped into the bathroom and began to run some cold water in the bathtub. She searched for something to wrap her foot in, but only produced a few strips of white cloth. It would have to do. Rose carefully removed the piece of her shirt she had torn off and stuck her foot underneath the icy water pouring from the spout. She sucked in a breath at its cold temperature, but quickly felt grateful for the fact that it was helping a bit with the pain. She took a washcloth and wiped away the crusted blood. Once she had done that, she could examine the wound a bit more carefully. There were about five punctures in the skin from the thorns. They weren't very big, but looked quite deep. It was strange how even though they were only thorns, they seemed to be hurting a lot more than normal thorns would. There was a dull throbbing sensation in her foot, along with a painful stinging. Rose suddenly found herself longing for her home back on Earth, with its familiar plants and places and people. But that was far, far away, and she was with the Doctor, after all. She wouldn't give up this life for anything.
Rose turned off the water and wrapped her foot in the clean material, securing it with a safety pin, and tested her weight on it. It was painful to put pressure on it, but she tried to reassure herself that as long as she tried to keep off it as much as she could, and didn't run too much, it should be just fine. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She was a complete mess. She was covered in sweat, stray hairs that had escaped her ponytail clinging to her neck. Her face was unusually pale, and her hands were covered with her own blood. She quickly scrubbed her hands clean of any sign of blood, then pulled her hair out of the ponytail completely and splashed some cold water on her face. She then pulled her hair back once more and looked at herself again. She dabbed a little blush onto her cheeks to hide how pale she was and practiced smiling. When she had decided she was presentable enough, she left the bathroom and collapsed onto her bed with a magazine, wishing this was the position she had been in for the last thirty minutes.