Takes place during and after The Satan Pit and goes AU from there.)

They'd lost the TARDIS on Krop Tor. At first, the Doctor was shocked, but for a variety of different reasons. First, he wondered how Rose had managed to convince Zach of throwing caution to the wind and pressing his big red button— oh how he loved big red buttons. The entire time he's been on the Sanctuary Base, he never noticed it among the myriad of flips and dials and switches and buttons of all sorts of colors. Apparently, if there was one important life lesson that Rose learned from him in dire circumstances, it was that she should always look for a big red button.

Down in the pit, as he faced the most mysterious of creatures (this thing was a self-proclaimed paradox. Honestly, how could something have come before time? Even the word before implies a place within time—), he proclaimed that he believed in her. He believed in his favorite pink and yellow human. He believed that she'd find a way to move on without him after he'd fallen into the pit. He believed that she'd manage to safely escape the power of the black hole after he'd disposed of the Beast's corporeal form. He believed that she'd survive, in the way that her species were prone to do. And he believed that they'd both be better for having known each other.

What he hadn't believed was that he'd survive this particular encounter. Despite having saved him time after time since meeting her, the Doctor was shocked that she'd managed to save him again. That big red button, Zach explained, had been an untested homing device which had been installed in the main panel of the Sanctuary Base. Lack of funding for the mission had prevented the homing system from being completed, and the crew had been under strict orders to not risk the lives of their crew members and were not to press the button under any circumstance.

Well, those were two factors that only begged for the button to be pressed. A big red button that should never, ever, ever be pressed under any circumstance— naturally, Rose found a way to hit the button. And as it did so many months ago aboard a vessel of Sycorax flying over London on Christmas morning, absolutely nothing seemed to happen.

Toby had flown out of the rocket's shielding and into the black hole along with the impossible planet and the bodies of Ida and the Doctor. But the moment that the Krop Tor had disappeared into the oblivion, a white flash illuminated the rocket and the Doctor appeared in the seat that Toby had unwillingly evacuated, with Ida draped across his lap.

And now, here they were. On a version of Earth that even Rose was terribly unfamiliar with, hundreds of years after her personal timeline. And they were both shocked. It had been three days since Zach had located them to this apartment in what was known as the 'Old New England' Territory on the American Peninsula (It was the area known as Mexico in Rose's day, which had become a peninsula after a series of natural storms had flooded over the Central American Countries in the late thirtieth century.)

They had no TARDIS, it was hot, and neither of them had any money to spare. The apartment was fully furnished, but small with one bedroom, one bathroom, and no laundry equipment. That didn't really bother them, though, as all of their clothing had been left on their ship.

Rose could tell that this had all been hard on the Doctor— the loss of his home, and now even the loss of the last remnant he had of his home. The apartment was cramped and uncomfortable, as he'd opted to sleep on the couch. He was forced to take the slow path, to live life in a linear fashion, which was something even she had come to dread.

'Stuck with you, that's not so bad.

Yeah?

Yes.'

So they tried to trudge on. In their small apartment— Rose knowing that she'd never see her mother again, the Doctor learning to live in a style he found repulsive. All they had was each other and a couple of hundred credits worth of debt because the Doctor wouldn't accept the apartment as a gift from their Krop Tor friends. So now they had to pay rent as well.

And they didn't have any food left in the cupboards.

The Doctor rummaged around in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets to find something valuable enough to sell or trade. Only coming across a small velvet box, he stopped dead in his tracks as Rose eyed him in anticipation.

"I'll go get some food," he told her gently, swiftly turning and leaving her behind in the apartment. He knew that he'd had plans for the item inside the velvet box— he'd bought it with intentions of giving it to her for her birthday. But desperate times called for desperate measures. She didn't know what she'd be missing, not really. And he could always wait until he'd made a bit of extra money now that he was stuck in a linear timeline (oh, he'd have to find a job sometime soon, that's disgusting), and buy it back. Or buy a different one. A better one.

He came back almost two hours later, laden with vegetables and cans of soup and a chicken. He was very proud of himself for picking the poultry, knowing that if cooked right, a whole chicken could last them at least a week— especially in this time period where chickens grew to be the size of a Thanksgiving Turkey.

Rose, on the other hand, was not impressed.

"And how did you pay for this, Doctor? I'm sorry, but you can't just sonic every cashpoint you see."

"I didn't. I sold something and used the profit to buy us the makings for the first proper meal we've had since Vualus XII," he said in his defense. A long minute of intense scrutiny passed between the two, after which she turned back to the box with the chicken.

Opening the lid, the Doctor saw all color drain from her face as she stumbled backward and looked at him in horror.

"Rose," he panicked, running up to her, "are you alright? What is it?"

"Could we try to be vegetarian," she mumbled to him shyly.

He was confused. "Whatever for? You've never wanted to be vegetarian before— which believe me, is rather impressive considering all the times you've gotten food poisoning from the meat dishes on other planets—" he was cut off as she shoved him into the table, now looking venomously at him.

"Yeah, well I've never had to kill my own chicken before, have I," she shrieked at him.

"Oh, that," he said as he remembered the chicken's current status of "LIVING."

He laughed.