Chapter 1: In which the Doctor and Rose brood, and Mickey makes stew.
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"Are you all right?" Rose asked the Doctor, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer.
"I'm always all right," he replied in an entirely unconvincing voice.
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It was two days since the Doctor had returned from the other side of the fireplace and Reinette.
The TARDIS was still aboard the abandoned 51st century spaceship. The Doctor had said something about one of the TARDIS phase stabilisers being "stripped" and had spent most of the two days in a four-foot square alcove under the floor of the console room, working on repairs.
Or so he claimed, anyway. Mickey, in his efforts to make himself useful aboard the TARDIS, had cooked a large batch of stew and brought a bowl of it to the Doctor, who was, apparently, not expecting any company down there in his hole. Mickey had found him surrounded by banana peels, playing with a Rubik's Cube.
Mickey had informed Rose of this fact as they shared portions of the stew later in the kitchen, and instantly regretted it when she asked him in return, quite irritated, if he always had to put in quite so much salt every time he cooked.
Rose, for her part, was spending the time cleaning – her room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the library. The wardrobe had proven the most neglected room of them all; while she imagined that it might be useful sometime to have a nun's habit available, she doubted that they would need twenty of them. Same thing went for the fifty pairs of medieval-style military boots and the five large boxes of capes in a variety of colours, including electric pink.
She found two boxes of condoms in the pocket of a set of traditional Chinese robes - Qing Dynasty, she guessed. She sincerely hoped they had been left there by Captain Jack.
She even found some tidying-up to do in Mickey's room, despite the fact that he'd occupied it for a mere matter of days since joining them. He had watched her toil away, knowing quite well that this was her preferred way of coping with heartache.
He also noticed that the Doctor's room remained untouched in her cleaning frenzy.
"Some things are worth getting your heart broken for."
Sarah Jane's words echoed in Rose's ears almost constantly these days. She'd been warned, she told herself. She'd seen her future in Sarah Jane. Despite the Doctor's reply of, "No. Not to you," assuring her that he'd never leave her behind, he had, in fact, already done so. The moment he'd given the OK to Mickey joining them, the moment he met Reinette, he might as well have dumped her back in Croydon. Or Aberdeen. Not like he knew the difference, anyway.
She'd heard Sarah Jane's words; she really had. She just hadn't expected the heartbreak to happen so soon.
She was going bonkers for the lack of female companionship. Rose wasn't normally the catty-girl-talk-gossip-while-varnishing-your-toenails type, most of the time the Doctor was all the company she required. Well, him and any girls, or blokes, or tentacled aliens they might meet along the way.
But this was different. She was a girl, after all, and she'd concluded that there was something hard-wired in the female psyche that simply required talking over one's problems.
But she had nobody to talk to. She certainly couldn't talk to the Doctor, nor did she have any desire to hear his side of things. And any attempt to broach the subject with Mickey led to immediate sniggering on his part.
She was finding it infuriatingly difficult to be angry with him for this.
So she'd gone into her room and confessed her woes to the only female around, the TARDIS, who responded with a slightly different engine hum that sounded vaguely sympathetic. And then In Your Eyes started playing on the sound system.
It was at this point that Rose remembered telling the Doctor it was her favourite song.
Estrogens, she concluded. She needed a proper female in a proper human body with proper female hormones to talk to. Sitting on her bed, she picked up her cell phone, dialled Shireen's number, and listed to it ring once, twice, three times. Then the answering machine picked up.
"No one's home, please leave a message. If you're a bloke, please include your height, weight, IQ, complete medical history, and any criminal convictions and we'll call you back as soon as possible. Maybe."
Rose listened to her friends' giggling voices on the answering machine for a moment, then quickly hung up before the beep. She considered calling her mum, but realised that talking to her would likely be as bad as talking to Mickey. Probably worse.
Feeling like her head was about to explode with unexpressed angst, she decided to get busy again. The oven hadn't been scrubbed yet, so she made her way down the hallway to the TARDIS kitchen, where she found Mickey seated at the table, nibbling away at some toast and reading a book.
"I found a few crumbs under my bed, you know," he said idly. "I think you missed some spots with the vacuum."
She chose to ignore him as she got out the oven cleaner and sponge.
"You know, I had it all wrong when we were dating," Mickey speculated. "I should've played around with other women, or ignored you and gone out with my mates more. My flat would've been spotless."
Rose had a nasty reply on the tip of her tongue, but only got so far as the dirty look, when the Doctor bounded into the room, all smiles and exuberance.
"Right," he said, giving Rose a wink that made her want to smack him. "So that's just about done, we'll be off soon."
"Finished your wallowing, then?" Mickey asked him, not looking up from his book.
"Wallowing?" the Doctor denied in an affronted tone. "I've been working on repairs. I'll have you know, a phase stabiliser is an incredibly delicate and complex piece of machinery. One wrong wire, one bad connection and we could be thrown to the edges of the universe, or sucked into the void, or end up in Guam in 1566."
"What's wrong with Guam in 1566?" Mickey asked.
"You really don't want to know," the Doctor replied. "Nasty business involving some turnips and a 93rd century toothbrush that fell through a hole in time. General Legazpi was never the same afterwards." He turned to Rose. "So where are we off to next? Ballybran? Canyons there make for some incredible rock climbing, especially with the low gravity. Or there's a star in the Ohrthi galaxy about to go supernova. Or," he brightened visibly, "we could go to the spring festival on Phallusacia. Wonderful food, great music, and it all culminates with the monks dancing the Sacrament of Spring. The males there have these positively enormous – "
"Home," Rose interjected.
"What?" asked Mickey and the Doctor simultaneously.
"Home," Rose repeated. "I want to go home. Not to stay," she answered Mickey's questioning look. "I just want a few days of feeling normal and then we'll be off again."
The Doctor snorted. "We could be witnessing the birth of a new galaxy, and you want to go home? To do what? Eat your beans and toast and watch your telly and wonder why Britney Spears wore the red shoes? That's how you want to spend your time?"
"You can just shut it," she snapped at him. Then she sighed. "Just a few days, a few hours even, of just me, like maybe I could get my hair done and not have to worry about some fire-spitting reptiles taking over the House of Commons, or radioactive terriers blowing up a power plant."
The Doctor regarded her quizzically. Rose looked back, almost pleading with him, and he paused. For a moment, she thought he might actually ask what was bothering her, but he finally shrugged and consented. "Home it is," he said. "Just another day or so to finish up –"
"Another day?" Rose interrupted him. "It'll take that long?"
"Well," the Doctor considered, running a hand through his hair, "that's if I double-check all the connections, but really, with this brain of mine, how necessary is that?" He paused for a moment, eyes closed, lips moving like he was working sums in his head. Finally he answered, "all right, give me two hours, and then we'll be off." He turned and bounded back out of the room.
Mickey looked at Rose questioningly. "Didn't you just get your hair done last week?"
Rose threw a nasty glance in his direction and left the room, leaving the oven untouched and unscrubbed.
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The ride proved to be a bit bumpy. To put it mildly.
The Doctor hadn't informed them things were ready to go, but had simply taken off. Rose and Mickey realised they were on their way with the first lurch, which found Mickey wandering the corridors on the third level after getting lost on his way to the bathroom. Again. Rose, for her part, had waited until Mickey had vacated the kitchen, and had gone in to have some tea on her own. The tea was subsequently spilled down the front of her favourite new pink top.
A moment later, she was running into the console room to see what was happening, and found the Doctor dashing wildly about, punching buttons, turning knobs, and yanking more than a few live, sparking wires.
"What's going on?" she demanded.
"The time coupling," the Doctor replied, reaching up at a jumble of wires. The TARDIS lurched again, and he ducked as a rectangular instrument came flying towards his head. "Something's gone wrong, it's not stabilizing the trajectory properly."
Another lurch, Rose was thrown against the console, and the Doctor fell backwards, landing on his bottom on the floor. Mickey was just entering the room and found himself being tossed against the wall, where his nose met the solid surface with a particularly hard blow.
The Doctor quickly stood up, yanked a few more wires, and aimed the sonic screwdriver at one of the controls. "Mickey, make yourself useful!" he ordered, indicating for Mickey to hold a lever in position. Mickey obeyed, still rubbing his nose in pain.
Rose was put to work pumping another of the controls while the Doctor worked at least three more – one with his foot – and slowly their ride smoothed out.
"So what was that, then?" demanded Mickey, as Rose handed him a handkerchief for the trickle of blood running down his nose.
"Must've mixed up one of the connections," the Doctor replied, rubbing the back of his neck. "Odd, I'm usually spot-on with them. Must have a look. Anyway, here we are, then. London, Powell Estates, at your service."
"Just let me change and I'll be right there," Rose said, heading back towards her room.
Mickey went over to the door and looked back at the Doctor. "You coming?" he asked.
"I'm really not up for a dose of Jackie Tyler just now, thanks," the Doctor replied. "You two go enjoy yourselves, I'll stay here and have another look at these wirings."
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Rose emerged from the TARDIS a few minutes later to find Mickey outside, examining his surroundings, and looking aghast.
"What's wrong?" Rose asked, taking a look for herself. Everything appeared in order, it was definitely London; the Powell Estates stood before them. He handed her a newspaper and she scanned the headline.
ROYAL WEDDING SOUVENIR
Underneath the words was a montage of pictures showing the events leading up to the wedding of Charles and Diana.
"July 26, 1981," Rose read the date. "That's so weird, the wedding's in three days."
"I feel like we should go warn them or something," Mickey commented.
"We should let the Doctor know," Rose suggested.
"You do it," Mickey said. "There's something I need to do here." Rose noticed a determined look about him that she was finding unnerving.
"Mickey," Rose said in a warning tone.
"1981," he reflected, staring off into the distance. "We haven't even been born yet." He turned to look Rose in the eye. "I know where she lived, though."
"Mickey," Rose repeated, sounding increasingly uneasy. Just as she knew who Mickey was talking about, she knew nothing good could come of his going to see her.
"I need to see her. I need some answers," he stated, his jaw set determinedly. He started down the street, then turned back to face her. "You coming?"
"Mickey, you won't get any answers from her. She doesn't even know you exist," Rose objected. "It hasn't happened for her yet."
"She's my mother. I need to see her," Mickey repeated. He shrugged. "If I could just see her, see what she was like, maybe I could understand a little more why she left."
"So what're you going to tell her, then?" Rose demanded. She put on a mock Mickey-voice. "'Hello, Mum, I'm the son you haven't even conceived yet, I've travelled in time from the future to find out why you left me, even though you haven't actually done it yet.'"
"Rose, please," Mickey beseeched. "You don't have to come, I just need to do this."
Rose folded her arms over her chest and eyed him up in her most Jackie-esque fashion. After a long silence, she decided that staring him down wasn't going to work, so she rolled her eyes and sighed. "Well, if you're going, you're certainly not going without me."
Mickey grinned and launched himself towards her in a tight hug.
They set off together to pay a visit to Mickey's mother.
tbc
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A/N: Anyone interested in being a beta and/or Britpicking this, please drop me a note.