Chapter 1:
"We're in need of refueling."
"Is that what you call it?" I giggled.
He smiled. "I wasn't talking about us, I was talking about the TARDIS. It needs a bit of petrol, so to speak. See that button flashing over there?" He pointed off somewhere I couldn't see. "That's what it means, we need to refuel. I think." He cocked his head. "Or it could be a distress call. It's hard to tell. Things look a bit different from this angle."
"From underneath the console, you mean?"
"And something's digging into my back, ow!" he sat up, looking at the grating underneath us. "How exactly did we end up here?"
"I showed you the courtisan dress I unearthed in the wardrobe, remember?"
He grinned. "Oh, yes. I always have had a bit of a thing for period clothes."
"So I gathered," I said, motioning to the current state we were in. "If the TARDIS needs refueling, where we going to go do that? I haven't seen any petrol stations in space lately."
"Cardiff."
"Blimey, everything's in Cardiff, innit?"
He was already halfway dressed again and babbling about rifts and radiation and the like. I watched him from the floor, with an amused smile on my face. The Doctor. The last of the Time Lords. The man that I had fallen head over heels for despite all our differences.
And my husband.
That last bit wasn't something we had planned. More like something forced on us on a strange planet. But judging from all the shagging that had taken place on the TARDIS lately, not something either one of us minded.
"So we're going home then?"
"If you like, I can stop off at your time, yes." He gave me a passing smile as I stood up, wrapping my dress around me like a blanket. Too much work to put it all back on now.
I grinned. "Gonna tell my mum the happy news?"
He pulled a face. "Absolutely not. At least I'm not going to be the one to. She's smacked me once already, remember?"
"I remember the look on your face," I laughed.
"900 years and I've never been slapped," he mumbled, twisting some controls on the TARDIS.
"Well, I'm going to go change and then maybe I'll phone, see if she's about." Seeing his shudder, I shook my head. "Fight a man with swords and great beasties, but you turn coward around my mum." I leaned in to kiss him briefly.
"Have you seen your mum?"
I smacked him lightly on the arm. "Your mother-in-law."
"Don't remind me. And don't just pop in and go telling her about what's happened. She barely can stand me now and this isn't the kind of thing you spring on someone."
"It was sprung on us."
"Exactly."
"And you haven't seemed to have minded," I said, letting the dress fall to the ground.
He groaned. "That's not fair."
"I know." I moved into his arms, kissing him again. "Alright, I'll have a good visit and then I'll break it gently to her and Mickey."
"Now you can tell Mickey straight away. No, never mind, I'm telling Mickey straight away."
I shook my head at his jealousy. "You tell Mickey, he's running straight to Mum. No, I'll sit them down, have a nice cuppa, and break the good news."
He sighed, resting his head against mine. "Do what you like."
I kissed his nose. "Thank you."
"You always do," he retorted.
I shot him a look as I started to walk down the hallway.
"Just don't do it when I'm there!" he called after me, as I walked back to my room. Well, our room, but most of my clothes were in there. I picked up the mobile off the bedside table and dialed a number. "Mickey, I'm back. Got a favor to ask you..."
There was a knock on the TARDIS door.
"That'll be Mickey!"
"Jolly good," he grumbled.
"You're such fun having company over." I gawked at him. "What is that ridiculous thing on your head?" He had some sort of headband with a big red light on the front, and was standing up on one of the controls, mucking about with some wires.
"It's a...well it helps with calibration...I'm working on the TARDIS!"
I shook my head and opened the door. "Mickey!"
"Rose!" My former boyfriend and best friend gave me a great hug.
"Here comes trouble, how you doing, Ricky boy?" the Doctor greeted.
"It's Mickey!"
I ignored the purposeful wrong-name calling. "Don't listen to 'im, he's winding you up."
"You look fantastic," Mickey grinned at me. He gave me a great big hug again, and I noticed my dear sweet husband with the bizarre flashing red light on his head giving him a dark look.
"Did you find it?" I asked Mickey.
"There you go." He handed me my passport.
I held it up to the Doctor. "I can go anywhere now."
"I told you, you don't need a passport."
"It's all very well going to Platform One and Paxil and the Glass Perimeter Cyclune, but what if we end up in Brazil? I might need it. You see I'm prepared for anything." I gave him a big smile. "Course, some of the information on it might be in need of updating..."
"Sounds like you're staying then," Mickey said glumly.
The Doctor looked at me and I gave him a slight smile, then looked to see Mickey frowning at us. He covered it quickly with a happier look. "So what you and Big Ears doing in Cardiff?"
"Oi!"
"Look in a mirror!" Mickey retorted.
"You saying I'm not handsome?" the Doctor grumbled, coming down the steps. "Because, I'll have you know, Ricky boy..."
"My mum!" I said and they both stared at me. The Doctor took my meaning and let it go. "I wanted to have a chat with you and her soon as she gets off work and we needed to refuel. The thing is, Cardiff's got this rift running down the city. It's invisible, it's like an earthquake fault between the different dimensions."
"The rift was healed back in 1869," the Doctor said.
"Right, by a woman named Gwenyth, because these creatures called the Gelf, they were using the rift as a gateway but she saved the world and closed it."
"But closing a rift means leaving a scar and that scar generates energy that is harmless to the human race but perfect for the TARDIS, I just park it here for a couple of days, open up the engines, let it soak up the radiation..."
"It's like filling it up with petrol and off we go..."
"Into time and space!" the Doctor and I finished together cheerily.
"My God, have you two heard yourself? You think you're so clever, aren't you?" Mickey said.
"Yup," the Doctor agreed.
"Yeah!" I said.
"We've got another 24 hours so we've got some time to kill," the Doctor said, leading us outside. "So let's go explore!"
I took his hand and we were off.
"You know what Mum's going to be most wound up about?" I asked the Doctor as we sat for a lovely brunch along the waterfront. Mickey had stepped outside to get better reception to call my mum to arrange for her to meet us. I had wanted to surprise her with my visit before I surprised her with news.
"Hmm? What?" The Doctor sounded distracted, and no wonder, since he wasn't paying any attention to what I was saying and instead was trying to figure out the least noticeable way for his hand to work its way past my already very short skirt. "What'd you go and have to wear tights for?"
"Maybe it's because it's so bloody cold outside?" I reminded him with a giggle, moving the offending hand away when really I wanted to let him have at it. But we were already getting looks around from the other patrons, he apparently hadn't been that discreet in his endeavors. We were probably getting the dirty old man cradle robber whispers. If only they knew how truly big the age difference was. "I didn't realize what a letch you can be," I said, teasing.
"And now it's too late to do anything about it," he said in the same jovial tone. "Now what were you saying about Jackie?"
"I said she's going to be particularly wound up."
"Do you think? She already hates me, I don't think there's a word that's been invented that is what she will think of me now."
"Especially since we're married and I have nothing to show for it." I held up a hand. "No ring."
"What're you talking about? You've got a ring right there." He pointed to my right hand.
"Yeah, my ring that I got for a tenner at the shops."
"You can't just switch what hand your wear it on?"
"Don't be such a git, you know better than that! It's supposed to be a ring from you, that's how we humans do these things."
"I'm not a human," he reminded me cheerfully.
"But I am and we were married by humans."
"Married by humans whose only requirement was to have a sword fight and shag after."
"You have such a romantic way of putting things."
"That's why you were tricked into marrying me," he said with a wide smile. "But if it's so important to you." He dug around in the pockets of his leather and pulled out a silver object, putting it in the palm of my hand. "There you are, cheers"
"What is it?" It looked like a ring, but of some sort of thick metal.
"Gasket from the TARDIS from when I was working on it."
"Yeah, and it looks like a gasket, not a ring."
"Blimey, hard to please, you are." He took it from me and pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket. He shone the screwdriver on it, and I noticed sweeping loops appear that I was used to see scroll on the TARDIS. His native language.
"There you are. A one-of-a-kind ring that came from a one-of-a-kind machine with writing on it that only one person in all of the universe still knows. For you. You're not going to find that at Harry Winston and you can tell your mother that too."
I slipped it on, amazed that it fit, and now with Gallfreyan scrawled across it, looked quite lovely. "What's it say?"
"For all of time," he said, his tone now quite serious, his eyes a dark blue filled with emotion.
I kissed him thoroughly, who cared what the people around us thought, until I heard a familiar throat being cleared.
I pulled away to see Mickey frowning down at us, disapproval plainly written.
"So sorry to be interrupting," he said sarcastically, moving to sit across from us. "But your mum's going to be meeting us as soon as she gets off work."
"Great," I said, facing turning red and looking down at the table as if I had been caught doing something I shouldn't.
"But I'm not hanging about to be the third wheel..."
"You're not the third wheel," I said.
"You could've fooled me."
I didn't know what to say. But lucky for me, the Doctor said it for me.
"Ricky, my boy, you get to be the first to know."
"It's Mickey, and the first to know what?" Mickey asked suspiciously.
The Doctor held up my hand. "We've gotten married! Maybe we should have some champagne to celebrate, this is our honeymoon after all, right Rose?" He flashed his wide grin.
I was looking at Mickey who was staring at me so hard his eyes were like to pop out of his head and his features were going a bit peaked.
"W-What? How? What?"
"It wasn't anything we planned," I said to Mickey. "We were at this planet Paxil, see, and the people there have a problem with single women, you're either the property of your dad or property of your husband. And I came along..."
"And was neither," The Doctor interrupted.
"Right, and so this guy thought that he could just have me."
"And I had to defend her honor," The Doctor said eagerly. "With swords. I won."
"Obviously," I said, a bit put out by how much he was enjoying rubbing my ex's face in it. "But to those people, that was a marriage ceremony and I was married to him since he won."
Mickey seemed to relax a bit. "So it was just some sword fight on a strange planet. You had to go along with it at the time, I get it. Easy enough to ignore."
"Only we're not," I said softly, looking down at my hand. The one with my new ring on it. My thoughts went back to what happened the night of our Claiming and just about every available moment since aboard the TARDIS. 900 years of living had definitely lead to mastery at certain aspects of married life.
As if he could read my mind (or likely see me blushing), Mickey looked ill. "Oh, God. You're not..."
"Every chance we get," the Doctor agreed amicably, and winced when I elbowed him in the ribs. "Ow!"
"Be nice or I'll make you go with me to tell Mum," I said through gritted teeth. "Mickey, this isn't how I wanted to tell you..."
Mickey was already on his feet. "To tell me you're off shagging someone else? Worse yet, that you're married to this alien blighter you're shagging? He's an alien, Rose, it's an alien you're shagging!"
"Keep your voice down!" I hissed, pulling at his arm. "And sit down! You're creating a scene! Everyone's going to think you're a nutter!"
"I feel like I am! I don't believe this!" Mickey dropped back down in his seat across from us. "You never even broke up with me, Rose, did you remember that? You just up and ran off with him!"
He pointed to the Doctor who had at some point gotten up during the tirade and wandered over to where another man sat, pretending to read the newspaper and really listening in on our conversation.
"And I was having such a nice day, too," the Doctor said, and held the newspaper so that I could read its headline: New Mayor, New Cardiff.
With a picture of a Sliveen under it.
Chapter 2:
We burst into the offices at Cardiff.
"So what's the plan?" Mickey asked.
"Have a poke about, see what we can find," the Doctor said.
"That's it? That's the plan?" Mickey scoffed. "Can see why you went and married him, what with the brilliant strategist."
The Doctor ignored him. "Right, Rose'll take the left, Mickey'll take the right, and I'll check down that way. Let's syncronize our watches."
"We're not wearing watches," I said.
He sighed. "I know, but it sounds better than synchronizing our mobiles."
I winked at him. "Let's go."
I walked down the hallways, trying my best to look like I belonged there, had a purpose for being there other than tracking down alien gangsters from planets that I couldn't pronounce. Being with the Doctor had taught me how to look confident in all sorts of situations where I felt out of my element.
My mobile rang and I answered.
"The Sliveen's heading north."
"On my way," I said, taking off.
I made it out to an alleyway, running into the Doctor and seeing the Sliveen already ahead of us.
"Ricky let her get past!" he blasted to me.
Mickey caught up to us. "It wasn't my fault!"
"Then's whose was it?"
"Never mind that, just stop her before she..." I watched as the Sliveen faded away in a blue glow. "Teleports away."
"It's alright, I've got it," The Doctor said, holding up the sonic screwdriver and pushing the button. The Sliveen reappeared again, this time running toward us. She turned and ran back down the alley again, fading out as she tried to teleport. Again, the Doctor turned her back to us.
"I can do this all day," The Doctor said cheerfully.
"Leave me alone, what'd I ever do to you?" she asked.
"You tried to kill me and destroy this entire planet!"
"Apart from that."
The Sliveen's master plan didn't sound much different than any other master plan I had heard lately. Blow up Cardiff, ride her cosmic surfboard out on the explosion and it would power her way home...blah blah blah. At first hearing this kind of thing would give me a scare, now it was old hat.
But there was one thing that did give me a shiver down my spine.
Blaidd Drwg. Bad Wolf.
Those words were following us across worlds, across time. Bad Wolf. A power plant here, a television station there, always there, like a song that sticks in your head. What could it mean?
And why did the very words give me a sense of foreboding? That something bad was going to happen, something that I...
I shivered and forcibly made myself concentrate on the present. The Doctor was puttering around the TARDIS, trying to set it up for petrol-filling, and trying to ignore the Sliveen's whinging about her being sent home being a death sentence. While I didn't want to send anyone to die, I also didn't want to just let her go and destroy the world so she could use her strange little surfboard to go to another world and likely start her villainous plans all over again.
The Doctor noticed my vague expression and gave me a smile. "I'll stay, keep an eye on her," he nodded to the Sliveen. "Why don't you and Mickey enjoy a nice drink at the pub with your mum?"
I smiled back. "You're just dodging telling her."
"You're absolutely right, but I have a convenient excuse." He jerked a thumb to the Sliveen. "Alien gangster trying to blow up the planet. Someone's got to keep an eye on her, can't be helped."
"Anything to get out of facing my mum," I said, leaning up to kiss him. Both Mickey and the Sliveen made groaning noises at the public display of affection.
"Here, put a cork in it," The Doctor said to them. "If I want to kiss my wife, I will."
"Don't remind me," Mickey grumbled, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"I'll give my mum your love," I said to the Doctor.
"Keep it for yourself," he said, kissing me again. "Off with you now."
Mickey and I fell in step with each other as we exited the TARDIS.
The expression on my mum's face was going to be interesting, to say the least.