Rose looked away.

"Well!? Did you find him!?" Mickey smiled dimly at her in stupid hope.

"Nuh." Is all Rose could say as her throat burned fierce with a need to cry.

"Ah well…" Mickey sighed, "we can try again in…" he looked at his watch, "ten days."

Rose gave into one deep sob before collecting herself and dismissing Mickey's oncoming hug, turning her back on him and walking clumsily down a set of steep stairs. She wasn't in the mood for his sympathy.

She stood at the base of the tower she had just stumbled down, looking up at the spiraling serpent like construction which had been two years in the making. Funny, she thought as she examined it's intricate detailing all over the outside, resembling an archaic form of circuitry, how it seemed that if you touched it, it would all come tumbling down.

The cold wind bit her cheeks as she turned away and headed towards her car. The streets were as empty as they always were at night these days, the footsteps of Mickey echoing behind her as she opened her car door.

"Oi! What's this then? You can't just go, you have to tell me everything, I need to know what happened!"

"What for?" Rose groaned as she slumped in her car seat.

"It was meant to take you to the Doctor. If it didn't…"

"If it didn't!? IF!?" Rose fired up, rising to her full height directly in front of him. "It bloody well didn't take me to him, alright!? There were police barricades, a woman jumped off the roof or something, people all round, but no Doctor. No blue box, no aliens, no nothing."

"Well, did you look? Cause to me it sounds like his m.o."

"YES I bloody well looked. I didn't have much time if you can recall. Now I'm tired and I just want to go to bed."

"Well fine, but you gotta do readings and stuff tomorrow, give me a detailed account, ya know? Now go on home." Mickey kicked the car in mute frustration.

"Ha!" Rose scoffed as she sat down in her car and jammed the keys into the ignition. "Yeah…right…home." She slammed the door and drove off.

Mickey watched as she sped away, kicking a rock with his foot and looking around the empty streets. "Oh bloody hell…" he said to himself as a realization dawned on him. "WAIT! STOP!" He yelled out to Rose's car as it turned the corner, out of sight. "How the hell am I gonna get home now!?" he puffed as he chased after her to no avail.



Truth was Rose hadn't felt at home at all since she'd left the Doctor behind. The TARDIS had been her home for so long, the only place she'd felt right, felt accepted- felt worthwhile. The tower was going to be her one big chance to really go home. It didn't seem right that it didn't work out. She'd changed the world to find the Doctor, but in the fleeting moments she had, he still wasn't found.

She pulled into the driveway of the house now called 'home'. It was large and full of useless trinkets like chandeliers and china, pretty to look at but in a fight against the Cybermen, useless. The china particularly bothered her, what's the use of owning plates you can't eat off. She'd adopted a very practical nature as of late, but her mum loved them, and she loved her mum, so she put up with it.

As she walked to her door, her mum swung it open and embraced her. "Oh thank God you're ok. So it worked, did it?" That dim hope spread across her face aswell.

"Uh, yeah, it worked, kinda. Anyways, I'm gonna head upstairs." Rose feigned a yawn and tried to pass Jackie.

"Oh no you don't!" Jackie grabbed her daughter by the arm. "Somebody is here to see you." She dragged an unassuming Rose into the house and shut the door behind her.

"Get off it!" Rose muttered as she dusted off her jacket. She looked up across the chandeliered entrance hall to see her visitor. She had a sharp intake of breath as her heart skipped a beat and her stomach leaped into her throat. Rubbing her eyes however allowed her to see the true nature of her visitor.

"Oh, it's you." She took in the sight of him. He was tall, skinny and just a little foxy. A spitting image. But his hair was flat, his suit wasn't pinstriped and his shoes were of the more formal variety. It was mostly his face that made him different though. His eyes had a little less soul, and his smile had a little less glee. "Well, what do you want then?" Rose strode past him, removing her gloves and placing them on a side table in the sitting room next door. She sunk into a big lounge chair next to the table, in front of the fire, and stared hard into the embers which flickered and danced before her eyes.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows, sunk his hands into his pockets and turned on his heel to face her. "Well, I just wanted to see how it went, you know…" he scratched his eyebrow and looked down at his feet for a moment, "I did invent the thing, well I say 'invent' but..." He paused, scanning Rose's face. "You didn't find him, did you?"

"Nuh." Rose stared harder into the fire.

"I'm sorry." The Doctor bent at the knee next to her, examining her face and then looking into the fire.

"You know, you said that it would bring me to him. You said it couldn't bring me any other place, or any other time." A tear trickled down Rose's face. She felt beyond sadness, beyond anger, beyond frustration; all this hope she had now twisted and writhed inside of her, turning on her, eating her up from the inside out.



"It's the Bad Wolf…"

"Bad Wolf, Bad Wolf, the bleedin' Bad Wolf. I don't give a DAMN about Bad Wolf." Rose stood up and hunching over, looked down into The Doctors sad, awful eyes. "I sent myself a message, beyond time, beyond space, to here, to now to take me back to the Doctor, MY Doctor, and we built that stupid tower and I crossed the stupid rift and now I'm back here. He wasn't there. He just. Wasn't. There."

The Doctor looked away towards the fire again as Rose sat back down. He shifted his seating position, stretching his legs out in front of him while leaning back on his elbows. After a short, heavy silence, he scrunched up his nose and said in a higher octave, "Did you look hard enough?"

Rose groaned, "Oh here we go."

"Well, I mean, if I was the Doctor, and… I am the Doctor; I would be running around a lot, sonic screw-drivering things, messing about, chasing aliens and the like. I'm a fast moving, go-getting, wayward kinda guy, I never look back and I don't really stick around to look for pretty girls with blonde hair." He looked from the fire to Rose, who stared at him with a mouth that was a little gaped and with a little spark back in her eye. "Just a suggestion."

"Oh you think you know it all, don't you? Well let me tell you, I looked."

"Yeah, sure, ok, well, I should get going." The Doctor bounced up and headed toward the door.

"Oi, I did look." Rose stood up promptly and tailed him as he strolled into the entrance hall. "I waded through crowds, snuck into buildings, searched through alley-ways looking."

"Mmm…ahuh…" the Doctor noted her words, distractedly, reaching for the front door handle. "I'll come back tomorrow, and then we can talk about how much you looked." The Doctor looked at her knowingly with a small smile stretched across his face.

Rose felt a fresh chill roll down her spine and couldn't help but return the smile, if only a little. "I thought you were a 'go-getting, wayward kinda guy', since when do you organise house-calls?"

"Ah, see, that's probably the difference between your Doctor and I, I enjoy a good plan every now and again. Like to know where I'm going to be tomorrow. Never really works out mind you, but still…" And with that the Doctor opened the door and shut it decidedly behind him.

Rose headed to bed, feeling a little better after that exchange, if not a little confused. She hadn't slept soundly in quite a long time, but at least that night, she almost felt like she had a tomorrow worth looking forward too.