"We're not doing anything to her," the Doctor said. "You've done quite enough."
"Oh please, I haven't touched a human in years. And here you are not wanting to share? Selfish."
The Doctor rolled his eyes. Fifty years of traveling with the Master, on and off, and he was more than a little tired of the man's stupid games. "We made a deal. You can ask me to fulfill the terms of our deal. If you touch Rose...Rose is not part of the deal."
"And what are you going to do about it? Kill me? I could plunder that little piece of ape six ways you've never even heard of and you wouldn't touch me."
Without remembering getting there, the Doctor had the Master pressed up against the TARDIS door, hand firmly around his throat. "There are worse things than dying, Master," he said, his voice low.
"Like what, what you did to the Family of Blood? Fairy-tale punishments? Oooh, how frightening. I've got no experience whatsoever escaping that sort of thing!"
"You know what they used to do to men who interfered with a completed claim back in the Dark Ages."
The Master's eyes flickered and the Doctor realized he had succeeded at surprising him. "That won't work. Not with an ape. They don't have any telepathic ability, not the ones from her time." From the certainty in his voice the Doctor ascertained that he must have tried it before, probably with Lucy. Poor Lucy, no wonder she'd been so addled towards the end.
"It already has worked. I've bonded with her."
Now the man was grinning, damn him. "Really! This I've got to see. Back on Gallifrey they would have locked you both in cages and poked you until they figured out what went wrong!" Before the Doctor could stop him, he had reached behind and grabbed the door knob, pulling the door open and slipping out from under the Doctor's grip.
He followed the other Time Lord into the TARDIS, feeling her unease at having the man who had violated her inside her again. It had been a long time ago, but what was time to a time machine? He soothed her gently with his thoughts. "They locked you in a cage on Gallifrey."
"Well, I never said I wasn't a freak too. Why else would we get along so well?"
The Doctor came up the ramp and saw the blond man leaning over Rose, examining her without touching her. His hackles went up as he got closer and saw how close the Master's hands were to Rose's temples. One of the hands lowered itself, too slowly to be anything other than an attempt to annoy him. Nevertheless he strode over and slapped the hand away.
"Now now, Doctor. I risked my TARDIS opening up a window to that universe so you could get your precious little primate back. Not to mention what you've done to the proper timelines. Our friends in the Council would be just appalled. Good thing you killed them all, isn't it?"
The Doctor made a face at him. "Are you ever going to stop going on about that?"
A soft moan from the jump seat cut off whatever the Master had been about to say. The Doctor frowned. She shouldn't be awake yet. At a minimum he'd planned on ejecting the Master back to his own TARDIS before she woke. Explaining what he'd just done to her was going to be awkward enough without his quasi-nemesis skulking around smirking.
"Doctor?"
He knelt next to her on the metal grating, ignoring the pain in his knees. "I'm here, Rose."
Her eyes turned slowly to find him. They were barely open, only the barest hint of whiskey brown showing through her lids. "Hurts," she whispered.
"What hurts? Your head?"
She gave a brief nod before closing her eyes again. His frown grew deeper. Maybe she'd woken up too early and the link hadn't settled yet. He touched her temples and closed his eyes, probing the connection between them. It seemed secure, but he could feel her pain radiating across it. She had a nasty headache, but he couldn't see anything actually wrong with her brain. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised it was painful. She was doing something her species wouldn't evolve capabilities for for several thousand more years.
As he pushed her back towards sleep and opened his eyes, he heard the Master. "Can't be too surprised she's in pain, you've done something unnatural to the poor girl."
The Doctor rubbed his own temples, trying to clear away the lingering ache. "Unnatural? Like you've got room to talk. At least I've never transformed every human being on earth into a copy of myself."
"That wasn't unnatural, it was a massive evolutionary step forward for a primitive species. Just think, if I'd succeeded, you never would have soiled yourself with that little ape."
"You're the biggest hypocrite in the universe, if not the multi-verse."
"Hypocrisy isn't a problem when you don't have a bucketful of pathetic little morals guiding you."
The Doctor tuned him out, staring at the woman asleep on the jump seat. It had been a long time since he'd felt particularly moral. Things had changed that day on Mars and he'd only gone further down the rabbit hole after the Master came on board. Of course, now he had effectively ended that timeline before Mars had even happened. It wasn't hard to convince himself it was for the best. Donna was safe. The meta-crisis had never happened and Rose was here, back in his arms once again.
"What's so special about this one, then? They've all loved you. She's just a little girl. No education or credentials to speak of. She's not even a real blonde."
Strangely, with the Master's words the Doctor felt a smile come to his face. "She's Rose. That's all."
The Master smirked. "I know why you really like her."
"Oh, do you?"
"It's that power. The Vortex itself! You can sense it, can't you? Trapped inside her tiny ape brain, all bottled up and just waiting to come out. It makes me want to crack her open like an egg and see what's inside. What did you do to her?"
The Doctor looked down at the little pink and yellow human sleeping on his jump seat. "I didn't do it," he said, and even the Master could hear the pain in his voice. "She did it to herself. I couldn't save her. I still can't. All I can do is keep her here, by my side. And that's what I'm going to do, and you're not going to interfere, or I will make you regret it."
Rose woke abruptly, still feeling as though the Doctor was on top of her. Adrenaline shot through her and she scrambled upright before opening her eyes and realizing nobody was in the room with her. She winced, raising a hand to her head, which ached fiercely.
As her head cleared, she frowned. She didn't know what in the universe had just happened, or when the Doctor had turned into some sort of sex-maniac. She'd have liked a little sex mania back before they were separated, but now it was just confusing. Not to mention she wasn't entirely pleased by how pushy he'd been. He'd always been hot and cold, but this was just ridiculous. He wasn't even here now to speak to her. He'd brought her in here and left her alone.
She rolled out of the bed and promptly stepped on a pile of dirty laundry. It was then she realized she was in her old room, pink duvet and piles of unwashed clothing still exactly where she'd left them. It had been almost four long years for her. How long had it been for the Doctor? There wasn't any dust, but she couldn't remember ever seeing dust in the TARDIS.
Stumbling toward the bathroom, she noticed she was wearing a pajama top and shorts. So he'd changed her clothes too.
She emptied her bladder and then struck out for the console room, trusting her memory to guide her in the right direction. After a moment she arrived in the familiar green-lit room, smiling fondly at the console and the coral struts. She stroked the coral lightly, feeling the familiar pleasant hum echo through her skull. The TARDIS was just as pleased to see her as she was to see the old time ship. She wished it was under less disturbing circumstances and the TARDIS hummed a tone she took to mean agreement.
At first she didn't see the Doctor; then she realized he had crawled into one of the service hatches to tinker. She could only see his Chuck-clad feet poking out and she almost smiled. How could things be so right and so wrong at the same time?
His senses were such that she was certain he knew she was there, but he stayed in the hatch, metallic noises echoing up into the console room. She shrugged and sat down on the jump seat. She had always been able to outwait him before. For a man who lived hundreds of years, he never had much patience.
After a few more minutes she touched the coral behind her and thought about how annoyed she was with him. There was a blue flash and a muffled curse and then the Doctor came crawling awkwardly backwards towards her. She crossed her arms. At least the TARDIS was on her side.
"So what have you got to say for yourself?" she demanded, wincing as she realized she sounded exactly like her mother.
He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding looking her in the eye. "What do you want me to say?"
"Oh no," she snapped. "We're not going down that road. I want to know exactly how you showed up in the other universe when you told me you couldn't, and why you practically raped me on the console, and what the hell you did to my head, which, I might add, still feels like I went on a weeklong bender!"
He had flinched when she said rape, but otherwise, he held steady. "It's a long story, Rose."
She held out her hands. "We're in a time machine, since you've apparently forgotten. We're in the Vortex. Tell me what I want to know, or you can take me home right now."
"You can't go home, Rose. I already told you that."
"Yeah, you took me away from my mother and brother forever, I know that much. You can still take me home to Earth in 2015 or wherever you lied about us going before."
His mouth was open. "I didn't - "
"No! No putting me off, no lying! Tell me right now or take me home!"
She had forgotten during their time apart how fast he could move. He was inches away from her before she could blink. "You're never going home, Rose," he hissed into her face.
"And why is that?"
"You're mine. You belong to me now. That's why I rapedyou on the console. That's why your head hurts. You will never leave me, whether you want to or not."
All the anger had drained from her, replaced by fear. She stared at him, this monster in a body that had once housed her Doctor. Was it wrong that she still loved him? Could you fear someone and love them too? He'd done monstrous things before she knew him, and she had loved him anyway. Would it be different now? Trying to cover the tremor of fear in her hand, she touched his face. "What happened to you?"
He melted under her touch, the aggression draining from his body, his shoulders slumping as he sank to his knees on the grating. As ever, he answered a different question than the one she'd asked. "It's an old Gallifreyan thing. I...claimed you. Telepathically. It's...you might call it a form of marriage. Never practiced by my time."
Marriage? He really had lost it. Her Doctor never would have wanted to be tied down to an ape. For all she'd known he loved her in his way, he had always made that clear. "And why would you do something like that? Without asking me?"
His eyes flicked to the TARDIS door before finding her again. "Back before the Time War, we used to be able to travel back and forth between the dimensions. But we needed more than one Time Lord, and more than one TARDIS to do it. That's why I couldn't get to you before."
She frowned at him. "Are you telling me there's another Time Lord out there?"
He leaned into her hand, his eyes closed. "Yes. And he's mad, Rose. Always has been. I needed his help to get you, but if he got his hands on you...he would do terrible things. I couldn't let that happen. Now that I've claimed you, he can't touch you. When you tried to go outside, I knew he was there. I couldn't let you walk into that without protecting you first."
"Protecting me? Just how bad is this guy?"
"He's not as bad as he was, years ago. But he likes to play games and he doesn't care how many lives he ruins doing it."
"And he's the only other Time Lord? You didn't find some cache of them hidden away somewhere?"
"Well, I suppose him still being alive proves I can't be sure they're all dead. But there's no sign of any others. We would know."
"Right, telepathy," she muttered. "So what does this claim thing mean, for me? For you?"
He got that flinty look on his face, the one he always had when he didn't want to tell her something. He hadn't changed that much. "I don't really exactly know."
Now she was angry again. "What the hell do you mean you don't know? How could you do something like that to me and not know what the consequences were?"
"When do I ever think of the consequences?" he asked.
She almost laughed, set off guard by his unexpected honesty. "Doctor."
He rubbed the back of his neck again. "The history of Gallifrey and our species is...spotty at best. When Rassilon took over and engineered the Time Lords, the old ways were thrown out. Some things became legend, where others were suppressed entirely. Breeding and bonding were in that category. There's almost no information about how it was done before Rassilon. I have one book in my library here that describes the types of bonding done back then, but it's skimpy on detail. I thought I might be able to form the most basic kind of bond with you. I wasn't sure it would work, but it seems to have. I can feel you in my head now."
She frowned. "Why can't I feel you, then?"
"I guess because you're not a telepath. Humans from your century don't have the brain capacity for telepathy yet."
"That seems awfully unfair. You get to see into my head, and I don't get to see into yours?"
He let out a strangled chuckle. "You don't want to know what's in this daft old head."
Rose tried to think this through. None of this made any sense to her, and it was so hard to think straight with her head aching so badly. He had given her some of the information she wanted, but there was something big missing in what he was telling her, she was sure of that. Some important detail he was leaving out. Like the time they went to Kasman 7 and he neglected to mention that "breeding season" meant she would be repeatedly accosted by amorous houseplants. She'd nearly been smothered by a hydrangea before he fought the thing off with his sonic. Knowing him, he might never give her the whole truth. She sighed. "Just tell me one thing, Doctor."
He raised an eyebrow expectantly.
"Can your med bay get rid of this horrible headache you've given me?" And explain why my head still hurts at all, she thought sourly. He'd been in her head a few times before in their years together. It had never felt like this, this constant pressure on her brain like someone was pressing on it with a trowel.
"We can try," he said, giving her his grin for the first time since she'd woken up as he jumped to his feet. "Allons-y!"
He ran the scanner over her head and frowned at the results on the screen. "This isn't telling me anything useful. May I..." he gestured to her temples.
She shifted uncomfortably on the thin, cold mattress. She wasn't entirely happy about the idea of letting him in her mind again, but what choice did she have? "Okay."
The Doctor pulled a chair beside her, sat down and gently touched the sides of her face, letting his fingers migrate to her temples. His eyes slid shut and she took the opportunity to study his face. If she hadn't known better, she could have believed it was only yesterday he'd left her on that freezing beach. He looked exactly the same, his pale skin lightly spattered with tiny freckles. The creases around the edges of his eyes were relaxed, making him look even younger than he usually did. His hair was as gorgeous and unruly as ever.
She flinched as she felt him abruptly pressing against the bubble of her thoughts, the pain intensifying as he tried to enter her mind. "Oh God, stop!"
He didn't, leaving his hands in place. "Rose, calm down. I can't find out what's wrong if you don't let me in."
"I can't! It hurts, Doctor, it hurts!" She lay back on the examining table, trying to get out of his grasp, but he followed her down. She could feel him tracing the edges of her mind, looking for a way in. Every touch of his mind on hers was like a hot poker jabbing at her brain. It was everything she could do not to scream. Instead she sobbed aloud, which only seemed to make the Doctor want to redouble his efforts. She thrashed and he lunged onto the medical bay bed with her, pinning her with his body.
He couldn't pin her and her hands both and she slapped at him, wanting him off, wanting him out. One of her hands brushed against his temple and the pain level suddenly lessened. Gasping, she grabbed the other side of his face with her other hand and closed her eyes.
"Rose, what are you - " before he could finish his sentence she was inside his head and he moaned. She didn't know how she'd done it once it was done. It was as though she'd stepped off a cliff and arrived inside the Doctor. Her body relaxed underneath his, the ache inside her skull vanishing entirely. The blockage to her mind disappeared and their consciousness merged fully for the first time. A bright light enveloped them both as the link between them was completed, and made permanent.
