Notes: Sorry for the slight delay. Here's the next part of Deep Breath. Thanks to dannicabbage on ao3 for reading it over for me!
The Doctor sat next to Rose and studied her as she listened to Vastra's explanation of a recent series of murders in the area. Cases that seemed to be spontaneous combustion, but they were quite sure had been killed by someone or thing.
"So, we need to find out who or what is causing it. Anything suspicious in the area?" Rose questioned.
"We haven't had any luck with that so far," Jenny admitted.
"Alright. Well, we can all go investigate a bit more in the morning. For now, why don't we all get some rest?" Rose suggested, knowing that Jenny, Vastra, and Strax had to be tired, and the Doctor still wasn't quite himself. If she stayed with him this time, maybe he would relax enough to sleep off the confusion.
Curled up next to him in the bedroom where he had been before, Rose stroked his hair and thought about everything that had happened recently. She could feel her husband's whirling thoughts, even as he slept, and she wondered how long it would take for him to settle back into the brilliant man that she knew and loved.
She was used to the idea now that he would change, but his underlying thoughts, beliefs, and morality remained the same. There were certain constants that she had seen in every version of the Doctor that she'd met. She often wondered what his younger versions were like; the ones before the Time War. Perhaps one day, she would meet one of them. For now, she had this new Doctor to learn about. His accent was interesting and even in his confused state, he was already flirting with her. His worry about her disappearing was a bit concerning. Their separation was centuries ago, but still seemed to worry him.
Rose gave her husband some telepathic caresses to try and calm him down a bit. With him so unfocused, their connection was difficult to access. It was like trying to listen to the radio when you weren't quite on the right frequency. She had managed to get through to him a bit earlier, but needed him to help with the connection on his end as well.
She was also a bit concerned that Jamie and River hadn't returned yet. The TARDIS did have a bit of a tendency to nudge the coordinates to where she felt she needed to be though, so perhaps she felt it was best if the Doctor couldn't run off through time and space again.
Rose dozed off for a bit, despite trying to stay awake to keep an eye on the Doctor. She was awoken by his sudden thrashing beside her. Obviously in the grips of a nightmare, she held him tightly and called to him urgently, "Doctor! Doctor, you've got to wake up, love. I'm here!"
His eyes snapped open, filled with panic until he finally focused on Rose's face. His breathing slowed at he grasped her tightly against his chest. "You're here," he gasped over and over again, as if not believing that she could possibly be with him.
"Let's get dressed and go investigating, Doctor," Rose suggested.
All he had to wear was the suit that his previous incarnation had chosen for the time being. It fit him well enough, but he grumbled about wearing it and refused to put on the bow tie that he had been so fond of before. Rose assured him that they could find him something better as soon as Jamie got back with the TARDIS.
Clara got dressed in one of the dresses she had worn when she was living here before her regeneration. She had to adjust a few things due to her change in size, but it fit, more or less. She didn't find her grandparents in the bedroom where they had slept last night and headed downstairs to look for them. As she was descending the stairs, Jenny was on her way up.
"Jenny," she greeted her.
"Ah, good morning, Clara."
"Morning. Er, so, have you seen my grandparents this morning?" she wondered.
"No, can't say that I have. Meanwhile, Madam Vastra is slightly occupied by the Conk-Singleton forgery case, and is having the Camberwell child poisoner for dinner," Jenny warned.
"For dinner?" Clara questioned, wondering why she would want a criminal as a guest.
"After she's finished interrogating him. Probably best to stay out the larder. It'll get a bit noisy in there later."
"Oh," Clara acknowledged, realising what she meant.
Strax hadn't seen the Doctor and Rose either, so she decided to head out into the city to look for them herself. At least this time, the Doctor had his wife with him to keep him out of trouble. Oh, that was a ridiculous thought, her gran was known to be even more jeopardy friendly than the Doctor himself.
The Doctor and Rose were walking arm in arm down the street, watching for anything suspicious about. He seemed to still be getting used to the length of his legs and stride compared to hers. It made their walk a bit awkward, but Rose knew that he would get there eventually.
"Bitey. The air, it's bitey. It's wet, and bitey," he said.
"Yeah, it's definitely cold today," Rose corrected.
"That's right. It's cold. It's cold, I knew it was a thing. I need um, I need a big, long scarf. No, no, move on from that. Looked stupid. Er, have you seen this face before?" he rambled as he stopped to stare at his reflection in a shop window.
"No, I haven't, love," Rose replied.
"Are you sure?"
"I haven't, but you might have," she assured him.
"It's funny, because I'm sure that I have. You know, I never know where the faces come from. They just pop up. Zap. Faces like this one. Come on, look at it, have a look, come on, look, look, look," he insisted, pulling her next to him to look in the window. "Look, it's covered in lines. But I didn't do the frowning. Who frowned me this face? Do you ever look in the mirror and think I've seen that face before?"
"Yes, love. Everyday," Rose laughed.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes. Fair enough. Good point. My face is fresh on, though."
"It certainly is. It's a very handsome face, Doctor. Distinguished, I'd say," Rose told him.
"Why this one? Why did I choose this face? It's like I'm trying to tell myself something. Like I'm trying to make a point. But what is so important that I can't just tell myself what I'm thinking?" the Doctor wondered.
"I don't know, love. Can you think of when or where you might have seen it? Who you were with? That might help us figure it out," Rose prompted.
"I can't… loud. The loud one," he told her.
"Donna?" Rose suggested.
"Yes. Loud and ginger. She was there," he agreed, staring at his reflection again.
"We can ask her about it when we go back to visit."
"I don't know if I like it. Well, it's all right up until the eyebrows. Then it just goes haywire. Look at the eyebrows. These are attack eyebrows. You could take bottle tops off with these," he complained, making Rose laugh. "They're cross. They're crosser than the rest of my face. They're independently cross. They probably want to cede from the rest of my face and set up their own independent state of eyebrows. That's Scot. I am Scottish. I've gone Scottish?"
"Definitely. You gonna tell me that lots of planets have a Scotland now?" Rose teased.
"Oh no, that's good. Oh. It's good I'm Scottish. I'm Scottish. I am Scottish. I can complain about things, I can really complain about things," he said, finally smiling.
"No big news there, but given your cross eyebrows, people might take it a bit more seriously. And I'm sure Amy will love it," Rose reasoned.
"No, wait. Shut up, shut up. Shut up. I missed something. It was here, it was here. It was. What was it I saw? What did I see?" he rambled rudely as he dug through the discarded newspapers in a nearby alley. "This is what I saw. Spontaneous combustion."
Rose read over the old article which detailed the fourth case of spontaneous human combustion. They had been trying to follow the lead that Vastra had given them about this. There had been nine in total now, but they were trying to find the right area to search. Pulling out her sonic, Rose added the coordinates of where this one happened to the information they had on the others and decided that they should probably call Clara to join them, now that they'd narrowed it down.
They sat in a booth at a restaurant named Mancini's. There was something odd about the patrons around them, but they tried to look casual, scanning the menu, as they waited for Clara to join them.
"Doctor, do you notice something odd about these people?" Rose asked him silently, trying to urge him back into using their bond properly.
He glanced up at her sharply, as if the telepathic message had surprised him greatly, but his eyebrows furrowed as he actually processed her question. Without moving his head, his eyes scanned the room, scrutinizing everything for the details that Rose had considered out of place.
"I think we've found the right place," he replied.
"You two couldn't have waited for me to join you this morning? Didn't know where you'd run off to," Clara grumbled as she joined them.
"Sorry, sweetheart, he was having trouble sleeping. I thought a bit of supervised exploring might help him," Rose apologized.
"This could be a trap," the Doctor whispered.
"I'm not imagining things then?" Rose responded.
He shook his head, then reached over to pluck a hair off of Clara's head.
"Oi! What was that for?" she protested.
"Mine's too short and I didn't want to hurt Rose. I'm trying to measure the air disturbance in the room," he told her.
"What for?" she wondered, knowing that her grandparents always had a reason for their slightly odd behaviour.
Holding the strand of hair slightly beneath the table, he dropped it and watched as it fell downward, without a single draft to disturb its descent.
"And what does that mean exactly?" Clara asked.
"There is something extremely wrong with everybody else in this room."
"Mmm. Basically, don't you always think that?" Clara countered.
"He's being serious, Clara. As carefully as you can, watch them. Something is very wrong here," Rose insisted.
Heeding her gran's warning, she cautiously glanced at the patrons sitting around them. "They look fine to me. They're just eating."
"Are they?" the Doctor pressed and she looked again.
They were moving their utensils, but none of them were actually eating anything. Adding that information to the lack of air currents, Clara was starting to get the same unsettled feeling that her grandparents had about the place.
"Okay, no. No, they're not eating," Clara acknowledged.
"Something else they're not doing. Breathing," he whispered as he dropped one of his own gray hairs to the floor.
"What do we do?" Clara whispered, slightly panicked.
"Well, you don't want to eat, do you?" the Doctor answered.
"Hmm. Slightly lost my appetite. Ahem. How long before they notice that we're different?" Clara wondered.
"Not long," he guessed.
"Anything we can do?" Clara asked.
"Well, you and I have a respiratory bypass and could easily hold our breaths for an hour or two. Rose on the other hand, does not," he said, taking his wife's hand protectively.
"We could just casually stroll out of here, like we've changed our minds," Clara suggested.
"Happens all the time," the Doctor agreed.
"Ha. Course it does," Clara beamed, happy that her suggestion seemed to be a good one.
As the trio stood from their table, however, all of the others stopped what they were doing and stared at them. As they tried to move toward the door, all of the diners moved to stop them.
"Might be best to try and blend in for now, yeah? We were looking for the source of the problem after all," Rose interjected and pulled them back to the table.
As soon as they were all seated again, the other patrons sat back at their tables and continued their charade just as before.
"What are they?" Clara whispered to her granddad.
"I don't know. But don't worry, because that's not the question. The question is, what is this restaurant?" he replied.
"Okay, what is this restaurant?" Clara asked obligingly.
"I don't know," he admitted.
They all tried looking at the menus in front of them nervously. They weren't quite sure what was going on, or what to expect to happen next. A waiter appeared at the table and stared at them.
"Don't suppose you have any chips?" Rose asked nervously.
The man looked at her suspiciously, but his attention immediately turned to the Doctor when he started speaking, "Er, no sausages? Do you? And there's no pictures either. Do you have a children's menu?"
The waiter held up some kind of scanning device and shone a green light over the Doctor. He stood there a moment, as if processing the results.
"Any specials?" the Doctor asked.
"Liver," he replied.
"I don't like liver," the Doctor protested.
"Spleen. Brain stem. Eyes," the waiter continued.
"Mmm. Is there a lot of demand for those?" Clara questioned.
"Yeah, I don't think he's listing the specials," Rose told her.
"No, I think we've just been put on the menu," the Doctor agreed.
"Lungs. Skin," the waiter added to his growing list.
"Excuse me," the Doctor said as he reached up to pull the skin off of the waiter's face, revealing a wire mesh beneath that was supporting it.
"Okay. Robot in a mask," Clara commented.
"Don't think it's just a mask, sweetheart," Rose told her, cringing at the implications of the waiter's list.
"It's a face," the Doctor said, bluntly.
"Ugh! Like a real one?" Clara gasped, catching on to what her gran was saying.
"Yes," the robotic waiter interrupted.
"Yes, what?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, we have a children's menu," it replied, just as metal restraints popped out of the bench where they were sitting and held them tightly in place.
The seat then descended into the floor and down to a lower level, once again making the restaurant above appear to be normal to anyone that happened to stumble inside.
"You've got to admire their efficiency," the Doctor commented, admiring the mechanisms involved in the setup.
"Is it okay if I don't?" Clara grumbled.
"Yeah, I've had nightmares like this," Rose added, prompting her husband to take her hand in his own.
Their mode of transport came to a stop with a bit of a jolt. There were several of the robot-people standing at the edges of the room and another was seated in the centre, not looking in their direction. The restraints had not released and the Doctor had no patience for inactivity.
"Hello? Hello, are you the manager? I demand to speak to the manager," he shouted at the immobile man.
"This is not a real restaurant, is it?" Clara asked.
"Definitely not," Rose answered.
"It's more a sort of automated organ collection station for the unwary diner. Sweeney Todd without the pies," he added.
"So where are we now?" Clara demanded, not particularly eager to have her organs collected.
"Factually? An ancient spaceship, probably buried for centuries. Functionally? A larder," he told her.
"A spaceship? What gave you that impression?" Rose wondered.
"Resonance. This place is contained, not connected to the ground, like a basement would be," he answered, wriggling a bit to shift the sonic in his pocket.
"So why hasn't somebody come for us?" Clara wondered.
"We're alive."
"We're alive in a larder."
"Exactly. It's cheaper than freezing us," he said and turned toward Rose, who stretched a bit to reach into his pocket from where she was held.
"There should be an easier way to do this, love," Rose grumbled, but managed to pull it free.
"I'll work on it," he agreed.
Rose quickly used the sonic to release all three of them and handed it back to him. They slowly passed by one of the robots, glancing at it nervously, but it didn't move.
"Granddad?" Clara questioned.
"Dormant."
"How do you know?"
"I don't. I'm just hoping," he admitted and led them away from it.
"Why would robots need organs? Burke and Hare from space?" Clara asked.
"No, but that's a good theory. Droids harvesting spare parts. That rings a bell," he mumbled thoughtfully.
"You can't seriously tell me that you don't remember?" Rose growled.
"Oh. Could be something like that," he answered, blushing at the memory.
"But that was thousands of years in the future, yeah? You said this had been buried for centuries," Rose argued.
A closer examination of the robots prompted several of them to pursue them down the corridor, apparently rather put out to be losing their donors so soon. The Doctor kept a firm grip on his wife's hand as they ran through the maze of hallways, trying to lose them.
"Do we have a plan, love?" Rose gasped.
"Not dying. And probably getting you out of here," he replied.
"We're not going to start all over with that nonsense, are we?" she protested.
"Clara and I can blend in by not breathing with this lot. They're stupid. If you get out of here, you can get Vastra and the others to help us shut this thing down," he explained, knowing how much his wife hated being sent away for her own safety.
There was a large doorway at the end of the hall that started to close as they approached it. He knew that he could use his abilities as a Time Lord to make it through just like he had to get through the fans on Platform One, but his only goal was to get Rose out of here. The Doctor pushed her through the door quickly and allowed it to close tightly behind her. At least it kept her from coming back immediately to argue with him about it.
He and Clara darted into the nearby, vacant alcoves and stood perfectly still as they engaged their respiratory bypass. The robots that had been chasing them paused briefly as they walked by, but continued on their way.
By the time Rose came back with Jenny, Vastra, and Strax to help dismantle the whole operation, the Doctor had discovered that the droids were from the sister ship to the SS Madame du Pompadour, the SS Marie Antoinette. They had somehow managed something even worse than the other ship had done and crashed the whole thing in the distant past.
After a bit of fighting, Rose eventually convinced the main control droid to shut the whole thing down. There was no home for them to find in space and they had lost their original sense of purpose over the centuries. He went on about a Promised Land for a while, but eventually conceded that they would be more likely to find it in death than their continued shadow of existence.
Knowing that it would be best not to expose Victorian London authorities to the technology found in the restaurant/space ship, Vastra arranged to have some offworld contacts come in to dismantle everything and salvage parts as payment for the work.
Rose, the Doctor, and Clara waited at Vastra's house for Jamie and River to return with the TARDIS. They were fairly sure that the ship herself was preventing them from coming back until the ordeal was over. But they all smiled brightly in relief when they heard the engines of the ship landing in the courtyard.
"Sorry about the slight delay. Don't know what the old girl was doing," Jamie told them as he exited the time ship.
"Right. How was the test drive, River?" Rose asked knowingly as she wiped some lipstick off the side of her son's mouth.
"Lovely, Rose. Sorry for making you wait on yours," River replied with a smirk.
"Way too much information. Can we maybe get back to our usual travelling, without traumatizing me?" Clara complained and pushed passed them into the TARDIS.
"Right. Well, I think it might be a good idea to see how Romana and the others are doing on Trenzalore. We left them without transport or really any way of contacting us. And well," the Doctor suggested.
"Of course, love. You're completely right. We also didn't really have a proper meeting with your family. Your mum and brother are here, yeah?" Rose hadn't even considered all of that in the face of what had happened. She was so worried about her husband and son, and Christmas with her own family, that they had just abandoned them there.
"We'll come with you," Jamie assured them. "But let's all get some rest first. We can go back shortly after we left, after all. No harm done."
"Yes. I'll set her adrift in the vortex for a few hours, while we all take a break," the Doctor agreed as Jamie and River went down the hall towards their room.
Rose surprised the Doctor slightly by wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. She snuggled into his back as he froze in place, the hug feeling awkward in his new form.
"I don't think I'm much of a hugger this time," he told her.
"Oh. I'm- I'm sorry," she mumbled and pulled away from her husband.
"No! No, I'm sorry, Rose. Come here," he said suddenly, pulling her back towards him, face to face. "We'll figure this out. I love you and I want you very much."
The Doctor pulled her into a slow kiss, gently cupping her face in his hands as she melted against him. She tentatively put her hands on his hips to steady herself and relaxed a little when he didn't tense away from her touch. She gasped when he suddenly picked her up and carried her down the hallway toward their bedroom.
"I can walk you know," she told him.
"Of course you can. But after taking such good care of me during that mess, I think you deserve a little pampering," he chuckled.
"Mmm, no arguments from me," Rose sighed, snuggling into his arms a little more.
He quickly tossed his boots and jacket aside, but abandoned any continued thoughts of undressing himself, in favour of stripping his wife. She kept trying to unfasten his shirt buttons as he removed her many layers, but he swatted her hands aside and focused on kissing every inch of newly revealed skin. Rose sighed happily at his attentions, but was wishing that she could explore his new body. He had after all seen hers for centuries already.
"I want to see you," Rose complained.
"Plenty of time for that later. I need to taste you first," he insisted, finally removing her knickers and licking his way down to her hip.
"You've tasted me thousands of times," she sighed, but spread her legs wider for him.
"New tastebuds. New tongue. New senses," he explained, kissing her sensitive inner thighs and sliding two long, cool fingers into her. He groaned at how wet she was already, his voice now a deep rumbling sound that was new to both of them.
"Doctor," Rose gasped, tangling her fingers in his thick, grey hair.
"Yes, darling?" he asked between licks over her sensitive flesh.
"Don't stop. Never stop," she sighed.
"I can't guarantee that, I'm afraid. You see, I have plans very shortly to replace these fingers with something a bit more substantial," he told her as he curled his fingers against the spot that he knew would throw her over the edge very quickly.
With a happy squeal, Rose shuddered her release and he licked his fingers clean, while unfastening his trousers. Rose was panting heavily on the bed as he finished undressing. He admired the pink flush over her skin as she gazed back at him. He didn't give her much of a chance to stare at his new body before returning to her on the bed. He was about to climb back on top of her, but quickly found himself on his back, with a very determined pink and yellow human straddling his legs.
"My turn," she insisted, her mischievous smirk making him even harder than before.
Rose leaned over to kiss him, deeply. Her hands were braced on his chest and she flexed her fingers, feeling the soft, curly hair that covered his chest. Her last two Doctors had very little body hair and she hadn't been sure if that was something to do with his species or just the way those particular bodies had been. It wasn't excessive on this new body, just a little more than she was used to. She moved her kisses softly across his cheek and down his neck as she continued to explore. The Doctor's hands moved to her hips to help steady her above him.
"I'm sorry that I don't look as young as you do this time," he apologized, seeming a bit insecure about his appearance.
"Doctor, I love you. That will never change. It's never been about your appearance. I mean, I've always found you to be very handsome, but I still do. You look older by human standards, but I know that you aren't frail. I meant it earlier when I said your new face is handsome. More authoritative than your last one, yeah?" she assured him.
"Mmmm, is that something you'd like then?" he questioned playfully, one of his substantial eyebrows rising.
"Maybe," she replied, her tongue peeking from the side of her smile. "But later. Right now, I think I need to do some tasting of my own."