iv. smith, jones and tyler

"Are you sure about this? This is a human hospital. It's not exactly for aliens with two hearts."

"Rose, we've battled Daleks and Cybermen and Slitheen and who knows how many other aliens and you're worried about a hospital."

"We've had a track record of causing trouble at hospitals."

"Good point. But, I'm not going to make trouble again."

"We're not here for a check-up. Of course we're going to cause trouble!"

"This hospital doesn't have cats and Cassandra."

"Or gas mask dummies and ex-time agents."

We laughed as we walked into the hospital. "Oi, stop it, they're going to think you're faking the sickness."

"I am." We walked up to the reception and the receptionist said, "Hello, how can we help you?"

"Hi, this is my friend, John Smith."

"I'm hurting down here."

He sounded like a school child and it didn't sound like him. "Okay," the receptionist said, "We'll get you in for a check-up. Just down that hallway and turn right."

"Thank you."

We walked down there and I said, "Too dumb, don't you think?"

"Just blending in with the local humans around here."

"Oi!"

"I didn't mean you."

"Good."

"Doctor, it's 10 o'clock. Stop adjusting your sonic."

"But I'm bored!" The Doctor wriggled around in the bed like a little child.

"If you're bored, go to sleep, like I'm trying to do, but you're stopping me!"

"You can go back to the Tardis if you want?"

"No way. Don't want you looking around in the middle of the night, scaring all the nurses half to death."

"Your choice, not mine."

A group of students started coming our way. "Now then, Mr Smith," said the leader of the party, "a very good morning to you and your friend. How are you today?"

"Aw, not so bad, still a bit, you know, blah."

"John Smith, admitted yesterday with severe abdominal pains. Jones, why don't you see what you can find? Amaze me."

A girl stepped forward and said to the Doctor, "That wasn't very clever, running around outside, was it?"

"What?" I replied.

"Sorry?"

"On Chancery Street this morning. You came up to me and took your tie off."

"Really? What did I do that for?"

"I don't know, you just did."

"He hasn't gotten out of this bed the whole morning," I said, "Well, at least I think he hasn't."

"Well, that's weird, cause it looked like you. Have you got a brother?"

"No, not anymore."

The man who was leading the party of students said, "As time passes and I grow ever more weary, Miss Jones."

"Sorry. Right." The girl took out her stethoscope and put it to the Doctor's chest, and looked puzzled. She moved the stethoscope to the other heart, and the Doctor winks at her. Now, this is why we shouldn't of gone undercover.

"I weep for further generations. Are you having trouble locating the heart, Miss Jones?"

"Um, I don't know. Stomach cramps?

"That is a symptom, not a diagnosis. And you rather failed basic techniques by not consulting first with the patient's chart." He picks up the chart, receives an electric shock, and drops it.

"That happened to me this morning." The girl said.

"I had the same thing on the door handle," said one of the students.

"And me, on the lift," another of the students said.

"That's only to be expected. There's a thunderstorm moving in and lightning is a form of static electricity, as was first proven by, anyone?"

"Benjamin Franklin!" The Doctor said like a school kid.

"Correct!"

"My mate Ben, that was a day and a half. I got rope burns off that kite, then I got soaked.

"Quite..."

"And then I got electrocuted!"

"Moving on. I think perhaps a visit from psychiatric. And next we have Mrs Taylor, how are you doing?"

"Good one!" I nudged him.

"What?"

"They think you're a loony now."

"Why?"

"You started talking like a nerd. A time-travelling, alien nerd."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Doctor?" The Doctor was adjusting his sonic, again.

"Yep?"

"The rain."

"What about it?"

"It's raining up."

He looked at the rain and said, "Oh no. Hold on tight to something!"

"What?"

"Anything!"

I grabbed a chair and sat on it. Suddenly, the hospital started shaking, but after half a minute or so, it stopped. There was no change, until I looked at the window. "Doctor." I started. We walked over to the window. "We're on the moon."

The student from before came into the room. "All right, everyone back to bed, we've got an emergency, but we'll sort it out." She walked over to one of the windows. "It's real. It's really real. Hold on!" She started to open the window.

"Don't!" said the other student accompanying her, "We'll lose all the air!"

"But they're not exactly air tight. If the air was going to get sucked out it would have happened straight away, but it didn't. So how come?"

The Doctor suddenly stepped away from our window. "Very good point! Brilliant, in fact. What was your name?"

"Martha," she replied.

"And it was Jones, wasn't it?" She nodded. "Well then, Martha Jones, Rose Tyler, the question is, how are we still breathing?"

The other student said, "We can't be!"

"Well, obviously we are so don't waste my time. Martha, what have we got? Is there a balcony on this floor, or a veranda, or...?"

"By the patients lounge, yeah."

"Fancy going out?"

"Okay."

"We might die."

"We might not."

"Good! C'mon, Rose, Martha."

We ran to the patients lounge where there was a door leading to the balcony. We push open the doors together. And I can breathe.

"We've got air! How does that work?"

"Just be glad it does," I say.

"I've got a party tonight. It's my brother's twenty-first. My mother's going to be really, really..."

"You okay?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

"Want to go back in?"

"No way. I mean, we could die any minute, but all the same, it's beautiful."

"You think?"

"How many people want to go to the moon? And here we are!"

"Standing in the earth light."

"What do you think happened?"

"What do you think?" The Doctor asks.

"Extra-Terrestial. It's got to be. I don't know, a few years ago that would have sounded mad, but these days? That spaceship flying into the Big Ben, Christmas, those Cybermen things. I had a cousin. Adeola. She worked at Canary Wharf. She never came home."

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Yeah. Thanks."

"We were there. In the battle."

"I promise you two, we will find a way out. If we can travel to the moon, then we can travel back. There's got to be a way."

"We're not patients, you don't need to talk to us like that."

"Who are you, then?"

"I'm the Doctor, this is Rose."

"What is it then, Doctor Smith?"

"Just the Doctor."

"How do you mean, just the Doctor?"

"Don't worry," I say, "Nobody knows his real name. I don't."

"Well, I'm not calling him that. As far as I'm concerned, you've got to earn that title."

"Well, I'd better make a start then. Let's have a look." He picks up a pebble and throws it. Instead of just falling onto the moon's ground, it rebounds against a sort of force field you'd see in Star Trek. "There must be some sort of force field keeping the air in."

"If that's like a bubble sealing us in, that means this is the only air we've got."

"How many people in this hospital?"

"I don't know, a thousand?"

"One thousand people. Suffocating."

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Heads up! Ask them yourself."

Suddenly, about a dozen ships land on the moon right in front of the hospital. Some aliens come out of the ships and march towards the hospital.

"Aliens. That's aliens. Real, proper aliens."

"Judoon."

"What do we do, Doctor?" I ask.

"Let's get to the reception."

We get to the reception just as the Judoon start shining lights in the patients and employees faces. As they do so, they say "human" and marks a cross on the back of the right hand of the people.

"Oh, look down there, you've got a little shop. I like a little shop!"

"Never mind that!" I say, "What are the Judoon? They just look like rhinos to me."

"Galactic police. Well, police for hire. More like interplanetary thugs."

"And they brought us to the moon?"

"Neutral territory. According to galactic law, they've got no jurisdiction over the Earth, and they isolated us. That rain? Lightning? That was them, using a H2O scoop."

"What's that about galactic law?" Martha said. "Where'd you get that from? If they're police, are we under arrest? Are we trespassing on the moon or something?"

"No, but I like that. Good thinking. No, it's more simple. They're making a catalogue, it means they're after something non-human, which is very bad news for me."

"Why?" Martha asks. The Doctor looks at her. "Oh, you're kidding me. Don't be ridiculous. Stop looking at me like that."

"The alien would have to look human if they can't just look and see if we're human. So, is it a Time Lord?" I ask.

"Good thinking, but Time Lords aren't the only ones who look like humanoid aliens. Come on."

The Doctor and I enter an office while Martha stands guard. He starts sonicing the computer in the room.

"They've reached the third floor. What's that thing?" Martha says as she walks into the room.

"Sonic screwdriver."

"Well, if you're not going to answer me properly!"

"No, really, it is. It's a screwdriver, and it's sonic. Look."

"What else have you got? A laser spanner?"

"I did, but it was stolen by Emily Pankhurst, cheeky woman." He suddenly hits the computer. "Oh, this computer! The Judoon must have locked it down. Judoon platoon upon the moon. Cause I was just travelling past, I swear, we weren't just wandering for trouble, honestly, we weren't, but I noticed these plasma coils around the hospital, and that lightning, that's plasma coils, been building up for two days now, so we checked, Rose and I. I thought something was going on inside, it turns out the plasma coils were the Judoon up above."

"But what were they looking for?" I asked, before Martha could butt in. She was starting to get on my nerves.

"Something that looks human, but isn't."

"Like you. Apparently." Martha remarked.

"Like me. But not me."

"Haven't they got a photo?"

"Might be a shape-changer."

"Whatever it is, can't you just leave the Judoon to find it?"

"If they declare the hospital guilty of harbouring a fugitive, they'll sentence it to execution."

"All of us?" I ask, "We're trying to stop this mess. The people are terrified!"

"Oh yes. If I can find this thing first... Oh! Just that they're thick! Judoon are thick! They are completely thick! They wiped the records. Oh, that's clever."

"What are we looking for?" I ask.

"I don't know. Any patient admitted in the past week with unusual symptoms. Maybe there's a back up."

"Just keep working." Martha says. "I'll go ask Mr Stoker, he might know."

"I'll come with you. I'm no use to nerd here."

"Oi!"

"I've restored the back up." We meet the Doctor in the corridor.

"We've found her."

"You what?" He suddenly sees the leather guys. "Run!"

We run across the corridor, down the stairs, and narrowly miss the Judoon by going in a door leading into another corridor. We run into a room marked 'Radiology' and the Doctor sonic-locks the door. "When I say now, press the button."

"I don't know which one." I say.

"Find out!"

He starts sonicing some of the machinery. I head for the Operator's Manual. After about 5 seconds of reading, the leather guy broke down the door.

"Now!"

I hit a big yellow button just before Martha and one of the machines zaps the leather guy alien thing with radiation, his skeleton visible. The Slab falls inert.

"What did you do?" I say.

"Increased the radiation by five thousand percent. Killed him dead."

"Isn't it likely to kill you?" Martha says.

"Nah, it's only radiation. We used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery." I laugh at that. "It's safe for you to come out, I've absorbed it all. All I need to do is expel it." He starts bouncing and hopping. "If I concentrate I can shake the radiation out of my body and into one spot. It's in my left shoe. Here we go, here we go, easy does it..." He shakes his foot like a maniac. "Out, out, out, out, out, out, out, ah, ah, ah, ah. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is hot. Ah, hold on." He throws his shoe in the bin. "Done!" I start giggling uncontrollably.

"You're completely mad. Both of you."

"You're right. I look daft with one shoe." He takes the other shoe off. "Barefoot on the moon!" I giggle even more.

"So what is that thing? And where's it from? The planet Zovirax?"

"It's just a Slab. They're called Slabs. Basic slave drones, see? Solid leather, all the way through. Someone has got one hell of a fetish.:

"It came with that woman, Mrs Finnegan. It was working for her. Just like a servant."

"They were in the room when-" The Doctor interrupted me by saying, "My sonic screwdriver."

"Oh my god." The screwdriver was a mess. It was all charcoaled with wires coming out of it.

"She was one of the patients, but-"

"My sonic screwdriver!"

"She had a straw like some kind of vampire!"

"I love my sonic screwdriver!"

"Doctor!"

"Sorry." He tosses the sonic and says, "You called me Doctor!"

"Anyway! Mrs Finnegan is the alien."

"She was drinking Mr Stoker's blood."

"Funny time to take a snack. You'd think she'd be hiding. Unless, no. Yes! That's it, wait a minute. Yes! Shape-changer. Internal shape-changer. She wasn't drinking blood, she was assimilating it! If she can assimilate Mr Stoker's blood, mimic the morphology, she can register as human. We've got to find her and show the Judoon. Come on!" He runs out of the room with Martha and I close on his heel.

"Does he always run off like this?" Martha asks.

"Always."

A Slab walks past us and down the corridor. "That's the thing about Slabs. They always travel in pairs."

"What about you two?"

"What about us two what?"

"Are you always like this? Superheroes coming to save the day? If you're an alien then how did you get here."

"Uh. Humans. We're stuck on the moon running out of air with Judoon and a bloodsucking criminal, and you're asking personal questions. Come on."

"I like that. "Humans." I'm still not convinced you're an alien."

We suddenly step in front of a Judoon, and he shines his light on the Doctor's face. "Non-human."

"Oh my god, you really are!"

"Told ya." I butt in.

"And again!" We run off, dodging lasers as we go.

"They've done this floor. Come on. The Judoon are logical and just a little bit thick. They won't go back to check a floor they've checked already. If we're lucky."

"Well, that's great," Martha says, "If we're lucky." I just ignore her even though I want to give her a snide comment back. "How much oxygen is there?" she says to her student friend.

"Not enough for all these people. We're going to run out." After hearing that, the Doctor comes up to me. "How are you feeling? Are you all right?"

"Fine. I'm breathing normally."

"Okay, that's good. Martha?"

"I'm running on adrenaline."

"Welcome to my world."

"What about the Judoon?" I ask.

"Ah, great big lung reserves, it won't slow them down. Where's Mr Stoker's office?"

"It's this way." I point to the office and the Doctor walks towards it, with Martha and I on his heels.

"She's gone!" Martha says when we enter. "She was here!" She notices Mr Stoker and stops talking.

"Oh my god, Doctor? Is that Mr Stoker?" I ask.

"Drained him dry. Every last drop. I was right. She's a plasmavore."

"What was she doing on Earth?" Martha asks.

"Hiding. On the run. Like Ronald Biggs in Rio de Janeiro. What's she doing now? She's still not safe. The Judoon could execute us all. Come on."

"Wait a minute." Martha says. She bends down next to Mr Stoker and closes his eyes. As if embarrassed, she leaves abruptedly.

"Think, think, think. If I was a plasmavore surrounded by police, what would I do?"

"Get a blood donor?" I joke.

"Good one, but no." He suddenly sees the MRI sign. "Aah. She's as clever as me. Almost."

"Find the non-human. Execute." The Judoon suddenly open a door and march down the hallway.

"Rose. Stay here. I need time. You're going to have to hold them up."

"How do I do that?"

"With any other woman, this would mean nothing. Honestly, nothing. But, with you, it's different." He bends down, and kisses me. Passionately.

Yep. You heard right. The Doctor. Kissing me. Passionately.

"Find the non-human. Execute." The Judoon walk towards Martha. "Human," they say after scanning her with a blue light, like they did with all the others.

"Thanks." Martha says sarcastically. They march towards me next. "Now listen. I know who you're looking for. I've found the alien. She's this woman. She's acting as a patient. Please listen to me." Great. I'm pleading now.

"Human. With non-human traits suspected. Non-human element confirmed. Authorise full scan. What are you? What are you?" I felt like saying, "Just a human who kissed a Time Lord, that's all," but I restrained myself. They made a cross on my hand. "Confirmed. Human. Traces of facial contact with non-human. Continue the search." They gave me a piece of paper. "What's that for?" I ask.

"Compensation. Follow me." I start following them, with Martha behind me. "Useless sort of police, aren't they?" Martha says.

"What do you mean?"

"It's against the law to kiss." We laugh nervously.

They're gone. The stupid rhinos left. What a big surprise.

Martha's on the floor beside me, gasping like a fish out of water. Weirdly, I'm breathing perfectly. Bad Wolf. That's got to be it. I crawl towards the Doctor and start to do CPR. Strangely enough, and yes, I'm being sarcastic, it's not working. Then I look back at Christmas, not this Christmas, but the Christmas before. When he was in bed, and I needed him, I told him to help me, and he woke up. Maybe that would work. I whispered in his ear. And he woke up. "The scanner, she's done something." The Doctor crawls to the MRI machine and does one of the most obvious things ever. He unplugs it. "Come on, Rose," he groans. I help him as he walks. We walk down the corridor and to the window. "Come on, come on, come on, come on, Judoon, reverse it." It starts to rain upwards again. "It's raining, Rose, it's raining on the moon."

In a flash of white light, we fall down. The Doctor suddenly gets back up. "We're back!" He screams like a little kid. "We are back!"

"No need to scream like a little kid."

"But we're back, Rose!"

"Let's just get back to the Tardis. We need to talk."

His face let go of the silliness. "Yeah." I held out my hand. "Come on." He took and we ran. All the way down the stairs, and out the back doors, seeing as we didn't want to be interrogated by the police. We got into the Tardis. "So." The Doctor said.

"Did that kiss mean something, or was it only so the Judoon would be distracted with me?"

"Rose, there was heaps of ways I could of done that genetic transfer."

"So, did it mean something?"

The Doctor sighed before saying, "Yes."

"So, does that mean there's going to be more of them?"

He looked at me and said, "If you want to?"

"Oh, I do." I walked towards him and started kissing him. This time it was more passionate than ever before. We broke the kiss and the Doctor said, "I love you, Rose Tyler."

"Really?"

"Rose Tyler, ever since I met you, I loved you. I don't know why I stopped my feelings before today. It's the dumbest thing I've ever done. I want to be with you."

"I love you too." That's pretty much it for conversation. If you know what I mean...

2 days later...

"Doctor, I need to ask you something."

"Yeah?"

"In the hospital, I didn't have any trouble breathing. None at all."

"I don't know what that's about. Seriously, I don't."

"I thought it was Bad Wolf." The Doctor looked at me like I was crazy. I continued on, "Maybe I'm still protected by it."

"I don't know if that's possible. I mean, I took it out of you. All of it. I think..."

"But, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe, I might never die."

"Well, that's a possibility, but it's also highly uncertain."

"Not impossible?"

"Not impossible."

5 hours later...

"Do you want to take Martha along for a thank you present? Just one adventure then she will be off."

"Okay."

"Good. Let's go get her." The Doctor ran around the console, flicking buttons and levers until, "13th of March, 8:03pm. Let me go get her." He ran out of the Tardis. Ten minutes later, he came in. "Hold on, Rose, just need to do something." He changed the coordinates and we set off. "What are you doing?" I asked.

"Just something." He ran out of the Tardis once again. Five minutes later, he came back in. "What did you do?" I asked.

"I took my tie off." He held his tie in his hand as he changed the coordinates. "Tell you later." He ran out of the Tardis once again. Five minutes later, he came back in. Without Martha.

"Where is she?"

"She didn't want to come."

"Okay."

"Still, the onward trail, you and me, Mutt and Jeff, Shiver and Shake! Allonsy!"

A/N - don't favourite/alert this story without reviewing