He found her standing before the little fireplace with her head bent, staring blankly at a folded piece of paper. Her mobile held limp and forgotten in her other hand. She looked lost. That makes two of us, he thought.
"Rose," he said gently, not wanting to startle her from her reverie. She looked around at him, her hands dropping to her sides as she came to herself. "Do you know there's a Moralvian Temporal Displacement Rifle sitting on your bedside table."
"Yes," she answered swiftly. "Well, no. I didn't remember what it was called," she gave a wan smile, "Just that it was bad." She tipped her head to the side so that a long stand of blonde hair which had come loose from her ponytail brushed at her shoulder. "It is, right? Bad, I mean."
"It is, in fact, bad."
"Thought so." She nodded confidently, and set the phone and paper down on an end table. Her hands, thus freed, seemed not to know what to do with themselves, and settled on wringing each another nervously. "I ordered us some food. It's Thai. Hope you're hungry."
"I am," he said. He was.
"Good." She dug into the tight pockets of her jeans and pulled out a much tattered note. "I'm going to go take a shower. If the delivery boy shows while I'm in the bath-"
"I should run and hide behind the couch before he sees me dressed like this," he finished. She blinked. Her eyes ran slowly down his body and back up again, as if noticing for the first time the awkwardness of his outfit. Her head pulled back slightly and simultaneously, her lips sucked themselves back in behind her teeth. The Doctor recognized the signs of desperately hidden laughter an instant before Rose broke out into uncontrollable guffaws. She doubled over, bracing herself against the back of her couch. Her eyes squeezed shut and tears leaked helplessly from their corners.
"You chose it." He gave her a withering look and held his arms out as if to show he was powerless in the face of fashion. She paused in her hilarity only enough to look up at him, and seeing the look on his face, broke out into fresh laughter. Something deeply ingrained in his personality, something stoic and superior and Time Lord-y, was offended by her reaction. Was encouraging him to stare down at her with irritated ice blue eyes he didn't even have any more. Was telling him he should be put out and sulk a bit before letting her beg her way back into his good graces.
Luckily for the Doctor, the voice was drowned out by his own laughter.
"God." She drew the word out, gasping for breath after her near apoplexy. "You've got a point there. I've got a reputation among the local delivery boys, you know. Can't have them thinking I just invite poorly dressed weirdos around for tea. I'll make this quick, okay? Be out before the food gets here." She gave a crooked smile and slipped past him to the bathroom. He was alone in the living room, then. Rose's living room. For lack of direction, he stared around at its contents.
It was small, like the rest of the flat. A love seat faced a medium sized, flat screen TV. Beneath was a mass of wires and boxes, amongst which the Doctor counted what appeared to be at least three game systems. His brow creased in concentration, that didn't seem much like Rose. More of a Mickey thing, and he supposed it still was. There was a coffee table set in front of the couch, littered with magazines. This was a familiar Rose aspect. He'd been forever clearing her periodical detritus from the TARDIS console and stacking it in neat piles that never seemed to diminish in size despite his pleas that she get rid of them. However, in those days the stacks had been full of Cosmopolitan and People and 10 Celebrity Make-Up Secrets Revealed. Now, apparently, it was Popular Science.
The fireplace opposite the television was flanked by two bookcases. There was also a shelf of books in the guest bedroom, and he had already looked over those titles while he was getting dressed. Physics and astronomy and Torchwood manuals. Here were the everyday books, for lack of a better term. The Doctor recognized what looked like a whole series of romance novels. There were books by a number of science fiction authors he was familiar with, and one or two he didn't recognize. Some historical fiction. Jane Austen. Conan Doyle. Lovecraft.
The Doctor straightened, unable to imagine Rose reading Lovecraft.
A book with a striking yellow and black striped binder stood out from the others on the shelf and he removed it for a better look. Time Travel for Dummies. The Doctor's brow creased further and he flipped through the pages. It took a while for him to realize it was meant as a joke, and not as an actual primer on temporal mechanics. He flipped to the contents and snorted in amusement. Chapter 6: Time Paradoxes- How Not to Kill Your Own Parents. Chapter 10: Looking the Part- What Not to Wear on Your Temporal Adventure. Flipping all the way to the front, he noticed an inscription scrawled on the title page.
Rose,
Just in case. Happy Birthday!
Love- Mickey
The Doctor smiled ruefully and replaced the book on the shelf. Wandering over to the fireplace, he noticed a number of objects sitting on the narrow white painted mantelpiece. Mantles, he knew from experience, were where humans like to keep their nicest objects; where they could display their prized possessions. In the times before television, sitting around the fireplace had been one of the primary forms of entertainment, and everyone was likely to spend an inordinate amount of time staring at the mantle and its contents. Although the focus of human entertainment had shifted a bit since then, the purpose of the mantle, apparently, remained.
On the left end was a photograph of Jackie and a very frazzled looking Pete. The Doctor thought he had even less hair in the picture than the last time he'd seen the man. Jackie was cradling a little pink bundle in a blue blanket. Tony, he presumed. Jackie was radiant. At the other end of the mantle was another photo. This time of Mickey in what looked like Army fatigues, grinning madly and with his arm wrapped around the shoulder of another vaguely familiar young man. Perfectly normal mantelpiece decoration, it was the items in the center which were striking.
Rose had a Dogon Sixth Eye.
The Doctor could guess where she got it from: the same place as the Displacement Rifle. He wondered if she knew what it was. He wondered if Torchwood knew. He wondered if they knew she had it. He wondered why she would want it. The Dogon Eye was harmless. Well, relatively. Well, he said harmless, but it could, in fact, be very emotionally damaging to use one. Regardless, nothing along the lines of the Displacement Rifle or the other items he'd caught a quick glimpse of in the bedroom. Mostly, he wondered why she'd put it on her mantle for all to see when everything else alien was relegated to the back bedroom. Certainly it was pretty. Maybe that was the only reason. Maybe she thought it was just a nice rock. Yeah, and maybe he'd given up on underestimating her after she launched herself across a dozen universes to help him keep the stars from blinking out.
Perhaps more curious from a different standpoint was the phone. The pink one. The one he'd fixed for her in the year five billion and watched in dismay as she immediately called her mum; so sure she'd run right back to her old life. It was leaned against the wall in order to keep it standing up straight. Its little screen was blank and gray. Dead.
Seriously, who keeps a phone on their mantle?
However, the oddest item of all had to be what sat in the center. The place of honor, as it were. The Doctor recognized it, of course; he was a student of Earth history. It was balanced awkwardly, all crazy arms and odd curves. It looked like something out of an alien spaceship, but it wasn't. It was old, too. Brass and battered. Scratches marred its once pristine surface. And there, draped from its highest point, hung a slim gold chain and a single silver colored key. Where the device was warm and gold in appearance, the key reflected a cool, almost blue hue. Tentatively, he reached one long finger out towards it.
"It an antique," said a voice behind him, and he whipped around. Rose was clothed in a light pink tank top and matching flannel pajama bottoms with little flowers all over them. Little roses. Something in his chest fluttered at the sight of her. Not from excitement or desire or any normal reactions human males are supposed to have to a woman in her bedclothes, but from thankful recognition. Relief flooded through him at the appearance of this oh-so-familiar Rose in these disturbingly different surroundings. She had worn sleeping outfits just like that when they had traveled together before, and his mind reeled with the number of memories these simple articles of clothing brought to mind. Rose sitting Indian style on the jump seat with a steaming mug of tea held in her lap. Rose passing him sleepily in the hallway on her way to breakfast. Rose collapsed in laughter on the floor grating, with Jack standing proudly over her wearing only a strategically placed tube sock. Rose asleep in front of his own fireplace, head pillowed on one arm.
"I found it in a shop," she said, reaching one hand up to lay it on the mantle next to the object in question. "That's what mum does now. Antiquing. Says it's relaxing. Dreadfully boring is what I say."
He tore his eyes from her and focused them back on the mantle. "You know what it is?"
"A sextant."
He nodded. He knew her too well already, the new her in this new world, to be surprised. "And you know what it's for?"
Her hand's grip tightened upon the mantle's edge and she leaned her weight away from it, balancing back on her heels. "Sailors used it, back in the day. They looked at the stars through it and were able to figure out their latitude and navigate all over the ocean." Her voice was soft and dreamy, as her eyes floated over the strange and spidery apparatus. "Traveling by starlight."
Her eyes shifted to him, then, and he felt as if she were looking right through him. Looking past him. Gazing into a different universe, a different time, a different place. A different person. Someone with two hearts beating a syncopated staccato in his chest. Someone who could still feel the tilting of the earth beneath his feet as it twirled endlessly upon its axis. Someone who wouldn't be caught dead wandering around in nothing more than a T-shirt and boxers.
"Rose," he started softly, then stopped himself before he could finish his thought. He hated this. This whole situation. The dreadful awkwardness of it all. He hated that she kept looking, hated that he couldn't entirely blame her for doing it, hated himself for putting them into this situation, hated the heat of fury he felt coiling in the pit of his stomach, hated that he couldn't quite quell the sickly, boiling acid sting of it, hated most of all the fact that he had already been through this once before. The look she was giving was the same, her voice was the same, every bloody damned thing was the same except this time he didn't feel like he was about to collapse with exhaustion and explode with exhilaration at the same time. No, this time he just felt confused and stupid and slow and useless and…and wet.
A knock at the door provided a much needed distraction.