A/N: Hello! I know it's been a while, but much has happened since I published anything. For one, I've got a new laptop. For another, I've now moved to England for a year. The next month I'll probably be very distracted, settling down and getting the hang of things, but I'll try to write as much as I can during my free time.
Yes, I know I skipped over the Voyage of the damned but I've never really liked it. I'll reference to things that happened during it in the next few chapters and some things happened differently and will have consequences, mainly in how the characters react to different things.
Also, only one review for the last chapter? Shame on you!
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Rose squirmed as she sat on the closed toilet seat.
She'd been there for seven hours already, having hidden separate from the Doctor so that they'd cover more ground, so to speak. He said he'd hide in some supply closet a few floors down and to text him if she got caught.
So here she was, sitting in a cubicle with noting to entertain herself with save her super phone and the internet. She couldn't even listen to music because then she'd leave herself vulnerable in case someone came in to look for her. Not that she was very aware of the current top 40 or had had much time to listen to music recently (try since she met the Doctor). There had been a few live concerts during her travels but they were to see bands and singers who had long since died (Elvis) or broken up (the Beatles). She had no idea of the current boy bands (the Doctor refused to let her near too good looking men, she figured he was jealous) or what Robbie Williams was doing at the moment or who the new hot female artist was. She also had no idea of the current day time telly or celebrity gossip, so the Doctor had used it as another reason for her to stay in the TARDIS the day before because she would have had no idea of what the others were talking about had someone mistaken her for their coworker and asked her what she thought of the last episode of EastEnders.
Well, he'd used it along with the fact that she'd hurt her knee during their last adventure and wouldn't have been able to run had they been found out.
As soon as he had come back, he'd admitted one of the Adipose employees had flirted with him and he'd looked at her with his wide eyes so repentant, like he thought she'd blame him for someone flirting with him. It would have been a completely different thing if she'd seen him start the flirting for no reason at all, but when retrieving information or on the receiving end of flirting, they'd agreed not to hold it against the other. (They, however, were not held responsible for what they'd do to the flirting party. By now he'd already given one bloke a black eye (the arrogant businessman on the starship Titanic) and she'd slapped some floozy on a far away planet.) He'd assured her he'd told the woman he was taken and wouldn't be playing "health and safety" with her. And then he'd proceeded to show her just how much he'd missed her while he was away.
Then, with the list of customers, he'd left her back on TARDIS again to monitor alien activity in close proximity to the addresses he'd fed into the TARDIS' system. It had been a good idea too, because a few streets from where the Doctor went, there was a spike in an alien signal and Rose called him, telling exactly what was happening. Then his own alien-o-meter went off and he'd hung up on her and chased after the signal.
A phone ringing brought Rose back from her thoughts and she heard a woman in the cubicle on her right whisper to here phone about being in a church, praying. She got the feeling the Doctor and her weren't the only ones investigating Adipose Industries.
The restroom door was opened and Rose could discern three sets of footsteps, one light footed woman and two heavier men. "We know you're in here, so why don't you make this nice and easy and show yourself?" the woman said in a falsely saccharine voice.
For a second Rose thought she meant her but then she realized the woman had no reason to suspect her. She hadn't been there before, and they had no camera surveillance on the bathroom and the Doctor had assured her that he had roused no suspicion in anyone the day before.
With that thought she flushed the toilet, put on her most innocent face and got out of the cubicle, looking at the woman.
"Ms. Foster!" she yelped in faked surprise, empathizing her accent. "I just finished my 'undred-an'-first customer's paperwork! I 'ad ter go before I went 'ome. I'll just… wash my 'ands an' go! I swear I didn't mean ter stay 'ere this late, please don't fire me!"
Ms. Foster, the woman, blinked at her in obvious surprise, not having expected any workers to still be there. "Well, hurry up then, we have a spy here."
"Yes Ms. Foster," Rose said and washed her hands quickly, eyeing the guards' guns from the corner of her eye. Discreetly, as she walked by them, she used her magnetic screwdriver to jam them. They'd no longer hurt anyone.
She hid amongst the workstations, crouching down and keeping the walls between herself and Ms. Foster, the guards and the woman they were frog marching between them. The woman they'd caught, the spy, was complaining loudly, but wasn't the woman Rose had heard whispering to the phone in the bathroom. Three different investigations at the same time? And all of them hiding in the same bathroom? What were the chances of that?
Soon the bathroom door opened again and a familiar ginger woman exited. Rose peeked over the frame and frowned at her back as Donna Noble stealthily followed Ms. Foster. Was this how Donna and the Doctor met again?
Rose turned her attention back to her task: hacking into the computer frame of Adipose industries. It was better for her. Because of her knee, which the Doctor said would be all healed up in a few more days but until then, she was stuck doing the "safe" jobs. She snorted at that. There was no such thing as a "safe" job when with the Doctor. In all likelihood, she'd be caught in the next half hour.
Soon enough she was in and on the executive level. She found the intended time frame for the birth of millions of Adipose. Adipose were, apparently, life forms made out of living fat and they'd lost their normal seeding planet, Adipose III. Ms. Foster was in charge of planting enough Adipose in human hosts and then taking care of them until the nursery arrived. Rose found all the cloak and dagger of the whole plot rather pointless, because if the chance had been offered to humans openly, most would have agreed anyway because they'd still have lost weight. Of course, since it was still rather early in Earth's development and Earth was still a level five planet, it should have been disguised as a government experiment or something, but still. She downloaded all the important looking files to a memory stick the Doctor had soniced for her (it was faster and had much more memory space than a normal early 21st century memory stick).
Just as she was closing down the computer, two parties arrived from different directions to the office space. The Doctor and Donna were running from the direction of Ms. Foster's office and Ms. Foster and the guards came from the staircase.
"Hi honey," Rose said and hurried to stand by the Doctor's side, seeing Donna glance at her curiously.
"Rose!" he grinned, delighted. "Did you get it?"
"Of course," she smiled, held up the memory stick and they turned their attention to Ms. Foster.
"Well then," Ms. Foster said, taking off her glasses, her eyes lingering on Rose, recognizing her from earlier, "at last."
"Hello," said Donna, giving a jaunty little wave.
"Nice to meet you, I'm the Doctor," the Doctor said and then pointed at Rose. "And this is Rose."
"And I'm Donna," Donna added.
"Partners in crime," sniffed Ms. Foster disdainfully. "And evidently off-worlders, judging by your sonic technology."
"Oh yes, I've still got your sonic pen," remembered the Doctor and took out a sonic device that did remind Rose of a pen. "Nice, I like it. Sleek, it's kinda sleek." He showed it first to Donna who agreed and then he showed it to Rose.
Rose snatched it out of his hand and looked it over herself. "I guess you use it to sign your real name which would be…?"
"Matron Cofelia of the Five-Straighten Classabindi Nursery Fleet," Ms. Foster said and then added: "Intergalactic class."
"A wet nurse, using human as surrogates," summed Rose. She glanced at the Doctor. "The Adipose have lost their breeding planet."
"What do you mean lost?" the Doctor asked, looking at her before turning to look at Matron Cofelia. "How do you lose a planet?"
"Oh, the politics are none of my concern," the Matron said indifferently. "I'm just here to look after the children on behalf of their parents."
"What, like an outer-space super nanny?" scoffed Donna in disbelief.
"Yes, if you like," agreed the Matron.
"So…" Donna took a deep breath and mimed holding a ball with her hands, "so those little things they're, they're made out of fat, yeah, but that woman, Stacy Campbell, where was nothing left of her."
"Oh, in a crisis the Adipose can convert bone and hair and internal organs. Makes them a little bit sick, poor things," the Matron explained.
"What about poor Stacy?" demanded Rose and Donna t the same time.
"Seeding a level 5 planet is against galactic law," the Doctor reminded the Matron.
"Are you threatening me?" she asked, taking it the wrong way.
"He's tryin' to help you!" cried Rose, finally having had enough of hard headed aliens who never understood.
"This is your one chance; cos if you don't call this off, then I'll have to stop you," the Doctor said, taking hold of Rose's hand. He didn't like making promises like that and she knew it, because they most often came true. He warned everyone but because they didn't listen, he had to… dispose them. And each and every death that happened was another burden on the Doctor's heart.
"I hardly think you can stop bullets," the Matron scoffed and the guards took aim.
"She's bluffin', I jammed those guns earlier," Rose said quietly to the Doctor who nodded unnoticeably, letting go of her hand.
"No, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, one more thing before… dying. Do you know what happens if you hold two identical sonic devices against each other?" asked the Doctor, holding out his hand to Rose who obeyed the unvoiced request and put the sonic pen in it.
The Matron looked at them for a second before answering. "No."
"Nor me, lets find out!" declared the Doctor gleefully and pointed the two sonics at each other, triggering them. It created an awful noise and Rose covered her ears, gritting her teeth but being thankful that the Doctor had the sonics pointing slightly away from her and Donna and at Matron Cofelia and the guards who were covering their ears too. The sound broke the glass railings beside the Matron and the guards and from the corner of her eye Rose saw Donna push the Doctor while trying to still cover her ears.
The shove jarred the Doctor enough to dislodge the sonics and he grabbed Rose's hand, squeezing the sonic pen between their hands.
"Come on!" shouted Donna and they ran off, running around the glass incased area to the staircase and a few floors down to the supply closet the Doctor had been hiding in earlier. Rose had to take the stairs slowly because her knee hurt, but otherwise didn't slow them down. The Doctor started clearing out all the supplies and Rose threw out the ladder.
"Well, that's one solution. Hide in a cupboard. I like it," Donna said sarcastically.
"Yeah," Rose grinned at her, looking up. "You'll be doin' it a lot if you'll come with us. I mean, alon' with the runnin'."
The Doctor ignored their chatting, concentrating on emptying the supply closet enough for the three of them and then opened the back of the closet, revealing a big and complicated green machine wired into the wall.
"Hacking into this thing, cos the Matron's got a computer core running through the center of the building. Triple deadlocked. And now I've got this," the Doctor spoke quickly and held up the sonic pen, "I can get in." Something blipped on the green tinted screen. "She's wired up the whole building. We need a bit of privacy," he said and connected two sparking plugs.
"What was that?" demanded Rose.
"Electricity, just enough to stun the guards, nothing more," answered the Doctor, glancing at her with a smile which she returned. "Why's she wired up the tower block? What's it all for?" he asked and fiddled with the cables, wearing a frown.
"Inducer online," a computerized female voice announced.
"You look better," Donna said, looking at him while he continued fiddling and Rose went the door to check that the guards really weren't coming. "Older, but better."
"Thanks," grouched the Doctor, glancing at her and then at Rose who came back to stand by his side.
"How long ago did you find her? Rose I mean?" Donna asked, glancing at the mentioned woman who pretended to be engrossed in whatever it was that the Doctor was doing.
"Me? Find her? No, no, she found me," answered the Doctor. "She's brilliant like that. And it was two months ago, linear time for us. Before that I had Martha Jones. She was brilliant too… but I destroyed her life."
"You didn't, just changed it drastically," Rose corrected. "Her mother, on the other hand, I'm not so sure of. I think she would have been better off not knowin' how big the universe really is."
"Yeah," he agreed and glanced at Donna again. "Weren't you going to travel the world?"
"It's easier said than done!" Rose told him. "I mean, you can travel free of charge anywhere in the universe but travelin' on Earth costs money an' to get money people have to work."
"I know that," he pouted at her.
"It's like I had that one day with you and I was gonna change. I was gonna do so much. Then I woke up next morning, same old life. It's like you were never there. And I tried. I did try, I went to Egypt. I was gonna go barefoot and everything. And then it's all bus trips and guidebooks and don't drink the water and two weeks later you're back home. It's nothing like being with you. I must have been mad turning down that offer," Donna hinted not so subtly.
"What offer?" asked the Doctor, frowning at her.
"To come with you," said Donna slowly.
"You'd come with us?"
"Oh yes, please!" grinned Donna. "As long as Rose doesn't mind?" she said, looking at Rose questioningly.
"You're more than welcome! Then we'll out number him completely, even if he says he gets two votes because he's a Time Lord," Rose grinned and leaned to whisper to her behind the Doctor, knowing he'd hear because of his superior physiology. "Of course, TARDIS is the one who actually decides where we'd go, but shh, don't tell the Doctor that."
"Inducer activated," the computerized female voice interrupted Donna before she got to voice her disbelief of the Doctor doing something like that.
"What's it doing now?" Donna growled irately.
"Ms. Foster's started the program!" said Rose, sounding worried.
"Inducer transmitting," the computer announced and the Doctor who'd been working quickly before, became frantic.
"So far they're just losing weight, but the Matron has gone up to emergency pathogenesis," he said, running his fingers through his hair.
"But that's when they start to convert bones an' organs!" Rose realized. "You've got to cancel the signal!" she said and started going through his pockets, looking for the "18 carat gold pendant."
"Wrong side!" he cried and Rose dove between him and the computer to the other side, her hand inside his right hand jacket pocket.
"Got it!" she announced, triumphant, and pulled it out, already twisting it open for him when he snatched it from her.
"This contains the primary signal. If I can switch it off the fat goes back to being just fat," he said and hooked the revealed chip to the computer.
Just few seconds later, the computer announced: "Inducer increasing."
"No no no no no, she's doubled it, I need... Haven't got time! It's too far, I can't override it! They're all gonna die!" the Doctor shouted, tugging on his hair.
"Is there anything I can do?" Rose heard Donna ask but she was already running as fast as she could to the office area to get another pendant. Her speed was impended by the pain in her knee and as she ran up the stairs, she stumbled because of a bad step, her knee twisting, and the pain increased even though she didn't fall. Limping the rest of the way she gritted her teeth and wrenched open the closest set of drawers, grabbing one of the still packed pendants. She ripped it open as she limped back to the stairs and slid down the banister to save time. Once on the right floor, she ran again, trying to ignore the pain in her knee.
Just as she crashed back into the supply closet with the ripped open back when they all heard a loud horn somewhere above them.
"What the hell was that?!" demanded Donna, looking around.
"I'd call it the nursery," said Rose, breathing hard, glancing at the second capsule now hanging from the computer. Donna must've had it. She winced as she took a step forward, putting weight on her right knee.
"Fine. When you say nursery you don't mean a creche in Notting Hill," Donna sighed, resigned.
"Nursery ship," the Doctor nodded.
The computer lit up again. "Incoming signal." It started spewing something in an alien language that sounded even with the TARDIS translating like some very accented English, very French sounding English.
"Hadn't we better go and stop them?" asked Donna with disbelief when the Doctor just continued listening.
"Hang on, instructions from the Adiposian First Family," he shushed her. "She's wired up the tower block to convert it into a levitation post." He listened to the message intently. "Oh. Ooh. We're not the ones in trouble now. SHE is!" He turned and offered his hand to Rose.
"Can't, my knee…" she said regretfully. "I'll meet you back at the TARDIS."
"But…" he said, eyes wide. "But… the end is the best part! And I want you there!"
"But I really can't climb those stairs an' the lifts are locked. Go with Donna, show her how wonderful it can be!" she encouraged him. "If you don't run now, you're gonna be late."
For a second he looked like he would argue but then he sighed and his shoulders slumped. He took her by shoulders and kissed her chastely on the lips. "See you at the TARDIS. We'll take another look at that knee then. Come on, Donna!"
Rose watched them run to the stairs and disappear up them.
The walk to the TARDIS was slow and painful, even with the staircase banisters making her way down easier. She could have been there in five minutes if she'd been hale and in ten minutes had it been her ankle, but since it was her knee, it took her close to fifteen minutes to limp to the TARDIS who kindly opened the door to her at a mental plea from Rose. With a sigh of relief she sunk to the jump seat and gingerly massaged her knee.
It took another ten minutes for the Doctor and Donna to arrive and when the TARDIS' door opened, the Doctor was carrying a bunch of bags.
"She packed?" she called, the humor in her voice obvious.
"She's got a hatbox," the Doctor answered with disbelief and set down the duffle bag and the tote he'd been carrying before turning to get more of her baggage. "Even you didn't have a hatbox!" he complained as he came back with a hatbox and a rollaboard.
"I've never been one for hats," she grinned, her tongue between her teeth as she watched him go back for more baggage and Donna came in, chatting excitedly.
"Do I need injections though, do I? Like when you go to Cambodia, is there any of that? Cos my friend Veena went to Bahrain, and..." she noticed Rose. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, just hurt my knee a few days back an' all the runnin' today hasn't done it any favors," Rose answered. "It's a funny old life, in the TARDIS. Sometimes you get hurt an' end up in the wrong place but nothin' beats the feelin' of a different ground beneath your feet or a different sky above your head or seein' all those creatures an' horizons… All those sunsets long ago or long from now…" She smiled gently and pretended not seeing the Doctor in the doorway looking at her, listening in on the conversation. "I've never regretted goin' with the Doctor. But, in know there was a time Martha regretted it, when she ran from a psychotic Time Lord all across Earth."
"Do you think that'll happen again?" asked Donna, frowning.
"Nah, the Master was killed," Rose shook her head. "But that's it. Travelin' with the Doctor is unpredictable. You'll have to run for your life with him, more often than not, an' your morals will be called to question. You'll wonder if what you're doin' is right, if there's a better way of doin' things. The Doctor's not human so things that are obvious to us, might not be to him. He needs someone to hold his hand an' remind him of the good things in life. An' to stop him sometimes. To tell him he's wrong."
"Rose is good at that," the Doctor said, setting the latest of Donna's baggage. "Her second trip on the TARDIS and she told me point blank I was wrong. Mind you, she'd been lecturing me since the third time we met when I forgot about her boyfriend."
Something about Donna tickled something in the back of Rose's mind and she frowned at her. "Hey Donna. I had some trouble findin' himself an' jumped all over his timeline when I was comin' back an' I may or may not have run into you a few times. So… if you run into me an' I don't know you, could you act like you don't know me, alright?"
"Okay?" said Donna, obviously confused, but followed the Doctor back out as he went to get the last of Donna's bags.
"Rose is right. The last time, with Martha, like she said... it got complicated. And that was all my fault. I just want a mate," Rose heard the Doctor say.
"You just want TO MATE?" she heard Donna shrike in disgust. "Haven't you got Rose for that?"
"I just want a mate! A bestie!" the Doctor corrected. "I love Rose and she's the best, but I've traveled with different people for so long that, every now and then, I want someone new along, because after a while, people get used to it and I love seeing others' reactions to new things."
Rose giggled quietly and remembered the few first trips she'd witnessed as a "seasoned" TARDIS traveler. There had been Adam and Jack and Mickey and now there'd be Donna. And probably many more in her future, that is unless she got killed.
Contently she watched the Doctor come back and Donna run off to do something about her mother's car keys, returning with a curious frown. She pointed at Rose. "I just saw you outside. I told you to tell my mother what bin it was that I left the car keys in."
Slowly the memory came to the front of Rose's mind. It had been the very beginning of the dimension cannon testing, well, middle. They'd managed to pinpoint the correct universe but were still fine tuning the where and when it landed. She'd been the only tester, the only one willing, really. She'd wanted to find the Doctor more than live alone for the rest of her long, natural life.
She'd been there just in time to see the little white things start to emerge and then fly up. She hadn't stood still, just watching, but rather walked around, trying to find the Doctor. Of course, she'd had no idea what was going on and there had been no explosion to go to, so she'd really had no idea what to do. Then she'd seen the crowd and went to see what was going on, asking a few questions from the confused police officers, but they hadn't known any more than her, even less actually. Then the ginger woman, beaming, had told her to tell the tall blond woman "that bin there." It had been one of the less confusing, more forgettable jumps, so she hadn't really thought much of it.
She hadn't even known the woman had been Donna.
"Off we go, then!" Donna said with a grin.
"Here it is, the TARDIS. It's bigger on the inside than it is on the outside..." the Doctor said, sounding like a professor, repeating a lesson he'd already held many times.
"Oh, I know that bit. Although frankly, you could turn the heat up," she said with an exaggerated shiver.
Rose laughed. "It's just that the TARDIS isn't used to you, she doesn't know your personal temperature preference yet. Give her a few days."
"You talk about it like it's alive," Donna said with wonder.
"That's because she is," answered Rose, looking at the time rotor fondly.
"So, whole wide universe, where do you want to go?" the Doctor butted in.
"Oh, I know exactly the place," said Donna confidently.
"Which is?"
"Two and a half miles, that way," Donna said, nodding north-west. "My grandfather should be there, up the hill, looking at the stars and waiting for aliens. I told him to shout for me if he ever saw a little blue box. He's the one I want to know."
As soon as they'd waved Donna's grandfather goodbye and gone to the vortex, the Doctor turned to Rose. "How's the knee?"
"Swellin' an' tender to touch," Rose answered honestly. "I can barely put any weight on it an' movin' it hurts."
He came around the time rotor and scooped her up to his arms easily. "Quick tour Donna, follow me," he said over his shoulder and walked deeper into the TARDIS. On the way to the infirmary he pointed out the main galley, the library, the media room and the corridor with the most bedrooms, leaving her there to find a suitable room for herself while he took Rose to the infirmary.
