A/N: Just a quick snippet today ... for those of you worried about Rose and whether or not she's going to go wandering about and get into mischief.
I make no apologies for the TARDIS and her "improved" sentience ..
~~oooOOOooo~~
It was an annoyed hum from the TARDIS that finally stirred Rose Tyler to full wakefulness. Having basically passed out in the Doctor's bed the moment she fell into it, Rose actually opted to ignore the prodding of the time machine in favour of trying to get another few minutes of sleep. Chances were that the annoyance she could feel through her connection to the old girl was due to Doctor-related tinkering, anyway.
"Just give him a little zap like you normally do," she whined softly as she rolled onto her side and cocooned herself inside the thick down-filled duvet. "One day he might get the hint."
The TARDIS continued to poke and prod inside her mind with about the same level of tenacity that her son held when he wanted her to get up and out of bed. Rose huffed in response. She then rolled onto her back and spread out into a starfish shape to stare angrily up at the ceiling.
"What do you want me to do about him?" She asked the ceiling hotly. She lifted a finger to point up at the twisted coral above her. "You know how he gets. You an' him were separated for three months by those Angel things. Of course he's gonna want to tinker around a bit under your console to make sure they didn't do nothing to you." She pulled the duvet up over her head. "If you zappin' him isn't working, then what do you think I could possibly do to stop him?"
She gave an adolescent chuckle. "Aside from that of course."
The ship didn't seem to find her joke amusing at all, but rather than sending her a wave of admonishment for ignoring her annoyance, the TARDIS merely sent a telepathic wave with such force that she may as well have been Gallifrey bouncing up and down on the bed chanting: "getupgetupgetupgetupgetup."
Rose actually jerked in response. She pumped her hands in the air in a downward motion that matched her words of asking the ship to settle down.
"Okay, girl. Okay," she chanted as she slid off the mattress and toed her feet into a pair of well-worn runners that had long ago been converted to slippers. She shook her head as she pulled a ratted and oversized old hoodie over her camisole and cropped yoga pants. "Really. If you want me up and out of bed without any argument, then you really shouldn't make the bed so comfortable that I don't want to get up."
Her eyes widened and she paused in her walk to the door. "Never mind. Forget I said that. Knowing you, I'll end up coming back to the bedroom to find a hay-filled mattress from the turn of the 1900's."
The TARDIS pushed Rose forward with more urgency in her telepathic demands, and Rose stopped arguing. Obviously whatever the Doctor was up to right now was really upsetting the old girl, and if it wasn't seen to quickly, then there'd probably end up being an all-out TARDIS tantrum…
…And, really, the universe didn't need that happening now, did it?
She soothed her hand along the corridor walls in an attempt to soothe out the TARDIS' annoyance.
"It's okay. I'll come up with something to distract him, sweetheart," she cooed. "Don't you worry about it."
The feeling of annoyance inside her head didn't abate, in fact it actually increased. When that annoyance shifted to fury, Rose shifted from lazy walk into a frantic run along the grating toward the console room. TARDIS didn't get mad very often – even when the Doctor's tinkering did go too far – so whatever was boiling her circuitry was a far greater threat than a bored Time Lord.
Rose burst into the console room with a yell for the Doctor. She skidded sideways on grated flooring on worn rubber soles in an attempt to stop, but ended up stumbling a trip and a step to collide her hip against the console's edge. She "oomphed" and spluttered, but found her balance and looked around the console room.
It was empty.
Rose felt her heart sink inside her chest. An empty console room and a panicking TARDIS meant only one thing: That the Doctor had somehow gotten himself into trouble … no doubt with their son standing right at his side.
Rose let out a cough through a set jaw. "Oh. I'm gonna kill him."
The TARDIS let out a blip and a tweet from the rotor column that may have protested Rose's threat against her thief.
"Oh," Rose muttered as she flicked her wrist and wandered toward the door. "He'll regenerate, don't worry. I'm not going to kill him that hard." She paused to consider that a moment. She then shook her head, shrugged her shoulders and continued to the door. "Well maybe not. Depends just what mischief he's gotten Gal into, doesn't it?" She turned to walk a backward stride and pointed up at the column. "And I'm the one he calls jeopardy friendly. Ha!"
Rose paused at the door and took a look down at herself. Dressed in what she considered appropriate nap-time sleepwear with a beat up old hoodie and sneakers that should have been discarded at least a decade earlier, she wasn't in fine run for our lives attire. But with no time to change, she merely let out a rough sigh and gripped the lock tumbler with her thumb and index finger to unlock the door and step outside into … wherever … but was surprised when the tumbler kept spinning without releasing the lock.
She kept turning and looked back to the rotor. "Is that you?" she queried worriedly. "Are you stopping me from leaving?"
The TARDIS replied with a wave of worry through their telepathic link, and a series of bleeps and brips from the column.
"I see," Rose answered carefully. "Whatever's out there is something you think is too dangerous, yeah?"
The question was answered not by the TARDIS, but by heavy pounding on the doors. Rose jumped backward from the doors and slowly strode backward. She could hear strong voices on the other side of the door, but none that matched her son or her husband.
"TARDIS?"
The column beeped again in a trill of worried squeaks. The squeak turned to a computerized shriek at the sound of metal striking at the doors. Rose spun a full 180-degrees and ran up the ramp toward the console. "What is it, girl?" she questioned hurriedly as she pulled the monitor around. "What's out there and how long have they been bothering you?"
The monitor flickered on without command and the terrifying face of a wild tribesman flashed onscreen in full HD glory. Rose gasped and leapt backward, colliding with the jumpseat and stumbling in her surprise.
"What the hell is that?" she hollered. Her eyes lifted to the rotor column. "Tell me my son hasn't been taken by them, TARDIS. Tell me he's not in their hands!"
The rotor bleeped and trilled her brips in reply, but the wave of assurance that her travelling companions were safe from the menace at the doors were drowned out by a more aggressive attempt to get through the TARDIS doors.
"God. Tell me they can't get through," she muttered under her breath as she slowly drew herself to a stand from the jump seat. "Not the hoardes of Genghis Khan," she assured herself inside a breath. She swallowed a lump and looked to the rotor column. "Promise me they're safe, TARDIS. I don't want my son…"
Rose yelped and cowered as a rather loud metal clang sounded out from the doors. She remained cowered under her arm as she ran to the safety of the console. "Tell me what to do," she yelped. "They're being relentless out there, and I know you're low on power. How can I protect you?"
Her hands hovered over the controls. She had absolutely no idea what to do to be able to maximize the TARDIS extrapolator shielding and maybe try and locate the Doctor to let him know that his beloved machine was under attack.
"Tell me," she demanded with a look to the monitor. "Surely you can put some instructions on the screen for me. You can fly yourself, I've seen you do it. You did it for Gal. Shielding should be easy-peasy compared to that, yeah?" The console flashed, and buttons depressed, and data scrolled across the screen.
Rose narrowed her eyes into a squint as she watched the circular patterns flicker to another alien-like language, and then back to the circles once more. The column beeped and bripped, then trilled with slight alarm.
But it all went silent outside…
Rose looked to the door and then back to the monitor. She let her eyes drop to the keyboard and fluttered her fingers across the keys to bring up the surveillance feed. Her breath shuddered to see that the attack against the TARDIS continued incessantly.
"Are you going to hold up okay, old girl?" she questioned softly. She waited for the blips and beeps to answer and then let out a breath. "Do you have any way of knowing where to find the Doctor, Martha and Gal?"
The apologetic wave in her mind and the slow trill of beeps that answered the question had Rose drop her head. Her shoulders slumped low. "And you're not going to let me go outside to find them, are you?"
The TARDIS knew the question was rhetorical and therefore didn't answer. Her column remained silent, it's glow dull. Rose nodded slowly to acknowledge the answer held inside the silence of the machine, and let out a breath as she walked to the door once again.
"Still," she said with a sigh as she pressed one hand on the door and lifted the other to try the lock again. "Worth a shot, isn't it? Because my husband, my son, and a woman that I actually really like is somewhere out there. I don't know if they're safe, if they need my help…" She looked back with hope toward the console column. "You understand, yeah? The father of my children, TARDIS. Dad to Gal…" She pressed her hand to her belly. "And to this new little one. He's out there and he might be hurt."
The beeps and trills and broops from the column sharply told Rose that she wasn't going to be guilted into letting her out into the throng still pounding at her walls.
Rose slumped and groaned loudly. "I get it. The Doctor told you to keep an eye on me, didn't he? He told you that you weren't allowed to let me out no matter what?" She let out a furious breath. "No need to answer that one, either, old girl. I get it. I can just see him being all rude and pointing at you with an order to make sure I didn't leave. Am I right?"
The replying trills were somewhat indignant toward Rose's charge, which indicated that the TARDIS was quite insulted of the accusation that her protection was only at the insistence of her pilot. The monitor flashed white and then replayed the image of her passengers leaving her console room – without any such orders for protection.
The column chittered with obvious insult and Rose could practically see the old Time Capsule fold her arms across her chest and turn away with a petulant sniff.
Rose felt immediate guilt. "Oh. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I know that you're first in line to come to mine and Gal's defense." She turned in place and pressed her back against the doors, and then let out a breath and slid down the wall to sit on the floor. She gave the rotor column a solemn look. "Quicker than the Doctor, sometimes. Well. When you can, anyway."
A single trill from low to high sounded in response, which made Rose smile. "I love you, too," she assured the ship softly as she drew her knees into her chest. She let silence fall for a moment, and then looked back to the column. Her chin rested on her knees and her voice was slightly strained as she spoke.
"So are just expected to wait around and do nothing? I mean, can't we maybe find a way to materialize wherever they're all being held and make a grand rescue?" She grinned with encouragement. "The sisters of time, TARDIS and her Wolf, running in to save the day."
The console remained silent, but Rose felt her apologize over their connection. "Can't do it, yeah? Not unless a security protocol is activated or something, right?"
That got a single beep in response.
"And if I said that you and I quickly set one up right now, that won't qualify, will it?" She huffed at another wave of apology. "No. I didn't think so."
She was silent for a few seconds, but then continued with her urging. "I just want to make sure they're all okay, yeah? They're my family, TARDIS. They're all I have." She inhaled a shaking breath. "I can't live without them."
The rotor trilled in agreement.
"So how about letting me out then, yeah?" she tried with a smile. "Let me go out and find my baby and his daddy?"
The trill of reply was sharp and slightly angry.
"Okay," Rose huffed. "I get it. Sorry. Sorry for wanting to make sure my family is safe."
The rotor glowed furiously and a litany of sharp sounds emanated from deep within its core. A shower of sparks rained down over the top of where Rose was seated. She quickly cowered underneath her arms and cried out her apologies.
A small lavender light softly brightening in the darkness of the corridor was missed by both ship and passenger, as was the glint inside the whites of a pair of whiskey eyes shielded underneath a thickly chopped blonde fringe of hair. The light buzzed a familiar sound that pitched high and then low as the signal searched to attach itself to the Time Rotor signal.
With a groan and a whine the column started to shift and pulse with the energy of dematerialization, which seemed to catch the TARDIS completely by surprise. Her whining was long and soulful and called for Rose to come closer.
The whiskey eyes watched as Rose Tyler shot up from the ground and ran toward the console with a question of what was happening on her lips.
"It's okay, Mum. We'll get you where you need to be."
A pair of green eyes appeared over the shoulder of the woman in the darkness, and a soft and silken voice whispered against her ear. "Did you activate the materialization sequence I uploaded?"
She nodded. "Yeah."
He sensed her worry via a shudder across their link. "Are you sure you're up for this, Tia?"
"No," she answered with a sigh. "I'm really not, Gal. I'm really, really, not."
"Do you want to leave?" he asked her gently. "I can give you the manipulator and you can go back. Cobblemouse and I can handle this."
She shook her head.
"They'll be okay, Tia" he offered gently. "We'll be okay. I promise."
She let out a long sigh. "Not once Dad finds out…"
"You say that like he doesn't already know.