Happy New Year.

Pretty soon we'll be dead.


The Doctor shifts in his chair. A look of discomfort crosses his face.

"You alright?" Rose asks.

"Yeah," he grumbles, shifting his weight. "It's just…I don't know, something about this place."

"This universe feels different," she recalls him mentioning.

"Maybe it's the one heart thing," he muses. "I'm still not used to that. I just woke up, and I'm already exhausted."

"Well, you said you didn't sleep well," Rose remembers. "What kept you from deep, peaceful slumber?"

Where to begin?

"Oh, just thinking," he tries to dismiss the subject swiftly.

"About?"

"This and that."

She raises an eyebrow at him. He's not getting away with that. Rose knows him too well.

The Doctor fiddles with his fork for a moment. "You did very well with the cooking."

"Doctor."

"I didn't know you could cook."

"Doctor," Rose repeats somehow more forcefully and more gently at the same time.

The Doctor sighs deeply. There's a heavy silence between the pair as they exchange glances across the table. The quiet goes on for so long, Rose wonders if the Doctor remembers the questions. But eventually, under his breath, so low she has to strain to hear, the Doctor mutters, "They're gone."

"Sorry?"

"They're gone," he says, louder, clearer, a tad sadder.

"Who?"

"All the people—and aliens—I've ever known and so many people I could have," he clarifies. "Takes its toll, I guess."

"Tell me about it," Rose chortles, recalling her initial entrapment here and the hopeless feeling of it. It wasn't entirely hopeless, of course. As long as she was alive, hope could be found.

"Yours was different," the Doctor points out. "You had Pete and Jackie and Mickey."

Without thinking about it, she responds, "Hey, you have me."

The Doctor smiles at this. "Yeah."

She smiles back, initially back at him, then down at her coffee mug.

"I miss my ship, though," the Doctor pouts. "He'd better be taking good care of it."

"Well, if anyone would…" Rose chuckles.

"I could have had a fantastic life over there. You better be worth it," the Doctor points at her, mock threatening.

"What? Worth your whole life?"

She laughs off the thought.

She still didn't know. She still wasn't aware she was worth that and more to him.


"It looks like home," Amy observes, leaning down to examine a shrub, because maybe shrubs give distinctive clues about planets and civilians.

"Looks can be deceiving," the Doctor tells her, looking up to the sky.

"Very true," Rory agrees. "When I first met Amy, I thought she looked sweet."

Amy snaps her head around to shoot a glare at her husband. He shrugs innocently, and then occupies himself with observing shrubs of his own.

"This place feels different," the Doctor muses, hopping up and down on the concrete. The place looks very earthly, with geometric architecture and controlled plant growth prettying up the place.

"Different how?" Amy asks, running a hand down a leaf.

He frowns at the sky. "Not bad, different, but not good, different."

"Well, it looks like we're still on earth," Rory concludes.

"Hey, I've seen these!" Amy exclaims.

The Doctor and Rory turn to face her. She's studying a poster pasted to the brick wall of some coffee shop. The pair comes to join her on either side.

"Oh, no," the Doctor mutters.

"What? Is this bad?" Amy asks.

Rory follows, "Do you know where we are?"

The Doctor hesitates. He reads the poster over a few times, just to make sure.

The poster depicts a vaguely man-shaped robot, expressionless and made of steel. The figure is a wreck, with arm parts and leg parts heaped into a pile and detached head tilted to the side. The poster attempts to garner sympathy. Dismemberment tends to do that.

Above the illustration, the poster reads, "SAVE THE CYBERMEN!"

There's a bunch of fine print under the rendering. A bunch of very detailed logic pleading that cybermen are sentient being, may as well be human, and logic and science that made sense if one thought on it too long. It went on to antagonize an organization, Torchwood, which wanted to eradicate the race. The poster made them seem heartless and cruel.

"Doctor," Rory repeats. "Do you know where we are?"

The Doctor answers calmly, not betraying anything with his voice, "I hope not."


"You know, after Bad Wolf Bay, I didn't think I could feel more sorry for you," the Doctor comments through the door.

"It's not nearly as bad," Rose assures him, wrapping herself in the towel.

"I find that hard to believe," he groans.

Rose has just gotten done showering, and the Doctor, not knowing what one's supposed to do while waiting other than hop forward in time, merely waits in her room. Somewhere along the way, a friendly, though-the-door conversation started.

"This would be a lot easier if you had an open mind," Rose calls to him.

The bathroom connects to Rose's bedroom. The Doctor picks around at some of Rose's things as he talks.

"I consider myself an optimist, Rose," the Doctor says. "The thought of a nine-to-five job just isn't one of the things I dwell on to supply myself with hope."

"It's more than a nine-to-five job," Rose tells him, running a new towel through her hair. Her roots are showing, she notices. They've been showing a while, but only now does it strike her to care. "You'd like a lot of the work we do there. Lots of life-threatening nonsense that you'd be into."

"It's not the almost-dying that made my life exciting," the Doctor points out, running his gaze across a bunch of framed pictures on her bedside table, all of them seeming to depict her family and Mickey. "It's the new experiences, the lack of security, the people you meet who make you look at the world differently." He absentmindedly slides open a drawer beneath the framed pictures.

"In Torchwood, you meet people, experience new things, and the lack of security…well, we don't have dental insurance."

"Living on the edge, you are," the Doctor murmurs.

Rose rolls her eyes, chuckling, then starts collecting her clothes of the counter.

The Doctor peers into the open drawer, not really considering this might be an invasion of privacy. He feels almost at home here. Almost. It's no TARDIS.


"Doctor, where are we going?" Amy trots after him.

"Back home," he replies brusquely.

"So we're not home now?" Rory asks, keeping pace. "This isn't earth?"

The Doctor wrings his hands. "Have you two always asked so many questions?"

"Doctor, why won't you tell us where we are?" Amy asks, furthering his point.

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure, okay?"

"Then why are you all tense and high-strung?" Rory questions.

He stops and spins on his heels, causing Amy and Rory to jerk to a halt. "I AM NOT HIGH-STRUNG!"


The Doctor peruses the papers in Rose's bedside drawer. More science-y papers. Geez, even in bed she was looking over research. For some reason, he finds himself feeling disappointed. What was he expecting to find in here? Sentimental pictures of him? How would she even have those?

A slim, expensive-looking phone starts buzzing atop the bedside table.

"Rose, your phone's ringing," the Doctor alerts her. Reading the caller ID, he adds, "It's Torchwood."

"Answer it, will you?" Rose requests. "Tell dad I'm getting ready."

The Doctor brings the phone to his ear. "She's getting ready."

"Ah, Doctor!" Pete greets. "You didn't come to our house last night, so I hoped you'd stopped off at Rose's. Wouldn't want you getting lost, now."

"Yep. Safe and sound," the Doctor confirms.

"Anyways, can you and Rose come down here straight away?"

"She's getting ready," the Doctor repeats. He suddenly realizes how quietly Pete is talking.

"Yes, I heard," Pete whispers. "Please, hurry her along."

The Doctor grows serious. "Pete, what is it? Are you in danger?"

"Hurry."

"Hey!" a loud, rough voice barks at them. "Is that a phone?!"

A click on the other end.

"Rose!" The Doctor exclaims.