Starting Over Chapter 10: Getting Settled
The Doctor watched Rose walk through the door that featured her father's name and followed her with a bit of trepidation. He had only met a version of Peter Tyler three times before, and every single time, the world was ending. If he were a less sophisticated man, he might have said that Peter Alan Tyler was bad luck.
They stepped into a small, simple office with a single desk and two chairs by the wall. A woman with short, chestnut colored hair sat at the desk, typing.
"Mr. Tyler's not available right now, you need to ma-" She stopped speaking when she looked up and saw Rose. "Rose!" she squealed, got up out of her chair, and enveloped the blonde woman in a hug. "I thought I'd never see you again!"
Rose stiffened up and looked baffled, as well as a little sad when the woman threw her arms around her. After a moment, she relaxed and returned the hug. Then she pulled back from the hug. "Oh, well, plans, change, ya know?" Rose said. She tried for nonchalant, but even though they had been apart from one another for years and she'd apparently learned a lot of things he hoped she'd never need to know, he could tell she was anything but unconcerned. He wouldn't have even needed to know the story behind those changed plans to know that.
The woman turned and openly regarded the Doctor. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and her mouth dropped open. "Are you- oh, my God, you are, aren't you?" she squealed and jumped a little.
"Maybe?" the Doctor asked, a bit embarrassed. "Um, who is it you think I am?"
"The Doctor!" she squeaked.
He nodded dumbly, which prompted more squeals from the woman. He opened his mouth, but closed it again, speechlessly shocked and looked over to Rose. She just stood there, looking amused and slowly shaking her head.
"Rose, aren't you gonna introduce us properly?" the woman chided.
"Oh, right, I've got no manners anymore. Doctor, this is Chelsea Grammer. She's Pete's secretary an' PA. Chels, this is Johnathan Smith, better known as the Doctor," she introduced.
Chelsea stuck out her hand. "Hello Doctor, it's wonderful to meet you. I never thought I would!" The Doctor took her hand and shook it, bemused.
The door to the inner office opened, and a tall, thin man in a black suit stepped out. He barely glanced at Chelsea, Rose, and the Doctor on his way out.
"Pete, Rose and the Doctor are here," she called into the room.
"Alright, send 'em in," came the voice of Pete Tyler. "Oh, and Chels?"
"Yes?" she asked.
"Could you order a box of Jackie's favorite chocolates and a single, red rose?" he asked. Chelsea immediately went to go do that.
"Uh, oh," Rose muttered as they stepped inside the office.
"Your mother's mad at me, 'cause I'm mad at her," Peter Tyler explained.
"For what it's worth, I agree with you," Rose replied.
"So, Pete Tyler, how have you been?" the Doctor changed the subject. "I hear you're properly a father now, congratulations! Can't wait to meet that boy of yours. If he's anything like his sister he'll be very jeopardy friendly and..." he trailed off at Rose's glare. "Brilliant, just absolutely brilliant."
"Oh, he's a handful, alright," Pete chuckled. "Welcome to this universe, Doctor. Glad you're here."
"I'm glad to be here," the Doctor earnestly replied with a smile. "Wellll, not glad to be here," he amended and gestured out the window to indicate the world, "but I'm perfectly happy to be here," he gestured towards Rose, who blushed a little.
"That's good," Pete said. He turned to Rose. "I wasn't expecting you this morning. You two've got those Ident pictures finished already?" he asked.
"My car was still 'ere," Rose explained. "You did say, 'the sooner the better,' so I figured we might as well get it done while we were already 'ere at the buildin'." She handed the envelope with the freshly printed and chipped pictures to her parallel father.
"Might as well," Pete agreed, looking through the pictures. "Oh, I see you look different in each picture. Good idea. What're you doing after you leave here?"
"Shopping," Rose replied with a grin.
The Doctor couldn't hide his grimace at the word. Unless it was parts, he didn't like to shop. He'd already tried- unsuccessfully- to get out of shopping, but he couldn't deny that he did need things. He only had a handful of suits, no shirts, ties, socks, pants, etc.
Pete chuckled at his grimace. "Jacks made me go shopping once, said she was tired of seeing me in nothing but grey and black suits. I told her I could fix that by wearing n-"
"Don't wanna hear that!" Rose interrupted quickly, squeezing her eyes shut. It was funny, and the Doctor couldn't help but chuckle.
"Speaking of suits," Pete said to the Doctor, "I've never seen you wearing anything but a suit or tux before. I take it Chelsea found something that met with your approval?"
"Yep. I figured, new me, let's try something new. Never thought jeans would be this comfortable. Well, I used to wear jeans before. Jeans and leather, but not since Christmas," the Doctor replied, glancing down at the garment in question. He caught Rose eyeing him up from the corner of his eye and shot her a wink.
"Thanks for that," he added quickly, before Rose could call him rude.
"No problem," Pete said as he turned toward the desk. "And if you need anything, you can come to us," he added as he picked up a pair of photos.
"Rose, while I've got you here," he started, "Early this morning, just after your debrief, your team was called out for an unknown fallen object. They found this," he told her and handed her the pictures. "Is that what I think it is? I recognize it from your stories." She gasped and looked up at her parallel father, nodding.
"Recognize what?" the Doctor asked, moving over to get a peek at the photos in question.
"No one's tried to open it, have they?" Rose questioned sharply, pulling out her mobile phone.
"No," he replied. "It's stable, so I ordered them to lock it in Secure 10, until you told them otherwise."
Rose handed the Doctor the images as she scrolled through her contacts and he finally got a look at what they were talking about. No wonder Pete recognized it from a story Rose had told (another thing he had to ask about later). She'd know this piece of technology well. It was Chula. Not only was it Chula, it was medical.
"Jake?" Rose said into her mobile. "That cylinder thing you picked up this morning, you have it down in S-10, righ'?" she asked into the phone. "Are you there now?" A pause. "Yes. 'S a Chula ambulance and whatever you do, don' touch it anymore." Another pause. "'Ere, talk to the Doctor. Yes, e's righ' 'ere." She held the phone out to the Doctor, who immediately took it.
"Were any of the lights on the panel lit up at all?" the Doctor asked, bypassing all greetings.
"One, a little yellow light at the bottom right corner of the panel," came a familiar voice. "That's when you're standing at the end closer to the panel," he added. Rose had called him Jake. This was Jake Simmonds. He mentally praised the man for getting right to the point and him not having to ask Jake to describe which buttons and how he was standing.
The Doctor looked down at the pictures in his hand again, paying special attention to the panel, which the photo taker had thoughtfully shown in full detail. It looked exactly the same as the one he encountered the night they met Jack Harkness, so he could be sure that it was the same where it counted. That little yellow light wasn't good. It could wait, but if someone pressed the wrong button, the panel would open up.
"It's not flashing, is it?" he asked.
"No, it's solid," the man replied.
"Okay, I'm coming down to deactivate it," the Doctor declared. "Rose, lead me there, Love."
"No, you're not," Pete said.
"You can't," Jake proclaimed at the same time Pete had given his negative.
"I can't," Rose replied softly.
"Why not?" he asked all three, not whinging. Time Lords didn't whinge. Both Pete and Jake answered with explanations about how everyone who entered the Secure rooms had to have clearance and the doors would lock someone who didn't have clearance in between the first and second set. It was an impressive bit of security, the Doctor thought.
"Pete, you run this outfit, give me clearance," the Doctor protested.
"I can't," Pete explained. "Not without you already in the system," he added.
"I have clearance," Rose spoke up. "Tell me what to do."
The Doctor took a pen from the desk and put a little number over each button that needed to be pressed and the order it needed to be pressed in. Some buttons had two or three numbers over them. It was a fairly long sequence.
"Press these buttons in the order I've numbered them," he told her, handing her the now marked up photo. Rose took it and looked it over quickly, nodding. The photo was pretty self explanatory.
"Okay, be right back," Rose said. She took her mobile and told Jake that she was coming down as she left the office.
As soon as they were alone, Pete turned to the Doctor with a serious look on his face. Suddenly, he remembered that this man with the thinning ginger hair was, for all intents and purposes, Rose's father. Or stepfather, depending on how you looked at it. He also realized that this was the first time he was truly alone with the man. Any version of him.
"Doctor, while you're waiting, we need to talk," Pete informed him, causing the Doctor's stomach to drop. Rose didn't get all of her formidableness from her mother. "When Rose first came to this universe, she was a mess," Pete told him. "She was...depressed doesn't even begin to cover it."
This news hurt the Doctor to hear, but he wasn't surprised. He'd spent some time in a near catatonic state before the idea came to him to find a way to get to her. After all, the first time through was an accident. He'd broken an entire room full of things on the TARDIS when he couldn't find a way through. Once his rage had calmed down, he found a way to contact her to make sure she was and would be okay, even if he couldn't get through. He needed to hear her voice and see her one last time.
"A few weeks in," Pete continued, "she suddenly decided that she was going to take me up on my offer to work here. It was like she suddenly had a purpose. Turned out, Rose only took the job because she wanted access to the archives, the information on our jumpers, an' some excitement." Pete went around to the other side of his desk and sat down, gesturing for the Doctor to do the same.
"I saw her library," the Doctor said. "She told me that she had worked on the Dimension Cannon."
"Yeah, she did," Pete affirmed with a nod. "I reckon we wouldn't've been able to get it done in time if she hadn't been working on it herself. That's not my story to tell, though. Only she knows the whole thing." He leaned forward and put his hands on the desk in front of him, fingers clasped together.
"After Bad Wolf Bay, she went back into her depression for a bit. Mickey, Jacks, an' I were worried, but grief was something we could understand well." A dark look flashed on his face for a moment, and the Doctor was reminded that he had lost his first Jackie 3 years before Rose and her mother came to live with him. "I mean, you might as well have been dead, the result was the same."
"It was the same on the other side of the Void," the Doctor admitted. Pete looked sympathetic for a moment.
"Jackie tells me that there's two of you now?" Pete asked.
"Yep," the Doctor said, popping his 'p.'
"How did that happen?" he asked. It was a perfectly logical question, and he found himself explaining it again.
"Rose told you about regeneration?" the Doctor asked, receiving a nod in reply. "Well, when Rose came back, I got shot by a Dalek. I had just gotten involved with the situation, and Rose had just come back. Changing myself right then could have been disastrous. So I used a little of the energy to heal myself, and managed to stop the change by putting the rest of it into the hand that had been cut off right after I regenerated last time," he explained and wiggled the fingers of his right hand. "This hand right here, my handy spare hand," he joked. "Next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor of the TARDIS and there were two of me. Turns out Donna had touched the hand, which set off a chain reaction and this body got a bit of her DNA, making me part human," he finished.
"So, you were born from a hand?" Pete asked, incredulously.
"More like- welll, close enough," the Doctor replied.
"Jackie tells me you have a human lifespan?" Pete questioned.
"More or less," the Doctor replied. "The human part overtook several of my Time Lordy bits. No regeneration," he explained.
"And you're sure that your projected lives are about the same?" Pete asked. The Doctor started to wonder why Pete was pushing this, then remembered that Rose probably told him how old the Doctor was.
"You can never be too sure about these things, Pete. You know that better than most," the Doctor answered, trying not to reawaken too many painful memories. He knew that this Pete and the other Jackie had separated, but the man in front of him had still loved his wife. Pete nodded in affirmation and remembrance.
"Jacks also told me about what happened back on the beach this time," Pete informed him after a moment. The Doctor swallowed at this. What happened back there went according to the other Doctor's plan, and Rose hated it, with good reason. He'd taken her railing at him, though. He had played a part in manipulating her as well.
"The point I'm getting at is: you're the same man, and he left her without a word," Rose's father pointed out.
"And you're worried I'm going to do the same," the Doctor finished for him. He leaned forward and put his forearms on his knees. "I'd rather be by her side than live the life I've been living the past few years. The life I know he's living right now. And the same goes for him. He didn't want to leave her any more than I do. The only reason I sent her away the last time we met was so that she'd be safe. Rose and I have discussed this already, and I promise you, the same thing I promised her: if I ever leave her, it won't be my decision."
Once his speech ended, he sat back and waited for the other man to speak. Peter Tyler nodded once, appeased.
"Don't hurt her, Doctor. She's been hurt enough," Pete said.
"I'll try not to," the Doctor promised.
XxXxXxXx
After she finished shutting down the Chula ambulance, Rose and the Doctor finally stepped outside of Torchwood Tower and walked toward her car, a Kia Hare in an emerald green color. The model had never existed in their home universe, as far as she knew. It looked fast, and it was, but she didn't get much occasion to use the speed capabilities of it.
"Nice car," the Doctor said, approvingly. Figured he'd be a car man.
"Hydrogen powered, with a petrol backup," she told him.
"They went to hydrogen cars here?" he asked.
"About a quarter of the world's fleet is hydrogen powered," Rose replied. "A third's electric, and the rest're still on petrol, but mos' of those are older cars or in developing nations."
"I'm impressed," the Doctor replied as they got in. "Doing better than you lot in our universe."
"'Snot our universe anymore," Rose muttered and pulled out of the parking spot.
They went to four shops that day, starting with the Converse Outlet, looking for all the basics they needed for the Doctor. Rose was sitting by the dressing rooms in next shop, when the Doctor came out in a printed powder blue t-shirt that said, "Trust me, I'm a Doctor."
Rose busted out laughing.
"What?" he asked. Rose laughed harder.
"What?" he repeated.
Rose shook her head and gasped out, "No."
"What's wrong with this t-shirt?" the Doctor asked, which had Rose laughing again in remembrance of when he used to say that about his jumpers.
"Fine, I'll take off the bloody t-shirt," he grumbled.
At the third shop, the Doctor got his measurements taken for a couple of suits. While there, he discovered that he really liked a velvet jacket that was on display. He put it on and looked in the mirror, stroking it while he did so. It seemed he was as tactile as ever.
The Doctor still favored pinstripes over anything else, though. Half the clothes they bought that day were vertically striped.
Their last stop was to a furniture store. When the Doctor realized where they were, he got a bit antsy. Rose was surprised it had taken him this long.
"Relax," she told him after they got inside.
"I am relaxed," the Doctor replied.
"No, you're not," she countered. "We won't be long here," she promised. "We don't even have to make any choices, I already know what we've got to get."
"And that is?" he asked.
"Bedroom furniture for you," she replied. "What else would we need from a furniture store?" Rose wondered.
"So, we're getting a bed?" he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. Rose's heart stopped for a moment. "I guess I'll need a bed. You know, in that empty bedroom. I mean, if I'm gonna get a bed, can it be a-"
"Hold on a mo'. Do ya wan' your own room?" Rose interrupted the Doctor's nervous ramble. He stopped and looked at her. She wasn't used to this uncertainty in the Doctor. He was usually so confident.
"No! I mean, really, no," he replied, "but-"
"'Cause I thought we'd get a bedstand and dresser that matches mine for you. For our room," Rose told him before he could get going again.
The Doctor put his hands in his packets and smiled sheepishly. "Really?" he asked.
"Yes," Rose assured him with a little nod.
Their eyes locked together and the Doctor opened his mouth to say something, but the door behind them opened with a ding, reminding the two of them that they weren't alone.
Once they were back home, bags strewn all over the half of the living room that was mostly empty, they collapsed on the couch with takeaway Chinese. Rose turned the Telly on to some mindless show, and they both tucked in to their meal.
XxXxXxXx
"Awww, come on, really?" Rose asked incredulously.
"I'm serious!" the Doctor exclaimed as he grabbed a shrimp with his chopsticks. "H.G. Wells really did get the term 'science fiction' from me." They laughed.
XxXxXxXx
"So, me an' Jake's all covered with this thick, pink slime, an' Mickey's laughing at the both of us. And it stinks!" Rose exclaimed. "It stinks like those snail things on Tanilla."
The Doctor wrinkled his nose at the memory. "Now that was bad."
"Yeah," Rose agreed. "So I distract Mickey while Jake comes up and gives him a full body hug!"
"No way!"
XxXxXxXx
"-and Ace is so excited to break out of prison that she might as well have just tipped off the guards herself and saved us the trouble of subterfuge," the Doctor explained, rolling his eyes.
"Sounds like she was a firecracker," Rose replied.
"Oh, yes. Rather explosive, literally. Had to be careful with her, especially when she had a spray can in hand," the Doctor told her as he explained Nitro 9.
XxXxXxXx
"...an' here we all are, trying not to laugh an' give away the fact that the translator is working again," Rose laughed and the Doctor chuckled.
"Look at you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor breathed out. "You don't need me anymore." His voice held both pride and sadness.
"Maybe not," Rose admitted. "I want you, though, isn't that better?"
The Doctor brushed a lock back behind her ear. "Yeah, I think so," he breathed out.
He had started to lean in when the phone rang and Rose jumped. He cursed the invention in twenty different languages before Rose picked it up. It was her mother calling to see how the day went.
The Doctor wished he was on the other side of the Void from that woman.
XxXxXxXx
The Doctor climbed into the spacious bed next to Rose, who was reading a book. She leaned over, grabbed a second book off of the table, and handed it to him.
"Charlie got to finish it in this universe," Rose told him. "No blue elementals, though," she joked.
The Doctor looked down at the really old, worn book in his hand. It had the title, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood."
"'S a first edition," Rose told him. "I was gonna give it to you when-" she cut herself off. "Didn't get the chance,' she finished. "A little light reading if you can't sleep," she added.
The Doctor pulled her in for a hug and shifted them so that they laid together.
"Thank you, Love. I'll treasure it always," he whispered.
They laid there in silence and started to drift to sleep.