Chapter 10 - 01.04 - Aliens of London
As fun as playing dress-up with Charles Dickens had been (fearing for her life and the lives of the whole human race - and the Doctor - aside), Rose was grateful to be back in her own, twenty-first century clothes. She set down the amazing, straightening, hair-drying brush in the en-suite of her TARDIS spare bedroom, wondering whether the Doctor might let her keep it when she went home.
Oh, she didn't want to go home. Well, she did, she wanted to see her Mum, her mates; but she so wasn't ready to leave this life of traveling in space and time...
She wasn't ready to leave the Doctor.
Rose stepped out into the TARDIS' corridor as the ship jostled to a stop, catching herself against the wall. "Doctor?" she called, making her way towards the console room.
He looked up as she entered, a smile blooming on his face. Rose sent him an answering grin, wondering briefly when just catching his eye had started to feel so... thrilling. Maybe she should go home, but maybe she really didn't want to.
Still, here they were.
"I know we mentioned stoppin' back home," the Doctor told her, as she climbed into the captain's chair. Her heart leapt at the way he had phrased it as definitely a brief visit. "But I got to thinkin', if ya didn't mind too much, there's a planet I'd like ya to see."
Rose shook her head, smiling. "Can't say I've ever turned down seein' a new planet," she answered, so relieved to put off possible goodbyes. "This okay?" she asked, gesturing towards her new, old apparel.
"Oh, fine; perfect," he assured her. "No human presence, yet, when I've landed us. An' the natives won't mind at all."
They were already there? "Where are we? When?" Rose asked, sitting up straighter.
"Still in 1869, actually, but the planet's called Delta Magna," he told her, jogging down the entry ramp to wait for her, his hand resting on the TARDIS' door.
Rose sprang up from her seat, and quickly joined him. The Doctor pulled the door open, allowing her to step out, first, once more.
She gasped, not having any words to describe or appreciate the scene before them. The grassy slope was bathed in blueish-violet moonlight. She couldn't be sure, but in the light shining from the TARDIS, she thought the grass itself might actually be blue.
"Seems like a good spot," the Doctor assessed, after following her just a few steps from the TARDIS. He shrugged out of his leather jacket, and spread it out like a blanket. "Care to join me?" he asked. The Doctor dropped down onto the right side of the jacket, leaning back with his hands pressed into the grass behind him.
Rose accepted the invitation, sitting just close enough to touch, but keeping her arms about her knees. She followed the Doctor's gaze up into the sky. "Two moons?" she asked, softly.
"Four, actually," he told her. "A third's just risin', there, behind the forest."
He pointed off towards the horizon to their left, leaning into her as he kept his balance one-handed, and Rose realized she could make out a brighter, purple glow amid the twilight. "'S beautiful," she told him, not knowing where to rest her gaze.
"Spent some time up on that moon there," he said, gesturing to the right. "Methane refinery; huge, giant squid. Was all the gas that made me think o' this place," he told her, without mentioning the Gelth by name.
The moons and the planet's whole atmosphere did seem to have something of a charge to it, a shimmery blue that reminded Rose of Gwenyth's angels - before they had started trying to take over the world...
A flare of blue erupted and quickly faded in the sky above them. "How long," Rose asked, "'til the first humans? Ya said there weren't humans here, yet."
"Five hundred ninety-one years," he answered.
Rose released her knees, leaning back on her own hands, nestling into the Doctor's side. "It's so beautiful," she breathed. "Bet we muck it all up, somehow."
"Well, depends on who ya mean by 'we'," the Doctor allowed.
Rose shivered at the feel of his voice as she lay against him.
"Different groups, different interests," he went on. "By the time I got here, there was an organized, human push-back against colonization. Even though the human race had to go somewhere, they'd started wakin' up to how they were goin' about it."
Rose nodded, turning her head on his shoulder to look over at him. "Hope for us yet, then?" she asked.
"Yep. Quite like hope," he said, gently.
In the otherworldly moonlight he looked truly alien, his blue eyes appearing the same color as his face - but with that face turned towards hers, the feel of his body beside hers, she felt more at home than she ever remembered.
He leaned into her again, without any pretext of pointing anything out to her, and Rose happily melted into his kiss beneath the purple-blue-tinged sky.
Or, even better than that...
To be continued...
You can find John Smith's sketch of Delta Magna in Chapter 4 of "03 08AU Human Nature". I'm so glad I finally got to write this scene - and with a bonus kiss, to boot!
The Fourth Doctor, Romana, and (technically) K-9 visited Delta Magna III in "The Power of Kroll" - which I haven't actually seen.
(This might seem more like a post-"The Unquiet Dead" chapter instead of a pre-"Aliens of London" chapter, but I justify it by mentions of Rose returning home, her outfit from the latter, and the Doctor's smile from the start of the episode.)