11. Jacket & Coat

"Oh my God, I'm sorry," Rose said, breaking the spell she had over the Doctor as she disentangled herself from his grip. "Are you okay?" Unnecessarily, she began to brush him down. The Doctor felt distinctly like he was being mothered.

He caught her wrists and smiled at her, his eyes meaning the smile too. "I'm fine," he said sincerely, and he felt Rose go limp in his grip. He released her. "Though I really want my jacket back. And my coat. I really like that coat."

Rose couldn't help laughing at the whine in his voice, before she looked over at the fallen Cyberman. "He's not going to get back up, is he?" she asked quietly.

The Doctor stepped over to the metal man and crouched down, surveying it with his gaze. "No," he said, and sounded relieved, "it's not."

Rose smiled slightly before remembering suddenly and fishing the sonic screwdriver out of her pocket. "Here," she said, and chucked it at him as he stood up. He caught it, closing his fingers around it and relishing the feeling of security that it gave him.

"Thank you."

He didn't know for how long they stood there, just looking at each other in silence. His hand was still out; his fingers wrapped around the sonic screwdriver, his expression, he presumed, a little open mouthy.

The moment was somewhat broken by a loud groaning from somewhere deep within the warehouse. The Doctor was first to react; he turned and began sprinting towards the noise. It didn't sound inhuman to him; in fact, it sounded very human indeed. And anything that sounded human was a welcome noise in the awkward silence.

He skidded to a halt in front of a locked metal door, and fiddled with the screwdriver until it was at the right setting. By this time, Rose had run up behind him, panting slightly. She was clearly unused to all the running around she had been accustomed to when she'd travelled with the Doctor previously.

The Doctor ran the screwdriver over the lock, which clicked open quite happy. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

"Oh my God," he heard Rose utter behind him, and then she was past him, kneeling on the floor, her arms wrapped around Gary, who was just coming round.

"Ooh," the Doctor stated, his face contorted at the sight of a welling bruise on Gary's head.

"Is he going to be all right?" The Time Lord responded with silence, his expression one of distaste for the man who had been trying to trap him the whole time. "Doctor!"

"Yes! Sorry. Should be fine." He began to roll down his sleeves, his bare flesh covered in goose bumps. There was a draft coming through the door that Rose had entered the warehouse with, and the Doctor could tell that it was windy outside.

Rose released Gary and he put his hand up to the bruise on his forehead, his face twisted in intense amounts of pain. "Oh God, that smarts."

The Doctor stepped forward and crouched down beside him, adjusting his screwdriver and then aiming it at Gary's head. He turned it on and ran it from left to right along his forehead, and then back again. "It wiped his memory," he said, shock in his voice.

Gary suddenly clocked the Doctor, and hurriedly backed away along the floor, before leaping to his feet. Both Rose and the Doctor stood at the same time. "Stay away from me!" Gary bellowed, his eyes terrified as he drank in the Doctor's appearance. The Doctor absent-mindedly scratched the back of his head as Rose stepped forward, towards Gary. He did not seem scared of her.

"Gary? It's all right. I'm Rose and he's the Doctor. We're not going to hurt you."

"You're not! He is!" Gary managed to gasp. He reached behind him and grabbed something, holding it out in front of them for all to see. "This his?"

A grin spread across the Doctor's features and his eyes lit up. "My jacket!" he said, his voice obviously extremely pleased. He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked to the right, spotting his long brown coat behind Gary as well. "And my coat!"

Rose cleared her throat loudly and the Doctor looked over to her, the grin immediately disappearing off his face. "Sorry."

"Anyway!" Rose said, using the tone of voice she favoured when speaking as though the Doctor was a particularly emotionally stunted child who needed to be silenced sooner rather than later, "That's his jacket, yeah."

"There was a man," Gary said, his voice shaking. He sounded close to tears. "He was… he was wearing this. He hit me. And then he… oh God, I can't remember. I can't even remember. He took my memories!"

The Doctor leaned to the left, towards Rose, lowering his voice into a conspiratorial whisper, "It didn't just wipe his memory… it modified it completely." He made his voice louder, stepping a little closer to Gary and holding out his hand for his jacket. "I'm not going to hurt you, Gary. Come on. Give that to me."

Gary's grip tightened around the clothing, but he remained silent. The Doctor took this as a good sign, and stepped forward a couple of steps more.

Gary dropped the jacket and swung forward, punching him in the abdomen. Then he ran, out of the warehouse, as the Doctor doubled over and clutched his stomach, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Rose made to go after him, but the Doctor had turned. He held out a hand and wheezed, "Don't. Let him go. We'll find him later."

Rose looked at the Doctor and went to retrieve his jacket from the floor, waiting for him to recover and straighten up, before holding it out to him.

"Thank you," he murmured, taking it from her and shrugging it on, wincing from every movement he made. He tucked the sonic screwdriver into his inside pocket, buttoned his cuffs, and, feeling the pain ebb away, took his coat from the floor, pulling it on.

"So who tied you up?" Rose asked, rubbing her arms and trying to get a little bit of conversation moving. "I can't see a Cyberman taking time to do that to someone."

"No, neither can I," the Doctor admitted. "It was probably Gary."

"Gary?" Rose asked.

"Yes, Gary," the Doctor replied. "Long story." He rubbed his face with both hands agitatedly. "Doesn't matter. Now we just need to find Gary. I'm sure we can do that from inside the TARDIS." He strode towards the door and turned slightly when he saw that Rose was not following. "You coming?"

There was a brief pause, and the Doctor could see several emotions run across Rose's face. "Yeah, of course," she said, finally, and the Doctor let out a breath he didn't even know he'd been holding.

x

It was the first time she'd been in the TARDIS for a long time. Whilst she had been counting the days before the Doctor had arrived, now he was here she had forgotten how many she had gotten up to.

It was the same as she'd always remembered. Rose had been surprised at that, at first, but then she realised that it hadn't been too long for the Doctor, and therefore it hadn't been too long for the TARDIS, either.

She touched one of the pillars softly, smiling as it warmed to her touch. "She remembers you!" the Doctor said in a barely intelligible voice, and she looked over at him. His head was poking out from between the grating of the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver held between his teeth. He was fiddling with two wires, his expression concentrated. Bless him.

He had said, as soon as they had entered the police box, that she needed some tinkering doing before they were able to find Gary. He had immediately hopped underneath the grating and had been under there for quite some time whilst Rose stared blindly about the ship.

A rush of emotions had come flooding back to Rose as he had thrown his coat over one of the pillars and ran forward, pulling the sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket. And now, as she walked towards the console and sat in the seat by it, she felt content for the first time in a long time. She reached forward and grabbed a metal ball from where it was resting next to the screen. She recognised it as the ball he had been playing with as Big Ears, when they'd met Margaret Blaine for the second time. Idly, she tossed it from hand to hand.

"She's an egg!" the Doctor chirruped happily, as though reading her mind. He was back underneath the grating now, lying on his back and using the sonic screwdriver on several more wires.

"She's an egg," Rose repeated softly, smiling. She replaced the ball as the Doctor climbed up and replaced the grating.

"There we go! All done. Now to find Gary, and then we can be off!" He was bouncing happily around the console, smiling in that annoyingly catchy way of his. Rose was certain that she had made him happy like that. She stood up and purposefully got in his way, so that he had to grind to a halt. His expression turned to neutral very quickly. "Ooh. Hello."

"Hello," Rose whispered, and grinned, her tongue poking between her teeth. She reached up, pulling his tie out from beneath his buttoned jacket. She had a vague recollection of doing this some time in the past, but couldn't for the life of her remember when it was. His expression was confused, and she didn't blame him, really. Only an hour or so ago she had been hardly speaking to him.

She'd lost him once. Now she had him again, she was going to keep him close to her. Slowly, she began to unbutton his jacket. The Doctor looked down at her hands, his brow creased. His expression was still bewildered, but quite complacent. He reminded her of a schoolboy who didn't really know what was happening to him.

As she undid the last button, he seemed to snap out of his blissful ignorance. "Rose, I'm not sure that it's a good idea for us to be–"

She silenced him with a fierce kiss to his lips. Placing her hand on the back of his head, she held him to her and kissed him as though she was drowning and he was her oxygen, as though she was dying and he was her salvation. And in a way, he was.

It really struck her how cold he was to kiss. His hand had always felt cool in hers, but she had presumed that that was just his manner, not that he was physically colder than humans. At first, the kiss was slightly awkward, as the Doctor clearly had no idea how to react to the situation. But after a few seconds, he visibly relaxed and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her back.

They pulled apart after a few moments, only inches from each other's faces.

"Well," Rose said, breaking the silence.

"Well, well," the Doctor said, and they dissolved into laughter for a moment, before silence fell again.

"Rose–" the Doctor began, and then stopped, his breath hitching in his throat. "Are you sure you want this?"

"Are you?" was Rose's reply.

The Doctor thought it over in his mind. At least, he would have done, if he had not been so occupied by the fact that Rose was pressing up right against him. "I don't know," he said, slightly deliriously.

"Neither do I."

And before long, they were kissing again.