"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Rose cried happily. Tony startled awake from the deep sleep he'd been in, eyes wide and searching. Rose laughed. "Morning!"
Tony looked up, bleary-eyed, and rubbed a hand over his face, lips smacking. "S'my bir'day?" he mumbled.
"Yep." She grinned broadly. "Antony Iain Tyler, you are now officially ten years old."
The boy sat up fully, rubbing a hand over his face. He looked down at the plate that Rose was holding out to him and grinned. One of their last chocolate biscuits. "You saved it for me?"
"'Course I did. Couldn't quite nip out to the shops for a cake now could I? Best I could do for the best ten year old on the planet."
"I'm the only ten year old on the planet," he said around a mouthful of biscuit.
Rose pushed herself up off the cushions and stretched. She handed Tony a plastic mug of tea off the low table she'd made for the bedroom. He promptly dipped his biscuit in it and, after a precisely calculated period of time so as to reach maximal softness but not quite mushiness, threw the rest of it into his mouth, humming in pleasure at the perfect marriage of tea and chocolate.
"I have a present for you," Rose said. She walked the few steps to her workshop and returned a moment later. She handed Tony a long, thin packaged wrapped in a soft cloth.
He carefully unwrapped the gift, and his eyes went wide. "Is this the one John made me?" he asked quietly. Rose saw the bead of a tear gathering at the corner of one of his eyes.
"It is. He left me some instructions on how to lift the restrictions on it. I only just got it working. It should be an almost fully functioning sonic screwdriver now. I hope, anyway. Can't be sure I did everything – OOF," her sentence was cut off as Tony grabbed her in a tight hug. She ran her hand over his head and dropped a kiss on the crown of his hair. "You can consider it from both of us."
"Thank you," the small boy muttered against her chest. "This is the best birthday present ever."
The former heir of Vitex industries, the son of one of the richest men in Britain, who had once counted his birthday presents by the dozen, cried softly against Rose's chest, grateful for a single gift on a special day.
Her heart swelled in her chest and she rocked him side to side gently. "Shh, it's okay, Tony. No need for tears. Besides, I think someone else has a gift for you too."
He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed already, tear tracks damp down his cheeks. "Someone else?"
Rose grinned broadly and took his hand. "Come on. I felt it earlier and thought you'd like to be the first to see so I haven't been to check myself."
They walked out of the cave and followed the well-worn path to the small copse of trees on top of the hill that contained their home. In the very middle of the trees stood a ten foot tall, broad coral structure. Or it had been coral. Today, the structure looked for all the world like a six foot wide tree trunk with no branches coming off it.
Rose watched as Tony approached and she felt the steady, welcoming hum in the back of her mind. She could tell the boy did as well, given his broad smile as he rested his hand on the rough bark.
At his touch, a crack appeared. It stretched upward, along the dips and waves of the red bark. A second crack joined it, and the rough, rectangular outline of a door became visible in the trunk. Grinning, Tony gave it a soft push and it swung inward.
He stepped in and Rose followed.
"She's beautiful," he whispered in awe. Rose had to agree. She barely restrained herself from doing a happy dance.
Coral struts rose out of the uneven ground towards a ceiling twenty feet above. The room seemed to stretch for metres in every direction. There was no rhyme or reason to it. The entire interior structure glowed faintly, a vaguely rose ambient light with no apparent source cast no shadows.
Branches of coral reached in every direction, forming places suitable for sitting. The pair navigated their way through the tall columns and eventually found themselves in a small clearing.
"This will be the perfect place to put the console," Rose mused. "It shouldn't take me long to move the pieces I've made here."
Tony ran his hand along one of the horizontal beams and then hopped up. His feet dangled in the air below and he breathed deeply of the slightly cool, moist air that surrounded them. "Can we move in here?" he asked hopefully.
"Don't see why not. She seems ready enough, don't you girl?" The entire room seemed to hum in agreement and both Tylers smiled. "I think that's a yes."
"Well then, you get started," Tony said, grinning.
"Just me?"
"S'my birthday so it's my day off."
Rose shook her head, laughing at the cheeky child. "Fine then, you try to see if there are any other rooms. I'll start packing up the cave."
All told, it had only taken them – Tony had helped, no matter his joking refusal – a few hours to move their belongings into the newly opened TARDIS.
By the time they had finished, the small clearing in the centre of what would be the console room had grown a mushroom-shaped plinth that Rose knew would be the home of the controls she had spent the last couple of months building.
Tony had located a small corridor with four small rooms off the main room. The two largest would be suitable as bedrooms. Tony had attempted to claim the larger of the two, but Rose had pulled rank and relegated him to the smaller one. The TARDIS had been very accommodating and furnished the smallest of the four side rooms as a loo. The toilet, like everything else in the TARDIS, was formed of the ever-present, slightly pink-orange coral, but it would do. There was a walled off area which seemed as though it were a shower stall.
Rose was very glad they would no longer have to hike the half kilometre to the shuttle for running water and a proper toilet. She and Tony had built a small outhouse, but neither had any desire to use it unless they absolutely had to, so the both of them made the walk to the shuttle often enough.
The room they would use as a galley had no cooking apparatuses, though there was what seemed to be a spot made up as a rudimentary stove, similar to the one Rose had constructed out of stones in the kitchen of their cave.
Rose had decided to take a risk and retrieved the shuttle, landing it just outside the stand of silver-leafed trees where the TARDIS was growing. She and Tony made quick work of finishing stripping it of anything useful.
Med kits and tool sets, extra parts, water packs and boxes of rations found their way into the TARDIS. They were stashed in the many dozens of cubby holes that had grown into the sides of the main rooms. Rose stripped the last few seats of cushions from their getaway vehicle and used them to make up beds for her and Tony on the newly raised platforms in their bedrooms which seemed intended for this purpose.
After a very long day of moving things about, Rose returned the shuttle to the ravine where they'd had it camouflaged for the months they had been here. She pulled the dead branches and grasses back over it and walked away for what she hoped was the last time.
Soon enough, they'd have a much better mode of transport.
She breathed deeply of the spicy air on the walk back to the TARDIS, running her fingers along the tops of the long, red grass she walked through. This planet certainly explained the Doctor's lifelong desire to be ginger; he'd have matched his home world. All oranges and reds, dotted with bits of brown and blue and silver. She smiled at the thought and realized that she was finally, all these months later, able to think about him without the gaping maw of grief threatening to consume her.
It was nearly a year now since he had died. It had been a challenge to keep time in Earth days since their arrival on Gallifrey, with its seventy five hour light and dark cycle, but she had maintained a careful count, for Tony's sake. Dates meant more to him than they did to her. It was the only way they'd known when his proper birthday would be.
And now, her careful record keeping told her that the anniversary of John's death was less than three weeks away.
How much the year had changed them, she reflected.
John was gone. Jackie and Pete were gone. Tony, no longer the slightly chubby, pampered Tyler heir, but a small adventurer in his own right. Stowaway, ship's ward, and now accessory to theft and settler on an uninhabited world. The boy had always been precocious, but now after over five months on the run from people who had killed the only parents he'd ever known, there was a hardness to him.
Only ten, and Tony wasn't a little boy anymore.
Rose sighed softly to herself, remembering how she'd also had a rough coming-of-age. Estate life could be harsh, and she had lost her childish naiveté about the world at an age younger than Tony now was.
She hated that he had lost everything, but marvelled at his ability to cope. As Rose approached the TARDIS, she spotted him outside, gathering some berries from a low bush. They were one of the few local foods they knew were safe, and he had taken quite a liking to them. They were small and round, dotted with seeds like squat, orange strawberries, but they tasted remarkably like apples, though the texture was nothing alike.
Tony had two handfuls of the berries and smiled at Rose as she approached. "They're finally ripe!" he said, indicating the fruit in his hands with a jut of his chin. "Perfect birthday treat, eh Joan?"
"Joan?"
"The TARDIS. We can't just keep calling her 'the TARDIS,' can we? I thought Joan, like John, since John was the one who helped us figure out how to grow her, but we can't call her John 'cos she's a she, so Joan seemed good." Rose shook her head amusedly at the child.
"'M still calling her the TARDIS until she says otherwise." Rose pushed aside the bark-clad door, letting Tony enter before her. The structure seemed to hum in amusement around them.
"See? Joan agrees with me," Tony said, smiling. He walked to the small galley with his fruit.
Rose followed him and pulled out a bowl for him to drop the berries in. She plunked it in the sink and turned on the tap. While they had moved their drinking water rations from the shuttle and the cave into the TARDIS, Rose wasn't quite sure where the running water (or, for that matter, the pipes) came from. She wasn't about to ask, but instead was simply grateful to not have to lug around buckets anymore.
She rinsed the berries thoroughly and pulled out a Quorosi ration pack. Half of the paste was dropped into each of two bowls and she added a handful of berries alongside. She tore up a bit of the red grass that grew on almost ever level surface of this planet – which tasted rather like it smelled, something of a cinnamon flavour – and sprinkled it over the food. She handed one bowl to Tony and ruffled his hair after he took it.
"Happy birthday, Trouble Tyler."
"Thanks, Rose." They dropped down onto the two pads they'd placed in the galley for seating and ate their meal, both lost in thought.
Once the dishes had been washed and the biodegradable ration packaging left in the composting hole outside (a convenient means of disposal, if ever there was one,) Rose and Tony decided to take a walk along the beach to check on the anomaly they had seen a week prior.
Tony splashed in the waves as they strolled along. Rose smiled. While Tony had never been stuffy, precisely, he had certainly had the upbringing expected of a child of the upper crust. A classical education delivered by tutors, little contact with other children, and few opportunities to play freely, to run and make trouble as a little boy should. He had learned about how to behave at dinner parties and how to tie his own tie, but not how mud felt between his toes or how to swing off monkey bars. He'd had a very privileged, but deeply lonely, childhood, and it hurt Rose's heart that this vibrant child had been so deprived of the simple freedom that should have come with being young.
She resolved that, as soon as they found their way back to her own universe, she would make sure the rest of his childhood included as many opportunities to play in the dirt and run around with friends as she could provide.
They approached the outcropping, and Rose felt the thrum of energy start in her mind again. It was louder, stronger this time. Her hands shook a bit, and Tony stilled beside her.
They rounded one of the larger stones and Rose could finally pinpoint exactly why it was she had felt this before.
She reached down and took Tony's hand, squeezing it reassuringly.
"Is that it?" the boy asked quietly, eyes wide.
More than a decade before, in a Cardiff basement, she had seen a woman die while acting as a bridge across a rift in spacetime. Rose looked into the snapping lightning that jumped across the mouth of a swirling, seething, violet hole in what could only be the fabric of reality. The hairs on her neck stood up and she felt the almost electric dance of the familiar rift energy over her skin. The fragment of the Vortex that had rested quietly within her soul woke up and she felt a howling in her mind as the Bad Wolf awoke in her consciousness.
"This is it. This is the rift that's going to take us home."