Title: L is for Living

Rating: G/K

Summary: Part 2 of K is Killed, Rose finally gets some answers about what happened to her before.

Length: 2,853 words

Disclaimer: Doctor Who & associated. does not belong to me.

Author's Note: Not really any hurt/comfort in this chapter. Thanks to Scholar of Imagination for the L is for Living idea. And M is for Malaria will feature a special guest.

Rose was sitting on a settee in the library, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and her knees tucked up to her chest. She was warm and comfortable and happy and ready to put the events of the previous few days far behind her.

The Doctor opened the door by asking the TARDIS to do it for him. His arms were laden with various treats and hot drinks and there was another blanket wrapped around his shoulders. As he approached Rose, he shuffled his feet a bit, making sure that he wasn't going to surprise her.

She smiled and accepted a mug full of tea and a larger travel mug filled with hot cocoa and helped the Doctor set down the rest of his supplies without dropping them onto the library floor or mashing them into the blanket he had slid off onto his seat.

"Thanks." Rose mumbled into her mug of hot chocolate. The Doctor always had the best hot chocolate, probably because it came from some other planet where all did was grown cocoa and supply the universe with chocolate.

Then she waited and they spent thirty minutes in companionable silence, broken only by the munching of crisps and shortbread and the rest of the snacks the Doctor had brought. As their eating was beginning to dwindle down, Rose took a deep breath and asked the Doctor the question that she had been waiting to have answered since she had woken up several days ago.

"So, can you explain, properly this time, what happened? I'm all right Doctor and I really want to know." Rose snuggled up to the Time Lord's side, "I know that it wasn't your fault that I got hurt and we got separated. And we don't have to tell my mum."

The Doctor pressed his lips together tightly and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She could feel his fingers quivering against her side.

"Please Doctor. I trust you, and I want to know what happened."

The Time Lord took a shaky breath. "It was awful Rose. If you had really died, if you hadn't come back, what would I have told your mother? What would I have done?"

"But that's past now." Rose held his hand tightly. "Just tell me what happened."

The Doctor shook his head and let a tiny smile creep onto his face, "I suppose you won't leave me alone until I tell you?"

Rose grinned. "Of course I won't. "

"Very well then, it all started a week ago, after we set down on the planet Loxodon."

The Doctor grinned and waved his arms about. "Here it is Rose, Loxodon, the home of the cat people and the best fish in the universe!"

Rose looked around. The entire planet seemed rather damp and cold and a rather nasty fishy smell filled the air even though there was no bodies of water or other creatures in sight. The sky was clouded over and the path that the Doctor had landed the TARDIS next to was completely deserted.

The Doctor sniffed the air, Rose couldn't imagine that he was smelling anything besides the overwhelming fishiness. But a moment later he pointed down the path. "There is something interesting going on over there. I can hear talking and some new sounds." He grinned at her. "Let's check it out."

So Rose sighed and resigned herself to a few fishy hours. At least the TARDIS found have a hot shower and some nice bath gels waiting for when she returned. She hurried to catch up with the Doctor and fell in beside him as they continued down the path.

About twenty minutes later, the trees began to thin out a bit and Rose had adjusted to the smell of fish and it no longer overwhelmed her. And she could hear the undercurrent of noise that the Doctor had mentioned earlier.

None of that prepared her for the events in the clearing. A large number of the cat people, that despite being the same species looked nothing like the nun cats on New Earth, were fighting each other. She saw several blaster type weapons and a few knives flashing in the light, but there were cats fighting with their natural teeth and claws too.

The Doctor clapped a hand to his forehead. "We're on the wrong side of the planet. Of the five main continents, three are underwater, the one at covers most of the planet is a heavily industrialized space faring nation, and the last continent, the one at the very top of the planet is filled with a more slowly developing branch of the species. We must be in the wrong area. This is one of the Eastern government's incursions and the locals are fighting back."

Rose took a closer look at the fighting cats. Sure enough, there was one side that was clearly working as a team. They all wore dark blue and green uniforms and they were the ones fighting with mostly the blasters and stun guns and a few of them had knives out. The rest of the feline people seemed to be wearing bits and pieces of animal skins and some primitive type cloth. But despite being armed with nothing but their bodies, they were holding their own against the invaders.

"Come on Rose, if there are wild folk here, they are bound to have a camp nearby. Want to see if we can find some of their children?"

Rose frowned, "Why would we want to do that?"

The Doctor looked at her incredulously, "Have you ever seen a kitten? What about a walking and talking kitten?"

She smiled and nodded and followed him in a roundabout path around the two warring teams.

The indigenous tribe, a group called the Tarrus were happy to have them. Apparently they had a local legend about a healer that changed his face and the tribe's alpha couple welcomed them to the camp, mostly for the Doctor's medical skills, but they soon came to appreciate Rose and she them.

Rose spent a day watching their children while the Doctor talked strategy with the pack's elders, and the Doctor had been right. The cat children were a lot like kittens only a little better in some ways and a little worse in others. For one they were a lot more fun than any children that she had ever met on Earth, but she had also never planned on seeing the cat people wash themselves with their tongues as meticulously as Earth housecats did.

She met up with the Doctor again that night. He seemed rather pleased with himself again and took her to the small den that one of the warriors had temporarily vacated to give them some space to themselves.

"Rose, this is going brilliantly!" The Doctor said, as he passed her a bundle of leaves that smelled strongly of fish. "I've got everything worked out. With the TARDIS and a few other pieces that they were able to supply, we're going to put up a force field with a few hidden doors. It'll keep them safe from opportunistic leaders on the other continents and the hidden doors will prevent them from being trapped here permanently!"

Rose glanced down at the bundle of leaves in her hands. The Doctor had opened his up and had been placing small bits of whatever was in there into his mouth as he'd been talking, but she wasn't so sure. It smelled very fishy, like the way a dead fish smells on the beach when it's stinking up the entire seaside.

The Doctor frowned at her for a moment. "Aren't you hungry? Immerse yourself in the culture Rose, eat what they eat!" He reached a hand out and opened up the wrappings in her hand. The stuff looked like a cross between the sushi that you could get at one of those places were everything was in Japanese, from the labels on the food to the price stickers on the shelves, and the canned cat food that had been sitting a can for so long that it looked more like sicked up cat food than fresh stuff.

Rose picked up a small piece of it between two fingers. It was fish all right. But somehow when the Doctor had claimed that Loxodon had the best fish in the universe she had been imaging cooked fish, made over a fire or a grill, but not a half paste raw fish that she had to eat with her fingers.

"Just try it." The Doctor took another big bite of his fishy dinner.

Rose took a deep breath and put the small piece she'd selected into her mouth. "It's not bad." She said, before wrapping it all back up in the leaves. "Still, when are we going back to the TARDIS?" She looked at the Doctor beseechingly.

He just laughed and then dug around in one of his pockets before producing a protein bar of some kind. "Here, this is," He glanced down at the package, "Wasabi and mint flavoured. I'll trade you for the rest of your fish." He offered out the flashy package and Rose readily agreed.

The protein bar wasn't bad. A little on the spicy side, but she could deal with that. It got the fishy taste out of her mouth and the mint reminded her pleasantly of candies and toothpaste.

The Doctor finished off his own fish and hers before leaning back into the damp grass that covered the bottom of the den.

"I figure we'll probably head back to the TARDIS tomorrow. I'm going out to set up the force field in the morning, we could use your help actually, and then we'll have a little meeting with the invasion force and then we'll come back to the village, say our goodbyes and head on to somewhere else. Any preference?"

Rose shrugged. "I'm sure you'll pick someplace nice." She looked around the tiny and damp den. "Maybe somewhere with nice beds, with soft mattresses and warm blankets." She laid down on the ground next to him, using her arms to pillow her head against the cold wet ground.

The Doctor laughed and curled closer to her, she could feel his temperature quickly rising as he kept her warm on the cold planet. "In a few hours you can have my coat as a blanket." He put a warm arm over her and held her close, sharing his now warm body heat.

But she was restless the entire night. Even after the Doctor wrapped her in his coat and left her curled up, the ground kept poking her and then she started to cough and every time that she breathed in, the fishy smell coated her throat and lungs and they burned as she tried to get some sleep.

Finally, the Doctor returned and took his coat back with a broad smile on his face. "All right Rose, want to come with me and the warriors? The force field is ready to be turned on and we're about to meet with the invasion force leaders."

Rose followed him out of the den, stretching happily in the predawn mix of almost light but still mostly dark as a group of cat warriors assembled around them, doing their own stretches and pulling on bits of stiff animal hide and strapping knives made of stone and bone to their hips and trimming back the hair around their eyes so that it wouldn't impede their vision.

Then, when the sun was just starting to come over the tops of the evergreens, the group set out. The warriors moved quickly through their native territory and Rose and the Doctor were left taking up the rear of the group.

"It's better this way." The Doctor told her in hushed tones. "They're starting to take responsibility for themselves and keep invaders out of their lands."

The group crossed a bridge that invaders had built years ago on yet another one of the incursions to the northern continent. Rose glanced over the steep edges, there were no guard rails or anything, but she figured that the cats probably didn't need them if they were anything like the felines on Earth.

They kept walking to the appointed meeting place where they had to hang back in the trees and watch as the warriors had an abrupt, but peaceful talk with invading forces leaders. The TARDIS was still translating for Rose and both sides were rather polite for groups that had been involved in a bloody battle against each other just a few days earlier.

"We are willing to do business with you in the future." The head warrior of the tribe announced. "You must present it to us fairly and give us things that we need in exchange for the things that you need." The head warrior then handed over a bundle of papers that the Doctor had helped the tribe leaders prepare.

A quick discussion between the two leaders quickly followed and soon the leader of the invasion force was taking off her uniform top and giving it to the head warrior in exchange for a beaded pouch that he was wearing around his waist. He removed several of the leaf packages of food first and then handed it over with a smile.

The Doctor grinned. "It's much colder in the northern continent," He told Rose, "But it is difficult for them to make clothing and the other continent discovered weaving machines and textiles quite a while ago, but they don't have all of the natural resources that are left up here."

Finally the tribe stood on one side of a small post that looked like it had been freshly built, it probably had been, Rose reflected. This force field thing was totally new. The invasion force backed away as the warrior fiddled with some wires for a moment and after a few seconds there was a loud crackling noise and she could see the force field static into place, shimmer for a minute and then it was totally invisible to her eyes.

"That's it?" She asked, glancing at the Doctor, it didn't look very much like a force field. Where were the swirling colours and the ominous electric sounds?

The Doctor nodded. "Yep, we'll go back to the village, it is on our way back to the TARDIS anyways and I wouldn't mind a little more of that fish."

The warriors slowed their pace on the way back and Rose was easily able to keep up with them. The Doctor lingered towards the back, admiring the wild vegetation properly now that the sun had fully risen.

They came close to the bridge again and Rose could hear the rumbling of water. As they started to cross over the bridge, she moved carefully to the side, not wanting to fall over from the lack of hand rails.

But she must have stepped too close. The loud white water was quite a ways down, but as she craned her neck to see it better, the wind picked up and she teetered on the edge for a moment before turning back to see what the Doctor was looking at now. She must have misjudged her turn she thought, as she felt her ankle quiver and then she was falling backwards and the roaring of the river seemed to be all around her.

"Is that good enough?" The Doctor asked.

Rose could feel his arm shaking where it was wrapped around her and she could her the pounding of his hearts under the ear that she was resting on his chest. She did want to know a little bit more, but most of it she could extrapolate from what he'd told her. And she didn't think that he was up to telling her much more.

"What happened next?" She asked, hoping that she could ferret out a few more details.

The Doctor sighed. "I fished you out of the river, the invasion force crossed the force field by flying over it. It turns out that they had an outpost that hadn't had time to evacuate before the force field had been turned on. They found us wandering about and you were taken prisoner while I managed to hide."

He took a deep breath. "It's lucky that they captured you. You needed their advanced technology, the TARDIS would have been fine, but we were still about two hours walk away and they saved your life."

Rose pulled away from the Doctor a little, so that she could look at his face. "Thank you. I really did want to know what happened."

The Doctor smiled, a bit sadly this time, at her. "It's all done now. Will you please let me stop talking about it?"

She nodded.

"And stop bringing it up all the time too?" The Doctor asked.

"Sure." Rose said. "We need a new adventure. Weren't you going to pick someplace with nice beds and I wouldn't mind a hot tub either." She smiled and the Doctor laughed happily. Everything was as it should be again.