Just a note to say that I have two new fictions... Like I haven't enough to deal with already... An Alice in Wonderland one called Too Small, Too Tall and Too Far Away and one for Pirates of the Caribbean called Essence of a Beautiful Disaster!

Chapter Twelve

I Need to Live

When I awoke the next morning, it took a moment for me to remember why my body was aching, aching in the most delicious way I could have ever expected to experience and I rolled over, blinking in the sunlight that was streaming through that pesky ever-present gap in my curtains. He grumbled as I rolled into him and my face cracked into a broad smile before I turned to face him properly and rested my arm on his bare chest, using his shoulder as a pillow.

"Mmm." He murmured against my hair, pressing his lips against it. "Good morning." He pulled his arm from under the duvet and ran his fingers along the skin on my arm, goosebumps rising where he'd touched me.

I watched his fingers trace patterns on my arm for a moment, remembering gladly the way his fingers had done the same thing the night before on the skin on my back, after we had both woken from our dreams to the darkness that permeated my room. I had reached for him, half-asleep and he had complied to my touch, kissing me softly, sweetly as I boldly straddled him. His hands did not cease to touch my body and as I gently rocked upon him, his hands traced the same patterns as they were now doing upon my back.

"What are you doing?" I asked him and his hand stilled. He kissed my hair.

"I'm writing your name on your skin." He whispered.

I wrinkled my nose. "My name doesn't look like that." I told him.

He chuckled. "Just as well, I'm writing it in Gallifreyan." I looked up at him as he spoke and his warm brown eyes were bright with some hidden emotion that I couldn't quite decipher. It looked like happiness but with a small edging of fear or maybe wonder but with sadness etched somewhere within and I reached up to touch his face, not wanting to see him sad or afraid. He smiled and kissed my hand. "You have an incredibly pretty name..."

"I'd like to see my name in Gallifreyan."

The sadness faded a little as his smile grew. "One day, I will have to show you properly." With that, he wrapped his arms back around me and we settled into a warm silence, broken only by the sound of his heart beating in my ear.

"Doctor?" I murmured, breaking the silence while stretching my body slightly lazily against his side.

"Mmmm?" His eyes were closed but a small smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth. I smiled and kissed his shoulder gently and his warm brown eyes opened, lowering gently to mine.

I rested my head on his shoulder, my eyes still on his dear features. "What were you thinking... when you saw me again? I mean after the earth had moved and you were with Donna..."

"Before the Dalek?" He relaxed into the pillow and looked up at the ceiling. "When I realised that you were there and turned around to see you, it was as if the world had just stopped. I couldn't feel the turn of the earth, I couldn't feel anything but it was okay because you were there, with me." He held me tighter. "The only thing I was thinking was Rose. Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose. You were there, and that's all I needed. I forgot everything. I forgot the earth had moved, I forgot Donna and I forgot you were even gone. It's not easy for a Time Lord to forget."

I lay there, listening to him speak and finally understanding the depth of his feelings for me. I smiled and cuddled closer to him.

"Do we need to get up?" He asked me, softly.

I shook my head. "No. My mum hasn't tried to waltz in my room just yet and I want to cuddle you until she does. I think she has some sort of Snuggle Radar to tell her when we're getting too close."

He smirked. "We were rather close last night..." He reminded me.

I giggled.

O

Nix decided that life was good.

It hadn't always been good. In fact, over the last six months, it had been downright awful, filled with nights of passed out drunk upon a bar, mornings that passed her by completely and fights, screams and beatings, bringing her experience of life down to a mere existence. Her regular haunt was the seediest bar she could find, the only place he wouldn't think to find her and it was that place that she had met the one thing that had started to make everything... better.

The sound of her footsteps echoed loudly upon the naked floorboards as she tightly hugged her arms to her body. She was nervous. This was her, her, Nicola Lloyd, finally making a stand. It had been weeks, only two, since she had walked out on her asshole of a boyfriend to create a new life for herself. Two weeks since she had started looking for a job. Two weeks since everything had started looking up. Two weeks since she had met him.

Her head jerked up at his footsteps and she smiled.

"Do you like it?" He asked her, softly. She tried to swallow the silly words that were clambering up her throat and instead turned in a tight circle, letting herself imagine what this place would look like with her furniture and her personal touches crammed in. The thought made her grin.

"I love it." She told him, softly. Her grin widened and her excitement suddenly became too much for her. She let herself be overcome with it and jigged on the spot, giggling. "Oh! I love it! I love it!"

He laughed and reached out to her, pulling her into a quick embrace. "Good," he breathed. She disentangled herself from his arms and stepped into the room that would soon become her bedroom, turning in a small circle.

"This is somewhere where I could start again!" He laughed as she turned to him, grinning widely. "Isn't it wonderful?!"

He moved toward her slowly, reaching out a hand to brush the fabric of her sleeve, pulling it up a little way so he could see the skin on her arm. The bruises caused by that bastard were healing, so only a dull yellow pattern remained upon her forearm but there were other marks, other marks that were hidden under the assorted bracelets and stray pieces of leather and fabric that would never really heal. She looked up at his face, his shadowed blue eyes and swallowed, hard, at his proximity. She could smell him and her brain buzzed uncomfortably in the knowledge that even though she wanted him to be close to her, there would be no way she would trust him. Not really. Not after...

His fingers brushed the pale once-bruises and he raised his eyes to meet hers. "I want you safe, Nix." He told her, softly. "I'm glad you're away from him, I really am... but I can't shake this feeling I get..."

Nix raised her hands and carefully cupped his face, allowing herself to step into the shelter of his closeness, pushing her reservations to the back of her mind. "I'm going to be fine. Look, I'm here... All safe and sound." She tried to smile at him but her fear weighed the edges down slightly.

"I don't want to lose you, John."

She froze. "John?"

"Huh?"

"Who... who is John?"

He frowned and dropped his hands, his blue eyes becoming shadowed as he thought. "I don't... I don't know."

Nix cocked her head to one side. "When was the last time you actually slept? You've been running around like a blue-arsed fly, trying to get these viewings set up for me... You look exhausted."

He nodded slowly, smiling a little as Nix allowed her hands to thread through his hair, delighting in the softness of his blonde tresses. "I guess I am a little tired." He told her. His arms came up around her again and he carefully pulled her to him, pressing a kiss to her forehead. This felt backwards somehow, but nice... somehow also nostalgic. His arms tightened around her and she laughed.

"Come on," She murmured against his chest. "Let's go find that agent and tell him that I'll take it." She pulled away and smiled up at him, a big grin that only just held remnants of the horrors of the last couple of years.

Her smile was infectious and he felt his own pulling up at the corners of his mouth, "You're the boss, Nix."

"Shut up, Ellis."

O

Two weeks. Two weeks of this. I danced around the kitchen to Abba, mainly thanks to my mother's iPod that sat in the dock at the window and I didn't really have the heart to switch it with my own, simply because, secretly Abba made me smile. The eggs were cooking, toast in the toaster and the Doctor was due down any minute after his shower. Jackie was sitting at the kitchen table, jigging her foot to Dancing Queen as I skidded along the tiles to the toaster, just in time for the bread to pop up.

"You're in a good mood," Jackie commented, chewing on the end of her pen, looking down at her half-finished crossword puzzle. Her eyes glittered as she turned her face toward me. "I wonder why."

I ignored her and continued to dance on the spot while buttering the bread. She had a point. Over the last two weeks the Doctor and I had been inseparable. Well, we were inseparable before but now, it was different, it felt different. We'd both admitted that we weren't whole without the other and apparently, that makes a difference... even to a casual observer like my mother who had twigged about mine and the Doctor's... activities the morning after.

We were standing by the coffee maker, talking quietly to one another when she walked in. She stood, stared for a moment and her face cracked into the biggest grin you would expect from anyone. She didn't say anything to us, instead just perched at the kitchen table, just like that precise moment.

Since my rant at her the night I returned from Torchwood, she had returned to her former attitude to the Doctor, mainly for my sake, and the atmosphere had settled back into the easiness of before. Except the minor difference of mine and the Doctor's newfound energy for one another, and that was beyond anything I had trusted myself to imagine.

But there was still the matter of the other Pod, the Pod that had escaped after killing my friend.

The thought of Ella as alone and scared as I was, lying there, knowing nothing of where she was, who she was with and what was going to happen to her... and not being saved... dying in that manner... it killed me every time I thought about it. I would not wish it on anyone, the closing in of the senses, breaking down of your mind, only to be lost in your own fear and torment, imagining the worst because that's all you could possibly do. You are trapped. Alone. Terrified.

And she died like that.

I knew the Doctor had tried everything he could to make sure she didn't die but he just hadn't managed it in time. She died the same day my sight went, apparently, so there was no way for me to know. I should have been there for her. I let her down.

My thoughts always carried this vein, but one touch from the Doctor would silence my thoughts. He made everything better, he made me better.

It was on that morning, as I was dancing around kitchen with a spatula and a buttery knife, that my phone rang. Now that we knew what the pods were, one of which was placed in the Lab again with a "No Women Allowed" sign slapped on the door under the watchful eye of one of John's subordinates, I was allowed to finish the rest of my interrupted time off. With Ella's funeral, periodic visits from an increasingly ragged Lewis, some part of me wanted to get back to work, but I knew that there was no good reason to take the Doctor with me anymore, not like that would stop him. Stubborn git.

Once again, I skidded to where my phone was lying on the counter beside the cooker. "Hello?" I answered, scrambling my already scrambled eggs.

"Hey, Rose." I winced. He sounded awful.

"Morning Lewis, what's up?"

"Can you come to the Lab?" I paused in my scrambling, frowning slightly.

"Lewis, you know I can't do that. The Pod's still there." I remembered the Doctor telling me that he had spared the Pod and, although it had almost killed me, I felt happy at that. He told me that it was part of a massive race he had known of once. He didn't go into details but I knew there was more, he just wasn't ready to tell me yet and I guessed, when it boiled down to it, I was alright with that. I had to be, right?

"Okay, not the Lab but I've managed to find something."

"Since when do you work for Torchwood?"

I heard Lewis sigh and tried to fight down a grin. It was always so fun to torment him. "I don't. John pulled some strings and got me clearance for a couple of weeks. I think I've found something to lead us to Ella's Pod."

I froze. "You're a Private Eye now?"

"Rose!"

"Alright, I'm sorry... I just..." I chewed on my lip, not wanting to say the words that were clawing up my throat. Would I be thought less of if I told him that I was scared? The Doctor said that the human Pod would now look quite a lot like Ella now, having took everything that was her, and I wasn't totally sure I could deal with that, not now I wasn't sure the Doctor could take it. He was so much more... squishy now.

"You just what?"

"Why do you need me?" I winced, even as the words left me. How selfish could I be?! Didn't I want Ella's killer to meet justice? He was out there, wearing a human skin, wanting to mate and create more of those bastard Pods... maybe female ones where the Doctor and Lewis and John would be in danger.

"Rose. I just do, please?"

I sighed and looked up, just as the Doctor walked into the kitchen, drying his hair with a fluffy blue towel. The thought of him without his senses, lying there like Ella had, and I couldn't take it. I nodded and lowered my voice. "I'll see you in an hour."

I pressed the end call button before Lewis could even spit out a reply and threw the phone on the counter as the Doctor approached me. I fixed a bright smile on my face and went back to my destroyed eggs. "Oh." I managed to sound disappointed. "I burned them."

He laughed and wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer. "That's alright, we can always make more." He stepped around me quickly to the fridge, where he pulled out a carton of eggs, turning so he could wrap his arm around my waist again, spinning me slightly to the music. "Go sit down, I've got this." His voice made a warm shudder pass through me and I skipped around him to slide in, gracefully by my mother. She was looking at me.

"Where are you going?" I gulped. I hadn't realised she had heard me but I turned my head slyly to make sure the Doctor wasn't listening and, after seeing him throwing the burned eggs out, I looked at my mother. "I'm going to go to work. There's something I have to do and if he knew, the Doctor try to come with me. I don't want that."

"Trouble in paradise?" She grinned as she continued to chew on her pen.

I glared at her, but her grin did not waver once. "No, mum." I snapped. "It could be dangerous for him."

Her eyebrow shot up, not the response she was waiting for. "Dangerous... for him? And now you think I'm just going to let you go when it's dangerous for him?"

"He's human now, mum."

"So are you!"

"Yes, but I've always been human. I know what can kill me and I'm used to not running head-first into trouble-" she scoffed and I glared."-but he's still got it in his head that he can regenerate. But he can't. He's like us now mum and I won't let him get hurt."

She frowned, not convinced.

"I'm going, mum, whether you like it or not."

O

Surprisingly, the Doctor, after swallowing my half-lie about having to pop into work to properly hand-over to the new carer for the remaining, now harmless, Pod, let me go without complaint. He gave me a quick kiss, swung in beside a harassed looking Pete, who was poring over paperwork, and attempted to help him puzzle it out. I was a little taken aback but somewhat glad. I didn't want to have to lie to him more than what was necessary.

I found Lewis in the Security Room for the floor that housed Lab Six. He was sitting at the desk in front of the massive monitor with two other security guards I hadn't met before lurking by his shoulder. George had let me in before returning to his spot on Lewis' left, announcing that he was about to go home but Lewis had demanded the use of the Security Room and as he hadn't signed off yet, anything Lewis did would fall under George's responsibility. He was watching him like a hawk.

"So what's all this about?" I moved forward to stand next to George, ignoring the unfriendly glances I was receiving from the other guards. I didn't belong there, for all they knew, I was here as some sort of security breach. I was not welcome.

"Look." Lewis didn't even glance my way as he tapped a few keys on the massive keyboard George had manned before. He had already brought up the same corridor I had seen on my last visit here but a couple of days after the Pod had gone missing. "You need to see this." Again he tapped on the keys, turning in the cushioned chair to gauge my reaction.

"What am I looking at here?"

"Just watch." He frowned a little. "Where's the Doctor?"

I ignored him and sighed, leaning forward slightly on the desk to better see the empty corridor outside Lab Six that was being shown on the screen. For a moment, a long moment, nothing happened, and I found myself glaring at my friend out of the corner of my eye. After a couple of minutes, my annoyance reached its peak. "Is something supposed to be happening?"

"Rose just watch that's all I – THERE! Just there! Look!"

I turned back to the monitor and instantly frowned. The just-visible door to Lab Six slid open with a hiss that I couldn't hear and despite myself, I leaned forward, squinting to better see the hazy, grainy image, that even through my utter disbelief, told me everything I needed to know. The doors slid open and someone stepped out.

It was a man, quite tall with a mop of fair hair that shone in the florescent lighting above him. His feet and legs were bare, his torso and thighs covered only by a lab coat that he had obviously taken from the lab, buttoned up to the throat. He looked both ways, quickly before taking the route that would carry him past the security camera they were now watching him on. Lewis paused it with flourish and the image stilled so I could, for the first time, see his face.

High cheekbones, full lips. It was Ella... but not Ella. For a start, he was a man but the hair, the eyes, the facial structure, even the height of him just screamed Ella. He had taken my friend. He had stolen everything that was her. And I hated him for it.

"Rose?"

"Where does he go?"

"What?"

I turned to look at Lewis. "You can see where he went from here can't you? If we find out where he went, maybe it would get us closer to finding him?"

He blinked at me. "You want to find him."

"He's an alien. He's going to want to mate with humans to create more Pods and if he does that, then everything we know will be in danger! I can't just sit around while he's out there!" Lewis fixed me with a wide-eyed stare and I stood up, realising, suddenly, that I had made an awful, awful mistake. The Doctor should be here. He would be able to find the Pod or whatever that person was now. What was I going to do? I could barely keep myself together, let alone avenge my friend – and was that what I really wanted? Did I really want to avenge Ella? What was I going to do if I even found this thing? The Doctor would know and I knew, myself, that I was an idiot for leaving him at home. "You wouldn't understand." And I turned and stormed out of the Security Room. He needed to be here.

I managed to get halfway down the corridor to the elevator before I realised that I was not alone.

"Rose, wait." I turned and glared at Lewis as he jogged down the hall to catch up with me.

"What?" I snapped.

He looked as angry as I did. "It's not easy you know?" He said to me as he caught up. He crossed his arms over his chest, cut off, annoyed... hurt. "When John and Ella met... I always thought that there was this big secret that they were keeping from me. They'd stop talking whenever I walked into the room, they would message one another late into the night. To begin with, I thought it was their relationship forming, which I was fine with... but even after they made it official... I was still an outsider."

"What has that got to do with anything?"

"Because all this," he motioned around him, to the building we were standing in, "I'm not used to this! You! You and, and John and, God rest her, Ella... you all know this stuff. I am just a doctor, a regular, human doctor who looks after real sick people and you're expecting me to stand here and understand and know and just accept all this at fact value and goddamnit Rose, I just can't. I'm not wired that way."

I rolled my eyes. "So what are you doing here? Why don't you just run off back to your precious hospital and make sick people better?" When he didn't answer, I finished his thoughts for him. "Because you know. You have what we have now. You look at the world now and it's dull, lifeless and, and, and, all you want to do is just grab the adventure with both hands, not caring if you get hurt because this, this is really living. You don't want to go back to the hospital and make sick people better... you want to come with me and make a real difference. And you can, Lewis. The smallest person in the world can also be the most important person in the world. The Doctor taught me that."

He was staring at me like he had seen me for the very first time, confused but in a weird way, relieved.

"I thought I was going mad." He admitted, softly.

"You're not going mad." I shrugged. "This is where the human race is going, Lewis. We belong up there! With the stars and moons and all the civilisations that stretch across time and space. We used to think we were so alone but it's different now, we know we're out there and we belong out there with it!"

He was looking at me with wonder in his eyes and I misinterpreted it, carrying on with my silly words so he would, perhaps, see what I see, know what I know and feel the excitement that was coursing through me at the thought of spinning through those stars again. "If only you could see it." I closed my eyes. "The world is so much huger than I first imagined but then then, there is so much more out there. Worlds that dwarf ours... seas of diamond, a world that is never put into darkness, it's all so wonder-" whatever it was went unheard as I heard his sigh and felt a sudden jerk as he stepped forward, grabbed my shoulders and roughly pulled me to him, pressing his lips to mine.

Thanks to:

DerpyDash: I'm glad you enjoyed it! I don't put sex in my stories for the sake of it being there, I try to make it more important than that. Please, I'll keep writing if you keep reading.

Lioness2012: I know what you mean, but I thought, with everything going on with her, being dumped on the beach, yet again, she would be really screwed up, screwed up enough to be completely self-involved about what was happening to her. Anything else came secondary... even the Doctor's (10.5) feelings.

Scryer-LuqGaru: Jackie has a radar!

Anon: I'm glad! He's so hard to write!

BookyGurl: Glad you liked it!

Ilove2HearULaugh: You need to send me a banana chocolate cake. Now. Or I will refuse to write another chapter.

LieselMargarite: Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Chelsdfvjhi: Ahh, well I'm a romantic soul! It's what I do! I'm glad you like the chapter though! Continue to enjoy!

Bunny-chan16: Well shriek again because here is another one! Enjoy this chapter! I hope people continue to read this because I have sooo much left up my sleeve! I tried to write the scene in the best way, while staying true to the story and not making it too crude because sometimes, it takes away from the essence of what is being written and I don't want that to happen! I toned it down quite a bit because of this, and I hope it still lived up to the M rating!

OpalKitty: Oh I still have lots (well, some) up my sleeve and the planning of a sequel! Don't worry! I love getting your reviews and I hope you enjoy this chapter too!

JollyRoger1: I'm glad you're enjoying this! I love writing it!