The air was crisp, his breath steaming in the midnight glow of street lamps and twinkling, colored Christmas lights. Even in the gray, dingy corner of the world known as the Powell Estates, the holidays shone brightly in dangling strings tacked to balcony edges, the occasional tree showing through windows. It was still with the breathless hush of slumber. Not a creature was stirring, he chuckled, even as the sounds of rats scampering across broken brick and concrete belied the rest of that poem.
This was a bad idea, a monumental one, but in the wake of all the other, really stupid things he had done in the last few hours, it seemed relatively minor. Rose had been sent to bed, she'd never know the truth. A few side trips and he was at Christmas, 1998, the next-to-last Christmas before the start of the new millenium, at least by human reckoning of the time. It was also one of the very last Christmases of Rose's childhood.
He stared up at the flat above him, a red bicycle leaning against his hip.
He hadn't be sure why red, Rose was more of a pink or purple sort of girl, but something about it felt that it was right. It was candy apple red, the sort that he'd seen her brush on her nails from time to time, with white trim and a white leather seat. It shone with chrome and lacquer, the tires still smelling of the factory, that was how new it was. When he saw it he could hear the whispered, forbidden allure that it brought to the minds of any child who saw it, the promise of freedom, of travel, of adventures far away from the watchful eye of annoying parents. It was for any young child their own personal TARDIS, a wonderful machine that allowed them to run away, far away, and be free, for a few hours at least, until empty stomachs and tired bodies turned their thoughts towards home.
The Doctor grinned, stroking the leather of the seat, thinking of what something like this would have meant to Rose. And he thought of Pete, too, the father who would have loved the chance to give it to her. The father who would have understood just how much it would have meant to her. Perhaps it was for him, as much as for Rose, that the Doctor decided to do this. To do something for her that that man couldn't.
The steps to Rose's floor still smelled as much in 1998 as they did in 1987 and would in 2005. His boots scraped, the bike bouncing as he drug it up, depositing it on her floor and wheeling it down. Her door was locked tight, save for the cat flap, but he dug out his sonic screwdriver, a bright blue in the darkness. It popped open easily enough. He held his breath as he carefully maneuvered himself and the bicycle through the door and past Jackie Tyler's ever listening ears.
The darkness in the house was broken only by the sparkling lights on the white, tinsel tree. And abomination in terms of Earth Christmas traditions in the Doctor's opinion, he'd been a bit like that Charlie Brown fellow, preferred the real stuff. But, let Jackie have her white tree with pink garland, however atrocious it was. Maybe for next Christmas he'd send her a real one, that smelled like a tree for a change and didn't look as if it came from Salasian sex shop. Not that Jackie knew where Salasia Six was, and he preferred it that way. Him knowing about it would only confirm her worst fears regarding her daughter.
Quietly as he could manage, he propped the bike in front of the tree, bright and shining in the golden lights. Out of his pocket he pulled a giant bow for it, tying it to the chrome handlebars, and a large tag that simply said, "To Rose, From Father Christmas". Best to keep the mystery. Besides, how could he explain the concept of himself to her before she had met himself?
He made his way out of the shabby flat as quickly as he could, fearful of what would happen should a precocious Rose appear at her bedroom door. Locking the front behind himself, he hummed a random Christmas tune, simultaneously smug and proud of himself. He'd have wagered even money that there were few great Christmases in Rose's young life, good ones, yes, but probably not fantastic ones. It made him unaccountably giddy to hold that secret, to know it was him who would put a smile on the face of a girl who deserved so much more than this universe had given her.
The Doctor rounded the corner from the dimly lit stairwell, whistling, when he stopped. He paused, feeling that prickling sensation once again, similar to when the Reapers had appeared, but different, fainter in a sense, but just as wrong. His skin crawled as he turned, eyes searching the darkness for whatever it could be, hearts ice in his chest as he wondered what in the hell could have gone wrong? This was Christmas, an innocuous one at best, and he had done practically nothing to upset the still delicate balance of time. He had checked.
He spun around, tempted to shout at whatever it was, but stopped at the sight of a man, standing at the distant corner. Normally a man standing by himself in this neighborhood at 3 AM would not necessarily be that strange, but it took the Doctor less than an instant to know that whoever this man was, he was the source of the disturbance. Something was just intrinsically wrong about him. Why that was it was hard to tell. He was too far away to see clearly, standing in shadows as he too watching the Doctor. Nothing in particular stood out about him, save for the long, greatcoat that spoke to a period fifty years earlier in Earth history and a war that a man that young shouldn't know anything about except through history books. Still, those things were easy enough to get at a surplus store, he surmised, it didn't necessarily mean a thing.
Then why was he standing there, staring so poignantly at the Doctor? And why did the Doctor have the mad desire to flee from him without even knowing why. And what in the bloody hell was he doing anywhere near the Powell Estates?
"Oi," he shouted, his voice bouncing off the sleepy walls of the filthy estate. "Who are you?"
The figure didn't flinch. He didn't answer either. Rather, he pulled away, turning on heels, moving in the darkness the other direction.
"You!" The Doctor called after him, willing his feet to give chase and finding them planted firmly on the ground, as if his muscles refused to have anything to do with the man. He swore mildly, but didn't press the point. The man was gone anyway, absorbed into the darkness, missing. Even the creepy presence was gone, the Doctor was now left with only the disconcerting feeling of having missed out on something important.
"No good deed goes unpunished," he muttered darkly, running his hands across his scalp nervously, making his way as quickly as he could to the TARDIS. Even she was unsettled as he opened the doors, making a nervous hum as strode up to the console. He patted one of her struts affectionately as he made his way to the monitor. After a few brief moments of scanning the area, he found nothing that could explain the presence. Whatever it was, it had left for now without any further explanation on what it was or what it was doing in the Powell Estates.
In frustration he shuffled Post-It notes stuck around the screen, all scribbled in Gallifreyan with different notes to himself, such as "Don't forget the jam." and "Don't press that big red button, three over to the left." He stopped at the one stuck on the top of his screen, which looked like nothing more than a creative doodle. It was his native language's equivalent for "bad wolf".
His hearts slammed against his chest. Bad Wolf, those words repeated over and over again, ever since he had taken Rose's hand that long ago day. Something primal and powerful and terrifying, and he kept finding traces of it all over the world. Was that stranger part of it? If so, what was he? It kept following Rose, at least her home, was it tied to her? Worse, was it dangerous to her? And what intention did it have with him, the last of the Time Lords?
The Doctor didn't know. Honestly, in a way, perhaps he didn't want to know. But he did what he always did best in situations like this. He decided it was simply better to just run.
By the time Rose awoke hours later, puffy faced and with the residue of tear stained mascara on her cheeks, he had already moved them three-quarters of a century to London of 2066, and the grand celebrations of a millennia of rule of the descendants of William the Conqueror and the English kingdom. London was in a celebratory mood, filled with parties and parades and impromptu gatherings on the street, tourists filled the hotels, eager to take part in the festivities. Of a particular shock to Rose was the speech given by now King William V, who in her time was not much older than Rose herself, but was now a venerable gentleman in his 80's, still ruling capably even in an age where monarchy was seen as something antiquated.
"He was so hot when he was young," Rose lamented, staring at the flat screen where the king stood next to his wife, Catherine, and his heir, George, Prince of Wales, now a middle aged man, surrounded by children of his own.
"I think age suits him well," The Doctor defended, rolling his eyes at his companions shallowness. "His gran ruled for next to forever. It's in the genes with that family, came from Victoria, something with her passes longevity in this clan. She lived clear into the 20th century."
"Must be all the inbreeding," Rose teased, dragging him along, through the darkened streets, to a punky little shop covered in red, white, and blue. Rose delighted in perusing cheap mementos of the event, trying to convince him to buy a tawdry, plastic crown he refused to put on his head, or tempting him with a teapot with all the British monarchs for the last thousand years on it. She settled finally on a Union Jack t-shirt and a book on royal scandals for her mother before suggesting they grab a pint and head back to the TARDIS.
Not another word was said about Pete Tyler. No mention was made of Reapers. By the time they had finished at the pub, filled with chips, fish and bitter, Rose was grinning and smiling and shining again. And while it didn't completely hide the shadow of loss he still saw in her eyes, it was better than where she was. It was what he needed from her, her joy, and he would take it.
"So where to next," she wondered, meandering with him through the streets back to where the TARDIS was parked in an alley, out of the way.
"Oh, I don't know. We could wander to a different planet this time? Barcelona, the planet, not the city, that's a fantastic place. Or Bettlegeuse, full of really mad people. Met this interesting fellow there once, he wanted to be a travel writer."
"What happened to him," she mused as they came upon the TARDIS.
"Don't know. Heard he got stuck here on Earth for a while, and had I known, I'd have offered to help, but he never searched me out. Hope he got off, finally, he was a tosser once you got a drink or two into him."
"You have the most interesting friends," she laughed as he opened the door. "I don't care, someplace fun and different. Something I've never seen before."
"That's the spirit, Rose Tyler," he beamed, thrilled to have his companion back once again.