"What's your name?"
"Rose Tyler."
"Where do you live?"
"The Powell Estate.'
"Who's Jackie Tyler?"
"Really?"
"Just answer, please."
Rose sighed as she leaned against the back of the sofa and eyed the insufferable man across from her.
"And what if I don't want to, hmm?" she asked him with narrowed eyes, "What gives you the right to just waltz in here and tell me that there's something wrong with my brain?"
"Rose," her mother admonished next to her.
Rose turned to Jackie, fixing her with a disbelieving expression. "And there you are, defending him! I've never even heard of him, Mum. Don't you think I would have, what with me having travelled through time and space for two years?" she looked back at the man who claimed to be the Doctor contemptuously, "Maybe he's done something to your brain."
For the briefest of moments, Rose caught a flash of pain crossing over the man's features before he brought his hand up, obscuring it completely. "For the last time," he said as he ran the hand up his face and through his (kind of amazing) hair, "I'm not controlling her mind, Rose. Nor yours. But your mind is being controlled by someone else. Count Dracula. He's doing it to get to me, and I've no idea how to stop it just yet."
She looked at him in awed silence for a moment. Then she turned back to her mother, staring at her imploringly. "Are you hearing this?" she cried incredulously.
"It's not that far-flung," Jackie said quietly, "After everything you've faced over the years, you can't possibly be that surprised that you found Dracula on this go."
"No," Rose shook her head adamantly, "The Dracula bit I remember. I just don't remember him having any part in it. Not in anything I've done."
"But I did," he insisted, the intensity in his deep-brown eyes causing her to go slightly light-headed, "All those things you remember, those are things we did. You and I. Together."
She wasn't going to give in to that, no matter what an ineffable effect he seemed to have on her. For all she knew, that was just one of his alien superpowers.
"So tell me this, then," she said, switching gears, "Let's say, hypothetically, you're right and my mind now contains sod-all of my memories, why would Dracula do that to get to you? What am I to you?"
At this his face softened. "You're my best friend."
His words caused her heart to flutter in a way it hadn't since she was sixteen, but luckily she managed to keep a healthy dose of scepticism up as a front. "Right. So you're saying that the Count went through all this trouble to get to you while you were right there just 'cause we're friends?"
"Best friends," he stretched.
"Yeah, best friends. Alright," she laughed ruefully, shaking her head and getting up from off the couch, "Sorry if that doesn't inspire me to have much trust in your story."
The Doctor huffed, also getting up. "Well, obviously not that much has changed, then," he muttered.
Jackie looked between the two of them bemusedly. "She doesn't even know who you are, and still you manage to have a couples' row," she mused with an eye-roll.
Rose disappeared down the hallway and, moments later, the Doctor and Jackie heard the crack of a bedroom door slamming. The Doctor winced at the sound.
"She'll have to come with me eventually," he said, turning back to Jackie, "The Count was thorough; he put a telepathic lock on her memories so that only he could unlock them. I'll have to take her back to him."
Jackie nodded, for once not mouthing off about the Doctor's putting Rose in this situation in the first place. "Yeah, figured it was going to be something like that. Tell you what— you go, give her some space to wrap her head around it all for a minute and I'll talk her 'round to it."
The Doctor knew, albeit begrudgingly, that Jackie actually had the best course of action in mind.
"Alright," he agreed, turning to head back down to the TARDIS.
"Only—"
He turned back to her slowly. "Only?"
Jackie shifted uncomfortably where she stood, fiddling with the hem of her bright turquoise shirt and not quite meeting his eyes. "Only maybe—you shouldn't."
He frowned. "Shouldn't what?"
She sighed and met his eyes. "Shouldn't take her with you. Just leave her here," she held up a hand when he opened his mouth, "No, shut up. Listen. The thing about Rose that you need to remember, Doctor, is when she says she won't leave you, she really won't. D'you get that? Not ever. Every time that you bring her here, I see it in her eyes. In the way she looks at you. And, frankly, it scares me to death. 'Cause this life that you lead, that you've pulled her into—that's a part of you, too. That's why she loves it just as much as she does you."
Her eyes glistened. "And loving both is going to kill her one day."
The Doctor knew that the lump of guilt that he felt rise in his throat was directly owing to his unsaid admission:
It already had.
Instead, however, he utilised a technical justification. "I'm sorry, Jackie, but I can't just leave her here like this. The Count is cleverer than that. When he erased her memories of me, he didn't take away all the memories including me. He left gaps," the Doctor's fists clenched and he realised that he'd never wanted to deck someone as badly as he did Count bloody Dracula. "Right now it's fine, because Rose is mentally filling in those blank spaces with as much logical thought as is possible, but it won't hold. Her mind's a ticking time bomb. Given time, the gaps will start to erode, take up larger chunks of memory, until eventually—" he trailed off.
Jackie's eyes widened in horror before she composed herself and proceeded to nod solemnly.
"I'll talk her 'round."
…
Talking Rose around took a very long time, apparently. By the time the Doctor heard knocking on the TARDIS door, he knew that it was already light out.
"You could have just come in," he told Rose when he opened the door, "You live here, you know."
"Lived. Past tense," she reprised, striding past him and up the ramp. She sat herself down on the jump seat without any further preamble, eyeing him warily. "I'm here for some answers."
He nodded, moving over to lean on the console across from her, being careful to keep his distance (which he hated). "Shoot," he told her.
"Okay," she said, still stony-faced, "First question: Are we shagging?"
The Doctor's eyes glazed over and for a second he didn't quite register what she'd asked him. When he did, however, he found it rather impossible to maintain any sense of eloquence. "W—what?" he sputtered in a slightly higher than normal pitch.
Rose snorted. "I'll take that as a 'no', then."
"Yes. I mean no—I mean—" he steadied himself from the sudden verbal onslaught, "Why do you ask?"
"Oh," she waved a hand airily, "Just wondering. The way my body reacts to yours, the way I constantly want to be in contact with you—oh well," she shrugged, "Must just be an attraction thing, I suppose."
Well now, how did one respond to that?
"Um," the Doctor said, answering his own mental question.
"So, we're really just friends, then? We're not together or anything?"
He shook his head slowly, uncertainly, not really knowing whether he was lying or not. He certainly thought of her as more than just a friend; their whole predicament just proved this to be fact once again. But did he really have the right to stake such a claim on her when he kept pulling her close and then pushing her away?
"Alright then," Rose grinned, "That's a relief.'
At which point his full attention was abruptly snapped back to her.
"What's a relief?" he asked suspiciously.
"That we're not together," she continued inadvertently, "'Cause otherwise I may have kind of—sort of— cheated on you." She smiled sheepishly.
"What?!"
She raised her eyebrows. "What 'what'?"
The Doctor looked at her incredulously. "With who?"
"Bit tetchy for someone who claims not to be my boyfriend, ain't you?"
"Who was it?" he asked, trying and failing miserably to sound less murderous.
"Is it any of your business?"
"Damned well it's my—"
He stopped short when he saw Rose's eyebrows climb even higher and a small, triumphant smile make itself known on her face. "So we are together!" she announced, grinning outright.
The Doctor sighed, running a hand through that gorgeous hair of his again. Throwing caution to the wind, he moved to sit down beside her.
"It's—it's more complicated than that."
"It's more complicated than that," she repeated in a surprisingly good impersonation of his voice. She shook her head exasperatedly, but didn't press it any more.
After a few minutes which were spent by each person looking straight ahead at their respective spots on the floor, Rose leaned sideways and bumped the Doctor with her shoulder. "His name's Matt," she started, "He'd been trying to chat me up the entire evening through, even though I'd already agreed to go with him at the start as it was. 'Round about ten, he'd had a few, so him and me left the club together. After that—"
She paused, trying not to smile at the fact that the Doctor didn't seem to be breathing
"I dialled a cab and it took him home."
The Doctor looked up at her in surprise.
"So, wait," he said slowly, "You didn't—"
Rose smiled up at him softly. 'Nah," she told him, resting a hand over his, "Just didn't feel right at the time doing it."
He looked down at their hands lying atop each other, a gesture that was so familiar yet seemed so foreign in their current situation. He turned his hand so that his palm was facing upwards and took her hand. Rose allowed their fingers to intertwine. The small remnant of contact made the Doctor feel that much more at ease.
"Rose?"
"Yeah?"
"How did Jackie talk you 'round?"
No answer came, and when he looked up, it was to see Rose smiling down mysteriously at their linked hands.
"I'll tell you some other time," she said without further elaboration.
