a/n: The Doctor and Rose are on Aramathon in the midst of their next task involving transporting a bull. It's not going well for them.
Disclaimer: Of course I own nothing of anything in the Whoverse.
The Doctor vs. The Bull
Rose and the Doctor leaned against the wall inside the utility shed as the bull banged against the outside shaking the meager metal walls.
"Doctor, what are we gonna do? That bull must be at least six feet tall and must weigh at least Three Hundred Kilos not to mention it's seriously annoyed with us."
"Yes, well, it appears we need to take a bit more of an animal husbandry approach. There could be something said for a good old fashion round up right about now."
"Seriously, like an American cowboy with boots, horses and lassos?
He grinned back at her. Rose stared at him and a smile began to creep across her face as she imagined him all geared up, riding a horse with a Stetson and swinging a rope. She might have licked her lips and had a dreamy look in her eyes at the thought of what she would like to do with a Doctor with a stetson, boots and rope, especially if it involved naughty role playing.
"Rose Tyler, you wicked girl you. You were having impure thoughts about me weren't you?" he teased her, with a cocky grin. "Never knew you had a thing for a stetson. I'll have to remember that for later."
Rose giggled and bumped her head into his shoulder as the bull again ripped into the building and the whole building trembled causing dusty tools and supplies to fall off shelves and crash down around them. Rose curled up closer into the Doctor as a sneezing fit overtook her from the amount of dust floating in the air from the bull's assault on the small shed. Eventually, the bull tired and wandered off.
"Well, at least we know where to start to track it," he told Rose, as he stood and pulled her up.
"Right, but then when we find it again, what are we gonna do?" she asked, as they left the shed and walked back toward the hill.
"Well, we can't harm it. If I drugged it, we'd still need to get it back and into the Tardis so that's out. We need to persuade it to cooperate and lead it into the Tardis."
Rose gave him a skeptical look. "Doctor, how do you persuade a three hundred kilo, brown bull with sharp horns on it's head to come take a stroll with us?"
He grinned at her. "We simply offer it what it wants most. It's got to be missing it's normal diet which is Canteran sweet grass. We pop over to Canter and pick up some sweet grass. Pop back here, track it and set up a trap. When it goes to eat the grass we lasso it and then lead it back to the Tardis by offering it more sweet grass. See isn't that brilliant!"
Rose shook her head. "Sounds a bit too easy and somehow I don't think it's gonna care for being lassoed. By the way, exactly whose gonna be doing the lasso thing?"
"Well I am of course!" he answered her, with a huge grin on his face. "I've always wanted to do that! Isn't it exciting!"
"Uh yeah. So we're headin' back to the Tardis then?"
"Yep! Come on Rose, allonsy!" he shouted, and dragged her up the hill toward the Tardis. After a quick trip to Canter where the Doctor purchased several bales of sweet grass to which Rose quickly found she was allergic, they landed once again on Aramathon. The Doctor and Rose once again approached the farm where they met Egrad.
Egrad took one look at sniffling and sneezing Rose and stepped back away from her. "The female leaves now! We don't want her kind here," he gruffly told the Doctor.
Rose rolled her eyes. "Fine, guess I'll go wander off then," she said sarcastically.
"Oi, not too far!" the Doctor reminded her, as he proceeded to explain what they needed from Egrad.
Rose walked off toward the top of the hill they had climbed earlier in their search for the bull. She gazed out over the rolling countryside enjoying the peaceful bucolic beauty of the place. She saw a flash of white in the forest and saw a child peering at her from behind a tree. She slowly walked toward the woods. The child darted back behind some trees. When she reached the edge, she called out, "Hey, I won't hurt you. You okay in there?" Slowly, a small child emerged from behind some shrubbery.
The boy looked to be around eight years old and had the same greenish tinted skin and black greenish hair with brown eyes. He wore the typical farmer's clothing that the field workers wore. "Hi, my name's Rose."
He smiled brightly at her. "I am Nelf. Is it true? Are you here to capture the great beast?" he asked eagerly, and with great excitement.
"Well, yeah we kind of are. Have you seen it?" Rose asked, worried for the child's well being as the bull had exhibited aggressive tendencies.
Nelf nodded his head enthusiastically. "Yes, I saw it arrive. It is very big."
"Really? You saw it arrive? Can you tell me about it?" Rose asked, as she walked over and sat cross legged in a grassy patch near the child and then started to sneeze. She looked up to see the child nervously inching away from her. "Oh, don't be afraid. I'm not sick. We just got back from visiting the bull's home and it made my nose itch a bit."
The child cocked his head and looked at her. "Are you one of the sickly city people?" he asked nervously.
Rose smiled. "No, I'm not. I promise you I'm not sick. Now, why don't you tell me about the first time you saw this beast, yeah?"
"I was playing in the fields around sunset when a ship landed in a clearing in the forest. I've never seen a ship up close before so I went to look at it. When I arrived, there were pale people like you walking out and playing music. They were dancing and drinking. It reminded me of our harvest celebration except they didn't look like farmers. Soon, a few of them led the beast out and tethered it to a tree. They took turns riding it. It did not look very happy and it broke the tether and ran off into the woods. The people didn't stay long after that and went back to their ship and left."
"Nelf, can you show me this clearing?" Rose asked him, now curious to solve the riddle of how the bull ended up here. The boy nodded his head and led Rose through the forest to the clearing. The area was littered with debris and the remnants of what was obviously a party. As she walked around examining things, the Doctor burst out of the woods.
"Rose! What did I say about wandering off. Blimey, I don't know why I bother anymore," he groused at her. He stopped his tirade when he saw Nelf run off into the woods. "Who was that?" he asked, walking up to where she knelt on the grown.
"What, you mean the little boy you just scared off with all the ranting?"
"I wasn't ranting," he told her, petulantly as he stared at an object in the grass.
Yeah, you were. Now stop getting all worked up over nothing. It's not like you couldn't have done the psychic thing to find me."
He glared at her and then sighed. "Rose, you know I worry about you. I don't like it when we're separated during these tasks. Too many bad things have happened already," he told her softly. "Besides, we're under a bit of a time crunch."
"What do you mean time crunch?" she asked him.
"I'm sure I told you that we had to get this task done by the harvest moon which is tomorrow night. That only gives us thirty hours and we still have to gather everything. What's that you're looking at?"
"No, you didn't tell me that. Nelf, the little boy you scared off, saw how the bull got here. He told me he saw a ship land and all these people got off and threw a party. Apparently they tied the bull up to a tree and were takin' turns riding it when it ran off. They took off after that happened. They left this stuff behind," Rose explained, perturbed at him.
He put on his glasses and examined the debris. "Well, it's pretty obvious what went on here. I'd say this wasn't just some random party. Looks like what you might call an intergalactic frat party," he told her smiling.
"Scuse me? Did you say frat party as in university students going to some off world kegger?"
"Yep! See this item under the bush?" he asked her, as he walked over and pulled it out. It was a silver pyramid with some green symbols on one side. "This is a Canteran version of a keg," he told her, patting it on the side. "I'm betting that the bull was some sort of prank that got out of hand."
Rose rolled her eyes at this. "Figures, it would be something weird. So, does that mean the bull is some mascot or something?"
"Could be. We'll figure that part out when we get back to Canter. All we'll have to do is check to see which of the universities have a bull mascot that's missing."
"Right, so what's next? What did you and Egrad the Terrible work out."
"Egrad the Terrible? Really, Rose. Egrad the Idiot or Egrad the Intolerant is more like it."
Rose giggled and he grabbed her hand and they started back through the woods toward the farm. "So, Egrad is letting us borrow a couple of horses. Well, they're not really horses, more horse-like but they'll do for our purpose. We'll get the horses and ride out with the sweet grass and lay our bull booby trap. Ha! You like that? Bull booby trap!" He giggled at his joke and Rose just groaned.
They separated near the farm. The Doctor went to retrieve the horses while Rose went back to the Tardis to get the sweet grass ready. Just as she had finished pulling out the bales of sweet grass while sneezing profusely, the Doctor walked up with the horse creatures. Rose sniffed, blew her nose and turned to the Doctor. The creatures looked almost exactly like Earth horses with the exception of long droopy ears and dark green eyes. Both were a chocolate brown color with black mane and tales. Rose walked over and patted one of them.
"Well they seem friendly enough. So no saddles?"
"Oh yes, they're very friendly and well trained. On Aramathon they don't use a saddle like on Earth, only this padding and reins. As he loaded an automated transport with the bales of grass, Rose watched him with a contemplative expression on her face.
"Right, ready? Want a leg up?" he asked her, with an excited glint in his eye.
"You gonna ride that thing like that?" Rose asked staring at the Doctor in his brown pinstripe suit and trainers.
"What? What's wrong with this? I'll have you know that I have run from a Hadry, fought pirates, faced carnivorous birds and Trash people in this suit," he adamantly told her.
"No you haven't. We binned the suits after the Trash People and the bird thing," she told him, crossing her arms.
"Fine. Maybe those suits did get a tad worn, but it's still fine for this. See, I'll show you." He climbed up on the horse-like creature and there was a ripping noise. Rose started giggling. The Doctor grimaced and looked down with a tremendous pout.
"The suit is fine for runnin' and most everything else but for horseback ridin, not so much. Come on, back to the Tardis. I put some stuff in my bag for emergencies," she told him, and held our her hand and wiggled her fingers at him. He slid off the horse and walked over to her hands in his pockets looking over his shoulder once and muttering about primitive means of transportation and inflexible, inferior Earth fashion. In the Tardis, she pulled out a pair of blue jeans and tossed them to him. He held them before him and examined them like some new questionable life form. He sighed and toed off his trainers as he removed his slacks and put on the jeans.
After he zipped them up and walked around a bit grimacing he turned to Rose who was staring at him, well, at a particular part of him. "Rose Tyler, are you staring at my arse?"
"What?" she asked, innocently.
"You were! You were staring at my arse. Just how long have you been carrying these jeans around? I'm suspecting you've been waiting for a moment like this haven't you!" he demanded, trying to sound outraged but his amusement was shining through.
"Torchwood taught me to always be prepared," she answered him, trying to sound innocent but with a naughty glint in her eye.
"Well, spose I can't blame you. It is a nice arse isn't it," he told her smugly, and patted his arse. "This is probably the best arse of any regeneration, welllll maybe except my fifth regeneration. I had a pretty fine arse in that body too," he informed her, grinning and winked at her.
"Well, I think your ninth self had a really, really fine arse," Rose said dreamily, as she folded up his slacks.
The Doctor walked over behind her and put his arms around her pulling her tight into his body. She relaxed back against him smiling. "Hmmm, well this is a discussion we should definitely continue after we finish up here," he murmured into her neck.
"Count on it," Rose told him. When they turned to walk out, Rose let out a little gasp. On the console, was a white stetson. Rose giggled and ran over and picked it up. She thanked the Tardis and walked over to the Doctor caressing the rim of the stetson. He grinned at her as she put the hat on his head. He adjusted it and winked at her. "Why thank you little lady," he told her, with a Texas accent.
Rose laughed. "Come on Tex, the sooner we get this done, the sooner we can have some fun with that stetson."
They rode over the hill and back toward the lake where they first encountered the bull. From there, the Doctor tracked the bull through some woods and into a meadow.
"Here, we'll set everything up here. Why don't you get the horses settled over behind that thicket and I'll set up one of the bales." The sun was almost set by the time he finished setting up the area. He came back to find Rose had laid one of the blankets on the ground and was pulling some sandwiches and drinks from a bag. They enjoyed a quiet dinner, laid down and watched the stars peek between the branches of the trees. Rose cuddled up to him and gently patted his most delicious jean clad arse.
"At last, the truth comes out, you only want me for my arse," he told her, and kissed her tenderly on the temple.
"Yeah, that's right. Mmmm, my life is complete now that I have me some Time Lord tush. Course, lucky for me the rest of the package is pretty posh too," she whispered in his ear, as she snuggled down for the night.
Rose woke up the next morning just as the sun was rising. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and realized the Doctor was already up. She looked up to see him on his horse staring into the meadow. She heard a snort and sat up. The Doctor looked down at her and put a finger to his lips. She nodded and quietly stood up and put the blanket on her horse and held the horses reins. She watched the Doctor pick up a coil of rope and gently nudge his horse into the meadow. She mounted her own horse and watched as the Doctor slowly approached the bull.
The bull looked up at the Doctor's horse, snorted and went back to munching on sweet grass. "Hello, big fella," the Doctor quietly greeted the bull. "I know people haven't been very kind to you. I just want help you get home so you can enjoy more of this nice juicy sweet grass. That's it, just relax and enjoy breakfast." He began to uncoil the rope and formed a loop. He slowly swung the rope in the air and threw it toward the bull. The loop landed around the bull's bulky neck. The Doctor turned and grinned at Rose with manly pride. Rose watched in horror as the bull turned an angry look at the Doctor and charged the horse. The horse reared and the Doctor fell on his lovely arse that Rose had been admiring just a few hours ago.
The bull ran past him. The Doctor looked down at the quickly disappearing rope which he had wrapped around his hands. "Oh, no, no, no!" he shouted, as the rope went taught and he found himself roughly being dragged behind the rampaging bull through the meadow and into the woods.
"Oh shit!" Rose said, as she watched the Doctor dragged off behind the angry bull. She urged her horse to follow them, grabbing some handfuls of sweet grass as she crossed the meadow. She followed the trail which was clearly marked by the Doctor being dragged through mud, leaves, bushes and across small saplings which were now crushed. She found the Doctor a few hours later laying, a couple of meters from the bull who was standing in some bushes glaring at the prone Doctor.
She slid off her horse and grabbed some sweet grass. She slowly inched her way up to the Doctor stopping every time the bull snorted and looked agitated. When she finally reached the Doctor, she knelt beside him and turned him over. His faced was dirty and scratched and his hands were rope burned and bloody. One hand was bent in a strange angle. His suit coat, which he insisted on wearing with the jeans was equally dirty and torn. He had blood on his shirt and it looked like he had dislocated a shoulder.
"Doctor, where does it hurt," she whispered to him, trying decide what to do first.
He looked up at her with pain filled eyes. "Everywhere," he whispered back. He swallowed and assessed his physical state. "My, my shoulder is dislocated and I think my wrist is as well. Probably some broken fingers. Other than that scratches and contusions. Nothing too serious. Don't let the bull get away."
"All right, I'm gonna take the rope off your hands and tie it to the tree over there," she told him indicating a tree to her left.
"Good, once you do that, you can help me snap my shoulder back into place," he told her, wincing.
"You sure about that? Maybe we should just get you back to the farm and call for a Doctor to look at it?"
"No time and anyway I don't want any primitive healer from around here working on me. Remember, they're not the most sympathetic lot to the injured or infirmed," he told her.
Rose tried to be as gentle as possible removing the rope but parts of it were embedded in his skin and blood had dried around it gluing it to his hands. Peeling it away from his hands and especially his injured hand had him whimpering and tears streaming down his face. Rose was crying softly herself as she saw the amount of pain he was suffering. Eventually, she succeeded and pulled the rope free of his hands and tied it around a tree.
The Doctor instructed her where to grip his shoulder and body in order to pop his shoulder back into the socket. He warned her he would lose consciousness and gave her his sonic and told her what setting to use to encourage healing in his muscles and tissue as well as a quick lesson on how to snap his wrist back into place and splint his fingers. Rose nervously gripped his shoulder, counted to three and pulled with all her might as he screamed and then lost consciousness. During all the commotion, the bull tried to bolt but was prevented from escaping by the rope that Rose had tied to the tree.
With shaking hands and while quietly crying, Rose finished working on his wrist and hands. She walked back to her horse and retrieved a water bottle and along with a handkerchief she found his pocket, cleaned his wounds and dabbed at his pale face. She whispered encouraging words in his ear and soon his eyes fluttered open. He looked up into her concerned tear streaked face.
"We really must stop doing this," he groaned, and tried to sit up with Rose's help.
"Seriously, I feel like I shouldn't leave the house with you without a first aid kit shoved in my pocket. Are you sure there's nothin' else wrong with you. Your breathing sounds okay. I didn't find any broken bones in your leg. I'm worried you could have banged your head and have a concussion," Rose told him, in a shaky voice.
"Oh I'm fine other than what you took care of for me. Course, don't think I'll be dancing the tango with you anytime soon, but I'll survive. Why is it the creatures on these tasks all hate me?" he asked her, as he tried to stand up stumbling a bit into her.
"You sure you're ready to walk?"
"Sure, I think, uh maybe."
"Right, well why don't you lean against the tree while I go and have a chat with the bull, yeah?"
"What! You can't! It's vicious and has a mean streak."
"We gotta get it back before the harvest moon rises and don't have much time. I'm goin' to deal with the bull and that's final. Now stay here while I tell that big lunk exactly how things are gonna work," Rose emphatically told him, now irritated by the whole task. She stood and pulled some of the sweet grass from her pocket and slowly and cautiously walked up to the bull talking softly to it. She held the sweet grass out in her hand in front of her as she approached it. It snorted and grunted and stomped its hooves a bit. She stopped a few feet from the bull.
"Right, now see here. We're just tryin' to get you home so you're gonna cooperate from hereon out. I'm tired of watchin' my Doctor get hurt and stomped on by one thing or another so you can just put away the attitude. Now, I know you gotta be hungry and I have what you want right here. So, you give me a chance and I'll get you out of here," Rose told the bull, and walked up to it with the sweet grass. It stared at her for while before it's nostrils flared once and it took a step toward her. She waited patiently for it to take another step until it was sniffing the grass in her hand and started to eat. She continued to wait until soon she was running her hand over it's muzzle. Not long after that, the bull was nuzzling her side for more sweet grass. She smiled and petted the bull on the neck.
"I don't believe it," the Doctor muttered behind her. She turned and looked over her shoulder at him and gave him the patent Tyler grin. She turned back to the bull. "See, big Time Lord brain, has to make everything so complicated," she whispered to the bull.
"Oi, I heard that!" the Doctor stated loudly, leaning against the tree and wincing. Rose shook her head and began leading the bull back toward the Doctor and more of the sweet grass she had in her bag. Her horse shifted a bit so Rose pulled the bull a bit further away to munch on more grass. She turned to the Doctor.
"Think you can ride or would you rather walk?" she asked him.
He sniffed and glared at the bull. I'll walk. He took the reins of the horse and walked with a slight limp ahead of Rose and the bull. When they reached the meadow, Rose left the bull with the large bale of sweet grass, tied up the rope and finished clearing their camp while the Doctor rested. They very quickly made their way back toward the Tardis stopping off at the farm to return Rose's horse. It gave Rose great satisfaction to see the look on Egrad's face as she led the bull by them on the way to the Tardis. She grinned brightly and waived to Egrad and all the farm workers who all just stared at her with disbelieving eyes. When they reached the Tardis, the Doctor opened up both doors wide.
"There now, that's a good Bart. Shhh, we're just gonna load you on the Tardis and take you home," Rose whispered to the bull.
"Bart? You've named the bull Bart?" he asked, with a disbelieving look.
"Yep, there a problem with that?"
"Nooooo but Bart? Why Bart?"
"Dunno, he just looks like a Bart to me."
"Riiiight. Well, let's get Bart loaded up."
Rose encouraged Bart to enter the Tardis which took some doing on her part. The Bull was very stubborn and kept refusing to budge. Finally, Rose slapped him on the hind quarters and threw some sweet grass inside and the bull moved. It was a tight squeeze to say the least. She secured Bart's lead to a support strut and walked over to stand next to the exhausted looking Doctor.
"Hey, you doin' all right?" she asked, as he shakily set the coordinates.
"Fine," he told her, and yawned as he set them off for Canter. The ride was slightly less bumpy but it was still rough enough to upset Bart the bull who started struggling, snorting and kicking at the coral. They landed with a thump and an agitated bull. The Doctor immediately went to open the doors while Rose cooed to the bull and tried to calm him down. The Doctor looked outside to see they had landed on the main campus of Canter College amidst some sort of rally for the return of the school mascot. A group of students were walking around with signs around their neck declaring them thieves. They were surrounded with other students holding up pictures of the bull now wreaking havoc in his Tardis.
The Doctor started to smile at the irony of it as he watched the students marching around chanting "We want Blake the bull back.". He heard Rose talking to the bull and turned back to see her wrinkle her nose.
"That was so uncalled for, Bart! A bit rude after we helped you get home and everything," she ranted at the bull. The Doctor looked from Rose to the bull and helped her as she struggled to take the rope lead off of him. He slapped the bull on the hind quarters and it trotted out toward the students.
"Well, happy ending for our friend Bart," he told Rose, as he held her hand.
"Yeah but it would've been nice if he hadn't of left us with a bit of himself in the Tardis," she told him, and looked into the Tardis with an unhappy expression on her face.
"A bit of himself?" the Doctor asked, and then got a whiff from the interior of the Tardis. He and Rose walked in and the doors slammed shut behind them by an unhappy Tardis.
"Oh that's disgusting!" the Doctor shouted, as he waved his hand in front of his face. "That revolting creature left its feces on my magnificent time machine!" The Tardis lights dimmed. Rose walked up to the console and patted it.
"I'm sorry, sweetheart. I promise we'll get you cleaned up when we get home," she told the Tardis sympathetically.
"We?" the Doctor questioned her.
"Well it was you idea to use the Tardis as transport so that makes it partly you're fault so yeah we, as in us together. I seem to recall you saying everything would be all right as long as we're together and from now on it's the two of us together. I think that includes shoveling.."
"Don't!" he told her shaking a finger at her as he walked over to the console stepping over Bart's statement of displeasure. "Besides, I'm injured," he mumbled, as he set the coordinates for home. The ride home was beyond bumpy and could almost be described as punishing. Rose lost her grip several times and fell against a support strut. They landed with enough force that it threw both of them into the manure.
"Ack, that's just foul!" she said, as she tried to shake off bull refuse. The Doctor stood up and leaned against the coral.
"That's it! There are officially no pets allowed on the Tardis!" he proclaimed.
"Yeah," Rose said as she looked at the mess stuck to her clothing. "Guess we better get unloaded and then get this cleaned up so we can get upstairs and get you looked after," she told him, as she walked over to him. She picked up the bag with their things and walked with him outside. Before they were barely through the door, it slammed.
The Doctor turned and tried to push it, but it wouldn't open. He winced when he tried to connect with the Tardis. "Uh, she's a bit miffed with us."
"She locked us out?" Rose asked, looking up at him.
"Yep, but look at it this way, at least we don't have to shovel bull…"
"Doctor, let's go enjoy some of that tuitti fruitti bubble bath. We can make things right with the Tardis tomorrow." She took his hand and led him away.
"All right, but it's my turn to play with the pirate ducky."