Chapter Twenty-Nine -
Rose watched as the Doctor jumped down from the window and cautiously walked over to the wheelchair that Jack had been occupying. He nudged the wheelchair with his foot before turning to look at her.
"Rose? Doctor? Can you hear me?" Jack's voice called from the speakers of an old radio stuffed on a shelf, hidden behind a few things. The Doctor walked over to the Radio and pulled it from the shelf. "I'm back on my ship. Used the emergency teleport. Sorry I couldn't take you." The Doctor held up the end of the wire to plug it into the wall to show that it had been chewed on by rats. "It's security-keyed to my molecular structure. I'm working on it, hang in there."
"How are you speaking to us?" The Doctor asked him, an annoyed look on his face.
"Om-Com. I can call anything with a speaker grill." Jack informed them.
"Now there's a coincidence." The Doctor growled out dropping the wire.
"What is?" Jack asked.
"The child can Om-Com, too." The Doctor informed Jack.
"He can?" Rose asked.
"Anything with a speaker grill. Even the TARDIS decorative phone." The Doctor told her with a nod his head.
"The TARDIS has a decorative phone?" Rose asked quietly.
"Inside the outside cupboard." The Doctor told her and Rose mentally made a note to find the outside cupboard.
"So, does that mean the child can phone us?" Rose asked shoving that thought to the back of her mind for later.
"And I can hear you." Jamie's voice cut in through the radio. "Coming to find you. Coming to find you." He sang out. Rose backed away from the radio fighting to keep Bad Wolf from rising and attacking either the radio or Jamie.
"Doctor, can you hear that?" Jack asked.
"Loud and clear." The Doctor growled as he moved in between Rose and the radio, as if to protect her should Jamie suddenly appear from it.
"I'll try to block out the signal. Least I can do." Jack told them.
"Coming to find you, Mummy."
"Remember this one, Rose?" Jack asked before he put on Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade. The Doctor slowly turned to look at her, a questioning look on his face, his eyes burning with jealousy.
"Nothing happened?" The Doctor growled out causing Rose to sigh. She quickly grabbed the Doctor's hand before he could storm away in anger to let the dark thoughts run ragged and cause more damage to his self-esteem.
"We danced while he tried to work his con on me." Rose informed the Doctor as she pulled him into her arms, wrapping them around his neck.
"You danced?" The Doctor growled out, his arms automatically wrapping around her waist. Rose began to sway them to the beat. Rose stood on her toes so that her lips could brush his ear.
"I was thinking of you the whole time." Rose whispered. She felt the Doctor tense up for a moment before he relaxed. Rose smiled and began to pull away only to have the Doctor take her by the back of her head and pull her into a kiss. She moaned and opened her mouth when his tongue brushed along her bottom lip. When she felt his hand leave her waist to travel to the front of her jeans. "What are you doing?" Rose whispered against his lips.
"Thought that my intentions were quite clear." The Doctor told her with a smirk as he fingered the button to her jeans.
"You don't think Jack's coming back, do you?" Rose asked receiving a deep, angry growl from the Doctor, shocking Rose.
"Don't talk or think about him while you're with me." The Doctor growled out at her, his eyes dark and dangerous. A small part of Rose became frightened of him before she shoved it off a cliff. The Doctor wouldn't hurt her.
"You have nothing to worry about with Jack. I don't want him. I don't want anyone but you, Doctor." Rose told him, gently taking his face in her hands. "You are the only person I will ever want. You are my soulmate."
"Rose." The Doctor whispered, his eyes closing as he rested his hands on top of hers.
"Jack will be back. He'll get us out of here." Rose told him and the Doctor opened his eyes and gave her a hard look.
"Why do you trust him?" The Doctor asked her. "What is it about this guy that makes you trust him so much?"
"He saved my life." Rose informed him.
"Jimmy." The Doctor growled out.
"That's not what I was talking about there. I meant when I was traveling across London by barrage balloon. I had lost my grip and he caught me with his tractor beam." Rose explained before sighing knowing that the Doctor would need a little more reason to give Jack a chance. "That, and because he reminds me of you." The Doctor raised an eyebrow at that. "He gives off the same type of vibe. I get the feeling that he's a good guy."
"He's a conman Rose!" The Doctor told her and Rose shook her head with a small smile.
"I understand that, but there is something about him that is telling me that he's a really good man, like you. He tried to make sure that he didn't hurt anyone with this con of his." Rose told him.
"His con caused all of this to happen!" The Doctor growled.
"So he made a mistake! It's not like you haven't made a mistake before!" Rose told him, not liking having to remind him about Cardiff but at the same time knowing he needed to be reminded about the deadly mistake he had made. It wasn't so different than Jack's mistake here.
The Doctor growled and stormed away from her before he began pacing, hands running through his short hair as his mind raced over everything. Rose sighed before taking a seat in the wheelchair. He needed time to himself to think. Rose never took her eyes off the pacing Doctor as she rolled the chair back and forth. She blinked when the Doctor suddenly appeared in front of her and pulled her from the wheelchair.
"Doctor?" Rose asked as he began to examine her hands.
"Barrage balloon?" He asked.
"What?" Rose asked wondering what he was going on about.
"You were hanging from a barrage balloon." The Doctor reminded her as he continued to examine her hands in confusion.
"Oh. Yeah. As I told you, there was a kid on the roof (the child) and stupidly tried to use the rope of a barrage balloon to get to him." Rose explained once more. "It took me thousands of feet above London, middle of a German air raid, Union Flag all over my chest, never been more scared in my life."
"I've traveled with a lot of people," the image of Sarah Jane Smith popped into her mind, "but you're setting new records for jeopardy friendly." The Doctor told her never looking up from his examination of her hands.
"What are you looking for, Doctor?" Rose asked.
"Hanging from a rope, thousands of feet above London." The Doctor repeated while holding up her hands to show them to her. "Not a cut, not a bruise, not even a burn." The Doctor told her.
"Captain Jack fixed me up." Rose told him.
"Oh, we're calling him Captain Jack now, are we?" The Doctor asked angrily.
"Well, his name is Jack, and he's a captain." Rose told the Doctor with a small, playful smile causing the Doctor to roll his eyes and fight back a smile.
"You and I both know that he's not really a captain, Rose." The Doctor said.
"Does it really matter?" Rose asked.
"Baby-doll blue eyes, same color hair as Adam styled differently. Long coat that can flap behind him. Title of captain." The Doctor listed off her requirements to be her eye-candy. "Yeah I think it matters." He growled. Rose stared at him before responding by pulling him into a deep, passionate kiss, pouring all of her love for him into it.
"Most people notice when they've been teleported." Jack suddenly commented. They pulled away from the kiss to see that they were now inside Jack's ship. Rose gave the Doctor a 'told you so' look. "You guys are so sweet." Jack said as he poked his head out from underneath the control console. "Sorry about the delay. Had to take the Nav-Com off-line to override the teleport security."
"You can spend 10 minutes overriding your own protocols. Maybe you should remember whose ship it is." The Doctor told Jack, Rose was happy to note that the jealousy that had once always been in the Doctor's voice while talking with Jack was now gone.
"Oh, I do. She was gorgeous." Jack said with a smirk causing Rose to laugh. "Like I told her, be back in five minutes." And then he popped his head back under the control console.
"This is a Chula ship." The Doctor commented.
"Yeah, just like that medical transporter. Only this one is dangerous." Jack told him. The Doctor snapped, activating the nanogenes that surrounded his hand.
"They're what fixed my hands up. Jack called them..." Rose started.
"Nanobots?" The Doctor asked. "Nanogenes?" He quickly corrected himself.
"Yeah." Rose said with a nod.
"Subatomic robots. There are millions of them in here. See?" The Doctor said motioning to his hand. "The burn on my hand hadn't fully healed yet. All better now. They activate when the bulkhead's sealed. Check you out for damages, fix any physical flaws." He showed the nanogenes away as Rose bit back the urge to tease him that he wouldn't get her to be his nursemaid now. "Take us to the crash site. I need to see your 'space junk'."
"Soon as I get the Nav-Com back online." Jack informed him. "Make yourselves comfortable. Carry on with whatever it was you were doing." He told them with a smirk.
"You're not getting a free show out of us, mister." Rose told him as she glared at him playful.
"How much for a ticket, then?" Jack asked with a wink.
"It'll cost you your life." The Doctor growled causing Jack to laugh. Rose sat down on the bed closest to Jack as he climbed out from underneath the control console to sit in the captains chair as he began to flipping switches, turning nob, and pushing buttons.
"So, from everything I've been able to read off of you, you used to me a Time Agent and now you're trying to con them." Rose said, it was silent for a moment and Rose knew Jack was trying to decide if he should tell her what had happened to her or not.
"If it makes me sound any better, it's not for the money." Jack told her quietly.
"Then why?" Rose asked.
"Woke up one morning when I was still working for them, found they'd stolen two years of my memories. I'd like them back." Jack told her.
"They stole your memories?" Rose asked as her mind pulled up the memory of the potential timeline of her failing where the Doctor took away all of her memories from her first time traveling with him.
"Two years of my life. No idea what I did. Your partner over there doesn't trust me. And for all I know, he's right not to." Jack said the control console gave out a small beep. "Okay. We're good to go. The crash site?"
~Replay~
"There it is." Jack said nodded towards the fenced in area in front of them. "They've got Algy on duty. Must be important." Jack muttered.
"We've got to get past him." The Doctor said through his teeth.
"Are the words 'distract the guard' heading in my general direction?" Rose asked him.
"I don't think that's be such a good idea." Jack told her, and though she knew why he had told her that, she still couldn't help feeling slightly insulted.
"Don't worry, I can handle it." Rose told him.
"I've got to know Algy quite well since I've been in town. Trust me, you're not his type." Jack said before glancing at the Doctor for second before looking back over towards the fenced in area and Algy. Rose's eyebrows shot up at that. Algy was more into a person like this version of her Doctor than Jack this time?
"I'll distract him." Jack told them before heading towards Algy. "Don't wait up." He called over his shoulder. Rose and the Doctor looked at each other before they began to laugh.
"If this Algy person is more into your type, then why didn't Jack ask you to distract him?" Rose asked.
"Maybe Jack was jealous? Maybe he wanted to be the type Algy likes? Or maybe Jack realized that it would be hard for me to distract Algy." The Doctor said.
"Why? You seem to do a fantastic job of distracting me." Rose told him with a flirtatious smirk.
"That's because it's you, Rose. Had I had to flirt with anyone else to distract them, I wouldn't be able to. Wouldn't feel right." The Doctor informed her. Rose looked away with a small, loving smile and a blush. She watched as Jack walked up to Algy, his body set in his flirtatious manner. The two of them talked for about a minute before Algy fell to his knees as his face became a gas-mask. Rose bit back the urge to hurl at the sight.
"Stay back!" The Doctor yelled bolting from their hiding place with Rose right behind him.
"You men, stay away!" Jack ordered the soldiers that had rushed over to help Algy.
"The effect's becoming airborne, accelerating." The Doctor said as they got to Jack and Algy.
"What's keeping us safe?" Rose asked.
"Nothing." The Doctor told her as the air raid sirens began going off.
"Here they come again." Jack groaned.
"Yeah, that all we need." Rose muttered as Bad Wolf shifted and reminded her of the time. "Didn't you say a bomb was gonna land here?" Rose reminded Jack who nodded.
"Never mind about that. If the contaminant's airborne now, there's hours left." The Doctor growled out his eyes flying around the sight as his mind raced.
"Till what?" Jack asked fearfully.
"Till nothing. Forever. For the entire human race." The Doctor informed him causing Jack to gulp. "And can anyone else hear singing?" Rose forced herself to hear passed the air raid sirens and heard a woman singing.
"It's coming from this way." Rose said before leading them to the tent the singing was coming from. Rose went to open the door only for the Doctor to stop her.
"We don't know what could be in there." He whispered to her before he took her spot at the door and poked his head in before quietly entering the room as Jack and Rose peeked in to see Nancy handcuffed to a table with a sleeping gas-mask person next to her. The Doctor quickly unlocked the handcuffs before escorting Nancy out of the tent.
With Nancy in toe, Jack quickly lead them over to the ambulance and helped the Doctor uncover it. "See? Just an ambulance." He told the Doctor as he quickly climbed on top of the ambulance to the key pad.
"That's an ambulance?" Nancy asked and Rose pulled her into a hug, knowing that all of this was difficult for her to grasp at the moment.
"It's hard to explain. It's from another world." Rose told her gently.
"They've been trying to get in." Jack commented.
"Of course they have. They think they've got their hands on Hitler's latest secret weapon." The Doctor told Jack. "What are you doing?"
"The sooner you see this thing's empty, the sooner you'll know that I had nothing to do with this." Jack told him desperately. He finished putting in the combination to unlock and open the ambulance only to have it spark and sound the alarm causing the Doctor to glare at him. "Didn't happen last time."
"It hadn't crashed the last time." The Doctor hissed at him. "There'll be emergency protocols."
"Doctor!" Rose cried as the army of gas-mask people began to bang on the gates, trying to get them to open as the ambulance called them to it.
"Captain, secure those gates!" The Doctor ordered pointing at the gates that were wired open.
"Why?" Jack asked.
"Just do it!" The Doctor growled at him. Jack quickly jumped down from the ambulance and ran towards the gate. "Nancy, how did you get in here?"
"I cut the wire." Nancy told him nervously.
"Show Rose." The Doctor said before pulling out his screwdriver and tossing it to Rose. "Setting 2,428-D"
"What?" Rose asked knowing she wasn't supposed to know what that setting was yet as she ran after Nancy.
"Reattaches barbed wire. Go!" The Doctor told her as he began to climb onto the ambulance.
"Right, where did you enter?" Rose asked.
"Right here." Nancy answered pointing at the section of wire that was cut.
"Mind holding them together so that I can reattach them?" Rose asked.
"Okay?" Nancy said uncertainly before they bent down and got to work. "Who are you?" Nancy asked watching in shock as the barbed wire reattached itself. "Who are any of you?"
"You'll never believe me if I told you." Rose said as she mentally asked Bad Wolf if she could let slip to Nancy how this war would end.
"You just told me that was an ambulance from another world. There are people running around with gas masks calling for their mummies and the sky's full of Germans dropping bombs on me." Nancy hissed at her. "Tell me, do you think there's anything left I couldn't believe?"
"We're time traveler. From the future." Rose told her.
"Mad, you are!" Nancy told her with a shake of her head.
"We have time travel machine, seriously." Rose told her with a small smile knowing what was really bothering Nancy.
"It's not that. All right, you got a time travel machine. I'll believe you. Believe anything, me." Nancy said before looking up at the sky. "But what future?" Rose could see, thanks to Bad Wolf, that without the knowledge that London doesn't fall, that there was a day they would win the war, that Nancy wouldn't truly fight. And they needed her to fight for the nanogenes to be able to be changed.
"Nancy, this isn't the end." Rose told her gaining Nancy's attention once more. "I know how it looks, it's not the end of the world or anything."
"How can you say that? Look at it!" Nancy cried out.
"Listen to me. I was born in this city. I'm from here, in like 50 years' time." Rose informed her and saw hope spark in Nancy's eyes for a second before it vanished again.
"From here?" Nancy questioned her.
"I'm a Londoner." Rose assured her. "From your future."
"But..." Nancy whispered, that spark of hope back, "but, you're not..."
"What?" Rose asked.
"German?" Nancy whispered.
"Nancy. The Germans don't come here. They don't win." Rose looked back at the Doctor to see how far he was before leaning in close to whisper to Nancy. "Don't tell anyone I told you so. But do you want to know a secret?" Nancy nodded. "You win."
"We win?" Nancy asked her in shock before giving her a wet smile. That spark of hope had turned into a wild fire within Nancy.
"Come on." Rose told her, taking Nancy's hand before helping her up before leading Nancy back over to Jack and the Doctor who had managed to get the ambulance open.
"It's empty. Look at it." Jack urged.
"What do you expect in a Chula medical transporter? Bandages? Cough drops?" The Doctor asked him as Rose let go of Nancy's hand to walk over to him and take his hand. "Rose?"
"Nanogenes." Rose informed Jack who looked ready to crumble to the ground as he finally realized and accepted that he was the cause of this.
"It wasn't empty, Captain. There was enough nanogenes in there to rebuild a species." The Doctor told him.
"Oh, God." Jack cried as he buried his face in his hands. Rose wanted to go up to him and pull him into a hug and tell him that everything would be all right. That they would fix this mistake together, the three of them. But her body wouldn't move. Bad Wolf was keeping her from going over to him.
"Getting it now, are we?" The Doctor asked him. "When the ship crashes, the nanogenes escape. Billions upon billions of them. Ready to fix all the cuts and bruises in the whole world. But what they find first is a dead child. Probably killed earlier that night. And wearing a gas mask."
"And they brought him back to life? They can do that?" Rose asked.
"What's life? Life's easy. A quirk of matter. Nature's way of keeping meat fresh. Nothing to a nanogene." The Doctor told her. "One problem, though. These nanogenes, they're not like the ones on your ship. This lot have never seen a human being before. Don't know what a human being's supposed to look like. All they've got to go on is one little body, and there's not a lot left. But they carry right on. They do what they're programmed to do, they patch it up. Can't tell what's gas mask and what's skull, but they do their best. And then off they fly, off they goo, work to be done. 'Cause you see, now they think they know what people should look like. And it's time to fix all the rest. And they won't ever stop. They won't ever, ever stop! The entire human race is gonna be torn down and rebuilt in the form of one terrified child looking for its mother! And nothing in the world can stop it!"
"I didn't know!" Jack cried out. "I'm sorry!" Jack stepped off the ambulance and began to pace along side it, hands flying through his hair, eyes watery, and mind racing to try and figure out how to help make everything right. The Doctor released Rose's hand to bend down to fiddle with the ambulance to try and find away to fix Jack's mistake. Rose looked from Jack to the Doctor and back again. She knew, by their body languages, that there was nothing she could do or say to help them now, they were too far gone to hear her. So she decided to turn her attention to the one person who needed her that was still able to hear her: Nancy.
"Rose!" Nancy called to her before she could even begin to turn to face her. Rose spun her body around to be able to look at Nancy, only to see the army of gas-mask people from the hospital making their way towards them. Rose ran over to Nancy and grabbed her hand before pulling her closer towards the ambulance and away from the army. The chanting of 'Mummy' steadily getting louder, but neither Jack nor the Doctor seemed to hear it. Too focused on trying to figure out a way to save them.
"It's bringing the gas-mask people here, isn't it?" Rose asked the Doctor causing him to glance over his should at her, catching the army closing in.
"The ship thinks it's under attack." The Doctor told her as he turned his focus back on the ship and began rushing what he had been doing. "It's calling up the troops. Standard protocol."
"But the gas-mask people aren't troops!" Rose argued as Jack was finally pulled back out of his mind.
"They are now. This is a battlefield ambulance. The nanogenes don't just fix you up, they get you ready for the front-line. Equip you, programme you." The Doctor told her.
"That's why the child's so strong? Why it could do that phoning thing?" Rose asked in a way to get Nancy to tell them Jamie's name.
"It's a fully equipped Chula warrior, yes." The Doctor said grimly as he gave up on whatever he had been doing to stand up and look at the army that was slowly surrounding them. "All that weapons tech in the hands of an hysterical four-year-old looking for his mummy and now there's an army." The army stopped just outside the parameter of the crash site.
"Why don't they attack?" Jack asked.
"Good little soldiers. Waiting for their commander." The Doctor told him causing Jack to look at him in shock.
"The child?" He asked.
"Jamie." Nancy corrected him.
"What?" Jack asked.
"Not 'the child'. Jamie." Nancy growled at them, having enough of them calling her son 'the child'. Rose saw realization of something flash through his eyes. She couldn't quite tell if he realized Nancy was the mother, or if he realized that this was harder on Nancy then them because she was related to the first victim.
"So how long until the bomb falls?" Rose asked Jack.
"Any second." Jack told her nervously.
"What's the matter, Captain? Bit close to the volcano for you?" The Doctor asked as he moved to stand in front of Nancy.
"He's just a little boy." Nancy cried.
"I know." The Doctor whispered to her.
"He's just a little boy who wants his mummy." Nancy cried.
"I know." The Doctor told her as he gently rested his hand on her shoulder. "There isn't a little boy born who wouldn't tear the world apart to save his mummy. And this little boy can."
"So, what are we gonna do?" Rose asked him as a bomb fell just miles away from them. The Doctor looked at her with fear in his eyes.
"I don't know." He told her.
"It's my fault." Nancy told them.
"No." The Doctor assured her.
"It is. It's all my fault." Nancy told them.
"How can it be your..." The Doctor stopped as he finally realized that Nancy was Jamie's mother as the gas-mask people started up their chanting again. "Nancy, what age are you? 20? 21? Older than you look, yes?" Rose cried as a bomb fell closer to them, the shock wave nearly knocking her to the ground.
"Doctor, that bomb, we've got seconds." Jack informed him.
"You can teleport us out." Rose told them receiving and head shake from Jack.
"Not you guys. The Nav-Com's back online. Gonna take too long to override the protocols." Jack told her sadly.
"So it's Volcano Day. Do what you've got to do." The Doctor told Jack who looked at her before teleporting himself away. Rose bit back the hurt and abandoned feeling that tried to over take her, knowing that Jack would be back to save them.
"How old were you five years ago? 15? 16?" The Doctor asked turning his attention back on Nancy. "Old enough to give birth, anyway. He's not your brother, is he?" Nancy shook her head as she cried. "A teenage single mother in 1941. So you hid. You lied. You even lied to him." Rose jumped when the gates swung open. Jamie was there.
"Are you my mummy?" He asked.
"He's gonna keep asking, Nancy." The Doctor told her as he gently turned her to face Jamie. He took release her shoulder but didn't force her closer to Jamie as he walked over to them. "He's never gonna stop."
"Mummy?"
"Tell him." The Doctor urged and Nancy cried out. "Nancy, the future of the human race is in your hands. Trust me and tell him." Nancy nodded before taking a deep breath to calm herself. She took a hesitant step towards Jamie before a second slightly more confident step. This continued until she was right in front of Jamie, who had never stopped asking her if she was his mummy.
"Yes, I am your mummy." Nancy told him.
"Mummy?" Jamie asked.
"I'm here." Nancy called to him.
"Are you my mummy?" Nancy knelt down so that she could look him in the eyes.
"I'm here." She told him.
"Are you my mummy?" Jamie asked tilting his head.
"Yes." Nancy answered him tearfully.
"He doesn't understand, there's not enough of him left." The Doctor whispered.
"I am your mummy. I will always be your mummy." Nancy told him before pulling him into a hug. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry." The nanogenes surrounded them, bathing them in a beautiful golden light as they read Nancy's DNA while they tried to change her.
"Come on. Please!" The Doctor begged. "Come on, you clever little nanogenes. Figure it out. The mother, she's the mother! That's got to be enough information. Figure it out."
"What's happening?" Rose asked him.
"See?" The Doctor cried pointing something out as the nanogenes moved from Nancy to Jamie. "Recognizing the same DNA." Nancy gasped in shock as she collapsed to the ground and watched as the golden nanogenes slowly vanished from around Jamie. The Doctor bolted over to the boy, Rose right behind him. "Come on. Give me a day like this. Give me this one." He muttered before he cautiously reached out and gently took off the gas mask. The Doctor gave out a cry of happiness at seeing Jamie's real face and swept the boy into his arms. "Welcome back! 20 years to pop music, you're gonna love it!" He told Jamie as he tossed the boy into the air before hugging him.
"What happened?" Nancy asked.
"The nanogenes recognized the superior information: The parent DNA!" The Doctor informed them. "They didn't change you because you changed them." He handed Jamie over to Nancy. "Mother knows best."
"Jamie!" Nancy cried hugging her son close to her as another bomb fell closer, causing them to stumble from the shock wave.
"Doctor, that bomb." Rose reminded him.
"Taken care of." The Doctor informed her.
"How?" Rose asked.
"Psychology." The Doctor told her. They looked up just in time to see Jack catch the bomb falling at them with the tractor beam of his ship. Rose laughed when Jack appeared on the bomb, straddling it. She knew, Jack having told her, that he hadn't needed to do that to talk to them, but had wanted to speak to her and the Doctor one last time, face to face.
"Doctor!" Jack cried out.
"Good lad!" The Doctor told him.
"The bomb's already started detonation. I've put it in stasis, but it won't last long." Jack informed them.
"Change of plan! Don't need the bomb." The Doctor told him. "Can you get rid of it, safely as you can?"
"Rose?" Jack called to her.
"Yeah?" Rose called back.
"Goodbye." He said before teleporting him and the bomb onto his ship. "By the way. Love the T-shirt!" He told her as him and the bomb appeared back in the tractor beam. She smiled at him as he teleported away once more. Rose bit back the urge to scream and cry, knowing that they would save him, as Jack's ship flew away. She turned her attention to the Doctor as he called up the nanogenes.
"What are you doing?" Rose asked him.
"Software patch. Gonna email the upgrade." He told her before sending the nanogenes at the army in front of them. "Everybody lives, Rose! Just this once! Everybody Lives!" He cried out as everyone changed back to how they were before the nanogenes had changed them into an army of gas-mask people.
"Dr. Constantine," The Doctor cried as he ran over to help and old man in a lab coat up, "who never left his patients. Back on your feet, constant doctor. World doesn't want to get by without you just yet and I don't blame it one bit." He motioned to the people around the confused man. "These are your patients. All better now."
"Yes, so it seems." The man said looking around him. "They also seem to be standing around in a disused railway station. Is there any particular reason for that?"
"Yeah, well, you know, cutback." The Doctor told him with a laugh. "Listen, whatever was wrong with them in the past you're probably gonna find that they're cured. Just tell them what a great doctor you are. Don't make a big thing of it. Okay?" The Doctor told the man before he turned and ran back to the ambulance and jumped onto it.
"Right, you lot!" He yelled gaining everyone's attention. "Lot's to do. Beat the Germans, save the world! Don't forget the welfare state!" He showed them away before he bent down and began fiddling with the keypad. "Setting this to self-destruct, soon as everybody's clear. History says there was an explosion here. Who am I to argue with history?"
"You're usually the first in line." Rose told him playfully, earning a playful glare from the Doctor.
~Replay~
"The nanogenes will clean up the mess and switch themselves off, 'cause I just told them to." The Doctor explained as they ran into the TARDIS. "Nancy and Jamie will go to Dr. Constantine for help, ditto." Rose watched from the ramp as the Doctor rush around the console flipping switch, pushing buttons and turning nobs. "All in all, all things considered. Fantastic!"
"Look at you beaming away like you're Father Christmas." Rose laughed.
"Who says I'm not? Red bicycle when you were 12." The Doctor told her causing Rose to freeze, she never did get him to explain how he knew that.
"What?" Rose asked.
"And everybody lives, Rose! Everybody lives. I need more days like this!" The Doctor cried out happily.
"Doctor." Rose started.
"Go on, ask me anything. I'm on fire!" The Doctor told her.
"How much longer until we go save Jack?" Rose asked as the Doctor flipped the lever to start the dematerilaztion, looking down at the console with a dark look in his eyes.
"Who says we're gonna save him?" The Doctor asked quietly.
"Because that's not the Doctor I know. You wouldn't just let someone sacrifice themselves for you without trying to save them in return." The Doctor looked up at her. "Plus, without him I'd be dead, three times over."
"How is it that you know me so well, when even I don't know me half the time?" The Doctor asked her. "Go open the door. You're eye-candy is waiting to be saved." Rose smiled at him before quickly turned and opened the TARDIS doors.
"Woke up in bed with both my executioners. Lovely couple. They stayed in touch." She over heard Jack tell his ship as he ate an olive.
"Now that's a story I can't wait to hear." Rose called out to him, shocking him.
"Rose?" Jack asked turning his chair to look at him.
"Well, hurry up, then!" Rose called over her shoulder as she turned around and walked back up the ramp to an awaiting Doctor. She smiled when she felt the TARDIS send them into the vortex after Jack ran in. Both her boys were safe at home now.