Well I apologise about that cliffhanger, and here's the resolution, but they're not out of the woods yet. Sorry in advance.

When the TARDIS landed, Rose didn't want to go out. She stood in the console room, eyeing the doors with apprehension, fingers twisted into the hem of the Doctor's jumper.

She had formulated a sort of plan while she had been getting dressed. It was an idea that could save the pair of them with reasonable ease, though it depended very much on whether that man believed what she said to the Doctor when she found him. She only hoped that he had not been hurt. Not only would that be a really bad thing in general, but without the Doctor to take part in the plan then she would not be able to get them out of her.

With one last deep breath, Rose patted the console fondly and made her way to the doors. She peeked out and found she was looking just about straight down the barrel of a gun. How tedious.

"I want to see the man in charge," she told the gun, and it lowered slightly to reveal a guard in a black uniform with a helmet on. Making sure the TARDIS doors were tightly shut and locked behind her, Rose allowed herself to be marched down multiple white corridors which began to merge in her mind as she attempted to remember which way they had come. It was the sort of thing that might come in useful later, but trying to file away each turn they made and reverse it in her mind for the trip back, when every corridor looked the same, proved to be nigh on impossible.

They ended up in another white room – these people really did not seem to like variation in their decorating – which seemed to be an office of some kind. The slimy man who Rose had been brought to see was sitting behind a white desk, peering at Rose over his own, fingertips.

"Well Miss Tyler, so glad to see that you've come to your senses. I see you have not brought the child with you."

Rose took a breath before answering. "I can't. I want to get the Doctor out of here, but he's the only person who can get Jenny out of the TARDIS now. The Emergency Protocol activated, that means that the Doctor alone can go in there now." She bit her lip, hoping she was fooling them. "I just want him safe, and he'd be willing to bring Jenny out and negotiate with you, I'm sure of it. But there's nothing more I can do on my own."

The slimy man stood up, pacing around to the front of his desk. "You could be lying, you know. This could all be some clever trick.

Nodding, Rose arranged her features into what she hoped was an earnest expression. "That's true, it could be, but there's no way I can get back into the TARDIS. It's impossible. You need him to do this, and I'm the only one that can persuade him to." She kept her eyes big and pleasing, focussed entirely on the slimy man. He was regarding her with scrutiny.

"Very well," the man conceded, motioning to the guards next to the door, "I will let you in there to talk to him. If this is indeed the only way for us to get the child, then we will have to make the Doctor co-operate." He began to issue commands, and for a few moments after he was done speaking, the room was silent while they waited to be told the Doctor was ready to be seen.

"But why do you even need him?" Rose blurted out, cursing herself immediately afterwards. She had planned to simply plant this information in the man's mind and leave it at that, but her curiosity got the better of her. "How could you even find out about him? Surely there are easier ways to get power than this?"

The slimy man chuckled, a sinister thing to behold, before settling on the edge of his desk as though he were ready to tell a long story.

"The Time Lords are a legend, a power unequalled throughout the universe. With their race gone we assumed that that power had died with them. You and I both know, however, that this was not the case. The Doctor first came to our attention a long time ago. This is our main base, of course, but we also have a secondary base on Earth – your home planet, I believe. We noticed how fond he seemed to be of that peculiar planet and its primitive people, and so we made sure that we remained close by. We have rudimentary time travel devices that we can use in certain circumstances to keep an eye on him." The man raised his arm and Rose took note of the device on his wrist, similar to the one that Jack wore. "It wasn't really that hard to simulate a phenomena in the weather that would attract his attention, and once we knew he'd be coming we developed a machine that could shift the time frame just slightly and bring him here later than he thought. By rights, his TARDIS should have materialised here this time last year – that's when we created the weather disturbance. The device waits until the TARDIS locks on and then shifts just slightly, causing a ripple in time that changes the destination. It's quite clever really, I would show you if we weren't in the middle of something else."

Rose was not interested in this man's smugness at his efforts to trap the Doctor. "So you've been planning this for a long time, then?"

The man smiled – he was so creepy it almost made Rose feel sick – and examined his nails as he continued. "Miss Tyler, this society had been working on a way to harness the power of the Time Lords for over 100 years. The only reason that we have finally begun to intercept him rather than simply observing him is because of the child. We've been using the device for a few years now, but sometimes we don't always attract the attention of the right TARDIS. Occasionally the Doctor will find his TARDIS drawn to a peculiarity that is particularly uneventful – I think it's happened 5 or 6 times now throughout his lifetime. As soon as we realised that we had reached him in a time before the child was born, we simply retreated to a safe distance and began to work with the machine again."

Rose was appalled. These people had been watching them, following them.

"Of course, we knew that we were looking for him at a time when he was with you, my dear." Rose bristled at being talked down to like that. "We understood the nature of your, ahem, relationship, and from there on it all seemed too easy, really. You and him – you both form each other's weakness, I'm afraid. There couldn't be a better way to get hold of the child than by using one of you against the other." He began to pace around the room, arms clasped behind his back as he looked at her. Rose kept staring in front, not letting him see any emotion or weakness in her face. "We weren't sure that he was even capable of a relationship like this, but seeing you two together confirmed it. What a fool he is to allow himself to be made vulnerable by a mere girl, a human girl, however pretty she may be."

Rose shivered, even as she could feel anger bubbling under her skin, making her feel hot and cold all at once. The slimy man was behind her, and she could all of a sudden feel his breath on her neck. She had to stop herself from cringing away from him. She hated being leered at, hated the fact that she knew the sort of thoughts that were going through his head, and that none of them were particularly pleasant. She wished she could just knock him out and be done with it, the stupid, patronising git, but there was no chance of that working, what with the guards. She just remained totally still, trying to act as though there weren't 4 guns trained on her and there wasn't a creepy man right behind her and she wasn't unarmed and without a solid escape plan.

"Well you're not going to be getting anywhere near Jenny until I see the Doctor. If he's hurt in any way, then we're going to be having words." She stayed silent, giving him time to consider his options.

Annoyingly, he seemed to find her threat amusing. "I am terrified, Miss Tyler. If you'll follow me?" He gestured towards the doors that had slid open moments before, to reveal two guards. They marched Rose and the slimy man down another few corridors, before they came to another white room; one that Rose was absolutely certain was a prison.

It was mainly white, but the grey metal bars that shut off one half of it indicated that the far side was used as a cell. Inside this cell there was the figure of a man – a tall skinny man with great hair.

"Doctor?" He looked slightly wobbly and a little paler than usual, but his eyes were still bright. Whatever they had done to him, it had not caused any lasting damage. "Doctor!"

Rose ran towards him and tumbled awkwardly to her knees. She thrust her hands through the bars and gripped at any part of him she could reach. His strong hands grasped hers and she was sure he would have smiled were he not too busy being worried sick.

"Are you OK? Is Jenny OK?"

"We're both fine," Rose tried to say reassuringly, but all she could quite manage was relief that he was alive. "Emergency Programme 5 activated, so she's locked in the TARDIS until you get back there and bring her out."

There was only the tiniest flicker of confusion on the Doctor's face at Rose's words – anyone who knew him less well than she did would never have noticed the slight contraction of his eyebrows and the obvious question in his eyes. "Well that's alright then – as long as she's safe."

Rose nodded. "Totally safe." He visibly relaxed, but Rose could not. "What did they do to you?"

He shrugged, just as Rose had known he would. "Little of this, little of that. Mind probe or two. Wee bit of torture – nothing too major, I've had much worse in my time." Rose felt slightly sick that the Doctor could brush off the torture as easily as this. Apparently he noticed her discomfort, because he drew her to him and hugged her through the bars. It wasn't easy and it wasn't comfortable, but it was him.

"Doctor," Rose said as she pulled back from his arms, "you have to bring Jenny out. Maybe we can reason with these people, come to a reasonable decision, but they aren't going to listen to us until we've brought out Jenny. You understand?"

She looked straight into his eyes, willing him to understand. He must know that Emergency Programme 5 had taken Jenny to Martha and Mickey, otherwise Rose would not have known about it. Evidently he figured it out, because he sagged against the bars as though admitting defeat. "

"OK then, you win. I'll bring her out."

After he muttered those words, it was only a matter of moments before he was out of the cell and he and Rose were once more being led through a maze of white corridors, back towards the TARDIS.

"Why did you say that about Emergency Programme 5?" he muttered as they walked along together, clasping her hand in his in a gesture that conveyed just how worried he had actually been.

Rose tried to speak in a way that would not attract attention. "Because if they think Jenny's in the TARDIS then they'll spend their time trying to get into it, which you told me was impossible. Assembled hordes of Genghis Khan and all that." The Doctor grinned and gripped her hand tighter. "Whereas if they knew where she actually was, they'd be spending their time torturing you and possibly me in order to make us go get her. This way they think that you have to be the one who goes inside and brings her out. And once you're in the TARDIS, well, who knows what might happen?"

The Doctor's eyes were wide as he realised the subtleness of Rose's plan, the idea she had planted in the heads of their captors to make sure the Doctor could get back inside the TARDIS. "Rose Tyler, have I ever told you that you are brilliant and a genius?"

"Probably, but I think I can just about manage to hear it again."

A few more quick whispers were all they needed to get the rest of the plan sorted. The Doctor protested several elements of Rose's idea, as they hinged on him being inside the TARDIS while she was outside and exposed, but Rose shushed him. They did not have a choice, and she was going to be fine. She was going to get them out of here alive and well. He just had to trust her.

Once they arrived back at the TARDIS room, the slimy man stayed by the door, clearly not intending to stay and see this part of the process through.

"I must leave, but you will activate the force field while I am gone." The man looked at Rose and the Doctor, who were standing very close to each other, and sneered. "Any attempt to get out of here through that door once the energy field is activated will not go well, I assure you. While the Doctor is in the TARDIS, Miss Tyler will be kept out here. Any rash move on your part, Time Lord, any production of a weapon or attempt to dematerialise your TARDIS will result in her immediate death." As if on cue, the guards grabbed Rose's arms and yanked her away from the Doctor, one aiming their gun straight at her head. "I will be back shortly. Ensure that the child is procured without incident."

With that he left, marching through the door with purpose, and the guard who was not threatening Rose's life tapped a sequence of buttons on the keypad next to the door. A wave of shimmering blue light sprang up in the doorway, presumably the energy field that the slimy man had spoken of. Once it had rippled into place it was almost invisible, with only the tiniest shimmering disturbances indicating that there was anything apart from air in the doorway.

"Get on with it then," growled one of the guards, and Rose felt the gun touch her skin.

The Doctor opened the door of the TARDIS and slipped inside, only able to spare a tiny glance back at Rose before the door clicked shut. Rose could feel the barrel of the gun, cold and unyielding and pressed much too firmly against her head. Now was her chance. She had to play this right.

Letting her eyelids flutter, Rose began to swat and groan, her head lolling first onto one shoulder and then the other. She let one ankle lean sideways, her foot shifting and giving the impression that she was only just able to stay on her feet.

"I can't," she murmured, staggering again and reaching out to grab at the nearest guard, who was looking at her with concern and apprehension, "I can't see." With what she hoped was a convincing gasp, Rose toppled to the floor. She hit her head against the floor – not as hard as she would have done if her faint had been genuine, but hard enough that the guards would not be suspicious. Her entire plan hinged on the fact that they were still underestimating her. The slimy man had posted fewer guards there to keep an eye on her than he had with the Doctor. He was probably going to regret that move later.

Waiting until one of the guards knelt down next to her to check her pulse, Rose shot out a hand and snatched the gun from the startled guard. She rolled over and quickly smacked at the other guard's ankles, scrambling out of the way as the tall man toppled to the ground. Rose was on her feet in seconds, gun pointed at the guards, both of whom were still on the floor, confused and scared. Alarms started to sound throughout the building and Rose sighed inwardly – of course they must have some sort of surveillance system.

"Stop her!" cried a familiar voice from down the corridor, and Rose caught one glimpse of the slimy man running towards her, fury and panic in his eyes – right into the energy field he had ordered be set up in order to prevent Rose or the Doctor from escaping.

For a second he was frozen in mid step, his face contorted and his body crackling with yellow energy, before he slumped to the floor. Rose did not know whether he was alive or not, and frankly at that moment she was more worried about getting away than anything else. The two guards were still there, getting back to their feet, though they both seemed to wary of her still to prevent attack. The incapacitation of their commander also seemed to have shaken them, but Rose was too angry to feel any sympathy for them. She hoped she was emanating even a part of the fury she had seen on the Doctor's face when he was in similar situations.

"Leave my family alone," she snarled, spitting out the words with the gun aimed levelly at the two guards. A couple of steps backwards and Rose hit the TARDIS doors. She pushed them open, chucking the gun back to the guard she had stolen it from in the first place, who caught it with a bemused look on his face, and giving both a smug and triumphant grin before whirling and slamming the doors shut behind her.

A blur of movement confused her vision, and in a moment Rose was in the Doctor's arms, being lifted off her feet and hearing his laughter in her ear. "You were brilliant," he beamed triumphantly, "I was watching on the monitor, that was just fantastic!"

"Thank you." He put her down, but his arms remained around her waist for a few seconds, the ridiculous grin never leaving his face. When he finally pulled away, she could see that another idea had clouded his mind, and all thoughts of possible reunion kissing were blown from her head as though by a passing breeze.

"Right, now we're back in here and things are on our terms again, I think it's time we go and deal with that lot out there." The Doctor sounded relaxed enough, but he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. His whole body was taught, rigid and almost violent in its movements. It was clear that, now he no longer had to fear for their lives, the Doctor was being consumed by rage – the anger that these people had tried to hurt him, his daughter and his Rose was clearly taking over his brain, not allowing him to think straight.

"Doctor." Rose put a hand on his arm and he finally stilled. He looked at her, and his eyes were full of fire. "Doctor, I know they're awful and hideous and what they tried to do was unthinkable, but you've gotta stay calm. Don't do anything stupid like try and get revenge or something."

For a couple of moments the Doctor didn't say anything. He didn't even move. Then finally, he sagged. His shoulders dropped and he leant forward, hugging Rose to his and burying his face in the shoulder. "I wasn't going to do anything stupid," he said in a muffled voice.

"I know," Rose replied, arms wrapped tightly around him, "I just thought you might need reminding, you know, that you weren't going to do anything stupid."

The Doctor snorted with laughter and stood back up to his full height. "Come on then, let's go sort them out. I might not be acting rashly, but they're not going to be pulling something like this again, and I'm making sure of it."

Rose nodded. "Seems fair. Just try not to terrify them to within an inch of their lives."

"I think you already did that." Rose tried not to look smug.

With the slimy man dead, it was the work of moments for the Doctor to destroy all of the records of himself in the society's archive, melt the time shifting device and destroy all the vortex manipulators. That, along with Oncoming Storm looks and threats about what may happen if any of them even thought about coming near him, Rose or Jenny again, proved to be all that was needed to remove the threat posed by the society.

Back in the TARDIS, which the Doctor had taken to the vortex, Rose took off her jacket and stretched, before becoming aware that the Doctor was staring at her torso in a way that wasn't quite his usual style.

"Doctor, what are you looking at?"

He jerked out of his reverie, but without the awkward gabbling and the guilty facial expression she would have thought he would be sporting if he had in fact just been staring at her breasts.

"Is, is that my jumper?"

Rose looked down at herself in shock, as though surprised to see that the garment she had put on earlier was still there. "Um, yeah. I think the TARDIS put it in my wardrobe or something, but I saw it and I just thought it'd be good, you know. Give me a bit of strength or whatever." She avoided his gaze – it was suddenly too direct for her.

He took a couple of steps forward and rested his hands gently on her upper arms. Rose tilted her head to look up at him. He was practically glowing with pride and gratitude, "Rose, you have plenty of strength without my jumper there to help you. If it weren't for you then I'd... well I wouldn't be here in the TARDIS now, would I?"

"So you don't want me wearing it then?" Rose smiled, a little bit of tongue just poking out, and the Doctor's expression shifted.

"Well I didn't say that," he answered, voice that little bit deeper as his eyes travelled down and then up again, "actually I'm quite enjoying seeing you in it."

"As opposed to seeing me out of it?" Rose wondered if she was pushing a bit too far with this, but the Doctor simply smirked.

"That would be good too, but I think before we explore the pros and cons of you wearing and not wearing my clothes, we ought to go and tell Martha and Mickey that we're not dead. I doubt Jenny will have noticed we were gone."

"I wouldn't have thought there'd be any cons to me not wearing clothing," Rose grumbled.

The Doctor simply raised his eyebrows at her suggestively. "One con would be that if it's already off you, I don't get the pleasure of removing it myself." Rose gawked at his forwardness for a second, and was certain that he blushed a little. She smiled and looked away.

"Come on then, let's go."

Rose flung open the TARDIS doors and they both stepped out, eager now to assure Martha and Mickey that they were alright. Martha came running into the garden, as fast as she could now that she was more heavily pregnant. "You're alright," she said with shock and relief, but she did not smile and there were bags under her eyes.

"How long have I been gone?" Rose asked.

"You were here yesterday," said Martha, but she was twisting her hands and she did not seem focussed at all on what she said.

"Martha?" The Doctor stepped forward, concerned, and put his hands comfortingly on her shoulders. "What's wrong?"

When Martha looked up at the Doctor, Rose somehow knew from the sad and hopeless look in her eyes what she was about to say. "It's Jenny."