~revised~
Chapter IV
Mira
"Thank you... Doctor." She still wasn't used to that name. "So, what now?"
"Well, pick up a friend, and then... we'll see," he said whilst enthusiastically jumping around the console, flipping switches and pulling levers.
"Who? Someone like you?" she asked, not thinking of anything.
But he looked at her and just for the fracture of a second it seemed as if a shadow had fallen over his face. It was gone before she was sure she had even seen it or the lights in the TARDIS had played a trick on her eyes.
"Nah," he finally said casually, continuing on his way around the console. A bit too casually in her opinion. "Human. Rose." He looked at her again. "That's her name. From good old Earth. She's just visiting some friends. The two of you should get along quite well. She's around your age, I guess. How old are you?"
"Thirty," she answered without hesitation. It wasn't even a lie. She really was thirty, biologically speaking. That was the age when she had gotten the cell-activator, that little device around her neck and stopped ageing.
"Oh, well... Are you sure? No wrinkles there...," he answered as he studied her face intently for a few moments.
"Yes, I am quite sure," she said with a lop-sided grin. "You don't have to have wrinkles at the age of thirty. Stayed out of the sun."
"Anyway. Rose is nineteen, so you really should get along great. She's really nice," he said with a somehow manic smile.
"Yeah, I'm sure we will," she managed to answer. Nineteen. Great. And why was he travelling with teenagers? And why had she not told him the truth about her age? Because she was afraid. To be honest, she didn't even exactly know herself how old she was. Somewhat between a thousand and fifteen-hundred years, but it was also a bit complicated to work out considering time-jumps and time she had spent... elsewhere. The last time she had done that had been around her thousandth birthday. Then she had halfway kept track for a century or two, but this had been a while ago now. A lot of things had happened since then, and time was really flying fast... It didn't matter anyway. Her father was around for over two thousand years now and Atlan had been around for even more than twenty-thousand years by now. (Well, although ten-thousand of them he had spent sleeping in some sort of stasis.) She herself had seen the rise and fall of empires, literally. So what was the point in counting single years, or even being short of a century or two?
"Ready? You maybe want to hold on to something..." The Doctor pulled her out of her thoughts.
She did as she was told and grabbed the handrail, looked at him and nodded.
"So off we go!" he yelled, then pulled a lever and the whole ship came alive. Actually alive. As if she had been half asleep all the time. She could feel that the TARDIS was now clearly in her element. The engines were producing a sound that Mira had never heard before. And she could tell that the ship was having fun, even though the ride was actually quite bumpy.
"Inertia dampeners are overrated anyway, huh?" she finally gave in to the urge to comment it.
"Ah, that's nothing," he said, and in this moment she wasn't sure if he wasn't just outright mad.
She was about to make another more or less intelligent remark about the flight as she felt something odd. Something that made the fine hairs on her arm and neck stand up and her head tingle. A feeling she she had felt before and she would never ever forget again. A feeling human's shouldn't ever experience as it almost always ended in trouble. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. Who the hell was he? He didn't seem to notice her glance as he was occupied with piloting the ship.
"Here we are," he finally said, pulling the same lever again. "Solar System, Earth, England, London, Powell Estate, 7th of February 2006."
"Finally a date. And just a bit off to my own universe," she said with a distinct undertone in her voice. She had to talk to him about what had just happened, but probably not right now. She had a certain suspicion, and if that was true, then...
"Why? When did you come from?" he asked.
"27th of March 4197 A.D. Or 610 NGC, depends on what you prefer."
"NGC?" he asked, slightly puzzled.
"New Galactic Calculation of time. Never gotten used to it myself. Not in all its 610 years of existence. After all this time I am still converting it to A.D.," she answered.
"What!?" Now he looked really puzzled and had completely stopped in his tracks.
You've understood exactly what I've just said, she thought. If you can just travel through time with me without warning then you can have a bit of a riddle yourself now. Of course she wasn't a hundred percent sure they had just made a time jump. But that feeling she had gotten was too distinctive.
"I said I never really came to like it. Not over all these years. So, let's pick up that friend of yours," she finally replied, smiling lightly.
Maybe she shouldn't be teasing him like that. He could be dangerous for all she knew. But then again - to say it was fun didn't quite describe it. It was rather a challenge. Well, he had started it by asking her what she was seeing in him, hadn't he?
"Fine." He swung around and grabbed a brown coat that was hanging over one of the pillars next to the door.
Door?
Indeed, there as a wooden door. Totally didn't fit in with the rest. She wondered how she had managed to miss it until now. She was about to ask if he had really just landed a spaceship that size in the middle of London in the year 2006, but right at this moment he pulled open the door and looked at her as if waiting for her to step out first.
She walked over to him and looked out. First thing she noticed was the cold air. It was February after all. Second thing was that they seemed to be in some sort of backyard, between high-rise buildings. It looked not that different from the buildings she knew from the 1960s, the time when she had been around Rose's age, back in her universe. She finally stepped outside, her arms wrapped around herself in an attempt to keep her warm.
He hadn't actually just landed a huge spaceship in the middle of a city of an apparently pre-space-flight civilisation, hadn't he? Pre-space-flight if one didn't count the landing on the moon as actual space-flight. If they had even been there in this universe.
Besides that the ship couldn't actually be that big if it fitted in this backyard she thought whilst slowly turning around to get a look at the ship for herself. Something wasn't adding up here.
And then she saw it. A blue box. A small, wooden, blue box. Police Box it said. She had no idea what exactly a Police Box was because she didn't originally came from the UK. To her it resembled something like a phone box. Although where she originally came from they had been yellow and smaller and made of metal with glass windows. The Doctor was still leaning in the door frame, smiling like a little boy at Christmas.
She couldn't help herself but to smile with him.
"So," she said as she stood in front of him again. "Interesting airlock you have here," whilst peering around him and inside the ship.
"Yeah, a bit old school. How do you like it?"
"Oh, it's lovely." She carefully reached with her hand through the open door as if searching for something.
"No transmitter field?" she asked.
Maybe the actual ship was still in space and that was a stationary transmitter he had placed here, disguised as a police box.
He just shook his head in response.
"Well," she finally managed after taking a deep breath. "If this is what I think it is, than it is really, really cool."
He looked at her somehow doubtfully.
"Cool? Just cool?" he frowned.
"No, seriously. That really is amazing. Incredible. I would have never believed that this is even possible," she continued, whilst first leaning inside the TARDIS and then gently touching her wooden hull.
"So, what do you think it is then?" he finally asked.
"A concept, well, rather a theory... No, being honest, not even that. A highly hypothetical theory which, if mentioned, would almost certainly ruin one's scientific reputation for good. But there it is."
"So?" he asked again, standing right next to her, his face turned to hers.
Stop starring at me like that she thought.
"Uhm, did I not just tell you that no-one will ever take me seriously again in the world of science?" She shrugged and continued, "On the other hand it doesn't really matter I suppose as my scientific reputation went to hell ages ago." She smiled mischievously at him, before finally saying, "Transdimensional engineering. The theory of forming and folding the dimensions of space like... well, like that. Practically creating a new universe inside the universe. With its own reference point, more or less completely independent from the outside universe. And with different dimensions and probably even other laws of physics. It has always been doubted, although it is proven by now that the dimension of time can be bend and intertwined with itself. So why not space. Just because we don't have the energy sources nor the mathematics for doing so doesn't mean it's impossible, does it? Well, obviously it's not impossible, as..." She trailed off and pointed at the inside of the TARDIS. "Saying it out loud really does sound pretty mad. And it doesn't explain the wooden hull and this... airlock," she added. "Please, tell me I'm wrong."
"Well, it indeed needs a certain amount of energy," he said. "The mathematics are a bit complex too, but not too much."
She looked at him, the full implications just dawning on her.
"How much bigger on the inside is she?"
He just glanced right at her, arching his brows.
"All right. I guess tiny little human brain really wasn't an insult after all," she finally admitted, and before he could reply anything they heard the somehow angry shouting of a woman behind them, making him instantly look genuinely shocked.
"That's Jackie. Her mother...," he whispered.
Rose
She had just wanted to visit her mother and some of her friends. But of course, this would have been to easy. Not only that the Doctor had preferred to stay in the TARDIS, he also had called her not an hour later only to tell her that he was on his way to investigate some sort of emergency signal. Or at least something the TARDIS had told him, she had had a hard time understanding him over the phone as he was trying to synchronise his flight with some small spaceship and was jumping all around the console. He promised her to be back in no more than two hours. But hell, he got it wrong before, didn't he?
So instead of going out with friends she sat in the kitchen with Mickey and her mother, drinking tea and listening for the sound of the TARDIS. It has been almost five hours now, and she grew really anxious. What if something had happened to him? What if he really got it wrong and wouldn't be back for a year or even longer? But at least she didn't think he would deliberately leave her after all they've been through by now.
When finally the faint sound of the engines of the ancient Time Ship reached her ears, it was Jackie who jumped up instantly.
"Who does he believe he is? Does he have any idea at all about how much you were worrying? Oh, I'll tell him, that's for sure!" And out she was.
"Mum!" Rose yelled after her.
This was going to be embarrassing. Not that she didn't plan on having a view words with him herself, but Jackie could just stay out of it. She looked at Mickey, searching for help, but he just grinned at her. She knew exactly what his opinion of the Doctor was. She sighed and ran after her mother. By the time she had gotten outside and reached the backyard, Jackie was already blustering at him. She knew she just meant well, or at least she hoped so. After all she didn't seem to have slapped him by now.
"... and you really thought you could avoid me by just staying in this weird box of yours?" Rose heard her saying, before Jackie gave him a big hug and a even bigger kiss on his cheek, causing him to wince.
Then she saw something that made her heart drop right into her stomach. He wasn't alone. There was a girl with him, or should she rather say, a woman?
"Rose!" he yelled as he saw her, smiling all over his face, and finally seeing a chance to evade Jackie's attempts to snog him.
He stepped over to her and gave her a bone-crushing hug. For a moment all her anger and worries were forgotten and she could do nothing more than to return the hug, feeling his cool breath on her skin and taking in his alien, yet by now familiar scent that reminded her a bit of honey. As they finally let go of each other, she peered over to the girl... woman...who was standing next to the TARDIS, giving the impression of feeling somehow out of place. Or rather of actually being out of place. The Doctor followed her eyes, and as if he had just forgotten the woman for a moment, he hit his forehead and said: "Stupid me. May I introduce you? Rose Tyler, Mira Rhodan," smiling at them both. Suddenly Jackie, still standing behind him, cleared her throat. "Oh, and Jackie Tyler."
Rose examined her closer as she nodded at her. No need to shake hands here. The other woman was strikingly beautiful which made her heart sting. Well, maybe beautiful was not really the right word. For her taste she was way too pale, way too skinny – although rather the dancer-yoga-kind of skinny than the feed-me-kind, her hair-do looked like something straight out of one of Mickey's weird sixties science fiction movies (besides that, she had really gorgeous hair, Rose had to admit) and she was wearing no make-up at all and dressed completely in black. But no matter how Rose looked at it, she somehow felt threatened by her appearance.
"Hi Rose, nice to meet you," Mira said, smiling softly at her.
"Yeah, nice to meet you too," she finally managed to say. All right, fine. She really was beautiful, sort of, in a charismatic, making-heads-turn kind of way. Nevertheless, there was something weird about her, mainly about her piercing grey eyes, about the way she looked at her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it.
"She will stay with us for a while," the Doctor said.
Wonderful. Not.
"I hope you don't mind, Rose," Mira fell in, frowning. "'Cause I'm afraid I'm sort of stuck here."
Even better.
Rose managed to smile at her. She seemed to be nice, though, but Rose still didn't like the idea of having her along.
Mira
Great, she thought. Just great. Men. Aliens. Male aliens. Could really drive one mad.
They were sitting together in an incredibly huge library, drinking tee and eating chips. Well, so much for dinner. She tried to stay in the background as her first encounter with Rose had been more than enough for her.
Above all, Rose wasn't even the problem. Rose was a nice, pretty, good hearted, strong, determined and compassionate young woman. Or more likely, teenager. Nineteen, although quite mature for her age. And... head over heels in love with this strange alien, calling himself the Doctor.
And she couldn't blame her for that. He really was fascinating. Not to mention, extremely handsome. And intelligent. Really, really intelligent. That mind-blowing-nerd-ish kind of intelligent. And also psychic and/or telepathic, which was hard enough to come by in that great big universe – even though it probably didn't matter that much to Rose. Maybe one had to be psychic themselves to fully appreciate that. The feeling of touching each others mind, connecting in a way most humans couldn't even begin to comprehend. And he definitely had the most beautiful hands she had ever seen. Under different circumstances she had probably fallen for him herself, but right now it was for so many reasons completely unthinkable. Maybe that was the privilege of having lived as long as she had and having seen as much as she had. If one wanted to call it a privilege. She had been hurt so many times over that she just didn't fall like that for someone anymore. And even if she allowed herself to do so, acting on it was just out of the question most of the times. And she knew exactly she would be able to stick to this. Let alone for her own sake.
That very alien in question, now sitting right there, was peering to her all the time, seemingly completely oblivious to Rose's feelings for him. Feelings that washed over her like waves and made her feel as if she was nineteen herself all over again.
She really appreciated that he let her stay, but he could have told her about his relationship or close friendship or whatever one wanted to call it to Rose. And as he hadn't done it he must either be incredibly blind or had just no idea about humans. Or both.
And right now, although she herself might have given him something to think about earlier on - by mentioning to not getting used to something over a period of 610 years, or by talking about all this transdimensional engineering stuff - he should really focus on Rose, and safe everything else for later.
Or at least stop insisting. They were planning on going on some sort of trip, and even though she was really in for a distraction, she had already made three attempts to convince him that she would rather stay here. Alone. Rose on the other hand seemed to had gotten the hint by now, but he just kept on insisting she should come along.
She was almost on the verge of faking a migraine attack, even though there wouldn't be much she had to fake if she was forced to stay much longer in this awkward and exhausting situation, when Rose finally said, "You really don't have to stay here all on your own. It will be great, I promise.", and gave her an adorable tongue-between-teeth-smile. It wasn't so much what she said, but how she said it. Or more likely, her feelings as she said it. She was slowly feeling less threatened and more self-secure, as she seemed to have gotten the hint.
"All right, then," Mira finally gave in.
...
Not much later she was in the console room with the Doctor, waiting for Rose, who just wanted to change. Mira herself had stopped by her room to look for some sort of jacket because it was a bit on the cold side for her taste in the TARDIS – only to find her uniform jacket together with the rest of her clothes cleaned and folded on her bed, so she had put it on. By now she had also learned from their conversation earlier that the TARDIS could indeed travel through time. Her feelings hadn't betrayed her after all. That was a thing she clearly needed to talk about with the Doctor, but rather in a quiet moment, not now. And not with Rose about to bump in any second. The young girl took everything a bit too easy for her taste, but on the other hand, she probably hadn't seen the damage time travel could do. Yet. So instead she decided to go for some small talk.
"Has anyone ever gotten lost in this ship? It really seems to be huge."
He looked at her as if he wasn't sure what to make of her remark.
"Well, you could certainly get lost in one of our ships. Of course, the different sections and decks are marked, but you have to know the system behind it," she continued.
"Your ships are also bigger on the inside?" he finally asked, stopping for a moment in fiddling with the console.
She looked at him in surprise for a moment before she got it. "Uhm. No. The ship I was flying with was just some sort of ship's boat. We do have larger ships. Spherical and about 2.5 kilometres in diameter. Battleships."
"Battleships," he replied and looked at her in distaste. "You humans. Always going for battles."
"Well, that's what they are called. In fact they are used for all sorts of things. Exploring, travel, even trade now. And of course they can fight. If we have to defend ourselves. What's wrong with that?" she said in the sudden urge to justify not only herself, but also humanity as a whole. So much for small talk.
"You're not with the military, are you?" he asked.
She looked deliberately down at her thigh-long jacket with the stand up collar which had the colourful, abstract symbol of the LFT, the League of the Free Terrans, on the left front of the chest and three silver stripes and one star of her rank on the epaulettes, not to mention the symbol of the mutant corps, a stylised brain surrounded by rays of light on the left upper sleeve. Albeit she wore this symbol simply out of sentimentality. Uniforms weren't as formal these days as they had been back in the days of the Solar Empire. Well, took him long enough to figure that out.
"What if?" she asked.
Before he could reply anything, thankfully Rose showed up. She really had changed and was now wearing a ridiculously short jeans mini skirt, a pink t-shirt and black, semi-transparent tights.
"What do you think of this? Will it do?" Rose asked, beaming at the Doctor.
"In the late 1970s? You'd better be off in a bin bag. Hold on, listen to this." He put a silver disk in some sort of player, that looked suspiciously like an old CD or DVD. Almost instantly music started playing. It sounded quite good, although Mira had never heard it before. And a bit loud for her taste.
"Ian Dury and the Blockheads. Number One in 1979," the Doctor said right before starting to sing along to the music. Mira couldn't help herself but had to smile. It was weird, just weird. Although somehow in a good way.
"Never heard of Ian Dury, but what about Pink Floyd?" she suddenly asked.
"What's about them?" he replied, shouting over the music.
"Well, have they ever existed here?"
"Oh yes. So, who do you want to see? Ian Dury or Pink Floyd?" he asked them both.
"How'd you mean? In concert?" Rose wanted to know.
"What else is a TARDIS for?" he replied, dancing around the console. "I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar... the first anti-gravity Olympics... Caesar crossing the Rubicon... Pink Floyd performing The Wall in London, 1981 or... Ian Dury at the Top Rank, Sheffield, England, Earth, 21st November, 1979. What do you think?"
Mira took a quick look at Rose, who really didn't seem to care for Pink Floyd, and finally said, "Sheffield it is then."
"Hold on tight!"
The bumpy flight started again and whilst she actually managed to stay on her feet, Rose and the Doctor ended up lying on the floor, laughing their heads of. At least the tension from earlier on was gone, she thought, as the Doctor dragged Rose to her feet, and before she knew what was going on he had also taken her by the hand, pulling both of them with him to the door.
"1979. Hell of a year!" he said as he let go of them, grabbing his coat.
"China invades Vietnam... The Muppet Movie! Love that film. Margaret Thatcher... urgh... Skylab falls to Earth... with a little help from me... nearly took off my thumb," he babbled whilst opening the door. "I like my thumb. I need my thumb. I'm very attached to..."
As they had hardly stepped outside, the Doctor ahead of them, Mira looked straight into the barrels of guns.
"... my thumb," the Doctor finished his sentence.
Instantly the three of them raised their hands, not one second to late as a clicking sound reached her ears. A sound she knew only to well. Primitive guns. Primitive but nevertheless deadly.
"1879. Same difference," the Doctor murmured.
" You will explain your presence. And the nakedness of this girl," one of the soldiers demanded, apparently the leader of the bunch. Whilst saying that he had looked rather irritated at Rose. Well, she was quite naked indeed, at least for 1879. He also shot a somewhat depreciative glance at herself. A woman in trousers was probably not much better than nakedness to him.
"Are we in Scotland?" the Doctor asked, in the same accent as the leader of the soldiers. Of course. Scottish. Had been a while since she had heard that sort of accent.
"How can you be ignorant of that?"
"Oh, I'm- I'm dazed and confused. I've been chasing this... this wee naked child over hill and over dale. In't that right, ya... timorous beastie?"
Oh bloody hell, she thought. That couldn't be real.
But the soldiers believed him, oddly enough.
"Ooch, aye! I've been oot and aboot," Rose gave it a shot. Not really successfully.
"No, don't do that," the Doctor said quietly.
"Hoots mon!" Rose continued.
She turned her head to Rose, begging her silently to stop.
"No, really don't. Really," the Doctor tried to convince her and added, "And for this weird-dressed woman-"
"My name is Mira," she cut him off, "And I am from a far off land. You might have not heard of it, for it is just a small island. Far in the west. It is called Terrania. I was just travelling with him and helped him out with this... naked girl." She emphasised her Intercosmo accent even a bit more as she just knew she would never pass for a native speaker, although her English was absolutely fluent and her pronunciation quite Oxford-like. But nevertheless, you still could hear it. So no point in faking being British or even Scottish. Probably it wasn't a good idea to sound too English now.
The Doctor looked at her bewildered, but she didn't care about that right now. She could feel that the soldier believed her and was quite satisfied with her answer.
"Will you identify yourself, sir?" the Doctor was finally asked.
"I'm Doctor James McCrimmon. From the... Township of Balamory. Eh... I have my credentials, if I may..." He reached carefully into his pockets and produced some sort of ID-Card in a leather wallet. She couldn't see what was on it, but the soldiers seemed to be satisfied with it whilst the Doctor explained further, "As you can see, a Doctorate from the University of Edinburgh. I trained under Doctor Bell himself."
Then she heart a voice from inside a carriage. It was a rather large company they had encountered here.
"Let them approach."
"I don't think that's wise, ma'am," the leader insisted.
The woman just repeated herself, absolutely unimpressed by the advice just given to her.
"You will approach the carriage. And show all due deference," the soldier finally obeyed.
They did as they were told, Mira and Rose following the Doctor. As they saw who was in the carriage, the Doctor turned around, smiling at them and explained, "Rose, Mira - might I introduce her Majesty Queen Victoria. Empress of India and Defender of the Faith."
The Queen? Really? What had they stumbled into now?
"Rose Tyler, Ma'am. And my apologies... for being so naked," Rose said apologetically.
She didn't say anything, but suddenly felt like she was walking on ice. Thin, incredibly thin ice, so thin she could almost see the cracks forming under their feet just from standing there. Replace ice with time and then you got the situation quite right, she thought. This was madness. One wrong word, one wrong action, and all established history would go to hell. Of course it could be the case that they were meant to be here anyway, but how could she be sure of that? How could anyone be sure of that? Her head was spinning with all the possibilities of messing something up really badly. She just listened with one ear to the conversation, something about an incident and assassination attempts. And that they were supposed to follow them. Great.
Rose
They were walking amongst the entourage of the Queen, when she wondered: "It's funny though, 'cos you say 'assassination' and you just think of Kennedy and stuff. Not her."
"1879 - she's had... six attempts on her life? And I'll tell you something else: we just met Queen Victoria!" the Doctor answered.
"I know!" she replied, absolutely excited. It was really amazing. Although she was travelling with the Doctor for some time now, and had really seen a lot of things, it caught her every time again.
"She was just sitting there!"
"Like a stamp!" the Doctor said, equally excited.
That was one of the things she loved so much about him. Besides everything he had seen in his long life he was always absolutely enthusiastic about their travels.
"I want her to say 'we are not amused'. I bet you five quid I can make her say it."
"Well, if I gambled on that, it'd be an abuse of my privileges of traveller in time," he refused
"Ten quid?" she asked teasingly.
"Done."
As this was settled she shot a quick glance at Mira, who had a rather brooding look on her face, her hands shoved into the pockets of her jacket, and, even though she wasn't really that tall, she managed to look a big haggard when walking along like that. Right now, she just reminded her a little of the Doctor in his current regeneration. As if Mira had felt that she was watching her, she turned her head to look at them and then shot a quick glance around. Rose instinctively did the same. No one really close.
Mira stepped next to the Doctor, and then said with her voice down, "I truly don't want to spoil anything. But do you really think this is a good idea?"
"What?" he asked, now looking around himself either.
"That whole time travel thing," she said sharply.
And a bit anxious, Rose thought.
"Oh, that! Why? What's about it?"
"It's dangerous! You can't just go somewhere in the past and mess around a bit."
Now Mira clearly sounded more anxious and worried than anything else, so she wanted to reassure her.
"It's safe. We did this before. It's okay, really."
Mira just starred at her with wide eyes. A somehow scary glance, almost as if she was figuring out what was going on in her mind.
"It's okay? Honestly, Rose, I don't want to offend you in any way, but I don't think you quite get the-"
"Mira," the Doctor fell in. "It's as Rose just said. I know what I'm doing. It's fine. Just be a bit careful."
"How can you possibly know what you are doing?" Mira asked.
"I can."
Mira just starred at him, shaking her head in disbelieve.
"He... Well...," Rose started, then looked at the Doctor. Hadn't he told her? What had he told her at all? Where did she even came from? Rose wasn't even sure if she was human. And how could she be stuck anyway? The TARDIS could reach any place in time and space.
"I know because I'm a Timelord. I know because I can see what should happen and what must not happen. Trust me, hm? Besides... You have travelled in time yourself, haven't you?"
Now it was on Rose to stare at Mira in disbelieve. "You're a Time Agent?" She suddenly remembered Jack.
"What?" Mira replied. "No? I've been many things in my life, but certainly never a Time Agent. Haven't even heard of that one before." She turned to the Doctor. "Right. I did travel in time. And I know the implications of it and I know that when things go wrong, the go horribly, devastatingly wrong." She sighed before adding, slightly defeated, "Fine. I guess I have to trust you with this for now."
The Doctor just looked at her, an eyebrow raised and apparently not completely convinced.
Rose felt almost sorry for her. She really took this quite hard. Okay, meeting someone like the Doctor could be a bit of a shock, but travelling through time seemed to be too much for her. She wondered what her experiences with time travel had been. Couldn't be that much, could it? She didn't appear to be much older than twenty-five or so.
"Timelord?" Mira continued a few moments of walking in silence later, now rather curious. "Never heard of them. So this is what you do? Travel around in time with this incredible ship of yours and see where you end up?"
"Well, basically... Yes," the Doctor replied.
"You are all just doing this? I mean, the rest of your people?"
Rose knew how really sensitive that topic was to him and so didn't like where this was going at all. So, before the Doctor could answer anything, she exclaimed, "I guess we're there! That must be it. It's beautiful, isn't it?"
A huge, old – or right now, not that old – stately home came into sight.
4evercrazy96: Thank you for writing the first review! :-) Hope you like that chapter, even though I struggled a bit with Rose.
