It didn't take long to set up the beacon. "Now," the Doctor observed, stepping back from the console, "all we need to worry about is attracting the attention of anything large and angry with that. But given what we've seen of this place, I think that's very unlikely."

"You're so reassuring. You know that, right?"

The Doctor smiled wryly. "I do try." He brushed idly at one of the sap stains on his coat front, and then looked up sharply, bright-eyed. "Can I show you something?"

Rose sniggered. "You know, if we were on Earth and I didn't know you, you'd be getting such a slap right now."

His expression filled with dismay. "I didn't mean that!"

Rose laughed, and then, on a surprising whim, stepped up and hugged him. He seemed to find this not at all odd and wrapped his arms briefly round her in return, patting her back; then pulled away with a curious expression, eyes dancing, leaving one arm halfway round her waist.

"What was that for?"

Rose laughed again. She couldn't help it. "Don't know," she admitted. "Seemed the thing to do at the time."

"Thank you," he said.

"You really are the Doctor, aren't you?"

"Yes."

They stood, eyes locked, for several moments; then he broke out another boyish grin. "So can I show you this?" He let go her waist and bounced across the room, pausing by the inner doorway to look back expectantly.

"What's 'this?'" Rose asked, with mock suspicion, though at that moment she felt she could follow him into a live volcano and think of nothing but how exciting it would be to see up close. His enthusiasm was infectious.

"I'll show you!" he proclaimed. "Come on, then."

It was a foregone conclusion that she would have to explore this mystery with him now, and so she relented and followed after him as he headed briskly down the corridor. Far be it from her to tempt fate.

"I seem to have upset you earlier," he spoke quietly as they walked. "And no, don't apologize," he insisted before she'd barely opened her mouth. "Something must have happened, and I don't want to know what it is. But I do want to make it up to you." He turned down a side corridor, then another, and finally came to a halt before a large door at the end of a short stone tunnel. He paused to flash her a gleeful look. "This is where I come when I want cheering up."

He pushed through the door and into the room beyond. Rose just stood in the doorway for several long moments, blinking in the sudden brightness, her jaw gone completely slack.

"Well come on then!" the Doctor cried back at her from halfway up a grassy hillside. "Mind the butterflies."

Rose shook herself to her senses and stepped inside – or was it outside? – hesitantly. The grass felt springy beneath her feet; the sun warm overhead; and god this was impossible. "How…?" she started to ask, and forgot the question as the ground rose up beneath her feet and exploded in a miniature tornado of swirling color and whispering wings. "Oh, wow…" was all she managed to utter, as a pair of vivid yellow butterflies whisked by her nose and disappeared into the indistinguishable sworl overhead. Trying to step carefully, but stumbling as her eyes refused to tear themselves from the aerial display to look at the ground, she shuffled up the hill to the Doctor, who waited with a huge grin plastered across his face, arms outflung, laughing delightedly as hundreds of the brightly colored insects swarmed around him.

"Slowly," he cautioned, as she reached up wonderingly to touch one of the big fuzzy grey and orange moths clinging to his coat. Its hair was so fine she could barely feel it under her finger. Another purplish black one landed on the back of her hand and she brought it wonderingly to her face, scarcely daring to breathe.

"Are they all… real?" she asked.

"Oh yes," said the Doctor, smiling at her around a chain of tiny orange butterflies dangling from a lock of his hair. "A few thousand species here, from all over the universe. Just the ones that will live peacefully together, of course. Did you know, Earth alone has over a hundred and sixty-five thousand species of Lepidoptera?"

"Lepi-what?" Rose blinked as the purple moth took wing and merged into the endless swirling dance.

"Lepidoptera. Butterflies," he repeated, moving one hand with slow care to gently brush a few of the moths from his coat. They fluttered precariously and then re-settled, crawling over one another. "Practical too," he grinned, wiping his thumb over the dark green velvet, now utterly devoid of sap.

"Cheaper than the dry-cleaners'," Rose quipped. She stroked another of the grey ones and was delighted when it clambered from the Doctor's forearm to her hand. "Y'know, most people say butterfly collection, they mean dead ones stuck under glass."

The Doctor wrinkled his nose. "I know. I think I prefer my way though, don't you?"

Rose laughed. "Not many people could keep up a hobby like this. How'd you get sunlight in here?"

"Oh, it's artificial, of course. Can't tell though, can you? Marvelous girl, this old TARDIS." The Doctor smiled fondly and eased himself down to sit in the grass, careful not to squash any of the insects.

Rose sat down beside him, feeling as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She leaned back on her elbows on the hillside, watching for some moments a shiny green butterfly that alighted on her knee, then turning her gaze upward at the dancing swarm. "Is that a cloud?" she wondered, squinting at the large shimmering object above them.

The Doctor's eyes sparkled. "Look closer," he urged.

Rose stared more intently – then gasped as the 'cloud' shifted and blinked at her. "That's a butterfly!"

"Yes. A flutterwing; they never land."

"That's amazing!"

The Doctor smiled. "I'm glad you like it." Rose tore her eyes off the gigantic butterfly, with difficulty, to look sideways at her companion instead. His face was turned upward, his eyes darting more swiftly than human, following the intricate flight patterns of the swarm. She realized suddenly that his hair no longer seemed too long; his hands too fine; his voice too gentle; even his outfit no longer seemed so outlandish. It fit him. The whole package.

In some ways, she heard the Doctor's harder Lancashire accent in her head, he was the best of all of us.

But he was wrong. She realized she no longer thought of the man sitting beside her as the "other" Doctor. Eighth, ninth, tenth, it didn't matter. He was simply the Doctor. Her Doctor. And even on this ball of nothing rock in the middle of nowhere, he'd found a way to show her a corner of the universe she'd never seen. She grinned softly to herself.

Then blinked, as she realized his sharp eyes had shifted from the butterflies to her face; he was watching her with a gently bemused expression.

Rose kissed him.

It was perfectly chaste: just a peck on the cheek; she didn't even realize she'd leant over and done it until after she'd drawn back again. He made no indication of either displeasure or reciprocation; except that his smile perhaps widened very slightly as he looked at her. Asking nothing.

"Thanks," she said, simply.

"What are friends for," he replied happily, then pushed himself elegantly to his feet and offered her a hand up. "Now let's get home."

In point of fact it took rather longer than an hour for the ninth Doctor to get the TARDIS flight circuits online; it was closer to two. Rose didn't mind. She sat outside waiting with the eighth Doctor, their backs to the solid comfort of the big blue box, chatting amicably and splitting a packet of biscuits she'd found in the kitchen. (It didn't seem, she had observed, that the Doctor made much use of said kitchen in any of his incarnations.)

When the second TARDIS finally materialized a few yards away with its reassuringly familiar wheezing and groaning sound, she noted that the damage to the side panels already looked better. Just a bit dinged up rather than completely caved in. The door swung open and the Doctor tramped out. The smudge of solder was gone from his nose, but the rest of his face looked more than grimy enough now to make up for it. He scuffed up a puff of dust as he came to a sharp halt, glaring sternly at the two of them.

"Working hard, I see," he observed.

Rose giggled and scrambled to her feet, offering him the last of the biscuits. "Hardly our fault if we finished our part of it on time. Waiting on a Time Lord, fancy that."

"Ha ha," he replied dryly; but he took the biscuit. Munching on it, he gave his chin a jerk toward the open door behind him. "Make yourself useful, then; there's a pile of cable in there. Run it on out and hook us up."

"What, by myself?"

"Sure," he grinned, leaning one shoulder against his TARDIS, licking a few crumbs off his fingers and then folding his arms in a cocksure manner. "You're such the expert, getting your work done on time and all."

She stuck out her tongue and skipped past him, singing out, "Fine, then!" The cable she found neatly coiled on the floor in the control room looked rather lightweight for such a task as jump-starting a TARDIS, but she shrugged and began paying it out anyway, walking backwards through the doorway. Police boxes didn't look like they should be able to travel through space and time either; so who was she to judge some wires on looks?

Despite his challenge, the ninth Doctor took part of the coil off her hands and helped her run it to the other TARDIS, though she noticed him suppress a faint shudder as he crossed the threshold into the great gothic control room. "This old place," he murmured to himself, glancing about and then briskly crossing the stone to the hardwood floor that surrounded the central pillar. He sat down under the console and began ripping out wires like he knew what he was doing.

The eighth Doctor, meanwhile, crossed to the other side of the hexagonal console and tapped in a few commands. The TARDIS hummed to itself, and a few moments later a hatch slid open in the panel, discharging a small nondescript cube. The Doctor picked this up carefully and brought it over to Rose.

"These are the coordinates we'll need to get out of here."

Rose frowned, turning it over curiously in her hands. "What's this, like a… Gallifreyan floppy disk?"

He smiled. "Bit more complex than that."

"I bet."

"Rose," called the ninth Doctor from under the console, "Run back to the control room and push that big red button on the main control panel. I labeled it, just in case it being big and red wasn't incentive enough."

"Oi, watch it, you," Rose shot back fondly, throwing his big cheeky grin right back at him. She hurried from one big blue box to the other, found the button – and he had labeled it, the big git: 'Push Me Rose' – pressed it with authority, and then, leaving the datacube on the console, jogged back.

She entered to the familiar sound of a humming time engine, and the sight of the Doctors slapping each other on the back in congratulatory fashion. She ducked under their arms and wormed between them, hanging one arm on each of their shoulders: one clad in leather, one velvet. "Is that it, then?" she asked cheerily. Her favorite alien in the universe, and here she was, sandwiched between both of him. Didn't get much better than that, she thought.

Eight scanned the monitor readouts eagerly, and nodded. "Everything's online now. All we need to do is use those coordinates I gave you and we'll both be on our way back to our own time streams."

Rose felt almost disappointed that it had been resolved so quickly. "Well," she said, disentangling herself from the both of them and smiling a bit wistfully at Eight, "Guess this is good-bye, then?"

"Not really," he smiled back. "You're leaving with me, after all."

She felt the ninth Doctor's comforting grip on her shoulder and reached up briefly to squeeze his calloused hand in return. "Yeah," she glanced up at him with a grin, "guess so."

The Doctors shook hands.

"Nice to meet me."

"Try not to get into too much trouble."

"Well you'd know, I guess."

Rose and the Doctor gathered up their wires and stepped outside, the door swinging shut behind them on a final glimpse of flickering lamplight. A few moments later, the distinctive sound of the time engines shuddered through the air, and the TARDIS faded from sight.

"Well, that was… interesting," Rose murmured, leaning against the Doctor with a small sigh.

"Just interesting?" he grinned down at her.

She poked him in the ribs. "Just learned some things about you, yeah? How interesting could it possibly be?"

He laughed, draped his arm over her shoulders, and led the way back into the TARDIS, and home.