Immediately, without looking up from the computer, the receptionist told them, 'I'm sorry, but you've got to put a mask on, sir, ma'am.'
The Doctor stopped, looking around. The waiting room was empty. 'Do you provide those?' he inquired.
Wordlessly, the woman pointed at the coffee table, where a bottle of hand sanitizer, tissues, and a box of the blue surgical masks were kept. No mags.
After a couple tries— the Doctor's kept snapping apart— they donned the masks and approached the receptionist again.
'Hold on, hold on.' The woman held a hand up. 'You can't pass the red line. Social distancing, please.' Despite half her face being covered, she still managed to give them an annoyed look.
'Right,' Rose said and took a step back. 'Sorry. Anyways, we're— well, erm... He's the Doctor and I'm here with him. I'm his companion.'
The woman raised her eyebrows. 'The Doctor,' she repeated. 'I'm sorry, sir, but I'm gonna need a name.'
'That is my name,' the Doctor argued. 'I'm the Doctor.'
The woman sighed. 'Sir, really. I'm not in the mood for games and if you cannot give me a straight answer, I'll be forced to call security on you.'
The Doctor huffed and threw his hands up. 'I am the Doctor. I— hold on.' He dug around his jacket, and Rose could imagine him scowling underneath the mask. 'Where's it gone?' he grumbled, low enough that only she could hear him.
'Oh!' Rose reached into her coat and withdrew the psychic paper. 'So sorry. I forgot I still had that after Marco Polo.'
The Doctor took it from her fingers. 'Thank you. All right, see? I'm the Doctor. Granted clearance to, er—' Rose imagined he licked his lips. Kate Stewart hadn't told them what to do exactly once they got to the hospital.
The phone beeped, drawing their eyes towards the speaker. The lady picked the receiver up, eyeing them, and spoke, 'Front desk. Steph speaking.'
Her brow furrowed as she listened to whoever was on the other end. 'I've got a man and a woman up here… Claim to be 'The Doctor' and his... his companion?' She glanced up at the Doctor and Rose then back down to the desk. 'Er, pretty tall, sort of longish brown hair… a tweed jacket and a bowtie… the woman's blonde… with a black duster coat on…' Her fingers twitched against her desk. 'You're sure?' She sighed. 'I better not get fired 'cos of this, Ally.'
She set the receiver down and jerked her hchin towards the lift. 'You're good to go.' She spun around in her chair and went back to her computer.
'Have a good day,' Rose told her, following after the Doctor. 'Ta.'
The Doctor paused inside the lift, his fingers hovering over the buttons. 'Er…' He glanced at Rose then at the receptionist then back at the buttons.
'What's the matter?' Rose whispered.
The Doctor tugged on his jacket cuffs. 'I don't- I'm not sure where it is that we're supposed to go.'
'Maybe the—' The edges of her vision flared, the buttons blurring before her eyes. Vaguely, she could hear the Doctor, the cadence of his voice but not the words that he said.
The buttons lit up, golden, in a sequence as she fell in and out of the timestream. Call, 1, 3, 1, 4, 2, 2, close doors. Call, 1, 3, 1, 4, 2, 2, close doors. Drunkenly, she reached out and touched the buttons. The lights flared again, brighter than before.
~~~
Stars. Whole constellations. Nebulas and black holes and galaxy clusters. And timelines, golden ropes of time and life leading her away. Away? Away from where? To where?
In the afterglow, there were little circles in her vision, shifting easily from yellow to green to blue to purple to red and back to yellow. She watched the circles as they danced about the darkness.
Darkness?
Slowly, she peeled her eyes open— Open? Had they been closed?— blinking against the orange light.
'Rose?'
She turned— the circles flaring across her vision— towards the source of the voice. A man leaned against the railing beside her. His face seemed pulled down in a permanent frown and his hair poofed out about his head in grey curls.
She squinted at him, trying to place him. She should remember him. She did remember him. Did she? Know him? Remember him? Was it even a he? He could be an alien and she's met— has met— will meet?— plenty of aliens who seemed to be female but we're, in fact, male and the same vise versa.
'I'm sorry,' she said, politely, 'but do I know you?'
He sighed, heavily as if the weight of all the universes were on his shoulders. It was a familiar sigh. One she knew well. Would know well. Does know well? God, tenses and time and their finicky natures.
Tentatively, she reached out, probing about this stranger's timeline. It was coiled tightly inside him, a long way from being severed. If all went right that is. But its future wasn't what caught her attention, rather, its past.
The entire length of it, impossibly long, seemingly almost as long as time itself, glowed a deep, dark amber. Almost brass coloured, it pulsed near constantly to the beat of the stranger's heart. Or, should she say, hearts. Plural.
'Oh,' she said pleasantly.
She looked up at him, the stern blue of his eyes. She noted with satisfaction that his pupils went a bit wider as they met her gaze. She smiled. 'Hullo, Doctor.'
His lips pulled back in a smile. 'Hullo, Rose,' he replied. 'When are you from?'
She frowned. 'I—' She thought. Where had she come from? London? Well, yes, London, of course. London when? Something was going on. Was it important? God, she hoped it wasn't important. Or dangerous.
'I think- I think I was with you. In… circles.'
The Doctor raised his eyebrows— and what eyebrows they were! Like, attack eyebrows or something. Still magnificent, though— and parroted her.
She scowled and reached over to smack his arm. 'Rude,' she chided. Her face lit up as his accent set in. 'And Scottish!'
He tugged on his coat with pride. 'I'm a Scotsman now,' he affirmed.
'You can complain about things!' Rose giggled. 'Oh, this is wonderful. Well, for you. Not for me or any of our companions, I suppose.'
The Doctor chuckled. 'You put a stop to my complaining about an hour after my regeneration. You were not as delighted about my Scottishness then as you are now.'
Rose gave him a bemused look. 'You're rude, and Scottish, but not ginger.' She pouted. 'So close.'
The Doctor sighed. 'Amy Pond. The first and last face this face saw. My regeneration took the wrong influence from her.'
Rose's eyebrows shot up. 'Amy Pond? That's where I was! Well, not with Amy, but with you. We're in a hospital lift. Er… St. Thomas.' She tilted her head. 'Is she still about? If she was the last face your regeneration saw? I don't think she likes me very much.'
Something flickered in his eyes, a shadow that Rose couldn't place. He cleared his throat. 'No, she- she and Rory- they decided to live their life… Domestics and whatnot.'
Rose narrowed her eyes at him. He was hiding something. He hesitated too much. Before she could press him further, however, he went on, 'The lift in St. Thomas, you say?' He fumbled about his coat, then ambled over to the console. 'There's something you ought to remember… where is it?' He grabbed a cardboard box out from the grate and rummaged about it.
While he searched for whatever it was that he was looking for, Rose reached out, searching for another timeline. She was relieved to find another— two more.
Before she could dig into their timelines, the Doctor told her from the floor, 'Bill Potts and Nardole. Don't go about Nardole's timeline. I think you said once that his cyborg nature made him all— what did you say? Choppy and twitchy. Like there were big chunks missing that his time consciousness didn't know about.'
She frowned. 'Time consciousness? What's that mean?'
The Doctor shrugged. 'Exactly as it says, I suppose. I dunno, you said it. Anyways, here we are.' He held out a journal.
Rose took it from him, flipping through the pages. 'Jim the Fish… Angels… Library…'
'Oi!' He tugged the book back, raising his eyebrows at her. 'Spoilers.'
She scoffed and put her hands on her hips. 'I beg your pardon?' She raised her eyebrows right back at him. 'Who's the one who can see all of time and space?' She leaned closer to him, a grin tugging at her lips. 'All that ever happened, all that ever could be?'
She ran her eyes over his face, noting all the differences, cataloguing them for future reference. This was obviously a future regeneration, after all. She frowned and pulled away. 'I thought you said you were on your last regeneration.'
The Doctor shook his head, paging through the journal. 'I was just telling you that to get you to leave the timelines alone.'
She stared at him.
'Here we are.' He shook the pages out and handed her the journal. 'Remember this. It'll make everything go by much smoother.'
Absently, Rose took the journal, her mind still reeling from what he said. 'You lied to me?' she demanded.
He froze and had the decency to look cowed. 'Er, sweetheart...'
Rose took a step towards him, barely a metre in between them. 'You lied to me?'
'We've already had this conversation,' he told her weakly. 'I don't fancy having it again.'
She glared up at him, hands on her hips. 'So you're not on your last regeneration?'
The Doctor sighed, relaxing slightly. 'No, Rose. Technically speaking, a Time Lord could regenerate until the end of time.' He took a step away from her, rambling, 'I had a friend who regenerated over a hundred times before breakfast just 'cos she didn't like the way she looked.' He smiled a little, in that new, sharp way of his.
'So you're not gonna die?' she asked, her voice wavering a bit.
The Doctor held his hands out. 'Does it look like I'm dead?'
'Time can be rewritten.'
He dropped his hands and took a step towards her. She stood still as he reached up, suddenly hesitant. For a second she thought he was going to cradle her face but instead he laid his hands on her shoulders. 'Not us: he told her. 'You made it that way.' A smugness overtook his expression. 'You took all of time and space as your plaything quite literally.'
She looked up at him— she was surprised to find that she was still level with his sternum; if she leaned forward just a little, she could hear his hearts beat. 'But are you gonna die? One day?'
He frowned at her. 'I don't mess with that sort of thing, and neither should you. But I know what you're asking— and no, Rose.' His fingers twitched against her shoulders, a light butterfly flutter. The action sent shivers down her spine.
She looked into his eyes, even as her head started pounding and the orange light started to brighten into gold. Eyes, as blue and piercing as ice was softer than she knew, not as haunted. The loss of that anguish comforted her more than his parting words.
'We survive, Rose. Not without some cuts and bruises, but in the end, we survive, and we live.'
~~~
Half-scenes rushed across her vision and echoes of conversations followed, whether or not they were synced to what she was seeing.
There was Amy, screaming silently as a Yorkshire woman said, 'I'm really craving a fried egg sandwich.' A demented Mary Poppins with her hands raised towards the sky as a voice echoed, 'Would you like a jelly baby?' Jack, blinking into existence with a smug grin on his face. 'No more!' A boy, walking across the street, unaware of the car rushing towards him. And the voice of the Doctor, familiar and heartbroken, 'I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a mad man. And I've watched universes freeze, and creation burn—'
The scenes faded but the Doctor's voice, the Doctor she knew, stayed. '—I have seen things you wouldn't believe and I have lost things you will never understand!'
She held onto that Doctor, his voice, his essence. She was supposed to be with him. What were they doing? They were doing something; they always were. It had something to do with a journal. There was a name in the journal. River Song. Was she supposed to be with her? No, no, she had never met her. Had she? Will she? Oh, what was in that damn journal?
Data.
Tests. All science-y biology stuff. Things about spikes and mRNA samples and immunity. A disease. An epidemic, a vaccine, blue surgical masks on a bridge. Yes, that's right! In London, in St. Thomas, in a lift, on November 18, 2020!
Her vision exploded in a burst of golden light, the inside of the lift coming into focus as the afterglow faded. Blue and green and red and yellow and orange and pink and purple and back to blue.
Her vision was still a little blurry, even as she could feel the cold bite of the walls. The floor was steady underneath her feet— a weird sensation after being immaterial. And there was a face in front of her.
She squinted at it, trying to place it. Was she supposed to know him? It seemed like he knew her, he was saying her name. Rose Rose Rose Rose. Was that her name? Rose? Yes, it must be, she responded to it after all.
She reached out, trying to grasp at his timeline. If she could look into his timeline she would know who he was. She wrapped her hands around the dark brass of his timeline— Good Lord, how old was this man? As old as Time itself it seemed.
The man choked, his eyes widening as she pulled on his timeline. What a curious reaction. She did it again, a smile lifting her cheeks as he stumbled forward, towards her.
He leaned over her, his hands braced on either side of her head. He panted, his face stained dark red as he looked into her eyes. 'I—' he started and swallowed thickly. 'Hullo,' he finished hoarsely.
She tilted her head at him, hands still holding onto his timeline. She looked into it and found thick golden strands woven into it— her own timeline.
'Oh,' she said finally. She looked up at him. 'You're the Doctor.' She frowned. 'You're not Scottish anymore.'
It was possible, after all, for his eyes to widen even more. 'I— Scottish?'
Holding onto his— her? Their?— timeline helped. The pounding in her head faded. The light became more fluorescent white and less pulsing gold. She didn't let go, only let her heartbeat slow and her breathing steady, even as his breath wavered across her face and the brass of the timeline pulsed erratically in time to his hearts.
In the space between one blink and the next, she was back, as if she had never left.
Hazel eyes locked on green.
'I—' she squeaked. 'Doctor?' She stared up at him, at the minimal space between them. He was practically sprawled across her, a weight that hadn't occured to her until that moment. Their timeline was at a near constant glow with their combined, speeding heartbeats. With a gasp, she dropped it, letting it fade into the background, leaving behind only time dust and shaking hands.
The breath rushed out of him, fanning warmth across her face. She stiffened at the feeling, pressing herself up against the wall.
Ding!
That single sound startled the both of them, spurring the Doctor to scramble ungracefully to his feet. He coughed several times, wringing the mask in hands. Then, remembering where he was, he looped the bands over his ears and pinched it at his nose.
Rose, rising to her feet, felt about her person, looking for the same garment.
The Doctor let out a too-high 'Oh!' before reaching into his pockets and pulling it out. There was an awkward trade off where neither party wanted to touch the other's hand but they ended up touching with every movement.
The Doctor's ears were bright red when the doors finally opened.