Chapter 1

Among Chrysanthemums and Carnations

Carnation: Fascination

Chrysanthemum: Cheerfulness and rest, You are a good friend.

"I promise you," Jack said as he stepped out of the TARDIS. "This world has the best shopping for women's clothes in the universe. There's no place better."

"Nice." Rose followed him eagerly out into the sunshine, blinking in the sudden brightness.

"And you know this why exactly?" the Doctor asked, locking the door behind them. He was completely ignored by both his companions.

With his ship gone and no actual obligations to be anywhere or any when, it had been the most obvious thing to invite Jack to join them on their travels through time and space. And in the past couple of weeks Rose had found that travelling with both the Doctor and Jack was a great deal of fun - for the most part. They were both adventurous and enthusiastic and generally nice people into the bargain. Not to mention the eye-candy. What more could a girl ask for?

That being said, there were drawbacks. First of all was the shear volume of testosterone that had been flying around inside the TARDIS since Jack had joined them was probably poisonous. It was an entirely friendly rivalry, granted. However, Jack and the Doctor still seemed constantly to be trying to one up each other, both in the field as it were and by telling amazing - and probably wildly exaggerated - stories of the places they'd been and the things they'd done. And in Jack's case, the people he'd done as well. Rose had heard more in the last two weeks about the places the Doctor had been before she met him than she'd heard in all the months she'd been travelling with him before Jack's arrival. It had been fun at first, but it was getting old; not the stories so much as the unending competition behind them.

The other thing that had begun getting on her nerves was the lack of attention she'd been receiving. It wasn't that she minded focussing a bit on showing Jack that he didn't know as much about time and space as he thought he did. She had to admit to a wicked little delight whenever the Doctor managed to show Jack something that truly surprised him. It didn't happen often, but it was always entertaining when it did. And she'd known that Jack's joining them would make things a little different. She'd been used to the TARDIS being hers and the Doctor's alone and, of course, adding a third party to the mix would shift the balance a little. At the same time though, Rose couldn't ignore the fact that she'd started to become jealous. She didn't like it. It made her feel... well, it made her feel petty. Just a stupid little ape after all who couldn't stand the fact that she wasn't the Doctor's sole focus anymore.

She'd tried to ignore it, pretend everything was fine. She told herself that she was just being silly, that the Doctor cared about her and valued her as much as he ever had. That Jack was like a new toy and once the Doctor got used to having him around the attention he gave to each of them would even out. She tried telling herself that he wasn't actually ignoring her as such. It was just that she wasn't used to his attention being divided. All she had to do was give it time. She'd get used to it and not mind anymore.

She hadn't entirely believed either of her arguments, but she'd managed to at least act patient while the newness of Jack's presence on board the TARDIS began to wear off. She simply kept telling herself that it would be fine when things settled back down and they were all used to the new situation.

However, their last two trips had been the final straw. It wasn't just that she wasn't used to the new situation. She was being ignored. Both destinations had been chosen by the Doctor solely for Jack's benefit - or at least to benefit the Doctor's attempts to one up the ex-Time Agent - and in both the Doctor's lack of attention toward Rose had finally had consequences.

When Jack had started telling them war stories - or rather boasting about his competence as a soldier - the Doctor had taken them directly into the middle of a civil war. He'd managed to take Jack down a few pegs and show that he wasn't as good as he liked to think he was. Something Rose would have found amusing... if she'd been there to see it. But the Doctor had been paying so much attention to showing Jack the sights that he'd managed to lose Rose long enough to have them all seriously worried that they wouldn't find one another again. Rose had just turned around and the pair of them had been gone. It had been truly awful. Wandering around in the midst of a pitched battle, completely lost and entirely unarmed was not something Rose was going to forget in a hurry. Neither was she going to forget the row she'd had with the Doctor afterwards or crying herself to sleep later that night.

Following that debacle, and as part of his rather ineffectual attempts to make peace between the Doctor and Rose, Jack had tried to draw the two of them into a discussion on whether or not war was an absolute in the universe. Instead of allowing himself to be pulled into a debate, however, the Doctor had taken it as a challenge. Although, Rose suspected it was partly because he wanted to get out of the TARDIS and away from the tense post-fight atmosphere. Their next stop had been on one of the few entirely pacifistic worlds in the universe. Again, Rose had had a truly dreadful time because the Doctor had forgotten to tell her a few basic facts about the race they were visiting. So, she'd found herself being locked up under suspicion of being violent by nature (this due to the fact that she'd thrown a wadded up piece of paper at the Doctor's head to get his attention when he'd been ignoring her in order to show off his knowledge of the world's history to Jack) and then by falling victim to an illness that existed no where else in the universe and that even the Doctor had never heard of. She wasn't sure what was worse, the way she'd felt while she was ill or the fact that she was too ill by the time the Doctor got to her to give him the piece of her mind she'd been saving up for him while she sat in that ugly, boring, god-awful prison cell.

It proved unnecessary though. After almost two days delirious with fever Rose had awoken to find the Doctor sitting at her bedside, beside himself with worry. No matter what she said to him she couldn't have made him more sorry than he'd made himself. Jack told her later that the Doctor had neither slept nor left her bedside for the entirety of the two days she was delirious. This after a day and a half of concerted effort to find her and free her from the prison she'd been placed in.

Now, almost a week later Rose had recovered enough for them to continue their travels. This time though she had the contrite and entirely focussed attention of both males who insisted that this trip would be somewhere special just for her. Anywhere she wanted, whatever she wanted to do. Provided it wasn't too strenuous since she still wasn't entirely recovered, or so the Doctor insisted. Rose felt fine and rather suspected he was being overly protective out of guilt. Which was fine with her. As far as she was concerned he was going to have to work for some time to make the last two trips up to her.

So, partly to replace the two outfits which were beyond repair after war and prison and partly to exact a little revenge on the Doctor, she'd insisted that she wanted to be taken shopping. She'd meant it more as a joke than a demand and she hadn't really expected that the boys would insist on going with her. All in all, she'd have been happy with an afternoon back in London 2005 as long as it was the Doctor's money she was spending and he sprang for chips at the end of it. She hadn't anticipated just how seriously the Doctor and Jack would take her request.

Which was how they'd ended up on Temrin 8; the smallest world in a large but mostly uninhabited solar system, sometime in the 52nd century.

The TARDIS had landed safely in a little side street only a few blocks from the Plaza of Glass, the women's shopping area, in the early morning and all three of them were going to devote the entire day to clothes shopping for Rose. She still wasn't sure whether she was more touched by the gesture, amused by the mental image of the Doctor in the middle of a department store, or worried about what she might be inflicting on the unsuspecting shopkeepers of this alien planet.

Ah well. They were here and Rose was determined to enjoy both her shopping and her revenge.

"First thing I'm going to need is pair of sunglasses," Rose commented as they stepped out into a large thoroughfare, bright in the morning's sun. The clean white buildings and shining glass around them reflected back the light making everything almost too bright to look at. The whiteness of it all would have been overwhelming if it hadn't been for the trees and bushes which grew in a strip down the centre of the street. The streets gleamed and the sun promised a warm day to come. However, the morning breeze was still a little sharp and Rose was glad of her jacket.

"All that stuff you brought from Earth and you didn't bring sunglasses?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her, a grin tugging at his lips.

"Says the man who has two swimming pools and doesn't even own a bathing suit," Rose sniffled.

"Not all species are as hung up about nakedness as you humans are."

"I object," Jack said, as he started leading them down the street. "I have no problems whatsoever with skinny dipping. I much prefer it, in fact."

Rose rolled her eyes. "You don't count."

"Why not?" he demanded, turning to walk backwards as Rose and the Doctor followed him. "I'm human."

"You leave the door open when you shower!" she said. "You're an exhibitionist by nature. Therefore it's just you, not humans in general."

Jack's objections that his preferences did count and Rose's insistence that they didn't continued all the way to the end of the street. The Doctor refused to allow himself to be pulled into it, but listened to the good-natured bickering with evident amusement.

For the first time in a while Rose found herself relaxing, enjoying the company. She actually felt as though she were part of the group again, a feeling that deepened when the Doctor took her hand as they walked.


The Plaza of Glass was every bit as lovely as its name suggested and far larger than Rose had been expecting. It was the size of two football fields at least. In the middle was a park with winding paths amid tall trees, brightly blooming flowerbeds, and little white gazebos. This was surrounded by tall glittering buildings which seemed entirely made of glass and prisms that cast rainbows on the white cobles of the streets. The ground floor windows all round them displayed bolts of bright fabric, glass dummies modelling some of the most beautiful dresses Rose had ever seen, and stone pillars on which sat shoes in more styles than she'd ever even dreamed of. Looking up, she could see showrooms of more clothes through the higher windows. It wasn't only a shopper's paradise, it was truly a beautiful place.

"They've built it up a bit since I was here last," Jack remarked, looking around with self-satisfaction as though he'd built the place himself.

"It's great!" Rose enthused.

The Doctor shrugged. "I've seen better." He relented with a sheepish grin when they both glared at him. "Alright, not many. The Tulorins have always been great lovers of beauty. And it's not something they just enjoy either. It's part of their religion. So, even if you don't like an outfit don't say it's ugly," he told Rose. "That would be a major insult."

"I'll keep that in mind," Rose said, eager to get started.

The shops were only just opening for the day and the plaza was still mostly empty. So, for the next couple of hours the three had the shops mostly to themselves. At first, Rose tried to focus on finding practical clothes with the unpredictability of their travels in mind. The shops unfortunately didn't carry trousers - apparently women on this world didn't wear them - but there was a wide enough variety of things that it wasn't too hard to find clothes she could use. She picked up a couple of tops and a knee length skirt that looked like cotton but was made of a fabric tougher than denim.

She took special delight in making the Doctor carry her bags.

He'd been fairly bored with the whole thing, amusing himself by teasing Rose about her love of something as frivolous as shopping and finding fault with any piece of clothing about which his opinion was asked. But he'd been going along with the shopping trip for Rose's sake and had stayed with them, not wandered off in search of something more interesting. That and the fact that he continued to hold her hand as they walked from shop to shop was enough for Rose.

After a while though the allure of the fancier things grew too much. With Jack's support Rose managed to drag the Doctor onto floors dedicated to arrays of some of the most stunning dresses she'd ever seen. Once there it didn't take too much persuasion on the part of the shop assistant to get her to try some of them on.

She felt like a princess standing in front of wall of mirrors in a strapless gown of a fabric that shimmered like silk and clung to her body like a second skin before fanning out in gleaming folds just below her hips. The russet colour set off her complexion perfectly, or so the shop assistant assured her, as he spread the bottom of the gown around her feet.

"Wow," Jack commented, looking Rose up and down with undisguised admiration.

Rose pulled her hair up on top of her head and held it there, turning her head this way and that while she imagined walking into a ball dressed like this.

Then she caught the Doctor looking at her in the mirror.

He'd flopped into a chair outside the dressing room when Rose had gone in to change, complaining that it was a waste of time since he wasn't buying her anything that impractical. Now, he sat staring at her with an intensity to his expression that made her breath catch and her mouth go dry.

She licked her lips nervously. "What do you think, Doctor?" she forced a little smile when he met her eyes in the mirror.

He seemed to wake up and the expression disappeared from his face, though not entirely from his eyes. He sat back obviously struggling to maintain the bored air he'd had all morning.

"The dress isn't bad," he said, shrugging. "It's a nice dress. Too bad about the colour though."

"What's wrong with it?" Rose asked, turning slightly and watching the play of the light across the fabric, hoping she wasn't blushing.

"Nothing that I can see," Jack offered, still watching Rose as though she were something he wanted to eat.

"It brings out the youthful beauty of her human complexion," the shop assistant, who had introduced himself as Lurrin, said with authority.

Rose tried to focus entirely on the dress as the Doctor's eyes swept over her, something in them not nearly as disinterested as his voice sounded.

Oh just stop it, she told herself silently. You'd think that no one had ever looked at you in a dress before. It was ridiculous. There Jack was, practically licking his lips while her mouth was going dry because something in the Doctor's expression was... what? Focussed? She'd asked him what he thought of the dress after all. But she couldn't help but remember the way he'd looked at her when she'd come out of the wardrobe in the TARDIS wearing that dress back in Cardiff.

"Well?" she asked, trying to cover her embarrassment. "What's wrong with it?"

He met her eyes again and this time she forced herself to hold his gaze, raising her eyebrows slightly. Then the Doctor grinned, one of those daft grins of his that seem to spread from one overlarge ear to the other.

"It makes you look like a Yee-yaris fire worm," he said firmly, his eyes dancing with sudden mischief.

Rose's indignation lasted less than a second, as she caught the shocked look on the face of the shop assistant. She'd never seen anyone more horrified in her life as he began to object in the most strenuous tones. Jack laughed outright.

"Tosser," Rose muttered, glancing back at the Doctor from the shop assistant, realising he said it just for that effect and struggling not to smile.

The Doctor winked.

Lurrin began babbling about other colours that the Doctor might like better and hurried off in a dither to find something else.

"The look on that guy's face..." Jack chuckled. Rose finally let herself laugh.

"You're just being mean," she said told the Doctor, lifting the edges of the skirt and twirling around in front of the mirror to see the shimmer of the fabric and distract herself from his gaze.

She found a moment later that she needn't have bothered. She glanced up when he didn't answer and found that he'd got up and gone over to the window. They were up on the fifth story and he looked out over the plaza frowning.

"Something wrong?" Jack asked.

"I don't know." He paused. "It's just... Does anything seem odd about this place to you?"

Rose walked over the looked out the window as well, trying to see what he was getting at. "Odd how?"

He shook his head. "It's probably nothing."

"Yeah, right," Jack snorted, joining them. "This is us we're talking about here. The possibility that it's nothing is probably billions to one against."

Rose stifled a laugh, but the Doctor seemed not to have heard.

"Doctor?" she asked, laying her hand on his arm to get his attention.

They were interrupted then by Lurrin's return with three more dresses for Rose's inspection and the Doctor shook his head and returned to his chair, appearing as indifferent to the proceedings as he had earlier.

As soon as Lurrin had bustled Rose back into the dressing room and back out again in the next dress the Doctor took up his game again, finding fault with how that dress fitted Rose and how colour of the one after that made her look sallow. He was always careful never to say that anything was wrong with the dress, that Rose remembered would have been an insult to the shop. And judging from the reactions of the shopping assistant one the poor guy might never recover from. Rose would have been insulted by this pastime, felt she should be insulted... but somehow she wasn't. The bored look never quite seemed to return to his eyes and she could feel them on her at all times. It was almost unnerving. Almost.

Rose found herself playing along, trying not to think about what it was like being the focus of all of the Doctor's undivided attention. She dredged up as much offended dignity as she could, pretending to take his teasing seriously. Jack picked up the game as well, either agreeing with the Doctor's objections or finding some of his own.

It was mean to play with the poor shop assistant like that, but he made it so easy.

Despite all their heckling though each dress was more beautiful than the last and the more dresses Rose tried on the more she could almost feel the Doctor's eyes on her. Each one of the gowns was a creation worthy of a fairytale and no matter what the Doctor's voice said, his eyes said something very different. Something that made Rose's knees go just a little weak.

The shop assistant grew increasingly complimentary toward her as the Doctor and Jack continued to find fault with everything Rose tried on. And as their objections grew sillier Lurrin's compliments grew more and more outrageous. Rose was thankful for this as struggling not to show her amusement and play along was keeping her from thinking things she'd rather not think. This was the Doctor after all. They weren't like that. They just weren't.

It was the dresses, she decided. They made things... different. It would be alright again when she was back in her own clothes and was just Rose once more.

So, it was with a mixture of relief and regret that she entered the dressing room the final time to take off the last of the dresses and put back on her denim skirt and plain top. They both seemed so ordinary after the swing of full skirts around her and the shimmer of expensive fabrics. She sighed as she looked at herself in the mirror one last time. This gown was silver and form-fitting, made of the same silk-like material as the russet one earlier. The sleeves came down to a V-shape over her hands, which made her wrists look smaller and more delicate than she would have thought possible. The square-cut neckline showed rather more cleavage than the kind of thing she usually wore but it stopped just short of being sluttish, promising rather than actually revealing.

She ran her hands over the material, feeling the cool slide of it. She'd never been the fairytale kind of girl, never really wanting to be the beautiful princess who the prince fell in love with at a glance. She wanted to be appreciated for herself, not a nice dress and a good makeup job. Just the same, the way she felt in these dresses... the way she felt when the Doctor looked at her when she was wearing them...

Rose pushed the thoughts away. They were friends, they cared about each other. That was all. He was an alien for crying out loud. They probably weren't even compatible... well, that way. Oh god, she wished she hadn't even thought that. Just the same, she couldn't help but wonder if he actually even had...

"Rose?" She almost jumped a foot as the Doctor's voice from just outside the door interrupted her thoughts. "You okay in there?"

She made herself take a deep breath, knowing she was blushing even though there was no way he could know what she'd just been thinking. She suddenly wanted to wash her mind out with soap.

"Yeah," she called out, reaching back to unfasten the dress.

"What's taking so long?"

"Nothin'." Her voice was a little breathless as the tiny, fabric-covered buttons up the back slipped through her fingers. "Um, where did the guy - Lurrin - go?"

"To put the other dresses away. Why?"

"Ah..."

"Problem?"

Rose strained again, trying to get the buttons undone and wishing for the first time that the dress wasn't so form fitting. There was no way she could get the thing over her head, which meant...

Oh god. This wasn't fair. It just wasn't.

"I need help," Rose admitted in defeat. "I can't get these sodding buttons undone."

"Oh." For a moment there was nothing but silence outside the dressing room door. Then in a rather strained voice: "Do you... want me to come in then?"

Rose rolled her eyes, trying to concentrate on being annoyed so she wouldn't have to feel embarrassed. "Well, you can't exactly undo them from out there, can you?"

"Right." There was silence again.

"Doctor?"

"Yeah," he said, finally opening the door. If Rose hadn't known better she would have said he was blushing a little as he came in. Did Time Lord's blush?

Rose stared fixedly at her feet, just sticking out from the bottom of the dress as the Doctor began work on the long row of tinny buttons that ran from the base of her neck to the bottom of the dress. He didn't have to undo all of them, only down to her hips for her to get the dress off. But that seemed like far too much at the moment. Funny, she hadn't thought anything of it when the shop assistant had been doing them up for her. He was just... it just wasn't the same. She could feel her heart beating too fast and fervently hoped it wasn't as loud as it sounded to her.

As he got the first few buttons undone, one of the Doctor's fingers accidentally brushed against her skin and a shiver ran up Rose's spine, startling her.

For a second, the Doctor froze before slipping the next button through it's loop careful not to touch her again. Rose wasn't sure if she was pleased about that or not.

He worked his way slowly down her back and she could feel the slight pull of the fabric across her breasts as he tugged lightly on the dress. Strange that the simple pull of fabric should suddenly feel so... so intimate.

Because he's like you. Except with dating and dancing.

You just assume that I don't... dance.

Rose wished she knew what he was thinking, but she didn't even dare look up from her feet to see the reflection of his face in the mirror. The memory of that conversation during the London blitz had been coming back to her a lot since she'd begun to recover from the fever. The Doctor had been so worried. He hadn't slept, hadn't left her side for the entire time she was unconscious. Of course, she knew Time Lords didn't need as much sleep as humans did. The Doctor was always having a go at her about how little stamina she had. Seventeen or eighteen hours of mayhem and she was off to sleep again. But he did need some sleep, she was sure. And as for never leaving her side... And how frantic Jack had said he'd been to find her... How dead set against Jack he'd been when they first met him... Jealous? Was that possible?

The dress was beginning to loosen as the Doctor continued down the line of buttons and Rose reached up to grasp the neck. Suddenly, the neckline of the dress seemed far to revealing as it was and she certainly didn't want anything more to show. She just tried to focus on breathing slow and steady. God, she wished she hadn't taken off her bra before trying this dress on. Although what protection that would have provided her with now she didn't know. It was just that she felt that much more naked under the dress without it.

Rose finally felt the last of it loosen as the Doctor undid the buttons holding the dress tight across her hips. If Rose were to let go of her death-grip on the front of the dress she's be standing in front of him in nothing but her knickers. Her grip tightened.

She nearly gasped as she felt a cool hand suddenly against the small of her back, lightly tracing her spine. Her eyes flew up to the mirror in front of her to find the Doctor looking at her with a strained look on his face.

When he spoke his voice was softer than normal, almost a little hoarse. "You... you lost some weight while you were ill," he said. "I hadn't... hadn't really noticed how much before."

Rose opened her mouth to reply and found she couldn't think of a single thing to say standing there all but naked with the Doctor's hand on her back. And even if she could have thought of anything, she wasn't sure she could manage to make a single sound as they stared at one another in the mirror...

"Rose?"

They both jumped and the Doctor snatched his hand back as though he'd been burnt. Rose spun around, gripping the dress tighter against her and raising it higher.

"Rose, do you have any idea where the Doctor's got to?" Jack's voice was muffled by the closed dressing room door and Rose was thankful that the Doctor had thought to close it when he'd come in.

"He's in here helping me with the dress," Rose answered, pleased that her voice managed to come out sounding almost normal, instead of shaking as badly as her knees seemed to want to. She couldn't look at the Doctor.

"What do you want?" the Doctor called back.

"I think I figured out what you were talking about earlier. About something being off about this place?"

Rose's eyes shot to the Doctor's face, the promise of adventure overcoming her shyness. "Trouble?" she asked, just a tad too hopefully.

The Doctor shrugged. "Maybe. Get dressed, then we'll all talk."

For a moment after he left Rose sagged against the wall, trying to catch her suddenly too fast breathing and calm her rapid heartbeat.

What the sodding hell had that been all about? Was she just imagining things or... But the promise of adventure tugged her mind away from whatever might or might not have been happening.

She stripped off the dress with more haste than was appropriate for something so expensive and grabbed for her own clothes.