Chapter 5: After the match

She was sitting next to the TARDIS console blowing on her hot cup of tea. Mickey was off in the kitchen making another cup of tea for himself this time. The Doctor was outside talking with the Time Agency representatives that had come immediately after he had sent a call to them. They were going to deal with Jack and the rest. The Doctor had insisted that they didn't interact too much with him earlier. She wanted too but there were other things on her mind. Like all the weird stuff that had happened and the event she tried to forget. The feel of the male alien rummaging in her mind, forcing her memories all her memories out of her then doing something weird that had made him scream in her mind hard enough for her to lose consciousness for a while. The last she remembered where the whisper of the words: "Bad Wolf" entering her mind.

It wasn't the first time some alien had mentioned that she had something of the wolf about her. The Werewolf had said she had burned like the sun. She had put if off. She had last thought about Bad Wolf when she had discovered it was a message for her. That had been before she had opened the heart of the TARDIS. After that everything was a blur until she had woken up in front of her Doctor who had been in the process of dying. She was sure she should have known what the words meant exactly and where they came from, but it had kept slipping her mind. Now she wondered why she hadn't at least given it some thought. She sipped the warm tea again and tried to put it out of her mind.

"I am the Bad Wolf, I create myself." The words echoed suddenly through her mind. She felt or remembered a sharp burning pain. The memory was that strong as was the faint feeling and memory of a most beautiful song. She gasped and winced. The feeling, the pain and the memory disappeared like smoke through her fingers as she sought to define it.

"You ok," Mickey asked.

She wondered if she should tell him... but then she decided that there was nothing to tell. "Yeah, rough day that is all," she answered.

The Doctor burst in. "All done. Now I am not normally one to stay and fix the little details. However Jack is a friend and the Time Agency promised to set things right," he said. He wandered up to her and gave her an intense stare. "Are you alright, Rose," he asked suddenly a lot more serious than usual after a successful adventure.

She decided to be honest, "I am a bit shaky. Their interrogation was rough."

"And you're sure you're alright?" He studied her for a moment as she nodded. He gently held her hand then hugged her drawing her head against his chest for a moment. She heard his hearts beat and the sound soothed her a lot. Then she felt a strange shiver down her spine and leaned back looking around. It had been like someone staring at her from behind, but it had already stopped again. "I am sorry Rose, I don't know why they did that to you," he said and gave her questioning glance.

But she decided she had no idea why they had done it and so had nothing to say. Instead she wondered and asked, "What will they do to Jack? He looked devastated."

The Doctor looked at her for a moment she saw the grim reality in them. She remembered when she had first met Jack how happy go lucky he had been, but also how angry over losing two years of his memories. "You really think this is the reason they erased his memory?" she said and blinked in surprise.

"It could very well be, I am not sure. We should leave though, I think a more pleasant place should be on the menu don't you," the Doctor suggested.

"Actually Doctor I wouldn't mind a bit of a rest before going anywhere," she said feeling more than a bit knackered.

He looked at her and nodded. "No problem, a rest might do us all a bit of good, I'll put the TARDIS into deep space far away from anywhere," he said and set about activating the controls of his ship. She nodded and used to the shuddering of flight she walked out of the control room. Her room was luckily pretty close.

She thumped into the bed of the room she had made her home. Stacks of clothes lay in cupboards to avoid getting tossed around by their travels and the bed smelled homey now after she had used it for years. She had glued a small picture of her mom along with another old one of her dad next to the bed but otherwise the only memorabilia around was the leftovers from her travels, souvenirs from places close and far in both time and space. A small lacquered figurine from Japan in the early 19th century. A blue purple icicle-like rock from Woman Wept. A small note confirming her as the Dame of Powell Estate handwritten by Queen Victoria with a sure handed comment about her banishment on top.

She locked the door and undressed carefully feeling more than a bit sore here and there. If she had felt more energetic a warm shower would have been in order, but she decided it could wait until morning. Instead she just put on a different T-shirt and jumped on the covers. She waved her hand over the light and the room fell into a dusk like semi-darkness lighted by the faint bluish glow of the unreadable Gallifreyan circular words that were inscribed on the back of her door.

He stood staring at the TARDIS console as they were finally adrift inside the Time Vortex. He had opted to pilot his ship there rather than somewhere reachable like deep space. They needed a little while in transit between adventures again. It had happened before of course. Minor wounds or events that needed to be processed had before made it necessary for doing a bit of drifting through nowhere. He would use the time to read, fix his ship or doing different things, while Rose would run around the TARDIS slowly getting bored. In his last incarnation he had hated it, but that incarnation had never liked to stop and contemplate much of anything being almost a walking wounded trying to escape from his own memories. He sighed and pushed off from the console, considering if he wanted to go to his library or swing by the kitchen where Mickey often camped out. "Library it is," he said and walked that way.

He noted immediately as he walked towards the library that he was passing Rose's room. He had given it to her over a year ago. She had been all of 19 years old, a good human being but woefully unprepared for the universe he had taken her into or anywhere else for that matter. Still she had made it her home. He hadn't been inside a lot since then. At first because of his hurting soul not wanting to think about the possibilities of life in the TARDIS becoming domestic as he no longer had a place to call home. Now he respected Rose's privacy too much to invade it. By now pretty much like Rose he had made the TARDIS all the home he needed and her a part of his family. He lingered for a moment contemplating their strange day.

He had two things on his mind with associations to their day he realized as he walked towards his destination. He wanted to know why the first H'Fahni had chosen to focus so much on Rose and why that had killed it. However he had guessed from Rose's behaviour that she had no idea either. She had been tortured mentally but that didn't mean she was aware of much more than that consciously. He considered initiating telepathic contact with her but he hadn't had too much luck with that lately given the bond inadvertently formed with Reinette a while back and besides he knew Rose wasn't really very happy about any kind of telepathic access to her mind. He had really only been in there once and that was not a clear memory for him either. Second he wondered how the base capable of shifting between real space and the time vortex had escaped the conflagration in the Time War and Rose's equally massive act to end it just a few months ago. Still it was probably just coincidence as it had been free of Daleks.

He settled into his favourite reading chair looking around at the numerous books most from Gallifrey that lay open against the edge of his table. He looked at the different ones chose the one on the study on the creatures native to the Time Vortex and started reading trying to distract himself for a few hours.

He was getting surer every day he spent aboard this ship. He was realizing that there would not be a place for him on it forever and that maybe just maybe he didn't want there to be. Rose wasn't embracing him back in her life as he had hoped. She had her new better life, a life with meaning she said and it apparently didn't need a Mickey Smith to improve it. Or maybe it was just a cowardice that was unbecoming that spoke again. He didn't like it, but at times he fell back to old behaviour again feeling afraid, fearing change, things like that. And worst of all he still felt like the tin dog.

He also thought about their day. Seeing incredible things, getting into dangerous, but no without reason and then fighting back. He didn't feel pride when he thought about how he had behaved during their crisis. He wanted that to change. He did have a feeling that wanting it to change and changing it was not the same thing. Also he was discovering he realized as he blew on his hot tea that the universe might not be the best choice of places to find the stable relationship with Rose that he had hoped when he had asked the Doctor for permission to join. He wasn't sure why the Doctor had allowed him to come but he had.

He looked at the strange kitchen with its golden walls, rounded beams and rounded cabinets stocked with things from many ages and worlds. A lot of the food was from Earth apparently the Doctor's favourite resupply station or maybe it was the influence of his travelling companions. He started drinking his tea and considered turning in himself to rest his tired legs, which had done all too much running today for his taste.

Locked in her dreams and with everyone else otherwise occupied no one not even Rose noticed a subtle golden flash of energy surrounding her body then fading. It hadn't been the first of there flashes and it wouldn't be the last. Meanwhile in Rose's mind a barrier was crumbling ever so slowly and memories were leaking into her unprepared brain.