Chapter three.
Before the Doctor could properly begin his tale, there was another knock at the double doors. It echoed loudly around their heads. The Doctor rubbed his temples and muttered, "oh for Rassilon's sake."
Then he did something very very strange.
He stretched out his right hand towards the door as if trying to extend his arm far enough without getting up, his eyes trained unblinkingly on the door.
It opened.
Just like that. As if some invisible force was yanking the twin handles backward and forcing the doors to open smoothly and completely silently.
Rose looked from the Doctor to the doors and back again. The Doctor's face betrayed nothing but an apathetic frown.
How was that possible? It was almost as if...
Before she could think further on it, a woman in a different type of red robe began to approach. There was a pleasant smell wafting from a sliver kart the woman wheeled in with her.
"Ah, the food, good...good..." The Doctor mumbled absentmindedly.
The woman eyed the humans of the room wearily but didn't react to whatever her thoughts were.
It took a few minutes for her to cross the massive room and with each step she took, the smell got closer. Rose began to salivate at the mere thought of a hot meal, and her stomach growled in agreement.
The wheels of the cart and the footsteps of the women were muffled greatly by the golden-red carpet that clashed horribly with the brown sofas, but the cart still gave a little groan when it reached its destination as if it were tired and ready for a nap.
Rose knew the feeling, but she could hardly think of anything other than the promise of what lay under the immaculate round dishes covering the platters and blocking her eyes cruelly from seeing their bounty.
After seeing the Doctor again, everything else had been pushed to the back of her mind. She only just comprehended what a state she was in. They were imprisoned for days. No showers, proper bathroom breaks, or food, let alone simple things like a hairbrush, a toothbrush... God her breath!
She suddenly felt embarrassed. The Doctor's fresh sent was clear from the second he appeared. Rose was pleased to note that he still smelt of bananas, some things pleasantly never changed. Yet, here she was, in front of the one man she would do anything to be desirable to, looking worse than she ever had.
Then she felt shame.
Shame in thinking that things like that were important to the Doctor. She knew him better than that. She knew that all he cared about right now was whether or not they were okay and what was the extent of their mistreatment. She hoped he never found out.
She was broken out of her thoughts by a prickling on the back of her neck. She was spacing out, her eyes glazed at the food cart, but then she looked up. The woman who brought the food in was staring at her.
Really staring at her. As if she was an...alien.
She understood then. She was sure of it. They didn't know what planet they were on, but all they knew was that is sure as hell wasn't earth. She was an alien. The Doctor had said they were aliens here, but it was different to see people treat her that way. She wondered if they were giving this woman her first impression of humans and if they were, that she would understand that they didn't all look so savage.
She has been on other planets before, seen humanoids before, and she had been the alien before. But at least then she wasn't the only one. The Doctor was also just as foreign as her. But for some strange reason, she couldn't shake the thought that this was somehow more than just some planet that the Doctor had somehow established some sort of commanding role on. He was both too comfortable and too familiar with everything.
Rose refused to let the strange woman intimidate her. She stared right back, unbashful. The woman blushed and turned to face the Doctor.
She bowed deeply before him and with a quick, "my apologies sir", began to back out of the room, with her back to the door and her eyes never leaving the Doctor.
The Doctor met her gaze, stare for stare. Silent words passed between them, and Rose yearned to understand what was going on for what felt like the hundredth time.
At the moment though she wasn't sure what she wanted more, the food or the explanation. Hopefully, the Doctor would understand their impatience, and let them have both simultaneously.
After being crapped up in a small cell only slightly bigger than a walk-in closet with two other people, she was aching to do something. Eat, run, understand, grab the Doctor and snog him senseless. Just something!
The doors gave a barely audible click shut, and only then did the Doctor blink. He rubbed his eyes with his left hand.
"I feel like I am going to be saying this a lot, but I'm sorry again. She, well most people here really, have never really seen a human before."
So Rose was right.
Jack nodded in understanding. "So then if she wasn't human, then is anyone here human? Are you going to finally tell us where the hell we are?"
The Doctor stared at Jack in surprise. "You have to ask? Isn't it obvious?"
"We'r not all big bleedin' aliens with big brains, ya know? Ya can actually spell stuff out, it would't kill ya." Jackie retorted halfheartedly.
Her eyes were trained firmly on the food kart that the humans wanted to both ravish and at the same time were apprehensive to touch.
The Doctor followed her eyes and stood up. He straightened his robes, looking rather pompous with his diamond crown and sparkling garbs. Rose half expected him to pretend to look for imaginary dirt under his fingernails.
He didn't, and Rose really didn't want to think about what was under her fingernails.
The Doctor took off the lid on the largest platter. Steam wafted up in a cloud and the smell of sweet-savory chicken filled their nostrils.
It didn't look like chicken though. For one thing, it was much larger. For another, it still had its head, and that was most definitely not the head of a chicken, and chickens did not have scales.
There was a second lower shelf to the cart that the Doctor leaned into and pulled out a small stack of ostentatious looking dishes and cutlery.
He set the plates, if you can call something that looked as if it was made with real gold a "plate", on his desk in neat order. Then began opening all the smaller, covered pots and dishing them out evenly on three different plates.
The dishes were made, or so it seemed, out of pure gold, and they were each almost as large as the chicken creature. The Doctor scooped up bits of potatoes, beef, gravy, roasted vegetables, fruits they had never seen, and so much more. Somehow he managed to squeeze some of the aforementioned carved bird onto each plate. He then placed a fork and knife with a diamond-studded handle, by each plate. Then he stood back to admire his handy work.
He seemed to notice that his desk wasn't exactly a good table, and the sofa's they currently occupied was not pressed up against the desk, but rather parallel.
"Stand up a moment, k?" He asked, making a square with his hands and looking through it at them.
Rose, Jack, and her mom all shared a confused glance, before obliging.
The Doctor shoed them further back with his hand, still looking at the brown sofa that Jack and Jackie were just sitting on.
"Just come around my desk a tick, ya?"
They did so, without hesitation, wanting to see what he was going to do.
Rose gasped, Jackie gave a small shriek of shock, and Jack breathed, "Oh you're kidding me?"
One of the brown sofas was moving, on its OWN!
It was sliding across the carpet as if on skates. It turned around and stopped only when it was right in front of the desk, facing it.
"W'at t'e 'ell was t'at, 'ow did you... did you... is that f'in' alive, cause I was sittin' in it, an I ant sittin' in some funny alien couch f'hat's gonna eat –"
She stopped rambling and switched to huffing indignantly at the Doctor's laughter.
"Alive!" He roared. "Really? Alive? And gonna eat you did you say?"
Jackie ignored him and just mumbled that she said nothing of the sort.
"Doctor…," Jack started, but the Doctor waved him off.
"First sit, eat."
He motioned to the couch. Rose half expected it to move again at his hand movement, but it didn't.
Rose sat down at once and picked up a plate and began at once to shove food into her mouth, not caring how she came across. She was famished and the second the food touched her lips, her stomach growled more ferociously, as if telling her to go even faster, and she did her best to ignore it, knowing that she needed to go slowly.
She all but moaned in delight.
The thing she thought looked like chicken tasted nothing like it. It was much sweeter and juicier, but yet also dry and tangy, and the moment she swallowed, she wanted more.
Jack, after seeing her enthusiasm, joined her and tucked into his plate with a little less fervor, but heated none the less. Jackie looked to be having an inner battle. Sit on the creepy couch and eat what was somehow better than it smelt, or stand there safer but still starving.
The hunger must have won out, because she joined them, but slowly. She tapped the cushions, pulling back fast, but nothing happened. Then she pressed her hand down hard and jumped back, but nothing happened again.
"Oh come on now, it was just me okay, the sofa isn't alive or anything, look!"
Jackie screamed again, and Rose and Jack nearly choked on their mouthfuls.
A pitcher of water began to float over from the second self of the cart and onto the table. It landed gently without splashing a single drop onto the elaborate cherry woodwork. Rose could imagine Jackie's thoughts about coasters and the lack of, on wood as fine as that, and she grinned to herself behind her fork. her second immediate thought took over everything else. Her fork starting shaking slightly.
Rose began coughing and sputtering, and Jackie ran over to thump her on the back a few times, before glaring at the Doctor who had the good sense to look sheepish.
"Ah," he said rubbing the back of his neck, "sorry about that. I didn't mean to startle you, just. Well..." He trailed off.
Through the thumping of her back, Rose coughed once more and then gave the Doctor a weak thumbs up.
The Doctor grinned back.
Jackie eyed him with a mixture of fear and distrust, and the Doctor's grin vanished.
"Right then, explanations," he muttered, sitting back down in his plush chair, leaning back, and putting his still bare feet onto the desk, but well away from their plates.
"I'm still not convinced that desk is really yours ya know?" Jack added, tentatively reaching a hand over to the water jug and pouring himself a glass.
"Humans, really? I can move stuff with my mind and your only concern is to think about my desk?" The Doctor rolled his eyes and waved his hands dramatically.
Rose giggled slightly but was still impatiently awaiting his impending explanation. The Doctor's humor took her back to so many familiar moments of extraordinary. He had a tendency to make light of those times as well. It felt right, despite to clearly unnatural things he was doing. Then again, he literally changed his face in front of her, so she didn't know how anything could still surprise her, and at the same time, was glad to find that things still could.
"Well, it does help if you'd tell us how you'd picked up that little trick too," Jack agreed.
Jack and the Doctor shared an amused look.
"First things first, how old was I when you last saw me?"
Rose looked to Jack, knowing their answers were each going to be different.
"Well, I think you were about 900 something when I last saw you. I think, I mean, you were never exactly very chatty about your age were you?"
The Doctor gave a small laugh and then raised an eyebrow in anticipation for Jack's answer.
Jack blew into his cheeks and blew out slowly. "Oh, I don't know, but it was after that whole Miracle Day thing on earth, remember?"
The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. "Oh yeah, Miracle Day, well I say Miracle Day, well, actually, you humans called it that, or-"
"Why are you asking this?" Rose asked curiously, trying to will herself to eat slower after noticing she was already halfway done with her plate. The food was already sitting heavily in her gut. As though she was an overinflated balloon. She led back against the couch, away from her food for the moment. She was well distracted, and found that turning away from the food now, felt easier.
The Doctor gave her that smile in return. The one where he put his tongue between his teeth. The one the always made her blood rush and her stomach quench.
"Why Rose Tyler, isn't it obvious? It's how I keep track of things now." Then he chuckled as if he just told some private joke, and swung his legs off his desk, replacing it with folded hands. His face was suddenly serious.
"That means that I haven't seen you in almost 7,000 years."
It was lucky Rose was taking a break and didn't have anything in her mouth, because she was sure she would have really choked then.
Jack stared, completely flabbergasted.
Strangely it was Jackie who was the first to recover.
"Come off it, t'at would make you at aroun' 8,000 years old, 'hat's not righ'. You look even younger, less lines aroun' the'y eyes."
The Doctor remained stoic as he replied. "That's because this time, this face, he pointed to it, is younger than when you last saw it. When I regenerated into it, I was much much younger; I looked like one of your teenagers. Can you imagine that? I never saw what this face would look like so young before. It was quite strange. Stranger still though when I grew more and came back into this old face. It was the first time I'd ever done that you see? Regressed back into a body of my choosing, and I always had a thing for this one. The personally could've used a bit of work though, a bit too vain, ill-tempered, but then again, with a controlled regeneration like mine, I got to fix that up a bit didn't I?"
"I understood nearly half of that," Rose admitted, frowning in an attempt to take it all in.
"So let me get this straight," Jack began slowly. "You're saying that, well, basically, you're really really old now?"
The Doctor gave a snort of mock indignation. "Hey, look who's talking, your- oh no wait, I actually don't know how old you are now. When was the last time you saw me again? Because the last time I saw you was very different."
Jack's head jerked up, and he paused with his hand that was in mid-lift of a fork to his mouth. "Oh?"
"Yeah, the last time I saw you..." He trailed off, unsure suddenly. "Well, it's apparently your future. For one thing, you look nothing like you do now."
"Do I?" Jack burst out excitedly. "Did I, or is it, do I…do I, you know, age? Do I look older, younger even, still as devilishly handsome as ever?"
The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Still as annoying as ever I'll tell you though."
The Doctor surveyed Jack, visibly debating whether he should tell him something or not.
"I'll tell you this much, we are still good friends, and recently actually, I brought you here and, well... Let's just say we had an interesting time of it." The Doctor wiggled his eyebrows seductively.
Jack gasped. "No way! No freaking way! Are you telling me-?!"
"So does 'hat mean you're gay?" Jackie interrupted, taking her first break from stuffing herself. She seemed to have lost all her previous hesitations about the food and the sofa.
Rose shot her mum a look, but the Doctor laughed.
"Gay isn't really that kind of a thing here. It's both stricter and more lenient at the same time."
Jack asked, "What does that mean?" While Rose said at the same time, "and here would be...?"
"Gallifrey of course."
All three humans just stared at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
"Doctor…," Rose said in a tone one might use when trying to explain something simple and irrevocable to a small child. "Gallifrey is gone. You said so yourself. It burned, remember?"
She expected the flash of pain that always danced across his face at the mere mention of his home planet, but instead, he waved her off.
"Nah, I just thought it did. I learned the truth when I was around…oh….1,200 and something. Hard to say exactly how old. That regeneration was a bit forgetful about such details."
"But how can this be Gallifrey," Rose cried. "It doesn't make any sense. You said you can't go back, you said you were the last of your kind." Part of her recognized that she was repeating his most reluctant admissions. Things she would have never said to him before. This used to be the most taboo subject. What could've possibly changed so much?
"I was," he nodded in agreement. "I really was, but not forever. Only until I was all caught up you see?"
The confused looks made the Doctor sigh. He sat up straighter, rolling his shoulders to release the tension.
"All this random question and answering is only making you lot more confused. Tell you what, I'll let you absorb what I have told you so far, and finish your food. Just remember to eat slowly. The guest bathroom is that door there."
He pointed to a cherry wood door, with a golden handle, patterned in the same decor as the main double doors. Then he stood, straightened his crown, and pulled down his robes unnecessarily.
"Meanwhile, I am going to get dressed. It's odd entertaining in my bathrobe."
Before they could say anything further on the matter, he crossed the room in only a few powerful strides of his long legs. The hem of his silky sparkling robes alternating between showing them glances of a barefoot and sweeping the floor.
He went into the furthermost room and the left-hand corner and disappeared behind it, with a soft thud.
Then all was still.
The air in the room almost sparked with an awkward and confusing silence left by the Doctor's sudden and impromptu exit.
Jack refilled all their glasses with water, emptying the pitcher on his own glass, which he filled last. Then sat back down and didn't touch his plate or his newly filled water cup.
All of them were trying to take in the bombshells they were just given.
Rose tried making a list in her head.
1) The Doctor is back.
Okay, that was a good first. It was simple, undeniable, and forced an insuppressible smirk to escape her lips.
2) He was in some kind of position of royalty.
If the crown, Oh that crown, wasn't a dead giveaway, then all the, yes your majesty's and the palace-like of an office they were in sure as hell was.
3) He is really really old.
Much older than the last time she had seen him.
That was certain if what he said was to be believed. He once said to her, he would outlive her. It was a time when she was elated, happy. Convinced of her choice and her destiny to stay with him forever. That was one of the few times she could see how truly lonely he was. How depressed it made him.
4) Was the one that possibly freaked her out the most, he had somehow gained a new supernatural ability.
Could he really move things with his mind? If it was anyone else, Rose would have thought that he was having her on, but the proof was in the evidence. Unless it was all some trick. She always knew he was a telepathic species as he had shown her and told her many times before. She thought that was normal for his kind at the time. Normal for him and his people to be able to go inside the minds of other creatures, and to understand every language.
He always had this way of just knowing the time. He said that was a Time Lord thing, but still, to just be so aware of the time, there was most definitely something...supernatural about that. He was always special, but despite all that, he was more special to her. Despite all his mind tricks, and strange abilities.
She wondered if every one of his kind was able to move things with their mind.
It was strange to think of him as nonhuman. Rose was always aware that he wasn't human, but just as often, she needed to be reminded. The only time she really and truly understood that he wasn't human, was when he regenerated. But even then, she was glad. It took her time to get used to it, but she found she loved the new him even more than the old him. But she still wouldn't want that to happen to him again.
Rose didn't know how to feel about all of this yet. All she felt at the moment was a sense of numbed shock. She couldn't even begin to imagine how to cope with all this. And somehow, on top of it all, Gallifrey was back? And they were on it?
Her head was starting to hurt. A thought had struck her. A terrible, paralyzing thought.
Was he even still her Doctor?
Did he still care about her? Would he even remember what he was going to say, only a year ago for her, but centuries ago for him, on that cold beach on an old American shore?
Rose sat there, staring pensively at the over large desk, now holding platters, plats, and an empty crown case. The Doctor's feet were missing from it. A tiny clouded circle, like when you breathe on a glass, imprinted where they had been before. The desk needed him behind it because without him, it just loomed larger than furniture has a right too.
She wanted to find him so bad. So so badly. But she never imagined this.
Never.
In late nights, alone in her room, Her mind often terrified her of scenarios of him moving on without her, of seeing him again, only to be met with rejection in place of that smile she craved from him.
The empty feeling was slowly ebbing away. Replacing itself with a mixture of dread and fear that crept up her back, giving her chills.
The door to the far left banged open, reviling someone unrecognizable.
Rose nearly shielded her eyes against the dazzle and light that seem to emanate off of him.
The door closed quickly behind him. Whether it was of its own accord or the Doctor using his mind thing, she couldn't say.
He crossed the room and sat back down at his desk as if nothing happened. As if he wasn't wearing that crown that seemed the perfect center of two suns, both shinning off it in opposite ends, making it look alive and glorious. Like he wasn't adored in a billowing gown oozing with jewels and painted in patterns of gold and a deep rich red. As if he didn't look anything like himself, like the Doctor, like... her Doctor.
It was this change in demeanor and appearance that brought Rose's worst fears into life.
She choked back a sob, lowering her head. She needed to look away from him. It hurt her eyes in more ways than one.
Incredulously, Jack was taking it in stride. "Wow... Doc... You look, GORGEOUS!"
He did indeed. The Robes clung tightly to his thin frame like diamond silk, and Rose just noticed now that he was less thin and more build this time around. His crown of breathtaking beauty made his whole face light up and beam with its open radiance. His sideburns were gone as was his five o'clock shadow. He looked younger and more radiant, and yet so very very old.
She blinked hard, willing the tears away. Now wasn't the time for this. Not in front of this new strange man.
This man was not her Doctor. She felt ashamed for accepting him so fast without a thought. Wished that it didn't take only five minutes out of his presents to think clearly again. But most of all, she wished he was him, and that things could go back to the way they used to be.
Was there any chance left of her finding him? He said the last time he saw her was that last time she saw him. That meant that they didn't meet again until this moment. Which also meant that she never found him in the proper timeline. She didn't want to appear piteous, but she was finding it hard not to let that get to her and she could tell that she was making a scene.
The man was at her side in a flash of light and gold. The stranger, the God, was among her, asking her what was wrong, holding her shoulder gently, comfortingly... almost like he would... almost.
She jerked her shoulder away, only then realizing how hard she was sobbing. Her cheeks burned in embarrassment that this creature of elaborate perfection and strength was there to witness her breakdown. The very idea made her feel weak and pathetic. She wanted to run, to hide, and to go back into the cell before she knew what he had become. Before she knew what had become of her one love.
Before she understood the death of all things in her world.