"You'll definitely be back in a week, yeah?" Rose checked with the Time Lord.
"Promise, and, then we'll go and find that planet with the best hot chocolate in the galaxy."
"I am sorry, Doctor," Rose commented. "But, she's so sick, I can't just leave her."
"No, of course you can't," he offered. "A few days and she'll be feeling much better. A week and she'll be back to normal, well, not normal, she'll be back to being Jackie," he assured her. The Doctor tucked his stethoscope back into his pocket.
"Sure you don't want to stay?" Rose asked him. The Doctor snorted and Rose laughed. "Thank you for coming and checking her out for me."
"It's influenza, Rose, common garden variety flu. Give her those pills, just one every morning, and she'll recover a lot more quickly," he added. "Please don't tell her they're from the TARDIS or next time I'm here she'll slap me for trying to poison her."
"I'll just tell her they're paracetamol," Rose assured him. "And I definitely won't get it now?" Rose rubbed the spot on her arm where the Doctor had insisted he vaccinate her.
"You're not going to get it."
"Would you stay and look after me if I did?" Rose asked cheekily.
"Of course I would," the Doctor smiled. "But, since you're not going to get sick?"
"Go on then," Rose prompted aware that the Doctor was itching to leave. She didn't blame him the sight of her coughing, spluttering, snot filled mother was enough to put anyone off staying. "You sure you're not going to get bored on the TARDIS on your own?"
"I'll find something to do," he offered positively. "And, if I do get bored, I can always just jump ahead and pick you up next week. I'll see you in no time at all," he informed her. He headed down from the flat down toward the bins where he'd parked the TARDIS. Rose remained on the walkway and he smiled as he waved up to her. She waved back and remained there until the TARDIS had vanished. She heard her mother groan weakly from her bed and went back in.
Once in the vortex the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief – that had been a lucky escape. The thought of remaining in the flat while Jackie was sick filled him an absurd level of dread. He'd been happy to make sure it wasn't anything more serious than a dose of flu. He'd not want harm to come to her, but if he'd been needed to say he was sure he'd drown under a flood of human mucus and that was not how he wanted to go.
Rose was so brilliant. She didn't ask him to stay – apart from in jest. She didn't expect him to stay, and, she'd even suggested that if he had stayed that he'd just get under her feet. She was brilliant, definitely brilliant, and that was why he was going to go to Caritvas III. He was going to check. Caritvas III proclaimed to be the home of the best hot chocolate in the galaxy, and he wanted to share the best hot chocolate in the galaxy with Rose.
Last month he'd taken her to the Molten Hyperflames of Coho where they proclaimed you could get the best hot dogs in the galaxy, heated in the hyperflame itself, and well, the hotdogs weren't any better than the ones he's eaten from the open tin in Jackie's fridge on their last visit. Rose hadn't told him they were rubbish and entirely disappointing. She'd eaten two herself without complaint and watched him eat four, but he'd had definitely better hotdogs. They certainly weren't the best hotdogs in the galaxy. His attempts of undermining their advertising campaign had almost resulted in them being imprisoned overnight, so, now he was going to Caritvas III in advance of taking Rose and before he announced that he was taking her for the best hot chocolate in the galaxy.
He went to set the coordinates. If he was clever, and he was, then he could time his visit to Caritvas III with their annual spring festival. If he was careful, and he honestly tried to be, then he could return to the annual spring festival with Rose, albeit in a different town, to enjoy the festival and the best hot chocolate in the galaxy at the same time – if he decided it was in fact the best hot chocolate in the galaxy, because he was sure after spending a week nursing her sick mother Rose was going to need nothing but the best. If the hot chocolate on Caritvas III was mediocre then he'd try Rocos instead – that was supposed to be good.
The Doctor removed his coat and tossed it on the jump seats. As he crossed toward the controls a vague wave of dizziness washed over him. He shook it off and gave it no more than a millisecond of thought. It wasn't that long since he'd suffered a full neural implosion and it had taken him a while to settle after that. Longer than he'd let Rose know. He didn't want to worry her any more than his collapse and new face had already done. As he reached the controls pain sliced through his head. It was sudden and dropped him to his knees as he grimaced, pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead.
Nausea bubbled up from deep within him as he cried out at the escalating pain in his head. His hearts hammered in his chest and a feeling of dread settled in his core. He shuddered and shivered, sure he was going to regenerate or worse. He gasped and whimpered, curling on the grated floor, fisting his hands in his head to try and stop the pain. He couldn't take it. He was going to pass out there and then. He wasn't going to get back to Rose in a week and he wasn't going to take her for the best hot chocolate in the galaxy. He didn't know what it was. He'd never felt anything like it. He squeezed his eyes closed ready to claw through his own skull to release the rising pressure within it.
As suddenly as it hit him it was gone. He didn't quite trust it to begin with. He breathed slowly, measuring his inhalation and exhalation unmoving on the floor, trying to make sense of what had happened. There was a vague ache between his temples and a concerning fear. He cautiously sat on the floor and had an inexplicable urge to retreat under the central console and hide. It was ridiculous. He was in the TARDIS. He didn't have to hide from anything. He rose to his knees and then when that didn't invite any further onslaught he got to his feet. He felt drained and shaken, but he still felt scared. Scared for his life.
He rubbed his face and tried to think through and ignore the bizarre primal fear seizing him. He couldn't, so instead he tried to latch onto it. To understand it. What was he so scared of? It was only as he caught the snaking fear in his mind that the realisation hit him. He wasn't scared at all. It wasn't him. Someone somewhere was terrified. Someone so powerful that they'd been able to strike him with it inside his TARDIS within the vortex. How could someone be that strong a telepath? And what was that terrifying? He fought the fear down, accepting that it wasn't him, but someone screaming in his head for help. There was no hint of who it was, what it was, where it was, or when it was. How was he possibly going to find them? On a vague whim he retrieved the psychic paper from his coat and pressed the blank page to the TARDIS's neural circuits. The time rotor began to wheeze up and down. They were in flight.