Author's Note: Thanks for all your support. Make sure you tell your friends, and please continue to tell me what you think.
Also, a special thanks to the guest reviewer, BadWolf9653 that told me this was the best season three with Rose fanfic she's ever read…seriously, that's just so nice of you and I can't tell you how happy it made me to hear it. And two more special thank-you's to MirrorFlower and DarkWind and Delta Marauder, who are faithful and supportive reviewers! I'm always happy to hear from you!
:)
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She smiled at him and took his hand as they reached the double doors of the patients' balcony. They shared a look that seemed to say, "Are you ready?"
And together they pushed open the doors.
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The Doctor and Rose each took hesitant steps onto the balcony, then stopped and let out their breaths, the Doctor's face took on a look of curiosity, and Rose began chuckling at the novelty of breathing on the moon.
"We've got air!" said a voice behind them where Martha Jones stood, momentarily forgotten. The stuff of legends both jumped at the unexpected comment. She had yet to stray from the threshold. "How does that work?"
"Just be glad it does," the Doctor told her as she finally came to take her place beside him.
"I've got a party tonight. It's my brother's twenty-first. My mother's going to be really... really…"
"You okay?" He asked her.
Rose had wandered off slightly, but was still within his line of sight, inspecting the balcony. He maintained visibility of her at all times to be sure it stayed that way.
"Yeah."
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
He like this Martha Jones. She was like his Rose when they'd first met. Shock didn't create panic for her, instead she accepted her current reality, responding with single words. Her repeated "Yeah" reminded him of the blonde girl currently reaching her torso and arms too far out over the balcony, trying to feel for something none of them could see. A force field, he knew, but she was still going to give him a hearts attack if she didn't stop.
"Rose." He hissed under his breath. Martha was too enraptured by the view to even notice, but Rose shot him a startled glance, which crumbled quickly into a grimace when she realized what he wanted, before she ultimately decided to concede. She slowly pulled her body back to the safety of the balcony while he went on speaking to Martha as if his attention had never lapsed and the last two seconds hadn't happened.
"Want to go back in?"
"No way. I mean, we could die any minute, but all the same—it's beautiful."
'Good answer Martha Jones!' "You think?"
"How many people want to go to the moon? And here we are!" She shifted closer to him unconsciously, and he put his weight on his other leg to inconspicuously regain space between them.
"Standing in the earthlight," he mused. Rose gave a low "Ha!" as she bent down and nabbed something off the ground and made her way back over to him.
"What do you think happened," asked Martha.
"What do you think," Rose countered as she took her place at the Doctor's other side. She tipped her head at an angle in appraisal of the woman before her. She'd seen the Doctor test other beings all throughout the universe and overtime she had developed her own ideas on what made a good companion.
"Extraterrestrial," she said to Rose with her head held high, defiantly, but not condescendingly, and Rose smiled at her answer—even though she noticed Martha's eyes darting unconsciously to the Doctor for his reaction. By the end of her address, Martha's attention was once again solely on the Doctor. "It's got to be. I don't know, a few years ago that would have sounded man, but these days? That spaceship flying into Big Ben—Christmas—those Cybermen things... I had a cousin… Adeola. She worked at Canary Wharf. She never came home."
At the mention of Canary Wharf the Doctor's face went white. Even his freckles didn't dare retain their color. Rose had gotten closure and embraced her fate was the one composed enough to reply. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah."
"I was there," the Doctor whispered. "In the battle."
"I promise you, Mr. Smith," she tried to reassure the suddenly deflated man before her. "We will find a way out. If we can travel to the moon, then we can travel back. There's got to be a way."
"It's not Smith, that's not my—not our real name," he said.
"Who are you, then?"
"I'm the Doctor."
"And I'm Rose. Helloo."
"Me too, if I can pass my exams. What is it, then, Doctor Smith?"
"Just the Doctor."
"How do you mean, just the Doctor?"
"Just... the Doctor."
"What, people call him 'the Doctor,'" she asked Rose.
"Sorta, yeah," she smirked.
"Well, I'm not. As far as I'm concerned, you've got to earn that title," she told them firmly.
"Well, I'd better make a start, then."
"Sorry, Doctor," Rose said, showing him the pebble in her open palm. "You'll have to wait your turn. It's my turn to be impressive."
She threw the pebble out over the balcony as far as she could, and all three watched as it impacted something in the air, causing ripples to fan out along the sky.
"There must be some sort of force field keeping the air in," the Doctor said, mostly to himself, Rose had figured as much the second Martha had opened a window on the moon.
"If that's like a bubble sealing us in, that means this is the only air we've got. What happens when it runs out," asked Martha.
"How many people in this hospital?"
"Gotta be at least a thousand," Rose spoke up and Martha nodded in agreement.
"One thousand people. Suffocating."
Martha gasped. "Why would anyone do that?"
"Head's up!" he said. "Ask them yourself."
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"Aliens," Martha said in awe from her place beside Rose. "That's aliens. Real, proper aliens."
"Doctor!" Rose gasped and grabbed onto his arm with one hand, still watching the ships land. "Those are Judoon."
He nodded his head and ushered Rose and Martha back inside.
"What are they doing here? You said Earth was a Level 5 planet and they can't interact with humans. You said—"
"I know. That's why were on the Moon. Neutral territory."
"Well, they had to land on Earth to set up the transmat thing to get us here in the first place."
He nodded his head and made a face, muttering "plasma coils;" she suspected he hadn't considered that, but the fact remained that they were trapped on the moon without the TARDIS, with little time to save everyone in the building, and with no idea what they were saving them from.
Rose had begun to pride herself recently on her ability to distinguish the time and place and force herself to focus on the task at hand. Just as she'd known when the Doctor had warned her away from the balcony edge that he'd sooner relinquish his tight hold on her well-being if he knew he could count on her to listen when it counted, she knew her questioning on universal laws could wait.
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'I want to wake up now,' Martha Jones decided as she and the married couple—the not-Smith's—reached the second floor mezzanine and crouched behind some plants to watch the gigantic rhino-like aliens shine a blue light from a gun-like instrument onto the face of one of her peers.
She was too absorbed in the action to catch many words, but she heard "language assimilated," "Category: human," and "Catalogue all suspects," pretty clearly. Were they being rounded up?! A black "X" was drawn in marker on Morgenstern's hand and the aliens spread out to catalogue the rest of the terrified people.
Martha had promised the man beside her that they'd be okay, but how were they going to be okay when just below them were potentially hostile aliens rounding them up and cataloguing them?
"Oh, look down there," said the man to his wife in a carefree inflection. 'Although you lied about your name, maybe you lied about your wife too. Maybe you're involved in all this.' Martha stopped herself, she was being ridiculous. "They've got a little shop. I like a little shop."
"Oh, yeah!" The blonde said happily; her eyes lit up and her tongue poked out the side of her mouth— like a puppy, Martha thought, and wasn't sure whether she liked it. This girl with the South London dialect and bad dye job, who couldn't be older than twenty, was married to 'the Doctor?' 'Lucky.'
"Never mind that!" She said, as much to herself as her company. "What are Judoon?"
"Galactic police. Well, police for hire. More like interplanetary thugs."
That drew her up short. "And they brought us to the moon?"
"Neutral territory. According to galactic law, they've got no jurisdiction over the Earth, and they isolated us. That rain? Lightning? That was them, using an H2O scoop."
That drew her up shorter. Rose was beside him, nodding like that had made perfect sense. Maybe she wasn't so lucky. Maybe this 'Doctor' is as crazy as he is good-looking. "What's that about 'galactic law'? Where'd you get that from? If they're police, are we under arrest? Are we trespassing on the moon or something?"
Rose snorted in amusement.
"No. But I like that. Good thinking," he said like a teacher giving praise. "No, it's more simple. They're making a catalogue, it means they're after something non-human, which is very bad news for me."
"Why?"
The couple looked at her in confusion.
"Oh, you're kidding me."
Rose shook her head and he raises an eyebrow. Martha ignores the blush fanning her cheeks from having his intense eyes directed at her. "Don't be ridiculous," she says a little bit too harshly. "Stop looking at me like that."
Rose sighs and the Doctor says, "Come on, then."
He takes off abruptly, without looking back.
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It doesn't take very long for the Doctor to find a room with a computer he can use. Rose catches up to him just as he's pulling out his sonic screwdriver, and Martha brings up the rear as he begins performing his search on the hard drive.
"They've reached third floor," she heaves. "What's that thing?"
"Sonic screwdriver," says Rose, though Martha had been solely addressing the Doctor again.
She scoffs. "Well, if you're not going to answer me properly!"
"No, it is! It's a screwdriver, and it's sonic." She holds up the Doctor's sonicing hand by the wrist, interrupting him from his task and eliciting a frustrated "Hey" out of him "Look."
"What else have you got," she inquires. "A laser spanner?"
"I did, but it was stolen by Emily Pankhurst," He says sarcastically, muttering. "Cheeky women," as he works.
He grows frustrated after a while of near silence, only the buzz of the sonic and the occasional white noise from the crowd outside their room to break up the lack of sound. Than without warning he begins banging on the computer savagely, pointedly ignoring Rose's long-suffering sigh and accompanying eye roll—she doesn't believe in the benefits of percussion maintenance. 'Her loss.'
"Oh, this computer! The Judoon must have locked it down… Judoon platoon upon the moon... Cause we were just travelling past, I swear, Martha, just wandering! We weren't looking for trouble. But then Rose noticed the plasma coils around the hospital… and that lightning—that's plasma coils, been building up for two days now, so we checked her in… had to make up fake identities because she's technically dead… said we were married so I could stay and investigate. I thought something was going on inside, it turns out the plasma coils were the Judoon up above!"
The Doctor sucked in a deep breath, readying himself for another round of talking, as was this body's habit when he was stressed or bored, but seeing Rose's bemused smile and Martha's eyes, glazed over as they were, made him rethink it.
"But what are they looking for," Martha asked him.
"Something that looks human, but isn't."
'And therein lies a very big, very not good problem.' Because if it was a nonhuman they were looking for, any alien in this hospital is in danger, including the Doctor. And while the Doctor wouldn't usually spare a nanometer of concern over that fact, Rose might be in danger as well.
He hadn't said anything to her about it. He didn't know how to—he didn't know if he was even going to, but he probably should…'Did she already know?... Nah, she couldn't.' He'd gone investigating last night and left her to get some sleep. The first time he'd returned to check on her she'd appeared to be in the middle of a REM cycle; he'd backed out and gone off to skulk around the hospital some more.
The second time he'd come back, he'd quietly pushed the drapes aside and almost shrilled like Mickey, in shock. She'd been gold. Wellll, not literally. It seemed to be emanating from her, like the blood in her veins was a shiny pure gold, flowing through her body, being pumped by her heart. Behind her closed eyelids, where eyelashes met skin, a small bit of golden light escaped. And right before his eyes she exhaled a puff of it from her mouth—like regeneration energy, but somehow different.
Humans could not do that. They couldn't glow gold. Time Lords couldn't either. In fact, he couldn't think a single species in the universe that to his knowledge could.
Eventually he remembered he needed to breathe… and he regretted it instantly, for two reasons. The smell of pure time energy was clinging to her like expensive perfume, custom made to match her body chemistry becomingly. How could he have never noticed it before? It was like time was dancing with her and in the air around her. And even worse, it had been intoxicating. He'd stood there, stunned, like an idiot, for an undistinguishable amount of time—his time sense entirely forgotten—just breathing it in; it was the most alluring, wonderful smell—it was incomparable. Better than Jackie's tea, better than bananas or jelly babies.
And all of it terrified him. He turned tail and ran back the way he'd come, colliding with a nurse on his way and grabbing her upper arms to keep the poor woman upright. She must have noticed how pale he was; she'd asked him if he was alright, but he had been very far from alright. He'd muttered a quick 'sorry' and said some nonsense about going to get tea and a banana, and he'd continued his aimless run in any direction, so long as it got him away from there. He'd ended up pacing up and down the hallway just outside a nearby waiting room. And when he got the courage to check on her again fifteen minutes later, realizing what might happen if someone else found her in that state, all evidence of it had been gone.
Now the Judoon were hunting an alien. According to the TARDIS, Rose's DNA was still human, but that had been when she wasn't lit up like someone with string lights coiled through their veins. Before that she'd never smelled so strongly of the vortex—would she still register human? He could not take that chance. And how could he tell her? 'He can't. Coward, every time.'
"Like you... Apparently," her eyes had narrowed at him slightly.
"Like me. But not me," he assured her.
"Haven't they got a photo?"
"Might be a shape-changer."
"Or a Slitheen," said Rose.
Martha cast her a confused look. "Whatever it is, can't you just leave the Judoon to find it?"
"Nopee," said Rose.
The Doctor nodded. "If they declare the hospital guilty of harboring a fugitive, they'll sentence it to execution."
"All of us," she asked him.
"Oh yes. If I can find this thing first... Oh! Just that they're thick! Judoon are thick! They are completely thick! They wiped the records. Oh, that's clever."
"Doctor," Rose said sharply to draw his attention. "What are you looking for? We can help."
He took a deep breath. "I don't know. Any patient admitted in the past week with unusual symptoms…. Maybe there's a back-up."
"I'll go ask Mr. Stoker, he might know," Martha said.
Rose would intend to follow Martha, the Doctor knew. She would figure that she couldn't help the Doctor with anything technology related and may even be in the way, and she'd decide she could do more good with the medical student. She may even try to eavesdrop on some unsuspecting Judoon—try to find out what species, or at least some characteristics of what they were looking for.
As he expected, she began to turn on the heel of her foot, opening her mouth to tell Martha to wait up, but he'd anticipated her actions before she'd even solidified her plans, and before she'd pivoted more than half way the Doctor had grabbed onto her wrist too tightly and yanked her back.
The quick change in direction made her body jerk back into him, causing her to almost, but thankfully not, roll her ankle. He righter her quickly but kept his tight grip on her arm. She looked up at him, no doubt intending to yell at him for the harsh treatment she was unused to receiving from him, but something in his expression stopped her short.
He looked as feral as he felt. He wouldn't allow any arguing or protesting from her and it showed on his face. When it came to Rose's protection, there was no telling how he'd react or what he'd resort to, to ensure her safety.
"Do not even think about it," he growled quietly, dropping his tight clasp on her wrist and going back to fiddling with the computer and his sonic as if he hadn't just acting completely out of character.
She studied him hesitantly for a moment before ultimately deciding that for whatever reason, he felt it necessary that she stay with him. She trusted him, after all. Still, as she rubbed her right wrist and watched light bruises form on her pale skin, she couldn't help but mutter a quick, "Yes, sir, Sarge," under her breath.
The Doctor's lips quirked up involuntarily. 'That's my Lewis,' he thought.
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By the time the Doctor had restored the back-up, the terse silence between them had dissipated into a companionable one.
"Aha! I restored the back up!" He held out his hand to her, wiggling his fingers in his usual fashion. "Let's go find Martha."
"Do you like her," Rose asked.
"She's smart," he said hesitantly. And it was true, Martha was very smart. She also liked helping people—Rose supposed she'd have to like helping people to want to be a doctor—but she seemed to have decided, albeit rightfully, that the Doctor was the undisputed leader of their duo, and she exhausted very little energy acknowledging Rose existed.
Rose chastised herself for caring about that when the lives of everyone in the hospital were at stake. Of course Martha was focused on the Doctor—they were in the middle of a crisis and he was the man with the answers. She should be as focused as Martha is, she couldn't afford to lose focus and become self-conscious at a time like this.
"Yeah, she is," Rose said. "I think I like her."
Just as they had begun jogging down the hall, Martha came barreling into them, landing right in the Doctor's arms; he righted her immediately and stepped back.
"Good timing," Rose told her at the same time as the Doctor said, "I've restored the back-up."
"I found her."
"You what," they said simultaneously. The Doctor lifted his eyes to the slap running toward them, and reacting instinctually, took Martha's hand in the one not currently clasping Rose's, shouting. "Run!"
A short run through the hospital eventually found the trio backed into a corner, with slabs on one side and Judoon on the other, they make their way into the radiology room and closed the door behind them. The Doctor ushered them into the back room and closed it, with himself still on the side housing the x-ray machinery. "When I say 'now', press the button," he ordered Martha.
"I don't know which one!" She told him incredulously.
"Find out!" he shouted, and began using his sonic on the x-ray machine while Martha grabbed the Operator's Manual and began skimming desperately through it.
The slab broke down the door and had begun making its way toward the Doctor, who yelled to Martha, "Now!"
Martha, however, had yet to find what she's looking for and didn't want to press the wrong thing.
Finally, she decides to press a random button, choosing the giant yellow one, just a second after Rose, who had grown impatient waiting on the medical student and decided to take matters into her own hands.
Suddenly the room with the Doctor and the slab lit up and when it's over the slab is on the floor, sizzling.
"What did I just do, Doctor?" Rose asks calmly, walking to the door and throwing it open so she can inspect the damage.
"I increased the radiation by five thousand per cent. It killed him dead."
Rose goes pale, looking at the slab, dead on the floor, then looking the Doctor up and down, expecting him to burst into golden light any moment. It's Martha who finally speaks up. "Isn't that likely to kill you?"
"Nah, it's only radiation. We used to play with roentgen bricks in the nursery. It's safe for you to come out," he tells Martha, who is still in the other room. "I've absorbed it all. All I need to do is expel it. If I concentrate, I can shake the radiation out of my body and into one spot. It's in my left shoe. Here we go, here we go, easy does it...Out, out, out, out, out. Out, out, ah, ah, ah, ah. It is, it is, it is, it is, it is hot. Ah - hold on."
Rose had begun laughing as soon as the Doctor had started jumping up and down. When he started shakes his shoe and making faces she'd bent forward, clutching her sides in amused peals of laughter. She didn't right herself until almost a full minute after he'd ripped off his shoe and tossed it in the waste bin in a show of finality.
"You're completely mad," Martha said staring at him open-mouthed.
"Right. I look daft with one shoe… Barefoot on the moon!" He says, shucking the other in the bin after the first and wiggling his toes.
Rose had to fight to keep from laughing again.
Martha had a lot of questions, and began to ask him in rapid fire what the slabs were while simultaneously explaining to the Doctor about Mrs. Finnegan. He stopped listening once he realized his sonic screwdriver had been thoroughly fried, and unable to find any sympathy from Martha, he turned back to Rose, who had been standing there feeling slightly forgotten. She rubbed his shoulders empathetically.
Thanks to Martha, the Doctor was finally able to piece together what kind of alien they were looking for. An internal shape shifter could blend into any environment of humanoids perfectly, so long as it was able to keep assimilating that species' blood. Unfortunately, in order to do that, Mrs. Finnegan would need a well-stocked blood bank, or a live donor. And unfortunately for Mr. Stoker, she'd chosen the latter.
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As they trio crept through the hospital, where the air was becoming increasingly thin, they spotted a second slab. "That's the thing about Slabs. They always travel in pairs."
"What about you," asked Martha, she'd been increasingly curious about the relationship between the Doctor and his blonde companion and decided this was as good of an opening as she could ask for in the circumstances. It wasn't that Rose wasn't nice, but she didn't understand how the two had formed their strange relationship, or friendship, or partnership, or whatever it was. They were worlds apart, plus she looked to be at least twelve years his junior.
"What about me what," the Doctor asked her.
"Haven't you got back-up," she prodded. "You must have a partner or something?"
Rose frowned, looking distinctly hurt that Martha seemed to dismiss her so, and Martha almost felt bad for the young girl. After all, whoever this Doctor really was, it was obvious that he was just as out of Martha's league as he was Rose's. Eons, even.
And if the Doctor's eyes flashed in irritation at Martha's dismissal of Rose, neither of the women noticed. "Rose is my plus one. She's all the back-up I need," he said firmly, and had the pleasure of seeing the small, radiant smile bloom quietly over her face. "Uh. Humans," he continued in the less serious manner that was typical to him. "We're stuck on the moon, running out of air, with Judoon… and a bloodsucking criminal, and you're asking personal questions."
He gave her a look that seemed to say, "I'm disappointed," but Martha looked unrepentant, so with a shake of his head he murmured, "Come on."
"I like that. 'Humans.' I'm still not convinced you're an alien."
Just then they rounded the corner and Rose and the Doctor came face-to-face with a Judoon's scanner. In Rose's panic to get the Doctor away from the Judoon, she failed to realize the scanner had been aimed at her.
"Non-human," said the Judoon.
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The Doctor's mind cleared of all thoughts, but one. Get Rose safe. The Judoon's voice seemed to echo repetitively through his head as he pushed her in the other direction and they sprinted down another hall. He was careful to keep her body directly in front of his, to keep her out of the line of fire of the Judoon's shooting. "Non-human…. Non-human…. Non-human…."
Luckily for him, Martha had also failed to realize where exactly the scanner had been pointed. "Oh my God, you really are!"
Running up the stairs and into a hallway crowded with medical personnel and patients with oxygen masks being held to their faces, Rose noticed something and slowed down, breaking away from him. The Doctor just stopped himself from forcefully grabbing onto her wrist again to stop her—he was even more panicked now that he knew his fears had been validated, 'She scanned non-human. I can't believe she actually scanned non-human.'
He noticed the crying medical student from before and realized she wasn't wandering off. He'd also seen the bruises his fingers had pressed into her skin and didn't want to make them worse. This wasn't the first time he'd done it. Time Lords were so much stronger than humans, their skin and bones were much denser. In moments of high stress—like when she woke him from a nightmare, or when he feared for her life—he knew he sometimes grabbed her too roughly, held her too tight. It disgusted him that he had been the source of her pain even once. It disgusted him more that a small part of him thrived on the power he had over her.
He was capable of hurting her, physically and emotionally. He never wanted to and would never try to purposefully, he adored her petulance and loved watching her exert her free will to make change—she was incredible—, but the fact that it would be so easy, and she trusted him not to gives him a strange thrill.
"They've done this floor," he said, following after Rose and Martha toward the medical student, Swales. "Come on. The Judoon are logical and just a little bit thick. They won't go back to check a floor they've checked already… if we're lucky."
Rose stoops down to sit companionably by Swales, who shoots her a relieved smile, like two are old friends reuniting. Martha frowns at this and asks, "How much oxygen is there?"
"Not enough for all these people. We're going to run out."
"How are you feeling? Are you all right," the Doctor asks Martha; she's more out of breath than Rose, though both are breathing heavily. Rose is rubbing comforting circles on Swales arm and shoulder, and the two are speaking quietly.
"I'm running on adrenaline," Martha says, bringing his attention back to her.
He chuckles. "Welcome to my world."
"What about the Judoon," she asks.
"Ah, great big lung reserves, it won't slow them down. Where's Mr. Stoker's office?"
"It's this way," she says and walks off, not looking back to see whether the Doctor and Rose are following.
"Come on, Rose," the Doctor says, holding his hand out to help her up.
She looks up at him and takes his hand, but when he tries to pull her away she resists, turning back to Swales, she says, "You'll be okay."
Swales looks up at her and smiles, content showing even through her obvious worry. "I know."