A/N: I've sort of skipped around the "Hide" episode, so for those who don't remember - there's a point where Clara has to fly the TARDIS into a pocket universe without the Doctor's help. I've skipped over that scene in this story, but it's going to be mentioned in this chapter.
Rose had already said her regretful goodbyes to Professor Palmer and Emma when the Doctor suddenly received his next eye-opening revelation and they realized that their adventure with the Caliburn "ghost" wasn't quite finished yet.
"It's the oldest story in the universe - this one or any other," the Doctor explained cheerily as he turned and ran for the TARDIS once more. "Boy and girl fall in love, get separated by events - war, politics, accidents in time. She's thrown out of the hex, or he's thrown into it ..."
Or they're trapped in two parallel worlds, Rose agreed silently, her smile strained as the Doctor casually threw his arm around her shoulders and continued gesturing wildly with his free hand.
"Since then, they've been yearning for each other across time and space, across dimensions! This isn't a ghost story, it's a ... love story!"
Rose turned to glance at him out of the corner of her eye, but as soon as her gaze met his, the Doctor's arm flew off of her shoulder as though she had physically shocked him. His happy smile disappeared as well as he awkwardly fidgeted with his now-empty hands. "Sorry," he finally muttered, wheeling about in the direction of the TARDIS once more.
"It's alright," Rose replied lightly as she eagerly followed after him. "It was a nice story. It actually ... sounded a bit familiar, if I'm being honest ..."
"Oh?" the Doctor asked distractedly over his shoulder as he swung open the doors to his ship.
"Yeah," she agreed as she followed him in. "And I think ... maybe there's a reason you tell it so well, too."
"Personally, I'd rather hear your story," the Doctor replied, still not facing her as he began flipping levers on the console and preparing to send them back into the pocket universe to rescue the monster that they had unknowingly abandoned there.
"My story?" Rose repeated dubiously.
"Yes," the Doctor answered, his head bending over the controls as though he were concentrating especially hard on them. "For instance, I'd like to know how a perfectly normal human girl managed to fly a TARDIS into a pocket universe and back without putting a single scratch in the exterior paint."
Rose licked her lips nervously and cast her eyes to the time rotor, as though the sentient ship might somehow help her come up with a plausible lie for him. Honestly, she wasn't quite sure how she had done it, either - she just knew that the Doctor was in trouble and that she had had to rescue him. She had run to the TARDIS and let the ship guide her through all the rest. It had actually been extremely simple - she had barely had to think about what she was doing before she simply ... did it.
"The TARDIS helped me," she explained with a simple shrug. "I think she knew that you were in trouble."
"So you communicated with her," the Doctor replied, his tone insinuating that this was a statement and not a question.
"Yeah ..." Rose muttered slowly, casting around desperately in her memory and trying to remember how the TARDIS had communicated with her back before she had met the Bad Wolf and changed everything. She couldn't very well tell him the truth - that she could hear the TARDIS's song in her head as though the ship were a part of her own mind. But how had the ship spoken to her back when she was still just a normal human girl?
"There was this hologram-type thing ..." Rose explained haltingly. "She gave me instructions through it."
The Doctor paused in thought for a moment before eventually nodding, but Rose could tell by the stiff posture of his spine that he still didn't believe her weak excuse.
"Oh, come on, Doctor," she sighed, finally bridging the nervous distance between them to stand at his side and run a comforting hand over his back. "I promise you're still her favorite. And we won't go and try to gang up on you or anything like that."
The Doctor laughed humorlessly and flashed her a small grin out of the corner of his eye as he returned to his frantic button pushing and dial-turning. "Yeah, you say that now," he muttered under his breath. "But it's always the same with you women."
"Excuse me?" Rose demanded haughtily, feeling an unwelcome wave of jealousy pricking at her insides.
The Doctor just shrugged innocently as he began to race in circles around the console, but Rose wasn't about to let him off of the hook that easily. She chased after him and demanded, "'You women'? What are you talking about 'you women'? How many of us have their been?"
"Well, really only one," the Doctor called back to her cryptically as he continued his mad dash around the console. "Or I guess now you would make two ... Or is it technically three? Oh, but there was that one time ... Oh, well, never mind."
"What are you talking about?" Rose demanded irritatedly.
"The TARDIS!" the Doctor replied with a boisterous bark of laughter. "Flying the TARDIS. Not many have done it, but what do you say?"
"What ...?" Rose asked dazedly, his words immediately stopping her in her tracks.
"Want to learn? It's been ages since I've gotten to teach anyone," he admitted as he finished his last lap around the console and came to a stop behind her. When she turned to look at him, he added casually, "I mean, I don't really plan on having to leave the TARDIS behind again any time soon, but I have to admit that it was handy having an extra pilot around when I needed it today. And she clearly already likes you, so there's that."
"You're ... going to teach me how to fly the TARDIS ..." Rose repeated in complete disbelief.
The Doctor merely smiled that joyous, boyish smile of his that she really had no choice but to reciprocate as he shrugged and eagerly awaited her response.
Was this a thing that happened now? Did he do this with all of his companions? He said that there had been others, but even he seemed confused on those details. In her previous life with the Doctor, Rose could never have dreamed of him making an offer like this. He had showed her some basics over time, sure - but never had he offered her (or anyone else, for that matter) driving lessons.
The TARDIS hummed a note of reassurance in the back of Rose's mind, calmly reminding her that a lot of time had passed for him since then and many things had happened. The silent support gave Rose the courage that she needed to straighten her spine and smile up at the Doctor with an expectant, teasing expression. "Alright, then," she agreed. "But don't you think that this give you an excuse to go wandering off whenever you like. I don't want to become your designated driver or whatever."
The Doctor gave her a hearty laugh in reply and Rose decided that she quite liked the sound of it. The smile definitely looked much better on him than the weary, lost expression that she had found him with not so very long ago. And the thought that maybe - just maybe - that smile was there because of her was enough to make her own heart flutter with a giddy happiness that she hadn't felt in years.
TARDIS flying lessons quickly ended up in a smoking, sparking disaster, however, as something (or someone) locked onto their ship and began to mercilessly pull them in. Everything went distinctly pear-shaped after that, and Rose awoke to find herself completely alone, deep within the bowels of the time ship with a sharp, painful burn on her hand and no idea what was going on.
The TARDIS was keening morosely in the back of her mind and Rose reached out on instinct in an attempt to reassure her. "What is it now, Old Girl?" she whispered aloud into the silent, empty hallway. "What's happened?"
Death, chaos, destruction, worry, sorry, have to help ... run ... save ...
The jumble of words and emotions made no sense to her, but they still filled Rose with an impending sense of doom as she gazed around the darkened hallways of the old ship. Where is he? she asked silently.
Searching, searching, not fast enough ... dead, dead, dead ...
Rose set her feet in the direction that she knew the console room should be, but the TARDIS was a disorganized, confused mess, and she ended up wandering aimlessly instead. The ship took her to all of the old rooms that she had once lived in and loved during her previous travels. The memories seemed to ring off of the very walls, and Rose swore that she could hear, at times, a familiar Northern accent or see the flash of brown coattails just around the corner.
Finally, the TARDIS brought her to a room that she didn't immediately recognize. It took Rose a few minutes to realize that it was a dimly-lit storage room - filled to overflowing with memorabilia from different times and places. Some of it she recognized as her own - an old jacket, some faded pictures, a locket that she had bought from a shop on Berantis Zeta. She quickly came to realize that this was a graveyard, of sorts - a place for the Doctor to bury his old hurt and memories.
"Oh, Doctor," Rose whispered aloud as she ran her fingers over the priceless old items. "What's happened to you?"
Rose suddenly realized in that moment that there was still so much about this thousand-year-old alient that she still didn't even know yet. He had traveled for nine centuries before meeting her, and then another century in between. How many had he loved and lost, in all that time? She felt the weight of his sorrow as her own as she turned her back on the room and made sure that the door was securely locked behind her.
It wasn't long after that that Rose realized that she was being stalked by some sort of humanoid creatures with glowing red eyes and black, charred skin. One of them had just managed to chase her down and trap her into one of the corners of the empty console room when a familiar hand suddenly grabbed hers, and Rose found herself being pulled into the safety of the Doctor's arms once more.
Their reunion and promise of escape was predictably ruined, however, when a warning light flashed on the console screen and alerted them and their two new companions of an impending explosion. "Okay, detour!" the Doctor announced brightly.
"Where are we going?" one of the newcomers asked curiously.
"The center of the TARDIS."
They didn't make it far, though, before the old time ship began leaking memories all around them. Along with the charred, ashen zombies chasing them down, there were now voices (both familiar and new) and conversations echoing through the long, dark corridors as well.
"Doctor ...?" Rose asked in wonder as she rounded a corner and almost ran headlong into a man with floppy brown hair dressed in an unfamiliar tweed coat.
The man turned towards her, but his eyes gazed right through her as though she wasn't even there. Before Rose could say anything else, he grinned cheekily and then straightened his bowtie before disappearing in the blink of an eye.
"Stay away from them," the Doctor - the proper one, this time - commanded as he rounded the corner behind her and quickly took Rose's hand. "Don't touch them."
"Why? What happens if we touch them?" Rose asked as they continued to run full tilt down the winding hallways. "Doctor, what is going on?"
"Well, there seems to be a small tear in the fabric of the continuum," he explained, his hand still gripping hers tightly as he led her deeper into the TARDIS. "It must have happened when the TARDIS was pulled in by the ..."
But the Doctor's words were cut off as they rounded a corner and both of them let out a startled cry of fright and immediately froze in place. At the end of the hallway before them was a tall man with cropped hair wearing a leather jacket and leaning over a young blonde girl. The Doctor and Rose watched in wide-eyed wonder as their previous selves smiled at each other before the memory-version of him suddenly grabbed young Rose's hand and the two of them ran off out of sight.
"What ...?" Rose breathed quietly in disbelief.
"Rose! This way!"
The Doctor and Rose turned in tandem to see a man in a brown suit behind them, reaching frantically back for someone just out of sight.
"Come on, we don't want to be late!"
"What ...?" Rose asked again as she watched a younger, blonder version of herself skip forward and easily take the younger Doctor's outstretched hand.
"Just ... old memories," the Doctor assured her quietly as he stared after the images like a starving man staring at a meal that he could never have.
"Oh, you never learn, do you, Sweetie?"
Rose turned towards the new, unfamiliar female voice to see a woman with a playful smirk and wild, golden curls. Her hands skimmed against the walls of the TARDIS hallway, effectively caging in the Doctor in tweed who was cowering away from her and looking around frantically for a way out.
"But you can't do that, River, you just can't!" the younger Doctor insisted.
"I'll do what I like," the woman named River stated simply, leaning in and forcing her lips solidly against his.
"What?" Rose demanded, whirling on the current Doctor as a sudden flare of anger fired up within her.
"Best ... keep moving," he replied sheepishly, tugging on her hand and forcing them down the hallway in the opposite direction of the memory of River.
Rose allowed herself to be carted off further into the TARDIS, but she didn't try to hide her look of disgust and disappointment as she glared at the Doctor out of the corner of her eye So there had been others in her absence - and some of them from not so long ago, if the Doctor's face was anything to go by.
She had asked him once if she was just the latest in a long line. Unfortunately, it seemed that that was just one more thing that hadn't changed ...