"Okay, so ... not London 1893 - Yorkshire 1893. Near enough!"
Rose watched with amused fascination as the Doctor bolted from the TARDIS and quickly assessed their new surroundings.
"Are you doing this on purpose?" she asked, narrowing her eyes at him but unable to hide the wry, upward turn of her lips.
"What?" the Doctor asked, whirling back to face her as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "What are you talking about? Doing what on purpose?"
"You keep taking us to the same sorts of places," Rose insisted, smoothing out the skirts of her period, late-nineteenth century dress as she watched him. "First the rings of Akhaten with all of the aliens, now we're all dressed up for the 1800s. I mean, is Charles Dickens going to be waiting just around the corner? Or, I don't know, have you got the Face of Boe tucked away somewhere?"
The Doctor gaped at her for a moment with a look of shocked offense. "This isn't the same!" he insisted, stepping closer and scowling down at her. "This is completely different! We went to Akhaten for a festival, not an 'end of the world' party - and there were carnivorous suns and zombies and pyramids! And this is way off from 1860s Cardiff - Charles Dickens has been dead for decades! And there was loads of stuff in between there, too, I'll have you know. Or have you already forgotten about the Ice Warriors and the ghosts?"
"I don't know ..." Rose teased in a sing-song voice, "looks to me like you might be running out of ideas. Maybe you're just not as impressive as you used to be, eh, Doctor?"
"Oh, you ..." the Doctor growled, though his goofy smile took away from the menacing effect that he was attempting to muster up. "I'll show you impressive, Miss. Oswald."
And for once, the false name didn't irk Rose the way that it usually did. In fact, it excited her to know that even though the Doctor now knew her true name, he was keeping it to himself - a shared secret, just between the two of them. She grinned up at the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and sent out a silent prayer to the universe in hopes that maybe this time her happily-ever-after would actually last.
The Doctor was leaning so close to her now that Rose was beginning to wonder if he was actually going to just bend down and snog her right there against the side of his police box in broad daylight when a shrill, female scream suddenly rang out across the cobblestones around them. Both of them immediately glanced up in the direction of the impending mystery and then flashed each other wide smiles out of the corners of their eyes.
"Impressed yet?" the Doctor muttered under his breath.
"Not yet," Rose teased. "Show me more."
He grabbed her hand with a wild smile and they were off without another word.
"Doctor and Mrs. Smith," Mrs. Gillyflower greeted them warmly. "Oh, yes, you'll do very nicely."
"Oh, grand. Smashing!" the Doctor exclaimed in a forced accent as he folded his hands behind his back and bounced joyfully on the balls of his feet. "Eh, the missus and I couldn't be more chuffed, could we, love?" He threw an arm around Rose's shoulders, pulling her tight to him as he smiled down at her in excitement.
Rose tilted her head towards the strange old woman and flashed her a sweet smile, but as soon as Mrs. Gillyflower's back was turned, she raised a dubious brow in the Doctor's direction.
"'Mrs. Smith'?" she hissed under her breath. "Didn't think I had enough aliases already?"
"Oh, come on, it's a great name!" the Doctor whispered back, his hand squeezing her shoulder encouragingly. "Easy to remember, too."
"It's a bit ... Bond, if you ask me," Rose muttered as they both nodded towards Mrs. Gillyflower with matching fake smiles and allowed her to lead them off further into the utopian paradise that she had set up. "And since when is your go-to cover story marriage? I remember back in the day when your one goal was to convince other people that we weren't a couple."
"Yes, yes, that was a long time ago," the Doctor replied, waving his hand at her dismissively. "I was young and restless, didn't want to be tied down."
"You were none-hundred-and-one," Rose hissed through her teeth, shaking his arm off from around her shoulders so that she could tuck her hands primly against his elbow instead. "Love the voice, by the way," she whispered. "Miss the northern accent sometimes."
"Yes, and I miss the blonde hair every now and then, but you don't hear me going on about it," the Doctor grumbled under his breath.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rose demanded, her smile instantly falling away as she stared up at him with a mixture of surprise and hurt. "Have you got a problem with my new face?" The face that she had taken on specifically so that she could be here with him, she thought bitterly.
"Oh, I certainly didn't say that," the Doctor replied, giving Rose a very pointed, appreciative once-over as he let his hand reach up to cover hers against his arm. Rose couldn't help but grin at his sly smile as he managed to instantly settle her self-conscious doubts.
Mrs. Gillyflower finally interrupted them, then, as she turned to see that they had fallen a good distance behind her. "It's always the same with you newlyweds," she called back to them good-naturedly. "You get so distracted by one another that you forget that you leave an old woman waiting."
"Oh, we're not newlyweds," the Doctor replied as he lengthened his stride to catch up with their hostess. "Just have a lot of catching up to do."
The elderly woman looked between the two of them with a lost expression, to which Rose piped up helpfully, "It's complicated."
Mrs. Gillyflower smiled and shook her head at them as she replied, "Well, nothing is complicated in Sweetville! In fact, I think you'll find very soon that you won't have to worry about a thing ever again."
But then she proceeded to show them into a room where she had people propped up like dolls beneath giant glass domes and things suddenly got just that much more complicated.
Rose came to in waves after she had somehow managed to survive Mrs. Gillyflower's strange preservation and containment process. She could hear voices talking around her, but her clouded mind couldn't quite seem to make sense of what they were saying.
"I know who you think she is, but she isn't."
"i was right, then. You and Clara have unfinished business!"
The world tilted then, and Rose finally blinked open her eyes as she stumbled forward and fell into the Doctor's waiting arms.
"Hello, stranger," he murmured gently as she blinked hard in an attempt to force her eyes to focus.
He was smiling down at her and with her thoughts still hazy and her inhibitions limited, Rose wasn't able to fight the urge to reach out and run her fingers clumsily over his lips. "Doctor ..." she hummed pleasantly, her own smile unfocused and goofy as she looked up at him through slightly hooded eyes.
The Doctor smirked against her fingertips as he shifted his grip on her and attempted to center her back on her own two feet again. "Clara," he whispered back, raising his eyebrows at her pointedly as though to make sure that she remembered that she had a new name and a role to play.
As Rose looked over his shoulder and her thoughts slowly fell back into alignment, she realized why he was being so cautious - they weren't alone. "Hi," she muttered awkwardly, staring up at the reptilian woman and her human counterpart standing just behind the Doctor. They looked familiar, but in her dazed state, Rose couldn't quite place where she knew them from. "What's going on?" she asked, turning back to the Doctor questioningly.
"Oh, haven't you heard, love?" he replied, throwing on his fake accent once more as he smiled down at her with affection. "There's trouble at the mill."
When Rose did nothing but continue to blink up at him without even a hint of comprehension, he threw his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of their companions and whispered, "She's a lizard."
"Yes, I can see that," Rose muttered sardonically as she finally forced herself to step out of the Doctor's supportive embrace. "But I'm almost certain that's not how she prefers to be introduced."
She stepped past the Doctor without another word and smiled brightly at the two women watching them, sticking out her hand in polite greeting. "Hello, let's try this again. I'm Clara," she introduced herself, not even pausing or stumbling over her fake name. "I'm sorry about them," she added, rolling her eyes in the Doctor's direction. "He's rubbish with introductions."
Rose's memories were slowly falling back into place once more and she realized suddenly that she recognized the two strangers from the Bad Wolf's trial run at Christmas. The human woman was the one to finally step forward and take Rose's hand, but even if Rose hadn't already seen the two women in action against the snowmen, it was easy to tell that the reptilian one was the mistress of the household - it was clear in the way that she carried herself.
"It's nice to meet you, Miss. Clara," the human woman replied with a nervous smile. "I'm Jenny, and this is Madame Vastra."
"Right!" Rose said, smiling cheerily as Vastra silently and suspiciously eyed her up and down. "It's nice to meet you both." Rose figured that it would be easier to pretend for now that she didn't know who they were, and let the Doctor decide what information was safe to divulge later.
"But Doctor, I don't understand ..." Madame Vastra muttered as she slid her wary gaze towards the Doctor.
"Yeah? Me, neither," the Doctor agreed breezily. "Nothing new, really - just try to make it up as I go along, mostly. Speaking of which, there's a crazy old lady dunking young, attractive humans into magic red slime. Anyone wanna take a crack at that one?"
Madame Vastra rolled her eyes in a long-suffering gesture that Rose knew only too well from her own personal use, and motioned for them to follow her further down the hallway. "This way," she instructed them hastily. "I think I might just know what's behind all of this ..."
After the leech from the dawn of time had been destroyed and Sweetville's factory had been shut down for good, the Doctor seemed eager to get Rose back into the TARDIS where he could conceal her from his other companions and their probing, curious gazes.
"Right, London! We were heading for London, weren't we?" he asked as he busily steered Rose away from Jenny, Vastra, and Strax and pointedly placed himself between her and their prying eyes.
"Was there any particular reason?" Rose asked, patiently allowing herself to be corralled back towards his time ship.
"No! No, just thought you might ... like it," the Doctor replied sheepishly, flashing her a nervous smile.
Rose narrowed her eyes on him in suspicion, but she nodded slowly and stepped obediently through the TARDIS doors all the same. "Don't be too long," she whispered under her breath as she flashed the Doctor a parting wink.
"You're the boss," he shrugged dismissively.
"Am I ...?" she asked, smiling suggestively in his direction.
The Doctor chuckled as he flashed her a wide grin, shoving his hands back into his pockets as he walked backwards away from her and towards where the rest of their companions stood waiting. "'Course you are," he replied quietly. "Never been able to say no to you, have I?"
Rose smiled at him as he raised his eyebrows at her and then spun on his heel to make their final excuses and farewells. He didn't take long at all and Rose couldn't help but feel a little guilty for leaving Jenny, Vastra, and Strax in the dark, but she knew that until more could be known about her current situation, it was probably best to limit the knowledge of her true existence as much as possible.
"So are we really going back to London?" Rose asked curiously as she rounded the console and watched the Doctor set their next destination.
He whipped off his period bowler hat and spun it wildly off into one of the surrounding balconies before roughly scrubbing his hands through his hair as he spun to face her. "Sure! Why not?" he exclaimed as he flashed her a wide smile. "Figured we'd check up on our dear Clara and the little life that she left behind, what do you say?"
"I suppose so ..." Rose replied slowly, frowning slightly at the console controls as she thought back to the small, unfamiliar house and the strange family that she had left behind. Why had the Bad Wolf placed her there in the first place? Who were those people? Just how far did this alias go?
"We don't have to, you know," the Doctor reminded her after a few moments of watching her deflated expression. "We've got whole universes to see - all of it out there, just waiting for you, Rose Tyler."
Rose flashed him a winning smile, wondering what she had ever done to deserve such a fantastic, impossible man in her life. "London it is, then," she agreed, nodding at him with firm approval. "Domestics first, then you can show me the stars."
The Doctor grinned and offered her a mock salute before yanking hard on the dematerialization lever and sending them whirling back to the present day.