Warnings: Language. Angst. Fluff. Sexual Content.

The Dread of Tomorrow and Yesterday

Chapter 83

Father's Day: Papa, Can You Hear Me?

The Doctor entered the church anteroom, where Pete was checking a door to see if it were still secure. The Doctor looked out the window, curious to see what was happening outside, and Pete joined him.

"There's smoke coming up from the city but no sirens," Pete said, urgently. "I-I don't think it's just us, I think these things are all over the place. Maybe the whole world." He grimaced.

The Doctor ignored him, staring in dismay out of the window, as the car that was meant to kill Pete appeared out of thin air, tyres screeching. It rounded the corner and the terrified driver threw his hand over his face, as it vanished into nothing again. This happened, again and again, and Pete glanced out of the window just in time to see it reappear.

"Was that a car?" Pete asked, confused.

The Doctor remembered the way Rose had spoken of her father in the TARDIS – the soft, wistful, longing tone her voice had taken. He remembered the way her hands had visibly shook and she had cringed away when that car had rounded the corner the first time. He remembered the glee in her young blue eyes when she had saved him. He remembered the first time he had heard Rhea speak of her own father, all those centuries ago; he remembered the grief in her eyes and her tongue and how she told him she forgot every night, and that every morning, she would wake up and remember that her father was dead and it would feel like someone had just kicked her in the stomach, all over again.

"It's not important," he said, finally. "Don't worry about it."

He left the room at that point, and Pete stared out of the window.

Rose sat by her lonesome near the altar, her eyes red and sore and damp, when Pete came in through a side door with his hands in his pockets.

"This mate of yours..." Pete began. "What do you mean, this is your fault?"

Rose cleared her throat. "Dunno... just... everything," she replied, thickly.

"I gave you my car keys," Pete said, suddenly. Rose's eyes snapped to his. "You don't give your keys to a complete stranger." Rose bit her lip, watching as it all slowly came together in his head. "It's... it's like I trusted you. Moment I met you, I just did. A wound in time..." Rose chewed on her lip. "You called me Dad. I can see it... my eyes... Jackie's attitude... you sound like her when you shout..."

Pete reached out and touched her face with the tips of his fingers, as if he couldn't believe it. Rose closed her eyes. Pete dropped his hand, but Rose snatched it before it fell into his lap and pressed it back against her cheek, desperate for any sort of contact from a man she hadn't had the chance to know because the universe had been so cruel to take him away from her and her mother.

"You are." Pete fell apart. "You are... you're my Rose. You're my Rose grown up," he rasped.

He threw his arms around his daughter all-grown-up, pulling her close. As all sense in her shattered, Rose's tears started to fall once more.

"Dad... my Dad. My Daddy..." she sobbed.

The Doctor knelt in front of an indisposed Rhea, hand curling behind the nape of her neck, thumb jutting into the underside of her jaw. He tilted her head back and it went, because Rhea was much too weak to protest. He looked over the sweat on her skin, the discolour and the way she was slumped forward, her eyes unfocused as she gazed at him through her eyelashes.

"You okay?" he asked, and then cursed inwardly at a such a stupid question.

Rhea chuckled, hoarsely, the sound thick in her lungs. "Been better."

He kissed her on the forehead, her skin clammy where he touched it. "Stay strong, love," he said, roughly, before crashing around in the main church, checking all possible exits.

He had just finished and was approaching Rhea to examine her once more, when he was stopped by the bride and groom.

"Excuse me! Mr..." the groom trailed off, uncertainly.

The Doctor pulled Rhea close, so that her head could rest on his shoulder. "Doctor," he corrected, not even looking at him.

"You seem to know what's going on," the groom surmised.

"I give that impression, yeah." The Doctor shrugged.

"I just wanted to ask-"

"Can you save us?" the bride interjected, worriedly.

These words stole the Doctor's attention and he reluctantly turned away from Rhea.

"Who are you two, then?" he asked, curiously.

"Stuart Hoskins."

"Sarah Clarke."

The Doctor nodded towards Sarah's obvious baby bump. "And one extra. Boy or girl?" he asked, curiously.

Sarah ran a fond hand over the curve of her belly. "I don't know. I don't want to know, really," she confessed, laughing lowly.

The Doctor's eyes moved between the couple. "How did all this get started?"

Sarah glanced at Stuart, gesturing for him to tell the story.

"Outside the Big Box Club. Two in the morning," Stuart began.

"Street corner. I'd lost my purse. Didn't have money for a taxi," Sarah explained, shyly.

"I took her home."

The Doctor's lips twitched. "Then what? Asked her for a date?"

Sarah nodded. "Wrote his number on the back of my hand." She grinned at her fiancé.

"Never got rid of her since," Stuart joked. "My dad said-"

He faltered, realising what he was about to say. Sarah's lower lip quivered, while the reapers screeched outside.

"I don't know what this is all about," Sarah said, tearfully. "And I know we're not important..."

"Who said you're not important?" the Doctor asked, genuinely shocked. Sarah looked back at him, her eyes wet. "I've travelled to all sorts of places. Done things you couldn't even imagine, but... you two... street corner. Two in the morning. Getting a taxi home." He shook his head.

"Kind of like a strange man knocking on a girl's door at three in the morning, offering to show her the stars…" Rhea weakly mused. "Everything just sort of went to hell after that," she teased.

The Doctor beamed down at her and twisted a stray curl of hers between his fingers. "Yes," He looked at the soon-to-be-married couple. "I'll try and save you."

Sarah smiled back at him through her tears.

Rose sat on a couch in a side room, with her father beside her, sniffling, as she bit back the tears that had started to run of their own accord.

"I'm a dad," Pete wondered out loud. "I mean, I'm already a dad, but..." he amended. "Rose grows up, and she's you. That's wonderful. I suppose I thought that you'd be a bit, useless, what, with my useless genes and all, but..."

Rose laughed, slightly, and Pete continued to stare at her, fascinated.

"How did you get here?" He asked, suddenly.

Rose bit her lip. "Do you really wanna know?" She asked, worriedly.

"Yeah!" Pete exclaimed.

"A time machine."

Pete paused, stunned by her answer. "Time machine."

Rose smiled, sheepishly. "Cross my heart."

Pete grinned back. "What, do they all have time machines where you come from?"

Rose shook her head. "Nah, just the Doctor."

"Did you know these things were coming?" Pete asked.

"No."

Pete shook his head. "God, I dunno, my head's spinning," he muttered to himself, causing Rose to look down. "What's the future like?"

Rose shrugged. "It's not so different." She hedged.

This was a topic she was keen to avoid for as long as she could.

"What am I like? Have I gone grey?" Pete teased, laughing at his own joke. When Rose didn't reply, instead watching him with such a forlorn look, Pete's smile faded slightly, dread curdling in his stomach. "Have I gone bald? Don't tell me I've gone bald."

Rose still didn't know what to say and Pete cleared his throat, wrong-footed by the turn of the conversation.

"So, you're sure this mate of yours is into your other friend, then? Cause I have to say, I'm glad because being your dad and all, I think he's a bit old for you..." Pete trailed off, awkwardly.

Rose laughed. "Yes, they're crazy about each other. They've known each other way longer than I've known them. Total fluke that I found 'em, really," she mused.

"Have you got a bloke?" Pete asked, curiously.

Rose shook her head. "No, I did have-"

There were the sound of running footsteps and they could hear Jackie's voice coming from just outside the room they were inside.

"Mickey!" Jackey called out.

Mickey ran up to Rose and threw his arms around her legs, surprisingly, his eyes clenched shut.

"Do you know him?" Pete asked, confused.

Rose blinked down at the boy clutching at her legs with shock and grief. "I just didn't recognise him in a suit," she stammered. "You'll have to let go of me, sweetheart..." she said, soothingly, and Mickey let go of her, returning to Jackie who had now joined them. "I'm always saying that..." she murmured to herself, shaking her head.

Jackie slipped an arm around his shoulder. "He just grabs hold of what's passing and holds on for dear life. God help his poor girlfriend if he ever gets one."

Rose choked inwardly at that.

"Me and Rose were just talking..." Pete began.

Jackie snorted. "Oh, yeah? Talking? While the world comes to an end, what do you do? Cling to the youngest blonde," she said, scathingly, ignoring the way Rose flinched at her cruel words. "Come on, Mick."

She took the boy's hand and led him away. Pete made to follow, but Rose grabbed his arm to stop him.

"You can't tell her," Rose said, urgently.

Pete frowned. "Why?"

"I mean..." Rose bit her lip. "I really don't want you to tell her."

"What, don't you want people to know?"

Rose sighed. "Where I come from, Jackie doesn't know how to work the timer on the video recorder," she said, pointedly.

Pete grinned at her, boyishly. "I showed her that last week."

Rose raised an eyebrow, expectantly, and his smile fell.

"Point taken," he conceded.

The Doctor knelt in front of baby Rose, cooing at him from her carry-tot.

"Now, Rose... you're not gonna bring about the end of the world, are you?" he said, sternly. "Are you?"

Baby Rose stared innocently up at him with wide blue eyes.

Rhea rolled her eyes. "Try it again, I don't think she understood you," she said, dryly.

Rose, the grown version, joined them and the Doctor glanced at her.

"Jackie gave her to me to look after. How times change," the Doctor said, ironically.

Rose smiled, shyly, at the two, tearful. "I'd better be careful. I think I just imprinted myself on Mickey like a mother chicken."

She reached out to take the baby in her arms, but the Doctor grabbed her hand quickly and shoved it back.

"No. Don't touch the baby," the Doctor said, coldly.

The Reapers outside distracted Rose for a moment, as they screech particularly loudly.

"You're both the same person and that's a paradox, and we don't want a paradox happening. Not with these things outside. Anything new, any disturbance in time makes them stronger. The paradox might let them in," the Doctor finished, unsmiling.

Rose sighed, crossing her arms over her chest self-consciously. "Can't do anything right, can I?"

The Doctor stared at her as though he was speaking to a dimwit. "Since you ask, no. So, don't touch the baby," he ordered.

Rose narrowed her eyes, displeased with his tone. "I'm not stupid," she shot back.

"You could've fooled me," the Doctor growled, cruelly.

"Okay, so, not only does every muscle in my body ache like I've been fighting warlords in Nairobi for days again, but I'm also like experiencing every type of headache there is at once, so I really don't need the two of you bitching at each other right now," Rhea hissed, pushing herself forward in her pew.

The Doctor found himself collapsing at her voice, chastened by the sheer distress in her voice that betrayed more of her current state than her words ever would.

He sighed and turned to Rose. "All right. I'm sorry." Rose looked back at him. "I wasn't really gonna leave you on your own."

Rose cracked a smile. "I know. Rhea wouldn't have let ya."

"It's a dick move," Rhea slurred, her head lolling back against the headrest.

The Doctor leaned in. "But between us, I haven't got a plan. No idea," he confessed, dismally. Rose looked at him, intently. "No way out."

Rose looked at the way that the Doctor stared at Rhea then, his face twisting with despair and self-disgust that he may not be able to get Rhea safely out of this, not in the state she was in at that moment (and frankly, it frightened her to see Rhea like this, sickly and indisposed and almost nothing like the indomitable, fierce woman she had always known her as; the woman she had been proud to call her friend). But if there was something true she knew of this Time Lord standing in front of her, it was that woman would never suffer a tribulation that he could prevent.

The way he looked at her, it was the way that all girls wanted to be looked at.

For that alone, he would save her (he would save her).

"You'll think of something," Rose said, firmly.

The Doctor sighed. "The entire Earth is being sterilised. This, and other place like it, are all that's left of the human race. We might hold out for a while, but nothing can stop those creatures." He looked at the shadows eerily circling the church. "They'll get through in the end. The walls aren't that old. And there's nothing I can do to stop them. There used to be laws stopping this kind of thing from happening, my people would have stopped this. But they're all gone. And now I'm going the same way," he said, forlornly.

Rose swallowed hard, guilt congealing in her lungs. "If I'd realised..."

"Just..." he sighed, looking at Rhea for reassurance, who gave him a gentle smile through the pain creasing the corner of her eyes. "Tell me you're sorry."

Rose's eyes did not falter, betraying her sincerity. "I am. I'm sorry."

The Doctor reached out to her, cupping a gentle hand around her face, almost a fatherly gesture. Then, he grinned and pulled her in for a hug, which she returned with equal vigour.

She had hated fighting with him.

"Aw," Rhea gushed, mockingly. "I love make-up scenes."

Rose pulled away from the Doctor and rolled her eyes, something catching her attention instead. She slid her hand inside the Doctor's jacket pocket, curiously.

"Have you got something hot?" she asked, confused.

Rhea snorted. "There are so many innuendos I could come up with right now."

There was a sizzling sound as she took the TARDIS key out of the Doctor's pocket. It burned her immediately once it grazed bare skin and she gasped, dropping it to the floor, where it glowed gold against the dark carpet.

"It's the TARDIS key!" the Doctor exclaimed. He slipped off his jacket and used it as a mitten to pick up the hot key. "It's telling me it's still connected to the TARDIS!"

The Doctor was standing on top of a chair, addressing the remaining of the wedding guests who were gathered in front of him.

"The inside of my ship was thrown out of a wound but we can use this to bring it back." He showed them the glowing key. "And once I've got my ship back, then I can mend everything. Now, I just need a bit of power. Has anybody got a battery?" he looked around, hopefully.

Stuart noticed his father's phone lying on the chair in front of him, and he jumped up, showing it to the Doctor.

"This one big enough?"

The Doctor hurried over to him and beamed. "Fantastic," he crowed.

"Good old dad," Stuart said, wistfully, giving the phone to the Doctor. "There you go."

"Just need to do a bit of charging up..." the Doctor murmured, pressing his sonic screwdriver against the flat of the battery pack. "And then we can bring everyone back."

He glanced around the church as the battery charged, eyeing the doors, which shook threateningly as the reapers on the outside threw their weight against it.

Rose and Pete sat down near the back of the church.

"You, um... you never said why you came here in the first place. If I had a time machine, I wouldn't have thought 1987 was anything special. Not round here, anyway," Pete mused.

Rose shrugged, hoping that it was nonchalant enough to not draw any suspicion. "We just ended up here."

"Lucky for me, eh? If you hadn't been there to save me..." Pete trailed off.

"That was just a coincidence," Rose replied, quickly. "That was just... really good luck. It's amazing..." she babbled.

Pete had his eyes narrowed as if he didn't quite believe her. "So, in the future, are me and her indoors still together?" he asked, curiously.

Rose swallowed hard, looking at him. "Yeah."

"Are you still living with us?"

Rose's smile was shaky. "Yep!"

Pete nodded and smiled. He looked at her intently for a few moments and then asks her a question, something that had been on his mind long before he had found out that this Rose was his Rose.

"Am I a good dad?" he asked, self-consciously.

Rose felt the tears burning at the backs of her eyes once more. "You... you told me a bedtime story every night when I was small. You were always there... you never missed one." She smiled at him, gently, as if everything she was saying were true and nothing more than a fairytale she had always dreamed of. "And um... you took us for picnics in the country every Saturday. You never let us down. You were there for us all the time."

Pete listened intently.

"Someone I could really rely on," Rose finished, roughly.

There was silence between them for a minute.

"That's not me," Pete said, solemnly.

Rose winced and her smile fell. She looked to the front of the church, where they TARDIS finally started to materialise, the key in her lock. The Doctor put his jacket back on, grinning down at Rhea, who smiled wearily back at him. He ran back up the steps to the pulpit to address the guests.

"Right, no-one touches that key. Have you got that? Don't touch it," he told them, sternly. "Anyone touches that key, it'll be, well, zap. Just leave it be and everything will be fine. We'll get out of here. All of us." His eyes softened when they fell on the soon-to-be-married couple. "Stuart, Sarah, you're gonna get married, just like I said."

He grinned encouragingly at them.

The TARDIS materialised slowly but surely, and everyone was sitting, waiting for it to appear fully. The Doctor and Rose sat by Rhea (because the Doctor had no intention of straying too far from her, not in the condition she was in), Pete on a seat behind them, while Jackie cast them a contemptuous glance over her shoulder.

"When time gets sorted out..." Rose began, quietly, to the Doctor.

"Everybody here forgets what happened." The Doctor pursed his lips. "And don't worry, the thing that you changed will stay changed."

"You mean I'll still be alive," Pete said, suddenly. Rose rounded on him, terror striking on her face. "Though I'm meant to be dead." Rose swallowed hard, but chose not to say more, and Pete nodded, taking her silence for acquiescence. "That's why I haven't done anything with my life. Why I didn't mean anything."

The Doctor shook his head. "It doesn't work like that."

"Rubbish," Pete scoffed. "I'm so useless I couldn't even die properly. Now it's my fault all of this has happened."

Rose blinked back tears, reaching over suddenly and placing her hand on his arm. "This is my fault," she corrected.

"No, love." Pete disagreed, gently. "I'm your dad. It's my job for it to be my fault." He said, firmly.

Jackie appeared behind him, fury and disbelief turning her face red. "Her dad? How are you her dad? How old were you, twelve?" she hissed.

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her dramatics and looked at Rhea, long-sufferingly, who simply smirked at his discomfort, when he took a step backward, preferring to leave this drama to Rose.

"Oh, that's disgusting," Jackie grimaced.

Pete jumped to his feet. "Jacks, listen. This is Rose," he said, urgently.

Jackie's eyes widened, but her anger only increased. "Rose? How sick is that? You give my daughter a second hand name? How many are there? Do you call them all Rose?" she snapped, her voice low.

Pete growled under his breath. "Oh, for God's sake, look! It's the same Rose!"

He snatched up baby Rose (a little roughly by Rhea's standards) from Jackie's arms and placed her into adult Rose's, forcing the Doctor to start in protest, but in vain, too late.

"Rose! No!" the Doctor said, warningly, pulling baby Rose from her arms, but not before they touched.

Suddenly, a reaper appeared in the middle of the church, its black, threadbare wings bared in a threat, the guests screaming and leaping to their feet.

"Everyone! Behind me!" the Doctor shouted.

The Reaper chirped menacingly, much like a crow, but the Doctor looked on, solemnly.

"I'm the oldest thing in here," the Doctor began.

"No!" Rhea shouted, stumbling to her feet, clutching onto the headrest of the pew for dear life. "Wait!"

The Reaper cocked its head at her, curiously.

"I'm the most complicated thing in here," she gritted out. "Take me instead."

Despite everyone's opinions of her, she wasn't the self-sacrificing type. Sure, she believed in good and evil and right and wrong just like anyone. And when she loved (yes, loved, she wasn't allergic to the word), she loved fiercely.

But that wasn't why she stood up now.

She had been forced to keep silent since they had entered the church, reduced to sarcastic quips because this jarring time jumping she had uniquely been forced into because apparently Fate was a bitch and hated her, had left her weak and curled in on herself like she was still that girl in a shower, sluicing the blood from her thighs and arms and torso, tracing her hands, wrists raw and red from rope, across the various keepsakes Damian had left on her skin as if he had any right to it all because she had stood beside him one night and said some words in front of some priest.

This wasn't her. She had sought out awful men and embarrassed herself and hurt herself on purpose so that she wouldn't have to feel that helplessness again. It wasn't that she blamed herself for being the victim (she couldn't have helped it, not then), but it was something she never wanted for herself ever again. She had wanted to be strong and brave and steel, and all this time travelling, this timeline jumping had left her like porcelain, easily breakable.

She hated it.

No, this, her standing up, was her being practical.

She was weak and sickly and these people, these ingenuous people needed the Doctor; they didn't need her. Maybe the Doctor needed her, maybe he thought he needed her, but if they didn't get rid of the goddamn reapers, there would be no Doctor to need her.

That was unthinkable now. Funny, how she had changed in a few, short months.

She closed her eyes. At least she could do something.

The Reaper bore down upon her without much contemplation and swallowed her whole, and she heard the Doctor roared in fury and disbelief before she knew nothing but black.

The Reaper swooped around the church, apparently satisfied with its kill, and collided with the semi-transparent TARDIS, fading into nothing and taking the TARDIS along with it. The key dropped from where it had jutted into the lock, the golden glow fading from the metal.

The Doctor watched as Rhea was there and suddenly not there.

He should've done something-he should've stepped forward, pulled her away, done something to stop her.

Damn her and damn her dignity, he cursed, inwardly.

What could he do but just stand there, useless now and incapable of helping these people Rhea had been so certain he would save?

Rose eyed the Doctor, watching him still as if life had left him hollow and bereft, and she supposed that was what Rhea had been to him. Clutching at her ribcage as if it ached to move, and it probably had, Rhea had faced the reaper with grim determination and stared into her end all because of a choice she had made.

Rose ran down the aisle, past the Doctor, and picked up the key, going numb with shock as she shook her head.

"Cold. It's cold," she mumbled.

Pete approached her cautiously from behind, all the while looking nervously around the church.

"Oh, my God, she's dead," Rose breathed.

Rhea, brave, sarcastic, kind, brutally honest, uninhibited, fierce Rhea was dead.

Because of her.

Pete reached out to her in comfort, but she shook him off.

"It's all my fault... all of you... both of you..." she trailed off, her voice cracking towards the end, as the impact of what had happened hit her. Her arms went lax at her sides when Pete took her into his arms. "... the whole world..."

The light in the church dimmed as though a cloud had passed over the sun. Jackie held baby Rose closer to her, and the guests looked around, scared.

"This is it. There's nothing we can do. It's the end," one of the wedding guests murmured, despondently.

Pete looked out of the window in the side room with the view of the car that was still stuck in a loop. As he watched this happen twice with his brow furrowed, his eyes dawned and he took a deep breath, steeling himself against the shudder of dread that wracked through him. He left the room and approached Rose, who was sitting on her own in the dark church and warily watching a silent Doctor, who had seemingly lost all hope as well, carrying his jacket.

"They really care about you…" Pete said, slowly. Rose looked up at him, her eyes red, and it made his heart wither in his chest to see her so distraught. "They didn't want you to go through it again if there was another way. Now there isn't," he sighed in resignation.

Rose's brow furrowed and something heavy settled in her stomach. She slid to her feet.

"What're you talking about?" she asked, cautiously.

Pete slid his jacket on. "The car that should've killed me, love. It's here. The Doctor worked it out way back, but he," He eyed the man and looked him straight in the eye, and knew his theory to be true. "Er, he tried to protect me."

Tears wet her eyelids, but all Rose could do was look at him in silence.

"Still, it's not his choice. It's mine," he finished, firmly.

"But you can't..." Rose protested, weakly.

Pete softened, and he reached out to brush his fingers over Rose's face, the last sight he would see of his beautiful, brave little girl, all grown up and ready to save him no matter the cost.

"Who am I, love?"

"My Daddy," Rose choked out.

Jackie approached them, staring at Rose with wide eyes.

"Jackie... look at her. She's ours," Pete implored.

Jackie looked at Rose then, the truth dawning upon her, and Rose looked back, tearful.

"Oh, God..." Jackie breathed and threw her arms around Rose, her eyes shut tightly. When she let go, she looked at Pete, apprehensively.

"I'm meant to be dead, Jackie. You're gonna get rid of me at last," Pete joked, lightly.

"Don't say that," Jackie said, thickly, holding back her tears.

"For once in your life, trust me," Pete said, gently. "It's got be done. You've got to survive, because you've got to bring up our daughter." He gestured to Rose, and pulled Jackie in with one last kiss to her mouth. He turned to Rose. "I never read you those bedtime stories. I never took you on those picnics. I was never there for you."

"You would've been," Rose sobbed.

"But I can do this for you. I can be a proper dad to you now," Pete said, firmly.

"But it's not fair," Rose protested, hiccupping.

Pete smiled, comfortingly. "I've had all these extra hours. No-one else in the world has ever had that. And on top of that... I get to see you." He cupped her face in his hands. "And you're beautiful." Rose shook at that. "How lucky am I, eh? So, come on... do as your dad says."

Slowly, tears still damp and rolling down her cheeks, and without looking at him, Rose handed him the vase.

"Are you going to be there for me, love?" Pete asked, hesitantly, his hands shaking briefly as he registered what he was about to do.

Rose nodded. This time, she would have the stomach for it.

Pete put a hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes.

"Thanks for saving me," he said, fiercely, pulling his wife and daughter into a tight embrace, Rose screwing up her eyes against his warm shoulder, feeling him warm and there against her, something she thought she would never have, not from a dead man.

The reapers were still clamouring outside the church when Pete ran out of the doors, holding the vase. He stopped just outside the gate and looked up at one of the reapers, just as it began to bear down upon him. He turned to see the car appear from thin air around the corner and ran straight out in front of it, screwing up his eyes before the impact.

"Goodbye, love..."

The driver threw a hand over his eyes as the car knocked Pete over. The vase crashed to the ground and broke into several pieces, and the reapers disappeared one by one. Rose stood outside the church doors, her head down and her eyes closed, taking deep breathes in the slight breeze. Rhea comes up behind her, steady and uninjured, and looked at her for a few moments before placing a hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at her.

"You should go to him. Quickly," Rhea urged.

Rose ran out of the church gates, down the road, and knelt down next to her dying father, his mouth damp with blood from where he was haemorrhaging internally. She held his hand and lifted his head slightly up off the ground so that she could place it in her lap. She held his gaze, firmly, as he took his last few breaths. Finally, his eyes drifted shut and his head fell back, limp. Rose lowered his head gently to the ground, just as Sarah Clarke, Stuart Hoskins, his father, Jackie, and the rest of the guests emerged from the church, trying to see what has happened.

"The driver was just a kid. He stopped. He waited for the police. It wasn't his fault. For some reason, Pete just ran out." Rose remembered her mother saying. "People say there was this girl... and she sat with Pete while he was dying. And she held his hand. Then she was gone. Never found out who she was."

Rose placed a kiss onto her father's forehead.

"What d'you say we go and visit your dad now? Two for two, huh?" ythe Doctor said, quietly, betraying how her death had wrecked him only by his hand holding onto hers for dear life.

Rhea thought of her father, always with a quick grin and a stern word, kind brown eyes and the desire to do good in this world, however he could. When she had asked him, that godforsaken day, to come with her to the store, he had objected just slightly before melting at her pleas, because that was what her father was; he had loved no more and nothing more than her mother and her.

How sweet would it be to see him again?

"No," Rhea said, finally, viciously ignoring the way her heart clenched in protest at her own words. My father's dead. I dealt with it a long time ago. I don't want to have to deal with it again. "There's no point."

Rose stood up, and after looking down at him for a few moments, raised her eyes to meet the Doctor and Rhea's, who were standing around the other side of the car that killed Pete, and she went over to them.

"Peter Alan Tyler, my Dad. The most wonderful man in the world. Died the 7th of November, 1987."

The Doctor took Rose's hand, as Rhea fell against her back, fierce and reassuring, and they walked slowly back to the TARDIS together.

The Doctor found Rhea much later, buried in a glass of whiskey on the edge of their bed.

"Hey," She smiled when she saw him walk inside. "You want some?" she tilted her glass in his direction.

"No, thank you," the Doctor said, gently, taking a seat beside her. He paused, contemplating, for a few moments. "This was hard for you, today, I mean."

Rhea's lips twitched. "Yes," she said, simply.

"How are you doing?" The Doctor asked, cautiously.

Rhea pursed her lips.

"When I was a little girl and my dad and I would go somewhere, sometimes I would always ask him to buy me something, something small, like chocolate or a lolly or maybe an ice-cream. But he would always say no. I think he was afraid I would become spoiled. But then, all I would have to do is say that I didn't want it and my dad would turn around and buy it for me." She grinned. "I always loved that reverse psychology worked on him. My mother would never have given in." She bit her lip. "I never knew whether he knew what I was doing and still bought it for me anyway, or it was because he wanted me to have everything I wanted." She paused. "Whether I took it in the end or not didn't matter, he just had to offer."

The Doctor entwined their hands.

Rhea looked down at the shape their fingers made together, hers slender and short with sharp, black-painted nails (a luxury she sometimes afforded herself when she wasn't biting them down to the tips of her fingers) and his long, broad and rough with callouses.

"I miss him," she confessed, haltingly, as if she afraid to give voice to her thoughts.

"I know," the Doctor said with that unabashed certainty which told Rhea once more that he obviously knew her better than he pretended to. He looked at her then, stone-blue eyes searching into hers. "Are you sure you don't want to go and see him?"

Rhea raised an eyebrow. "After everything that happened today, you'd allow that?"

The Doctor shrugged. "I'd be concerned about you, but I also knew you wouldn't try and save him."

"Why?" she didn't know if his trust raised her spirits or made her feel worse "Because I'm so detached nowadays that I wouldn't give a damn if I saw my father dying right in front of me?" she asked, curiously, not particularly offended, but wondering what his answer would be.

The Doctor shook his head. "No, but you were the one who told Rose that you wouldn't make the same choice as her, even if you were in the same situation. I trust your word."

Rhea smirked, grimly. "I lie," she said, pointedly.

"So do I," the Doctor countered. "But that doesn't mean I trust you any less."

Rhea looked down at their joined hands once more before tilting her head to the side and kissing him on the mouth slowly. She slipped her fingers out of his grasp, so that she could slide her palm up the length of his arm and curl it around the nape of his neck, her mouth insistent on his.

His teeth scraped her lower lip, inciting a low moan, and she hooked one knee over his thigh, pressing him down onto the bed, and straddling his hips between her thighs. She leaned back and pulled him forwards, slipping his jacket over his shoulders and leaving him only in his dark violet shirt underneath. She slid her hands underneath his shirt, her palms easing across the broad planes of his abdomen, more muscled and solid than his future counterparts, but just as tempting. She tugged on the hem of his shirt, impatiently, and he promptly divested himself off it.

His large hands spanned the width of her thighs and dragged up the skirt of her green dress until it was bunched around her hips, so that only her cotton underwear and his jeans remained between them. As much as he didn't want to, when he felt her fingers grope at his belt buckle, he pulled away.

"Just a question, do you want to have sex because you're sad and you want comfort? Or because you actually want to have sex?" the Doctor asked, curiously, with just the slightest concern in his eyes.

Rhea opened her mouth, intending to say something coy or filthy that had made many a men do whatever she wanted them to do, but suddenly found herself becoming shy, twisting her fingers abruptly in her hair.

"Well, actually, I'd really like to be close to you tonight," she confessed, lightly.

The Doctor softened and shifted, so that his back was now resting against the headboard and Rhea was curled in his lap, still in that pretty green dress, her hands on his shoulders to maintain balance.

She was pleasantly surprised when he began by kissing her just above her eyebrow.

"You know," Rhea murmured. "I always thought you'd be rough in this body."

The Doctor pulled away slightly and brushed her hair away from her face like he could spend the rest of the night doing just that.

"Is that what you would like from me?" he asked, curiously.

"I just want you," Rhea said, firmly.

"You always have me, Rhea," the Doctor said, roughly.

Rhea simply smiled and pulled down the zipped at the back of her dress, tossing it over her shoulder. All she was left in was a black t-shirt bra and matching cotton underwear, not overtly seductive by any means, but still somehow sexy. Her fingers toyed with his belt buckle, before she was undoing it with precision and unzipping his jeans. The Doctor curled an arm around her waist and lifted her up slightly, so that he could pull the jeans down and let them drop at the foot of the bed.

He twisted his hands in her dark hair as she kissed him once more, squirming against his hips, until she could feel him hard against her stomach, through his briefs. She didn't even bother to take them off before she was slipping her hand past the waistband so that she could fist his cock, slowly, twisting her wrist just as she approached the head.

He groaned against her mouth and she smiled, feeling him throb against her hands. In retribution, one of his hands slipped downwards, curving against her hip, before falling in between her legs and past her underwear, so that he could stroke into her. She gasped and her nails dug into his shoulder, arching her back when his fingers slid inside her cunt, his thumb patting her clit, slowly but surely. She was slick and ready for him when she hiked her hips over him and slowly sunk down on his cock, letting herself adjust to his size, shorter but thicker that her matchstick man and bow-tie boy.

Her arm curled around his shoulder-blades and she drew him against her once she began her rhythm, her forehead pressed against his. His hands were uncompromising on her hips, helping her flow and ebb over him. It wasn't long before she found herself shaking from her orgasm, which cleaved straight through her, leaving her a strung-out mess, damp with sweat and relief and some strange sort of contentment.

She continued to rock on top of him, her hips undulating despite the awareness of her flesh, until he was panting her name against her neck and spilling wetly inside of her. She scraped her nails against his short hair, pressing him close against her until his own shudders subsided.

It was hardly the most indecent of her own sexual experiences, but she was left with something only the Doctor had been able to give her – for the first time, in a long time, she didn't feel that hunger in her belly, aching for something more (not just with regard to orgasms, but more – she had always wanted something more). When she had first kissed the Doctor this night, she had wanted all the voices in her head to stop, she had wanted to forget her father's death, forget Damien and her damage, forget Theo and his warnings; she had just wanted to feel something sweet.

Wasn't she owed that?

The Doctor kissed her sweetly on the mouth and pulled her down with him onto the bed, his arms wrapping her around instantly.

Surprisingly, she didn't feel the urge to run.

Despite both of them satisfied with their respective orgasms, Rhea (perhaps still seeking comfort for the memories that the day had invoked or something much deeper that she wouldn't scrutinise for now) was unwilling to let him leave her. He was soft inside her and when he moved just the slightest, it made her clench and her toes curl from the sensitivity of her flesh, but he felt good and she wasn't about to let that go anytime soon.

"Why does it feel so good in all of your bodies?" Rhea brushed her red mouth against his jaw.

The Doctor made a contended sound, low in his throat, almost a purr, and stroked a warm hand down her side.

"Perhaps it's because it isn't just our bodies joining, it's this," he pressed their joined hands to his hearts and then against her own. "That stays the same, no matter what body I have and no matter how old you are and no matter when you find me," he said, solemnly.

Rhea leaned in closer and smiled. "I like that idea."

A/N: Okay, so I hope you guys enjoyed the sex scene. I originally intended it to be this long, drawn-out affair between the two, that probably would've been rough and filthy, but then I figured that Rhea was probably a little too raw for that tonight and she would prefer some comfort even if she couldn't say it to his face. It's my headcanon that 9 is a more dominant lover than 10 or 11, but in this case, I wanted their first time to be sweeter, I guess. They'll have their obscener encounters, of course, but I think they needed this.

And I know Rhea probably wasn't as action-heavy in this chapter and the last as many may have wanted, but I hope that little introspection I gave her that had her hating how she was weak now gave you more of an insight of why I left her that way in this episode. It was something she needed to acknowledge and consider, because she won't always be able to do something.

I had this episode focused more on Rose, not only because it does follow the plotline, but also because I wanted to expand on Rose's character as well. This story isn't just about the Doctor and Rhea; it's about the companions too, even if I don't give them so much 'chapter time', it's about the relationship Rhea has with the companions because they're helping with her character growth as well. I wanted to write how Rose felt this episode because, while stupid decisions aside, it was an emotional and traumatic experience for her, so not only did I want to show her interactions with Rhea from her own POV, but I also wanted to write her side of it as well (hopefully it made her more empathetic if you didn't like her in this episode).

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter and don't forget to leave a review!

Reviews:

NicoleR85: Thank you!

PrincessMagic: Thank you!

sam: Thank you!

Waypoint-46: Thank you! Rhea was supposed to meet all of those Doctors but unfortunately I never got around to it!