A/N: okay, I lied, one more bit here. This part just worked better here.
XxXxXxXx
After a wonderful meal, where everyone laughed and shared stories, Rose and the Doctors bade the Lakes and Rosita goodbye. The trio walked back to the TARDIS, Rose hand in hand with the Time Lord, who was being particularly clingy at the moment. She didn't blame him one bit, he just thought that she was dead for over an hour.
When they stepped back inside of the TARDIS, everyone shrugged off their coats and threw them in their usual places. The Time Lord's trench coat went over the coral strut to the right, The human Doctor's black trench coat went over the coral strut to the left, and Rose's leather one went over the railing. The three of them then went to their usual places around the console and dematerialized the TARDIS into the Vortex.
This was a routine that the three of them had fell in to by accident. Well, mostly accident, there were a couple of dirty looks at the beginning when one of them would have to move the other's coat to get to their own.
As soon as they were safely in the Vortex, the Doctor in the brown suit pulled her to him and brought his lips to hers with a level of passion he usually didn't possess-not since their bond had settled anyway. Rose kissed back enthusiastically. She stood up on her tip toes and ran her fingers through his hair as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
She felt the other Doctor's presence behind her just before he put his hands on her shoulders. What happened next wasn't what she expected, though.
"I'm sorry, I really hate to break this up. Really, really, hate to," he apologized, "but now that we're alone and in the TARDIS, you, Rose Tyler, have been putting this off long enough,"the Doctor in blue said matter of factly.
The other two broke apart suddenly and gave him matching dirty looks.
Rose groaned. "I'm fine!" she protested.
"Wait, what?" the other Doctor asked, confused.
"I don't need to get checked out," Rose added.
"Is something wrong?" The Time Lord questioned his other self, worriedly.
"She got electrocuted by a Cyberman, then we had a visit from Bad Wolf, and then, to top it all off, when we used the Vortex manipulator, she claimed it didn't hurt and looked like she felt good," the Doctor in blue informed him.
"'She's' about to give you both a smack if you keep talking about 'er like she's not 'ere," Rose grumbled.
The Doctor in brown looked back and forth between Rose and his twin, wide eyed. He opened his mouth and closed it several times, then squeaked out, "you were electrocuted?"
"Yes, I was," Rose admitted with a shrug. "A Cyberman was goin' after 'im, an' I jumped in front of it. I knew I could survive it. Didn't know if 'e could or not."
The Doctor in brown stared at Rose wide eyed. "I don't know what to be most concerned about, the electrocution, the fact that you can shrug it off like that, or the reemergence of Bad Wolf. I agree with him, why didn't either of you tell me this before?"
"Wha'? Not concerned about the other thing?" Rose asked, testily. She really was tired of being a science experiment. "'M alrigh'," she restated.
"She's okay, but I still wanna run-" The Doctor in blue started.
"No more tests!" Rose interrupted him. "'M tired of bein' poked and prodded all the time. You two run a bunch of tests every week, and they tell ya nothin'. I feel like a lab rat!"
"They don't tell us 'nothing,'" the Doctor in blue defended. "It's a progression of your changes and-"
"Doctor," she cut him off, "an' this is directed to both of you this time, jus' so ya know. Does it make a difference?"
"Does what make a difference?" the Doctor in brown asked.
"My changes," she answered. "Do the changes happenin' to me make a difference?"
XxXxXxXx
"Well, of course, they do," the Doctor replied, unwittingly.
A look of hurt passed over Rose's face. A look he knew all to well, and he instantly knew that was the wrong answer.
"What this Dunce, who I swear lost half his brain in the metacrisis, is trying to say," the other man said derisively, "is that you could be allergic to, say aspirin, like us, and it'd be nice to know about that beforehand."
"Yes! We need to be certain that you're okay, that the changes in you aren't going to cause any problems," he picked up the explanation gratefully, happy for once for that bit of Donna in his other self that allowed the man to understand human women better. He glossed over the insult, he'd deserved it.
"After what just happened today," the part human Doctor added, "I should have checked you out as soon as we got back here."
Rose looked pacified, a bit, anyway, but she was still angry. "I understand that," she told them. "Today, I said an' did thin's I don' remember." She looked discomposed at that realization, and all her anger left her. "Oh, fine then, but do we 'ave to do the reg'lar testing so often? I mean 'snot like things really change in a week."
He and his double glanced at each other, they didn't need telepathy to be sure what the other was thinking, they were, essentially, the same man after all.
"Okay," they said together.
"Now that we've established that the changes are very slow, we can do it less often," the Time Lord conceded.
"But we do need to look you over tonight," his twin added, just to be sure they were all in agreement.
After several tests, the Doctors determined that Rose was perfectly fine, which caused both of them to be on the receiving end of the human tradition of "I Told You So."
There was one change noted, though, an increase in artron energy, more than could be accounted for with normal time travel.
Everyone who went through the Vortex picked up traces of artron, it was a sort of radiation that stuck to all beings and things that passed through the Vortex. Artron energy powered the regeneration process. If a Time Lord had no artron, or it was inhibited, he/she wouldn't be able to regenerate. It was healing, gave an immune boost to humans, and allowed frequent time travelers to age just a bit slower, but not much.
The TARDIS refined it and used it. Hanging out in the Vortex would charge a TARDIS, but it was done much faster if they parked at a rift for a while.
Rose used bits of her energy sometimes when caring for the TARDIS coral, they all knew that. It would allow the little one to be ready a minimum of six months sooner, and it was only small amounts. They kept an eye on Rose's levels, though, just in case.
But too much artron was damaging. The levels of a Time Lord would go down with a new body, which kept them from building up too much. A large burst of artron energy would also send one into regeneration. That's how his second life had ended, through a forced regeneration. and his last body, old big ears and leather, died because of the artron energy he took out of Rose with everything else.
"Wait, I have an idea," Rose said, as she looked at the screen with the artron chart with the Doctors. "When we used the Vortex manipulator, I felt good, really good, like I had drunk several energy drinks right after I woke up, good," she explained.
"Yeah, it would have added some, but that wouldn't account for this spike in energy. The use of some on the Cyberman should have used quite a bit," the Doctor who had been on the trip with her countered.
"Yeah, but I remember wha' both of you 'ave told me about it," she told them, "and you know 'ow we usually feel excited when we're goin' somewhere?" she asked.
"Yeah?" the Doctor in brown said, not sure where she was going with this.
"What if it's not entirely our own feelings?" she queried, knowingly.
Suddenly, it clicked in his mind, and he could see that it had clicked for his part human twin as well. He thought about it. It made sense. The TARDIS usually communicated in shocks and emotions, sometimes a picture or two, and by switching rooms around. But she did usually seem happy when they were flying from one place to another. Sometimes even when sparking.
The TARDIS gained a bit of energy when her shell was flying through the Vortex. And Rose had some TARDIS-y bits stuck to her DNA. She had said that it felt like she'd had energy drinks.
"How do you feel right now?" he asked her as he leaned back against the counter with his hands in his pockets.
"Fine," she replied.
"Not overly energetic?" he queried.
"Nope," she popped her 'p'.
"How did you feel after you woke from the shock?" his twin with the one heart asked her as he crossed his arms and regarded her.
"Kinda sick and like my head 'ad been bashed in," she answered.
"Are you feeling like you normally do about the time I hit the sack?"
"Wow, 'as it been tha' long since we got up already?" Rose wondered.
"Yeah, I'm a bit knackered," he admitted. He scratched the back of his neck with his right hand and made a disgusted face. "So, are you feeling like you may need to sleep within the next few hours?" he asked.
"I can't say wha' I'll feel like in a few hours, but right now, I feel fine an' ready to go," she told them both, shrugging.
"Okay, then. We'll keep an eye on your artron levels over the next few days," the Time Lord said. "Let us know if you experience a crash in energy not consistent with your usual patterns."
"If you have to use the space hopper again," the other Doctor said, with a distasteful look on his face, "I want to check your levels right afterward."
He nodded his head in agreement with him.
Rose's lips quirked up in a smile. "That 'space hopper' you hate so much just saved our lives," she teased.
"Only because I made it work," he countered. "It's a pogo stick compared to a sports car."
Rose laughed loudly over that. She walked over to the wall and patted it. "You 'ear that, Love?" she asked the sentient ship, "he called you a sports car! I think you're more of a luxury model, myself."
They all heard the hum change and felt a sense of smugness. The Time Lord Doctor laughed, and the part human shook his head.
"Oh, If we've been up tha' long, I've gotta check on the TARDIS coral," Rose realized. "I 'ad to adjust the mister this morning. Might 'ave ta take it apart an' clean it out again," she said with a grimace. The minerals added to the water would sometimes clog it up.
"I'll come with," the part human quickly volunteered. "It's on the way to bed, and I'd like a peek in on the little one. Haven't looked in a while. Could help with the mister too."
"Be back soon," Rose told him, before she disappeared.
He put the detector back in it's place, leaned back against the counter again, and put his hands back in his pockets. This was the first moment he had been alone with his thoughts since it had been confirmed that the other two had been alive. He thought back on the hour and a half that he had thought that Rose and his twin were dead.
Once again, he had thought that she was gone forever and he'd have to live on without her. And he'd had no regrets, not counting the last couple of seconds, which really, the last seconds of any way you're going to lose someone you care about are going to be a bit regretful.
It was freeing, to know for a fact that he had no more regrets in that area.
With this thought in his mind, he went to the lab where they kept the TARDIS coral.
XxXxXxXx
Rose used her new sonic to take apart the coral mister. She didn't need to, but it was the first chance she had really had to use it, and she had to take it.
"This stuff really clogs up the mister quickly," the Doctor grumbled.
"Yeah, but the end result will be worth it," Rose replied, with a fond look at the TARDIS coral. The coral had grown to the size of a beach ball, and looked exactly like the struts in the console room. "She's getting' big, ain't she?"
"Yeah, she's gonna get a lot bigger, and she's gonna be needing to be removed from that tank soon," he told her. "She'd have been in the first tank we had her for two centuries without the faster growth." He put the nozzle in the solution that would eat away the mineral buildup.
"Wait, what's the downside of growing a TARDIS this fast?" she asked, mentally kicking herself for not thinking about that sooner.
He took off his glasses and looked at the coral thoughtfully. "Well, not much, actually," he replied. "After the initial growth, there won't be any difference, but at first, she may have a hard time integrating new systems." He looked over at Rose and added, "don't worry, though, with all three of us working on her, she'll be fine."
"Brilliant TARDISes," they heard from the door, "she'll be fine."
Rose looked to the door where the Time Lord stood. He leaned against the frame with his hands in his pockets and a smile on his face.
Rose grinned back at him as she put another piece of the mister in the solution the other Doctor had whipped up. The solution fizzed as it ate away at the minerals. "This stuff works great, and is a damned sight better than scrubbing all the gunk away." She dropped the last piece that needed cleaning into the solution and watched it bubble away. "How long will the pieces need to stay in?" she asked the part human Doctor.
"About 10 minutes," he replied. "Don't want to keep the stuff in there for too long."
Rose sat back and looked at each Doctor as she debated how to bring up the subject that had been bothering her for a while. "So," she started, drawing out the 'o', "The Cybermen from the Void, using Dalek technology."
"Yep," was all both Doctors could say.
"Joy," she sarcastically remarked. "What's the likelihood of more than jus' tha' group gettin' out?"
Judging from the looks both of the Doctors gave her, neither of them had thought about it.
"It's possible," the part human admitted after a moment.
"We're gonna be playin' innergalactic whack-a-mole for a while, aren't we?" she leaned her head back and hit the wall of the lab a couple of times.
"Now, you stop beatin' your head against the wall, Missy," the Time Lord admonished her, without much heat. She hadn't hit her head hard, just a tap, and he knew it.
"There's nothing we can do about it now," the Doctor in blue added. "If anything else got out, we'll come across them eventually, we always do," he sighed.
Rose sat there with her head back against the wall. She'd fought Daleks five different times: Van Statten's, the Game Station, 70 a.d., Canary Wharf, and the Medusa Cascade. She'd gone to great lengths to stop them, and the Doctor had gone even further. She'd fought Cybermen three times by the Doctor's side, and half a dozen times in Pete's World. Now it appeared they might never be entirely rid of them.
They sat in silence for a few moments, each lost in their own thoughts. The part human Doctor yawned once during that time, and Rose thought that he should go to bed.
10 minutes after they put the pieces in, they all put gloves on and grabbed pieces out of the acidic solution. They cleaned them off, using a small, hard bristled brush to get the last tiny bit of build up out of the nozzle, put the mister back together and set it back up like it should be.
When they had the mister spraying the mineral laced solution on the coral again, the part human Doctor finally decided to go to bed and the other two cleaned up.
"I need a shower," Rose complained.
"Weelll, I wasn't going to say anything," the Doctor joked.
"Shut up," she reprimanded him. She gave his arm a light smack as she walked past him. He laughed softly as she stepped out of the room.
After a quick shower and a change into pajamas, Rose walked the halls of the TARDIS in search of the Doctor. She had already checked the console room, and was surprised to not find him there doing his almost constant maintenance.
She ran her hand along the wall, letting the ship guide her, and came upon the library, where a familiar shape sat on the couch.
"Hello there, have a nice shower?" the Doctor asked her.
"Yes, I did," she replied as she flopped down on the couch next to him.
There were a few scattered books on the table. The assortment was as eccentric as the man that sat next to her. Books on various types of physics, the complete Lord of the Rings series in one book, The Hunger Games, storybooks from other planets, Summer Falls by Amy Williams, and a little red book full of Sherlock Holmes stories.
"So, reading tonight?"
"Sort of," the Doctor replied. "Since it seems you're sticking around for a while, I wanted to start teaching you more things. We'll start with my language, because teaching everything else will be easier if you know it."
He handed her a book in Gallifreyan and she groaned.
"Welll, if you never want to be able to read the displays on your-" The Doctor teased.
"Okay, okay!" She interrupted, and took the book from him.
With a grin, the Doctor began teaching Rose the language he grew up with.