Thanks for the reviews! Another update because I've had a bad day lol. Exam at 5.30 in the evening... not good. Plus, I wanted to kick off the Rose/Doctor adventure before people started wondering where they'd gone. It's sort of alternate chapters now I think, one Doctor/Rose, one Torchwood.

Cold floor. As he came to, the Doctor reached out with a hand to feel cold hard floor underneath him. It wasn't a particularly clean floor, he realised, sitting up gingerly to get his nose out of the dust and dirt covering it. He quickly checked himself over, making sure that everything was in working order. He stood up and looked around. Not that there was anything to see. He was in almost pitch darkness, he could just see enough to make out the shape of his hands in front of him. In cases like this, he had a simple rule he always followed; if you can't see and you don't know where you are, you stay still.

Then he remembered.

"Rose?" His voice was weak at first wavering, questioning the air around him. Then, stronger, "Rose? Rose, are you here?" No reply. He felt both his hearts begin to race. The last thing he remembered before waking up here was losing a grip on her hand, her fingers slipping through his. "Rose, if you're here, say something, make a noise, anything." Maybe she was hurt and couldn't reply. Maybe she was still unconscious, he sometimes forgot that she didn't have the bounce-backability that he did have. Or maybe she just wasn't here. That was something he wasn't willing to face just yet, something he didn't want to have to contemplate until he'd exhausted all other possibilities. "Rose!"

"Doctor?" It just the merest whisper, barely a sound at all, but his ears caught it.

"Rose?"

"Doctor!" She gave a breath of relief. "Thank God!"

"Where are you?"

"I don't know, I can't see anything." He heard her move. From the change in her voice, he could tell she was standing up. "It could be anywhere. Where are you?"

"Sounds like a pretty good description," the Doctor agreed. "Can you remember what happened?"

"It's all a bit… vague," Rose admitted. "What's taken us?"

"Oh, now come on, Rose, we don't know anything's taken us yet, don't jump to conclusions-"

"Doctor."

"Oh alright." He sighed. "I don't know." He patted his hands down the front of his jacket. "But whatever it is, they don't know enough to take the sonic screwdriver off me." He pulled the small device out of his pocket.

"So you're going to what, blast us out?" Rose sounded doubtful, knowing what she did about the sonic screwdriver.

"Nope."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Having a look around." The Doctor flicked the switch and a pinpoint of light shone around where he was. "Setting three-five-nine: torch."

"Is there anything that it doesn't do?"

"It's never been so good at flat-packs actually," the Doctor admitted as he looked round. The narrow light didn't show him much, but he could see enough. He was in a small box-shaped room, only about five foot in each direction; there wouldn't be room for a fully-grown adult human male to lie down straight in. The walls were sheer and stretched right up to a high ceiling.

"What can you see?" Rose's disembodied voice floated through from one of the walls. "I can't see any light."

"You're not in the same room as me." He tried to shrug off the regretful feeling. There was a simple solution; if Rose wasn't with him, he'd just have to get to her. "I'm in some sort of room… a cell."

"A prison?"

"Sort of." The Doctor looked around again. "That's interesting."

"What is?"

"No doors." The Doctor frowned and looked around again, double-checking. He hadn't been wrong. There wasn't an opening of any sort in any of the walls. He looked up and down. Nothing.

"Then how did we get in here?" Rose sounded both curious and a little scared.

"That, Rose, is not the question. The question is how do we get out?" The Doctor turned things over in his mind. There were no doors. There was always the possibility of them having been teleported in of course, but he didn't feel like that had happened. He prided himself on knowing when he'd been dissolved into tiny pieces and reassembled in another place. There had to be another way.

"Well?"

"Well what?" He switched settings on the sonic screwdriver and ran a beam over the walls.

"What's the answer?"

"I'm working on it." He frowned as the sonic screwdriver registered… nothing. It didn't detect anything at all, as though… as though there was nothing solid there. As though whatever the walls were made of, it wasn't anything that couldn't be moved through.

"What are you doing?" Rose asked again. She sounded increasingly anxious. "You are still there, aren't you?"

"Of course I am. I wouldn't leave you. I'm just checking something out." He took a deep breath and then reached out to touch the wall. "Ow!"

"What is it? What's happened?"

The tingling sensation in his fingers stopped almost instantly. He did it again, and this time there was a loud crackle and the same burst of energy, but nothing that painful. It was just a shock.

"Oh genius!" He exclaimed excitedly. "That is brilliant!"

"Doctor?"

"Really, wonderful!" He jumped on the spot, unable to contain the elation in his body. "So simple!"

"Doctor!"

"It's electricity, Rose! Static electricity! That's all these walls are made of, just good old plain static electricity!"

"What? Like the shocks you get off a tap?"

"Or a car door or anything metal," the Doctor agreed. "There's some sort of shield too, a projection of an image to make it look like they're real walls."

"But if it's just static electricity… Does that mean…?"

"We can get out. We just step straight through."

"Is it really that simple though?" Rose questioned, her voice skeptical. "I mean, if they wanted to keep us locked up, would it really be that simple?"

"One way to find out." The Doctor collected his thoughts and then, swiftly and smoothly, stepped through the wall. He heard the crackles and spitting noises, and felt a million small jolts all over his body. But he was through and on the other side.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor looked to his left and could now see Rose in the cell next to his, looking confused and anxious. One of his favourite expressions on her face. He loved them all of course, but when she turned that face on him, the one that told him she cared what happened to him, if he lived or died, if he stayed or went… that held a special charm for him.

"It worked, Rose, I'm out. I can see you."

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, 'course I am. Rubber soles and natural fabrics… static electricity's arch nemesis." He looked her up and down now, a strange voyeuristic sensation sweeping over him as he remembered she couldn't see him doing this. Rose in her natural state, looking around like a lost child. "You might want to take your jacket off. All that polyester won't help things much."

Rose unzipped the red jacket quickly and, as an experiment, threw it through the wall. Sparks flew off it as it passed through the static field and then it landed on the other side.

"That looks promising," she said sarcastically. "Are you sure I'm not going to get fried or something?"

"Certain. Honestly, just step through." The Doctor picked up her jacket and winced as a shock came off it. "Is there a reason you chucked this through, by the way?"

"It might be cold, wherever we are. Where are we anyway? What can you see?"

For the first time, the Doctor appreciated that there was more in his immediate surroundings than the cell he'd come from and the one Rose was still in. In fact, there were more of the same sort of cells stretching away on either side of theirs, all the same size. The area he was in now, some sort of corridor, was dimly lit and, he could see doors at either end, heavy metal doors. Clearly this wasn't the Land of No Doors. That was a shame, it would have narrowed things down a whole lot.

"It's some sort of prison, I think," he replied, moving a few paces away to look into the next cell. What he saw in there made him start and move onto the next, and the next and the next.

"A prison? You mean, we're prisoners?" Rose was still trying to build up the courage to step through the static field.

The Doctor looked behind him and saw an identical row of cells, with equally as shocking sights in them. "No. It's a museum."

"Like Van Statten's?" Rose put her head on one side, and unconsciously looked directly at the Doctor, frowning. Funny the things people still do even when they can't see the person they're talking to, the Doctor mused in some part of his mind. It had always amused him to see Jackie on the phone, using hand gestures, frowning and smiling, even though the person she was talking to (usually Bev who seemed to have as little to occupy her during the day as Jackie herself did) had no chance of picking up on those non-verbal signals. That was part of the beauty of humans.

"No." The Doctor looked round grimly, as Rose finally found the bottle to step through, amidst crackles far louder than those that accompanied his own step out of his cell. He swallowed hard before continuing. "It's a zoo."

Rose tripped as she came out into the hazy light of the corridor, and the Doctor moved to break her fall. He allowed himself a second to hold her tight, savouring the delight of having her back beside him again. Every time he found himself without her, he always vowed when he found her again that he'd appreciate her presence that much more this time. Of course, after the initial elation and hugs, he usually forgot, but he remembered now. He was reminded again how much he loved her.

"You alright?" he asked, breathing in the warm comforting scent of her.

"Yeah, fine." Rose nodded, grinning up at him. "Your hair looks awful."

He ran a hand over his unruly brown hair, made even more rebellious by the electricity. "You can talk," he teased smoothing down her now slightly static blonde hair.

Rose turned to look around. "My God, you weren't joking!" she exclaimed, breaking away from his hug to move towards the cell next door to her own. Inside, half-curled on the floor, was a humanoid cat, like the nuns they'd met on New Earth. He was asleep, dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt. Rose wasn't sure which was most disturbing; the so very human clothes or the fact that he was locked up.

"What is this place?" she asked, as she moved to the next cell. What she saw there made her gasp and crouch down on the floor. Inside the cage (she was finding it hard to think of it as anything else) a great green creature, who would have been twice as tall as a human standing up, was sitting in the middle of the floor, hunched over. At the end of a long neck, it had a strange, almost baby-like face. In its lap, lay an almost identical min-version of the creature. "Doctor…"

"I know." He moved to stand behind her.

"But look!" She looked up at him and back to the creature, unable to say much more for a second as her words suddenly got choked in her throat.

"I can see, Rose. That's a Slitheen with her baby. I get it."

Rose swallowed back tears as she looked at the strange tableaux, unable to shake the image it conjured up from her head. Sometimes they still surprised, these intense feelings, taking over her like some sort of wave, sweeping all other thoughts away, and leaving just one: her. It was like a physical ache inside of her, a longing to have her in her arms, to bury her nose in her hair and breathe her in, to have her all around her.

Finally, she said, "Do you think she's-"

"Rose," he interrupted quickly but gently, knowing what she was about to say. It was what was going through his head at the exact same moment. But she couldn't say it. "Rose, you know what we said."

She nodded, not taking her eyes off the Slitheen family in front of her. "I know, I just…" She remembered the conversation they'd had, within days of that momentous day when the Doctor had walked back into their lives. She remembered how he'd made her sit down and write that letter to her mum, explaining what to do if anything like this ever happened. She remembered how he'd told her that, whatever happened, wherever they ended up, the one thing she must never do was mention Tala.

"She's part Time Lord, that's bad enough," he'd explained. "But she's part human too. And that's worse."

It had seemed so easy to agree to back then, still basking in the joy of having him back in her life, a proper father to their daughter, a real presence in the world again. Rose had felt invincible for a time, imagining the possibilities as she'd written that letter, but feeling sure it would all come to nothing. Just over two years later, the unthinkable had happened, and now all Rose wanted to do was talk about their daughter, evoke memories and keep them close, if only to make herself feel better.

Without thinking, she reached out a hand to touch the wall in front of her, like she would any window. To her surprise, she touched a solid sheet of glass.

"A one-way field, very clever." The Doctor put his glasses on and regarded it, crouching down beside her. "So you can get out of these cages but not in." He tapped the glass lightly, being careful not to wake the slumbering Slitheens up. "They must have a way of turning it off, reversing it or something."

"Wouldn't it be more useful to stop them getting out?" Rose asked, thinking about what she'd seen Slitheen do before. "I mean, who's going to jump into a cage that small with a creature like that?"

"Good question." The Doctor stood up. "A very good question. If we can walk out so easily, why don't they all?"

"Maybe they're scared," Rose mused, pressing her hand against the glass again. "Maybe they don't realize it won't hurt them."

"I can believe that of Slitheen, but not all of them." The Doctor looked at all the other cages, shaking his head. "Something's not right. This isn't making sense."

"Maybe these are normal cages," Rose suggested, standing up. "Just regular glass cases, like at London Zoo," she added, remembering the reptile house they'd visited only last week. "So they couldn't get out."

"But there're no doors," the Doctor reminded her. "Anyway, it would take more than glass to keep that in." He pointed.

Rose looked and instinctively stepped back when she saw what was in the cell. "But… I thought they were all dead."

"They're like cockroaches. They'll be here in one way or another long after anything else." The Doctor spat the words out bitterly as he took a step towards the Dalek cell. "Why wouldn't it just come straight through, it's clever enough to work it out."

"Maybe all that metal would react or something."

"No, it's resistant to electricity." The Doctor continued frowning. "It's almost like these cages are completely sealed, on both sides, so no one can get in or out. Like the force field is active in both directions."

"Then why were we able to get through?"

"Exactly." The Doctor walked down the line of cells. "All of these aliens, locked up, secure. And we're just allowed to walk free?"

Rose walked in the opposite direction. In each cell, slept an alien creature, some she recognized, like the Slitheen and the Cat-Human. In another cell, a Krillitane hung upside, wings wrapped around it like a bat. A shiver ran down her spine as she passed an Ood, standing bolt upright, eyes shut. It was the next cell that made her stop dead though.

"Doctor!" She beckoned him over to see inside. He strolled down, hands in pockets, glasses on. For a few seconds, Rose was able to forget the last few years and half-believe that this was a routine adventure for them, like the old days.

His dark eyes widened when he came beside her. "Cassandra?"

Inside the cell was the familiar frame with paper-thin skin stretched across it. The only distinguishable human features were a mouth, a small dimple of a nose and two eyes, shut now as the Last Human dozed.

Rose looked at the Doctor. "But I don't understand. She's dead, we saw her die."

"Something's not right." The Doctor looked round, his hearts beating faster. "Someone's been searching throughout time for all these creatures, Cassandra, the Dalek… us. But why?"

At that moment, the dim corridor was flooded with light, and the doors at both ends of the room crashed open. Men with guns ran in both ends.

Rose gulped. "I think we might be about to find out."

Next time: Cross My Heart

"Uncle Jack?" A small voice from down on the floor made Jack jerk himself out of his reverie. He looked down at the mattress he'd borrowed from the medical bay downstairs and brought up here. Looking up at him was the reason for all this reminiscing, the catalyst for his state of mind this morning. A seven-year-old girl with chocolate brown eyes and a mass of blonde hair, sticking in all directions this morning and still clutching her stuffed cat.