Chapter 2

Rose Tyler stared at the ceiling of her darkened room, unable to sleep. She was thinking about him again. The Doctor. The proper Time Lord Doctor. Was he lonely? Did he miss her? How could he have left her on that beach again after she'd travelled so far to get back to him?

Six weeks had passed since that day, and yet she still kept thinking about it.

She'd done what he'd asked and looked after the other—human—Doctor. With Pete's help, he had an identity, a flat, and a consultant position with Torchwood that he reluctantly accepted. Rose hadn't spent much time with him after that. It was still too confusing—like when the Doctor had regenerated but worse. This time she knew he was still out there, possibly all alone.

Rose had asked for space from this man who looked and sounded like the Doctor, who had told her he loved her, and who had held her hand whilst the TARDIS and its Time Lord disappeared, possibly forever. He'd looked hurt by her request but graciously agreed. Rose had pulled away even further by mostly avoiding Torchwood for the past month, as well. She'd spent four years working non-stop to get back to him, and he'd left her behind. Now what was she supposed to do?

Her mobile rang, and the screen lit up the dark room. It could only be Torchwood calling this early in the morning. "Yeah," she answered breathily. Her throat was tight from trying not to cry—again—as she tortured herself with thoughts of what should have been.

"Miss Tyler, you're needed straight away. A ship has been detected in orbit," a young woman's voice informed her.

"What kind of ship?"

"We don't know yet. Hopefully you and Doctor Smith can identify it."

Rose exhaled a breath. Of course they needed him for this. They needed him far more than her. "Did you contact him already?"

"Yes, ma'am. He's on his way."

Rose told the woman she'd be there soon and ended the call. She dressed quickly in the dark, pulling on jeans, a t-shirt, and a tan leather jacket. The blue one she'd worn on her jumps with the dimension cannon got shoved in the back of her closet upon her return from Bad Wolf Bay and hadn't been out since. She didn't need anything else to remind her of that day.

Rose had never expected to still live with her parents at 24, but in this world, her family had a mansion and she'd spent too much of her days at Torchwood to care where she slept. The house was dark and quiet as she stole through the hallway and down the stairs. A light was on in the kitchen, and Rose was surprised to see her mum sat at the table with a cup of tea. She was in her dressing gown with her pale hair secured in a clip atop her head.

"Mum, are you all right?"

"Fine. Tony was up, so I went to check on him," Jackie said tiredly. "You're not sleeping, either." It wasn't a question.

"Work called," Rose replied, not wanting to get pulled into the same discussion for the hundredth time. She kissed her mother on the cheek. "Love you!"

Jackie was undeterred. "Rose, I know this has been hard on you. It took me a long time to realise that Pete wasn't the same man as your father, and I wasn't the same as his Jackie. Maybe we were once, but we had twenty years apart. But I still love him, even if he's not the same."

"Dad died," Rose countered harshly, turning away and feeling terrible as soon as the words left her mouth. "The Doctor is still out there."

"He's here, too, you know. Just give him a chance, sweetheart," Jackie called after her, and Rose thought that only in a parallel universe would her mum ever tell her to give the Doctor a chance.

He was already there by the time Rose arrived in the briefing room of Torchwood One. Her heart clenched involuntarily when she spied the mussed dark hair and brown pinstriped suit. Where had he found that? On closer inspection, it wasn't quite the same suit she'd last seen on the fully Time Lord Doctor—the stripes were cream instead of blue, and the brown was slightly darker.

"Hello Rose," he greeted, noticing her stare. He looked hopeful, his dark eyes wide.

"Hello," she responded automatically. She tore her gaze away and sat down in the only remaining empty seat, which of course happened to be right in front of him. She was having trouble focusing with him so close. Rose forced her attention to the screen at the front of the room and saw an image of the alien ship currently orbiting the Earth.

"It looks like a cruise ship," Rose said. The vessel resembled a giant dark grey ocean liner with extra bits that glowed blue. Engines, she thought. It looked like no spacecraft she'd seen before, though she supposed the same could be said for every new spacecraft.

"Have you seen it before?" the director leading the briefing asked. Knightley, she thought, or was it Kingsley?

Rose started to shake her head no when the Doctor piped up behind her. "I have. Well, sort of. In the parallel universe. And it was indeed a cruise ship."

"We've been unable to contact the vessel. Is it dangerous?" Director Kingsley asked, looking over Rose's head at the Doctor. Rose reminded herself to keep looking at the screen.

The Doctor hemmed and hawed before settling on, "Possibly. If it's the same situation as before, definitely. The passengers are harmless. They've just come for a bit of sightseeing. It's the crew of the Titanic you need to watch out for."

"The Titanic?" Rose scoffed, finally turning in her chair to look at the Doctor. "Why would they call it that?"

The Doctor shrugged. "They said it was the most famous ship in Earth's history."

"Did they not bother to read what happened to it? Maybe watch the film?"

"Given what they thought about Christmas, I don't think they had a very good grasp on Earth history."

"Christmas?" Jake Simmonds asked tentatively from his place several seats over from Rose, not sure if he was about to lead the Doctor off on a tangent he'd regret. Or if he'd regret butting in on what was turning out to be the longest conversation between Rose and the Doctor in weeks.

"The Sto came here to experience Christmas on Earth. A first-class holiday cruise." He left out the next part of that statement, before all the death and destruction. A bit melodramatic, he thought.

"Did you tell them to come back in December?" Rose asked.

"Well, that's just it. They came on December twenty-fourth in the parallel universe. Anything and everything could be different now."

"Maybe they've come for Halloween," Jake quipped.

Rose shot Jake a look to shut it and turned her attention back to the Doctor. "So you stopped whatever horrible thing was going to destroy the Earth on Christmas. Again."

An old familiar grin started to appear on the Doctor's face before he changed his mind and it fell away. "Habit, I guess. I just kept the Titanic from crashing into the Earth and killing everything on the planet. Does that happen here, too?"

Other people in the room looked confused, but following the Doctor's train of thought had become second nature to Rose. "No," she replied. The Doctor looked disappointed until she added, "New Year's." The cheeky grin he gave her in response made her heart ache.

The director tried to pull the briefing back on track before it went too far down the rabbit hole. "All right, then. Tyler, Doctor Smith, we're going to get you on that ship so you can check it out. Make sure it isn't hostile."

"And what if it is hostile?" the Doctor asked. "Because if you're thinking what I think you're thinking, you can't."

"Can't what?" Director Knightley asked, utterly confused.

"Blow it up with a missile or a laser or what have you. Those are nuclear storm drives. Detonate them and you destroy half the planet."

The director's face turned sour. "Then take a larger team."

The Doctor looked as if the man had just suggested sending a litter of newborn kittens to investigate. "So we look like an invasion? No, Rose is all I need. Stopped it single-handedly last time, I did. Well, the other me did...still me, I suppose. Well, I did have some help." The Doctor paused for air and looked at Rose, who was staring at him with an expression he couldn't quite pin down. It was something like the first time she saw the Earth from space aboard Platform One. Like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing.

"Grab your cocktail dress, Rose. We've got a party to crash," he said excitedly. "Allons-y!"