PART III - Just As It Should Be

Chapter 13

"Rose Tyler, where would you like to go today?" the Doctor asked the next morning when the blonde reappeared in the TARDIS console room after storing a bag of clothes and other odds and ends from her room in the Tyler mansion. She'd already said her goodbyes to her family, and Jackie had made a number of veiled threats to the Doctor whilst Rose was busy hugging Pete. Of course, Jackie had surprised the Doctor by following her threats with a crushing hug and wet kiss on the cheek.

Rose noted the Doctor had his blue suit on today, and she almost regretted not rescuing her blue leather jacket from the back of her closet because it went so well with his suit. Maybe next time they went back to visit her family she'd be ready to get that jacket out again.

"Barcelona," Rose finally answered, having anticipated the question. Her trip through the Doctor's memories had stirred some of her own, particularly her last conversation with her first Doctor. "The planet, not the city. We never did go there, and I want to see—"

"Dogs with no noses!" they finished in unison.

The Doctor grinned and started turning knobs and flipping switches. "Barcelona in the seventy-third century should do it. Now just hold down that yellow button next to the orange button. The one on the other side," he added as Rose started to reach for the wrong yellow button.

He shoved a lever into place and the TARDIS materialised with a jolt. Even though she was holding on to the console, Rose still tipped sideways, knocking into the Doctor, who caught her with one arm around her waist. She couldn't help grinning before deftly slipping from his grasp and running for the TARDIS doors. She flung them open to reveal an emerald green grassy hill topped by a sky that was slightly more turquoise than Earth's. Pinkish fluffy clouds dotted the sky and the sun blazed with warm orange light.

Rose stepped from the TARDIS ramp onto the soft grass and had a sudden urge to kick her shoes off and run up the hill. She took a deep breath and smelled something sweet. She plucked a few blades of grass and held them to her nose thinking it was the apple grass they'd encountered on New Earth, but it didn't quite smell like apples.

"Blech. Pear," the Doctor said beside her as he wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Why couldn't it be something pleasant, like banana or even satsuma?"

A light breeze ruffled Rose's hair. "It's beautiful," she said with a smile. "But where are the dogs?"

He gave her a supercilious look that made Rose wonder if she'd gotten marmalade on her shirt. "Do you think they just roam like noseless sheep? No, we need to head into the city."

"And where's that?" Rose asked, following him up the hill. Once at the top, she could see they were in a large park. The TARDIS was the same shade of green as the grass, though it was still roughly police box sized. Tall, crystalline buildings surrounded half of the grassy park with flying shuttles zipping from building to building. Another side of the park transitioned from grass to a pink sandy beach with gently rolling waves along the shore. The final side bordered what was either a rainforest or a jungle, dense with trees and vines in a variety of greens, purples, and browns that choked out the sunlight. The jungle looked dark and foreboding compared to the sunny park and glimmering skyscrapers.

The Doctor took Rose's hand to lead her down the other side of the hill towards the city. The pleasant, leisurely walk through the grass was almost unusual.

"The TARDIS can translate for us again, yeah? 'Cause it's been years since I took any Spanish."

"Oh, they haven't spoken Spanish in Barcelona for several centuries now. They use Earth standard."

Rose frowned. "And what's that?"

"Bit of a mishmash, really. Mandarin, English, and Spanish make up the most of it, but there are words from all sorts of languages mixed in. The whole thing evolved over millennia. Well, I suppose most languages evolve over time. Except dead ones, of course. Not too many people going around speaking dead languages, though, unless you travel back to before it was dead. In which case, it isn't a dead language anymore."

"Doctor," Rose interrupted with fond exasperation. "Is the TARDIS's telepathic field working to translate?" The Doctor grinned with pride at her well-phrased question. His Rose was brilliant. She smiled back for a moment before tugging on his arm. "You still haven't answered me."

"Hmm? Oh, right. I think so," he said somewhat uncertainly. "I guess we're about to find out. Hello!" He greeted a man on the pavement dividing the park from the city. The man raised his bushy eyebrows at them but nodded in greeting before continuing on. "Not terribly friendly, him," the Doctor remarked privately once they were well past the stranger.

They continued along the pavement heading into the city, and Rose shivered slightly as the tall buildings blocked out the warm sunshine. The Doctor released her hand to wrap his arm around her against the chill of the shade, and Rose thought she could get very used to this as she leaned into him.

The next time they neared another pedestrian, Rose took the lead. "Excuse me. Do you know where we can find dogs around here?"

The brunette woman with a bluish tint to her skin nodded. "Continue two more blocks and turn right. The temple of the dogs will be just ahead. You can't miss it."

"Thanks!" she said brightly. Not only were they close, but the TARDIS seemed to be translating just fine. They followed the woman's directions and rounded the corner ahead. Rose spied a large golden statue of a dog...with no nose. The snout was a little shorter, more like a cat's than a dog's, and the overall effect was just odd. She'd seen so many alien things with the Doctor, and yet the familiar form of a dog without a nose was slightly unsettling.

"This must be the place," the Doctor said, leading her up a wide set of stairs beside the dog statue that was taller than him. The stairs that seemed to sparkle in the sunlight led to a grand room with floors tiled in a colourful geometric design, high ceilings, and walls lined with more statues of a variety of noseless dogs. These statues seemed to be life-sized as opposed to the giant over-sized statue by the entryway. Rose identified what looked like a collie, a labrador, a sheepdog of some sort, and even a little yorkie like the one the alternate Jackie had named Rose.

But the main attraction, seeming entirely out of place in the grand room, was the pack of equally noseless but live dogs roaming around the room. The diverse group of canines, maybe 25 of them, were all over the place doing whatever they pleased. Some slept, some played, some ate, but not a one of them sniffed.

"How do they smell?" the Doctor asked quietly with a look of anticipation.

Rose grinned. "Terrible!"

He grinned back and wrapped his arm around her waist. "That joke never gets old."

"But really, is that how they smell?" she asked as one of the dogs stuck its tongue out—it didn't look like it was panting, more like it was tasting the air like a snake.

"Of course. They're dogs without noses, not without a sense of smell. It's an evolution of the vomeronasal organ, something even dogs with noses have."

Rose couldn't help smiling at yet another explanation she didn't quite understand. While she'd learned a number of new fields in four years with Torchwood, biology wasn't one of them. Sometimes she thought he just made things up, anyway. She pulled him closer and whispered in his ear. "You think you're so impressive."

"Oi! I am impressive, Rose Tyler," he said as he straightened up and pulled his shoulders back.

Rose pulled away with a laugh and knelt down in front of an orange, squat little corgi-like dog that had wandered over. She held her hand out like she would for an Earth dog to sniff and then wondered whether that was the right way to approach a Barcelonan dog. The dog looked up at Rose with big brown eyes and let its pink tongue loll out the side of its shortened snout. She took that as a positive sign and reached out gently to pet the corgi. The dog wiggled its butt happily as Rose gave it a good scratch behind the ears.

"What are you doing?" someone yelled in outrage. Rose jumped to her feet to see what was going on and was surprised to find three people in matching orange uniforms staring at her. Two of them held what looked sort of like Jack's sonic blaster pointed at her. Rose put her hands up in response and glanced around for the Doctor, who stepped up next to her with hands raised.

"I just remembered something important," he said quietly. "Don't touch the dogs."