A.N. Thanks so much for the positive feedback to the first chapter =] All the follows and favorites were amazing & the reviews were lovely!
It was an hour later when Rose came out of the MedBay, exhaustion abated, and her brown eyes sparking once more, but thankfully without the gold. The Doctor looked up from his fiddling at the console to find that gaze settled unpleasantly on him.
"Where is he?"
"You keep asking that," the Scottish woman grumbled. Rose didn't spare a glance in her direction.
"We're tracking him," the Doctor answered. "Might take a while, his TARDIS is behaving erratically, but it would, of course, being new and –"
"I could take you there," River interrupted.
Rose's attention flashed to her. "What do you mean?"
"No," the Doctor said sternly, straightening up from the console. "Absolutely not."
"Why not?" River asked. "It's perfectly safe, you've seen me do it multiple times."
"You are not doing it with Rose."
River's expression displayed a spasm of pain that she quickly hid. Rose narrowed her gaze. She really didn't want to be involved in any of this. She didn't care about this. She only cared about her husband.
Or at least, that's what she kept telling herself, she was trying to use her anger to bolster her defenses against the Doctor, because he was as gorgeous as ever and closer to her age now than he had ever been. Figured, then, that he would marry a woman who looked to be twenty years his senior. Of course, age meant nothing compared to his but . . .
Rose tried to tune back into the argument storming between the Doctor and River. "It's a vortex manipulator for god's sake," River was saying, shaking her head in disbelief at the Doctor.
Rose's attention perked. "Like Jack's?"
The Doctor swung around to look at her. "Yes and you remember how unpleasant that was."
"If it gets me to the Doctor, then I don't care."
"I am the Doctor!"
All eyes landed on him. He fidgeted with his bow tie, then moved to fidget with the console. Yes, that really hadn't come out how he wanted it to. Now it sounded like he wanted Rose to stay here with him instead of return to her husband. Which of course was absurd because he didn't want that. Not in the least. Not at all. Not even a little.
River slowly turned from her husband to the blonde girl in front of her. "Doesn't matter what he says, I can take you if you wish."
Rose cut a look to the Doctor, bent over the console, unruly hair falling into his face. Her heart twisted in her chest. "Yeah. That's what I want."
The Doctor froze, then carried on with determination as if he couldn't hear the conversation that was so purposefully excluding him.
"Right then, when you're ready."
"I'm ready now," Rose said, crossing to River's side. And she didn't consider giving the Doctor a goodbye because he hadn't given her one either of the two times he had left her which certainly meant he didn't deserve one now. She ignored the absolutely painful pinching of her heart at knowing she was losing him again.
River flipped open the watch on her wrist, very reminiscent of Jack's and began typing in her desired destination and whatever else she needed. Rose's eyes remained trained on the Doctor, despite her desperate desire to ignore him as he was so steadfastly ignoring her.
"Alright, be back, Sweetie," River said to her husband. The Doctor responded with an indecipherable grumble. She clasped Rose's hand in hers and prepared to leave.
Rose pinched her eyes close, sucking in a deep breath. She heard River click the watch.
"No! Rose, don't do this!" And the Doctor was throwing himself across the room, his hand landing over hers and River's just as they blinked out of the console room of one TARDIS and into that of the other.
The three of them landed sprawled on the floor of the other TARDIS a jumble of limbs and swear words as they each dragged themselves apart. River was shaking out her hair and staring daggers at her husband. "What the hell was that for? You could have gotten us killed!"
But the Doctor wasn't paying attention to her, not even looking at her, instead, he was scanning Rose with a pat of hands to ensure that nothing was broken, that she was perfectly fine. And Rose was trying to push him off, slapping away hands that just kept returning to their patting.
Finally, Rose threw an elbow in the Doctor's direction and dodged away from his ministrations. "Doctor! Doctor!" she called, running around the console room and disappearing down a hallway.
The Doctor stared after her, wavering on his indecision to follow after her or – He turned to face his wife. This really really wasn't turning out well. He could see the pain in the tight expression of River's face, in the fists balled at her sides.
"River, really, it's just –"
"You never talked about her," she interrupted. She was good at that, interrupting before he could start rambling. "All this time and you never said a word. But she pops up out of literal nowhere and you're falling all over yourself for her. So tell me, Doctor, who exactly is she?"
"She's – she's . . ." God, Rose had been right about the stuttering. He was going to have to work on that. In the meantime, River was still waiting for an answer. "She's Rose Tyler." It was entirely inadequate while summing up the situation perfectly.
"Yes, I caught her name, Doctor, with the number of times you were saying it with a disgusting amount of boyish awe. But what I don't understand is who she is to you."
The Doctor knew with absolute certainty that there was positively no way to answer that correctly. To answer that without upsetting River. He could lie, say Rose was no one, just an old companion, but River wouldn't buy that, not for a second.
So his eyes fell to his boots while his fingers tugged uselessly at the sides of his bow tie.
Then Rose burst back in, chest heaving from having just run through the entire TARDIS. "He's not here! He's not here!"
Her brown eyes were wide as she looked to the Doctor for answers he simply didn't have. His straight shoulder sunk down and he was left feeling utterly useless.
Rose shot her look of pleading to River who looked at the younger woman with sympathy. "We'll look outside, Rose. Maybe he went to explore a bit. The Doctor can stay here in case he returns."
Rose nodded her feverish agreement, the golden glow slowly returning to her eyes. "Yeah, good, look around for him." She bounded toward the door, wrenching it open as River cast one last injured look at her husband.
The Doctor watched both of them leave, itching to go with them, to ensure nothing happened to Rose, but he knew how capable River was. She could handle anything they came up against and Rose herself was quite capable, even if he was always desperately trying to look out for her.
As soon as they were out the door of the TARDIS, this one just as blue and police boxy as the other, Rose turned to River. She took a second to notice that they were in a jungle. An honest to god jungle, with great towering trees, and masses of animals squawking all around them.
River gazed down at the younger woman, knowing she had something to say. Squaring her shoulders just slightly, Rose said, "I'm sorry."
River's brows furrowed in confusion, her mouth pursing. "For what?"
"For showing up like this, for dragging you away, for causing a mess. I just . . ." she trailed off, shaking her head. "I just didn't know who else to go to. I have to have him back, River. You are probably the only other person who can understand that. I've stood on a beach twice and lost him for all time, I can't do it a third time. I can't."
River reached out and squeezed Rose's shoulder reassuringly. "We'll find your Doctor, don't worry. And you don't have to apologize. Any mess was made by the Doctor, not you."
Rose bobbed her head in acknowledgement, then shifted her attention to the jungle around them. "So do you think I can go with just shouting as loudly as humanely possible and trying to get him to hear us or are we more likely to be eaten by something that way?"
River laughed. "Well, I once defaced a pyramid to get his attention, so I can hardly judge."
Now Rose was laughing. "Wow, wish I could have seen that."
River smiled. "It was all rather melodramatic, but the Doctor tends to be so." She lifted her shoulder in a shrug that had Rose laughing even harder.
Together, they began to walk forward through the jungle, their eyes scanning everything around them for any sign of a human presence. The silence wasn't pleasant exactly, but it wasn't the worst silence Rose had endured either.
There were levels of silence that one learned to deal with when traveling with the Doctor. There was the running for our lives silence. There was a where in the name of all that exists are we silence. There was the this is impossibly bad silence. There was even he really did not just lick that silence.
Still, River was going out of her way to be helpful and Rose felt she deserved better than the we've lost someone and they could be in mortal danger silence. And therefore, she decided to break the silence.
"So you married him, right?"
"Mhm."
"So you know his name?"
"Mhm."
"Isn't it ridiculous?"
River froze, turning surprised eyes to the girl beside her. "You know his name?"
"Well, yeah, I married mine."
River relaxed. "Right, of course. And yes, it's quite the name. Gallifrey must have had quite the harried nursery schools."
Rose grinned. "To be sure. I mean, he tells me, during the vows, and I'm like trying not to crack up and be like, 'you're joking, mate' and he's getting all suspicious because to be fair, it's not very convincing when a giggle gets through and of course the whole family's watching us."
River listened as Rose prattled on about her wedding. It was nothing, absolutely nothing, like River's. River didn't have to guess that the Doctor hadn't told Rose moments before it that he didn't want to marry her or that he hadn't married Rose in an alternate universe that no longer existed which basically made their entire marriage void. Or the simple fact that at their wedding he hadn't told her his name, he whispered the secret of the Teselcta, that it was until later, much later than now that she would learn his name.
River glanced at the blonde haired girl beside her. Was that why the Doctor loved her so much? Because of this youth, because she could move forward through time and not just bump into the Doctor as River tended to do? Because even when Rose was glowing golden, she was still light and innocence?
"River?" Rose's voice prodded her away from her musings.
"Yes, sorry, got a little caught up is all," River flustered to cover her distraction.
Around them, the jungle was eerily quiet and Rose really felt that didn't bode well for them. Add to that the obvious strain between River and her Doctor, it was just not shaping up to be the best day that Rose had ever had. It had already been the worst month, she shuddered to think how much worse things could possibly get.
"How did you get to the TARDIS? The Doctor seemed to think that was quite impossible." River pushed aside the foliage in front of them, blazing forward.
Rose followed close behind, her eyes skittering over the greenery for any sign of pinstrips or a brown overcoat. "That was really all Bad Wolf."
"And Bad Wolf is?"
"The Doctor was going to die when I first met him, it was about a year into our travels together and we had a situation in the future that no good could ever come of. He sent me back to my time to save me, but I couldn't let him die, I'm sure you understand that. So I broke into the TARDIS which is amazingly hard to do and I looked into her soul. The Bad Wolf was born of that. I took the TARDIS into me and she took me into her and we saved the Doctor or at least, we saved him from dying permanently."
It was a sad little speech, with no pauses or hesitations, as if Rose had been waiting for someone to ask her about the Bad Wolf for years. She had it all prepared, all ready to share, but no one had ever asked. River knew what that felt like. To carry something with you, something that weighed on you, and have no one ask, not even the person closest to you, not even the person you loved.
"And now?" she asked.
"Bad Wolf comes out when I need her to and defies all logic and defies all conceptions of what should be impossible. Though my husband already did that since he shouldn't be able to jump universes. I think I'll consider divorcing him once we find him. Would serve him right for abandoning me for the third time. Well, his first, but –" she broke off with a grimace.
River felt she could quite understand that grimace. "Men, they are the impossible things."
"Quite right," Rose agreed through tight lips.
They continued to search the jungle for the next hour, but nothing turned up, and with every passing minute, Rose seemed to shine a brighter gold. River was worried. Rose deserved to find her Doctor, but it wasn't seeming likely that they would. It also didn't make sense that he would just abandon his TARDIS.
"Let's head back, maybe the boys have gotten together and are wrestling it out over whether or not bow ties are cool." River turned them back through the jungle.
Rose lifted one dark brow. "Yes. That bow tie. I wasn't really prepared for that. I mean, it took long enough to get used to the overcoat of my current doctor and that jumper my first doctor wore." She shook her head.
"At least it's much better than the fez."
"The what?" Rose turned to her companion with wide eyes.
River smirked. "Don't worry. I blasted it into oblivion."
"Blasted it?"
"Mhm." River took the sonic gun from her belt and showed it to Rose.
"And he doesn't mind?"
"The gun? No. Why do you ask?"
Rose shrugged, a calculatedly casual gesture. "My Doctors were rather vehemently opposed to guns. Things change, I suppose."
River was silent, their boots crunching through the undergrowth as they made their slow progress out of the jungle. She had met Rose's Doctor, the incarnation Rose was seeking out the half of, whatever that meant, and River really did need to talk to the Doctor about that. He hadn't been exactly fond of her gun then but he hadn't forbidden it either. Rose was right that things changed. But whatever the Doctor felt for Rose, that didn't seem to have changed at all. River frowned.