Rose wriggled against the hands clamped about her wrists, hands she couldn't see. Someone was gripping her hair in a positively painful fist, yanking her head back so that she was looking up at the star dotted sky above the clearing, and the tall branches of the jungle trees.
"Doctor!" she shouted, fervently grateful that he had found her, especially since she didn't have a clue where she was. One second she was in the TARDIS being tickled, the next she was a captive of invisible hands in the jungle. The jungle the Doctor had said was brimming with poison dart shooting natives.
"Eh, yes, hello, Rose. Don't suppose you'd like to introduce me to your friends?" He bobbed on the tip of his toes, ingratiating smile in place.
"Would if I could see them. Can you see them?" Rose was still shouting because she couldn't see the Doctor, and while he sounded close, he didn't sound all that close.
"Not in so many words, no. But I have the distinct impression from the way your arms are spread eagle that they've decided you aren't to be trusted?"
Rose grimaced. "Don't forget the hair pulling."
"Brilliant." The Doctor clapped his hands together. Immediately afterwards, he received a sharp jab in the back. Stowing his sonic stealthily into his pocket, the Doctor glanced over his shoulder to see what was at his back, pressing directly into his spin. He was met by nothing but the darkly shadowed jungle.
The jab increased in pressure soon to be joined by two more points of pressure on his sides. "Happy to oblige," he assured his unseen attackers, stumbling forward a step or two before straightening and walking to the fire pit.
"Care to explain?" Rose asked, going slack since resisting didn't seem to be getting her anywhere.
"Well," the Doctor toed the edge of the fire pit, having no desire to actually step inside it. He was rather partial to these boots after all. "I may have forgotten to mention that the reason that the natives of Savoh are so good at blending in is that their skin has properties similar to that of chameleons, so in fact, if I had to wager a guess, I'd say we were outnumber by about 30 to 2 right now."
Rose rolled her eyes making the stars above her swirl together. "Charming."
"They are, really! Just, you need to meet them under the right circumstances, with the correct sacrifices, a chicken, a wild boar, oh! They do like a good sacrificial frozen turkey."
"Frozen turkey?" Rose deadpanned.
"Love roasting it over their fire, find the whole thing fascinat – " Another sharp jab to the back cut off his ramble. "Right, then. Just give us a moment, Rose. I'm sure I'll have this all straightened out."
Rose wished she felt similarly confident, but this was the Doctor and they were surrounded by hostile natives. This scenario very rarely worked out in their favor. Nine times out of ten this led to a proclamation of run followed by a mad dash for their lives back to the TARDIS. And Rose, in her current state, was not in her best running gear. Feet bare, the Doctor's black sweater running down past her hands and ending mid thigh. Oh yes, brilliant time to be running.
The Doctor commenced on speaking in a series of clicks and hisses that Rose didn't have a chance of understanding. Their TARDIS hadn't yet matured to the level of translating alien languages and it seemed that the other TARDIS didn't feel particularly inclined to letting her in on what was being said.
So Rose zoned out, finding the clicks and hisses, now escalating steadily in number, quite unnerving. The Doctor had been off in approximation. It didn't sound like thirty natives, nearer to fifty if Rose had to guess. Then, of course, something slithered over her foot and Rose unleashed a scream that had the ability to curdle blood and the Doctor went from being genial lost traveler to the Oncoming Storm in less time than it took for Rose to realize it had just been a stray leaf, not a snake.
Out came the sonic, the Doctor's voice now booming in authority, threatening the lives of all present if something happened to Rose. She could tell, not because she understood the words, but she understood those tones, had used them herself if ever the Doctor was in peril.
The hissing and clicking was coming faster than ever, spilling over one another until it sounded like a radio desperately searching for a frequency. Feeling guilty for having raised the alarm over nothing but a leaf, Rose tried to interrupt. The grip on her hair had relaxed enough that she could finally see the Doctor. Not much of him, mind, just from the shoulders up. But from what she could see, he looked dangerously angry.
"Er, Doctor – thing is –"
"Rose!" he admonished angrily. "I'm in the midst of arguing for our lives." He turned his neck to the side and with a surprisingly unattractive grimace, he cracked his neck.
Rose's eyes bugged forward. "No," she said with sudden determination.
The Doctor knew a variety of Rose's determination. There was the determined voice she used when choosing to stay with him above all else. There was the determined voice she used when refusing to let him leave someone behind. There was the determined voice she used when forcing him to attend tea with Jackie, that one still gave him nightmares. But the determined voice she was using now was the one that implied he was doing something horribly rude.
Surprised, the Doctor faltered in his argument with the Savoh. Rose took this momentary pause in hisses and clicks to clarify. "I may not be your wife, not in this universe, but you are absolutely not ever going to crack your neck again."
Around them, the Savoh grew quiet, seemingly interested in the domestic affair before them. They were probably wondering how exactly the two beings were arguing domestics while they were on the point of the death. The Doctor would have wondered that too, but this was Rose and him and even when he hadn't wanted it, domestics had always slipped up on them.
"What are you on about?" his growl was turned to her now and it made him slightly ashamed.
"Cracking your neck, in case you were wondering, is rude. Incredibly rude. Also, it's gross. Just like fingers in jelly or licking blood. Gross and rude."
"River never said anything about it," the Doctor groused.
Rose lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "Yeah, well, maybe she's not as use to curbing your rude behaviors as I am."
It was the casual way she said it, as if it was a daily occurrence to keep him from being rude, that washed away his annoyance. This was Rose Tyler who had, when they'd traveled together, always been after him about being rude. It seemed nothing had changed with Ten and Half and now that he was on to eleven, she was going to continue to pester him.
A smile broke through his anger and he was gratified by the returning smile she sent slightly skyward, her tongue poking between her teeth. "Now, get back to arguing with the Savoh. Though I should mention it was a leaf that touched my foot. So . . . I might have overreacted a tad."
"A – a leaf?" he asked in disbelief.
"Mhm." Her head nudged upward then downward, the complete range of her movement for the moment with the hand still fisted in her hair.
"For god sake's, Rose." Then he broke up laughing, Rose joining carelessly in.
They probably would have kept at it for a while, had the invisible spear not jabbed into the Doctor's kidney and jarred him back to the unseen danger at hand. "Try not to interrupt this time," he commented to Rose before picking up with his hissing and clicking where he'd left off.
It was a long ten minutes before the rolling waves of the alien language subsided. Rose had bemused herself with imagining what other horribly rude habits the Doctor had picked up in two hundred years without her. Really, the man was a menace to society, not that he was a man, but that was utterly beside the point.
Her Doctor still found something horrid to lick each day. Rose had taken to tackling him the moment she saw that gleam in his brown eyes. Torchwood thought they were a comedy routine, Rose leaving her work space to dive bomb the Doctor whose tongue was already snaking out to lick a suspicious looking leaf, a moldy donut, a strange stain, or, notoriously, the ambassador of the planet Kallenster's cheek.
She felt it would probably be harder to tackle this Doctor. He was more compact, less lanky and thin, more solidly proportioned. Rose liked his new clothes though. He looked so posh, a different sort of posh from the brown jacket and suits.
Maybe it was because she had been so disappointed that she missed out on his adventure with Martha where he'd used the chameleon arch to become Professor John Smith. Although, she wasn't sorry to miss out on the chameleon arch part, just the part where he wore school teacher clothes. Even now the image made her smile, her teeth digging into right corner of her lip.
So lost in her silent contemplations was Rose that she entirely missed it when the hissing and clicking abruptly stopped. It was the Doctor's hesitant calling of her name that brought her back to the present.
"Rose – they say they've had another stranger here. One with spikey hair." His tone was surprisingly mournful for delivering such good news.
"Where is he?" Rose asked excitedly. "Do they know where he is? They didn't – they didn't hurt him, did they?" Her eyes flared golden.
"No, no," the Doctor hurried to assure her. "They didn't hurt him. Seems he, er, spooked them, actually. Dashing about the forest as he was, sonic screwdriver buzzing about. They thought he had magic, so they stayed away from him."
"So where is he now?" Rose twisted against the restraining hands again, quite fed up with being spread eagle at this point.
"In a cave, apparently."
"What?" She frowned, twisting to the left now instead of the right. "Why is he in a cave?"
"They don't know. But I've made a deal with them to take us to the cave."
Rose was instantly suspicious. "What kind of deal?"
"Oh, a quite good one, actually," the Doctor said proudly, his features pulling up in a charming smile. "We'll leave and never return, especially with the spikey haired stranger, and they'll lead us to him."
"Not exactly keen on outsiders, then?"
"Nah. Prefer to keep to themselves and people they can easily poison with their darts."
"Right . . . and they can't with us?"
His smile grew cheeky. "Not from what I've told them."
Rose grinned back. "Oh, you."
"Come along, Rose Tyler. We're off to save your husband." He held out his hand for hers and finally, finally, the hands on her wrists relinquished their hold and her hair was released from the tight fist.
Rose shook out her limbs, rejoicing in free flowing blood again. She bound quickly over to the Doctor, skirting the fire pit careful. Her hand found his unerringly in the dark, their fingers lacing together naturally.
"I don't have shoes . . . or pants for that matter," Rose whispered, lifting on her tiptoes to speak only to him.
The Doctor found himself blushing. "Er, right. Not sure I can do anything about the pants, not that you should worry, you have very nice legs, Rose – " she smacked his chest, "but I think I have a spare pair of shoes here somewhere."
He shoved his free hand into his tweed pocket, searching the impossible depths. Eventually, his fingers ran across the smooth material of the item he was looking for. The Doctor pulled out a pair of red ballet flats.
Rose eyed them with intrigue. "In case you regenerate into a girl?"
The Doctor choked in surprise. "Rose Tyler! I am not going to regenerate into a girl – er – at least I hope not. No. Those are Amy's."
"And you have them because?" Rose hopped from foot to foot, jamming on the shoes that were a little too big.
"After the not Rio incident, Amy started insisting I carry extra things for her so she could be better prepared. Bit of a nuisance, really."
"Well, if you were better at landing . . ."
"Rose Tyler!"
She giggled, patting his arm soothingly. "We all have our weak areas, Doctor."
"I'll have you know Times Lords are superior in every way, we have no weak areas –"
"Yes, because obsessions with bananas are totally normal –"
"Rose!" he cried indignantly.
"Doctor!" Rose echoed mockingly.
Spears were prodding them in the back as they made for the right side of the clearing. The Doctor said a few short words in the alien language and suddenly the Savoh where melting into existence. That's how it seemed at least.
The empty space they occupied melted away to reveal tall humanoid bodies, a tattooing of blue and brown marking them from head to toe, all male, or at least Rose presumed so since none looked particularly female, with strips of loin cloth around their essential parts.
"Oh," Rose whispered.
"Yes, quite impressive," the Doctor remarked. The Savoh in front of them led the way deftly into the jungle. "Speaking of, how is it that you were in the TARDIS then you were out here?"
Rose shrugged. "Bad Wolf."
He gave a grunt of displeasure. "And I assume I didn't clarify that for you either?"
"Back to first person?" she questioned, shooting him a look.
The Doctor looked away. "Well, he is me, but sometimes . . ."
"No," Rose said, saving him the hassle of trying to explain how exactly he felt about his half self. "You didn't clarify, but I'd assume that's because I'd never done my disappearing act until I showed up on your TARDIS. Since Bad Wolf seems like a defense mechanism though, I think she takes me away from danger as she perceives it."
"So you don't view her as part of you?" he asked curiously, pushing limbs up above them so that they wouldn't either of them in the face.
Their footsteps were muffled by the heavy jungle underfoot, trampled down by the Savoh ahead of them. "Well, she is, but when she takes over, it's not exactly me . . . I don't know. Does that make sense? That she is me but she isn't?"
"Yes," he said solemnly, "I can understand that quite well."
"Yes," Rose looked up at him, "I imagine you can."
The Doctor squeezed her hand reassuringly.