A/N: Thanks to the lovely people who reviewed the last chapter, and to all the other people who took the time to read it. It means a lot to me that you enjoy this :D Enjoy chapter 2!

'Doctor, are you okay?' Rose asked as they walked away from the food stall with a large cloud of candyfloss to share between them. They had been on their way to find another ride when the Doctor had decided he was hungry and veered them off towards a row of stalls selling food. Rose was only surprised he hadn't gone for the toffee-covered banana, letting her choose what to buy whilst he scanned the crowd around them suspiciously.

'I'm fine,' he replied distractedly, his gaze coasting over the huge field. He was on the lookout for anything odd, for anything that shouldn't be here. What he had seen earlier hadn't been right. There was no way a man could've appeared in front of them out of nowhere and then disappeared. And there was no way that could've happened without Rose seeing it as well. Just as, he supposed, there was no way she could've seen what she had seen without him at least noticing something strange as well. He couldn't decide if there was actually something strange going on or if both he and Rose were going not-so-slowly mad as a result of their hair-raising adventures.

The Doctor broke out of his internal musings when he felt something soft brush over his lips. He looked down to find Rose holding a fluffy clump of candyfloss to his mouth, her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she smiled coyly at him. 'You said you were hungry,' she reminded him. 'You gonna eat something?'

He smiled and opened his mouth, letting her push the candyfloss inside. His lips brushed against her fingers as she pulled her hand away and they both shivered slightly. The Doctor tried to think when Rose had first started to affect him like this, when she had acquired the ability to make his thoughts lose coherence and his body tremble from the smallest touch. When he was with her, he felt- for lack of a better word- somehow human. He couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or not, but he knew he definitely liked it when she touched him. He liked it a lot, in fact. More than he should, and more than he could ever admit to. He chewed the candyfloss slowly and swallowed, reaching out for more when he had finished. He blinked to clear his vision, certain that if anything was even slightly out of place he would notice it. He was determined not to let anything else go by, his inquisitive nature leading him back to the topic of the strange occurrences earlier this evening.

He let Rose lead him through the crowd, one hand held loosely in hers. Everything had taken on a new crispness and clarity now, even in the dark of the night, as he focussed his attention on what he could see around him. Everything seemed normal now, the bonfire glowing brightly to their left as all the people in gaudy costumes gathered around it and music started playing somewhere nearby. He wondered if he was worrying unnecessarily over this, if perhaps he was on edge because he was desperate for Rose to have a good time tonight, free from trouble for once. He turned his attention back to her, lacing his fingers through hers and taking more candyfloss when she offered it.

'Rose,' he said.

She turned to him, her face young and expectant and all naïve innocence. 'Yes, Doctor?'

'Are you… I mean, would you…' He coughed, not entirely sure what he was trying to ask her. Somehow asking her if she was okay seemed futile and unnecessary and she would only worry that he was up to something. He should ask her though; she had been through a lot recently what with him regenerating, her dad rejecting her, losing Mickey, getting her face sucked off by a 1950s television set… Yeah, somehow "are you okay?" didn't really seem to cut it. 'What do you want to do next?' he asked instead.

'Dunno,' she replied. 'We could go look at that parade, if you want,' she suggested, nodding back up the hill they had walked down earlier this afternoon.

'Nah,' the Doctor said. He slipped his hand out of hers and rested his arm around her shoulders, bringing her closer to him as a group of teenagers pushed past them. He left his arm there after they'd gone. 'How about…' he started, looking around for inspiration. 'The House of Mirrors!' he exclaimed, spotting the brightly lit building about a hundred metres away, the bonfire reflecting in the mirrors that adorned the entrance. In the slightly distorted reflection, he didn't notice the way the effigy on top of the bonfire warped and then seemed to come alive, the life-size doll writhing as though it was a real person burning. The figure danced on top of the flames, its mouth open in the shape of a scream, although any sound the not-quite-real person made was drowned out by the festivities all around it. Slowly, it became still again, crumpling into the heart of the fire like a man burned at the stake would do in death. Nobody batted an eyelid.

Damien is jumping around his living room with nerves. He has been dating Airlia for two months now, and every second they have spent together has been perfect. He is scared at how intensely he loves her after such a short period of time, is terrified by the fact that he can think of nothing but her.

The smell of her hair, the way she smiles, the way her body feels against his as he holds her all crowd the rational part of his mind every waking moment of the day. Every sleeping thought is consumed by fantasies of what could be; holidays in exotic locations, a lifetime of happiness spent together, her body moving beneath his…

She knocks on the door, right on time as always. He cannot keep the smile from his face as he answers it, sweeping her up into his arms the second he sees her. She squeaks as he swings her round, laughing as he dips her for a kiss, her hair trailing on the floor.

He has been imagining this day for as long as he has known her, has specially washed his bed sheets for this occasion. 'You look gorgeous,' he says.

She smiles the smile that melts him every time. 'You always say that.'

'Well you always look gorgeous.'

'Thank you.' She catches her bottom lip in between her teeth and looks down. 'Damien,' she begins.

'Yes?' He takes her hand, leads her over to the sofa and coaxes her to sit. He places himself next to her, not letting go of her hand.

'I've been thinking…' She trails off, nervousness written all over her lovely face.

He smiles at her in a way he thinks makes him look kind and compassionate. 'I've been thinking too, angel,' he says, his free hand moving to brush her hair away from her eyes. 'I've been thinking that we're having an amazing time together.' He pauses to kiss her, mistaking the nervous tremble that runs through her as excited anticipation. 'And I've been thinking that we could make it even more amazing.'

He kisses her again, one hand on the back of her head and the other sliding to grip her waist. She gives in to him for a moment before pulling away and standing up. She walks to the other side of the room and stands looking out of the window of his apartment. 'No, Damien. I need… I need to tell you something before we can… do anything. It wouldn't be fair otherwise.'

He frowns and shifts forward on his seat, his hands gripping the edge of the sofa cushion. 'Okay,' he says, feeling slightly stupid for assuming she wouldn't resist him. 'What is it?'

And reluctantly, she tells him everything he needs to know, stopping to take a steadying breath here and there, pausing when the tears well up in her sparkling eyes. He listens silently, intently, his heart pounding as she tells him all the risks of being in a relationship with her. She tells him things that should make him sick, should make him throw her out of the apartment and his life just for crimes by association, but he doesn't care about any of it. What scares him the most is how much he still wants to be with her when she has finished her story. He takes her to bed and makes love to her slowly through the night, tears pouring out of them both when they finish.

This is the day Damien learns who Airlia really is.

'I think I've worked out why you wanted to come in here,' Rose told the Doctor as they crossed the entrance and walked into the House of Mirrors.

'Oh yeah?'

'Yeah.' She grinned and rolled her eyes, watching him admire himself in the mirrors as they walked passed them. 'Your big ego!' she teased him.

'What?' He stopped and turned to her, a mock-annoyed expression on his face. He couldn't hold it for long and broke out into a grin as Rose sniggered behind her hand. He moved her hand away from her face and held it in his. 'I do not have a big ego, Rose Tyler!'

Rose gasped at his blatant lie. 'You totally do!' she exclaimed, laughing at him. 'You can't stop checking yourself out in the mirrors! You're totally in love with your looks this time round,' she informed him, poking him in the ribs playfully.

'Well,' he said, attempting to sound at least somewhat serious. 'I am unusually sexy in this body.' He leaned close to her, his free hand brushing against her waist as he allowed his fingers to play with the hem of her top. 'What do you think, hmm?'

She blushed, hoping he wouldn't notice in the dim light and glad that his body was blocking the view of herself in the mirror opposite. She wasn't a fan of the colour her skin went when she blushed. 'Yeah, you're not so bad,' she stuttered, suddenly becoming extremely interested in studying the floor at her feet. 'You look nice,' she said.

The Doctor was quiet for a moment, before he straightened up and looked over Rose's head to study himself in a mirror. 'Nice,' he repeated. 'I look nice. Whatever happened to words like sexy and absolutely devastating? Got anything a little bit more enthusiastic, Rose?' he asked, pretend hurt in his voice. He stuck his bottom lip out and made those puppy dog eyes he knew she found hard to resist.

She looked up at him again, drinking in his fluffy brown hair, the eyes she felt like she could drown in, the cheekbones so chiselled they'd make a better chisel than an actual chisel and that mouth of his. 'You're gorgeous,' she said quietly. 'You look amazing.' She coughed and lowered her head again in embarrassment. 'Especially with your glasses on.'

There was stunned silence for a moment, the Doctor finally lost for words. Rose shuffled uncomfortably in front of him, looking anywhere but at his face. He struggled to contain the huge grin that wanted to break out and consume him at her words, feeling his insides dance around in glee. To hear that she thought he was gorgeous- especially with his glasses on- made him inexplicably happy, and he once again wondered when she had started to affect him in this way, when it had started to matter whether she thought he was attractive or not. 'Thank you,' he said eventually, hoping that it would do.

'You're welcome.'

She still wouldn't look at him, so he reached out and grasped her chin, bringing her gaze up to meet his. He smiled at her, hooking his fingers into the corners of her mouth and tugging upwards to make her do the same. She burst out laughing unexpectedly, the warm chuff of air sending warm shivers from his hand all the way through his body.

'Don't do that,' she said, pulling his hand away from her mouth. 'Feels weird.'

'Good weird or bad weird?'

She shrugged. 'Dunno. Does it make a difference?'

He didn't hear her, turned once more to face one of the mirrors. He fluffed up his hair and straightened his tie before pulling out his glasses and sliding them on. He took up Rose's hand once more. 'Right then, Miss Tyler,' he said. 'Let's go find some of those lovely and intriguing distorted mirrors and see if we can make ourselves look like the inhabitants of the planet Haglik. Lovely people, they are. Unfortunate about their looks. And the smell; it whiffs a bit around there, something to do with sulphur reacting with… Oh, never mind! This is going to be fun.'

He dragged her down the short corridor and around to the right before coming to a stop in front of a row of distorted mirrors. He let go of her hand and pulled poses to make Rose laugh, his reflection looking like a squashed balloon with a face. 'See Rose!' he exclaimed. 'The resemblance is uncanny! Exactly like the natives from Haglik. Remind me to take you there one day; I think you'd enjoy it.'

She giggled to watch him pulling faces and jumping up and down in front of the mirror like a five year old after eating too many Smarties. Her heart was still pounding from the way he'd looked at her when she'd told him she thought he was gorgeous. He'd done his best to act normal and keep a straight face when the words had left her mouth, but she would have had to be blind and/or completely thick not to notice the way his eyes lit up with pride and happiness. Why she'd had to go and tell him he looked good especially when he had his glasses on was something she was still trying to comprehend, however. The words had just been spoken without any prior permission from her brain to her mouth to speak them.

Turning her attention back to the Doctor admiring himself in the mirror, she frowned at what she saw there. He was still bent over in the shape of a hermit crab in front of her and laughing when the distortion in the mirror made him look like a pancake, apparently not noticing that anything was wrong. Studying the reflection in the mirror, Rose could see a crowd of people distorted out of shape, but they were definitely people. They stood together silently, staring at something, and Rose was sure she could see flames reflected in their eyes.

She spun around, finding nothing behind her apart from another row of mirrors that gave her a very nice view of the Doctor's arse expanded to epic proportions. She turned back to find the strange crowd of people still standing in the mirror. 'Doctor,' she said, hating the way her voice trembled slightly.

'Rose,' he replied, glancing at her before sticking his tongue out and blowing a raspberry at his reflection.

'Doctor,' she said again, more urgently this time. 'Can't you see them?'

'See who, Rose?' He sounded slightly confused. 'We're a couple of decades away from the mass introduction of CCTV; surely you can't be worried about men sitting in rooms ogling a bunch of video screens.'

'No,' she replied insistently. She pointed at the mirror. 'Them.'

The Doctor stopped his precarious balancing on one foot and looked at where she was pointing. 'There's nobody there, Rose. Just us.'

'It looks like there's a crowd of people in there, all staring at something.'

He looked at her and frowned, before reaching into his jacket and taking out the sonic screwdriver. He fiddled with its settings, his eyes still locked firmly on Rose's face. 'Is it the same kind of thing as earlier?' he asked her. 'Does anything look blurry at all?'

Rose studied the scene in front of her. 'Sort of,' she said. 'It's like there's a whole other world in there. It's a bit blurry around the edges.' She indicated where with her hand, the Doctor immediately running his sonic screwdriver over the area. And, if she wasn't mistaken, she could see some type of alien-looking tree swaying at the edges of the crowd.

The Doctor stepped back, turning Rose away from the mirror to face him. 'There's nothing there, Rose,' he said, pocketing the screwdriver once more.

'You must think I'm going mad.'

'No, not mad at all.' He frowned. 'Did you hear that noise?'

She shrugged. 'What noise?'

He held his finger to his lips for a moment. She couldn't hear anything other than normal fairground noises, and their light breathing. 'That noise,' he said. 'Over there.' He stepped past Rose and walked on down the corridor before rounding another corner and disappearing out of sight

Rose turned back to the strange scene in the mirror, only to find it vanished as soon as she had managed to focus on it again. She blinked, confused, and shook her head. She wondered perhaps if both she and the Doctor were mad, what with her seeing strange things that weren't really there, and him hearing noises that could probably (hopefully) be explained away fairly easily. She sighed, and turned away from the mirror to follow in the direction the Doctor had taken, walking down the corridor.

She turned the corner she had seen him go around, only to be met with a brick wall. She looked around; there was nowhere else he could have gone, and she had definitely seen him disappear around this corner. Perhaps she had crossed the line from casual madness into fully-fledged deranged maniac.

But no, lifting up her hand, she discovered that the wall in front of her was quite real. The surface was rough and solid, and the red brick looked out of place in a building that was filled with mirrors and dark surfaces. She let her hand drop back to her side. 'Doctor?' she called. 'Doctor!'

She spun in a circle, wondering what the hell was going on. Her heart pounded in her chest as she ran back down the corridor and into the other side of the House of Mirrors. She screamed as loudly as she could: 'Doctor!'

There was no response, other than a very strange look from the French attendant on the door to the attraction, followed by him placing his finger on his lips in admonishment. She uttered a quick apology before dashing through the rest of the House, only to find no sign of the Doctor. Slightly out of breath and starting to panic somewhat, she ran back past the mirrors where the Doctor had done his Haglik impersonation and went back to the corner.

The wall was gone. She frowned as she noticed the Doctor standing only a little way off, tension written in the lines of his shoulders. She walked over to him. 'Doctor, what's happening?' she asked, sounding slightly hysterical.

He turned to face her. 'Rose!' he said, as though he was surprised to see her there. 'I was… I was in a room with a woman. She was playing the cello- that was the sound I heard. But now…' He trailed off, clearly not understanding what was going on.

'Did the room have brick walls?'

'What?' He shook his head and stared at her before realisation dawned on him. 'Yes, it did. Did you see one?'

She nodded behind them. 'There was a wall blocking off this corridor. I thought I'd lost you!'

The Doctor stumbled back in surprise as Rose threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He put his arms around her and squeezed her back before she pulled away and looked up into his face. 'This kind of thing isn't what I'd call normal, would you?' she asked him. 'What's going on?'

He shook his head. 'I don't know,' he replied honestly, reluctantly. He hated not having the answers. 'And here I was hoping we could have a nice, normal day to unwind.' He took out the sonic screwdriver once more and clicked it on, turning to stride up and down the length of the corridor they were standing in. 'Absolutely nothing,' he said. 'She was here just a minute ago…' He gestured to an empty space. 'Playing the cello- something beautiful, haunting. She had her back to me, couldn't hear a word I said. It was like I wasn't even there. That or she wasn't even aware of me. And then she disappeared.'

He studied Rose's face. 'I'm so sorry about this,' he said. 'But I think we need to go back to the TARDIS. Find out what's going on and see if we really are going mad or not.'

She nodded. 'Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Can hardly see us having a nice, relaxing time if we're getting more and more delusional by the minute!'

The Doctor took her hand, holding just a bit tighter than normal. Rose looked up at him to see his face set in a grim line, slight worry visible in his eyes. They walked back to the entrance of the House of Mirrors in silence, both wary and on alert for anything out of the ordinary.

Damien is sitting in his living room, staring at the remnants of the wine he drank last night with Airlia. Her words are still fresh in his mind; he doesn't think he will ever be able to get them out of his head.

'I'm dangerous', she had told him. The stories she told him proved this true, and now he had two reasons to fear her. Not only does she hold his heart in her hands, but being with her could also kill him. Not because of anything she has done especially, but simply because of who she is.

He picks up the glass she drank from last night after they had made love, swirling around the last quarter inch of deep red wine until it almost splashes over the sides before raising it to his lips and swallowing it whole. Lowering the glass, he runs his thumb over the lipstick print Airlia left on the rim. He touches his tongue to it; it still tastes like her.

He wastes the day away, sitting and thinking. Her words repeat over and over in his head. He knows he should summon the strength to end it, walk away now whilst he still has a chance at survival without her. But Damien is weak, and he cannot bring himself to do it. And so he stays with her, drowning in the ideal of her and praying the day when he dies because of her is still a long way off.

This is the day Damien learns that falling has become fallen.

They stepped outside, still hand in hand. The atmosphere was charged, electric as they took in the scene before them. They didn't speak for a few moments, the silence stretching on like a cord strung with tension, just about to snap.

Rose cracked first. 'Doctor,' she said, her voice small and scared as she looked at the unfamiliar landscape surrounding them. 'Where are we?'

He frowned and shook his head slowly in disbelief. He looked back to find the House of Mirrors gone, a crumbly, derelict building in its place. He looked down at Rose, his expression stunned with shock. 'I have absolutely no idea,' he said.