Rose walked confidently up to the door of the shop.
"Are you sure this is the right place?" the Doctor asked, looking around. "It doesn't look that impressive to me."
"Yeah, well it's not supposed to, is it?" Rose said.
The small shop was built into the causeway above, and they could see feet walking past. Rose pushed the door open to reveal a dusty souvenir shop. A bell tinkled somewhere in the back.
"Hello there. How may I help you?" asked a Welsh-accented voice.
The Doctor looked curiously at the man who came out of the back of the shop. He had seen him somewhere before.
"Ianto! Good to see you again!" Rose said cheerfully.
Ianto's face broke out into a wide smile.
"Rose! Did it work?" he asked.
Rose smiled, a little sadly.
"Yeah. It worked. I stopped the stars going out, didn't I?"
Ianto shot the Doctor a questioning look.
Rose understood.
"It's ok, he knows everything already."
"In that case, may I be the first person to congratulate you on your success," Ianto said heartily.
Rose gave him another sad smile.
"I managed. Thanks. How's Lisa? And the twins?"
A huge smile broke over Ianto's face.
"Lisa's fine. Sam is a lot better, and Tom's just got the tiniest cough left," he answered.
The Doctor looked curiously at Rose.
"Ianto's sons were sick. I helped find a cure," she explained.
"Some sort of plague that was released from a space ship that fell to earth. Rose is too modest – she stopped an epidemic with that cure," Ianto replied.
Rose flushed pink.
"Wasn't anything. Just doing what you would have done, Doctor."
The Doctor shook his head, impressed.
"Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth. Didn't I tell you?"
Ianto peered at the Doctor.
"Is this the bloke you need all the paperwork for? Suzy's been going mad, getting it all ready."
"Yeah. This is him. Dr. John Smith, meet Ianto Jones of Torchwood Three. Ianto, this is my fiancé, John Smith."
"Fiancé?" Ianto asked, shaking the Doctor's hand.
"Long story," The Doctor said, smiling.
"Well Congratulations for that too. You're a lucky man, Mr. Smith. Rose is a right treasure. If I wasn't happily married myself, I'd think about stealing her from you."
Rose's cheeks turned pink
"Ianto you old flirt. If those goes on much longer, we'll never get what we came for."
"Right," Ianto said, suddenly all business. "I'll let them know you're here." He picked up the phone and pressed a button.
"Suzy? They're here. Right." He put the phone down. "Go on in," he said to Rose and the Doctor. He reached under the desk and pressed another button. The wall shifted, revealing an elevator.
The trip down took longer than the Doctor thought it would. They must have been pretty deep underneath Cardiff by now. The door slid open, and a entrance appeared.
"Welcome," Rose said, grinning, "To Torchwood Three."
The Doctor looked around eagerly. It wasn't at all what he had expected. Above them, a shriek sounded.
"Is that a...?"
"Pterodactyl? Yeah, it is," Rose said.
"I was going to say carbon-based Ptonite. They're often mistaken for dinosaurs when found in fossils. They've been coming to earth for thousands of years. That's a particularly nice one, if I do say so myself."
Rose just rolled her eyes.
"Yeah. Right. What was I thinking?" she muttered.
Before the Doctor could respond, a woman appeared on a balcony above them. She hurried down the many small flights of stairs and landings.
"Rose!" She cried.
Rose laughed, and ran forward. The two women embraced.
"Suzy! It's so good to see you again!" Rose exclaimed.
Suzy was tall and thin, with dark curly hair and a long nose. She looked almost Middle Eastern, the Doctor speculated.
The two women parted.
"Suzy Costello, I want you to meet John Smith," Rose introduced.
Suzy raised an elegantly shaped eyebrow.
"John Smith? You're going to have to do better than that. Nobody is going to believe he's really called John Smith."
"That's the beauty of it," The Doctor said. "It's so cliché that nobody would choose John Smith for an alias. Which, conversely, makes it the perfect alias."
Suzy thought about that for a moment.
"That almost… makes sense," she said. "Which documents do you need?"
"The works," Rose said. "Birth certificate, schooling, Doctorate, papers, everything."
Suzy looked critically at the Doctor.
"Who did you used to be?" she asked.
"Oh, just, you know. A hermit of sorts. A hermit with friends is odd, I know, but Rose sort of likes hopeless cases, doesn't she?"
"If you say so," Suzy replied, shaking her head. "Where do you find these people, Rose?"
Rose's eyes sparkled with suppressed laugher.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," she replied.
--
The Doctor stood up and stretched. He wasn't used to getting sore when he sat for too long, and the pins and needles in his legs were also new. He winced. They had been going at it for what felt like hours now, creating all sorts of different documents that they thought he would need for his new life. Suzy must have owed Rose one heck of a favour to do be doing all of this.
Rose grabbed a paper, and looked from it to the Doctor.
"So, here it is. You're John D Smith. The D is for Doctor, but it says here that it's for David. You're 35 years old. Your birthday was last Tuesday. You were born in London to Sarah Jane and Harry Smith. They're both now deceased. You have no siblings. You read Time Magazine and watch the BBC, shop at expensive suit stores, and your favorite sport is cricket. Anything else?" she turned to Suzy.
"Yeah. You said 'Doctor' John Smith. So he needs a doctorate in something, and I'm assuming it's not medicine."
The Doctor wrinkled his nose.
"I wouldn't want people to look to me for medical attention," he agreed.
"What about engineering?" Rose volunteered. "You like to tinker with things."
"Engineering's good. Can I have two?" the Doctor asked, looking at Suzy.
Suzy raised her eyebrow.
"You think you're smart enough to have two?" she asked.
"Weeeeeeell… I think I could manage it," the Doctor said. "After all, clever is an understatement when it comes to me."
Rose giggled.
"Rude!" she said.
"Not ginger either," The Doctor shot back.
They both grinned at each other. Suzy looked lost.
"Right. So. Back on track. Second Doctorate?" she asked, her fingers hovering over the keyboard.
"What about transdimensional astrophysics?" the Doctor asked.
"Is that even a subject?" Suzy fixed her dark eyes on him.
The Doctor leaned back in his chair.
"It's a very specialized subject. There are only a few of us in the world who truly understand it. I won't try to explain it to you. You would just make a muddle of it," he said.
"Well, you certainly have the arrogant act down pat," Suzy remarked.
"Act?" Rose questioned, smirking.
Suzy rolled her eyes.
"Ok, so one doctorate in Engineering and one in astrophysics. You can tack on the transdimensional by yourself. What else do you need?"
The Doctor looked at the papers scattered around Suzy's office.
"I think that's about enough," he said.
"Good." Suzy hit the print button on her computer.
Rose got up and stretched.
"Think I'm going to use the loo," she said.
Rose left silence in her wake.
Suzy was looking at the Doctor with a very scrutinizing gaze.
"Are you going to tell me what all this is about?" she asked.
The Doctor did his best to look innocent.
"All what?"
"Come on, John, or whoever you are. I've created an entire life for you right here, but you must have had one before. Who did you used to be?"
The Doctor avoided her eyes.
"I told you. No one. I had no identity."
"But you must have been someone," Suzy insisted.
"Would you believe me if I told you, Suzy Costello?" the Doctor asked.
It was Suzy's turn to squirm uncomfortably.
"I can believe almost anything, having worked this job for four years. Now tell me, who are you?"
"A traveler. Or… I was. But something happened, and I have to stay here. Rose travelled with me for a long time, and when she found out I was here, she wanted to help me."
Suzy's dark eyes widened.
"You were the one she went back for," she said, wonderingly. "She crossed a universe to find you."
"Yes," the Doctor replied, sadly.
"All that. I helped her build that cannon, to shoot herself across the universes, to stop the stars going out. We were all scared that the end of the world was coming, and all she could talk about was this fellow who she had left behind. And it was you. It broke her heart, being here."
"It broke mine that to leave her here," the Doctor said in a low voice. "Which is why I came back with her. But I have no identity here."
"Which is why you needed me," Suzy surmised.
"Yes. I want to stay with Rose forever. Which means adapting to life here, with her."
Suzy nodded.
"I think I understand now."
The Doctor opened his mouth to say something else, but Rose appeared in the doorway.
"Everything ok?" she asked.
--
"All this officiating has made me hungry," The Doctor said. His stomach growled loudly, as if to validate his claim.
He and Rose stood outside the building over top of Torchwood Three, their new documents safe in Rose's purse. The Doctor was amused to think he now had not only a birth certificate and several degrees from different places, but also a bank account, a membership to National Geographic, and a points card at Henricks. The last of which amused him very much.
Rose nodded.
"How does it feel to be an official person, Dr. Smith?" she asked, taking his hand.
"Pretty good. Here I am, a certified human who went to uni and watches reality shows on the telly, and reads National Geographic."
Rose giggled.
"As if you could be ordinary," she scoffed.
"Rose?" the Doctor said.
"Yes, Doctor?" she replied absently.
The Doctor veered off their course, and stopped in front of a picturesque fountain.
"Rose… I…" he sighed, and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up on end even more than usual. "I'm sorry we're stranded here, Rose. I'm sorry I stranded you here."
Rose looked surprised.
"What brought this on?" she asked.
"Something Suzy said. I wish that we could be like we were, travelling around in time and space, but we're stuck here, and we can't do anything about it. Just like last time."
"But there's a difference between now and then," Rose reminded him. "Now we're together."
The Doctor smiled at her, but was determined to go on.
"When we were separated, after Bad Wolf Bay, I tried everything I could think of to get you back without the universes collapsing. I spent weeks in my library, researching, looking for anything that could get me back. I didn't give up on you."
The Doctor pulled Rose into his arms. Their hugs had always had a special comforting quality that none other could replace.
"I just wanted you to know that it broke my hearts to leave you there on that beach, and not even be able to hug you, or tell you how much I loved you."
"I know, Doctor," Rose said, her voice muffled in his shirt.
"And if you had asked Martha, she could have told you that I went on and on about you. More than I should have. I know I made her feel inadequate, but I just couldn't stop. You were always on my mind."
"I know," Rose said again. "As you were always on mine."
"I can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be than here with you, and I know it broke the other me's hearts all over again to leave you here," the Doctor finished.
"I'm glad there's a you, Doctor," Rose said. "I don't think I could have bourn it if I was all alone again. I nearly went crazy last time."
The Doctor chuckled.
"Suzy said as much."
Rose laughed too, and they released each other from their hug, but not from each other's arms. The Doctor wrapped his arm around Rose's shoulder in a possessive gesture. Her arm went automatically around his waist. They seemed to fit together so perfectly, as if they had been designed for each other.
He and Rose began to walk again. It almost didn't matter what direction they went in. Their train didn't leave for another four hours, so they had plenty of time to wander around Cardiff. That was the thing about this world, the Doctor thought as he allowed Rose to pull him into a clothes shop, they had trains everywhere. It was almost like being back in the 1800s. Except for the pollution. And the giant skirts. Not that he would mind seeing Rose in one of those again…
"Rose can I ask another question?" the Doctor said, breaking the comfortable silence.
"Is there anything I can do to stop you?" Rose quipped.
"What did you do for Suzy Costello that she owed you such a big favour?"
A large grin spread over Rose's face, and the tip of her tongue peeked out from her teeth.
"She had a little trouble with a glove."
"A glove?"
"A glove that brought people back to life for about a minute and a half. What a mess that was! Took my whole team plus hers to straighten that one out."
The Doctor was about to ask more, but his stomach growled loudly.
"Roooooose," he whined. "I'm hungry!"
A wonderful smell wafted past, and he sniffed deeply. It was the tantalizing aroma of potatoes cooked in grease- an Earth specialty that he had become particularly fond of since travelling with Rose.
"Are you whining?" Rose asked, laughing incredulously at him.
"Yes," the Doctor replied, pouting. "I'm hungry and I smell chips. Come on, Rose, let's have chips."
Rose brightened up immediately. She took a deep breath.
"Oh. That smells a bit good. We could nip in for some chips, couldn't we?"
The Doctor nodded enthusiastically.
"I could even pay, now that I have real money and a bank account. To make up for last time when I didn't."
Rose laughed.
"Alright. Chips it is and you're paying."
Author's Note: Four chapters in four days. I am very impressed with myself. Usually it takes me ages to get this far in a story. But this one just seems to be writing itself. I'm just brimming with plot bunnies!
I put Suzy Costello in this because I kinda wish she was still in Torchwood. I thought she was cool, in spite of her morbid fascination with that resurrection glove, and it was a shame she died so early into series one. So, naturally, without Jack she is the head of Torchwood Three.
Once again, thank you to everyone who reviewed. You are all really spurring me on to write more and faster. Please, feel free to offer suggestions for what you think should happen, and I will try to incorporate as many of them in as I can.
I have no idea where this story will end. I have the sort of vague idea that it will go on forever and chronicle the whole lives of Rose and the Doctor. There's so much more for them to do and adjust to! So, to all of those who worried that this is going to end, put your minds at rest cuz I just can't see an ending from here.