Chapter 6: Tuesday
The sound that woke her was again raised voices. Mickey, Pete, and her mum were arguing in the kitchen. Rose tsked to herself and went to eavesdrop on them. It wasn't good for her mother to get angry or get her blood pressure up, not this late in her pregnancy.
"I just want her safe," Jackie shouted.
I want you safe, My Doctor.
"D'you think I don't know my own daughter?"
"Look, Jacks, I'm not saying you don't know your daughter," said Pete. "What I'm saying is that Mickey was there when she was traveling with him, so he'd know if this was going on."
"It was, Jackie, I'm sorry," Mickey assured her. "Rose has been changing ever since he did, it has to have had something to do with looking into the ship."
I looked into the TARDIS and the TARDIS looked into me.
"I remember," she told the wall, which ignored her.
The time wasn't right yet, but she knew…
"Look, remember how she felt him in her head before Bad Wolf Bay?" Mickey asked. "And she fixed the translator? And those aliens that came last month, took one look at her, and ran, and the ones the month before that? And that time she took apart the power generator and put it back together with duct tape and god only knows what, just in the nick of time? She remembers everything she sees now, too. Know what she told me yesterday about Ted in the mailroom?"
"No, what?" asked Pete, curious and concerned at the same time.
"She said he's got to keep his job, because his home life is a big problem, and she wished she could help him, but he had something important to do later. How would the old Rose know any of that?"
How, indeed, wondered Rose. She knew she had always been tough, inspired, creative, stubborn. Being with the Doctor always changed you, always, and none moreso than Rose Tyler of the council estates, London. Rose, the shop girl who saved his life, Rose the companion who stood between him and a Dalek, only to finish the Dalek off herself, Rose the power that had ended the Time War, Rose the valiant child…
But she didn't die in that battle, because she had already begun to change.
At 10:30 on Tuesday, she and Mickey went out to the park for their morning break Rose asked him about the argument, but he wasn't ready to confront her, not really. She prodded at him and pried and almost had an answer when something strange and horrific popped out of the trees at them.
"Not good," Rose said, in typical Rose Tyler understatement.
"No kidding," said Mickey. "What do we do?"
Rose grabbed his hand, fitting it just so into hers. "Run!" she shouted.
They pelted through the trees, dashing madly into clearings and then racing through them while the thing with enormous horns had to navigate them more carefully. They darted past the play park and then deeper into the little wooded area to draw the creature away from the park.
Unfortunately, this didn't work. They stopped running when the sounds of pursuit changed into the sounds of tiny people screaming. Rose looked back, her face white, and started shrieking herself. "That'll draw it off," she said, and she was right, because it turned around, its white eyes hollow and terrifying, and darted toward them.
"It's coming this way!" Mickey shouted.
"Yeah, not a good thing," Rose agreed, the understatement again, and gazed around her. "Trees," she ordered and started climbing.
Mickey jumped up and clung to a branch, while Rose clambered up next to him. Meanwhile, the horned beast chased toward them like a steam engine, huge, unstoppable, and implacable. Mickey reached his branch and dragged Rose up, then took another branch and pulled himself up into a sitting position. Rose jumped and vaulted onto it, glad once again of the gymnastics training.
They were several feet above the thing's head, feet dangling precariously and Mickey trying to get a signal on her phone to get someone to come and corral the thing when a dark, organ pipe sound shot from a nearby clearing and the beast shrieked horribly.
Then, it collapsed. Rose looked at Mickey in concern, then dropped from her branch and landed beside the thing in a ready stance. There was a whispery, rustling sound like applause heard from far away in the bushes to their right, but she ignored it for a moment.
She put a hand to its face. "Dead," she informed him, and he clambered down as well. "It's a Malturis, non-sentient, aggressive, kinda like a bull. Even related to bovines, really, except it eats meat. But how did it get here?"
"You seem remarkably well informed," said a whispery, papery voice from the bushes.
"Come out where I can see you, please," Rose ordered. When three tall, slender, blue men, who looked like people evolved from gazelles, slipped soundlessly from the undergrowth, Rose shook her head in disgust. "Navarad Hunters," she said grimly. "I should have known. And how did your quarry get here?"
"It escaped," said the Hunter, and even Mickey could tell it was trying for innocence.
"They always do," she replied, and now her disgust was plain. "You didn't think it could kill somebody, did you?" she demanded now, her voice quiet and dangerous.
Mickey felt like he had around the Doctor, the sense of a storm in all its glory and terror brewing on the horizon. Only it wasn't on the horizon. It was standing next to him, blazing through the girl he once knew, burning like stars in her suddenly, incredibly golden eyes.
"Who are you?" the apparent leader demanded.
"I'm Rose Tyler," she said. "This is Mickey, my companion."
Mickey briefly looked at her as if she'd lost her mind, but let it go on the grounds he was certain she had and didn't care.
"It had been eons since the Navarad hunted your kind, Rose Tyler. We thought you were no more."
"You know why you don't hunt my kind, though, don't you?" she said, dangerously. "Because we hunt you back. This is the only warning you're going to get. Leave this world and never return."
"Oh, no," the leader said, delighted, whispery laughter in his voice and in his face. "Run, Rose Tyler, run and don't look back."
He lifted the gun looking thing and Rose grabbed Mickey's hand. They turned and dashed away, running full pelt through the trees back toward the Torchwood Tower. "This is insane," Mickey shouted.
"No kidding," Rose replied as a bolt of energy sailed over her left shoulder. "They're damn good shots."
"Why are we leading them back to Torchwood, then?" Mickey asked.
Rose stopped running and grinned at him, wildly. "Mickey Smith, you're a genius," she proclaimed ecstatically, and turned and dragged him off down the street.
They darted through a crowded intersection and then Rose hailed a cab. Mickey turned to look and saw the three hunters were only a hundred yards or so behind them.
"They don't run very fast," Rose explained as they bundled into the cab, "and they can't shoot by-standers. They can let them get killed by the quarry, that doesn't matter to them, but they have rules. We stay in crowds or keep well away from them, and they can't get us. No extraordinary measures are allowed. Not even for chasing me." She sighed and raked her fingers through her thick blond hair. "Take us to Cardiff," she told the cabbie. "And step on it."
"Rose," Mickey said, "what's happening to you?"
"I'm changing," she told him. "I was always changing. It's just…" She sighed. "Remember last month when those things held me captive in space for a week?"
"Yeah," he said, nervously. "Did they do something to you?"
"No, no, no, no, no." She took his hand. "It's just free space radiation accelerates it. I've always been changing…" she sighed. "Look, I promise I'll explain all this later. We need to get to Torchwood, Cardiff. Can you call Tosh and let her know we're on the way? Oh, and call London and get them to send a strike force to comb those woods."
Mickey placed the call as directed to Cardiff, letting them know that he, Rose Tyler, and a gang of alien hunters were coming. "And don't let Gwen out of the building," Rose added, which Mickey relayed with all the firm authority he didn't feel, exactly as if he knew what he was talking about.
"Why not?" he asked as he hung up.
"She's an anomaly; they'll want her almost as much as they want me."
"Ok, what do you want me to tell Pete and Jake?"
"They're looking for a spaceship, about 10 meters long, 10 meters wide, streamlined, heavily camouflaged, and probably giving off hecht radiation."
"Is that dangerous to people?"
"No, but it'll make them easy to find. Tell them to call us when they get it."
"Why?" Mickey demanded, feeling quite frantic now.
"I'm going to drop it on their heads," she said with a wicked little smile.
As good as her word, Rose, with Tosh, Owen, and Greg led the hunters on a merry chase all through Cardiff. Mickey stayed behind with Gwen and Ianto to rig up whatever she had planned at the Rift. They were following her instructions to the letter, not sure what exactly they were doing, but doing it anyway.
"What'd she say this was?" Gwen asked, flipping her raven hair out of her face and studying Mickey with concern.
"Called it a super magnet. Said it would draw the aliens back through the Rift, since she thinks that's where they came out."
"And you and I have to stay behind because why? She knows I prefer to be involved."
"She said you were in danger. And apparently, I'm her companion, now, so that means I get to follow her weird instructions and try to figure out what she's up to with half a clue and no time to figure it out in."
"Mickey, that's got to be the weirdest thing you've ever said."
Mickey snorted. "Well, she hasn't called me an idiot, or Rickey yet, so all I have to say is it's better than being the tin dog."
Gwen looked at him incredulously. "I take it back," she said. "That's the weirdest thing you've ever said."
"Rose, we found it!" Jake's voice exclaimed over the phone. "Can't even see the f-ing thing unless you're standing on top of it, though, so we can't find the entrance."
"Brilliant! Find the exact center, half way along and halfway up the right hand side, and shoot it."
Over the phone she heard Jake unload his service weapon the fast way. "Got it! Rose, there's a door!"
"Good, go inside, and tap the buttons where I tell you."
"We've caught you now, Rose Tyler," said the Navarad in amused, benign tones. "We expected to chase you all through time and space, yet you stayed here, and that was foolish. How does it feel to survive your race and die on an uncharted backwater?"
"Not as bad as you're going to feel if you don't let me go," she explained. "This is your last chance. Step back and get away."
"We've caught you, and we're going to mount you on a pedestal," the Navarad replied, utterly unconcerned for her warning. "I think we'll do an open chest display, so everyone can see what you were."
Mickey, crouched on the ground a few feet away, sprang to sudden life and shot forward, a furious roar on his lips and his pistol in his hand. "No, Mickey!" Rose shouted as he ran toward her, to thrust his body between her and the Hunter. "Get back, where you're safe."
"Not a chance," he said fiercely. Behind his back, he passed her the device he and Gwen had constructed. "I'll be your companion, if you want, Rose, but you know what that means better than I do."
She nodded sadly and caught him tightly to her, her arm up over his shoulder and her hand on his chest, covering the furious pounding of his single heart. She raised the device in her free hand over his shoulder and a beam of light shot out of it at the Hunters.
Their spaceship materialized ten feet above them and plummeted to the ground. Rose shoved Mickey down and rolled with him across the lawn, away from the Navarads who stood there in bald shock. It was all too fast for even the Hunters' reflexes, and the ship landed, crushing them. Then, there was a god-awful, shattering noise and the ship and all trace that it had ever been there vanished in a swirl of white light.
And Mickey Smith stood on the clear, green lawn and held onto Rose Tyler while she cried like her heart was breaking.
Later that evening, she took him out to dinner at the most expensive restaurant she could find. After dinner, they went back to his flat, Rose seeming utterly preoccupied, Mickey completely taken with concern for her.
"I'm changing," she told him. "It will be complete, soon, I'll be different." She laughed then. "But I'll still be so human," she announced proudly, "so very human."
"But what will you be, besides human?"
"Different," she assured him, softly, and then moved in close and kissed him, tenderly.
He let this carry on for a minute and then pushed her back. "Rose…" he started.
"No, Mickey, this is important. Because pretty soon, I'll be too stupid to say this, and too smart to let on. I love you, Mickey Smith, always have, since the days we used to fall over and skin our knees and bleed on each other back at Powell Estates."
"But you don't love me like you love him."
"No, you're right, I don't," she replied sadly. "But that doesn't mean I ever loved him more or less, just different. You don't quantify love – it is, or it isn't, it doesn't have a number value. I love him better than I love you, because it was what I was born to do. For that, I'm sorry. Because you deserve the very best in life, Mickey Smith, and only the very, very best love you can find."
"I found that already," he told her, his heart in his eyes. Then he leaned in close and kissed her, kissed her like his life depended on it, like the very air would leave them if he stopped. And she kissed him back, savoring the kiss like the last drink of water in the desert, knowing full well that it would be the last kiss they ever shared.
That night, she slept in his bed with him, for the first time in ages and the last time in their lives.