Chapter Three: The Best of Friends

Back at the Daily Galaxy, the Doctor was twisting restlessly back and forth in his wheeled office chair, feet on the desk, as Rose finished typing up the article about the U.N.I.T. Labs robbery and discovery of the Mini Doctor. Every now and then she lifted her head to shoot him a peeved glare, but honestly, what help would he be? He was a Time Lord, not a reporter. Not to mention, he'd noticed a slight tendency towards the verbose this regeneration. Talkative. Very fond of words. A walking thesaurus. Gobby git, Jackie had groaned over that long-ago first Christmas dinner. Perhaps not the best personality trait for writing for a—he mentally put on a booming, impressive voice—GREAT METROPOLITAN NEWSPAPER.

"There," she sighed, clicking in "their" submission. Leaning back in her own chair, Rose closed her tired eyes and reached up to tug her golden hair out of its pins, oblivious to the riveted gaze of her partner as she did so. He watched her hair tumble around her face, soft tendrils that begged for his fingers in their golden glory. "Why the Doctor, though?" The question was partially muffled by hands scrubbing over her face, rubbing away the sleep.

One a.m. had waved on its fleeting way past, and they were the only ones left now in the Daily Galaxy. They had been hours at the police station, watching the officers try to interrogate a suspect who not only wouldn't talk, but couldn't in any language they could translate. Mini Doctor's vocal cords were simply too little to allow language meant for larger folk, and it would take weeks to fully translate his own language of meeps and squeaks.

They had, however, identified why he had still been there when any co-conspirators he might have had got away. His little wrist was out at an odd angle, obviously broken and preventing him from climbing back into the ventilation shaft. Rose had taken it on herself to splint it temporarily with a broken pencil and pieces of tissue, making noises suspiciously like cooing at him. Interestingly, she had been the only one allowed to put her hands in the jar without having her fingers bitten. The Doctor currently had several tiny, circular welts on his fingertips; for such a small mouth it sure had sharp teeth. "Why make a clone of him?"

The Doctor shrugged, scooting his chair over to pull Rose's up against his, locking their armrests together. "Weeeeeeeell," he drawled, lightly pulling through strands of her hair with gentle fingers. Was this Rose a natural blonde? Her brows were dark, but there were no roots at all to her hair. She had always had roots in his world. That had been one of her favorite excuses for visiting her mum.

"The Doctor," he began, and she didn't notice his lip curl at speaking of himself in the third person, "is a genius, isn't he? Not to mention he probably has all sorts of skills that humans wouldn't. You'd need that, to be able to get in and out of U.N.I.T. without being caught by the cameras, or the night security, not to mention identifying the target and getting it out securely, that takes some specialized scientific knowledge. Or it could be as simple as whoever created him just happened to have a piece of the Doctor's DNA lying around and thought it would be a good joke. Dunno."

Slightly unnerved by "John's" continued perusal of her hair, but making no motion to pull away, Rose closed her eyes to the soothing massage. "Someone should warn him," she opined, sighing softly as his fingers buried deeply against her scalp. "He'll be able to help."

For a moment, the Doctor was silent, indulging in the painful pleasure of touching his Rose once more. Gingerbread houses, he'd once warned her of parallel universes. Beautiful dreams of lost loved ones and quiet lives, but never belonging, always remembering what had never been… It was a temptation, such a temptation. He'd given so much to the universe, wasn't he owed this? Owed a chance with the woman he loved after nine hundred years of lonely service to Time?

Even as he thought it, he knew he had to find his way home. Martha was somewhere on the TARDIS, possibly unaware that she was alone, and that universe still needed its protector. Still, his hearts were heavy as he asked, "Rose…what do you know about the Doctor?"

Her body stiffened, eyes snapping open, startled as they met his, but he nudged her face back down with his hands in her hair, unwilling to meet her eyes for this conversation. "I know, I know," he said, cutting her off before she could object. "Just…remind me. Please? Humor me?" She couldn't see the little quirk of a smile he flashed her, but then, she'd never needed to open her eyes to know his moods. Remarkably perceptive when it came to him, she was.

Letting out a slow sigh, Rose relaxed back into his hands, smiling faintly as his fingertips scraped back from her hairline. "He showed up in the early sixties," she began, still more than a bit puzzled by his questioning but forever willing to trust him. "He comes and goes—disappeared for almost twenty years in the late eighties and nineties, but he always shows up when the world needs saving."

"Saving from?" he prompted, mouth beginning to twitch upwards amusedly in spite of himself. Well, this sounded more than a bit familiar.

"Aliens," she shrugged. "Homegrown megalomaniacs. Pretty much whatever comes along, never sticks around after it's all over, never asks for thanks…the suit's a little silly, but he said once it keeps people from recognizing him."

The perception field, he realized. It explained a lot; how he was maintaining a secret identity, for one. No one saw the Doctor as changing bodies, because no one remembered he'd ever looked different, thanks to the perception field. He had the sudden image of some of his earlier selves in the tight spandex suits, and winced. That was…definitely for the best. "And you…you're a friend of his, yeah?"

Under his hands, Rose's skin heated, and he was astonished to notice a warm pink stealing up over her cheeks. "S'pose so, yeah. I guess I am, sort of…mean, I help him out sometimes. Seems to work well, a good partnership."

He'd heard that soft tone from her before. He'd heard it in that store room, challenging him to show her his moves, swaying close to his old self and smiling. "Yeah?" he managed to get out, finding himself, for once, with nothing else to say. Oh for heaven's sake, he couldn't be jealous of himself, could he? He was the Doctor. The real thing, even. John Smith was the fiction!

….really, who was he kidding? Over his life, he'd made being jealous of himself, fighting with himself, and generally being a psychiatrist's identity crisis nightmare practically a career.

"Yeah." She giggled a little under her breath, sending his teeth gritting. His fingers closed a bit too tightly in her hair, causing her to wince slightly before easing back into his touch.

"What about us?" he asked hesitantly, telling himself that he wasn't being a jealous idiot. He needed all the information he could get. Anything might help him back to his own reality. It was completely true, so why did his logic feel so unstable?

"Us?" she echoed, brows knitting together as she finally pulled away completely, twisting over the back of her chair to face him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean…us. Friends, right, you said? So…"

"John…" Rose trailed off uneasily, reaching out with a tentative hand as if to check for fever.

"Just, please," he said wearily. "Keep humoring me."

She bit down hard on her lower lip, looking dreadfully worried about his state of mind, but complied without argument. Nice, that. It was all too rare to have Rose, any version of Rose, do as he said. "You came to London about three years ago," she began slowly. "You grew up in the town of Gallifrey, somewhere up north, and did you ever have an accent when I first met you!" She laughed merrily, spinning his head almost as much as the name of his homeworld, tripping so easily from her tongue. "Thought you were a right twit when you first started here. Nearly pitched a fit when the Chief said you were gonna be my partner! But you learned well enough, and now I can almost just about stand you." She grinned up at him, tongue peeking from the corner of her mouth as he remembered so well. "Like I said, we're best mates. Do everything together, you and me."

"Shiver and Shake, the old team?" He couldn't help it; this might not be his Rose, but it was a Rose, and where there was a Rose, the Doctor would simply adore her. Mirroring her grin with his own, he reached down to take her hand, swinging it back and forth between their chairs, and it felt so right. "All right, then?" she asked gently, clearly still concerned for his state of mind.

"Oh, I'm fine," he assured her. "Peachy keen, even."

Rose almost giggled with relief, leaning in until they nearly bumped noses like children. She still wasn't sure he was quite right; something seemed terribly off about her usually good-natured but rather airheaded partner. If she could only just put her finger on it… But he was watching her with such dark, fathomless eyes, focused on her as if she were the only thing in his universe, and she couldn't quite remember feeling that heated roiling in the pit of her stomach for her partner; the Doctor, yes, if in her very secret thoughts, but not John, handsome and sweet and best mate though he might be…

…did she?

"The question is," he suddenly blurted out, making Rose blink at the change of topic, not to mention the abrupt distance he put between them. Something was definitely, definitely off with John, and she intended to find out what. Award-winning investigative reporter. Shouldn't be too hard. "The real question is: what do these robberies have in common? Besides being seemingly impossible and likely having the same pint-sized culprit, who negates the impossibility of the whole enterprise; do you think we should take that off the list, then? Maybe it should be, 'quite improbable.' Yes, quite improbable and likely perpetrated by our diminutive little friend and possibly some more diminutive friends of his. So, what do they have in common….Rose, what was taken from each robbery?"

Maybe she should just get used to being off-kilter, since it seemed that her partner had made it his new hobby to confuse her as much as humanly possible. "Ahhhh….a collection of diamonds from the vault of First Bank, the atom…glue…machine thingy from U.N.I.T. Labs, some biological specimen from another lab-they don't say what, top secret and all, a full weapons shipment from the military, a new tech probe from a microengineering firm, and a batch of some kind of new, super-resilient polyethylene from the industrial lab at a plastics factory outside the city."

With each component, the Doctor's hearts sank further and further. He had the very bad feeling he knew exactly what someone could do with those components, if they were a boundless genius such as himself and had very few scruples, as well as certain alien contacts. And what could be done wasn't good, not at all.

Leaping from his chair, the Doctor all but ran to grab his overcoat, throwing it on so hastily that he almost missed the left armhole twice. He had to go, had to find out who had those components and what exact type of biological specimen they had obtained. He thought he knew, but for once he hoped fervently to be wrong.

Astonished by the sudden transition from inertia to top speed, Rose half-rose from her chair as if to stop him. "Wait, where are you going?"

"I'm going to, ah, um…talk to the Doctor!" The answer came, distracted and rather bounced, as he leapt up the stairs to the upper level of the newsroom three at a time. "Yes, I figure he'll know what's going on." Not a lie. He did, in fact, have a pretty damn good idea what was going on. And chattering to himself was yet another bad habit he'd picked up with this latest regeneration. The urge to babble was not to be suppressed, even when no one was around to hear him.

"You know where to find him? I'm coming with you!"

"No!" Rose froze in the act of pulling on her own coat, watching as he dove into the elevator, punching his floor without even looking. As much as the Doctor might want her with him, and he did, there would be too much explaining to do, too many things that could go wrong, and besides, he had a very bad feeling about his changes of ending up in blue spandex. "No, you stay here…he's in kind of a shy mood, you know how it is, having a bad hair day and you just hate to be seen. I'll take care of it, you just stay here and DON'T WANDER OFF!" And then, before Rose could object, the elevator doors slid closed, leaving her in a darkened newsroom with no idea what was happening to her story, a sense of things going on over her head, and a partner who'd first gone mad, and then taken off like the hounds of Hell were on his heels. Again.

Rose sat back down heavily in her chair. "I hate when he does that."