A/N: I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I am not a tech-minded person. I'm also not a medical-type-person. That said, what follows is not in any way accurate and I beg of you not to go into this thinking I am clever enough to have gotten it right. I found words I liked, I even made some up, I put them in here.

This chapter went way longer than I intended and so I had to break it up. I am not quite sure just how I feel about this particular chapter... We wrestled for quite a while as to just how we were going to pull this off. I went back and changed so many things because I found myself so undecided that I am worried it might be a little jumpy to the reader. My initial read-though said no, that it was fine ... but I also know what I was trying to say, so I can quite easily bypass the errors. If you note them ... point them out. I am absolutely not opposed in any way to rewriting this particular chapter ...

Not. At. all.

I do hope you enjoy... My apology if you don't... :)

Oh, and the product named in the early paragraphs of this fic - Poo-Pourri - is a product that I strongly recommend any one who resides with any male of any age immediately purchase and give pride of place in the washroom. It is a brilliant product that negates the need for a courtesy flush (and show me a man that actually believes in that practice) and leaves any bathroom smelling wonderful no matter what level of ickiness has been dropped in there. I swear by it ... I really do...

GK

~~oooOOOooo~~

Still at Pete's World…..

Rose Tyler stirred into wakefulness with a heaviness on her chest that made it somewhat difficult to draw in a deep breath. She felt a constriction across her belly and thighs and for the briefest of moments wondered if she was suffering from an unfortunate sleep paralysis event.

To this point she'd never actually experienced one of those events first-hand, but she'd read about them and watched accounts being retold on the telly. All the tales she'd heard and read about had intimated that a sleep paralysis event was an absolutely terrifying phenomenon. Terrified, however, she wasn't. Restricted and unable to move, yes. Scared out of her mind? No.

She opened her mouth wide to draw in a breath as deep as possible and practically choked. Her inhale had drawn in a mouthful of chestnut-dyed hair that belonged to a head that was at that moment pillowed heavily on her chest. Ahh. Yes. Aspirated hair. Well that quickly turned fear into realization. Obviously what was restricting her movements right now was the part-Time Lord that had cocooned himself around her as she slept, and not the horrors of sleep paralysis.

She chuckled lightly to herself and wriggled slightly to try to force him into shifting his head off the centre of her chest. "C'mon John," she whispered in urging. "Move a bit, yeah? I need to breathe."

He let out a rather indignant snort of protest, snuffled his nose against her right breast and tightened his hold on her. "Mmmphf-comfy-mmmphff."

She stroked at his hair and let out a sigh as she looked up toward the darkened ceiling above them. "You might be, Love, but I'm not."

A long and wet exhale through his lips was his only response.

Rose maintained the tender movement of her fingers through his hair and stared at the darkness overhead with a strength of focus that she absolutely should not have been capable of at this time of the night. It would probably have been a good idea for her to reach down inside herself to attempt to determine just how it was that she ended up in bed and not in front of a fireplace, naked and writhing on a sheep-skin rug with her husband. Probably a good idea, but really not really worth it. She was usually unable to recall much after her appointments with Doctor Song, and the more she tried, the more she just became frustrated with it. It was better to focus on the fact that she was very safely ensconced in the arms of her husband rather than how she got there.

..Actually right now the consideration might be just how to wriggle herself free of him so that she could quietly use the toilet and potter around a bit without waking him.

Her bladder agreed with her.

She wriggled again to test the waters for the depth of John's sleep and was immediately chided within a snorted snuffle and a leg that curled even tighter around her own.

Right. So. Moving was off the table for now. He wasn't about to let her sneak out of bed no matter how much her bladder protested it. She let out a sigh and looked back up to the ceiling in the hope that counting backwards from 100 might help her get back to sleep. What she saw up there caught her breath in her throat and threw any and all numerical figures out of her head and throughout all time and space.

It was an optical illusion – she understood that well enough – but that didn't make the swirling black mass above their bed any less frightening to look at. She might've described it as rolling storm clouds of absolute doom and gloom, but the shadows above her seemed more to swirl and twist than roll and shift.

With the manner in which it swirled and pulsed above her, Rose found no accurate descriptives to truly describe it – if she was in any way inclined to do so that is. It wasn't a roll of clouds. It didn't ripple like water. There was no dissipating movement that could describe it as thick smoke. She wouldn't even equate the movement to that of a diffusing bath bomb in warm bath water. It couldn't be one, and it couldn't even be a combination of each of those effects. It was more along the lines of nothingness engulfing the nothingness that surrounded it.

A black hole?

No.

If she were to consider the movement within the void between dimensional walls this would probably be it. The eyes of the Reaper himself, calling nothing into nothing. Mind games and tricks of a weary eye. Yes. Void stuff. Void stuff leaking into her bedroom to remind her of the insanity of all the jumps she had ever made.

Her breath drew in hard.

Or a reminder that there were walls that still needed to be crossed…

The very tip of her plump and pink tongue nestled into the corner of her mouth a moment as she let that thought entertain her brain for a moment. Before she had been dosed with sedative, she had decided that her quest for salvation across dimensional walls was not over. John had a second device, which meant he also had detailed records and designs saved somewhere. Those designs and specs were very likely hidden on a protected folder on his cloud network. That made things easy. She could try to access that information from her tablet or laptop.

Perhaps at the same time she could look into what other areas of study he'd been investigating. Doctor Song had stated quite clearly that he was studying her. Maybe she could look at his research notes and glean something from that, too?

She blinked up into the shifting black mass above her face and smiled toward it in thanks. She then looked down at her chest and pursed her lips in contemplation. Moving. Waking him. Finding explanation. How and what could she do just that.

Her bladder raised its hand and grunted loudly for attention like the child in the back of the class desperately seeking attention from a teacher. Rose nodded to herself and let herself move without care as to whether or not the man above her woke up.

"Gotto go," she murmured with a grunt as she heard the distinct sleepy sounds of his rousing. "Move, John."

He moaned and shook his head as he tightened his grip around her. "No."

"Do you want me to pee in the bed?"

"But you're so warm," he mumbled almost coherently against her sternum. "I'll take the blame for a complete bladder release and then admit to a fetish of that nature if it'll make you feel better about it."

"It really doesn't," she countered with a groan. She wriggled upward as best she could and pushed at his tightening arms with her hands in search of freedom. "Now get off me."

He lifted himself enough to give her room to shift out from underneath him, and then flopped back down onto his belly. His arms thrust upward to snare a pillow and he hauled it down to lay his cheek deep into it. "Don't be long," he warned with faux darkness and a look through the only eye that was capable of looking at her past the fluff of the pillow. "Need m'teddy bear."

Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes as she picked up her silken kimono robe from the floor and slipped it onto her shoulders. "I'm very sure you'll be fine." She chuckled at him muttering in disagreement and walked past the ensuite toward the bedroom door. "Back shortly."

"Where you going?" he asked curiously with less of a muffle in his voice that told Rose he had picked his head up off the pillow. "Ensuite is behind you."

She spun quickly on her heel and offered him the most embarrassed expression she could muster. "Uhm. I was thinking of using the toilet downstairs." She thumbed to the doorway. "I've got a bit of a belly ache and I might be a while."

He chuckled, shook his head and then flopped onto his back. His head buried deep into the pillow, but he kept his eyes on her. "You know," he began with a teasing smile. "The ensuite is capable of accepting waste at level two."

Rose's brows tightened into a grimace of discomfort. "Yeah. Might do. But now that you know the intention is to do that, I can't very well do that with you only a wall away with your superior olfactory and aural senses picking up each and every…" She moaned and dropped her head into her hand. "Oh God."

"If you subscribe to religion, Rose, then you could absolutely blame him for designing a waste removal system that…"

"Don't!" she cried out in horror. "Just don't. I really don't want to talk about it, yeah?"

"Just use the Poo-Pourri if you're so embarrassed by it," he muttered.

"Actually, I'll just use the lower bathroom, thank you," she said with a groan. She flicked her hair over her shoulder and turned away from him to leave the room. "And besides. We're out. You poured the entire bottle of it into the bowl last week, remember? Chilli-gate?"

"Right," he drawled along a breath. "The pre-emptive post-chilli bowl pour." He stretched his lanky form on the mattress and let out a sound of pleasure at the pull on his muscles. "Worth it, though. Totally worked." He then rolled onto his side and propped his head up on his hand. "Go do what you need to do. I'll be waiting for you."

She paused at the doorway and slowly turned her head to look back over her shoulder at him. "Go back to sleep, Love. I'll try not to wake you when I come back to bed."

"I can't sleep without you." He sniffed, hummed and then nodded as his eyes drifted shut. "But I'll try my best. Love you, Rose."

She smiled and returned the sentiment using the name given to him on Gallifrey and quickly disappeared into the hallway before he could react in his usual manner. The moan of utter desire that ghosted along the corridor after her made her chuckle. Her chuckle quickly fell to an expression of seriousness as she ran her fingers along the wall and curled the around the bannister of the stairs to look back down the corridor toward the bedroom. She paused there for a long moment in wait for him to emerge. After inhaling and then exhaling three very long and deep breaths, she finally let herself pad quietly and quickly down the stairs. She knew that it would only be a matter of time until he got impatient and started to look for her, so she moved into a light jog at the bottom of the stairs. She snatched her tablet from the arm of the couch and ran straight into the bathroom. She spun on the ball of her foot rather unnecessarily to close the bathroom door behind her. She clicked the lock in place with flourish and moved to the toilet without even switching on the light.

With one hand Rose managed to lift the toilet seat, drop her knickers, and settle herself atop the padded toilet seat that was – thankfully – not cold. As her bladder cheered triumphantly and voided itself, Rose slouched forward and tapped through the security code on her tablet.

It took her at least five minutes before she could access the necessary cloud drives to begin her search of John's files. She knew full well that he had security protocols in place on any of his files that would immediately notify him via text if any of them were accessed. She had to make sure that she tip-toed herself past each and every cyber-booby-trap he had in place. And, oh, if he wasn't brilliant at implementing anti-hacker software and patches…

…Fortunately she was a much better hacker than he was an anti-hacker. Twenty years of Torchwood training and service, and several degrees in computer engineering certainly gave her the upper hand. It didn't mean she could become blasé about nosing about and thinking she'd completely one-upped him. He was still the Doctor, after all…

…Regardless of what he called himself now.

Ten minutes into her search, however, there didn't seems to be anything particularly interesting that pertained to the dimensional beacon. There were plenty of files that appeared to contain a myriad of alien equations that could create several different pieces of technology that could upgrade a toaster or a car, maybe. There were designs and equations that related back to their failed attempts to grow their TARDIS coral within their own lifetime.

…Oh that was a heartbreaker…

But aside from his typical experimentations and random pages of alien equations, she couldn't find anything. Nothing. Nada.

She blew out a long breath of defeat through pursed lips and dropped her chin into her hand. As her elbow settled onto her knee, she tapped the very top of her fingernail against the tempered glass screen of her tablet.

Where could she possibly head from here? What avenue should she step into this time?

The tapping of her fingernail turned into a tap of her fingertip and within a moment, a bleep sounded lightly from the tablet and a very interesting hidden file appeared on her screen. Her eyes widened and she lightly called "tag. Found you" before letting her tongue settle in the corner of her mouth to take a sneaky peek at it.

Her brows slammed together hard in a tight furrow of absolute shock to find a folder named "Project Bad Wolf and Storm" that had creation and modification tags assigned to Doctor Song's ID attached to it. Her fingertip double tapped at the air above the icon at least seven times before she could actually bring herself to tap at it for real. She did it only after she drew in a horribly deep breath that threatened to rip her lungs apart and then exhaled it as violently as she could through her nose.

The file icon expanded to fill the screen with a listing of files, each of them created and modified by a single computer identification. And it wasn't John's. If the naming protocols of the files was what she believed it to be, then the files pertained to both John and herself.

She lifted her eyes to the thick black shadow over the top of her tablet. Slowly her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness to show the silhouette of the bathroom sink, but that image quickly thickened to black when her eyes went back to the brightly lit tablet screen.

Her eyes scrolled along the file names and the modification dates. Her time was limited right now, and so she had to be selective of just which file she wanted to access. She chose a random file bearing the "Storm" designation.

Followup evaluation and management of psychiatric medication and alien hormone therapies

Subject A.

Gender: Male.

Codename: Storm.

Species: Hybrid: Human/Gallifreyan – classified Biological Meta-Crisis

The patient has been doing quite well since his last examination. Despite an increase in dosage of Cyclobarbital to allow greater absorption of Dehalcynaphnren into the patient's bloodstream, he is calm, relaxed with high energy levels well over acceptable limits for the level of barbiturate in his system His cognitive function is intact. There is no obsessions, compulsions or phobias noted.

Storm is very alert and responsive. His orientation is full for time, place and person. Mood is euthymic. Energy levels are very good. His concentration is firm, but is easily directed and controlled by suggestion.

I suggest experimental administering of simulated Lindos hormone via spinal tap to begin as soon as possible to prepare his immune system for the introduction of pure Lindos hormone.

~~ooooooo~~

Rose's brow furrowed tightly as she ignored the remaining paragraphs of that report. She had to admit to being just slightly confused … or quite baffled … or in actual fact quite rightly stymied as to why and how John would submit himself for treatment like this.

Pain medication, yes. He was taking quite a lot of that of late. Despite the apparent lack of injury when they were reunited after the accident, he had apparently suffered a quite painful injury that had lingering pain. It was definitely pain medication, though. Rose had researched the name of the drug he'd been taking as soon as she noticed his shifting moods and changing personality. It was the run of the mill – but highly addictive – medication that about ten percent of the population was taking on a regular basis.

To some degree she could understand the introduction of Lindos to his physiology. He lived his entire life prior to the Meta-Crisis with Lindos cursing through his mind and body whenever he suffered injury. Perhaps he was using it as a last resort to end the pain of an injury that simply wouldn't lie?

She tapped her fingernail against her teeth as she considered the psychotics. Why on Earth would he need to be mixing barbituates and psychotics?

Well … Anti-Psychotic medication, perhaps. Oh, half the universe would probably agree to him taking that…

She couldn't even find it in her to chuckle to herself at that. She merely blinked her eyes against the darkness atop her tablet and swallowed thickly. With a shaking hand she tapped open a more recent entry.

~~ooooooo~~

Followup evaluation and management of psychiatric medication and alien hormone therapies

Subject A.

Gender: Male.

Codename: Storm.

Species: Hybrid: Human/Gallifreyan – classified Biological Meta-Crisis

The patient has exceeded all expectations since his last examination. The dosage of Cyclobarbital was levelled and Dehalcynaphnren levels tripled to counter the anxiety and tremoring experienced by the patient as pure Lindos hormone was regulated into the patient's bloodstream.

Storm's immune system and the hormone modification therapy has yielded surprising results. Cellular degeneration expected with subject's age (estimated to be nearing 70 relative to human aging – regardless of his actual degeneration being much more consistent with a 60-year old. Actual age has not been determined) has completely ceased and in a remarkable turn has begun to reverse. Three months after introduction of the hormone to subject's system, Storm's physiology appears to have regressed to degeneration expected from a fourty-year old subject. It is expected that this reversion may slow and stop once the immune system properly aligns with the new hormone and the changes level out. This effect would be consistent with the female subject who is the source of the Lindos. Cellular degeneration has completely ceased in that subject to keep her physiology consistent with a 25-30 year old human female. Actual age is estimated to be 55.

Despite the physiological changes, the subject remains calm, relaxed with high energy levels well over acceptable limits for the level of barbiturate that remains in his system His cognitive function is intact and improving exponentially in response to the degenerative reversal. Without factoring in conditioning training, there is no obsessions, compulsions or phobias noted.

Storm is very alert and responsive. His orientation is full for time, place and person. Mood without medication is euthymic. Energy levels are very good. His concentration is firm, but is easily directed and controlled by suggestion.

~~ooooooo~~

Rose nearly dropped the tablet. What in the name of Rassilon's ghost was this all about? Had John really submitted himself for experimentation like this? Did he truly miss being a regenerating Time Lord so intensely that he would allow medicinal manipulation and intervention like this to stay young and handsome?

It made absolutely no sense to her at all. She let her eyes fall back to the remainder of the report.

~~ooooooo~~

I suggest experimental oral administration of Hydromelithium Hydroxi. The introduction of Lindos to the subject's physiology has resulted in the reawakening and strengthening of his dormant telepathic receptors. This has interfered with the mental conditioning experiments performed in the initial test phase immediately following initial contact. It appears to have provided the subject with increasing episodes of clarity and awareness not conducive to the anticipated results of prolonged exposure to conditional experimentation. Regular administering of Hydromelithium Hydroxi will suppress the telepathic receptors and allow further and more intensive mental conditioning. It is expected to achieve total manipulation of subject though mental conditioning and medicinal intervention by the end of the calendar year. Control of this subject is paramount.

~~ooooooo~~

Rose looked at the date on top of the report and inhaled deep to note that the end of that particular calendar year was approximately fourteen months ago. If that report was accurate and the desired results met, then John … Rose shook her head unwilling to complete that thought. She sat back against the toilet's tank and let the tablet fall onto her knees. She lifted her eyes to the dark void against the wall that was the mirror over the vanity and willed her eyes to focus even though she wasn't truly looking at it. Her mind whirled with a myriad of questions that she wanted immediate answers to. Answers, of course, that she knew she wouldn't get, but they were burning questions none-the-less.

There was a compulsion within her right now to storm her bedroom, shove this tablet and it's hidden files into the face of her husband and demand that he anti-up with just what the hell he was up to to allow himself to be experimented on like this…

But was it something that he even allowed, though? Did he even know what was happening to him?

She hunched forward over her knees and kissed her lips against the top edge of the tablet to consider that question. No. That couldn't be right. He couldn't have known. If he knew about it, surely he would've stopped it.

These files, this incriminating folder, it was all on his cloud drive. Surely he had accessed and read it all by now? John – at least the John she knew – wouldn't sit idly by and do nothing. He wouldn't have files like this on his drive and not have memorized them all in their entirety. No, he was far too curious to ignore anything that might have some delicious scientific content. Unless….

Unless he didn't know they were there.

Rose pursed her lips and focused on the glow of the tablet screen reflecting off the stainless steel handles of the cabinet doors. These files had required some fancy finger work and artful navigation to track down. She dipped and ducked through several anti-hacking booby traps that John simply didn't have the technological flexibility to curl around.

She frowned and swiped her fingers on the screen to walk backward through her chosen pathways in order to determine exactly where she'd wandered. She had assumed that the pathways she had taken were the paths that led her toward John's drive. As she backed through the paths she had carefully taken, however, the cloud drive she'd accessed became clear.

…It wasn't John's drive. It wasn't even close to his drive.

She immediately tossed the tablet with both hands up onto the counter and shoved herself backward on the toilet seat in an attempt to back as far away from the tablet as possible.

She'd accessed not only the Scientific Federation Health Centre network drives, but the actual files of Doctor River Song herself. Oh. Oh dear. Holy-absolutely-illegal-activity, Rose Tyler! She'd be flagged. She would. IT didn't matter how careful she was in sneaking though their network, she could be flagged and her IP recorded without her even knowing it.

Alarms could be ringing through the hospital network right now!

She snatched her tablet back form the countertop and pulled it toward her with far more force than was necessary. With her knickers still around her ankles and still seated on the toilet, Rose Tyler scrambled to implement the worm virus that would obliterate any evidence of her presence in the system. The Torchwood Special Mickey called it back when he'd written the program virus thirty years ago. A Data string over thirty years old and considered obsolete by today's standards, it had never been beaten yet.

…at least she damn well hoped so. The last thing she needed right now was a knock on the door and accusations of hacking into highly confidential medical files.

As her thumb made the final swipe to initiate and execute the worm virus, there came a sharp rapping sound from the other side of the door.

Her husband's voice called firmly from the other side of the door. "Rose. What are you doing in there?"