A/N: This starts a little on the painful side, but quickly brightens up to end on a very light note.

This bloody chapter ran on and on and on ... It didn't want to stop! Sorry, but I'm giving you a 6K monster of a chapter today ... sorry if that ends up TL;DR...

The species name I've given the TARDIS isn't canon. I did try to look at just what species grew into those magnificent sentient time machines, but had no luck. So I thought "Sod it" I'll think of my own name ... So I did.. :)

I don't think I can write a tale without dropping in an original character to play with. This fic is no different. Rose finds herself a new ally, one that just might be able to pull her out of the danger she's found herself in and take her toward the one man who can truly help her...

There are many ways that one could describe the sensations of a migraine headache: A heavy pounding behind the eyes with a pressure that felt like they could explode from their sockets with even a slight movement, a full and pulsing ache that seems to press down from the very air above rendering the victim completely immobile, or even a grinding vibrating rattle of the skull that seems to jackhammer the brain into a grey pulsing soup of which the only relief might be to grab a tissue and blow it all out of one's nose.

To Rose Tyler, her migraine consisted of a mass of incredible swirling and haunting voices that swept around her mind screeching and bellowing into the most deepest recesses of her brain. Voices that had claws and hand held drums … clawing and banging … screaming and yelling … Each one of them telling her that only death would ease the pain.

And for a brief moment she begged for just that. She managed to open her eyes just barely. She opened them to mere slits to let in just enough vision for her to assess just where it was that she was currently lying in wait for death. Not that she really needed visual proof, mind. She could immediately tell by the fluffy goose-filled duvet and the memory foam pillows that carried the scent of her husband that she was in her bed. But she wanted to make sure anyway. She didn't often wake without him beside her – or more accurately wrapped around her – so she needed to make very sure she was actually in her own bed…

…Not that she wouldn't be, of course. While she was once a traveller that spent more time in unfamiliar beds than she did her own, over the past few years she rarely ventured away from home. Trips to Doctor Song's offices were the furthest she had gone since the accident.

Speaking of Doctor Song…

Rose moaned and covered her eyes with her forearm as the memories of her argument with Vale rose to her consciousness with startling clarity. Typically she didn't recall the intricacies behind any of their tiffs and rows, but this one seemed to want to remain crystal clear. She didn't have to strain to recall any small part of it. The whole thing played out like a show on the telly, High Definition and all.

It made her want to vomit.

Or was that the migraine?

She felt the increase in her respiration and the clutching cramp in her stomach that warned her she was about to retch. Her mouth watered and her throat contracted painfully. She had just enough time to flip onto her side and lean over the edge of the mattress before her stomach decided to push its way up into her throat. A sickly and involuntary heaving sound made bellowed from deep inside her chest, but there was no substance to her retch besides rancid breath. After three painful contractions and coughs toward the hardwood slats of their bedroom floor, Rose managed to lift herself to fall onto her side at the very edge of the bed.

She blinked her watering eyes free of tears and struggled to clear her vision. She focused on two small white cylindrical shapes on the bedside table and let her breaths even out. Pills. They were two chalky white pain caplets that sat in the puddle caused by the condensation of a bottle of water at their side.

She blew out a breath and shifted her gaze to a small tented card beside the bottle. Carefully deliberate neat script read: "For your headache, Rose. I'm so sorry you're in pain. Rest. Recover. I'll see you later. We'll do something special tonight, just you and me. I love you. Valeyard xx"

Disgust filled her at that moment. How dare he be so nonchalant about what happened between them last night? Did he think that forgiveness was going to come so easy just because he left her a couple of pain pills and a bottle of water to wash it down?

She flicked her finger angrily at one of the pills and watched with a sneer of defiance in her eye as it flew off the table, ricocheted off the window sill beyond the small armchair in the corner of the room and then landed with a tiny little clunk on the floor beside her.

"I hate you and I hate him," she growled toward the little caplet that lingered along the line of light and shadow from the window. "Well. Not hate…" Her brows pinched tightly together with indecision on that emotion. That pinch lasted only a moment before the pain in her head reminded her in a rather cruel manner to limit her movement.

"Okay," she corrected as she hurriedly swatted at the table for one pill and then reached awkwardly over the edge of the mattress for the other. "Maybe I'll actually fall in love with the two of you if you'll only…" her words ended with a humph as she lost her precariously held balance over the edge of the mattress and then fell heavily to the floor.

A loud moan of absolute deathly agony poured out of her throat as her head fiercely protested that movement. Rose used that wide open mouth to cup her hand over it and toss the pills as far back into her throat as was possible. She then rose up onto her knees and lifted her hand above her head to retrieve the bottle of water. She was partially relieved to find that the lid had already been thoughtfully unscrewed; it meant she didn't have to exert any unnecessary energies in struggling to open it.

She drew back long and deep and let her head hang backward for a long moment as she felt the movement of the cool liquid make its languid way down into her gullet. She counted the seconds it took to finally make it to her stomach, and then slowly rocked her head forward to let it hang limply on her shoulders. She blew out a breath that fluttered the frilly hems of her sleep shorts and willed the drugs to take immediate effect.

They wouldn't. She knew they wouldn't. But perhaps if she got up and walked around for a while she could work that wonderful migraine killing drug into her system. It would take some effort to haul herself to her feet and then encourage them to move on her behalf, but she would try.

It turned out that it didn't take too much coaxing at all to get herself moving. It took some time to coax herself into attempting to move – about ten minutes or so – but by that stage the medication was starting to take a tender hold on the situation. She found she could move without searing pain flashing through her mind and so she slowly made her way along the carpeted hallway and down the stairs. By the time her bare feet touched the tiled floor at the base of the stairs, her migraine had dulled to a strong headache.

"I can do this," she muttered to herself with only a small wince on facing direct sunlight through the kitchen window. "I'm Rose Tyler – Bad Wolf – Destroyer of the Emperor of the Daleks and his hybrid battle fleet. I can face the morning sun!"

She strode toward the sliding glass door that led toward their patio deck. She looked out through the plate glass with a squint as she let her hand drop so that she could flick open the lock with her thumb.

It didn't budge…

Her brow tightened into a grimace of confusion and she looked down at the handle to try it again.

Again, it didn't budge.

"What the?" She bent at the knees to lower herself a little to better investigate the issue at hand. Her eyes widened at what she saw. It had been deadbolted. Deadbolted and sealed and therefore completely unopenable without a very specific key.

Without any further investigation on that door, and with rising panic insisting on investigations being required on the other exits to the home, Rose Tyler fled to the front door of their home. In her haste to check it out, she barely managed to stop herself from colliding against the stained glass panel set beside the door. She stepped form foot to foot to balance herself and then lowered herself at the knees to look at the handle.

Deadlocked.

Both hands flew up to her head and she raked her fingers painfully through hair that was in desperate need of being brushed. She twisted side to side and paced foot to foot as sounds of worry flew past her lips.

"I'm leaving this house..."

"You can't stop me."

"Sooner or later you're going to have to get off me…"

The memories of her threats to him last night crashed down hard on her. She told him she was going to leave, that he couldn't stop her … and he took that challenge. He rendered her unconscious with an attack on her mind to give him all the time he needed to make sure that no matter where he was or what he was doing, there'd be no way in which she could leave him.

"Oh," she breathed out along a very long exhale. "You can't do this to me, Vale. You just can't!"

She tugged hard on the unresponsive doorhandle. She tugged. She pulled. She jiggled and twisted. She yelled out. She slapped it. She pounded against it. She gave up and pressed her forehead against it to finally let out a defeated cry. Her forehead remained against the wood and roughly dragged down across the bumps and valleys of the intricately carved door as she dropped to her knees and began to sob.

She was trapped, now. Trapped, and there was nothing she could do about it. She lost contact with all of her friends in the years since Jamie died. She had no family left since Jackie passed and Pete left England to accompany Tony on his humanitarian medical aid commitments in Africa.

She let out a snort. Even if they were contactable, Vale had probably disconnected the phones somehow. No doubt the wifi was also disabled. She didn't see the need to check any of them. He was nothing if not efficient. He would've thought far beyond the simple act of making sure a door was locked. In fact, she'd place wagers on the fact that he'd bugged and sensored the entire home. Surveillance cameras perhaps…?

She looked up to the doorway that joined the entrance hallway and the living room and noted with a sinking heart the blinking red light of a camera pointed directly at her. Without care for whatever sensibilities the person monitoring the surveillance feeds held, she lifted her hand, let her middle finger rise tall and mouthed fuck you into the lens.

Her defiant arrogance was short-lived, however, and she quickly slumped back against the wall, in amongst the discarded shoes that were thrown into a haphazard pile at the side of the door.

"What am I going to do?" she whined softly to herself. She slumped in defeat. "I'm a prisoner in my own home."

She leaned back to rest her head against the door that led to their basement and let out a hard breath though her nose. She turned sideways on her inhale to rest her shoulder and ear against the door. She wanted to put her back toward the camera. She wanted to make sure that there was no way that he would see the utter devastation in her face. She wanted to cry without his cameras looking at her. She didn't want him to see her tears – even though she knew it would destroy him to see them. He might be behaving like an inconsiderate ass right now, but she knew there'd be no way he'd handle seeing her cry. He never could. He'd probably rush home and try to console her, and the last thing she wanted right now was accept any form of sympathy from him.

Her shoulders shook with her sorrow and her chest heaved with the gulping sobs that wracked her tiny body. Every inhale she drew in was wet and shaking. Each exhale was painfully choked. She curled in on herself and pressed herself heavily against the door.

And then she heard it. A sound of empathy. A small hum from beyond the door that seemed to weave itself through the smallest of cracks between the door and its frame. A hum of support that curled itself around her ankles and snaked up toward her chest. Her breath drew in and she held it deep inside for a long while to focus on that unusual – but somehow familiar sound.

She was finally forced to exhale a sharp breath and drew in a second one with a forceful gulp. There was something beyond the door. Something that lurked inside a basement that had been sealed shut more than a decade previous. The door had been padlocked and the room forgotten about with the death of a small chunk of coral from another universe.

With a careful touch of her fingers against the door to provide her some stability, Rose looked up at the rusted out lock that held closed a thin strip of metal that latched across the door and its frame. She lifted her hand and flicked at the lock with her finger. It was as untouched and rusted as it had ever been. There were no new marking on it to indicate that it had been opened in recent weeks of months.

Perhaps this was a void in Vale's surveillance that she could somehow exploit? If he hadn't been in this room, then it was still in the same condition it was when he sealed it after the death of his baby TARDIS. He wouldn't have set this area up in his matrix of surveillance.

She gnawed at her thumbnail and weighed her options.

She could easily use her tablet to sneak into the monitoring network and provide some convincing loop-feeds that would have him think that she was padding aimlessly around their home, or even sleeping the day away in a drug-filled stupor … she still had some anti-depressants that she had been given after Jamie's loss hidden somewhere that she could pretend to take.

The tip of her tongue swept along the seam of her lips as she considered the appropriate programming and hacking techniques that would allow her to do that. She could then use whatever time she had to recreate that damn Dimension Canon and leap across the universal walls to find some help to take down whatever forces were working against her husband…

…and maybe get him back?

Her eyes dropped to the floor with that thought. Even if she was able to conquer the demon that had taken over John and he came back to her … would she even want him back? Could she ever trust him enough to bring them back?

She didn't want to consider it. Not yet. Not now.

But she did want to stop this monster, regardless of what the eventual outcome would be. She lifted her eyes to the latch and let herself smile and maybe even find just the smallest amount of hope that not all was lost and that she wasn't condemned to a life as a prisoner to an obsessed madman without a box.

With renewed vigour, Rose Tyler pulled herself to her feet. She tapped the rusted out lock and winked at it. "I'll be back," she vowed softly.

~~oooOOOooo~~

It took an embarrassingly short amount of time for Rose Tyler to access the monitoring signal feeding out of her home from her tablet. It took even less time to piggyback an old program created by Mickey that would creatively overwrite live images with older footage looped via a bypass feedback protocol into the live stream back at the monitoring station.

She wanted to cheer at the ease and flawlessness in which she was able to accomplish it all. Twenty years as an active agent at Torchwood afforded her skills and knowledge that she knew she'd never forget. In her opinion that was the best retirement package ever …

Once confident that her reprogramming had been successful, Rose returned to the basement door with a dirty old yale key in hand and a crowbar underneath her arm. A crowbar that she hoped she wouldn't have to use. The last thing she needed was for Vale to figure out what she was up to because of the crowbar-sized dents in the door and frame and then shredded screw holes where the fastenings of the latch used to be.

With a purse in her lips and a hopeful expression on her face, Rose slid a shaking key into a rusted old lock. She winced at the resistance that met the key, but pushed through it, and bit at her lips when she finally sheathed it to its hilt.

"Here goes nothing," she sighed quietly to herself as she flexed her thumb and finger to twist the key in the lock.

It wouldn't budge.

She almost whimpered in disappointment to find that the lock had seized through age and disuse, but refused to give up on it. She held that lock firmer, and pushed harder at the key to will it to turn. She jiggled it. She withdrew and shoved it back in to try again. She grunted out a growl as she focused on a single turn rather than continue to jiggle it.

"Come on. Please. You can do it," she urged the little key. "You own that lock, mate. You tell it to open for you!"

With a click and a crackle, the lock finally gave way. It was still very stiff in the turn, but finally the tumblers fell into place against the key and the shackle finally popped upward. It was a snap sound that was music to Rose Tyler's ears, and she practically sang as she released the key and turned the shank to pull it from the latch.

"To whatever God is watching over me," she vowed softly as she pulled open the latch and twisted the tarnished metal door handle. "Thank you."

The door opened slowly and gave some definite protest with a heavy screeching cry of the rusted hinges scraping metal over metal. She winced at the sound, but strode ahead anyway into the darkened room beyond the door. Immediately she coughed at the thick dust that swirled up from her feet. With a wave of one hand in front of her face and the other swatting at the wall in search of the switch, Rose carefully made her way down the first to steps that would take her down into the unfinished basement below.

Her hand finally met with a switch panel that shifted underneath her touch. She stopped her stride and looked toward it as her fingers blindly found the tiny little lever that would either switch on the light or electrocute her. Either/or. Fortunately it sent its power toward a naked incandescent bulb that swung from a two-foot long cord that hung from the ceiling in the centre of the room, and not through the tips of her fingers.

The sudden illumination in the room highlighted the swirling dusts in the air and as though the very image of it heightened the choking power of dust, Rose started to cough against it. Her wracking coughs destabilized her enough that she ended up running down the remaining stairs to prevent gracelessly tumbling down them. She spun to evade an up-ended chair on the ground, but still managed to collide with the very edge of John's old workbench at the edge of the room.

She cursed and rubbed the flat of her hand against the sting of an oncoming bruise on her hips, hissing breaths though her teeth as she tried to work out the pain and work to reacquainting herself with the basement and all that it held within it.

To the right of the room – of the stairs – was John's former workshop table. It was bordered along the wall with small storage tubs that were filled with an array of screws, nails, washers, bolts, nuts, wires, glues and soldering irons. Several half-completed circuit boards that were once intended to become part of a TARDIS console were piled to one side of the desk, and schematic diagrams took up most of the other side of the desk. By the haphazard and splayed array of papers, Rose could tell that he'd swiped his hand across the desk in frustration when the coral cutting finally gave up and died completely.

She walked toward the desk and crouched to pick up a piece of paper from the floor. A sad smile graced her face to see a child's doodle drawn over the top of designs for an absolute Tesseractulator. Jamie had been so young and so eager to play about around his father's ankles that he quite happily sat on a mat laid atop a dusty basement floor and scribbled crayon images over any piece of paper he could possibly get his hands on.

…And John loved it. Oh, how he'd crow with pride at the scribble on the page – regardless of how it ruined the original design – and then drop whatever he was doing to sit on the mat beside his child to join him in his scribbling.

Her hand flew to her mouth and she fought off tears. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply behind her hand as she gently set the drawing down onto the work table. That hand then joined the other, and she held at her mouth with both hands as she battled to keep her composure and take stock of the room at the same time.

Drafting Table. There was an old drafting table that Rose used from time to time when she engaged in creating artwork of her own. There weren't too many actual art supplies left, but if she felt so inclined, she'd be able to pick up the hobby again with what was here. Perhaps one day. She really did miss it.

Out of the corner of her eye, and against the wall in a nondescript manner that had it appear more as a distraction rather than something openly useful for her to rebuild a canon, stood a rickety old wooden cupboard. She frowned just slightly as she tried to remember when and where they had acquired that. It didn't quite seem to be within the tastes of either she nor John. Nothing came immediately to mind, so she merely shrugged her shoulder and turned to look around the rest of the dusty, smelly, damp old room that sat relatively abandoned underneath her home.

As she pottered around and poked her fingers into things here and there with a curious assessment to its worth toward her project, Rose couldn't help but occasionally notice a light buzzing against her mind. It felt as though she was being followed by a persistent mosquito, and more than once she blindly slapped at the air to rid herself of it. It only took thirty minutes of this for her to decide that her next venture down in this room would require mosquito coils or a can of Mosi-Guard to free the place of annoying insects.

The humming and buzzing intensified the deeper that she strode into the room, and before long, she found her expression falling into a grimace at the slowly rising ache that was again seeding itself in her head. She pressed the butts of both hands into her eyes and leaned forward into a stoop in an attempt to focus past the building ache. She still had roughly an hour and a half before she could take any more painkillers for her head.

"Oh for God's sake," she seethed under her breath as the humming intensified. "Get outta my head. I don't want you in there!"

The humming sound seemed to gasp itself free of her mind, and Rose felt a sudden encompassing feeling of utter distress. It made her choke out a dry sob and stumble against her drafting table. She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself, spinning in the damp light of the room as though suddenly lost. All she found herself capable of doing at that very moment was to collapse into a desk chair and lean forward over her knees.

A sound quietly made its presence known in the room. Atop the light humming of the incandescent bulb above her head, Rose heard a light whine and wheeze and a metal on metal keening sound that she hadn't heard in over thirty years. Fear bloomed inside her chest as the sound intensified and the papers around her started to rattle and shift with a ghostly breeze that picked up and blew around her with no immediately identifiable point of origin.

She lifted her head, but kept her arms wrapped tightly around her belly as a flashing light caught her attention. Toward the wall, a grey metallic cylinder faded in and out of existence, each pulse of its materialization timing itself perfectly with the push and pull whine that was growing ever louder.

There was no mistaking that sound. It was the TARDIS.

Her breath flew in sharp and her eyes bloomed with hope as the thick metal cylinder finally finished its materialization and fully emerged against the far wall. She watched with tight brows as a thin beam of laser light – a scanner – traced the room and fixated on John's metal storage cupboard under the stairs. The exterior of the TARDIS flickered, shuddered, and then slowly morphed into an identical copy of the cupboard.

Then it was silent.

Rose sat forward just slightly in the chair. Her arms were still crossed tightly across her chest, and her expression was still one of shock and confusion. Had the Doctor finally fixed the Chameleon Circuit? She thought that he liked the look of the old girl. Why would he go and change it?

More importantly, why was he here? Had he somehow locked onto her signal when she had jumped only a day ago and managed to find his way across the walls?

She softly called out the name of the Time Lord that she expected was at the helm of the ship, and held her breath as the door creaked open.

A small, handheld, electrical gadget emerged through the doors first. Little red blinking lights with orange and green flickers in between flashes of red that rolled down between a small pair of twisting dish sensors attached to a black-cased box. It beeped a slow and steady pattern that seemed to indicate that all was well, and so a tuft of tousled dark hair emerged from beyond the doors. The pilot's shoulder emerged next, but he didn't curl himself around the door as Rose expected him to. Instead, he pressed his shoulder up against the door's edge to lean his tall and firm body against the doorframe. His eyes were focused on the gadget in his hand and he set one hand on his hip and crossed his legs at the ankle in what seemed to be curious confusion at the readings on his gadget.

Rose cleared her throat into her hand loud enough to ensure that she'd be heard. She kept her eyes on the man lingering in the doorway of the TARDIS with wide and hopeful eyes that he'd recognize her.

He looked up from the device in his hand with high brows and a slightly startled expression on his face. His wide blue eyes softened and a smile bloomed across his face when he caught sight of her. He pulled from the doorway and spoke to her in a series of melodic syllables that were enough to send shivers racing throughout her body even though she couldn't understand any part of it.

She shook her head at him. "Doctor. Is your translation circuit malfunctioning?"

He frowned at her and his head jerked just lightly as though as though unable to understand her. He shifted his head forward and spoke again, this time a little slower than the first time he'd spoken.

Rose had to chuckle and shook her head. "Doctor…" She looked into his face, into light crystal blue eyes rimmed with the darkest blue and found herself having to blink with surprise at the absolute lack of familiarity within them. "Don't you know who I am?"

Dark brows that matched the almost black head of hair rose high on his forehead. There was a moment of pause and then a sudden look of realization. He laughed a wide grin of brilliant white teeth and held a finger up to her as he turned back to the TARDIS doors. He spoke again, words that Rose assumed were the Gallifreyan equivalent of "Gimme a mo." And then disappeared inside the TARDIS.

He emerged only seconds later with his smile still firmly in place and both hands in his trouser pockets. Trousers, she noted, that were tucked into a calf-high pair of brown leather boots and were a deep green that matched hues perfectly with the two-toned long-sleeved tunic he wore over top.

If he sread out his arms and puffed up his chest, he would've kind've looked like a tree.

"So," he began with a sheepish smile and dip in his head. "How're we doing now? Can you understand me?"

Rose smiled and gave him a nod of her head. "Problem with the translation circuit?"

His smile fell and he tilted his head with curiosity at her. "Oh, not really. I didn't think to turn it on," he began with a gentle but somewhat wary tone of voice. "I was on a test flight and didn't expect to land off-planet."

Rose's mouth was slightly gaped as she nodded her head. "Ahh. I see. So you're not an adventurer yet, then?"

He studied her for a short moment with guarded eyes and a stiffened stance. His fists were clearly tight inside the pockets of his trousers.

"Doctor?"

His guarded eyes and his tight stance immediately relaxed. He smirked a one-sided smile of realization and shook his head. "No. Not him." He thumbed back toward his TARDIS. "He's still off gallivanting around the universe after rather successfully upsetting the entire political system on Gallifrey, which involved exiling the Lord President and the whole of council, and then took off leaving our entire planet in disarray."

She couldn't help but chuckle. "Sounds like him."

"You're a friend of his?"

She pressed her lips together and then shook her head. "No. Not as such. I'm an old acquaintance." She held out her hand to him. "I'm Rose. Rose Tyler."

He looked down at her hand with a curious expression on his face. "Ahhh," he breathed as he recalled his study of Alien cultures at the Academy. A smile blossomed and he slapped her hand to give her a side swiping high-five. "Trappullekestrupipusikontam," he returned eagerly. "Pleasure to meet you, Rose Tyler."

"Trappul-ah-what?" she queried with embarrassment.

He grinned a cheeky smile and leaned down to her. "You can call me Trapp. Most people do." He straightened up and looked around the room with a light frown on his face. "A good and strong Gallifreyan moniker is a fine thing," He looked back to her and gave a wink. "But no one can ever really remember it in its entirety to correctly pronounce them. We shorten them to the first syllable more often than not."

"I'd imagine so," she cooed with a smile. "Roll-call at school must be something else, yeah?"

"Takes half the academic day," he shot back with obvious amusement. "My name's pretty short by comparison to some of my fellow cadets. I had one cadet friend – my best friend actually – who I spent an entire century studying with at the academy. And you know what? To this day I can't tell you his full name." He wandered the room a little. "We called him Ian. He was Iandutavuntespithnoke ….something or other."

She chuckled into her hand and straightened up a little on the chair. She smoothed out the messy pull of her hair with a swipe of her hand and slowly drew herself to a stand. "So did he send you here then?"

He hummed in question but didn't look at her. His attentions were definitely on the various pieces of furniture around the room.

"The Doctor," she clarified. "Did he send you here?"

His brows were high as his head twisted quickly to look at her. "Pardon me? The Doctor? Did he send me here?" He shook his head. "No. Course not. I've never met him."

She exhaled a disappointed breath. "Oh."

"We run in different circles, him and me," Trapp continued. "Different chapters, you see. Different Academies, different ideals." He looked at her. "He's Prydonian, I believe. I'm from the Arcalian Chapter." One side of his face lifted into a wince of consideration. "And even if the Chapters did tend to mingle, don't believe I'd ever have the privilege." He tipped his head to one side to regard her curiously. "Why? Are you expecting him?"

Rose shook her head with quick and short movements. "No. Not really. I just figured that. Well. Maybe…"

"You need him?" he asked softly. "I'm sure I can issue out a call for him. Might take a while, I'm afraid, but I can try."

"Oh no," she answered on a rushed breath. "No need. None at all. Probably best that we don't let him know I even asked about him, yeah? Just leave him to gallivant across time and space like always."

His face lengthened with unshielded disbelief in her aver about not wanting the presence of the Time Lord Doctor. "Right. Okay. No problem at all."

She awkwardly hooked her hair behind her ear and blew at some stray strands that hung down over her face. "So. So what brings a Time Lord of Gallifrey all the way across to my side of a parallel wall, anyway?" She held her hand at her ear as though in preparation to curl yet another lock of hair around it. "I thought there weren't anymore of you people left in the universe."

"Time War," he queried with a side-long glance.

Rose nodded. "He said you were all gone."

Trapp shook his head and gave her a smile. "He saved us," he said with pride and awe in his voice. "That crazy madman in a box found a way to save us from the brink of destruction. I wasn't loomed at that point in time, mind you. But from the texts it was said that in the blink of an eye all the Daleks were gone and Gallifrey was at peace again. We've been rebuilding for centuries."

"I'm so glad to hear that."

"Me too," he admitted with a wink. He then went back to investigating the contents of the room. "Where are you?" he murmered quietly to himself.

Rose leaned to one side in curiosity at him looking through the room and muttering quietly to himself. He was quite obviously looking for something, but she wasn't quite sure just what. Something had brought him here. She needed to know just what that was.

"So, Trapp," she began curiously. She held onto her question until he turned to look at her. "What brings you here?"

"Oh yes," he chirped. "You did ask that earlier, didn't you?"

"I did."

He pointed to the left side of his chest, where he wore a name tag that indicated his name inside a series of circles, lines, dots and swirls. "I'm head of the hyperloom facility and Dry Dimension Dockyard Cradles operations."

"Oh-Kay," she breathed out in prompting for more information. "And?"

He smirked. "I'm a specialist in the cultivation, birthing, cloning, repair, maintenance, and engineering of the Pundeharhiran species." He gave her a wink. "Otherwise referred to as TT Capsule or – in the Doctor's case - a TARDIS."

"You…?"

He nodded. "Yes. I am the equivalent of a Time Lord foster father to thousands of very cheeky, playful, mischevious, and incredibly loyal Pundeharhirans." He inhaled a deep breath and resumed looking around the room. "That means that when a capsule is in distress I will typically intercept the call and see what kind of assistance is needed to get them back to Gallifrey for repair, nurturing, and rehabilitation." He walked to the edge of the room, where a rickety wooden cupboard stood against the wall. He tipped his head to one side and ran his hand down the rough wooden exterior. "I received a distress call from a very young Pundeharhiran that led me here."

"You're a little late then," Rose said sadly. "She died, Trapp. We lost our precious piece of coral more than a decade ago. I'm sorry this was a wasted trip for you."

He shook his head slowly and stroked tenderly at the cupboard. "Oh no she didn't," he corrected her softly. "You didn't die, did you, sweetheart? You just needed some time alone to grow properly, didn't you? Time away from a meddling and insistent Time Lord who doesn't know what he's doing trying to make you grow too fast." He closed his eyes and lowered his head. "But it's okay. I'm here now. Tell me what's wrong with you, little one. Let me help you."

A hard breath flew through Rose's lips. "Are you saying that that cupboard…?"

He opened his eyes and turned his head to look down his shoulder at her. There was a smile on his face when he answered her. "This perfect little lady is a juvenile Pundeharhiran." His grin widened. "Or as you know it, a TARDIS. Yours."