A/N: It's been a very very long while since I've updated any of my fics ... I've been hit very hard with RL over the past few months, and then it's been a struggle to get back into writing. It probably didn't help that I chose this one to get back to ... sighhhhh...

Anyhooo. I know this isn't a popular fic, but I hope those of you who are reading it will like this chapter. Basically just arguing ... but ... ya know.

~~oooOOOooo~~

It was only a short few moments between the sounds of dematerialisation echoing throughout the small basement space and the sounds of a TARDIS returning. Rose knew well enough to detect the change in pitch that signalled materialisation. The whine and wheeze of a departing TARDIS was always coupled with a shrill cry across time and space – this was a sound that was absent from a time ship on approach.

She smiled as the winds of materialisation kicked up the flyaway strands of her hair that had fallen helplessly from her make-shift and messy bun. Her smile held as she wiped at her face to clear it of the itch of irritation that her blowing hair caused. Swiping at it became a futile exercise, however. The winds were relentless.

With the appearance of the deep grey-coloured cylinder, she opened her smile in preparation to remark a cheeky question of him missing her after such a very short time. But with the rapid speed in which the capsule's door opened and Trapp burst out of the ship, her smile quickly fell. Trapp's movements were frantic and his panicked expression was in her face and field of vision so quickly that she was unable to appreciate or even notice the pinlight laser beam of the Chameleon circuit scanning the room to change the appearance of the hull into the shape of a cabinet.

"Rose," he panted urgently. "Rose, I'm so sorry."

Her eyes widened and her head shook lightly with confusion. "Sorry for what?"

Trapp lifted his hands to take hold of her arms, but seemed undecided as to whether or not he had permission to do so. His fingers flailed hopelessly and his hands hovered without purpose. His head moved with the slide of his eyes between his hands and Rose's arms. He didn't look up at her to meet her eyes.

"I didn't think," he said worriedly. "I know I should have guessed that he was this cunning. Rumours say that he is." His voice fell to fear. "Oh, the rumours say he is. Cunning and then cunning some more. So I should have known, but you said that you and he weren't close, so why would I think that? 'Course, Spandrell told me otherwise. He did, and I should have expected it, but I didn't. I never thought for a second that he'd actually latch on to Teden's signal to follow. I really didn't."

Rose dipped her head to try to capture his gaze. His rapid-fire words were basically nonsensical in her ears, and she struggled to be able to quickly grasp anything of what he was saying. Although unable to decipher, she knew it wasn't good. "Trapp?" she queried with more compassion and confusion than worry. "Trapp, what's wrong?"

He lifted his eyes to hers and let his hands drop to his side. He swallowed thickly and gave her an expression that begged her forgiveness. "I messed up," he admitted.

Her brows fell into a frown of concern. "Messed up in what way?"

Trapp's eyes flicked toward the capsule, but he held that image for less than a second before he looked back toward her. "I contacted Gallifrey," he said with a rush. "Like I told you I would. I spoke…" He paused to swallow. "I spoke with a friend at Traffic control…"

A brow slowly lifted on Rose's forehead. She couldn't help but picture a Gallifreyan police officer standing at an intersection directing traffic. "Traffic control?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Yes. Traffic control. She – my friend Celeste - monitors all of the incoming and outgoing flight plans of all Time Capsules. I was on my way back to Gallifrey, and I couldn't get it out of my head." He paused to inhale and finally found the ability to clutch lightly at her upper arms.

"Rose," he breathed out apologetically as his eyes bored imploringly into hers. "Rose, the thought of a violation of that nature… "

Rose breathed out the word and blinked her eyes with worry. Her worry heightened as she felt the rise of wind in the room and a second sound of materialisation slowly increase from the corner beside her own baby TARDIS. She knew that words were still tumbling from his lips, but she didn't register anything beyond the sight of a blue Police Box fading in and out of view behind the panicked Time Lord.

"Rose, I'm sorry. Please believe me."

The TARDIS – His TARDIS – the Doctor's TARDIS – finally materialised completely. Her eyes were locked on time ship and her voice slowly passed quietly through her parted lips. "Trapp. What did you do?"

"Please believe me when I say that I didn't expect this," he implored desperately as he shifted his head left, right, up and down to try to capture her attention from the TARDIS and the creaking of its doors. "When you told me that you and he were only acquaintances…"

Her attention, however, was completely locked on the man who exited the ship she had once called home. She exhaled a three-letter word through a breath that conveyed her shock at his arrival, her acknowledgement that she knew who he was, and of her horror that he was there. Her breath drew in and out of her in great gulps that threatened to break her into heaving sobs, but she quickly neutralised that threat by focusing on every other emotion his image pulled from within her.

She chose anger and betrayal as the leading emotions and let her body ripple with that. It was easy to do when she saw the Doctor's rather timid smile, and then his need to quickly shield his apprehension behind forced confidence and a brighter grin.

"Rose Tyler," he called out as he opened his arms and braced himself for what she believed he assumed would be a bone-crushing embrace. "It's so good to see you."

So good to see…?

Her eyes flicked briefly toward his new and attractive female companion and then shot back toward him. His smile and his confidence that she would so readily run back into his arms after he'd abandoned her on a beach so many years ago without even a backward glance … Oh … oh, that was the straw she needed to release her anger upon him.

She wasn't gentle, nor apologetic, as she fiercely pulled herself out of Trapp's hold and then shoved him out of her way to approach the flop-haired, short-trousered, tweed-wearing Time Lord behind him. She let anger cloud her eyes and her stalk as she lifted her hand and point a furious finger toward the TARDIS.

"Get out of my house," she growled angrily. "Get away from me and never come back."

The Doctor didn't change his stance, the openness of his arms, or even the joviality in his voice and smile. "Don't talk such rubbish, Rose," he forced out through his grin as she moved to within capturing distance. He quickly scooped her into his arms and pulled her against his chest. He held her tight even though she struggled violently against him. "I can feel as much relief from you as I can anger…"

Rose didn't feel the sudden hitch in his breath that was his gasp of horrific realisation. She thrust the butts of both of her hands into his shoulders to shove herself away from him. "How dare you!"

The Doctor stumbled backward from her at that moment. His eyes were wide with terror and his face white as a sheet as he fell back onto the door of the TARDIS without any of the grace of his previous incarnation. "R-Rose? How are you doing that?"

She let his defeated slouch against the TARDIS give her courage, and even though she could tell that her victory was only as a result of his sudden confusion – about just what, she didn't know nor care about at this juncture – she held herself high over him.

"You aren't welcome here, Doctor," she seethed through her teeth. "You're not even supposed to want to be here. You made your choice, remember…."

His green eyes were sad and he kept them on her as he lightly shook his head. "Not before you'd made yours," he countered with quiet hurt in his voice. The proud Time Lord remained slouched against the side of his TARDIS and looked toward her with pain inside his ancient eyes. "What choice did I have but to respect the choice you'd made?"

The fight within Rose waned, and she slouched with defeat of her own. Her voice was barely audible. "I didn't choose this, Doctor." Her breath drew in raggedly and she watched warily as he slowly pulled himself from his own slouch to approach her with care. "I wouldn't ever choose this."

He paused only a few feet from where she stood and held out his hand to her. His voice was soft and urging. "Then change your mind and come with me. Let me take you away from all of this."

"I can't," she whimpered quietly.

"All of time and space at your disposal," he continued with a voice rising with confidence. "Your hand in mine, the Doctor and Rose Tyler, in the TARDIS, just as should be."

Her eyes hardened with those words; an echo of words spoken to her on a beach back in Norway when a man in a pin-striped suit tossed a chunk of TARDIS coral toward a man dressed in blue. Her back straightened. She shook her head. Her voice darkened. "Get out."

He felt the wash of betrayal flow through him with her words; a wave of hurt, loss and sadness so intense that he felt his left heart skip and his breath fly out of him as through punched in the chest. He didn't stagger backward this time, but his entire face fell into confusion.

"How can you do that?" he asked along a hoarse whisper.

Rose's head tipped to one side. "Do what?" she shot back hotly. "Ask you to leave?" Her expression shifted to one of petulance. "With relative ease when I consider how you've always found it so easy to dump me off and walk away."

His green eyes immediately flared and he approached her with all the power of his oncoming storm persona driving him forward. "Do you think it was easy?" he growled out. "Easy to walk away from you?" He saw her lips move to retort, but stopped her with a shake of his head. His tone of voice didn't lighten any when he continued. "I needed you, Rose Tyler. I told you that. Back on that beach. There was nothing easy about watching you choose another man over me."

"You only told me that as part of your sales pitch for me to accept you dumping him off with me," she seethed in reply.

"And it seemed to do the trick," he accused sharply. "Didn't it? You made your choice easily enough."

"You were the one who made that choice, Doctor," she corrected him as she clenched her fists at her sides and she leaned forward to let her entire stature stiffen much like a little girl in tantrum. "I did not choose anyone," she vowed firmly. "You never gave me the chance to choose for myself. You just dumped me on a beach with your metacrisis clone, turned on your heel and swaggered back into your TARDIS without a damn care in the world."

"Without a what?" he yelled indignantly in reply. His arm thrust out to point at the ground behind him. "You were kissing him! Mouth to mouth and all …squishy! What do you expect me to do in that moment? Wait around for you to finish and then ask for my turn? Tap you on the shoulder and say excuse me a moment, hate to interrupt your mating dance here with a man who is very much the inferior human version of me. But I'm about a tafelshrew's hair from making a complete fool of myself by either wailing like a broken hearted whippet or acting like a Neanderthal; knocking him out and then throwing you over my shoulder to take you back to the TARDIS?" He chuckled dangerously. "Don't you think for a second I wasn't ready to do just that."

"Oh, bullshit. You were happy to be rid of me." Her seething then fell to disgust when she heard a gasp of shock from Clara. Her arm lifted so that she could point toward her. "Got rid of me so you could go back out and swan around the universe picking up woman after woman – no doubt making them fall in love with you so you can dump them off when you get bored and find yourself someone new."

"How dare you…."

Her eyes flicked toward Clara. "Tell me something – oh, I'm sorry – what was your name? The Doctor here is too much of an ignorant, selfish prat to formally introduce us."

Clara's eyes were wide and her mouth flapped hopelessly. She didn't get a chance to answer her question, however, as the Doctor launched into his own tirade.

"Selfish, Rose? You have the gall to call me selfish?" He took a long stride toward her to stand chest against chest and found himself having to crank his neck almost painfully to be able to glare down at her. "I gave up my life for you."

"One of thirteen," she corrected coldly with a dig of her fingertip into his chest. She levered her head upward to glare as best she could into his face. "And not until I chose to give up my one life for you first." She snorted. "Not to be outdone, the Time Lord Doctor, right?"

Hurt flashed across his eyes as they flicked their focus between hers. His voice softened dramatically. "I saved you," he croaked, "from having to do that for me." His voice fell to a whisper and his expression softened into reverence. "You just couldn't let me die, could you? I lost everything, Rose. I was ready to die. But you wouldn't let me. Why wouldn't you let me die?"

"How could I?" she asked him with equal softness. "I loved you with ev'rythin' inside me, Doctor. Forget the stars an' all the planets – you were my whole universe - I couldn't let you die."

"When I left you on that beach," he vowed sadly. His arms moved to tenderly circle her waist. "I may as well have." He watched her turn her head off to one side and sniff, a tear rolling down her cheek. "Did he tell you – my clone – how I almost ended myself on Christmas Day underneath the Thames because of how devastated I was to lose you?"

"He didn't have to," she whispered as she pulled away from him and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I saw it for myself… What happened when Donna wasn't there to stop you."

He nodded slowly. "I died in the alternate world. Didn't I, Rose?"

She closed her eyes and swallowed thickly. It took a moment for her to try and compose herself with the reappearance of a long-suppressed image of a lifeless pin-striped arm falling out from underneath a white coroner's sheet.

"Please go," she whispered finally without opening her eyes. "Let me live with the choice you made for and let me be."

His arms tightened around her, but it wasn't in a gesture of tenderness. He held her tightly with argument in an attempt to prevent her escaping him. "I didn't tell you to kiss him, all mouth to mouth and … and squishy like you did."

She rolled her shoulders in a pathetic attempt to pull out of his arms that did nothing more than slightly loosen his hold. "You could have stepped in, you know. You could've been the one that said you loved me.."

"Rose…"

"No, you should have been the one who said it," she corrected with renewed resolve. Now, she was able to pull back from him, and made sure to take a full stride backward to take herself out of his reach. "But you had to skip and hop and spit out a hollow little copout of it not needing to be said."

His eyes twitched and his head lowered so that he looked toward her through his near-invisible brows. His voice was quiet, and even husky as he tried to shove down the emotion that was tingling the very back of his throat in a very unpleasant way. "It shouldn't have needed to be said, Rose. I thought it was obvious."

She snorted a derisive sound of utter annoyance. "The King of mixed signals, you are," she accused darkly. "How does anyone know anything for sure about you and how you feel unless you're telling them. Shit, Doctor, even when you open your mouth and pretend to clarify it, you still can't tell for sure."

"You believed him well enough, didn't you?"

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Yeah. And look where that's gotten me – my son's dead, I'm being experimented on with the full knowledge of my philanderous husband, who's cheating on me with the woman who is …"

"He's what?"

Rose snorted a laugh through her nose. She figured he'd caught only the cheating part of her rant and rolled with that. "Yeah. With a Doctor called River Song." Her eyes flicked up to his at the sound of his breath hitching in his throat. "Heard of her? Course you have. Married her last I heard."

"You might want to better vet your sources," he growled. "There was nothing legitimate about…"

"Shag her in Prime, shag her here in Pete's World," she continued with a sigh and a roll in her eyes. "Dunno what's so special about her. All hair and attitude that one…"

"You seem to be doing a fine job of it yourself," the Doctor argued, although in a tone of voice more defeated than aggressive.

Rose's eyes lifted to his. She then pointed toward the TARDIS, and to the vanishing backs of Trapp and Clara through her doors. "Just leave."

He folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. "No. I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to stay right here until that cloned version of my other self gets back home so that he and I can have a little chat."

Rose let a fake smile twist up the edges of her mouth. "Oh. How quaint. Would you like me to prepare you tea and scones…?"

"I'm going to fix this," he vowed thickly. "And then you're coming back with me. I'm taking you as far from this place as my TARDIS is capable of taking us."

Rose's eyes flicked toward the machine in question. "Bit like Trapp fixing your TARDIS? This isn't a broken bit of machinery, Doctor, this is something much more intricate than that."

"I don't know what the Arcalian has to do with it," he grunted petulantly, "but…"

"The fact that your current companion just took in a Pundehahiran technician who's simply dying to tinker with your girl into …"

"She did what?" He barked incredulously with a twist of his head and body toward his time ship. His eyes narrowed and his fists clenched. He began a slow stalk toward his TARDIS. "I'll regenerate that little woprat if he's doing any fiddling about with my TARDIS."

"Yeah," Rose breathed out as she watched the Doctor stalk into his TARDIS without so much as another word. "You do that." He looked up toward the POLICE sign at the top of the TARDIS. "Take him away, old girl. Please. I can't do this right now. If John finds out he's here…" She inhaled deeply. "Then we're all in danger."

She gasped with the slamming of the TARDIS door, and then a panicked pounding from within that drowned out the sound of the Doctor demanding to be let out. The winds of dematerialisation swept first across the dusty floor and then circled around her legs. A tear fell from Rose's eye as the whine and wheeze of the machine peaked and then ebbed away toward nothing.

"Thanks, girl," she whispered to the now empty place in the corner. She then looked toward the two timeship cabinets and shook her head.

"Well. I guess I have two of you now." She smirked and pointed toward them both as she heard a car pull up outside through the windows of the basement. "Now shush and behave, okay?"

Her head shot up at the sound of her husband's voice hollering out her name from the front door as he battled to unlock all of the locks that he'd installed. She swallowed thickly, but raced to the stairs to beat him into the foyer and hopefully continue to hide her only sanctuary in the entire house. She paused at the top and looked down at them both over her shoulder.

"And if you're at all capable … Please stop them coming back."