Author's note:

I'm sorry for the long delay between updates. Truth told, I've been a wee bit depressed since the announcing of the Eleventh Doctor back in January. True, the braver part of me is the larger part, and I know I'll enjoy what is to come and it will be an adventure rediscovering the Doctor in Matt Smith's style. But...of all the Doctors I have adored Ten most of all (as I have clearly shown in this delightful Doctor-torture story), and I've been sad that David Tennant is stepping down. Still, it's high time I bucked up and got on with the story. After all, that time is still a little while off, and the Tenth Doctor's adventures won't end as long as there is fanfiction to write, neh?

Between Two Heartbeats

The Doctor drifted in and out of sleep.

At first, he would panic when he realized that he had slept, then he would reach for the TARDIS and relief would flood him when he found she was still there. Muted, muffled, but there. Then when he realized that she was always going to be there every time he woke up, he let himself drift into painlessness.

To his crippled mind, sometimes the way things were, were the way things were. He could no longer question why or see how things could be different. He had also exhausted himself and advanced his dehydration with his crying and joyful noises. He would sleep. He would sleep, and when he woke up he still wouldn't be free, but he also wouldn't be quite as alone.

The last time he slept, then woke, he actually had a strong half-thought. Half a thought, as in it seemed a finished end that had no beginning in his mind. It also frightened him, somewhat, though he couldn't think of why.

The thought was that somewhere, someone was doing something stupid.

Aside of the fright the little broken thought gave him, there was also another, long-forgotten feeling.

Exasperation.

He lay very still under his feather-blankets, face scrunched as he used the half-idea and the feeling to draw up another idea.

The feelings of exasperation only deepened. But not at himself. He had been the living dead too long to be frustrated or wearied at himself.

No, this was…

There was a second of pure clarity. Not an improvement or a breakthrough from his captive mind, but rather a noticing of something that was familiar and expected, something sharp like an instinct rather than truly a thought, such as the way he knew he should scramble to the bars of his cage when it began to rain so that he could catch the precious moisture on his fingers, or when he had thought to dig two deep holes at the outmost edges of his cage to catch rainwater so that he might save a little to have when it stopped raining.

Is that my companion doing something stupid? he asked the TARDIS, except that asking such a "complex" question was painfully difficult. He took the long way about it just to be sure he would be understood. My companion, he said, or rather, conveyed with the image and feeling of a warm hand slipping into his own. Something stupid? he asked, with several images of Rose doing foolish or silly things that he could still remember from their travels, back when he was free…

The TARDIS could not say anything back to him, but there was a shift in the telepathic exchange, a slight change in her emotion. She was…sheepish. The mental equivalent of him rubbing the back of his head with a nervous laugh.

The Doctor paused for a long moment, trying to consider this. He tried to work things out, and it was in the trying he knew he would fail since he had not been able to work out much in decades. Still, many things didn't make sense. There seemed to be vague feelings and recollections of precisely why it was that Rose could not and should not possibly be doing something stupid right now. A mental picture of what she might look like aged many, many years ahead of the time he had last seen her, and he thought her perhaps to be too frail to be doing alarming things. Yet, this image somehow no longer seemed right. No, it was wrong, and the idea of her being old, he realized suddenly, should be completely discarded because it was not valid…yet.

He pressed his lips together, suddenly irritated and also further exhausted.

Baaaaaad! he found himself scolding. Bad! Bad Time And Relative Dimensions In Space! Bad girl! Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad!

The feel of the TARDIS changed again, this time wavering in a tremor of laughter. Part of her was still lightly sheepish, but the larger part of her beamed at him.

Bad girl, he repeated, but smiled briefly because her laughter was infectious and he had had such little joy for so long.

But it was only a moment and the tiny smile vanished underneath the weight of his chains again. He tried to grasp the thought that Rose should be stopped, kept safe. Tried to grasp the reasons why, to make himself understand. Part of him, the noisier part, wanted his TARDIS to just be nearby while he slipped away into the dark. To hold his hand--so to speak--until she let him go. There was just enough of the link between him that he could probably direct her to initiate emergency protocol one the very moment Rose next stepped through the doors.

The quiet, sad part of him, the part that wasn't even fighting anymore, wanted to be saved.

Paradox, paradox, his mind sang lazily, and quite suddenly he forgot what he was worried about. He spent a few short moments grasping for the elusive worry, but it was gone, drifting in smoke and fog. Dehydration was affecting him along with the diadem now. It wouldn't be long now.

Rose. Yes, Rose. Rose was his worry. Hurry Rose. No. No, Rose, stay away. No, hurry. Hurry… No, stay back. Stay safe. Hurry.

Leave me. Just leave me. No. No, don't. Don't leave me. Don't…

The TARDIS increased her muted hum, a soundless but soothing vibration in his head that soothed away the turmoil and drew him back down into sleep, dreamless and protecting.

It could not be said how the Doctor, who was grimly impaired, seemed to know, but Rose would have in the same moment agreed that she was indeed pulling one of the more idiotic stunts in her life.

She was clinging to the incredibly high cliffs above the beaches of West Burreme, a very small town forty miles from Idun. She knew she was an idiot, because she kept telling herself so, over and over like a mantra to distract herself from the fact that she was CLINGING to a sheer rock wall with nothing below but rocks and crashing ocean. Freezing water below, freezing air all around her. She was wearing a pair of intricate climbing gloves she had bought from a hobby shop. Like slender gauntlets, they were, with ridged claws meant to sink into rock so that she could support herself by her arms when she needed to rest. Yet they were flexible enough to allow her to grab handholds and manipulate the rope she brought with her.

In trying to be fair to herself, she wasn't actually completely stupid. She had spent a childhood and an early youth enjoying climbing and swinging around on ropes when she found opportunities, had enough formal gymnastics training that she wasn't completely a novice and enough awards and small medals that she wasn't entirely untalented. There was also the fact that in her life with the Doctor she often found herself, when not merely running for her life, doing a great deal of clinging and climbing and free-falling, and seldom with handy tools like she had now.

She had also practiced a little before coming out here, on the artificial climbing rocks the hobby shop had in a back room so that customers could test out samples of climbing gear before buying. Interestingly, they had also had a very small skating park back there too.

But this was different, very extreme, and infinitely less comfortable than any climbing experience she had had before. It was the icy wind that was the worst, she decided. She could deal with the torn and skinned knees of her jeans and flesh, with her fatigue and aching muscles, with slightly strained wrists and ankles, with the pulling ache of chapped lips and the wind-stung ears and cheeks and the painful way her own hair whipped her face in the high winds. But it was the cold air coming off the ocean that made the effort so difficult to bear. Beforehand, she had decided it best to be more light and mobile than warm, so she had dressed in jeans, windbreaker, and a wool cap that had fallen off some time earlier, leaving her head bare and her hair free.

Not for the first time, Rose Tyler wished that she were smarter, because only an idiot would be climbing down a cliff alone with no idea of what she was going to find there--if anything--in this kind of cold and not at least think to put on some thermal underwear! Her small backpack was also too heavy. At the time, she had thought she was packing too lightly, but the little metal medical kit borrowed from the TARDIS and a few other odds and ends she thought she might need had started to feel like onerous weights that tried to drag her from the cliff to fall into the churning ocean below.

Rose stopped to rest, digging the metal claws deep into the rock and finding firm footholds to take some of the weight off her arms. She was not afraid of heights in particular, but somehow being in prolonged suspension made her a bit dizzy from time to time. Or maybe it was just the freezing, salty air. Either way, she closed her eyes and pressed her face into her forearm.

What in hell was she doing? She had to be crazy. No one knew that she was here. Usually when attempting such a dangerous task, the sensible thing to do was to have someone along, or at least tell someone what she was doing so that if something went wrong--like falling and breaking her neck or back, or getting caught somehow in a way that she could neither climb up or down--someone would know. There might be hope of rescue. And a chance to try again. As it was, if she got herself killed or disabled right here, then it was not only her doom, but the Doctor's as well.

So she couldn't afford even a small margin for error, because there had been no one she could tell. No one who, at best, wouldn't try to stop her by calling the police and having her hauled in "for her own good".

As she rested she thought, somewhat inanely, that when this was over, she was going to have to find out if the TARDIS had a gymnasium, and if not, if the Doctor might not feel like constructing one once he was feeling better. Rose liked the idea, not only because she had resolved to work on her climbing skills and upper body strength after this, but also if the Doctor had a project inside the TARDIS, it might be nice to perhaps stay home for just a little while, have a little break from adventuring. Not a big break, just a couple of days. Just enough that Rose could watch him for a while, make certain he was really all right…

She trembled where she clung to the rock, blaming it on the cold, but knowing it was because she was frightened about what she might find by the end of this climb.

Still, she knew she shouldn't complain, because just a few hours ago there was not even a cliff to climb.

The first start had been at the law office that belonged to two small-time lawyers whose names Rose hadn't bothered to learn. If she had walked toward the building with a stinging numbness from her experience in the shower, she was launched into warrior mode when she had to deal with the idiot secretary in the front reception area inside.

"What do you mean, there was no virus?!" she nearly shrieked at the little mousey woman.

In hindsight, Rose realized that being already emotionally unhinged meant that she was unable to deal with most situations tactfully. In the same hindsight, she also realized that just because the little woman blockaded behind tall, ominous monitors of different computers was dumpy and had glasses so thick she should have been able to see the other side of the moon didn't mean that she was supposed to be exceptionally bright.

Or brave since she nearly called the police in response to Rose's aggression. Summoned by the little woman's flustered squeaking, another little mousey person in thick glasses who could have been the woman's brother wandered from behind slightly larger monitors that were blinking in and out different colored helixes in what Rose guessed was some sort of screen saver.

Luckily for both women the man--who must have been one of the lawyers who owned the building, was much calmer. Aside from a rise in her already over-stimulated feelings of impatience and irritation because of his condescending tones, she did actually manage to have a sensible and believable conversation with him just before he offered to call the authorities to escort her wherever she needed to go.

Rose left the law office and skipped between a few buildings before ducking back inside the TARDIS. She sat on the floor with her back against the doors, thinking rapidly. She even allowed herself a few seconds to feel embarrassed by her behavior; it was no wonder they thought she was a crackpot! Still, finding the source of the virus and the area it had taken place and then ultimately disappeared--because surely the Doctor would have taken care of it in short over forty-eight years ago--was the first step that she needed. Indeed, it had been an obvious one that she simply hadn't seen before.

She had chosen to go to the office with her inquiries because it was the only "official" building that she knew of in a strange town in a strange country. Even though the building was a restaurant forty-eight years ago, of course it would have records predating that time. A deadly virus would tie lots of places and people with litigation, wouldn't it?

The mousey little man with his arms resting loosely in the pockets of his dark brown suit had repeated--in calmer and more reasonable tones than his female counterpart--that there had been no virus that she was describing. There was none on file, none on record, and a twenty-year-old girl insisting she damn well knew there had been a virus then when she couldn't possibly have been around at the time to insist with such authority needed to be escorted home to her parents and put to bed. …Well, that last part he didn't actually say, but it was all over his face.

Rose sat another moment, heartbeat slowing, and let another wave of heavy, crushing guilt flow over her. Once again she thought how things might have been different if only he could have trusted her to obey Rule One. If only he hadn't been so distracted that he had been paying closer attention to the settings he was entering into the TARDIS computer.

Still, there was no time for that. She had to think. To move. Maybe those lawyers didn't have as good of records as she guessed.

She went back out and asked directions to any hospitals in the area. She visited one run-down local clinic and also a huge main hospital that was two taxi-rides and a long walk away from the street where the TARDIS was parked. No one had ever heard of a virus. There was no record of a virus or anyone being affected by one of the symptoms Rose described in the last fifty years.

It was getting increasingly difficult to stay patient. Everywhere she turned, every soul she questioned gave her nothing but blankness. There was sympathy if she said she was looking for a missing person, but utter blankness when she described a virus. Forty-eight years was a long time, but a disease that had gotten the Doctor's attention would have to stick in a few memories…wouldn't it?

Later, Rose might have admitted perhaps she had finally gone a bit barmy before she saw it coming because found herself back on that same be-damned street randomly knocking on doors. In an attempt not to seem like a complete madwoman, she scraped her inquiries together in a cover story that was based enough on the truth that she might somehow get the actual answers that she needed.

Composed but allowing some of her worry to show through, Rose would show anyone who answered a door a picture of the Doctor on her phone. He was her friend, she said, and he had come to town to do research on a virus that his grandfather had been fighting in this area just short of fifty years ago, but he had disappeared.

Her heart would rise if she met anyone who looked to be over fifty years old, always adding that her friend in the picture bore a striking resemblance to his grandfather, hoping to invoke a memory of him then, hoping for a story, an anecdote, something, anything that could be a starting point for her to pick up the trail. She couldn't squelch the feeling that if she got even a spark of memory from anyone, it what start a ball rolling that she wouldn't be able to stop if she wanted to.

For hour after excruciating hour, with her body heavy under fatigue and desperation, and knuckles growing sore, Rose knocked on every door she could find, every shop, every home, every numbered apartment, every old town house door framed by crumbling stoops. Sometimes she recognized some of the same people she had spoken to on the street before, which was inevitable of course. Some reflected sympathy. Some had pity in their eyes. Some were indifferent, busy. Some were angry at being disturbed. Some were children who were, of course, incredibly unlikely to know anything useful. Some were chatty, prattling on about what the world was coming to and rumors of what happened to people who disappeared. Some were dismissive, didn't care. Some were interested and wanted to know more, but had nothing to tell her in return.

Rose's desperation began to turn into irritation and anger as the sun dipped low. It was a candle-weak flame, she knew, something that would burn for a bit, and then putter out. She knew this was her most idiotic idea yet. She thought she had known what she needed to do to trace the Doctor, but everywhere she turned, every person she asked, every place she looked was a dead end, and she knew better than any human in this town how big the planet and then the universe beyond it was. He couldn't be far from here, and yet he could also be anywhere, and here she was walking around in circles running and running and running in the same circles like a hamster on a wheel! She needed a lead! Just one lead!

But…she knew it was time to give up for the day. She knew it would take weeks to ask every resident on the street, and she also knew she couldn't rap on doors and ring doorbells all night long.

She was in the middle of the street where two buildings were parted enough to allow a shallow alley that ended abruptly at a brick wall that was also the back of another building on the next street. There was just enough room for an old-fashioned skip. Rose absently reflected that some things didn't seem to change no matter how far she traveled into the future, such as human methods of waste disposal.

A very old man who couldn't possibly be younger than seventy wandered out of the alley. As unchanging as old metal skips were also the garb of the homeless and the destitute. The old man had once been broad and stocky, Rose could see, even with the indeterminable layers of clothing wrapped around his body.

On impulse, Rose strode toward him. It was his advanced age that drew her, one of the few people she had seen this evening who was old enough to have been here and remember something from forty-eight years ago.

And if he didn't, then she could at least give him the package of crackers she found in one of the Doctor's unsettlingly deep coat pockets as an apology for disturbing him.

No sooner had Rose Tyler taken out her mobile and produced a picture of the Doctor when it happened. A miracle that was almost worth the agony of the past few days.

The old homeless man plunged his hand into an inner pocket of his coat and drew out a gun, the barrel suddenly a paper's width away from the end of her nose. All without ever taking his bloodshot, olive-brown eyes off the little screen displaying the Doctor in Rose's palm.

"The Doctor," he spat.

There was a space between two heartbeats. In that tiny space of time between one heartbeat and the next, so much information could be taken in. So much could be felt. The man spoke the Doctor's name like a curse, a familiar mix of hatred and fear that Rose had heard many times from enemies of the Doctor.

The old man smelled of urine and whisky and old human oil and sweat and all manner of rot and waste and rancid and sour, and his tangled beard was caked with unidentifiable substances but…

The Doctor, he had said. And he had said it with fresh hatred in his eyes. The Doctor, he said! One heartbeat, and Rose's entire being was absolutely renewed with hope.

In spite of everything, even the weapon shoved right in her face, Rose could have kissed him.