Remember how it all began all you had to do was hold my hand and we've been running all this time it seems
Rose moves down the hallway. The slimy, frothy foam is glistening. She hopes that it's just a trail of snails or something equally harmless, but she knows it won't be that easy.
Something moves up ahead. She swallows hard. "I see it," she whispers. "It's about ten meters ahead. This place is huge."
"I thought I told you not to move until I got there." The Doctor is seriously annoyed.
"I'm okay."
"I'm reporting you when we get back," Simon informs her. "And I expect John to write you up."
There is silence at this. Rose is ignoring him as she heads to the source of the slime, and the Doctor is too busy to notice his assumed name.
"John? Are you there?" Simon waits, then rolls his eyes in exasperation. "Doctor? Are you there?"
"Yes, I'm here. What are you rambling on about, Simon? We're on a mission here."
"You two are impossible. We ought to leave you here alone."
"No," Riley says instantly. "The paperwork would be horrible if something happened. There's nothing at the south exit of the building."
"And we'd have to tell Mrs. Tyler," Ian adds. "I'm not brave enough for that. Eastern exit is clear. No signs of life."
"Rose, wait for us," the Doctor orders her.
"Something is moving up here. If I wait it may disappear."
"If you go ahead it might eat you," Simon counters.
"I'm coming, Rose," the Doctor says. "I'm right behind you." Despite the danger and his annoyance with his beloved, his heart is racing. This is why he stays at Torchwood, this is why he hasn't gone to work at a university. The thrill of discovery, of meeting new life forms and facing danger each day, well, it's certainly been fun so far. And he gets to do it with Rose.
"Hurry up," his beloved says. "It's on the move."
The Doctor gets to her in very little time, remarkable when you consider the distance between them in the factory. Rose watches him approach, most of her attention still up ahead.
"This place is enormous, isn't he?" he asks her. "Where is it?"
Rose points. His gaze falls on the trail of slime and he kneels down to examine it more closely. "Light grey," he agrees to himself. "Definitely foamy. Slight frothiness." He sits back on his heels and frowns.
"You have that look on your face," Rose says in a sing-song voice.
He looks up at her, still frowning. "What look?"
"The look that says you're thinking hard about something but you're not going to share it right now."
"I have nothing to share," he admits, coming to his feet. "I don't know what this is." He is incredibly frustrated. "Parallel world, but so many of these aliens are unfamiliar."
"Not everything will be the same."
"No, but is it asking too much for a few similarities?" He starts to walk toward the movement, which has been getting farther away. "Now we've got to deal with some kind of giant snail."
"Something outside," Riley says sharply. "We're going."
"Wait!" Simon orders her. "I'm coming."
"South wall," Ian says shortly. "Rose, Doctor, you're on your own."
"Great," Rose whispers.
"We know you're there!" the Doctor calls out. "We see your trail of...er, stuff. We don't want to hurt you."
There is silence. He waits patiently but gets no response.
"Are you still there?"
"Right, like it's gonna answer you." Rose moves past him.
"Rose, wait."
"Come on!"
They head to the end of the hallway and hit a wall. Looking all around the floor, Rose spies a small patch of wetness. "There!"
They follow it down another hallway. This one has no windows. Rose lifts her torch and the Doctor knocks it back down again.
"Wait," he whispers. "Something's there."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know. I just do." And that's all he knows. Something is there and he can sense it.
"Come on out," Rose calls. "This is Torchwood. We have the building surrounded."
"You don't want to threaten it," the Doctor complains, getting ready to be attacked.
"Something killed that guard." Rose is tired of playing hide and seek. She starts to walk purposefully down the hallway. She finds it in one of the empty offices lining the hallway.
"Stop right there." She raises her weapon and torch and takes aim.
The Doctor comes up behind her and takes the torch. "Who are you?"
Rose makes a sound of revulsion as the light hits the creature they've found. "What are you?"
The creature resembles an overgrown lizard. It is grey and slimy and leaving a trail of wet foamy stuff in its wake as it moves.
"I don't think it's capable of speech." The Doctor peers down at it, starts to kneel on the floor.
Rose grabs his arm. "Don't touch it!"
"Oh, it's perfectly safe," a voice says from the corner, and they both spin around.
It's a man standing there, dressed in a uniform and regarding them with an alarmingly calm expression on his face.
"Who are you?" Rose demands.
"I own this factory."
"And this creature?"
"It's mine."
"Where did you get it?" the Doctor asks. "It's not from Earth."
The man looks faintly surprised. "No, it's not. I don't know what it is. I call it Henry."
"Henry," Rose and the Doctor repeat together.
"Found him in the garden, twenty years back now."
Rose looks back at the lizard. "Where did it come from?"
"I don't know." The man shrugs and holds out his hand. Instantly the Doctor brings up the weapon he'd sworn never to use again. The man keeps his hands in the air.
"My name's Potter," he says. "I make birthday candles. I don't know where he came from, honest. I keep him around because he's good for business."
"What?"
"That slimy stuff that he leaves behind. It makes the best wax candles I've ever seen."
"You make birthday candles out of it?"
"They work great."
"Candles that go into cakes?" Rose is repulsed by the notion and can't help thinking about Tony's birthday, just the other week.
"They're easy to make, they burn clean and they're much cheaper. I don't have to pay for Henry, just feed him now and then."
"What did you feed him?" the Doctor asks. "Because you're short a security guard."
Potter looks sad. "I know. I'm sorry about that. But none of my employees knew about Henry here. I made up the solution for candles at night, and they made the candles during the day,"
"So, what?" Rose asks. "Henry here went crazy and attacked your guard?"
"Oh, no," Potter says. "Henry is as calm as a cat. The guard discovered us here. I couldn't let him leave. He was yelling about Torchwood and aliens and invasions. He couldn't have left."
"You...you killed him?" Rose asks, just to be clear.
"I had to. He was going to take Henry away. I'm very attached to Henry."
Rose and Doctor look back at Henry. A less prepossessing creature would be hard to find.
"Control," the Doctor says into his headset. "Send the other teams in. And we'll need a containment unit."
oOoOo
"That is the most disgusting thing I've ever heard," Ian says. "Guy was making candles from alien ooze?"
"They're supposedly the best candles in Great Britain," Rose tells him.
"Disgusting. And he committed murder because he didn't want to lose his alien pet?"
"Sad, really," the Doctor muses.
"Disgusting," Ian says for a third time
They've checked the entire factory, now awash in light. Henry was indeed the only alien creature in residence, and he's been taken back to the Torchwood labs for identification.
"Everything's clean," Simon reports. "We're heading back now."
"And the creature?" Rose asks. It's not poor Henry's fault he was being used as a wax replacement for so long.
"We'll take care of it."
"Take care of it like find it a home? Or like really take care of it?"
"We're not going to kill it, Rose. Honestly."
"Are you sure?" she presses.
Simon points behind him. "Ask them."
The live containment unit has arrived. They're hauling Henry away on a special anti-gravity platform developed through alien technology.
"Steve, where you taking him?" Rose asks the man in front.
"Back to the lab. It'll be fine."
"You're sure?"
"Rose, we're going to study it, see if we can determine where it came from. We're not dissecting anything. At least not today."
Steve and his companion laugh odd little laughs.
"Your brand of humor needs improvement," the Doctor tells them.
"Yes, sir," Steve says. He's still smirking a little. "We won't hurt him, Rose."
Rose has to be satisfied with that for now. She'll find her dad and make sure Henry is safe later. She sighs and watches Henry disappear.
"He'll be fine," the Doctor assures her. "For all we know he could be the head of state for some wet, slimy, foamy-frothy planet. Wouldn't do to kill the monarch."
"Whatever," Simon says. "Either way, I'm never touching a candle again."
"It's an odd custom anyway," the Doctor agrees. "You're the only people who top a confection with a burning stick and expect the recipient to blow it out in order to make wishes come true."
"It's symbolic," Rose says. They've had this conversation before.
"Yes, but then whoever has to share said confection runs the risk of germs and other things landing on the cake after the candles are blown out." He's being very reasonable about that, really.
"Well, that's how we silly humans do things here." Simon glances around. "We're done. I'll see you back home, then." He heads for the exit, eager to be out of there.
"Bye." Rose can't help sounding a bit forlorn.
"Are you still worried about that creature? We'll find out where it's from and get it home somehow. Someday."
Rose doesn't get a chance to answer. From the depths of the factory comes an absolutely blood-chilling scream. She and the Doctor freeze, then look at one another.
"Ha!" He laughs and grabs her hand. "Let's go!"
oOoOo
It's a long time before they get home. Once they're in the flat Rose goes directly to the bathroom and takes a long, long hot shower. The smell of the factory seems to have gotten into her hair. When she steps out to dry off the Doctor is there.
"I've got frothy foam all over my shoes," he says sounding aggrieved.
Rose accepts the towel he hands her and watches as he strips off his clothes. "I thought it was foamy froth?"
"Whatever. It was on my hands and then I touched my hair." He steps into the shower and angrily twists the faucets.
"Those candles were supposed to be very safe," she says soothingly, wrapping herself up in the towel.
"Once they were processed or whatever it was he did to it all. Who knows what the raw by-product of Henry slime is? Maybe it makes your hair fall out."
"Maybe it will just give you a waxy build-up." Rose can't help but giggle at her own joke. The Doctor jerks the shower curtain back to glare at her. She sobers. "Sorry," she says, trying to sound sorry.
He twitches the shower curtain back into place and washes his hair a second time. "And then to find Henry's offspring lying in wait for us!" he says savagely. "Henry's harmless as a cat! Please."
"He was harmless."
"Those other creatures were not harmless, Rose. One of them killed the security guard, and Potter was going to let us leave them there for someone to find in the morning."
"Well, they were younger than Henry. And they didn't have a mother. Maybe having just one parent makes that species angry." It's a weak argument, but Rose has little else to go on. The creature they know as Henry was docile, if a bit slimy. The four other, younger Henrys, caged up in a back room, were the bearers of dryer, darker skin and fiercely sharp teeth. Henry had been breeding offspring on his own for a while, and Potter was making plans to expand production when his little alien secrets were found out.
"Murderous creatures, idiot human-" The Doctor breaks off and coughs as he gets shampoo in his mouth. "Ahhh!"
"You all right?"
"I just swallowed flower-scented soap suds." He sounds appalled.
"That can't be very tasty. You should have tried my coconut stuff."
He rinses his mouth out with water from the showerhead and peers around the tub. "We have coconut stuff?"
By the time he comes out of the bathroom Rose is dry and dressed in a tank top and those stretchy black pants that he's so fond of, the ones he calls sweats and she calls yoga pants. She's sitting cross-legged on the bed, waiting for him.
"This is a hard universe," she says.
"Yeah?"
"We don't know what's out there. You don't know what's out there." Rose is troubled by this. "It's like we're sitting here on Earth in this little bubble, and we're waiting for the next thing to come through the atmosphere."
He hastily dries off and puts on some jeans and a shirt. Sitting beside her, he smoothes her hair back behind her ear. "Is that what's bothering you?" he asks quietly.
"I've seen what's out there. The Dimension Cannon let me hop around, yeah? But this particular universe - I didn't see very much of it. I was too busy trying to reach you. The darkness is gone and Davros is dead-" she pauses a minute as he shifts nervously - "but something else might be waiting."
He doesn't bring up his suspicions that Davros isn't really dead after all. It wouldn't be the first time, but he'll let the other him deal with that if and when the time comes.
"If something comes, we'll be waiting. That's our job." She doesn't answer and he gets concerned. Rose is in a mood he's not familiar with. "Rose?"
"Birthday candles. Made of alien goo. We just watched Tony blow out his candles!"
"Well, maybe they weren't this brand of candles. Seems like your mum would go for something fancy."
"I don't know why I'm so upset. It's like this place has suddenly gotten all strange."
"'Suddenly'? It's been strange for a good long while, Rose Tyler." He leans forward and kisses her, trying to break her out of this mood. "You're sad. Let me fix it."
"Fix it? How?"
He kisses her again, reaching beneath her top to caress her bare skin.
It works. She kisses him back, lets him ease her onto the bed. Lets them both pretend, for a little while, that their life is a normal life.
oOoOo
"It worked, didn't it?" He sounds pretty pleased with himself.
Rose rolls over and regards him by the light of the bathroom. "You're missing my point."
"No, I'm not. You were all sad and melancholy and I made you feel better. You're welcome." He's definitely sounding smug about it.
She hits him on the shoulder. "Sex is not the answer to everything."
"Sometimes it is," he says seriously. "Should we try it again?"
"Doctor, you're not listening to me."
"Oh, I'm listening very well. You needed me."
The truth is that she did, and Rose is rather annoyed with herself. They've reached an odd stage in their relationship, where it's not brand new to him anymore, but he can still surprise her with the depth of his response to her. As for herself, well, she loves him, more and more each day, and it's scary sometimes to put her heart entirely in his hands.
"Where else would your heart belong but with me?" he asks her when she admits this to him. "You have mine. You always have."
"We go from acting like a teenage couple snogging in my parent's kitchen to sharing a flat," she begins.
"Yes. And?"
"And...nothing." Rose drops the subject. For now, anyway. "Nothing at all." She reaches over and kisses him. "I love you." Resting her chin on his chest, she traces his features with her fingertips. "I wanted to do this for so long, back when we were traveling."
He captures her fingers. "I wish you would have."
"Maybe things would have been different?"
"No. I don't think we could have changed what happened, any of it. But it brought us here, so it was good."
"I changed things," she disagrees. "I found Donna and made her change things so you lived. And then other things happened because I came back to you."
"If you hadn't the universe we knew would have been destroyed by Davros," he says, very steadily. "I wouldn't exist and this universe would have been destroyed as well. Everything in its own time, Rose Tyler."
"Everything?"
There's a question in her voice, something hopeful that he doesn't quite understand. "Yes," he says firmly. "Everything."
She smiles and kisses him. "Thank you."
"For what?" he asks, but she only kisses him again.
They're kept from doing more by the ringing telephone.
"Leave it," he says. "It's your mother."
"This is Sally Marshall!" a cheerful voice says from the machine, and they both jump and break apart. Rose dives under the covers as though the woman is in the same room with them and immediately feels foolish.
The Doctor reaches for the phone. "Hello, Sally. Yes. Good, thanks. And you? Oh, that's nice. Really? No, that's fine for us. We'll see you then. Thanks." He hangs up and grins at Rose.
"Sally has some houses to show us tomorrow. Should be fun!"