This took longer than I meant it to, but the next chapter should be up fairly shortly, it's already half written. Hope you enjoy - my tumblr is greatbigouterspacedunce, in case you were interested :P

1:05pm

How on earth the Doctor had managed to rope everyone in to a trip to his locker, Rose could never understand. The likelihood of getting Jack to come with him seemed remote, never mind Donna, and yet there they were, creeping down the Science corridor with the Doctor in the lead, hoping desperately that Mr Saxon would not choose this moment to check on them in the library where they were supposedly working.

It had taken him a little while to calm down, but about half an hour after lunch he had returned to the group, restored to his usual buoyant self. Rose wondered about what other secrets and painful memories he was keeping hidden, buried deep underneath layers of smiles and nonchalance and a long brown coat.

She had attempted a couple of times to go over and talk to him, but he had studiously annoyed her faint calls and her concerned looks. In the end Rose had decided not to climb up the stairs and talk to him, but to let him come back over to them in his own time. She sensed that attempting to make him open up would make him clam up further. He was a strange one, that Doctor.

They wandered along the next corridor, down a flight of stairs and through the hall. The Doctor did not seem to be making any effort to be quiet or inconspicuous. Martha was creeping, looking a little nervous. It appeared that, for all that she was a lot less uptight than Rose had originally (and wrongly) assumed, Martha was still not exactly comfortable breaking the rules. Jack looked a bit sulky still – Rose thought he was not appreciating being dragged along, especially since it meant letting the Doctor lead the expedition. Donna, on the other hand, was looking happier than she had been all day. True, she was not smiling, but she was walking with the tiniest of springs in her step, and her eyes were bright. Rose smiled as she noticed this, nor did she miss the sneaking glances that Jack kept sending Donna's way, apparently unnoticed or ignored by the red haired girl. Interesting.

"We're here!" the Doctor called back to the rest of them. Even strolling along casually with his hands in his pockets, he was managing to keep in front of the rest of them with relative ease. He had pulled out a pair of thick rimmed glasses and put them on his face as they approached the end of the corridor, clearly ready for whatever he was here to do.

"Why," Jack asked, "did you have to have a locker on the farthest side of the school?"

The Doctor considered this. "Luck, I suppose. Either that or they wanted to keep me as far away from science as possible. Apparently there was something in my locker that was interfering with some of their equipment, though of course when they searched my locker there was nothing to be found." Rose found herself grinning without realising she was doing it, and a glance to her right told her that Jack was doing the same. It seemed that the Doctor's charm – though manifesting in a slightly unconventional manner occasionally – had begun to work on him. Or perhaps it was a combination of the glasses and the fact that the Doctor walking in front of them gave them an excellent view of his bum.

In hindsight, it should have been obvious which in the long row on identical lockers belonged to the Doctor. It was the locker that had been painstakingly painted deep, midnight blue, contrasting starkly to the pale grey of the rest of the lockers on the row. He opened it carefully, and Rose was amused to see that every inch of it, both inside and out, had been painted. She wondered how long it had taken him, how much time he had given over to his efforts to put his mark on his own piece of school property.

He caught her looking. "They kept cleaning it, but I kept repainting it. After a while they just stopped trying." He stroked the door fondly as he began to use his other hand to sift through the contents of the locker, which were numerous in quantity and bizarre in appearance. "Hello, old girl," he murmured softly, and Rose let out a giggle. He looked up, faintly embarrassed with a definite pink tinge to his freckled cheeks. "What? I talk to her sometimes, it... she's... will you stop laughing at me Rose, please?"

Realising that she had flustered him – quite a lot, if the way he was running a hand awkwardly through his hair was anything to go by – Rose calmed down her laughter. "Sorry." She put out a hand and laid it gently on the locker's door. "Sorry," she said. The Doctor narrowed his eyes at her for a second, before he realised that she wasn't trying to make fun of him. Then he grinned, before delving once again into the tangle of what Rose identified as junk that filled up his locker.

She wondered if she should grab hold of him to make sure he didn't fall in and disappear. Half of his body was now in the locker, and Rose was reminded of the scene in Mary Poppins where Mary pulls a hat stand out of her bag. From where Rose stood, it did appear that the Doctor's locker was considerably roomier on the inside than it first appeared.

"Aha!" came the Doctor's muffled shout as he withdrew from the locker, slamming the door shut with a clang, a silver object clutched triumphantly in his hand.

"That's what we came all this way to get?" Jack asked disbelievingly.

"Oh yes!" The Doctor seemed to be in higher spirits than he had been all day (which was something of a feat, considering his normal level of exuberance.)

Martha leaned in closer, obviously intrigued. "What is it?"

"Well, I call it a screwdriver, but really it doesn't do much to screws – well, not yet." No-one could escape the edge of pride in his voice as he looked down at the unassuming metal tube in his hand. "I've been working on it for a while. It emits sound waves at different pitches depending on what setting I choose." He showed them the tiny buttons on the side, before pressing one carefully. The end of the screwdriver glowed bright blue and the device gave out a high pitched buzzing noise. "I haven't got it to work properly yet – well, it doesn't really do anything apart from that at the moment – but I hope that eventually I'll be able to get it to do simple things, override electric locks, things like that."

"Are we just gonna stand here all day staring at that thing or are we actually gonna go back." Rose swivelled around to see Donna standing with her hands on her hips, and eyebrow raised. Every time Donna opened her mouth – which was admittedly not very often – she said something sharp and sarcastic, and Rose couldn't help but like her for it.

They set off and retraced their steps along a couple of corridors, before they rounded a corner and just about ran straight in Mr Saxon, who was drinking from a water fountain about ten metres away.

"Back," the Doctor hissed, beating a hasty retreat back into the corridor where they would not be seen, "we'll just have to find another way to go, that's all."

They tried various different paths around the school, the Doctor leading the way, the loss of his carefree attitude and the little crease between his eyes indicating his worry. However, it didn't seem that they could get even half way back to the library before they heard the telltale footsteps of Mr Saxon around the corner, on the flight of stairs above or beyond the next set of double doors. The Doctor was tearing at his hair in frustration.

"Maybe we could make our way out through the Maths corridor and cut around, come in through the front entrance—"

"No." Jack stepped forward, breathing slightly heavily from all the running back and forth. "We're through listening to you. This way." He turned and began to lead them all the opposite way to the path the Doctor had suggested. Martha gave the Doctor a regretful look and followed Jack. Rose sighed before heading the same direction.

Donna started off, before turning around and staring at the Doctor. Rose looked over her shoulder to see the Doctor standing there, hands in his pockets and feet planted. She should have expected he would be ridiculously stubborn. Whatever Donna said or didn't say to him – Rose was too far away to hear – the Doctor seemed to finally relent, and with a roll of his eyes he began to catch up with them, Donna jogging behind him with her face looking ever so slightly smug.

As he ran past Rose, the Doctor stuck out his left hand and grabbed her right one. She was pulled along with him, struggling a little to keep up at first, before her feet began to match his rhythm and she felt a grin spreading over her face. This felt good. Right, somehow. They sped up, passing Martha and then Jack as the strangely out of place feeling of contentment swelled in Rose's chest.

It would have all have gone swimmingly if they hadn't have reached the locked doors. The Doctor pulled uselessly at the handles before pounding the doors angrily with his fist.

"Great idea," he said sarcastically as Jack ran up beside him.

"Fuck you," Jack replied dismissively.

"Fuck you, why didn't you listen to the Doctor?!" Rose was angry now, and she wasn't going to have Jack blaming the Doctor for things that weren't his fault.

"What are we going to do?" Martha asked, clearly wanting to get moving as soon as possible. "We can't stay here forever, has anyone got a plan?"

"If Saxon's wandering around the school now then he could be anywhere – we don't have a chance of getting back there without being spotted, and then we'll be in for it." Donna nodded in agreement at Jack's statement, but didn't say anything. Her eyes were flickering between everyone else as she watched them try to figure out where to go from here. Rose felt like she was being scrutinised when she came under Donna's gaze.

For the next few seconds no-one spoke. There didn't appear to be a safe way to get back. From Rose's point of view it seemed like they would just have to run back as fast as they could and pray that they weren't discovered. It wasn't much of a plan.

"Alright, I'm going." The Doctor gave his screwdriver to Martha, shoving into her hands and surprising her so much that she nearly dropped it. "Do not lose that. Not that I thought you would, but just be careful." He winked at her, before turning his back and taking off down the corridor, back the way they'd come.

"Oi! Where are you going?" Donna's shout was loud enough to stop the Doctor in his tracks. Rose wondered whether he shared her surprise at Donna actually caring where he was going, wondered if that was what had stopped him from running off without an explanation.

He span around and took a couple of steps back towards where Rose and the others had stopped, standing in a little group in the middle of the corridor like statues."Well, someone's got to distract Saxon if we're ever gonna get back to the library. We're just lucky he hasn't checked in there already."

"But he'll kill you!"

The Doctor scrunched up his nose. "Not really – not his style. I'll just get another detention or something. Besides, either I go or we're all gonna get caught. See you later." Before Rose had time to realise it was happening, he had given her a quick hug, close and warm, before darting off back down the corridor again, rounding the corner before shouting and whooping to his heart's content. Jack said nothing – Rose thought he felt guilty at the Doctor being the one getting in trouble, when it had been Jack who had told him to go the other way – and Martha still looked shocked, carefully cradling the Doctor's screwdriver in her hands. After the sound of his rubber soles slapping against the floor had faded away completely, Rose started walking, beckoning to the others to follow her.

"Come on then. We'd better get back. It sounds like he's going to the science labs, we'll go the long way round."