A/N I am not the BBC. I don't own any of their shows, especially not this one.
P.S. Flashback will be the paragraphs in italics.
P.P.S. Sorry about the delay; I've been busy.
Chapter 34
After the Doctor had watched Rosanna kill herself, he'd met back up with Rose and Isabella and they started to walk back to the TARDIS, assuming that the girl would come with them, if only for a brief explanation. She refused, however, deciding instead to stay in Venice and go to school. She'd decided she wanted to study the movement of the planets – still quite mysterious in her time – and watch for any more aliens that came to her city. With sad goodbyes, the Doctor and Rose had loaded into the TARDIS and sent the ship into the Vortex.
And then they'd tried to recount their adventure to Donna.
"So you're telling me you two met vampires? Real-life ones with fangs and everything?" said woman asked, raising an eyebrow disbelievingly.
The Doctor waved her away. "No, no, no. Fish from space. Now I…where was I?"
"The throne room," Rose put in and he nodded his thanks at her with a smile.
"Right, yes. So there we were when she walked in and the look on her face! Then Rose here gave her a good talking-to and stormed out. Incredibly dramatic. After she'd left, Rosanna told me that she would bend the heavens to –"
BRIIIIIING.
BRIIIIIING.
BRIIIIIING.
When neither of the others so much as moved towards the ringing phone, Rose sighed and stood up. "I'll get it." She walked over to the console and picked up the phone, greeting the other end with a cheery, "Hello, this is the TARDIS, Rose speaking."
A jumble of warbled words that Donna and the Doctor couldn't make out came over the line and Rose paled and straightened up almost instinctively.
"Yes, sir. I'll inform him immediately, sir. And uh, what's the date and time?"
Donna and the Doctor exchanged bewildered looks, their eyes flipping to each other and then to Rose and then back to each other again.
"Thank you, sir," Rose told the man before hanging up the phone. She took a deep breath before turning back to her friends. "That was UNIT. They said they've got a problem, need your help immediately, Doctor. 26 June 2010….in Leadworth."
Donna tilted her head, thinking about the place and date. "Isn't that where Amy –"
"Yes," the Doctor cut her off. His eyes didn't move from Rose. "Would you like to share with the class?" he asked her, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Tell us all about your old mates? UNIT?"
She grimaced. "I meant to tell you, honestly I did! It just….never seemed the right time. I'll explain it all after we deal with this, yeah?"
He stubbornly crossed his arms. "We have time. Explain it now."
"We've got to go and help!"
"Time machine."
"Yeah, but it's not….not the same," she argued weakly, not really in the mood to delve into her recent history with UNIT. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed, folding her arms and leaning back against the console. "I'd been there for almost two years," she began. "I was Amy's babysitter at the time…."
"Thanks again for watching her," Sharon said with a smile.
Rose smiled back, waving goodbye at Amelia, standing behind her aunt. "No problem. You said tomorrow at 9, right?"
Sharon nodded. "Yes, thanks. See you then!"
Rose smiled again and nodded as the woman shut the door. As soon as she turned away from the house, Rose's smile dropped. A year. It had been a year and then some since the Doctor had left her here. If her timey-wimey watch still worked – and she would bet money that it did – she'd been here exactly one year, seven months, and three days. Not that she was keeping count or anything.
She was walking down the street back to her apartment – that is, the cheap apartment she'd rented with babysitting and the wad of cash that had been in the pocket of her jeans. Her funds were wearing a bit thin though, she ought to look into getting a real job. But she just couldn't make herself though. A real job would make this seem permanent, instead of temporary. Make it seem like she'd given up on the Doctor.
Rose was about halfway to her apartment when some bloke crashed into her from behind, sending her bag to the ground, spilling books everywhere. "Oi! Watch where you're going, mate!" she grumbled, bending to collect all of her library books and shove them inside her bag. When she stood up, however, the man was –
"Why'd you have a bag full of library books?" Donna asked, interrupting her story.
She frowned and looked away from them, her face flushed. "Well, I thought that if I could figure out what made the TARDIS tick, I could contact the Doctor at the right point in his timeline. I was doing a bit of research. Really simplified temporal physics, that kind of thing."
The Doctor's face broke out into a grin and he forgot that he was supposed to be mad at her. "Lovely. We ought to have a good chat sometime, I could explain to you how she works. I always knew you were brilliant, A-levels or no," he confided with a mushy little sigh.
She raised her head to see him looking at her with absolute wonder. To be frank, it made her rather uncomfortable and her blush darkened. "Anyway," she said, brushing a stray piece of hair behind her ear, "the guy was still there, and he was trying to scan me with this thing – for a moment I thought it was you, Doctor. A different you."
"What're you doing?" Rose asked, staring down at the thing the man had pointed just below her nose. It was beeping.
"Simple scan, nothing to worry about," he said in a chipper voice, though his face was flooded with confusion. "Probably won't even remember it."
She narrowed her eyes, examining the man before her. If you could even call him a man. He didn't look older than 16, and even that was a bit of a stretch. He had sort of sticky-uppy blonde hair and his skin was covered in freckles. There was something in his eyes, though, that looked older...it almost seemed like….. "Doctor?"
He froze and slowly drew back his contraption. "You know the Doctor?"
So this wasn't him. "Do you?" she countered, hoping that this wasn't one of his enemies.
He didn't answer, just looked into her eyes as though he was staring into her soul. "You do know the Doctor," he breathed reverently, an awed look on his face. The expression made him look even younger, and Rose wondered idly why this boy was out by himself with a big fancy scanner. "I think you ought to come with me. I'm Schneider, by the way. Toby Schneider," he said, holding out a hand for her to shake.
She cautiously took it. "Rose. Rose Tyler."
His eyes widened. "You're definitely coming with me."
She instantly drew her hand back. "Who are you? Are you Torchwood?"
The boy's lip curled in blatant dislike. "Course not. I'm with UNIT."
"UNIT?" Rose asked, thinking of Martha. She'd said she was with UNIT, back on the Dalek Crucible. With that Osterhagan key thing. "Unified Intelligence Taskforce or something? Why would I go with you lot?" she asked incredulously, "You tried to blow up the planet last time I saw you!"
The boy reached out and took her by the arm again. "Just trust me."
Though she still had her doubts, Rose shouldered her backpack once more and looked at the man through slightly narrowed eyes. "Where?"
He grinned and began to walk away. "Follow me."
After a slight hesitation, she did. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. He led her down the sidewalk, the streetlamps only periodically lighting their way. The darkness made Rose uncomfortable, but this guy seemed trustworthy. For now. She followed him in silence to a building that reminded her of a much-less gaudy Torchwood, with concrete walls and large glass windows letting in the moonlight.
"We've been tracking you," he said after a moment, wincing as he realized how bad that sounded. "Not exactly like….nevermind," he said, giving up. They'd just reached the door and he stretched out a hand to begin the complicated combination lock. "They've been watching you for a few years now. Picked up on some unknown alien tech, checked it out and saw it was you…they said they'd wait and see what you did, but so far we haven't got anything. If we hadn't run into each other back there you might never be seeing the inside of this building."
She rolled her eyes at his obvious attempts to be mysterious and said, "What alien tech? The TARDIS? She hasn't been here for quite some time." She tried not to sound bitter. It was hard. "What did they think I would do – why the need to track me?"
He frowned at that as the lock finally clicked open. "I…I dunno. Guess they thought that the alien tech might be dangerous, didn't want you going all psycho murderer on everyone."
She raised an eyebrow. "Do I seem the type?"
"Not really," he admitted with a short laugh. "If you want the full details, you'll have to ask the Brigadier when you see him." He swung open the door and gestured for her to go inside first.
She readjusted the strap of her backpack again a bit nervously. "I'm more afraid you're going to go all psycho murderer on me," she muttered under her breath, still thinking about the time UNIT decided that it was best to just destroy the entire planet with that damn Key. Despite her slight – decidedly not slight – misgivings, she stepped through the door slowly, looking around for any trip wires or hidden lasers in the walls. She knew all of Torchwood's tricks, but hardly any of UNIT's. Maybe she could learn something.
"We're not going to hurt you," Toby told her, obviously trying to hold back a laugh. "From what I've heard, the Doctor would kill anyone who so much as looked at you wrong."
She bit her lip, not turning back to him. That's what she'd thought, too, but now….he wasn't there to save her anymore. Not that she would tell UNIT that. Let them think she had a backup plan. "You'd better not try anything then," she warned, trying to keep her voice light.
He smirked. "Just go inside."
Inside was dark. And everything was metal. Rose started to walk slowly down the hallway, keeping her back straight and her head up, just the way she would back at Torchwood. No weakness needed to be shown. At the end of the hallway there was a little red button. Toby stepped in front of her and held it down with his finger.
"Tobias Arnold Schneider, reporting back," he said aloud, probably into some hidden speaker. He paused a moment, looking at Rose. "Rose Tyler also present," he said eventually before releasing the button. There was a muffled clang and the previously locked door a few meters away swung open, revealing a room full of people walking around in an organized sort of chaos. Toby nodded for Rose to go through the door. Unable to mask her curiosity, she did, her head swinging side to side to take it all in.
A young, slightly stocky man in a uniform came to stand before her. "So this is the mysterious Rose Tyler," he said, sticking out his hand for her to shake. "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, ma'am. It's a pleasure."
"Lethbridge-Stewart?" the Doctor exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart? He went back to UNIT?"
Rose shook her head. "No, he said that Alistair was his father. The Doctor mentioned the man enough that I had to ask," Rose explained, turning to Donna, "but apparently he'd just retired and started teaching at some boarding school or something. Anyway, long story short, I was at UNIT, they said their detector thingies had picked up on my watch – you know, the one that adjusts to the time period automatically? Got it at some bazaar years ago, best purchase I've made in my life. Well, they'd picked up on it and were watching me to make sure I wasn't dangerous or anything."
"Dangerous?" Donna asked, raising an eyebrow. "Why'd they think you'd be dangerous?"
Rose shrugged. "They never really explained that bit. Right, so they'd told me they'd been watching me, but now that I was there, they had an offer for me."
"Me? You want me to work at UNIT?" She repeated, not understanding.
The Brigadier smiled. "You'd be a great help, Miss Tyler. We've found that the previous companions of the Doctor have an extensive knowledge of alien habits that even we don't know about. You'd be extremely beneficial. Could even save the world once or twice."
Rose bit her lip, contemplating. "I'd love to help, really, but I'm….I'm not staying here. The Doctor's coming back for me; it's just a mistake that I'm still here."
The Brigadier looked doubtful, but he quite obviously pitied her. "Right. Well then, how about something temporary? Just until he gets back, hmm? There won't be any fuss if you suddenly have to up and leave one day, we'll understand." He smiled at her. "So, what do you say?"
Rose hesitantly nodded and stuck out her hand to shake on it. "Alright. I'll work for you. Temporarily."
"And that was that, really," she finished. "Nothing too dramatic. I was there for almost eleven years before you came back. Taught them a few things, helped out a few stranded aliens, even saved the world once or twice. I never got too close to anyone there though. Don't think I even told them when I left, I just….didn't come back," she said with a shrug. "When we got wind of Prisoner Zero again, they let me go out to tell Amy to run and hide and I….ran into you, never went back to UNIT. Wonder if they've fired me," she added with a laugh.
Donna laughed. "I suppose we'd better go and find out!"
DOCTOR WHO
"And you're positive? You haven't misunderstood?" the Doctor asked, raising one eyebrow.
The Brigadier shook his head, his lips in a tight line. "Doctor, this creature has been murdering people – there's not many ways to misunderstand," he said, his words clipped and strained.
"Well then," the Doctor announced, "I guess we'd better go and have a look." He turned to Donna and Rose, "Coming?"
Rose's eyes slid over sideways to the Brigadier. She hesitated a moment. "I….I'll catch up."
The Doctor smiled, but his eyes were worried. "Ah, you'll miss all the fun! No matter. Donna! Chop chop, off we pop!"
Said woman snorted and rolled her eyes. "I'm coming, I'm coming!" She started to follow and then turned back to the little band of soldiers around Rose with a raised eyebrow. After a moment's pause, they all raised their hand in a salute and she nodded, satisfied, and marched out after the Doctor.
Rose watched them go with wistful looks before looking to meet the Brigadiers' eye. She held up a hand before he could even begin to speak. "You said no fuss if I had to up and leave, yeah? So…no fuss."
His eyes crinkled up in amusement, making the rest of his face wrinkles as well. He looked much older than he actually was. "Don't worry, Rose. No fuss, just like I said."
She crossed her arms and let her weight fall to one hip. "Then why are you looking at me like I've just stepped on your puppy?"
He sighed, shaking his head. After a moment, he gestured with his head for her to follow, leading her to the privacy of his office. She closed the door behind them at a look from him. They stood in silence until she coughed awkwardly, prompting him to speak. "Rose….how old are you?"
She fidgeted a bit, not meeting his eyes. Then she snorted, saying, "That's not a very polite thing to ask a woman." The Brigadier raised an eyebrow and she looked away again. "I, umm….thirty-five? Six? Time goes all funny in the Vortex," she added with a weak laugh, trying to ease the tension that had built between them.
His brow furrowed. "And you haven't –"
She cut him off, saying, "I dunno. Something to do with the TARDIS, the Doctor thinks. Does it matter?" The last words came out so suspicious that Rose almost felt bad as the Brigadier's face colored.
"I might remind you that this is not Torchwood, Miss Tyler," he said with forced calm, "We merely wish to learn all we can from and about you. Everything you can offer us may be very useful at some point in the future."
She uncrossed her arms, assuming a more respectful position. "I'm sorry, sir. If I find out anything else, you will be informed. Alright?"
He seemed dissatisfied but nodded for her to go regardless. She gave him a short nod and escorted herself out of the room, trying her hardest not to roll her eyes as she left.
A voice to her left caught her as soon as she stepped out. "Wow, you must've really pissed him off; you haven't been back ten minutes and you're already called into his office."
Rose turned and a grin broke out on her face when she saw who was leaning on the wall beside her. "Toby!" she cried, jumping over to throw her arms around him in a hug.
He laughed and wrapped his around her waist. "Took you long enough! You should've said hello first thing!" He released her and reached a hand out to ruffle her hair, laughing again as she smacked his hand away. "So, how've you been? How's the Doctor? I still need to meet him – gotta approve of the guy who's shagging my best mate."
Rose turned a color worthy of her namesake and smacked his arm. "Stop it! We haven't – we're not really –"
His eyes widened. "No," he said, "Seriously? Not even once?"
She shrugged. "How've you been?" she asked, changing the subject.
Toby grinned down at her a bit too widely to be normal. "Good. Yeah, I've been good. Great, actually." At Rose's silent question, his grin got even wider and he looked as though he were about to burst with excitement. "Alright, alright. Do you remember Ben?"
Rose thought for a moment. "Cute one who worked down at that little café?"
He nodded enthusiastically. "That's the one! Well one day, about a week after you'd gone, I got up the nerve to ask him out – I actually asked him if he'd like to go and get coffee, if you can believe – and he said he'd been waiting for me to ask him, so of course he said yes and –"
Rose cut him off with an excited little shriek. "Congratulations! You'd been eyeing him for ages before I left! I'm glad you finally got that stick outta your arse and asked him out," she added with a laugh. Toby flushed and he rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. He opened his mouth as if to continue speaking, but then Rose's pocket started ringing. She reached in and pulled out her phone, seeing an unfamiliar number on the caller ID. "Hello?" she asked, answering. Toby, unaware of the conversation, watched her happy expression fall and the color drain from her face. After a long time listening, she nodded and said, "On my way." Then she snapped the phone shut, shoving it back into her pocket. "That was the Doctor."
Toby's eyebrows scrunched together. "This something UNIT needs to get involved in?"
Rose shook her head. "No. More of a….personal problem," she said after a slight hesitation. "They ran into an old friend."
He raised an eyebrow. "Do I need to get involved? For moral support?"
"No, I think we've got it," Rose said, although she was secretly hoping that he would come anyway. He'd been her best friend for twelve years and she'd not hesitate to say that she had missed him.
He snorted. "Liar. I'm coming with you."
She grinned. "Fine, if you insist."
Meanwhile, the Doctor was staring down the nose of one incredibly upset Rory Williams, trying desperately to explain himself. It wasn't working too well. "Now, Rory, Rory, just listen for a moment –"
"No!" he shouted, his hands fisted in the front of the Doctor's shirt. "You've just exploded my best mate!"
The Doctor spluttered indignantly. "Rory, that's ridiculous. If you would just let me explain myself –"
Rory shook him, ignoring Donna's cry to leave him alone. "No! Why are you even back? Come for the wedding, did you?" The Doctor opened his mouth to answer but Rory cut him off, shouting, "Well guess what! Charlie did too! But he's not gonna get to see it because you exploded him!"
The Doctor, finally having had enough, raised his voice even louder than Rory's. "I did not! I have no idea where your friend is, but the creature that I exploded certainly was not him!"
The upset expression drained from Rory's face, leaving behind a blank stare. "What?" he asked, though it sounded more like a statement than a question.
The Doctor stood up, gently shoving Rory off of him – which wasn't hard now that the man had released his shirt – and pointed to the pile of….erm, gloop on the floor. "That," he announced, "was a form of shapeshifter from the planet Zeen 4. They're usually quite peaceful – they do all of these lovely historical reenactments; perfect job for a shapeshifter – but this one seems to have gone rogue. Apparantly, UNIT's been following its trail for weeks as it's been killing people – can you imagine? All the Zeenians do is reenact battles and make this delicious jam and now this one's gone and given them all a bad name. Horrible."
Rory blinked, looking at the gloop. "And so Charlie…."
Donna crossed her arms, looking exasperated. "Your buddy's fine, dumbo! Haven't you been listening at all?"
The Doctor clapped his hands together and strode around to prod the gloop with the toe of his shoe. "I'm not so sure about his shirt, though," he added, looking at the orange shirt in the gloop pile. The picture on the front, Amy and Rory in a heart shape, was distorted and blurred by the transparent substance covering it. "Sorry about that," the Doctor muttered sheepishly.
Rory just looked at him incredulously.
"Might want to close your mouth, you'll catch flies," said a voice from the front door of the bar. They all turned to see Rose standing there, looking at the scene with a sort of confused disgust. "Anyone want to explain what's happened here?"
The Doctor waved and blew her a kiss. "Hello, darling!" he called to her, "Terribly sorry about the mess."
She snorted. "You got it, then?"
Donna snorted and gestured to the gloop that was splattered all over the front of her shirt. "I should hope so," she grumbled, looking down at her shirt. "I want to go and have a shower. I feel disgusting."
The Doctor winced. "I think our work here is done, don't you, Donna?"
She nodded enthusiastically. "I'm heading back now, actually. This stuff looks like it'll stain if I don't wash it out."
As Donna headed towards the door, Rose stepped a few feet out of her way to avoid being touched by the gloop. When Donna was past her, she stepped inside the pub again and looked around at the gloop splattered everywhere, though it was mostly just in the one spot on the floor. As she stepped inside, a young man came in behind her, his face a mask of professionalism. "I'm gonna need a formal report for the Brigadier," he told them.
Rose snorted, waking over to the Doctor. "Don't look at me, Schneider, I don't work there anymore."
The man – apparently Schneider – narrowed his eyes at her and huffed out an exasperated breath. "Doctor?" he asked hopefully, but the Time Lord shook his head vehemently.
"No thank you, ah, Schneider, was it? I don't do paperwork."
The young man rolled his eyes and stepped forward, careful to avoid the gloop. "I should've expected as much. Toby Schneider," he said, sticking his hand out for the Doctor to shake.
He took it, smiling. "You seem to already know who I am, but hello, I'm the Doctor. Lovely to meet you." He surreptiously eyed the Doctor and Rose, standing there before him, hands clasped together as if they hadn't even noticed they'd grabbed for each other's. It was too sweet. Toby shot Rose a look, and she blushed, leaning into the Doctor's shoulder. Toby grinned. "It's alright, I'll make something up and write it out for the Brig. See ya' round, Rose, Doctor."
Rose dropped the Doctor's hand for a moment to step forward and give Toby a hug. "Keep in touch," she said, pulling back to grab his pen from him and write her number on his hand. "I'll be waiting to hear more about you and Ben, alright?"
Toby blushed. "Yeah, alright. I'll call sometime," he promised, waving goodbye to them all as he walked out.
The Doctor's mouth was turned downwards a bit and his eyes looked a bit sad. "A friend from your time at UNIT, I'm assuming."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Don't worry, Doctor. Just a friend," she promised, reaching up on her tiptoes to kiss him and pat his cheek with her hand. "After all, humans just seem a bit…boring now. Why bother with them when I've got my very own Time Lord?" she asked teasingly, her tongue in the corner of her mouth the way she knew it drove the Doctor crazy.
He smirked and captured her lips with his own, mumbling, "Don't you forget it," against them.
Someone cleared their throat behind them and they turned to see Rory standing there, awkwardly rubbing the back of his neck. "So….do you just leave now, or….."
Rose dropped back down onto her heels. "Yeah, I suppose so. Unless…." she trailed off, "you wanted to come with us?" Rory spluttered at that, unsure how to respond and Rose continued, "Amy could too, if she wanted. Just a trip or two; we can drop you back off five minutes from now so you won't miss anything. Right, Doctor?"
He puffed out his chest. "Of course we can. I'm an excellent TARDIS pilot," he bragged.
"And Donna wouldn't mind, she loves Amy," Rose added.
Rory seemed to consider it. "Five minutes from now?" Rose nodded. "I….I'll have to ask Amy."
Amy, it seemed, was eager to travel again. Rory's phone wasn't even on speaker yet they could all hear her enthusiastic "YES!" even several feet away from the device. After he hung up, Rory turned back to them. "She said yes," he told them with a little smile, as if they hadn't heard him the first time.
The Doctor grinned and clapped his hands together. "Well then," he said, looking at Rory. "Geronimo!"
A/N I seem to do this every update, no? This whole 'sorry it's late, ive been busy' thing. I'm working on it, honestly. I think a month is some sort of record for this story though. Ouch.