As requested, I tried to make more tenxrose but it ended up very whouffleish.
But don't worry I have big plans for Rose and ten in the next chapter. Enjoy and a special thanks to knittingFamine for helping me with this chapter:)
Rose was suspicious as soon the nuns took over the hospital. They marched in with their odd cat like faces, and told them that the mayor had granted them free use of the hospital. They yelled at people often, and threatened to fire her twice for going into John's office without a substantial need. Rose and John called them the devil cats behind their backs, and often tried to make life miserable for the imposters.
Sadly, it didn't break the cat's good performance in caring for patients, and both Rose and John were worried they'd lose their jobs to these evil nuns. Whenever voicing her opinions to Clara, she would get a shake of the head and a frown, and Rose would growl at her, if only in her mind. Clara didn't understand, she was a teacher.
"We need to get rid of the cats." she groaned to John one afternoon, after leaving work together. "They just are so... they seem to be up to something." It had been about six months since the Smith's moved to town, and Rose and John seemed inseparable. She hadn't failed to notice Clara's continued visits with Elijah either, and teased her about it endlessly.
"I agree." he answered, thinking along the same lines. "I think it's time we call in... the team."
"The team?"
"The team."
The moment school got out, Clara's phone rang. It was Rose (she now checked her caller ID, to avoid more mistakes.) and she picked it up with her usual trill of "Oswin here!"
"Oswin... we require your...talents." Rose said mysteriously into the phone, and Clara rolled her eyes.
"What talents may I ask?"
"Clara..." Rose sighed, "Your hacking talents, duh."
"You know I stopped hacking into things after the principal suspended me!" Clara protested.
"This is important. Life or death."
"By that, I take it you mean... Life or you getting fired?"
"Pretty much."
"I'll do it."
Elijah was sitting down at Sexy lake, when his phone rang. He practically lept to his feet, a grin already etched on his face. Surely Clara was calling. He took the call without checking who was calling.
"Clara!" he called into the phone, "I've thought about your offer, and of course I'll pretend to be your boyfriend when your Father comes home!"
"What?" squeaked Rose from the other side.
"Oh... Not Clara then?" he asked.
"I'm afraid not." John said, "Rose just dropped the phone. What did you tell her?"
"Something I wasn't supposed to..."Elijah trailed off, biting his lip nervously. "Why are you calling anyways?" he asked, annoyed.
"I need your help to break into the hospital and find out what those cat nuns are up to." John said, being brutally blunt.
"We're going to be breaking and entering?"
"Yep."
"I'm in!"
Amy was painting her toenails when her phone rang. Propping the phone inbetween her shoulder and her head, and picked it up.
"Hello?" she called into the phone.
"Amy!" Rose sang into the speaker, "How would you like to go behind Rory's back, break into the hospital and destroy the cat nuns domain for good?"
"Hell yes." she said, flinging the nail polish aside. "Let me grab my boots." Finally. She thought. He's doing something.
Clara was rather excited to put her hacking skills in to use today. Although her Mum had never approved of her hacking talents, the computer keys still called to her. Rose had come home for a brief spell, to put on dark clothes, and now they group outside the hospital, out of view of the security cameras.
"Elijah will be staying with you." John instructed her, as Elijah plopped down next to Clara and her laptop. "Because he's honestly just a nuisance."
"Oi!"
"It is true." Clara agreed, and only looked mildly annoyed when he flicked her on the nose.
"And then, the Wolf, the Legs, and the glasses will sneak into their secret lab..." Rose explained, and Clara crinkled her nose.
"Codenames? Really?"
"Codenames are cool." Elijah muttered.
"Of course they are." Clara sighed, and Amy looked over at the pair of them, and Clara could swear she saw a flicker of depression at the sound of hearing Elijah say 'cool.' She decided she must have imagined however, as Amy turned away with a slight frown and set to lacing up her boots.
"You are not here to judge." Rose instructed, "You are here to hack into the security system." Clara rolled her eyes, but obligingly opened her laptop.
John was glad it didn't take Clara long to hack into the security system and take down the cameras and protections on the building. Amy still volunteered to go first, to check for any life threatening mistakes, but they both vetoed the idea. All he could see was the golden shine of Rose's hair in front of him as they slipped into the hospital, her feet sounding like that of a lion, quiet and soft.
Amy came in behind him, and the three of them silently padded through the glossy hospital, occasionally dodging the security guards who were looking after the overnight patients. It wouldn't be easy for a normal burglar to navigate the maze of falls without running into the burly guards, but Rose and John had sweet talked the guards, and they faked turning their backs whenever they saw them coming.
Everyone in the hospital hated the nuns, and the guards were no acceptance. That's why, after hearing a run down of the plan from Rose, they simply didn't notice them, in the hopes that the nuns would be gone soon.
Clara had tapped into the security feed, and with her legs spread out in front, she watched as her friends moved through the halls like carefull ninjas. Elijah had been unusually quiet, his hands picking at the grass beneath their legs. She looked at him, her brown eyes regarding his blue-green ones cooly.
"What's up?" she asked him, setting the laptop back on the grass and tightening her coat around herself. The winter chill still hadn't quite left the air, and she could still feel the cold creeping up her back like a worm.
"Nothing." he lied, but his eyes betrayed him. They looked at her with big wide sadness, and she could almost see the beginning of tears starting in their depths.
"I can see when you lie to me, in those big sad eyes of yours." she said, and scooched closer to him. "You can tell me." she promised. She felt a lot more comfortable around him now that she had known him for a while. She had gotten to know the person behind the awkward comments and 'cool' comments.
"It is..." he sighed, rubbing his eyes with his palms. "The one year anniversary of my Mother's death, and the ending to my marriage."
"You were married?" if she had anything in her mouth she would have spit it out.
"Her name was River Song." he said, picking at the grass with his long fingers, "Just another part of half the year from hell."
"Half the year?" she asked.
"Yeah, because then I met you." he said, quirking up his mouth in a half smile.
"What happened to your Mom?" she asked before she could stop herself, and then silently cursed herself. More people than she could count had asked her the same question, and over time it simply drove her mad. Every time that question came out of someones mouth, she relived the pain of hearing her Mother's last moments with her. "Forget it." she said, before he could respond. "I know how that feels to be asked that question, I'm sorry." he chuckled.
"I'll tell you." he said, and she looked up in surprise. "John would say it's good for me to talk about my marriage failing and my Mother dying." he rubbed his eyes with his palms.
"I understand if you don't want to talk about it. I sure did-"
"It was a Monday." he said, cutting her off. He leaned back against the grass, his palms splayed on the grass and his eyes glassy as he looked at the stars. She leaned back with him, the cool ground lightly stinging the back of her head. He reached over and took her hand, and she wrapped her fingers in his, tracing the back of his hand with her fingertip.
"I thought it would just be a normal day. River and I hadn't been getting along lately, but I thought that it was nothing, every couple experiences bumps and bruises. We just had an especially bad argument, so I left. Stormed out of the house and over to my Moms. She wasn't up yet, so I decided to make her breakfast." he took a deep breath, "Right when I put the eggs on, River called me. I picked up, and the gas oil, which I didn't know my Father had left out, spilled." Clara let out a soft gasp.
"River had called me to tell me to meet her at the library, which had always been our special place. I nearly forgot about the breakfast completely, yelling up at my Mum that some eggs were on the stove. I left in a hurry, I thought River wanted to make amends for our horrible fight. I arrived at the library, and met her in the astronomy section, my favorite books. She turned around to face me, and said that we were done, she was kicking me out, changing the locks, and that the divorce papers would be delivered shortly. She was always blunt, River was."
"Right after my ex-wife left, I got a phone call from John. He was screaming at me about how Mum was in the hospital because some idiot had tried to make her eggs." he gulped hard, "She didn't last a day. Her burns were too severe, and she made John promise to look after me or I wouldn't be here at all. To this day, my Father still has not said one single word to me."
"What was her name?" Clara asked softly.
"Gallifrey Smith. She gave us the most normal names because she couldn't have one." he laughed slightly, but it was a hollow sound. "Let me guess, you're gonna say you totally get what I'm feeling, but have no clue."
"I understand exactly." she said, "You're blaming yourself, because everywhere you look today you see her. Both of them. River and your Mum because in a way, at least to you, both of them died that day. And you've probably visited her grave today and lingered outside of River's house to see if anyone's home."
"How do you know that?" he asked her, turning his head to get a better look at her.
"Because I went through the same thing when my Mum died." she said simply. "Except, since I was twelve, I didn't have a husband, of course. But my Dad stopped talking, sent me away to live with my aunt for a month. I got a cold," she said, figuring she should tell him her story as well, "And that was all it was for me, a cold. But I'm pretty sure I passed that on to my Mum. One night, that's all it was, a cold, and she refused to kiss me goodnight in case it wasn't the same strand. The next morning she was dead."
"You don't know it was you that gave her the illness," he pointed out.
"And how do you know that it was you that knocked over the oil?" she pointed out, "For all we know it was your Dad, and he hasn't said a word to since because of shame."
"He's talked to John."
"John is easy to talk to."
"And I'm not?!"
"You're to easy to talk to." she said, "and it scared him away. And I know you won't stop blaming yourself because of something I said, because I sure didn't when my aunt said it to me."
He sat up, and pulled her into a brief, almost violent hug. She buried her face into his shoulder, and she could feel tears wetting her hair as he cried, and she found that she was crying too, because she hadn't ever found someone who thought like she did before. She pulled back partly, and only then noticed how close their faces were. He leaned in-
The Harry Potter ringtone went off. They both sprang apart, and Clara reached around for her phone, propping it up to her ear.
"Rose?" she asked.
"No." John said grimly, "But you may need to call the police."
Amy quickly picked the lock, a skill she had learned from traveling with the Doctor a long time ago. They had reached the Cat Nun's base in no time, arriving there quickly and efficiently. She pushed the door open, and was nearly shoved over as Rose pushed inside.
"Oh my god." she heard her friend whisper, and John pushed ahead of Amy as well. Before entering the room, she considered if this was something alien, what should she do?
When she heard John gasp out loud, and the muffled sounds of someone sobbing, she ducked inside quickly. She would have screamed, but bit down on her knuckles as not to draw attention. The sobbing was coming from Rose, who was wrapped up in John's arms, as he stroked her hair. He too, had tears streaming down his face.
Amy staggered back, wanting to vomit. The Cat's 'medical lab' was full of experiments all right. On humans. Normal humans that had gone missing from everyday society, someone she recognised from the newspaper. They were awake, but seemed incapable of speech, their skin was a mottled red, their eyes bloodshot and watery, the only sounds emitting from their throats a raw whisper, their hands and feet bound to the lab slab.
"This can't be happening." Amy said out loud, "No, no, he wouldn't let this happen!" John and Rose didn't seem to be paying much attention to her.
"Don't touch them." John said, "And you'll get infected. No wonder we had such advanced treatments." She heard him calling Clara. Amy was shocked herself to find tears streaming down her face. The awful part was (the part she hated herself for) is she wasn't sure if the tears were for the poor souls stretched out on the table, or the fact that the Doctor was no where to be found. He wouldn't come in this time, with his sonic screwdriver and some witty remark. No, he was gone.
Hospital Lockdown initiated. A computer chimed, and Rose went white.
"No." she whispered, and ran over to the computer.
"Rose I don't think you should-"
A jet of white gas sprayed out from the computer and hit Rose in the face. She spun around slightly, laughing.
"Hello, darlings!" she cried, and waved her hands about.
"Rose...?" John said cautiously, and she waved at him flirtatiously.
"Hellllo! And anyways, my name isn't Rose, it's Cassandra..."
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