It had proven remarkably easy to steal – Rose preferred the term borrow but knew it was unlikely they'd ever give it back – a 20-seater escape shuttle. It was a small, interplanetary hopper, but it came prepared with a large survival kit. Materials for shelter, communications, food, medicines. Many of the medicines weren't compatible with human biology, but she knew a few that were, though she hoped they wouldn't ever be necessary. The starliner carried more than enough escape shuttles for the entirety of her crew and passengers, and Rose knew no one would be endangered by her making off with one of them.
In the dark of the night, with the ship light's turned low to maintain circadian rhythms, she and Tony had made a plan to leave the ship for good the following day. The escape shuttle was faster than the Ariades and Rose could pilot it easily enough. They'd worked out a plan and packed their precious TARDIS sack with everything they owned. It may not be a proper TARDIS, but it was sufficient to store far more than it should. John had marvelled at the young coral cutting's desire to please them, and despaired at its inability to grow more in Earth's temporal environment. Even four years on the rift in Cardiff hadn't been sufficient to help it grow more than a foot and a half.
Tony slept above Rose in his bunk, putting away what energy he could for what would be a long day ahead. Rose listened to his soft, regular breathing and realized how very much she missed hearing John's gentle snoring in the night. She'd avoided thinking about John Lord as much as possible since she and Tony had made their way off Earth. Yet another name on her list of loss. She couldn't allow herself to wallow and she did as best she could to avoid thinking about any of them.
She remembered John's last day, when he had seemed lucid for a moment. His emaciated face made his warm eyes stand out all the more as he breathed his last, her name on his lips. Rose shook the image out of her mind. She could not allow herself to fall to pieces right now. Thoughts of her mother's death intruded and she pushed them aside with an almost violent mental shove. She still was not ready to put those memories to rest. Not until they were safe would she give herself time to mourn.
Her mum would have hated what she was planning to do. She'd have fought Rose on it every step of the way, but Rose would have won, because for all her fortitude, Jackie Tyler had been unable to change her daughter's mind since she was sixteen years old.
Rose knew the plan was a reach and she'd been surprised that Tony – precocious as he was – had been so quick to agree to it. She'd given herself a time limit to make things work. Six months. She had six months to take the books of John's notes and make them reality. If her plan bore no fruit, she and Tony would find some quiet corner of some pre-contact civilization and integrate themselves. She knew they would stand out, but she hoped they could integrate. Rose hated the idea of Tony having to live a life on the run, the life they could be stuck with if this didn't work.
Unable to sleep, she rested her head against the grey-painted wall. It wasn't long until the day cycle began and they would make for KB4 with the travellers after breakfast. She took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, her thoughts chasing themselves in circles through her mind.
Tony whimpered quietly as he had done nearly every night since they had left Earth. Rose stood from her bunk and reached a hand over to run her fingers gently through the young boy's hair. Softly, she sang a traditional Welsh lullaby she had learned in Cardiff, and as she did, he settled back into peaceful slumber.
"….Breichiau mam sy'n dynn amdanat, Cariad mam sy dan fy mron…"
Their morning meal of various textures and colours of pastes eaten with hard, sweet crackers – Quorosi delicacies that Rose had taken a bit of a liking to – was over before Rose even realized it had begun. Tony had mumbled an excuse to his friends, apologizing for being unable to play with them that day as he would be accompanying Rose on the excursion. Despite his actual excitement at the prospect of seeing the planet in person, he gave no hint of it to the other boys, who did not have any option of off-ship trips.
Throwing her blue, battered-appearing bigger-on-the-inside rucksack over a shoulder, Rose reached for Tony's hand. They set off together towards the departure lounge, where a shuttle would take them to the surface.
"Can you see it out the window, Rose?" the boy asked.
She shook her head. "We're in orbit and the angle's all wrong. Just wait." Rose understood the enthusiasm – she herself was very excited to see this planet. She looked around the two dozen or so passengers who collected around them as a group. Off-ship excursions hadn't been terribly popular on the Kelios either. The tour director was standing up ahead, clad in her neatly pressed, light-blue uniform. She wore a large smile as the group formed about her and she raised her hand to wave stragglers to her.
"Good morning, everyone. Please ensure you're in the right place. This excursion is to the surface of KB4 at the edge of the Coral Sea. There is a second group leaving this afternoon for the hot springs in the Glass Mountains." At this, half the group left and the remainder clustered closer to the director. "We will be leaving by landing shuttle from Bay 7 in just a few minutes. Please follow me, and please ensure your safety badge is active and charged by pressing the green button on the front." She demonstrated using her own, and the members of the excursion party followed suit. "This way, please."
Rose and Tony joined the queue and within minutes were buckled into the shuttle's rather luxuriously appointed passenger compartment. While stowing the backpack beneath the seat ahead of her, Rose could feel a faint hum in the fabric. She made a mental note of it, supposing the very young TARDIS was responding to their proximity to the planet. The shuttle rumbled faintly along and Rose held Tony's hand tightly as they broke atmosphere – a bumpy ride in every vessel she had ever travelled on. She knew Tony had a hard time with any sort of turbulence after their rough ride off Adaraxidoredanillae in the cargo hold of a livestock ship. It had been the only transport Rose had been able to find which would take them to any of the A'ni'daren planets.
It took a half hour for the shuttle to land, and the passengers poured out of the small vessel onto white sand. As her eyes adjusted to the bright ambient light, Rose let out an audible gasp.
One of the suns was rising above the horizon far to what she supposed would be the East. Red and brilliant, it capped the waves with tips of fire as they rolled toward the beach. The white sand squeaked softly below her feet as she took a few cautious steps ahead. To the west were stands of what appeared at first to be pale rock. Arching and branching they seemed almost to move in the morning mist which poured out from between them.
Kissed by the rising sun, the thin mist swirled around the travellers, painting the air a pale rose, like sweet French wine Rose had once enjoyed. She took a deep breath and felt her lungs – after months aboard starliners, breathing recycled air – take in the humid air. It felt like breathing for the very first time.
There was the faintest scent of spice and salt on the air, and something sweet that Rose could not place. She looked over at Tony and saw that he was running his hands reverently down the coral rock-like formations, a look of awe on his face. She smiled and turned her sight back to the sea which seemed to stretch forever, touching the red sun and orange sky.
The waves sounded different here. Their sound was deeper, more soothing as they lapped upon the shore. It felt blasphemous to speak, wrapped as they were in the ethereal beauty of this alien beach.
She could feel something in the back of her mind, a welcoming presence. The sand beneath her feet and the mist that wet her skin resonated with it. She closed her eyes and saw only golden light in her mind's eye as she let the breath of the planet's awareness flow through her.
She walked towards the water's edge and felt tears form in her eyes. It was the most beautiful place she had ever been. In all her travels, in years of exploring the universe, she had never set foot on a world that sang its welcome in her very soul.
Finally, she understood the look that came over John's face whenever he described his lost home. This planet he had mourned so deeply was beyond words. She felt in her own heart the soul of this world and in that moment understood more than she ever had before what it was for him to lose Gallifrey. What a jewel for her home universe to have lost, this Eden, this Utopia.
Tony stepped up beside her and leaned into her side. She wrapped her arm about his slight shoulders and they gazed out over the sea together, taking in the rise of the red sun.
"So what do you think, Tones?" she asked him
He shot an unamused look up at her for the nickname – he was particular about being addressed only as Tony or Antony – and drew in a breath, closing his eyes. "It feels… like home. Even though it's not. I don't know how to describe it, but I like it here."
"Me too. Think we'll be alright here for a while?"
His face broke in a radiant smile. "Yep!" He broke off from her side and ran for the water, splashing in the waves at the edge of the beach, the definition of childhood abandon.
The group spent a few hours photographing and exploring the varying habitats around the Gallifreyan – Rose could no longer think of the planet as anything else – beach. They'd tromped through the coral forest and Rose had felt that the bag on her back seemed to resonate with the breeze winding through the tree-like structures. It radiated what she could only describe as contentment as they wandered in the shade.
They'd found themselves in a copse of silver-leafed trees which swayed to and fro with the increasing wind. It had rained briefly as the group had settled to dine on prepared lunches. In the distance, an immense rock formation lined the horizon, straight lines of black and grey rock breaking the long line of the red-grass plains ahead of them. It reminded rose of Uluru, only it seemed to go on forever.
During the excursion, the tour director had kept up a running narrative of what was known about the planet. Held in a single relative position by the gravity of its two distant suns, the planet was far out of the habitable zone of either. It was only because of the additive influence of both stars' energies that this planet had plant life at all. There was no animal or insect life at all, though there was a complex world of microorganisms which were symbiotic with the plant life.
The coral forest, they were told, was similar to the animal-created aquatic coral found on other planets, only this was the result of calcium-fixing lichens instead of cnidarians. It took millions of years, they were told, for the coral trees to grow. The unique gravity of the planet, which was slightly higher than most class 5 planets, was why their excursion to the planet was limited to a half day as it would exhaust most species fairly easily. At this, Rose had had to stifle a laugh.
After her years with the Doctor and the better part of a decade working at Torchwood then U.N.I.T., she was in peak physical form. She felt she could run for days, and barely noted the slight increase in her perceived weight in the increased gravity. Tony seemed to be tiring, but she knew he'd adapt quickly.
The scientists in their party set off across the faintly spicy-smelling red grass towards a small outcropping of rock, where some sort of measurement equipment was stored. They returned soon after the remainder of the group had finished their midday meal. Rose luxuriated in the warm sun, no hotter than a warm June day in London, and stretched on a soft bed of grass. Tony bounded about with the only other child in the group – a Quorosi girl about his age – climbing burgundy-barked branches and shrieking happily as they dove onto the piles of soft moss that lined the ground between the trees.
The idyll of the morning was broken as the director herded them back to the shuttle. Rose felt a sense of loss as the doors closed behind them and the shuttle took off.
Tony fell into a fitful nap on the trip back, exhaustion from the morning's exertion in higher gravity claiming him. Escaping the planet's gravity took longer than the careful descent and it was an hour before they joined back up with the Ariades in orbit. As the passengers disembarked, Rose hung back with Tony and woke him gently. The tour director left before Rose and Tony had exited the shuttle as they were not paying passengers so did not fall under his purview.
Tony woke quickly and took only a moment to find his bearings. Rose shushed him before he spoke a word and they exited the shuttle quietly. It was the lunch hour for the tour staff and there were almost none in the lounge. Rose took Tony's hand and they made their way, as casually as possible, down the nearby corrido that would take them to the escape shuttles.
They faced no opposition as they sneaked into one of the well-stocked shuttles. Rose's nerves sung with worry as she began the initiation sequence, but no voice came over the comm. No one came running for them. It took only five minutes before they undocked from the ship. The shuttles had been designed with the possibility of passengers piloting them in mind, as emergency situations could be unpredictable, and Rose, never much of a pilot herself, was glad of it. Twenty minutes after their escape, they were hailed, but Rose had planned what to do when the ship attempted to retrieve the shuttle and had already deactivated their remote access. The ship, unwilling to mar the experience of their paying customers, did not break orbit to pursue the small shuttle, but fired off a probe in her direction. Rose understood they were marking the location for the authorities to search.
She had, naturally, thought ahead. Two hours later, the small shuttle alighted on the very small rocky surface of a moon shrouded in dense gas, one of the many moons orbiting KB2. The homing beacon for the shuttle had been launched towards the uninhabitable, dangerously toxic planet below. Whoever might come looking for them would get readings of debris and no lifesigns on KB2 and it would appear they had been pulled in by the high gravity of the gas giant circling the red star of Kasterborous.
At least, this was what Rose had hoped. She knew, from nearly two months travelling on interstellar ships, that desertion by crewmembers was not out of the norm. Crew would pick up and leave when a better opportunity presented. The Quorosi government would probably only look so far as to track their homing beacon as their resources wouldn't allow a prolonged search for a low level criminal. Rose knew she was taking a chance by stealing the shuttle, but it was one she had to take.
She settled the ship into a crevasse and prepared to wait. They would rest here a few days, using the ship's provisions. It held enough rations for twenty adults for a month. Dry, uninteresting rations, but they would do. For herself and Tony, the stored food would be enough for a year.
Then once the risk of discovery was gone, they would set for KB4. For Gallifrey. Their new home.
A/N:
The bit of lullaby Rose sings is from an actual traditional Welsh lullaby called Suo Gân. I would strongly recommend listening to one of the boys' choir versions of it on Youtube (Kings College or Ambrosian Junior Choir.) It is utterly gorgeous, and while I don't speak much Welsh, I sang my own babies to sleep with it because I love what it means.