Rose lay stretched out on her front, head on her folded arms, as the suns high above warmed her skin. She had been immensely pleased to learn that her things were still in the TARDIS, all except what she wore the day she was sucked into the other dimension and the clothing she'd brought to mum for washing that day.
The woman was even more pleased to discover that her old clothes still fit after ten years. She supposed she could credit the months of stress, physical labour, and subsisting largely on survival rations for that. Rose had greeted her long-lost bikini like an old friend and now lay worshipping the suns of Gallifrey for their wonderful warmth.
She had not been so relaxed in many years. The gloriously warm air and the soft hiss of the waves meeting the shore lulled her into a near slumber as she let her mind drift lazily over the last few days, since they had successfully propelled themselves back to Rose's home universe.
The Doctor had decided to spend some time exploring this alternate Gallifrey, and Tony had not wasted a moment pestering the man to let him come along. Rose was glad of the reprieve; she had become accustomed to her solitude, and six months in the constant presence of a ten year old, no matter how much she loved him, had left her desiring some time to herself and a beautiful white sand beach beneath not one but two glorious suns was the ideal place for it.
This particular afternoon, Tony and the Doctor had been in the coral forest, taking measurements. The Doctor had been curious about how the TARDIS had managed to tow the planet through the Vortex and he'd wanted to take measurements. Tony, ever the little scientist himself, had whipped out his sonic screwdriver, bid goodbye to Rose, and left with the tall Time Lord.
Tony seemed to differentiate between the Doctor and John. As far as Rose could tell, he viewed them as two separate people instead of a continuation of a single man. Rose had to admit, in the privacy of her own thoughts that the Doctor had changed since she had last spent much time with him. He seemed darker, more troubled, than he had been when they had parted, almost like all of the gains he had made over the years she knew him had been lost. He was back to the scarred warrior, the man with the guilt of a lost world on his conscience. His eyes were older than she had ever seen them.
Her heart ached for him. He was, as always, reticent to talk of his experiences in the last year. Over their years together, John had told her of his adventures with Martha and Donna. Of Pompeii and freeing the Ood, of meeting Shakespeare – he'd rarely seemed so alive as when he talked of the Bard – and of the death of his oldest friend and fiercest enemy which left him the last repository in all of creation of his people's gathered wisdom.
She'd always known he had faced heartbreak of unimaginable proportions, but when he told her of Jenny, the daughter who died to save him, he had broken. He had already seen the passing of his firstborn son as well as his beloved granddaughter and first travelling companion, Susan, in the Time War, at the fall of Arcadia. John had told her these things in anger; revelations about the shadows of his past spat at her to make a point. Anger at her for refusing to consent to Tony being told the truth. She had remained firm in her position that the best, safest, and happiest life he could have would be with Pete and Jackie. John had eventually agreed, but their relationship had suffered a rift that left a deep scar.
No matter her words to John those years ago, she worried, and had always doubted, whether her decision was the right one.
Too late to go back now, she told herself.
Rose knew that Tony, clever as he was, would learn the truth sooner than she would like. While she had extracted the Doctor's grudging agreement, for now, to not give it away to Tony, Rose knew her days before that most uncomfortable conversation were numbered, especially now that he and the Doctor were together constantly.
She rolled lazily to her back and shielded her eyes from the suns with her forearm.
The last year, Rose reflected, had certainly been the hardest in her entire life. Learning to live without John, and then the loss of her mum and Pete. Even if their relationship had been strained, Pete was the closest she'd ever come to having a dad she could remember, and she had loved him and missed his presence in her life. And her mum, the fierce and protective mother who may have erred a bit too much on the side of being her friend, but who had still been the single most important person to her for the majority of her life.
Rose missed Gwen, the strong, brave, and incredibly funny woman who, despite being older than her own mum, was more like a sister. Erisa had been a fabulous coworker, but she'd not shared late evenings and too many bottles of wine with the Major the way she had with Gwen. She had expected to mourn those few connections she had made in the other universe, and today felt the strain of their loss, but she tried to focus on the fact that she was regaining so much by her return to this world.
For one, chips. She'd not been to Earth yet to have any, but they were just never the same in the other London. Rose had an unhealthy love of the deep fried potatoes, but a world without proper chips was scarce worth living in.
She made a mental note to ask the Doctor about a quick trip to Earth to visit her favourite chippy. Rose was not the least bit confident about navigating her own TARDIS yet and was more than a bit anxious about any attempts to travel to other worlds lest she and Tony and up before the big bang or something. Best to let the Doctor drive, awful as he was at it. She laughed to herself as she thought of the many, many times they'd found themselves off course.
Rose was just starting to consider the possibility of getting up when her entire body went ice cold.
She let out an ear piercing shriek and jumped to her feet. It took her eyes a moment to adjust and when they did, she saw a very amused ten year old with a bucket, and a nine hundred and six year old Time Lord a few feet behind him, doubling over in laughter.
"This is war!" she screamed. She lunged forward and grabbed Tony, hauling the tall, thin child over her shoulder as she made a beeline for the sea.
Struggling and flailing and laughing, Tony squealed and wriggled but he was unable to save himself from being thrown, clothes and all, into the slightly chilly water.
Rose turned to look back at the beach and saw the Doctor standing there, hands in the pockets of those pinstriped trousers, his posture radiating peace, smile wide and the corners of his eyes crinkled in happiness. He indicated with a nod that Rose should look behind her. She made to turn, but suddenly found herself falling forward into the salty, thigh-deep water with a ten year old on her shoulders.
"I win!" Tony proclaimed loudly as she surfaced.
Rose bent down and whispered quietly in his ear. "I'll make lava cakes for pudding if you can get the Doctor with a bucket of ice water between now and then."
"Consider it done," Tony whispered back with a mischievous wink.
Dripping wet and feeling chilled by the rising breeze, Rose was glad to get back to the beach but found her towel sopping wet. The Doctor stepped over to her and shrugged off his jacket, dropping it around her shoulders. She pushed her arms through the sleeves and flashed him a grateful smile. Tony ran ahead towards the coral forest, where both TARDISes remained parked. They'd seen no need to move them as the Doctor had said his own TARDIS seemed to be recharging her own energy simply by resting amongst her own kind.
She hooked the back straps of her sandals over her thumb and pulled her sunglasses down over her eyes from where they'd rested on the top of her head, glad they'd not fallen off in the water.
The Doctor extended his hand, smiling a bit shyly. His skin was soft as she slid her hand into his, a gesture both very familiar and very much missed. They swung their arms in time with their steps as they walked back towards the arching structures a half kilometre away down the beach.
"Find out anything interesting today?" she asked to break the silence.
"Oh yes," the Time Lord said, eyes lighting up with the excitement of discovery. "Your TARDIS, young thing that she is, networked with all of the other TARDIS coral. All of it. There's a subterranean network of roots that acted almost like neurones and it seems they were all activated at the exact same moment. We popped over to the continent of Wild Endeavour, on the other side of the planet, and everything was recently activated there too. TARDISes can't travel on their own, not without linking with a Time Lord, but your little ship figured out how to turn all the coral everywhere on the planet into a clonal organism so it could travel together."
Rose turned her head to look at him skeptically over the top edge of her sunglasses. "A planet-sized clonal organism?"
"Yep," he said, grinning. "Magnificent, isn't it? Trapped up the whole planet inside what was basically a single giant TARDIS."
"And since it's bigger on the inside, travelling through the Vortex with a planet wasn't any different than travelling through it with a single TARDIS," Rose finished, having put the pieces together fairly quickly.
"Got it in one," he said with a nod.
"Hold on a tick," said Rose, something he said earlier coming back to her, "you said they can't travel without linking with a Time Lord, but the TARDIS was travelling at my command. I could feel her in my mind."
"Not precisely accurate," the Doctor began hesitantly.
Rose stopped, turning to face him completely. "Explain," she ordered, growing suspicion in her mind that she was not going to like what she was about to hear.
He cringed a bit as he responded, as if afraid of what Rose would said. "Well a TARDIS that hasn't been imprinted can't travel, and only Time Lords have the necessary biology, and there was only one nearby so she…"
"Linked with Tony," Rose interrupted.
"Yeah. His Artron signature is all over the TARDIS."
"My ten year old has a time machine," Rose concluded, feeling a bit queasy at the implications.
The Doctor ran his hand over the back of his neck. "Seems to be the case, yeah. I didn't tell him, don't worry, and I'm sure he thinks it was you. Still, I'm sure she won't let him do anything dangerous."
"Oh like that ever stopped you!" Rose said, rolling her eyes. "A ten year old version of you – and don't pretend he isn't basically a smaller version of you because he is – running around and he has his own bleeding telepathic time and space ship."
The Doctor pursed his lips in thought. "I think this might require some intervention on my part."
"You think?" Rose asked sarcastically.
As ever, the blue TARDIS had a well-stocked galley. Rose hadn't intended to completely move into the Doctor's TARDIS, but they'd returned from a walk to the berry bushes on the hill one day and found all of their belongings spat out on the ground and the younger TARDIS completely unwilling to open for them. The Doctor had suggested she might be remodeling now that she had a better idea of what a TARDIS could do, since he'd informed her that the telepathic fields of the two ships had overlapped since his arrival so they must be in contact.
Despite her understanding of the nature of her vows to John, which extended them to the Doctor, Rose had decided to stay in her old room for the time being, until she'd had some time to ease back into a life with him. With John's declining health, he'd not slept in the same room as her for a year and a half before he died as he had required a hospital bed. It had been hard for Rose to adapt to sleeping with Tony in the same room when they had gone on the run, and she had been glad to have her own space again once their TARDIS had provided them two bedrooms.
The Doctor had been very understanding of her need for some space and time for herself, after all she had been through. He seemed fairly wrapped up in getting to know the third inhabitant of his TARDIS, anyway.
Rose was chopping onions and listening carefully to the goings-on in the console room. The galley had located itself just inside the corridor entry from the console room this evening, and Rose could hear clearly what was being said. The Doctor was explaining to Tony how certain components of the TARDIS worked. She quirked an eyebrow any time he gave what could only be described as driving tips, and made a note to talk to the Time Lord about that. This was not what she'd thought he meant when he said he'd do something about the fact that Tony had linked with a TARDIS in his own right.
She was pushing the onions off the cutting board into a frying pan on the thankfully very modern stovetop and added a pat of butter to sauté them when Tony came striding in.
"Best get started on those lava cakes, Rose," he said confidently.
"Ah ah, I need proof," she said without looking up.
A moment later, a loud, surprised shout and a splash echoed down the corridor from the console room.
"TONYYYYY!"