Hello all! New chapter is in. I know he is slightly shorter than usual but I'm already working on the next one! I promise. I hope you will like it and don't hesitate to tell me if it's the case (or not, you can) and what did you think of it.
Big up to my beta Penandpaper who is a life saver, like always.

Chapter 17

Rose sighed when she finally closed the door of her apartment behind her. She had spent the last week deciding what to take and what to leave behind. Informing UNIT that she was now officially in the role of offshore consultant for the time being, and except in the case of clear and dire emergencies; she will only respond to emails and phone calls if absolutely necessary. Which of course Colonel Mace, and Geneva by extension, had not been happy with this sudden change in arrangement. Especially when she had told them she was leaving Earth with the Doctor to fight an unknown enemy who could or could not destroy the whole multiverse in the near future. Mace had been particularly vocal about the fact that another of the top minds of UNIT had once again been snatched by the Doctor. And it was quickly getting old. She had played along, especially when Sir Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart; who had been visiting his daughter Kate, had stated that it was a fact of life that the Doctor was to annoy UNIT and those in charge to the best of his ability .

But she knew that deep down that everyone, especially those who knew about her, were fully aware that she will never return to UNIT. Not full time at least. Even if she was successful on what could be her biggest mission ever, she had never hidden the fact that her time on Earth was running out. She had tried to live a somewhat normal life, complete with a circle of friends and the occasional boyfriend here and there. But the fact always remained in the back of her mind: she was not aging, and soon enough it will become an issue.

When as she looked at the three bags balanced precariously against the wall, she realized that everything that was close to her heart were in those bags. She could never return to her place ever again, and not miss a single thing that was inside. That fact made her realize that even if she had a life here, a very good one at that, she had never really placed roots. Not since she had lost everything when she had crossed over without the possibility to comeback.

As she lifted her luggages with difficulty, she vowed to herself that when her adventure with the Doctor does end, she will do everything in her power to change that. But before she could dwell more in those morose thoughts, she head the sound of the TARDIS materializing only a few meters from where she was. As soon as that glorious box became completely visible, Donna almost fell out the door. She had apparently opened the door as soon as they landed to rush out and greet Rose. She eagerly hurried up to Rose, ready to engage her in a discussion, until she saw the bags on her back and shoulder. She frowned and turned around.

"Oi Doctor, Rose needs a hand with her luggage!" She called through the open door.

Before Rose could even begin to insist that she was fine, the Doctor had appeared. "Please tell me she didn't bring a Hat case too," he said with a teasing voice, making Donna slap him on the shoulder as a response.

"A what?" Rose asked with a puzzled face, trying her best to not let the bag on her right shoulder slip and fall.

"Nothing, just something that Donna had brought along when she came onboard. She somehow thought there was a planet of the hats out there," he answered with a smile, trying to keep his nerves at bay. This was it, Rose had was finally back in the TARDIS. Back with him where she belonged. He walked to her with his right hand extended, waiting for her to drop at least one of her bags. "Let me take your luggage, it doesn't look comfortable."

Rose tried to protest, but he already had one of them in his hand, and was doing his best to take the one from her other shoulder as well.

"You sure you have enough?" he asked with a quick glance around, not sure if this was all of her bags or if she had one hidden somewhere for some reason.

She shrugged as Donna was giving her a welcoming hug. "Everything needed is here. And if I miss something, I still can ask the TARDIS to drop me somewhere to buy it."

He scratched his chin. "That's fair. Ok, let's go inside. Ladies first!" he said with a flourish, a bigger smile than before on his face.

Rose was first to enter, glad to have taken time to unwind after so much time not having a single minute to herself. She was closely followed by Donna who was looking at her back with genuine interest. "That backpack is really interesting. I think my grandad had one just like that from the war. But his is much more beaten down. And I thought they only came in green," the redhead observed as Rose was dropping it off beside one of the column.

Rose let herself fall in the driver seat and glanced at the bag, as the Doctor was putting down her two other bags. "My duffel? Oh yeah, normally they are green or black. But with privilege of my rank, mine is brown and blue."

"Well old girl, it's not that I do not like that kind of discussion but where are you going to take us next?"

She smiled at him, ready to to playfully mock him about his short span of attention; when she realized how much he was uncomfortable at the discussion of her soldier past. Forgot how he was ready to take responsibility for everything, and how he still sees the fact she was in the military as a failure on his end. Rose knew that they should discuss this. Make him understand that she had loved what she had become. And she had kept it to herself before not just for the sake of it, but because she was genuinely proud of herself and her accomplishment. But now was not the time.

"Well, I propose hanging out in the time vortex. I need to take everything to my room, and then take a shower. I don't know about you, but it's been a very long week, and not a fun one at that."

"Well it's only been two hours for us, but I understand your point of view," Donna said as Rose looked at the Doctor with surprise. Who, Donna noted in amusement, suddenly found the ceiling very interesting.

"Only two hours?" Rose was astonished.

Donna snickered as the Doctor was glaring at her with the intensity of a thousand suns. Amusing Donna even more. "Well if I didn't ask for time to take a shower and change, I think it would have been fifteen minutes top."

"I needed to be sure that the TARDIS was working correctly!" the Doctor answered in a stronger tone than intended. "She just took us to another planet without input from us. Imagine if it happened again!"

"Sure, Spaceman. Just keep telling yourself that," Donna teased, changing what had been simple discussion into bickering that lasted at least five minutes before Rose lost interest, and decided to go in search of her room.

She took two of the bags, the ones she knew contained the more important things and slipped back into one of the corridors, the sound of Donna and the Doctor's debate getting more and more muffled the further she walked. She walked for about a minute, passing multiple doors and a hatch, none of them distinguishable from one another. As she was starting to feel her right shoulder sting under the weight of her backpack, she felt drawn to a blueish door with a carving of a phoenix in the middle and oak leaf all around the frame.

"This one?" She asked to the ceiling. After a few seconds she felt the draw once again. Making her smile. "Okay girl, but the phoenix is a little on the nose, no?" The laugh in her head was all the response she needed.

While she was occupied deciding what belonging would go where, she was interrupted by a knock on the door. When she turned around, she was greeted by the sight of the Doctor looking at her sheepily from the doorstep, her last bag in his hand.

"Can I come in?" he asked with bashfulness, proposing his full hand as a tribute.

She smiled. "Sure! You can just drop that one anywhere." He put it down beside her bed. "I'm trying to unpack everything before being too caught up in everything. I mean, last time I think it took something like three months before I had the mind to take out all my socks from my backpack."

The Doctor stood straight, his glasses giving him that very serious look. "If I remember correctly, it was four months and you also forgot the tupperware from your mother. Also, I remember there were two bags of skittles that definitely didn't like that famous tupperware." The smile on his face was all she could muster before facepalming herself in shame.

"Oh god that tupperware...I think I had to move out for two weeks before the smell disappeared." She still had nightmare once or two time a year about the odor. And she had a Xylot explode on her.

He laughed for a few seconds before looking serious again. "I'm really sorry about earlier. We both tend to be a little oppiniated sometimes."

She snorted. "I think I had made my peace with that don't worry. It's just I needed a shower and five minutes alone so it was more of a blessing that anything else."

He nodded before looking around, realizing this was not the original room she had before leaving. "Did you not find your room? You should have asked the TARDIS to get it for you. I'm sure she would have loved that." He touched the wall, which was now more of a pale orange, completely different from the neon violet she had lived in before.

She got up, walking to the open wardrobe with a few shirts. "No, I don't really want to have the same room that I did before…"

He approached her, his hands deep into his pocket. "Why?"

She debated with herself about what to say, stalling as much as she could, arranging her shirts like it was her life mission. But as she started to open her month to lie, she realized that she was so tired trying to protect him from her own truth. He deserved to know about her, not all of her, but most of it. If she was starting this renewed friendship on a lie, how could she really deserve to be friends with him again? How could they trust each other? "Because I'm not ready to be back there." She turned around, looking him directly in the eyes. "Things are different now and I've changed. A lot. Just like how you've changed too. And I'm not emotionally ready to go back into my old room and see what I left behind. I…" She averted her gaze, his truthful stare too much at that instant. "I need time, Doctor. That's all."

"I understand," he said and they looked at each other in silence for a minute, not sure about what to say after that. "You want me to go?" he finally asked, pointing to the still open door.

"No, it's okay. I just wanted you to know…" She continued to move her things out of her bag, trying her best to show that everything was good. "By the way where is Donna?" she finally asked, wanting to end the uncomfortable silence that had grown since the end of the conversation.

The Doctor jumped on it, walking around the room with a smile. "Oh she is still in the console room!" he said, looking curiously in the bathroom. "I think she is reading of her magazines or something. I can't say I understand much of what she is doing sometimes." He knocked on her bed frame with a interrogative look. "But I wanted to know how you were doing and where do you want to go next." As she was starting to feel dizzy watching him going round and round, he finally decided to sit down in one of the chairs, making her a little less tense. "But it took forever to find your room. At first I did go to your old room and then when I tried to find you, someone..." He glared at the ceiling. "didn't want me to find you. So it took forever."

"I needed time to sort out the essentials and take a shower, so I can understand why." She smiled cheekily, making him blush a little.

"So where do you want to go next?" He asked like she had said nothing, taking the opportunity to pull out a wooden-like sculpture out of one of her bags, examiniting it with his sonic like it was make of C4.

She snatched it out of his hand, her eyes rolling with exasperation. "Don't touch that. A shaman from the Chimeran gave me that, and I prefer to keep it in one piece please."

He looked surprised. "A Chimeran? Really? I thought they were rarely leaving their system now."

She placed the figure on her nightstand. "Well, one of their spaceships was caught in a wormhole, and they space crashed in our planet. It was not really intentional of course..." She looked around, making sure that everything of value was not in reach of the Doctor. When she was satisfied that nothing could go wrong in the next five minutes, she nodded to herself and took the direction of door, indicating to the Doctor she was ready to go back. "But to respond to your question, I would like a quiet place for a change. Like not running for our life or plead with a megalomaniac that saying no to his marriage proposal is not grounds for a death sentence."

He sighed and muttered while following her in the corridor. "You promise her one time to someone trying to dominate the world and then you hear nothing else."

She chortled, pushing him with her shoulder. "One time? Doctor, try three times. And I'm not counting that one time when I had to rescue you from a bloodthirsty princess."

"Hey! That time was a different me, so it doesn't count!" he exclaimed, his indignity written all over his face.

"What doesn't count?" Donna asked absently as they entered the console room, her eyes completely focused on the magazine in front of her.

Rose as a second of surprise when she realized they were already there. She had forgotten how much the TARDIS liked to play around sometimes, before jumping back right into what she was saying. "That I completely saved him from marrying a crazy princess! You should have seen him" She was laughing hysterically at that point. "Screaming his head off to not touch him, clutching as his shirt like a lifeline, and her shrieking that he was the man of her dreams. One minute more and he would have climbed to the ceiling." She was clutching to the Doctor to stay upright as she was laughing too much at the memory. At the dismay of the Doctor himself. "Jack had to basically strip himself naked, and dance around her to divert her attention." She looked at him with humor. "I think it took you three weeks to look us in eyes again. And you had to threaten Jack to send him in a supernova to stop him from laughing every time he was seeing you."

"He would not stop!" said the Doctor with a clear desperation in his voice. "And I had to! Three times he sneaked on me, whispering in my ear to take him right now. It was that or I would have murdered him."

Donna could not stop laughing at the image. "Oh man! I need to meet that Jack someday."

All humor left Rose's face, sobering her up instantanely. "That's not really something we can do I'm afraid, he is pretty busy at the moment," she said, completely aware that she was lying through her teeth to her new friend. She stood quickly, needed a little distance now, as she felt the Doctor tense beside her. She knew the Doctor had lied to her that day, saying some beautiful story to placate her, but she was not stupid. Jack Harkness had died fighting for an already lost cause. Dying like the beautiful hero she always knew he was. That day she had lost more than a friend. She had lost a brother, a best friend, a soulmate.

"Jack is… Well…"continued the Doctor, clearly not knowing how to finish that sentence, looking at Rose with concerned eyes. He tried to say something else, but she didn't want to hear. She never had mourned Jack completely and if brought up the subject right now, she was afraid to lost it there and there.

"But I'm sure you would have loved him!" Rose said, interrupting him with a fake smile, purposely looking Donna in the eyes. "If you ever had the chance to meet him, he would've charmed the pants off of you, I'm sure."

"Quit literally I have to say," muttered the Doctor in the background.

"Well if one day we cross his way I would gladly introduce myself to him," Donna enthused, sensing it was a sensible subject and to not dwell on it. "So where are you taking us next, spaceman?"

The Doctor perked right up, jumping to the console with a maniac energy. "Well I was thinking Drexell Three. The sky is red like it's on fire, and if you're there at the right time you can see the most magnificent meteor shower!" as he finished his sentence, he was already pushing and pulling buttons and levers all around the console.

As Donna was expressing her enthusiasm, Rose looked at him suspiciously. "Wait. You're not talking about the planet that was overthrown sixty-six times in three decades?"

He made a strangled sound before clearing his throat and smiling awkwardly. "Maybe?" Donna made her protest loudly clear as soon as the word had left his mouth. Making Rose smile, she officially was fond of the Doctor's spirited redhead friend.

"But I'm sure everything is going to be fine!" the Doctor said quickly while trying to assure everyone that things would be just fine. "I plan to land on a year when nothing had happened!" he continued, trying to make a point, even if he was sure that he had already lost.

"Yeah sure good idea!" said Donna sarcastically, throwing her magazine in his general direction. "Let's go to that planet where everything is going to be perfect! Where have I heard that before?" She made a show to look like she was thinking hard, making the Doctor cringe, already knowing what she will say. "Oh I remember! There was Pompeii when you landed on flipping volcano day, and we were almost roasted like a Sunday chicken!" She was now shooting him daggers, and Rose clearly could see it was a sore subject.

"You really landed on Volcano day?" Rose asked curiously.

The Doctor who had now retreated as safe distance, scrubbing his neck with a grimace. "In my defense, I wanted to land in Rome. I didn't plan to end up in Pompeii…"

Rose had a cheeky smile, humor dancing in her eyes. "How many times I heard that before?"

He pointed to the walls, trying his best to clear his name. "You know that this ship has a mind of her own!"

Donna crossed her arms, a mullish expression on her face. "And that's why we are not going to Drexwell thing. With your chance we are going directly in the middle of a revolution."

He sighed. "Drexell three...Ok fine, where would you like to go?"

The two women looked at each other for a few seconds before turning to him again. "Somewhere nice," started Rose. "Where we're not running for our life," added Donna. "And if possible where either of us have never gone," Rose finished with a smile.

The Doctor looked at the rotor. "You heard that girl? Do you have the place?" And as the light started to blink, the Doctor pulled two lever and with a dramatic gesture punched a big red button. As the TARDIS started to shiver and shake, signaling that she was moving and materializing somewhere, the Doctor looked at them with one of his maniac smile. "Direction anywhere, wherever!"

"Great… We're definitely landing in the middle of the sun or something," Donna said with a half serious eye roll as she was resigned their fate where there is no controlling where the TARDIS lands.

Rose could only do one thing in response. She laughed.