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Chapter Three

Thoughts of a Time Lord

Rose had fallen asleep in his arms after their lovemaking, and the Doctor was now staring down at her, his superior vision letting him make out her features even in the darkness the TARDIS had changed the lighting to when Rose began to drift off. She was so much healthier, the wan and gaunt cast to her features from living in slavery gone with her rebirth into a safer, a better, life.

Physical attraction wasn't something that Time Lords were meant to appreciate. They were attracted by timelines and by mental compatibilities. But he'd always been different from his people, and he'd been physically attracted to her from the start. The golden, elegant twists of her timelines and the shining pink and yellow warmth of her mind were just the icing on the cake.

She was so beautiful, it made his hearts clench in his chest. What had he done to earn her trust, her love? He could remember when they first met, her expression blank but her expressive amber eyes full of venom and contempt, for him and his people. That gaze had gradually changed, but he could never pinpoint when it had, and he wondered what had triggered the change.

She had hated him longer than she had loved him, and he still didn't know when it had started to change. Ever since he left Gallifrey and began studying humanity, things like Stockholm Syndrome and inappropriate power dynamics had haunted him, making him wonder if she truly loved him, or it was just circumstances.

Rose stirred and blinked up at him, sighing and reaching out to squat at his shoulder tiredly. "Stop it," she grumbled, her accent even thicker due to tiredness. "I can 'ear ya worryin' in my sleep. I didn' fall in love with you 'cause of Stockholm whatever, I fell in love with ya 'cause I could see you changin'. If I was just fallin' in love with my slave-owners, why didn' I fall in love with Braxiatel? 'e was kind enough to us? No, I fell in love with you for a reason. I 'ated you when we firs' met, but you learned an' grew, and it was 'cause you were willin' to look beyond what you'd been taught and understand tha' differen' doesn' mean less than tha' I fell in love with ya. So gimme the decency to respect my choice to love you. Got it?"

He felt an involuntary smile stretch across his face. She was always so good at laying things out simply where his overactive mind went mad.

"Got it," the Doctor murmured, stroking her cheek with his thumb.

She sighed a tired yawn and he leaned down to kiss her, savouring the ability to actually kiss her in this moment, instead of having to rely on memories six centuries old to cope with his constant craving for her. "Go back to sleep, my hearts," he urged gently. "I promise not to wake you up a second time with my worries. Only happy thoughts for the rest of the night, I promise."

She mumbled inaudibly against his chest, and swiftly drifted off again to the rhythm of the Doctor stroking her hair. The Doctor settled back in the plump pillows of his bed (both the pillows, the duvet and the mattresses used by the TARDIS were all from Llusolia, a planet famed for providing the cosiest bedding in the galaxy) and fulfilled his promise to only think good thoughts. He spent the rest of the night dreaming of different places to take her, from Barcelona (the planet not the city) when his exile was lifted (and even the thought of his exile couldn't ruin his elation at having his bondmate back. Half the problem he had with being grounded, after all, was the fact that it meant delaying his search for her) to Paris (the city not the planet). He could do that soon. He was pretty sure he was meant to be taking holidays, but the thought of wasting time like that had bored him until he had Rose to waste time with.

The bonding he had done with Rose meant that, now they had consummated it, their timelines were tied together. They would die together, many years from now. Rose would age like an Elorthian, as in very, very slowly (as in a week per decade), and she'd be refreshed to eighteen, the age she was when they bonded for the first time, whenever he regenerated. If Rose had been a human when they met, it wouldn't have been possible to undergo that sort of bond. Her body wouldn't have been able cope with the strain, nor her mind. But she was an Elorthian, and those traits, now that her past life's memories had been awoken in her mind, would begin to return, turning her into a sort of human-Elorthian hybrid and allowing her to sustain it. It was a fascinating quirk of Elorthian biology that no one understood, but that he was extremely grateful for.

Basically, they had forever before them, and he couldn't wait to live it with her.

Theta was eager to see Rose when he finally finished with the endless meetings Quences had dragged him to. He was completely uninterested in politics, but he was a Prydonian, and so it was expected. It made his stomach churn, listening to his fellow Time Lords rant to each other about how they could enslave more people from this planet and whether it would benefit them to conquer that one.

Rose, he knew, would be able to cheer him up, remind him of the good he could do if he climbed the political ladder far enough. He currently favoured the non-interference faction's view, though he thought they went too far in the opposite direction of the Conquerors. His true preference was in the middle, where they interfered to help other planets be the best that they could be without taking over or enslaving people. It was a dream, he knew, but he was entitled to that.

He shook his head as he entered in his rooms, hearing Rose moving around in the living area. He made his way there, and instantly froze. Rose was dusting, but that wasn't what upset him. What upset him was the bright green bruises tainting the delicate, pale pink skin of her right arm and around her left eye. The one on her face had swollen her eye shut, and there was a tremble in her hands as she cleaned.

"Rose?" He called out softly.

She must have been deep in thought, because she started and nearly dropped the vase she was cleaning when she realized he was there.

"Oh! Ya scared me," she muttered, voice strained. She didn't meet his gaze, continuing to scrub at the vase with a ragged cloth. "Is there somethin' ya need? 'cause I've got a lot o' work ta do taday."

"Actually, you're done for the day," he replied stonily, reaching out and tugging the vase and cloth away from her trembling hands. She didn't resist, slumping tiredly once he'd taken them and left them on the mantle. "Sit down," he said tightly, waiting until she had sunk onto the low chaise-longue and was sitting quietly, staring at her feet, to go and fetch his medikit. He carried it back over and kneeled in front of her, almost amused at how, when she'd first been given to him, he'd often sat on the chaise and had her kneel in front of him to rub his feet. Now, their positions were reversed and it seemed much more right. Like a primitive kneeling before the statue of a goddess.

"Are these the only ones?" He asked coolly as he could, trying to keep his voice even as he knew she was always mentally sensitive after things like this, as if afraid of him too. That was normal according to information he had looked into in the TARDIS databanks. She shook her head, avoiding his eyes as she pulled up her tunic to reveal several large boot prints decorating her torso.

He ground his teeth together in anger as he examined her wrist, which he now realized was swollen. A scan with his newly invented sonic screwdriver showed it was broken. Her cheekbone was fractured. Thankfully, none of her ribs were injured, but even with the supplies he had, she'd be sore and tender for a while. He couldn't heal her completely, it would be too suspicious.

Quences would take her away if he decided that Theta was too attached to a 'mere slave'. Take her away and sell her to some brute who would do Rassilon knew what with her. Theta couldn't let that happen. She was his anchor to reality when being stuck on Gallifrey made him feel like he was going insane.

"Who was it?" He asked finally, when he'd tended all her injuries and was sitting on the chaise with Rose, her head in his lap as he ran his finger through it. He couldn't reveal his attachment to Rose to anybody, but he could at least remind whichever of his cousins that had hurt her that Rose was 'his' and they had no right to 'punish' 'his property'.

Those words had become so abhorrent to him since he had realized that the slaves were sentient people in their own rights.

"Lord Glospin," Rose croaked out, her voice hoarse and tired. "Ailyse dropped a glass o' wine 'e'd ordered 'er ta bring ta 'im. We're pretty interchangeable ta ya lot, so i' was easy ta say i' was me."

Theta concentrated. Rose wasn't wrong, it wasn't until he'd seen the truth that he had begun to think of the slaves as people in their own right, and he'd been doing his best to remember which was which and address each by name ever since. The image that came to mind when he thought of the name 'Ailyse' was a young Cheinopian, with purple tentacles instead of hair, pupilless silver eyes and lavender skin, clumsy due to her webbed feet and hands, not to mention her breathing difficulties.

Cheinope was an ocean planet, so the Time Lords hadn't bothered to conquer it, but they'd taken some slaves, purely so the richest Houses could claim them for the 'exoticness' of it. It was disgusting, and it repulsed Theta to know he had once been indifferent to those poor peoples' plight.

"Is she alright?" He asked softly.

"She's young," Rose sighed. "On'y about twen'y, which is like a twelve-year-old 'uman or a ninety-year-old Time Tot. An' she wasn' born inta this life. She's on'y been a slave for about three years, an' on'y outta the pens fer a few months. 's not easy. She's scared. Missin' the water."

Theta bit the inside of his mouth, thinking. "There's Lake Abydos," he offered slowly. "I could, go there for a holiday. One of the secluded parts. If I brought you and Ailyse as my attendants, she could at least go swimming for a bit, so long as she kept hidden."

Rose rolled over to gaze up at him. "Ya're a good person, Theta," she breathed. "'m glad ta know ya."

"I am the man I am because you showed me the truth," he replied softly, stroking her cheek. Then he leaned down to kiss her.