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butterflyTo make a long story short - the 'twist' is that Anakin and Obi-Wan were never sent to the future. They were doubled - part of them went to the future and the other part stayed and did all the stuff that happened in the movies.
In order for younger!Obi-Wan to survive in this future, the ghost!Obi-Wan would need to fade into the Force so that this Obi-Wan could connect, because they aren't clones, but genuine 'echoes'. He'd been trying to do that and had been finding it hard and ghost!Obi-Wan would have had to look past his own unique ways of spinning the truth in order to let go. It's the doubled connection - ghost!Obi-Wan cutting off younger!Obi-Wan's connection to the Force - that would lead to Obi-Wan nearly dying as per Anakin's dream.
I was in the middle of writing the next chapter when I got stuck on the process, but I will share it with y'all as well:Chapter 42
The Force was playing games with him.
Really, Obi-Wan thought, that was the only possible solution. To give him this time and place where he could have Anakin, but also show him all of Anakin’s flaws and mistakes in more painful depth than he ever could have imagined – it could only be the work of a heartless universe.
And yet, it seemed that he was fated to be trapped here for a while longer.
Obi-Wan smiled at Mothma and reached out for another small sliver of fruit, not allowing his annoyance at her delays to show on his face. One of the problems with being famously diplomatic was the need to be patient when people were stalling. And, without doubt, Mothma wasn’t quite ready to begin the discussion that she wanted so dearly.
The Force had brought him here – Obi-Wan no longer had any doubts about that. This wasn’t an accident. The cards were too well aligned. Much as he would love to be able to go home and fix all of this bloodshed and terror, Leia’s words wouldn’t let him. There was something about the girl, something that needed working out.
“General Kenobi,” Mothma said, hesitantly, at least for her. “You may be wondering why I requested you to attend this breakfast alone.”
“The question had occurred to me,” Obi-Wan said.
“I mean you no disrespect, but in our work together during the rebellion, you had a bitterness about you whenever Skywalker’s name came up,” Mothma said. “Nothing to point to specifically, you understand, but there were enough oddities about the whole business to make someone wonder what happened between the two of you before he died."
She was so much different than she'd been before – harder, as though the years had honed her to a razor's point. Her eyes had paled slightly, and fine lines had worked into her face, giving her a depth of character that she'd sorely lacked the last time he'd seen her – five weeks ago... decades ago.
What did she see when she looked at him?
She was still waiting for him to speak, to give something away, and he was content to let her wait, sampling the supplied breakfast instead of acting rashly. So, the older version of himself had given out hints that Anakin had become less than trustworthy but... he'd never told her what had happened. Luke had spoken truly when he'd said that no one knew that Anakin Skywalker and the dreaded Darth Vader were one and the same.
That told him that he hadn't changed much at all – he'd still protected Anakin, even when it was an obviously stupid thing to do.
For all their outward victories for the sake of the Republic, it was increasingly clear to Obi-Wan that the Council had chosen very poorly when they'd allowed him to train Anakin. And yet, even with that knowledge burning inside him, he would choose no differently.
And that was where the actual writing ended.
Another big series that I never finished was my S4 AU with Rose - it started somewhat close to canon and was going to deviate further and further as I went along.
My initial thought for the series was this:
Sadly, I didn't get to anything actually involving the Master.
Here's the last of what I'd written for "Chapter and Verse", the story that I broke off in the middle of:Chapter Two: Rose
“I can't possibly need to wear all this,” Donna said. Rose looked up from her contemplation of three different pairs of shoes to see Donna holding up a soft, white shift, similar to the one that Rose had slipped over her own head only moments ago, while staring in dismay at the rest of the pile of clothing that Rose had dumped in front of her.
“If you don't want to wear the dress, we can explain away your trousers and shirt,” Rose said, deciding on the pale yellow pair of half-boots. People, Donna would learn soon enough, were willing to accept just about anything if it was presented casually. Pretend that something was completely natural and most people would just go along with it. It was one of the most useful skills that Rose had learnt from the Doctor.
“That's an actual corset,” Donna said, eyebrows drawn up in distaste. Donna had already displayed a fascinating variety of facial expressions, and Rose had only known her for a couple of hours. “I like breathing.”
“You won't have any problems breathing, as long as it isn't too tightly-laced,” Rose said, snagging some stockings off of a shelf and sitting down on a nearby strut to pull them up over her knees and tie them into place. “The TARDIS will make certain that you've got one the right size.”
“What's he going to wear?” Donna asked, tossing the shift onto a bench.
“Probably the brown suit,” Rose said, thoughtfully. “Though he does have that blue one now. He might wear that.”
“That can't be period,” Donna said.
“People don't generally care what the Doctor wears,” Rose said. Well, Jack had, she remembered. 'U-Boat captain'. She stifled a giggle. Donna wouldn't understand and Rose wasn't sure she was up to explaining at the moment. “It's part of that whole thing that he has... that sense of... of feeling like he has answers. People tend to fall in line. I'm sure you've seen it.”
“Oh, I've seen something, all right,” Donna muttered, only barely audible. Then she cleared her throat. “Do you need help with that thing?”
“One of the benefits of wearing alien clothing is corsets that tighten themselves,” Rose said, pulling it up and carefully placing it where she wanted it to be. Then, she reached back and yanked on the ribbon and breathed in deeply, and she heard Donna gasp as the corset did its work. Rose let her breath out again when it was safe and then glanced down at her more impressive cleavage. Still not at the level that Donna was at just by existing, but definitely fuller than she normally looked. “Tugging on the other side will undo the whole thing.”
“How did...” Donna made a sort of sputtery noise.
Rose glanced over, trying to see what Donna was having such trouble getting out. She seemed a cross between horrified and fascinated.
“Does it come with an instruction manual?” Donna asked finally.
“The Doctor told me what to do,” Rose said, her cheeks only slightly warm. “The first time that we went to a place where corsets were common – I think it was actually an alien planet, that time.” The memory returned, as bright and clear as if it'd been yesterday – the Doctor, with his short hair and his black jacket, telling her the special features of a corset without actually mentioning anything about 'skin' or 'breasts'. “Yeah, it was Korsea, out past Betelgeuse and about... eight million years into the future. Of course, I wasn't really fitting in anyway, as it was mostly tall aliens with see-through skin and no hair, and I had to wear this half-mask to breathe through because the air was a bit toxic to humans. That was... just before their revolution. Well, I say just before, but we ended up being a part of it. And even afterwards, they still loved their corsets.”
“You can talk, can't you?” Donna said. “You sound like him.”
Rose couldn't tell from the sound of Donna's voice whether or not she thought that was a good thing.
“You're not the first person to say that,” Rose said, hauling up her underskirts and attaching them. Donna was still dressed her in original clothes, trousers and a soft-looking brown top. “Are you sure that you don't want to dress up?”
“It really doesn't hurt?” Donna asked, reaching out and pressing a finger against one of the hard curves of the corset.
“I promise,” Rose said, reaching down and wrapping her hand around Donna's, momentarily startled by the warmth of Donna's skin. Donna looked her in the eyes and Rose wondered just what she was looking for and then Donna nodded, pulling away and going over to the clothing that Rose had collected for her. She poked at it, made a considering sound and then started changing.
Rose picked up her dress proper, also light yellow, and pulled it into place, then slipped into her half-boots. They were, of course, almost unbelievably comfortable. Humans, the Doctor had assured her once, would one day be able to create shoes as comfortable as the ones available in the TARDIS, but not for another three hundred years.
As far as Rose was concerned, that was far too long to wait.
She examined herself in one of the full-length mirrors and brushed out the skirts, though they weren't wrinkled in the slightest. Now that she was in the yellow, she wasn't sure if she liked the way it looked. Perhaps she should have chosen a darker color or a more vibrant one. Maybe one more like the velvety blue that she'd picked out for Donna.
A chirping sound, not quite a bird call, filled the room.
“What is that?” Donna asked.
“That'd be the Doctor, wondering if we're ever planning on joining him in the main room,” Rose said, bustling over to help Donna finish getting dressed, the cut of the dress and the push of the corset making her sway more than normal. She'd hate to have to wear this sort of costume all the time – give her trousers and trainers any day – but it was nice to dress up when the occasion called for it. She finished up the row of fasteners that would keep Donna's dress in place and then backed away to get a better look. “That's a beautiful color on you. Did you find shoes?”
“They were even my size,” Donna said. “How is that... does the ship make the clothes?”
“Sort of,” Rose said. “It's complicated. It... adjusts preexisting fabric. The Doctor explained to me once, but it was a bit over my head at the time.” She paused. “I should ask him to tell me again. I might understand now.”
“Where were you?” Donna asked. “I mean-- I know I've got no right to ask, but... the Doctor said that you followed a lizard between dimensions. After what I've seen with him, I shouldn't doubt it, but it sounds absolutely mad.”
“That's life with the Doctor,” Rose said, with a laugh. “Always completely mental, but so utterly fantastic. You get used to it.”
“That's just it,” Donna said. “I want to, Rose.”
“You want to...”
“I want to get used to it,” she said. “I want to stay, after this and after Rome. I want to see the stars from a mile away and smell what it's like on an alien planet and maybe meet an alien that doesn't look like a great big spider.”
“The Doctor said...”
“The Doctor could tell you weren't happy about me coming on,” Donna said. “But I don't care about getting in the way of the two of you – I just want the sky. I'm not- I'm not competition.”
“Of course, you're not,” Rose agreed, eyes wide, feeling like she'd been slapped. “I didn't realize that I was...”
Rose turned away from Donna, pressed her hand against her stomach, where the scar from the Titanic was, and closed her eyes.
“The day I met the Doctor, I was about to get married,” Donna said. Rose could hear the shift of fabric and then Donna's hand was on her shoulder, gentle. “I was in love. Well, I loved who I thought he was, but... the day I met the Doctor, I saw the world for the first time. I saw my life, the way it was and I... even if it hadn't turned out that Lance had betrayed me, I don't think I would have married him, not after meeting the Doctor. Not because I'm attracted, believe me – you can have skinnybones all to yourself – but because I saw that I could have more than a life filled with gossip and work and men.”
“That's what he does,” Rose said. She twisted slightly, just to meet Donna's eyes, and felt herself smiling. “That's who he is. He did it for me, too.”
Donna smiled back, hesitantly, and opened her mouth-
And the alarm chimed again, more insistently. Donna burst out laughing, her hand sliding down to Rose's elbow, and Rose couldn't help but join her.
“What is that sound?” Donna asked. “It's not a bird.”
“It's a pterodactyl call,” Rose said. “It's new, actually. He's changed it. It used to be the roar of a... the closest thing we have is a lion, but... think alien and with six legs. And purple and blue.”
“See, that's exactly-”
“If adding an additional female traveler always exponentially increased the clothing changing time, I'd never have done it,” came the Doctor's voice from the doorway.
Donna shrieked – actually shrieked – and spun around to the side. Rose turned about more slowly. She'd been right about the brown suit, but he was wearing a deep blue shirt that she wasn't sure she'd seen before underneath it and she knew that he had on a new tie. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth and he was leaning against the door frame as if he knew exactly how good he looked at this moment.
“Susan and Barbara,” he continued, “got dressed separately, for the most part. Tegan and Nyssa positively orbited around each other in such things, but still didn't take any longer dressing together than apart.”
“You could just ask 'what took you so long?',” Rose said, but she couldn't keep a smile off her face. It was like a great big dam had broken inside him and each time he mentioned a new name, something inside her clicked – the part of her that still remembered being in his head, she reckoned.
“You could knock,” Donna said. Rose looked over at Donna and wasn't surprised to see her hands on her hips. “I could have been naked.”
“Yes, that would have been... deeply scarring, no doubt,” the Doctor said, quirking an eyebrow. Donna let out an offended huff of breath. His grin widened. “Both of you look wonderful.”
Rose hurried toward him and he came forward to meet her – the kiss was soft and cool and, though brief, exactly what she needed. When she pulled back from him, he reached up and pressed two fingers lightly against her lips, and she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
“You've dealt with these Carrionites before,” she whispered, so that he could hear her, but Donna couldn't. “You know what to do?”
“We'll figure it out,” he said, his hand slipping down to hold hers. He lowered both their hands down, and his gaze kept shifting to her mouth, as if he couldn't help himself. “We always do.”
The certainty in his voice sent a deep shiver of happiness through her and she leaned forward for another tiny snog, almost too brief to think on, but filled with all her joy.
Once they were outside, the Doctor pulled out a small device – it was roughly the size of a standard remote control, but the buttons were labeled in spiraled Gallifreyan that she couldn't read. Probably technical terms, she'd wager. The Doctor tapped several buttons, then did something else to it with the sonic screwdriver, talking all the while, of course, about 'spectral wavelengths' and 'biological resonance'. Rose gave him about half her attention, focusing the rest of it on Donna, who still seemed fairly astonished that Rose had been right about the corset, from the way she kept breathing deeply, as if to prove that she could.
Rose considered the notion of Donna coming along on a more permanent basis, poking at the idea from every possible angle: Jack had worked out well, all things considered, but Adam had been a disaster and Mickey had-
Rose swallowed against the memory that popped into her mind, of Mickey flashing her a grin and teasing her about getting hurt chasing after another potential alien menace. The last time that she'd seen Mickey, they hadn't even said good-bye, because she hadn't known that it would be the last time.
Donna wasn't anything like Mickey, but she wasn't like Jack, either. She was entirely herself, that one, and Rose wasn't quite sure what she should say. She still wasn't sure if the Doctor asking Donna along wasn't his way of trying to... slow down. He wasn't like a man, not most of the time, no matter what Mickey always thought, so she couldn't predict what he meant by what Mickey or Jimmy or any of the other blokes would mean.
“I've got her,” the Doctor said, his voice raising in triumph, the machine in his hand making a three-two beeping pattern. He waved his hand in a northerly direction. “We need to go that way for roughly two kilometres and then I can take another reading.”
Rose glanced at the gently-sloping grassy hill in front of them, then down at where her boots were squishing into the mud – she hoped that Donna had gone with the sensible shoes. “Onwards and upward,” she muttered, instinctively taking the hand that the Doctor had reached out to her. He tossed a smile back at her and they were off.
“Couldn't we have gone by the road?” Donna asked, from close behind them. “If you can blinky-machine us from the middle of a field, you can blinky-machine us from a proper road.”
“What's the adventure in that?” the Doctor asked.
“I should have known that you didn't have a good reason,” Donna said.
The was going to be based around the Tudor time period, dealing with Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. The Doctor is trying for Rome and lands in Wilton House, just as Lady Mary is going through a trying time.
They should arrive in 1587 – spring. They help inspire her to start Wilton House.
She has only recently lost her brother – that's why the escaped Carrionites went to her. The events of the episode make her see a larger world (though she may or may not realize the full extent of who the Doctor, Rose, and Donna are).
Only Lilith? Maybe. She should realize who Rose is – the threat needs to be focused on Rose (theme!). In fact, maybe only Lilith is left.
“The others... trapped in there... they starved themselves that I might live. And Mary... drew me. Her grief matched my own. I used the playwright's pain without understanding it. Now, I know what it feel like to lose an entire world and be forced to survive.”
“So do I,” Rose said, stepping forward. Lilith watched her cautiously, like the snake watches the mongoose. “I lost... everything and I had to go on when all I wanted was to go back.”
“But your world was restored to you,” Lilith said. “Your love stands with you. My mothers and sisters are forever gone.”
“The Doctor's people are all dead,” Rose said. “Never to return. He has felt your grief.”
She should be saved (everyone gets saved, though not everyone lives). Lilith lives and Lady Mary is inspired.
Here's the breakdown that I wrote for the S4 episodes.
Okay, I've decided that the Master has been somewhat... humanized. What happened is that Martha opening the TARDIS caused a program that the Master had installed to kick in and that's why he was able to resurrect in this version and not the other. So, he's currently researching ways to become a Time Lord again but when they catch wind of Rose Tyler being back in the universe (saying goodbye to Jack), he comes up with another plan. He wants to use Rose to get to the Doctor (plus, have the fun of getting Rose when the Doctor cares so much about her – it's all kinds of win for him (so he thinks).
Partners in Crime – Realignment 'verse
(A Most Noble Undertaking)
1 – we open with Rose still injured from Christmas and the Doctor talking her into resting for a bit at Sarah Jane's place. After she's been dropped off, he goes off to investigate some odd energy signatures.
(the Doctor)
2 – We have Donna investigating Renova. At the very end of her chapter, she runs into the Doctor.
(Donna)
3 – Rose is not content to sit around and heal while there may be action afoot. Especially since Sarah Jane and Mr. Smith have picked up on the same energy signature that the Doctor was so interested in earlier. She and the SJA crew go off to investigate as well.
(Rose)
4 – The Doctor and Donna track down Earnest Young, who appears to be the head of the company and the Doctor cows him while Donna investigates the files and finds some intriguing information about the formula and its side-effects.
(The Doctor)
5 – Rose sees something and heads off, while the SJA crew discover the same information that the Doctor did in 4. They run into the Doctor (who wonders where Rose is) and together they destroy the barrels, the formula, and the assembly line and feel that they've gotten Young to see the line, warning him that they'll be watching him.
(Sarah Jane)
6 – Meanwhile, Rose runs into Lucy, who call herself 'Harriet Cole' and says that she's a Time Agent. She says that she was just here to investigate the situation but that it looks to be under control. After she leaves, Rose runs into everyone else again, and she agrees to let Donna come along with them (Wilf stuff still happens?).
(Rose)
Fires of Pompeii – Realignment 'verse
(Chapter and Verse)
1 – open on Donna getting used to the Doctor/Rose dynamic and the mistake of landing in the Tudor period
(Donna)
2 – setting the stage for the reveal – Rose and Donna get dressed up and everyone gets to know Lady Mary (Rose claims that Donna is her recently widowed older sister)
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor and the realization of the Carrionites
(the Doctor)
4 – Donna finds out from the Steward's books that no one has been dying in odd or mysterious ways and Rose wanders off to investigate, going missing (again)
(Donna)
5 – Rose confronts Lilith and finds out the truth behind the dead Carrionites and the situation – the Doctor comes to rescue her and tells her that she can't possible trust Lilith, Rose tells the Doctor to trust her instead
(Rose)
6 – the Doctor makes the choice to trust Rose and Lilith agrees to have her power bound – with her family dead, it's not of much use to her anyway. When she agrees to that, he's instead willing to take her to a more hospitable time and place. Lady Mary argues that he doesn't need to – she says that Lilith can stay.
(The Doctor)
Planet of the Ood – Realignment 'verse
(Unfinished Business)
1 – Donna suggests that since the Doctor's aim is so bad, why bother actually aiming? The Doctor says “all right” and randomizes the controls. Landing them on the freezing cold Ood planet, where they run into the Ood in the snow
(Donna)
2 – At the plant, they start to get the tour and wander off – Rose notices something else and wanders off on her own (as she is wont to do). She notices a tiny bit of wolf graffiti and follows it.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor expresses annoyance to Donna about the whole 'wandering off' thing, while they continue with their bit of plotline.
(The Doctor)
4 – Meanwhile, Rose has stumbled into a bit of a Bad Wolf situation (that the Doctor never ran into on his own because he never went there). One of the semi-rabid Ood oracles at her. “A friendly face hides more lies that you could ever imagine” and suchlike. Warnings about the future/past.
(Rose)
5 – The Doctor and Donna's plot is concluded as previously.
(Donna)
6 – The Doctor confronts Rose about going off on her own and she counters by telling him that since the ceremony, he's completely backed away on their relationship.
(the Doctor)
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky – realignment 'verse
(Less Than Kind)
1 – we open with a continuation of the last scene from the previous episode, from Rose's PoV instead. Their argument heats up and finally does end in a bit more movement on the romantic front.
(Rose)
2 – which is, of course, when the call from 'Holly' (Lucy) comes in and we find out that Jack has been buried alive. The Doctor, Rose, and Donna go to Wales to find out what's going on and meet the TW crew (they run into Gwen on the roof!) – Rose recognizes Tosh and Ianto (but not Gwen or Owen). Tosh, of course, made her sonic screwdriver and Ianto had worked with her on many projects.
(the Doctor)
3 – They decide to split up – Rose and the Doctor will go to the past to save Jack, while Donna stays in the present with the TW people who are trying to save Cardiff. We stay with Donna for this section.
(Donna)
4 – Rose and the Doctor go to the past using the locator information that 'Holly Cole' have them and find Jack roughly twenty years into his death sentence. He's very glad to see them and tells them as much of the whole story as he knows – he also reveals that he's never heard of 'Harriet Cole' but that doesn't mean much, as Time Agents change their handles as needed. A blonde in her thirties could be any of five or six agents.
(Rose)
5 – Back in Cardiff, I want Donna to be directly responsible for helping to save Tosh from dying. In this part, maybe she helps redirect people. She's a Temp person, she can come up with ideas. Grey doesn't know that she's there, so she saves Tosh from getting shot.
(Tosh)
6 – Rose, the Doctor, and Jack return to the present and run into Grey, who has quite a lot to say (after he woke up from getting beaned in the head, he slunk away to regroup). The Doctor and Rose have more efficient counters for his words than Jack did.
(The Doctor)
7 – Tosh and Donna don't quite manage to save Owen in time and he dies in the reactor. Tosh is inconsolable.
(Donna)
8 – the return of John and the judgment of Grey. Episode end. People meet up – the Doctor and Rose comment on Gwen's resemblance to Gwyneth, Rose remarks that she's met versions of Ianto and Tosh in her previous TW experiences. The Doctor disables John's vortex manipulator and offers to drop him off somewhere – John says that he'd like to stay here with Jack (Jack is the only one even remotely all right with that idea).
(the Doctor)
9 – Rose calls up 'Holly' to thank her for helping Jack get saved. Asks more about who Holly will be to her and about the Time Agency connection and gets blather in response.
(Rose)
10 – Jack comes back on board the TARDIS to say goodbye again (and Donna gets in a good flirt with him), then the TARDIS begins reacting the way it did in the original end of TPS, taking off without permission.
(Jack)
The Doctor's Daughter – realignment 'verse
(In His Footsteps)
1 – the original landing on the Hath planet and the cloning of the Doctor, the initial battle that lands Rose and Jack on the other side of the wall from the Doctor and Donna.
(The Doctor)
2 – Rose and Jack with the Hath. Jack actually gets shot by them (and comes back) before they're willing to listen to reason.
(Rose)
3 – the Doctor is pissed off about everything. Donna connects very strongly with Jenny (who she still names). Jenny tries to connect to the Doctor, who can only think of Rose. An escape is planned.
(Donna)
4 – Back on the Hath side, Rose and Jack establish communications with the Doctor (who is thrilled). They trigger the same system thing that Martha did (they do not save the Hath). And then they go off across the surface to find the signal thing.
(Jack)
5 – Donna and the Doctor escape and make their way to the compound, where Donna figures things out. The show-down occurs and Jenny is shot.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose refuses to leave when the Doctor wants to, telling him that she wants to sit with Jenny for a while (because of the grace she saw in her when she died for the Doctor). Jenny, of course, comes back to life, full of energy. The Doctor invites her aboard and she declines, stating that she wants to find her own way. To the Doctor's shock, Donna says that she wants to go with Jenny. The Doctor gives them a bit of TARDIS coral for Jenny to grow, telling her that when it does grow up, maybe she'll have a chance of understanding what it means to be a Time Lord. They take Jack back to TW and send him on his way.
(Rose)
The Unicorn and the Wasp - realignment 'verse
(Lux Eterna)
1 – Martha calls them home and tells them the problem.
(the Doctor)
2 – They go to Tom's location and notice something interesting – the same radiation that had cropped up in “A Most Noble Undertaking” is happening here, as well. I think that I want Rose going off to investigate something and Martha following her, wondering what she's doing.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor and Tom Mulligan are working together and they run into Lucy Saxon. The Doctor recognizes her and asks what she's doing. She tells him that the company in question has been owned by her family for years. After Harry's death, she decided to go back to her roots.
(the Doctor)
4 – Rose and Martha come across some files that lead them to a secret room filled with experiments (a chance for Martha to shine). They sent the patients free.
(Martha)
5 – Lucy gets a phone call that seems to upset her and she tells the Doctor that she had no idea such horrible things were going on in her place of business and that she plans on launching an immediate investigation. She dismisses them and, while the Doctor remains a bit suspicious, he also knows that Lucy did shoot the Master, so he's sympathetic to her and is willing to believe that she didn't really know.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose and Martha reunite with the Doctor and Tom, sharing with them what they'd found. This distresses the Doctor, who shares with them the news about Lucy. Martha expresses the hope that it really was a mistake that will get cleaned up – Lucy's name was not to be found on any of the papers, after all. It ends on a bit of an uneasy note.
(Rose)
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead – realignment 'verse
(The Doctor's Wife)
1 – The Doctor gets a message on the psychic paper. Rose is a bit suspicious of the 'kisses' part of it. They get to the library and notice how empty it is. Spooky, even. They run into the security drone that's labeled and screaming, and then run into River (and crew).
(the Doctor)
2 – River and Rose don't get off to the best start. River and the Doctor get off to a worse one. Arguments and whatnot ensue. Rose strongly defends Evangelista against the others. She also notices when Evangelista is warning about the open door and follows her, managing to save her from the Vash Narato.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor follows Rose (of course) and they all end up running from the Vns.
(the Doctor)
4 – River and the Doctor continue to not see eye-to-eye, while Rose considers the possibilities of what River means. She sees it as a positive sign that the Doctor will recover from losing her in the future, while the Doctor is, basically, saying “fuck that shit”.
(River)
5 – Some people die and running continues. The Doctor talks to River again and decides that he can't handle the idea of moving on and losing Rose – tries to send Rose off like he did with Donna in the original episode, thus breaking his vows.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose in the false reality. She fights against it a lot. No Evangelista, so she figures it out on her own that things are screwed up and she starts trying to fight that from the inside.
(Rose)
7 – The Doctor is seriously pissed off. Rose has been 'saved', River is treating him like a lover, and he's not feeling sympathetic to anyone. Another person may die at this time (people definitely alive at episode end – Evangelista, Lux, River)
(River)
8 – Rose finds her way to CAL and talks to her, former trapped girl to trapped girl. “This is no life” vs “I'm saving these people”. She forces Cal to confront what she's really doing and to start growing up. And makes contact with the Doctor through a security ball.
(Rose)
9 – the Doctor challenges the VN, no need for River to die or things to go 'boom'. River is reluctantly impressed “You may not be my Doctor, not yet, but you are one hell of a man”. Rose is restored to him and he tells River that, while what she says about his future may be true, it won't happen as long as Rose is alive and for enough years beyond for the pain to start to fade. He can't quite believe that it's possible, but he'll take her word. He gives her a kiss on the cheek good-bye.
(the Doctor)
10 – Rose confronts the Doctor about breaking his vows and the Doctor and Rose consummate that marriage of theirs. Finally.
(Rose)
Midnight – realignment 'verse
(Echo)
1 – Landing on the pleasure planet and spending some time enjoying themselves and each other. The Doctor notices the offer of a cruise and he and Rose decide to take it.
(the Doctor)
2 – the first bit of the trip, getting to know the other passengers.
(Rose)
3 – the machine breaks down and the Doctor and Rose go to work investigating the problem. Sky is invaded.
(the Doctor)
4 – Sky really begins to creep out everyone except the Doctor and Rose. She decides to focus in on the Doctor.
(Rose)
5 – Everyone starts to turn against the Doctor and Rose for being 'freaks', especially when Sky 'recovers'. When Rose tries to stop them from hurting the Doctor, Val pushed her into the seats (she hits her head). The Doctor is frozen during all this. The rest plays out like the episode, the Hostess gives her life when she sees the truth.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose wakes up in the Doctor's arms to a very quiet and solemn cabin atmosphere. The Doctor is full of barely contained rage. His bitterness toward humans not Rose is at its height – they nearly killed her. “If I hadn't been sure that you would wake up,” he told her softly, “None of them would have left that ship alive.” This is the Lonely God aspect of the Doctor and it is and should be a very scary note to end on.
(Rose)
Turn Left – realignment 'verse
('Listen')
1 – Rose on Chan Chen, buying a present for the Doctor. She runs into the fortune teller and is sent to the past to change her decision to work at the butcher's instead of Henriks. Rose and Mickey get married and have a kid, under the backdrop of aliens and invasions. Rose has something on her back.
(Rose)
2 – Rose runs into a TenThatNeverWas. He's blonde and brash and notices the Time Beetle. She goes back with him to the TARDIS.
(Rose)
3 – the big seduction/sex scene with Rose and Not!Ten.
(Not!Ten)
4 – Rose makes the decision to go back to the past and change her change of mind.
(Rose)
5 – Or, rather, it's the Not!Ten that does it for her – he bumps into her on her way to the butcher's and charms her a bit, and she and he walk along the street until Henrick's and that's where he leaves her, right in front of the 'Wanted' ad. Her desire from earlier surges up again and she goes into the store, undoing the damage of the Time Beetle.
(Not!Ten)
6 – she wakes up into the tent, the fortune teller runs off, and her Doctor is there. She totally jumps him.
(Rose)
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
(Amidst Ruins and Fallen Gods)
1 – Rose and the Doctor are enjoying a lazy day (he's tinkering and she's learning some Gallifreyan) when she gets a phone call from 'Harriet' asking for her help and telling her that she can't bring the Doctor. Rose agrees, since Harriet's stock is pretty solid since the Jack thing, and she goes off to meet with her. We're introduced to her 'husband' Lucius Cole, who may come across as the Master or may not. They admit to Rose that they are working on a way to make humans 'relatively' immortal. Rose expresses her reservations with the idea.
(Rose)
2 – the Doctor is contacted, by the Master, who tells him that he has Rose. The Doctor? Freaks out, of course. Serious amounts of 'chicken with head cut off' and lots of panic at why he can't sense the Master.
(the Doctor)
3 – Rose figures out that something strange is going on and is turned into a prisoner. She figures out who Lucius is at this time, calling him 'Koschei' in her head, while Harriet/Lucy starts calling him 'Harry'. Lots of names. She asks to speak to the Doctor and does so, giving him a hint about assembling a bunch of people to rescue her if need be while she works him from the inside.
(Rose)
4 – The Doctor contacts Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane in order to help figure out where the Master might have Rose and what he plans to do to her and how to rescue her. Sarah Jane has Luke, Maria, and Clyde to help her (and Alan Jackson, too, I think). Jack has the TW team plus John, and Martha has UNIT and Tom and Mr. Copper, who has been tinkering around with lots of things since the Doctor and Rose left him on Earth.
(the Doctor)
5 – Rose figures out that the Master is human now and that's why he and Lucy are doing all this research. They think that they finally have a breakthrough, but were hoping that she would be willing to play their lab rat. But 'we can force it on you' they tell her. It'll hurt more if she fights it. She tells them that she's never going to give in (she gets knocked out by a guard).
(Rose)
6 – Martha reminds the Doctor about the suspicious activity of Lucy's group – if the Master is alive, then Lucy may have shot him as part of one of his plans, they realize. Jack and Tosh try to locate possible places where Rose may have been taken. They start with where the TARDIS has landed and work outward from there.
(the Doctor)
7 – Rose wakes up in a strange location, all hooked up to the Master's machine. She argues with him about using it on her and he basically tells her that she's got no choices – he has her trapped and he's going to do this to her no matter what she might want.
(Rose)
8 – Sarah Jane and Mr. Smith locate “Harriet and Lucius Cole”. She's found out that Cole had been Lucy's maiden name before she'd married Harry. The Doctor says, “Lucy and Harry. It's like they're mocking me. It was staring us right in the face. They swapped names.” Tosh is going through CCTV footage, trying to locate the places where Lucy and the Master may have taken Rose. They're starting to get frantic. As they find possible locations, Martha tries to convince UNIT that they search there for Rose and the Master – the Doctor tracks down Alistair in order to get him to talk them into expending the manpower on 'this one girl'. “And the man who was willing to enslave the human race. You have to trust me on this, Bridgider. If we lose Rose, then you're also losing me.”
(the Doctor)
9 – Rose wakes up, feeling rather woozy. Lucy asks her how she's feeling and they have That Conversation about how Lucy has been lying to her for months. “But I did help you save Jack's life,” she points out. “Just to make me trust you,” Rose realizes. “You never cared about Jack, did you?” The Master comes in, also asking her how she feels. He's carrying a gun and she realizes that he's thinking of seeing whether or not she can regenerate the old fashioned way. She brings up the Doctor's threats and the Master shrugs it off, saying that the Doctor has always forgiven him before. He shoots the gun and Rose dies.
(Rose)
10 – Tosh has narrowed it down to the most likely target. The Doctor is at the Hub at that moment in time and Jack volunteers himself and his team to come with to help out. In the end, it's the Doctor, Jack, Gwen, Ianto, and Martha who go along.
(Jack)
11 – Rose wakes up in the Master's arms and he's pissed as all hell that she looks the same – she's not Time Lord enough for his tastes. The warning on the estate goes off. “He's here!” the Master says, uncocking the gun. He and Lucy take Rose to a more secure room that has a video feed to the outside and the Doctor comes up.
(Rose)
12 – The Doctor sees red. Literally, he's going to go off the deep end here. And then the Master offers that olive branch. “I've given Rose an experimental treatment that may very well give her the ability to live forever. Think of it, Doctor – the little wife, yours for the rest of your life. Rather a good deal, don't you think, for letting me have the same thing and go on my own way?” Also, he should thank Martha for restoring him to life “however an imperfect job you did” Rose tells the Doctor that the Master is human before he cuts her off, seriously upset that she spilled the beans.
(Martha)
13 – the Master cuts off the connection and throws Rose to the ground. She's getting pretty pissed off herself. And what the Master did to her isn't exactly what he would have wanted. She has a healing ability now, but, more importantly, she's developing a psychic knack and a time sense. She starts to see into the Master's head (fear and broken pride) and Lucy's (who is truly insane to a scary degree). He has her taken off somewhere and she's in a room alone with Lucy, with a guard outside.
(Rose)
14 – the Master calls the Doctor to talk alone. He tempts the Doctor with the universe and with Rose. The Doctor is willing to trade the universe for Rose and then... he hesitates and refuses. the Master is baffled. “It's not what she wants,” the Doctor said. “This is not what she would want me to do.” “And you listen to her?” the Master said. “I thought that you loved her.” “More than anything else I have ever loved,” the Doctor said. “And that's exactly why I'm saying no, because as much as I love her, I respect her. And she wouldn't want me to trade away myself or the universe for her sake. I understand that now.” “You're a fool,” the Master tells him. “Goodbye, old friend,” the Doctor says and closes off the line. He turns to Jack, Martha, Gwen, and Ianto – time for Plan B.
(the Doctor)
15 – the Master goes to confront Rose... but she's gone, out of her cell. “How could you let her escape?” he demands of Lucy. “She just made so much sense,” Lucy says, not certain herself what happened. “Find her,” he orders of his goons. Rose, of course, is 'listening' with her newfound psychic sense and is avoiding the guards that way. She can tell where she needs to be and when, so she heads that way.
(Rose)
16 – UNIT storms the compound, with orders to capture and not kill. Jack and Gwen, Martha and Ianto, and the Doctor are also searching.
(Gwen)
17 – Jack and Martha run into Lucy, taking her prisoner.
(Jack)
18 – Rose runs into Gwen and Ianto, saving them from a goon attack.
(Ianto)
19 – the Doctor confronts the Master. They have a good, old-fashioned argument, or so the Master thinks, until the Doctor slaps a pair of handcuffs on him (yes, the kind that he used with Blon). The Master, of course, recognizes them. He asks in horror if the Doctor plans on keeping his as a 'pet' again. The Doctor smiles and tells him that he has other plans.
(the Master)
20 – Rose, Gwen, and Ianto run into Jack, Martha, and Lucy. Lucy is given into UNIT custody, Jack reunites with Gwen and Ianto and then Martha wonders where the Doctor is. “Everyone else has pulled back to base.” Rose's eyes cloud over and she says that she can't tell what he's doing -- “Just that he's upset and relieved about it.” This, btw, should freak out Jack a bit – she couldn't do that before.
(Martha)
21 – the Doctor is smiling down at a nice young man who only has vague memories. “It's all right,” the Doctor reassures him, pocketing a small watch. “Everything will make more sense in time.” The man is told that his name is “John. John Smith.” He's a professor and very smart. Got hurt saving the Doctor's life. The Doctor doesn't know where his home is supposed to be but thinks that he'll be safe and happy enough here. “Can't I come with you?” John Smith asks him. “I... I like you. I think that I can trust you.” The Doctor tells him “No, not right now. Maybe someday, though, I'll come back and we can have an adventure together.” “I'd like that,” John told him shyly. He's on the human/Hath colony that they find in “The Doctor's Daughter”, about a month after Jenny and Donna have left. Without the watch (which will remain in the Doctor's possession), he'll never remember who he is. 'John' kisses the Doctor goodbye and the Doctor lets him.
(the Doctor)
22 – the Doctor reunites with Rose, realizes that she's going to live a bit longer (though still nowhere near as long as he will). The whole group of them get together for a bit of a party. It's a bit of a cheerful end to the series!
(Rose)
Children in Need bumper
(As Time Lords Do)
1-part
Rose and the Doctor play around with mutual telepathy (and have sex) in those Lost Gardens of Ki'plu. Rose finds out about Jaime and some other stuff about the Doctor's past.
(the Doctor)
Fic Snippets
Unfinished Business (Planet of the Ood)
"We owe it to them to help, Doctor," Rose said. "Because of last time."
...
"Would you like to join our song?" the Ood asked. "Doctor? Rose? Donna?"
"Thank you, but no," the Doctor said. "I… we have a song of our own."
"Yeah, I'm happy travelling. Thank you for the offer," Rose said, almost at the same time.
"No, thanks," Donna said, nearly on beat with the other two.
"We understand," the Ood said. It sounded amused. "But do not forget that every song ends."
"Believe me, I know," the Doctor said.
"We will remember all of you."
Less Than Kind (The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky)
Rose's mobile rang and the Doctor reluctantly moved so that she could reach it. Without her mother here, the only people calling Rose would be people who immediately needed to speak to the two of them.
"It's Jack," she said, looking at the screen. Her face paled after she'd started listening. "You're not – how did you get his phone?" The Doctor twitched, reminding himself that he had no right to ask her to let him on the line. "Repeat that, please. You can't be serious. Oh. Oh."
She clicked off her phone.
"Jack was just buried alive," she said, sounding numb. "We need to get there after the people doing it have left – the woman who was on the phone is a contact from Jack's Time Agency days, says that Jack mentioned me just before he was attacked, so she looked me up on Jack's mobile."
"I didn't know that Jack had your number," the Doctor said. On reflection, it was not the smartest thing he'd ever said.
"My mobile may have changed, but I managed to get the number back," Rose said. "Probably something to do with a certain bloke zapping my phone – it never went out of service, even though I haven't used it in eight years."
"Well, let's go and save Jack," the Doctor said.
The Doctor's Wife (Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead)
"She seems to believe that she knows you very well," Rose said, quietly. She was playing with one of the Library books, her hands betraying a nervousness that her voice didn't reveal.
"She doesn't know you," the Doctor said, turning back to twist the wires under the console a bit. That little girl, there had been something about her that had struck him as a bit off. "That means that she doesn't know me at all."
"She said you look younger now – maybe she knows you from after I-"
"Please, don't," the Doctor said, trying to focus on the wiring and not Rose's words. "Let's concentrate on the problem at hand."
"I'm just saying... this could be a good sign. Shows that, after me, you move on," Rose said. Her kindness – her love – felt like a knife stabbed into his throat. Always so concerned about how he would cope without her, always so sure that he had to- he had done the universe enough good. He couldn't grow old with Rose, still couldn't do that, but that didn't mean that he would allow himself to forget her. To... move on as if she'd just been- as if he could replace her with the latest model, like a human with a midlife crisis.
The Doctor stopped at his work, taking in a deep breath. It did little to quell the anger that had been sparked by River's first words to him, feelings that had only been stoked by her carelessness toward Rose. He glanced over and saw that she was watching them... no, watching him, as though Rose mattered as little as a book already read.
He reached out and grabbed roughly at the back of Rose's neck, fully aware that he was being crass and a fool and not caring because River had to be wrong and there could not be a future where he wouldn't have mentioned Rose. He pulled Rose up against him and kissed her, her lips parting so easily for him these days. She tasted of apple and cinnamon today, crisp and sweet. He closed his eyes and fell into her touch and steadfastly refused to think of a time where he wouldn't be able to do this.
When he let her go, she stumbled a bit, looking shaken, her mouth swollen.
"There is no 'after you', Rose," he said. It was simple fact, though she wouldn't believe that no matter how many times he told her. "It doesn't exist."
"Doctor," she said, softly. And he knew that she was disappointed in him.
He shook his head and turned back to his work, not looking over at where he knew River would still be standing.
Let her watch.
...
“You sent me away,” Rose said, her voice shaking. “You promised, Doctor. You swore.”
She could see a muscle twitch in his jaw, but he didn't respond, instead calmly inputting the directions to where he was planning on taking her next.
“How can I trust you?” she asked. “How can I believe you when-”
“She didn't know your name,” the Doctor said. “I never told her. Why not? Hmm?”
“I don't care,” Rose said.
“Liar.”
“Maybe I do, but that's not what this conversation is about,” Rose said. “You lied-”
“To save your life!”
“And I ended up getting trapped in the computer,” Rose said. “It didn't work. It never works.”
“I can't have loved her and not mentioned you,” he said. “Especially not... not with this face.”
“Doctor-”
“I didn't love her,” the Doctor said.
“You don't now,” Rose said. “But in the future-”
“You don't really want that,” the Doctor said. “Oh, you believe that you should. You don't.”
“I want you to be happy and I know that I won't live forever,” Rose said. “Of course, it's going to hurt to meet the woman who... replaces me.”
“She won't,” the Doctor said.
“You can't know that,” Rose said. “I know how much you hate getting information from your future, but it does mean-”
“It doesn't,” the Doctor said. “It doesn't mean anything, Rose. Even now, the future is more complex than any of us, even me, can realize.”
“Some things are simple,” Rose said. “If my choice is to hide in the TARDIS or stay by your side, you know what I want to do.”
“The thought of seeing you die is...” he turned away.
“With everything River said, everything she implied, it made me think about something,” Rose said. “You said once, that you could be... human in some ways. But you haven't... we haven't...”
“Is this about sex?” the Doctor asked.
“Because if it's not something that you want, I'll understand,” Rose said. “If it weren't for all the kissing and such, I wouldn't even think about it. Probably.”
Listen (Turn Left)
Rose paused at the booth, fingering a ring. It was warm, had been even before she'd touched it. It was a deep, brilliant red in color – a simple band of what looked like stone, but felt more flexible.
“What is this?” Rose asked the vendor.
“Ah, heat-sprung hanite,” she said. “It always stays warm, no matter where you go.”
“How much?” Rose asked. The price was... probably too steep, but Rose had enough of the local currency to pay it. The vendor wrapped the ring up for her and Rose tucked the package into a pocket.
She'd been looking for over a year to find a gift for the Doctor that would feel as appropriate as the cool silver bracelet that he'd gifted to her on their promise-day. This ring was exactly what she'd been looking for – it would remind him of her, hotter than he ever ran, but just about human body-temperature.
She headed back toward the Doctor when someone snagged her sleeve.
"See the future," the woman offered. Rose shook her head. The woman smiled hopefully. "Fortunes told!"
Rose hesitated, looking over to where the Doctor was happily haggling with someone.
"Could I... see someone else's future?" Rose asked. "See if they end up happy?"
"Of course," the fortune teller said cheerfully. "Special discount for you, since you're such a kind lady."
"Well, I have to say yes, then, don't I?" Rose said with a laugh, following the fortune teller into the tent. They settled down across from each other in the two available chairs. Rose waved a bit to clear the air in front of her – the tent was thick with a scent she didn't know.
"Now, tell me about this person whose future you want to know?"
"Aren't you supposed to tell me?"
"I tell the future – you tell me the past. How did you meet this person?"
"He blew up my job," Rose said, smiling. She could still feel the jolt of that first meeting – his hand meeting hers and his voice telling her to run. He'd jumpstarted her, like she'd been a stalled car, and he'd kept her running ever since. "While saving the world, he'd want me to add."
"What steps led you to that meeting?"
"Oh, I don't know." Nothing in the first nineteen years of her life or the eight in the parallel world held the same sharpness and clarity of focus that her years with the Doctor did. They were fuzzier, not as real.
"How did you get this job of yours that he destroyed?"
"I- what was your name?"
"Like your friend, I have no proper name," she said. "I am a fortune teller – that is all that is needed to be said, on this planet. You will respect our customs?"
"Yes, of course, I will," Rose said, feeling a bit silly for asking. "I got the job because it was available. I just... saw the sign in the window and decided to go in."
"Why?"
"I needed the money," she said. Her mum had told her that she wouldn't be willing to foot the bills for someone who'd made such a dumb choice. Rose couldn't really blame her. With all the men Jackie had slept with over the years, she'd never let any of them touch her money. "I'd dropped out of school to be with this boy and it left me in debt, so I couldn't really get anything better."
Rose paused, something nagging at her.
"Hold on – how did you know that my friend doesn't go by a 'proper name'?" she said. She was starting to feel a bit fuzzy and the fortune teller's hands on hers were starting to ache a little.
"I see the future," she said and Rose nodded. That made sense. The Doctor still wouldn't have a name in the future. "Were there any other places you could have gone?"
"There was always the local butcher's," Rose said, unable to suppress her shudder. "They had such a high turn-over rate for assistants. My mum had mentioned it to me, just that morning. Maybe that's why I went in to Henricks, because I didn't want to work at Finches."
"Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you'd listened to your mother?"
"I... no," Rose said, without needing to think about it. "Never."
"What if you got the chance to find out?"
"No." Rose tugged at the woman's hands, but found that she couldn't get away. "Let me go. Let me go!"
"Go back to that morning, Rose Tyler, and listen to your mother."
Rose shook her head, now trying desperately to get away and getting nowhere, the woman's fingernails digging into her hands, feeling something touching her on her back-
...
Rose blinked and her mum rolled her eyes.
"Oh, look at you, thinking of Neverland again, I'd wager," Jackie said, disdainfully.
"I'm sorry, what were you saying?" Rose asked, feeling an odd sense of dislocation, like she didn't belong here, in her own mum's flat.
"I said, you don't have many prospects now, but Finches would take you. They've always got jobs."
"The butchers?" Rose asked, her voice lifting in distaste, and then a little voice in the back of her head whispered listen to your mother. "I... I don't- I... maybe you're right, mum."
"Oh!" Jackie said, looking delighted. "I haven't heard you say that since you were a tiny snip of a thing. I'll take you over there myself, if you'd like."
Rose hesitated, knowing that she didn't want to work at the butchers but that voice in her head was saying, over and over, listen. Listen to your mother. She knows best. Listen to your mother.
"All right," she agreed, and it didn't even feel like she was the one talking.
...
"I was thinking that we could make things official," Mickey said, offering up a box. Rose took it from him, with trembling hands. She opened it up and it was just as she'd suspected – an engagement ring. He'd probably had to save up for at least a year for it, maybe longer. Rose felt a bit numb, but she was pretty sure that she managed to keep a smile on her face. She was glad that he'd done this while they were alone in the break room and not in front of all the other people in Finches. Anne-Marie, in particular, might know Rose well enough to know how she was feeling.
"Yeah," she said, faintly. Mickey took the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger, grinning away proudly.
"I was thinking we could get married in March," Mickey said. "My parents got married in March. You think you'd like that?"
"Sure," Rose said. "That sounds fine."
He reached out for her and she kissed him back obediently. His mouth was warm and so familiar. She'd kissed Mickey hundreds of times. Maybe even thousands of times – the thrill was bound to have worn off by now, no matter who was kissing her.
"I've got to go and tell the boys that you said yes," Mickey said, after he broke off the snog. He'd never looked happier.
"I'll tell my mum tonight," Rose promised. He ran off and Rose looked down. The ring on her finger looked small, but it felt like it weighed more than the Koh-i-Noor itself would. This was Rose Tyler, binding herself to Mickey Smith for the rest of her life.
They would wake up, go off to their respective jobs, come home, watch telly, probably shag, and go to bed. Then they'd do it all again the next day. And, again, every single day after that.
Every day in her future would be just like yesterday.
Rose stood up on shaking legs and walked carefully to the employee restroom, where she very quietly threw up her lunch. She wiped her mouth and flushed the toilet, then went out to the tiny mirror and slowly redid her makeup.
A March wedding would be nice.
...
She had the dream the first time that night.
Cool hands stroked lightly across her body and her hand was buried in thick hair. He had sharp features and his kisses were cool and clean, like standing under the full moon on a clear night.
Every brush of his body against her felt like a tiny electric shock and his voice was whispering against her skin – he called her beautiful and the word rolled off his tongue like a crashing wave.
In the morning, when she woke up, she would remember laughing eyes that weren't Mickey's, skin that shone creamy pale instead of being a rich, warm brown, a body that was slender and lithe in ways that made her ache, and she wouldn't be able to look Mickey in the eyes at breakfast, feeling a sick knot form in the center of her stomach.
...
"Do you, Rose Tyler, take Mickey Smith-"
A deafening noise from outside the hall startled the entire gathering.
A spaceship had crashed into Big Ben, everyone outside told them, and then landed in the Thames.
"I wish I knew what was happening," Rose said, wistfully. Aliens were real. Aliens. And they were here in London. Why couldn't anything that exciting ever happen to her?
"I wish they'd waited until tomorrow to land," Mickey said. "We'll have to do the whole wedding over again."
"Aliens, Mickey," Rose said. "Have some perspective."
"Yeah, I suppose," he said, grudgingly. "It was your big day, though – I didn't even get the chance to tell you how beautiful you look yet."
He reached out and touched her mouth, very gently, probably so he wouldn't smudge her lipstick. It was almost unbearably sweet. Rose pulled him closer to her and rewarded him with a tender kiss. It wasn't aliens or space or anything exciting, but this was nice. It was good.
They held onto each other as the countdown began, and in the wave of relief that swept over everyone after it was all over, they made love like they hadn't since they were kids – all swept up in each other and the moment.
"I don't think it was a hoax," Rose said later, glaring at the newspaper. "You saw, Mickey. You saw the ship. What do you think?"
"I- I don't reckon it was, either," he said. "The panic everyone was in – nah, it was real, Rose. There are aliens up there and they don't like us."
"That's not what I said," she tried to tell him, but Mickey was already half-way out of the room, and he didn't hear her.
...
Once... only once... she'd had a dream of a different man, one with close-cropped hair and larger, strong features, but it had felt the same as the others.
He'd stared at her, his eyes blue and lost, and he'd said just one thing.
“I need you.”
That was it. Just that sentence and then he'd pulled her against him, just holding her body against his.
When she woke up that morning, she was already crying.
She didn't stop until half-past ten.
...
"Again with the aliens," Mickey said in disgust. "And on Christmas Eve."
"They wouldn't know about our holidays," Rose said. "What do you think might be happening up there?"
"Alien things," he said dismissively. "Come on, now, you need to be careful, love."
Rose could have said the next bit by heart-
"Don't want to risk the baby," he finished, curving a hand over the tiny bump her stomach had developed.
...
All of those people, standing right at the edge.
"I wish that I could do something to help them," she said.
"We all do, sweetheart," her mum said, wrapping her up in a hug. "But the best we can do is hope that there's someone who'll be able to stop those monsters."
Rose started weeping into her mother's arms and she had no idea why.
...
The bright green lights converged and the ship exploded in the sky above them.
Someone had saved them.
The Prime Minister had made the call, as it turned out. Harriet Jones had saved them from the alien menace.
"She's a brilliant woman," Jackie said. "Bet that showed those Americans how to settle a war."
"Yeah," Rose agreed faintly, blinking against the flecks of white landing on her face. She wondered what the aliens had looked like, up close. There had only been the briefest glimpse on the news, just that one photo. They couldn't all look that way.
"And we even got snow on Christmas," Mickey said, pressing up against Rose and wrapping his arms around her. "How romantic is that?"
"It's beautiful," Rose said, but her mind was in places high above, in the sky that was so very far away.
...
Sometimes, in the dream, he just lay next to her, his curious brown eyes fixed on her and long, complicated sentences slipping out of his tempting mouth.
She didn't understand half of what he said, but when she woke up, all she wanted to do was hear more.
On those mornings, she often felt even guiltier than after she'd been dreaming about having sex with the bloke.
Still, most days, she got up and went to work and went home to Mickey and everything was fine. Her daughter was growing up quickly and it wasn't a bad life. Maybe it wasn't the sort of life she'd dreamed about as a kid but that was just it, wasn't it? That sort of thing was for kids.
She was old enough now to realize that girls like her couldn't afford to have adventures or break the rules. And girls like her didn't ever meet guys like the one she dreamed about, not for anything but an easy shag.
...
"Hello, miss. Do you have a moment?"
Rose turned around, startled. She hadn't realized anyone else was around this late at night. The man who'd spoken was tall and lanky, with thick, spiky blond hair. He was around forty or forty-five and he was wearing a lavender suit with a pink carnation on the collar and a tight smile. Would assuming that he was gay be falling into stereotypes? She was trying to be more careful about that these days, ever since Timmy came out at work.
"Do I know you?" Rose asked, knowing as she said it that there wasn't a chance, despite the odd feeling that she must have seen him before. But she'd never met anyone who dressed like that.
"I hope that you will," he said, quirking an eyebrow, so maybe not gay – nice accent on him, too – and then he did a double-take when he seemed to realize how slimy that sounded. "I'm sorry... I just... there's something different about you. What's your name?"
"You can keep your flirting to yourself," Rose said, but she smiled anyway. "I'm Rose Tyler, and I'm married."
"I'm not-" he paused. "Do you believe in aliens?"
"After this Christmas past – I had better," Rose said.
"It's not a given that you would," he said. "The denial instinct of humans is rather astonishing."
That was a strange way of putting it.
"Are you saying that you aren't human?" Rose teased. "You look human enough to me."
"Oh, I've been known to fool people," he said. "The reason I'm asking is because you're giving off some interesting readings and this whole thing will be much easier if you believe in aliens."
"What sort of readings?" Rose asked. "And... not to be rude, but I've given you my name and you haven't given me yours."
"I'm the Doctor," he said.
"Is that supposed to sound impressive?" Rose asked and she blinked, because the man in front of her had green eyes but, for just a moment, she would have sworn that they were blue.
"It generally does the trick," he said. "If I could have your arm..."
"The whole thing?" she asked. "I do still need it later."
He smiled then, a much more real smile than he'd been wearing before. He had, Rose decided, a very nice smile. He pulled out some kind of tool and pressed a button – the tip glowed blue.
"Is that what takes your readings?" Rose asked. A human-looking alien who used advanced tech – it was like she'd always imagined meeting Spock from Star Trek would be like.
"Sonic screwdriver," he said, waving it around a bit. She extended her arm. He brandished the... sonic screwdriver... over her hand for a few minutes, muttering softly for a little while before speaking clearly again. "Could you turn around?"
She did, feeling a bit strange and... a little guilty. Five minutes with this odd man and she felt more flush and alive than she'd felt with Mickey in years.
"Oh," he said, sounded absolutely fascinated. Rose shivered. "Well, now, that's just gorgeous." There was a moment of silence. "Don't worry, Ms. Tyler, I'm not flirting with you – I'm talking about something that's on your back."
Rose felt a twinge of relief... and one of disappointment.
"So, there is something on my back?" she asked. "I've been having some odd dreams and this peculiar itch, but no one else could see anything."
"Some communities have fewer psychics than others and only someone with extra switches flipped in their brain would pick up on this," the Doctor said. He was still standing behind her, beeping that screwdriver at her back. "Oh, this is very interesting. You're carrying something of a time-twister, Ms. Tyler."
"You can call me Rose," she said, feeling a bit breathless.
"Wouldn't that be a bit forward?" he teased, and Rose felt that guilty rush again. "You've got one of the Trickster's Brigade on your back – a Time Beetle. They feed off of time, by making someone change a choice."
"Why would I have one?" Rose asked, turning to face him. He didn't object, so she assumed he was done with the screwdriver – which she didn't see anymore. He must have put it away again.
"Because there's something special about you, Rose," the Doctor said. He reached out and traced along the edge of her face, looking puzzled. "Can't you feel it?"
"I'm nothing special," she said, softly. He had gentle hands.
"You're a woman with a choice," the Doctor said. "Three, actually."
"That would be nice," she said. His eyes softened and... she really should tell him to take his hand off of her face, but she couldn't quite manage it. This close, there was something about him was so intensely familiar, something that reminded her of her dreams, but her dreams were full of thick, dark hair and deep brown eyes that were so much older than Mickey's. This man looked nothing like that.
"You see, I can get rid of that Beetle for you, but the how of it depends on your answer to one question," he said.
"What's that?"
"Are you happy?"
Rose froze and pulled away from him.
"Why should that matter?" she asked, rubbing at her arms.
"I'm sorry," he said. "That means 'no', doesn't it?"
"What?"
"If you were happy, you would just say 'yes'."
"That's a horrible thing to say," Rose said.
"But you aren't?"
He reached out again, capturing her hand. She stared at him, not quite sure how to explain an entire life of desperately wanting more. With his alien talk and his glowing tube and his casual words about time... he sounded like everything she'd ever thought 'more' meant.
"Why couldn't I have met you before I married?" she asked, wrapping her fingers around his. There was a sharp, bitter ache in the center of her chest.
"Oh, Rose," he whispered and his voice just echoed through her, a thousand aching girlish daydreams. "You don't have to be unhappy."
"How do you mean?"
"If I take you back... it looks like it would be back about four years, that would be before you made the Beetle's choice, then I can stop it from changing your mind and you can live the life you were meant to live."
"Am I happy in it?"
"It's impossible to say," the Doctor said, gently. "The Beetle may have attacked you on someone's orders, it may have just thought you looked like a good meal, or... you could have asked for it to change your past. And, in that case, you might be stepping into a very unhappy life."
"All we know for certain is that... it isn't this life?" Rose asked. "It would be different?"
"Yes, it would," he said. "There's another option – I could remove it now and you would go on from here. If you'd said that you were happy, we could just leave it at that but-"
"What, Doctor?" Rose asked, again getting the oddest sense that she'd said that before. But, of course, she had. Whenever she'd spoken to doctors in the past – at Suzie's last pediatrician appointment, maybe.
"You could come with me," he said, softly. "You could leave this life behind and travel with me."
"I have a daughter," Rose said, realizing with a start that she hadn't said that earlier. "Her name is Suzie. She's just a year old."
"And you have a husband," the Doctor said, carelessly, and she could believe now that he was alien. "He could take care of her. I don't do families."
Rose stood there, the Doctor's hand in hers, feeling like the most horrible mother in the world, even considering his offer. Either of his offers, because...
"And... if I go back, she won't even be alive," she whispered. "She would never have been born."
"She was meant to never have been born," he said.
"She's just a little girl," Rose said. "She's never hurt anyone. How could I..."
"You aren't happy," he said. He had this conflicted look on his face, like even he wasn't entirely sure why he cared so much. "That... matters, Rose. You need to be happy."
"Are you this invested in everyone's happiness?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I'm generally not. But when I look at you, Rose – do you feel it?"
She opened her mouth to say 'no', but the word refused to come out. Because she did feel it – she felt it in the way that her hand felt so at home in his; she felt it in how her heart was racing at his words; she felt it deep inside her, driving her to do anything to stay with him.
"Yes," she said, finally, and it was like a dam breaking, emotion flooding through her. "Yes."
He held up her hand in front of them and ran his fingertips over her rings – engagement and wedding. His thumb slipped to the base of her finger, pushing the rings up slightly. She closed her eyes, feeling her pulse beating hard in her throat, and nodded. He slowly slid her rings up until her finger was naked, the wind kissing bare flesh.
"I don't believe that I want to take you back in time, Rose," he said. He'd leant forward and was speaking so close to her ear. She shivered. "I don't want to risk a future where I never meet you."
"My daughter..." Rose said, trying to hold onto that. Beautiful Suzie, who had her father's eyes and Rose's own smile. She was a laughing, boisterous baby girl and she didn't deserve to be abandoned. "I have a responsibility to her."
"You weren't supposed to," he said. Rose had never believed in... a god or a devil or anything like that, but if she did, she would call this man Lucifer, with his tempting silver-tongued words meant to draw Rose away from the consequences of her own choices. "I don't know what your life was supposed to be like, but you weren't meant to be her mother. She's alive because time changed."
The Doctor pressed his mouth against the skin below her ear and... it felt intoxicating and natural, a rush to her system that felt painfully wonderful. She reached up and her fingers sank into thick hair, and that was so right that she felt tears welling up behind her still-closed eyelids.
"Come with me," he said, pressing cool kisses to the side of her neck. His hands were at her back, pressing her up into his body. "Let me take you away. Oh, Rose, I don't know what you've done to me, but do it to me for the rest of your life, please."
"Yes," she said, tilting her head back to give him more access.
"Would you two lovebirds get a room?"
Rose opened her eyes, barely even seeing the man who'd spoken – she felt dazed.
"Sorry about that," the Doctor said, his hand casually wrapped around Rose's wrist. "We'll be on our way. Sorry to bother you."
He tugged her along and she followed, feeling a bit numb. They stopped in front of a large blue box and the Doctor dropped her hand and started rummaging around in his pockets.
"What's a Police Public Call Box?" Rose asked, staring up at the sign, feeling that internal echo again.
"Phone box from the 1960s," the Doctor said, pulling out a key and opening the door. "It's how my ship disguises itself."
The Doctor stepped inside and Rose... stared. Because... yes, it was bigger on the inside than the outside, that was obvious, but the strangest thing about it was the way that she looked at it and thought 'home'.
"Are you going to hang about all day?" the Doctor asked. "You're letting the cold in. Come on inside."
"I feel like I've been here before," Rose said, as she followed him in and shut the door behind herself. He turned to her, his eyes sharpening with interest.
"If you've been here before... perhaps we did meet in your alternate future," he said. "That might be what the Beetle latched onto."
"Is there any way to know for certain?" Rose asked.
The Doctor paused. "Well, there is one thing I could do."
"What?"
"You could let me inside the beautiful head of yours," he said, with a wink. Rose flushed, heat crawling across her cheeks. "My people have a limited form of telepathy. I might be able to see what you’re almost remembering."
"All right," she agreed, barely needing to think about it. He was alien and she'd only just met him and she was in a space ship but... she knew that she could trust him with her life.
"Perhaps a more comfortable location," the Doctor said, reaching his hand out toward her. She placed her hand in his and they were off into this impossibly enormous ship of his.
The room they ended up in seemed to be pretty obviously his bedroom – there was an extra carnation lying on the desk in the corner. The bed was tightly made and that was where they ended up.
"This will be easier if you lie down," he said, stripping off his suit jacket and tossing it over the chair in front of the desk. He wore a light button-down shirt underneath, also a pale purple in color.
"Bet you say that to all the girls," Rose said, but she stretched herself out on the bed.
"I'm going to touch your face, Rose," he said, sitting next to her. "If there's anything that you don't want me to see, just imagine it behind a shut door. I'll respect your boundaries."
"All right," Rose whispered, closing her eyes. She startled a bit when he touched her, despite his warning. She'd thought it was just the breeze outside, but his hands were still cooler than she'd have expected, despite the warmth of the room.
"Now, let me inside you," he said and Rose felt a shamed twist in her stomach at the vivid image those words conjured up. The Doctor took in a sharp breath. "Oh, that's an interesting thought. We could explore it later, if you'd like."
Without her rings on, it was surprisingly easy for her not to object to his invitation. Her mind was still thinking about what he'd said and... she was never meant to have lived this life. Four years back was before she and Mickey had even started dating again. Maybe that was never meant to have happened at all. Maybe... maybe she could have this... this life, this man.
"I would like that very much," the Doctor said, in a low, purring voice that made her ache inside. "But, for now, I'd love it if you could think about this ship being familiar to you and why that might be the case."
"Sorry," Rose whispered. She could hear the Doctor shifting around and... he was lying over her now, his lower body pressing down on her, one of his legs between hers, and just one hand at her temple and... his other hand must be propping him up, but she didn't feel like opening her eyes to find out. "I'm not sure I'll be able to- to concentrate with you-"
He shifted off her again.
"Are you sure?" he asked, sounding a mix of delighted and disappointed. His voice wasn't... it didn't sound quite right. He made an interested noise when she thought that. "How should I sound?"
"I'm not- not entirely sure," she said, trying to think. "Either a bit more like me, but still... more cultured... or brash and Northern. How can it be both?"
"Oh, that is intriguing," he said, and the curiosity in his voice, that was right. "I think that you have met me, Rose Tyler. And yet… I'm inclined to be selfish."
"What... what do you mean?" Rose asked him, opening her eyes. He was staring down at her with an intensely penetrating look, as if committing every inch of her to memory.
"I almost want to keep you anyway," he said, and the casual nature of his words made her head buzz a bit. It wasn't familiar at all, the way he spoke like she should... belong to him. Like she wasn't her own person. His eyes widened. "Oh, no, Rose. That's not what I meant at all."
The sincerity in his voice was undeniable and she felt herself folding into it.
He moved again, fully covering her body with his own, and leaning down to taste her mouth. She gasped up into him and there's another flash of a dream – his mouth was darker, his bottom lip fuller. He'd snogged her, so many times, he'd covered her body in kisses and she never ever grew tired of the feel of his lips brushing her skin because it sang like the stars every time.
"You loved me," the Doctor said, like a prayer. "I can feel it. You adored me."
Rose shook underneath him, and his body almost felt like it was flickering – it was this body, a bit heavier and broader, and then it was his, lithe and whip-cord strong and the most perfect, beautiful man she'd ever known and all for her, he looked that way for her, to please her.
"Did I?" the Doctor asked. He seemed half out of breath, green-then-brown-then-green eyes focused on her. "I do believe that you're correct – how completely fascinating. Who are you, Rose Tyler, that I was so entirely yours?"
"I don't know," she said, feeling as helpless as she had every day of her life and hating it. She'd married Mickey; she'd said 'yes' for the rest of her life and now she was lying under another man and wanting nothing more than for him to take her – in this bed, in the console room, lying in the fresh apple-scented grass of-
"New Earth," the Doctor said. "I took you to New Earth."
"New new Doctor," Rose whispered. She lifted a hand up and traced the lines of this face, different from both of the two that were in her head. His nose was about halfway between in size, she decided. He had smaller ears than either of her other Doctors. His eyes were green, but they still somehow looked the same – it was the eyes that had helped her so much after he'd changed. The color might change, but nothing could hide the weight they carried. Still beautiful, he was always beautiful, because he was the Doctor. "I know you."
"You knew a me that doesn't exist in this timeline," the Doctor said. "And one that did."
"You were... my first Doctor and you regenerated?" Rose guessed.
"Without you here, I didn't end up the same," he said. "So, you see, if I take you back, this version of me may never exist. Your Doctor will exist again – with his laughing brown eyes and full mouth and... long fingers?"
Rose blushed hard, sure that her face must be scarlet. She hadn't expected him to pick up on that thought.
"Though your Doctor seems... happier," he said, thoughtfully. "Of course, if you stay here with me, I might end up the same way. I already feel lighter than I have since..."
"Gallifrey," Rose said. "Since your people."
"Yes," he said, reaching down to brush her hair out of her face. "The choice is up to you, Rose. I can take you back in time and you can have him back or... come with me and we can have all of time and space together."
"You're... letting me decide who you're going to be," Rose said, certain that she had to have heard wrong. "You can't mean that."
"I believe that I do," he said, sounding faintly surprised. "I trust you."
"I meet you sooner, in the other time line?" Rose asked, fairly sure of the answer.
"From what I saw, you're... nineteen when I meet you," he said. "Not married to Mickey. No child. That was... such a pathetic and short life for this version of me, Rose. It sounds like his was much better."
"Will I remember you?" she asked.
"I hope so," he said, sounding pleased. "I'm honored that you'd want to... and it sounds as though you've already decided."
"It may make me a terrible mother and wife, but... yes, I have," Rose said, and just saying that truth gave her the strength to say more. "I hate this life of mine, Doctor. I've poisoned it because of that. I've not been a good mother to my Suzie – my mum sees her more often than I do and has given her a bottle more often than I've fed her personally. I've thought about stepping out on Mickey before... never have done, but I've thought of it."
"The temptation always comes with tall, dark-haired men with wiry builds," he said, with a wry twist to his mouth. "I'm guessing."
"Something inside me has been screaming for him these last few years. So loudly that I can barely breathe some days," she said. "When you touch me, I can feel him and it burns, Doctor."
"He's been deep inside your mind," the Doctor said, pressing his hand against the bare skin of her stomach. Rose nodded, her breathing going shallow. "I'm not sure whether or not it was intentional, but he's branded himself in there, clear as day once I got past the fog the Time Beetle causes. He's linked so tightly to you that-"
The Doctor broke off, skin paling. He pulled away from her.
"What is it?" Rose asked him, her body feeling bereft.
"I'm not sure that he'll survive your passing," he said, weakly. "I can feel the traces of him and, in every single cord, there's absolute certainty that you are the last thing that he wants to see in this universe. He's wound everything around you, Rose, every piece of who he is – who are you?"
"I'm just me," she said, softly. "Just Rose."
The Doctor laughed, and the sound was cold.
"From the moment I... he met you, there was something about you, Rose," he said. "I can feel it. He wants the press of your body and the embrace of your mind and he wants it so badly that it bled over onto me, simply because I was close to you. You are not 'just' anything, Rose Tyler. You brought the last of the Time Lords to his knees."
His gaze raked over her.
"By human standards, you're pretty, but not the aching beauty that everything inside me tells me that you are. Objectively, I shouldn't find you so overwhelmingly attractive – Romana's second regeneration was more classically beautiful and more authentically blonde, yet I never felt this heat when I was with her," he said, words quick and biting. "Your facial features are over-large, but I only find that all the more enticing. Your figure is nicely-rounded – more so since the pregnancy, I'd wager – and all I long to do is touch you and taste you, feel every inch of your body and then claim you in a vulgar and very human way. What did you do, Rose, to turn a Time Lord so domestic?"
"I don't know," she said, feeling the sudden urge to cover up, despite still being fully clothed. "I didn't do anything – I said 'yes' when you asked me along. I held your hand. I danced with you. I didn't make you fall in love with me."
"But you knew that I had," he said, reaching down to place his hand on her belly again. "I can feel it. You knew that I was in love with you and you still kept Mickey. You could have had a Lord of Time and you choose him instead."
"You were an alien," Rose said, memory sparking at his words. She broke off to whimper as his hand slid under her shirt. "I didn't even know that you were... compatible."
"Tease," he whispered in her ear. "You danced with me and I was so close to you – I could smell your hot human sweat and I knew you wanted me – how do I remember that, Rose? How is that possible? – but you still went off with that boyfriend of yours."
"I was just a kid," she said, putting her own hands at work, unbuttoning his shirt. "You're nine-hundred years old-"
"Well, a bit more than that," the Doctor said, snapping the clasp of her bra in two. That strength of his – it brought to mind visions of him picking her up and swinging her around in a hug, sweeping her off her feet to take her to a bedroom, holding her up against the wall of the ship with one hand bracing them and the other touching her in all the best places. "Closer to twelve-hundred, but once I saw your reaction to nine, I didn't want to make that gap any larger. Do I remember that because he left the knowledge inside you or by some other way?"
Rose answered him with a kiss, yanking down on the undone collar of his shirt to bring him close. This sex that she was having now – it wasn't familiar, in either the boring or the reassuring ways. This Doctor wasn't quite hers, had sharper edges. But she wasn't quite his, either. She'd married another man; she'd had a child that was entirely human.
She remembered now, as she hadn't in any of the dreams, how petty and fierce her Doctor's jealousy had been, particularly of Mickey.
"Yes," the Doctor panted, tearing his mouth away from hers and then burying his face in her neck, licking at her skin as he reached down and undid the top button on her jeans. "One tiny human and sometimes I... sometimes I hated him just because he'd touched you and I hadn't yet. Because he'd had a claim on your heart before I met you, because I could see this in your future if you ever said no to me – you married to him, choosing him and I can't bear it, Rose, I can't-"
She moaned, pulling at the sides of his shirt – he obliged her enough to let go so that she could have it off him and then he returned the favor, pulling her shirt up and over her head, her broken bra quickly following. He pressed down on her again and it was skin to skin and he was shivering everywhere that she was touching him.
"I need you, Rose," he said, and his voice sounded almost Northern now. "I've always needed you, every day, so much, and you weren't here, and I didn't know what I was missing but I ached, oh, I ached for you."
"I love you," Rose told him, stroking down the bare skin of his back – there were marks there and he healed so quickly and efficiently, always. How had he managed to get scars?
"Ran into a Dalek," he said, still responding to her thoughts. "It didn't go well. I had to... I had to-"
"You killed it," she said.
"I had no choice," he said.
"You did with me." He pushed up a bit, staring down at her, looking so incredibly lost. She reached up and stroked a line down his chest – thicker across the shoulders than the only other Doctor that she'd seen with his kit off, but still nice. He had the same odd interplay of muscles that looked like the Doctor and not like Mickey or the other human blokes that she'd shagged. "You chose not to be a killer anymore."
"You saved me," he said and that was wonder in his voice. "I understand now, Rose. I know why he centered everything inside you. I know why I have to take you back. I'm a better man when I have you in my life."
"Doctor-"
"But I want to have this, first," he said, desperately. "I want to wrap myself inside you, Rose. Will you let me, please?"
"Yes," she said and... he looked different, but he was the Doctor. "Anything you need, you can have. Always."
"When you get back, if you remember, you tell that Doctor of yours how lucky he is." He smiled down at her and she knew that smile – that was her smile, the one that her Doctors had shared, the one that they'd given her when they were so very proud of her. "And tell him that I forgive him, will you?"
"What for?"
"For everything he's willing to do for your sake," he said, leaning down to kiss her again. His hand slipped down and encircled her wrist and, for the first time, she felt the aching absence of the bracelet that was meant to be there. He hummed, catching her thought. “My wife,” he said, words slurring as if he'd been drugged. That was... that was caused by her emotions entering into him as his arousal deepened. She could... she could remember how it worked now. “My partner.”
“Everything that I have, I give to you,” Rose said, in halting Gallifreyan words that she hadn't realized she'd known. “For as long as you wish.”
Chapter Three
Hearing Rose's voice – already so precious and necessary – speaking words that the other him had to have taught her at some point, would have been enough to tip him into full-blown arousal if he hadn't already arrived there several minutes earlier.
He wasn't entirely sure that he approved of the fire she'd placed into his blood, but he couldn't fight it. No more than a handful of sand could escape the embracing clasp of gravity.
And this was a reckless regeneration – he'd known that from the first moment he'd woken up, the Nestene Consciousness dead and him along with it. His previous self had, possibly, had a bit of a death wish and it had remained in him in the form of the desperate desire to touch everything he could.
Amidst Ruins and Fallen Gods (The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)
Rose's mobile buzzed – she'd never seen the number before. That was odd. She hadn't gotten a call from a number she didn't know since before she'd come back to this universe. She lifted the phone to her ear.
"Rose – I've done it!" It was that Lucy's voice, bright and hopeful. "We need you here – can you come?"
"Just let me tell the Doctor-"
"We can't yet," Lucy said, sounding slightly frustrated. "He can't know."
"Timelines?" Rose asked.
"Of course," Lucy said. "Call me back when you're ready."
Rose sighed, wishing that she could have the full story – but Lucy had been right to warn her at Christmas and her phone call had saved Jack's life only a few months back. She'd earned some trust. And Rose had seen the way that the Doctor had gone off on that River Song woman about telling him too much. So, she went over and popped her head into the Doctor's study.
"I need to run a few errands," she said. "You'll be all right until I get back?"
He made a vague noise that Rose decided to take for agreement.
As she headed out, she dialed back the number Lucy had used.
"I'm headed out into London – it's spring when I am and the year is 2009," Rose said. "Do you need more than that?"
"That's perfect," Lucy said. "I'll find you in a few minutes."
...
"This is my husband," Lucy said, and she was glowing. "My Harry."
"I'm delighted to meet you again, Rose," Harry said, coming over to her and shaking her hand. He was an attractive bloke, tall and skinny with nice blue eyes. "Lucy has told me so much about you – and, of course, there are the meetings I've had with you that you haven't had yet, if that makes sense."
"Nonlinear time travel gives everyone headaches," Rose said. "Now, you two come clean already – what's the big secret?"
Lucy and Harry glanced at each other, each of them smiling in a way that was driving Rose crazy with curiosity.
"We know about your problem with the Doctor," Harry said. "We understand it."
"I don't- I don't have any problems," Rose said.
"He has a longer lifespan than you," Lucy said. "We know that you must worry terribly about it because... because Harry and I suffered from the same problem."
"He's an alien," Rose said.
"My Harry would naturally outlive me by far, given our comparative species lifespans," Lucy said. "But he's a scientist, so he set himself the task of solving that problem."
"And it worked?" Rose dared to ask.
Lucy's smile was luminously happy. "Yes."
"You'll be able to stay with your Doctor as long as you need to," Harry said, quirking a smile. "You won't grow old the way the rest of humanity does, instead, you'll... shift forms. We've been working on the technology for ages."
"That sounds like what the Doctor does," Rose said, slowly, trying to find the catch.
"Just so," Lucy said, her warm arm a reassuring presence around Rose's shoulders.
"I should talk to him about it," Rose said, softly.
"Ask his permission?" Harry scoffed. "You're an independent woman, Ms. Tyler. You don't need to see if your husband approves of your choices."
"I know that," Rose said, sharply. Harry just raised an eyebrow. "I just- why don't you want me to tell him?"
"He shouldn't know yet," Harry said. "From what you told us, it was something of a surprise."
"Why would I do that to him?" Rose asked.
"I don't know, Rose," Lucy said. "Maybe you should ask yourself that question."
"I just... I can't imagine making this decision without at least telling him that it's possible," Rose said. "He'd be happy about it."
"Would he?" Harry asked – he sounded quite interested in her answer. "Do you think? I was scared, personally, even as I was working on it. I was terrified that I would hurt Lucy somehow or... make her less than human. You aren't worried about that?"
"I suppose," Rose said. "He loves me. He wouldn't want me to get hurt, of course, but he wouldn't get mad that I'd looked at the options."
"It sounds as though he really is worth all your devotion," Harry said, leaning forward and looking at her quite intently. "Will you let us take some tests, at least? Mostly just blood work."
Rose glanced over at Lucy, who smiled encouragingly.
"Sure," Rose said. "Can't be any harm in that."
...
"Rose, I wanted to-"
She wasn't there. The Doctor thought back and actually he did recall her saying something about going out for a bit.
The TARDIS phone rang and he perked up, racing over to pick it up – double-checking that the display said it was coming from Rose's mobile.
"I'd love it if you’d head back now," he said. "I've just about got the graviton problem sorted and then everything should be ready for our latest trip. I'm thinking of showing you the twin sunsets of Quivear – it's magnificent. Here's a bit of an incentive: there won't be anyone around for two hundred years. We can make love on the grass and not worry about getting banished from the planet."
"Awww, I didn't know you still cared."
Time slowed to a crawl and it felt like the world was freezing around him, bitter and cold.
"You're dead," he said, numbly. "I held you in my arms and you died."
"And now you're offering to make love to me on the grass of Quivear," the Master said, his voice lingering over the words that were meant for Rose, making them sound dirty. "It's tempting, but we do both have wives, you know."
"What have you done to Rose?" the Doctor asked, trying to make his voice stay level. Ten million possibilities raced across his mind, each more terrifying than the last. "If you've hurt her, I'll-"
"What, Doctor?" the Master asked, silky-smooth. "Kill me? It didn't stick the last time. Besides, you've no reason to fret. Rose and I merely had a most congenial chat. I had a proposal for her."
"Don't you touch her," the Doctor said. The Master's laugh was sharp and mocking, like always.
"Not that kind of proposal," he said. "I made her an attractive offer that would be of benefit to the both of you."
"What are you telling her?" There was a muffled crack and his fingers felt strange. The Doctor blinked and looked down – he'd been holding his sonic screwdriver in his other hand. And now it was in two pieces and his hand was bleeding. He could feel it, distantly, but it wasn't important. "Where is she?"
"She's so worried about you," the Master said. "She poured her heart out to my dear Lucy – oh, she was my back-up plan all along, sorry that I didn't tell you... or, no, wait, I'm not – she told Lucy how much it hurt, knowing that you would have to live on after she was dead. It eats her up inside, knowing how very much you love her. It's a burden, Doctor. I'm shocked that you let her carry it."
"Please don't hurt her," the Doctor said, tightening his free hand into a fist. "I'll do anything. I don't... I'll do anything you want, just please don't hurt her."
"And there's our trump card," the Master said, softly. "You watched me torture the Earth for a year while working on a plan to save it, you've been able to fight me over so many things... but for this one human girl, you'll roll over like an obedient mutt. I don't know whether I admire or despise her for breaking you so thoroughly."
"Rose isn't what broke me," the Doctor said, feeling every year of his life weighing down on him, the imagined screams of all his people echoing in his mind. "Just... tell me what you want."
"What I've always wanted – to rule the universe with you at my side," the Master said. "I'll even let you keep the girl, since you need her so much. Oh, and Doctor? I have some more happy news for you."
The Doctor closed his eyes, waiting for whatever this last blow was.
"Your little human girl is eating for two. Congratulations, Daddy." After those words, the call cut out.
The Doctor sat down hard on the grating, phone still clutched in his hand. Rose had... Rose was...
He still didn't know where she was.
...
"I can't find my phone," Rose said, checking her pockets again. "Do you remember me putting it down anywhere?"
"I don't remember seeing you with it at all," Lucy said. "Are you certain that you need more time?"
"Yeah," Rose said. "I don't care what the me in the future said, the me in the now isn't doing this without talking to the Doctor about it. Especially if you two are right about the baby, though I'll be double-checking that to be sure. Anyway, all the doctors told mum to be careful about any kind of medical procedures while she was carrying. And this baby... it's only half-human. It might have all kinds of special needs."
"A psychic connection with the parents is a necessity for a Gallifreyan child."
Harry had come back into the room – he was leaning against the doorframe, playing with a mobile.
"I never said 'Gallifreyan'. I never told you that," Rose said, a knot beginning to gather in the pit of her stomach.
"Harry, what are you doing?" Lucy asked, sounding uncertain of herself for the first time since Rose had met her. "I don't think she needed to know that."
"The baby changes everything," he said. He seemed indecisive. "All of our plans need to be adjusted. You should go and cancel our appointments for the next few days."
Lucy squeezed past him, though not without a curious look back at Rose.
"Look, I think that I'll head out, too, all right?" Rose glanced around but the room still only had the door that Harry was blocking. "You can sort through things while I'm gone."
Harry pulled something out of his pocket – it looked a bit like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but it was bigger and... yellow instead of blue.
"Who are you?" Rose asked. "Your name isn't really Harry, is it?"
"Look at the little human, finally catching up," he said, with a smirk. He closed the door and twisted the lock. Needing to unlock the door would almost certainly slow her down if she tried to escape. He was being pretty clever about this. He probably thought he was the only clever one in the room.
"You're him, aren't you?" Rose asked – and that caught his attention. "The Doctor thinks that you're dead."
"Not anymore, he doesn't," Harry... no, Koschei said, tossing the phone toward her.
As she'd feared, it was hers.
"You called him," Rose said. "He knows that you're alive and that... I'm here. You know, it's bad manners for the ex to kidnap the wife."
"He told you that?" Koschei asked, sounding absolutely stunned. It made Rose very glad that she hadn't run into him the first time he'd been around, when she probably wouldn't have known about his past with the Doctor.
"He told me all sorts of things," Rose said. "You were so jealous of his first wife and he didn't see it, did he? He never realized just how much-"
"Shut up," he growled, coming toward her.
"How desperately you love him," Rose finished, refusing to let him intimidate her. He had her pinned up against the wall, but he wasn't even properly looking at her. If he wanted to, he could kill her – the Doctor was stronger than he looked, so Koschei would be the same way – but he would have already done that if he didn’t' think he needed her for something. "He chose her, at first, and it killed you."
"Literally," Koschei said, with a wry smile. "I purposefully regenerated, hoping that I would care less in my next body."
"But it didn't work that way," Rose said, and she was able to push him away from her a bit, though she wasn't quite ready to risk running for the locked door – Lucy was still out there and... this was one of the Doctor's people. This was someone that the Doctor loved. "Love doesn't fade. It changes to fit into the new form, but it's still there. I know, because my Doctor fell in love with me wearing a different face. And he changed, but his love... that was the same. Burned into him, like a scar that will never quite heal."
"You really do understand," Koschei said, sounding puzzled. He backed away and sank down on the couch, though he kept holding onto that screwdriver of his. Rose wouldn't make the mistake of thinking he wasn't still dangerous. "I knew only a few facts about you, Rose, but you're managing to exceed my expectations."
"I'd be flattered, but I reckon you thought very little of me."
"The woman who captured the Doctor's hearts and who looked into the Time Vortex itself to save him... oh, no, Rose, I was expecting you to be interesting. Just not this interesting. What else do you know?"
"I'm just supposed to tell you?" Rose asked, skeptically.
"You probably wouldn't enjoy it if I went rooting around inside that head of yours to find out on my own," he said.
"Safe to say," she said. "But I might be able to hold my own."
"Highly unlikely, though... intriguing." Koschei paused and gave her a considering look. It sent cold shivers down her spine. "I must say, it's astonishing that you conceived. Your DNA really shouldn't be compatible with his."
"Nature finds a way," Rose said.
"What?"
"It's... a movie quote, actually," Rose said. "But it might apply. The Doctor mentioned... being made for me. This version of him, at least."
"Now that is interesting," Koschei said, leaning forward. "He regenerated to please you?"
"He was dying anyway, but... he said that he wanted to make me happy. And he used to have kids, so that might be part of what he thinks romantic happiness means."
"You don't?"
"It's not the most important thing on my mind," Rose said. Especially at the moment, she thought to herself. "Did you ever have any?"
"Oh... oh, no," he said, sounding completely horrified. Rose couldn't stop herself from giggling. Hysterical laughter, no doubt – she'd be having fits on the floor next. "Children would have just gotten in my way."
"In your... what exactly is it that you want, anyway?"
"To rule the universe."
"Of course," Rose said. "Why did I bother asking? Of course, you want to rule the universe. You Gallifreyan blokes don't think small, I'll give you that."
"You're comparing me to him, aren't you?"
"He's prettier than you are," Rose said, not bothering to hide her smirk. He didn't seem to mind her sassing him – and if that got her filed under 'talks big, does nothing', all for the better.
"You noticed that, too?" He sounded terribly disappointed, but very far from homicidal. As long as she kept this on the right side of the knife's edge, she might get out all right. "I'd been hoping that it was just-"
"Just because you fancy him that you thought that?" The Doctor admired cleverness, enjoyed it when she was on the same page as him. Koschei might feel the same... or he might want to kill her for assuming she understood him.
"You know, I think that I might actually like you."
"You don't have to sound so depressed about it." Rose held back her sigh of relief – no need to give away to him how nervous she was. He had to believe that she wasn't afraid of him.
"I despised Lieroniakiahoutonia. I could have happily hung her up by her toes and tortured her for a millennium or two. I was expecting to feel the same way about you."
"And you don't?" Rose was torn between being flattered and horrified. "You aren't feeling any urges to torture me?"
"Not really," he said. "Perhaps I can blame it on the baby."
"I'm all right with not being tortured," Rose mentioned. "Just... in case it needs saying."
"He thinks that I'm planning on doing something awful to you," Koschei said. "And... I was thinking about it, but... that bloody baby. It shouldn't exist. I hate riddles."
"The Doctor loves them," Rose said.
"Hmm."
"You know, she probably wasn't so horrible," Rose said.
"What?"
"Lieronia," Rose said. She was actually feeling a lot of sympathy for the woman at the moment. "The Doctor loved her, so she probably wasn't horrible. He generally has good taste when it comes to people."
She glanced over at Koschei.
"Present company excluded, naturally," she added, glad to see him smile at that. He wanted someone to treat him like the enemy, but not like a king. Too much respect directed at him and he would stop respecting her. "Are you really planning on holding me captive or do you think you might get around to letting me go?"
"You're my trump card," he said, pouting down at his hands. She had never been so grateful for Mark talking about his work over dinner – never specific cases, of course, but she'd heard all about the ways people could be slightly off normal for nearly two years. So she knew that now that she'd connected with Koschei, he had to keep thinking of her as a person, someone who deserved as much consideration as himself. She couldn't let him treat her like anything less, not for a second.
"Do you mind if I call the Doctor?" she asked, flashed her returned mobile at him. He waved a hand at her, and she only barely stopped herself from smiling in triumph.
...
The phone rang again, only moments after he'd finally gotten around to putting it back in place – he snatched it up, unable to stem the tide of words, "If you have so much as touched a single hair on her head, I will personally rip out one of your hearts and force it down your throat."
"Well, it's good to know that you care."
"Rose," he breathed out, needing to sit down again. "Are you all right? He hasn't hurt you, has he?"
"You don't yet need to feed him one of his own hearts, no," she said – sounding... amused of all things. Not that he wasn't grateful that she wasn't terrified, but he'd rather like not being the only one filled with blinding fear. "And now he's moping. It's like dealing with Tony in one of his sulks."
"He's in the room with you?" the Doctor asked.
"Oh, yes," she said. "He locked us in here together. I mean, it's just a deadbolt and I'm on the right side of it, but I'm pretty sure that it would slow me down long enough that he'd catch up to me again. You Gallifreyans tend to be made of rather stern stuff, so I thought I should keep violence as a last resort, just in case it didn't work."
"Can he hear what you're saying?"
"I don't know. Let me check," she said. And then he could actually hear her yelling out to the room about whether the Master had heard her saying that she'd thought about using violence on him. Rose, the Doctor decided, was by far the scariest person he'd ever met in his life. "Yeah, he can hear me just fine."
"Are you aware that you've gone completely mad?" the Doctor asked, tightly.
"Well, I guess that means that we know what your type is," she said cheerily. "You require them a few cards short of a full deck."
"Rose... he could hurt you," the Doctor said.
"He doesn't want to, he says," Rose told him. "He said that he has absolutely no urge to torture me. He's blaming it on the baby."
"So, he wasn't lying about that?"
"How am I supposed to know? He hasn't exactly let me out to get a second opinion," Rose said. "But he's using it as his excuse. He says that it's impossible and requires study."
"Not impossible, just very unlikely," the Doctor said. "And you can tell him-"
"Yes, yes. Hearts stuffed down his throat, I heard the first time," Rose said. "Between you and me, I think that he's tired of fighting with you."
"Rose, you can't trust-"
"Hold on a moment," Rose said. Then he heard her calling something else out, but she must have been covering up the microphone, because he couldn't make out what she was saying. "Sorry about that. Your friend wanted me to tell you that he will never be tired of fighting with you and also that he's a great big baby who needs to grow up and get over himself."
"Rose-"
"I may have added that last bit," she said unnecessarily. The Doctor bit down on his tongue and tried to think of anything he could possibly say that would actually convince Rose not to antagonize the insane man currently holding her prisoner.
Rose had always had better luck talking him into things than the other way around.
"Rose, could you please put him on the phone?" he asked, desperately. "Just so I can get a sense of where his head is."
"On top of his shoulders," Rose said. Her voice lowered slightly, though the Doctor could only hope it was quiet enough that the Master wouldn't understand her. "And you have got to be kidding me, Doctor. Right now, he's manageable. He talks to you, anything could happen. The old boyfriend is not the person who is capable of calming down their crazy stalker ex. You'll just make him emotional again. He seems to... like me, which is a bit appalling, but I'm willing to go with it as long as I need to. I will do my very best to get back to you in one piece, but I need you not to do anything stupid. Can I trust you to do that?"
"Rose, please-"
"Can I trust you?"
"Of course."
"I'll call you again later," she said, more loudly. The Master must have started paying attention again. "Sorry that I have to miss the big party."
And then she hung up on him.
"What big party?" the Doctor asked, staring down at his phone.
...
"What's 'big party' code for?" Koschei asked – he'd pulled one of those squishy stress balls out of a pocket somewhere and was playing with it.
"It isn't a code," Rose said. "I'm turning thirty in a few days and we were all planning on getting together for it."
"When you say 'we all'-"
"Oh, you know, people," Rose said. "Mates."
"I could torture you," he said, but he didn't look very convincing, all huddled down on the couch.
"Could do, yeah," Rose agreed.
"You aren't supposed to agree," he groused. "And... thirty, really? By Rassilon, you're young."
"What's Rassilon?" Rose asked, gingerly sitting on the far edge of the couch.
"I'm not telling," he said. "It's a Gallifreyan thing."
"When I ask the Doctor about Gallifreyan things, he just tells me," Rose said. Though that wasn't, strictly speaking, completely true, but it wasn't as though Koschei would know that. "I mean, I get that you want to be exclusive and arrogant and all those other Time Lord things, but you don't need to, not with me."
"Just because the Doctor thinks that you breathe out stardust doesn’t mean that I'm not willing to gut you and play with your internal organs if you annoy me too much," he said.
"You know, the Doctor mentioned that if you hurt me, he's planning on making you eat one of your hearts," Rose said, conversationally, glad that he couldn't see the way her stomach twisted at his words. "I don't think he was kidding, either."
"I don't think that I ask for too much," Koschei said, after he'd performed another spirited round of pouting. "Just a little something to call my own."
"You want to rule the universe," Rose reminded him. "Technically, you're asking for everything."
There was another long pause. Rose wondered again about the advisability of kicking Koschei in the balls and attempting to make her escape.
It was probably still a bad idea.
"Could your tests tell how far along I am?" Rose asked.
"Why? Is there a chance that it isn't his?" The hope in his voices was... really pretty disgusting.
"Unless you've discovered a human embryo capable of incubating for two years, it can't be anyone else's," Rose said, glaring at him. "I'm just curious."
"Oh. About three weeks."
"That explains why I haven't noticed," Rose said.
"What do you- oh, the human female reproduction cycle," Koschei said, with a bit of a shudder. "Messy bit of business, that. It lays Lucy out for a week out of every month. How humans accomplish so much with that kind of constant trauma is absolutely beyond me."
Rose didn't say anything, but her mouth twitched a bit. If Lucy really had convinced Koschei that her period left her completely incapable for one-fourth of each month, Rose had to admire her for it. Mickey would have called her on something like that before two months had passed.
Some things really were easier with alien blokes.
"And your lives are so short. You know, I was with the Doctor for nearly a century," he said. "He still left me."
"Well, after a century, I'll be dead," Rose pointed out. "So, it won't matter as much."
"That seems a bit defeatist to me," he said. "I'm still willing to give you that treatment."
"Why would you want to do that?" Rose asked. "I mean, not that I want to you to start treating me that way, but I am... competition for the Doctor's affections. Why would you want me to live longer?"
"You'd make a better bargaining chip if you last longer."
"I don't want you to take this as a threat, because it isn't, but the last person who tried to use me as a bargaining chip ended up dead," Rose said. "It might not be the safest route to take."
"You aren't carrying around any extra power any more," he said. "I think I'm probably safe."
Rose decided not to mention that she hadn't been talking about the Daleks. It might be better if he thought she was helpless on her own, annoying as it might be to play that game. If he thought her only resource was the Doctor, he might not cover all the angles.
...
When his phone started playing "It's Raining Men", Jack grinned and immediately answered, "How can I help you today, Doctor?"
"Does the phrase 'big party' mean anything to you?" the Doctor asked.
"A lot of fun?" Jack guessed. "Maybe an orgy."
"That can't be what she meant," the Doctor. "She's been held captive by a madman – even if she has kept him from torturing her, she can't be having fun. And... certainly not the other thing."
"What are you talking about?" Jack asked. "Can you put Rose on?"
"She's the one who's been captured," the Doctor said.
"And you didn't open with that?" Jack asked. "Doctor – the first words out of your mouth should have been 'Rose has been taken prisoner'. Why the hell are we talking about parties?"
"It's the last thing that Rose said, on the phone," the Doctor said. "She said that she was sorry to be missing the big party. But we aren't having one."
"Or maybe she meant that you should contact all of your mutual allies and help rescue her," Jack said.
"That makes sense," the Doctor said, after a moment. Jack wondered if he'd started kicking himself.
"I'll mobilize Torchwood," Jack said.
"I'll call Martha... oh, and Sarah Jane, she might be able to help," the Doctor said.
"Sarah Jane Smith?"
“Yes. Why do you ask?"
"I've heard some good things,” Jack said, vaguely. “What about Donna?”
“I could pick her up – and Jenny.”
“Who's Jenny? I haven't met her,” Jack said. “Yet.”
“Well, you aren't allowed to flirt with her,” the Doctor said, firmly.
...
“Are we just going to sit here, then?” Rose asked. She wondered if she could possibly blame her irritability on being pregnant. Probably not.
“Until I think of a better plan,” Koschei said, petulantly. “Are you sure you don't want the treatment?”
“Why do you keeping asking my permission for it?” Rose asked, leaning back on the couch. “Why not just... do it, if that's what you want?”
“Maybe I will,” he said, without actually moving from his seat.
“Has Lucy-”
“It hasn't been tested yet,” he said.
“I'm not inclined to be your lab rat,” Rose said.
“But you love him,” he said. “Don't you?”
Rose shrugged, not wanting to give away to this particular man how deep her affection for the Doctor ran.
“If you do love him, the idea of never dying and always being with him has to be tempting,” Koschei said.
“I'm fond of him,” Rose allowed. “But there are certain things that I wouldn't be willing to do to stay with him.”
“You're a fool,” he said. Rose shrugged again and looked away, willing the man to just leave already, so that she could have a go at breaking out. “I'd destroy the universe if he would just look at me the way he did when we were young.”
“Have you ever thought about the possibility that... it's your willingness to destroy for him that makes him not want you?” Rose asked. “Because... I wouldn't. I couldn't. I don't believe that I have the right to hurt anyone else just because I care about the Doctor. I think that's one of the things that he likes about me.”
“Why are you avoiding the word 'love'?” Koschei asked. “Don't you love him?”
He actually sounded genuinely curious.
“What I feel for the Doctor is none of your business,” Rose said evenly.
I'd worked out an outline for my 'season five' as well: The pitch for S5 is the return of family and of the Daleks (Davros and the Daleks not being dealt with in S4).
Series Five pitch:
Bringing Jenny and Donna back into the picture.
May or may not incorporate parts of TW S3 and SJA S2. May or may not include things from the Christmas or 2009 specials.
Something will happen with Jenny and the Hand and Rose and... something. Jenny instead of Donna? And her brain can handle it. Three Doctors and no one overheats. Of course, the Rose problem is going to pop up, in that case.
Donna and Jenny have become very close over their time together.
So, S5 – the Adipose planet disappears. Pyrovilia disappears. The moon of Poosh is lost. The Sontaran planet disappears.
The walls open up.
The return of family – not just Jenny, but Jackie and Mickey and Pete (and young Tony).
One 'Christmas' special.
13 episodes, with 1 three-parter, 2 two-parters and 6 singles.
There will be a new companion for the Doctor and Rose.
Not a young woman, not of this time period. Alien?
Or... hmm. Tosh? Rose has fond memories of Tosh (Owen still dies, maybe). That could work. Tosh becomes the new companion for S5.
The Christmas special should be a solo Doctor/Rose piece.
The first episode brings in the TW crew and Tosh and Tosh asks to leave with the Doctor and Rose.
In the second episode, they do a historical (somewhere Tosh might enjoy – look it up)
In the third, they go to a Far Future (the Ood post-freedom?)
Four-Five is the first two-parter. Generally, this is an Earth Invasion plot – do I want to have the Sontarans or possibly I could use a different Old School villian?
Six will be a Tosh-focused episode where we get to meet her mother and learn about her family.
Seven will be Near Future.
Eight-Nine should be an adventure-based two-parter.
Ten will be Rose-focused.
Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen will be the finale of S5. This will bring in Donna, Jenny, Mickey, and use the Hand-regeneration trick in some fashion.
5x00 - Christmas Special (10 parts): Rose and the Doctor spend a solo trip to the outer reaches of the galaxy – they do end up dealing with something of a crisis, but it actually ends fairly well, with only a few deaths.
5x01 - Episode One (6 parts): The Doctor and Rose go to help the Torchwood crew with something and Tosh is having a hard time dealing with Owen's final death. She ends up asking the Doctor and Rose if she can come with them and they accept. At some point, I want Tosh to run into an (unnamed) Mickey (who is playing Rose in this search for the Doctor to help stop the stars from going out).
5x02 - Episode Two (6 parts): some kind of historical episode that allows Tosh to show off her skills.
5x03 - Episode Three (6 parts): some kind of future-type episode, unrelated to any other future episode.
5x04/05 - Episode Four-Five (10-12 parts): Double-length episode about Tosh's background – deals with UNIT and her family (another flash of Mickey?).
5x06 - Episode Six (6 parts): An episode dealing with Tosh as a companion specifically.
5x07/08 - Episode Seven-Eight (10-12 parts): Deals with the consequences of Rose's transformation.
5x09 - Episode Nine(6 parts): More serious historical episode.
5x10 - Episode Ten(6 parts): More light-hearted space romp.
5x11/12/13 - Episode Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen (22-30 part story?): Finale with Daleks/Davros. Starts with a phone call from Donna and Jenny, brings in Mickey from the alt!verse (who will end up staying).
5x00 – Christmas Special – Silver Belles
The Doctor and Rose are celebrating being together and testing out their new telepathic connection, when they run into some alien trouble and end up in a bit of jail. Female-based society? (women are a huge focus of this series, with Rose and Tosh both being full-time companions and Donna and Jenny playing vital roles in the finale).
5x01 – The Second Stage of Grief
Jack calls the Doctor and Rose in to help with something of a crisis (and to spend time with them). Martha Jones is there, having decided, in the wake of Owen's death, to join up with Torchwood. Tosh is having a very hard time dealing with Owen's death and she and Rose bond (Rose having very fond memories of the Tosh in her universe). Tosh asks to go with them and Jack can't tell her no.
5x02 – The Writer's Soul
The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh meet Virginia Woolf (research!). She sounds totally awesome. “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” I think she'd like Rose and Tosh (must check Woolf's racism levels, though, b/c I don't want Tosh to deal with people being jerks to her).
1982 – 1941. English novelist and essayist. She knew lots of people. Also, bisexual! She needs to hit on either Rose or Tosh (since she doesn't believe in exclusive relationships, she could hit on all of them!)
5x03 – Wings of Wax
The future-based episode where Tosh really gets to show off her skills. The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh land in a society that is certain about where it is going, unfortunately, they are heading down the path to ruin.
5x04/05 – Journal Entry #105
This deals with Tosh's family and her history, as well as having an alien plot of some kind.
5x06 – The Cost of Living
Tosh messes up a bit by overestimating her skills and getting herself in some trouble. We also see here that she's still working through her grief for Owen, but that she is working through it. Slowly. With pain. And she misses her TW people.
5x07-08 – Daughter of Time
This is the story that focuses about Rose's transformation and how it's affecting her. She gets a bit of time sickness and has to deal with that – two timelines competing for her attention, things that the Doctor has to deal with all the time.
5x09 – The Day Before Yesterday
Focuses a bit on the Doctor's historical past. Possibly a past-regeneration story? Five, maybe, since I didn't use “Time Crash” in my canon? Maybe takes place in a casino of some kind or a dance hall. The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh must help the fifth Doctor and Tegan deal with a mystery. Rose asks, “Why don't you remember doing this before?” Set in America in the 1920's, maybe?
5x10 – Last, Best Hope
Where we see stuff happen. Near-future episode. Tosh-focus? Doctor-lite?
5x11/12/13 – World Without End
We start with Donna calling the Doctor, telling him that she and Jenny need to come home – there's an emergency.
Ah! Ah! Jenny uses the hand. Same genetic material as the Doctor, after all. She gets hit by a Dalek blast, the Doctor takes her into the TARDIS and bonds her to it, she actually regenerates into a new form and excess energy bleeds into the hand (he uses that to keep her from regeneration sickness – make that explicit. It 'settles' her form more rapidly. He also connects with her telepathically to help her settle more quickly).
Donna still gets stuck in the TARDIS and touches the hand, we get a second Jenny (who looks like the original one), who has the memories of both the Doctor and Jenny (which is very complicated for her).
So, we have a Doctor, a Jenny, a Doctor-Jenny, and a Donna-Doctor-Jenny. At the end, the Doctor tells Jenny that they don't have any other choices than to strip Donna of her memories.
Mickey and Jenny are going to spark a lot when they meet, which will be post-regeneration (which the Doctor finds very disturbing – he also forbids Jack to flirt with her – he can't manage to stop her from flirting with... every single person around, though).
In the end, Tosh is going to go home to TW and Mickey is going to end up with Jenny, while Doctor-Jenny takes away Donna's memories but decides to go back with her to London. She wants to see if enough time will help Donna recover.
Mickey and Jenny take off together – we get to find out that her TARDIS piece is growing quickly and that it has gotten boosted by Doctor-Donna-Jenny before her memory was wiped.
Sarah Jane is involved to the same extent that she was before. Jackie is spoken of by Mickey – she's with Pete and Tony and has adjusted to not having Rose in her life, though she misses and loves her dearly. Rose has some (slight) angst about how much she has changed since she's left (her mum was right about this life; Rose really isn't fully human anymore – a fact that she confesses to Mickey)
Should Mr. Copper and Harriet Jones be used this year? Sounds like a good idea, since they would still be involved in helping with that sort of thing.
Should any of the principals die?
Tosh must be vital in some way.
End set-up:
Doctor-Jenny and Donna (mind-wiped)
Doctor & Rose (alone again)
Mickey & Jenny (new pairing – not explicitly romantic, but with an edge in that direction)
Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, Martha (TW teams – possible adjustments given TW S3)
Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde (decide on Maria after viewing of SJA S2)
There should be a short 'Children in Need'-eske story between S5 and S6.
The Doctor-Jenny character only has the Doctor's memories up until the Sychorax sword fight. After that, it picks up with Jenny. So, she has conflicting feelings – she was deeply in love with Rose Tyler, desperate to renew her affection, but there's an equally large part of her that isn't all that affected by Rose and is much more strongly attached to Donna.
She's the one who takes away Donna's memories, and she also has a goodbye scene with Rose.
“I remember... wanting nothing more than for you to look at me like I was everything you'd ever wanted,” the woman... the person who wasn't Jenny or the Doctor. But she looked like Jenny, so it was hard for Rose to think of her in any other way. “And I remember meeting you for the first time and seeing you with my father – you were just the blonde woman that he was in love with and I was grateful to you for having him wait around until I woke up again, but none of those other feelings are in that part of me.”
“I don't...” Rose paused. “How much of you is the Doctor?”
“Enough,” she said. “But I only have the memory of a single year with you, Rose Tyler. How long have you been with... with the other me? You married him. You love him. Everything that I never would have believed that I could dare to have with you, he has. How did I ever become so brave?”
“We did it together,” Rose said, softly. And that was the problem, wasn't it? She did remember what it had been like just after the Doctor had changed. It had taken time – and eight years trapped in another universe – for the two of them to get to this place. Even if... even if she didn't already have the Doctor, she couldn't imagine having the energy to break through all those walls again. It had been hard enough the first time.
“And all of those are memories that I don't have,” she said. “You're not the Rose that I remember and I'm the Doctor that you've already grown past.”
“Don't say that,” Rose said. “I didn't stop loving who you used to be just because I love who he is now.”
“I can't stay on this ship,” she said. “I can't watch the two of you – no matter how glad I am that you have found happiness, I... I can't-”
“Where are you planning on going?”
“I'm going to go to London,” she said. “Near where Donna lives. I'm hoping that, with time, I'll be able to heal her mind enough that she'll get her memories back.”
“The Doctor said-”
“It may not be possible, I know,” she said. “But I travelled with Donna for three years and I can't abandon her. I never knew the Donna that the Doctor knew, my memories stop before that. I only know the Donna that Jenny knew and I can't bear the thought of that person never existing. I have to try.” She paused. “And... if I'm in London, then there's the chance that I'll still see you again, on occasion.”
“I thought you said that you couldn't watch,” Rose said.
“I kissed you once,” she said. “To take the Time Vortex from you. Part of me longs, even now, to kiss you again. The thought of never seeing you, not for the rest of my life, it hurts me.”
“Doctor...” Rose murmured, instinctively reaching out and cupping the woman's cheek. It didn't feel right, but that tone of voice and that look in her eyes, that was right. That was the Doctor.
The woman... the Doctor... swayed forward, into Rose's touch, and tilted her head to the side. It was a question or perhaps a hope. Rose nodded slightly and then leaned that last bit more. Their mouths met in a very soft, hesitant kiss. It was goodbye and hello and everything that Rose wouldn't be able to give.
She didn't taste quite like the Doctor did, Rose noticed.
Rose let the Doctor... Jenny... end the kiss, her chest aching when she heard the tiny, longing sigh the other woman breathed out.
“I'm sorry,” Rose said. “So sorry.”
In order for younger!Obi-Wan to survive in this future, the ghost!Obi-Wan would need to fade into the Force so that this Obi-Wan could connect, because they aren't clones, but genuine 'echoes'. He'd been trying to do that and had been finding it hard and ghost!Obi-Wan would have had to look past his own unique ways of spinning the truth in order to let go. It's the doubled connection - ghost!Obi-Wan cutting off younger!Obi-Wan's connection to the Force - that would lead to Obi-Wan nearly dying as per Anakin's dream.
I was in the middle of writing the next chapter when I got stuck on the process, but I will share it with y'all as well:
The Force was playing games with him.
Really, Obi-Wan thought, that was the only possible solution. To give him this time and place where he could have Anakin, but also show him all of Anakin’s flaws and mistakes in more painful depth than he ever could have imagined – it could only be the work of a heartless universe.
And yet, it seemed that he was fated to be trapped here for a while longer.
Obi-Wan smiled at Mothma and reached out for another small sliver of fruit, not allowing his annoyance at her delays to show on his face. One of the problems with being famously diplomatic was the need to be patient when people were stalling. And, without doubt, Mothma wasn’t quite ready to begin the discussion that she wanted so dearly.
The Force had brought him here – Obi-Wan no longer had any doubts about that. This wasn’t an accident. The cards were too well aligned. Much as he would love to be able to go home and fix all of this bloodshed and terror, Leia’s words wouldn’t let him. There was something about the girl, something that needed working out.
“General Kenobi,” Mothma said, hesitantly, at least for her. “You may be wondering why I requested you to attend this breakfast alone.”
“The question had occurred to me,” Obi-Wan said.
“I mean you no disrespect, but in our work together during the rebellion, you had a bitterness about you whenever Skywalker’s name came up,” Mothma said. “Nothing to point to specifically, you understand, but there were enough oddities about the whole business to make someone wonder what happened between the two of you before he died."
She was so much different than she'd been before – harder, as though the years had honed her to a razor's point. Her eyes had paled slightly, and fine lines had worked into her face, giving her a depth of character that she'd sorely lacked the last time he'd seen her – five weeks ago... decades ago.
What did she see when she looked at him?
She was still waiting for him to speak, to give something away, and he was content to let her wait, sampling the supplied breakfast instead of acting rashly. So, the older version of himself had given out hints that Anakin had become less than trustworthy but... he'd never told her what had happened. Luke had spoken truly when he'd said that no one knew that Anakin Skywalker and the dreaded Darth Vader were one and the same.
That told him that he hadn't changed much at all – he'd still protected Anakin, even when it was an obviously stupid thing to do.
For all their outward victories for the sake of the Republic, it was increasingly clear to Obi-Wan that the Council had chosen very poorly when they'd allowed him to train Anakin. And yet, even with that knowledge burning inside him, he would choose no differently.
And that was where the actual writing ended.
Another big series that I never finished was my S4 AU with Rose - it started somewhat close to canon and was going to deviate further and further as I went along.
My initial thought for the series was this:
The pitch for S4 is the Attempted (emotional) Seduction of Rose Tyler. The Master, for one, is absolutely thrilled to have the chance to meet her. Lucy is… slightly less enthused, but willing. Lucy is the shill – she meets Rose, briefly, in VotD. Hmm… they were spotted in Cardiff! While dropping off Jack. We know that the Master had the resources to fuck with Jack's team… he's spying on them now. He wants to suborn Rose so that he can get the Master (he's good with the Doctor keeping his 'human pet', of course, if it'll keep him shut up – of course, he's making the mistake of underestimating our Rose).
Ooo. Maybe his chosen 'regeneration' actually worked in quelling some of his madness.
Sadly, I didn't get to anything actually involving the Master.
Here's the last of what I'd written for "Chapter and Verse", the story that I broke off in the middle of:Chapter Two: Rose
“I can't possibly need to wear all this,” Donna said. Rose looked up from her contemplation of three different pairs of shoes to see Donna holding up a soft, white shift, similar to the one that Rose had slipped over her own head only moments ago, while staring in dismay at the rest of the pile of clothing that Rose had dumped in front of her.
“If you don't want to wear the dress, we can explain away your trousers and shirt,” Rose said, deciding on the pale yellow pair of half-boots. People, Donna would learn soon enough, were willing to accept just about anything if it was presented casually. Pretend that something was completely natural and most people would just go along with it. It was one of the most useful skills that Rose had learnt from the Doctor.
“That's an actual corset,” Donna said, eyebrows drawn up in distaste. Donna had already displayed a fascinating variety of facial expressions, and Rose had only known her for a couple of hours. “I like breathing.”
“You won't have any problems breathing, as long as it isn't too tightly-laced,” Rose said, snagging some stockings off of a shelf and sitting down on a nearby strut to pull them up over her knees and tie them into place. “The TARDIS will make certain that you've got one the right size.”
“What's he going to wear?” Donna asked, tossing the shift onto a bench.
“Probably the brown suit,” Rose said, thoughtfully. “Though he does have that blue one now. He might wear that.”
“That can't be period,” Donna said.
“People don't generally care what the Doctor wears,” Rose said. Well, Jack had, she remembered. 'U-Boat captain'. She stifled a giggle. Donna wouldn't understand and Rose wasn't sure she was up to explaining at the moment. “It's part of that whole thing that he has... that sense of... of feeling like he has answers. People tend to fall in line. I'm sure you've seen it.”
“Oh, I've seen something, all right,” Donna muttered, only barely audible. Then she cleared her throat. “Do you need help with that thing?”
“One of the benefits of wearing alien clothing is corsets that tighten themselves,” Rose said, pulling it up and carefully placing it where she wanted it to be. Then, she reached back and yanked on the ribbon and breathed in deeply, and she heard Donna gasp as the corset did its work. Rose let her breath out again when it was safe and then glanced down at her more impressive cleavage. Still not at the level that Donna was at just by existing, but definitely fuller than she normally looked. “Tugging on the other side will undo the whole thing.”
“How did...” Donna made a sort of sputtery noise.
Rose glanced over, trying to see what Donna was having such trouble getting out. She seemed a cross between horrified and fascinated.
“Does it come with an instruction manual?” Donna asked finally.
“The Doctor told me what to do,” Rose said, her cheeks only slightly warm. “The first time that we went to a place where corsets were common – I think it was actually an alien planet, that time.” The memory returned, as bright and clear as if it'd been yesterday – the Doctor, with his short hair and his black jacket, telling her the special features of a corset without actually mentioning anything about 'skin' or 'breasts'. “Yeah, it was Korsea, out past Betelgeuse and about... eight million years into the future. Of course, I wasn't really fitting in anyway, as it was mostly tall aliens with see-through skin and no hair, and I had to wear this half-mask to breathe through because the air was a bit toxic to humans. That was... just before their revolution. Well, I say just before, but we ended up being a part of it. And even afterwards, they still loved their corsets.”
“You can talk, can't you?” Donna said. “You sound like him.”
Rose couldn't tell from the sound of Donna's voice whether or not she thought that was a good thing.
“You're not the first person to say that,” Rose said, hauling up her underskirts and attaching them. Donna was still dressed her in original clothes, trousers and a soft-looking brown top. “Are you sure that you don't want to dress up?”
“It really doesn't hurt?” Donna asked, reaching out and pressing a finger against one of the hard curves of the corset.
“I promise,” Rose said, reaching down and wrapping her hand around Donna's, momentarily startled by the warmth of Donna's skin. Donna looked her in the eyes and Rose wondered just what she was looking for and then Donna nodded, pulling away and going over to the clothing that Rose had collected for her. She poked at it, made a considering sound and then started changing.
Rose picked up her dress proper, also light yellow, and pulled it into place, then slipped into her half-boots. They were, of course, almost unbelievably comfortable. Humans, the Doctor had assured her once, would one day be able to create shoes as comfortable as the ones available in the TARDIS, but not for another three hundred years.
As far as Rose was concerned, that was far too long to wait.
She examined herself in one of the full-length mirrors and brushed out the skirts, though they weren't wrinkled in the slightest. Now that she was in the yellow, she wasn't sure if she liked the way it looked. Perhaps she should have chosen a darker color or a more vibrant one. Maybe one more like the velvety blue that she'd picked out for Donna.
A chirping sound, not quite a bird call, filled the room.
“What is that?” Donna asked.
“That'd be the Doctor, wondering if we're ever planning on joining him in the main room,” Rose said, bustling over to help Donna finish getting dressed, the cut of the dress and the push of the corset making her sway more than normal. She'd hate to have to wear this sort of costume all the time – give her trousers and trainers any day – but it was nice to dress up when the occasion called for it. She finished up the row of fasteners that would keep Donna's dress in place and then backed away to get a better look. “That's a beautiful color on you. Did you find shoes?”
“They were even my size,” Donna said. “How is that... does the ship make the clothes?”
“Sort of,” Rose said. “It's complicated. It... adjusts preexisting fabric. The Doctor explained to me once, but it was a bit over my head at the time.” She paused. “I should ask him to tell me again. I might understand now.”
“Where were you?” Donna asked. “I mean-- I know I've got no right to ask, but... the Doctor said that you followed a lizard between dimensions. After what I've seen with him, I shouldn't doubt it, but it sounds absolutely mad.”
“That's life with the Doctor,” Rose said, with a laugh. “Always completely mental, but so utterly fantastic. You get used to it.”
“That's just it,” Donna said. “I want to, Rose.”
“You want to...”
“I want to get used to it,” she said. “I want to stay, after this and after Rome. I want to see the stars from a mile away and smell what it's like on an alien planet and maybe meet an alien that doesn't look like a great big spider.”
“The Doctor said...”
“The Doctor could tell you weren't happy about me coming on,” Donna said. “But I don't care about getting in the way of the two of you – I just want the sky. I'm not- I'm not competition.”
“Of course, you're not,” Rose agreed, eyes wide, feeling like she'd been slapped. “I didn't realize that I was...”
Rose turned away from Donna, pressed her hand against her stomach, where the scar from the Titanic was, and closed her eyes.
“The day I met the Doctor, I was about to get married,” Donna said. Rose could hear the shift of fabric and then Donna's hand was on her shoulder, gentle. “I was in love. Well, I loved who I thought he was, but... the day I met the Doctor, I saw the world for the first time. I saw my life, the way it was and I... even if it hadn't turned out that Lance had betrayed me, I don't think I would have married him, not after meeting the Doctor. Not because I'm attracted, believe me – you can have skinnybones all to yourself – but because I saw that I could have more than a life filled with gossip and work and men.”
“That's what he does,” Rose said. She twisted slightly, just to meet Donna's eyes, and felt herself smiling. “That's who he is. He did it for me, too.”
Donna smiled back, hesitantly, and opened her mouth-
And the alarm chimed again, more insistently. Donna burst out laughing, her hand sliding down to Rose's elbow, and Rose couldn't help but join her.
“What is that sound?” Donna asked. “It's not a bird.”
“It's a pterodactyl call,” Rose said. “It's new, actually. He's changed it. It used to be the roar of a... the closest thing we have is a lion, but... think alien and with six legs. And purple and blue.”
“See, that's exactly-”
“If adding an additional female traveler always exponentially increased the clothing changing time, I'd never have done it,” came the Doctor's voice from the doorway.
Donna shrieked – actually shrieked – and spun around to the side. Rose turned about more slowly. She'd been right about the brown suit, but he was wearing a deep blue shirt that she wasn't sure she'd seen before underneath it and she knew that he had on a new tie. A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth and he was leaning against the door frame as if he knew exactly how good he looked at this moment.
“Susan and Barbara,” he continued, “got dressed separately, for the most part. Tegan and Nyssa positively orbited around each other in such things, but still didn't take any longer dressing together than apart.”
“You could just ask 'what took you so long?',” Rose said, but she couldn't keep a smile off her face. It was like a great big dam had broken inside him and each time he mentioned a new name, something inside her clicked – the part of her that still remembered being in his head, she reckoned.
“You could knock,” Donna said. Rose looked over at Donna and wasn't surprised to see her hands on her hips. “I could have been naked.”
“Yes, that would have been... deeply scarring, no doubt,” the Doctor said, quirking an eyebrow. Donna let out an offended huff of breath. His grin widened. “Both of you look wonderful.”
Rose hurried toward him and he came forward to meet her – the kiss was soft and cool and, though brief, exactly what she needed. When she pulled back from him, he reached up and pressed two fingers lightly against her lips, and she reached up and wrapped her fingers around his wrist.
“You've dealt with these Carrionites before,” she whispered, so that he could hear her, but Donna couldn't. “You know what to do?”
“We'll figure it out,” he said, his hand slipping down to hold hers. He lowered both their hands down, and his gaze kept shifting to her mouth, as if he couldn't help himself. “We always do.”
The certainty in his voice sent a deep shiver of happiness through her and she leaned forward for another tiny snog, almost too brief to think on, but filled with all her joy.
Once they were outside, the Doctor pulled out a small device – it was roughly the size of a standard remote control, but the buttons were labeled in spiraled Gallifreyan that she couldn't read. Probably technical terms, she'd wager. The Doctor tapped several buttons, then did something else to it with the sonic screwdriver, talking all the while, of course, about 'spectral wavelengths' and 'biological resonance'. Rose gave him about half her attention, focusing the rest of it on Donna, who still seemed fairly astonished that Rose had been right about the corset, from the way she kept breathing deeply, as if to prove that she could.
Rose considered the notion of Donna coming along on a more permanent basis, poking at the idea from every possible angle: Jack had worked out well, all things considered, but Adam had been a disaster and Mickey had-
Rose swallowed against the memory that popped into her mind, of Mickey flashing her a grin and teasing her about getting hurt chasing after another potential alien menace. The last time that she'd seen Mickey, they hadn't even said good-bye, because she hadn't known that it would be the last time.
Donna wasn't anything like Mickey, but she wasn't like Jack, either. She was entirely herself, that one, and Rose wasn't quite sure what she should say. She still wasn't sure if the Doctor asking Donna along wasn't his way of trying to... slow down. He wasn't like a man, not most of the time, no matter what Mickey always thought, so she couldn't predict what he meant by what Mickey or Jimmy or any of the other blokes would mean.
“I've got her,” the Doctor said, his voice raising in triumph, the machine in his hand making a three-two beeping pattern. He waved his hand in a northerly direction. “We need to go that way for roughly two kilometres and then I can take another reading.”
Rose glanced at the gently-sloping grassy hill in front of them, then down at where her boots were squishing into the mud – she hoped that Donna had gone with the sensible shoes. “Onwards and upward,” she muttered, instinctively taking the hand that the Doctor had reached out to her. He tossed a smile back at her and they were off.
“Couldn't we have gone by the road?” Donna asked, from close behind them. “If you can blinky-machine us from the middle of a field, you can blinky-machine us from a proper road.”
“What's the adventure in that?” the Doctor asked.
“I should have known that you didn't have a good reason,” Donna said.
The was going to be based around the Tudor time period, dealing with Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke. The Doctor is trying for Rome and lands in Wilton House, just as Lady Mary is going through a trying time.
They should arrive in 1587 – spring. They help inspire her to start Wilton House.
She has only recently lost her brother – that's why the escaped Carrionites went to her. The events of the episode make her see a larger world (though she may or may not realize the full extent of who the Doctor, Rose, and Donna are).
Only Lilith? Maybe. She should realize who Rose is – the threat needs to be focused on Rose (theme!). In fact, maybe only Lilith is left.
“The others... trapped in there... they starved themselves that I might live. And Mary... drew me. Her grief matched my own. I used the playwright's pain without understanding it. Now, I know what it feel like to lose an entire world and be forced to survive.”
“So do I,” Rose said, stepping forward. Lilith watched her cautiously, like the snake watches the mongoose. “I lost... everything and I had to go on when all I wanted was to go back.”
“But your world was restored to you,” Lilith said. “Your love stands with you. My mothers and sisters are forever gone.”
“The Doctor's people are all dead,” Rose said. “Never to return. He has felt your grief.”
She should be saved (everyone gets saved, though not everyone lives). Lilith lives and Lady Mary is inspired.
Here's the breakdown that I wrote for the S4 episodes.
Okay, I've decided that the Master has been somewhat... humanized. What happened is that Martha opening the TARDIS caused a program that the Master had installed to kick in and that's why he was able to resurrect in this version and not the other. So, he's currently researching ways to become a Time Lord again but when they catch wind of Rose Tyler being back in the universe (saying goodbye to Jack), he comes up with another plan. He wants to use Rose to get to the Doctor (plus, have the fun of getting Rose when the Doctor cares so much about her – it's all kinds of win for him (so he thinks).
Partners in Crime – Realignment 'verse
(A Most Noble Undertaking)
1 – we open with Rose still injured from Christmas and the Doctor talking her into resting for a bit at Sarah Jane's place. After she's been dropped off, he goes off to investigate some odd energy signatures.
(the Doctor)
2 – We have Donna investigating Renova. At the very end of her chapter, she runs into the Doctor.
(Donna)
3 – Rose is not content to sit around and heal while there may be action afoot. Especially since Sarah Jane and Mr. Smith have picked up on the same energy signature that the Doctor was so interested in earlier. She and the SJA crew go off to investigate as well.
(Rose)
4 – The Doctor and Donna track down Earnest Young, who appears to be the head of the company and the Doctor cows him while Donna investigates the files and finds some intriguing information about the formula and its side-effects.
(The Doctor)
5 – Rose sees something and heads off, while the SJA crew discover the same information that the Doctor did in 4. They run into the Doctor (who wonders where Rose is) and together they destroy the barrels, the formula, and the assembly line and feel that they've gotten Young to see the line, warning him that they'll be watching him.
(Sarah Jane)
6 – Meanwhile, Rose runs into Lucy, who call herself 'Harriet Cole' and says that she's a Time Agent. She says that she was just here to investigate the situation but that it looks to be under control. After she leaves, Rose runs into everyone else again, and she agrees to let Donna come along with them (Wilf stuff still happens?).
(Rose)
Fires of Pompeii – Realignment 'verse
(Chapter and Verse)
1 – open on Donna getting used to the Doctor/Rose dynamic and the mistake of landing in the Tudor period
(Donna)
2 – setting the stage for the reveal – Rose and Donna get dressed up and everyone gets to know Lady Mary (Rose claims that Donna is her recently widowed older sister)
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor and the realization of the Carrionites
(the Doctor)
4 – Donna finds out from the Steward's books that no one has been dying in odd or mysterious ways and Rose wanders off to investigate, going missing (again)
(Donna)
5 – Rose confronts Lilith and finds out the truth behind the dead Carrionites and the situation – the Doctor comes to rescue her and tells her that she can't possible trust Lilith, Rose tells the Doctor to trust her instead
(Rose)
6 – the Doctor makes the choice to trust Rose and Lilith agrees to have her power bound – with her family dead, it's not of much use to her anyway. When she agrees to that, he's instead willing to take her to a more hospitable time and place. Lady Mary argues that he doesn't need to – she says that Lilith can stay.
(The Doctor)
Planet of the Ood – Realignment 'verse
(Unfinished Business)
1 – Donna suggests that since the Doctor's aim is so bad, why bother actually aiming? The Doctor says “all right” and randomizes the controls. Landing them on the freezing cold Ood planet, where they run into the Ood in the snow
(Donna)
2 – At the plant, they start to get the tour and wander off – Rose notices something else and wanders off on her own (as she is wont to do). She notices a tiny bit of wolf graffiti and follows it.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor expresses annoyance to Donna about the whole 'wandering off' thing, while they continue with their bit of plotline.
(The Doctor)
4 – Meanwhile, Rose has stumbled into a bit of a Bad Wolf situation (that the Doctor never ran into on his own because he never went there). One of the semi-rabid Ood oracles at her. “A friendly face hides more lies that you could ever imagine” and suchlike. Warnings about the future/past.
(Rose)
5 – The Doctor and Donna's plot is concluded as previously.
(Donna)
6 – The Doctor confronts Rose about going off on her own and she counters by telling him that since the ceremony, he's completely backed away on their relationship.
(the Doctor)
The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky – realignment 'verse
(Less Than Kind)
1 – we open with a continuation of the last scene from the previous episode, from Rose's PoV instead. Their argument heats up and finally does end in a bit more movement on the romantic front.
(Rose)
2 – which is, of course, when the call from 'Holly' (Lucy) comes in and we find out that Jack has been buried alive. The Doctor, Rose, and Donna go to Wales to find out what's going on and meet the TW crew (they run into Gwen on the roof!) – Rose recognizes Tosh and Ianto (but not Gwen or Owen). Tosh, of course, made her sonic screwdriver and Ianto had worked with her on many projects.
(the Doctor)
3 – They decide to split up – Rose and the Doctor will go to the past to save Jack, while Donna stays in the present with the TW people who are trying to save Cardiff. We stay with Donna for this section.
(Donna)
4 – Rose and the Doctor go to the past using the locator information that 'Holly Cole' have them and find Jack roughly twenty years into his death sentence. He's very glad to see them and tells them as much of the whole story as he knows – he also reveals that he's never heard of 'Harriet Cole' but that doesn't mean much, as Time Agents change their handles as needed. A blonde in her thirties could be any of five or six agents.
(Rose)
5 – Back in Cardiff, I want Donna to be directly responsible for helping to save Tosh from dying. In this part, maybe she helps redirect people. She's a Temp person, she can come up with ideas. Grey doesn't know that she's there, so she saves Tosh from getting shot.
(Tosh)
6 – Rose, the Doctor, and Jack return to the present and run into Grey, who has quite a lot to say (after he woke up from getting beaned in the head, he slunk away to regroup). The Doctor and Rose have more efficient counters for his words than Jack did.
(The Doctor)
7 – Tosh and Donna don't quite manage to save Owen in time and he dies in the reactor. Tosh is inconsolable.
(Donna)
8 – the return of John and the judgment of Grey. Episode end. People meet up – the Doctor and Rose comment on Gwen's resemblance to Gwyneth, Rose remarks that she's met versions of Ianto and Tosh in her previous TW experiences. The Doctor disables John's vortex manipulator and offers to drop him off somewhere – John says that he'd like to stay here with Jack (Jack is the only one even remotely all right with that idea).
(the Doctor)
9 – Rose calls up 'Holly' to thank her for helping Jack get saved. Asks more about who Holly will be to her and about the Time Agency connection and gets blather in response.
(Rose)
10 – Jack comes back on board the TARDIS to say goodbye again (and Donna gets in a good flirt with him), then the TARDIS begins reacting the way it did in the original end of TPS, taking off without permission.
(Jack)
The Doctor's Daughter – realignment 'verse
(In His Footsteps)
1 – the original landing on the Hath planet and the cloning of the Doctor, the initial battle that lands Rose and Jack on the other side of the wall from the Doctor and Donna.
(The Doctor)
2 – Rose and Jack with the Hath. Jack actually gets shot by them (and comes back) before they're willing to listen to reason.
(Rose)
3 – the Doctor is pissed off about everything. Donna connects very strongly with Jenny (who she still names). Jenny tries to connect to the Doctor, who can only think of Rose. An escape is planned.
(Donna)
4 – Back on the Hath side, Rose and Jack establish communications with the Doctor (who is thrilled). They trigger the same system thing that Martha did (they do not save the Hath). And then they go off across the surface to find the signal thing.
(Jack)
5 – Donna and the Doctor escape and make their way to the compound, where Donna figures things out. The show-down occurs and Jenny is shot.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose refuses to leave when the Doctor wants to, telling him that she wants to sit with Jenny for a while (because of the grace she saw in her when she died for the Doctor). Jenny, of course, comes back to life, full of energy. The Doctor invites her aboard and she declines, stating that she wants to find her own way. To the Doctor's shock, Donna says that she wants to go with Jenny. The Doctor gives them a bit of TARDIS coral for Jenny to grow, telling her that when it does grow up, maybe she'll have a chance of understanding what it means to be a Time Lord. They take Jack back to TW and send him on his way.
(Rose)
The Unicorn and the Wasp - realignment 'verse
(Lux Eterna)
1 – Martha calls them home and tells them the problem.
(the Doctor)
2 – They go to Tom's location and notice something interesting – the same radiation that had cropped up in “A Most Noble Undertaking” is happening here, as well. I think that I want Rose going off to investigate something and Martha following her, wondering what she's doing.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor and Tom Mulligan are working together and they run into Lucy Saxon. The Doctor recognizes her and asks what she's doing. She tells him that the company in question has been owned by her family for years. After Harry's death, she decided to go back to her roots.
(the Doctor)
4 – Rose and Martha come across some files that lead them to a secret room filled with experiments (a chance for Martha to shine). They sent the patients free.
(Martha)
5 – Lucy gets a phone call that seems to upset her and she tells the Doctor that she had no idea such horrible things were going on in her place of business and that she plans on launching an immediate investigation. She dismisses them and, while the Doctor remains a bit suspicious, he also knows that Lucy did shoot the Master, so he's sympathetic to her and is willing to believe that she didn't really know.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose and Martha reunite with the Doctor and Tom, sharing with them what they'd found. This distresses the Doctor, who shares with them the news about Lucy. Martha expresses the hope that it really was a mistake that will get cleaned up – Lucy's name was not to be found on any of the papers, after all. It ends on a bit of an uneasy note.
(Rose)
Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead – realignment 'verse
(The Doctor's Wife)
1 – The Doctor gets a message on the psychic paper. Rose is a bit suspicious of the 'kisses' part of it. They get to the library and notice how empty it is. Spooky, even. They run into the security drone that's labeled and screaming, and then run into River (and crew).
(the Doctor)
2 – River and Rose don't get off to the best start. River and the Doctor get off to a worse one. Arguments and whatnot ensue. Rose strongly defends Evangelista against the others. She also notices when Evangelista is warning about the open door and follows her, managing to save her from the Vash Narato.
(Rose)
3 – The Doctor follows Rose (of course) and they all end up running from the Vns.
(the Doctor)
4 – River and the Doctor continue to not see eye-to-eye, while Rose considers the possibilities of what River means. She sees it as a positive sign that the Doctor will recover from losing her in the future, while the Doctor is, basically, saying “fuck that shit”.
(River)
5 – Some people die and running continues. The Doctor talks to River again and decides that he can't handle the idea of moving on and losing Rose – tries to send Rose off like he did with Donna in the original episode, thus breaking his vows.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose in the false reality. She fights against it a lot. No Evangelista, so she figures it out on her own that things are screwed up and she starts trying to fight that from the inside.
(Rose)
7 – The Doctor is seriously pissed off. Rose has been 'saved', River is treating him like a lover, and he's not feeling sympathetic to anyone. Another person may die at this time (people definitely alive at episode end – Evangelista, Lux, River)
(River)
8 – Rose finds her way to CAL and talks to her, former trapped girl to trapped girl. “This is no life” vs “I'm saving these people”. She forces Cal to confront what she's really doing and to start growing up. And makes contact with the Doctor through a security ball.
(Rose)
9 – the Doctor challenges the VN, no need for River to die or things to go 'boom'. River is reluctantly impressed “You may not be my Doctor, not yet, but you are one hell of a man”. Rose is restored to him and he tells River that, while what she says about his future may be true, it won't happen as long as Rose is alive and for enough years beyond for the pain to start to fade. He can't quite believe that it's possible, but he'll take her word. He gives her a kiss on the cheek good-bye.
(the Doctor)
10 – Rose confronts the Doctor about breaking his vows and the Doctor and Rose consummate that marriage of theirs. Finally.
(Rose)
Midnight – realignment 'verse
(Echo)
1 – Landing on the pleasure planet and spending some time enjoying themselves and each other. The Doctor notices the offer of a cruise and he and Rose decide to take it.
(the Doctor)
2 – the first bit of the trip, getting to know the other passengers.
(Rose)
3 – the machine breaks down and the Doctor and Rose go to work investigating the problem. Sky is invaded.
(the Doctor)
4 – Sky really begins to creep out everyone except the Doctor and Rose. She decides to focus in on the Doctor.
(Rose)
5 – Everyone starts to turn against the Doctor and Rose for being 'freaks', especially when Sky 'recovers'. When Rose tries to stop them from hurting the Doctor, Val pushed her into the seats (she hits her head). The Doctor is frozen during all this. The rest plays out like the episode, the Hostess gives her life when she sees the truth.
(the Doctor)
6 – Rose wakes up in the Doctor's arms to a very quiet and solemn cabin atmosphere. The Doctor is full of barely contained rage. His bitterness toward humans not Rose is at its height – they nearly killed her. “If I hadn't been sure that you would wake up,” he told her softly, “None of them would have left that ship alive.” This is the Lonely God aspect of the Doctor and it is and should be a very scary note to end on.
(Rose)
Turn Left – realignment 'verse
('Listen')
1 – Rose on Chan Chen, buying a present for the Doctor. She runs into the fortune teller and is sent to the past to change her decision to work at the butcher's instead of Henriks. Rose and Mickey get married and have a kid, under the backdrop of aliens and invasions. Rose has something on her back.
(Rose)
2 – Rose runs into a TenThatNeverWas. He's blonde and brash and notices the Time Beetle. She goes back with him to the TARDIS.
(Rose)
3 – the big seduction/sex scene with Rose and Not!Ten.
(Not!Ten)
4 – Rose makes the decision to go back to the past and change her change of mind.
(Rose)
5 – Or, rather, it's the Not!Ten that does it for her – he bumps into her on her way to the butcher's and charms her a bit, and she and he walk along the street until Henrick's and that's where he leaves her, right in front of the 'Wanted' ad. Her desire from earlier surges up again and she goes into the store, undoing the damage of the Time Beetle.
(Not!Ten)
6 – she wakes up into the tent, the fortune teller runs off, and her Doctor is there. She totally jumps him.
(Rose)
The Stolen Earth/Journey's End
(Amidst Ruins and Fallen Gods)
1 – Rose and the Doctor are enjoying a lazy day (he's tinkering and she's learning some Gallifreyan) when she gets a phone call from 'Harriet' asking for her help and telling her that she can't bring the Doctor. Rose agrees, since Harriet's stock is pretty solid since the Jack thing, and she goes off to meet with her. We're introduced to her 'husband' Lucius Cole, who may come across as the Master or may not. They admit to Rose that they are working on a way to make humans 'relatively' immortal. Rose expresses her reservations with the idea.
(Rose)
2 – the Doctor is contacted, by the Master, who tells him that he has Rose. The Doctor? Freaks out, of course. Serious amounts of 'chicken with head cut off' and lots of panic at why he can't sense the Master.
(the Doctor)
3 – Rose figures out that something strange is going on and is turned into a prisoner. She figures out who Lucius is at this time, calling him 'Koschei' in her head, while Harriet/Lucy starts calling him 'Harry'. Lots of names. She asks to speak to the Doctor and does so, giving him a hint about assembling a bunch of people to rescue her if need be while she works him from the inside.
(Rose)
4 – The Doctor contacts Jack, Martha, and Sarah Jane in order to help figure out where the Master might have Rose and what he plans to do to her and how to rescue her. Sarah Jane has Luke, Maria, and Clyde to help her (and Alan Jackson, too, I think). Jack has the TW team plus John, and Martha has UNIT and Tom and Mr. Copper, who has been tinkering around with lots of things since the Doctor and Rose left him on Earth.
(the Doctor)
5 – Rose figures out that the Master is human now and that's why he and Lucy are doing all this research. They think that they finally have a breakthrough, but were hoping that she would be willing to play their lab rat. But 'we can force it on you' they tell her. It'll hurt more if she fights it. She tells them that she's never going to give in (she gets knocked out by a guard).
(Rose)
6 – Martha reminds the Doctor about the suspicious activity of Lucy's group – if the Master is alive, then Lucy may have shot him as part of one of his plans, they realize. Jack and Tosh try to locate possible places where Rose may have been taken. They start with where the TARDIS has landed and work outward from there.
(the Doctor)
7 – Rose wakes up in a strange location, all hooked up to the Master's machine. She argues with him about using it on her and he basically tells her that she's got no choices – he has her trapped and he's going to do this to her no matter what she might want.
(Rose)
8 – Sarah Jane and Mr. Smith locate “Harriet and Lucius Cole”. She's found out that Cole had been Lucy's maiden name before she'd married Harry. The Doctor says, “Lucy and Harry. It's like they're mocking me. It was staring us right in the face. They swapped names.” Tosh is going through CCTV footage, trying to locate the places where Lucy and the Master may have taken Rose. They're starting to get frantic. As they find possible locations, Martha tries to convince UNIT that they search there for Rose and the Master – the Doctor tracks down Alistair in order to get him to talk them into expending the manpower on 'this one girl'. “And the man who was willing to enslave the human race. You have to trust me on this, Bridgider. If we lose Rose, then you're also losing me.”
(the Doctor)
9 – Rose wakes up, feeling rather woozy. Lucy asks her how she's feeling and they have That Conversation about how Lucy has been lying to her for months. “But I did help you save Jack's life,” she points out. “Just to make me trust you,” Rose realizes. “You never cared about Jack, did you?” The Master comes in, also asking her how she feels. He's carrying a gun and she realizes that he's thinking of seeing whether or not she can regenerate the old fashioned way. She brings up the Doctor's threats and the Master shrugs it off, saying that the Doctor has always forgiven him before. He shoots the gun and Rose dies.
(Rose)
10 – Tosh has narrowed it down to the most likely target. The Doctor is at the Hub at that moment in time and Jack volunteers himself and his team to come with to help out. In the end, it's the Doctor, Jack, Gwen, Ianto, and Martha who go along.
(Jack)
11 – Rose wakes up in the Master's arms and he's pissed as all hell that she looks the same – she's not Time Lord enough for his tastes. The warning on the estate goes off. “He's here!” the Master says, uncocking the gun. He and Lucy take Rose to a more secure room that has a video feed to the outside and the Doctor comes up.
(Rose)
12 – The Doctor sees red. Literally, he's going to go off the deep end here. And then the Master offers that olive branch. “I've given Rose an experimental treatment that may very well give her the ability to live forever. Think of it, Doctor – the little wife, yours for the rest of your life. Rather a good deal, don't you think, for letting me have the same thing and go on my own way?” Also, he should thank Martha for restoring him to life “however an imperfect job you did” Rose tells the Doctor that the Master is human before he cuts her off, seriously upset that she spilled the beans.
(Martha)
13 – the Master cuts off the connection and throws Rose to the ground. She's getting pretty pissed off herself. And what the Master did to her isn't exactly what he would have wanted. She has a healing ability now, but, more importantly, she's developing a psychic knack and a time sense. She starts to see into the Master's head (fear and broken pride) and Lucy's (who is truly insane to a scary degree). He has her taken off somewhere and she's in a room alone with Lucy, with a guard outside.
(Rose)
14 – the Master calls the Doctor to talk alone. He tempts the Doctor with the universe and with Rose. The Doctor is willing to trade the universe for Rose and then... he hesitates and refuses. the Master is baffled. “It's not what she wants,” the Doctor said. “This is not what she would want me to do.” “And you listen to her?” the Master said. “I thought that you loved her.” “More than anything else I have ever loved,” the Doctor said. “And that's exactly why I'm saying no, because as much as I love her, I respect her. And she wouldn't want me to trade away myself or the universe for her sake. I understand that now.” “You're a fool,” the Master tells him. “Goodbye, old friend,” the Doctor says and closes off the line. He turns to Jack, Martha, Gwen, and Ianto – time for Plan B.
(the Doctor)
15 – the Master goes to confront Rose... but she's gone, out of her cell. “How could you let her escape?” he demands of Lucy. “She just made so much sense,” Lucy says, not certain herself what happened. “Find her,” he orders of his goons. Rose, of course, is 'listening' with her newfound psychic sense and is avoiding the guards that way. She can tell where she needs to be and when, so she heads that way.
(Rose)
16 – UNIT storms the compound, with orders to capture and not kill. Jack and Gwen, Martha and Ianto, and the Doctor are also searching.
(Gwen)
17 – Jack and Martha run into Lucy, taking her prisoner.
(Jack)
18 – Rose runs into Gwen and Ianto, saving them from a goon attack.
(Ianto)
19 – the Doctor confronts the Master. They have a good, old-fashioned argument, or so the Master thinks, until the Doctor slaps a pair of handcuffs on him (yes, the kind that he used with Blon). The Master, of course, recognizes them. He asks in horror if the Doctor plans on keeping his as a 'pet' again. The Doctor smiles and tells him that he has other plans.
(the Master)
20 – Rose, Gwen, and Ianto run into Jack, Martha, and Lucy. Lucy is given into UNIT custody, Jack reunites with Gwen and Ianto and then Martha wonders where the Doctor is. “Everyone else has pulled back to base.” Rose's eyes cloud over and she says that she can't tell what he's doing -- “Just that he's upset and relieved about it.” This, btw, should freak out Jack a bit – she couldn't do that before.
(Martha)
21 – the Doctor is smiling down at a nice young man who only has vague memories. “It's all right,” the Doctor reassures him, pocketing a small watch. “Everything will make more sense in time.” The man is told that his name is “John. John Smith.” He's a professor and very smart. Got hurt saving the Doctor's life. The Doctor doesn't know where his home is supposed to be but thinks that he'll be safe and happy enough here. “Can't I come with you?” John Smith asks him. “I... I like you. I think that I can trust you.” The Doctor tells him “No, not right now. Maybe someday, though, I'll come back and we can have an adventure together.” “I'd like that,” John told him shyly. He's on the human/Hath colony that they find in “The Doctor's Daughter”, about a month after Jenny and Donna have left. Without the watch (which will remain in the Doctor's possession), he'll never remember who he is. 'John' kisses the Doctor goodbye and the Doctor lets him.
(the Doctor)
22 – the Doctor reunites with Rose, realizes that she's going to live a bit longer (though still nowhere near as long as he will). The whole group of them get together for a bit of a party. It's a bit of a cheerful end to the series!
(Rose)
Children in Need bumper
(As Time Lords Do)
1-part
Rose and the Doctor play around with mutual telepathy (and have sex) in those Lost Gardens of Ki'plu. Rose finds out about Jaime and some other stuff about the Doctor's past.
(the Doctor)
Fic Snippets
Unfinished Business (Planet of the Ood)
"We owe it to them to help, Doctor," Rose said. "Because of last time."
...
"Would you like to join our song?" the Ood asked. "Doctor? Rose? Donna?"
"Thank you, but no," the Doctor said. "I… we have a song of our own."
"Yeah, I'm happy travelling. Thank you for the offer," Rose said, almost at the same time.
"No, thanks," Donna said, nearly on beat with the other two.
"We understand," the Ood said. It sounded amused. "But do not forget that every song ends."
"Believe me, I know," the Doctor said.
"We will remember all of you."
Less Than Kind (The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky)
Rose's mobile rang and the Doctor reluctantly moved so that she could reach it. Without her mother here, the only people calling Rose would be people who immediately needed to speak to the two of them.
"It's Jack," she said, looking at the screen. Her face paled after she'd started listening. "You're not – how did you get his phone?" The Doctor twitched, reminding himself that he had no right to ask her to let him on the line. "Repeat that, please. You can't be serious. Oh. Oh."
She clicked off her phone.
"Jack was just buried alive," she said, sounding numb. "We need to get there after the people doing it have left – the woman who was on the phone is a contact from Jack's Time Agency days, says that Jack mentioned me just before he was attacked, so she looked me up on Jack's mobile."
"I didn't know that Jack had your number," the Doctor said. On reflection, it was not the smartest thing he'd ever said.
"My mobile may have changed, but I managed to get the number back," Rose said. "Probably something to do with a certain bloke zapping my phone – it never went out of service, even though I haven't used it in eight years."
"Well, let's go and save Jack," the Doctor said.
The Doctor's Wife (Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead)
"She seems to believe that she knows you very well," Rose said, quietly. She was playing with one of the Library books, her hands betraying a nervousness that her voice didn't reveal.
"She doesn't know you," the Doctor said, turning back to twist the wires under the console a bit. That little girl, there had been something about her that had struck him as a bit off. "That means that she doesn't know me at all."
"She said you look younger now – maybe she knows you from after I-"
"Please, don't," the Doctor said, trying to focus on the wiring and not Rose's words. "Let's concentrate on the problem at hand."
"I'm just saying... this could be a good sign. Shows that, after me, you move on," Rose said. Her kindness – her love – felt like a knife stabbed into his throat. Always so concerned about how he would cope without her, always so sure that he had to- he had done the universe enough good. He couldn't grow old with Rose, still couldn't do that, but that didn't mean that he would allow himself to forget her. To... move on as if she'd just been- as if he could replace her with the latest model, like a human with a midlife crisis.
The Doctor stopped at his work, taking in a deep breath. It did little to quell the anger that had been sparked by River's first words to him, feelings that had only been stoked by her carelessness toward Rose. He glanced over and saw that she was watching them... no, watching him, as though Rose mattered as little as a book already read.
He reached out and grabbed roughly at the back of Rose's neck, fully aware that he was being crass and a fool and not caring because River had to be wrong and there could not be a future where he wouldn't have mentioned Rose. He pulled Rose up against him and kissed her, her lips parting so easily for him these days. She tasted of apple and cinnamon today, crisp and sweet. He closed his eyes and fell into her touch and steadfastly refused to think of a time where he wouldn't be able to do this.
When he let her go, she stumbled a bit, looking shaken, her mouth swollen.
"There is no 'after you', Rose," he said. It was simple fact, though she wouldn't believe that no matter how many times he told her. "It doesn't exist."
"Doctor," she said, softly. And he knew that she was disappointed in him.
He shook his head and turned back to his work, not looking over at where he knew River would still be standing.
Let her watch.
...
“You sent me away,” Rose said, her voice shaking. “You promised, Doctor. You swore.”
She could see a muscle twitch in his jaw, but he didn't respond, instead calmly inputting the directions to where he was planning on taking her next.
“How can I trust you?” she asked. “How can I believe you when-”
“She didn't know your name,” the Doctor said. “I never told her. Why not? Hmm?”
“I don't care,” Rose said.
“Liar.”
“Maybe I do, but that's not what this conversation is about,” Rose said. “You lied-”
“To save your life!”
“And I ended up getting trapped in the computer,” Rose said. “It didn't work. It never works.”
“I can't have loved her and not mentioned you,” he said. “Especially not... not with this face.”
“Doctor-”
“I didn't love her,” the Doctor said.
“You don't now,” Rose said. “But in the future-”
“You don't really want that,” the Doctor said. “Oh, you believe that you should. You don't.”
“I want you to be happy and I know that I won't live forever,” Rose said. “Of course, it's going to hurt to meet the woman who... replaces me.”
“She won't,” the Doctor said.
“You can't know that,” Rose said. “I know how much you hate getting information from your future, but it does mean-”
“It doesn't,” the Doctor said. “It doesn't mean anything, Rose. Even now, the future is more complex than any of us, even me, can realize.”
“Some things are simple,” Rose said. “If my choice is to hide in the TARDIS or stay by your side, you know what I want to do.”
“The thought of seeing you die is...” he turned away.
“With everything River said, everything she implied, it made me think about something,” Rose said. “You said once, that you could be... human in some ways. But you haven't... we haven't...”
“Is this about sex?” the Doctor asked.
“Because if it's not something that you want, I'll understand,” Rose said. “If it weren't for all the kissing and such, I wouldn't even think about it. Probably.”
Listen (Turn Left)
Rose paused at the booth, fingering a ring. It was warm, had been even before she'd touched it. It was a deep, brilliant red in color – a simple band of what looked like stone, but felt more flexible.
“What is this?” Rose asked the vendor.
“Ah, heat-sprung hanite,” she said. “It always stays warm, no matter where you go.”
“How much?” Rose asked. The price was... probably too steep, but Rose had enough of the local currency to pay it. The vendor wrapped the ring up for her and Rose tucked the package into a pocket.
She'd been looking for over a year to find a gift for the Doctor that would feel as appropriate as the cool silver bracelet that he'd gifted to her on their promise-day. This ring was exactly what she'd been looking for – it would remind him of her, hotter than he ever ran, but just about human body-temperature.
She headed back toward the Doctor when someone snagged her sleeve.
"See the future," the woman offered. Rose shook her head. The woman smiled hopefully. "Fortunes told!"
Rose hesitated, looking over to where the Doctor was happily haggling with someone.
"Could I... see someone else's future?" Rose asked. "See if they end up happy?"
"Of course," the fortune teller said cheerfully. "Special discount for you, since you're such a kind lady."
"Well, I have to say yes, then, don't I?" Rose said with a laugh, following the fortune teller into the tent. They settled down across from each other in the two available chairs. Rose waved a bit to clear the air in front of her – the tent was thick with a scent she didn't know.
"Now, tell me about this person whose future you want to know?"
"Aren't you supposed to tell me?"
"I tell the future – you tell me the past. How did you meet this person?"
"He blew up my job," Rose said, smiling. She could still feel the jolt of that first meeting – his hand meeting hers and his voice telling her to run. He'd jumpstarted her, like she'd been a stalled car, and he'd kept her running ever since. "While saving the world, he'd want me to add."
"What steps led you to that meeting?"
"Oh, I don't know." Nothing in the first nineteen years of her life or the eight in the parallel world held the same sharpness and clarity of focus that her years with the Doctor did. They were fuzzier, not as real.
"How did you get this job of yours that he destroyed?"
"I- what was your name?"
"Like your friend, I have no proper name," she said. "I am a fortune teller – that is all that is needed to be said, on this planet. You will respect our customs?"
"Yes, of course, I will," Rose said, feeling a bit silly for asking. "I got the job because it was available. I just... saw the sign in the window and decided to go in."
"Why?"
"I needed the money," she said. Her mum had told her that she wouldn't be willing to foot the bills for someone who'd made such a dumb choice. Rose couldn't really blame her. With all the men Jackie had slept with over the years, she'd never let any of them touch her money. "I'd dropped out of school to be with this boy and it left me in debt, so I couldn't really get anything better."
Rose paused, something nagging at her.
"Hold on – how did you know that my friend doesn't go by a 'proper name'?" she said. She was starting to feel a bit fuzzy and the fortune teller's hands on hers were starting to ache a little.
"I see the future," she said and Rose nodded. That made sense. The Doctor still wouldn't have a name in the future. "Were there any other places you could have gone?"
"There was always the local butcher's," Rose said, unable to suppress her shudder. "They had such a high turn-over rate for assistants. My mum had mentioned it to me, just that morning. Maybe that's why I went in to Henricks, because I didn't want to work at Finches."
"Have you ever wondered what your life would have been like if you'd listened to your mother?"
"I... no," Rose said, without needing to think about it. "Never."
"What if you got the chance to find out?"
"No." Rose tugged at the woman's hands, but found that she couldn't get away. "Let me go. Let me go!"
"Go back to that morning, Rose Tyler, and listen to your mother."
Rose shook her head, now trying desperately to get away and getting nowhere, the woman's fingernails digging into her hands, feeling something touching her on her back-
...
Rose blinked and her mum rolled her eyes.
"Oh, look at you, thinking of Neverland again, I'd wager," Jackie said, disdainfully.
"I'm sorry, what were you saying?" Rose asked, feeling an odd sense of dislocation, like she didn't belong here, in her own mum's flat.
"I said, you don't have many prospects now, but Finches would take you. They've always got jobs."
"The butchers?" Rose asked, her voice lifting in distaste, and then a little voice in the back of her head whispered listen to your mother. "I... I don't- I... maybe you're right, mum."
"Oh!" Jackie said, looking delighted. "I haven't heard you say that since you were a tiny snip of a thing. I'll take you over there myself, if you'd like."
Rose hesitated, knowing that she didn't want to work at the butchers but that voice in her head was saying, over and over, listen. Listen to your mother. She knows best. Listen to your mother.
"All right," she agreed, and it didn't even feel like she was the one talking.
...
"I was thinking that we could make things official," Mickey said, offering up a box. Rose took it from him, with trembling hands. She opened it up and it was just as she'd suspected – an engagement ring. He'd probably had to save up for at least a year for it, maybe longer. Rose felt a bit numb, but she was pretty sure that she managed to keep a smile on her face. She was glad that he'd done this while they were alone in the break room and not in front of all the other people in Finches. Anne-Marie, in particular, might know Rose well enough to know how she was feeling.
"Yeah," she said, faintly. Mickey took the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger, grinning away proudly.
"I was thinking we could get married in March," Mickey said. "My parents got married in March. You think you'd like that?"
"Sure," Rose said. "That sounds fine."
He reached out for her and she kissed him back obediently. His mouth was warm and so familiar. She'd kissed Mickey hundreds of times. Maybe even thousands of times – the thrill was bound to have worn off by now, no matter who was kissing her.
"I've got to go and tell the boys that you said yes," Mickey said, after he broke off the snog. He'd never looked happier.
"I'll tell my mum tonight," Rose promised. He ran off and Rose looked down. The ring on her finger looked small, but it felt like it weighed more than the Koh-i-Noor itself would. This was Rose Tyler, binding herself to Mickey Smith for the rest of her life.
They would wake up, go off to their respective jobs, come home, watch telly, probably shag, and go to bed. Then they'd do it all again the next day. And, again, every single day after that.
Every day in her future would be just like yesterday.
Rose stood up on shaking legs and walked carefully to the employee restroom, where she very quietly threw up her lunch. She wiped her mouth and flushed the toilet, then went out to the tiny mirror and slowly redid her makeup.
A March wedding would be nice.
...
She had the dream the first time that night.
Cool hands stroked lightly across her body and her hand was buried in thick hair. He had sharp features and his kisses were cool and clean, like standing under the full moon on a clear night.
Every brush of his body against her felt like a tiny electric shock and his voice was whispering against her skin – he called her beautiful and the word rolled off his tongue like a crashing wave.
In the morning, when she woke up, she would remember laughing eyes that weren't Mickey's, skin that shone creamy pale instead of being a rich, warm brown, a body that was slender and lithe in ways that made her ache, and she wouldn't be able to look Mickey in the eyes at breakfast, feeling a sick knot form in the center of her stomach.
...
"Do you, Rose Tyler, take Mickey Smith-"
A deafening noise from outside the hall startled the entire gathering.
A spaceship had crashed into Big Ben, everyone outside told them, and then landed in the Thames.
"I wish I knew what was happening," Rose said, wistfully. Aliens were real. Aliens. And they were here in London. Why couldn't anything that exciting ever happen to her?
"I wish they'd waited until tomorrow to land," Mickey said. "We'll have to do the whole wedding over again."
"Aliens, Mickey," Rose said. "Have some perspective."
"Yeah, I suppose," he said, grudgingly. "It was your big day, though – I didn't even get the chance to tell you how beautiful you look yet."
He reached out and touched her mouth, very gently, probably so he wouldn't smudge her lipstick. It was almost unbearably sweet. Rose pulled him closer to her and rewarded him with a tender kiss. It wasn't aliens or space or anything exciting, but this was nice. It was good.
They held onto each other as the countdown began, and in the wave of relief that swept over everyone after it was all over, they made love like they hadn't since they were kids – all swept up in each other and the moment.
"I don't think it was a hoax," Rose said later, glaring at the newspaper. "You saw, Mickey. You saw the ship. What do you think?"
"I- I don't reckon it was, either," he said. "The panic everyone was in – nah, it was real, Rose. There are aliens up there and they don't like us."
"That's not what I said," she tried to tell him, but Mickey was already half-way out of the room, and he didn't hear her.
...
Once... only once... she'd had a dream of a different man, one with close-cropped hair and larger, strong features, but it had felt the same as the others.
He'd stared at her, his eyes blue and lost, and he'd said just one thing.
“I need you.”
That was it. Just that sentence and then he'd pulled her against him, just holding her body against his.
When she woke up that morning, she was already crying.
She didn't stop until half-past ten.
...
"Again with the aliens," Mickey said in disgust. "And on Christmas Eve."
"They wouldn't know about our holidays," Rose said. "What do you think might be happening up there?"
"Alien things," he said dismissively. "Come on, now, you need to be careful, love."
Rose could have said the next bit by heart-
"Don't want to risk the baby," he finished, curving a hand over the tiny bump her stomach had developed.
...
All of those people, standing right at the edge.
"I wish that I could do something to help them," she said.
"We all do, sweetheart," her mum said, wrapping her up in a hug. "But the best we can do is hope that there's someone who'll be able to stop those monsters."
Rose started weeping into her mother's arms and she had no idea why.
...
The bright green lights converged and the ship exploded in the sky above them.
Someone had saved them.
The Prime Minister had made the call, as it turned out. Harriet Jones had saved them from the alien menace.
"She's a brilliant woman," Jackie said. "Bet that showed those Americans how to settle a war."
"Yeah," Rose agreed faintly, blinking against the flecks of white landing on her face. She wondered what the aliens had looked like, up close. There had only been the briefest glimpse on the news, just that one photo. They couldn't all look that way.
"And we even got snow on Christmas," Mickey said, pressing up against Rose and wrapping his arms around her. "How romantic is that?"
"It's beautiful," Rose said, but her mind was in places high above, in the sky that was so very far away.
...
Sometimes, in the dream, he just lay next to her, his curious brown eyes fixed on her and long, complicated sentences slipping out of his tempting mouth.
She didn't understand half of what he said, but when she woke up, all she wanted to do was hear more.
On those mornings, she often felt even guiltier than after she'd been dreaming about having sex with the bloke.
Still, most days, she got up and went to work and went home to Mickey and everything was fine. Her daughter was growing up quickly and it wasn't a bad life. Maybe it wasn't the sort of life she'd dreamed about as a kid but that was just it, wasn't it? That sort of thing was for kids.
She was old enough now to realize that girls like her couldn't afford to have adventures or break the rules. And girls like her didn't ever meet guys like the one she dreamed about, not for anything but an easy shag.
...
"Hello, miss. Do you have a moment?"
Rose turned around, startled. She hadn't realized anyone else was around this late at night. The man who'd spoken was tall and lanky, with thick, spiky blond hair. He was around forty or forty-five and he was wearing a lavender suit with a pink carnation on the collar and a tight smile. Would assuming that he was gay be falling into stereotypes? She was trying to be more careful about that these days, ever since Timmy came out at work.
"Do I know you?" Rose asked, knowing as she said it that there wasn't a chance, despite the odd feeling that she must have seen him before. But she'd never met anyone who dressed like that.
"I hope that you will," he said, quirking an eyebrow, so maybe not gay – nice accent on him, too – and then he did a double-take when he seemed to realize how slimy that sounded. "I'm sorry... I just... there's something different about you. What's your name?"
"You can keep your flirting to yourself," Rose said, but she smiled anyway. "I'm Rose Tyler, and I'm married."
"I'm not-" he paused. "Do you believe in aliens?"
"After this Christmas past – I had better," Rose said.
"It's not a given that you would," he said. "The denial instinct of humans is rather astonishing."
That was a strange way of putting it.
"Are you saying that you aren't human?" Rose teased. "You look human enough to me."
"Oh, I've been known to fool people," he said. "The reason I'm asking is because you're giving off some interesting readings and this whole thing will be much easier if you believe in aliens."
"What sort of readings?" Rose asked. "And... not to be rude, but I've given you my name and you haven't given me yours."
"I'm the Doctor," he said.
"Is that supposed to sound impressive?" Rose asked and she blinked, because the man in front of her had green eyes but, for just a moment, she would have sworn that they were blue.
"It generally does the trick," he said. "If I could have your arm..."
"The whole thing?" she asked. "I do still need it later."
He smiled then, a much more real smile than he'd been wearing before. He had, Rose decided, a very nice smile. He pulled out some kind of tool and pressed a button – the tip glowed blue.
"Is that what takes your readings?" Rose asked. A human-looking alien who used advanced tech – it was like she'd always imagined meeting Spock from Star Trek would be like.
"Sonic screwdriver," he said, waving it around a bit. She extended her arm. He brandished the... sonic screwdriver... over her hand for a few minutes, muttering softly for a little while before speaking clearly again. "Could you turn around?"
She did, feeling a bit strange and... a little guilty. Five minutes with this odd man and she felt more flush and alive than she'd felt with Mickey in years.
"Oh," he said, sounded absolutely fascinated. Rose shivered. "Well, now, that's just gorgeous." There was a moment of silence. "Don't worry, Ms. Tyler, I'm not flirting with you – I'm talking about something that's on your back."
Rose felt a twinge of relief... and one of disappointment.
"So, there is something on my back?" she asked. "I've been having some odd dreams and this peculiar itch, but no one else could see anything."
"Some communities have fewer psychics than others and only someone with extra switches flipped in their brain would pick up on this," the Doctor said. He was still standing behind her, beeping that screwdriver at her back. "Oh, this is very interesting. You're carrying something of a time-twister, Ms. Tyler."
"You can call me Rose," she said, feeling a bit breathless.
"Wouldn't that be a bit forward?" he teased, and Rose felt that guilty rush again. "You've got one of the Trickster's Brigade on your back – a Time Beetle. They feed off of time, by making someone change a choice."
"Why would I have one?" Rose asked, turning to face him. He didn't object, so she assumed he was done with the screwdriver – which she didn't see anymore. He must have put it away again.
"Because there's something special about you, Rose," the Doctor said. He reached out and traced along the edge of her face, looking puzzled. "Can't you feel it?"
"I'm nothing special," she said, softly. He had gentle hands.
"You're a woman with a choice," the Doctor said. "Three, actually."
"That would be nice," she said. His eyes softened and... she really should tell him to take his hand off of her face, but she couldn't quite manage it. This close, there was something about him was so intensely familiar, something that reminded her of her dreams, but her dreams were full of thick, dark hair and deep brown eyes that were so much older than Mickey's. This man looked nothing like that.
"You see, I can get rid of that Beetle for you, but the how of it depends on your answer to one question," he said.
"What's that?"
"Are you happy?"
Rose froze and pulled away from him.
"Why should that matter?" she asked, rubbing at her arms.
"I'm sorry," he said. "That means 'no', doesn't it?"
"What?"
"If you were happy, you would just say 'yes'."
"That's a horrible thing to say," Rose said.
"But you aren't?"
He reached out again, capturing her hand. She stared at him, not quite sure how to explain an entire life of desperately wanting more. With his alien talk and his glowing tube and his casual words about time... he sounded like everything she'd ever thought 'more' meant.
"Why couldn't I have met you before I married?" she asked, wrapping her fingers around his. There was a sharp, bitter ache in the center of her chest.
"Oh, Rose," he whispered and his voice just echoed through her, a thousand aching girlish daydreams. "You don't have to be unhappy."
"How do you mean?"
"If I take you back... it looks like it would be back about four years, that would be before you made the Beetle's choice, then I can stop it from changing your mind and you can live the life you were meant to live."
"Am I happy in it?"
"It's impossible to say," the Doctor said, gently. "The Beetle may have attacked you on someone's orders, it may have just thought you looked like a good meal, or... you could have asked for it to change your past. And, in that case, you might be stepping into a very unhappy life."
"All we know for certain is that... it isn't this life?" Rose asked. "It would be different?"
"Yes, it would," he said. "There's another option – I could remove it now and you would go on from here. If you'd said that you were happy, we could just leave it at that but-"
"What, Doctor?" Rose asked, again getting the oddest sense that she'd said that before. But, of course, she had. Whenever she'd spoken to doctors in the past – at Suzie's last pediatrician appointment, maybe.
"You could come with me," he said, softly. "You could leave this life behind and travel with me."
"I have a daughter," Rose said, realizing with a start that she hadn't said that earlier. "Her name is Suzie. She's just a year old."
"And you have a husband," the Doctor said, carelessly, and she could believe now that he was alien. "He could take care of her. I don't do families."
Rose stood there, the Doctor's hand in hers, feeling like the most horrible mother in the world, even considering his offer. Either of his offers, because...
"And... if I go back, she won't even be alive," she whispered. "She would never have been born."
"She was meant to never have been born," he said.
"She's just a little girl," Rose said. "She's never hurt anyone. How could I..."
"You aren't happy," he said. He had this conflicted look on his face, like even he wasn't entirely sure why he cared so much. "That... matters, Rose. You need to be happy."
"Are you this invested in everyone's happiness?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I'm generally not. But when I look at you, Rose – do you feel it?"
She opened her mouth to say 'no', but the word refused to come out. Because she did feel it – she felt it in the way that her hand felt so at home in his; she felt it in how her heart was racing at his words; she felt it deep inside her, driving her to do anything to stay with him.
"Yes," she said, finally, and it was like a dam breaking, emotion flooding through her. "Yes."
He held up her hand in front of them and ran his fingertips over her rings – engagement and wedding. His thumb slipped to the base of her finger, pushing the rings up slightly. She closed her eyes, feeling her pulse beating hard in her throat, and nodded. He slowly slid her rings up until her finger was naked, the wind kissing bare flesh.
"I don't believe that I want to take you back in time, Rose," he said. He'd leant forward and was speaking so close to her ear. She shivered. "I don't want to risk a future where I never meet you."
"My daughter..." Rose said, trying to hold onto that. Beautiful Suzie, who had her father's eyes and Rose's own smile. She was a laughing, boisterous baby girl and she didn't deserve to be abandoned. "I have a responsibility to her."
"You weren't supposed to," he said. Rose had never believed in... a god or a devil or anything like that, but if she did, she would call this man Lucifer, with his tempting silver-tongued words meant to draw Rose away from the consequences of her own choices. "I don't know what your life was supposed to be like, but you weren't meant to be her mother. She's alive because time changed."
The Doctor pressed his mouth against the skin below her ear and... it felt intoxicating and natural, a rush to her system that felt painfully wonderful. She reached up and her fingers sank into thick hair, and that was so right that she felt tears welling up behind her still-closed eyelids.
"Come with me," he said, pressing cool kisses to the side of her neck. His hands were at her back, pressing her up into his body. "Let me take you away. Oh, Rose, I don't know what you've done to me, but do it to me for the rest of your life, please."
"Yes," she said, tilting her head back to give him more access.
"Would you two lovebirds get a room?"
Rose opened her eyes, barely even seeing the man who'd spoken – she felt dazed.
"Sorry about that," the Doctor said, his hand casually wrapped around Rose's wrist. "We'll be on our way. Sorry to bother you."
He tugged her along and she followed, feeling a bit numb. They stopped in front of a large blue box and the Doctor dropped her hand and started rummaging around in his pockets.
"What's a Police Public Call Box?" Rose asked, staring up at the sign, feeling that internal echo again.
"Phone box from the 1960s," the Doctor said, pulling out a key and opening the door. "It's how my ship disguises itself."
The Doctor stepped inside and Rose... stared. Because... yes, it was bigger on the inside than the outside, that was obvious, but the strangest thing about it was the way that she looked at it and thought 'home'.
"Are you going to hang about all day?" the Doctor asked. "You're letting the cold in. Come on inside."
"I feel like I've been here before," Rose said, as she followed him in and shut the door behind herself. He turned to her, his eyes sharpening with interest.
"If you've been here before... perhaps we did meet in your alternate future," he said. "That might be what the Beetle latched onto."
"Is there any way to know for certain?" Rose asked.
The Doctor paused. "Well, there is one thing I could do."
"What?"
"You could let me inside the beautiful head of yours," he said, with a wink. Rose flushed, heat crawling across her cheeks. "My people have a limited form of telepathy. I might be able to see what you’re almost remembering."
"All right," she agreed, barely needing to think about it. He was alien and she'd only just met him and she was in a space ship but... she knew that she could trust him with her life.
"Perhaps a more comfortable location," the Doctor said, reaching his hand out toward her. She placed her hand in his and they were off into this impossibly enormous ship of his.
The room they ended up in seemed to be pretty obviously his bedroom – there was an extra carnation lying on the desk in the corner. The bed was tightly made and that was where they ended up.
"This will be easier if you lie down," he said, stripping off his suit jacket and tossing it over the chair in front of the desk. He wore a light button-down shirt underneath, also a pale purple in color.
"Bet you say that to all the girls," Rose said, but she stretched herself out on the bed.
"I'm going to touch your face, Rose," he said, sitting next to her. "If there's anything that you don't want me to see, just imagine it behind a shut door. I'll respect your boundaries."
"All right," Rose whispered, closing her eyes. She startled a bit when he touched her, despite his warning. She'd thought it was just the breeze outside, but his hands were still cooler than she'd have expected, despite the warmth of the room.
"Now, let me inside you," he said and Rose felt a shamed twist in her stomach at the vivid image those words conjured up. The Doctor took in a sharp breath. "Oh, that's an interesting thought. We could explore it later, if you'd like."
Without her rings on, it was surprisingly easy for her not to object to his invitation. Her mind was still thinking about what he'd said and... she was never meant to have lived this life. Four years back was before she and Mickey had even started dating again. Maybe that was never meant to have happened at all. Maybe... maybe she could have this... this life, this man.
"I would like that very much," the Doctor said, in a low, purring voice that made her ache inside. "But, for now, I'd love it if you could think about this ship being familiar to you and why that might be the case."
"Sorry," Rose whispered. She could hear the Doctor shifting around and... he was lying over her now, his lower body pressing down on her, one of his legs between hers, and just one hand at her temple and... his other hand must be propping him up, but she didn't feel like opening her eyes to find out. "I'm not sure I'll be able to- to concentrate with you-"
He shifted off her again.
"Are you sure?" he asked, sounding a mix of delighted and disappointed. His voice wasn't... it didn't sound quite right. He made an interested noise when she thought that. "How should I sound?"
"I'm not- not entirely sure," she said, trying to think. "Either a bit more like me, but still... more cultured... or brash and Northern. How can it be both?"
"Oh, that is intriguing," he said, and the curiosity in his voice, that was right. "I think that you have met me, Rose Tyler. And yet… I'm inclined to be selfish."
"What... what do you mean?" Rose asked him, opening her eyes. He was staring down at her with an intensely penetrating look, as if committing every inch of her to memory.
"I almost want to keep you anyway," he said, and the casual nature of his words made her head buzz a bit. It wasn't familiar at all, the way he spoke like she should... belong to him. Like she wasn't her own person. His eyes widened. "Oh, no, Rose. That's not what I meant at all."
The sincerity in his voice was undeniable and she felt herself folding into it.
He moved again, fully covering her body with his own, and leaning down to taste her mouth. She gasped up into him and there's another flash of a dream – his mouth was darker, his bottom lip fuller. He'd snogged her, so many times, he'd covered her body in kisses and she never ever grew tired of the feel of his lips brushing her skin because it sang like the stars every time.
"You loved me," the Doctor said, like a prayer. "I can feel it. You adored me."
Rose shook underneath him, and his body almost felt like it was flickering – it was this body, a bit heavier and broader, and then it was his, lithe and whip-cord strong and the most perfect, beautiful man she'd ever known and all for her, he looked that way for her, to please her.
"Did I?" the Doctor asked. He seemed half out of breath, green-then-brown-then-green eyes focused on her. "I do believe that you're correct – how completely fascinating. Who are you, Rose Tyler, that I was so entirely yours?"
"I don't know," she said, feeling as helpless as she had every day of her life and hating it. She'd married Mickey; she'd said 'yes' for the rest of her life and now she was lying under another man and wanting nothing more than for him to take her – in this bed, in the console room, lying in the fresh apple-scented grass of-
"New Earth," the Doctor said. "I took you to New Earth."
"New new Doctor," Rose whispered. She lifted a hand up and traced the lines of this face, different from both of the two that were in her head. His nose was about halfway between in size, she decided. He had smaller ears than either of her other Doctors. His eyes were green, but they still somehow looked the same – it was the eyes that had helped her so much after he'd changed. The color might change, but nothing could hide the weight they carried. Still beautiful, he was always beautiful, because he was the Doctor. "I know you."
"You knew a me that doesn't exist in this timeline," the Doctor said. "And one that did."
"You were... my first Doctor and you regenerated?" Rose guessed.
"Without you here, I didn't end up the same," he said. "So, you see, if I take you back, this version of me may never exist. Your Doctor will exist again – with his laughing brown eyes and full mouth and... long fingers?"
Rose blushed hard, sure that her face must be scarlet. She hadn't expected him to pick up on that thought.
"Though your Doctor seems... happier," he said, thoughtfully. "Of course, if you stay here with me, I might end up the same way. I already feel lighter than I have since..."
"Gallifrey," Rose said. "Since your people."
"Yes," he said, reaching down to brush her hair out of her face. "The choice is up to you, Rose. I can take you back in time and you can have him back or... come with me and we can have all of time and space together."
"You're... letting me decide who you're going to be," Rose said, certain that she had to have heard wrong. "You can't mean that."
"I believe that I do," he said, sounding faintly surprised. "I trust you."
"I meet you sooner, in the other time line?" Rose asked, fairly sure of the answer.
"From what I saw, you're... nineteen when I meet you," he said. "Not married to Mickey. No child. That was... such a pathetic and short life for this version of me, Rose. It sounds like his was much better."
"Will I remember you?" she asked.
"I hope so," he said, sounding pleased. "I'm honored that you'd want to... and it sounds as though you've already decided."
"It may make me a terrible mother and wife, but... yes, I have," Rose said, and just saying that truth gave her the strength to say more. "I hate this life of mine, Doctor. I've poisoned it because of that. I've not been a good mother to my Suzie – my mum sees her more often than I do and has given her a bottle more often than I've fed her personally. I've thought about stepping out on Mickey before... never have done, but I've thought of it."
"The temptation always comes with tall, dark-haired men with wiry builds," he said, with a wry twist to his mouth. "I'm guessing."
"Something inside me has been screaming for him these last few years. So loudly that I can barely breathe some days," she said. "When you touch me, I can feel him and it burns, Doctor."
"He's been deep inside your mind," the Doctor said, pressing his hand against the bare skin of her stomach. Rose nodded, her breathing going shallow. "I'm not sure whether or not it was intentional, but he's branded himself in there, clear as day once I got past the fog the Time Beetle causes. He's linked so tightly to you that-"
The Doctor broke off, skin paling. He pulled away from her.
"What is it?" Rose asked him, her body feeling bereft.
"I'm not sure that he'll survive your passing," he said, weakly. "I can feel the traces of him and, in every single cord, there's absolute certainty that you are the last thing that he wants to see in this universe. He's wound everything around you, Rose, every piece of who he is – who are you?"
"I'm just me," she said, softly. "Just Rose."
The Doctor laughed, and the sound was cold.
"From the moment I... he met you, there was something about you, Rose," he said. "I can feel it. He wants the press of your body and the embrace of your mind and he wants it so badly that it bled over onto me, simply because I was close to you. You are not 'just' anything, Rose Tyler. You brought the last of the Time Lords to his knees."
His gaze raked over her.
"By human standards, you're pretty, but not the aching beauty that everything inside me tells me that you are. Objectively, I shouldn't find you so overwhelmingly attractive – Romana's second regeneration was more classically beautiful and more authentically blonde, yet I never felt this heat when I was with her," he said, words quick and biting. "Your facial features are over-large, but I only find that all the more enticing. Your figure is nicely-rounded – more so since the pregnancy, I'd wager – and all I long to do is touch you and taste you, feel every inch of your body and then claim you in a vulgar and very human way. What did you do, Rose, to turn a Time Lord so domestic?"
"I don't know," she said, feeling the sudden urge to cover up, despite still being fully clothed. "I didn't do anything – I said 'yes' when you asked me along. I held your hand. I danced with you. I didn't make you fall in love with me."
"But you knew that I had," he said, reaching down to place his hand on her belly again. "I can feel it. You knew that I was in love with you and you still kept Mickey. You could have had a Lord of Time and you choose him instead."
"You were an alien," Rose said, memory sparking at his words. She broke off to whimper as his hand slid under her shirt. "I didn't even know that you were... compatible."
"Tease," he whispered in her ear. "You danced with me and I was so close to you – I could smell your hot human sweat and I knew you wanted me – how do I remember that, Rose? How is that possible? – but you still went off with that boyfriend of yours."
"I was just a kid," she said, putting her own hands at work, unbuttoning his shirt. "You're nine-hundred years old-"
"Well, a bit more than that," the Doctor said, snapping the clasp of her bra in two. That strength of his – it brought to mind visions of him picking her up and swinging her around in a hug, sweeping her off her feet to take her to a bedroom, holding her up against the wall of the ship with one hand bracing them and the other touching her in all the best places. "Closer to twelve-hundred, but once I saw your reaction to nine, I didn't want to make that gap any larger. Do I remember that because he left the knowledge inside you or by some other way?"
Rose answered him with a kiss, yanking down on the undone collar of his shirt to bring him close. This sex that she was having now – it wasn't familiar, in either the boring or the reassuring ways. This Doctor wasn't quite hers, had sharper edges. But she wasn't quite his, either. She'd married another man; she'd had a child that was entirely human.
She remembered now, as she hadn't in any of the dreams, how petty and fierce her Doctor's jealousy had been, particularly of Mickey.
"Yes," the Doctor panted, tearing his mouth away from hers and then burying his face in her neck, licking at her skin as he reached down and undid the top button on her jeans. "One tiny human and sometimes I... sometimes I hated him just because he'd touched you and I hadn't yet. Because he'd had a claim on your heart before I met you, because I could see this in your future if you ever said no to me – you married to him, choosing him and I can't bear it, Rose, I can't-"
She moaned, pulling at the sides of his shirt – he obliged her enough to let go so that she could have it off him and then he returned the favor, pulling her shirt up and over her head, her broken bra quickly following. He pressed down on her again and it was skin to skin and he was shivering everywhere that she was touching him.
"I need you, Rose," he said, and his voice sounded almost Northern now. "I've always needed you, every day, so much, and you weren't here, and I didn't know what I was missing but I ached, oh, I ached for you."
"I love you," Rose told him, stroking down the bare skin of his back – there were marks there and he healed so quickly and efficiently, always. How had he managed to get scars?
"Ran into a Dalek," he said, still responding to her thoughts. "It didn't go well. I had to... I had to-"
"You killed it," she said.
"I had no choice," he said.
"You did with me." He pushed up a bit, staring down at her, looking so incredibly lost. She reached up and stroked a line down his chest – thicker across the shoulders than the only other Doctor that she'd seen with his kit off, but still nice. He had the same odd interplay of muscles that looked like the Doctor and not like Mickey or the other human blokes that she'd shagged. "You chose not to be a killer anymore."
"You saved me," he said and that was wonder in his voice. "I understand now, Rose. I know why he centered everything inside you. I know why I have to take you back. I'm a better man when I have you in my life."
"Doctor-"
"But I want to have this, first," he said, desperately. "I want to wrap myself inside you, Rose. Will you let me, please?"
"Yes," she said and... he looked different, but he was the Doctor. "Anything you need, you can have. Always."
"When you get back, if you remember, you tell that Doctor of yours how lucky he is." He smiled down at her and she knew that smile – that was her smile, the one that her Doctors had shared, the one that they'd given her when they were so very proud of her. "And tell him that I forgive him, will you?"
"What for?"
"For everything he's willing to do for your sake," he said, leaning down to kiss her again. His hand slipped down and encircled her wrist and, for the first time, she felt the aching absence of the bracelet that was meant to be there. He hummed, catching her thought. “My wife,” he said, words slurring as if he'd been drugged. That was... that was caused by her emotions entering into him as his arousal deepened. She could... she could remember how it worked now. “My partner.”
“Everything that I have, I give to you,” Rose said, in halting Gallifreyan words that she hadn't realized she'd known. “For as long as you wish.”
Chapter Three
Hearing Rose's voice – already so precious and necessary – speaking words that the other him had to have taught her at some point, would have been enough to tip him into full-blown arousal if he hadn't already arrived there several minutes earlier.
He wasn't entirely sure that he approved of the fire she'd placed into his blood, but he couldn't fight it. No more than a handful of sand could escape the embracing clasp of gravity.
And this was a reckless regeneration – he'd known that from the first moment he'd woken up, the Nestene Consciousness dead and him along with it. His previous self had, possibly, had a bit of a death wish and it had remained in him in the form of the desperate desire to touch everything he could.
Amidst Ruins and Fallen Gods (The Stolen Earth/Journey's End)
Rose's mobile buzzed – she'd never seen the number before. That was odd. She hadn't gotten a call from a number she didn't know since before she'd come back to this universe. She lifted the phone to her ear.
"Rose – I've done it!" It was that Lucy's voice, bright and hopeful. "We need you here – can you come?"
"Just let me tell the Doctor-"
"We can't yet," Lucy said, sounding slightly frustrated. "He can't know."
"Timelines?" Rose asked.
"Of course," Lucy said. "Call me back when you're ready."
Rose sighed, wishing that she could have the full story – but Lucy had been right to warn her at Christmas and her phone call had saved Jack's life only a few months back. She'd earned some trust. And Rose had seen the way that the Doctor had gone off on that River Song woman about telling him too much. So, she went over and popped her head into the Doctor's study.
"I need to run a few errands," she said. "You'll be all right until I get back?"
He made a vague noise that Rose decided to take for agreement.
As she headed out, she dialed back the number Lucy had used.
"I'm headed out into London – it's spring when I am and the year is 2009," Rose said. "Do you need more than that?"
"That's perfect," Lucy said. "I'll find you in a few minutes."
...
"This is my husband," Lucy said, and she was glowing. "My Harry."
"I'm delighted to meet you again, Rose," Harry said, coming over to her and shaking her hand. He was an attractive bloke, tall and skinny with nice blue eyes. "Lucy has told me so much about you – and, of course, there are the meetings I've had with you that you haven't had yet, if that makes sense."
"Nonlinear time travel gives everyone headaches," Rose said. "Now, you two come clean already – what's the big secret?"
Lucy and Harry glanced at each other, each of them smiling in a way that was driving Rose crazy with curiosity.
"We know about your problem with the Doctor," Harry said. "We understand it."
"I don't- I don't have any problems," Rose said.
"He has a longer lifespan than you," Lucy said. "We know that you must worry terribly about it because... because Harry and I suffered from the same problem."
"He's an alien," Rose said.
"My Harry would naturally outlive me by far, given our comparative species lifespans," Lucy said. "But he's a scientist, so he set himself the task of solving that problem."
"And it worked?" Rose dared to ask.
Lucy's smile was luminously happy. "Yes."
"You'll be able to stay with your Doctor as long as you need to," Harry said, quirking a smile. "You won't grow old the way the rest of humanity does, instead, you'll... shift forms. We've been working on the technology for ages."
"That sounds like what the Doctor does," Rose said, slowly, trying to find the catch.
"Just so," Lucy said, her warm arm a reassuring presence around Rose's shoulders.
"I should talk to him about it," Rose said, softly.
"Ask his permission?" Harry scoffed. "You're an independent woman, Ms. Tyler. You don't need to see if your husband approves of your choices."
"I know that," Rose said, sharply. Harry just raised an eyebrow. "I just- why don't you want me to tell him?"
"He shouldn't know yet," Harry said. "From what you told us, it was something of a surprise."
"Why would I do that to him?" Rose asked.
"I don't know, Rose," Lucy said. "Maybe you should ask yourself that question."
"I just... I can't imagine making this decision without at least telling him that it's possible," Rose said. "He'd be happy about it."
"Would he?" Harry asked – he sounded quite interested in her answer. "Do you think? I was scared, personally, even as I was working on it. I was terrified that I would hurt Lucy somehow or... make her less than human. You aren't worried about that?"
"I suppose," Rose said. "He loves me. He wouldn't want me to get hurt, of course, but he wouldn't get mad that I'd looked at the options."
"It sounds as though he really is worth all your devotion," Harry said, leaning forward and looking at her quite intently. "Will you let us take some tests, at least? Mostly just blood work."
Rose glanced over at Lucy, who smiled encouragingly.
"Sure," Rose said. "Can't be any harm in that."
...
"Rose, I wanted to-"
She wasn't there. The Doctor thought back and actually he did recall her saying something about going out for a bit.
The TARDIS phone rang and he perked up, racing over to pick it up – double-checking that the display said it was coming from Rose's mobile.
"I'd love it if you’d head back now," he said. "I've just about got the graviton problem sorted and then everything should be ready for our latest trip. I'm thinking of showing you the twin sunsets of Quivear – it's magnificent. Here's a bit of an incentive: there won't be anyone around for two hundred years. We can make love on the grass and not worry about getting banished from the planet."
"Awww, I didn't know you still cared."
Time slowed to a crawl and it felt like the world was freezing around him, bitter and cold.
"You're dead," he said, numbly. "I held you in my arms and you died."
"And now you're offering to make love to me on the grass of Quivear," the Master said, his voice lingering over the words that were meant for Rose, making them sound dirty. "It's tempting, but we do both have wives, you know."
"What have you done to Rose?" the Doctor asked, trying to make his voice stay level. Ten million possibilities raced across his mind, each more terrifying than the last. "If you've hurt her, I'll-"
"What, Doctor?" the Master asked, silky-smooth. "Kill me? It didn't stick the last time. Besides, you've no reason to fret. Rose and I merely had a most congenial chat. I had a proposal for her."
"Don't you touch her," the Doctor said. The Master's laugh was sharp and mocking, like always.
"Not that kind of proposal," he said. "I made her an attractive offer that would be of benefit to the both of you."
"What are you telling her?" There was a muffled crack and his fingers felt strange. The Doctor blinked and looked down – he'd been holding his sonic screwdriver in his other hand. And now it was in two pieces and his hand was bleeding. He could feel it, distantly, but it wasn't important. "Where is she?"
"She's so worried about you," the Master said. "She poured her heart out to my dear Lucy – oh, she was my back-up plan all along, sorry that I didn't tell you... or, no, wait, I'm not – she told Lucy how much it hurt, knowing that you would have to live on after she was dead. It eats her up inside, knowing how very much you love her. It's a burden, Doctor. I'm shocked that you let her carry it."
"Please don't hurt her," the Doctor said, tightening his free hand into a fist. "I'll do anything. I don't... I'll do anything you want, just please don't hurt her."
"And there's our trump card," the Master said, softly. "You watched me torture the Earth for a year while working on a plan to save it, you've been able to fight me over so many things... but for this one human girl, you'll roll over like an obedient mutt. I don't know whether I admire or despise her for breaking you so thoroughly."
"Rose isn't what broke me," the Doctor said, feeling every year of his life weighing down on him, the imagined screams of all his people echoing in his mind. "Just... tell me what you want."
"What I've always wanted – to rule the universe with you at my side," the Master said. "I'll even let you keep the girl, since you need her so much. Oh, and Doctor? I have some more happy news for you."
The Doctor closed his eyes, waiting for whatever this last blow was.
"Your little human girl is eating for two. Congratulations, Daddy." After those words, the call cut out.
The Doctor sat down hard on the grating, phone still clutched in his hand. Rose had... Rose was...
He still didn't know where she was.
...
"I can't find my phone," Rose said, checking her pockets again. "Do you remember me putting it down anywhere?"
"I don't remember seeing you with it at all," Lucy said. "Are you certain that you need more time?"
"Yeah," Rose said. "I don't care what the me in the future said, the me in the now isn't doing this without talking to the Doctor about it. Especially if you two are right about the baby, though I'll be double-checking that to be sure. Anyway, all the doctors told mum to be careful about any kind of medical procedures while she was carrying. And this baby... it's only half-human. It might have all kinds of special needs."
"A psychic connection with the parents is a necessity for a Gallifreyan child."
Harry had come back into the room – he was leaning against the doorframe, playing with a mobile.
"I never said 'Gallifreyan'. I never told you that," Rose said, a knot beginning to gather in the pit of her stomach.
"Harry, what are you doing?" Lucy asked, sounding uncertain of herself for the first time since Rose had met her. "I don't think she needed to know that."
"The baby changes everything," he said. He seemed indecisive. "All of our plans need to be adjusted. You should go and cancel our appointments for the next few days."
Lucy squeezed past him, though not without a curious look back at Rose.
"Look, I think that I'll head out, too, all right?" Rose glanced around but the room still only had the door that Harry was blocking. "You can sort through things while I'm gone."
Harry pulled something out of his pocket – it looked a bit like the Doctor's sonic screwdriver, but it was bigger and... yellow instead of blue.
"Who are you?" Rose asked. "Your name isn't really Harry, is it?"
"Look at the little human, finally catching up," he said, with a smirk. He closed the door and twisted the lock. Needing to unlock the door would almost certainly slow her down if she tried to escape. He was being pretty clever about this. He probably thought he was the only clever one in the room.
"You're him, aren't you?" Rose asked – and that caught his attention. "The Doctor thinks that you're dead."
"Not anymore, he doesn't," Harry... no, Koschei said, tossing the phone toward her.
As she'd feared, it was hers.
"You called him," Rose said. "He knows that you're alive and that... I'm here. You know, it's bad manners for the ex to kidnap the wife."
"He told you that?" Koschei asked, sounding absolutely stunned. It made Rose very glad that she hadn't run into him the first time he'd been around, when she probably wouldn't have known about his past with the Doctor.
"He told me all sorts of things," Rose said. "You were so jealous of his first wife and he didn't see it, did he? He never realized just how much-"
"Shut up," he growled, coming toward her.
"How desperately you love him," Rose finished, refusing to let him intimidate her. He had her pinned up against the wall, but he wasn't even properly looking at her. If he wanted to, he could kill her – the Doctor was stronger than he looked, so Koschei would be the same way – but he would have already done that if he didn’t' think he needed her for something. "He chose her, at first, and it killed you."
"Literally," Koschei said, with a wry smile. "I purposefully regenerated, hoping that I would care less in my next body."
"But it didn't work that way," Rose said, and she was able to push him away from her a bit, though she wasn't quite ready to risk running for the locked door – Lucy was still out there and... this was one of the Doctor's people. This was someone that the Doctor loved. "Love doesn't fade. It changes to fit into the new form, but it's still there. I know, because my Doctor fell in love with me wearing a different face. And he changed, but his love... that was the same. Burned into him, like a scar that will never quite heal."
"You really do understand," Koschei said, sounding puzzled. He backed away and sank down on the couch, though he kept holding onto that screwdriver of his. Rose wouldn't make the mistake of thinking he wasn't still dangerous. "I knew only a few facts about you, Rose, but you're managing to exceed my expectations."
"I'd be flattered, but I reckon you thought very little of me."
"The woman who captured the Doctor's hearts and who looked into the Time Vortex itself to save him... oh, no, Rose, I was expecting you to be interesting. Just not this interesting. What else do you know?"
"I'm just supposed to tell you?" Rose asked, skeptically.
"You probably wouldn't enjoy it if I went rooting around inside that head of yours to find out on my own," he said.
"Safe to say," she said. "But I might be able to hold my own."
"Highly unlikely, though... intriguing." Koschei paused and gave her a considering look. It sent cold shivers down her spine. "I must say, it's astonishing that you conceived. Your DNA really shouldn't be compatible with his."
"Nature finds a way," Rose said.
"What?"
"It's... a movie quote, actually," Rose said. "But it might apply. The Doctor mentioned... being made for me. This version of him, at least."
"Now that is interesting," Koschei said, leaning forward. "He regenerated to please you?"
"He was dying anyway, but... he said that he wanted to make me happy. And he used to have kids, so that might be part of what he thinks romantic happiness means."
"You don't?"
"It's not the most important thing on my mind," Rose said. Especially at the moment, she thought to herself. "Did you ever have any?"
"Oh... oh, no," he said, sounding completely horrified. Rose couldn't stop herself from giggling. Hysterical laughter, no doubt – she'd be having fits on the floor next. "Children would have just gotten in my way."
"In your... what exactly is it that you want, anyway?"
"To rule the universe."
"Of course," Rose said. "Why did I bother asking? Of course, you want to rule the universe. You Gallifreyan blokes don't think small, I'll give you that."
"You're comparing me to him, aren't you?"
"He's prettier than you are," Rose said, not bothering to hide her smirk. He didn't seem to mind her sassing him – and if that got her filed under 'talks big, does nothing', all for the better.
"You noticed that, too?" He sounded terribly disappointed, but very far from homicidal. As long as she kept this on the right side of the knife's edge, she might get out all right. "I'd been hoping that it was just-"
"Just because you fancy him that you thought that?" The Doctor admired cleverness, enjoyed it when she was on the same page as him. Koschei might feel the same... or he might want to kill her for assuming she understood him.
"You know, I think that I might actually like you."
"You don't have to sound so depressed about it." Rose held back her sigh of relief – no need to give away to him how nervous she was. He had to believe that she wasn't afraid of him.
"I despised Lieroniakiahoutonia. I could have happily hung her up by her toes and tortured her for a millennium or two. I was expecting to feel the same way about you."
"And you don't?" Rose was torn between being flattered and horrified. "You aren't feeling any urges to torture me?"
"Not really," he said. "Perhaps I can blame it on the baby."
"I'm all right with not being tortured," Rose mentioned. "Just... in case it needs saying."
"He thinks that I'm planning on doing something awful to you," Koschei said. "And... I was thinking about it, but... that bloody baby. It shouldn't exist. I hate riddles."
"The Doctor loves them," Rose said.
"Hmm."
"You know, she probably wasn't so horrible," Rose said.
"What?"
"Lieronia," Rose said. She was actually feeling a lot of sympathy for the woman at the moment. "The Doctor loved her, so she probably wasn't horrible. He generally has good taste when it comes to people."
She glanced over at Koschei.
"Present company excluded, naturally," she added, glad to see him smile at that. He wanted someone to treat him like the enemy, but not like a king. Too much respect directed at him and he would stop respecting her. "Are you really planning on holding me captive or do you think you might get around to letting me go?"
"You're my trump card," he said, pouting down at his hands. She had never been so grateful for Mark talking about his work over dinner – never specific cases, of course, but she'd heard all about the ways people could be slightly off normal for nearly two years. So she knew that now that she'd connected with Koschei, he had to keep thinking of her as a person, someone who deserved as much consideration as himself. She couldn't let him treat her like anything less, not for a second.
"Do you mind if I call the Doctor?" she asked, flashed her returned mobile at him. He waved a hand at her, and she only barely stopped herself from smiling in triumph.
...
The phone rang again, only moments after he'd finally gotten around to putting it back in place – he snatched it up, unable to stem the tide of words, "If you have so much as touched a single hair on her head, I will personally rip out one of your hearts and force it down your throat."
"Well, it's good to know that you care."
"Rose," he breathed out, needing to sit down again. "Are you all right? He hasn't hurt you, has he?"
"You don't yet need to feed him one of his own hearts, no," she said – sounding... amused of all things. Not that he wasn't grateful that she wasn't terrified, but he'd rather like not being the only one filled with blinding fear. "And now he's moping. It's like dealing with Tony in one of his sulks."
"He's in the room with you?" the Doctor asked.
"Oh, yes," she said. "He locked us in here together. I mean, it's just a deadbolt and I'm on the right side of it, but I'm pretty sure that it would slow me down long enough that he'd catch up to me again. You Gallifreyans tend to be made of rather stern stuff, so I thought I should keep violence as a last resort, just in case it didn't work."
"Can he hear what you're saying?"
"I don't know. Let me check," she said. And then he could actually hear her yelling out to the room about whether the Master had heard her saying that she'd thought about using violence on him. Rose, the Doctor decided, was by far the scariest person he'd ever met in his life. "Yeah, he can hear me just fine."
"Are you aware that you've gone completely mad?" the Doctor asked, tightly.
"Well, I guess that means that we know what your type is," she said cheerily. "You require them a few cards short of a full deck."
"Rose... he could hurt you," the Doctor said.
"He doesn't want to, he says," Rose told him. "He said that he has absolutely no urge to torture me. He's blaming it on the baby."
"So, he wasn't lying about that?"
"How am I supposed to know? He hasn't exactly let me out to get a second opinion," Rose said. "But he's using it as his excuse. He says that it's impossible and requires study."
"Not impossible, just very unlikely," the Doctor said. "And you can tell him-"
"Yes, yes. Hearts stuffed down his throat, I heard the first time," Rose said. "Between you and me, I think that he's tired of fighting with you."
"Rose, you can't trust-"
"Hold on a moment," Rose said. Then he heard her calling something else out, but she must have been covering up the microphone, because he couldn't make out what she was saying. "Sorry about that. Your friend wanted me to tell you that he will never be tired of fighting with you and also that he's a great big baby who needs to grow up and get over himself."
"Rose-"
"I may have added that last bit," she said unnecessarily. The Doctor bit down on his tongue and tried to think of anything he could possibly say that would actually convince Rose not to antagonize the insane man currently holding her prisoner.
Rose had always had better luck talking him into things than the other way around.
"Rose, could you please put him on the phone?" he asked, desperately. "Just so I can get a sense of where his head is."
"On top of his shoulders," Rose said. Her voice lowered slightly, though the Doctor could only hope it was quiet enough that the Master wouldn't understand her. "And you have got to be kidding me, Doctor. Right now, he's manageable. He talks to you, anything could happen. The old boyfriend is not the person who is capable of calming down their crazy stalker ex. You'll just make him emotional again. He seems to... like me, which is a bit appalling, but I'm willing to go with it as long as I need to. I will do my very best to get back to you in one piece, but I need you not to do anything stupid. Can I trust you to do that?"
"Rose, please-"
"Can I trust you?"
"Of course."
"I'll call you again later," she said, more loudly. The Master must have started paying attention again. "Sorry that I have to miss the big party."
And then she hung up on him.
"What big party?" the Doctor asked, staring down at his phone.
...
"What's 'big party' code for?" Koschei asked – he'd pulled one of those squishy stress balls out of a pocket somewhere and was playing with it.
"It isn't a code," Rose said. "I'm turning thirty in a few days and we were all planning on getting together for it."
"When you say 'we all'-"
"Oh, you know, people," Rose said. "Mates."
"I could torture you," he said, but he didn't look very convincing, all huddled down on the couch.
"Could do, yeah," Rose agreed.
"You aren't supposed to agree," he groused. "And... thirty, really? By Rassilon, you're young."
"What's Rassilon?" Rose asked, gingerly sitting on the far edge of the couch.
"I'm not telling," he said. "It's a Gallifreyan thing."
"When I ask the Doctor about Gallifreyan things, he just tells me," Rose said. Though that wasn't, strictly speaking, completely true, but it wasn't as though Koschei would know that. "I mean, I get that you want to be exclusive and arrogant and all those other Time Lord things, but you don't need to, not with me."
"Just because the Doctor thinks that you breathe out stardust doesn’t mean that I'm not willing to gut you and play with your internal organs if you annoy me too much," he said.
"You know, the Doctor mentioned that if you hurt me, he's planning on making you eat one of your hearts," Rose said, conversationally, glad that he couldn't see the way her stomach twisted at his words. "I don't think he was kidding, either."
"I don't think that I ask for too much," Koschei said, after he'd performed another spirited round of pouting. "Just a little something to call my own."
"You want to rule the universe," Rose reminded him. "Technically, you're asking for everything."
There was another long pause. Rose wondered again about the advisability of kicking Koschei in the balls and attempting to make her escape.
It was probably still a bad idea.
"Could your tests tell how far along I am?" Rose asked.
"Why? Is there a chance that it isn't his?" The hope in his voices was... really pretty disgusting.
"Unless you've discovered a human embryo capable of incubating for two years, it can't be anyone else's," Rose said, glaring at him. "I'm just curious."
"Oh. About three weeks."
"That explains why I haven't noticed," Rose said.
"What do you- oh, the human female reproduction cycle," Koschei said, with a bit of a shudder. "Messy bit of business, that. It lays Lucy out for a week out of every month. How humans accomplish so much with that kind of constant trauma is absolutely beyond me."
Rose didn't say anything, but her mouth twitched a bit. If Lucy really had convinced Koschei that her period left her completely incapable for one-fourth of each month, Rose had to admire her for it. Mickey would have called her on something like that before two months had passed.
Some things really were easier with alien blokes.
"And your lives are so short. You know, I was with the Doctor for nearly a century," he said. "He still left me."
"Well, after a century, I'll be dead," Rose pointed out. "So, it won't matter as much."
"That seems a bit defeatist to me," he said. "I'm still willing to give you that treatment."
"Why would you want to do that?" Rose asked. "I mean, not that I want to you to start treating me that way, but I am... competition for the Doctor's affections. Why would you want me to live longer?"
"You'd make a better bargaining chip if you last longer."
"I don't want you to take this as a threat, because it isn't, but the last person who tried to use me as a bargaining chip ended up dead," Rose said. "It might not be the safest route to take."
"You aren't carrying around any extra power any more," he said. "I think I'm probably safe."
Rose decided not to mention that she hadn't been talking about the Daleks. It might be better if he thought she was helpless on her own, annoying as it might be to play that game. If he thought her only resource was the Doctor, he might not cover all the angles.
...
When his phone started playing "It's Raining Men", Jack grinned and immediately answered, "How can I help you today, Doctor?"
"Does the phrase 'big party' mean anything to you?" the Doctor asked.
"A lot of fun?" Jack guessed. "Maybe an orgy."
"That can't be what she meant," the Doctor. "She's been held captive by a madman – even if she has kept him from torturing her, she can't be having fun. And... certainly not the other thing."
"What are you talking about?" Jack asked. "Can you put Rose on?"
"She's the one who's been captured," the Doctor said.
"And you didn't open with that?" Jack asked. "Doctor – the first words out of your mouth should have been 'Rose has been taken prisoner'. Why the hell are we talking about parties?"
"It's the last thing that Rose said, on the phone," the Doctor said. "She said that she was sorry to be missing the big party. But we aren't having one."
"Or maybe she meant that you should contact all of your mutual allies and help rescue her," Jack said.
"That makes sense," the Doctor said, after a moment. Jack wondered if he'd started kicking himself.
"I'll mobilize Torchwood," Jack said.
"I'll call Martha... oh, and Sarah Jane, she might be able to help," the Doctor said.
"Sarah Jane Smith?"
“Yes. Why do you ask?"
"I've heard some good things,” Jack said, vaguely. “What about Donna?”
“I could pick her up – and Jenny.”
“Who's Jenny? I haven't met her,” Jack said. “Yet.”
“Well, you aren't allowed to flirt with her,” the Doctor said, firmly.
...
“Are we just going to sit here, then?” Rose asked. She wondered if she could possibly blame her irritability on being pregnant. Probably not.
“Until I think of a better plan,” Koschei said, petulantly. “Are you sure you don't want the treatment?”
“Why do you keeping asking my permission for it?” Rose asked, leaning back on the couch. “Why not just... do it, if that's what you want?”
“Maybe I will,” he said, without actually moving from his seat.
“Has Lucy-”
“It hasn't been tested yet,” he said.
“I'm not inclined to be your lab rat,” Rose said.
“But you love him,” he said. “Don't you?”
Rose shrugged, not wanting to give away to this particular man how deep her affection for the Doctor ran.
“If you do love him, the idea of never dying and always being with him has to be tempting,” Koschei said.
“I'm fond of him,” Rose allowed. “But there are certain things that I wouldn't be willing to do to stay with him.”
“You're a fool,” he said. Rose shrugged again and looked away, willing the man to just leave already, so that she could have a go at breaking out. “I'd destroy the universe if he would just look at me the way he did when we were young.”
“Have you ever thought about the possibility that... it's your willingness to destroy for him that makes him not want you?” Rose asked. “Because... I wouldn't. I couldn't. I don't believe that I have the right to hurt anyone else just because I care about the Doctor. I think that's one of the things that he likes about me.”
“Why are you avoiding the word 'love'?” Koschei asked. “Don't you love him?”
He actually sounded genuinely curious.
“What I feel for the Doctor is none of your business,” Rose said evenly.
I'd worked out an outline for my 'season five' as well: The pitch for S5 is the return of family and of the Daleks (Davros and the Daleks not being dealt with in S4).
Series Five pitch:
Bringing Jenny and Donna back into the picture.
May or may not incorporate parts of TW S3 and SJA S2. May or may not include things from the Christmas or 2009 specials.
Something will happen with Jenny and the Hand and Rose and... something. Jenny instead of Donna? And her brain can handle it. Three Doctors and no one overheats. Of course, the Rose problem is going to pop up, in that case.
Donna and Jenny have become very close over their time together.
So, S5 – the Adipose planet disappears. Pyrovilia disappears. The moon of Poosh is lost. The Sontaran planet disappears.
The walls open up.
The return of family – not just Jenny, but Jackie and Mickey and Pete (and young Tony).
One 'Christmas' special.
13 episodes, with 1 three-parter, 2 two-parters and 6 singles.
There will be a new companion for the Doctor and Rose.
Not a young woman, not of this time period. Alien?
Or... hmm. Tosh? Rose has fond memories of Tosh (Owen still dies, maybe). That could work. Tosh becomes the new companion for S5.
The Christmas special should be a solo Doctor/Rose piece.
The first episode brings in the TW crew and Tosh and Tosh asks to leave with the Doctor and Rose.
In the second episode, they do a historical (somewhere Tosh might enjoy – look it up)
In the third, they go to a Far Future (the Ood post-freedom?)
Four-Five is the first two-parter. Generally, this is an Earth Invasion plot – do I want to have the Sontarans or possibly I could use a different Old School villian?
Six will be a Tosh-focused episode where we get to meet her mother and learn about her family.
Seven will be Near Future.
Eight-Nine should be an adventure-based two-parter.
Ten will be Rose-focused.
Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen will be the finale of S5. This will bring in Donna, Jenny, Mickey, and use the Hand-regeneration trick in some fashion.
5x00 - Christmas Special (10 parts): Rose and the Doctor spend a solo trip to the outer reaches of the galaxy – they do end up dealing with something of a crisis, but it actually ends fairly well, with only a few deaths.
5x01 - Episode One (6 parts): The Doctor and Rose go to help the Torchwood crew with something and Tosh is having a hard time dealing with Owen's final death. She ends up asking the Doctor and Rose if she can come with them and they accept. At some point, I want Tosh to run into an (unnamed) Mickey (who is playing Rose in this search for the Doctor to help stop the stars from going out).
5x02 - Episode Two (6 parts): some kind of historical episode that allows Tosh to show off her skills.
5x03 - Episode Three (6 parts): some kind of future-type episode, unrelated to any other future episode.
5x04/05 - Episode Four-Five (10-12 parts): Double-length episode about Tosh's background – deals with UNIT and her family (another flash of Mickey?).
5x06 - Episode Six (6 parts): An episode dealing with Tosh as a companion specifically.
5x07/08 - Episode Seven-Eight (10-12 parts): Deals with the consequences of Rose's transformation.
5x09 - Episode Nine(6 parts): More serious historical episode.
5x10 - Episode Ten(6 parts): More light-hearted space romp.
5x11/12/13 - Episode Eleven-Twelve-Thirteen (22-30 part story?): Finale with Daleks/Davros. Starts with a phone call from Donna and Jenny, brings in Mickey from the alt!verse (who will end up staying).
5x00 – Christmas Special – Silver Belles
The Doctor and Rose are celebrating being together and testing out their new telepathic connection, when they run into some alien trouble and end up in a bit of jail. Female-based society? (women are a huge focus of this series, with Rose and Tosh both being full-time companions and Donna and Jenny playing vital roles in the finale).
5x01 – The Second Stage of Grief
Jack calls the Doctor and Rose in to help with something of a crisis (and to spend time with them). Martha Jones is there, having decided, in the wake of Owen's death, to join up with Torchwood. Tosh is having a very hard time dealing with Owen's death and she and Rose bond (Rose having very fond memories of the Tosh in her universe). Tosh asks to go with them and Jack can't tell her no.
5x02 – The Writer's Soul
The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh meet Virginia Woolf (research!). She sounds totally awesome. “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” I think she'd like Rose and Tosh (must check Woolf's racism levels, though, b/c I don't want Tosh to deal with people being jerks to her).
1982 – 1941. English novelist and essayist. She knew lots of people. Also, bisexual! She needs to hit on either Rose or Tosh (since she doesn't believe in exclusive relationships, she could hit on all of them!)
5x03 – Wings of Wax
The future-based episode where Tosh really gets to show off her skills. The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh land in a society that is certain about where it is going, unfortunately, they are heading down the path to ruin.
5x04/05 – Journal Entry #105
This deals with Tosh's family and her history, as well as having an alien plot of some kind.
5x06 – The Cost of Living
Tosh messes up a bit by overestimating her skills and getting herself in some trouble. We also see here that she's still working through her grief for Owen, but that she is working through it. Slowly. With pain. And she misses her TW people.
5x07-08 – Daughter of Time
This is the story that focuses about Rose's transformation and how it's affecting her. She gets a bit of time sickness and has to deal with that – two timelines competing for her attention, things that the Doctor has to deal with all the time.
5x09 – The Day Before Yesterday
Focuses a bit on the Doctor's historical past. Possibly a past-regeneration story? Five, maybe, since I didn't use “Time Crash” in my canon? Maybe takes place in a casino of some kind or a dance hall. The Doctor, Rose, and Tosh must help the fifth Doctor and Tegan deal with a mystery. Rose asks, “Why don't you remember doing this before?” Set in America in the 1920's, maybe?
5x10 – Last, Best Hope
Where we see stuff happen. Near-future episode. Tosh-focus? Doctor-lite?
5x11/12/13 – World Without End
We start with Donna calling the Doctor, telling him that she and Jenny need to come home – there's an emergency.
Ah! Ah! Jenny uses the hand. Same genetic material as the Doctor, after all. She gets hit by a Dalek blast, the Doctor takes her into the TARDIS and bonds her to it, she actually regenerates into a new form and excess energy bleeds into the hand (he uses that to keep her from regeneration sickness – make that explicit. It 'settles' her form more rapidly. He also connects with her telepathically to help her settle more quickly).
Donna still gets stuck in the TARDIS and touches the hand, we get a second Jenny (who looks like the original one), who has the memories of both the Doctor and Jenny (which is very complicated for her).
So, we have a Doctor, a Jenny, a Doctor-Jenny, and a Donna-Doctor-Jenny. At the end, the Doctor tells Jenny that they don't have any other choices than to strip Donna of her memories.
Mickey and Jenny are going to spark a lot when they meet, which will be post-regeneration (which the Doctor finds very disturbing – he also forbids Jack to flirt with her – he can't manage to stop her from flirting with... every single person around, though).
In the end, Tosh is going to go home to TW and Mickey is going to end up with Jenny, while Doctor-Jenny takes away Donna's memories but decides to go back with her to London. She wants to see if enough time will help Donna recover.
Mickey and Jenny take off together – we get to find out that her TARDIS piece is growing quickly and that it has gotten boosted by Doctor-Donna-Jenny before her memory was wiped.
Sarah Jane is involved to the same extent that she was before. Jackie is spoken of by Mickey – she's with Pete and Tony and has adjusted to not having Rose in her life, though she misses and loves her dearly. Rose has some (slight) angst about how much she has changed since she's left (her mum was right about this life; Rose really isn't fully human anymore – a fact that she confesses to Mickey)
Should Mr. Copper and Harriet Jones be used this year? Sounds like a good idea, since they would still be involved in helping with that sort of thing.
Should any of the principals die?
Tosh must be vital in some way.
End set-up:
Doctor-Jenny and Donna (mind-wiped)
Doctor & Rose (alone again)
Mickey & Jenny (new pairing – not explicitly romantic, but with an edge in that direction)
Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, Martha (TW teams – possible adjustments given TW S3)
Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde (decide on Maria after viewing of SJA S2)
There should be a short 'Children in Need'-eske story between S5 and S6.
The Doctor-Jenny character only has the Doctor's memories up until the Sychorax sword fight. After that, it picks up with Jenny. So, she has conflicting feelings – she was deeply in love with Rose Tyler, desperate to renew her affection, but there's an equally large part of her that isn't all that affected by Rose and is much more strongly attached to Donna.
She's the one who takes away Donna's memories, and she also has a goodbye scene with Rose.
“I remember... wanting nothing more than for you to look at me like I was everything you'd ever wanted,” the woman... the person who wasn't Jenny or the Doctor. But she looked like Jenny, so it was hard for Rose to think of her in any other way. “And I remember meeting you for the first time and seeing you with my father – you were just the blonde woman that he was in love with and I was grateful to you for having him wait around until I woke up again, but none of those other feelings are in that part of me.”
“I don't...” Rose paused. “How much of you is the Doctor?”
“Enough,” she said. “But I only have the memory of a single year with you, Rose Tyler. How long have you been with... with the other me? You married him. You love him. Everything that I never would have believed that I could dare to have with you, he has. How did I ever become so brave?”
“We did it together,” Rose said, softly. And that was the problem, wasn't it? She did remember what it had been like just after the Doctor had changed. It had taken time – and eight years trapped in another universe – for the two of them to get to this place. Even if... even if she didn't already have the Doctor, she couldn't imagine having the energy to break through all those walls again. It had been hard enough the first time.
“And all of those are memories that I don't have,” she said. “You're not the Rose that I remember and I'm the Doctor that you've already grown past.”
“Don't say that,” Rose said. “I didn't stop loving who you used to be just because I love who he is now.”
“I can't stay on this ship,” she said. “I can't watch the two of you – no matter how glad I am that you have found happiness, I... I can't-”
“Where are you planning on going?”
“I'm going to go to London,” she said. “Near where Donna lives. I'm hoping that, with time, I'll be able to heal her mind enough that she'll get her memories back.”
“The Doctor said-”
“It may not be possible, I know,” she said. “But I travelled with Donna for three years and I can't abandon her. I never knew the Donna that the Doctor knew, my memories stop before that. I only know the Donna that Jenny knew and I can't bear the thought of that person never existing. I have to try.” She paused. “And... if I'm in London, then there's the chance that I'll still see you again, on occasion.”
“I thought you said that you couldn't watch,” Rose said.
“I kissed you once,” she said. “To take the Time Vortex from you. Part of me longs, even now, to kiss you again. The thought of never seeing you, not for the rest of my life, it hurts me.”
“Doctor...” Rose murmured, instinctively reaching out and cupping the woman's cheek. It didn't feel right, but that tone of voice and that look in her eyes, that was right. That was the Doctor.
The woman... the Doctor... swayed forward, into Rose's touch, and tilted her head to the side. It was a question or perhaps a hope. Rose nodded slightly and then leaned that last bit more. Their mouths met in a very soft, hesitant kiss. It was goodbye and hello and everything that Rose wouldn't be able to give.
She didn't taste quite like the Doctor did, Rose noticed.
Rose let the Doctor... Jenny... end the kiss, her chest aching when she heard the tiny, longing sigh the other woman breathed out.
“I'm sorry,” Rose said. “So sorry.”