![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabid1stDISHEVELED
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Ten/Rose
Ratings: Adult +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, larielromeniel, and thewinterqueen and the newest beta babes in the Disheveled family, Measi and queenrikki_hp. With a special shout-out to Lil and Jei for their YIM help.
Summary: Do they have big yellow tow trucks in Cuba? Will Jackie Tyler kill the Doctor for marrying Rose? And just how much has Rose changed?
Disclaimer: I work my little fingers to the bone and I'm still not entitled to any royalties. Nobody invites me to the sound stages in Cardiff. I had to sneak into the company picnic, avoiding security and such while I ate fried chicken and potato salad, but that's okay because all rights to Doctor Who and it's characters belong to the BBC, Russell T. Davies and assorted production companies.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
PART TWENTY-TWO
Mobile phone loosely cradled in hand, Rose Tyler slouched against the side of the TARDIS. The rough wood bit into her bare shoulder, but didn't bother her enough to justify switching positions. She was trying to remain optimistic or at least calm, but her confidence waned with each passing minute. They were drawing unwanted attention, now, standing next to the police box. It had been just over an hour since they returned to the TARDIS. So far, two police cars had slowed as they passed and a number of people had stopped to stare. Rose watched with mounting disillusion as, once again, the Doctor applied the universal key of his sonic screwdriver to what he'd always told her was an impregnable lock. There was a sharp squeal and a bit of smoke, but nothing more promising.
“You remembered to bring a feather and a slingshot with you,” she remarked, with only a tinge of exasperation coloring her habitually bright tone, “but forgot your key?”
“I was a bit distracted,” he reminded her, casting a smoldering glance in her direction before peering at the readouts on his screwdriver. “All that...dancing.” Easing his glasses out of his shirt pocket, he put them on to check the numbers, again. By the sigh he released, Rose guessed they still weren't getting anywhere.
“No change?”
“Recriminations are not helping.”
“Just recapping,” she said, with a forced smile and false bat of her dark lashes.
“Well, recap our assets, as well, then. One, I'm brilliant. Two, you're quite...persuasive. A handy combination of skills to have in a dictatorship.”
“Assets?” Rose mused. “Let's see...you’ve got a sonic screwdriver. And I’ve got a mobile phone. We could call roadside assistance...if we weren’t stuck in Cuba...in 1991...with very little money and no means of identification.” Remembering how Jack had said much the same thing the night they'd met, she tried her hand at imitating him as she said, “Well, the assets discussion went quickly.”
A slight upward twitch at the corner of the Doctor's mouth showed he'd caught her reference, but he didn't comment on it. He could seldom be baited into discussing Jack. “It's not as bad as all that. We’ve got your passport and the psychic paper.”
“My passport is from 2004. You don't think Castro's secret police will notice that sort of thing?”
“We’ll survive.” Straightening his knees, he stood from his crouch and, whipping his glasses off, winked at her. “Honestly, you know we will. You and me. Me and you.” As he tucked the specs away, he looked up the street toward the Hotel Nacional. “We might need to lay low for a few weeks. But late twentieth century Earth? Oh, yes! This is a fantastic time and place to get stranded. Lots of alien traffic, coming and going...going and coming. And as long as the revolution has ATM machines,” he paused, frowning, suddenly not so sure of himself, “Hmmm? I wonder if they do.”
“Let’s hope so. I've grown used to a life of leisure. Did you ever think...here we are in possession of a locked police box and…? Wait! Hang on a minute.” Rose sprang from her slumping posture into energetic mobility. “How can it be locked? Neither of us had a key. Didn't you tell me that was what triggered the locking mechanism? We walk out with a key and the lock codes to our genetic patterns.” Inspired by this logic, she threw herself around the corner of the blue box, crowding him away from the door. “Are you sure you've tried just...?” She jiggled the handle, twice, producing no results.
The Doctor gave her a pained look. “Yes, I did try jiggling the handle. It's a simple gravity lock. No genetic override in play. The TARDIS knows we're missing but she doesn't know we're outside.”
“Great,” she sighed, an icy fog rolling in on her mood.
He donned an apologetic grimace, culled from his repertoire of extreme facial expressions. “The good news is there's no shielding either. I should be able to break in...given time.” He was the picture of diffidence. It went all the way to his trainers.
Even though he was blatantly manipulating her, Rose's coolness evaporated and her ready good humor returned. “We've got time,” she said, gripping his wrist and squeezing “You'll work something out. And even if you don't, it's still an adventure.”
“It's just...” He hesitated and glanced down, scuffing his toe through the loose gravel underfoot. “It is my fault. If I hadn't forgotten the key...or reinstalled the automatic systems for your training flights..." He reflected on his mistakes for a moment, before going on to explain. “I don't generally use them, automatic programs, I mean. Too many glitches. And besides...Time Lord...expert user and so on...and this sort of thing can happen...I should have known...should have remembered things go wrong on training flights.”
A new thought occurred, making him twitch as if he'd been smacked. He sprang back a bit, inhaling sharply, but recovered his balance almost immediately. Lunging forward, he caught Rose by both arms at the elbow and, peering at her with a renewed sense of urgency, said, “Tell me you remembered to activate the buffers against temporal drift.” When she gaped at him, he shook her gently. “The blue button? The shiny blue button, I said you must never ever forget to press?” He groaned aloud at the dumbstruck expression on her face. It was as good as a guilty confession. “Right after engaging the hand brake?” he peeped, forlornly.
“There was no...”
“No hand braking,” he recalled on a sighing exhale. Releasing her so suddenly she staggered, he dropped his arms to his sides. His face fell into grim lines as he accepted the direness of their plight. Rose, he saw, was still several steps behind him, but catching up quickly. Head tilted back and jaw jutted forward, he mulled over whether or not to spell out the implications of her rookie mistake.
“This is bad?” she guessed.
“Bad, yes,” he sighed, still gazing up at the stars. “Though it makes things much simpler. Now, we won't have to worry about explaining the police box.” A small squeak escaped Rose's closing throat. He lowered his chin to target his bleak gaze on her, and saw understanding flit across her face a beat before he said, “Because she'll drift off in a bit.”
“Drift off? No! We've got to do something,” Rose said, gaining her voice but losing her composure. Her galloping pulse caused a ringing in her ears.
“I am doing something, several things in fact,” The Doctor assured her, with a maddening air of inner peace. “Unfortunately, not one of them is helping our situation.” He shifted the screwdriver from his left hand to his right and gently hooked an arm about Rose to guide her out of his way. As he glared at the lock, he seemed to switch moods and topics. “Do you have any idea what happens if straight after you land on Rigel 127 you dash off after a reptilian drug lord and his band of cutthroats leaving the TARDIS door standing open?” When Rose shrugged on shoulder, he returned his attention to the lock again, squinting at it, eyeball to keyhole, and said, “Tribbles.”
“Excuse me?”
“An infestation of Tribbles.”
“Tribbles? Like on Star Trek? The Trouble With…?”
“Yes, very like,” he sighed, nodding in weary sarcasm. “If, instead of fluffy balls of purring affection, you are imagining voraciously breeding, glittery-eyed, armor-clad locusts with an appetite for destruction.” Flexing his neck this way and that, he grimaced in pain. Rose circled to give him a one-handed massage, easing the tension from his corded muscles. When she'd finished, he smiled up at her and went on with a little more of his usual pep, “They swarm. And sing. Imagine the grating sound of a million metal-tipped fingernails on the world's biggest chalkboard and you'll have some idea.” Rose winced. “Now, imagine hearing that for seven long years, every time you turned your back on the little buggers.”
“Speaking from experience?”
He sucked in his bottom lip, audibly popping it out again, before answering her. “Back when Ace was learning to push all the right buttons, we got into a serious spot of bother with the Rigelian Free Traders, a load of cutthroats and mercenaries. We left the door open.” He stood to glare at the door, too much white showing around his dark irises. A few more noises, mostly teeth and tongue clicks, later he said, “I didn't want that sort of thing to happen, again. So...I installed the training wheels,” he nodded toward the TARDIS. “There are a few latent safety features on the primary operating system. They kick in if the designated driver make a misstep in the landing sequence, overlooks any of the standard protocols.”
“Like using the handbrake?” Rose surmised.
“Or pressing that blue button.”
“So, this failsafe system kicked in and locked us out? And we don't have our genetic override because we've left our keys at home?”
“That about covers it. Ever notice the deadbolt on the inside of the door?”
“I wondered about that.”
“Does much the same thing,” he told her, “Takes priority over the genetic overrides. Just in case anyone with a key goes rogue on me. Gets infected with the Mara? Joins forces with Fenric the Destroyer of Worlds?”
“Couldn't they lock you out as well?”
“Ah, well...there's the downside.”
He dialed up one of the more lethal settings on his screwdriver, and took aim at the lock. There was a brilliant blue flash. Rose turned her head, shielding her eyes with an upraised hand. When the sparkling dazzle cleared from her vision, she saw the metal on the door: handles, hinges and lock, glowed white hot. The metal, wet from sea spray, steamed for several seconds.
“If you melt it, we'll never get inside.”
Drawing a deep breath, the Doctor blew it out in an extended huff at the lock.
“The big bad wolf approach,” she said, suppressing her grin. When he didn't answer, she searched his face for some sign of returning hope. “Would you like me to give it a go? Hey! Maybe I could reach the TARDIS psychically, tell her to let us in.”
He glanced up, eyes twinkling fondly. “I wouldn't mind your mother finding me a tow truck.”
“I wonder if she knows any Cuban fire fighters? I thought the control panel was stubborn, yeah? But it's lucky I didn't have to get through the front door or you'd still be on Satellite Five with Captain Jack.”
Head bent over his work, the Doctor shot her a couple darting glances as he reprogrammed the screwdriver. “How much do you remember about that?” he asked, casually. “Satellite Five? Jack?”
Suddenly, it was her turn to be evasive. She looked beyond him to the sea. Her barriers went up, crossed arms and compressed lips, making it clear she didn't want to talk about her memories of that day. She did remember it, though, despite what she'd told him to the contrary. It was just painful for her to look back on it--the flood of endless power surging through her, reducing Daleks to their composite atoms, resurrecting the dead. The whole of it terrified her. She hadn't enjoyed seeing the Doctor as tiny, an insignificant spec in the whole of creation. He was everything to her.
“Just...flashes,” she said, focusing on the dark-obscured horizon. “So...? Are we stuck here?”
“Not necessarily,” he said, standing again. “There are sixty-five trillion possible combinations for a gravity lock. Trying them all will take most of my lifetime, but I could hit on the right one at any moment. A minute from now. Later today. Tomorrow. Next month. Until the TARDIS drifts, we have hope.”
“Hope is a good emotion,” Rose said, stepping closer to cuddle his arm. She stared up into his face. “I rather like hope. And mind you, it does make a girl proud, knowing she’s put your short term memory on the blink. You a Time Lord and all, supposedly asexual.”
His lips formed a tight line as he turned his head to face her. “Call your mother,” he ordered, delivering a chaste kiss to her brow before gently disentangling from her grasp. “She's wondering if I've gotten you killed or stolen you away forever.”
“What would I tell her?”
“I don't know,” he said sounding irritated. “Tell her you're sorry you didn't ring her sooner. Tell her about communist ice cream. Mother/daughter things. It might be her last chance to hear from you for a few years. When we lose the TARDIS we'll lose your signal booster. The next time you see her, you'll be almost the same age.”
“There's a cheery thought,” Rose sighed, glancing at her mobile, but stalling. “We could talk about menopause. And what to do for crow's feet. Trapped in Cuba for the next,” she did the math, “sixteen years? I suppose I'll be back working in the shops.” She shot an inquiring glance at him. “Unless you have a trade of some sort?”
“I'm a doctor,” he yelped, offended she'd forgotten.
“Are you? And where's your license to practice, tucked away in the library?”
“I can always forge something suitable to this time. Not to worry.” he pointed at the phone in her hand. “Dial. Maybe your mother can fire up Mickey's old laptop and find us a locksmith.”
“In Cuba, circa 1991?” Rose retorted.
“Small family businesses endure,” the Doctor said, “some of them might still be around in 2007.”
“The assembled hordes of Ghengis Khan couldn't break through that door, but you think a Cuban locksmith can get in?”
“I think I can get in. I think a Cuban locksmith will have tools I can rent or borrow.”
“So we're relying on my mum's Internet skills to save us? Good plan. Even if she knew how to access the Web...” She broke off, considering the idea. “You know...it's a shame we don't have the Cybus Network here. Then, we could use my phone to...I don't know...call the TARDIS...?”
“Wouldn't work. Even with a much more advanced network at our disposal, the TARDIS is a closed system. She's impregnable, impenetrable. What we really we need is a...Oh!” He gasped. His hands flew to bracket his temples, but hovering a few inches shy of his head, didn't clutch his hair. He simply stared straight ahead for a moment. Then, whipping his adoring gaze around to intersect her interested one, he declared, “Rose Tyler, you're a genius!”
“True,” Rose laughed. “What's brought it to your sudden attention?”
Instead of joining in on the joke, he brandished his screwdriver, waving it about in front of her as he demanded, “Phone.”
“What...? What did I say?” Noticing the screwdriver in his hand, he hastily dumped it into his pocket. Then, he stuck his hand out again, snapping his fingers, irritably until she surrendered her mobile. “All right. Here.”
“Computers,” he told her, busy pressing buttons and scanning the tiny screen for something. “They're all connected. You might have to come at them via a roundabout way, but...” He found whatever he was looking for, hit ENTER, and then, TALK, and held the phone to his ear.
“You're going to try to hack into the TARDIS computers? Using a mobile? You just said that was impossible.”
“It is. The assembled...hackers of...Genghis Khan wouldn't be able to break through those firewalls. No, we need a man on the inside. Oh, hello,” he said into the phone, his face splinting into a sappy grin and his tense manner dissolving into syrupy sweetness. “Yes, yes, it is. Recognized my voice? Oh, fine. Fine. And you? Yes...certainly. Right! Oh, no, she's here, listening in. Lent me the mobile. And how have you been? Everything going along...well, swell, satisfactorily, swimmingly...?” There was a longish pause while he listened. “No belly button, hey? Fascinating. Still investigating...?” He took a another break in the exchange. “Did you? So you like the presents? Oh, no...a few toys in the attic...it was nothing really...”
“There's a battery life limit,” Rose remarked, giving him the petulant eye.
The Doctor covered the mouthpiece and softly chided, “No need for that tone. Just catching up a bit.”
“Well, before you wander off into a discussion of your ten-inch record collection,” Rose said. “You might remember we could lose the TARDIS at any moment and phone access to the next century.”
“You referenced Aerosmith,” he declared, beaming proudly. After she smirked back at him, he tilted his head to indicate the phone, hand still over the mouthpiece, and said, “I need to jolly the old girl along. Can't call out of the blue demanding favors without spending a moment on the pleasant...Ow!” He'd place the phone to his ear as he spoke , but jerked it away immediately. Rose heard the tinny shrill of Sarah Jane yelling something. “There's no need to shout at me,” the Doctor shouted at the receiver. Then, he gingerly brought the phone back to his face.“Yes, quite right. Didn't mean to imply you required...no, I realize... Yes, certainly.... Listen, is K-9 about? Oh...” he grimaced. “I forgot about that...black holes...yes...well, you'll just have to patch me through. Mr. Smith? Smith? No, I don't think so. Just hold the phone up for K-9 and...right...I'll hang on.”
“What are you doing?” Rose asked. The Doctor shook his head, admonishing her with one finger to wait. Hearing the sound of piped music, she grinned. Sarah Jane had him on hold. “Is that The Girl from Ipanema?”
He rolled his eyes, fidgeted and, lowering the phone, started to explain what he was doing. “While it is true we can't hack into the TARDIS directly. We do have someone on the inside. All of the K-9 units are interfaced with one another and...Oh, hello, K-9,” he said brightly. “Who's a good dog? Yes, Sarah Jane told me. That sounds very impressive. And you're looking after her? I knew you would. Listen, Rose and I are stranded and we could use your help. Mark these coordinates.” He rattled off a bewildering series of numbers and letters, waited for K-9 to acknowledge them and then said. “Yes, that's right. Tell him to go open the front door and let us in.”
“The librarian,” Rose crowed, poking the Doctor's shoulder. He caught her against him in a one-armed celebratory hug.
“Good dog. Thank you. Do you have this number? If your brother has any trouble, give us a jingle. Pat yourself on the head. See you soon.” There was a brief pause, and then he said, “Yes, she's still here. Yes, all right.” He handed the mobile to Rose. “Sarah Jane wants to say hello.”
Rose took the phone. “Hello. And thank you so much.”
“The nerve of that man,” Sarah Jane growled. “Jollying me along...indeed. Next time, do me a favor and you make the emergency phone calls.” She laughed, suddenly. “And come over for tea when you get back to the twenty-first century. I want to know how you ended up locked out of the TARDIS in the first place.”
The two women chatted for a few moments, before Rose rang off. She stared at the mobile in her hand, chewing her lower lip indecisively. She could feel the Doctor's eyes on her but she didn't look at him. Making her decision, she quickly punched the speed dial number for her mum. The phone hummed in her hand as it rang the distant line.
“Hello?” Jackie Tyler said.
“Mum?”
There was a desperately lonely note underneath the happiness in her mother's voice when she cried, “Rose? Where have you been, sweetheart? I've been calling and calling. It's been three weeks with no word.”
“I know. I'm sorry.” Tears blurred Rose's view of the ocean. She sniffed and hastily dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “We've been...busy, traveling. And I can't talk long, now. We need to keep this line clear. But we're on our way home. I'll tell you all about what happened when we get there.” She smiled, as the nature of the background music penetrated her awareness. “What's that you've got playing?”
“What?”
“The music. Sounds very romantic. I'm not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Oh...it's nothing. Just...something on the radio. When do you think you'll be home?”
Rose glanced at the Doctor. “We're on our way.”
“Oh, I'm so glad,” Jackie said, but she didn't sound it. She sounded wrung out and weary. “I'll see you soon.”
“As soon as we can manage.”
“All right,” Jackie said, softly. “Be careful.”
There was a soft click from the TARDIS door as Rose closed her mobile. “The door is open, Master, Mistress,” K-9 yipped near her ankles.
Startled, Rose glanced down, but then smiled and said, “Thank you, K-9.”
“It was nothing, Mistress. It is a treat to get out of the library. I am seldom needed upstairs.”
As she followed him into the ship, she said, “We should invite you up more often.”
“There is no need to trouble yourself, Mistress. I am programmed to be self-sufficient.”
“And very good you are at it, too,” the Doctor cooed.
“Praise noted, Master,” K-9 said, wagging his metal tail as he trundled away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I just can't help thinking there's something wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“She sounded...I don't know...listless?” Rose said as she stuffed dirty clothes into her backpack. “Or depressed? I'm worried about her.”
The Doctor dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand. “Probably just having a bad day. Touch of the blues.” he suggested, while considering the ties in their shared wardrobe.
He only went to the larger wardrobe on special occasions these days, and so his selection of shirts and ties remained constant. It was one of the many ways he'd begun schooling himself for eventual settling. Someday, he and Rose would have a normal house with finite closet space. He was making sacrifices, preparing for the transition. Though he hadn't gone so far as explaining this to her, yet.
“No, this was different. She's been missing Mickey a lot. I hadn't realized they'd gotten so close, but she talks about him all the time. Keeps breaking out the old photo album, every visit. I wish she had a few more friends.”
He peeked around the cupboard door, his expression reflecting concern. But he had no idea what to say to comfort her, so he remained silent. Watching her don a fresh pair of knickers, and then jeans and a reversible blue and lavender hoodie, he thought of something he'd meant to ask for a long time.
“Why do you always take your mother a bundle of dirty laundry? The TARDIS cleans your clothes far quicker and easier, without generating all of those noxious pollutants.”
Rose slipped on a windbreaker and stuffed a final sock into the sack, before answering. “Maybe I like the fresh scent the dryer sheets leave in my jimjams,” she said.
“That fragrance is carcinogenic,” the Doctor informed her, wrinkling his nose. “And the TARDIS washer makes your clothes much softer.”
“All right, if you must know everything,” Rose chuckled. “Doing my laundry makes my mum feel needed. And, if I only have a few weeks worth of dirty clothes,” she said, shouldering the load, “it looks like we've only been away a short time.”
“I had no idea you were so devious,” he teased.
“Yes, you did.”
“Yes, I did,” he agreed, beaming as he latched onto her offered hand.
They took one more moment to enjoy their privacy, leaning into each other before setting off. As she lifted her face to look up at him, the Doctor deposited a sweet kiss on her lips, knowing it would be the last romantic contact they would have on the visit. Rose never encouraged him to affection in front of her mother. On the other hand, it was unlikely Jackie Tyler had missed the signs of his devotion. Surely, his admiration of her daughter went beyond obvious. And she had to have some idea why they always slipped back to the TARDIS together for a few hours, during every visit.
On the way out, the Doctor double checked the handbrake and pressed the blue button. Rose conspicuously fingered her key. Despite his having removed the automatic programming from the ship's memory, they weren't prepared to take any more chances. The lock still clicked closed behind them, but the shields didn't activate. If they needed to they could get back in, even without K-9's help. Still, it was good to know they had back up in the library.
“We should get K-9 an electronic chew toy or something,” Rose said.
“He's quite fond of bouncy balls,” the Doctor told her. “And quantum equations.”
They discussed where to get a present for a fifty-first century robot in the twenty-first, as they skipped along hand in hand across the common area. The Doctor held open the building door for Rose, in gentlemanly fashion, and they climbed the stairs to Jackie Tyler's apartment. Rose wondered when it had stopped being home to her. She vowed to make a conscious effort to refer to it as her home for as long as her mother lived. And there it was, in her head at last, the thought of her mother's dying. She quickly shoved it back under the rug of denial. When that day came, Rose knew she would sever all ties with Earth. But it seemed a long time in the future. Someday soon, however, she needed to tell her mother the truth about her changing life, about the Doctor.
Reaching the apartment, she entered as she knocked, and called, brightly, “Mum, we're home.”
There was no answer. The apartment felt cold and deserted. The Doctor noted a faint smell of rot in the air, food turning in the refrigerator, perhaps. Or rubbish left too long in the bin. He tensed and signaled Rose to get behind him. Something was wrong. Rose sensed it too and had to be physically restrained from rushing down the hall. After a bit of whispered arguing, they crept forward together, checking each room as they went. Jackie's bedroom was empty, the bed unmade, a rumple of tangled sheets. Mail and a few magazines spilled across the floor, but there were no true signs of struggle.
As they approached the living room, Rose relaxed, springing forward with a glad cry, “There you are.”
There was Jackie Tyler, dressed in a housecoat and slippers. She had curled up in a corner of the sofa. Surrounded by crumpled tissues, she seemed to be staring sightlessly out the window, tiny blue headphones plugged into her ears. She started as Rose entered her peripheral vision, but she didn't leap up with her usual animation. Her red-rimmed eyes and scarlet nose offered as much evidence of extensive weeping as the pile of crumbled tissues on the couch beside her. Hastily gathering up her tissues, she scrunched them into a ball. She tucked the wad under her hip, popped the headphones free of her ears and held out her arms for a hug.
“Oh, Rose,” she cried. “You're here.”
“What is it? What's wrong?” Rose said, dropping into an embrace, but casting a worried glance back at the Doctor.
He shifted from foot to foot, fiddling with his earlobe. Head lowered, peering up at her, he'd gone rather goggle-eyed and pale. “There she is,” he said weakly. “I'll just...go...” Rose scowled. “Not away, naturally,” he hastily assured, “But, I could be more useful...somewhere...” He dithered even more, tufting up his hair and obviously at a complete loss, when Jackie broke into noisy sobs.
“You shouldn't have come here,” Jackie said, “You shouldn't have come home.”
The Doctor's frantic gaze had been darting here and there, searching for some avenue of escape, but this caught his attention and he focused on her, his brows arching, head tilted. “Why not?”
“Make us a cup of tea, yeah?” Rose told him. She shifted to look into her mother blotchy, tear-stained face. “Nice cup of tea, just the thing to settle the nerves,” she said, gently stroking Jackie's shoulder.
Little by little, the full story came out. Apparently, her mother's new boy-toy hadn't been interested in romance.
“He was after you, Rose,” Jackie said. “All along. He was after the pair of you.”
Rose stiffened, but tried to keep her fears in check as she asked for clarification. “What do you mean? He was after the Doctor?” She gave Jackie a gentle shake, just enough to help her focus “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” Jackie cried. “I swear. I would never let anyone hurt you. Or him.”
“All right,” Rose said, mollified. Ashamed of her impatience and how long she'd neglected her, she gave her mother another hug. “I know you were just taken off guard. If I'd been in touch more, none of this would have happened.”
“Only, maybe, I did say you were traveling,” Jackie admitted. “And that I didn't see you very often.” She sniffled and looked away, embarrassed by her loneliness and her mistakes. Tugging another tissue from the box on the side table, she blew her nose, before resolutely going on, “Anyway, he already knew about the Doctor. I didn't put it together until later, but when we met, he said he belonged to some club, investigating paranormal phenomenon. I didn't pay it any mind. Lots of people are interested in aliens these days.”
“Linda,” the Doctor intoned, from the doorway.
Rose met his eye. “Who?”
“Not who, what. L.I.N.D.A. It's an acronym. Stands for London Investigation N' Detective Agency. They're sort of my...fan club.”
“And they actually use the letter N for AND?” Rose asked, amused by the inanity of it all, despite her irritation.
“I didn't say they were imaginative, just that they follow me about snapping photos and posting them on the Internet. You've met one of that sort.”
“Clive. Yeah,” Rose agreed. “So, now they know about my mum, what's to stop them coming here in droves?” Neither Jackie nor the Doctor had an answer for her. The kettle whistled.
“Tea!” the Doctor said, brightly, popping off again even as his wife ground her teeth in frustration.
Giving Jackie's shoulder a final squeeze, Rose got up and followed him to the kitchen. She paused in the doorway to watch him pour water into mugs. He had a graceful lack of efficiency, almost everything he did was a dance of stops and starts.
Voice pitched low, she said, “I want to find this bloke. Talk to him. See what he was after.”
“We don't even know his name, yet.”
“Elton Pope,” Jackie said, causing Rose to gasp and spin around.
“Slippered feet, mum,” she accused. “You half-startled me.”
Shuffling into the room, slippers scuffing on the tile floor, Jackie sank into a chair at the small dining table. “He's twenty-eight,” she said. “A Capricorn. I don't know where he lives.”
“We'll look him up,” the Doctor said.
Jackie shook her head. “He's not in the book. I think he rents a room somewhere. Or so he said. Maybe that's not even his real name: Elton.” She fell silent, contemplating the lies. When the Doctor set a steaming mug in front of her, she wrapped both hands around it and went on, “He's got a cell phone. But I threw the number away day before yesterday.” She glanced toward the overflowing trashcan, before remembering, “In the outdoor bin. The one at the foot of the stairs?”
“Probably gone now,” the Doctor said, “Pity! I could have used the number to trace him.”
“I don't want to phone him,” Rose growled, her dark eyes fixed on the Doctor. He couldn't help noticing the gold specks glinting in their depths. “I want to find him, wherever he is, right now.”
“We can't just...” the Doctor began, only to be cut off by Jackie.
“Don't go,” she pleaded, half rising from her seat. “You've just got here.”
“We'll be right back, mum,” Rose said, dismissively. But the stricken expression on Jackie's face made her reconsider her rash reaction. “Or...yeah,” she agreed, exchanging worried looks with the Doctor, “we can stay for a bit. Hey, now...shhhh,” she said, dragging a chair around the table to sit by Jackie, who had teared up again. Settling on the edge of the seat, Rose soothed, “It's going to be fine. This can all wait.” She skated her hand across the table to clasp her mother's wrist. “You just drink your tea.”
“It tastes funny,” Jackie said, sniffing the spicy aroma. “Not my brand. Different, but nice.”
Rose's eye widened slightly. She shot a questioning glance at the Doctor and caught his almost imperceptible nod. Rotating his hand, he flashed her a glimpse of something in his palm. It was a black package, one she easily recognized. The logo on it matched the black and purple tag dangling from a string in her mother's tea. Rose hadn't noticed it at first, but the Doctor had made Jackie a cup of his special blend. The warm drink would put her to sleep in no time.
“A little something we picked up on one of the Martian moons,” he joked.
“Space tea?” Jackie mumbled. “Is that why I feel so lightheaded?”
“He's kidding, mum,” Rose said, softly. “It's from China. Sixteenth century. A few rare herbs, but nothing dangerous.”
Jackie yawned. “I do feel better, more relaxed.”
“It will help you sleep,” Rose said, standing. “You probably just need little nap.” She signaled the Doctor and together, they levered Jackie up and guided her unsteady steps to the bedroom.
“Oh, the house is a mess, sweetheart.”
“Never you mind about the mess. We'll tidy up. Tell you what,” Rose said, as Jackie stretched out on her bed. “Scoot over and I'll sit with you for a little while. You can tell me what you'd like for Christmas.”
“I'll be in the...” the Doctor said, gesturing over his shoulder, as he backed out of the bedroom. Rose, curling up next to her mother, gave him a brief nod.
After wandering into the living room, he perched on a sofa arm and waited. He could hear the gentle rise and fall of Rose's soothing voice. Her rounded tones harmonized with, and mellowed, Jackie's shriller ones. Eventually, there was quiet. Twenty minutes later Rose strode down the hall, the militant light still clearly visible in her eyes. Rising to greet her, he said, “Everything settled?”
“She's sleeping. But things won't be settled until we deal with Mr. Elton Pope.”
“He's probably quite harmless,” the Doctor said, hoping to keep her temper in check.
“He upset my mum. Nobody upsets my mum.” Her tone brooked no room for discussion.
“Right. Yes. Once we get back to the TARDIS, I can cross reference the name with the tax roles. He must file income tax. We can stake out his....”
Rose cut him off, impatiently. “We're not going to stakeout anything. My mum hasn't slept in two days. She was afraid to call us. Afraid she was the bait in some trap. Do you see these?” she asked, drawing a fistful of photos out of her windbreaker pocket. “She says he had these with him. He had pictures of me. I want you to take me to wherever he's at right now. So, I can speak to him.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head. This was the first time she'd asked him to do something he simply couldn't do. “But that's...impossible,” he told her, spreading his hands in defeat.
“You told me you can do anything.”
He had told her that, once upon a time, back when he was a leather jacketed loon. “Honestly, I can't. He's a person. Not a planet. He doesn't have fixed coordinates.”
“You found my Dad.”
“At the wedding. And just before he died. There were records.”
“Elton Pope has records, too," she told him as she tossed the photos down on the coffee table. "He's got to be somewhere. Just...find out where...and take me to him.”
“How do you suggest I do that?”
“I don't know...” she said, exasperated, and grasping at straws, “biorhythms?”
“Biorhythms?”
“Why not?”
He tilted his head to one side. “Because there are no such thing?” he suggested.
“Course there are. We know he's a Capricorn. That means he was born in December or January, twenty-eight years ago. We can search all the hospital records for London. Can't be too many babies named Elton. I suppose that is his real name. Who'd make something like that up?”
Fascinated by the workings of her mind, the Doctor hunkered a bit to peer into her eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that he could watch her brain churning through Rose-logic. “Of course, simple really,” he said, with a distinct air of humoring her, “And once we know exactly when he was born...then what?”
“We follow his life along. He had to go somewhere straight after he was born, right? We just have to figure out where, and then follow him about...on up to today...using his biorhythms.”
The Doctor stared at her for several long beats, before chirping, “That's completely mad.” After shaking his head, as if saddened by her mental breakdown, he began to tick things off on his fingers. “First, he'd interact with other people. Every step of the way, he's making complex decisions. He's not living in a binary world, is he? It's not off/on, yes/no, left/right. You're talking about game theory, with unknown...” he corrected himself, “No, make that unknowable variables. The first decision isn't even his. His parents would decide where he went after hospital. So, we'd need their biorhythms, as well, wouldn't we? Assuming there was such a thing as a biorhythm, which there absolutely is not. Second,...”
Rose didn't wait for his second point. Red faced and seething, she spun away from him. “I'll just ask her myself,” she said, striding toward the front door.
Standing on tip-toe, craning his neck to see her, the Doctor called, “Ask who?”
“The TARDIS,” she yelled, over her shoulder as she barged out the front door.
He gave a little indecisive bounce and whined, “I knew you were going to say that.”
As the door slammed closed, his restless gaze fell on a photo she'd dropped, and just like that he had a surge of inspiration. Snatching up the picture, he tucked it into his pocket, before darting after Rose. It wasn't like he needed to hurry. She wouldn't get anywhere asking the TARDIS about biorhythms. He could just wait for her inevitable failure, and then explain his own idea. There was no need to trot after her. But a tiny part of his generally sensible mind had turned quite superstitious. It reminded him that Rose Tyler had already convinced the TARDIS to do something impossible once. Was he really so sure she couldn't get...well...somewhere if she tried again?
He caught her elbow just as she took the top step. “Hang on a minute. I need to borrow something from your mother.”
“I hope it's an umbrella,” Rose muttered, as she braked. Glancing up, she'd noticed storm clouds gathering overhead. There was already a drizzly mist in the air.
But if Doctor heard her, he didn't acknowledge it. As soon as she'd stopped moving, he'd released his grip on her arm and whirled to shoot back up the steps and into the apartment. He bounced out again ten seconds later, declaring, “Hairbrush,” as he brandished one.
“This is no time to work on your back combing.”
“Hairbrushes mean hair,” he told her, launching down the steps at speed. He skirted her without stopping, racing recklessly on, certain she'd follow him. “Hair means DNA. And DNA means...?” Hitting the ground floor, he spun in a skipping circle to throw a delighted word at her. “Biorhythms.”
“But we aren't trying to find my mum,” Rose reasoned, picking up her pace to run beside him.
His attention was split between the path ahead of him and fishing things from his pockets. “Ah, yes...but...” he said, pointing one hand to heaven while he juggled the brush, a ball, his key and a few photos in the other. “There's a process of elimination.”
“Elimination? From what?”
“These,” he declared, nearly dropping everything as he flashed the pictures at her. “Everyone has touched them. You, me, your mother...”
“And Elton Pope,” Rose said, catching on. “That's brilliant.”
“Well,” he tipped his head modestly as he opened the TARDIS door. “I am a Time Lord. I can do anything.” With a wave of his hand, he ushered her in ahead of him “Mind you, it will still be like looking for a needle in a...needle factory. One specific needle you understand? Lost amidst billions...or millions...at least. I think we can narrow the search to the population of Great Britain.” He placed Jackie's hairbrush and the photos on the console, returned his key to his coat, and started flipping switches. The TARDIS hummed a welcome. “Here's a challenge for you, love,” he told the awakening machinery. “Our Rose wants you to find one man among many. One particular man.”
“You're going to lock on his DNA profile?” Rose guessed.
“Assuming the TARDIS can configure the Vortex based on genetic sequencing, yes. We've never tried this sort of thing before, but...with a bit of jiggery-pokery...” he whipped around to face Rose and said, “Hold very still.” She did, despite tingling all over when he very gently combed his spread fingers through her hair. A single golden strand clung to his skin as he lifted his hand away. He beamed, displaying the hair for her between pinched fingers. “A touch of Rose for the potion. I'll just program this in to the computer.” The TARDIS popped open a tray and he carefully coiled the hair into it. “She already has my codes from the regeneration. So...that leaves...your mother,” he plucked a brassy hair from the brush and added it to the tray, “And Mr. Elton Pope.” In went the photographs. Waggling his head, he grimaced, adding, “Also, whomever he showed these photos to...the processor...the photo shop clerks...but...we do have a cross reference selection.”
After sliding the slot closed, he drew the monitor around in front of him. There were a number of pings and whistles and flashing colored lights. The Doctor knocked a knuckle against the thermobuffer dials, punched a few keys on the Zeiton Crystal display, took a reading and adjusted the temporal anchors. Rose braced herself for take off. The rotor ground to life.
“Oh, what a marvelous girl, you are?” the Doctor sang, stretching forward to pat the nearest bit of naked TARDIS. When Rose grimaced over this affectionate display, he winked at her and shouted above the rotor noise. “I said so, didn't I? She likes you. Despite your fits of jealousy.”
“I'm not jealous of your time and space machine,” Rose called back. “I just think it's silly to pet her.”
The rotor stalled and Rose hastily reached out a hand to stroke the nearest column To the Doctor's smug delight, her affectionate apology seemed to do the trick. The ship stabilized and the spinning dials found focus. A second later they landed lightly in an alleyway. Rose looked over the Doctor's shoulder at the scene in the monitor screen. A strawberry blond man, who she took to be Elton Pope, cowered in the shadow of a green beast of some kind.
“Hey, it's the bloke from the meat processing plant,” Rose said. “What's that looming over him?”
“I don't know,” the Doctor said, seriously. Heading for the door, he cautioned, “Stay here, until I find out.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He should have known better than to expect her to stay put for long. She popped out of the TARDIS as soon as he announced her desire to speak with the lad. Luckily, the monster was easily dealt with and Elton Pope turned out to be rather innocent and sweet. Just another human caught up in circumstance beyond his control. Rose went from raking the boy over the coals to sympathizing with him in record time. It seemed the lad had lost both his mother and his true love. And, of course, Rose had expected her pet Time Lord to deliver a miracle. Said Time Lord had caved completely when she'd pleaded with those puppy-dog eyes of hers. He wasn't made of stone, even if Elton's girlfriend now was.
“Do you think they'll be happy? With her as a brick?” Rose asked, as they reversed course to return to the Powell Estates. “Got to be a major adjustment in a relationship.”
“It's an improvement on dead,” he said, and her tiny head tilt told him she agreed. “They'll manage I think. They love one another. Her physical form has very little to do with that.”
“People put a lot of stock in physical compatibility.”
“Not you,” he said. The glance he gave her brimmed with heated tenderness.
“You didn't make it that hard on me, though, did you?” she teased. “Wait until you go geezerly.”
“A day laborer and a paving tile,” he mused. “Not that different from you and I, at the end of the day.”
“Thank you very much,” Rose yelped, shoving his shoulder. “I like to think I'm a bit more animated than decorative stonework.”
“Who says you're the stonework?” he countered.
“Oh, well...if you mean you...that's different. You have loads in common with a paving tile,” Rose agreed, laughing. “There's a certain rigidity, to start with.”
“I'm constant,” he said with a lofty sniff. “You should count yourself lucky.”
“Oh, I do,” she said. Catching the tip of her tongue in her teeth, she smiled at him as he circled the console.
He did his best to ignore the bubbling effervescence her flirting triggered in his veins. Locking the temporal anchors, he engaged the handbrake. The ship shuddered a little but, for once, didn't toss them around like ice in a martini shaker. “This landing business is getting astoundingly routine.” He pulled the monitor around to study it. “I wonder if she's coming down with something.”
“Do you think she'll outlive him, poor thing?” Rose wondered, her sympathetic heart touched by the thought of a lonely paving stone.
Preoccupied with the TARDIS, the Doctor had lost the train of the conversation. “Hmmm?”
“Ursula. I would hate to think of her lingering on and on...after he's gone...”
“I think...” the Doctor said, eyes still on his readings, “They're happy.” He threw the switches that sent the TARDIS into her dormant mode. Then, he looked up and straight into her eyes. “And that's all any of us can hope for.”
To his surprise, the light in Rose's face faded and she turned away. “Nobody gets forever, I suppose,” she mumbled, hugging herself as she walked up the ramp toward the outer door. Staring after her, he shivered. In his mind's eye he could see the swirling void, and then the wolf staring at him with its fixed and golden gaze.
Nobody gets forever. Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies.
He knew this. Had known it since he first looked into the Vortex as a child. He'd run away, then, and he'd kept on running. But now, it was all catching up to him. He wanted her safe, his Rose. How was he going to go on if she came to dust? His old life, traveling and fighting, exploring new worlds and meeting new people, seemed so hollow and lonely. Without Rose, he'd be a representation of a man, frozen inside, nothing more than a decorative tile on the wall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Half-way across the parking lot, rain broke over them with no warning. One instant it was misting gently, as it had all day, the next it was bucketing down. They ran for cover, splashing through puddles. Squealing and giggling, they reached the portico, both thoroughly soaked. By the time they'd reached the apartment, Rose was shivering, but the unexpected drenching had washed away all melancholy. As the Doctor used his key to let them in, they could hardly contain their teasing pokes and tickling caresses.
Rose shushed them both, before peeking into her mother's room. “Shhh! She's still sleeping.”
“We've only been gone five minutes,” he whispered. “She should sleep for another six hours.”
“Six hours?”
“Give or take. You're dripping on my trainers.”
“You're dripping on me,” Rose countered.
He was. Raking a hand through his hair, he spiked it into hedgehog spines, scattering even more raindrops onto her upturned face. She found this funny and, silently chortling, collapsed against his chest. Her hoodie was sopping wet and clinging. He wrapped his arms around her, fingers pinching the wet cotton away from the small of her back, so his hand could skim up her spine. Her skin had a slick heat from rain and running. Hot, wet Rose, his personal addiction.
She was more intoxicating than a bag full of jelly babies. Determined to repeal their one unspoken and unassailable rule, no intimate contact in her mother's presence, he nuzzled his way to Rose's ear and said, “We should get you out of these clothes.”
Her breath caught, sending a sputtering sigh fluttering across his cheek, and her hands wandered, fingers threading their way through his damp layers to skin. As she dipped her head, the tip of her nose drew a line down his neck. He gulped, his grip on her tightening.
“Into the kitchen,” she mouthed. The touch of her lips was feather light at his throat. “There's a dryer.”
He pressed against her, holding on with the desperation of a drowning man. To break the embrace, Rose collapsed to the side and rolled along the wall. This helped her sustain contact as long as possible, while moving away at the same time. They pulled apart like the segments of an orange, peeling free of the natural cling, Once they were two people again, Rose reached down to seize his hand. She tugged him in her wake as she backed toward the kitchen.
His trainers squelched and squeaked on the tile floor. Rose reprimanded him, stretching to touch a fingertip to his lips as she said, “Shhh.”
“I can't help my shoes squeaking.” His protest was whispered, but indignant.
“Step lightly,” she said, “Or better yet...” She leaned into his shoulder, bringing her mouth close enough to his ear to warm it as she murmured, “Take them off.” When he tried to pull back, suddenly wary of this whole plan, she fisted his duster lapel in one hand to keep him near and, sending her hungry gaze down his form, commanded, “Take the whole kit off.”
“Oh...not a good idea,” he warned. “Not here.” But his fingers had a mind of their own and were already busy tugging his shirt free of his waistband.
“My room?” Rose suggested, stepping around him to the dryer. She divested herself of her shoes and jeans. The latter went into the machine, the former she kicked to one side.
“If I lose control...”
“You won't. You know you won't.”
“But if I do...you'll be out for days. And your mother will kill me. Regeneration simple as that.”
Rose grew serious. “I want to see you,” she said, trumping any further argument he might have been thinking of purposing. “I want you to bloom open and....” She broke off to swallow hard, moistening her lips as she squirmed free of her damp knickers. Dropping this last scrap of clothing into the dryer, she punched the button for a low setting, before facing him again. “It's so beautiful,” she told him.
“I...oh...bother!” He rolled his gaze to the ceiling and huffed. Damn. Damn. When she put it like that, what choice did he have? He absorbed his humiliating defeat for a moment. Then, glowering fiercely, held a finger so close to her nose that her eyes crossed to focus on it and, staring directly into her face, said, “Absolutely no touching.”
“Or you will turn this car around...” Rose laughed.
“Or, I'll go back to the TARDIS,” he told her, with quelling sincerity. “And bar the ruddy door.”
“I know how to get in now, remember?”
“Not if I throw the deadbolt.”
Hurt, she sniffed and turned away. “If you feel that way about it,” she groused, fixing her attention on starting up the . “Forget I asked. I just thought...since we had a few hours, we could consummate our official status...but I guess you would rather talk about global warming or the Peligeisee Treaties or Sontar....”
Her sulk ended in a surprised squeak as he pounced. One second he was arranging his coat over a chair back. The next second, pivoting on the ball of one foot, he struck. Yet, for all his sudden savagery, he still managed to cushion her from any injury as he pressed her forward into the dryer. His hands guided her into position, firm on her shoulders, her back, her bottom. He frisked her after capture, as Time Lords will do, checking, not for weapons but for random thoughts. Rose gasped as he shuffled erotic images to the surface of her mind. This was pure Gallifreyan foreplay, but a shocking liberty to take with a human, far more intimate than anything he was doing to her physically.
And he was doing quite a lot to her body. His hands roamed all over her, flat-palmed as they circled her nipples, claw-fingered as they scraped across her belly. His knee spread her legs into a wider stance. He was going to have her in her mother's kitchen. She whimpered, trying not to squirm. When this mood seized him squirming would only trigger his cnidocytes. And Rose didn't want to dream.
She wanted to be wide awake for this. He meant to climax. She could tell by the way he'd come at her, restraining her. The knowing filled her with a thrumming ardor. She imagined him flowering, mantling, flooding her with heat. Reading her mind, he moaned, hitting a breathless, desperate note. Starting at the nape of her neck, he kissed every vertebrae to her tail bone. As he went lower, he shifted his grip, but continued to hold her fast against the machine. His one arm, and the weight of his body, kept her from moving, while the fingertips of his free hand glided around the plum swell of her behind. Pillowing his cheek between her shoulder blades, he gently tickled open her hidden folds. His fingers teased for a bit before they sheathed themselves in her slippery passage. She made his palm slick in seconds.
Face to the wall and sandwiched between two immovable objects, one of them quite alien, Rose knew absolutely no fear. The tiny, involuntary noises escaping her throat were inspired by the dip and slide of slender fingers. She clenched around them, trying to hold on as they pumped in and out, but they eluded her squeezing grip. Inner walls quaking, gut clenching, she remained as still as possible, panting through her need to rock her hips. Her position was perilous. He would drug her with the slightest provocation. But this was torture. Forced to her toes by pleasure, she felt her legs quiver, knees going weak. Climax barreled down on her like a runaway freight train.
The Doctor kissed her. Nipped her. Sucked the exquisitely sensitive spot behind her left knee. His fingers massaged, stroking deep. In and out. In and...out. His tongue licked and swirled. His lips softly caressed. He'd settled to his haunches behind her, no longer restraining her at all. Rose held on, fingernails catching in the metal seams of the dryer, while the Doctor's teeth sampled her buttocks and the back of her thighs, testing the springy texture and pungent flavor of her flesh with gentle bites. The dryer's metal exterior was shockingly cold against her bare nipples but inside there was churning heat. She savored the deep vibration, letting it sink in, and it stimulated her past the point of no return, shoving her to the brink of a bone-melting release. The climax rolled over her, sending her racing toward oblivion. She jerked once and her lover disappeared.
“No,” she wailed, breathlessly. “Oh...God...not now....”
But he was already gone, bounding away out the door and down the hall. Rose needed a shuddering moment to scrape together her composure, before she could follow him. In the hall, she found he'd left her a trail of discarded garments. It lead straight to her bedroom. She arrived there, wet and weak in the knees, clutching his tie, shirt and suit jacket.
He was just unzipping his trousers.
NOT THE END OF THIS PART...but...
WHOA! This chapter was too long...follow this link for part 2 of part 22...
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/130998.html
by Rabid1st
Doctor Who
Ten/Rose
Ratings: Adult +
Beta Babes: Keswindhover, larielromeniel, and thewinterqueen and the newest beta babes in the Disheveled family, Measi and queenrikki_hp. With a special shout-out to Lil and Jei for their YIM help.
Summary: Do they have big yellow tow trucks in Cuba? Will Jackie Tyler kill the Doctor for marrying Rose? And just how much has Rose changed?
Disclaimer: I work my little fingers to the bone and I'm still not entitled to any royalties. Nobody invites me to the sound stages in Cardiff. I had to sneak into the company picnic, avoiding security and such while I ate fried chicken and potato salad, but that's okay because all rights to Doctor Who and it's characters belong to the BBC, Russell T. Davies and assorted production companies.
CLICK HERE FOR ALL PREVIOUS PARTS
PART TWENTY-TWO
Mobile phone loosely cradled in hand, Rose Tyler slouched against the side of the TARDIS. The rough wood bit into her bare shoulder, but didn't bother her enough to justify switching positions. She was trying to remain optimistic or at least calm, but her confidence waned with each passing minute. They were drawing unwanted attention, now, standing next to the police box. It had been just over an hour since they returned to the TARDIS. So far, two police cars had slowed as they passed and a number of people had stopped to stare. Rose watched with mounting disillusion as, once again, the Doctor applied the universal key of his sonic screwdriver to what he'd always told her was an impregnable lock. There was a sharp squeal and a bit of smoke, but nothing more promising.
“You remembered to bring a feather and a slingshot with you,” she remarked, with only a tinge of exasperation coloring her habitually bright tone, “but forgot your key?”
“I was a bit distracted,” he reminded her, casting a smoldering glance in her direction before peering at the readouts on his screwdriver. “All that...dancing.” Easing his glasses out of his shirt pocket, he put them on to check the numbers, again. By the sigh he released, Rose guessed they still weren't getting anywhere.
“No change?”
“Recriminations are not helping.”
“Just recapping,” she said, with a forced smile and false bat of her dark lashes.
“Well, recap our assets, as well, then. One, I'm brilliant. Two, you're quite...persuasive. A handy combination of skills to have in a dictatorship.”
“Assets?” Rose mused. “Let's see...you’ve got a sonic screwdriver. And I’ve got a mobile phone. We could call roadside assistance...if we weren’t stuck in Cuba...in 1991...with very little money and no means of identification.” Remembering how Jack had said much the same thing the night they'd met, she tried her hand at imitating him as she said, “Well, the assets discussion went quickly.”
A slight upward twitch at the corner of the Doctor's mouth showed he'd caught her reference, but he didn't comment on it. He could seldom be baited into discussing Jack. “It's not as bad as all that. We’ve got your passport and the psychic paper.”
“My passport is from 2004. You don't think Castro's secret police will notice that sort of thing?”
“We’ll survive.” Straightening his knees, he stood from his crouch and, whipping his glasses off, winked at her. “Honestly, you know we will. You and me. Me and you.” As he tucked the specs away, he looked up the street toward the Hotel Nacional. “We might need to lay low for a few weeks. But late twentieth century Earth? Oh, yes! This is a fantastic time and place to get stranded. Lots of alien traffic, coming and going...going and coming. And as long as the revolution has ATM machines,” he paused, frowning, suddenly not so sure of himself, “Hmmm? I wonder if they do.”
“Let’s hope so. I've grown used to a life of leisure. Did you ever think...here we are in possession of a locked police box and…? Wait! Hang on a minute.” Rose sprang from her slumping posture into energetic mobility. “How can it be locked? Neither of us had a key. Didn't you tell me that was what triggered the locking mechanism? We walk out with a key and the lock codes to our genetic patterns.” Inspired by this logic, she threw herself around the corner of the blue box, crowding him away from the door. “Are you sure you've tried just...?” She jiggled the handle, twice, producing no results.
The Doctor gave her a pained look. “Yes, I did try jiggling the handle. It's a simple gravity lock. No genetic override in play. The TARDIS knows we're missing but she doesn't know we're outside.”
“Great,” she sighed, an icy fog rolling in on her mood.
He donned an apologetic grimace, culled from his repertoire of extreme facial expressions. “The good news is there's no shielding either. I should be able to break in...given time.” He was the picture of diffidence. It went all the way to his trainers.
Even though he was blatantly manipulating her, Rose's coolness evaporated and her ready good humor returned. “We've got time,” she said, gripping his wrist and squeezing “You'll work something out. And even if you don't, it's still an adventure.”
“It's just...” He hesitated and glanced down, scuffing his toe through the loose gravel underfoot. “It is my fault. If I hadn't forgotten the key...or reinstalled the automatic systems for your training flights..." He reflected on his mistakes for a moment, before going on to explain. “I don't generally use them, automatic programs, I mean. Too many glitches. And besides...Time Lord...expert user and so on...and this sort of thing can happen...I should have known...should have remembered things go wrong on training flights.”
A new thought occurred, making him twitch as if he'd been smacked. He sprang back a bit, inhaling sharply, but recovered his balance almost immediately. Lunging forward, he caught Rose by both arms at the elbow and, peering at her with a renewed sense of urgency, said, “Tell me you remembered to activate the buffers against temporal drift.” When she gaped at him, he shook her gently. “The blue button? The shiny blue button, I said you must never ever forget to press?” He groaned aloud at the dumbstruck expression on her face. It was as good as a guilty confession. “Right after engaging the hand brake?” he peeped, forlornly.
“There was no...”
“No hand braking,” he recalled on a sighing exhale. Releasing her so suddenly she staggered, he dropped his arms to his sides. His face fell into grim lines as he accepted the direness of their plight. Rose, he saw, was still several steps behind him, but catching up quickly. Head tilted back and jaw jutted forward, he mulled over whether or not to spell out the implications of her rookie mistake.
“This is bad?” she guessed.
“Bad, yes,” he sighed, still gazing up at the stars. “Though it makes things much simpler. Now, we won't have to worry about explaining the police box.” A small squeak escaped Rose's closing throat. He lowered his chin to target his bleak gaze on her, and saw understanding flit across her face a beat before he said, “Because she'll drift off in a bit.”
“Drift off? No! We've got to do something,” Rose said, gaining her voice but losing her composure. Her galloping pulse caused a ringing in her ears.
“I am doing something, several things in fact,” The Doctor assured her, with a maddening air of inner peace. “Unfortunately, not one of them is helping our situation.” He shifted the screwdriver from his left hand to his right and gently hooked an arm about Rose to guide her out of his way. As he glared at the lock, he seemed to switch moods and topics. “Do you have any idea what happens if straight after you land on Rigel 127 you dash off after a reptilian drug lord and his band of cutthroats leaving the TARDIS door standing open?” When Rose shrugged on shoulder, he returned his attention to the lock again, squinting at it, eyeball to keyhole, and said, “Tribbles.”
“Excuse me?”
“An infestation of Tribbles.”
“Tribbles? Like on Star Trek? The Trouble With…?”
“Yes, very like,” he sighed, nodding in weary sarcasm. “If, instead of fluffy balls of purring affection, you are imagining voraciously breeding, glittery-eyed, armor-clad locusts with an appetite for destruction.” Flexing his neck this way and that, he grimaced in pain. Rose circled to give him a one-handed massage, easing the tension from his corded muscles. When she'd finished, he smiled up at her and went on with a little more of his usual pep, “They swarm. And sing. Imagine the grating sound of a million metal-tipped fingernails on the world's biggest chalkboard and you'll have some idea.” Rose winced. “Now, imagine hearing that for seven long years, every time you turned your back on the little buggers.”
“Speaking from experience?”
He sucked in his bottom lip, audibly popping it out again, before answering her. “Back when Ace was learning to push all the right buttons, we got into a serious spot of bother with the Rigelian Free Traders, a load of cutthroats and mercenaries. We left the door open.” He stood to glare at the door, too much white showing around his dark irises. A few more noises, mostly teeth and tongue clicks, later he said, “I didn't want that sort of thing to happen, again. So...I installed the training wheels,” he nodded toward the TARDIS. “There are a few latent safety features on the primary operating system. They kick in if the designated driver make a misstep in the landing sequence, overlooks any of the standard protocols.”
“Like using the handbrake?” Rose surmised.
“Or pressing that blue button.”
“So, this failsafe system kicked in and locked us out? And we don't have our genetic override because we've left our keys at home?”
“That about covers it. Ever notice the deadbolt on the inside of the door?”
“I wondered about that.”
“Does much the same thing,” he told her, “Takes priority over the genetic overrides. Just in case anyone with a key goes rogue on me. Gets infected with the Mara? Joins forces with Fenric the Destroyer of Worlds?”
“Couldn't they lock you out as well?”
“Ah, well...there's the downside.”
He dialed up one of the more lethal settings on his screwdriver, and took aim at the lock. There was a brilliant blue flash. Rose turned her head, shielding her eyes with an upraised hand. When the sparkling dazzle cleared from her vision, she saw the metal on the door: handles, hinges and lock, glowed white hot. The metal, wet from sea spray, steamed for several seconds.
“If you melt it, we'll never get inside.”
Drawing a deep breath, the Doctor blew it out in an extended huff at the lock.
“The big bad wolf approach,” she said, suppressing her grin. When he didn't answer, she searched his face for some sign of returning hope. “Would you like me to give it a go? Hey! Maybe I could reach the TARDIS psychically, tell her to let us in.”
He glanced up, eyes twinkling fondly. “I wouldn't mind your mother finding me a tow truck.”
“I wonder if she knows any Cuban fire fighters? I thought the control panel was stubborn, yeah? But it's lucky I didn't have to get through the front door or you'd still be on Satellite Five with Captain Jack.”
Head bent over his work, the Doctor shot her a couple darting glances as he reprogrammed the screwdriver. “How much do you remember about that?” he asked, casually. “Satellite Five? Jack?”
Suddenly, it was her turn to be evasive. She looked beyond him to the sea. Her barriers went up, crossed arms and compressed lips, making it clear she didn't want to talk about her memories of that day. She did remember it, though, despite what she'd told him to the contrary. It was just painful for her to look back on it--the flood of endless power surging through her, reducing Daleks to their composite atoms, resurrecting the dead. The whole of it terrified her. She hadn't enjoyed seeing the Doctor as tiny, an insignificant spec in the whole of creation. He was everything to her.
“Just...flashes,” she said, focusing on the dark-obscured horizon. “So...? Are we stuck here?”
“Not necessarily,” he said, standing again. “There are sixty-five trillion possible combinations for a gravity lock. Trying them all will take most of my lifetime, but I could hit on the right one at any moment. A minute from now. Later today. Tomorrow. Next month. Until the TARDIS drifts, we have hope.”
“Hope is a good emotion,” Rose said, stepping closer to cuddle his arm. She stared up into his face. “I rather like hope. And mind you, it does make a girl proud, knowing she’s put your short term memory on the blink. You a Time Lord and all, supposedly asexual.”
His lips formed a tight line as he turned his head to face her. “Call your mother,” he ordered, delivering a chaste kiss to her brow before gently disentangling from her grasp. “She's wondering if I've gotten you killed or stolen you away forever.”
“What would I tell her?”
“I don't know,” he said sounding irritated. “Tell her you're sorry you didn't ring her sooner. Tell her about communist ice cream. Mother/daughter things. It might be her last chance to hear from you for a few years. When we lose the TARDIS we'll lose your signal booster. The next time you see her, you'll be almost the same age.”
“There's a cheery thought,” Rose sighed, glancing at her mobile, but stalling. “We could talk about menopause. And what to do for crow's feet. Trapped in Cuba for the next,” she did the math, “sixteen years? I suppose I'll be back working in the shops.” She shot an inquiring glance at him. “Unless you have a trade of some sort?”
“I'm a doctor,” he yelped, offended she'd forgotten.
“Are you? And where's your license to practice, tucked away in the library?”
“I can always forge something suitable to this time. Not to worry.” he pointed at the phone in her hand. “Dial. Maybe your mother can fire up Mickey's old laptop and find us a locksmith.”
“In Cuba, circa 1991?” Rose retorted.
“Small family businesses endure,” the Doctor said, “some of them might still be around in 2007.”
“The assembled hordes of Ghengis Khan couldn't break through that door, but you think a Cuban locksmith can get in?”
“I think I can get in. I think a Cuban locksmith will have tools I can rent or borrow.”
“So we're relying on my mum's Internet skills to save us? Good plan. Even if she knew how to access the Web...” She broke off, considering the idea. “You know...it's a shame we don't have the Cybus Network here. Then, we could use my phone to...I don't know...call the TARDIS...?”
“Wouldn't work. Even with a much more advanced network at our disposal, the TARDIS is a closed system. She's impregnable, impenetrable. What we really we need is a...Oh!” He gasped. His hands flew to bracket his temples, but hovering a few inches shy of his head, didn't clutch his hair. He simply stared straight ahead for a moment. Then, whipping his adoring gaze around to intersect her interested one, he declared, “Rose Tyler, you're a genius!”
“True,” Rose laughed. “What's brought it to your sudden attention?”
Instead of joining in on the joke, he brandished his screwdriver, waving it about in front of her as he demanded, “Phone.”
“What...? What did I say?” Noticing the screwdriver in his hand, he hastily dumped it into his pocket. Then, he stuck his hand out again, snapping his fingers, irritably until she surrendered her mobile. “All right. Here.”
“Computers,” he told her, busy pressing buttons and scanning the tiny screen for something. “They're all connected. You might have to come at them via a roundabout way, but...” He found whatever he was looking for, hit ENTER, and then, TALK, and held the phone to his ear.
“You're going to try to hack into the TARDIS computers? Using a mobile? You just said that was impossible.”
“It is. The assembled...hackers of...Genghis Khan wouldn't be able to break through those firewalls. No, we need a man on the inside. Oh, hello,” he said into the phone, his face splinting into a sappy grin and his tense manner dissolving into syrupy sweetness. “Yes, yes, it is. Recognized my voice? Oh, fine. Fine. And you? Yes...certainly. Right! Oh, no, she's here, listening in. Lent me the mobile. And how have you been? Everything going along...well, swell, satisfactorily, swimmingly...?” There was a longish pause while he listened. “No belly button, hey? Fascinating. Still investigating...?” He took a another break in the exchange. “Did you? So you like the presents? Oh, no...a few toys in the attic...it was nothing really...”
“There's a battery life limit,” Rose remarked, giving him the petulant eye.
The Doctor covered the mouthpiece and softly chided, “No need for that tone. Just catching up a bit.”
“Well, before you wander off into a discussion of your ten-inch record collection,” Rose said. “You might remember we could lose the TARDIS at any moment and phone access to the next century.”
“You referenced Aerosmith,” he declared, beaming proudly. After she smirked back at him, he tilted his head to indicate the phone, hand still over the mouthpiece, and said, “I need to jolly the old girl along. Can't call out of the blue demanding favors without spending a moment on the pleasant...Ow!” He'd place the phone to his ear as he spoke , but jerked it away immediately. Rose heard the tinny shrill of Sarah Jane yelling something. “There's no need to shout at me,” the Doctor shouted at the receiver. Then, he gingerly brought the phone back to his face.“Yes, quite right. Didn't mean to imply you required...no, I realize... Yes, certainly.... Listen, is K-9 about? Oh...” he grimaced. “I forgot about that...black holes...yes...well, you'll just have to patch me through. Mr. Smith? Smith? No, I don't think so. Just hold the phone up for K-9 and...right...I'll hang on.”
“What are you doing?” Rose asked. The Doctor shook his head, admonishing her with one finger to wait. Hearing the sound of piped music, she grinned. Sarah Jane had him on hold. “Is that The Girl from Ipanema?”
He rolled his eyes, fidgeted and, lowering the phone, started to explain what he was doing. “While it is true we can't hack into the TARDIS directly. We do have someone on the inside. All of the K-9 units are interfaced with one another and...Oh, hello, K-9,” he said brightly. “Who's a good dog? Yes, Sarah Jane told me. That sounds very impressive. And you're looking after her? I knew you would. Listen, Rose and I are stranded and we could use your help. Mark these coordinates.” He rattled off a bewildering series of numbers and letters, waited for K-9 to acknowledge them and then said. “Yes, that's right. Tell him to go open the front door and let us in.”
“The librarian,” Rose crowed, poking the Doctor's shoulder. He caught her against him in a one-armed celebratory hug.
“Good dog. Thank you. Do you have this number? If your brother has any trouble, give us a jingle. Pat yourself on the head. See you soon.” There was a brief pause, and then he said, “Yes, she's still here. Yes, all right.” He handed the mobile to Rose. “Sarah Jane wants to say hello.”
Rose took the phone. “Hello. And thank you so much.”
“The nerve of that man,” Sarah Jane growled. “Jollying me along...indeed. Next time, do me a favor and you make the emergency phone calls.” She laughed, suddenly. “And come over for tea when you get back to the twenty-first century. I want to know how you ended up locked out of the TARDIS in the first place.”
The two women chatted for a few moments, before Rose rang off. She stared at the mobile in her hand, chewing her lower lip indecisively. She could feel the Doctor's eyes on her but she didn't look at him. Making her decision, she quickly punched the speed dial number for her mum. The phone hummed in her hand as it rang the distant line.
“Hello?” Jackie Tyler said.
“Mum?”
There was a desperately lonely note underneath the happiness in her mother's voice when she cried, “Rose? Where have you been, sweetheart? I've been calling and calling. It's been three weeks with no word.”
“I know. I'm sorry.” Tears blurred Rose's view of the ocean. She sniffed and hastily dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “We've been...busy, traveling. And I can't talk long, now. We need to keep this line clear. But we're on our way home. I'll tell you all about what happened when we get there.” She smiled, as the nature of the background music penetrated her awareness. “What's that you've got playing?”
“What?”
“The music. Sounds very romantic. I'm not interrupting anything, am I?”
“Oh...it's nothing. Just...something on the radio. When do you think you'll be home?”
Rose glanced at the Doctor. “We're on our way.”
“Oh, I'm so glad,” Jackie said, but she didn't sound it. She sounded wrung out and weary. “I'll see you soon.”
“As soon as we can manage.”
“All right,” Jackie said, softly. “Be careful.”
There was a soft click from the TARDIS door as Rose closed her mobile. “The door is open, Master, Mistress,” K-9 yipped near her ankles.
Startled, Rose glanced down, but then smiled and said, “Thank you, K-9.”
“It was nothing, Mistress. It is a treat to get out of the library. I am seldom needed upstairs.”
As she followed him into the ship, she said, “We should invite you up more often.”
“There is no need to trouble yourself, Mistress. I am programmed to be self-sufficient.”
“And very good you are at it, too,” the Doctor cooed.
“Praise noted, Master,” K-9 said, wagging his metal tail as he trundled away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“I just can't help thinking there's something wrong.”
“How do you mean?”
“She sounded...I don't know...listless?” Rose said as she stuffed dirty clothes into her backpack. “Or depressed? I'm worried about her.”
The Doctor dismissed her concerns with a wave of his hand. “Probably just having a bad day. Touch of the blues.” he suggested, while considering the ties in their shared wardrobe.
He only went to the larger wardrobe on special occasions these days, and so his selection of shirts and ties remained constant. It was one of the many ways he'd begun schooling himself for eventual settling. Someday, he and Rose would have a normal house with finite closet space. He was making sacrifices, preparing for the transition. Though he hadn't gone so far as explaining this to her, yet.
“No, this was different. She's been missing Mickey a lot. I hadn't realized they'd gotten so close, but she talks about him all the time. Keeps breaking out the old photo album, every visit. I wish she had a few more friends.”
He peeked around the cupboard door, his expression reflecting concern. But he had no idea what to say to comfort her, so he remained silent. Watching her don a fresh pair of knickers, and then jeans and a reversible blue and lavender hoodie, he thought of something he'd meant to ask for a long time.
“Why do you always take your mother a bundle of dirty laundry? The TARDIS cleans your clothes far quicker and easier, without generating all of those noxious pollutants.”
Rose slipped on a windbreaker and stuffed a final sock into the sack, before answering. “Maybe I like the fresh scent the dryer sheets leave in my jimjams,” she said.
“That fragrance is carcinogenic,” the Doctor informed her, wrinkling his nose. “And the TARDIS washer makes your clothes much softer.”
“All right, if you must know everything,” Rose chuckled. “Doing my laundry makes my mum feel needed. And, if I only have a few weeks worth of dirty clothes,” she said, shouldering the load, “it looks like we've only been away a short time.”
“I had no idea you were so devious,” he teased.
“Yes, you did.”
“Yes, I did,” he agreed, beaming as he latched onto her offered hand.
They took one more moment to enjoy their privacy, leaning into each other before setting off. As she lifted her face to look up at him, the Doctor deposited a sweet kiss on her lips, knowing it would be the last romantic contact they would have on the visit. Rose never encouraged him to affection in front of her mother. On the other hand, it was unlikely Jackie Tyler had missed the signs of his devotion. Surely, his admiration of her daughter went beyond obvious. And she had to have some idea why they always slipped back to the TARDIS together for a few hours, during every visit.
On the way out, the Doctor double checked the handbrake and pressed the blue button. Rose conspicuously fingered her key. Despite his having removed the automatic programming from the ship's memory, they weren't prepared to take any more chances. The lock still clicked closed behind them, but the shields didn't activate. If they needed to they could get back in, even without K-9's help. Still, it was good to know they had back up in the library.
“We should get K-9 an electronic chew toy or something,” Rose said.
“He's quite fond of bouncy balls,” the Doctor told her. “And quantum equations.”
They discussed where to get a present for a fifty-first century robot in the twenty-first, as they skipped along hand in hand across the common area. The Doctor held open the building door for Rose, in gentlemanly fashion, and they climbed the stairs to Jackie Tyler's apartment. Rose wondered when it had stopped being home to her. She vowed to make a conscious effort to refer to it as her home for as long as her mother lived. And there it was, in her head at last, the thought of her mother's dying. She quickly shoved it back under the rug of denial. When that day came, Rose knew she would sever all ties with Earth. But it seemed a long time in the future. Someday soon, however, she needed to tell her mother the truth about her changing life, about the Doctor.
Reaching the apartment, she entered as she knocked, and called, brightly, “Mum, we're home.”
There was no answer. The apartment felt cold and deserted. The Doctor noted a faint smell of rot in the air, food turning in the refrigerator, perhaps. Or rubbish left too long in the bin. He tensed and signaled Rose to get behind him. Something was wrong. Rose sensed it too and had to be physically restrained from rushing down the hall. After a bit of whispered arguing, they crept forward together, checking each room as they went. Jackie's bedroom was empty, the bed unmade, a rumple of tangled sheets. Mail and a few magazines spilled across the floor, but there were no true signs of struggle.
As they approached the living room, Rose relaxed, springing forward with a glad cry, “There you are.”
There was Jackie Tyler, dressed in a housecoat and slippers. She had curled up in a corner of the sofa. Surrounded by crumpled tissues, she seemed to be staring sightlessly out the window, tiny blue headphones plugged into her ears. She started as Rose entered her peripheral vision, but she didn't leap up with her usual animation. Her red-rimmed eyes and scarlet nose offered as much evidence of extensive weeping as the pile of crumbled tissues on the couch beside her. Hastily gathering up her tissues, she scrunched them into a ball. She tucked the wad under her hip, popped the headphones free of her ears and held out her arms for a hug.
“Oh, Rose,” she cried. “You're here.”
“What is it? What's wrong?” Rose said, dropping into an embrace, but casting a worried glance back at the Doctor.
He shifted from foot to foot, fiddling with his earlobe. Head lowered, peering up at her, he'd gone rather goggle-eyed and pale. “There she is,” he said weakly. “I'll just...go...” Rose scowled. “Not away, naturally,” he hastily assured, “But, I could be more useful...somewhere...” He dithered even more, tufting up his hair and obviously at a complete loss, when Jackie broke into noisy sobs.
“You shouldn't have come here,” Jackie said, “You shouldn't have come home.”
The Doctor's frantic gaze had been darting here and there, searching for some avenue of escape, but this caught his attention and he focused on her, his brows arching, head tilted. “Why not?”
“Make us a cup of tea, yeah?” Rose told him. She shifted to look into her mother blotchy, tear-stained face. “Nice cup of tea, just the thing to settle the nerves,” she said, gently stroking Jackie's shoulder.
Little by little, the full story came out. Apparently, her mother's new boy-toy hadn't been interested in romance.
“He was after you, Rose,” Jackie said. “All along. He was after the pair of you.”
Rose stiffened, but tried to keep her fears in check as she asked for clarification. “What do you mean? He was after the Doctor?” She gave Jackie a gentle shake, just enough to help her focus “What did you tell him?”
“Nothing,” Jackie cried. “I swear. I would never let anyone hurt you. Or him.”
“All right,” Rose said, mollified. Ashamed of her impatience and how long she'd neglected her, she gave her mother another hug. “I know you were just taken off guard. If I'd been in touch more, none of this would have happened.”
“Only, maybe, I did say you were traveling,” Jackie admitted. “And that I didn't see you very often.” She sniffled and looked away, embarrassed by her loneliness and her mistakes. Tugging another tissue from the box on the side table, she blew her nose, before resolutely going on, “Anyway, he already knew about the Doctor. I didn't put it together until later, but when we met, he said he belonged to some club, investigating paranormal phenomenon. I didn't pay it any mind. Lots of people are interested in aliens these days.”
“Linda,” the Doctor intoned, from the doorway.
Rose met his eye. “Who?”
“Not who, what. L.I.N.D.A. It's an acronym. Stands for London Investigation N' Detective Agency. They're sort of my...fan club.”
“And they actually use the letter N for AND?” Rose asked, amused by the inanity of it all, despite her irritation.
“I didn't say they were imaginative, just that they follow me about snapping photos and posting them on the Internet. You've met one of that sort.”
“Clive. Yeah,” Rose agreed. “So, now they know about my mum, what's to stop them coming here in droves?” Neither Jackie nor the Doctor had an answer for her. The kettle whistled.
“Tea!” the Doctor said, brightly, popping off again even as his wife ground her teeth in frustration.
Giving Jackie's shoulder a final squeeze, Rose got up and followed him to the kitchen. She paused in the doorway to watch him pour water into mugs. He had a graceful lack of efficiency, almost everything he did was a dance of stops and starts.
Voice pitched low, she said, “I want to find this bloke. Talk to him. See what he was after.”
“We don't even know his name, yet.”
“Elton Pope,” Jackie said, causing Rose to gasp and spin around.
“Slippered feet, mum,” she accused. “You half-startled me.”
Shuffling into the room, slippers scuffing on the tile floor, Jackie sank into a chair at the small dining table. “He's twenty-eight,” she said. “A Capricorn. I don't know where he lives.”
“We'll look him up,” the Doctor said.
Jackie shook her head. “He's not in the book. I think he rents a room somewhere. Or so he said. Maybe that's not even his real name: Elton.” She fell silent, contemplating the lies. When the Doctor set a steaming mug in front of her, she wrapped both hands around it and went on, “He's got a cell phone. But I threw the number away day before yesterday.” She glanced toward the overflowing trashcan, before remembering, “In the outdoor bin. The one at the foot of the stairs?”
“Probably gone now,” the Doctor said, “Pity! I could have used the number to trace him.”
“I don't want to phone him,” Rose growled, her dark eyes fixed on the Doctor. He couldn't help noticing the gold specks glinting in their depths. “I want to find him, wherever he is, right now.”
“We can't just...” the Doctor began, only to be cut off by Jackie.
“Don't go,” she pleaded, half rising from her seat. “You've just got here.”
“We'll be right back, mum,” Rose said, dismissively. But the stricken expression on Jackie's face made her reconsider her rash reaction. “Or...yeah,” she agreed, exchanging worried looks with the Doctor, “we can stay for a bit. Hey, now...shhhh,” she said, dragging a chair around the table to sit by Jackie, who had teared up again. Settling on the edge of the seat, Rose soothed, “It's going to be fine. This can all wait.” She skated her hand across the table to clasp her mother's wrist. “You just drink your tea.”
“It tastes funny,” Jackie said, sniffing the spicy aroma. “Not my brand. Different, but nice.”
Rose's eye widened slightly. She shot a questioning glance at the Doctor and caught his almost imperceptible nod. Rotating his hand, he flashed her a glimpse of something in his palm. It was a black package, one she easily recognized. The logo on it matched the black and purple tag dangling from a string in her mother's tea. Rose hadn't noticed it at first, but the Doctor had made Jackie a cup of his special blend. The warm drink would put her to sleep in no time.
“A little something we picked up on one of the Martian moons,” he joked.
“Space tea?” Jackie mumbled. “Is that why I feel so lightheaded?”
“He's kidding, mum,” Rose said, softly. “It's from China. Sixteenth century. A few rare herbs, but nothing dangerous.”
Jackie yawned. “I do feel better, more relaxed.”
“It will help you sleep,” Rose said, standing. “You probably just need little nap.” She signaled the Doctor and together, they levered Jackie up and guided her unsteady steps to the bedroom.
“Oh, the house is a mess, sweetheart.”
“Never you mind about the mess. We'll tidy up. Tell you what,” Rose said, as Jackie stretched out on her bed. “Scoot over and I'll sit with you for a little while. You can tell me what you'd like for Christmas.”
“I'll be in the...” the Doctor said, gesturing over his shoulder, as he backed out of the bedroom. Rose, curling up next to her mother, gave him a brief nod.
After wandering into the living room, he perched on a sofa arm and waited. He could hear the gentle rise and fall of Rose's soothing voice. Her rounded tones harmonized with, and mellowed, Jackie's shriller ones. Eventually, there was quiet. Twenty minutes later Rose strode down the hall, the militant light still clearly visible in her eyes. Rising to greet her, he said, “Everything settled?”
“She's sleeping. But things won't be settled until we deal with Mr. Elton Pope.”
“He's probably quite harmless,” the Doctor said, hoping to keep her temper in check.
“He upset my mum. Nobody upsets my mum.” Her tone brooked no room for discussion.
“Right. Yes. Once we get back to the TARDIS, I can cross reference the name with the tax roles. He must file income tax. We can stake out his....”
Rose cut him off, impatiently. “We're not going to stakeout anything. My mum hasn't slept in two days. She was afraid to call us. Afraid she was the bait in some trap. Do you see these?” she asked, drawing a fistful of photos out of her windbreaker pocket. “She says he had these with him. He had pictures of me. I want you to take me to wherever he's at right now. So, I can speak to him.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then shook his head. This was the first time she'd asked him to do something he simply couldn't do. “But that's...impossible,” he told her, spreading his hands in defeat.
“You told me you can do anything.”
He had told her that, once upon a time, back when he was a leather jacketed loon. “Honestly, I can't. He's a person. Not a planet. He doesn't have fixed coordinates.”
“You found my Dad.”
“At the wedding. And just before he died. There were records.”
“Elton Pope has records, too," she told him as she tossed the photos down on the coffee table. "He's got to be somewhere. Just...find out where...and take me to him.”
“How do you suggest I do that?”
“I don't know...” she said, exasperated, and grasping at straws, “biorhythms?”
“Biorhythms?”
“Why not?”
He tilted his head to one side. “Because there are no such thing?” he suggested.
“Course there are. We know he's a Capricorn. That means he was born in December or January, twenty-eight years ago. We can search all the hospital records for London. Can't be too many babies named Elton. I suppose that is his real name. Who'd make something like that up?”
Fascinated by the workings of her mind, the Doctor hunkered a bit to peer into her eyes, wishing, not for the first time, that he could watch her brain churning through Rose-logic. “Of course, simple really,” he said, with a distinct air of humoring her, “And once we know exactly when he was born...then what?”
“We follow his life along. He had to go somewhere straight after he was born, right? We just have to figure out where, and then follow him about...on up to today...using his biorhythms.”
The Doctor stared at her for several long beats, before chirping, “That's completely mad.” After shaking his head, as if saddened by her mental breakdown, he began to tick things off on his fingers. “First, he'd interact with other people. Every step of the way, he's making complex decisions. He's not living in a binary world, is he? It's not off/on, yes/no, left/right. You're talking about game theory, with unknown...” he corrected himself, “No, make that unknowable variables. The first decision isn't even his. His parents would decide where he went after hospital. So, we'd need their biorhythms, as well, wouldn't we? Assuming there was such a thing as a biorhythm, which there absolutely is not. Second,...”
Rose didn't wait for his second point. Red faced and seething, she spun away from him. “I'll just ask her myself,” she said, striding toward the front door.
Standing on tip-toe, craning his neck to see her, the Doctor called, “Ask who?”
“The TARDIS,” she yelled, over her shoulder as she barged out the front door.
He gave a little indecisive bounce and whined, “I knew you were going to say that.”
As the door slammed closed, his restless gaze fell on a photo she'd dropped, and just like that he had a surge of inspiration. Snatching up the picture, he tucked it into his pocket, before darting after Rose. It wasn't like he needed to hurry. She wouldn't get anywhere asking the TARDIS about biorhythms. He could just wait for her inevitable failure, and then explain his own idea. There was no need to trot after her. But a tiny part of his generally sensible mind had turned quite superstitious. It reminded him that Rose Tyler had already convinced the TARDIS to do something impossible once. Was he really so sure she couldn't get...well...somewhere if she tried again?
He caught her elbow just as she took the top step. “Hang on a minute. I need to borrow something from your mother.”
“I hope it's an umbrella,” Rose muttered, as she braked. Glancing up, she'd noticed storm clouds gathering overhead. There was already a drizzly mist in the air.
But if Doctor heard her, he didn't acknowledge it. As soon as she'd stopped moving, he'd released his grip on her arm and whirled to shoot back up the steps and into the apartment. He bounced out again ten seconds later, declaring, “Hairbrush,” as he brandished one.
“This is no time to work on your back combing.”
“Hairbrushes mean hair,” he told her, launching down the steps at speed. He skirted her without stopping, racing recklessly on, certain she'd follow him. “Hair means DNA. And DNA means...?” Hitting the ground floor, he spun in a skipping circle to throw a delighted word at her. “Biorhythms.”
“But we aren't trying to find my mum,” Rose reasoned, picking up her pace to run beside him.
His attention was split between the path ahead of him and fishing things from his pockets. “Ah, yes...but...” he said, pointing one hand to heaven while he juggled the brush, a ball, his key and a few photos in the other. “There's a process of elimination.”
“Elimination? From what?”
“These,” he declared, nearly dropping everything as he flashed the pictures at her. “Everyone has touched them. You, me, your mother...”
“And Elton Pope,” Rose said, catching on. “That's brilliant.”
“Well,” he tipped his head modestly as he opened the TARDIS door. “I am a Time Lord. I can do anything.” With a wave of his hand, he ushered her in ahead of him “Mind you, it will still be like looking for a needle in a...needle factory. One specific needle you understand? Lost amidst billions...or millions...at least. I think we can narrow the search to the population of Great Britain.” He placed Jackie's hairbrush and the photos on the console, returned his key to his coat, and started flipping switches. The TARDIS hummed a welcome. “Here's a challenge for you, love,” he told the awakening machinery. “Our Rose wants you to find one man among many. One particular man.”
“You're going to lock on his DNA profile?” Rose guessed.
“Assuming the TARDIS can configure the Vortex based on genetic sequencing, yes. We've never tried this sort of thing before, but...with a bit of jiggery-pokery...” he whipped around to face Rose and said, “Hold very still.” She did, despite tingling all over when he very gently combed his spread fingers through her hair. A single golden strand clung to his skin as he lifted his hand away. He beamed, displaying the hair for her between pinched fingers. “A touch of Rose for the potion. I'll just program this in to the computer.” The TARDIS popped open a tray and he carefully coiled the hair into it. “She already has my codes from the regeneration. So...that leaves...your mother,” he plucked a brassy hair from the brush and added it to the tray, “And Mr. Elton Pope.” In went the photographs. Waggling his head, he grimaced, adding, “Also, whomever he showed these photos to...the processor...the photo shop clerks...but...we do have a cross reference selection.”
After sliding the slot closed, he drew the monitor around in front of him. There were a number of pings and whistles and flashing colored lights. The Doctor knocked a knuckle against the thermobuffer dials, punched a few keys on the Zeiton Crystal display, took a reading and adjusted the temporal anchors. Rose braced herself for take off. The rotor ground to life.
“Oh, what a marvelous girl, you are?” the Doctor sang, stretching forward to pat the nearest bit of naked TARDIS. When Rose grimaced over this affectionate display, he winked at her and shouted above the rotor noise. “I said so, didn't I? She likes you. Despite your fits of jealousy.”
“I'm not jealous of your time and space machine,” Rose called back. “I just think it's silly to pet her.”
The rotor stalled and Rose hastily reached out a hand to stroke the nearest column To the Doctor's smug delight, her affectionate apology seemed to do the trick. The ship stabilized and the spinning dials found focus. A second later they landed lightly in an alleyway. Rose looked over the Doctor's shoulder at the scene in the monitor screen. A strawberry blond man, who she took to be Elton Pope, cowered in the shadow of a green beast of some kind.
“Hey, it's the bloke from the meat processing plant,” Rose said. “What's that looming over him?”
“I don't know,” the Doctor said, seriously. Heading for the door, he cautioned, “Stay here, until I find out.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He should have known better than to expect her to stay put for long. She popped out of the TARDIS as soon as he announced her desire to speak with the lad. Luckily, the monster was easily dealt with and Elton Pope turned out to be rather innocent and sweet. Just another human caught up in circumstance beyond his control. Rose went from raking the boy over the coals to sympathizing with him in record time. It seemed the lad had lost both his mother and his true love. And, of course, Rose had expected her pet Time Lord to deliver a miracle. Said Time Lord had caved completely when she'd pleaded with those puppy-dog eyes of hers. He wasn't made of stone, even if Elton's girlfriend now was.
“Do you think they'll be happy? With her as a brick?” Rose asked, as they reversed course to return to the Powell Estates. “Got to be a major adjustment in a relationship.”
“It's an improvement on dead,” he said, and her tiny head tilt told him she agreed. “They'll manage I think. They love one another. Her physical form has very little to do with that.”
“People put a lot of stock in physical compatibility.”
“Not you,” he said. The glance he gave her brimmed with heated tenderness.
“You didn't make it that hard on me, though, did you?” she teased. “Wait until you go geezerly.”
“A day laborer and a paving tile,” he mused. “Not that different from you and I, at the end of the day.”
“Thank you very much,” Rose yelped, shoving his shoulder. “I like to think I'm a bit more animated than decorative stonework.”
“Who says you're the stonework?” he countered.
“Oh, well...if you mean you...that's different. You have loads in common with a paving tile,” Rose agreed, laughing. “There's a certain rigidity, to start with.”
“I'm constant,” he said with a lofty sniff. “You should count yourself lucky.”
“Oh, I do,” she said. Catching the tip of her tongue in her teeth, she smiled at him as he circled the console.
He did his best to ignore the bubbling effervescence her flirting triggered in his veins. Locking the temporal anchors, he engaged the handbrake. The ship shuddered a little but, for once, didn't toss them around like ice in a martini shaker. “This landing business is getting astoundingly routine.” He pulled the monitor around to study it. “I wonder if she's coming down with something.”
“Do you think she'll outlive him, poor thing?” Rose wondered, her sympathetic heart touched by the thought of a lonely paving stone.
Preoccupied with the TARDIS, the Doctor had lost the train of the conversation. “Hmmm?”
“Ursula. I would hate to think of her lingering on and on...after he's gone...”
“I think...” the Doctor said, eyes still on his readings, “They're happy.” He threw the switches that sent the TARDIS into her dormant mode. Then, he looked up and straight into her eyes. “And that's all any of us can hope for.”
To his surprise, the light in Rose's face faded and she turned away. “Nobody gets forever, I suppose,” she mumbled, hugging herself as she walked up the ramp toward the outer door. Staring after her, he shivered. In his mind's eye he could see the swirling void, and then the wolf staring at him with its fixed and golden gaze.
Nobody gets forever. Everything must come to dust. All things. Everything dies.
He knew this. Had known it since he first looked into the Vortex as a child. He'd run away, then, and he'd kept on running. But now, it was all catching up to him. He wanted her safe, his Rose. How was he going to go on if she came to dust? His old life, traveling and fighting, exploring new worlds and meeting new people, seemed so hollow and lonely. Without Rose, he'd be a representation of a man, frozen inside, nothing more than a decorative tile on the wall.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Half-way across the parking lot, rain broke over them with no warning. One instant it was misting gently, as it had all day, the next it was bucketing down. They ran for cover, splashing through puddles. Squealing and giggling, they reached the portico, both thoroughly soaked. By the time they'd reached the apartment, Rose was shivering, but the unexpected drenching had washed away all melancholy. As the Doctor used his key to let them in, they could hardly contain their teasing pokes and tickling caresses.
Rose shushed them both, before peeking into her mother's room. “Shhh! She's still sleeping.”
“We've only been gone five minutes,” he whispered. “She should sleep for another six hours.”
“Six hours?”
“Give or take. You're dripping on my trainers.”
“You're dripping on me,” Rose countered.
He was. Raking a hand through his hair, he spiked it into hedgehog spines, scattering even more raindrops onto her upturned face. She found this funny and, silently chortling, collapsed against his chest. Her hoodie was sopping wet and clinging. He wrapped his arms around her, fingers pinching the wet cotton away from the small of her back, so his hand could skim up her spine. Her skin had a slick heat from rain and running. Hot, wet Rose, his personal addiction.
She was more intoxicating than a bag full of jelly babies. Determined to repeal their one unspoken and unassailable rule, no intimate contact in her mother's presence, he nuzzled his way to Rose's ear and said, “We should get you out of these clothes.”
Her breath caught, sending a sputtering sigh fluttering across his cheek, and her hands wandered, fingers threading their way through his damp layers to skin. As she dipped her head, the tip of her nose drew a line down his neck. He gulped, his grip on her tightening.
“Into the kitchen,” she mouthed. The touch of her lips was feather light at his throat. “There's a dryer.”
He pressed against her, holding on with the desperation of a drowning man. To break the embrace, Rose collapsed to the side and rolled along the wall. This helped her sustain contact as long as possible, while moving away at the same time. They pulled apart like the segments of an orange, peeling free of the natural cling, Once they were two people again, Rose reached down to seize his hand. She tugged him in her wake as she backed toward the kitchen.
His trainers squelched and squeaked on the tile floor. Rose reprimanded him, stretching to touch a fingertip to his lips as she said, “Shhh.”
“I can't help my shoes squeaking.” His protest was whispered, but indignant.
“Step lightly,” she said, “Or better yet...” She leaned into his shoulder, bringing her mouth close enough to his ear to warm it as she murmured, “Take them off.” When he tried to pull back, suddenly wary of this whole plan, she fisted his duster lapel in one hand to keep him near and, sending her hungry gaze down his form, commanded, “Take the whole kit off.”
“Oh...not a good idea,” he warned. “Not here.” But his fingers had a mind of their own and were already busy tugging his shirt free of his waistband.
“My room?” Rose suggested, stepping around him to the dryer. She divested herself of her shoes and jeans. The latter went into the machine, the former she kicked to one side.
“If I lose control...”
“You won't. You know you won't.”
“But if I do...you'll be out for days. And your mother will kill me. Regeneration simple as that.”
Rose grew serious. “I want to see you,” she said, trumping any further argument he might have been thinking of purposing. “I want you to bloom open and....” She broke off to swallow hard, moistening her lips as she squirmed free of her damp knickers. Dropping this last scrap of clothing into the dryer, she punched the button for a low setting, before facing him again. “It's so beautiful,” she told him.
“I...oh...bother!” He rolled his gaze to the ceiling and huffed. Damn. Damn. When she put it like that, what choice did he have? He absorbed his humiliating defeat for a moment. Then, glowering fiercely, held a finger so close to her nose that her eyes crossed to focus on it and, staring directly into her face, said, “Absolutely no touching.”
“Or you will turn this car around...” Rose laughed.
“Or, I'll go back to the TARDIS,” he told her, with quelling sincerity. “And bar the ruddy door.”
“I know how to get in now, remember?”
“Not if I throw the deadbolt.”
Hurt, she sniffed and turned away. “If you feel that way about it,” she groused, fixing her attention on starting up the . “Forget I asked. I just thought...since we had a few hours, we could consummate our official status...but I guess you would rather talk about global warming or the Peligeisee Treaties or Sontar....”
Her sulk ended in a surprised squeak as he pounced. One second he was arranging his coat over a chair back. The next second, pivoting on the ball of one foot, he struck. Yet, for all his sudden savagery, he still managed to cushion her from any injury as he pressed her forward into the dryer. His hands guided her into position, firm on her shoulders, her back, her bottom. He frisked her after capture, as Time Lords will do, checking, not for weapons but for random thoughts. Rose gasped as he shuffled erotic images to the surface of her mind. This was pure Gallifreyan foreplay, but a shocking liberty to take with a human, far more intimate than anything he was doing to her physically.
And he was doing quite a lot to her body. His hands roamed all over her, flat-palmed as they circled her nipples, claw-fingered as they scraped across her belly. His knee spread her legs into a wider stance. He was going to have her in her mother's kitchen. She whimpered, trying not to squirm. When this mood seized him squirming would only trigger his cnidocytes. And Rose didn't want to dream.
She wanted to be wide awake for this. He meant to climax. She could tell by the way he'd come at her, restraining her. The knowing filled her with a thrumming ardor. She imagined him flowering, mantling, flooding her with heat. Reading her mind, he moaned, hitting a breathless, desperate note. Starting at the nape of her neck, he kissed every vertebrae to her tail bone. As he went lower, he shifted his grip, but continued to hold her fast against the machine. His one arm, and the weight of his body, kept her from moving, while the fingertips of his free hand glided around the plum swell of her behind. Pillowing his cheek between her shoulder blades, he gently tickled open her hidden folds. His fingers teased for a bit before they sheathed themselves in her slippery passage. She made his palm slick in seconds.
Face to the wall and sandwiched between two immovable objects, one of them quite alien, Rose knew absolutely no fear. The tiny, involuntary noises escaping her throat were inspired by the dip and slide of slender fingers. She clenched around them, trying to hold on as they pumped in and out, but they eluded her squeezing grip. Inner walls quaking, gut clenching, she remained as still as possible, panting through her need to rock her hips. Her position was perilous. He would drug her with the slightest provocation. But this was torture. Forced to her toes by pleasure, she felt her legs quiver, knees going weak. Climax barreled down on her like a runaway freight train.
The Doctor kissed her. Nipped her. Sucked the exquisitely sensitive spot behind her left knee. His fingers massaged, stroking deep. In and out. In and...out. His tongue licked and swirled. His lips softly caressed. He'd settled to his haunches behind her, no longer restraining her at all. Rose held on, fingernails catching in the metal seams of the dryer, while the Doctor's teeth sampled her buttocks and the back of her thighs, testing the springy texture and pungent flavor of her flesh with gentle bites. The dryer's metal exterior was shockingly cold against her bare nipples but inside there was churning heat. She savored the deep vibration, letting it sink in, and it stimulated her past the point of no return, shoving her to the brink of a bone-melting release. The climax rolled over her, sending her racing toward oblivion. She jerked once and her lover disappeared.
“No,” she wailed, breathlessly. “Oh...God...not now....”
But he was already gone, bounding away out the door and down the hall. Rose needed a shuddering moment to scrape together her composure, before she could follow him. In the hall, she found he'd left her a trail of discarded garments. It lead straight to her bedroom. She arrived there, wet and weak in the knees, clutching his tie, shirt and suit jacket.
He was just unzipping his trousers.
NOT THE END OF THIS PART...but...
WHOA! This chapter was too long...follow this link for part 2 of part 22...
http://rabid1st.livejournal.com/130998.html
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-05 06:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-05 09:58 pm (UTC)Lol! I've always known Rose was a Star trek fan! (Well, she does like Spock, after all..)
This is brilliant! More, please!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-05 10:09 pm (UTC)Unless...you've already done that. ;->
So happy to see you here. Glad you liked the "bit of Spock." And this sort of ties into the Doctor picking up Gene Roddenberry...maybe he heard of voracious tribbles and made them into furry little balls of purr.
Thanks for the feedback. Now, I must know if you read part 2 though...sigh!
Rae
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-05 10:32 pm (UTC)It's a bit late tonight... but I keep it for tommorrow... It will be my Saint Nicolas' gift! (lol)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-06 11:02 pm (UTC)I'm interested in the Doctor making plans to settle. I guessed I imagined that Rose would agree to leave a time tot with Sarah Jane to raise until 14 or so. Especially since they are bonding, and I can't imagine Rose not getting restless. But then, Rose did ask about him being a Dad. On the other hand, you mentioned that it would not be safe for the Doctor to stay in one place. You've definitely left your options open.
I see you brought up the topic of forever. Again, we have an opportunity for Rose to bring up the topic of extending her lifespan. Instead, she just ponders the poignancy of the situation of Elton and Ursula. You tease me. But maybe that's a post-Doomsday discussion to have.
You also reinforced the theme of the relationship between Rose and the TARDIS. The Doctor and the TARDIS come as package, but it is more than that. And of a mention of Rose stroking an uncovered bit of the TARDIS and in the next section, implying that the TARDIS shares in their sexual act.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-12-06 11:16 pm (UTC)As I look over the few responses to this chapter, there are so many people I miss...but I know this is a busy time of year for all of us. So, I'm trying to imagine people reading but not reviewing until a later time. During this contemplation...I actually said, well...Binah will not be commenting. So, you prove me wrong by being here. And then, you are all wordy, too. Good news on two fronts then...my muse's easily bruised feelings and your health. ;->
Secondly, as usual, you are very perceptive. The things you mention are the things I wanted people to take away from the chapter...all of them vital now to the plot. You've always followed my clues closely...but at this stage...everyone else needs to start getting clued in, too.
I'm still trying to avoid being heavy handed...since the Doctor is a bit behind on the curve and he's not stupid. But the foreshadowing should be dark and obvious by now.
As ever, thanks for your insightful commentary. And I hope you have an especially bright and festive holiday season.
Rae