Fic: "Mockingbird" (part 1 of 2)
Aug. 7th, 2006 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icebluenothingTitle: Mockingbird
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
icebluenothing
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set between Tooth and Claw and School Reunion
Length: 15,000 words. This one's a long one.
Summary: Rose was convinced -- even though he looked nothing like the man she'd met, this new man was still the Doctor. Unless it was all a lie . . . .
________
"I've been trying and trying to call you for days," Mickey was saying. "So, you're on Earth, yeah?"
"We're -- close by, yeah." Rose shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, shot a quick involuntary glance upward.
"Close by -- ? You're -- still with the Doctor, right? Are you with him right now?"
"Yeah, 'course," she said. "Mickey, is something wrong? You sound really strange."
"Is he listening?"
"Is he -- " Rose looked over at the Doctor. If he'd even noticed that her phone had rung, he hadn't looked up. "I don't think so," she said, lowering her voice a little. "Mickey, what is it?"
"It's still the same guy, right? The same one as at Christmas?"
She frowned. "Yeah -- what -- "
"Rose, can you come meet me?"
"Sure, but -- "
"Only, Rose, listen. This is important, all right? Don't bring the Doctor. Come alone. And don't tell him where you're going."
" . . . What? Mickey, seriously, what's going on?"
There was a silence on the other end, a silence as black and empty as the sky overhead. She glanced at her phone to see if she'd lost signal -- felt immediately stupid for doing it. Glanced up at the Earth again as she held the phone back to her ear. Mickey said to her, quietly, a million miles away: "Your life is in danger, Rose."
Rose laughed. No, she didn't. She wanted to, but she couldn't make the sound. " . . . Pull the other one, then."
"Rose, please, just this once take me seriously, all right? If you won't believe me, there's somebody here you will believe."
"Who, my mum?"
"No, it's -- listen, get away from him, all right? I can't tell you any more, he might be listening."
"The Doctor?"
He looked up at her then, bright brown eyes and cheeky smile, ears pricking up at the sound of his name like a cat.
"Just get away from him and call me back from a land-line as soon as you can, all right? Not your mobile. I'll tell you where we are when its safe."
And then he hung up.
She looked helplessly over at the Doctor. He had his eye down on the ball again, and he swung the club almost faster than her eyes could follow.
The golf ball went poof as it hit the edge of the TARDIS force field, and a puff of air followed it out, instantly freezing into a sparkling haze of vapor crystals. The ball kept going up and up in a wide swinging arc.
The Doctor grinned and bounced over to her, his trainers and the cuffs of his pinstripe slacks covered in moon dust. "Did you see how far that one went?" he beamed. "This course does offer certain advantages."
"Yeah. I mean, sure. It does." Rose wasn't really listening. She was looking up at the Earth, hanging fragile like a soap bubble on a summer breeze.
"Rose Tyler," he said, staring at her, suddenly serious. He could do that. "I don't think you appreciate the gravity of our situation."
Your life is in danger, Rose.
And then he flashed that brilliant smile again, that X-ray intense stare gone in a flash.
"Oh? Oh -- gravity! Gravity, right."
"Something wrong?" he asked, trying to set up another tee in the dust. "Hand me a nine-iron, will you?"
She took the club he handed her and stared at it. "I thought you said this was a nine-iron."
"Did I?" He stared at it, and was suddenly at her side, examining it closely as if it were some piece of alien technology. Which to him it was, she supposed. "You know," he said confidentially, "I'm starting to think golf is not my game." He took a felt pen out of his pocket and carefully wrote "nine-iron" on the shaft. Then, as an afterthought, added, "(?)"
"So what is wrong?" he asked. "Who was that on the phone?"
"Mi -- " Her voice caught. "Me mum." Lying to the Doctor left a hollow space inside her, and her stomach closed tight around it.
"Ahhh, the irrepressible Jackie Tyler. She all right?" He said it casually, too carefully casual.
"I -- think so."
He stared at her again, his face dead calm. "Do you need to go home?"
" . . . I think I do, yeah. By myself," she added, a little too quickly.
He looked a bit startled, and smiled to cover it. "Suit yourself."
"It's not like that -- " Rose said, not sure what it was like. "It's just, it's . . . a mother-daughter thing. You know."
"No, I don't. Never having been either." He shoved the possible nine-iron back into the golf bag and hefted it over his shoulder. He swung the doors of the TARDIS open wide and breezed inside without so much as a backward glance.
She ran in after him. "Used to be, you'd have done anything to get out of spending any time with my mum," she was saying, trying to make a joke out of it.
"Rose, it's all right, honestly it is. We're not attached at the hip, you know."
"Yeah," she said. "It's just, my mom hasn't been feeling well, and she just wants me home. For a day or so."
The Doctor was spinning dials and pulling levers, usual Doctorish things. "Improving your lie," he said.
" -- What?"
"Hmm? Oh -- improving your lie in the rough. It's a three-stroke penalty. I think. A golf thing. You know. Just remembering out loud."
His smile was bright and wide and she couldn't read it at all.
By the time Mickey led her to their destination, her mood was completely black. The two and a half hours on the train had been exhausting -- having to travel like ordinary people seemed like too much to take -- and Mickey's tight-lipped jumpiness, the whole cloak-and-dagger routine, was starting to wear a little thin.
She stared up at the old Victorian building. "A hotel." She let the word fall from between her lips.
"Yeah." Mickey looked at her face. He might as well have read her mind. "This isn't what it looks like."
"No?" She glared at him. "This had better not be a joke, Mickey. Or some kind of, of, keeping score kind of thing, all right? I call you up and ask you to come to Cardiff, so now you call me up and have me come to Cardiff, just to see if I'll do it? That's not it, is it?"
"Rose, no, come on -- "
"No? Second chance, then? You never got me back to your hotel room the last time we were here, so -- "
"Rose, would you just shut up for a minute?"
She shut. She stared. She hadn't really seen him like this before -- not frustrated, not defensive, just -- angry at not being listened to, not being trusted.
"Sorry," Rose said, and her voice felt small and useless.
"Just come on. He's waiting."
"Who's waiting?"
"He said you wouldn't believe me unless you saw for yourself, all right? You'll see in a minute."
He led her through the lobby, under the huge crystal chandalier, up the grand staircase. Down the hall. All of it a bit posh for Mickey's tastes, she thought.
As he took the key out of his pocket, Rose was suddenly trembling. Suddenly sure that she did not want to see whatever was on the other side of this door.
She held her breath. The door opened.
He was sitting in a chair by the window, drumming his fingers impatiently along the windowsill.
He looked up when she came in, and that impossible grin lit his face. Those ice-blue eyes of his froze her in place.
"Rose."
That voice. The same voice, the one she heard sometimes in dreams still. Saying her name the way no one else had ever said it -- claiming her, owning her with a word.
The Doctor. Her Doctor.
He crossed the room in three great strides and folded her up in his leather-clad arms and lifted her off her feet.
"You're all right!" he said.
She glanced over at Mickey. He was standing with his arms folded, his back against the wall, looking uncomfortable and self-satisfied all at once.
He put her down, and she was just looking up at him, too stunned to even smile. Eyes wide and unblinking and not wanting to miss a single moment. "You shouldn't even be here," she breathed.
"No? Where should I be, then?"
"You -- you died, I saw it, you shouldn't -- you're not supposed to cross your own timestream, you told me -- You're not supposed to be here!"
"Rose, listen to me. I'm here. I'm real. This is me. I haven't crossed my time stream."
"But -- I just left you in London -- "
"No, you didn't."
She took a step back, sat down on the edge of the bed. "I -- you lost me."
"You're right. I did lose you. On the Game Station, remember?"
"You -- sent me away -- "
"No. They took you."
" . . . They?"
"Enemies, Rose. Enemies from the Time War, even older than the Daleks. They wanted my TARDIS." The Doctor glanced over at Mickey. "And now they have it. They've had it for months."
"They -- " His words didn't make any sense. And then suddenly, sickeningly, they did. "No."
"Go on, Rose," the Doctor said. "Figure it out." He said it gently.
"That's -- but he's -- he's you. I saw you change."
He shook his head. "Transmat beam. They pulled me right out of my own TARDIS. It's taken me all this time to escape, to find my way back to you."
The Doctor came over to where she was sitting and took both of her hands in his. Stared deep into her eyes. "That's not me you've been travelling with, Rose. It's not. Do you believe me?"
She could hardly hear him. She couldn't concentrate. Her head was swimming, with images and memories and emotions. Every moment she'd ever spent with this man, like her life flashing in front of her eyes.
Rose wanted to answer him. But the room was too warm and too far away, and he seemed like he was talking to her from the end of a very long tunnel and all she wanted to do was sleep --
She slept.
This happened, oh, weeks and weeks ago. Or she was dreaming it now. It didn't seem to matter.
She and the Doctor were lying on a hillside. There were bright yellow flowers everywhere. Dandelions or something like them, some everyday miracle.
He was holding -- a ball of string? A spindle. A kite-string. Way above, at the end of the string, was a box-kite. The Doctor had made it himself and it seemed to take far more paper and paste and string and little wooden dowels than was strictly necessary, and she had asked why they couldn't just buy a kite instead, and he'd sulked and said that wasn't the point.
A box-kite, a blue box-kite, and she couldn't remember if it had been her idea or his to write "Police Box" all along the top, but she did remember that it had taken ages to get it in the air, but now it didn't seem to want to come down. He was just holding the spindle and every now and then making the kite dance with a casual flick of his wrist, as easy to keep it up as it had been hard to get it there.
He looked over at her, smiling shyly. "Do you want to fly it for a while?"
"It won't come crashing down or anything?" she asked.
"No. Well, probably not. Won't know until you try. Here."
She took it. Could feel it jerk and pull under her fingers.
"So are you getting used to this, then?"
"What -- kite flying?"
"No." She looked over at him, all doe-soft brown eyes and windblown hair, and knew what he meant before he could say it. "Me. This new face of mine."
"Oh, that," she said, grinning. She jerked the kite string wide. "Do I like it, do you mean?"
"No. Well, yes, that, too, but -- is it me, do you think?"
She shrugged. "Sure. 'Course it is."
He looked over at her. "Bit different than the old one."
"A bit, yeah. The ears are a definite improvement."
He smiled and stared up at the kite. "Oh, well, now you're just teasing me."
"You really want to know what I think, then?"
"Rose Tyler, I am dying to know what you think."
She looked at his face for a long moment. Then stared back up at the sky.
After another long moment, when the Doctor had seemed to give up on her answering entirely and had just settled back into the grass and relaxed, she said:
"When I was a little girl -- I mean, really little, like four or five -- whenever there was a full moon, my mum would say, look, Rosie, there's the man in the moon. Do you see him? Wave, now." She laughed. "And that's how I always saw it. Every time I looked at it growing up, I'd see the eyes and the mouth and I'd think, there's the man in the moon."
She looked to see if he was listening. He hadn't moved, showed no sign he was paying attention. But his breathing was very still. He was listening to her intently.
She kept watching him. Her kite kept drifting overhead, unseen. "But when I was fourteen? Fifteen? Something like that -- I was out walking with Mickey and there was a full moon in the sky and he asked, did I see the rabbit? And I didn't know what he was talking about, and I asked him, and when he told me I thought it was ridiculous -- there was no rabbit in the moon, it was a man in the moon, everyone knew that. But every time I saw the moon after that, I couldn't help but see the rabbit."
She didn't say anything after that.
The Doctor nodded slowly. "So I'm the rabbit in the moon, am I?" he said finally. "I think I like that." He looked suddenly concerned, and looked over at her. "But, Rose," he said, "the moon didn't really change."
"Well, yeah," said Rose. "That's kinda my point."
When Rose woke up, the man in the moon was gone.
She struggled to sit up. Mickey was still there. "Do you want a glass of water or anything?" he asked.
She shook her head, which turned out to be a really bad idea. "Where is he? Where's the Doctor gone?"
"So do you believe him, then?"
"Do I -- yeah. I mean, I think so. It's just -- a little much to take in."
Mickey nodded. "He should be back soon. He just went out for a walk."
"A walk? A walk where?"
Mickey frowned. "How should I know?" he asked.
Rose nodded. " . . . Do you think that's really him?"
Mickey laughed. "Well, yeah. Just look at him."
"I know, but . . . fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice . . . . " She shook her head again, this time to clear it. "I just want to be sure, this time." She looked up at him. "You never liked him, did you?"
He gave a dull laugh. "Which one?"
" -- This one."
"I still don't." He sighed. "But I trust him."
"I'm going to go find him," she said.
"He said to wait for him here."
Rose made a face. "Yeah, I bet. Still, I'm going. You coming or what?"
He sat down. "No, thanks."
"Mickey -- thanks for this. I'm sorry I was being such a . . . . "
"A pain in the arse?"
She laughed. "Something like that."
"Yeah, well, don't mention it." He grinned. It looked like it hurt. "Go on, then, if you're going."
Rose wanted to say something else, but she didn't know what. She bolted out the door and down the stairs, out into the streets she first saw a century ago.
When she found him, he was standing perfectly still.
She knew where they were. She could still tell where the cracks in the pavement had been hastily repaired; she remembered the sheer silver monolith, the fountain by the Millenium Centre. He was standing right where the TARDIS had landed when they were last here, a lifetime ago.
His eyes were closed, but he reacted, almost imperceptibly, to her approach. "The TARDIS was here, Rose," he said. "I can still feel it. It's still here, right now. That moment is still going on, stretched across time. I can feel the TARDIS right here, feel the pulse of her engines. Can you?"
"No," she said.
He opened his eyes. "Well. We'll have it back soon enough."
Rose just nodded.
"Go on. Whatever it is, say it," he said.
" . . . Is it really you?"
He sighed. "Of course it's me. Who else would I be? Don't be such a stupid ape. Even Mickey the Idiot figured it out faster than this."
She laughed. She couldn't help it. "I haven't heard him called that in a while."
"Oh? Why? Did he stop being an idiot?"
"You were -- I mean, the other you was, just, nicer to him, is all."
He grinned. "Then you should have known that wasn't me, yeah?" His grin faded. "Look, Rose, don't call him that, all right?"
"Mickey the Idiot?"
"No. The Enemy. Don't call him 'the other me,' all right? There is no other me. Just me."
"Yeah -- it's just -- "
"It's just what?"
"He acts like you. I mean, not exactly, but it's hard to imagine he's your enemy. He still -- "
"Rose, listen. An act is all it is, all right?"
"Sure, you said that, but -- "
"Rose. He killed Jack."
" . . . No, he didn't," she said, when she could speak again.
"Yeah, he did. Jack was a trained Time Agent. He knew he'd see through his lies like that." The Doctor snapped his fingers.
"He told me . . . Jack stayed behind . . . . " She'd known there was something wrong with that story, but she'd never thought about it too closely. Oh, God, why hadn't she?
"He did, yeah? What else did he tell you? How did he convince you he was me?"
"He -- " She frowned, trying to remember, trying to ignore the tears she wouldn't let come. "He told me how we first met. What he -- what you said to me. I mean, how would he know all that, unless -- ?"
"Oh, Rose, come on, think. The Enemy's been watching me for a long time. Watching us. Who knows what they overheard?" He stepped forward, took her hand. "I can do one better. If you still need convincing."
She looked up at him, wiping at her tears with her sleeve. "You can, huh?" she said, a little defensively.
"I know you, Rose Tyler. I know more than what we talked about. I know how you felt."
"Do you?"
"When I told you I can feel it. The turning of the Earth. You didn't know what I was talking about and you wanted to, you wanted to feel it, and you thought maybe if you could keep up with me, keep hold of my hand long enough, you'd understand, you'd learn to feel it. Do you still think you could, Rose? Or should I let go -- ?"
He loosened his grip on her hand. Reflexively, she held his tight.
"It really is you, isn't it?"
"Ahh, the light dawns. See, that human brain of yours can be remarkably effective if you'd just use it . . . "
She put her other hand at his waist, without thinking about it, and pulled him closer.
"You won't go away again, will you?"
He squeezed her hand tight. "Not ever," he promised.
The other Doctor -- the rabbit in the moon -- had managed to go a little over six hours without Rose before he gave up and tried to call her.
He didn't know quite what to do with an afternoon to himself in London. He had known a lot of people here once, from back when he was stranded on Earth, and he thought about looking some of them up -- until he remembered that that was back in the 70's, or possibly the 80's, he wasn't sure which, and it was a good deal after that now and most of them would have gotten old in the meantime or possibly died and that it all sounded terribly depressing and tedious when you thought about it like that, so then he thought perhaps he wouldn't.
He was riding around on top of a double-decker bus, playing tourist and enjoying the wind in his hair, but otherwise feeling generally out-of-sorts. He'd found an alien masquerading as a human, running a fish-and-chip shop, not half an hour before, and he'd rather hoped it was the vanguard of some alien invasion he could cleverly defeat, but it turned out it was just lost and needed directions. The Doctor had written down coordinates from galactic zero centre on the back of a paper napkin and sent it on its way with a stern warning, just in case it really was considering an invasion, but his hearts weren't really in it. This was no fun by himself.
He considered seeing a play. He wondered briefly if Cats was still running. Then he rather hoped it wasn't. Andrew had never really quite forgiven him for laughing all the way through the premiere of The Phantom of the Opera, anyway. How was he supposed to know it wasn't meant to be a comedy?
He found himself back at the TARDIS, for lack of anywhere better to be. He stood at the console, drumming his fingers along the edge. He could take a short jaunt somewhere more interesting. Be back before you could say -- before you could say something really difficult and complicated to say, with lots of syllables in it. He could go anywhere, really. But he wasn't entirely sure -- if he was being completely honest -- that he could reliably steer the TARDIS back to exactly these coordinates. He might come back to find that fifty years had passed, and Rose had spent her spinsterhood pining away for the freedom of their travels. Or, worse yet, had forgotten about him completely.
He amused himself briefly with the notion of coming back to find her, only to find he'd mistaken Rose's daughter for Rose herself, and taking her away on an adventure, like the ending of Peter Pan. Only then that led him to troubling thoughts of where Rose would have gotten a daughter from, and he decided to think about something else instead.
Finally, he decided he was being quite silly -- that they both were, really -- and that he could at least call and see how she was doing. There was no harm in that. He picked up the phone.
It was taking an awfully long time for her to pick up. And after a moment he realized -- he could hear it ringing. He could hear her phone --
He put the receiver down gently on the console, not hanging up, and followed the ringing. He followed it down the hall, all the way to Rose's room.
He hesitated at the doorway -- he didn't like intruding on his companions' privacy -- but he stepped inside. Found the phone abandoned on her bedside table.
That wasn't like her. She never went out without that phone. He supposed she did want to be really alone with her mother, after all.
Or maybe, he was trying not to think -- maybe there was something really, really, drastically wrong.
No, no, surely not, he told himself. She just forgot it. That's all. This once, she just forgot it.
He picked it up, stopped it ringing. Smiled to himself as he slipped it into his pocket.
I'll just pop around and give it to her, he thought.
"So what's the plan?" Mickey asked.
"Haven't got a plan," the Doctor said. He was vigorously cutting through a thick piece of steak. "Never bother much with them. They just get in the way, plans. They stop working halfway through and then you have to think of something else, anyway. Not much point."
Rose just watched him, watching the way he moved, listening to the familiar rhythms of his voice. "We've got to go get the TARDIS back, right?"
"No. We stay put."
"Why?"
"Why not? I like it here. A modern centre of trade and commerce, is Cardiff. No, the point is, we make him come to us. That puts us at a tactical advantge."
"But why would he come here?" Mickey asked.
Rose nodded carefully. "Looking for me," she said.
"That's right," the Doctor said, stabbing a couple of chips with his fork. "If he's still pretending to be me, of course he's gonna come looking for you. And if he's not pretending to be me, if he realizes you suspect him, well -- then he's still gonna come looking for you." He stuffed the chips in his mouth. "To finish you off," he said. He smiled unpleasantly.
Rose looked down at her pie and chips. Suddenly she didn't want it any more.
"Either way, you get to be bait." He cut himself another piece of steak and looked up at her. "That all right?"
"Not with me," Mickey said. "Anyone care what I think?"
The Doctor grinned. "Not particularly."
"He'll keep me safe, Mickey. Don't worry." The words sounded good. But Rose felt suddenly cold inside.
"Not to worry, Rickey," the Doctor said. "I'm sure I'll come up with a plan once the Enemy gets here. Anyone want more wine?" He tried to catch a waiter's eye.
"She hasn't been here at all?" the Doctor asked. "She didn't even call you?"
Jackie's frown matched his. "No, luv, she hasn't."
"But she said she was coming here." The Doctor was pacing frantically, staring into corners, hoping perhaps to find Rose lying forgotten behind a sofa. "She said you'd called her. I take it you didn't."
"No." Jackie couldn't stand watching him pace any more. "Do you want a cup of tea, long as you're here?"
"Yes, thanks," the Doctor said absently. He finally flopped down gracelessly in front of the TV and stared at the empty gray screen for a moment. He let out his breath in a long sigh. Then he took a deeper breath so he could do it again.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out Rose's phone and stared at it. Almost idly, he started thumbing through the call history. Mickey. Mickey?
He pressed the TALK button, and waited while Mickey's phone rang. And rang. No help there, either.
"Apparently she and Mickey have run off together," the Doctor called out to the kitchen. "Tell me, how do you feel about grandchildren?"
There was a crash and a tinkle of china. The Doctor ran in to find Jackie had dropped one of the best teacups. "Sorry," he said.
"There are some things," Jackie said, "we don't joke about."
One cup of tea later, and with a couple of biscuits tucked in his pockets for good measure, the Doctor was back out on the streets. He glanced over the list of places Jackie had suggested he try looking for her and sighed again, elaborately. He was getting rather good at it.
He quickly sorted the list into two categories -- too unlikely and too bloody obvious -- and stuffed it into his pocket.
How hard could it be to find her? She couldn't have gone far without him, anyway. Well -- not off-planet, at any rate.
He headed back to the TARDIS. One simple thing he could try, if she was close enough -- her TARDIS key emitted a particular kind of vibration in the sub-etheric range. He ought to be able to reconfigure the navigational beacons to tune in on that sympathetic resonance -- essentially, the kind of "scanning for alien tech" that Rose was always on at him to try.
He spent a frustrating half-hour trying to get this to work -- he'd even tried reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, which he hadn't had to resort to in quite some time, thank you very much -- before he finally concluded that she must be out of range. Not in London, then.
That left his search parameters at "outside of London" and "somewhere on the planet." Bit of a large haystack.
"Gonna need you to do me a bit of a favor, when we get the TARDIS back," the Doctor was saying. They were walking back along the bay toward the hotel. He'd hardly let go of her hand the whole time.
"Yeah? What's that, then?"
He took a deep breath. "I'm gonna need you to open the heart of the TARDIS for me."
She stopped. "That's dangerous, isn't it?"
"It is, yeah. But you've done it once before."
"I had a lorry that time. And chains and -- "
"You didn't need any of that. You just needed to get the TARDIS' attention." The Doctor grinned. "You just had to show it you were serious. Willpower, Rose. That's what really did it."
"Oh, right. Those chains were just for show, and all." Rose's smile was fleeting. A cool wind was coming off the bay and she pulled her hoodie around her a little tighter. "So, what for?"
"What?"
"Why do you need me to open it?"
His grip on her hand tightened. "The Enemy's had his hands on the TARDIS for a while. I'll need to get rid of his influence. It'll be like bleeding a wound clean. D'you see?"
"Oh. No, not really, but -- "
"But you'll do it, yeah?"
"Can't you open it? I mean, it is your TARDIS, right?"
"Of course it's my -- Rose, can you just stop asking so many questions and do what you're told for once?"
She jerked her hand away and stared at him. "All right. You don't have to raise your voice. I was only asking."
"Sorry," he said, in the perfunctory way he always said it. He frowned. "It is my TARDIS. You still don't believe that. You still don't think I'm me, do you?"
Rose thrust her hands into her pockets. "I don't know what to think. All I know is, the last time I opened the heart of the TARDIS, you changed. I lost you. I don't know what happened -- I thought I knew, I thought you'd explained it."
"What did he tell you?"
"He said it was called regeneration. Something Time Lords can do when they're injured."
"And you believed that? Don't you think I would have mentioned it to you before if I could do something like that?"
She looked at him. "So you can't?"
He reached for her hand again. "Of course not."
The Doctor half-heartedly stuffed the wires and components he'd been tinkering with back into the TARDIS console and shut the access panel.
He couldn't call her. Without her phone, she couldn't call him -- it's not like his number was publically listed. Even if it were she could hardly look him up in the phone book without knowing his last name. Or his first. Or his twenty-seventh, come to that.
She'd lied to him and ran off. Or possibly something had happened to her on the way to Jackie's, but the likeliest possibility was that she'd lied to him and ran off.
Which meant that he could wait patiently for her to come back -- not likely -- or he could -- what? Take an ad out in the Times?
That was about all he could think of, short of sending her a telepathic message.
He slapped himself on the forehead. He could be so thick sometimes.
He pulled open the access panel again and rubbed his hands together. Time for some serious jiggery-pokery.
"Sitting in the dark?" the Doctor said. He turned on the light switch. "You'll ruin your eyes." "I was just -- thinking," Mickey said.
"You'll ruin your brain, then. Not that it's good for much to start with."
"Oh, yeah?" Mickey said. "Maybe I'm smarter than you give me credit for."
"Could be."
"Where's Rose?"
"Left her out by the bay. She wanted to take a minute to sort things out for herself."
"Oh, yeah? You better not leave her alone to think for too long, then. Before she starts putting two and two together."
"Oh?" The Doctor said idly. "How's that, then?"
Mickey shook his head. "It doesn't add up," he said. "Little things. Like, why did you need me to call her? Why couldn't you call her yourself? And why are you here, anyway? Why couldn't you just go meet her in London?"
The Doctor smiled. "Mickey the Idiot. Maybe not such an idiot after all."
"So what's goin' on? What's really going on?"
"Two things." The Doctor held up his fingers. "One. You're right that I needed you to get Rose here. And two. Now that she is here -- I don't really need you here any more, now, do I?"
The Doctor smiled. And spread his arms wide.
Rose was lost. Not physically, not really -- she was sure she could find her way back to the hotel. She just wasn't sure she wanted to. But what did she want to do? Get back on the train, go back to London, track down the other Doctor, and ask, are you an alien? Not the alien I thought you were, I mean?
She wanted so badly to believe that this was her Doctor, her proper Doctor, back again, here in Cardiff. She'd gotten so used to the new Doctor, she wouldn't have thought she'd want the old one back, but here he was --
What if it wasn't him? How was she going to know? One of them was lying to her. Both of them were smarter than her, probably, so how could she ever be sure?
She walked down the street with tears filling her eyes. She felt stupid for crying. And the stupider she felt, the more she wanted to cry.
She was hardly paying attention to where she was going -- she almost ran right into an old woman who was coming out of a shop. "Sorry," Rose muttered, not even looking up.
"Y dy popeth yn iawn?" the woman said, looking concerned.
The words reached Rose's ears, and before she could consciously process them, her brain's link to the TARDIS sent the words racing back to its databanks, faster than light, and searched through its millions of languages and dialects, and sent back a translation -- "Is everything all right?"
(Miles away, staring at the screen on the TARDIS console, the Doctor's face lit up in a grin. "Got you!" he said.)
"I'm okay, thanks," Rose thought, and it came out as Y dy, diolch yn fawr, and the old woman nodded and Rose went on her way.
She knew where she was, now. There was the Millenium Centre, the huge slanted wall covered in some inscription --
She stopped. Stared at it. In the middle of all the unreadable Welsh --
Rose -- If you can read this, please strike up a conversation with someone.
She blinked.
Well, that wasn't there before, she thought, and fought down a giggle. Her eyes darted around, like she was looking for the hidden cameras, looking for someone to leap out and say "Surprise!" Wanting to be in on the joke. Maybe, she thought finally, I'm starting to go a little mad. How would I know?
She looked around and stopped someone who looked like he might be a policeman. "Excuse me," she said, pointing to the wall, "can you see that?"
He looked at the wall, and then looked back at her. "Oh, good. You saw my note. I wasn't sure this would work. Hello, Rose."
She blinked again. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
The man looked confused. "Oh, right, sorry -- it's me. It's the Doctor."
Rose shook her head. She felt a smile she couldn't quite control slide across her lips. "Right, 'course you are," she said. "Everyone's the Doctor today."
"Where are you?"
And now she'd completely lost track of the conversation. "Where am I? Umm, standing right in front of you?"
"No, no, no -- this isn't really me, I'm using the TARDIS telepathic circuits to translate whatever conversation you're really having into this one. Clever, yeah? Only I've never done it before and I'm not sure how much longer I can make this work, so quick, where are you?"
He didn't know. If this was the Doctor -- her other Doctor, the one she'd left in London, it sounded like him, even though it didn't sound like him at all -- (her head was starting to hurt) -- then . . . . this was the Enemy. The one who --
The one who killed Jack.
"I don't know," she said. And she started to back away. Turned and started to run.
She nearly knocked over a small boy, knocked the ball he'd been playing with right out of his hands. "Oh, sorry," she said, retrieving it. She looked back. The policeman wasn't following her. He was just staring, looking as confused as she felt.
The little boy looked quite cross when she handed the ball back. "What do you mean, you don't know?" he said.
Rose just stared at him. He started bouncing the ball again. "That was Welsh you were speaking a minute ago," he said. His words were a little bit sing-song, as if the boy were really playing a counting game. "You're in Wales, then, I'd guess. Not much call for it outside of Wales. Not much call for it in Wales, really, now that I think of it."
"I -- yeah. Wales, yeah."
"But you don't know where, exactly? Well, just keep talking while I pinpoint you."
"No, don't," Rose said, and she ran off again.
Why did I do that? she thought. Luring him here -- that was the Doctor's plan, wasn't it? So why not tell him where she was?
She didn't want to admit it. But even if the man here in Wales was the Doctor, and even if the man she'd been in the TARDIS with since the Game Station was his enemy -- she didn't want him hurt.
She'd forgotten. She'd forgotten how -- how dangerous the old Doctor could be, but she remembered it all now. She remembered staring down the barrel of his gun, talking him down from killing a single Dalek. What would he do, she wondered, to a man who'd stolen his TARDIS?
What was going to happen to the rabbit in the moon?
She stopped running. She leaned against the corner of a building, dizzy, exhausted, sick at heart.
A hand on her shoulder. She jumped.
"Are you sure you're all right?" It was the same old woman she'd talked to before. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"No, I -- " Rose looked up at her. "Actually, yeah. I think I am, yeah."
"What kind of trouble?"
"There's -- there's these two men, and -- they're telling me different things, and I don't know who I can trust -- "
"Just calm down," the woman said. "I can help you."
Rose's eyes filled with tears again. Her shoulders went slack with relief. "Really? You can?"
"Of course I can." The old woman squeezed her shoulder tighter. Looked deep into Rose's eyes.
"Just tell me where you are," the old woman said.
Rose finally found her way to the hotel. She hadn't spoken to anyone else, looked anyone in the eye, read a single sign, barely looked up. She wanted nothing more than a hot shower, and sleep. To curl up under the covers and not think about any of this.
She got to the hotel just as Mickey was walking out.
"Where are you going?" she asked him, and it sounded a little more desperate than she'd meant for it to.
"Back to London." He looked disgusted. He shifted his overnight bag from one shoulder to the other. "The Doctor wants me out from underfoot. He says he wants me somewhere safe, but I know what he meant."
"Mickey -- " She reached for his hand. "You don't have to go, if you don't want -- "
"I don't want to stay, do I? You've got each other back, and that's all that matters to you."
"Please don't be like this. Not right now." She looked at him closely. "This -- it is you, right?"
"What d'you mean?"
"You're you, aren't you?"
He just frowned and nodded.
"Okay," she said, and she laughed a small laugh. "Just making sure. You wouldn't believe the afternoon I've had." She looked at him again, not able to shake the memory -- a year ago? Longer? Sitting in a restaurant with something that just looked like Mickey, a fever-bright sheen to its skin, skin that had turned out to be plastic. Did everyone turn out not to be who she expected them to be, eventually? Life was like that, sometimes. But never like this.
"Probably not." Mickey said. He smiled, a little. "Look, Rose, just -- take care of yourself, all right? I'll see you when you get home. Whenever that is."
"Yeah. You, too," Rose said, a little abstractedly. She stared up at the window of their hotel room, looking at the light spilling out into the cool dark. Then she flashed him a quick smile. "Sure you're all right by yourself?"
"I manage," Mickey said, with a dull smile. "Here. Here's the hotel key." He dropped it into her hand. "I'll see you."
And then he walked off down the street.
Rose watched him go, and he turned back and waved. She waved back and went inside.
As soon as she was out of sight, the smile on Mickey's face went out, light-switch sudden. He kept walking, looked back again to make sure she was gone, and then ducked down an alley.
He swung the overnight bag off his shoulder and threw it into a dumpster, one smooth motion.
He kept walking. When he was deep enough into the alley that he couldn't be seen from the street, he covered his face with his hands. He could feel his features running and changing like melting wax. His skin grew pale in the dark, his hair golden.
He smiled with shifting lips. The Enemy was coming closer. He could feel it.
Somewhere not too far away, there was a deep sound, shuddering and grinding, rising and falling. You might think, if you heard it, that it was the sound of ancient engines, powered by forces strange and not subtle and unknown, driven on far past the point of exhaustion, far past the point they should have been put out of service. Or you might think it was the sound of air and wind, of Time, being indelicately torn apart, shoved to one side, to make way for a sudden intrusion.
The sound died, picked up and echoed by startled and scattered gulls along the bay, and something now stood solid that hadn't been there a moment before.
Inside, the Doctor frowned at the controls, at the coordinates he'd set. Cardiff. Again.
Well -- this was where she was. He thought. Somewhere close by, at any rate. He hadn't been able to get her to stay on the line, as it were, long enough to trace the call. As it were. She'd seemed quite rattled by it, actually. Next time maybe he should take an ad out in the Times.
He grabbed his long tan coat off the hatstand and shrugged into it. Not that there was going to be a next time. He wasn't going to let that girl out of his sight from now on.
He let himself out, never quite noticing a single light on the console, pulsing, persistent. A long-unused circuit in the TARDIS systems picking up something -- something like an echo, a reflection.
If he'd seen that light before he went out, he would have known. He would have been prepared.
But instead, he closed the doors, and locked them behind him.
Where to start? He wandered the streets. He didn't even know where to start looking, where to go for help. That was all right. That would have been too much like having a plan. He tried not to think too much about the trouble she said she was in. Until he knew what kind of trouble it was, it was best not to panic. Once he understood what was going on, then he could panic.
For now, wandering seemed helpful. Cardiff wasn't that big, was it? Perhaps if he just roamed the streets, they'd just run across each other.
Not the most reasonable course of action, arguably. But, of course, that was exactly what happened.
He turned a corner, and there she was.
He allowed himself one small, sly smile. "Your mother and I have been quite worried about you, young lady," he said, with mock severity.
"Doctor!" Rose's face lit up, and she threw her arms around his neck.
He held her close for a moment.
This was too simple, said the nagging little voice in the back of his head.
"Hello, Rose," he said, letting her go, still smiling. "So what's this about you being in some kind of trouble?"
"No, it's okay. I got away from him. 'Sides, you're here now." She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Let's get out of here, yeah?"
"Well, yes, of course," he said. He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Are you sure you're all right? Who did you get away from?"
He reached out and took her hand.
As soon as he took it, he remembered, quite strongly, the first moment he'd taken her hand, telling her to run. He remembered all of it -- everything that happened since that moment. Perfect clarity, every detail.
He shook his head to clear it. Put his other hand on the brick wall.
"Are you all right?" Rose asked suddenly.
"I think so, yes," the Doctor said. He closed his eyes. "I just suddenly feel like -- like someone's taken the card catalog for my mind and dumped all the drawers out on the floor at once." His eyes snapped open. "Have you ever felt like that?"
She stared at him. "No," she said simply.
"Hmmm."
"So, which way back to the TARDIS?"
" . . . Not far. Come on," he said.
She was still holding his hand as they walked. He stared down at it. "So what did happen to you?" he said. "You never did show up at Jackie's."
"No," she said. "I was kidnapped."
"That sounds dramatic."
"Don't even joke. It was terrible. There was this bloke who claimed he was you."
"Really? Did he look like me?"
"No -- well, yeah, but he looked like the old you, not you now." She squeezed his hand tighter.
"Really. Are you sure I'm me, then?" A department store basement. Moving mannequins, all around. All of it so fresh in his mind. Her hand in his. Run. "You're sure I'm not made out of plastic?"
She looked at him, uncertain for a moment, then grinned. She reached up and rapped his forehead with her knuckles. "Nope. Bonehead."
He grinned. "Satisfied?"
"Well, you're not an Auton, at any rate."
He nodded, still smiling.
A few more streets, a few more turns, and they stood in front of the TARDIS. Its windows glowed warmly, like a hearth.
"Well, here we are, then," the Doctor said breezily.
"Here we are," Rose agreed.
"Well, go on, then," the Doctor said. His smile turned suddenly cold. "Open it."
"What do you mean?"
"I gave you a key, didn't I?"
"Well, yeah, of course you did. The first time we came back to my mum's, remember?"
"Oh, quite clearly. So go on. Let us in."
Rose frowned and smiled at the same time. She made a show of patting down her pockets. "Haven't got it," she said. "Must've left it in my room."
"Really. Like you left your phone, I suppose."
"Yeah."
He took a step forward. "Would you mind telling me -- if it's not too much trouble, that is -- if the real Rose Tyler is still alive?"
Cross-posted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dwfiction, new_who, sortofyeah, and time_and_chips
Author:
icebluenothing Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Set between Tooth and Claw and School Reunion
Length: 15,000 words. This one's a long one.
Summary: Rose was convinced -- even though he looked nothing like the man she'd met, this new man was still the Doctor. Unless it was all a lie . . . .
________
"I've been trying and trying to call you for days," Mickey was saying. "So, you're on Earth, yeah?"
"We're -- close by, yeah." Rose shifted her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, shot a quick involuntary glance upward.
"Close by -- ? You're -- still with the Doctor, right? Are you with him right now?"
"Yeah, 'course," she said. "Mickey, is something wrong? You sound really strange."
"Is he listening?"
"Is he -- " Rose looked over at the Doctor. If he'd even noticed that her phone had rung, he hadn't looked up. "I don't think so," she said, lowering her voice a little. "Mickey, what is it?"
"It's still the same guy, right? The same one as at Christmas?"
She frowned. "Yeah -- what -- "
"Rose, can you come meet me?"
"Sure, but -- "
"Only, Rose, listen. This is important, all right? Don't bring the Doctor. Come alone. And don't tell him where you're going."
" . . . What? Mickey, seriously, what's going on?"
There was a silence on the other end, a silence as black and empty as the sky overhead. She glanced at her phone to see if she'd lost signal -- felt immediately stupid for doing it. Glanced up at the Earth again as she held the phone back to her ear. Mickey said to her, quietly, a million miles away: "Your life is in danger, Rose."
Rose laughed. No, she didn't. She wanted to, but she couldn't make the sound. " . . . Pull the other one, then."
"Rose, please, just this once take me seriously, all right? If you won't believe me, there's somebody here you will believe."
"Who, my mum?"
"No, it's -- listen, get away from him, all right? I can't tell you any more, he might be listening."
"The Doctor?"
He looked up at her then, bright brown eyes and cheeky smile, ears pricking up at the sound of his name like a cat.
"Just get away from him and call me back from a land-line as soon as you can, all right? Not your mobile. I'll tell you where we are when its safe."
And then he hung up.
She looked helplessly over at the Doctor. He had his eye down on the ball again, and he swung the club almost faster than her eyes could follow.
The golf ball went poof as it hit the edge of the TARDIS force field, and a puff of air followed it out, instantly freezing into a sparkling haze of vapor crystals. The ball kept going up and up in a wide swinging arc.
The Doctor grinned and bounced over to her, his trainers and the cuffs of his pinstripe slacks covered in moon dust. "Did you see how far that one went?" he beamed. "This course does offer certain advantages."
"Yeah. I mean, sure. It does." Rose wasn't really listening. She was looking up at the Earth, hanging fragile like a soap bubble on a summer breeze.
"Rose Tyler," he said, staring at her, suddenly serious. He could do that. "I don't think you appreciate the gravity of our situation."
Your life is in danger, Rose.
And then he flashed that brilliant smile again, that X-ray intense stare gone in a flash.
"Oh? Oh -- gravity! Gravity, right."
"Something wrong?" he asked, trying to set up another tee in the dust. "Hand me a nine-iron, will you?"
She took the club he handed her and stared at it. "I thought you said this was a nine-iron."
"Did I?" He stared at it, and was suddenly at her side, examining it closely as if it were some piece of alien technology. Which to him it was, she supposed. "You know," he said confidentially, "I'm starting to think golf is not my game." He took a felt pen out of his pocket and carefully wrote "nine-iron" on the shaft. Then, as an afterthought, added, "(?)"
"So what is wrong?" he asked. "Who was that on the phone?"
"Mi -- " Her voice caught. "Me mum." Lying to the Doctor left a hollow space inside her, and her stomach closed tight around it.
"Ahhh, the irrepressible Jackie Tyler. She all right?" He said it casually, too carefully casual.
"I -- think so."
He stared at her again, his face dead calm. "Do you need to go home?"
" . . . I think I do, yeah. By myself," she added, a little too quickly.
He looked a bit startled, and smiled to cover it. "Suit yourself."
"It's not like that -- " Rose said, not sure what it was like. "It's just, it's . . . a mother-daughter thing. You know."
"No, I don't. Never having been either." He shoved the possible nine-iron back into the golf bag and hefted it over his shoulder. He swung the doors of the TARDIS open wide and breezed inside without so much as a backward glance.
She ran in after him. "Used to be, you'd have done anything to get out of spending any time with my mum," she was saying, trying to make a joke out of it.
"Rose, it's all right, honestly it is. We're not attached at the hip, you know."
"Yeah," she said. "It's just, my mom hasn't been feeling well, and she just wants me home. For a day or so."
The Doctor was spinning dials and pulling levers, usual Doctorish things. "Improving your lie," he said.
" -- What?"
"Hmm? Oh -- improving your lie in the rough. It's a three-stroke penalty. I think. A golf thing. You know. Just remembering out loud."
His smile was bright and wide and she couldn't read it at all.
* * * *
By the time Mickey led her to their destination, her mood was completely black. The two and a half hours on the train had been exhausting -- having to travel like ordinary people seemed like too much to take -- and Mickey's tight-lipped jumpiness, the whole cloak-and-dagger routine, was starting to wear a little thin.
She stared up at the old Victorian building. "A hotel." She let the word fall from between her lips.
"Yeah." Mickey looked at her face. He might as well have read her mind. "This isn't what it looks like."
"No?" She glared at him. "This had better not be a joke, Mickey. Or some kind of, of, keeping score kind of thing, all right? I call you up and ask you to come to Cardiff, so now you call me up and have me come to Cardiff, just to see if I'll do it? That's not it, is it?"
"Rose, no, come on -- "
"No? Second chance, then? You never got me back to your hotel room the last time we were here, so -- "
"Rose, would you just shut up for a minute?"
She shut. She stared. She hadn't really seen him like this before -- not frustrated, not defensive, just -- angry at not being listened to, not being trusted.
"Sorry," Rose said, and her voice felt small and useless.
"Just come on. He's waiting."
"Who's waiting?"
"He said you wouldn't believe me unless you saw for yourself, all right? You'll see in a minute."
He led her through the lobby, under the huge crystal chandalier, up the grand staircase. Down the hall. All of it a bit posh for Mickey's tastes, she thought.
As he took the key out of his pocket, Rose was suddenly trembling. Suddenly sure that she did not want to see whatever was on the other side of this door.
She held her breath. The door opened.
He was sitting in a chair by the window, drumming his fingers impatiently along the windowsill.
He looked up when she came in, and that impossible grin lit his face. Those ice-blue eyes of his froze her in place.
"Rose."
That voice. The same voice, the one she heard sometimes in dreams still. Saying her name the way no one else had ever said it -- claiming her, owning her with a word.
The Doctor. Her Doctor.
He crossed the room in three great strides and folded her up in his leather-clad arms and lifted her off her feet.
"You're all right!" he said.
She glanced over at Mickey. He was standing with his arms folded, his back against the wall, looking uncomfortable and self-satisfied all at once.
He put her down, and she was just looking up at him, too stunned to even smile. Eyes wide and unblinking and not wanting to miss a single moment. "You shouldn't even be here," she breathed.
"No? Where should I be, then?"
"You -- you died, I saw it, you shouldn't -- you're not supposed to cross your own timestream, you told me -- You're not supposed to be here!"
"Rose, listen to me. I'm here. I'm real. This is me. I haven't crossed my time stream."
"But -- I just left you in London -- "
"No, you didn't."
She took a step back, sat down on the edge of the bed. "I -- you lost me."
"You're right. I did lose you. On the Game Station, remember?"
"You -- sent me away -- "
"No. They took you."
" . . . They?"
"Enemies, Rose. Enemies from the Time War, even older than the Daleks. They wanted my TARDIS." The Doctor glanced over at Mickey. "And now they have it. They've had it for months."
"They -- " His words didn't make any sense. And then suddenly, sickeningly, they did. "No."
"Go on, Rose," the Doctor said. "Figure it out." He said it gently.
"That's -- but he's -- he's you. I saw you change."
He shook his head. "Transmat beam. They pulled me right out of my own TARDIS. It's taken me all this time to escape, to find my way back to you."
The Doctor came over to where she was sitting and took both of her hands in his. Stared deep into her eyes. "That's not me you've been travelling with, Rose. It's not. Do you believe me?"
She could hardly hear him. She couldn't concentrate. Her head was swimming, with images and memories and emotions. Every moment she'd ever spent with this man, like her life flashing in front of her eyes.
Rose wanted to answer him. But the room was too warm and too far away, and he seemed like he was talking to her from the end of a very long tunnel and all she wanted to do was sleep --
She slept.
* * * *
This happened, oh, weeks and weeks ago. Or she was dreaming it now. It didn't seem to matter.
She and the Doctor were lying on a hillside. There were bright yellow flowers everywhere. Dandelions or something like them, some everyday miracle.
He was holding -- a ball of string? A spindle. A kite-string. Way above, at the end of the string, was a box-kite. The Doctor had made it himself and it seemed to take far more paper and paste and string and little wooden dowels than was strictly necessary, and she had asked why they couldn't just buy a kite instead, and he'd sulked and said that wasn't the point.
A box-kite, a blue box-kite, and she couldn't remember if it had been her idea or his to write "Police Box" all along the top, but she did remember that it had taken ages to get it in the air, but now it didn't seem to want to come down. He was just holding the spindle and every now and then making the kite dance with a casual flick of his wrist, as easy to keep it up as it had been hard to get it there.
He looked over at her, smiling shyly. "Do you want to fly it for a while?"
"It won't come crashing down or anything?" she asked.
"No. Well, probably not. Won't know until you try. Here."
She took it. Could feel it jerk and pull under her fingers.
"So are you getting used to this, then?"
"What -- kite flying?"
"No." She looked over at him, all doe-soft brown eyes and windblown hair, and knew what he meant before he could say it. "Me. This new face of mine."
"Oh, that," she said, grinning. She jerked the kite string wide. "Do I like it, do you mean?"
"No. Well, yes, that, too, but -- is it me, do you think?"
She shrugged. "Sure. 'Course it is."
He looked over at her. "Bit different than the old one."
"A bit, yeah. The ears are a definite improvement."
He smiled and stared up at the kite. "Oh, well, now you're just teasing me."
"You really want to know what I think, then?"
"Rose Tyler, I am dying to know what you think."
She looked at his face for a long moment. Then stared back up at the sky.
After another long moment, when the Doctor had seemed to give up on her answering entirely and had just settled back into the grass and relaxed, she said:
"When I was a little girl -- I mean, really little, like four or five -- whenever there was a full moon, my mum would say, look, Rosie, there's the man in the moon. Do you see him? Wave, now." She laughed. "And that's how I always saw it. Every time I looked at it growing up, I'd see the eyes and the mouth and I'd think, there's the man in the moon."
She looked to see if he was listening. He hadn't moved, showed no sign he was paying attention. But his breathing was very still. He was listening to her intently.
She kept watching him. Her kite kept drifting overhead, unseen. "But when I was fourteen? Fifteen? Something like that -- I was out walking with Mickey and there was a full moon in the sky and he asked, did I see the rabbit? And I didn't know what he was talking about, and I asked him, and when he told me I thought it was ridiculous -- there was no rabbit in the moon, it was a man in the moon, everyone knew that. But every time I saw the moon after that, I couldn't help but see the rabbit."
She didn't say anything after that.
The Doctor nodded slowly. "So I'm the rabbit in the moon, am I?" he said finally. "I think I like that." He looked suddenly concerned, and looked over at her. "But, Rose," he said, "the moon didn't really change."
"Well, yeah," said Rose. "That's kinda my point."
* * * *
When Rose woke up, the man in the moon was gone.
She struggled to sit up. Mickey was still there. "Do you want a glass of water or anything?" he asked.
She shook her head, which turned out to be a really bad idea. "Where is he? Where's the Doctor gone?"
"So do you believe him, then?"
"Do I -- yeah. I mean, I think so. It's just -- a little much to take in."
Mickey nodded. "He should be back soon. He just went out for a walk."
"A walk? A walk where?"
Mickey frowned. "How should I know?" he asked.
Rose nodded. " . . . Do you think that's really him?"
Mickey laughed. "Well, yeah. Just look at him."
"I know, but . . . fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice . . . . " She shook her head again, this time to clear it. "I just want to be sure, this time." She looked up at him. "You never liked him, did you?"
He gave a dull laugh. "Which one?"
" -- This one."
"I still don't." He sighed. "But I trust him."
"I'm going to go find him," she said.
"He said to wait for him here."
Rose made a face. "Yeah, I bet. Still, I'm going. You coming or what?"
He sat down. "No, thanks."
"Mickey -- thanks for this. I'm sorry I was being such a . . . . "
"A pain in the arse?"
She laughed. "Something like that."
"Yeah, well, don't mention it." He grinned. It looked like it hurt. "Go on, then, if you're going."
Rose wanted to say something else, but she didn't know what. She bolted out the door and down the stairs, out into the streets she first saw a century ago.
* * * *
When she found him, he was standing perfectly still.
She knew where they were. She could still tell where the cracks in the pavement had been hastily repaired; she remembered the sheer silver monolith, the fountain by the Millenium Centre. He was standing right where the TARDIS had landed when they were last here, a lifetime ago.
His eyes were closed, but he reacted, almost imperceptibly, to her approach. "The TARDIS was here, Rose," he said. "I can still feel it. It's still here, right now. That moment is still going on, stretched across time. I can feel the TARDIS right here, feel the pulse of her engines. Can you?"
"No," she said.
He opened his eyes. "Well. We'll have it back soon enough."
Rose just nodded.
"Go on. Whatever it is, say it," he said.
" . . . Is it really you?"
He sighed. "Of course it's me. Who else would I be? Don't be such a stupid ape. Even Mickey the Idiot figured it out faster than this."
She laughed. She couldn't help it. "I haven't heard him called that in a while."
"Oh? Why? Did he stop being an idiot?"
"You were -- I mean, the other you was, just, nicer to him, is all."
He grinned. "Then you should have known that wasn't me, yeah?" His grin faded. "Look, Rose, don't call him that, all right?"
"Mickey the Idiot?"
"No. The Enemy. Don't call him 'the other me,' all right? There is no other me. Just me."
"Yeah -- it's just -- "
"It's just what?"
"He acts like you. I mean, not exactly, but it's hard to imagine he's your enemy. He still -- "
"Rose, listen. An act is all it is, all right?"
"Sure, you said that, but -- "
"Rose. He killed Jack."
" . . . No, he didn't," she said, when she could speak again.
"Yeah, he did. Jack was a trained Time Agent. He knew he'd see through his lies like that." The Doctor snapped his fingers.
"He told me . . . Jack stayed behind . . . . " She'd known there was something wrong with that story, but she'd never thought about it too closely. Oh, God, why hadn't she?
"He did, yeah? What else did he tell you? How did he convince you he was me?"
"He -- " She frowned, trying to remember, trying to ignore the tears she wouldn't let come. "He told me how we first met. What he -- what you said to me. I mean, how would he know all that, unless -- ?"
"Oh, Rose, come on, think. The Enemy's been watching me for a long time. Watching us. Who knows what they overheard?" He stepped forward, took her hand. "I can do one better. If you still need convincing."
She looked up at him, wiping at her tears with her sleeve. "You can, huh?" she said, a little defensively.
"I know you, Rose Tyler. I know more than what we talked about. I know how you felt."
"Do you?"
"When I told you I can feel it. The turning of the Earth. You didn't know what I was talking about and you wanted to, you wanted to feel it, and you thought maybe if you could keep up with me, keep hold of my hand long enough, you'd understand, you'd learn to feel it. Do you still think you could, Rose? Or should I let go -- ?"
He loosened his grip on her hand. Reflexively, she held his tight.
"It really is you, isn't it?"
"Ahh, the light dawns. See, that human brain of yours can be remarkably effective if you'd just use it . . . "
She put her other hand at his waist, without thinking about it, and pulled him closer.
"You won't go away again, will you?"
He squeezed her hand tight. "Not ever," he promised.
* * * *
The other Doctor -- the rabbit in the moon -- had managed to go a little over six hours without Rose before he gave up and tried to call her.
He didn't know quite what to do with an afternoon to himself in London. He had known a lot of people here once, from back when he was stranded on Earth, and he thought about looking some of them up -- until he remembered that that was back in the 70's, or possibly the 80's, he wasn't sure which, and it was a good deal after that now and most of them would have gotten old in the meantime or possibly died and that it all sounded terribly depressing and tedious when you thought about it like that, so then he thought perhaps he wouldn't.
He was riding around on top of a double-decker bus, playing tourist and enjoying the wind in his hair, but otherwise feeling generally out-of-sorts. He'd found an alien masquerading as a human, running a fish-and-chip shop, not half an hour before, and he'd rather hoped it was the vanguard of some alien invasion he could cleverly defeat, but it turned out it was just lost and needed directions. The Doctor had written down coordinates from galactic zero centre on the back of a paper napkin and sent it on its way with a stern warning, just in case it really was considering an invasion, but his hearts weren't really in it. This was no fun by himself.
He considered seeing a play. He wondered briefly if Cats was still running. Then he rather hoped it wasn't. Andrew had never really quite forgiven him for laughing all the way through the premiere of The Phantom of the Opera, anyway. How was he supposed to know it wasn't meant to be a comedy?
He found himself back at the TARDIS, for lack of anywhere better to be. He stood at the console, drumming his fingers along the edge. He could take a short jaunt somewhere more interesting. Be back before you could say -- before you could say something really difficult and complicated to say, with lots of syllables in it. He could go anywhere, really. But he wasn't entirely sure -- if he was being completely honest -- that he could reliably steer the TARDIS back to exactly these coordinates. He might come back to find that fifty years had passed, and Rose had spent her spinsterhood pining away for the freedom of their travels. Or, worse yet, had forgotten about him completely.
He amused himself briefly with the notion of coming back to find her, only to find he'd mistaken Rose's daughter for Rose herself, and taking her away on an adventure, like the ending of Peter Pan. Only then that led him to troubling thoughts of where Rose would have gotten a daughter from, and he decided to think about something else instead.
Finally, he decided he was being quite silly -- that they both were, really -- and that he could at least call and see how she was doing. There was no harm in that. He picked up the phone.
It was taking an awfully long time for her to pick up. And after a moment he realized -- he could hear it ringing. He could hear her phone --
He put the receiver down gently on the console, not hanging up, and followed the ringing. He followed it down the hall, all the way to Rose's room.
He hesitated at the doorway -- he didn't like intruding on his companions' privacy -- but he stepped inside. Found the phone abandoned on her bedside table.
That wasn't like her. She never went out without that phone. He supposed she did want to be really alone with her mother, after all.
Or maybe, he was trying not to think -- maybe there was something really, really, drastically wrong.
No, no, surely not, he told himself. She just forgot it. That's all. This once, she just forgot it.
He picked it up, stopped it ringing. Smiled to himself as he slipped it into his pocket.
I'll just pop around and give it to her, he thought.
* * * *
"So what's the plan?" Mickey asked.
"Haven't got a plan," the Doctor said. He was vigorously cutting through a thick piece of steak. "Never bother much with them. They just get in the way, plans. They stop working halfway through and then you have to think of something else, anyway. Not much point."
Rose just watched him, watching the way he moved, listening to the familiar rhythms of his voice. "We've got to go get the TARDIS back, right?"
"No. We stay put."
"Why?"
"Why not? I like it here. A modern centre of trade and commerce, is Cardiff. No, the point is, we make him come to us. That puts us at a tactical advantge."
"But why would he come here?" Mickey asked.
Rose nodded carefully. "Looking for me," she said.
"That's right," the Doctor said, stabbing a couple of chips with his fork. "If he's still pretending to be me, of course he's gonna come looking for you. And if he's not pretending to be me, if he realizes you suspect him, well -- then he's still gonna come looking for you." He stuffed the chips in his mouth. "To finish you off," he said. He smiled unpleasantly.
Rose looked down at her pie and chips. Suddenly she didn't want it any more.
"Either way, you get to be bait." He cut himself another piece of steak and looked up at her. "That all right?"
"Not with me," Mickey said. "Anyone care what I think?"
The Doctor grinned. "Not particularly."
"He'll keep me safe, Mickey. Don't worry." The words sounded good. But Rose felt suddenly cold inside.
"Not to worry, Rickey," the Doctor said. "I'm sure I'll come up with a plan once the Enemy gets here. Anyone want more wine?" He tried to catch a waiter's eye.
* * * *
"She hasn't been here at all?" the Doctor asked. "She didn't even call you?"
Jackie's frown matched his. "No, luv, she hasn't."
"But she said she was coming here." The Doctor was pacing frantically, staring into corners, hoping perhaps to find Rose lying forgotten behind a sofa. "She said you'd called her. I take it you didn't."
"No." Jackie couldn't stand watching him pace any more. "Do you want a cup of tea, long as you're here?"
"Yes, thanks," the Doctor said absently. He finally flopped down gracelessly in front of the TV and stared at the empty gray screen for a moment. He let out his breath in a long sigh. Then he took a deeper breath so he could do it again.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out Rose's phone and stared at it. Almost idly, he started thumbing through the call history. Mickey. Mickey?
He pressed the TALK button, and waited while Mickey's phone rang. And rang. No help there, either.
"Apparently she and Mickey have run off together," the Doctor called out to the kitchen. "Tell me, how do you feel about grandchildren?"
There was a crash and a tinkle of china. The Doctor ran in to find Jackie had dropped one of the best teacups. "Sorry," he said.
"There are some things," Jackie said, "we don't joke about."
* * * *
One cup of tea later, and with a couple of biscuits tucked in his pockets for good measure, the Doctor was back out on the streets. He glanced over the list of places Jackie had suggested he try looking for her and sighed again, elaborately. He was getting rather good at it.
He quickly sorted the list into two categories -- too unlikely and too bloody obvious -- and stuffed it into his pocket.
How hard could it be to find her? She couldn't have gone far without him, anyway. Well -- not off-planet, at any rate.
He headed back to the TARDIS. One simple thing he could try, if she was close enough -- her TARDIS key emitted a particular kind of vibration in the sub-etheric range. He ought to be able to reconfigure the navigational beacons to tune in on that sympathetic resonance -- essentially, the kind of "scanning for alien tech" that Rose was always on at him to try.
He spent a frustrating half-hour trying to get this to work -- he'd even tried reversing the polarity of the neutron flow, which he hadn't had to resort to in quite some time, thank you very much -- before he finally concluded that she must be out of range. Not in London, then.
That left his search parameters at "outside of London" and "somewhere on the planet." Bit of a large haystack.
* * * *
"Gonna need you to do me a bit of a favor, when we get the TARDIS back," the Doctor was saying. They were walking back along the bay toward the hotel. He'd hardly let go of her hand the whole time.
"Yeah? What's that, then?"
He took a deep breath. "I'm gonna need you to open the heart of the TARDIS for me."
She stopped. "That's dangerous, isn't it?"
"It is, yeah. But you've done it once before."
"I had a lorry that time. And chains and -- "
"You didn't need any of that. You just needed to get the TARDIS' attention." The Doctor grinned. "You just had to show it you were serious. Willpower, Rose. That's what really did it."
"Oh, right. Those chains were just for show, and all." Rose's smile was fleeting. A cool wind was coming off the bay and she pulled her hoodie around her a little tighter. "So, what for?"
"What?"
"Why do you need me to open it?"
His grip on her hand tightened. "The Enemy's had his hands on the TARDIS for a while. I'll need to get rid of his influence. It'll be like bleeding a wound clean. D'you see?"
"Oh. No, not really, but -- "
"But you'll do it, yeah?"
"Can't you open it? I mean, it is your TARDIS, right?"
"Of course it's my -- Rose, can you just stop asking so many questions and do what you're told for once?"
She jerked her hand away and stared at him. "All right. You don't have to raise your voice. I was only asking."
"Sorry," he said, in the perfunctory way he always said it. He frowned. "It is my TARDIS. You still don't believe that. You still don't think I'm me, do you?"
Rose thrust her hands into her pockets. "I don't know what to think. All I know is, the last time I opened the heart of the TARDIS, you changed. I lost you. I don't know what happened -- I thought I knew, I thought you'd explained it."
"What did he tell you?"
"He said it was called regeneration. Something Time Lords can do when they're injured."
"And you believed that? Don't you think I would have mentioned it to you before if I could do something like that?"
She looked at him. "So you can't?"
He reached for her hand again. "Of course not."
* * * *
The Doctor half-heartedly stuffed the wires and components he'd been tinkering with back into the TARDIS console and shut the access panel.
He couldn't call her. Without her phone, she couldn't call him -- it's not like his number was publically listed. Even if it were she could hardly look him up in the phone book without knowing his last name. Or his first. Or his twenty-seventh, come to that.
She'd lied to him and ran off. Or possibly something had happened to her on the way to Jackie's, but the likeliest possibility was that she'd lied to him and ran off.
Which meant that he could wait patiently for her to come back -- not likely -- or he could -- what? Take an ad out in the Times?
That was about all he could think of, short of sending her a telepathic message.
He slapped himself on the forehead. He could be so thick sometimes.
He pulled open the access panel again and rubbed his hands together. Time for some serious jiggery-pokery.
* * * *
"Sitting in the dark?" the Doctor said. He turned on the light switch. "You'll ruin your eyes." "I was just -- thinking," Mickey said.
"You'll ruin your brain, then. Not that it's good for much to start with."
"Oh, yeah?" Mickey said. "Maybe I'm smarter than you give me credit for."
"Could be."
"Where's Rose?"
"Left her out by the bay. She wanted to take a minute to sort things out for herself."
"Oh, yeah? You better not leave her alone to think for too long, then. Before she starts putting two and two together."
"Oh?" The Doctor said idly. "How's that, then?"
Mickey shook his head. "It doesn't add up," he said. "Little things. Like, why did you need me to call her? Why couldn't you call her yourself? And why are you here, anyway? Why couldn't you just go meet her in London?"
The Doctor smiled. "Mickey the Idiot. Maybe not such an idiot after all."
"So what's goin' on? What's really going on?"
"Two things." The Doctor held up his fingers. "One. You're right that I needed you to get Rose here. And two. Now that she is here -- I don't really need you here any more, now, do I?"
The Doctor smiled. And spread his arms wide.
* * * *
Rose was lost. Not physically, not really -- she was sure she could find her way back to the hotel. She just wasn't sure she wanted to. But what did she want to do? Get back on the train, go back to London, track down the other Doctor, and ask, are you an alien? Not the alien I thought you were, I mean?
She wanted so badly to believe that this was her Doctor, her proper Doctor, back again, here in Cardiff. She'd gotten so used to the new Doctor, she wouldn't have thought she'd want the old one back, but here he was --
What if it wasn't him? How was she going to know? One of them was lying to her. Both of them were smarter than her, probably, so how could she ever be sure?
She walked down the street with tears filling her eyes. She felt stupid for crying. And the stupider she felt, the more she wanted to cry.
She was hardly paying attention to where she was going -- she almost ran right into an old woman who was coming out of a shop. "Sorry," Rose muttered, not even looking up.
"Y dy popeth yn iawn?" the woman said, looking concerned.
The words reached Rose's ears, and before she could consciously process them, her brain's link to the TARDIS sent the words racing back to its databanks, faster than light, and searched through its millions of languages and dialects, and sent back a translation -- "Is everything all right?"
(Miles away, staring at the screen on the TARDIS console, the Doctor's face lit up in a grin. "Got you!" he said.)
"I'm okay, thanks," Rose thought, and it came out as Y dy, diolch yn fawr, and the old woman nodded and Rose went on her way.
She knew where she was, now. There was the Millenium Centre, the huge slanted wall covered in some inscription --
She stopped. Stared at it. In the middle of all the unreadable Welsh --
Rose -- If you can read this, please strike up a conversation with someone.
She blinked.
Well, that wasn't there before, she thought, and fought down a giggle. Her eyes darted around, like she was looking for the hidden cameras, looking for someone to leap out and say "Surprise!" Wanting to be in on the joke. Maybe, she thought finally, I'm starting to go a little mad. How would I know?
She looked around and stopped someone who looked like he might be a policeman. "Excuse me," she said, pointing to the wall, "can you see that?"
He looked at the wall, and then looked back at her. "Oh, good. You saw my note. I wasn't sure this would work. Hello, Rose."
She blinked again. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
The man looked confused. "Oh, right, sorry -- it's me. It's the Doctor."
Rose shook her head. She felt a smile she couldn't quite control slide across her lips. "Right, 'course you are," she said. "Everyone's the Doctor today."
"Where are you?"
And now she'd completely lost track of the conversation. "Where am I? Umm, standing right in front of you?"
"No, no, no -- this isn't really me, I'm using the TARDIS telepathic circuits to translate whatever conversation you're really having into this one. Clever, yeah? Only I've never done it before and I'm not sure how much longer I can make this work, so quick, where are you?"
He didn't know. If this was the Doctor -- her other Doctor, the one she'd left in London, it sounded like him, even though it didn't sound like him at all -- (her head was starting to hurt) -- then . . . . this was the Enemy. The one who --
The one who killed Jack.
"I don't know," she said. And she started to back away. Turned and started to run.
She nearly knocked over a small boy, knocked the ball he'd been playing with right out of his hands. "Oh, sorry," she said, retrieving it. She looked back. The policeman wasn't following her. He was just staring, looking as confused as she felt.
The little boy looked quite cross when she handed the ball back. "What do you mean, you don't know?" he said.
Rose just stared at him. He started bouncing the ball again. "That was Welsh you were speaking a minute ago," he said. His words were a little bit sing-song, as if the boy were really playing a counting game. "You're in Wales, then, I'd guess. Not much call for it outside of Wales. Not much call for it in Wales, really, now that I think of it."
"I -- yeah. Wales, yeah."
"But you don't know where, exactly? Well, just keep talking while I pinpoint you."
"No, don't," Rose said, and she ran off again.
Why did I do that? she thought. Luring him here -- that was the Doctor's plan, wasn't it? So why not tell him where she was?
She didn't want to admit it. But even if the man here in Wales was the Doctor, and even if the man she'd been in the TARDIS with since the Game Station was his enemy -- she didn't want him hurt.
She'd forgotten. She'd forgotten how -- how dangerous the old Doctor could be, but she remembered it all now. She remembered staring down the barrel of his gun, talking him down from killing a single Dalek. What would he do, she wondered, to a man who'd stolen his TARDIS?
What was going to happen to the rabbit in the moon?
She stopped running. She leaned against the corner of a building, dizzy, exhausted, sick at heart.
A hand on her shoulder. She jumped.
"Are you sure you're all right?" It was the same old woman she'd talked to before. "Are you in some kind of trouble?"
"No, I -- " Rose looked up at her. "Actually, yeah. I think I am, yeah."
"What kind of trouble?"
"There's -- there's these two men, and -- they're telling me different things, and I don't know who I can trust -- "
"Just calm down," the woman said. "I can help you."
Rose's eyes filled with tears again. Her shoulders went slack with relief. "Really? You can?"
"Of course I can." The old woman squeezed her shoulder tighter. Looked deep into Rose's eyes.
"Just tell me where you are," the old woman said.
* * * *
Rose finally found her way to the hotel. She hadn't spoken to anyone else, looked anyone in the eye, read a single sign, barely looked up. She wanted nothing more than a hot shower, and sleep. To curl up under the covers and not think about any of this.
She got to the hotel just as Mickey was walking out.
"Where are you going?" she asked him, and it sounded a little more desperate than she'd meant for it to.
"Back to London." He looked disgusted. He shifted his overnight bag from one shoulder to the other. "The Doctor wants me out from underfoot. He says he wants me somewhere safe, but I know what he meant."
"Mickey -- " She reached for his hand. "You don't have to go, if you don't want -- "
"I don't want to stay, do I? You've got each other back, and that's all that matters to you."
"Please don't be like this. Not right now." She looked at him closely. "This -- it is you, right?"
"What d'you mean?"
"You're you, aren't you?"
He just frowned and nodded.
"Okay," she said, and she laughed a small laugh. "Just making sure. You wouldn't believe the afternoon I've had." She looked at him again, not able to shake the memory -- a year ago? Longer? Sitting in a restaurant with something that just looked like Mickey, a fever-bright sheen to its skin, skin that had turned out to be plastic. Did everyone turn out not to be who she expected them to be, eventually? Life was like that, sometimes. But never like this.
"Probably not." Mickey said. He smiled, a little. "Look, Rose, just -- take care of yourself, all right? I'll see you when you get home. Whenever that is."
"Yeah. You, too," Rose said, a little abstractedly. She stared up at the window of their hotel room, looking at the light spilling out into the cool dark. Then she flashed him a quick smile. "Sure you're all right by yourself?"
"I manage," Mickey said, with a dull smile. "Here. Here's the hotel key." He dropped it into her hand. "I'll see you."
And then he walked off down the street.
Rose watched him go, and he turned back and waved. She waved back and went inside.
As soon as she was out of sight, the smile on Mickey's face went out, light-switch sudden. He kept walking, looked back again to make sure she was gone, and then ducked down an alley.
He swung the overnight bag off his shoulder and threw it into a dumpster, one smooth motion.
He kept walking. When he was deep enough into the alley that he couldn't be seen from the street, he covered his face with his hands. He could feel his features running and changing like melting wax. His skin grew pale in the dark, his hair golden.
He smiled with shifting lips. The Enemy was coming closer. He could feel it.
* * * *
Somewhere not too far away, there was a deep sound, shuddering and grinding, rising and falling. You might think, if you heard it, that it was the sound of ancient engines, powered by forces strange and not subtle and unknown, driven on far past the point of exhaustion, far past the point they should have been put out of service. Or you might think it was the sound of air and wind, of Time, being indelicately torn apart, shoved to one side, to make way for a sudden intrusion.
The sound died, picked up and echoed by startled and scattered gulls along the bay, and something now stood solid that hadn't been there a moment before.
Inside, the Doctor frowned at the controls, at the coordinates he'd set. Cardiff. Again.
Well -- this was where she was. He thought. Somewhere close by, at any rate. He hadn't been able to get her to stay on the line, as it were, long enough to trace the call. As it were. She'd seemed quite rattled by it, actually. Next time maybe he should take an ad out in the Times.
He grabbed his long tan coat off the hatstand and shrugged into it. Not that there was going to be a next time. He wasn't going to let that girl out of his sight from now on.
He let himself out, never quite noticing a single light on the console, pulsing, persistent. A long-unused circuit in the TARDIS systems picking up something -- something like an echo, a reflection.
If he'd seen that light before he went out, he would have known. He would have been prepared.
But instead, he closed the doors, and locked them behind him.
* * * *
Where to start? He wandered the streets. He didn't even know where to start looking, where to go for help. That was all right. That would have been too much like having a plan. He tried not to think too much about the trouble she said she was in. Until he knew what kind of trouble it was, it was best not to panic. Once he understood what was going on, then he could panic.
For now, wandering seemed helpful. Cardiff wasn't that big, was it? Perhaps if he just roamed the streets, they'd just run across each other.
Not the most reasonable course of action, arguably. But, of course, that was exactly what happened.
He turned a corner, and there she was.
He allowed himself one small, sly smile. "Your mother and I have been quite worried about you, young lady," he said, with mock severity.
"Doctor!" Rose's face lit up, and she threw her arms around his neck.
He held her close for a moment.
This was too simple, said the nagging little voice in the back of his head.
"Hello, Rose," he said, letting her go, still smiling. "So what's this about you being in some kind of trouble?"
"No, it's okay. I got away from him. 'Sides, you're here now." She flashed him a brilliant smile. "Let's get out of here, yeah?"
"Well, yes, of course," he said. He reached out and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "Are you sure you're all right? Who did you get away from?"
He reached out and took her hand.
As soon as he took it, he remembered, quite strongly, the first moment he'd taken her hand, telling her to run. He remembered all of it -- everything that happened since that moment. Perfect clarity, every detail.
He shook his head to clear it. Put his other hand on the brick wall.
"Are you all right?" Rose asked suddenly.
"I think so, yes," the Doctor said. He closed his eyes. "I just suddenly feel like -- like someone's taken the card catalog for my mind and dumped all the drawers out on the floor at once." His eyes snapped open. "Have you ever felt like that?"
She stared at him. "No," she said simply.
"Hmmm."
"So, which way back to the TARDIS?"
" . . . Not far. Come on," he said.
She was still holding his hand as they walked. He stared down at it. "So what did happen to you?" he said. "You never did show up at Jackie's."
"No," she said. "I was kidnapped."
"That sounds dramatic."
"Don't even joke. It was terrible. There was this bloke who claimed he was you."
"Really? Did he look like me?"
"No -- well, yeah, but he looked like the old you, not you now." She squeezed his hand tighter.
"Really. Are you sure I'm me, then?" A department store basement. Moving mannequins, all around. All of it so fresh in his mind. Her hand in his. Run. "You're sure I'm not made out of plastic?"
She looked at him, uncertain for a moment, then grinned. She reached up and rapped his forehead with her knuckles. "Nope. Bonehead."
He grinned. "Satisfied?"
"Well, you're not an Auton, at any rate."
He nodded, still smiling.
A few more streets, a few more turns, and they stood in front of the TARDIS. Its windows glowed warmly, like a hearth.
"Well, here we are, then," the Doctor said breezily.
"Here we are," Rose agreed.
"Well, go on, then," the Doctor said. His smile turned suddenly cold. "Open it."
"What do you mean?"
"I gave you a key, didn't I?"
"Well, yeah, of course you did. The first time we came back to my mum's, remember?"
"Oh, quite clearly. So go on. Let us in."
Rose frowned and smiled at the same time. She made a show of patting down her pockets. "Haven't got it," she said. "Must've left it in my room."
"Really. Like you left your phone, I suppose."
"Yeah."
He took a step forward. "Would you mind telling me -- if it's not too much trouble, that is -- if the real Rose Tyler is still alive?"
Cross-posted to
dwfiction, new_who, sortofyeah, and time_and_chips
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Date: 2006-08-12 03:26 am (UTC)