Don't Blink - 15/?
Title: Don't Blink - 15/?
Characters: Rose, Ten
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb is the best beta in the world
AN: janine_moony gets credit for this chapter. She though it would be cool if they met Kathy, and I have to agree that she was right.
~ One~ Two~ Three~ Four~ Five~ Six~ Seven~ Eight~ Nine~ Ten~ Eleven~ Twelve
~ Thirteen~ Fourteen~
The flat was dark and quiet while Rose slept. With the television programs switching off at midnight the Doctor had nothing much to keep himself occupied. He found himself pacing around the kitchen. Too tense to stay still.
He had kissed Rose. Actually kissed her! He had behaved so utterly unlike himself that he wasn’t sure he knew himself any longer. And she hadn’t seemed to mind! She had kissed him goodnight. Left him. And now he was in turmoil.
It was the clothes, he decided abruptly. He was wearing these ridiculous human garments, and they were making him forget himself. He strode down the hallway to the bedroom, determined to open the wardrobe and get his suit back. The door was open slightly, and he came to a halt as he opened it and spotted Rose in the bed. Light streamed in from the streetlights outside, highlighting the blonde hair across the pillow. She was sound asleep, wearing a pink nightgown that revealed more than it should have.
Cursing under his breath, the Doctor wheeled around. Back in the kitchen he glared at his trousers and shirt. He didn’t dare go into that room while Rose was in that bed. He’d already lost all restraint, and he wasn’t sure what he might do next. If his people could see him now, fretting over a mere human girl, they would exile him on the spot. Which was rather ironic, considering that somewhere in London, one of his former selves was already exiled on the spot, consulting with UNIT.
“Hell of a conundrum,” he muttered to himself.
As he was pondering what had become of his life since meeting Rose Tyler, he was distracted by a loud noise coming from somewhere outside the flat. This part of London was not overly loud at night, and their neighbors were not the sort to throw loud parties. The Doctor waited a moment before starting to pace around the room again. He needed to snap out of this, he needed to forget that he had ever kissed Rose Tyler- was that another noise?
It was nearly two in the morning. Most people were sound asleep. The Doctor absently checked for his sonic screwdriver as he walked to the door. He listened for a moment before opening it. The hallways were dark, lit only by a few lights on the walls. Another sound, this time coming from downstairs in the lobby, drew him out. He carefully locked the door behind him - no one would get in to Rose while she slept - and moved to the stairs.
A few more muffled sounds, what might have been a human yell, quickly stifled. The Doctor rushed down the steps, scanning in all directions. A door slammed shut somewhere, and as he reached the lobby, looking all around, the noises stopped. Just...stopped.
He stood there, in front of the mailboxes, waiting. Nothing else. No sounds, no thumps, no yells. Whatever it was, it was gone.
“It could’ve just been a cat,” Rose said the next morning when he told her what had happened.
“A cat?” he repeated skeptically. “Rose, a cat would not have made those sounds. Cats meow and, and, purr and hiss.”
“Well, cats also grow to be life size nurse-nuns,” she pointed out. “Maybe there was one that’s just living up to its potential a few million years early.”
He stared at her.
“It could happen!” Rose ruined the effect of her statement by giggling. “Doctor, I’m sure it was nothing. These places make all sorts of noises at night. Sometimes it was impossible to go to sleep back on the estate.”
With no other evidence to show he was forced to drop the issue. “What have we got planned for today?” he asked instead.
Rose glanced at him in surprise. It was Saturday morning, and she’d spent it the same as the other Saturdays they’d spent in London. A quick whirl through the flat to tidy it up. A trip to the laundry and back to wash their clothes - Rose did these by herself; the Doctor still refused to be so domestic, even if she did threaten to wash a red sock with his white shirts - and putting the clothes away. And then an afternoon of adventure. There was a lot to see in London that Rose had never seen before, and the Doctor delighted in showing it all to her.
“Just the laundry left to do. Once it’s put away we’re on our own.”
“A pity we weren’t here a few centuries earlier,” he commented as he helped her fold the newly washed clothes on the couch. “They had the most amazing menagerie here, Rose!”
Rose snatched a towel away from him. Her idea of folding was very different from his. The Doctor preferred to just stuff items in drawers until he needed them, where she liked them neatly folded so she didn’t have to iron later.
“What, like a zoo? I’ve been to the zoo before.”
“A zoo! No, no, Rose. Much more than!” he corrected her. “By the early 1800’s there were lions, tigers, hyenas, bears.”
“Oh my,” Rose murmured.
“The monarchies all loved the idea of wild animals in display,” the Doctor continued, ignoring her interruption. “They were kept private for centuries until the animals finally went on display for the public to view.”
“Sounds like a zoo,” she pointed out in a sing-song voice.
“Maybe, but does a zoo charge a dog or a cat as admission?”
“Why would they do that? Did they need regular animals?”
The Doctor snorted. “Hardly. No spaying or neutering going on back then. Far too many strays around. No, they were for feeding to the lions.”
“What?” Rose was horrified.
“Or you could pay three pence,” the Doctor added hastily. “That’s what I did, of course. Never supplied a dog or cat myself.”
“That is disgusting,” Rose stated firmly, snapping her towel as she folded it. “Disgusting.”
“Well, we could skip the zoo,” he allowed.
“I think we should,” she said primly.
“Well, then, I could always get a head start on tracking down the next person to come back from the future.”
“That’s Michael J. Fox.”
“The next person to come back who’s not in a DeLorean,” the Doctor corrected himself with a grin. “Back from our future. Sally Sparrow-”
“You know what I want to do?” Rose paid no attention to what he was saying. “I want to find Kathy Nightingale.”
“Who?” the Doctor asked blankly.
“Sally Sparrow’s friend! The one who got sent back to 1920 by the Angels!”
“Oh, the letter,” he remembered.
“Yeah.” It had been on her mind for days now. Rose had taken to carrying the photos around with her.
“We can’t interrupt her timeline that way, Rose.”
“What is there to interrupt? It’s already happened to her. She’s living here knowing that Sally Sparrow won’t be born for another twenty years!”
“But why do you want to find her?”
“To, to see her! To see how happy she really is living in the past.”
He looked at her quickly. “Do you want to see how she is or how she managed to do it?”
Rose flushed. “That’s not it.”
“Do you not trust me to get you back where we belong?” His words were quiet, and he was careful not to look at her.
So much of their relationship went unsaid. She still didn’t know his true feelings for her. She had never been brave enough to tell him. The kiss they’d shared last night was ignored as though it had never happened, and she just wasn’t brave enough to force the issue right then.
She didn’t answer. “I’d just like to see her, is all.”
She hadn’t answered his question, and the Doctor let it drop. “She could be anywhere in England.”
Rose went to retrieve the envelope with Kathy’s letter. “We’ll start here.”
The Doctor gave in and sat down on the couch. “Where’s the postmark?”
“Hull.”
“Hull,” he mused. “So she landed there and never left, eh? Surprising.”
“Why? Sounds like she met a bloke she liked and stayed.”
“A modern young woman, just like you? If you landed in the countryside wouldn’t you try to get back to London?”
“If I met a nice man that I fell in love with and who loved me I’d want to stay with him.”
Her words hung between them, almost a challenge. He held out his hand for the envelope.
She glanced around. “It should be easy to find her. Is there a phone book here?” The flat was furnished, but somewhat reliably. There had been no knives in the cutlery drawer, but plenty of Barbie dolls wearing crocheted dresses stuck into a roll of toilet paper. Rose had consigned those dolls to a box under the bed.
“Nope. We have the next best thing, though.”
“What?”
The Doctor picked up the telephone. “Directory assistance.”
Rose smiled. “Good thing one of us has lived in this time before.”
Something flashed across his face and was gone. “I don’t know that I’d call it a good thing. It set me on my fate, at any rate.”
Whatever he had been thinking Rose never found out, because the operator connected him before she could ask.
“Yes, operator! Kathy Wainwright. Hull. Yes, Hull. In Yorkshire.”
There was a very long wait while the operator looked for the information. The Doctor wrote it down when he finally had it.
“Here we are. It’s a few hours away from here,” he warned Rose as he hung up the phone. “Same address as on the letter.”
“Then we should go as soon as we can.”
“Wait. Let me just...” He gestured to his clothes.
Rose stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Rose Tyler, we are about to meet someone who links our fate to Sally Sparrow’s! Momentous occasion.”
“All right.” She wasn’t quite used to him wearing these contemporary clothes, but she had been enjoying it. He looked much younger in the shirts and trousers they’d picked out for him, more like the student he was pretending to be rather than a centuries-old alien.
He had never felt so relieved to put the suit on. He shot the cuffs of his sleeves down past the jacket sleeves and straightened his tie carefully in the mirror. Not since that first Christmas Day had this suit felt so right. Part of him, the part that he usually tried not to listen to, said that he was wearing the suit as armor against Rose. Which was ridiculous, of course.
He heard Rose talking on the phone, evidently inquiring on the best way to get from London to Hull. He buttoned his jacket, undid the last one, and stared at his reflection. He felt like himself again, but he was aware that there was something different as well.
He had kissed Rose Tyler last night. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back, and he had no idea what to do next. To do what he really wanted to was impossible. It would be taking advantage of her at a time when she had no other friends. It would be wrong.
“It’s wrong,” he told his reflection sternly. “It’s wrong and you know it.”
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked from the doorway.
He moved away from the mirror to take her hand and lead her out of the room. “The soap they used at cleaners,” he said casually. “Makes the material all stiff.”
She glanced at his arm. “Looks the same to me.” She rubbed the material between her fingers. “See?”
“Yeah.” He covered her hand briefly with his. Her eyes met his and they smiled, and suddenly the unease and tension between them vanished. “Did you get the train schedule?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just give me a sec.” And she pulled away from him.
“Where are you going?”
She grinned at him over her shoulder as she hurried to the bedroom, that grin with her tongue between her teeth that made him want to grab her and kiss her again. “I just need to change my clothes!”
He was waiting by the door for her. “I thought we didn’t need to change?” he asked pointedly as they walked downstairs to the lobby.
“No,” she said very carefully. “I thought you shouldn’t change into your suit. I can’t go meeting people dressed in jeans! It’s not polite.”
“It’s not?” He was startled by this news. People seemed to wear jeans all over the universe.
“Well, it’ll probably be all right in a few years,” she conceded, “but right now it’s not nice to wear them in public unless you’re weeding the flowers or something.”
He had never paid attention to the clothing of the people he traveled among, but now that he thought about it, he realized she was right. Had he forgotten the formality of England in the 1960’s? Or had he simply never cared?
“Hello, Mrs. MacMurray!” Rose’s words broke into his thoughts, and he was grateful to tear his mind away from images of past companions.
“Hello!” he echoed Rose, raising a hand at their landlady. Mrs. MacMurray was a tiny old woman with curly white hair. She was standing by the door of her flat, reading over the morning paper. She wore a faded pink housecoat and white slippers.
“Hello there,” she said with a smile. “Going out to enjoy the sunshine?”
“Yes,” Rose said cheerfully. “Make sure you do the same!”
Mrs. MacMurray smiled and chuckled as the Doctor opened the door for Rose and ushered her out with a hand on her back. “I’m more of a night owl myself.”
“See you later!” Rose called.
“A night owl,” the Doctor muttered. “More like a peeping tom.”
“Doctor!”
“Peeping thomasina,” he amended.
“She’s a very nice old lady,” Rose said sternly.
He was tired of Mrs. MacMurray. It was a lovely day, and Rose was holding tightly to his hand and looking absurdly pretty in a green dress with a low, square neck. A matching belt was fastened tightly round her waist, and the charms he had given her hung around her neck. He was filled with a sense of happiness that he hadn’t felt in a while.
“The train station’s a few streets over.” Rose pointed with the hand that wasn’t being held by the Doctor. Her bag dangled from her wrist.
He glanced down at her white shoes. They were very pretty, with a high heel and a dainty strap across each foot, but he doubted whether they were suitable for walking long distances.
“Will you be able to walk all that way?” he asked in concern.
“Doctor, I’ve run for my life in shoes less comfortable than these.”
“As long as you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” And Rose set out to prove it by walking jauntily along.
He couldn’t help but take notice of the many glances she received from men as they passed by. Rose exuded beauty and kindness and happiness, and her smile was infectious. The Doctor frowned and pulled her a little closer to him.
Rose loved walking in London these days. The sights and sounds were still so new for her. Songs she used to classify as oldies were being heard for the first time, and the Beatles were still regarded as legends. It had made her sad when the Doctor had reminded her that they were to break up the following year.
She nudged the Doctor. “See? No one’s wearing jeans out.”
“A few people are.” He nodded to a group of young men, walking by in a huddle. One winked at Rose. The Doctor glared ferociously and the unfortunate young man quickly turned away.
“Yes, but they’re just young guys.” And Rose considered the matter dropped. In the next second she stopped, releasing his hand to clutch at his arm.
“Doctor!”
“What is it?”
She raised a shaking hand to point across the street. He followed her line of vision and started violently.
Sixteen
Characters: Rose, Ten
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb is the best beta in the world
AN: janine_moony gets credit for this chapter. She though it would be cool if they met Kathy, and I have to agree that she was right.
~ One~ Two~ Three~ Four~ Five~ Six~ Seven~ Eight~ Nine~ Ten~ Eleven~ Twelve
~ Thirteen~ Fourteen~
The flat was dark and quiet while Rose slept. With the television programs switching off at midnight the Doctor had nothing much to keep himself occupied. He found himself pacing around the kitchen. Too tense to stay still.
He had kissed Rose. Actually kissed her! He had behaved so utterly unlike himself that he wasn’t sure he knew himself any longer. And she hadn’t seemed to mind! She had kissed him goodnight. Left him. And now he was in turmoil.
It was the clothes, he decided abruptly. He was wearing these ridiculous human garments, and they were making him forget himself. He strode down the hallway to the bedroom, determined to open the wardrobe and get his suit back. The door was open slightly, and he came to a halt as he opened it and spotted Rose in the bed. Light streamed in from the streetlights outside, highlighting the blonde hair across the pillow. She was sound asleep, wearing a pink nightgown that revealed more than it should have.
Cursing under his breath, the Doctor wheeled around. Back in the kitchen he glared at his trousers and shirt. He didn’t dare go into that room while Rose was in that bed. He’d already lost all restraint, and he wasn’t sure what he might do next. If his people could see him now, fretting over a mere human girl, they would exile him on the spot. Which was rather ironic, considering that somewhere in London, one of his former selves was already exiled on the spot, consulting with UNIT.
“Hell of a conundrum,” he muttered to himself.
As he was pondering what had become of his life since meeting Rose Tyler, he was distracted by a loud noise coming from somewhere outside the flat. This part of London was not overly loud at night, and their neighbors were not the sort to throw loud parties. The Doctor waited a moment before starting to pace around the room again. He needed to snap out of this, he needed to forget that he had ever kissed Rose Tyler- was that another noise?
It was nearly two in the morning. Most people were sound asleep. The Doctor absently checked for his sonic screwdriver as he walked to the door. He listened for a moment before opening it. The hallways were dark, lit only by a few lights on the walls. Another sound, this time coming from downstairs in the lobby, drew him out. He carefully locked the door behind him - no one would get in to Rose while she slept - and moved to the stairs.
A few more muffled sounds, what might have been a human yell, quickly stifled. The Doctor rushed down the steps, scanning in all directions. A door slammed shut somewhere, and as he reached the lobby, looking all around, the noises stopped. Just...stopped.
He stood there, in front of the mailboxes, waiting. Nothing else. No sounds, no thumps, no yells. Whatever it was, it was gone.
“It could’ve just been a cat,” Rose said the next morning when he told her what had happened.
“A cat?” he repeated skeptically. “Rose, a cat would not have made those sounds. Cats meow and, and, purr and hiss.”
“Well, cats also grow to be life size nurse-nuns,” she pointed out. “Maybe there was one that’s just living up to its potential a few million years early.”
He stared at her.
“It could happen!” Rose ruined the effect of her statement by giggling. “Doctor, I’m sure it was nothing. These places make all sorts of noises at night. Sometimes it was impossible to go to sleep back on the estate.”
With no other evidence to show he was forced to drop the issue. “What have we got planned for today?” he asked instead.
Rose glanced at him in surprise. It was Saturday morning, and she’d spent it the same as the other Saturdays they’d spent in London. A quick whirl through the flat to tidy it up. A trip to the laundry and back to wash their clothes - Rose did these by herself; the Doctor still refused to be so domestic, even if she did threaten to wash a red sock with his white shirts - and putting the clothes away. And then an afternoon of adventure. There was a lot to see in London that Rose had never seen before, and the Doctor delighted in showing it all to her.
“Just the laundry left to do. Once it’s put away we’re on our own.”
“A pity we weren’t here a few centuries earlier,” he commented as he helped her fold the newly washed clothes on the couch. “They had the most amazing menagerie here, Rose!”
Rose snatched a towel away from him. Her idea of folding was very different from his. The Doctor preferred to just stuff items in drawers until he needed them, where she liked them neatly folded so she didn’t have to iron later.
“What, like a zoo? I’ve been to the zoo before.”
“A zoo! No, no, Rose. Much more than!” he corrected her. “By the early 1800’s there were lions, tigers, hyenas, bears.”
“Oh my,” Rose murmured.
“The monarchies all loved the idea of wild animals in display,” the Doctor continued, ignoring her interruption. “They were kept private for centuries until the animals finally went on display for the public to view.”
“Sounds like a zoo,” she pointed out in a sing-song voice.
“Maybe, but does a zoo charge a dog or a cat as admission?”
“Why would they do that? Did they need regular animals?”
The Doctor snorted. “Hardly. No spaying or neutering going on back then. Far too many strays around. No, they were for feeding to the lions.”
“What?” Rose was horrified.
“Or you could pay three pence,” the Doctor added hastily. “That’s what I did, of course. Never supplied a dog or cat myself.”
“That is disgusting,” Rose stated firmly, snapping her towel as she folded it. “Disgusting.”
“Well, we could skip the zoo,” he allowed.
“I think we should,” she said primly.
“Well, then, I could always get a head start on tracking down the next person to come back from the future.”
“That’s Michael J. Fox.”
“The next person to come back who’s not in a DeLorean,” the Doctor corrected himself with a grin. “Back from our future. Sally Sparrow-”
“You know what I want to do?” Rose paid no attention to what he was saying. “I want to find Kathy Nightingale.”
“Who?” the Doctor asked blankly.
“Sally Sparrow’s friend! The one who got sent back to 1920 by the Angels!”
“Oh, the letter,” he remembered.
“Yeah.” It had been on her mind for days now. Rose had taken to carrying the photos around with her.
“We can’t interrupt her timeline that way, Rose.”
“What is there to interrupt? It’s already happened to her. She’s living here knowing that Sally Sparrow won’t be born for another twenty years!”
“But why do you want to find her?”
“To, to see her! To see how happy she really is living in the past.”
He looked at her quickly. “Do you want to see how she is or how she managed to do it?”
Rose flushed. “That’s not it.”
“Do you not trust me to get you back where we belong?” His words were quiet, and he was careful not to look at her.
So much of their relationship went unsaid. She still didn’t know his true feelings for her. She had never been brave enough to tell him. The kiss they’d shared last night was ignored as though it had never happened, and she just wasn’t brave enough to force the issue right then.
She didn’t answer. “I’d just like to see her, is all.”
She hadn’t answered his question, and the Doctor let it drop. “She could be anywhere in England.”
Rose went to retrieve the envelope with Kathy’s letter. “We’ll start here.”
The Doctor gave in and sat down on the couch. “Where’s the postmark?”
“Hull.”
“Hull,” he mused. “So she landed there and never left, eh? Surprising.”
“Why? Sounds like she met a bloke she liked and stayed.”
“A modern young woman, just like you? If you landed in the countryside wouldn’t you try to get back to London?”
“If I met a nice man that I fell in love with and who loved me I’d want to stay with him.”
Her words hung between them, almost a challenge. He held out his hand for the envelope.
She glanced around. “It should be easy to find her. Is there a phone book here?” The flat was furnished, but somewhat reliably. There had been no knives in the cutlery drawer, but plenty of Barbie dolls wearing crocheted dresses stuck into a roll of toilet paper. Rose had consigned those dolls to a box under the bed.
“Nope. We have the next best thing, though.”
“What?”
The Doctor picked up the telephone. “Directory assistance.”
Rose smiled. “Good thing one of us has lived in this time before.”
Something flashed across his face and was gone. “I don’t know that I’d call it a good thing. It set me on my fate, at any rate.”
Whatever he had been thinking Rose never found out, because the operator connected him before she could ask.
“Yes, operator! Kathy Wainwright. Hull. Yes, Hull. In Yorkshire.”
There was a very long wait while the operator looked for the information. The Doctor wrote it down when he finally had it.
“Here we are. It’s a few hours away from here,” he warned Rose as he hung up the phone. “Same address as on the letter.”
“Then we should go as soon as we can.”
“Wait. Let me just...” He gestured to his clothes.
Rose stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Rose Tyler, we are about to meet someone who links our fate to Sally Sparrow’s! Momentous occasion.”
“All right.” She wasn’t quite used to him wearing these contemporary clothes, but she had been enjoying it. He looked much younger in the shirts and trousers they’d picked out for him, more like the student he was pretending to be rather than a centuries-old alien.
He had never felt so relieved to put the suit on. He shot the cuffs of his sleeves down past the jacket sleeves and straightened his tie carefully in the mirror. Not since that first Christmas Day had this suit felt so right. Part of him, the part that he usually tried not to listen to, said that he was wearing the suit as armor against Rose. Which was ridiculous, of course.
He heard Rose talking on the phone, evidently inquiring on the best way to get from London to Hull. He buttoned his jacket, undid the last one, and stared at his reflection. He felt like himself again, but he was aware that there was something different as well.
He had kissed Rose Tyler last night. He had kissed her, and she had kissed him back, and he had no idea what to do next. To do what he really wanted to was impossible. It would be taking advantage of her at a time when she had no other friends. It would be wrong.
“It’s wrong,” he told his reflection sternly. “It’s wrong and you know it.”
“What’s wrong?” Rose asked from the doorway.
He moved away from the mirror to take her hand and lead her out of the room. “The soap they used at cleaners,” he said casually. “Makes the material all stiff.”
She glanced at his arm. “Looks the same to me.” She rubbed the material between her fingers. “See?”
“Yeah.” He covered her hand briefly with his. Her eyes met his and they smiled, and suddenly the unease and tension between them vanished. “Did you get the train schedule?” he asked.
“Yeah. Just give me a sec.” And she pulled away from him.
“Where are you going?”
She grinned at him over her shoulder as she hurried to the bedroom, that grin with her tongue between her teeth that made him want to grab her and kiss her again. “I just need to change my clothes!”
He was waiting by the door for her. “I thought we didn’t need to change?” he asked pointedly as they walked downstairs to the lobby.
“No,” she said very carefully. “I thought you shouldn’t change into your suit. I can’t go meeting people dressed in jeans! It’s not polite.”
“It’s not?” He was startled by this news. People seemed to wear jeans all over the universe.
“Well, it’ll probably be all right in a few years,” she conceded, “but right now it’s not nice to wear them in public unless you’re weeding the flowers or something.”
He had never paid attention to the clothing of the people he traveled among, but now that he thought about it, he realized she was right. Had he forgotten the formality of England in the 1960’s? Or had he simply never cared?
“Hello, Mrs. MacMurray!” Rose’s words broke into his thoughts, and he was grateful to tear his mind away from images of past companions.
“Hello!” he echoed Rose, raising a hand at their landlady. Mrs. MacMurray was a tiny old woman with curly white hair. She was standing by the door of her flat, reading over the morning paper. She wore a faded pink housecoat and white slippers.
“Hello there,” she said with a smile. “Going out to enjoy the sunshine?”
“Yes,” Rose said cheerfully. “Make sure you do the same!”
Mrs. MacMurray smiled and chuckled as the Doctor opened the door for Rose and ushered her out with a hand on her back. “I’m more of a night owl myself.”
“See you later!” Rose called.
“A night owl,” the Doctor muttered. “More like a peeping tom.”
“Doctor!”
“Peeping thomasina,” he amended.
“She’s a very nice old lady,” Rose said sternly.
He was tired of Mrs. MacMurray. It was a lovely day, and Rose was holding tightly to his hand and looking absurdly pretty in a green dress with a low, square neck. A matching belt was fastened tightly round her waist, and the charms he had given her hung around her neck. He was filled with a sense of happiness that he hadn’t felt in a while.
“The train station’s a few streets over.” Rose pointed with the hand that wasn’t being held by the Doctor. Her bag dangled from her wrist.
He glanced down at her white shoes. They were very pretty, with a high heel and a dainty strap across each foot, but he doubted whether they were suitable for walking long distances.
“Will you be able to walk all that way?” he asked in concern.
“Doctor, I’ve run for my life in shoes less comfortable than these.”
“As long as you’re okay.”
“I’m okay.” And Rose set out to prove it by walking jauntily along.
He couldn’t help but take notice of the many glances she received from men as they passed by. Rose exuded beauty and kindness and happiness, and her smile was infectious. The Doctor frowned and pulled her a little closer to him.
Rose loved walking in London these days. The sights and sounds were still so new for her. Songs she used to classify as oldies were being heard for the first time, and the Beatles were still regarded as legends. It had made her sad when the Doctor had reminded her that they were to break up the following year.
She nudged the Doctor. “See? No one’s wearing jeans out.”
“A few people are.” He nodded to a group of young men, walking by in a huddle. One winked at Rose. The Doctor glared ferociously and the unfortunate young man quickly turned away.
“Yes, but they’re just young guys.” And Rose considered the matter dropped. In the next second she stopped, releasing his hand to clutch at his arm.
“Doctor!”
“What is it?”
She raised a shaking hand to point across the street. He followed her line of vision and started violently.
Sixteen