To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 2 (2/11)
Title: To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 2 (2/11)
Authors:ladychi and
the_tenzo
Beta:
spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for
unfolded73 and
fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays (except for Sunday, 17 May, to celebrate
fid_gin's birthday). and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1
The part-human Doctor, with his fully-human circulatory system, shivered and pulled the duvet up again, over himself and the two others; but he found that, quite uncharacteristically, he couldn't seem to fall asleep. In the few weeks since his creation, he'd discovered that the sensation of a human brain being flooded with post-coital serotonin was perhaps the only thing to compete with the pleasure of the main event itself. He had learned to relish it, to shrug off Rose's gentle teasings about men always falling asleep so quickly after (and to ignore the unspoken further implication that this was another trait about which the other Doctor could not be mocked).
Now, however, his eyes immediately popped open again every time he tried to close them. He felt his nakedness keenly, and he felt exposed. Rose was snuggled warmly and contentedly against his back, his duplicate on the other side of her, all lined up like three peas in a pod. The other Doctor made occasional murmured sounds of ease, and Rose's breathing slowed, then evened out.
The Doctor got quietly out of bed and gathered the remains of his blue suit, strewn about the room here and there. He very carefully avoided the inevitably wakeful gaze of the other man, knowing full well that Time Lord biology didn't succumb to such weakness as letting a single neurotransmitter dictate his actions.
Back in his own rooms, he let the shower fog the bathroom up before he entered to stand under it. He quite liked the configuration of this room as a very normal, very human, very 21st century en-suite. He'd told Rose that he felt it kept him grounded, but perhaps it was more about getting practice, for that inevitable day when he'd-
He heard the door open and shut, and the person doing it wasn't trying to be at all stealthy. "Couldn't sleep?" came the voice of his twin.
The Doctor sighed and turned the hot water up just a bit more before answering. "Taking a page from your book, I guess."
"You know it's just a matter of biology. It's not a judgment."
"Of course I know that." He leaned his head against the tile, which remained cool to the touch. "You've left her alone."
"You left us alone first," the other Doctor said irritably.
"I can't leave you alone if you're together. That, by definition, is not 'alone.'"
The door to the shower stall opened, letting a blast of cool air in and making the Doctor recoil. The other man stood regarding him, trousers wrinkled, shirt-tails untucked and tie untied. His hair was standing up in all directions.
"Oi, a little privacy, if you please!" the Doctor protested.
The other Doctor just snorted derisively. "Are you having me on? We are, effectively, the same man, and we have just both made love, at the same time, to the same woman. I think me seeing you all pink and wrinkly in the shower is the least of your concerns in the privacy department."
Hearing it stated in such a matter-of-fact way reintroduced the confusing swirl of emotions that had so plagued him during their encounter earlier.
"I wouldn't barge in on you, you know," he said, and then immediately regretted it.
The other Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Oh no, you wouldn't just walk in on me and Rose together at all, would you? Nope, never ever-I must have dreamed that happening last week. And another thing you'd never do is get such a raging knob-on from seeing us together that I could see it all the way from the bed, in the dark. You'd never do that either, would you?"
The Doctor was speechless, rooted to the spot and opening and closing his mouth under the stream of water, like a guppy.
"Yeah, I thought not," the other man said, doing up the last couple of buttons on his shirt and tucking it in. "I never thought I'd be such a bloody great prude as a human." He sounded disappointed, but with that singular edge of ironic pity which comes with being disappointed in oneself.
"I'm not a prude," the Doctor protested, not even really knowing why he was bothering. There are few things more futile than arguing with yourself.
"I'd rather think that's your problem, frankly, because I know what the alternative is-you can't hide things from me, let me remind you."
The Doctor wrenched the shower door free from his duplicate's hand and shut it again. "Leave me alone," he demanded.
"There's that word again," the other Doctor said flatly, and left.
***
There was nothing wrong, the Doctor thought viciously as he stared at his closet, with wanting to be alone. He'd been alone before. He'd spent centuries alone, if he added up all the years he'd gone through time and space without a companion. And what was so bloody hard to understand about the fact that it had been disconcerting to wake up and find himself in a human body, with human emotions and human... chemicals?
If he'd woken up, having split into two Time Lords, it wouldn't have been this awkward. Or it might have been. He sighed. There was no telling what it would have been like if he'd woken up with two hearts instead of just the one, and there was really no use trying to contemplate it. What was done was done.
He slipped on underpants, then trousers, and then a vest. He was reaching for a black t-shirt when the urge hit him to just walk out. He had lost Rose before, and the pain had been immeasurable. But this... this confusion and ache and misery, it was almost worse.
The mobile phone on the dresser seemed to call his name. Just once, he longed to talk to Donna. She would understand-she always had understood. She would have something practical to say, something useful. She would have told him what to do. Donna always knew what everyone else should be doing, and, while a quality that had occasionally been less than desirable in the past, it would be reassuring now. To know.
Binary binary binary binary... You can't ever talk to her again, Doctor. I mean it. We both know it's for the best. If you talk to her again, if she remembers us, she's dead. All right?
"All right," the Doctor whispered wearily to his own memory. "Yeah."
He pulled the shirt over his vest but didn't even bother with his jacket, let alone the coat Rose had recently had made for him ("He needs one just to look cool, but you and I actually need to keep warm."). He padded barefoot down the hallway, into the console room and out the blue double-doors to the outside world, imagining that he was being sneaky but knowing that no one was actually looking for him anyway.
They'd landed in London, still a favorite destination of theirs despite everything that had happened the last time they'd been in town. They'd stopped over in Hyde Park in time for spring flowers, and the Doctor wiggled his toes appreciatively in the cool grass. As a Time Lord, he hadn't done nearly enough barefoot walking, he decided. He might never wear shoes again.
The moon and a couple bright stars were still faintly visible in the sky despite the late morning hour, and he turned his face upwards towards them. They shifted imperceptibly to the naked eye, but he could still feel their movements, with the part of him that remained something larger than just a human consciousness.
He took a moment to consider his unique position in time and space, to feel the coordinates come to life and weave themselves around him, but he was jarringly interrupted by the faint cry of a human girl. It was a cry of pain, and the Doctor could no more ignore it than he could ignore a distress signal from another ship. He took off running in the direction of the sound, towards a grove of trees.
He stepped on a branch and cursed under his breath, hopping for a bit and then resuming his pace, only this time with a careful eye on the ground so that it wouldn't happen again. The cry grew closer and closer until suddenly it stopped.
The Doctor halted too, whirling around. Some part of his brain began to scream at him to run, to go the other way. He'd never been too fond of that particular part of his brain, in any incarnation, and so he pressed onwards, deeper into the trees-but more cautiously now, feet pressing down heel to toe, breath carefully regulated.
The cries resumed, more of a whimper this time, and the Doctor picked up his pace until he saw her. She couldn't have been more than three years old, dressed in a frilly pink dress and huddled at the base of a tree.
"Hello there," the Doctor whispered. "What are you doing out here?"
"Waiting for you," the girl said in reply, her voice clear and decidedly free of tears. "Can I have my lolly now, misters?"
The Doctor felt his stomach sink, and before he could whirl around, he felt the heavy weight of something crash into the back of his skull. He fell forward, but held onto consciousness just long enough to see two pairs of black men's boots.
"Hit him again," said the cultured voice of a woman the Doctor felt sure he should recognize. "He's still awake."
"Oh, that's not necess-" Another solid hit, and the Doctor found himself submerged in darkness.
***
When Rose woke up, she found herself in bed with a Time Lord, rather than being sandwiched between her two Doctors as she had hoped. The Doctor was wearing a pair of glasses and studying some piece of gadgetry with a great deal of feigned interest. She could tell because he held the mass of wires and gears close to his face, but his eyes weren't focused.
"Doctor?"
"Mm?" He poked a bit of wire, as if to demonstrate to her that he was most definitely not lost in his thoughts rather than working on a very important piece of technology.
"Good morning. Is it morning?" She stretched and brought a bare foot out from under the covers to stroke the Doctor's calf through his suit trousers. "I can never tell."
"Morning's relative," the Doctor mumbled, most uncharacteristically not taking the opportunity to explain the mysteries of the time vortex, or the morning rituals on a half a dozen different planets.
"I guess that would explain why I can never tell," Rose laughed, sitting up and letting the duvet fall off of her bare chest, perhaps half-hoping that the Doctor would notice and stage a repeat performance of the night before. He continued to fiddle absently with the gizmo in his hands, however. "Where's the Doctor?"
He shrugged. "In his room, I reckon. He couldn't sleep."
"Really? That's weird. We'll have to try to wear him out more next time."
The Doctor finally looked over, his glasses fallen down the bridge of his nose a bit. "I'm not sure there's going to be a next time."
Rose suddenly felt inappropriately brazen in her nudity and drew the duvet up again. "Did he not... He looked like he was enjoying himself."
"You'll have to talk to him about it," the Doctor sniffed, making it clear that his part of this conversation was over.
"Yeah, I think I will." Rose leaned over the side of the bed looking for her night shirt but coming up empty. "Nothing is ever easy with you two, is it?" she said playfully over her shoulder as she entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her.
As she showered, she couldn't stop thinking about the night before, trying to play back her (admittedly hazy) memories of what had occurred. The human Doctor had appeared to enjoy himself, at least. There had been a few awkward moments, but-she sharply turned off the tap and brought her head against the cool white tile. She'd long since given up on contemplating the strangeness of her life too deeply, but for just one minute she longed for things to be simpler.
She tied one of the green towels hanging from the rack around her chest and knotted it securely. Maybe her efforts had hurt more than helped. For all of his willingness to tell her that he loved her in human form, he wasn't any easier to milk a confession of feelings from than his Time Lord counterpart. They'd figure out a way to be happy, all of them together. If it took Rose years, she would find a way for them all to be happy.
Ignoring the Doctor still lounging on her bed, she padded down the hallway in her towel and knocked on his door, which was halfway open. When she didn't get a response, she pushed it fully open and found he wasn't there. A quick look around the room revealed that wherever the Doctor was, he'd left in a hurry. His jacket hung from a rack on the door and a heavy brown coat was next to it. Several shirts were laid out on the bed, as though he hadn't been able to decide which one to wear.
Still, that wasn't worrisome. She often left her room in a state of disrepair. What really stopped Rose in her tracks was a pair of bright red Converse, laying side-by-side on the floor with socks next to them.
She quieted the voices inside of her head. They were, all three of them, accustomed for going for a bit of a walk in the TARDIS when they were upset. The halls and corridors of the ship were inherently soothing. In all likelihood, he was somewhere else aboard, which would explain his shoes being left in the middle of the floor.
"Did you have any luck?" the Doctor asked, putting aside the machine he'd been tinkering with.
"No," Rose said honestly, dropping the towel to the floor and rummaging around in her drawers for panties and a bra.
"Did you know, in Victorian times, the sight of a bare ankle was scandalous?" The Doctor asked, lying back on the bed to watch her with half-open eyes.
"Been there. Remember, we caused that big to-do at Lady Angeline's party?"
"Ah yes. The one time you didn't wear stockings. Just goes to show you, Rose. You should wear stockings as often as possible. And garters. I do love some garters."
"Is it your birthday?"
"Well... no."
"Then shut it," Rose teased. "Garters are the worst. Although, maybe..." She trailed off. The twinkle in the Doctor's eyes made her think that maybe the other Doctor would appreciate a pair of garters. She examined her lingerie drawer. If a bit of lace would drive him out of his grumpy mood...
"Listen, don't worry about him," the Doctor said firmly. "It's always... different. Waking up, finding yourself in a strange body. It's been hard for everyone. He'll figure it out. I always do."
"I still feel bad. It was my idea-maybe I didn't listen well enough to what he was saying," Rose said with a sigh. "I just hope I didn't make things worse."
"Did it make you happy?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her quizzically.
"Well, yeah. Bit... fantasy fulfilling, that. And hot," Rose said, blushing furiously.
"If it made you happy, then on some level, it made him happy."
Rose made an unhappy sound; that still wasn't good enough for her. "Could he still be on the TARDIS? I mean, is there a way to tell where he is on the ship?"
"Yeah," the Doctor swung his legs over the bed. "C'mon, then."
"Let me put on a shirt," Rose said, throwing open her closet.
"Do you have to?" The Doctor kissed her shoulder as he passed by.
When Rose made it to the console room, she found the Doctor bending over the on-board computer, his brow furrowed in something between disappointment and resignation.
"What is it, Doctor?" Rose looked over his shoulder at the monitor display, which was totally incomprehensible to her. "I can't read what it says; you're going to have to tell me."
There was a long pause while the Doctor tapped some keys and then shrugged, taking a step back.
"He's not here," the Doctor said flatly. "The Doctor has left the TARDIS."
Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11
Authors:ladychi and
the_tenzo
Beta:
spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for
unfolded73 and
fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays (except for Sunday, 17 May, to celebrate
fid_gin's birthday). and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1
The part-human Doctor, with his fully-human circulatory system, shivered and pulled the duvet up again, over himself and the two others; but he found that, quite uncharacteristically, he couldn't seem to fall asleep. In the few weeks since his creation, he'd discovered that the sensation of a human brain being flooded with post-coital serotonin was perhaps the only thing to compete with the pleasure of the main event itself. He had learned to relish it, to shrug off Rose's gentle teasings about men always falling asleep so quickly after (and to ignore the unspoken further implication that this was another trait about which the other Doctor could not be mocked).
Now, however, his eyes immediately popped open again every time he tried to close them. He felt his nakedness keenly, and he felt exposed. Rose was snuggled warmly and contentedly against his back, his duplicate on the other side of her, all lined up like three peas in a pod. The other Doctor made occasional murmured sounds of ease, and Rose's breathing slowed, then evened out.
The Doctor got quietly out of bed and gathered the remains of his blue suit, strewn about the room here and there. He very carefully avoided the inevitably wakeful gaze of the other man, knowing full well that Time Lord biology didn't succumb to such weakness as letting a single neurotransmitter dictate his actions.
Back in his own rooms, he let the shower fog the bathroom up before he entered to stand under it. He quite liked the configuration of this room as a very normal, very human, very 21st century en-suite. He'd told Rose that he felt it kept him grounded, but perhaps it was more about getting practice, for that inevitable day when he'd-
He heard the door open and shut, and the person doing it wasn't trying to be at all stealthy. "Couldn't sleep?" came the voice of his twin.
The Doctor sighed and turned the hot water up just a bit more before answering. "Taking a page from your book, I guess."
"You know it's just a matter of biology. It's not a judgment."
"Of course I know that." He leaned his head against the tile, which remained cool to the touch. "You've left her alone."
"You left us alone first," the other Doctor said irritably.
"I can't leave you alone if you're together. That, by definition, is not 'alone.'"
The door to the shower stall opened, letting a blast of cool air in and making the Doctor recoil. The other man stood regarding him, trousers wrinkled, shirt-tails untucked and tie untied. His hair was standing up in all directions.
"Oi, a little privacy, if you please!" the Doctor protested.
The other Doctor just snorted derisively. "Are you having me on? We are, effectively, the same man, and we have just both made love, at the same time, to the same woman. I think me seeing you all pink and wrinkly in the shower is the least of your concerns in the privacy department."
Hearing it stated in such a matter-of-fact way reintroduced the confusing swirl of emotions that had so plagued him during their encounter earlier.
"I wouldn't barge in on you, you know," he said, and then immediately regretted it.
The other Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Oh no, you wouldn't just walk in on me and Rose together at all, would you? Nope, never ever-I must have dreamed that happening last week. And another thing you'd never do is get such a raging knob-on from seeing us together that I could see it all the way from the bed, in the dark. You'd never do that either, would you?"
The Doctor was speechless, rooted to the spot and opening and closing his mouth under the stream of water, like a guppy.
"Yeah, I thought not," the other man said, doing up the last couple of buttons on his shirt and tucking it in. "I never thought I'd be such a bloody great prude as a human." He sounded disappointed, but with that singular edge of ironic pity which comes with being disappointed in oneself.
"I'm not a prude," the Doctor protested, not even really knowing why he was bothering. There are few things more futile than arguing with yourself.
"I'd rather think that's your problem, frankly, because I know what the alternative is-you can't hide things from me, let me remind you."
The Doctor wrenched the shower door free from his duplicate's hand and shut it again. "Leave me alone," he demanded.
"There's that word again," the other Doctor said flatly, and left.
***
There was nothing wrong, the Doctor thought viciously as he stared at his closet, with wanting to be alone. He'd been alone before. He'd spent centuries alone, if he added up all the years he'd gone through time and space without a companion. And what was so bloody hard to understand about the fact that it had been disconcerting to wake up and find himself in a human body, with human emotions and human... chemicals?
If he'd woken up, having split into two Time Lords, it wouldn't have been this awkward. Or it might have been. He sighed. There was no telling what it would have been like if he'd woken up with two hearts instead of just the one, and there was really no use trying to contemplate it. What was done was done.
He slipped on underpants, then trousers, and then a vest. He was reaching for a black t-shirt when the urge hit him to just walk out. He had lost Rose before, and the pain had been immeasurable. But this... this confusion and ache and misery, it was almost worse.
The mobile phone on the dresser seemed to call his name. Just once, he longed to talk to Donna. She would understand-she always had understood. She would have something practical to say, something useful. She would have told him what to do. Donna always knew what everyone else should be doing, and, while a quality that had occasionally been less than desirable in the past, it would be reassuring now. To know.
Binary binary binary binary... You can't ever talk to her again, Doctor. I mean it. We both know it's for the best. If you talk to her again, if she remembers us, she's dead. All right?
"All right," the Doctor whispered wearily to his own memory. "Yeah."
He pulled the shirt over his vest but didn't even bother with his jacket, let alone the coat Rose had recently had made for him ("He needs one just to look cool, but you and I actually need to keep warm."). He padded barefoot down the hallway, into the console room and out the blue double-doors to the outside world, imagining that he was being sneaky but knowing that no one was actually looking for him anyway.
They'd landed in London, still a favorite destination of theirs despite everything that had happened the last time they'd been in town. They'd stopped over in Hyde Park in time for spring flowers, and the Doctor wiggled his toes appreciatively in the cool grass. As a Time Lord, he hadn't done nearly enough barefoot walking, he decided. He might never wear shoes again.
The moon and a couple bright stars were still faintly visible in the sky despite the late morning hour, and he turned his face upwards towards them. They shifted imperceptibly to the naked eye, but he could still feel their movements, with the part of him that remained something larger than just a human consciousness.
He took a moment to consider his unique position in time and space, to feel the coordinates come to life and weave themselves around him, but he was jarringly interrupted by the faint cry of a human girl. It was a cry of pain, and the Doctor could no more ignore it than he could ignore a distress signal from another ship. He took off running in the direction of the sound, towards a grove of trees.
He stepped on a branch and cursed under his breath, hopping for a bit and then resuming his pace, only this time with a careful eye on the ground so that it wouldn't happen again. The cry grew closer and closer until suddenly it stopped.
The Doctor halted too, whirling around. Some part of his brain began to scream at him to run, to go the other way. He'd never been too fond of that particular part of his brain, in any incarnation, and so he pressed onwards, deeper into the trees-but more cautiously now, feet pressing down heel to toe, breath carefully regulated.
The cries resumed, more of a whimper this time, and the Doctor picked up his pace until he saw her. She couldn't have been more than three years old, dressed in a frilly pink dress and huddled at the base of a tree.
"Hello there," the Doctor whispered. "What are you doing out here?"
"Waiting for you," the girl said in reply, her voice clear and decidedly free of tears. "Can I have my lolly now, misters?"
The Doctor felt his stomach sink, and before he could whirl around, he felt the heavy weight of something crash into the back of his skull. He fell forward, but held onto consciousness just long enough to see two pairs of black men's boots.
"Hit him again," said the cultured voice of a woman the Doctor felt sure he should recognize. "He's still awake."
"Oh, that's not necess-" Another solid hit, and the Doctor found himself submerged in darkness.
***
When Rose woke up, she found herself in bed with a Time Lord, rather than being sandwiched between her two Doctors as she had hoped. The Doctor was wearing a pair of glasses and studying some piece of gadgetry with a great deal of feigned interest. She could tell because he held the mass of wires and gears close to his face, but his eyes weren't focused.
"Doctor?"
"Mm?" He poked a bit of wire, as if to demonstrate to her that he was most definitely not lost in his thoughts rather than working on a very important piece of technology.
"Good morning. Is it morning?" She stretched and brought a bare foot out from under the covers to stroke the Doctor's calf through his suit trousers. "I can never tell."
"Morning's relative," the Doctor mumbled, most uncharacteristically not taking the opportunity to explain the mysteries of the time vortex, or the morning rituals on a half a dozen different planets.
"I guess that would explain why I can never tell," Rose laughed, sitting up and letting the duvet fall off of her bare chest, perhaps half-hoping that the Doctor would notice and stage a repeat performance of the night before. He continued to fiddle absently with the gizmo in his hands, however. "Where's the Doctor?"
He shrugged. "In his room, I reckon. He couldn't sleep."
"Really? That's weird. We'll have to try to wear him out more next time."
The Doctor finally looked over, his glasses fallen down the bridge of his nose a bit. "I'm not sure there's going to be a next time."
Rose suddenly felt inappropriately brazen in her nudity and drew the duvet up again. "Did he not... He looked like he was enjoying himself."
"You'll have to talk to him about it," the Doctor sniffed, making it clear that his part of this conversation was over.
"Yeah, I think I will." Rose leaned over the side of the bed looking for her night shirt but coming up empty. "Nothing is ever easy with you two, is it?" she said playfully over her shoulder as she entered the bathroom and shut the door behind her.
As she showered, she couldn't stop thinking about the night before, trying to play back her (admittedly hazy) memories of what had occurred. The human Doctor had appeared to enjoy himself, at least. There had been a few awkward moments, but-she sharply turned off the tap and brought her head against the cool white tile. She'd long since given up on contemplating the strangeness of her life too deeply, but for just one minute she longed for things to be simpler.
She tied one of the green towels hanging from the rack around her chest and knotted it securely. Maybe her efforts had hurt more than helped. For all of his willingness to tell her that he loved her in human form, he wasn't any easier to milk a confession of feelings from than his Time Lord counterpart. They'd figure out a way to be happy, all of them together. If it took Rose years, she would find a way for them all to be happy.
Ignoring the Doctor still lounging on her bed, she padded down the hallway in her towel and knocked on his door, which was halfway open. When she didn't get a response, she pushed it fully open and found he wasn't there. A quick look around the room revealed that wherever the Doctor was, he'd left in a hurry. His jacket hung from a rack on the door and a heavy brown coat was next to it. Several shirts were laid out on the bed, as though he hadn't been able to decide which one to wear.
Still, that wasn't worrisome. She often left her room in a state of disrepair. What really stopped Rose in her tracks was a pair of bright red Converse, laying side-by-side on the floor with socks next to them.
She quieted the voices inside of her head. They were, all three of them, accustomed for going for a bit of a walk in the TARDIS when they were upset. The halls and corridors of the ship were inherently soothing. In all likelihood, he was somewhere else aboard, which would explain his shoes being left in the middle of the floor.
"Did you have any luck?" the Doctor asked, putting aside the machine he'd been tinkering with.
"No," Rose said honestly, dropping the towel to the floor and rummaging around in her drawers for panties and a bra.
"Did you know, in Victorian times, the sight of a bare ankle was scandalous?" The Doctor asked, lying back on the bed to watch her with half-open eyes.
"Been there. Remember, we caused that big to-do at Lady Angeline's party?"
"Ah yes. The one time you didn't wear stockings. Just goes to show you, Rose. You should wear stockings as often as possible. And garters. I do love some garters."
"Is it your birthday?"
"Well... no."
"Then shut it," Rose teased. "Garters are the worst. Although, maybe..." She trailed off. The twinkle in the Doctor's eyes made her think that maybe the other Doctor would appreciate a pair of garters. She examined her lingerie drawer. If a bit of lace would drive him out of his grumpy mood...
"Listen, don't worry about him," the Doctor said firmly. "It's always... different. Waking up, finding yourself in a strange body. It's been hard for everyone. He'll figure it out. I always do."
"I still feel bad. It was my idea-maybe I didn't listen well enough to what he was saying," Rose said with a sigh. "I just hope I didn't make things worse."
"Did it make you happy?" The Doctor raised his eyebrows at her quizzically.
"Well, yeah. Bit... fantasy fulfilling, that. And hot," Rose said, blushing furiously.
"If it made you happy, then on some level, it made him happy."
Rose made an unhappy sound; that still wasn't good enough for her. "Could he still be on the TARDIS? I mean, is there a way to tell where he is on the ship?"
"Yeah," the Doctor swung his legs over the bed. "C'mon, then."
"Let me put on a shirt," Rose said, throwing open her closet.
"Do you have to?" The Doctor kissed her shoulder as he passed by.
When Rose made it to the console room, she found the Doctor bending over the on-board computer, his brow furrowed in something between disappointment and resignation.
"What is it, Doctor?" Rose looked over his shoulder at the monitor display, which was totally incomprehensible to her. "I can't read what it says; you're going to have to tell me."
There was a long pause while the Doctor tapped some keys and then shrugged, taking a step back.
"He's not here," the Doctor said flatly. "The Doctor has left the TARDIS."
Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11