Chapter Text
"Are you sure you know how to fly this thing?"
The gray-haired Scotsman was glaring across the console at Rose, but there was a spark of fear in his eye as the TARDIS careened haltingly from one direction to the other and back again. The wild rocking motion sent Rose and the Doctor staggering to keep their balance.
"I think you just punched a hole straight through the middle of the Cretaceous period ..." the new man muttered helpfully.
"Did you want to have another go, then?" Rose snapped angrily. She jumped half-way over the console to smack down the engine stabilizers before the TARDIS could jettison them backwards in time another two-thousand years. The ship's song seemed to be vibrating with barely-contained energy as she spun wildly through the vortex, hurtling them further into the unknown.
Come on, dear, just stay with me, Rose begged as she silently reached out for the TARDIS's aid and fought to make sense of the sentient ship's frenzied, unorganized melody. We just need to land safely. You can help me do that, can't you?
"Land? Are you trying to land?" the man across the console from her asked. He flashed her a sharp, indignant look as he added, "Well, why didn't you just say so? I can land us - I've landed loads of times. At least, I think I have. Unless I'm confusing landing with crashing again ..."
"Doctor!" Rose shouted in an attempt to focus him as he turned his scowl to the controls once more and began to ramble aimlessly.
"Right! Yes!" he replied, blinking hard and searching the panel of controls before him. "Landing, let's see ... You need the handbrake to land!"
Before Rose could stop him, he reached forward and yanked down hard on the lever nearest to him. They were both immediately hurtled towards the floor, letting out startled shouts as the ship shuddered to a screeching halt around them.
"See? Easy-peasy," the strange man groaned. He wearily raised himself up to his hands and knees, his breath coming in sharp, heaving gasps that belied his carefree tone. "Your parking skills could use a bit of work, though. I thought I showed you how to do this?"
"Doctor, I need you to focus, okay?" Rose's tone was breathless as she, too, drug herself wearily back to her feet once more. "We need to get back to modern day London so that we can sort you out."
"Nah, don't go there, it's boring. Why would you want to go somewhere boring?" he demanded. He turned to glare at her once more as though she had personally offended him with her unwelcome suggestion. "I mean, seriously, why should I even bother to bring you along if you're just going to suggest boring places to visit?"
"Doctor, please, we just need to ..."
Rose's desperate words were cut off on a small, shocked gasp as the Doctor suddenly circled the console in two long strides and stared down hard at her with those intense new blue eyes of his, leaving nothing but a breath of space between the two of them.
Before Rose could say a single word, he was suddenly invading her mind, using the telepathic bond that she had formed with his previous incarnation to delve deeply into her most recent thoughts and memories. He was rougher than he had ever been with her before. It felt as though he was tearing her apart from the inside out as he desperately searched for something within her. Rose forced herself to remain still and allow him to rudely push his way through her thoughts. She knew that it would hurt far worse if she attempted to resist him.
Rose, Rose, my Rose ... his mind whispered sadly. It seemed that he had finally found whatever it was he had been looking for and ceased his frantic mental digging.
Rose watched as the man before her closed his eyes and screwed up his eyebrows once more in a pained expression. It hurts ... he moaned silently.
Rose didn't know if he was attempting to hide his pain from her or not, but it came through the bond regardless. It filled her thoughts with fire and agony as she felt her bondmate's entire being slowly falling to pieces and reforming.
Rose soothed his thoughts as gently as she could, but she felt horribly, terrifyingly out of her depth. When she tentatively reached out and let her fingers brush against the familiar waistcoat that this strange new man was still wearing, his eyes immediately snapped open and he suddenly jolted back to life once more. He didn't even give her a warning before ejecting her forcefully from his mind as his attention immediately bounced back to his ship.
"Why did you bring us to the Cretaceous period, anyway?" he demanded loudly as he spun away from her and frowned down at the TARDIS controls once more. "What's here that's so important that you just had to land for a little pit stop?"
Rose opened her mouth to remind him of their near brush with a crash-landing, but she never got the chance. The ship suddenly gave another great lurch that threw them both into the ground again.
"What is that?" Rose demanded sharply as she gripped the edge of the TARDIS console and felt the ship shudder and groan all around them.
"Er ... best take a look outside ..." The Doctor paused for a moment as he seemed to consider something and then hesitantly met Rose's gaze. "You first," he suggested slowly.
"Doctor, what's out there?" Rose demanded as the ship tossed unevenly beneath their feet once more.
"Well, someone just had to come and visit the dinosaurs," he grumbled petulantly. His shaggy brows raised in her direction with a long-suffering look that Rose really didn't appreciate - especially considering the fact that, for all intents and purposes, they had just met.
"Doctor, what are you ...?"
The rest of Rose's question was cut off yet again as another mighty quake rumbled around them. This, at last, seemed to startle the Doctor back into action. Rose clung tight to one of the ship's railings as he spun around the console before her and began preparing them for another departure.
"Right! Best to beat a hasty retreat then, what do you say?" he rambled loudly as he worked. "I think there was a request somewhere for a nice boring spot to practice your parking skills, wasn't that right?"
Rose's angry retort was silenced as the console room suddenly exploded in a shower of sparks that sent them both shouting and moving to protect their eyes from the bright, fiery blaze.
"Oh, dear. Looks like we might have picked up an extra passenger," the Doctor grumbled lowly to himself. His gaze raised to Rose's once more and she was struck by the sheer intensity of it. Somehow, he managed to look at once so familiar, and yet so different from what she was used to. "Best find something to hold on to," he warned her ominously. "I think we'll be in for a ..."
But now it was the Doctor's turn to have his words silenced as the TARDIS groaned around them once more. A loud, sharp cracking sound preceded a great billow of dark black smoke that quickly filled the air around them, clouding their sight and making it difficult to breathe.
"Right! We were crashing!" he shouted jubilantly over the din. The Doctor was moving swiftly around the console controls once more with a bit more of his usual confidence. "Why do I ever let you distract me like this? Well, then - back to it!"
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When they finally landed again, Rose and the Doctor both ended up lying flat on the ground in varying stages of disarray while the TARDIS smoked and groaned around them. They didn't have long at all to recover before a loud knocking sound came from the ship's doors and a familiar voice called out to them.
"Hello? Exit the box and surrender to the glory of the Sontaran Empire!"
Rose barely had the chance to blink before the Doctor was jumping back to his feet again as though they hadn't just fallen through the vortex and barely made it out of the other side in one piece. He rushed towards the doors but only muttered a few, quick words with the alien man who was standing outside before letting the doors slam shut rudely in his face once more.
"I thought I told you modern-day London," Rose groaned wearily from where she still sat on the TARDIS floor. She glared up at him through pained, narrowed eyes as she rubbed a hand against her aching head. "Please don't tell me you've brought us to Sontar." The absolute last thing that she needed right now was to deal with a bunch of cross, war-like aliens while the Doctor and his ship were both so out of sorts.
The Doctor screwed up his eyebrows as he glared at nothing, seeming to digest her words for a moment. Something appeared to dawn on his expression as he turned on his heel to slowly crack the TARDIS doors open once more. "Sleepy ...?" he muttered curiously. "Bashful? Sneezy? Dopey?" He paused for another moment before he exclaimed knowingly, "Grumpy!"
He stumbled forward out of the TARDIS without another word, disappearing into the unknown that waited for them. Rose sighed in resignation as she slowly forced herself to her feet in order to follow after him.
"Oh, you two. The green one ... and the not-green one," the Doctor was ranting distractedly as he rushed on ahead of her.
Rose could see now that they hadn't, in fact, landed on Sontar, but the Doctor had still only managed to get their destination partially correct. They were on Earth, she was relatively certain, but judging by the familiar faces of Jenny, Vastra, and Strax and the period, Victorian clothes that they were all wearing, they had not managed to make it to the present day.
"Or it could be the other way around!" the Doctor continued lightly. "I mustn't prejudge. Oh!" He skidded to a halt as he turned and suddenly caught sight of Rose standing behind him in the doorway of his ship. "You remember, er ..."
His words trailed off awkwardly and Rose could feel his thoughts beginning to race as he stared hard at her in confusion. Rose, Rose, not Rose, what's the other one ...? Mustn't say that name aloud - special, private, secret, only for me. The gift that no one else must know about. But what's the other name ...?
"Thingy ..." the Doctor muttered as he continued to struggle to name her. "The, er ... the not-me one - the asking-questions one. Names ... not really my area."
Oh, you daft old ... "Clara," Rose reminded him exasperatedly. She was grateful that if they had to go through this strange naming process, at least it was in front of the only other three people in this universe who knew her true name already.
"Well, it might be 'Clara', it might not be - it's a lottery," the Doctor replied distractedly. He turned his back on them all without another word and began to scope out the area that they had landed in.
They all froze and gazed up in wide-eyed shock as the giant form of a Tyrannosaurus Rex suddenly cast its enormous shadow over them. That was certainly an unexpected twist that Rose hadn't expected to find in nineteenth-century London.
"I think something's gone wrong ..." Rose muttered under her breath. She slowly moved closer to Madame Vastra's side, never once taking her eyes off of the giant reptile before them. Had they really managed to time travel a dinosaur from the dawn of time straight into the middle of Victorian England? She remembered the Doctor saying something about picking up an "extra passenger", but surely this was outside of the realm of possibilities ...
"Wrong?" the Doctor repeated, whipping his head around to focus his wide, manic gaze back on Rose again. "What's gone wrong? Have you regenerated?"
He was stalking quickly towards her once more, his eyes narrowed as he examined her closely. Wrong, wrong, wrong, his thoughts insisted desperately. Rose? Where's my Rose? What have you done with her? Bring her back to me!
Doctor, it's me. Her heart was silently breaking over her bondmate's frenzied confusion as he tried desperately to piece together all previous twelve lifetimes that were rattling about inside of his head.
"I remember you!" the Doctor exclaimed loudly, immediately shaking Rose from her thoughts. His eyes went wide and a bright smile suddenly overtook his features. "Professor Song! It's certainly been a while, hasn't it? I knew you couldn't stay away."
Rose gaped at the Doctor in open-mouthed shock as he turned away from her with a dismissive wave of his hand and focused his attention back on the giant dinosaur currently looming over them. However, if being compared to the Doctor's sort-of dead-ish wife wasn't bad enough, he managed to confuse her with Strax, next. Rose tried very hard not to let her bruised vanity alter her opinion of him as she tugged irritatedly against their shared mental bond, reminding the Doctor once more of their proper names and urging him to focus and calm down.
"Well, you're very similar heights ..." the Doctor muttered in confusion. His blue eyes narrowed between Rose and the small, alien man as he attempted to sort them out. "Maybe you should wear ... labels ..."
He blinked hard as his gaze suddenly became distant and unfocused and Rose could feel his thoughts beginning to grow faint and fuzzy within the back of her own head.
"Why ... why are you all doing that?" he mumbled wearily. "Why are you ...? You're all going dark ... and wobbly. Stop that!"
"Doctor ... are you alright?" Rose muttered as she cautiously attempted to approach him. However, she only managed to take one step before he stumbled back over his own feet in an attempt to keep a safe distance between them. It was clear that his confused thoughts were still too muddled to rightly recall who she was and whether or not she could be trusted.
"Never mind!" the Doctor shouted distractedly. He turned on his heel and swung his arms wildly through the air around him. "Everyone - take five!"
Rose watched with wide eyes as he suddenly went very still, wobbling unevenly on his feet for a moment before suddenly pitching forward and landing hard, face-down in the mud beneath them.
Rose gasped in surprise as she immediately rushed forward and gathered his unconscious body protectively into her arms. She had seen the Doctor regenerate right in front of her eyes once before, but the experience certainly didn't get any easier or less confusing with time and practice. She had sworn a promise of "forever" to him more times than she cared to count, but it was only now that she began to wonder what that might actually mean. How many more times would she be forced to say goodbye, only to be thrown head-first into a new relationship with a completely different man? How many more times would she be forced to watch as the person who she loved most in all of the universe was destroyed and rebuilt right before her very eyes?
"I don't understand ..." Jenny muttered as she watched Rose trace her hands awkwardly over the new man's features, "who is he? Where's the Doctor?"
"Right here," Rose replied quietly. Her gaze never once left her bondmate's slack, unconscious expression as her eyes roamed over his unfamiliar face. "That's him - that's the Doctor."
"Well, then ..." Madame Vastra piped up gently, her tone distant and apprehensive in a way that Rose had never heard it before, "here we go again ..."