Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Chapter 24 – A Return To Normal Service

As more familiar laws of physics flickered into existence and the TARDIS sent a trill of happy noise – a signal of safe landing instead of falling through the Void – along their connection, the Doctor finally released his death grip on the console.

"Is everyone alright?" he asked his companions.

"Yeah," Rose said shakily as she stood up out of the chair, stumbling slightly before she properly regained her balance. The worst damage done seemed to be to her hair, which was now in a state of near perfect disarray, with a few sections appearing to be in the middle of some strange escape attempt that defied both gravity and their owner's attempts at smoothing them back down again.

Still, a little mussed hair was hardly anything to worry about and the Time Lord would take that over the many worse things that his companions had suffered over the years.

…Wait. There should have been two voices responding to that question.

The Doctor leaned around the console. "Delaine?"

The girl was lying on the floor next to the console, the fingers of one hand hooked around the edge of it like a lifeline. She did not respond.

The Doctor closed the space between them, rolling over Delaine's body so he could begin checking for vital signs. Her breathing was slow and shallow, her pulse – the Time Lord switched his grip from her wrist to her neck when the first refused to give up any information other than 'cold' – was thready, but both were stable enough for the moment, which was enough reassurance to let the breath he'd been holding escape in the form of a relieved sigh.

Watching a companion fall was always worse than just having the knowledge that they were dead. The second was a matter of fact and time, two things that were inevitable where Time Lords were concerned. The first, however, was often a much more personal failure and the fact that it hadn't happened here was...

"She alright?" Rose asked. "What happened?"

"No idea." Could she have knocked her head during the confusion? It wasn't like there hadn't been plenty of opportunity for such an injury – or perhaps she'd simply fainted?

Three immediately rolled his eyes. 'Yes, the companion that once tried to engage a werewolf in a knife fight is most definitely a fainter.'

'Perhaps it was a poor reaction to the dimensional jump?' Five mused.

The Doctor dismissed that idea. 'She was fine the first time across.' Other than the part where she'd been slammed against various parts of the ceiling, wall, floor, and intervening bits of the TARDIS. Really, that precedent only added to the Doctor's suspicions about a potential head injury this time around. He touched the side of her head just long enough to make the lightest psychic contact –

Only to find nothing but darkness and the vague sense of some distant light and sound. Music, like a fairground organ, accompanied by light that was just on the edge of invisible, reflected off of too many dull surfaces to be anything more than proof of movement. It was impossible to tell if that was the product of Delaine's own mind or just her own senses picking up something else. Perhaps the TARDIS? It was impossible to tell without her being awake to explain it from her point of view or diving further into her mind.

"She's completely unconscious," the Doctor declared as he retreated from the contact. While going deeper into Delaine's mind was a tempting prospect, the last time had given the Time Lord a taste of what would likely happen if any part of her, conscious or not, detected his intrusion. Even if that time had been a fluke or a temporary influence from some being picked up in the Void, he wasn't exactly eager for a repeat showing. "Doesn't seem to be concussed at least, but until I get some better equipment scanning her, I can't say more than that."

"Do you – do you need my help moving her to the infirmary?" Rose asked, awkward concern making the offer almost sound like she wanted the answer to be 'no'.

"Wouldn't say no to having a spare set of hands," the Doctor said as he picked Delaine up, the girl's spidery arms flopping downwards as he gingerly arranged her limbs to avoid jostling her injured leg. An insistent knock at the TARDIS door distracted him for a moment. "Of course, I wouldn't say no to having someone explain to your mum why I parked the TARDIS in her living room."

The blonde seemed to be caught between offense, excitement, and that previous concern that Delaine's fall had brought out. "You –" Another insistent knock cut Rose off. "Alright. But you get to explain just how you picked up Delaine in the first place, Doctor."

The current model's immediate predecessor winced at the thought. 'Oh, that'll go over well.'

Yes. Jackie had a talent for absorbing just enough information to jump to a conclusion that was usually followed up by the sort of domestic drama the Doctor made a point to personally avoid. A young athletic woman close to Rose's age being inserted into an equation that had formerly involved the Doctor, Rose, and the newly absent Mickey Smith? That wouldn't go over well, regardless of if Delaine regained consciousness or not by that point.

'But,' the Doctor decided as he picked the girl up and carried her to the infirmary, 'that's a problem for later.'

As they passed through the last door, Delaine made a small mumbling noise, cracking her eyes open just as the Doctor looked down at her.

"What was that?"

"I'm sorry," she murmured again, slurring the words badly enough that it took a bit of actual effort to recognize them as such. She made a weak attempt at moving her body, only for that effort to fall apart into a vague full body twitch. "…careless."

"Don't apologize for things you have no control over," the Doctor replied as he laid her down on the examination table. "Go back to sleep."

Delaine made a small sound that could have signified anything from amusement to agreement as her best efforts to keep her eyes open finally failed and she fell asleep again, the vague discomfort in her expression smoothing out as her consciousness went other places.

The Time Lord wondered what she would dream about once the psychic anesthetic took the rest of the pain out of the equation. For now, however, his main concern was the condition of her body.

'Diagnosis – impact injury to right hip resulting in displacement, impact injury to right foot resulting in sprain, bruising all over right leg with highest concentration on previously listed injuries, minor abrasions to hands, face, and knees. Hypothesis – subject has been injured in an impact event delivered by some point of transport vehicle or aggressive animal.'

"That doesn't explain why she's unconscious," the Doctor informed the TARDIS as he looked away from the scans and started plotting out Delaine's treatment plan, pulling the psychic anesthetic attachment down into position as he passed it in his quest to gather the necessary supplies. The nanopaste was in no danger of running low anytime soon, but it'd probably be wise to check the supply anyway, if this companion was going to insist on being so careless with her physical wellbeing. "And with the dearth of wild horses available in modern London, alternate universe or no, I'd wager the first our more likely cause of injury."

Not to say that he believed that Delaine was the sort of person to recklessly run out into traffic either, not without good reason at least, but it at least fit the time period.

The TARDIS's medical display blinked for a moment as it thought over the problem. It then slowly typed out its answer.

"Exhaustion?" the Doctor read incredulously.

'Diagnosis – exhaustion,' the TARDIS scanners said, accompanied by a vague sense of ill-ease and guilt from the time machine. 'Hypothesis – caused by dimensional transfer. Prescription – rest.'

How that was even supposed to work was beyond him, but it fit with what he'd initially assumed and what little Delaine had said. The fact that the TARDIS felt bad about failing to protect the girl from it only reinforced the idea.

Still, the Doctor thought as he leaned back to allow the skeletal realignment matrix to do its work, the answer felt incomplete. She'd been steady enough on her feet on her return to the TARDIS, despite the clear injuries slowing her down… so what had happened between the universes to change that? Had the shock from whatever had caused the injury finally worn off? Had she adjusted to the physics of a new universe only to fall as they got stripped away? Or had that strange gold light that had taken up occupancy in his companion so early after their arrival in that strange universe left at the least opportune moment?

Regardless of whichever answer was the right one – or maybe all of them all together –, the TARDIS was right. Rest was the only real cure for exhaustion, no matter how many cheats for pushing the deadline back were developed.

As if in spiteful response to that thought, Delaine's eyes cracked open again, catching the light just right to look almost gold. Not the bright, blazing gold that she'd displayed during her burst of temper the day before, but a mundane amber-brown that was still enough of a change from her usual near black shade that it registered as immediately odd.

"Sshhh… don't like white rooms, D'ctor," she mumbled, the words coming out with a slightly different emphasis than she usually put on her vowels. "Don't like them at all."

White – ah. To those unfocused eyes looking almost directly into bright lights, the TARDIS infirmary probably did resemble the Zero Room to some degree, despite it being a distinctly darker shade of grey in reality. "I remember. But you need to sleep. I'm putting you on strict bed rest until I tell you otherwise. Doctor's orders."

Delaine snickered a little at that, closing her eyes slowly as she seemed to drift off again. Still, the Time Lord caught the glimpse of another color shift, the gold turning to a very specific shade of blue-grey. The first might have been brushed off as a matter of catching the light at the right angle – 'if you're particularly desperate to excuse that sort of thing,' Seven muttered – but blue-grey was a completely different sort of animal. "You're a good… alien space bastard man, even with… that stupid ass face…"

Again, there had been a minute shift in accent, one that muddled the difference between 'R's and 'H's while recalling another American companion at the same time. It wasn't quite as strange as her last venture into Highlands Scottish – honestly, compared to some of the mysteries surrounding Delaine, her penchant for imitating voices and accents was one of the more mundane things – but it still stood out when the fact that she kept doing it at the strangest times, like when drifting in and out of consciousness. The fact that it was so often accompanied by that inexplicable shift in eye color that couldn't be explained away as a trick of the light any longer…

Putting away the incomplete theories about the 'why' and the 'how', the Doctor checked the TARDIS scanners again – not the ones for injury, but the ones that could pick apart DNA markers at a distance. The last time he'd attempted to scan Delaine, the readings had all come back as 'human, nothing special', but this time…

'Human variant.'

Human variant. Now that was interesting… and also incredibly vague, because 'human variants' could run the gamut from 'hybrids' to 'mutants' and onto deliberate alterations applied before or after birth. But something that it did cross out was that 'nothing special' that had put so many of the Doctor's more unpleasant theories about her background to bed. "Can you be a bit more specific?" he asked the TARDIS.

Somehow, the Time Lord wasn't surprised that the time machine's immediately response was a clear and somewhat mulish 'no'.

Still, that mystery of what just happened could wait to be unraveled. Delaine wasn't exactly in any state to run off and didn't have any reason to do so until the issue of exactly who and what she was finally got dragged into the light. For now, there was just waiting, allowing his previous incarnations to amuse themselves with the title Delaine had so generously bestowed on him in her delirium.

'Alien space bastard man. I don't believe we've ever been called those words in that order before,' Eight mused. 'Doesn't 'space' usually come before 'alien', grammatically speaking?'

'I, for one,' Four said grandly, 'accept the nomination of 'alien space bastard man' with great pride and honor.'

'Doesn't hurt that you're a bastard to begin with, Four.'

'But we're a good one. That's positively a compliment compared to our usual 'bastard' titles.'

Letting that conversation go as he picked up his just mended companion in his arms, the only real question left was if getting Delaine to stay in bed would be harder than getting her past Jackie Tyler.

'You could always just… leave her in the TARDIS,' Five suggested, having stayed out of the 'alien space bastard' conversation long enough to keep up with the Doctor's current thought process. 'It's not like she doesn't have a room that she's already comfortable with and she's in no state to wander off. It'll also permit the old girl more opportunity to run scans to narrow down what exactly she meant by 'variant'.'

Yes, technically that would work, but there was a part of the Doctor that deeply disliked the idea of having that amount of physical distance between him and his companion. Besides, with injuries – 'What injuries? You saw to them already,' Seven pointed out – like what she had sustained required constant observation and quick response.

'That sounds a hair too close to you making up excuses, you know,' Seven muttered. 'Because that reasoning wasn't connected to your impulse until you made the effort to justify your immediate reaction as part of your duty of care.'

That made the Time Lord stop short for a long moment before he started walking again, his grip on his unconscious companion distinctly tighter than what it had been when he'd first picked her up.

When Rose saw her mum again – alive, not a distant stranger with a familiar face, not torn apart and shoved into a cold metal suit that only dying would get her out of –, she crossed the space between them in a heartbeat and wrapped her mother in the tightest hug she could manage. Questions like –

"What happened? Why are you dressed like that? Why do you smell like smoke? Where's Mickey? I thought you said he was going off to space with you two… and while we're at it, where's the Doctor at?"

– could wait until Rose Tyler completely and totally confirmed that, yes, Jackie Tyler was alive and in one piece.

'But that doesn't change the fact that you watched a woman who was just like her in every possible way die,' a less pleasant voice that Rose hesitated to call 'reason' pointed out. 'That's two for two isn't it? Get to watch both of your parents die, get to see how good their lives would have been without you… and see all of that fall apart the moment you show up. You really are a jinx, aren't you, Rose Tyl–'

The poisonous thought cut off as Jackie pulled away from Rose, a very clear and present worry etched into the lines of her face.

"You look like you could use a cup of hot tea," she said as she maneuvered Rose over to the settee and took a step back. "I put the kettle on just a bit ago – should be ready any minute."

Rose almost wanted to tell her mother to forget the kettle and just stay with her, but that would just make those worry lines worse. Besides, the kitchen wasn't that far. It wasn't like the woman was going to just… disappear the moment she was out of sight.

Was this how Mickey felt when he found his grandmother in that other universe? Or maybe it was backwards for him, seeing someone he thought was gone forever back again, not dead and broken at the bottom of a staircase, but alive and still handing out smacks to the side of the head like they were bulk purchase sweets.

And without anyone or anything – not even a reputation, thanks to her mother's attempts to 'avenge' a murder that never happened – to come back to in their universe, well, was it really any surprise that he decided to stay behind? It's not like anyone had given him any reasons to come back.

Her mother came back with Rose's favorite cup, filled with tea that was mixed just the way it always was whenever there was a nightmare or a bad breakup – one sugar, a splash of milk, a dash of cinnamon, and a touch of honey to give it another dimension of warmth. It was a rare use of spice in the Tyler household, but that made it… special. Like a secret only Rose and her mum were privy to. A small luxury, but when a girl lived in the council estates, it wasn't like she had any chance of getting any of the larger ones.

"So. Tell me what happened?"

The universe decided to script itself in a perfect series of events designed to punch Rose Tyler in her emotions. "A… a lot happened, mum," Rose finally said. A lot of people died. A lot of people got hurt. "…Mickey left."

That was the smallest thing that had happened over the last twenty four hours, but somehow it was one of the things that was sticking with Rose the most besides the death of her mother's alternate universe self.

"What?" Jackie asked. "Where'd he even go? The boy's scared of everything!"

"He…" Words failed her for a moment. "I think I took him for granted too many times," she admitted. How many times had Rose slipped in and out of being Mickey's girlfriend because it was easy and convenient? How many times had she laughed at jokes about Mickey being stupid when he was the one that stuck through to the end of his schooling or skittish around things that most people would be terrified of? How many times had she been the one making those jokes? "And when he got the chance to make something better, he took it, instead of waiting around for me to take him for granted again."

"Is that what he told you?"

"Nah. I just… finally figured it out myself." Rose stared down into her tea. "It's just not fun, looking in the mirror and realizing that you don't really like what you see on the other side of the glass, is it?"

"Rose, there's nothing wrong with the way you look. Nobody's gonna come out looking like those magazine types, especially not when they–"

"No, no. That's fine. I'm not having…those problems again," she said, backpedaling quickly. "I like my body. It's mine. I just… someone pointed out that it's not all about me, even after I said something… really awful. I mean, really, really awful." Maybe that hadn't been Delaine's point, saying that everything came down to random odds and accidents being accidents, but…

Her mother hummed. "On a scale of 'your mum's a cow' to… I don't know, the sort of talk that ends up starting celebrity feuds, what sort of awful thing did you say to this person?"

Rose cringed. "I…I'd rather not say. But it was closer to the second one than the first, even if her mum was involved somewhat."

"Did you apologize?"

"Yes."
"Did this probably not-Mickey person accept it?"

Well, it had been more of a brush-off than anything, but… "I think so."

"Then what's left to be upset about?"

Sometimes, Rose wondered what it was like living in her mother's world, where things seemed to be so less complicated, where upsets could be put into a box after the fact and never be brought up again…

The thought was interrupted by the opening of the TARDIS doors as the Doctor stepped out, his arms full of unconscious girl, still dressed in that ruined maid's dress, though the lack of bruises and scrapes proved that they'd been to the infirmary.

"Which way to the guest bedroom?" the Doctor asked, his head swiveling around as he looked around the flat. "I wasn't exactly in a state to remember exactly where it was the last time I was in it…"

Jackie jerked her head back towards the hall behind her. "To the right of the front door. Should be easy enough to find – it's still got a bit of damage from when that bloody murder Christmas tree broke in."

As the Time Lord left the room with his cargo, nodding a small thanks as he left, Jackie's expression changed immediately. "And who was that?"

"Another friend of the Doctor's," Rose said, wincing as she caught her mother's pointed look. "Don't be like that – there's nothing between them. Honest, the Doctor's mostly keeping her around because she knows some secret about him that would be dangerous for anyone else to get a hold of."

That was a faint twist on the truth, but it was accurate enough. Wasn't it?

"I can think of a few choice possibilities…" Jackie muttered. "But you're sure of it? That he isn't interested in her? Sometimes you can catch a man's eyes wandering…"

Rose bit the inside of her cheek at that. The thought had crossed her mind whenever she caught the way that the Doctor's eye would occasionally break away from her to check on Delaine. Like somehow, the other woman was made of glass despite being one of the roughest people Rose had ever met from her own planet. Of course, that hadn't stopped her from limping back to the TARDIS covered in scorch marks and bruises, looking like she'd been hit by a car... "No. Never."

Her mum shook her head. "If I didn't know he was an alien already, that would have been the proof. Never knew a man who didn't at least glance at another woman, unless he wasn't interested in them in the first place." There was something in her tone that seemed to say, 'I don't really believe you,' despite the lack of a direct needle at Rose's 'No'. "But are you sure she feels the same way?"

Now that was a question Rose could answer with total confidence. "She thinks he's an obnoxious, immature chatterbox with no respect for her personal space," she replied with no small amount of delight at knowing that fact. "And I did ask her about what sort of men she went for when we first met – the most I could get her to say about the Doctor is that his hair is ridiculous and looks stupid." And that she vastly preferred the likes of Kelly LeBrock, though that little detail could be left out. No need to spring a surprise lesbian – or omnisexual, given that Rose hadn't exactly drawn much more information on Delaine's preferences than that – on her mother.

"Well, that isn't so odd, seeing that it's the truth. The first one was much better to look at. Leather and all that. Pity he never took that jacket off during any of his visits…"

"Mum!"

"What? It's not like you didn't have any thoughts like that. I'm your mother, I know how you think," her mum said before looking Rose in the eye. "…you did see that one without the jacket, didn't you?"

"And without the jumper, once." Rose looked back on the memory carefully, doing some mental arithmetic as she went. "He was actually thinner than you would have expected. Wiry, that's the word. Not as skinny as the current one, but…" She gestured vaguely, trying to find the right words to sum up the subtle differences in physical presence she'd noticed between the Doctor she'd met first and the current model.

"Having an interesting conversation?" the Doctor asked as he exited the guest room, apparently satisfied with Delaine's current condition. There was a faintly smug grin on his face, one that almost made Rose think that the Time Lord had somehow overheard their mostly whispered conversation about the relative fitness of the last model compared to the current one and found it immensely amusing.

Or, a more bitter voice suggested, maybe Delaine had made her way back to consciousness with a witty quip. That seemed to be the usual reason for the Doctor smiling whenever that girl was involved. Even if she wasn't interested in him, there was a part of Rose that didn't quite believe that disinterest was a mutual thing.

"Rose is telling me all about your new traveling companion," her mum said, leaning back to take a sip of her tea in a way that said the gesture was meant to be imperious before anything else. "American, is she? Where'd you pick her up? Or is the question 'when'?"

The Time Lord shrugged. "London, Christmas Day. The last one, with the Sycorax."

Jackie turned to Rose, raising her eyebrows in a 'well, what do you think of that?' sort of expression. "That was quick."

The Doctor winced, bouncing on his feet awkwardly. "Well, Rose was at an ABBA concert and I didn't have much better to do –"

"You could have stayed with her," her mum pointed out.

"He can't stand ABBA," Rose said conspiratorially.

That was apparently greater cause for offense than any implications of a rushed romantic affair with a strange foreign woman. "What? Don't you have any appreciation for art in space? Or whatever it is your home planet is called? How can you not like ABBA?"

"A few of my previous selves agree with you on that point, but all I can say is that something about the pitch they work at really, really irritates me this time around," the Doctor said carefully as he sat down next to Rose. His focus quickly went to her tea, which Rose surrendered with a smile. "Mmm. Lovely. Could use more sugar, but I've been informed that I've a tendency to overdo that."

"At least you had some taste in the past," Jackie sniffed.

The Doctor took a second sip of Rose's tea before giving it back to her, the cup still warm and a hair over half full. "I think you'd take that comment back if you saw some of the things I wore in the past."

"Like that scarf Delaine almost tripped to her death on in your scrap room? Or that patchwork coat in the wardrobe?" Rose asked.

"You found that?" the Doctor asked in dismay.

"Delaine did. I just took the opportunity to laugh at it." Was it wrong if she left out the part where Delaine defended it? It wasn't as if it was –

"She did? Oh, that's worse," the Time Lord said as he clapped his hands over his face. The rest of his words were muffled, but the thing about sitting right next to someone was that it was impossible not to catch even the quietest muttering. "That is the absolute worst thing she could have found. Well, not the absolute worst, but close enough to be absolutely terrible."

Rose grinned as she squirmed a little closer to the Doctor. "How so?"

His hands lifted just enough to stop the muffling but that changed nothing about his tone of melodramatic despair. "I don't want to go into it. It was another life that made other decisions that I cannot be held accountable for, but seeing as that's never stopped anyone before…"

"It can't be that bad," Jackie said with the sort of veiled joy that hinted at her anticipation of it actually being worse than whatever her imagination had already supplied.

Rose, for her part, would've been delighted to prove that it was indeed that bad, even without the prospect of finding out exactly why Delaine specifically knowing about the coat was so terrible. "I can go get it, if you want to see–"

"Please don't." "Please do."

Jackie Tyler and the Doctor traded looks, the Doctor's look of tired resignation bouncing harmlessly off of Jackie's smug anticipation as Rose stood up and turned to enter the TARDIS.

I crawled back to consciousness slowly, having to double check each sense as it came back – for a moment, I could have sworn that I felt Selby, but then that feeling slipped away almost as quickly as it came – until I was left laying on a bed under an unfamiliar ceiling, the faint smell of brimstone and tea hanging in the air.

The brimstone made me cringe slightly. It wasn't uncommon for the Rider to leave some sign of its presence after the fact, so the smell wasn't a surprise, but it still was a mark that I'd fucked up in my attempts to present as 'normal, harmless human' because no normal, harmless human smelled like fucking hellfire.

The tea… well, all it took as a look to the side to see where that was coming from; a glass beaker that was half full of the stuff, which was boiling away on a small portable heater like some homebrew medical humidifier. What the fuck it was supposed to achieve –

Oh. Oh, that… stupid motherfucker, I thought as I sat up. He's definitely getting punched for this.

'I don't know. It's kind of cute,' Shumari noted.

'It's fucking a fucking leaf water humidifier. There's nothing cute about that.'

'Just because you don't like tea doesn't mean it's not a nice gesture,' Duke said with a shrug, which was fair for him to say because if it had been a coffee bean humidifier, he would have been spitting nails over its very presence.

I fought the impulse to snarl in irritation. 'He's assuming that I work on the same level of nonsense that he does!'

'Well, that's not entirely off-base, is it?'

That soured my mood a bit. 'Do you think he suspects us?' I asked as I stood up, testing my legs. No weakness or lingering aches that I could detect in my body, even if my energy reserves were still lower than was necessarily healthy. That was good at least, though the idea of the Doctor carrying me to the infirmary while I was out was a little irritating.

This time, it was Max that came in, which, considering that our usual expert on all things Time Lord was out dealing with another universe, made sense. 'I'm going to go off what we know about the Doctor from Zeke and say 'he certainly suspects something'. What that something is remains to be seen.'

Ugh. Lovely. Like my existence wasn't complicated enough. At least it was within my mortal powers to change clothes into something that wasn't a dress.

I opened the door, ready to go find the TARDIS.

Any expectations for what I would see on the other side were immediately smashed to piece by the reality as I looked at the Tyler's sitting room.

Rose was posing dramatically in the Sixth Doctor's coat as her mother looked on in delight. The current incarnation of the Doctor was laying in the corner of the sofa with his hands over his face, looking like he was preparing to astral project out of the situation and leave his successor behind to deal with it.

'You know what? The coma made more sense than this. Let's going back to that.'

While beating myself into unconsciousness had some appeal, I wasn't quite sure that the walls of the Tyler apartment would stand up to that kind of abuse, even if I had the limiter taking me down to human levels of strength.

Right. Option two then.

I had the door leading out of the Tyler's flat halfway open by the time the Doctor – apparently regaining his will to live the moment I caught his attention – caught up with me, twisting around me to take up a spider's position in the doorway, blocking my exit with his twiggy legs and arms.

It'd almost be impressive… if I was five years old and had no idea how stupid some spiders looked doing the same thing.

"Y'know, there's probably easier ways to block a door than that," I noted, nodding at his unnatural perch and the two and a half feet of empty escape route he'd left at the bottom of the open door. Thanks to his current body's lanky frame, there wasn't much of a gap, but it was more than enough for someone of my size if they felt like getting through, superpowers or not.

Despite his current position relying on him staying almost entirely still, the Time Lord still managed to shrug. "Yeah, probably. But of the options, I thought this one would work best. Especially with consideration to your 'no touching' rule."

Huh. That was a bit more consideration than I was expecting from 'Doctor Hug Anybody', especially given his history of invading my personal space without hesitation.

'He's putting together the puzzle pieces. Not enough to get the whole picture, but you've never been subtle about your dislikes, Delaine. And you've been very clear about not liking him touching you.'

"You know that my 'no touching' rule doesn't exactly cover me from hitting you. All I'd have to do is kick out your leg about here," I gestured at the Doctor's right leg, which was about level with my chest and carrying most of the Time Lord's weight, "And then it'd just be a matter of stepping over your body from the ignominious sprawl you'd be left in."

The Doctor grinned, clearly pleased with the fact that despite not being explicitly protected by my personal rules, he still was under my umbrella of 'protection'. "Bold of you to assume that I'm capable of being ignominious in any capacity."

Was that a titch of Six on display? The cockiness was very Ten, but bigger words that weren't technobabble or Buffyisms were less of that. Well. I could hardly help but return the serve, regardless of where it came from. "I believe that you're very capable of being ignominious in every possible capacity."

"Are you two going to keep flirting for the rest of the day or will you move your ignominious selves somewhere else so I can close the door to my flat sometime within the hour?" Jackie asked from behind me, a vague scoff in her tone.

"Nah," the Doctor said smoothly as he moved back to a normal standing position, closing the door behind him before taking me by the arm and gently pulling me towards the Tyler's living room. So much for 'not touching'. "You should be taking it slow. Second trip to the infirmary on the inside of a week."

It took actual effort not to tear my arm out of the Time Lord's grip, but the feeling that I could end up doing damage to more than just his mood – fingers were rather fragile things, even on a species designed to be much sturdier than humans – made it a touch easier. "You never said anything about being reckless in an alternate universe," I snipped. "And I can handle myself at whatever speed I happen to be going."

"Good Gallifrey, it's like dealing with Leela all over again – I'm the Doctor here, if you won't accept bedrest, at least have a seat and keep it." With that, he pushed me down into the sofa and started to wave the sonic over me in what was likely supposed to be an all over medical scan – to me, it was mostly an exercise in not overreacting to the buzzing noise that everyone else was either incapable of hearing or making a point to ignore. "And stop trying to run away."

"I wasn't going to." I was going to go get some fresh air and ride out my conflicting moods in solitude. Which would have required running away to find enough privacy to stretch out for at least an hour, possibly longer depending on how many emotions I had to deal with.

Life was easier when I could establish my own territory and could reliably retreat back to it when I needed my space.

Finally satisfied with whatever the sonic had told him, the Doctor pulled back. "Alright. You're slightly dehydrated–"

"Ply me with hot leaf water and you'll be wearing it."

"– and you could probably stand to eat something, but other than that, you're in perfect condition," he continued, ignoring the threat. "Now, if you can keep it that way for, oh, I don't know, at least the rest of the day…"
I gave him a Look.

"Fine, fine. I figured that was a bit much to ask for." If the quip hadn't been aimed at me, I might have laughed. As it was, I simply let my Look intensify. "Anyway, I've got to go clean up. Don't go anywhere."

Wasn't planning on it. I settled into the corner of the sofa and tried to get a feel for the Tyler residence.

Bit too far away from the ground for me to be completely comfortable, but it didn't have the manicured minimalism that made most apartments unsettling to my senses, so there was that much going for it. Maybe the color scheme was a touch grey-and-beige for my taste, but I grew up poor – aesthetic coordination and poverty didn't play together well in the same sandbox. You could fake it, especially if you had a lot of antiques in similar shades of hardwood, but it'd never look quite as put together as a full room set sold as such… which was fine with me. Could never stand existing in a photoshoot-style home.

A small cough broke my out of my thoughts. I looked up at Rose, who had Six's coat in her hands and a distinctly apologetic look on her face.

"I remembered that you liked this coat. I figured…" She trailed off a little, apparently not quite having finished the thought before deciding to act on it.

Huh. An oddly sensitive gesture that I wasn't really expecting. "Thanks," I said as I took it from her and wrapped it around me like a blanket. There was a pleasantly soft smell to it, like that of kitten fur and malted milk with just a hint of something harsher behind it, like ozone or a minor electrical fire.

"I'm just going to – go help the Doctor with… whatever," Rose said, her hands awkwardly flitting around to gesture at everything from the ceilings, the windows, three very different walls, and a coffee table which was very distinctly Time Lord-free. Eventually, the rest of her body caught up with her stated intent and allowed the girl to beat a swift retreat elsewhere.

Teenagers. Impossible to communicate with, yet so adorably helpless when they tried to cover up their soft spots.

The sound of a throat being cleared broke me out of any musings about the haplessness of youth and brought my focus back to the Tyler apartment and the one person in it that I hadn't officially 'met' yet. Jackie Tyler, for her part, didn't look exactly enthusiastic about my presence here.

Still, there was no call for me to be anything but polite. "I don't believe we've been introduced… your name was Jackie, was it?" I asked, sticking out my hand to shake.

Jackie brushed aside the pleasantries and my proffered hand to open up with what could only be an accusation; "Rose told me about you."

Five little words, so open to interpretation. "I'm assuming from your tone that it wasn't anything good," I said mildly. That, or Jackie was making assumptions on her own initiative, which was entirely in character for her.

Jackie crossed her arms across her chest, clearly not willing to give me anything remotely resembling an inch of slack. "She says you're not a problem and you don't look like you'd be a problem, but two women with one man travelling god knows where in the universe... I might not be an expert on space/time nonsense, but I know that there's only trouble that way unless you know to keep your hands off –"

There were likely a long list of people who would have liked to argue that assessment of me not looking like a problem, but there was a different point for me to argue. "I promise you, there's not a force in this universe that could make me sexually or romantically interested in the Doctor. Or Rose, for that matter. Neither are mature enough for my taste."

"How do you get more mature than a nine hundred year old alien?"

"Ask me that question again after you catch him eating jam out of the jar with his fingers. Without washing his hands beforehand," I said as I rolled my eyes. Technically, that hadn't happened yet, but it was inevitable from what I'd already seen of the Time Lord's eating habits. "However many thousand years old he might be, he still acts like a fourteen year old boy."

The Doctor, who'd been just walked out of the bedroom with his makeshift tea humidifier and Rose just behind him, found himself on the receiving end of a patented Jackie Tyler stare.

"Thousands? I thought you said nine hundred."

"That's what I said. I've been fairly consistent about that number too." He squinted at me. "And who are you to call me out on that?"

The person who knows that you've been arbitrarily throwing out the number nine hundred since your Sixth regeneration in between other numbers that probably had as much accuracy behind them, considering that my own version of Seven admitted to not having a clear idea of the number beyond vague assumption of which millennia he was on.

So unfortunate that the truth was ruled out by necessity, but it did make it possible for me to reply, "The person saying the Doctor can't count."

The Time Lord looked positively scandalized at the accusation. "Excuse you, I can count. I do mathematics for fun! Happy primes. Recreational probability calculation. High end equations on my tea break!" He punctuated the last point by taking a sip of from the beaker of leaf water before making a pinched expression. "Might have left that alone for too long," he muttered as he rushed to the kitchen, the sound of gagging and liquid being dumped down a drain telling us exactly what became of the tea. Whatever mouth cleansing he had to do, it didn't stop him from coming back on the inside of a minute, which was just in time to receive his next question from Jackie.

"You take tea breaks? Breaks from what? Saving the universe?"

The Doctor shoved his hands in the pockets of his coat as he rocked back and forth on his heels, very distinctly not making eye contact. "On occasion. To be fair, most of the time it's not the universe that usually needs saving," he noted, stopping with his toes up in the air. "Individual planets and the odd civilization, now that's a bit more common. Not always Earth either, so you don't have to worry about that… much."

"Doctor, don't tease my mum."

"But it's so fun – ow!" The Time Lord ducked away from Rose, his arm wrapped around the ribs she'd just elbowed. "Deception. Disgrace."

"Don't quote the Lion King at me."

"The sequel, actually – ah, not the ear!"

Watching the domestic display, I couldn't help but laugh to myself. Maybe this 'bedrest' wouldn't be so bad after all.

Author's Note

I have returned, after so many months of constant headaches and personal drama killing my writing muse. Updates will probably remain fairly sporadic and spaced out, but I hope the quality makes up for the wait. Chapter is a bit shorter than normal, but it ended where it wanted to end, I think, and I can finally follow up on my promise to delete the earlier version of this fic.

With generic regards to Doctor Who, I haven't really been consuming that much of the show or related fiction lately, which is kind of sad because I usually really enjoy it. Still, I hope that getting this chapter out helps me get back into the swing of things.

The Doctor is finally beginning to puzzle out Delaine's true nature, though it'll still be a bit before the full story gets out. It's kind of fun writing a slow-burn friendship, but it's somewhat telling that I have delete a lot of interactions between Delaine and the Doctor for being over-intense and going too far in the 'argument' department. Thankfully, Delaine and Rose's thawing relationship is going that much more smoothly, if mostly because the two are handling each other with kid gloves for their own reasons.

I'm sure that small Delaine will make another appearance somewhere down the line. In fact, I might even be certain of it.

Something I should probably note – while I'm not against people theorizing about future developments (it's actually quite entertaining to see what you all come up with and what details you use to spin your theories together, because more than a few of you have pinned down my exact thought process in writing this fic), it does get a little annoying having people tell me what I should do with my characters, especially when their ideas go against the character completely or I've already explained that I'm not going that. I make an effort to be polite, but it does get aggravating having to go 'there's ten different reasons why I'm not doing this thing and here's those reasons listed' so often.

Feel free to ask any questions in the comments / review section. I will either answer them in-story or in the next Author's Notes. Reviews, criticisms, and commentary are, as always, welcome.