Five ways Rose and The Doctor would have settled down together if the TARDIS had gone kablooee
1.
Jackie Tyler has the least comfortable couch the Doctor has ever encountered.
He'd always known this would happen eventually, the Type 40 TARDIS was never designed to be flown forever and the ship's aging had been sped up by the damage it had received during the time war. Even though he'd always known that his TARDIS would someday die, he had hoped that he'd be somewhere more interesting than London 2006 when it happened.
At first he'd tried staying onboard, but you couldn't live onboard a dead TARDIS, it was like walking on somebody's grave. So now he was stuck in Rose's mum's flat, on a couch that he was almost certain he remembered from the Spanish inquisition.
"Doctor, are you asleep?"
"No," The Doctor twisted to face Rose, who was standing in the doorway wearing pyjama bottoms and tiny t-shirt, very impractical for fighting off alien invasions in, but as there wasn't due to be another invasion of the Earth until 2011 he supposed she was alright, "Bit hard to sleep on this thing anyway."
"You don't have to sleep on the couch, you know."
"I know, I could sleep in the bathtub, or there's six feet of carpet over there that looks particularly appealing, or if I was feeling very brave I could ask your mother to share…"
"That wasn't what I meant."
"I know."
Rose gave him one of those Significant Looks that humans were so good at and turned and headed back towards her bedroom.
The Doctor followed her leaving the torturous couch behind.
2.
Rose swatted ineffectively at the mosquitoes, ran her hands through her damp hair and tried to peel her sweat soaked t-shirt away from her skin. Then she gave up and resigned herself to being hot, sweaty and miserable. The Doctor was grinning widely as he chatted animatedly with the explorers that they'd met, he didn't look like he'd even noticed the humidity. Bloody stupid alien.
They were in Paraguay, or was it Peru; it was one of the P ones anyway. After they'd been forced to sacrifice the TARDIS to save 1930's Chicago from being sucked through a vortex into an alien dimension Rose had been all for staying put and making the most of life in the city. The Doctor had agreed at first, but after a few months he'd started getting restless and twitchy, talking about how there were parts of the Earth that were unexplored at this time and lots of things still to be discovered and wouldn't it be brilliant if they were the ones to discover them.
Well, Rose hadn't been about to let him wander off on his own. Which was how she came to be in the jungles of Paraguay, or was it Peru.
"Rose!" The Doctor was dashing over to her; he was waving what looked to Rose's eyes to be a bit of scrap paper with some scribbles on it. "These gentlemen here say they have a treasure map."
"Let me guess," Rose said, "they'll sell it to us for the price of the fare back to Rio."
"Exactly," The Doctor said, hopping from one foot to the other.
Sometimes Rose wants to leave the Doctor, wants to go back to the closest thing the 1940s can provide to civilisation but then the Doctor will get like this, all grinning and bouncy over an almost certainly fake treasure map and she can't help but follow him whatever he wants to go.
"Alright then," Rose said, making another ineffectual swipe at the mosquitoes.
3.
"Oww, hey!" Mickey complained, rubbing the side of his head. You had to admire the irony of the universe, he'd travelled through time, been to the 51rst century, wiped the cybermen out of Europe and become stuck in a parallel universe with no way to return. And yet here he was, sat at his kitchen table with his gran hitting him in the side of the head for forgetting to bring the salt out.
Rose laughed, Rose had always laughed when Mickey's gran had smacked him, it had probably been a sign that their relationship was doomed from the beginning.
The Doctor only smiled wanly at Mickey's complaining. He'd been getting more and more despondent since they'd become stuck in the parallel universe. Oh, running round Europe with Jake and the Preachers destroying the Cyber factories had cheered him up for a bit but now that they were back in London with a broken time machine and not an alien invasion in sight he was getting quieter and more miserable by the day.
Mickey stood up and headed into the kitchen for the salt before his gran could smack him again.
"This is nice," Rose said, having followed Mickey into the kitchen, "just like old times, eh?"
"Yeah, you and gran ganging up on me, just like old times."
"But it's nice, yeah, me and you…and the Doctor," Rose looked wistfully at the table where the Doctor was picking mournfully at his tea. And probably ignoring Mickey's gran telling him that he needed to fatten up.
"Rose…"
"No, I know what you think, but he's gonna be alright, it's just culture shock."
Mickey could have said that Rose was kidding herself, thinking that after nine hundred years of time and space the Doctor would be happy with a job and trips to the pub and tea with Mickey's gran. But he saw the way Rose looked at the Doctor, it was the same way she'd looked at Jimmy Stone back in school. She hadn't listened to Mickey then and she wouldn't listen to him now.
Eventually the Doctor would find a way to leave and Mickey would be left to pick up the pieces, it was what he always did.
4.
It was weeks before they were released from the holding facility, even though Zack, Ida and Danny all said that Rose and the Doctor were the reason they'd got off that planet alive. The government still wanted to know how they'd come to be on a planet orbiting a black hole and exactly why said planet had been sucked into the black hole shortly after their arrival.
Rose turned and faced the Doctor, "Is there any way we can get the TARDIS back?"
"No, she was sucked into the black hole, there's no way to get anything back from there."
"Oh, well are you alright?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"You said the TARDIS was all you had."
"I said you and the TARDIS were all I had. I've still got you."
"And is that okay?" Rose asked nervously, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.
The Doctor turned to her and smiled, "okay? It's brilliant!"
He grabbed Rose's hand and tugged her out into the bright sunshine of this strange new Earth.
5.
"This is a scrap yard," Rose said, utilising her unique human ability to state the blindingly obvious.
"Yes," the Doctor replied, utilising his unique Time Lord ability to infuriate Rose.
"You promised me alien planets and adventure."
"It's an alien scrap yard, and if I don't get a new chronostat for the TARDIS we won't be having any more adventures."
Before Rose could come up with a sufficiently witty response the Doctor had spotted a small mottled alien lurking between two piles of scrap metal and dashed off calling out.
"Thirty years, that's ridiculous!" The Doctor was shouting at the alien when Rose caught up with him.
"Thirty years till what?" Rose demanded.
The alien, as aliens were wont to, ignored Rose completely and spoke directly to the Doctor.
"Parts for Type 40 TARDIS's are difficult to come by, of course if you believe your ship will make it to another yard…"
"Alright, alright, but anything you could do to speed it up."
The alien bowed to the Doctor and shuffled off, still ignoring Rose.
"Thirty years to what?" she demanded.
"Well," the Doctor shuffled his feet and rubbed the back of his neck, "parts for TARDIS's are hard to come by and the one I need is a bit rare and it'll be a few years before he can get me one."
"How many years?"
"fmmphty," the Doctor mumbled.
"What?"
"Thirty years."
"So we'll go somewhere else," Rose said.
"Uh, well, the thing is I had to use the last of the ships power to get here and I don't actually think that she'll reach anywhere else without, um, exploding," the Doctor said all of this very quickly.
"Thirty years."
"Maybe a little sooner."
Rose breathed in, then breathed out, breathed in again and tried to look at the positives, she was alive, the Doctor was alive, they were together and on an alien planet which was pretty cool when you thought about.
"So," she reached out and clutched the Doctor's arm, "what is there to see on this planet."
"It's a moon," the Doctor corrected.
"Okay, what is there to see on this moon?"
"This is a scrap moon actually, the entire surface is covered in spare parts," the Doctor grinned hopefully.
"Rose?
"Rose?
"Rose…"