This would be the first Doctor Who fic I've attempted, so let's not all expect too much :). Also, I'm not sure how soon it will be updated, as real life busi-nesses may get in the way a lot.

Disclaimer: Doctor Who property of BBC. Oh, if only it belonged to me. Alas.

Full Summary: A visit home to London proves more hazardous than expected for one lone Time Lord – is the Doctor's mysterious illness born from natural causes, or something more sinister? It's up to Rose to save the world, all by herself this time – and keep the London medical practitioners from finding out the truth about their non-human patient.

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"Hello, doll," Jackie cried, throwing her arms around her daughter's neck. "You're home so early!"

Rose laughed, gasping a little under her mother's firm arms. "Mum, your earring's caught in my hair. How long've we been gone this time?"

"Oh, sorry," Jackie extracted her jewellery and stood back to help Rose get her pack off. "Only a couple of weeks. God almighty, what's this thing full of? A whole department store's worth of knickers? What you been doing?" she flashed a quick glare at the Doctor, standing behind her daughter, who was inspecting a wall-photo of a fat, pink, infant Rose.

"Bags of dirt," Rose beamed.

"Oh, don't be silly," Jackie replied, following Rose through the small flat's living room. "Can you pop the kettle on, sweetums? I've only just got in – you're lucky you didn't arrive earlier or I'd have found you sitting on the doorstep like a pair of tramps."

"That's us," agreed Rose, opening the cupboard. "Got any biscuits?"

"Middle cupboard. Rose – this thing is full of bags of dirt!" Jackie cried, wrinkling her nose as she opened the pack.

"Told you," Rose said. "It's from the hills of Magritte on Ala – Alu – Aleh – somewhere near the middle of the milky way. It's brilliant – you put plants in it."

"I know, Rose, it's dirt."

"No, see, you put dead plants in and they come back to life and if you make a garden you can grow anything, no matter the temperature or stuff like that, really fast too – and they never die, so's long as you give them a bit of water every now and then. Just don't spill it on any wooden furniture or your chairs and tables start sprouting roots and branches."

"But I don't have anywhere for a garden," Jackie said, holding up a bag of the rich black soil and looking at with confusion.

Rose's face fell. "Well, yeah, but I sort of thought you could do pot plants and window-boxes and things, and I could bring cuttings and seeds from wherever I go so you'd have plants from all over the galaxy…"

Jackie could hear the urgent need to please in her daughter's voice and quickly dropped the dirt back into the pack with a smile, pecking Rose on the cheek. "I'll put it to good use, darling."

Ten minutes later, Rose was sitting at Jackie's linoleum table popping a coke can while the Doctor stirred his steaming tea and described their latest brush with alien death in full living colour to Rose's mother, who felt her face grow more horrified with each word.

He gesticulated wildly as he explained. "And then, right when we think things couldn't get any worse…"

"I even said that, remember?" Rose interjected. "I said, 'God, could this be any worse?'"

"You did, you did," the Doctor flapped his hand at her to hush her. Rose rolled her eyes and took a swig of coke. Jackie wondered if they had anything like coke in the middle of the milky way. "So right when things can't get any worse, we look around, and this stuff starts pouring out of the grills in the walls."

"Smelled like hot tar," Rose added.

"Right, right. It was aqueous Prue-tree sap, totally caustic to carbon molecules, eat the flesh off your bones in like, a minute. And these spear-brandishing priests are wading towards us – they've got silicon-based skin, these jokers, the sap doesn't hurt them. And I'm thinking we're bloody done for, 'cause this stinking liquid is rising higher ever second and we can't climb much higher on this altar…"

Jackie put her hands over her eyes. "Stop! I don't want to here any more."

"Oh, but you wait Mum, you won't believe how we escaped."

Jackie did not want to hear how they had escaped. Nevertheless, there was not much to do but keep listening.

Rose patted her mother's arm as the Doctor finished the wild tale with a roaring description of how, using the giant hollow mask hanging above the altar as a raft, they had manoeuvred the Diloferin-lions into towing their makeshift boat to safety. Jackie did not applaud when the story was finished. She fixed her features into an expression that (she hoped) was positively furious, sipping her tea with pursed lips and glaring at the Doctor and Rose alternately.

"You know what? I think the two of you have just been sitting in a coffee shop in Scotland for two weeks," she grumbled.

"It's all true!" Rose insisted, nearly knocking her coke off the edge of the table.

"Don't spoil it for me. I want to believe it's not true," Jackie sighed, getting up to pour herself a fresh cup of tea. "I'll tell you one thing, though," she called over her shoulder. "He just likes to hear himself talk. You're never going to get him to stop, Rose, and serve you right."

Later, while the Doctor was at the corner dairy getting chips for tea (like the coke, Rose had demanded it – Jackie wondered if it was all the running for her life that allowed her daughter to keep her figure), Rose turned to her mother over their game of scrabble and asked, "Mum, why were you so glad to see me when we got in? You usually greet me with a whinge about how I don't come home enough."

Jackie shrugged, correcting Rose's spelling of 'machine' on the chequered board. "I get worried, that's all. There's been funny things on the news last week and I kept thinking your man-alien would turn up to investigate. I was just happy you hadn't arrived dished out in laser guns to tell me Britain's infested with Martians again."

"They were Sycoraks, Mum," Rose said as Jackie pondered over her own tiles. "What kind of funny things?"

"Nothing bothersome. Just – five people last week were found with their brains exploded."

"What?"

"It's alright, sweetie, it was miles away. Two in Cardiff, then two out in the countryside, and another one across London just a couple of days ago. They said it was like super-advanced mad cow disease had hit them overnight – they were missing for a couple of days, then they'd turn up dead with mush leaking out their ears. Funny business, but if your Doctor's not worried, neither am I."

"Cardiff and now London? You mean they're getting closer?" Rose was staring at her. Jackie tried to give her a reassuring smile.

"I did notice that, Rose. But really, I think it's just a coincidence. There's not been any queer lights in the sky or little green men spotted. How do you spell your TARDIS, then?"

"Tee, aye, are, dee, eye, ess. Are you sure there's nothing suspicious, Mum?" Rose's voice had grown very serious and sharp, as if she was scolding her mother. Jackie felt irritation tickling her. Rose never used to talk to her like she was stupid, not before she met her Doctor fellow. But, she had to suppose, when you listened to someone talk about how clever they were for all your waking hours, you were bound to feel a little superiority had rubbed off on yourself. Jackie thought of Rose's first Doctor compared to this new version – alright, she hadn't approved of the earlier one any better, and he was frightfully brash, but at least he had seemed to think before he spoke: and to Jackie the grass was always greener (or possibly the paintwork was always bluer) on the other side.

"I'm sure, Rose," Jackie answered. "There; I'm beating you by sixty points now. Do you surrender?"

Rose clicked her tongue and shot her mother a look that would have been spiteful if it hadn't been accompanied by a barely-contained smile.

"Alright, you win-"

At that moment, there was a roar and a bang so loud the last consonant of Rose's sentence was lost completely: it sounded as if something had rushed overhead and exploded nearby. But Jackie had felt no vibration, and the windows were not rattling. As if the bang had been all sound and no explosion.

Before Jackie had even processed these thoughts, she realised Rose had left the table and sprinted past her.

"Doctor?" her yell sounded tiny in the aftermath of the bang. Jackie rubbed her ears, realising she had been deafened a little. She pushed herself up and stumbled after her daughter.

"Rose! Do you know what that was?"

But Rose was already exiting the flat. Jackie hurried to catch the door before it swung shut and rushed down the concrete steps to the carpark outside. She saw the glowing blonde puff of Rose's hair already on the street, the streetlights filling up the shadows cast by the last light of the setting sun, running towards a prone figure lying on the sidewalk with a white newspaper packet of chips burst open in the gutter beside him.

"Doctor!" Rose's shriek split the air and drove the last of the deafness from Jackie's ears.

"Oh my God," Jackie heard her voice echo in her head as soon as it left her mouth. "Oh my God. Rose, has he been shot? Has someone shot him?"

She was still twenty metres from her daughter and Rose didn't seem to hear her. She was kneeling beside the trench-coated figure, shaking his shoulders wildly. Curious neighbours had left their flats and were silhouetted in lit doorways along the street. A few approached cautiously, a man in tartan slippers and dressing gown, two teenagers that lived in Jackie's block, and the young woman at number 23 carrying her toddler on her hip.

"Did you yell for a doctor? Do you want me to call the ambulance?" the woman with the child asked, addressing the question to Jackie. She was holding a cordless phone in her free hand, her thumb hovering over the '1' button.

"Yes! Someone's been hurt," Jackie called as she dashed to her daughter's side. "Rose, darling, don't shake him, I've heard you shouldn't shake them in case he has a neck injury…"

"I'm not," said Rose helplessly, and Jackie saw that her daughter's hands were hovering over the Doctor. But he was convulsing and jerking all on his own. His expression was blank, his eyes barely closed so that a sliver of white sliver beneath the lids.

"Oh, God," Jackie breathed, putting her hands over her mouth. Distantly, she heard the woman with the toddler talking to the emergency services.

The convulsions became suddenly more violent, but also more conscious; the Doctor thrashed, his fist just missing Rose's face, then clutched his head in his hands, squeezing his eyes shut and crying out. Rose whimpered and grabbed his wrists, seemingly trying to stop him crushing his own skull between his palms.

"Doctor, I'm here," she said, and Jackie knew her daughter was recalling her mother's words from only a few minutes before – 'they'd turn up dead with mush leaking out their ears… they're getting closer…'

Rose kept speaking, rapidly soothing, "It's alright, help is coming, it's alright," and after a few seconds Jackie saw it seemed to be working: the Doctor's clenched fingers relaxed and his head fell back to the pavement. Rose lowered his arms to his side and took his face in her hands. "Are you awake? Are you there?" His eyes opened, looked up at her and gave her a very familiar, alive, frown.

Jackie realised she had been wringing her hands so tight there were nail marks on her skin. She took a breath and felt her muscles begin to unwind.

"Oh, thank God," Rose gasped, smiling at once. "Are you alright? Is your brain alright? What happened? Was it that bang?"

But the Doctor's frown deepened. He sat up, staring at Rose with his eyes narrowed. He said something, but somehow it came out garbled and Jackie didn't hear what it was.

"Doctor?" Rose repeated. "Are you alright?"

"Rose," the Doctor said to her, then glanced at Jackie. "Jackie."

"Yeah, it's me sweetheart. You gave us a right turn for a second there," Jackie was too relieved to notice she had called the Doctor 'sweetheart'.

Shaking his head as he stared at Rose, he spoke again. At least, he tried to – but once again, all that came out of his mouth was nonsense.

"Is he deaf?" Jackie cried in horror. "He doesn't seem to know what he's saying."

"I don't know. No. He can hear me. Can't you, Doctor? If you can hear me, touch your nose, okay?" Rose begged.

The Doctor continued to stare at her.

The man in the Tartan slippers was standing over Jackie's shoulder. "He can hear you, hon," he grunted at Rose. "I saw him look at yer mum when she made a noise."

"But what's wrong with him?" Rose cried, throwing a desperate look at the man.

"Looks like the fellow's had a stroke. My wife, God rest her, had one a few years back. Scrambled the speech centres of her brain – she had to learn to talk all over again. She used to garble her words just like that," he pointed at the Doctor, who was watching the quickly gathering crowd with interest and possibly a little panic.

"A stroke? Can he get those?" Jackie asked.

"Surely not so young!" one of her neighbours answered her.

"It happens. Too much salt in his diet, no doubt," someone else said.

All heads – including the Doctor's – turned as the sound of a siren entered the street.

"Mum," Rose was clutching the Doctor's hand and looking up at Jackie. "He doesn't understand me. We have to get him inside. He can't go to hospital – they're not going to know how to treat him, for chrissakes!"

"Of course. Yes, if you think it's best," Jackie hurried around to the Doctor's other side, but before she could take his arm and help him to his feet, he jumped up of his own accord and shook Rose's hand. There was real panic on his face now and he was pointing across the street, repeating some word that Jackie knew she wouldn't even be able to pronounce.

"I don't understand!" Rose cried, staring at him and gesturing to try and communicate what she meant. "What is it? What are you saying?"

The Doctor gave a frustrated growl and tried to pull away from her, but the man in the tartan slippers stepped forward and grabbed his elbow. Looking annoyed, the Doctor jerked his arm away, but the two teenagers now gripped his jacket. "Don't go running onto the road, mate, you need a hospital!" one of them said. The ambulance, lights bursting against Jackie's eyes, had pulled up at the curb and two red-striped paramedics jumped out.

"Who's the bloke who's had the seizure?" one of them called.

The Doctor spun around as more neighbours closed in on him, preventing him from escaping to wherever it was he desperately wanted to go.

Rose's voice called out over the crowd, "No, he's alright, I'm just going to take him inside!"

"Don't be stupid, the woman on the phone told us this was serious," one of the paramedics yelled at her as they headed towards the Doctor, who was looking frantically around for an exit.

Rose pushed between the two teenagers and snatched his hand, dragging him back towards the flat. "He's fine, really," she yelled back at the paramedics. Jackie stepped quickly between the medics and the Doctor's retreating back to give Rose enough time to disappear with her companion (ruefully thinking how good at that Rose was). But she heard a gasp run through the crowd and turned to see the Doctor's lean figure stumbling and dropping to the ground once more, even as Rose attempted to hold him upright.

The paramedics sped past her and pushed Rose out of the way. Suddenly a stretcher had materialised beside them and they were hauling her daughter's alien man onto its white sheets and rushing him away towards the back of the ambulance. Rose had her hands pressed to her mouth. The tartan-slippered man was shaking his head without any convincing sympathy. Jackie looked from the Doctor's face vanishing behind the red-crossed doors, skin pale and eyes closed, to Rose's – even paler, but eyes wide open. She put her arms out and pulled Rose into her chest.

"Come on, sweetheart, we'll follow them to the hospital," she shushed. "Come on, Rose. He's going to be alright."

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