April 2018: Re-edited since its original posting

Chapter 8 - Invitations

Once the waters had receded from the underground complex, the Doctor, Rose, and Donna climbed back down into the corridor. The Doctor did not want to admit his relief at finding the TARDIS right where they had left her.

Donna gave them her address, and the Doctor and Rose piloted the ship to Donna's parent's house.

They all exited the TARDIS together, the Doctor pleased to note that she had materialized in just the right location, across the street from a home with softly-lit windows. "There we go. Told you she'd be all right," he said, admiring his ship. "She can survive anything," he announced proudly.

"More than I've done," muttered Donna.

The Doctor scanned her with the sonic screwdriver, gauging the effects of the Huon energy. "Nope!" he told her happily. "All the Huon particles have gone. No damage; you're fine."

"Yeah, but apart from that," she said, "I missed my weddin', lost my job, and became a widow on the same day. Sort of."

"I couldn't save him," the Doctor told her.

"He deserved it," retorted Donna, dismissively.

"You don't mean that," said Rose, reaching for Donna's arm.

"No, I don't," agreed Donna. She looked over at her parents' house. "I'd better get inside," she told them. "They'll be worried"

The Doctor smiled. "Best Christmas present they could have."

Donna shook her head. "I really think I hate Christmas," she said.

Rose nodded reluctantly, "Can't say we've had the best track record with it, ourselves."

The Doctor thought a moment, then reached up to work some switches hidden behind the TARDIS' transom. "What, even if it snows?" he asked, innocently.

Rose and Donna laughed with delight as a fireworks shower of snowflakes fell around them.

Donna reached her hands out, trying to catch the fluttering crystals. "I can't believe you did that!" she yelled.

"Oh, basic atmospheric excitation," he casually explained with a grin, leaning against the ship. "Real snow, that," he added, as Rose allowed herself a twirl in the snowfall. Hey only had eyes for her, as she closed her eyes and let the snowflakes fall on her upturned face.

"Much better than last Christmas," she acknowledged.

"Loony, you are, the pair of you," sighed Donna, gaining both their attention. "Merry Christmas."

"And you," said the Doctor.

Rose moved to give her a hug. "Merry Christmas, Donna," she said, as Donna returned the embrace. Rose added, not quietly enough to escape the Doctor's ears, "You're stronger than ya' know. You'll see." As she pulled back, she asked, "So... what'll you do with yourself, now?"

"Not gettin' married, for starters," Donna answered. "An' I'm not gonna temp anymore," she resolved. "I dunno, travel... see a bit more of planet earth... walk in the dust. Just... go out there and do somethin'."

Rose gave the Doctor an encouraging smile. "Well," he said, nodding to Rose with a smile of his own, "you could always..."

"What?" Donna asked.

"Come with us?" Rose finished for him.

Donna smiled. "No," she said.

"Well, we asked," said the Doctor to Rose with a shrug.

Rose glared at him. "Seriously?" she asked.

"No, but really," continued Donna, "everythin' we did today - do you live your lives like that?"

"Not all the time," defended the Doctor.

"I think you do," Donna contradicted him. "And I couldn't."

"You might think that now," said Rose, "but I used to be like you. I was just a girl who worked in a shop before the Doctor came along. An' you've seen it out there. It's beautiful."

"An' it's terrible," Donna put in. "That place was floodin' an' burnin' and they were dyin' and you," she pointed at the Doctor, "were stood there like... I don't know. A stranger, passin' judgment. And then you made it snow! I mean, you scare me to death!"

The Doctor was a bit taken aback at that; he always was when people didn't understand his life the way Rose did. "Well then," he said after a moment.

"Tell you what I will do, though," offered Donna, lightening the mood. "Christmas dinner." The Doctor winced. "Oh, come on," she pleaded.

"I don't do that sort of thing," he said.

"You did it last year," put in Rose, taking his hand.

"Ha!" exclaimed Donna. "Thank you, Rose. An' you might as well, because Mum always cooks enough for twenty."

The Doctor looked between Donna and Rose, and knew he'd been beaten. "Oh, all right then," he conceded. "But you go first; better warn them. And... don't say I'm a Martian?"

Donna went on ahead, as the Doctor locked up the TARDIS. Then, hand in hand, Rose and the Doctor followed after her.

After a very satisfying dinner, Donna said her goodbyes to Rose and the Doctor outside of the TARDIS. A few hugs and exchanged mobile numbers later, Donna had gone her way, and the TARDIS was once again floating in the Vortex.

Rose thought the Doctor was unusually quiet. Despite the cordial dinner they'd just shared, she thought she might be able to guess what was on his mind. "I'm sorry," she ventured.

The Doctor looked up at her, surprised. "What for?" he asked.

"'Bout the Racnoss. That the Empress wouldn't go peacefully, that... " she took a breath as she moved closer to him. "That even though you did exactly what you had to, that you had to do it."

He looked down, but smiled, sadly. "Thank you," he said, simply.

Rose shrugged. "I know it wasn't anywhere close to easy, or what you would've wanted."

As he looked at her and opened his arms, Rose stepped in to hold him.

"You looked preoccupied," she explained just a bit further. "I just don't want you tryin' to blame yourself or worryin' 'bout it."

"I honestly wasn't," he answered. "I'd learned all about the Racnoss, how they'd abused the Huon particles and actually, willingly altered themselves to become the destroyers they were. So, once I'd seen for myself, and she laughed at that offer... You're right. I didn't want to, but I can't regret it." After a beat, he added, "But I am actually sorry..."

Rose pulled back from the hug, just enough to watch his face. "For what?" Rose asked him.

"That we were having Christmas dinner with Donna -"

"Donna's great!" she said, stepping back and resting her hands on her hips. "I'm really hopin' she changes her mind about comin' with us, someday."

"I mean," said the Doctor, uncomfortably, "that we were with her family, rather than yours."

Ah. So that's it, huh? He was still blaming himself. Well, we can put a stop to this. "Did you, or did you not, try to send me to Pete's world with Mum in the first place?"

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that," he said, meekly, hand on neck.

"You should be, but not the issue right now," Rose told him. "Did you, or did you not, harness a super nova just to let me say goodbye through the very last gap between our universes?" She asked, moving towards him.

"I suppose -" he began, but she cut him off.

"And did I, or did I not, tell you that I've made my choice, and you're it?" she asked, with a pronounced poke at his arm as she arrived at his side.

"You did," he said, looking right at her.

"Okay," said Rose, suddenly a bit uncomfortable under his scrutiny. "Done with the guilt complex?"

A moment's pause, then, "Done."

"Alright."

He still looked like something was bothering him, but this time Rose didn't need to wheedle it out of him. "But speaking of your Mum," he said at last, "what's with all the slapping?"

Okay, not what she'd expected.

"Did you laugh when she slapped me, too, or just Donna? Only I couldn't tell because my head was ringing."

Rose bit her lip as she answered, "Well, let's just say I've wanted to shut you up a few times myself."

"That's the first time you slapped me!"

Rose blushed. No, slapping hadn't originally occurred to her, and she'd been too chicken to act on the first thing that had come mind.

To her horror, the Doctor seemed to read her thoughts on her face. He grinned. "How have you wanted to shut me up?" he asked.

"Badly," Rose evaded, refusing to inflate his ego.

He ignored the comment, and stepped closer, feigning innocence. "We established early on that I've got quite a gob," he said, hands in pockets, slowly but steadily advancing with each of Rose's retreating steps. "And I admit I can get going when faced with insolent invaders, threatening the annihilation of peaceful worlds; arrogant, thick-headed, single-minded destroyers, dooming desperate denizens to desolation..."

He was getting into his groove, she could tell. The alliteration always came out when he was on a roll.

"Or, like earlier with Donna, trying to solve a mysterious occurrence that by all rights should not ever have occurred, running through the possibilities, trying to hit upon the one clue that will reveal the truth... Or," he continued, moving even closer, so that Rose was backed against the railing, "I suppose I can get a bit carried away by discovering the solution to a problem with the TARDIS' systems..."

No, thought Rose, biting her lip. Not the technobabble. Anything but the technobabble!

But he did. He intentionally launched into a long and complicated spiel, detailing his most recent exploits with something-or-other spanners, whatsit-doohickey temporal modulators, intra-dimensional thingamabobs, and on, and on, and on-

And she gave up.

Rose grabbed him by the hair, and pulled his mouth down to hers.

She really would have let him go once he was quiet, but by then the Doctor was quite enjoying himself, so who was she to deny - oh, who was she kidding? He'd won. He'd gotten her to give in. But as she tangled her fingers more deeply in his hair, pulling slightly even as she held him more closely to her, eliciting a moan from him that had nothing to do with pain, she knew she couldn't care in the least.

The end.

Up next, "03 01AU The Smiths and Miss Jones" :)