tampered | Log ongoing; closed

Log ongoing; closed

When; Oct 8
Rating; PG-13 at the most
Characters; Rose Tyler, The Doctor
Summary; Rose ends up with 'Last Man Standing' curse while the Doctor ends up with Nightmares the next day. It's all a wreck.
Log;

When Rose woke up that morning, the City was a deserted ruin. When faced with an apocalypse, or if you're Rose Tyler, the first order of business is always to find the Doctor. She checks City Solutions, the ship where they get chips then Donna's flat followed by Amy and Rory's as well as the TARDIS'. When all of those come up empty, Rose begins to get worried. By afternoon she's panicked, having searched the City over. Come evening, she's a wreck and that's when her device decides to start broadcasting. She's in tears, tracks of mascara on her cheeks. It's like losing him at Canary Wharf all over again but somehow this is worse. She's losing everything she could have had with him that she never even imagined she'd get before.

“I need you back. Please. Doctor please, find me.”

She sits on a bench for a moment, giving into the absolute wreck of a girl she is inside then wipes at her cheeks with the heels of her hands, takes a deep breath and stands up. Rose Tyler doesn't wait for the Doctor to find her. She finds him.

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He woke up that morning to an empty flat and simply assumed that Rose had gone to work. That whole, 'schedule' thing, was something he was still learning to work with, and as such his own tended to be extremely non-conformist and unpredictable. However, for Rose to get up in the morning and go work at Cinna's shop was nothing out of the ordinary. The Doctor had merely gotten ready for his own day - there wasn't much too it. He'd only gone to bed because he really, really needed it at this point. Staying up for weeks at a time even for a Time Lord would eventually put you at a deficit, and he was now starting to require more sleep more often than he would have normally. Kind of a plan mid-backfire, if you will.

But when Rose doesn't ring up his device talking about lunch, or later about what they'll call in for supper, and isn't in the flat when he gets home and so he goes back out to see if she's just working late at work, he learns that she hadn't gone in at all that day, he suddenly gets very, very worried. And a little scared. There's a wash of absolute anxiety that hits him hard even as he thanks the employee of Cinna's and absently starts going back to their flat.

By the time proper evening has come and night is fast approaching, the Doctor looks clearly as though he is trying to find someone - half because he's asked everyone he knows if they've seen her and half because someone looking for something that is very important to them is not a difficult thing to spot. He doesn't look half as scared, worried, anxious, worried, or scared as he is, but they're there.

And then he hears her. He whirls around, trying to ascertain where the sound is coming from - Rose crying; not the sound he was hoping for, but one he's heard often enough to know - before realising it's emanating from his device. Pulling it up to see, he sees her. So much relief just from that. She seems to be okay, aside from the crying, and he can even tell where she is. He starts running over there even as he tries to get her attention through the network.

'Rose!' If she doesn't respond immediately he shouts it again.

It takes her a moment to respond, to realize that it's coming from her device. Her relief is immediate and she mops at her face again. "Doctor!"

Well now she just feels stupid. She's just somehow over looked him all day, right? "I'm here!" It's a declarations and a plea, a bit like the 'find me' but less pitiful. "Where are you?

'I'm coming to you. Can see where you're sat 'cos of the background. Bench, yeah? Should be able to see me in a couple of seconds. Where have you been all day?' He's both very glad to hear her, and see her to an extent, but mostly to find her - but he's also worried about whatever it was she was doing that made it so no one knew where she was for such a long period of time. There's a slight edge to the question he didn't mean to put in there.

"I've been looking for you. I thought with the--everyone missin' that you'd--" She pauses and swallows hard, shrugging a little and trying very hard not to give into crying again. "Thought you'd gone."

No matter how weak or ridiculous it makes her look, it's her worst fear here in the City.

He just continues walking/jogging/running toward her, listening to her and thinking about how much he felt the same way, aside from, 'Wait, hang on, d'you say everyone was missing?' At this point he's basically where he thought she was, but has stopped moving and is looking around himself, then back at the device for her surroundings, then back around his own.

She's watching him on the video and doing much of the same that she is. He should be here. He is here. And yet...

"Yeah...everybody missin'. S'all normal on your end?"

She sounds a little scared, a lot confused and very worried. "Doctor, what's goin' on?"

This comes a little absently as he's still looking around. 'Yeah, everything's fine over here... Well, I mean, fine as good as fine gets for this place. Just you that's missing...' He does that a bit more and is rapidly switching into science-work-things-out mode when her voice makes him pause and look back at her through the device. 'I'm not actually sure there's anything... Wrong. I just thought this was where you were, but I don't see you. Maybe I just... missed you somehow; do you see me anywhere?'

"Hold on." And she'll do some scrambling about, looking in all the directions for him and behind a few ruins. "Can't see you at all."

She gets an idea and she doesn't like the idea. "Turn you device down, I'll turn mine down. We'll give out a shout then check back to see if we could hear each other."

If he agrees she'll mute her device and give out a couple of very loud rounds of yelling his name.

Well that is an excellent idea so yes, he agrees to do it. A certain number of nerves come back when he calls, and listens, and calls, and listens, and doesn't hear anything.

After a couple of minutes trying it, he picks the device back up, still looking around occasionally between looking into the device itself. 'D'you get anything on your end?'

She turns her device back on and shakes her head. "Nothing. You yelled loud, yeah?" She knows he did but she has to ask because she's worried and beginning to panic a bit more.

"Haven't soniced our devices have you?" Because maybe she's where the City sends people who leave and the only reason he can still hear her and see her is because he soniced the devices up.

''Course I did.' It wasn't meant to be short and might not even have sounded like it, but it's been a long day for the pair of them. Longer for her, but he's trying to make up for that in Time Lord irrationality and over-protectiveness.

He shakes his head in response to that. 'No, I've never had a reason to. Haven't been apart more than a few hours since you got here, have we?' The last part's said with a bit of a forced grin. It's true, but doesn't really help the present situation at all.

She presses the heel of her hand against her forehead, fingers curled a bit and then nods. The tears are back and she's losing the battle with them. Being brave is hard and it's made harder by the fact that he's right, they haven't been apart more than a few hours at a time.

"Ought to do that after we find each other. Add some sort of GPS too. Just in case."

She takes a deep breath, trying to gather her wits about her again and she forces a smile at him. "Maybe if we both head back to the flat?"

He doesn't really know how to comfort people aside from hugs and cooing words when he's with them, and he's got even less know-how when all he can do is watch them try not to cry over a vid-link. The muscles in his jaw work as he watches her stay together and speak, and he nods tightly after the suggestion.

'Yeah. We'll do that. Good to be prepared.'

The smile is appreciated but he can't really manage a decent one in return - really just a softening around the eyes if anything. There's a very small pause before he replies. 'Meet you there.'

She breaks into a run back toward the flat. It's almost harder to keep it together when he's having a hard time dealing as well. She doesn't speak again because there's no point. She doesn't know what to say but she does keep checking the device to make sure he's there and to let him know she's still there. She finally reaches the building and bursts into the lobby then presses the button for the elevator.

"Had to pick the top floor, didn't we?"

She's fidgety, like she'll open the door to the flat and he'll just be there. Okay, that's what she's hoping. "We'll fix this, right? I'll find you or you'll find me." Her face twists a moment and she can't keep the tears back. "Don't stop looking for me, Doctor. Please."

He reasons that he runs everywhere anyway so he might as well run back to the flat as well. Neither one of them seems to feel much like talking at the moment either, so it's not as though he has to save his breath for anything. They probably slam into the lobby(s?) at about the same time, and then there's just waiting on the elevator. He bobs up and down on the balls of his feet waiting on it, both ways, not sure what to do with his arms either so at one point they're clasped behind him, the next folded in front of him.

Her first words earn a wry twist of the lips in return. The ones after that... He looks down - not into the device, just down - and swallows hard. 'Never have.' It's not really a response in the volume it ought to have been; more to himself than anything, but she might hear it.

Getting out of the elevator he calmly gets to their door and unlocks it, walking inside and doing the same look around he did both this morning and afternoon, somewhat on the slow side since he's doubting it will yield anything. 'Rose. You here yet?'

Edited 2011-10-02 07:29 (UTC)

She hears it and by this time, she's an absolute wreck. She's less calm about unlocking the door on her end and it takes her a few tries to get it but she flings the door open and pushes it shut with her toe.

"Doctor?" She checks out the rooms, including his room, which is still very much his domain and not some place she usually ventures. She glances down at the device addressing it again.

"Not here."

And then she sits down on his bed and pulls one of his shirts closer, hugging it to her. "What do we do now?" He can probably tell from the device that she's in his room.

Not here either. Damn. This all feels distressingly familiar, except this time he can't delude himself with the knowledge that at least she's with her family and people she knows like she ought to've been anyway. At this point it's the Doctor and Rose - that's how it ought to be, and now she's in yet another parallel but this time there's nobody else in it with her. He really wishes it were at least the other way around.

He can tell that's where she is and can't completely tell how he feels but goes to peer into his own room where she should be just because... he does. The sight of the empty bed where she is not sitting really doesn't help at all. And he really, really doesn't want to tell her he doesn't know what to do.

'I'll figure something out. There's always something. Or maybe it's just a curse. Hopefully it's just a curse... But something.'

She nods, raking her hands through her hair in another effort to pull herself back together.She slides his shirt on, leaving the front unbuttoned and gets up, moving into the living room part of the flat. "All right, so curse. That just means we wait 'til midnight, yeah? Not long 'til then."

Except she's desperately worried it's not a curse and they're stuck this way for two more years 'til one of them finds a way back. It's not the solitude or the apocalypse that bothers her. She can survive those things. It's not having him that will do her in.

He follows her without really meaning to; mild force of habit, sort of just because it feels... impolite not to, and it's a way of feeling like they're not quite so far apart if they're still technically standing in the same place. Or what would be the same place if they were... in the same place.

It may not be long to midnight but he doesn't particularly feel like just sitting around waiting on midnight to show up with or possibly without an actual solution to things, so he actually goes back to his room, tosses his coat on the bed, grabs a couple of things, and sits back down at the kitchen table with the device to at least attempt to work out where she's actually gone off to. Can't hurt to try, anyway.

'Shirt looks good on you.'

The way he follows her is nice, comforting. She left his room because it felt odd to be there for too long. She watches him in the device, perking up a bit when he compliments her.

"Yeah, liable to start raidin' your closet now, y'know."

And she gets up to wander over to the dining room table, she stands in the same position she would if she were looking over his shoulder. "If it is a parallel universe, there ought to be a crack, yeah? Like I used to find you."

'There's not much to raid from.' Which is the truth, however amused he is by the idea of her doing it. Rose in his clothes is really not something he thinks he has a problem with.

That would be true if they were in any sort of universe that made sense, but so far this one has proven to be annoyingly impermeable to most of the cosmic sort of rules he hadn't realised he relied so much upon. But it's not a bad idea, and he isn't sure how much saying all of that would help things. 'If there is one, hopefully I can figure out where it is between the two devices.' His own flips around for a moment as he tries to see if there's something he can pull open, and then rights itself as he sets it back on the table and messes with one of the things he brought over off to the side.

"Cinna'd fix that if you gave him half the chance. He's been dyin' to get his hands on you." It's true. In Donna's words, the Doctor may be a long streak of nothing but suits are perfect for that. She will probably just wear his shirts after he's taken them off, let them be laundered after a day while she 'borrows' another.

She's got another suggestion that sh'es not terribly fond of voicing but if it gets her back to him quicker..."I could take my device out, sort of run it 'round some places and see if I could help with the detectin'."

She hates the idea of leaving where he is, even if he's not technically here. She feels closer to him here but it's more important to figure out how to get back.

That makes him pause for a second. 'He's what?' He didn't know Cinna wanted him for anything aside maybe to stay out so Rose could work. 'S he want me for?' He's a bit distracted by what he's trying to work on, whether he thinks it will work or not notwithstanding.

'That might... help, yeah. I'm got a decent read link between the pair of them but it's not telling me anything I both already know and don't know simultaneously, which is... Very annoying.' He's trying to push around that though. 'I'm not sure Rose. I'm not going to ask you to, because I'm not sure it will, but if you want to try it, I'll see what I can glean from it from here.'

"He wants you to model for him." It's said with the first bit of teasing and a real smile she's had since this all started. "You look fantastic in a suit, Doctor." And some flirting. It's good distraction.

She sobers a bit and then nods. "Okay. I'll head out. Jus' keep talkin' to me, yeah?" She doesn't want to feel like he's leaving her alone again. "'Bout anythin'." And she'll talk back because she sort of assumes he's having some what of the same feelings she is. "M'gonna start with the fountain and the carousel then the clock. Seem to be where most people come in at so I figger it's probably the weakest point."

'Of course I do.' That is just a given. And was basically an automatic response, which is evident by how he stops what he's doing again and actually looks at her. 'He wants me to what?' The Doctor's done a great number of things throughout his lifetimes; he doesn't quite recall modelling coming into things very often. It doesn't take very long to accept the idea though. 'I suppose if I can pull off kool-aid I can probably handle... Cinna-things.'

Well if there's one thing he can usually do, it's talk. 'Good idea. Let me know when you get to each one just to make sure I get readings from the right place.' There's a couple seconds pause before the next statement. 'Especially let me know when you get near the clock. I can't stand the clock.'

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They're just going to attach at the hip after this

Every day is 'go to work with your partner day' after this

They're so broken

in their defence I do think they have some 'parallel universes are bad' trauma to deal with

Just a bit

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