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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.'

He gets a smile, a bit more strained now that she's actively moving away from where he is. "That'll make Cinna happy and you'll get more shirts out of it so I can steal 'em." Can't argue with that logic, can you, Doctor?

She's taking the stairs at a jog now, figuring they'll be faster than the elevator. "Should I start at the clock? Why do you hate the clock? Other than...time lord."

He's having memories of discussions about hot pants and Elvis suits that he's definitely not going to bring back up ever of his own volition. But no, he can't argue with that.

'The clock is... weird. I don't like it. Doesn't feel right. Do you not feel it?' It's strange to think about not feeling things like that. 'Not that everything here doesn't. Most everything. Not everything.'

Oh she hasn't forgotten that. It's still in the plan. Fortunately for him, she doesn't expect him to wear her clothes.

"I hear the tickin' and that's a bit nerve wrackin'--" she pauses because she still remembers what it was like to have the time vortex inside of her, the way that he feels all the time. "Sorry. Not anymore." And she does sound sad about that. It helps her understand him when she can feel those things. She bites her bottom lip, forcing a small smile. "Glad it's not everything."

She reaches the bottom of the stairs and heads out the door toward the clock.

Damn.

'It is definitely not quite everything.' Good, so they were on the same page with that one. The apology for not miraculously transcending human limitations to feel all of time as it exists as its own sort of identity and dimension in itself, he feels is probably a bit on the gracious side for her, and doesn't really know what to do with it except shrug it off. Really it's just sort of nice that she remembers at all, even if that was rather a bad thing ultimately.

He's sort of regretting sitting here just messing with things he's not certain are going to do anything. At least running around would have been distracting. 'How's... work, been. then...?' He doesn't know. But he's trying to talk about something.

Definitely on the same page. She remembers. Some of it is fuzzy, too bright and filled with a lot of pain but she does remember enough. It's not something she regrets and maybe that's a bad thing since he lost one of his regenerations saving her but she saved him and in the process, she's able to understand him a little bit more. It's mostly a win.

"S'all right. Better now that Cinna's show is over. Less frantic but it's been busy. Made at least half a dozen appointments for people to come in for help with their clothes. How's things at your work?"

She'll help him chatter away because the emptiness and the quiet is odd. "Almost to the clock."

She's getting lots of running done today.

He ought to be paying more attention to things. He didn't know Cinna had had some sort of show recently.

'Thanks,' for the clock notification. 'Sounds a bit busy still, yeah.' His device goes sideways but still faces him as he works on something else. 'Mine's been alright. Mostly left to do my own things. Experiments and such. Go over there, do a bit of jiggery-pokery, blow something up every other week, come back home.'

"I like the home part. Keeps you 'round a lot." She's grateful that he keeps the device on him. It helps being able to look down and see him. She stops, standing in front of the clock and looking up.

"Alright, Doctor. I'm here. Seems loud but might be 'cause the City's empty on my end."

He mumbles something about shops and Cinna and being home that I doubt even he bothered to pay enough attention to to understand it. His attention is focused elsewhere at the moment.

Her words attract it more, so than what he was looking at though, and he picks up his device to peer into it, looking at her look up at the clock. Even the secondary-pan-parallel proximity is making his nerves go a little frazzled, but he tries not to show it. Instead, he pulls the sonic out, and grabs one of the other things he was looking at, attaches it to the back of his own device, and then points the sonic at the screen. Three seconds of reading, then he's pulling it back apart and setting things down to look at them. 'Okay, got it. Which one's next?'

She gets the jest of his mumbling. Really they both need to find a job working together. At least as much work would get done, possibly more.

"M'thinkin' the carousel." She's already headed that way. She checks the time on the device. It's getting close to midnight but she wants him to get the readings in case something like this happens again or if it's not a curse. She doesn't even want to think about that. In fact doing so makes her more than a little ill.

It would definitely economize the time they spend walking to the other's job, at the very least.

He attempts to smother a yawn into the back of his hand and nods until it has passed. 'Okay. Carousel it is.' He's got to get this reconfigured before she gets there and might be working a little too quickly on it if the small zap and subsequent ow are anything to go by.

'It's still sort of surprising so many people want fashion help considering at practically any given moment something rendering it obsolete can happen. Turn into a... flamingo or something. Whole new wardrobe.'

And only irritate one employer in the process. "Hey, you all right?" She hears that ow. She's rapidly approaching the carousel.

"Well they always turn back. Well, so far as we've seen. Can't run 'round naked waitin' to turn back into a flamingo." And a pause. "M'here."

'I'm fine. Electricity.' It's not that it's difficult to do, he's just anxious and tired and they're both probably a lot of the same things right now, and knowing that doesn't do much to help.

The conversation does though. 'Well. True. You could probably get away with running around naked as the flamingo though. Still only need the one set of clothes.'

He repeats the same process as before when she says she's at the carousel, putting the reconfigured things together again and sonicking the assembled contraption before starting to pull it back apart for the fountain. 'Okay, got it.'

She's still worried about him and the electricity as evidence by the concern in her expression. Yes very much of the same things. She's exhausted but too anxious, scared and worried to stop doing anything.

"And some of us look good in pink." She rushes off toward the fountain. "M'goin' to head back after this. Ought to be close to midnight and you can have a go at the information you've got, see if maybe we can figger where to go next, yeah?"

He smirks a little, twisting two wires together and definitely not letting himself get slightly electrocuted again because those two fingers are still numb. 'Some of us look very good in pink.' The difference between the carousel and the fountain isn't going to be quite as much as the one between the clock and the carousel had been, so he doesn't have to work quite as fast this time anyway.

'That sounds good to me. If it is close to midnight then...' She might just come in the door. That would be amazing and too easy. He barely wants to consider it as an option because at this point he's not used to the universe just being that nice to him. 'I'll have all the data I should need to work out what sort of pocket you're in, or if it's a parallel in it's own right. Pocket makes more sense since there's no one else around.' Rambling. A little. He reins it in a bit. 'But! Yes, coming back here afterward. Good idea.'

Not getting electrocuted is good, particularly when Rose is not there to make concerned face at him in person. She grins at the compliment. He's very good at this distraction bit.

"Yeah..." That very vague yeah confirms that she's feeling the same things he is. She might just come in the door but the universe is generally much, much crueler to her than that. Traditionally she has to fight to get back to him. She doesn't expect this to be any different. The rambling is nice, it serves to distract her, to keep her from thinking too much about the easy way. It also makes him feel more there with his science-y rambling that she only understands a part of.

"All right, I'm here."

At least this time he's not really concerned anymore about universes collapsing any more than he was about using stars as energy sources before. Wouldn't be quite so one-sided again. He was almost finished re-assembling it, so she gets a quick 'Just a second' before he follows it up with the same routine as done the other two times.

'Okay, got it! You can come back now. Please.' The last word is really more to circumstances please working out okay this time than it is to her, although the sentiment is obviously there. 'Just need to do some more calibrating and some extra-dimensional triangulation - "triangulation" is the term that always seems to be used even when it isn't actually triangulation being done. Or anything about three-anything. Are you coming back yet?'

That day, the fact that he was using stars as an energy source meant as much as words he might not have said. She knew, Doctor. Not that words wouldn't be brilliant as well.

The please would make a wreck of her if she weren't already a wreck. "On my way."

And if her breathlessness is any hint, she's on her way at a full out run. "Everything okay there?"

Because it wouldn't do for her to get back and him be gone anymore than it would do for her to get back and find she's still alone and he's in a populated City.

'We'll know in a few minutes judging by the sound of it.'

Actually, knowing she's on her way back makes it slightly more difficult to concentrate, but when has that been any different? It'll really only be important if she comes back and still isn't there, and even if she does, it isn't as though this isn't something he's going to keep in his room and continue working on in the off-chance it happens again for real. There's no need to have either one of them continue running about the City in pocket dimensions or anything of the sort, and in the meantime it might help him learn something about how this place operates. Actually it's probably going to be quite useful after all the anxiety has dissipated.

Stairs because at least she's doing something active to get back to him instead of waiting for a lift but by the time she flings open the door, she's entirely out of breath and disheveled. Also, she doesn't miss that he answers her 'is everything okay' with the implication that it will be if she's back. She's learned to look for little things like that in the things he does say.

"Doctor," It's said breathless, hopeful and more than a bit scared because what if he's not there?

It's probably a good thing she's so good at picking up on all the nuances and subtleties in his words since he so rarely comes out and actually says anything bluntly enough for the casual listener. But she knows that by now anyway.

Waiting on her to show up takes so much longer than he feels anything has an honest right to, but it's so totally worth it when he actually hears the door bang open. He stands up so fast the chair falls over and turns the corner to see her. 'Rose.' And a shout couple of long steps and there is a great big swinging you about a bit kind of hug happening.

"Doctor!" She wraps her arms tightly around him, burying the face in his shoulder and the curve of his neck. She's crying but she's also smiling. "You're here. You're really here. I thought I'd got lost again." Because she won't ever say that he left her behind because he didn't, not on purpose.

She's not going to let go of him anytime soon.

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