Sunset

by Mad Maudlin (LJ | e-mail | comment)

Art by blackbearblue (LJ | e-mail | comment) and Medley (LJ | e-mail | comment)

ACT 2 - Down to Day

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

--Robert Frost, "Nothing Gold Can Stay"

Chapter 5

Rose managed not to think about it too much on her way to work. Well, not too too much. It wasn't as if she was obsessing about it. After all, Donna Noble was gone, off in the other universe, of no consequence to them now. The Doctor was hers, and he'd made that abundantly clear over the past few days-not just physically, though that had been great, but with little words and the way he said them, with casual touches and secret smiles. And Donna had been important, not just to the universe but to the Doctor himself, Rose knew that, so it didn't matter if he wanted to use her name. She just had to come up with a good reason to give the others for why he'd changed it.

By the time she'd got off the bus, she'd come up with a plausible story, and decided to test it out as she made her way through the security gates and across the lobby. "Morning, Ms. Prentice," Brynn said as Rose passed her desk. "How's your friend?"

"Doctor Noble is fine, thanks," she said smoothly. Maybe she could even get used to it.

Brynn frowned. "I thought you said he was Dr. Smith?"

"Yeah, about that..." Rose leaned over the edge of the desk. "He's sort of trying to keep his identity secret. Need to know basis, I can't really say anything else, you know how that is. So if you could just forget I ever called him Smith..."

"Oh! All right." Brynn nodded. "My lips are sealed."

Rose nodded back, smiling; Brynn would gossip until she was blue in the face about stupid stuff (such as Ianto and his security guard) but no one lasted long at Torchwood unless they could keep a proper secret.

She found a cup of coffee waiting for her in her office; the rich smell told her before she'd taken a sip that it was a gift from Ianto's private stash, his own small personal welcome-back gift. Since she'd emailed her full report to Mr. Winslow the night before, she just had to wait until he called her in for debriefing. In the meantime--

"Hey," Grace said, poking her head around the corner of Rose's open door. "Saw you come in. Got a minute?"

"Sure," Rose said. Grace entered, wearing a set of scrubs liberally streaked with something brown. "Oh, god, don't tell me we have a case already."

"What? Oh." She tugged on her scrubs. "I was assisting Varma with something that fell out of the Rift. Turned out not to be as dead as we thought it was when we started the autopsy."

"Ew," Rose concluded. "Is that what you wanted to talk about?"

Grace leaned against the door. "No, no, I just wanted to apologize for ambushing you last week with the party." She flashed a small smile. "It was mostly my idea, and I guess I didn't think it through very well."

Rose shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I appreciated the sentiment, that's the important part."

"I just...I didn't know about Mickey," Grace said with a shrug. "It wasn't the best way for that to get out."

"We hadn't told anyone yet, not officially," Rose said quietly. "So it's just as much my fault as yours."

She nodded. "Still, for what it's worth..."

"Yeah, thanks. Apology accepted." Since they were already talking about it, Rose braced herself, and went onto the main document server to find the forms necessary to register the missing and the dead. "Has anyone closed his file yet?"

Grace shook her head. "Jake and Tosh swept his apartment and packed up his things, but most of the paperwork is yours." She paused. "Is he...I mean, you don't have to answer if you don't want to, because I know this is personal. But I wanted to ask...is he happy, over there? Is that why he stayed?"

Rose considered Grace for a moment. She'd always treated Mickey with a mix of motherly nagging and grouchy sarcasm, but they'd still worked together for nearly a year. Tosh had worked with him even before Rose had come across the Void-she'd helped to develop the dimension-jumping technology-though they obviously weren't as close as Mickey and Jake had been. Mickey and Jake had liberated Paris together, for God's sake. So many people he'd worked with, made friends with, and Mickey only seemed to care about his gran and...

"I guess so," Rose said quickly, and looked back down at her keyboard. "I mean, I hope so. He made his choice."

Grace nodded. "Yeah, we have to live with that." She looked at Rose sharply. "If you want to, you know, talk about it...I mean, I know you two were close..."

"I'll be fine," Rose said, a little more harshly than she meant to. Then she forced a smile. "Really. It'll be okay. We'll all learn to live with it, right?"

Grace nodded and left, and Rose whiled away her morning in the tedium of paperwork. There were forms to fill in to report Mickey as missing in action (she thought about reporting him dead, but the thought hurt more than she expected it to, and it wasn't like she'd ever wished him gone). Then the routine forms to account for their lost weaponry, a form to comment on the functionality of the dimensional cannon, and some hasty back-dated forms to explain why her mum had been on a dangerous mission to another universe at all. Suddenly turning Jackie Tyler, Noted Humanitarian into a pro bono consultant on a tactical mission took some startling acts of rhetoric, but Rose managed to make it look like it had been part of the plan all along, which would at least keep Mickey's last act with Torchwood from being insubordinate. She supposed she could allow him that much, even if he hadn't said goodbye.

Tosh stopped by to say hello, and Ianto brought her more of the good coffee without being asked, and while Jake stayed hidden in his office he used the intranet's instant messenger to check in on her.

simmondsjw: finally coming back 2 work then?
prenticere: Just try to keep me away. :-)
simmondsjw: got boxes from mickeys
simmondsjw: putting them in the archies
simmondsjw: *archives
simmondsjw: if you want anything
prenticere: Maybe. Thanks for covering that
simmondsjw: np

She couldn't see herself taking any of Mickey's things, but she did appreciate the gesture. She wondered if Jake had lifted something, some memento or keepsake, or if he'd just boxed up what he couldn't fit in the bin. She couldn't really blame him either way.

Mr. Winslow didn't get around to seeing her until after lunch. She found him back in his usual natty brown suit, the kind that made him look like a misplaced schoolteacher, and he was holding a marked-up hard copy of her report-he drove the administrative staff mad with his insistence on paper copies of everything, as if that made the text immortal in a way digital backups couldn't. "Please, Ms. Prentice, have a seat," he said. "I don't think this will take long at all. Your report was remarkably thorough."

"Thank you, sir." Rose sat down and watched him shuffle. She had some idea already of what he'd choose to nitpick and argue, from a long history of previous battles. She was fully prepared to spend the rest of the week writing an amended report, if need be; it wouldn't be the first time she'd had to.

Winslow finally settled on a page and considered it for a few moments. "Here now. Your friend Dr. Smith. You seem to be a bit confused about his name."

Had the Doctor gone into the file and changed his name in her report? Before he even told her about it? Rose fought the urge to make fists and pushed the thought out of her mind. "He's asked to be known as John Noble, sir, from now on," she said.

He raised an eyebrow. "Any reason for that?"

She'd guessed he wasn't going to be as easy to snow as Brynn, but that was why her excuse had two stages. "It's for his own safety, sir," she said straight-faced. "He's fairly well-known in the other universe and he's concerned that if he has a double in this one, he might attract some dangerous enemies."

"But he is, in fact, a clone of the individual designated The Doctor in your prior reports to Torchwood and the UN?" Winslow asked.

"That's right," Rose said, grateful he was accepting her story at face value. "All the same memories and skills. Mr. Tyler has prepared him a cover identity to let him integrate into our universe."

"But he's physiologically human?" Winslow pressed. "He's not going to set off any panics if he ends up in the A&E? Father any babies with tails? That sort of thing?"

"He's as human as we are, sir," Rose said, and didn't add that there would apparently be no babies at all for the foreseeable future.

Winslow looked at her sternly. "And in your unbiased opinion, is he a threat to the safety of Earth?"

That almost drew a laugh out of Rose-the Doctor, a threat? Were the two Torchwoods in the two universes merging together? "Absolutely not, sir," she said. "He's...well, mostly harmless. And in the other universe, he's saved Earth so often that he might as well be named our patron saint. I'm certain we have nothing to worry about if we let him walk around as a private citizen."

Winslow shuffled the papers again. "Yet you say in your report that it was Mr. Noble, not the original Doctor, who exterminated the Daleks?"

Rose found she rather liked hearing exterminate and Dalek together as long as they were in that order, but she understood where Winslow was coming from. "The original Doctor was willing to show mercy to the Daleks, even under the circumstances, if they agreed to cease hostilities." she explained. "Dr. Noble concluded that they were too much of a persistent threat and couldn't be trusted to keep any sort of truce, and since the means to destroy the Crucible were at hand..."

"Clearly you agree with that assessment," Winslow murmured. Rose wondered if she should've disclosed that she'd tried to eradicate the Daleks once before herself, so perhaps her judgment was a little biased. But there were some stories not even a director of Torchwood was likely to believe. "Has he told you why he chose to remain in our universe rather than in the one of his origins?" Winslow continued.

"He was asked to stay here by the original Doctor," she said. "And...partly...he stayed because of me."

Mr. Winslow raised one eyebrow very slowly. "I see," he said, and then cleared his throat. "As for Mr. Smith-by which I mean Mickey, this time-you say that you do not know why he chose to remain in the other universe. Haven't you any clue at all?"

"His grandmother died," Rose offered lamely, then realized she needed to tell the truth, or at least part of the truth, at least here. Show some ovaries, said a voice in the back of her head that sounded more than a little like Grace. "Also, he has some history with the Doctor which wasn't...perfect. I think he found the prospect of living on the same planet as Dr. Noble a bit hard to face, let alone in the same city."

Winslow nodded slowly. "I think that can be left out of the final version with no loss of accuracy," he said, and straightened his stack on the desk. "So if you can submit a revised version with the names in order, I think this can be signed and archived."

Rose managed not to let her mouth hang open stupidly, but only just. "Are you certain? You don't have any more questions? I spelled everything right on the first try?"

Winslow smiled a bit. "Ms. Prentice, not so long ago I did not expect this world or anyone on it to survive more than an hour. Consider this my thanks to you for a job well done." He paused. "Also, your team has been assigned a new case in your absence, and I expect you to be fully briefed and active on it tomorrow. Mr. Simmonds can forward you all the relevant the files."

That sounded a bit more Winslowish, and the awkwardly emotional moment passed. "I'll see to that, sir," Rose said. "And thank you."

Back her office, she set to polishing the report. It turned out that the Doctor had just done a messy stupid find-and-replace, which caught only about half the Smiths in her report, including references to Mickey and Sarah Jane. And of course she couldn't find-and-replace right back without messing up at least half her references to Donna. She had to go through line by line to fix all the names, catching a few more typos and missing words along the way, but then she resubmitted the whole thing to Mr. Winslow and was done with it, which had to be the fastest she'd ever been shut of a report in her two years with Torchwood so far. Then she got on the messenger again.

prenticere: Oi, what's the case now? I missed it while I was in the other universe.
simmondsjw: i kind of like workin in a place where you can say that.
simmondsjw: sorry mr winslow, i was in a nother universe at the time
prenticere: Are they packing up the cannon? Maybe you can tranfer to your own team.
simmondsjw: na, like it here too much
prenticere: So. Case.
simmondsjw: go home to your doctor. briefing tomorrow @10. you bring the biscuits.

Rose smiled at her computer screen. Perhaps Jake was taking the whole thing better than she thought, or perhaps he'd had some time to come to terms with everything.

prenticere: You're brilliant. My favorite tactical expert.

simmondsjw: i'm ur only tac ex love, but i'll take the complement.

Mr. Winslow forwarded her the documents necessary to register the Doctor as an alien national-apparently Pete hadn't gotten around to those yet-but the weather was lovely and Rose decided this was one occasion when she could just take the whole mess home with her. "Out early today, Ianto," she said as she passed his desk. "I'll make it up from home, I promise."

"Of course, ma'am," Ianto said. "I'll forward all your calls to your mobile."

"Stop calling me ma'am," she said automatically, and then called over her shoulder, "And thanks for the coffee!" She was rewarded by seeing Ianto, ever so slightly, blush.

She stopped off at a shop along the way-they still, improbably, had some food from the party left over, but she also thought they probably ought to eat some things with fiber and vitamins in them, too-and decided to walk the rest of the way. She called the flat along the way, but got no answer. Huh. The Doctor would've have gone out, would he? She realized he didn't have a mobile yet, and resolved to get that sorted out first thing, because if he'd gone out to buy himself a fancy car or something like that she would really like to know about it. Though she wasn't sure if it would be to remind him that she didn't have any parking near her building or to help him pick out the upholstery.

Her amusement went cold as soon as she entered the flat, however. A cheerful "Hello...?" died off in her mouth, and her grip on her keys automatically shifted so they protruded between her knuckles, the better to scratch with. The chairs at the table had been pushed around haphazardly, and one had been placed in the center of the kitchen floor for no clear purpose. The refrigerator and freezer hung open, merrily defrosting all over the floor, and their contents (along with most of the dishes Rose owned) were strewn across the counters. The other furniture was subtly out of place as well, as if it had been moved and then put back in a hurry, and the vacuum cleaner stood lonely and unplugged on top of the television

It was the vacuum that convinced Rose she wasn't looking at a robbery-well, that, and the fact that all her electronics were still in place. She shut the door behind her and called out, "Doctor? Are you here?"

From the direction of the linen cupboard, she heard a distinct thump.

The door of the cupboard hung partway open, blocking Rose's view of the inside, so she approached it with caution. She didn't have a weapon except her keys, which weren't much of a weapon at all, so she switched on the small LED torch that hung from her keyring and led with that. In a smooth motion, she opened the cupboard door the rest of the way and aimed the light straight into the murky depths.

Her heavy duvet and two pillows flopped out at her feet. There was that thump again, and a rather pathetic whimper.

She yanked the duvet aside to find the Doctor laying on his back on the floor with a screwdriver in his mouth. His arms and legs were in the air, supporting with obvious difficulty the shelf which housed Rose's household cleaning supplies, and which had previously been attached to the wall several inches higher, albeit not very securely. In the cramped space of the cupboard, he clearly couldn't shift himself out from under the pile without dumping the lot of it, and the screwdriver appeared to be playing an integral part in his scheme to keep the shelf balanced above him. He whimpered again, making puppy eyes at her, and Rose did what any good friend would do, which was laugh until she was literally rolling on the floor.

The Doctor squawked at her indignantly, but really couldn't do anything until she wiped the mascara-dark tears from her eyes and delicately removed the screwdriver from his mouth. "I'm not going to ask, she said. "I am not even going to ask."

"This," he said fiercely, "is why they ought to be sonic."

She kicked the duvet aside and then shifted the contents of the shelf carefully onto the floor, out of range of any possible kicking or flailing. The Doctor extricated himself successfully and immediately stretched his arms out behind himself, making his back pop in altogether alarming ways-Rose wondered how long he'd been stuck under there. She also noted that he was wearing suit trousers and trainers today, but instead of his shirt and tie he had a pale blue t-shirt with a yellow submarine on it. Also, an inexplicable smudge on his nose. It was endearing.

"Looks like you had a busy day today," she said while he did some deep knee bends.

"Er, yeah," he mumbled. "I meant to have that all cleaned up before you got home."

"But you got trapped in the Cupboard of Doom instead?" she asked.

He glowered at her. "Not doom," he said. "That is nowhere even close to doom. It's not even peril. At the best, it's a Cupboard of Extreme Inconvenience. And aren't you home early?"

"Mr. Winslow liked my report," she said. "Once I fixed all the mistakes you added into it." He didn't respond, too busy doing some sort of awkward tai chi moves and rolling his shoulders in between. "And I think this decides it-we're getting you a mobile phone."

He made a face. "Not the kind that plugs into your ear and eats your brain, I hope?"

"Those are illegal now, actually," Rose said. "Too much risk, now that it's been proven they can be tapped and manipulated. Everyone's back on the handsets now."

"Excellent," the Doctor declared. "Proof that the human race can eventually pull themselves back from the brink of self-destruction. I want the kind with the camera in and I want it to be blue."

That evening-after the shopping was put away and the floor mopped and a camera phone with a custom blue casing purchased, programmed and played with-Rose said, "You know, if you're that bored around here, you can call me at work."

The Doctor, who had started the process of making tea and somehow ended up toasting a bagel instead, looked at her suspiciously. "Bored? Who said I was bored?"

"You did sort of take apart the flat today," Rose pointed out, and hopped up to sit on the counter next to him. "I'm just make an educated guess."

"Well, I'm not bored," he said. "I'm a Time Lord. Was a Time Lord. I'm perfectly capable of entertaining myself for a few hours while you're doing whatever it is Torchwood does when they're not being evil or shagging Jack Harkness. I don't get bored."

Rose rolled her eyes, but he didn't notice, as the toaster had clicked but refused to give up his bagel. He jiggled the handles irritably. "I'm just saying, on the off chance that you are...curious," because lonely was likely to go over just as poorly and unoccupied made him sound like a public toilet, "you can call me. Or text."

"Will you think I'm uncool if I text you but I use actual words spelled with letters?" he asked, and grabbed a fork from the draining board .

Rose reached out and unplugged the toaster the moment before he inserted the fork into the slot to fish for his bagel. "I'm just saying, Doctor, I don't mind hearing from you during the day. It'll be nice."

"Really?" He retrieved half a bagel, slightly mauled, and then looked up at Rose. "That Winslow fellow isn't going to make you write lines if your phone goes off in a meeting or something?"

She smacked him on the shoulder with the trailing end of the toaster's cord. "You're being deliberately thick about this," she informed him. You need people, she wanted to add, but thought it would be a little too patronizing.

"And you," he countered imperiously, "are being your mother."

Rose folded her arms over her chest and looked down on him from her perch on the edge of the counter. Well, slightly down. At least they were on a level. "Were you planning on having sex tonight?" she asked frostily.

The Doctor looked up at her with big eyes. "I take it back. You're perfectly reasonable and also very attractive and I will text you every other minute."

"Well, maybe not that much," she said. "Just, you know, if you need someone to talk to."

"I don't--" he started to say, but then he freed the other half of his bagel and apparently thought better of it. "Well. I mean. We did just pay for this fabulous phone plan, it'd be a shame not to use it."

"That's what I like to hear," Rose said, and stole half his bagel from him.

Chapter 6

The next day the Doctor got dressed when Rose did and drank about three cups of coffee in alarmingly rapid succession. "Busy day," he declared when she pointed out he was going to shake himself to bits. "I've got plans." Just what those entailed, he wouldn't explain, though, and while Rose usually liked the sort of surprises he could come up with, the scene the day before had her a little concerned about what sort of trouble he might get himself into without a monster or a mystery to occupy his attention. She tried not to show any misgivings as she kissed him good-bye, though, and he kept grinning at her all the way out the door.

Before the meeting, Rose got around to sending a mass email that thanked everyone for the ill-fated party and reassured them that she and the Doctor weren't cross about anything and appreciated the sentiment. She also sorted through her inboxes, both computerized and physical, and was on the verge of tipping all of the latter into her recycling bin when her phone trilled at her. A text message from the Doctor and she hadn't even been gone an hour. She smirked.

I strongly suspect the buses in this city are designed deliberately to make people insane. ?, he'd written.

Deep breaths. Count to ten. Try not to strangle any fellow passengers, she wrote back.

The reply came more quickly than she expected. They are not the problem. The drivers will receive no mercy. ?

Rose snorted. Please don't make me spring you from jail when you've scarcely been here a week. It will look bad on your record.

I have a record?Is it rock 'n' roll? ?

Fine, it'll look bad on my record if I've got to fetch you out of a lock-up during work hours.

Oh dear god I think I'm being stalked by a standard poodle ?, he sent, apropos of nothing, and before Rose could get clarification on that one her email gently pinged her.

It was an agenda for the meeting at ten, along with a briefing for her. Though Ianto had sent it, the agenda had clearly been written by Jake, as it consisted of two lines: 1. talk about evil people 2. vanquish them. Rose clicked on the briefing, because Jake at least took those seriously; indeed, it was several pages long, and it had footnotes. She fetched herself some fresh coffee before settling in to study their new assignment

It seemed the All Earth party-the reactionary whackos with the deceptively cuddly name-had actually organized their more militant wing, and started making veiled references to their exact intentions. They were calling themselves the Horatii, of all things (Rose had to Google that to understand the reference) and naturally with the stars going out and all, they'd gotten quite a lot of support for the idea of going out into the universe to beg, borrow and steal whatever technology they could get their hands on. No one was quite sure where they'd go next with the crisis past-All Earth had a lot of very wealthy backers with a vested interest in securing rights to new discoveries, and it looked like the money was flowing freely between the two organizations even though All Earth was careful to keep their official distance. Jake had a whole list of suspect bank accounts and persons of interest, and that was even before Rose got to the part that explained why this was relevant to Torchwood.

And she didn't, because her phone rang. The Doctor calling, the display said. "Hello?"

"Do you have any food allergies?" he asked casually.

Rose blinked at her wall calendar. "No, I don't think so."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "Peanuts, shellfish, citrus fruit, nothing like that?"

"I'm pretty sure I'd have figured it out by now if I did," Rose pointed out.

There was a rattle in the background, though Rose couldn't tell where the Doctor was, only that it was crowded. "What about lactose, eh? You're not lactose intolerant? I don't think that counts as an allergy."

Rose brushed her hair from her face, staring at the day on the calendar maked Find the Doctor, Save the World!!! "Of course not, Doctor. What are you asking for?"

"It's a secret! Bye!" He hung up on her, and Rose was left staring at her phone in bewilderment for a few moments. Not that she wasn't used to the Doctor doing and saying some utterly bizarre things, but usually she was right along with him and had a bit of context to go along with it.

The phone rang again. "Hell--"

"One more question, how do you feel about mushrooms?"

"I don't," Rose said. "I mean, I have no opinion about mushrooms. Doctor, what are you--"

"So don't like them?"

"I don't care about them!" she said. "They're fine! Why are we talking about mushrooms?"

"You'll find out when you get home, byyyeee!"

At this rate, she wasn't sure she wanted to find out...but, no, this was the Doctor, she'd trusted him in far more bizarre situations before, and more often than not things had turned out for the best, or at the very least nobody had been killed. Much. How much trouble could he really cause without a sonic screwdriver and a TARDIS behind him?

Actually, strike that, she didn't really want to find out.

Jake knocked on the door of her office, more of a warning than a request for permission to enter. "Oi, meeting in ten," he called. "You done your homework yet?"

"Working on it," she said, shaking her head. "The Doctor called. Have you been doing anything but snooping around bank records while I've been gone?"

"Best time to do it is the aftermath of a crisis," he pointed out. "Nobody's paying attention to the little details when they're celebrating the fact they still exist."

"Sneaky," Rose said. "Now get lost so I can finish reading."

Of course she didn't, because the Doctor texted again (did you know that the tomato is technically a berry? Ð) but she had enough facts that when they invaded the conference room she could sit down, look competent, and say, "All right, now tell me which were the important bits," in a stern voice that made it sound like she was asking for opinions instead of getting a summary of things she should know.

Jake shrugged. "Maybe all of it, maybe nothing. Without the stars going out, AE is going to have a harder and harder time beating the homeworld security drum in people's faces."

"Which never stopped them before," Grace pointed out. "Remember that guy from New York? Everything he says come down to a noun, a verb, and 'Cybermen' and he's leading his re-election bid. It's kind of ridiculous."

"But it's not AE that we're worried about," Rose said. "It's these Horatii."

"To the extent there's a difference," Grace muttered.

"My sentiments exactly," Jake said. "And those lorry manifests I mentioned prove they're moving an awful lot of cargo around Britain, and it's awful secret to just be car parts and soy protein."

"Weapons?" Rose asked, even though that wouldn't explain why it was Torchwood's business. Embarassingly, her phone started to ring as she was finishing the word; it was the Doctor, of course, and she felt a little twinge as she ended the call and then set the phone to silent. "Sorry."

"That's what MI-5 thought, weapons," Tosh said as if there had been no interruption. She passed Rose a large glossy print-out. "But then the old Cybus satellite network picked up this. It's a radiation graph, and the spikes there are consistent with some of the alien technology in our archives-possibly a photomorphic power source. So they kicked it over to us."

The pretty colors on the graph didn't mean anything to Rose, but she was more than ready to take Tosh at her word on the science bits. "What can you do with a photomorphic power source?" she asked.

"Theoretically, lots of things--" Tosh started to say, but Rose's phone suddenly vibrated, making a harsh rattle on the table. Message from the Doctor, the screen said. She shoved it into her pocket with a grimace. "Lots of things," Tosh carried on. "They're small, powerful, and rechargable from nearly any source of visible light."

"But it's probably weapons," Jake said.

"We can't say for sure," Grace pointed out.

"It matches with their rhetoric," he shot back. "What's the slogan, 'security is strength' or whatever? It's no long hop from telling people to arm themselves to actually arming yourself, especially if they mean to swoop in on the next set of monsters and save the day."

"You think that's their plan?" Rose asked, shifting as she felt her phone vibrate again against her thigh. "Build up some kind of militia, like their own Torchwood?"

"Maybe, maybe not," Grace said ominously. "I mean, we still don't know for certain if it's weapons or not--"

"So what do you think it is, digestives?" Jake asked.

"-But if they are arming themselves," Grace continued, talking over him, "there are targets a lot more tangible and close at hand than the next hypothetical threat to the human race."

Tosh's eyes widened. "You don't think they'd start a war, would they?"

"They didn't do so bad in the last couple of national elections where they stood," Jake pointed out, looking thoughtful now. "But they're still a long way off from controlling a government, and that keeps them shut out of the UN."

"And you know what they say about the road to hell," Rose said, looking again at the abstract colors of the radiation profile. Her phone vibrated again, and she took a deep breath. "Just a minute. I need to make a call, sorry. This'll only take five minutes."

She paced all the way down to Ianto's desk while she looked through the text messages: Rose I have a question for you! Call me! Ð and This is actually a very difficult question you know, Ð and Rose is this a bad time for you to call? Because you don't have to call. Ð. Since Ianto wasn't at his desk, she sat in his chair to dial the Doctor's number and fiddled with the leaves of his bamboo plant while the phone rang.

It took altogether too long for the Doctor to pick up. "Hello, Rose! Guess what?"

"There's some horrible emergency that explains why you've texted me three times in five minutes?" she asked.

"...no." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "But I did have something to ask you."

"I guessed that, yeah," she said. "Go on."

"What sort of toothpaste do you like?"

Rose could only sit for a moment and watch the fish on Ianto's screensaver go back and forth while she tried to wrap her mind around this. "Toothpaste?" she echoed weakly.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm actually in the aisle right now and I didn't even know there were so many different kinds of mint, but there's also vanilla lemon chamomile, which sounds disgusting, but I thought maybe you had an opinion even though you don't on the mushrooms."

"Why are you buying toothpaste again?" Rose asked, rubbing the bridge of her nose.

"Secret," he replied gleefully.

"You know we've got toothpaste at home."

"If you are fishing for spoilers, my dear, you shall be disappointed."

She stood up and straightened her shirt. "Right. Doctor, I don't really care what my toothpaste tastes like, and I'm supposed to be in a meeting right now and can't really talk about this, so just...get yourself a shiny box or something."

"There are lot of shiny boxes," he said, and Rose shouldn't actually be able to hear a pout, but she thought she sort of could.

"Blue and shiny," she suggested. "I'll talk to you later, okay? Love you."

"Love you, too," he said distantly, and Rose took a few deep breaths between hanging up and going back into the meeting room, because they had to discuss the evil people before they could vanquish them.

She thought that maybe after that conversation, the Doctor would get a hint and stop calling her, and she could get some work done-after all, even without speculating on the motives of the Horatii, they still had unlawful possession of advanced technology to pursue and not many leads to start with. Tosh could track the radiation traces by satellite, but not with any accuracy, so they could only really spot their targets when the lorries were on isolated bits of motorway or country road-that is, where there was nowhere else for the target to be. She was working on refining a tracking method, but until then they were going to have to do some blind groping around with nothing but the lorry manifests and the public face of the Horatii in Britain to start with.

But of course, whatever rules of logic allowed normal people to get a clue did not apply to the Doctor. He called-or texted, each one signed with that dashed D for God only knew what reason-a dozen more times between the end of the briefing and Rose's lunch break. If he'd had genuine, reasonable questions-things like "How do I get to the post office?" or even "What's the number for emergency services in this universe?"--she'd understand, really. Probably still be annoyed, but she'd understand. But most of the messages weren't even questions; just more inane comments like Guess what I am looking at or Did you know toothpaste is sticky? or I've got bananas!

Eventually, thought not without a stab of guilt, Rose turned her phone off.

By the end of the day they hadn't made much actual progress, but Rose felt they'd fairly clearly figured out what information they needed to gather, which was close enough. After all, sometimes with Torchwood, the first question to ask was what the question was. She caught the bus home and spent the ride slumped against the window, watching Cardiff roll by as she considered how to tell the Doctor to ease up on the calling without upsetting him. After all, she'd been the one to encourage him to start, and somehow she didn't think it would sound very encouraging to say Whoops, changed my mind, leave me alone. She did want to know what he was up to, keep that connection like when they'd traveled together and lived in each other's back pockets. But she didn't think she could take another day of constant interruption, either. Maybe if she made it sound like a new order from Mr. Winslow...no, no, he deserved honesty, and if she wasn't confrontational about it he'd surely understand...

These thoughts distracted her right up to the door of her flat, where they were then utterly obliterated by the smell that greeted her upon entering. It was one part burnt hair, one part cabbage and one part soap, and the source seemed to be the Doctor, who was darting around the kitchen with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, wreathed in steam (and smoke) as he...cooked?

"What are you doing?" Rose asked, just to be certain, because she'd learned the hard way to never make assumptions around the Doctor. The counters and the table were covered in wrappers and puddles and torn-up bits of packaging, and in the bin (which he'd moved to the center of the kitchen) she could see quite a few potato peelings and a squashed-up tube of toothpaste.

He grinned at her and called over the sound of various things sizzling, boiling and intermittantly bursting into flame. "Surprise!" he said. "I made supper! Go wash your hands, it's almost ready."

Rose cautiously approached the kitchen instead. She hadn't been aware that she owned so many pots and pans, and then realized that she hadn't-there was a stack of boxes in the corner behind the counter. "Where did you get money for all this?" she asked, because usually he just hijacked a cashpoint and she really didn't want the police to show up any time soon.

Thankfully the Doctor answered, "Pete," and gave her another grin while prodding something in a saucepan. "Didn't you see the contract he sent by with my papers and things? He's hired me on as a consultant to his department. Not quite UNIT, of course, but all I have to do is come when called and tell him if he's being a tit, and I happen to be quite good at one of those, if not so much the other."

"He didn't mention he was going to do that," Rose said, though of course it should've been obvious from the beginning that the Doctor needed a job-she made good money at Torchwood, but he was the last person who'd consent to being some kind of...kept man. (And the mental image that conjured up nearly derailed her train of thought completely.) "You know that means you have to pay me back for the phone, now, though."

He snorted and switched off a burner. "I think an authentic six-course Faniflaxarian ceremonial dinner is more than payback enough, thanks."

"Authentic?" she echoed warily.

"Well," he shrugged. "Obviously there are a few, er, substitutions, being that we're not in the Faniflaxaro nebula. But this is going to be great, just you wait." She just kept looking at all the bubbling, steaming (and smoking) pots and pans, and he gave her a narrow look. "What?" he demanded.

"Nothing," she said quickly, taking a step backwards. She bumped the table and nearly sent the debris of the preparations tumbling to the floor.

"That's not a nothing look," the Doctor said severely, and waved a spoon threateningly at her, dripping a thick white sauce on the floor in the process.

Rose busied herself with taking off her purse and arranging it on the table by the door. "I just," she said, then, "never mind, it's stupid."

"Say it," he ordered sternly

She raised her chin. "No."

"Roooose..."

"I didn't think you could cook," she admitted, remembering the disused galley of the TARDIS.

He looked positively offended by that, pausing with a colander full of greenish noodles half-tipped in one hand. "What made you think I couldn't cook?" he demanded.

"Well, you never did!" she said. "We always ate out, or used the food...pill...thingy..."

"I," he declared, folding his arms (with the now-empty colander still in his hand,) "can cook many things. I just never had the free time for it, what with all the traveling and exploring and spot of diurnal salvation here and there."

"So why'd you decide to start now?" she asked, leaning more carefully on the table.

He shrugged a bit. "Curtains and a mortgage, you know?"

She knew, and suddenly had the bizarre thought that she was domesticating him. Which immediately made her imagine him on a leash having a pee on a piece of newspaper, and she put that thought right out of her mind before she started to laugh and he got the wrong idea entirely. "I'll be right back after I wash my hands," she said, and he beamed at her, and dropped the salt shaker into a stockpot.

By the time she'd washed up, changed into something more comfortable and braced herself, he'd got the table cleared off (though there were still smudged of flour and ketchup here and there) and set it for two. There was barely room for their forks on account of the serving dishes, which looked about as bizarre as they smelled. "Voila!" the Doctor declared, pulling out Rose's chair for her. "The best of Faniflaxarian cuisine from circa the fifth century."

"The fifth?" Rose asked.

"Fifth B-C." The Doctor sat down and started dishing out onto Rose's plate. "They were wiped out about two thousand years ago when their nebula catastrophically collapsed into a star. Fun civilization while it lasted. though."

Rose looked at the first course, which consisted of the green noodles under a lumpy bluish-white sauce studded with what were either reduced the shriveled remains of grape tomatoes or a chopped-up red candle. The Doctor was still grinning, proud of himself in a way that usually required a puzzle solved or a life saved, so Rose gamely prodded the mess with her fork, wound up a noodle and shoved it in her mouth.

It was the foulest thing she'd ever tasted, a combination of mint and cabbage and something that she was now positive was candle wax. She managed not to gag outright, but she couldn't stop her face from screwing up as she spat the gritty, sticky concoction into a napkin. Then she looked up, terrified that the Doctor would be disappointed in her.

She was rewarded with a most fascinating series of facial expressions she'd ever seen as he choked down his own first bite. He followed it with a deep swig of water and a grimace. "Well," he said, brows knit. "Hmm. I suppose I didn't...I mean, last time I had this, you know, I had a different tongue. I...hmm..."

"Maybe try another one?" Rose offered, in hopes of wiping the guilty look off his face.

It was no use, though; all six courses were equally disgusting, albeit each in its own unique way. Rose still gamely tasted all of them, though, and was relieved that by the end they were spending more time laughing at each other's silly puckered faces than worrying over their inedible dinner. Rose tried to guess what he'd put in each dish as they prepared to throw out the whole lot of it, and then they both lay on the floor munching on pink bismuth tablets for a bit, and when the Doctor silently handed over some cash, Rose took it down the block to the take-away curry house for a proper dinner and didn't even tease him about it.

"You know," the Doctor said, getting a certain sly look in his eye as he prodded his vindaloo, "I've been to a planet inhabited by intelligent curries."

Rose paused with her fork halfway to her mouth and looked at him carefully. "You are so lying," she said after a minute.

"I'm not!" he protested. "It's in the seventy-sixth century. Masala Nine. Very peaceful civilization, the Masalans. They're ruled by a cadre of senior philosophers." He gave her that look again. "The debates tend to get quite heated." Rose threw a cushion at him. "Oi! It's true!"

It was gone nine by the time they finished all the washing-up (which was really more like decontamination in some ways) and found places to store all of their new cookware. That was when Rose remembered what she was supposed to talk to him about, and just the thought of it put a damper on her mood that the Doctor noticed. "What's up?" he asked. "Find something we missed on the first sweep?"

"No, no, it's just...just thinking about work," Rose said.

The Doctor's eyebrows rose sharply, and he gave a drawn-out "Ahhh," as he went back to drying the dishes. "I take it you're not about to relate any wacky hijinks or daring adventures?"

"Sorry, no," she said, knotting off another bin liner and setting it with the others that they'd already filled. She took a deep breath. "It's just...Look, Doctor, I know I told you that you could call me any time, even at work, and I meant that, but..."

He jumped into her pause, giving her low-intensity puppy dog eyes. "Too strong, right?" he said. "Is that why you stopped answering? Did I interrupt any very important top secret Torchwood business?"

She couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. "I'm just not always free to talk," she said. "Or answer texts. And I don't want you to think I don't want to talk to you, because I do, I just get...busy."

"Busy," he said, and looked down at the plate in his hands. He carefully set it on the draining board. "No, I get it, I was being a little...I suppose I got overexcited about dinner and all. I'll rein it in from now on."

"Thanks," Rose said, and got up on her tip-toes (and a leg up on the edge of a cabinet) to kiss his cheek. "I do like hearing from you, you know, I meant that bit."

"I know," he said, and even smiled, and Rose finally relaxed fully. That hadn't been so hard, had it?

Chapter 7

The next two days were not entirely interruption-free, but somehow the Doctor managed to restrain himself. He continued to cook, but he also took to exploring the city, absorbing all manner of strange facts about Cardiff: Its Culture And History In This Universe. That meant, of course, that their evenings were filled with his rambling monologues on things he'd learned during the day ("Leeks, Rose! Can you imagine?") but she found she didn't mind as much as she could've; if all else failed, she could just tune him out and enjoy the sound of his voice, which she didn't think would ever get old.

She could push aside their plates of his latest culinary experiment and lay her head on his chest, listen to him speaking, and under it all hear the one steady heartbeat that meant he was hers.

Work stayed low-key, mostly because they didn't have any firm targets to follow after; Tosh continued to look into the photomorphic cells, laboring alone now that Mickey was gone, while the rest of them tried to flesh out the information Jake had procured about financial and corporate ties between All Earth and the Horatii and the firms that owned the suspicious lorries and ships. The big win came when Tosh announced that she'd cleaned up the radiation profile and found a way to pinpoint individual pieces of tech from space.

"It's a long way from real time, of course," she said while the rest of them were ogling the maps she'd produced. "The logarithm takes a couple of hours to run, even on our mainframes, but it does give us confirmation of the presence of alien tech on these specific ships and-oh my!" she squeaked, as Jake had leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "It's not that much," she said, blushing.

"It's brilliant," he said gustily. "Better than all this legal crap by a million miles."

"You're the one who started the legal crap," Grace pointed out, pushing her reading glasses down her nose.

"It's a dead end, though, isn't it? Even if we find out the Horatii own every single ship and lorry personally, they've still got plausible deniability," he said, and waved one of Tosh's profiles at them. "From these radiation levels, there's maybe one ray gun per cargo container-maybe per ship. Easy enough to say 'Whoopsie, dear me, look what fell out of the Void' and meanwhile they freeze all their other movements and we're back to square one."

"It seems like an awful lot of trouble to use a whole cargo ship for one ray gun," Grace said. "If that's even what it is."

"They'll be in an awful lot of trouble when they're caught," Jake pointed out. "Besides, they've still got all those Brazilian bankers padding the bottom line, they don't have to worry about keeping to a budget."

Rose wrote Brazilian bankers on the edge of her notepad, but what she said was, "I think Jake's right-we need to go for the source, and now we've got a way to do that. Where is the tech coming from and who is moving it? Ladies, I need you on that." She turned in her chair. "But Jake, I'd like you to--"

Her phone rang.

The Doctor calling, her phone said, and her heart sank, but since he'd been so good for the past few days, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She gave everyone an apologetic smile and stepped out of the conference room, though she knew the closed door was mostly a symbolic gesture-it did nothing to keep out the sounds of the hallway. "Hello?"

"Hello, Rose," the Doctor said in a tight, sing-songy sort of voice; it was hard to hear him over the background noise. "Would you like to know where I am?" he asked.

"Possibly," she said. "Does it involve Cardiff Castle again?"

"No, actually," he said. "I'm in Aberystwyth."

"What?" she blurted, and then remembered the door and lowered her voice. "What are you doing in Aberystwyth?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't be calling you!" he snapped. "I must've gotten on the wrong bus and then I was reading this dictionary and the next thing I know I'm halfway here!"

"You got on the wrong bus," she echoed, and smacked herself in the forehead with her palm from the sheer stupidity of it. "I thought you could feel the turning of the bloody Earth, how hard is it to notice that you're suddenly on the M4?"

"It's not my species that didn't bother evolving a sensitivity to local magnetic fields!" he protested.

"Aren't you forgetting something, Dr. Noble?" she replied.

"Just tell me how to get to a bloody cashpoint so I can buy my return ticket," he growled. "I spent everything in my pockets on biscuits and the dictionary."

Rose opened her mouth to tell him how utterly absurd it was to expect her to know where the nearest cashpoint was in Aberystwyth (especially considering that she didn't know where in Aberystwyth he was, and why couldn't he just ask someone there for directions?) and perhaps then she'd ask how it was her responsibility to rescue him from his own idiocy and also, yeah, where did he get off giving her orders when he was the one who needed her help? There was so much she wanted to say that it all seemed to get jammed up in her throat, and so with an inarticulate growl she stalked down to Ianto's desk and thrust the phone at him. "Dr. Noble is lost," she snapped. "Find him."

As she walked away, she heard Ianto say with surprising calm, "Hell, Dr. Noble, this is Ianto Jones, I'll be helping you find your way. I'm afraid Ms. Prentice is in an urgent meeting. I'll be certain to tell her that, sir....and that as well. Are you finished, sir? All right, can you tell me where you are? Hmmm...all right, I've got a map right here on my screen..."

Rose stalked back to the meeting room, but Tosh and Grace had already gone; Jake was stuffing his face with biscuits, but swallowed quickly when she came back in. "Everything all right?"

"Oh, it's delightful," Rose said. She slumped in the nearest chair and took a deep breath. "I'm going to kill him, you know."

Jake finished wiping the crumbs off his mouth. "So what would you like me to do?"

She shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm being figurative. I swear, if I didn't know better I'd think--" That he was an alien, she almost said, and the thought nearly made her laugh. Because he was and he wasn't, and even when he'd had two hearts and the power to change his face around, he'd been as at home on Earth as she was. Taking the wrong bus-it was something a regular old tourist would do. Not the Doctor.

Jake cleared his throat. "I mean on the Horatii," he said. "Before you went running out, you said you'd like me to what?"

That. Oh god. Rose rubbed her eyes. "Right, yes. I want you to look into the shipping lanes anyway-tell me how feasible it would be to set up a coordinated sting on a couple of the ships. Catching lorries, maybe, too, at the same time. If we got enough of them at once it'd be hard to say the tech was an accident."

"Sounds like a fun way to spend the week," Jake said, with a roll of his eyes. "Especially without Mickey to split the work."

That was about as subtle as Jake ever got. "Mr. Winslow's working on it," she promised. "We'll have a replacement in a couple of days, I'm certain. In the meantime...make Ianto help?"

Jake snorted. "Oh aye, he'll be real useful for keeping me topped up on coffee while I'm working through the night."

"Don't be so dramatic," Rose said. "Pierre's rubbing off on you."

"In more ways that one," Jake said with a salacious smirk. Rose groaned. "Don't, now, you walked into that one."

Ianto knocked once on the conference room door before stepping partway inside to wave Rose's phone at her. "He's got a ticket and is waiting for his bus," he said. "He'll arrive in Cardiff at eight-ten. Shall I arrange for a car?"

Rose hesitated, part of her saying yes, or he'll end up in Bristol! But that was nasty, and paranoid, and now that the little adrenaline rush had passed she knew he'd be cross with her already and she didn't want to pile on the insults by implying he couldn't get home on his own. But on the third hand, it would be so much faster than making him take a city bus... "Don't send a car, but call a taxi for him," she said finally, taking her phone back. "I'll pay the charge personally."

"Yes, ma'am." Ianto nodded at her and at Jake before closing the door.

There was a moment of silence in the room while Rose considered whether she really wanted to go home at all, or perhaps just flee the country, because honestly, fighting over the wrong bus? Jake cleared his throat loudly and said, "You know, Mickey used to sleep on our couch at least once a week. Wouldn't mind you using it a time or two, if you bought us dinner and a movie first."

Rose had been vaguely aware of the arrangement, but hadn't realized it was that often. "Didn't Pierre ever get jealous?" she asked, hoping for a bit of the earlier banter back.

"No," Jake said earnestly. "We both knew Mickey only had eyes for one person."

Rose shoved her phone into her pocket and stood up. "Feasability report," she said shortly. "As soon as you can. If they're bringing in the technology from outside the Commonwealth, we can call in UN forces as backup."

"Yes, ma'am," Jake said with a sneer, and Rose left the conference room with her head held high.

She spent the rest of the afternoon hiding in her office though, and when she ran short of constructive work to do she played computer card games until only Brynn and Ianto and a few security guards and fervent nerds were left in the building. Her clock ticked inevitably down towards seven, and she was halfway hoping the Doctor would call again, but he didn't and eventually she had to decide whether she was going to take Jake up on his offer or not, balancing his potential smugness against the prospect of an honest-to-god fight with the Doctor.

She got as far as buying the pizzas before she forced herself to picture the Doctor coming home to an empty flat. Dammit, Rose, show some ovaries, she told herself, and carried the boxes all the way back home, bumping into just about everyone she passed in the process. It was just an argument. Couples had arguments. Just because she'd never really argued with the Doctor without the fate of the known universe hanging in the balance didn't mean anything. It's not the end of the world, she thought to herself, and nearly broke up giggling. Not this time, at least.

It took a little longer to get back with the pizzas than she'd planned; as she approached her building, she saw a light come on in her windows. She thought about trying to call to let him know she was on her way, but realized that juggling her phone and the pizzas would take longer than just climbing the stairs after him. He left the door unlocked, at least, so she didn't have to knock on her own door; she braced the pizzas against her hip while she turns the knob and forced the door open with her knee.

The Doctor was sitting at the kitchen table, watching his own hand as he followed the wood grain with his fingers. He looked mildly surprised to see her there, and a little guilty-who knew what sort of conclusions he'd jumped to when he found the flat empty. "Hello there," he said, and cleaned his throat roughly.

"Hey," Rose said as she kicked the door shut. She offered him the pizza boxes and he jumped up to take them, setting them out while she locked the door. He examined the pizzas without commenting and silently fetched them some plates, even though they could just as easily eat out of the box, while she arranged her purse on the table and checked that her keys and phone were both still in her pockets. They both sat down.

"I'm sorry," Rose blurted, at the same time the Doctor started to say, "So about earlier..."

They chuckled, and the Doctor waved at her a bit, as if inviting her to go first. Rose took a deep breath. "I'm sorry I was bitchy with you on the phone," she said. "I shouldn't have tossed you off on Ianto like that. I'm glad you made it back in one piece...and I reckon I owe you for the taxi, don't I?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. "I'm sorry I was bitchy on the phone, I just...I'm a little..." He stuffed a piece of pizza in his mouth and chewed for a few moments. Rose wasn't hungry yet, so she settled on staring at a little bit of sauce that got caught in the corner of his mouth. "I'm slower," he announced after he swallowed.

"Slower?" Rose echoed.

"Than I was." He picked a piece of sausage off his pizza, examined it, and put it back where he'd found it. "I'm only human now, I make mistakes."

"You made mistakes as a Time Lord, too," she reminded him.

'Yes, but I made them faster and more decisively," he said. "I paid attention to my bus tickets. I figured out how to find the cashpoint all on my own. I didn't get flustered like...like I was today."

"I don't blame you for being flustered if you don't blame me," she said. "Price of a human life, right?"

"Right," he said with a glum sigh. "A short, stupid human life."

It seemed the a fist closed around Rose's heart. "Bit late for regrets, now, isn't it?" she asked.

The Doctor looked up with wide eyes and grimaced. "Oh, god, no-Rose, I didn't-see, this is what I meant about flustered. I don't mean...I don't regret anything." And he said it so firmly that she decided she had to believe him, because he said it in the same voice that he used for Rose Tyler and I'm so sorry. "This is just me being stupid and feeling sorry for myself because I can't...I'm not..."

"You're fine," she said, and reached out to squeeze his hand. "You've just got to get used to it all. I'm sure you'll be back to your old self in no time."

His brows moved together, but he didn't reply; just clung to her hand for a few minutes staring into her eyes. "I love you," he said, apropos of nothing-or maybe of everything-and kissed her knuckles, such an odd gesture that it made her smile. "And thanks for the pizza," he added.

"You love me because of the pizza?" Rose asked, which was a stupid thing to say, but closer to normal than the rest of the conversation.

"I love you for many things, though pizza ranks high among them." He put a slice on her plate and nibbled on his own some more. "So. Erm. Anything interesting happening in the world of Torchwood?"

"Exact opposite, actually," Rose said; if he was asking her about work then he was definitely reaching for something to say. She racked her own brain. "Er...you know, they're running all the Quatermass movies tonight. I forget what channel."

"Quatermass? Really?" He glanced at the television, as if it could answer him, too. "How many did they make in this universe?"

"Something like six," Rose said. "And I know how much you hate them, so..."

"Oh, with a passion," he said, and that was how they found themselves camped out on the couch, channel surfing (because Rose wasn't sure if the marathon was even happening, or if she'd made up the whole thing subconsciously) and making fun of any old science fiction movies they could find. There was something called Ticks that had them laughing until their bellies ached until an altogether ridiculous hour of the morning, and when they finally crawled into bed half-dressed Rose snuggled down against the Doctor's side, heedless of his boney corners, to remind him that she wasn't going anywhere.

For three days the Doctor managed to keep himself busy, and Rose wasn't entirely certain how; nor did she ask, because they were settling into a fragile calm at home, a routine composed of one part adventures in gastronomy, one part reminiscence and one part satellite television. He seemed broody and detached, often staring off into space or stopping himself in mid-sentence, and Rose found herself picking up on the mood, biting her tongue like a visitor in a library or a hospice. She didn't know what to say to snap him out of it, or if she even could; but she told herself that he'd come out of it all on his own, given enough time, and until then at least he wasn't calling her every other hour of the day or wandering to the other side of Britain by accident.

Then he got arrested.

Rose was in Tosh's office when it happened, looking over her and Grace's work on mapping the Horatii's drop-off points, when her mobile rang. For a small, ugly moment, when she saw the Doctor's name on the screen she considered just switching it off. Then she scolded herself for being immature and answered. "Hey-what's wrong?"

"So there's been a little misunderstanding," he said.

Rose took a deep breath and told herself that she was going to be patient as a goddamn Buddha this time around. "Are you still in Cardiff, at least?"

"Oh yes," he said. "No worries on that front."

"Where are you, then?" Rose asked, because he sounded weirdly tense, and all she could think of was that he'd ended up in the A&E or he'd been...

"I'm at a police station," he said, and Rose bit down hard to keep from screaming into the phone. "Like I said, big misunderstanding, but they've taken away my shoes and I don't think this ink is coming off and I would really, really like to not be here if I possibly could, so if you could...?"

"How did you get arrested?" Rose managed to ask, which made Grace and Tosh look up at her with wide eyes. She waved at them, not sure if she wanted to signal that everything was under control or that the sky was falling and she needed to go prop it up.

"I'll tell you when you get here," the Doctor said. "Only they're asking for my phone back now, and they're really very rude people so I don't think I should-oh, no, here we go, goodb--"

The call ended, and Rose took a few deep breaths, wondering how on Earth she was supposed to explain this to Mr. Winslow. Grace stood up halfway from her chair. "Is everything all right?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah," Rose said. "Just a misunderstanding." Which it had better be, or she wasn't going to be responsible for her own actions. She shoved her phone in her pocket, turned to the door, turned back. Now she was flustered. "There's something I need to take care of. Some one. I'm just going to..."

"Of course," Grace said quickly. "We've got this, we'll just email you the rest."

"Right." Rose ran down to her office to collect her purse and her rain coat, and decided it was better to ask forgiveness than permission. As she hurried past Ianto's desk, she called out, "I've got a bit of a family emergency, I'll be back later this afternoon, my mobile's on." Ianto didn't even look up from where he was carefully watering his desk bamboo, just nodded, because at Torchwood one got used to this sort of behavior.

Her mood swung wildly between worry and anger while she waited for a bus, then realized she didn't know which station the Doctor was at. Luckily a few phone calls invoking her Torchwood credentials took care of that, and a rather alarming taxi ride later she was walking up to a bored-looking desk sergeant with her badge out.

"Rose Prentice, Torchwood," she announced. "I'm here to see a suspect."

"Name?" the sergeant asked, taking a pen from behind her ear.

"Dr. John Noble." The sergeant snorted softly as she waved to somebody standing nearby. "Is that going to be a problem?" Rose demanded.

The sergeant shook her head. "No, no, just...odd one, isn't he?"

"Among other things," Rose said. "What are his charges?"

The sergeant referred to her computer. "Jaywalking and assault on a constable in the execution of his duties," she announced. "The old bird wanted to file assault against him, too, but we talked her out of it."

"What 'old bird?'" Rose demanded.

"Ask him yourself," the sergeant said, and nodded in the direction of the cells. The Doctor was coming from that direction, his jacket folded over his arm and his tie gone entirely. He smiled warily at her, and aside from a slight limp (which could easily have been exaggerated) he seemed to be in one piece.

Which was lucky, because she was going to kill him.

"I'm taking him into custody," she told the sergeant. "The Institute will deal with the charges. I apologize for any trouble he might've caused."

"He an alien or something?" the sergeant asked.

"Used to be," Rose said, and turned to face him. Whatever the look on her face was like, it had stopped him smiling. "The taxi's waiting outside," she told him.

"Just need to get my-thank you," he took a bag from another officer, with his personal effects-the tie, his phone, his wallet, a packet of jelly babies and an astounding number of pennies. Rose lead the way out of the station because she didn't trust herself not to lose it entirely once they started talking.

Of course, inside the taxi the Doctor immediately said "Thank you," and swiftly added, "I'm really sorry, I just-they weren't listening to me. They're remarkably unhelpful people at times, police."

"I just want to know," she said, "how you got from jaywalking to one, possibly two counts of assault, involving a police constable." She commended herself on how level she kept her voice during the entire sentence.

He grimaced. "Funny story, really-not, you know, funny ha-ha, but funny like we'll look back on this some day and wince. I was trying to help this little old lady across the street-no, really, God's honest truth," he added when he saw the look on her face. He even put his hand over his heart (the missing one) and held up three fingers in some sort of salute. "I am not even joking. I went for a walk--"

"In the rain?" Rose asked.

"I like the rain," he said. "I was having a walk and I saw her, she had a cane and big bag of cat litter and I thought she was going to fall over dead any minute."

"So you ran into the street to save her," Rose said.

"There was a crosswalk," he protested. "The light was just, um, it must've changed right as I stepped off the curb."

She sighed. "So there's jaywalking. What happened next?"

"Well, after a bit of screeching tires and blaring horns and whatnot, I got to the lady," he said, "and I tried to take her arm, only for some reason the moment I laid a finger on her she started screaming 'rape' and hitting me in the shins with that cane. It hurt, too. Want to have a look?"

He tried to maneuver one leg around the seat in front of him, apparently for show and tell, but Rose wasn't interested. "Where does the policeman come in come in?"

"Well," he said, seeming disappointed in her lack of interest in his bruises. "So there's cars honking and this old lady is screaming-I never did get her name-and a PC comes running up and starts shouting at us to clear the crosswalk-very unfriendly, these Cardiff police, you know. She's yelling rape and murder, I'm trying to explain myself-I suppose the light was still green-and he starts pulling on my sleeve and I, well..." He coughed. "I may have...slightly...pushed back."

"While you were standing in the middle of traffic?" Rose asked.

"Not so much the middle as to on side," he said meekly. As meekly as he ever got, anyway.

Rose kept her mouth shut the last few minutes to their apartment. She kept it shut so hard it hurt. The Doctor scooted away subtly until he was leaning against the door, his body angled towards her like he was expecting to get mauled. Good. She couldn't remember the last time she was this angry with him-maybe when he tricked her into leaving him on Space Station Five, but even that had been more betrayal than outrage. This was...this...

She slammed the door of the taxi and left the Doctor to pay the fare, but he easily caught up with her on the stairs. "You know, you could say something," he said, looming close behind her.

"Like what?" she asked.

"'Oh, Doctor, what a horrible story,'" he said in a squeaky falsetto. "'Aren't these police just awful? You were so right to kick him in the shins.'"

"You kicked him in the shins?" she asked, incredulous.

"Well, no," he admitted. "But I may have threatened to."

"I don't believe you." She had trouble getting her key in the lock, and when she finally did she threw the door open and stalked straight to the windows, looking down the street rather than at the Doctor.

She heard him shut the door behind them. "A little support would be appreciated, here, Rose," he said, sounding wounded.

"Support?" She spun around. "You want support for harassing the police?"

"Maybe I do!" he shouted back. "Maybe I want you on my side!"

"This isn't about taking sides!" She took a step forward, because he had, and she was aware that they were crowding each other's personal space but didn't care. "This is about you being completely reckless!"

"Oh, I'm reckless, am I?" He folded his arms across his chest, raised his chin. "Funny, that never seemed to bother you before!"

"Because you were never this stupid about it!" she shot back, and she could see something slam shut in his face, knew she'd drawn blood. "I just used my Torchwood credentials to take you into custody, which means there is going to be an official report made to my supervisors, who are going to want to know why I didn't leave you there to face the consequences for yourself, and just now I don't know what I'm going to tell them!"

"Oh, yeah, because I keep forgetting you're such a high muckity-muck," he snarled. "Rose Tyler Prentice Whoever-you-are, Defender of Earth, Filer of Paperwork. You know, we used to make fun of people like you."

"You used to know what really mattered," Rose shot back, "and I didn't have a job to do."

"I was referring," he said crisply, "to me and Donna, actually."

For a moment Rose felt like all the air had been pulled out of her lungs, and she was exquisitely aware of her own rigid body, the slight pins and needles feeling in her fingers from all the shouting, her pounding heart. The Doctor just kept looking at her, looking down on her with a little smirk like he knew exactly what he'd done to her, and Rose couldn't even remember why they were screaming, or why she cared. "Then maybe you should've just stayed with her, eh?" she said softly. "Back in the other universe. If that's what you want."

The smirk fell off the Doctor's face, and his chin dropped. "What I want is to know why you're so angry about this," he said. "What ever happened to no harm, no foul, eh?"

"I just told you, this wasn't harmless, this was petty and stupid and now I'm on the line--"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," he said, and took another step forward, pressing in on her. "What's this really about, Rose? You're not scolding me like a naughty little boy just 'cause your reputation's hurt. Why're you really so pissed off?"

"Because you could've been hit!" Rose found herself saying in shrieky tones that reminded her far too much of her mother. She stepped back, because somewhere in the flat there had to be air. "You could've been killed," she added, aiming for something calmer. "You were standing in the middle of the road, you could've been hit and killed and you can't cheat that anymore, you can't regenerate and I...I don't think I could lose you twice."

The Doctor's face fell into blank shock, and his arms fell halfway out of their tight fold. Rose hadn't even realized until she voiced the words that it was nagging at her, but once she did, it played out in her mind's eye as large as life: the screeching tires, the blaring horns, the thud of impact and most of all, the Doctor's face, surprised just like he was now, because he did these things without ever thinking about the consequences. He would be broken and gone, just when she thought she'd got him back, their second chance wasted with no hope of a third. And if that didn't make him see reason, she had no idea what possibly could.

"I," he said, then paused, looked down. "So. Erm."

"I need to get back to work," Rose said. She pawed at her purse, because it felt like she should be grabbing something, taking something with her even though she hadn't set anything down inside the flat when she came in. "I'll, um...later."

"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Later." And as she was on her way out the door, "I'm sorry."

Rose didn't answer; she found another taxi and had a good cry in the back seat, then paid him to circle Roald Dahl Plass until she had fixed her make-up. She'd have to talk to Mr. Winslow again today and she needed to look like a responsible adult, not a hysterical teenager. And she and the Doctor could sort out everything else later, when they weren't screaming or terrified. Because they could do this-they deserved this-Rose had finally gotten her happy ending, dammit, and she wasn't going to let anyone split her and the Doctor up now. Not even the Doctor himself.

Chapter 8

Of course there wasn't any "later;" she did some fast talking to Mr. Winslow and spent the rest of the afternoon settling the paperwork instead of investigating the Horatii, and when she finally got home the Doctor had made lasagna and rented as many of the Quatermass movies as he could find. They made fun of the movies and dropped noodles on the couch, and if it wasn't entirely comfortable, it at least wasn't angry.

In fact, the fresh reminder of his mortality seemed to settle the Doctor's spirits for a few days. He talked more and brooded less, and things calmed down again except for a late-night trip to the A&E for what turned out to be a moderately severe electrical burn. (The microwave's injuries, in contrast, turned out to be fatal.) They spent the weekend doing silly touristy things like taking boat rides in the bay, and the Doctor talked some more about his hypothetical really great car without making any moves towards actually buying one. They did not bring up the arrest, or anything related to it at all; Rose had the idea they were both guarding their emotional scabs, and that was fine by her. She tried to take more of an interest in what he did all day, to show that she didn't really think he was stupid, even if he might occasionally act like it.

And the Doctor, for his part, suddenly decided to take an interest in Torchwood. He didn't say anything specific about it, but he did start making more of an effort to ask her about her day and then actually pay attention to what she said, which was new. There wasn't much to say, as the Horatii case was stalled in the looking-at-maps-and-tax-returns phase, but it was a nice gesture nonetheless. "So what's new with the great defenders of Earth?" he would ask, and at first she suspected he was taking the piss-or trying to distract her from something he'd been up to during the day-but then he asked insightful questions and maintained eye contact and generally looked at her again like she was something wonderful. Rose liked that feeling too much to hold onto any suspicions for long, even if all she was just telling him about the tedious process of sorting through names and deeds and contracts and bank accounts.

Until, of course, there was something else to talk about. It started when Jake arrived to hand her a flash drive and declared, "No fucking way."

"Sorry?" Rose asked.

"Your sting idea? No way." He sat down in her other chair while she plugged in the flash drive and looked through the files. "The number of individual ships we'd have to board is ridiculous, and Pete's never going to hand over enough manpower for us to search them properly. Unless Tosh has a way to track the little bastards in real time and narrow down the location to a lot further, we'd be playing the odds."

"Worth a thought, though," Rose said. "Thanks for getting this to me."

"Eh, whatever, it's better than reading about old contracts and corporate structures." He examined his fingernails. "How're you holding up?"

"Well, I haven't gone blind or decided to become a lawyer yet, so that's something," Rose said.

Jake glanced at her. "I meant with the Doctor. I heard he got in some trouble last week."

Rose copied Jake's files to her computer and returned his flash drive. "Nothing to worry about. It was a...a misunderstanding."

"Right," he said slowly. "And you're just fine with misunderstandings?"

"I'm just fine," Rose said firmly. "We're just fine. It just takes sometime to adjust."

Before Jake could say anything to that, Grace came bounding into the room with Tosh on her heels. "Okay, how much do you love us?" Grace asked cheerfully.

"Depends," Jake said. "Did you bring me a raygun?"

"Possibly," Tosh said, which immediately had Rose's full attention. Tosh set up a laptop on a free corner of Rose's desk and brought up a map. "See, I've fine-tuned the radiation scans a bit-not too much more-but within a city block or so. And we noticed that while most of the targets seem to be staying in England, there was one faint reading that went all the way up to Edinburgh."

"So we closed in on the address," Grace said, "and it turns out to be a hotel. A hotel that just happens to be hosting a fundraiser on the twenty-first, which was put together by Citizens for a Secure World."

Jake snapped his fingers. "That's one of AE's echo chambers," he said. "Do you have a guest list?"

"Not yet, but I have the program off the website," she said, and pulled a piece of paper from her pocket with a flourish. "How would you like to see Mr. Lawrence Hadley, the first All Earth MP elected in Britain, sharing a podium with Mr. Everett Schafer, the author of The War To End All Wars?"

"Schafer hasn't publicly supported the Horatii," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, but they've sure been supporting him," Grace said. "If we can get the guest list I'm positive we're going to find somebody on there who's signed the Horatii membership pledge and got the merit badges and the decoder ring."

"That doesn't mean we're going to catch them red-handed with a ray gun in their pants, though," Jake said. "If you can't spot it any finer than a city block--"

"I'm working on it," Tosh said. "The more data we get, the more I can refine it the logarithms. But it's a tradeoff of speed for accuracy."

Rose stood up. "Then we need to be ready to move in as soon as we get a location. Grace, go make our reservations. I'll let Mr. Winslow know where we're going."

"I thought you were supposed to get permission first and then start setting up travel?"

"I thought you knew a thing or two about taking the initiative," Rose said with a wink.

There were reasons Rose had gotten her position that had nothing to do with Pete or Mickey pulling strings; her ability to convince Mr. Winslow to sign off on an operation that she was making up off the top of her head as she told him about it was one of them. They signed out a van and all the gear they could possibly need and made Ianto load it up for them while they went to their respective homes to pack.

Rose found the Doctor waiting for her-well, not waiting for her, but there rather than out on one of his excursions. He was watching a Welsh-language soap opera with intense fascination, and barely looked away to say, "You're home early, aren't you?"

"Yeah, about that," Rose said. "I have to go away for a little while."

That got his attention. "Go away? Go where?" he asked.

"Edinburgh," she said. "Possible alien technology at a fundraising lunch. Really sorry about this, but we've got to move fast or we'll never catch it."

She fished a rucksack out of the bottom of her wardrobe and started packing more or less at random-her hands seemed to know what she wanted even if her brain wasn't very well engaged. The Doctor stood in the doorway and watched her. "Okay, so you're going to Edinburgh," he said. "Just like that?"

"Fraid so." She grabbed a fistful of underwear-you could never have too much back-up underwear-and stuffed it in the bag. "We just got the lead today, and it could disappear at any time."

"Oh, no, no, I get that." He examined something on the back of his hand. "D'you know where you're staying, though? That sort of thing?"

"Grace made reservations somewhere," she said, because she knew from experience they'd probably all end up sleeping in the van instead. Extra deodorant, right, just in case. "I'll have my mobile, though, if you need me."

"I think I'll be all right for a few days," he said. "It will be a few days, right? Not like a month?"

Rose shook her head. "Probably no later than Friday. Saturday, tops."

"Then I'll be fine." He smiled. "I've got some, er, plans, you know, anyway."

"Really?" She squashed down the clothes in the rucksack (maybe not that much back-up underwear) and then ran into the bathroom for her travel bag of toiletries. "With who?"

"Oh, you know, people..." He made a little wave. "I'm not sure I'm allowed to talk about whatever it is I'm doing for Pete, you know, all top-secret like."

Rose rolled her eyes. "I've got the same security clearance as you have, you know." She grabbed him by the tie and kissed him again. "I'll call you some time tomorrow, okay?"

"All right," he said. "No worries. Go save the planet." He squeezed her hand and held the door for her on her way out, smiling a little, and Rose found herself thinking, thank God, that went easier than I thought it would. It was a petty thought that made her feel guilty, and so she squashed it in favor of getting back to Torchwood, because Jake wasn't above driving off without her if she ran too late.

They drove halfway and stopped for the night, renting one room from a roadside motel and making Jake sleep in the bath. ("Mickey would not have stood for this," he grumbled, but went without a fight.) He slept in the back of the van, too, for the last leg of the trip, while Grace complained about driving on the right and Rose watched the sun come up through the windscreen. Their hotel rooms were in the building directly opposite the target, but Tosh confirmed they'd be doing most of the surveilling from an alleyway, so van it was for the most part. Still, Rose decided to enjoy the rooms while she could, so they all sat on her bed with legs crossed while she laid out the plan.

"I want to know," Grace said, "why I'm the one who has to pose as an extremist."

"It's 'cause everybody knows you Americans are gun-toting whackos," Jake said, patting her on the shoulder.

"I want to submit that I'm Californian and there's a reason we seceded," she shot back.

"It's because we need Tosh in the van to run the equipment and I'm too well-known to blend in," Rose said. "Jake, you'll be posing as a waiter in case Grace needs any backup, but I don't want either of you to take any unnecessary risks. The objective is just to confirm that the device is here and, if possible, who has it-we need names and faces above all."

"I've got the sensitivity of the satellite down to fifty meters," Tosh said. "As of the last update, the device was still in the hotel, somewhere in the south wing. No idea what floor, though."

"Can you get us internal security cameras?" Jake asked. "Make the whole thing a hell of a lot easier."

"Maybe," Tosh said. "I'll work on it."

"First priority is getting inside that fundraiser," Rose said. "We can scope out the south wing the old-fashioned way if we have to."

And they did; while Grace practiced how to talk like a fascist and Tosh did unspeakable things to other peoples' computers, Rose and Jake walked most of the hotel grounds, casually mapping them out. Rose took the occasional photo with her phone, but she counted on Jake to remember most of the details, like where the fire exits were and how long the elevator took between floors. They had a very discreet meeting with the hotel manager, in which they lead him to believe they were monitoring the rally as a potential target for liberal backlash, and then spent far too much time skulking around the south wing, on the off chance something suspicious might happen.

By the time they headed back upstairs, Grace had brought back chips and eaten all of hers and half of Rose's. "Sorry," she said. "Radicalism makes me hungry."

"Do we have the cameras or not?" Jake asked, tipped some of his chips into Rose's basket.

"Not," Tosh said. "I don't want to tip the hotel off to an attack and I don't imagine it was part of your discussion this afternoon. But Jake, you go on shift and seven tomorrow morning, and your uniform's hanging in your room. No facial jewelry."

He made a rude gesture at Tosh and stole some of her chips. "That just means you're up at the same time to fit my wire, right?"

"Wires, cameras, and hyperwave transponders," Rose corrected.

Grace made a face. "Come on, you don't think they're going to kidnap us and take us to an abandoned lead mine, do you?"

"I was thinking you could tag a suspect with him in case he goes into an abandoned lead mine," Rose corrected. "You did bring them, didn't you?"

Tosh thumped a case at her side. "Complete with a four-week battery. But if you tag whoever's carrying the device, it'll interfere with the satellite read and I might lose the signal on the goods."

"Like we're going to get that close," Jake said. "We'll be lucky to see the bloody thing."

"I've got it down to twenty meters," Tosh said. "If you do see it, we'll know so-it'll just take about a week to find out."

While Jake complained at length about his uniform (and Grace about having to socialize with wingnuts) Rose slipped out of the room and down the hall to a window. This far north, it was still somewhat light out; she leaned against the pane and called the Doctor. It took him a dozen rings to answer. "Yes? Hello? Everything okay?" he asked rapidly.

"Everything's fine," Rose said. "Hi. I just wanted call you."

"Oh. Erm, hello." She heard a rattle like he was moving something. "How's Edinburgh?"

"Normal," Rose said. "Boring. Gonna be stuck in a van all day tomorrow, watching Jake and Grace watch crazy people."

"Sounds thrilling," the Doctor said, and something crashed in the background. "Oh. Oh my."

"Is everything okay down there?" Rose asked.

"Oh, yes, fine, jolly, everything's under control," he said.

"'Under control' isn't the same as 'okay,'" Rose pointed out.

"Well, that depends on your definitions, doesn't it?" he asked. "Look, you sit in your van and do whatever. I'll be fine. I'll see you soon."

"Yeah," Rose said. "Just wanted to check in, is all."

There was a high, piercing noise, quickly muffled. "Consider yourself in-checked. Love you."

"Love you too." Long after he hung up, Rose looked at her phone, and told herself that it was irrational to ask Ianto to check in on the Doctor while she was gone. He wasn't a cat, for God's sake. And Ianto was probably celebrating his reduced workload with his security guard tonight. Just because the Doctor wasn't by her side didn't mean he was going to leave her again. Just because he was alone didn't mean he was going to get into trouble. She slipped her phone in her pocket and wandered back to her room. "Oi-anybody want pizza? I'm buying."

Jake reported to work at seven, wearing a wire, an earpiece, and a tiny camera disguised as a stud earring along with a really very silly polyester uniform. His transponder was around his neck on a chain, and he had two back-ups clipped to the band of his watch so he could drop them at a moment's notice. Rose was in the back of the van at the same time, nursing a coffee and watching the secret lives of hotel peons with vague interest.

At nine, Tosh joined Rose in the back of the van while Grace checked in and registered for the fundraiser. "Fifteen meters," she said, offering Rose a fresh coffee. "Also, I never realized one person could be so ticklish."

"She's on the list, though, right?" Rose said. "They're not going to give her trouble?"

"Not at all. Watch." One one screen, kitchen staff wandered about while Jake collected room service, but on the other, Grace (with a camera in her glasses) was talking to a man at a desk with the stylized Citizens for a Secure World logo on a banner behind him. He looked confused, but when he typed something into his laptop, whatever he saw made him nod. Rose released a little breath when he handed over a badge and a program. "Of course, we did have to transfer a few thousand pounds in her name to their coffers, so it's entirely possible we're funding terrorism here."

"Not unless we catch them first," Rose said. Then she pointed at the feed from Jake. "Hey-that bloke didn't wash his hands! God, I'm never eating room service again."

Eleven o'clock and Grace was walking around the south wing again, allegedly schmoozing, while Jake started setting up for the fund raiser. "Awful lot of security for a political fund raiser," Rose noted, as muscular men in drab, dark suits watched the proceedings.

"Hadley claims he's received death threats," Tosh pointed out. "And Ann-Marie Taylor's on the guest list as well, she's definitely got people out for her head."

"Isn't she the one who said the Cybermen were God's punishment for Communism?" Rose asked.

Tosh nodded. "And the Sycorax ship was actually a giant vengeful fetus from space. I suppose it's one way to get your own radio show..."

Twelve o'clock and people were starting to line up and wait to be seated; Jake had already dropped multiple forks and given them a cursory wipe on his vest before putting them right back on the table. "If anyone here gets food poisoning, we know who to blame," Rose said teasingly into the microphone, but he ignored her.

Tosh sat up straighter when her laptop beeped. "All right, I'm finally getting some telemetry from the mainframe on the refined signal...The twenty-meter radius puts it in a block of four rooms, or two suites if they're on the top floor."

"You can't get any relative height?" Rose asked.

Tosh shook her head. "It's not precise enough to triangulate...but if I cross-reference these coordinates to the guest list and the hotel register..." She tapped at her computer for a few moments and then switched on her microphones. "Okay, Jake, Grace? I'm emailing you some pictures and a list of names. These are people are suspected of possessing the tech at some point earlier this week. I'm still trying to work out more recent data."

The screens confirmed that they both checked their phones, scrolling through the names and pictures. Rose knew the hand-off could've already happened, but this was the most tangible lead they had so far-names and faces rather than just phantom sums of money floating from account to account. She checked out the list herself, and did a little Google searching on her own phone. "I think Arthur Dale is out," she said. "He's one of Hadley's assistants and I don't think they'd risk the connection. Jan Liebowitz is a writer, sounds like a strong possibility. Christopher Paulson is ex-military, a good man to be handling weapons if they have one. Thomas Donahue...shares his name with a porn star, apparently."

Tosh leaned over to look at Rose's phone. "Actually, they might be the same person. I wonder if Grace can convince him to take off his shirt so we can prove it."

One o'clock, and they started serving food, which looked so good on the monitors that Rose went off in search of something to fill her stomach. She ended up bringing back sandwiches for both herself and Tosh, which filled her up but didn't make her any less envious of Grace. Jake probably hated all of them. That was also when the speeches started, just loud enough to be clear over the wires, and Rose had to switch off her microphone so she could comment.

"Never more acutely have we been aware of our precarious position among the stars," the emcee intoned gravely. "And never more urgently have we needed a strong hand to guide us through the hard decisions we must now make."

"A strong hand, right, but the little mustache and the jackboots are optional," Rose muttered.

"The time has come to shake off fear. We must be bold; we must be decisive; we must be ready."

"We must be melodramatic." That made Tosh giggle.

"We must take up the weapons of our enemies if we wish to secure a future for ourselves and our children against the rising tide of the extraterrestrial threat. We must be prepared to fight fire with fire if we with to protect our legacy as a species. We must not be squeamish about seizing any advantage in the face of enslavement or extinction by the shadows from the stars."

Rose pulled out her phone and started texting the Doctor. "Who writes this stuff?" she asked, while typing, did you know we're under attack by mixed metaphors? She hit "send" on her phone.

A moment later, there was a loud pinging sound audible over both Grace's wire and Jake's. On the screen, Rose saw people looking around for the rude bastard who'd left a phone on; Grace turned her head fast enough to make Rose a little motion sick. From Jake's camera, she saw the emcee and several people at the head table turn around, as if the sound had come from behind them--

And then suddenly the curtains behind the podium parted, and the Doctor came out.

Several things happened all at once, though later Rose remembered them in a sequence. She dropped her phone. Tosh said, "Hey, isn't that your friend Dr. Noble?" Grace, over her wire, said, "What the hell?" and Jake said "Fuck." The Doctor's eyes were a little wide, his face a little sweaty, but he was grinning widely like this was the most fun he'd ever had, waving jauntily as he came out of his hiding place. "Hello," he said. "Sorry, forgot to switch it off, I know, terrible manners of me."

"Grace, do not take your eyes off him," Rose blurted; Tosh leaned over to switch on the microphones again. "Grace, listen, keep watching him. Jake, show me security."

He turned his head from side to side, and the burly men Rose had noted before were whispering into wrist-mounted radios and moving slowly towards the Doctor. The emcee was demanding "Who are you, sir?" but the Doctor, being the Doctor, paid him no mind; he had seized a plate of appetizers from the head table and was nibbling. "Mmm, pate, I like pate, though this could use a little less salt--"

"Tosh, can you hear what security are saying?" Rose hissed.

"Give me a minute," Tosh murmered.

Lawrence Hadley stood up and seized the Doctor by the arm, causing him to drop the plate. "Just what do you think you're doing here?" he bellowed.

"Would you believe I was looking for the little boy's room?" the Doctor said, straight-faced. "Only I heard those wonderful mixed metaphors over there and just had to come have a look-hello!" He tried to shake Hadley off and stumbled, nearly falling into someone else's lap. A great deal of shoving and scuffling started even before the security men came over and seized the Doctor by the elbows, and while he didn't actively resist he also didn't go easily-he kept catching his feet on tables and chairs and legs, falling down, knocking people into other people, and of course shouting "Oh! Terribly sorry! I'm sure the stain will come out with a little club soda! Ow! Steady on, I've got a heart condition! One of them's missing! Oh, hello, there, let's keep hands above the belt, please..."

The noise was steadily rising throughout the room, and people were starting to get up and move around-maybe to get out of the way, maybe to get a better look, even though the emcee had picked himself up off the floor and was calling for calm. Rose broke out of her shock staring when Tosh cleared her throat. "The chief of security is ordering a new perimeter sweep and they're re-checking badges and invitation," Tosh said quietly.

"Right." Rose took a deep breath. "Grace, Jake, get yourselves out of there. Regroup in the lobby."

"Thank you," Jake murmured, and as the video on both screens began to bob crazily Rose escaped the van to standing outside and swear under her breath.

I've got plans, he'd said. Plans, right. How could she have been so stupid? She'd practically drawn him a map, answering all those questions about the case and things. Had he been planning this from the beginning? No, he hadn't known she was going to Edinburgh until she was going...but he'd followed her, he'd lied to her, and what the hell was all that crashing about last night, then? And god, they weren't going to carry him away to an abandoned lead mine, were they?

Tosh stuck her head out of the van. "They're clear. It looks like Dr. Noble just got dumped in the lobby."

"Right. Okay. Good." Rose took another deep breath. "Go put the van back where it belongs. I'll go...I'll just go."

Tosh drove away while Rose stalked around the perimeter of the hotel and into the lobby. It wasn't crowded, and she spotted her people easily enough, especially with all the noise they were making. In fact, she arrived just in time to see Jake punch the Doctor squarely in the face. The Doctor crumpled like a sack of hammers, and Rose barely even thought about rushing forward and shoving Jake hard in the chest. Jake glared at her. "You saw what the wanker did to us!"

"Not here," Rose said, "not like this." She turned to the Doctor , who was picking himself up gingerly, with some help from Grace, but all words seemed to have escaped her except an incoherent sputter of "You...you..."

He raised his hands in a peace offering. "I can explain everything."

"You fucking better be able to," Jake growled.

"Not here," Rose repeated. She grabbed the Doctor by the arm, no more gently that Jake might've, and pulled him along behind her, across the street to their own hotel. Luckily he didn't try to talk to her, or she might've broken a wristbone or two in the process.

Only when they were secure in their own room did Rose turn on the Doctor and ask, "Just what did you think you were doing back there?"

"Hey, if you hadn't texted I'd have been perfectly safe," the Doctor said.

"You just ruined our best chance at gathering information on these fuckers!" Jake snarled.

"Hey, I brought you that, didn't I?" The Doctor pointed to Grace, who had trailed them up, and Rose realized she was examining a small box wrapped in plain brown paper. It was about three times the size of a matchbox, long and thin, and secured with Sellotape, which Grace picked at with no particular enthusiasm.

"What is it?" Rose asked, willing for the moment to let herself be distracted.

Grace shrugged. "No labels, no distinguishing marks...though somehow I doubt it's a vibrator."

Rose looked at the Doctor, who shrugged. "Don't look at me. One of those fellows sitting at the long table had it in his lap. I managed to snag it on my way out."

"In his lap?" Jake echoed. "How did you even notice something in a bloke's lap?"

The Doctor huffed. "Right, sorry, forgot looking at men's crotches was your department round here."

Jake took a step forward, and the Doctor immediately darted behind Rose, as if she was tall enough to hide behind. Rose took the parcel from Grace and gave it her own once-over. "Tosh has a scanner in the van. I want to know what this is before we open it."

"Right, because they'd be holding armed plastic explosives next to the family jewels," Grace said.

"Doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful about opening it up." Rose tucked the box into her bag and stepped aside, so she could glare at Jake and the Doctor equally. "You two. Wait here. Do not say a single word to each other, is that clear? We'll finish this conversation when we know for certain what you've found."

She walked out without waiting for them to answer. Grace hurried after her, tucking her camera-glasses into a pocket. "You sure that's safe?"

"They won't kill each other," Rose said. "Jake's not that angry and the Doctor isn't that violent." At least, not with non-Daleks. "And if they break each other's noses, they'll deserve it."

Tosh was just parking the van when they got down to her, and whatever questions she had about the Doctor must've vanished when she saw the look on Rose's face. Her eyes flickered ever so briefly to Grace, who must've winked or shaken her head or given some signal, because all Tosh said was, "What do you need me to do?" and when Rose explained, she did it.

"It's giving off radiation, all right," Tosh said after she'd subjected the box to some of her devices. "It'll take a while to confirm whether it's the same profile as our targets, but I don't think there's any harm in assuming we've found it."

"Doesn't look like a ray gun to me," Grace said.

"Any sign it might not be safe to open?"

Tosh pecked at her keyboard. "Chemical sniffers detect no explosives, ultrasound is negative on possible detonators, not heavy enough to be holding any significant mass of radioactive matter...as safe as it can be, I suppose.

Rose rummaged in the cabinets in the back of the van until she found the evidence bags, rubber gloves, and a box-cutter. Carefully, she removed the paper wrapping and tucked it away for fingerprints-though at this point, so many people had handled it that it was likely a lost cause. Inside the paper was a slim metal case with a sliding latch. Rose opened it up, and realized that they were definitely not looking at a ray gun.

Each piece was long, and thin, like the box they came in, and seemed to coated with a thin colorless slime. A cylinder made of delicate steel wire was connected with a solid sphere of the same material by a long strand of opaque white...stuff, gelatinous and glowing. A small blue light on each sphere blinked rhythmically, but not in synch. Grace gasped, and Tosh said something succintly Japanese and pushed herself back from the table.

Rose stripped off the gloves and reached for her phone, dialling Mr. Winslow's direct line. "Winslow, Torchwood," he answered briskly.

"Mr. Winslow, this is Prentice," she said. "I'm in Edinburgh and I'm looking at Cyberman technology."

Chapter 9

"Are you certain?" Winslow asked after a short, shocked pause.

"Positive. We've got..." Rose counted quickly, "five synthorganic devices of unknown specification. They were recovered from a guest at a political fundraiser."

"Cybus branded?" he asked sharply.

Rose used the blade of the box-cutter to examine one of the things, turning over the steel bits at both ends. "No, sir."

"Who was in possession of it?"

"We're...trying to determine that now, sir," Rose said, because of course the Doctor had just grabbed the box without noting who he's been grabbing it from. Here she'd thought Jack Harkness was the only one with a thing for sticking his hand in random people's crotches. "There's been a slight complication."

"Get those devices to Torchwood Two immediately," Winslow snapped. "I want you back in Cardiff making a full report tomorrow morning. I'll notify Mr. Tyler of the discovery."

"Yes, sir," Rose said, and hung up. "Tosh, give us all the tape you got from the cameras and all the data on guests, speakers and room assignments. Then take those things to the Edinburgh office for examination. Grace, you're with me."

"To do what?" she asked.

"Mainly, to keep me from killing the Doctor before he figures out who he got these from."

The news that their alien tech was actually a Cybus synthorganic device actually got both Jake and the Doctor to shut up for a moment. "You're absolutely certain?" the Doctor asked.

"Totally," Grace said. "I saw enough of that stuff in the war, it was genuine synthorganics."

"Could the Cybermen be involved?" the Doctor asked, turning to Rose. "Just a small number, manipulating the organization? All it took was one or two to get things started at Canary Wharf, after all."

"There's no Cybermen left on this planet," Rose said firmly. "They're all in the Void. We have ways of detecting any new comings or going into our universe now, so we'd know if they came back."

"Does it matter if the tin men are back?" Jake asked. "Just possessing synthorganics is illegal. Whoever you got that off of is going to a UN prison for a very long time."

The Doctor nodded gravely. "Right. So the question is, who did I get it off of?"

They had the list of attendees, the list of rooms that potentially housed the devices that morning, and the tape of the Doctor flailing his way out of the room. After listening to him say "This one-no, him-or maybe her? She is wearing trousers-er-" Rose gave up on his memory and started making lists. Of the people sitting at the long table of speakers (for he was quite certain he got it from one of them) as many as six had stayed in rooms in the south wing close enough to have potentially held the devices overnight, and four of them had been actively grabbed or manhandled by the Doctor according to the tape. "Lawrence Hadley, Arthur Dale, Moira Hearns, Eoin Collins," she declared. "Those are our suspects."

"An MP, his personal assistant, a professor of economics and an retired army major who writes a right-wing blog," Jake said. "You couldn't meet a nice bunch of people."

The Doctor squinted at the video of himself. "They were all wearing the same color of suits," he muttered. "If only they'd been in different suits, I'm sure I'd have it."

Tosh brought back the van around four o'clock, and with her was one of the synthorganic devices-now resting in a clear plastic tube. "They gave us one for luck," she said grimly. "They'll have fingerprints on the wrapper back by tomorrow morning, but figuring out this thing is going to take a bit more time than that."

Rose checked her watch and carefully calculated a route. "If we leave now and drive straight through, we'll be back in Cardiff by midnight," she said. "Start packing up."

"You want us to drive all night?" Grace asked, sounding basically resigned to the decision.

"Winslow wants our report tomorrow morning," Rose said. "And at this point, driving's just as fast as taking a blimp." She looked at the Doctor, who was still peering at the video, and braced herself to ask the necessary questions. "Where are you staying and how did you get up here?"

He cringed a little, and she allowed she was maybe a little...strident there. "Blimp," he said. "And I'm across the street in the economy rooms."

"Give Tosh your key card and she'll collect your things," Rose said; it was too risky to let him be seen again around the scene of the incident. "You can ride back with us."

"That's really not..." he trailed off and swallowed hard, pressing his lips together tightly while his brow furrowed; Rose must've been looking quite scary to get that reaction. "Yeah. Okay. What, er, what do I do in the meantime?"

"Already done more than enough," Jake said ominously before sulking out of the room.

Rose exhaled loudly. "Help get this equipment sorted so we can stow it as soon as Tosh gets back. We need to leave as soon as we can."

Precisely because they were in a hurry, it took absurdly long to get on the road; Rose insisted on driving the first leg, and then stayed in the front wile Jake took the second. She could hear, in the back, Grace and Tosh conversing quietly at times, but the Doctor stayed silent and Rose kept her eyes on the road.

They made one stop at a charging station, Jake plugging in the van while the others ran inside to use the toilet and stock up on crisps, sweets, soft drinks and depressing little sandwiches wrapped in plastic. By that time, Rose's anger had sort of mutated from the fiery I-will-stick-pencils-in-your-eyes sort of thing to a smoldering sort of I-do-not-know-if-I-can-speak-to-you weight. Still, it gave her the willpower to stick her head in the back of the van and offer the Doctor one of the sandwiches. "I got this for you if you're hungry," she said, fully aware that she sounded like a snotty teenager.

"Thanks," he murmured. He was hunched over on a bench a manner that would almost certainly be painful in the morning, and she realized he was poking at the synthorganic device with one of Tosh's long, thin instruments.

"What are you doing?" she asked, probably too harshly again.

He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised. "Toshiko said I could," he said quickly, pulling the device closer to his chest

Rose took a deep breath. "I'm sure she did, but what are you doing?"

"Oh," and his shoulders relaxed a bit. "Just playing about with it. Trying to remember some tricks."

"Tricks?"

He gave the device a few more prods, and suddenly the blue lights on the round end started blinking rhythmically. "There," he said, a bit of life coming into his voice. "Knew I'd get it eventually. It's now broadcasting the fourth act of Othello in Morse code."

It was such an odd thing to say and do that it made Rose smile; it took a moment for the practical implications to catch up to her. "So you know your way around this technology pretty well."

"Eh, so so," he said with a shrug. "It's your basic synthorganic circuit, half difference engine and half synapse. Sort of a cornerstone of Cyberman technology, but not that hard to program."

"So they're not all steel," she said.

"Or silver, depending on where they're coming from." He put the tool away and let the circuit blink away inside its plastic casing. "Wonder what the wingnuts were doing with one in a hotel, though."

"Wonder how many they have and what they're using them for," Rose said.

Jake knocked loudly on the side of the van. "All aboard what's going aboard," he shouted. "Some of us want to sleep tonight before we start apologizing to Winny the Pooh."

Tosh climbed back into the rear of the van and curled up with her laptop again. Grace deliberately took a bit longer to finish some gentle stretches before she ambled up to Rose. "You still calling shotgun?"

Rose glanced at the Doctor, who was staring at the circuit a little too hard. "Nah, it's your turn to drive," she said. "I'll kip back here for a bit."

They didn't talk for the rest of the ride back, and when Rose did doze off a bit, it was on the other side of the van and she ended up with a crick in her neck. They didn't talk while they navigated around Cardiff, the dashboard clock rolling over past 12:00 while Grace and Jake argued dully about the most efficient way to drop everyone off. They didn't talk as they plodded up the stairs to their flat, and when Rose collapsed on the bed in her underwear she though, There has to be a later this time, and then fell asleep so fast she didn't remember the Doctor laying down at all.

When Mr. Winslow said first thing in the morning, he usually meant eight o'clock sharp; Rose was dragged awake all too early by her alarm, and the Doctor managed to sleep right through it. Later, she thought, but didn't wake him before she slipped out the front door.

Everyone gathered around Ianto's desk in their formal serious-business attire-Jake was even sporting a tie-though Ianto was the only one who looked the slightest bit rested. He passed around little cups of espresso to all of them while they waited for Mr. Winslow to call them in. "A lot of data at the fifteen-meter radius dumped last night," Tosh said between sips. "I'm checking it against the hotel register again, but I think we can exclude Collins from our list of suspects."

"Which one's he again?" Grace asked blearily.

"Blogger," Jake said. "Author of brilliant pieces of shit like 'Pete Tyler Will Kill Us All' and 'I Like Big Guns and I Cannot Lie.'"

"Those other wingnuts can't deny," Rose said, spontaneously, and it wasn't really funny but they all ended up giggling insanely from a combination of sleep deprivation and caffeine, and Tosh had to retouch her eye makeup before they could go into Winslow's office.

He already had a stack of marked-up files on his desk, and a row of chairs across from it, like a reverse firing squad. "Sit down, please," he said. "I've just gotten word from the Edinburgh office. The devices are a synthorganic circuit manufactured to Cybus specifications, but they're working on documenting the exact materials. You brought a sample back with you?"

"It's already been delivered to the labs," Tosh said. "The radiation profile fits the one we've been tracking, but it's much fainter than we expected-probably the regular shipments contain several times as many units as the one we intercepted."

"Yes. About that." Winslow humphed and fiddled with his papers again. "I understand a certain Dr. John Noble was registered at the hotel where all this occurred."

"That is correct, sir," Rose said. She sat up straighter in her chair and leaned forward, determined to take the blame via body language if nothing else. "Dr. Noble followed us to Edinburgh and...intervened in the surveillance operation."

"She means he stumbled into the middle of it and nearly blew our cover, sir." Jake said firmly.

"He's also the one who actually recovered the ciruits," Grace said. "Sir."

Winslow raised an eyebrow at them. "I wasn't aware that Dr. Noble was an employee of Torchwood," he said. "How was he aware of your planned activities?"

"The Doctor has the highest security clearance Mr. Tyler is authorized to grant," Rose reminded him. "I wasn't aware that Torchwood was in the business of keeping secrets from the United Nations."

"We are in the business of keep covert activities covert," Winslow said. "Mr. Simmonds, what's your assessment of Dr. Noble's involvement?"

Rose bit down on her lip while Jake sat up a little straighter. "He's lucky he didn't get himself arrested again, sir," he said. "Dr. Holloway and I were undercover in the room when he blundered in and we could've been compromised. The fact that he recovered the circuits isn't an excuse for his behavior, it's the only reason we shouldn't be prosecuting him ourselves."

Winslow turned. "Dr. Holloway?"

Grace glanced nervously at Rose and said, "I agree that Dr. Noble was reckless, but the fact is that we weren't compromised and we did obtain valuable intelligence."

"And the Horatii know we've got it," Jake pointed out. "They're not going to miss the fact that their toys disappeared just after a random party-crasher started sticking his hands in people's crotches. They've got to suspect either us or the government."

"Because wandering into a room and stealing the appetizers is the kind of stealthy infiltration we're known for," Grace said.

"Dr. Sato, your thoughts?" Winslow said, before Grace and Jake could start going at it.

Tosh looked surprised to be addressed with the honorific. "I...can't really say, sir," she said. "He did recover the circuits in an...irregular way, and he made some comments that were quite helpful in figuring out their function, but...well, as you said, he isn't Torchwood."

"A succinct assessment," Winslow said. He looked at Rose again. "I'm going to want a full written report on the incident as well as regular updates on any suspects you might have. As for Dr. Noble, perhaps you could have a talk with him about his manners, Ms. Prentice?"

Rose swallowed hard around the bitter taste in her mouth. "Yes, sir. Will that be all, sir?"

"I think so." He made a note on one of his files. "You're dismissed."

Rose dove into her report for the rest of the morning, mostly to avoid talking to Jake. She knew she'd be too tempted to ask him what happened to the anarchist who'd liberated Paris, and knew him well enough to know the resulting verbal knife fight would leave them both flayed. She also wanted to avoid Grace, more because of guilt than anger; she wasn't sure how much of that defense of the Doctor was an honest opinion and how much of it was Grace trying to protect Rose because of...something. Some spirit of sisterly solidarity, or perhaps she just didn't want to lose her team leader, or just wanted to wind up Jake. Maybe she'd just decided that she liked the Doctor and was going to take his side; Lord knew he'd warmed up to her fast. It probably didn't matter, but it make Rose uncomfortable.

She was deep into the delicate task of describing what happened when the Doctor burst out without making it seem like he was completely insane, when Ianto knocked politely on her door. "Ma'am? Can I order you something for lunch?" he asked.

Rose glanced at the clock on her screen and winced. Now that she thought about it, she actually was hungry-no amount of angst could replace a meal. I'll get myself something a little later, she almost said, until she remembered what had to happen later and decided roundly to fuck it all. "I'm going out for lunch," she announced, saving her report and closing it with a sentence left dangling. "Transfer anything urgent to my mobile."

"Yes, ma'am," Ianto said with a little nod. "Also, Jake would like you know that he did only what he had to do."

If he was resorting to using Ianto as a messenger boy, he had to be truly worried about her reaction. She sighed. "Let him know I understand," she said. "I'll be back in an hour."

The bus home took too long, and Rose was sort of afraid to call ahead and confirm the Doctor was home-she wasn't sure if she'd rather he was or he wasn't. Coward, she told herself in her own head, but it didn't stop something from knotting up inside her when she unlocked the door and immediately heard the Doctor call out, "Hello?"

"Hey," she said, as she shut the door behind her. "Taking a long lunch."

"Ah." He'd been sitting on the couch in his pajamas, watching television-weather reports, it looked like, and Rose didn't remember if she ordered the weather channels or not and decided it was best not to know. There was a glass of milk and half a banana on the table between his propped-up feet, and he sank back down into his seat before saying, "Left early this morning, too."

"Mr. Winslow wanted us early," she said.

Mild, but a feint: "You didn't wake me."

Evenly, a retreat: "You looked like you needed the rest."

She thought about fixing herself a sandwich before they did any talking and then realized that she was looking for a way to keep delaying. She set aside her purse and walked straight to the couch, sitting down on the arm. "We need to talk."

He didn't look at her. "Just a minute," he said, "They're about to run a story about the flooding in Guangdong and I know that's, well, nowhere near where your mum is, but I'm still curious and--"

Rose snatched up the remote control and switched off the telly. "Let me talk," she said, more frostily, and his mouth shut with a little snapping sound. "What you did yesterday was so far out of line that I don't even know where to start. You lied to me about where you were and what you were doing this weekend. You interfered with my work and embarrassed me in front of my team and my boss. You put Grace and Jake in real danger, and yes, you got us the circuits, but now the targets know they're being watched, they know that we know part of their plan, and they are going to take steps to cover their tracks even more thoroughly. It could easily be two steps forwards and three steps back and I am the one who's going to be held responsible for it."

The Doctor squirmed for a minute, nudging his glass of milk with his toe, then said, "I'm sorry." He grimaced. "I mean it, I really am, I'm not just saying it. I just...I wasn't thinking about, you know, all that. Consequences and stuff."

Rose took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "What were you thinking of, then?" she asked, and hoped it didn't sound too much like an accusation.

"I miss you," he blurted, looked up at her with the sad puppy eyes. "I miss us. I thought...those first couple days, we were good, yeah? But now you're at the office all bloody day and I'm just some kind of house boy...I mean, I said I'd do the curtains and mortgage thing for you, but I didn't think I was going to end up like this. Just...this." He flapped a hand around the disheveled flat, then sighed, and his shoulders seemed to collapse in on themselves a bit. "I just want things to be like the old days, I suppose."

Rose shifted off the arm of the couch and sat down next to him, leaving a sliver of space in between. "Then I guess I'm sorry too," she said, hating the words and the truth underneath them. "For leaving you here by yourself. Should've known that a bored Time Lord is a dangerous thing."

It was a feeble joke and it didn't work. "I reckon I'm a bit jealous," the Doctor said instead. "Or, I guess it's envious, isn't it? Envy, jealousy-I used to know how those went and now I get them confused." He rubbed his nose. "I get envious because you're out there having all the fun, you know, Torchwooding it up and I'm...here. Making spaghetti and toothpaste."

"I'm sorry," Rose said again, and closed the gap, leaning gently against his arm. "That doesn't mean I totally forgive you yet, but I'm sorry for my part in this mess."

"'Snot your fault," he mumbled. "If Pete wants to hire me he should bloody well give me something to do."

Rose suspected that Pete had only drawn up the contract for the same reasons Oleg and Lena ended up as mansion caretakers, but now wasn't the time to tell the Doctor that. "We need to find you something to do instead," she said. "Something besides the spaghetti and toothpaste."

The Doctor wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and then suddenly brightened, looking at her with a ghost of the old manic grin. "We could take a trip," he said. "Wouldn't be quite like the old days, I know, but there's a whole planet here I haven't seen properly yet except through the History Channel and they're always on about the Nazis anyway."

"All right," she said. "When do we leave?"

He shrugged, jostling her. "Right now! Well, I mean, right away! Our bags are still packed, we've got credit cards, just book ourselves a flight and we're off!"

Rose tried to straighten up a bit despite the weight of his arm. "I don't think..."

"Oh, come on," he said, "we can go to the Yucatan-I loved the Mayans, they did such a good hot chocolate, you know, with the chilis-or maybe India--"

"Doctor--" she tried again, but he talked right over her.

"--Japan, or maybe Turkestan, did you know there's a Turkestan here? They've got hordes."

"Doctor," Rose said, seizing him by the hand. (She may have applied a little fingernail to the move.) He stopped this time. "I'm in the middle of a case, remember? I can't just take off for the Yucatan like that."

"Oh," he said, shrinking again. "Right. I...sorry."

"Maybe next time I get a holiday?" she said, hoping to reassure him, but he just looked broodier than ever. "Look, I'm sorry, Doctor, but I didn't have a job in the old days. And no, that doesn't mean you should blow up Torchwood. I like it way better than I ever liked Henrik's and--"

"That's it!" he blurted, and straightened up so fast Rose nearly got an elbow in the ribs. He grinned at her. "Rose Tyler, you are a genius."

"Of course I am," she said. "What'd I say?"

"I need a job," the Doctor declared. "A proper one, not this consultancy, because really it's a bit like being your dad's kept man and that's weird. I--" he leaned close to her like a conspirator, "am going to work for Torchwood."

For a minute, Rose blinked at him, as his words got hung up somewhere in her brain and refused to process. "Are you-I mean-Doctor, are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure," he said. "It'll be like the old days again, you and me, helping people. Somebody's got to replace Mickey, right?"

She really wished he wouldn't bring up Mickey in the middle of this. "I'm not the only one on the team," she reminded him. "You'd have to work with Jake and Grace and Tosh, too."

"What's wrong with them?" he asked. "Aside from the bit where Jake hates me, of course, but I've always been able to work around that before."

Rose groped for a tactful way to say this. "You're not exactly at your best when you've got rules to follow," she finally said.

He made a rude noise at her. "I'll have you know I spent years working for UNIT back in the day," he said. "I can do teamwork and rules and everything just as well as the next fellow. Just ask the Brigadier." His face fell a little bit. "Which I mean totally metaphorically, of course, since he's in the other universe and all. But you get my point."

"What if Torchwood decide you're not a fit for Mickey's old job?" she asked, not even sure where she was taking this.

"Rose, Rose, Rose," he said airily, "the wonderful thing about being a recovering Time Lord is that I have a nine-hundred year skill set. There's got to be an opening somewhere for something. The statistics are all in my favor."

She bit her lip and thought furiously. This could all go horribly wrong. If the Doctor got rejected-and his recent actions didn't exactly provide a ringing endorsement-he would be even worse off than before. If the Doctor got hired, there were still a lot potential disasters lurking...but like he said, they'd be together again, on the same side, and he'd be with her, where at least she could keep an eye on him...

"All right," Rose said, and turned to peck him on the cheek. "Let's write down your CV."

The Doctor made a face. "Oh, do we have to? I hate writing those, I never know how to sort out all the dates and things."

"That...might be a problem," Rose allowed. "But just think of the look on Mr. Winslow's face when he gets it."

That got her a grin, and so she snatched her laptop off the coffee table, and they spread it over both their laps and got to work.

Go to Act 3