Wolf Moon: Chapter Two

[amberfocus]

Chapter Two:  Hands Off the Leather

“Doctor, I’ve located it,” his time ship informed him.

“Are you sure?” He asked.

“It’s stationary now. And it’s mind, no, her mind is…roaming, seeking contact.” The time rotor began to move up and down as the ship took off of her own volition. Had there been longing in her thoughts?

“You said she?”

“The mind is quite feminine and holds so much power.” The TARDIS sounded awed. “So much undefined, raw power.”

“Is it, she, dangerous?” The Doctor asked.

The TARDIS paused for a long time. “Yes, she is. But not…not…”

“Spit it out,” he said.

“She has held your hearts before.”

“What?”

“It’s not clear. I can’t see.”

“You can’t see the time lines?” He asked with sudden fear in his voice.

“Something blocks them. But she cannot be left here. She must come with us. She must come. She must come. She must come.” Her thoughts became desperate with each repetition.

The Doctor leapt forward and gave a light tap on the TARDIS console right above her time circuit and the hiccup in her thought speech ended. A moment later she landed softly. Usually she liked to give a nice jarring thud to keep him on his toes. He frowned in concern but he didn’t have time to investigate what was wrong with his ship’s mind. He had to move before the item he sought moved from its current stationary position.

When the Doctor emerged from his ship he pulled out his tracer and aimed it at the building in front of him. He followed the steady beep forward, watching as the little light began to flash faster and faster in time to the tone. He followed it into the building and up several flights of stairs and down a long hallway. Stopping in front of a nondescript door labeled 5E he put the tracer back in his pocket and rapped impatiently on the door. Very carefully he formulated what he was going to say when the door opened. Hopefully whatever creature he found behind it was a reasonable one.



Rose was close to falling asleep on her couch; shoes long since kicked off, feet up on the coffee table, stockings in a puddle on the floor, glass of red wine in hand, listening to the radio which was coincidentally playing Orchestra of Wolves. She felt like fate was trying to get her attention this evening and it was using the ultra-deluxe mallet of doom and destruction to whack her over the head in order to do it. The rest of her drive home had been hounded by Garth Brook’s song Wolves, My Chemical Romance’s House of Wolves, and City of Wolves by some punk band she’d never heard of. She’d turned the program off when it had been announced that selections from John Flynn’s album Two Wolves would be coming up after the break.

“You know,” she told the ceiling conversationally, “I was in a great mood when I left work this afternoon. A really great mood. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I don’t want any part of it.” The ceiling didn’t answer back, which was probably a good thing considering the last time it had there’d been an infestation of Coraculan vespods growing up there. James Borell from Torchwood had spent three days helping her remove them, scrape all of the residue off that they had left behind, and a fourth day repainting her ceiling. He’d spent the entire time lecturing her about not skipping decontamination on her way out of the alien terrarium wing just because she didn’t like what the process did to her new shoes. Talk about taking your job home with you.

She sighed and stood up, deciding that she better take care of the mess she’d left in the kitchen before Torchwood showed up at her door having detected some new form of life growing in there. She flicked off the radio and was just heading out of the room when her front door bell rang. Not that her back door would ring, as the flat was five flights up and her back deck wasn’t accessible from the outside unless you counted the fire escape, and then there was the technicality of it not actually having a bell hooked up, either. Was her mind stuck on ramble tonight? Her second Doctor would be so proud, she thought with a grin.

Rose changed direction and went to answer her front door. She pulled the door open and looked at the man standing there. She took a step back and the glass of wine tumbled out of her hand and onto the carpet. She looked down at it in dismay. “That’s going to leave a stain,” she said. She glanced back up at the familiar, yet unfamiliar face in front of her.

“Club soda and salt,” said that voice in that accent. She had never expected to hear that harsh Northern accent spoken from that particular throat ever again in her life.

“You better come in,” she said taking a step back.

“Excuse me?” The man sounded surprised. “You in the habit of asking strange men into your flat in the middle of the night?” He asked with disapproval.

She reached forward and grabbed hold of his leather jacket, yanking him into the flat and kicking the door shut behind him. “Strange men?” She said. “You’re hardly…no, I take that back. You’re the strangest man I’ve ever met. Now do you have any intention of explaining to me what you’re doing here? And did you have to be wearing that face, too? Not that I haven’t missed old big ears but you told me you couldn’t change it back. And oh, yeah, there was that little detail of how it was impossible for you to cross into this universe and rescue me, too. How about we start with that?”

“Lady, what are you talking about?” He looked down his nose at her. “And hands off the leather,” he said reaching down to unwrap her fingers from his coat. A spark of gold flashed under his hand as he touched her skin. He pulled a device the size of a small book out of his pocket and pointed it at her. “What are you?”

“Oh, I much prefer the sonic screwdriver. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that it was rude to point alien tech at poor unsuspecting earthlings?” She asked. “And I’m human. Which you know very well, Doctor.”

He raised startled blue eyes at the use of his name. “How the hell do you know who I am?” He asked sharply.

“Oh, please don’t tell me you’re you from before you met me? Course how else would you be here since the walls have closed? Explains the face, too. Stupid time lines,” she said.

“I don’t know you,” he said flatly. The hurt flashed so briefly through her eyes that he almost didn’t see it. But he did and he wondered at it, wondered why it was so deep and wondered why that suddenly mattered to him.

“Ah,” she said. She pursed her lips. “Then what are you doing here?”

“Looking for something,” he said.

“Could you vague that up a bit more for me?” She asked him. “I forgot how reticent you could be in this body.”

“Okay, first the face, now the body? What do you know about me that you shouldn’t?” He demanded.

“I know that you’re a Time Lord, that you can regenerate, and that you aren’t supposed to be here. Two universes will explode if you are. At least that’s the line you fed me that last time we spoke and I got trapped here,” she said poking a finger into his chest.

“Ouch,” he said, pushing her hand away. Again as bare skin hit bare skin she sparked gold. “Will you quit doing that?”

Rose looked at her hand. “I don’t know why that’s happening.”

“Look,” he said. “Something’s going on and it has to do with you, so you better start talking. What did you say your name was?” He asked.

“I didn’t. It’s Rose.”

“Pleased to meet you, Rose.”

“Run for your life,” she muttered, looking anywhere but at him.

“What? Why?” He glanced around him, expecting to see some kind of a threat.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

“I need to figure out what is going on. And the answer lies with you. I need for you to come back to my ship,” he told her.

“And what? Look at your etchings?” She snapped. “I don’t think so. I’ve got dishes to do and a stain to get out of my carpet.” She walked away from him and into her kitchen, standing at the sink. Why was she so angry? She had never thought seeing him again would make her angry. She had never thought she’d see him again period. Especially this him. Her first him. Her Doctor.

She grasped the edge of the countertop and leaned forward, breathing heavily. “This is not happening,” she said out loud. “There is no way this is happening. I’ve fallen asleep on the couch. That’s got to be it. I am dreaming and any minute now I’m going to wake up. So wake up, Rose. Come on. Wake up.”

She gasped in a lungful of air desperately. “Please! Wake up!” She pinched her arm and yelped. Ten years. Ten years and now this happened. “But I was happy!” She said in a little girl lost voice. “I was over you.”

Setting herself on autopilot she decided to ignore the man she’d left in her living room and loaded her dishwasher, set it to run and scrubbed out the sink. Vigorously she cleaned off the top of the stove and then straightened up the kitchen table, setting down a fresh table setting for morning, though after a moment she knew it was only habit that she had done it. She was sure she wouldn’t be here in the morning to use it.

Rose took the back way out of the kitchen and went into her room. She had planned for this moment once upon a time. She moved on to a different kind of autopilot. She changed from her work clothes into a pair of jeans and a red jumper and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She rummaged around in the bottom drawer of her bureau and found a small packet of letters, ones for her Mum and Pete and the twins, one for Davin, and ones for Mickey and Jake that she tucked into her jeans. She put a pair of good running socks and trainers on her feet, put her wallet and phone in her pockets, squared her shoulders and went out to face the Doctor.

“Well, come on then,” she said to the startled man who’d been sitting in her arm chair, arms crossed and scowling in the direction of the kitchen.

“You’re coming?” He was shocked and somewhat baffled.

“Yeah,” she said simply. She dumped the letters on her coffee table in case she never came back. Her mother had a key to the flat and if Rose disappeared she’d come and find the letters. She followed the Doctor out of her apartment, down five flights of stairs and over to the maintenance shed behind her building. Did her building even have a maintenance shed? She saw him put a key in the lock and pull the door open then followed him inside.

“Please don’t say it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside,” he said.

She didn’t. She barged past him up the entry ramp and went and laid her hand down on the console, gold light sparking between her hand and the cold metal. What she did say was, “This isn’t your TARDIS.” She pulled away from the console and the ship let out a hum of protest at the loss of contact. His eyes widened at the reaction from his ship. Rose turned to look at him and for a moment flecks of gold swirled in her eyes. Then they cleared. “This isn’t your TARDIS,” she repeated, “And you’re not my Doctor.”

Suddenly at a complete and total loss as to what to say the Doctor fell into the defensive. “Oi, what do you mean, old big ears?”

Ch. 3:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/4758.html