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The wolf focused her eyes, and Rose was suddenly quite sure the animal was female, on the Doctor and growled. It wasn’t a snarl, but it did seem to be a warning. Rose took another involuntary step forward. The wolf looked at her and closed her mouth. But when the Doctor suddenly stepped in front of Rose, pushing her back, the wolf growled at him again and took a step forward. The Doctor reached inside his jacket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver but before he could even get it aimed properly the wolf had leapt, taking his wrist in its powerful jaws.
With a toss of her head, the wolf sent the screwdriver to the ground. Immediately she released the Doctor’s wrist and took a step back, then sat down on her haunches. The wolf craned her neck around the Doctor’s body to look at Rose again.
“Stay back,” the Doctor said when Rose started to move around him. The wolf growled up at him, her eyes focusing intently on the Time Lord, her lips pulling back in a snarl this time.
“She wants me,” Rose said.
“Well, she can’t have you. You’re mine,” the Doctor said widening his stance. Rose rolled her eyes at his back.
“Shall I remind you, Doctor that I am very much mine?” She asked him sharply. “I don’t belong to you. Legend or no legend, destiny or whatever, mother of the future if I so choose to be, but I will only be yours when I choose to be. And I will only fulfill this so-called destiny when or if I want to. We have a long way to go, no matter how much I want you right now, before I’m yours and you’re mine.”
“Is now really the time for a semantics lesson, Rose? Big, growly mongrel holding us at bay--.” The wolf snapped at him.
“Holding you at bay, you mean. I think she likes me.” On Rose’s words the wolf made a soft whining noise in her throat and Rose pushed her way around the Doctor and out into the open. The wolf did not get up, simply watched as Rose approached her. Just as Rose was about to reach out and touch the wolf, she bounded to the side, turning and running off several steps. Then she turned back and looked at Rose, whining again.
“I think she wants us to follow her,” Rose said.
“That’s a dangerous animal, Rose,” the Doctor warned.
“I don’t think she is. I can feel her, almost like she’s thinking towards me. She wants us to go with her. She’s trying to tell us, or at least me, something. And she’s not too thrilled with you for interfering. Now pick up your sonic screwdriver and let’s go.” Rose leaned over and picked up her backpack. She opened it, pulled out a packet of jerky, zipped it shut again and put the pack on.
She ripped open the packet and doled out a couple pieces to the Doctor and took one for herself, slipping the rest into her pocket. “Come on.” As she approached the wolf turned away and began to walk down the bank. Rose took a bite of the jerky and strode after the animal. With no other choice than to follow the headstrong woman, the Doctor trailed along after her.
Eventually the wolf led them to a cave and whined at them until they went inside. “Really don’t like leaving her behind us,” the Doctor muttered to Rose.
“She’s safe. I know she is. She’s a guardian,” said Rose.
“How do you know that?” The Doctor said. He held up his sonic screwdriver and shone the light around the cave’s interior.
Rose shrugged her shoulders. “I just know. I seem to know a lot of things I didn’t know before. Like all of these facts were buried in my brain and they’re slowly coming to the surface. And instincts, too.”
“What happened to the wolf?” The Doctor asked.
A whine came from the shadows. The Doctor shone his light in the direction of the sound and he saw the animal lying curled up against the wall. “You’re not a threat, are you?” Rose asked.
The wolf raised her head and appeared to look Rose straight in the eyes then she put her head back down, rolled over and exposed her belly. “Isn’t that a sign of accepting the dominance of another pack member?” Rose asked the Doctor. She handed him some food and one of the canteens from her backpack while she waited for his answer.
“Well, yes,” he admitted.
“I don’t think, however,” Rose said with a wry grin, “That it’s your dominance she’s bowing, to.”
“No, I don’t think she even likes me,” he said ruefully.
“Or she doesn’t like you bullying me,” Rose said.
“I wasn’t bullying you. I was protecting you,” protested the Doctor.
“You know I am pretty capable Doctor. I’m a sixth degree black belt in tae kwon do and I’ve had to take down some pretty nasty weevils in my time. A couple of times barehanded. Plus, I’m the one with the knife,” Rose told him. “I’m a far cry from a helpless little girl that you have to keep safe.”
“I wasn’t… I mean, I didn’t mean to… I want you safe, Rose,” he said. “I want to protect you. It’s instinct and it’s tied directly to you.”
“Well, you may need to learn to sit on your instincts a bit and figure out how to trust mine,” she said. “Because the only way destiny is going to work for you is if you figure out that we’re equal partners in whatever relationship we end up having. Whether it's friendship or everything that could be, I’m not going to be the little woman.”
“I don’t expect you to, but if you really are meant to be the mother of my children I need to keep you safe from harm and--.”
“That sounds so pompous,” Rose interrupted. “Look, I believe in this legend of yours, of ours, because I can feel it on an instinctive level, too, but you seem to have it in your head that I’m going to be some future baby machine because of it. Pumping out time tots like there’s no tomorrow. But destiny be damned. You need to realize that legend is one thing and free will is entirely another and pheromones or no pheromones I’m more than that.”
“Rose, I never thought--.”
“Didn’t you?” She asked. “You and Romana, you planned this based on something you found in an ancient text. You played with my life and you changed me and nobody asked me if it’s something I wanted. It’s like when I first came aboard the other Doctor’s TARDIS and she got in my head and started changing things without asking. She and he just assumed it was fine. Yes, the translation program is wonderful and highly effective, but neither one of them thought to even ask me.”
She puffed out air, blowing her bangs upwards. “And this is one thousand times bigger than that. Because everything is pointing to the fact that my whole life has been rearranged to fit some Time Lord agenda and no one bothered to ask Rose Tyler if she wanted to be the Bad Wolf, if she wanted to be changed, if she wanted to be with a different version of the man she loved instead of the man she did fall in love with, if she wanted to have desire so strong for a stranger that she had to fight every minute to maintain what she wanted, a slow build, and if she wanted to be the mother of his race’s future!”
“You’re talking about yourself in the third person,” the Doctor said lamely. She could tell he was unsure what to do about her little tirade.
“Is that all you can say?” She demanded.
“I’m sorry?” He asked.
“You’re sorry?” She said in disbelief.
“It honestly didn’t occur to us when we planned it that it would ever be a problem. Romana had seen how the time lines played out. She assured me it would be okay and I took her word for it. I always trusted her,” he said.
“Just…what do you expect from me?” Rose asked.
“I don’t expect you to do anything you don’t want to do. I mean, yes, okay, one day we could have kids if we both want to. We could restore the race. But I would hope that if we decide to have children, Rose, it’s because we’ve come to love each other and we want them and not because we’re supposed to or because there’s an agenda involved with it.”
He frowned as he stared over at the wolf in the light of the sonic screwdriver. “I’m not even all that keen on the idea of having children. It was always more of a responsibility to my dead race. I was a lousy father and a middling grandfather. And maybe it would be different this time, I don’t know. But having kids is hardly what I need. You are what I need. However I can have you. And if that means keeping my hands off you and keeping the inoculations in my body and the pink fog pumping through the TARDIS, and the two of us only ever being friends, then so be it,” he told her.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Then how do we get out of the pocket universe? According to Romana, we have to mate to do it,” Rose said. “And we can’t do that keeping our hands off each other.”
“I’m clever. If we decide we need to leave here before we do, I mean assuming we ever do, and I shouldn’t assume, I know that, I will find a way,” the Doctor told her. “But honestly, the sex sounds like the easiest and most fun way to do it.”
The wolf raised her head and growled at him. “He’s just flirting,” Rose told the animal.
“Do you want me to stop?” He asked her.
“Flirting with me?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t. I don’t even want you to stop touching me. Just not so aggressively. Not until we decide or don’t decide, or well, not until we’re ready to push forward. Right now the most important thing to me is getting to know you, this you, and you getting to know me. Like I’ve told you before, only maybe you weren’t listening.”
“I was listening. I’m just fighting against the awakening of a long buried sex drive. But I can keep myself under control as long as the vaccine and the drugs stay in my system. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to push you or scare you away, Rose. Did I go too far this afternoon?” He wanted to know.
“What, you mean kissing me? No, kissing you was wonderful,” she told him.
“I meant more along the lines of the roaming hands,” he said.
“It surprised me,” she told him. “But it wasn’t unpleasant. Look, a few random strokes here and there are fine. As long as you keep your fingers out of the playground, we’re pretty much good.”
“The playground being?”
“I think you know.” But she pointed specifically to the area that was off limits. “Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.” Rose finished her food and drank from her canteen. The Doctor had finished up his as well and Rose took back his canteen, putting it in the backpack and setting it to the side. “Now,” she said, “I need to get some sleep. Can I curl up with you and wake up unmolested or do I need to curl up with the wolf?”
“You know, I was dreaming when I did that. I don’t need to sleep tonight,” he assured her.
“Yeah, so does that guarantee I won’t wake up with your hand up my top again?” She asked.
“You won’t,” he agreed. He leaned back against the cave wall and opened his arms to Rose. She snuggled into his body and closed her eyes. Regardless of everything she had said and everything that she thought, she had still never felt more right in her life than she did in his arms. And that wasn’t a question of pheromones at all. It was instinct. Pack instinct. And she had a feeling it would last a lifetime.
Ch. 15:
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