Fic: Hairy Legs...and Other Parts
Title: Hairy Legs...and Other Parts
Authors: goldy_dollar and mrv3000
Pairing: Fourteen/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: Some things are revealed when the Doctor and Rose spend some time locked up.
A/N: For shinyopals who forever wants more people to write Fourteen/Rose. (Fourteen is a slightly skewed Ten II and based off the concept of jesidres's fic One Last Time.) Thanks to beck_liz for betaing!
As Rose was thrown into a cell and the Doctor marched to the one next to it, he decided that he and Rose probably should try and pretend they couldn't stand each other more often. The head guard had taken lip-curling delight at instructing them to be placed in separate cells.
Separate cells with a large white wall dividing them. It might have been centuries for him since the battle at Canary Wharf, but it stirred up those memories, feeling nearly as sharp as it had then.
"Doctor?" Rose's voice sounded high and tight.
"Yeah?"
She nervously chuckled. "You're on the other side of a white wall." She paused. "Just so you know."
He ran his hand over it, trying to push away old thoughts. "Really? Ooh, look at that! I've got one too!"
"Can you reach your hand around through the bars? No reason. I'm curious, is all."
He slid his hand through and waved it around, attempting to find her hand. He couldn't see Rose or her hand. "I'm waving. How about you?" he asked.
"Yeah. Guess we can't touch," Rose said softly.
He heard what sounded like her sliding down the wall to a sitting position. He did the same.
"Walls are useless," she said petulantly. It was a tone he wasn't used to hearing from her.
"Oh, I don't know. Quite helpful when using the loo."
She chuckled. That was better.
"And I'm sure the entire world is grateful they surround Jackie whenever she changes clothes."
"One of these days you really are going to get a slap from her, you know." There was a grin in her voice now, which was even better still.
"Nah," said the Doctor. "I'm very good at ducking."
He heard a faint chuckle and then the sound of her shifting around. He used the lull in conversation to look around the cell. It was white, concrete, and completely empty. There wasn't even a loo-a revelation that of course suddenly gave him the urge to use the toilet.
He shifted around him, trying to find a comfortable position and wondering how Rose was getting on. Was she cold? Was she also overcome with a sudden urge to use the toilet? Was she beginning to feel hunger pains? Had her legs fallen asleep yet? They'd been in worse places before, but this was the first time they'd ever been forcibly separated. It was very unnerving.
"Doctor?" She sounded worried again.
"Yeah?" he said, turning around to face the wall. He placed one hand up against it before quickly drawing it back. Bad, bad memories.
"Just checking."
The Doctor moved to the door, wrapping his fingers around the bars. "OI!" he yelled. "This contravenes section 292.2 of the Shadow Convention!" There was silence. "And… and the Superior Court of Justice expressly ruled against keeping prisoners in cells without toilets! So let us out!!"
Silence again. The Doctor sighed and moved back to the wall. "Well, worth a shot anyway," he mumbled.
Rose sighed. "You've got to use the loo, too, huh?"
He scrubbed one hand over his face. "Just… just don't think about waterfalls."
"Or the rain."
"Or a leaky faucet."
"Or the Thames."
"Or the purple moons of Jaaaaavenstale."
"Or the…" Rose began before trailing off. "Yeah, I don't have any way to top that. Sorry."
They descended into silence again. The Doctor eyed the wall separating them, silently raging at their captors for taking away his sonic screwdriver. All right, so it hadn't ever worked on cement before, but he was sure he could come up with something. This was a particularly pressing circumstance, after all-he really needed to hold Rose's hand.
"Doctor, will you tell me something?"
He shoved his hands in his pockets, still puzzling over whether he could successfully resonate concrete. "Well, that's a bit vague, isn't it? Do you know how many 'somethings' I know, Rose? For instance, I know that you can't rub your stomach and hop on one foot at the same time."
He didn't have to see her to know she was rolling her eyes at him. "No, something about you."
"How do you mean?"
"It's just… it's been so long for you," she said in a rush, "and you know almost everything I've been doing these last few years. I barely know anything about you. Who did you travel with? What planets did you visit? How many times did you stop the universe from ending?"
He hesitated. It wasn't that he deliberately wanted to hide his past from Rose, but so much had happened in the last few centuries, and there were many things he wasn't eager to revisit. "Ooh!" he said. "Did I tell you about the time I made the army of Khlon run away?"
She snorted. "What did you do, threaten to steal their jam?"
"Oi!" he protested. "I'll have you know I'm quite fearsome! Oncoming Storm! How about that, eh?"
Rose was silent for a moment, and he could picture the expression on her face - the one where she was thinking things through. "So your next body was a hulking brutish thing?"
He made a noise of protest.
Rose giggled. "Sorry, but you've gotta admit that how you look now doesn't really make people run for the hills. So how about it? Did you regenerate into a rugger?"
"Well..." Visions of a lanky body with floppy hair (that had been accidentally set on fire a time or two during experiments) popped in his head. "Not exactly."
"The one after?"
Medium, ginger (finally), posh accent, 50s-looking. "Erm..."
"All right. One after that--?"
"I was wearing a kilt!"
There was another silence, and this time, the Doctor could picture her expression quite clearly. It was the one where she was moments away from bursting out laughing.
"WHAT?"
"Okay, the real reason the army of Khlon ran away was because they thought that my... Hold on. Let me start from the beginning. At the time I was travelling with two people - Tam and Kyle - who had wandered on board due to a malfunction in the TARDIS. Bloody thing allowed a person to click at the doors and they'd open. It was all well and good when I thought I was the only one who could do it, but...well, I might have flown off without realizing they were in there. And then they wanted to stay, and so on and so on..."
"Nice blokes?"
"Tam was a woman, but yeah. They were nice. A bit brilliant, really. Even if they did have an annoying tendency to snog each other without warning. I'd be walking along in the TARDIS and BAM! There they'd be, all huddled up in the corner."
Rose laughed. "Can't have kissing on the TARDIS, now can we?"
"Well..." He rubbed at the back of his neck. Back then, he and Rose never did actually share a kiss while on the TARDIS, did they? But it was something they did now, and something he'd like very much to do again as soon as possible. Although that's what got them into trouble in the first place, wasn't it? He stood up and began to pace around his small cell, examining even the tiniest of cracks for potential weak spots.
"So what happened to them?" Rose asked.
The Doctor stopped chipping away at some paint with his fingernail. He should have guessed that Rose would be interested in the people he was with, and he was immediately relieved that he hadn't chosen a story involving some others. "They eventually decided they'd had enough of travelling around, so they went back to 2650s Edinburgh. Wouldn't surprise me if they got married soon after."
He heard her standing up and moving. It sounded like she was close to the bars again. "You don't know?" she asked.
He didn't. But he didn't think Rose would ever understand it had always been easier that way. That way he could imagine they lived happily ever after while doing amazing things instead of finding out...other things.
Rose cleared her throat at the silence. "What'd you look like then? I'm trying to get a visual."
The Doctor wandered over to the bars and gave them another shake, pondering for a moment. He never really thought about his life in segments for each body, so he played the "was this before or after this?" game. It took almost a full second to process it all.
"Sort of middle-aged. Shorter. Ginger."
"Oh hooray! Ginger!"
He smiled at her enthusiasm for it, even though the novelty for him had worn off after about a week. "Anyway, seems to me I was telling a story."
"Right. The kilt."
"The kilt that was completely Kyle's idea, I'll have you know. We were headed to a festival, and he insisted it was the proper dress for it. And everything would have been fine, if a bit drafty, if the TARDIS had landed in the right spot."
Rose snorted. "Drafty? Don't tell me you--"
"Authentic dress, Rose."
More snorting by Rose, which kept him grinning.
"So you landed in the wrong spot. I'll guess right in the middle of army of Khlon? The TARDIS must have been a surprise, eh?"
"Actually, no. They had transmat-like technology and must have thought I was a visiting leader since we materialized inside a tech zone. So completely advanced in that way. However, they weren't used to seeing a creature with hair. They might have passed off the hair on my head as a helmet, but the hairy legs came as a shock. And..."
"And?"
"And then this strong wind came along and blew my kilt...up. Very, very much up. Absolutely nothing covered. I found out later they thought I had a disease. That's one thing to see on a man's legs, but quite another to...well, you know. Thousands of soldiers scattered like the wind that had exposed me."
For a second there was silence, and then top-of-her-lungs laughter by Rose.
"OH. MY. GOD," she breathed between the laughter.
The Doctor grinned against the bars. The humiliating story was so worth the trade-off. "Told you I'm fearsome!"
"That's the Oncoming...something, all right!" Rose said, laughter still rippling through her. "Betcha it was something other than 'Storm' in their legends though!"
He pulled a mock pout, which he realized was completely useless without an audience.
Rose's laughter abruptly stopped. "Oh. Oh, right."
The Doctor frowned. "Oh?"
He could hear shuffling around for a few moments, followed by, "Hmm. Hang on."
"If you could see me, you'd know I'm hanging on to the bars at your command. Ready to--"
Rose walked into view, causing his mouth to drop. "I can see that," she said, a pleased smile on her face.
"How? Wh-- How? Did they leave the door unlocked?"
"Oi! Give me credit for more than that," Rose replied, trying to look like she was offended. She held up a small object, about half the size of the sonic screwdriver, which she then poked at the lock. "A bit of Torchwood tech. I forgot I had it on me until I put my hands in my pockets." Her eyes flicked up to him and she smirked. "Sorry, we could have been out of here before you told that story."
The Doctor put his fingers through the bars, touching her hand that was busy with the lock. "What's a little humiliation between friends?"
"Friends, eh? Would a friend demand that you recreate the kilt event?"
The Doctor coughed before regaining his composure. "Possibly. If I lost a bet, maybe." He pressed his face up against the bars.
"Not exactly my reason." Rose's smirk returned.
"Kiss me," he said.
"Are you forgetting that kissing in public is what landed us in here in the first place?"
"We're not in public."
She chuckled and gave him a quick peck through the bars, then turned her attention back to the lock. He attempted to use the power of his pout again, but before it could have any effect, the door sprung open. They very quickly sprang into each other's arms.
"I missed you," said Rose, holding him tightly around the neck. "Way, way too long apart."
"I missed you, too," said the Doctor. "Although, point of interest, I've still go to use the loo."
Instead of replying, Rose pulled away from him and began digging through her pockets. He spared some thought to trying to find their way out and back to the TARDIS, but finding out why Rose wasn't hugging him anymore seemed far more important.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh nothing," said Rose vaguely. She tugged out her mobile and then blurted, "Just about to call Mum and tell her that story."
"WHAT?" said the Doctor. "You wouldn't!"
Rose rested her chin on the top of her mobile and pretended to think about it. "Are you sure we can't get a signal through to the other universe? Bet Mickey would love to hear it."
He pointed at her accusingly. "I'm never telling you anything again."
Rose's face lit up with a smile. "I love you."
His stomach bottomed out and it became utterly impossible to feign annoyance with her. "I love you, too." Rose's smile widened and they spent a few moments gazing at each other before Rose's fingers made a suspicious twitch against the mobile. Ooh, if she was going to insist on playing it that way.... "New Amsterdam," he said slowly. "Four o'clock in the morning. Shellfish."
Rose's eyes widened, her smile slipping. Her fingers twitched over the mobile again and she swallowed. Then she lowered the phone, sliding it back into her pocket. "Guess we really know each other's worst secrets, yeah?"
He wiggled his eyebrows. "Scary, isn't it?"
"Yeah," said Rose. Then she giggled and shook her head. "No, it's not. I'm glad... I... didn't you have to use the loo?"
He blinked, head bent near hers. He hesitated--all right, escaping and using the loo was definitely in his Top Five Priorities at the moment, but so was snogging Rose. And that was something much harder to accomplish when they were on the move. "Part Time Lord," he said impressively, "I can hold it." Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. Rose smiled against his lips, hand going to the back of his neck and fingers tangling in his hair--
And wailing sirens exploded overhead.
The Doctor jumped back, lips still tingling. "WHAT?" He looked around as lights flashed up and down their former cells. "How do they know? We were definitely NOT doing that in public this time!"
"I'm not letting us get separated again," Rose said, in her best determined tone of voice. She thought for a minute, scrunching up her nose. "If only we had some way of scaring off people with an old-fashioned set of values--" Her eyes flew to his, and she smirked. "Oh, WAIT!"
He sputtered. "I... Rose... that is... I really don't think that's going to do us much good."
She rolled her eyes, and then grabbed his hand. "Or we could just make a run for it."
He blinked, feeling like an idiot. "Or that."
Authors: goldy_dollar and mrv3000
Pairing: Fourteen/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: Some things are revealed when the Doctor and Rose spend some time locked up.
A/N: For shinyopals who forever wants more people to write Fourteen/Rose. (Fourteen is a slightly skewed Ten II and based off the concept of jesidres's fic One Last Time.) Thanks to beck_liz for betaing!
As Rose was thrown into a cell and the Doctor marched to the one next to it, he decided that he and Rose probably should try and pretend they couldn't stand each other more often. The head guard had taken lip-curling delight at instructing them to be placed in separate cells.
Separate cells with a large white wall dividing them. It might have been centuries for him since the battle at Canary Wharf, but it stirred up those memories, feeling nearly as sharp as it had then.
"Doctor?" Rose's voice sounded high and tight.
"Yeah?"
She nervously chuckled. "You're on the other side of a white wall." She paused. "Just so you know."
He ran his hand over it, trying to push away old thoughts. "Really? Ooh, look at that! I've got one too!"
"Can you reach your hand around through the bars? No reason. I'm curious, is all."
He slid his hand through and waved it around, attempting to find her hand. He couldn't see Rose or her hand. "I'm waving. How about you?" he asked.
"Yeah. Guess we can't touch," Rose said softly.
He heard what sounded like her sliding down the wall to a sitting position. He did the same.
"Walls are useless," she said petulantly. It was a tone he wasn't used to hearing from her.
"Oh, I don't know. Quite helpful when using the loo."
She chuckled. That was better.
"And I'm sure the entire world is grateful they surround Jackie whenever she changes clothes."
"One of these days you really are going to get a slap from her, you know." There was a grin in her voice now, which was even better still.
"Nah," said the Doctor. "I'm very good at ducking."
He heard a faint chuckle and then the sound of her shifting around. He used the lull in conversation to look around the cell. It was white, concrete, and completely empty. There wasn't even a loo-a revelation that of course suddenly gave him the urge to use the toilet.
He shifted around him, trying to find a comfortable position and wondering how Rose was getting on. Was she cold? Was she also overcome with a sudden urge to use the toilet? Was she beginning to feel hunger pains? Had her legs fallen asleep yet? They'd been in worse places before, but this was the first time they'd ever been forcibly separated. It was very unnerving.
"Doctor?" She sounded worried again.
"Yeah?" he said, turning around to face the wall. He placed one hand up against it before quickly drawing it back. Bad, bad memories.
"Just checking."
The Doctor moved to the door, wrapping his fingers around the bars. "OI!" he yelled. "This contravenes section 292.2 of the Shadow Convention!" There was silence. "And… and the Superior Court of Justice expressly ruled against keeping prisoners in cells without toilets! So let us out!!"
Silence again. The Doctor sighed and moved back to the wall. "Well, worth a shot anyway," he mumbled.
Rose sighed. "You've got to use the loo, too, huh?"
He scrubbed one hand over his face. "Just… just don't think about waterfalls."
"Or the rain."
"Or a leaky faucet."
"Or the Thames."
"Or the purple moons of Jaaaaavenstale."
"Or the…" Rose began before trailing off. "Yeah, I don't have any way to top that. Sorry."
They descended into silence again. The Doctor eyed the wall separating them, silently raging at their captors for taking away his sonic screwdriver. All right, so it hadn't ever worked on cement before, but he was sure he could come up with something. This was a particularly pressing circumstance, after all-he really needed to hold Rose's hand.
"Doctor, will you tell me something?"
He shoved his hands in his pockets, still puzzling over whether he could successfully resonate concrete. "Well, that's a bit vague, isn't it? Do you know how many 'somethings' I know, Rose? For instance, I know that you can't rub your stomach and hop on one foot at the same time."
He didn't have to see her to know she was rolling her eyes at him. "No, something about you."
"How do you mean?"
"It's just… it's been so long for you," she said in a rush, "and you know almost everything I've been doing these last few years. I barely know anything about you. Who did you travel with? What planets did you visit? How many times did you stop the universe from ending?"
He hesitated. It wasn't that he deliberately wanted to hide his past from Rose, but so much had happened in the last few centuries, and there were many things he wasn't eager to revisit. "Ooh!" he said. "Did I tell you about the time I made the army of Khlon run away?"
She snorted. "What did you do, threaten to steal their jam?"
"Oi!" he protested. "I'll have you know I'm quite fearsome! Oncoming Storm! How about that, eh?"
Rose was silent for a moment, and he could picture the expression on her face - the one where she was thinking things through. "So your next body was a hulking brutish thing?"
He made a noise of protest.
Rose giggled. "Sorry, but you've gotta admit that how you look now doesn't really make people run for the hills. So how about it? Did you regenerate into a rugger?"
"Well..." Visions of a lanky body with floppy hair (that had been accidentally set on fire a time or two during experiments) popped in his head. "Not exactly."
"The one after?"
Medium, ginger (finally), posh accent, 50s-looking. "Erm..."
"All right. One after that--?"
"I was wearing a kilt!"
There was another silence, and this time, the Doctor could picture her expression quite clearly. It was the one where she was moments away from bursting out laughing.
"WHAT?"
"Okay, the real reason the army of Khlon ran away was because they thought that my... Hold on. Let me start from the beginning. At the time I was travelling with two people - Tam and Kyle - who had wandered on board due to a malfunction in the TARDIS. Bloody thing allowed a person to click at the doors and they'd open. It was all well and good when I thought I was the only one who could do it, but...well, I might have flown off without realizing they were in there. And then they wanted to stay, and so on and so on..."
"Nice blokes?"
"Tam was a woman, but yeah. They were nice. A bit brilliant, really. Even if they did have an annoying tendency to snog each other without warning. I'd be walking along in the TARDIS and BAM! There they'd be, all huddled up in the corner."
Rose laughed. "Can't have kissing on the TARDIS, now can we?"
"Well..." He rubbed at the back of his neck. Back then, he and Rose never did actually share a kiss while on the TARDIS, did they? But it was something they did now, and something he'd like very much to do again as soon as possible. Although that's what got them into trouble in the first place, wasn't it? He stood up and began to pace around his small cell, examining even the tiniest of cracks for potential weak spots.
"So what happened to them?" Rose asked.
The Doctor stopped chipping away at some paint with his fingernail. He should have guessed that Rose would be interested in the people he was with, and he was immediately relieved that he hadn't chosen a story involving some others. "They eventually decided they'd had enough of travelling around, so they went back to 2650s Edinburgh. Wouldn't surprise me if they got married soon after."
He heard her standing up and moving. It sounded like she was close to the bars again. "You don't know?" she asked.
He didn't. But he didn't think Rose would ever understand it had always been easier that way. That way he could imagine they lived happily ever after while doing amazing things instead of finding out...other things.
Rose cleared her throat at the silence. "What'd you look like then? I'm trying to get a visual."
The Doctor wandered over to the bars and gave them another shake, pondering for a moment. He never really thought about his life in segments for each body, so he played the "was this before or after this?" game. It took almost a full second to process it all.
"Sort of middle-aged. Shorter. Ginger."
"Oh hooray! Ginger!"
He smiled at her enthusiasm for it, even though the novelty for him had worn off after about a week. "Anyway, seems to me I was telling a story."
"Right. The kilt."
"The kilt that was completely Kyle's idea, I'll have you know. We were headed to a festival, and he insisted it was the proper dress for it. And everything would have been fine, if a bit drafty, if the TARDIS had landed in the right spot."
Rose snorted. "Drafty? Don't tell me you--"
"Authentic dress, Rose."
More snorting by Rose, which kept him grinning.
"So you landed in the wrong spot. I'll guess right in the middle of army of Khlon? The TARDIS must have been a surprise, eh?"
"Actually, no. They had transmat-like technology and must have thought I was a visiting leader since we materialized inside a tech zone. So completely advanced in that way. However, they weren't used to seeing a creature with hair. They might have passed off the hair on my head as a helmet, but the hairy legs came as a shock. And..."
"And?"
"And then this strong wind came along and blew my kilt...up. Very, very much up. Absolutely nothing covered. I found out later they thought I had a disease. That's one thing to see on a man's legs, but quite another to...well, you know. Thousands of soldiers scattered like the wind that had exposed me."
For a second there was silence, and then top-of-her-lungs laughter by Rose.
"OH. MY. GOD," she breathed between the laughter.
The Doctor grinned against the bars. The humiliating story was so worth the trade-off. "Told you I'm fearsome!"
"That's the Oncoming...something, all right!" Rose said, laughter still rippling through her. "Betcha it was something other than 'Storm' in their legends though!"
He pulled a mock pout, which he realized was completely useless without an audience.
Rose's laughter abruptly stopped. "Oh. Oh, right."
The Doctor frowned. "Oh?"
He could hear shuffling around for a few moments, followed by, "Hmm. Hang on."
"If you could see me, you'd know I'm hanging on to the bars at your command. Ready to--"
Rose walked into view, causing his mouth to drop. "I can see that," she said, a pleased smile on her face.
"How? Wh-- How? Did they leave the door unlocked?"
"Oi! Give me credit for more than that," Rose replied, trying to look like she was offended. She held up a small object, about half the size of the sonic screwdriver, which she then poked at the lock. "A bit of Torchwood tech. I forgot I had it on me until I put my hands in my pockets." Her eyes flicked up to him and she smirked. "Sorry, we could have been out of here before you told that story."
The Doctor put his fingers through the bars, touching her hand that was busy with the lock. "What's a little humiliation between friends?"
"Friends, eh? Would a friend demand that you recreate the kilt event?"
The Doctor coughed before regaining his composure. "Possibly. If I lost a bet, maybe." He pressed his face up against the bars.
"Not exactly my reason." Rose's smirk returned.
"Kiss me," he said.
"Are you forgetting that kissing in public is what landed us in here in the first place?"
"We're not in public."
She chuckled and gave him a quick peck through the bars, then turned her attention back to the lock. He attempted to use the power of his pout again, but before it could have any effect, the door sprung open. They very quickly sprang into each other's arms.
"I missed you," said Rose, holding him tightly around the neck. "Way, way too long apart."
"I missed you, too," said the Doctor. "Although, point of interest, I've still go to use the loo."
Instead of replying, Rose pulled away from him and began digging through her pockets. He spared some thought to trying to find their way out and back to the TARDIS, but finding out why Rose wasn't hugging him anymore seemed far more important.
"What are you doing?"
"Oh nothing," said Rose vaguely. She tugged out her mobile and then blurted, "Just about to call Mum and tell her that story."
"WHAT?" said the Doctor. "You wouldn't!"
Rose rested her chin on the top of her mobile and pretended to think about it. "Are you sure we can't get a signal through to the other universe? Bet Mickey would love to hear it."
He pointed at her accusingly. "I'm never telling you anything again."
Rose's face lit up with a smile. "I love you."
His stomach bottomed out and it became utterly impossible to feign annoyance with her. "I love you, too." Rose's smile widened and they spent a few moments gazing at each other before Rose's fingers made a suspicious twitch against the mobile. Ooh, if she was going to insist on playing it that way.... "New Amsterdam," he said slowly. "Four o'clock in the morning. Shellfish."
Rose's eyes widened, her smile slipping. Her fingers twitched over the mobile again and she swallowed. Then she lowered the phone, sliding it back into her pocket. "Guess we really know each other's worst secrets, yeah?"
He wiggled his eyebrows. "Scary, isn't it?"
"Yeah," said Rose. Then she giggled and shook her head. "No, it's not. I'm glad... I... didn't you have to use the loo?"
He blinked, head bent near hers. He hesitated--all right, escaping and using the loo was definitely in his Top Five Priorities at the moment, but so was snogging Rose. And that was something much harder to accomplish when they were on the move. "Part Time Lord," he said impressively, "I can hold it." Then he leaned in and pressed his lips to hers. Rose smiled against his lips, hand going to the back of his neck and fingers tangling in his hair--
And wailing sirens exploded overhead.
The Doctor jumped back, lips still tingling. "WHAT?" He looked around as lights flashed up and down their former cells. "How do they know? We were definitely NOT doing that in public this time!"
"I'm not letting us get separated again," Rose said, in her best determined tone of voice. She thought for a minute, scrunching up her nose. "If only we had some way of scaring off people with an old-fashioned set of values--" Her eyes flew to his, and she smirked. "Oh, WAIT!"
He sputtered. "I... Rose... that is... I really don't think that's going to do us much good."
She rolled her eyes, and then grabbed his hand. "Or we could just make a run for it."
He blinked, feeling like an idiot. "Or that."