In With the New (2/5)
Beta: roxieflashPairing/Characters: TenII/Rose, Jackie Tyler
Chapter Rating: PG
Word Count: ~1,300
Summary: Picks up where Journey's End left off with Rose and Human!Ten. Absolute fluff.
A/N: Written for the Spring Fling Fixathon at doctor_rose_fix
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After super-boosting Jackie's mobile phone with the sonic screwdriver and arranging their transportation back to London from the aptly named Dårlig Ulv-Stranden (in perfect Norwegian, no less, to a very bemused pilot), the Doctor returned to the mountainous cliff face and stepped inside. Rose followed, after procuring the small torch her mother had put in a coat pocket in preparation for the unexpected perils of dimension hopping. Jackie remained outside the projection; partially to watch for the incoming zeppelin, but also to discreetly give her daughter and the Doctor some well-earned privacy.
Rose stepped through the rock, a tingling feeling sliding across her skin as she did so, and walked towards the Doctor. She marveled at the complexity of the texture in the walls-a perfect copy of the stone and grass tufts on the other side. Even a gull's nest was mirrored there. The projection seemed to be an extension of an existing sea cliff; the crag was about forty feet on each side, nearly the same height, and was above the tide line (though just barely). The sand was damp under her feet as she made her way further in, and she was beginning to feel the moisture seep into the soles of her trainers through the fabric on the sides.
Once her eyes had adjusted to the faint torchlight, Rose saw that the Doctor was crouched in the center of the structure next to a small, dry dune that held the coral, pulling his fingers through the sand in long, wavy lines. He was wearing his glasses again, and they were lightly specked with droplets of sea spray. The Doctor occasionally muttered to himself and sketched what looked suspiciously like numbers in the air in front of him with his sonic screwdriver. Rose knelt beside him as he crouched in the sand and looked down at the half-buried piece of TARDIS chunk; it seemed to be soaking up the moisture from the surrounding beach, and she briefly wondered if her socks would dry out, providing she stood close enough. Or, if she were lucky, her hyper-prepared mother would have an extra pair in that coat of hers to go along with the torch.
The Doctor was tapping his chin with his screwdriver now. He had reached a point in his calculations where the thrill of discovery started to light up his face, and when he saw Rose, he launched into speech immediately, gaining speed and volume, gesturing with his hands as he maintained his stream-of-consciousness explanation. "If this projection was set up like I'd set it up," he waved around at the surrounding darkness, "Which I did, because I'm me, I'd've modified the dimensional stabilizer to a fold-back harmonic of 36.3 and shatterfried the plasmic shell of the projection field,then," he placed his hands on Rose's shoulders, "I'd leave it there for me to find so I'd do the same for the TARDIS. It compounds, Rose! Do you know what this means!"
He'd lost her at the beginning when his pronouns had gone wonky. Taking in his currently disheveled appearance, the discovery-wild look in his eyes, and his overwhelming propensity to run at the mouth, Rose, rather than trying to unravel the ancient mysteries of TARDIS-gardening, was instead trying not to laugh.
"No." and a slight shake of the head were all she could manage with a straight face. Her lips were pursed in a determined (yet unconvincing) non-smile, but her eyes were dancing.
"Rose, you're laughing at me, that's not very nice."
He looked slightly hurt. Rose immediately felt remorseful. "Not laughing, Doctor. Just not too good at maths, that's all."
"It means," the Doctor went on, slower this time, "that the TARDIS coral can be modified to grow fifty-nine times faster than normal."
Excitement began to build in Rose's chest. Surely that was within her lifetime. To go out there again, traveling with the Doctor, hand-in-hand more often than not? Seeing the worlds and living life to its absolute fullest? It certainly outshone anything Torchwood could offer her.
"It also means," the Doctor continued, beginning to smile "that I can do the same thing to the cliff projection."
"So it'd be a hundred and… eight times faster?" she guessed.
"A hundred and eighteen, you mean." And now he really was beaming. "But no, that's what I thought at first. Look at this." He reached down to a bit of damp sand nearby and wrote out the words 'Bad Wolf" with one of his long fingers. Almost immediately, the words began to crumble and sink back into a smooth, dry sandy mound.
"It's commutative, not associative - rather, it doesn't divide the time by fifty-nine twice. It divides the time by fifty-nine, twice."
"You lost me again."
"Alright, here: if I'd planted the TARDIS with Donna's modifications, it would grow about sixty times faster than normal."
"Okay, and how long'll that take?"
"Eh," he waggled one hand back and forth and curled a lip as he estimated, "about thirty years."
Rose sighed. "Still a hell of a wait, innit?" Her previous enthusiasm about once again escaping to the stars with the man she loved began to fade slightly. Sure, they would ultimately get back out there, but three decades… That was a while. How much travel could be done on just one planet? Still, there were a lot of things to see on Earth. And the Doctor was a textbook prescription for monotony. Couldn't be too terrible, she supposed.
"But here's the thing: If I do the same modifications to the cliff projection, which isn't technically a projection, by the way, it'll divide that time by fifty-nine as well."
Rose's heart rate increased again. Maths or no maths, this was good news. "Which is?"
A small shrug from the Doctor. "Six months?"
"Six months?" A disbelieving smile made its way onto her face. "We'll have a TARDIS in six months?"
The Doctor smiled back at her. "Yeah," was all he said. Was all he needed to say, really. They grinned at each other like idiots as the seconds ticked past. Rose considered standing to jump up and down in her joy, but restrained herself. (Even years later, she hated to be reminded of their hop-for-your-life escapade.) She settled instead for throwing her arms about the Doctor's neck, causing him to lose his already precarious balance, as they were both still crouched in the sand, and landed collapsed on his chest. Both were laughing in sheer delight. Rose put both hands on the Doctor's chest and propped her chin on them as one of his arms laced around her, touching her shoulder, stroking an ear, still reveling in the opportunity for physical contact after so long apart.
"So, Doctor," she said, still beaming, "what do you want to do for the next six months?"
"Well, I'll tell you what I'd like to do." He brought his other hand behind his head and leaned up a bit to look at Rose. "I'd like to go shopping for a big brown coat." He gave a small nod. "Yep, a big brown coat with lots of pockets. I miss my big brown coat." His small pout for the loss of his coat made Rose giggle even harder. It had been, what - less than a day since he'd worn it?
"That's what you're going to do for six months, is it? Trench coat shopping?"
"Well," he shrugged again, at least as much as he could while lying in the sand, "there's a few other things I'd like to take care of. Somewhere to live, something to eat, that sort of thing. And then, Rose Tyler," he said in a matter-of-fact voice, "I think I'd like to marry you."