Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The UNIT hospital room was quiet.

For once in the Doctor's life, there were no alarms, shouts, screams, or world-ending emergencies for him to deal with. There was just the smell of disinfectant, the soft sound of songbirds outside the window, and the beeping of a myriad of machines attached to Rose Tyler.

He was sitting in the chair by her hospital bed, watching her. She was dozing, propped up against the pillows and swathed in blankets, wearing a standard-issue UNIT patient gown, for which she'd already expressed a deep hatred. There were multiple IV lines in her arms attached to machines around her, and she was now permanently attached to a vitals monitor that was constantly displaying precisely how unwell she was.

It had been a week since the fall of Lanwa, and the Universe was still struggling to understand what had happened. There were constant political debates between confused world leaders and news reports attempting to dissect every moment. Spokespeople were struggling to be heard over conspiracy theorists spouting their own agendas, culminating in a Universe-wide meltdown.

The important thing was that Lanwa was gone. But the chaos she'd left behind was staggering, and now the galaxy needed someone to blame for it all. That was Rose Tyler, the woman who had worn Lanwa's face, and the Doctor, the man who had worn her chains.

The Neo Proclamation had already cleared them. Their official statement was absolutely factual: Rose had been a prisoner inside her own body, and the Doctor had been an enslaved, unwilling figurehead. 

Some saw them as victims. Others saw them as complicit. 

But the Doctor couldn't bring himself to care about any of that. He'd spent the last week looking after Rose as her wrecked body struggled to keep going. He kept her stable, clean, and fed as they waited for UNIT to stop dragging their feet and agree to perform the operation that would save her life. 

She needed a kidney transplant urgently. The Doctor had been acutely aware she didn't have time to sit on a waiting list and that a human replacement might not be enough. So he'd decided she would have one of his.

Brax had questioned his decision. Jack had hesitated. Jackie had relentlessly interrogated him about what it meant for him and Rose and if her daughter was suddenly going to turn alien green or grow another head. He'd stayed firm, and eventually, the others had relented and stopped trying to argue with him. He'd even made it the most straightforward thing for UNIT by writing up the entire surgical procedure for them to follow, including aftercare and any potential complications. He and Leah spent a whole day on it, ensuring everything was there. 

Then, finally, with Martha's help, UNIT agreed to perform the world's first interspecies transplant. As soon as they'd confirmed, the Doctor had piloted the TARDIS straight to UNIT's Manchester hospital. Jack had carried Rose to the bed on the surgical receiving unit. And now, they were waiting. 

'What's the time?' Rose suddenly asked, opening her eyes. 

'4pm,' he replied. 'How are you feeling?'

'Feelin' like we're gonna see that tomato soup I had for lunch again in a bit,' she said, pulling a face. 'When are Leah and Theo and Mum comin'?'

'Soon, she's just getting them fed and watered, and then she's bringing them straight in,' he said.

'Good,' she said sleepily, reaching out to find his hand without looking. He took it, squeezing it gently. She looked at him and gave a weak smile. 'I was thinkin'.'

'Don't strain yourself,' the Doctor joked. 

She ignored him. 'When you first told me you were givin' me your kidney, I thought, great. A piece of you with me forever.'

The Doctor grinned. 'Ahh, cute.' 

'Yeah. Then I remembered how much you're gonna bang on about this in the future.' 

'No, I won't.' 

'Yeah, you will. Every time I go to the toilet, you're gonna be like, "Ooh, pleased my kidney's working so perfectly, isn't it sooo much better than your rubbish human ones",' she said, putting on her best Doctor voice.

'I would never say that,' he insisted, mocking offence.

Rose grinned. 'So once I get your alien kidney, I'll pee less, heal a bit faster, and I can't eat a ginger nut biscuit before wine, else I'll get really drunk. Anythin' else you're forgettin'?'

'Nope,' he assured her. 

'Are you sure?' she asked seriously.

'I'm sure.'

'But what about—'

He sighed, interrupting. 'No, Rose, you won't grow another heart or suddenly be able to smell time, and I definitely promise you won't start regenerating if you twist an ankle.'

'Shame,' she mused, and then suddenly gagged. The Doctor immediately grabbed the sick bowl, pushing it under her chin just in time to catch the tomato soup coming back up, as promised.

He held back her hair as he had forty times before as she heaved. Once she was finished, she breathed heavily, trembling a little. 'I'm sorry,' she croaked.

'For the fortieth time, there's nothing to be sorry for,' he said. 'Done?'

'Yeah,' she croaked, and he removed the sick bowl. He then poured some water from the jug into a cup and gave it to her to swill around her mouth. 'Better?'

She nodded. 'Thank you. Ugh. I hate this.'

'I know,' he said, retaking her hand. 'Be over soon.'

She looked at him momentarily as she took another sip of her water. 'Thank you for everythin',' she said suddenly.

'No problem. I don't mind catching vomit,' he assured her. 'I once caught the vomit of Queen Patrixi of the Megalladon Cluster and won a free car.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Right. Not what I meant.'

'I know what you meant,' he said softly, suddenly sadder.

She nodded, the words suddenly dying between them and ebbing back to a comfortable silence as they shared an unspoken feeling. It was a complex one, mixing grief, anger, guilt, and sadness as a product of what they'd both been through for the past eight months. 

It had taken a few days for the nightmares to kick in, but now they were pretty constant. Rose dreamt about Lanwa - about the things she did, the people she killed, and the orphans she made in her relentless pursuit of power. She dreamt about the way she couldn't stop any of it, trapped in her own mind screaming.

She also regularly dreamt about what she did to the Doctor, or rather, what Lanwa made her body do to him. And that just made her angry. Angry at Lanwa for taking something so special and making it a complete mockery. For turning love into control. For ensuring that if they ever made love again, it was forever tainted with her disgusting memory.

The Doctor, on the other hand, dreamt about the medbed. About the tubes forced into him - the ventilator lodged down his throat, causing him to breathe to the machine's rhythm. The tubes going in his nose, one force-feeding him and the other sucking away the resultant vomit. The clamps buried so deeply into his guts he now had permanent scars. The catheter forced inside him, twisting and pulling without mercy.

Sometimes, he'd wake up and immediately realise it was a dream, but sometimes, he'd wake up and have a sharp, white-hot flash where he thought he was still there. Still restrained to the medbed. Still silently screaming. 

But she was there for him now, and he was there for her. They could talk about their experiences honestly. There was plenty of crying, but there was also anger and shame. Even laughter on occasions, which would seem insane to anyone else. But it was a raw, cataclysmic explosion of emotions on a nightly basis as the two of them struggled to start wading through the pure emotional and physical stew they had been left to bob in, clinging to each other in the hopes of staying afloat.

The others had tried to help in their own unique ways. Jack tried jokes, Jackie tried sympathy, and Brax tried pure logical reasoning to somehow argue away the feelings. Even the rest of Torchwood tried their best to be supportive, offering their time and ears like they'd all conspired to form some sort of communal therapy. It was nice they cared. 

Then there was the stillborn child. The girl who was theirs, but also not theirs at all. They'd talked about her quite a few times with each other. About who she'd have looked more like. About her personality. About all the things she could've become.

They never quite got around to naming her.

And as all these silent words and feelings buzzed between them, Rose reached up to cup his cheek. He rested his hand on it, holding it in place. 

'Can you help me get cleaned up?' she asked after a moment.

He nodded, immediately moving to get a fresh wash bowl by the sink as he had so many times before. 'Here's a thought.'

'What?'

'Doing your hair the same way every day is boring. Maybe I could branch out,' he said, filling the bowl and grabbing a soap.

'Yeah? Like what?' she asked, smiling a little.

'Y'know—curls, crimps, a few braids, a bit of volume,' he said, moving back to Rose's bedside to set up his station, drawing the privacy curtain. 'How d'you feel about Princess Leia buns?'

'Have you been on YouTube for hair tutorials?' she asked, smirking.

'I'm sure I don't even know what that is,' he replied, deadpan, wringing out the washcloth. 'I'll have you know I once won an award for my hairstyling. They called me ' The Oncoming Stylist .' He paused for a moment, thinking very seriously about that. 'Oh, that's a great name for a salon.'

She laughed, settling as he set to work. They chatted idly as he did until she was eventually washed and dried. He then arranged her hair carefully like he was perfecting a piece of art, concentrating very hard to get every lock into the right place. He then checked her bedclothes and pulled up her sheets to swathe her in comfort.

'Better?' he asked.

'Better if you did my make-up,' she said, only half-joking.

'Hmm. I'll need to find a YouTube tutorial for that,' he replied, blase.

She laughed again. 'How long till the surgery?' she asked.

'We're meeting with the surgeon and Martha soon to finalise things, then it should be tomorrow.'

Rose nodded and smiled again, but it was a little weaker than before. 'I'm a bit scared.'

'It'd be odd if you weren't. But it's going to be fine,' he told her.

She nodded. 'I know.' She retook his hand and gazed at his face, taking in his demeanour and expression. 'How about you? Are you sure you wanna do this? Given' your mighty alien kidney to a human?'

'I've never been so sure of anything in my life. Why? Don't you want it anymore?'

She laughed weakly. 'Um, yeah, but I mean, you don't have to do this.'

'Oh, I do,' he said honestly. A flicker of something crossed his eyes. 'I really, really do.'

He then impulsively leant in for an embrace. She held him in return, her cheek pressed into his shoulder.

Mid-hug, the door opened, and Martha stepped inside, wearing a white coat and holding a tablet. She took one look at them and grinned. 'Are you two done flirting, or do you need another five minutes?'

Rose huffed a laugh into the Doctor's neck before they pulled apart to look at her, finding each other's hands again. 'Hey, Martha.'

Still grinning, Martha moved forward to check Rose's IV lines and machines monitoring her. 'How are you feeling?'

'Tired, rubbish, and a total nuisance,' Rose replied honestly.

'Tired and rubbish is expected, but you're not a nuisance, not even a little bit,' Martha told her firmly. 'Are you still vomiting?'

Rose nodded. 'Didn't keep that soup down.'

Martha nodded as she consulted the data on her tablet. 'Yeah, that'll be your body telling us to get on with it. We got your admission test results back, and all your numbers are where we expected. GFR's at 5, and very high creatinine.'

The Doctor leaned forward. He already knew all of this; he'd made sure to read every detail of every test, but hearing Martha say it somehow hit him harder than just reading numbers on a page. 'When do we talk to the surgeon?'

'He's coming now. He wants to run through a few details of your surgical plan, then I think they're going to do a few dummy runs this evening so everyone knows what they're doing,' she said, then turned her attention to him. 'How's your stab wound?'

'Oh, great,' the Doctor said, terribly vaguely.

Martha raised an eyebrow and looked at Rose.

'He still winces when he twists too quick,' Rose told her.

'No, I don't,' the Doctor said immediately.

Martha rolled her eyes. 'Right, I get the picture. Lie on your bed for me, shirt off.'

'But I—'

'Doctor, shut up,' Martha ordered.

The Doctor groaned but didn't resist. He obligingly pulled off his shirt and finally laid on the bed next to Rose's, where Martha checked his vitals and then tilted his chin to check the fading bruises on his face.

'Healing nicely, nearly gone,' she said before carefully peeling back the dressings on the stab wound in his left side and pressing lightly around the obvious wound. He held himself together well, but Martha still caught the flinches. 'That hurt?' she asked.

'No,' the Doctor lied.

Martha and Rose gave him a long look, staring him down into submission.

'Okay, maybe a little bit,' he confessed.

'And how's your leg?' Martha asked, looking down at his left leg, which was still encased in a brace to offer support for the limb that had been so severely atrophied. 'Does it hurt?'

He shrugged. 'Not really. Just a bit achy.'

'Have you even been doing the exercises I gave you?' she asked with the tone of someone who already knew the answer.

'Yes,' the Doctor lied with a dazzling level of confidence.

Martha rolled her eyes. 'Doctor, you know perfectly well that it's not healing because you're creating more damage by over-exerting it. It'll never heal properly if you keep pretending it isn't a problem.'

'Boring,' the Doctor complained.

Martha looked pointedly at the only person he seemed to listen to. Rose took the hint and reached out to retake his hand across the gap between their beds.

'Just keep it low-key for a bit, yeah?' she told him. 

He pulled a reluctant expression but squeezed her hand to acknowledge that. 'Fine.'

'Promise?'

'Promise.'

Martha looked between them for a moment, taking them in. It was suddenly obvious how strange the past eight months had been without the Doctor and Rose together. She didn't know the details of what had happened to them, though everything she had heard sounded genuinely horrific. 

But she had no interest in discussing it if they didn't want to. Right now, it was her job to support them. To do whatever she could to help piece back together the mess Lanwa left behind. And that started with making sure both of them got through this transplant.

A sudden knock on the door opened to reveal Alistair Montgomery, UNIT's leading transplant surgeon and soon-to-be pioneer leading the world's first interspecies transplant. He nodded in greeting to them.

'Afternoon. Good to finally meet you in person,' he said, offering a hand to each of them in turn to shake. 'How are you settling in?'

'Okay,' Rose said tiredly. 

'Good,' he said, then straight to business; he set down his briefcase and pulled out some freshly printed pieces of paper bound into a wad. He handed them to the Doctor, who was now sitting up. 'The surgical plan, if you'd care to look. I must say, I've never had a patient write their surgical plan before, but I'm thankful you did, Doctor. Your physiology is … complex.'

'I like to keep things interesting,' the Doctor replied as he read through the entire fifteen-page plan in seconds. 'Hmm. Good work. Didn't butcher it.'

'Thank you,' Montgomery replied. 'I have a few questions if you'll indulge me.'

'Fire away,' the Doctor cued.

Montgomery briefly adjusted his glasses and checked his own copy of the surgical plan. 'You're proposing an intrarenal injection of Rose's blood into your kidney before removal?'

'Kidney School,' the Doctor said. 'The injection will teach my kidney to recognise her DNA. It guarantees compatibility.'

'There's no precedent for this in human medicine,' Montgomery said, frowning.

'It's a little radical, but it'll work,' the Doctor assured him. 'If you don't let them have a handshake, my kidney will start trying to filter out all her red blood cells as soon as it's in her, which I think we can agree isn't going to work.'

'Indeed,' Montgomery said, making a brief note before continuing. 'Next is the surgery itself. We can certainly do your double dose anaesthesia; that's not an issue, though your tissue durability…'

'Gallifreyan skin and muscle is more dense than a human's,' the Doctor stated. 'Make sure your blade's very sharp and use ultrasonic retractors. Otherwise, you'll be hacking at me for hours.'

Montgomery thought about that for a moment. 'Well, that's a disturbing mental image,' he concluded.

'Happy to help,' the Doctor replied cheerfully. 

Montgomery glanced down at the plan again and then at Rose. 'Then, after the transplant, you'll have fluctuating urination, metabolic changes, altered response to gingerol, and you'll need a monthly injection of artron. Are you sure you're ready for that?'

'Better than dyin',' she said honestly.

Montgomery smiled a little. 'Absolutely.' he looked back to the Doctor. 'Now, aftercare. You say your remaining kidney will compensate quickly with some mild metabolic changes. Are there any potential complications unique to you that I should be aware of?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Only about a million. I've listed all the basic care pathways in the plan. Anything else, you can call my brother.'

'How long until you're back to baseline after the surgery?'

The Doctor didn't hesitate. 'Less than 24 hours.'

'That's optimistic,' Montgomery mused.

'That's Time Lord,' the Doctor countered, sharing a knowing look with Rose, who grinned. 

'Very well. We will do a few practice runs for the surgery with dummies this evening. The full surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning, 9 o'clock sharp,' he said. 'I'll send in a nurse to start your, err, "kidney schooling" in a few minutes. If you need anything else, just let the nursing team know.'

The Doctor gave a mock salute as he left, followed by Martha, who gave them a smile. After they'd gone, the Doctor looked at Rose. 'Still scared?' he asked.

'Um, yeah, but less now,' she said. 'What about you?'

He didn't answer straight away. Rose watched as he checked the write-up.

'What's wrong?' she asked, instinctively sensing his mood change.

He looked at her and swallowed briefly. 'Two choices. I can either go into a healing coma while my kidney processes or stay awake.'

Rose frowned. 'What's the difference?'

'It's a painful process. The coma will stop me feeling that pain, while staying awake means I'll have to face all of it.'

'And why's that a dilemma?' she asked seriously. 'Do the coma.'

'If I go into a coma, they'll need to monitor my urine output, which means they'll need to ..' he paused briefly. '... Put a catheter in.'

She understood immediately. The catheter. A simple medical tool—except it wasn't. Not anymore. Not after what the bounty hunter did. 

The medbed had deeply affected him. His complete loss of control as it turned his body into a system it needed to maintain, and not as a person. Its relentless cycle of inserting, removing, and adjusting tubes, tearing at his insides for two whole weeks.

She suppressed a shiver as the thought crossed her mind. Whether that shiver was from grief, rage, or both, she had no idea. She just knew that now he was supposed to agree to one voluntarily. 

She didn't say anything, just watching him. The Doctor, of course, filled the silence.

'It's—' He forced a laugh. 'It's ridiculous. I mean, I've been through worse, haven't I? I should just pick the coma. Obviously, that'd be the rational choice, the logical choice, but—'

He broke off.

'…But you don't want to,' Rose finished.

He was suddenly so still. Rose thought he might deny it for a moment—slap on a grin, make some lousy joke, throw up some flimsy, weak deflection and completely change the subject. But he didn't.

They were too close now.

'…No,' he admitted quietly. 'I don't.'

The words hung in the air for a moment. He finally looked at her— really looked at her. 

His eyes looked so tired.

'… You'll be in agony all night if you don't do the coma,' she said quietly.

He dragged a hand through his hair. 'Yeah, well. It wouldn't be the first time.'

That sentence felt like it punched Rose in the stomach. Her heart seized a little, and anger unfurled in her gut—not at him, but at the Universe for doing this to him.

Slowly, she reached for his hand. '… Doctor.'

He took it. She squeezed gently.

'This ain't like before,' she said. 'No one's gonna hurt you. You're not gonna get stuck in it. You'll be safe.'

He said nothing.

She took a breath. 'I know it's hard. But tomorrow you're gonna be in surgery. You need to be rested.' She stroked her thumb gently over his knuckles. 'I'll be right here the whole time. And when I'm knocked out, Martha will be here too. Jack'll stay if I ask him. They're not gonna let anythin' happen.'

He was trembling just slightly. No one would have noticed but her. Then, finally, he gave a slight nod.

'…Okay,' he whispered. 'Okay.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The Doctor sat on the edge of the hospital bed, his fingers drumming against the mattress as the nurse moved around him, prepping. He was now dressed reluctantly in a hospital gown, the flimsy, pale blue fabric hanging loosely against his thin frame. His IV was in, the intrarenal injection was prepped, and the catheter was laid on the trolley.

Inevitably, he was talking too much.

'So, Zainab, what's your favourite ever transplant? Not kidneys, obviously; they're common and boring. How about a liver transplant? Or a heart.'

Zainab pulled on sterile gloves. 'Doctor—'

'Or corneas. Or—wait—pancreas! You don't get many of those in this day and age, but that'll change as soon as the human race discovers how to rewire endocrine compatibility across gene lines...'

Rose watched him closely. She knew what he was doing. Inane chatter acting as overcompensating nonsense, serving as a way for him to distract both the room and himself from what was about to happen.

'Yes, Doctor,' Zainab said with incredible tolerance as she finished laying out her equipment. 'Lie down for me.'

The Doctor didn't move. 'What's the rush? Not every day you get to install alien plumbing. Take your time.'

'Actually, it happens more often than you might think in this job,' Zainab joked. 'Now lie down for me.'

The Doctor finally relented and laid down, pulling up the gown for her. He looked at Rose, who instinctively reached out to take his hand as the nurse began.

She felt his grip tighten as he forced the rest of his body to stay still. Their shared bond was still so wounded and fragile after everything they'd been through, but she could still feel him. Scared. 

Despite his feelings, he still kept talking as it was placed.

'Honestly, I don't know how humans manage transplants before surgical micro-targeting...'

Thankfully, the nurse was fast, and it was over very quickly. 

Zainab looked at him as she secured the tubing. 'All done. Are you okay?'

His grip on Rose's hand stayed firm as he smiled at Zainab. 'Oh, peachy. Five stars. Would recommend.'

Zainab rolled her eyes but smiled as she covered him and moved to the next job. A direct injection of Rose's blood into his left kidney to teach her who she was.

He barely felt the needle go in as he finally stopped talking, now finding himself entirely focused on the catheter sitting inside him. A corpse-like cold crept through his limbs. The mechanical arms were pulling, pushing, and replacing. Blood down his legs. Sedatives crawling through his blood and brain like spiders. Shock after shock after shock. 

Compliance. Compliance. Compliance.

He was strapped down, wasn't he? He couldn't move anymore, he—

'Doctor,' Rose's voice cut through the haze. He blinked and looked at her. He hadn't even noticed the injection was finished, and Zainab had cleaned everything away.

'You're all set,' Zainab said, smiling at him and Rose. 'Just ring the call bell if you need anything.'

The Doctor didn't respond. He just watched her go as Rose politely thanked her on his behalf. As soon as she was out the door, he slowly exhaled.

Rose's fingers were still wrapped in his. The Doctor looked at her, and then, inevitably, his eyes dropped to the catheter tube resting over his leg.

Rose didn't speak right away. Just watched him carefully, her heart aching a little. '… It's bad, isn't it?' she finally said.

'…Yeah.' His voice barely made it past his throat. 'It's bad.'

He looked at her. She had no poor you look, no pity, no assuring him it would be fine. Just her.

'… I hate this,' he admitted. His voice was quieter now. 'I know it's stupid, I know it's just a medical thing, but—I hate it.'

'I know,' she murmured.

'… I hate that I let them.'

That was the truth.

Rose didn't let go. 'That's not what happened,' she said firmly. 'You made a choice.'

The Doctor laughed bitterly.

'Right now, you could choose to stay awake,' she persisted. 'But you're choosing this. You're choosing to let it happen. That's not the same as before.'

The Doctor paused, thinking about that. Not the same. Not forced. Not compliant.

'… You're right,' he murmured.

She squeezed his fingers again. 

'I should go under before this starts hurting properly,' he muttered. 'Unless you fancy watching me thrash around all night.'

Rose huffed a weak laugh. 'Nah, not today, thanks.'

'Night.'

'Night night,' she replied.

His fingers brushed over hers one last time before he let himself fall into the coma, and he stilled. Rose's eyes traced the thin tube snaking from his body. The amount of blood-tinged fluid running from him was unnerving, proof of the kidney processing her blood inside him.

After all these years with him, Rose had thought she knew what bravery looked like. But it wasn't just running into danger. It wasn't just facing Daleks and saving planets. Bravery was this. It was choosing to do something he was now absolutely terrified of. 

Her eyes burned. '… I love you,' she whispered. 'You're so bloody brave, you know that?'

She let out a slow breath. Her own body was protesting—cramping, her heart stuttering in strange palpitations. The worst part was she was used to it now. She could feel how much her system was failing and how much she needed this. Needed him.

She closed her eyes, resting her head back against the pillow. She didn't let go of his hand.

Chapter Text

Rose drifted in and out of sleep for a while before the room door opened. She didn't need to look up to know who it was as a light pitter-patter of feet crossed the floor towards her bed. The kids.

'They're asleep,' her mum said, coming in after them. 'Don't wake 'em.'

'It's okay, I'm awake,' Rose said as she smiled and opened her eyes. Leah stood next to her bed, looking up at her, and Theo was in her mother's arms, squirming slightly like an excited puppy.

'MA!' he yelled happily.

'Shush, inside voice!' Jack chided the toddler as he arrived carrying an overnight bag. 

Jackie sat Theo down on the bed next to Rose. He immediately grabbed Rose's sleeve. 'Ma!' he said again.

Rose hugged him as tightly as she could. 'Hey, sweetheart.'

Leah was looking at the Doctor now, her eyes darting over his sleeping form and the myriad of machines attached to him. 'He's processing the kidney now?'

'Yeah,' Rose said. 'He'll be asleep 'til morning.'

Leah nodded. Rose could quickly tell she was thinking furiously, her expression reflecting that of her father when he was pondering something incredibly complicated.

'DA ASLEEP!' Theo suddenly yelled happily.

Leah shushed him immediately, putting a finger to her lips. 'Theo, shh!'

Theo giggled, pressing a chubby finger to his mouth to mimic his big sister. 'Shhhuuuusssssh!!!' he said, delighted.

Jack took a seat, leaning casually back as he looked at the Doctor. 'So we all just stay here and stare at Sleeping Beauty 'til morning?'

'Pretty much,' Rose replied. 'Jack. Can you… fix his pillow? He doesn't look comfortable.'

Jack stood up immediately. He lifted the Doctor's head gently and tucked his pillow into a better position supporting his neck. 'Better?'

Rose nodded. 'Thank you.'

When Jack pulled back, his gaze flickered downward to the catheter line. His expression was carefully neutral, but she knew what was behind it. He remembered. He'd been there in the aftermath of the medbed, spending weeks in the Neo Proclamation infirmary with the Doctor, watching the medics fight hard to undo the damage.

And now, here he was again. Back in a hospital bed with a line running out of him that he would never, in a million years, have agreed to if it weren't for Rose.

Rose gave him a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Jack nodded back. He then dropped back into his chair and leaned back, his expression slipping back into his usual grin. 'I could kiss him for you if you want.'

Rose rolled her eyes.

~ ΘΣ ~

The night passed quickly.

They had all chatted for a while about menial things, about a joke Gwen had made that morning, about how enthusiastically Brax was taking the lead of Torchwood in Jack's absence. Intermittently, nurses would come in to check on the Doctor and drain the catheter bag. Eventually, it was late, and slowly, everyone fell asleep without leaving the room.

Rose didn't really sleep. She drifted—floating somewhere between awareness and exhaustion, too restless to fully settle. Every time she started to sink into unconsciousness, she'd snap back, her gaze automatically landing on the Doctor. Still there, still processing her blood.

The kids had curled up beside them, with Theo against her, Leah tucked beside the Doctor. Jackie had taken the chair, arms crossed, head tilted back in an awkward sleep. Jack had slouched sideways on the sofa, snoring lightly until he rolled over and nearly fell off.

She wasn't even sure what time it was when she finally noticed the catheter line in the early morning light. It was clear now. The deep red had faded overnight, the last remnants of her blood flushed through.

His kidney was ready for her.

The Doctor suddenly shifted, and Rose's attention snapped to him immediately. His body twitched a little, and then his breathing quickly changed from slow, measured breaths to a sharp, shocked, audible inhale.

'Doctor?'

His eyes fluttered open. Just barely—unfocused, confused. He blinked sluggishly. And then his expression rapidly changed.

Rose knew the exact second he felt it. She felt the bond between them seemingly tighten as his breathing became quick and loud. His eyes shot wide open, staring with a horrified, slow blinking up at the hospital ceiling. Almost immediately, his hand shot downwards as if he were about to try to pull the catheter out somehow.

'Doctor!' Rose hissed urgently, trying to get his attention. 'It's okay, stop!'

He blinked, his hand freezing.

'It's okay, you're safe, it's me,' she said, softer now. 'Look at me.'

He did, and just like that, he relaxed. He reached out to her, and she squeezed his hand gently. His eyes were clearer now. A little more aware. '…’S done?'

Rose smiled. 'Yeah. It's done. Your urine's runnin' clear.'

His head sank back against the pillow. '…Good.' Then, softer, sleepier— 'Oh, that feels weird.'

'Yeah?'

The Doctor's face scrunched slightly like he was trying to process an alien sensation inside his body. 'Feels... itchy.'

'How can it feel itchy?' Leah asked suddenly, rousing from sleep.

'Dunno. Just does. It's like, ugh, like a bad stitch, but also like I've swallowed a hedgehog.'

Leah giggled, waking Theo up, who immediately reaffirmed his grip on his mother.

'And it aches, like deep aches,' he continued. 'My whole side is—ugh.' He pulled a face. 'What have you done to me, Rose Tyler?'

Rose smirked but watched him carefully. He was pale. '...You alright?'

He grimaced. 'Urgh. Nauseous.'

Jackie was awake now, too, and already retrieving a bowl in case. He dismissed her with a wave.

'It's fine,' he muttered, closing his eyes briefly. 'M not throwing up. Just feels like my insides are... really confused.'

'I'll bet they are,' Jack said, stretching widely as he stifled a yawn. 'Morning. Did it work?'

'Yeah,' Rose confirmed.

'Sure you don't fancy anything else while we're here, Rose?' Jack joked. 'How about a second heart?'

'Maybe later I'll have a lung,' she joked. 'That's how it works, yeah? Buy one, get one free?'

'I don't remember you paying for it,' the Doctor murmured tiredly, making everyone grin.

The door then opened as Martha entered. Behind her, Montgomery followed, flicking through medical scans.

'Morning,' Martha greeted, already checking their charts.

Montgomery eyed the catheter bag and nodded. 'Looks like everything is going exactly as expected.'

The Doctor managed a weak thumbs-up. 'Brilliant. Get it out of me, please.'

Martha smiled, glancing at Rose. 'We've got an hour. I'll send the nurses in soon to get you both prepped.'

'We'll see you both in theatre soon,' Montgomery added, and they both left.

'Right, if they're about to get wheeled off, we should say goodbye,' Jack said.

'Can't I watch?' Leah asked seriously.

Jackie immediately looked horrified. 'Why on Earth would you wanna watch, sweetheart?'

'Because!' Leah stated as if that was all the explanation needed.

'That's an absolute bloody no,' Jackie said firmly.

Leah frowned. 'But I wanna see how they do it!'

Theo, who hadn't entirely grasped what was happening, perked up. 'We watch?'

'No one is bloody watchin',' Jackie growled.

Leah stared at her. 'But Gran, I want ...'

'Tell you what,' the Doctor interrupted suddenly. 'How about me and your mum show you the scars while they're still bloody and sticky and gross? And maybe a couple of scans so you can see the big hole in my stomach, too.'

Leah's eyes lit up. 'Okay!' she said, delighted with this compromise.

'Doctor!' Jackie lambasted him.

'What?' the Doctor asked innocently as Rose giggled.

Now very happy, Leah hugged her dad as tightly as she dared. 'You're the best! I love you, Daddy.'

Theo, not to be outdone by his sister, giggled and threw himself at Rose for an even bigger hug. 'Love ya Ma!'

Jackie sighed heavily, shaking her head in disbelief before she looked at the Doctor seriously. 'Right, I know you're gonna be fine 'cause you always are. But...' She hesitated briefly. ' Behave yourself, sweetheart.'

'Oh, come on, Jackie. I'll be unconscious. I can't do much when I'm unconscious,' the Doctor pointed out.

'I ain't puttin' anythin' past you,' she chided. She then leaned down and kissed his forehead firmly. 'See you soon, sweetheart.'

He nodded. 'See you soon.'

Then she turned to Rose, brushing a few stray hairs from her daughter's face. 'I'm so proud of you, you know. For gettin' through all this.'

Rose immediately found herself suddenly fighting the urge to cry. 'I love you, Mum.'

Jackie pressed a kiss to her cheek. 'Love you too, sweetheart.'

She then transferred seamlessly back into Grandma. 'All right, you two, time to go!'

She ushered Leah and Theo out the door. Jack was about to say goodbye and leave when Rose suddenly stopped him.

'Jack—can you stay for it?'

Jack studied her for a second, then the Doctor. He understood immediately. 'Course I can.'

~ ΘΣ ~

Once they were ready, the Doctor and Rose were taken up to theatres. They said one last goodbye and good luck before they were taken into separate rooms. 

Jack kept the tone light as the medics did the Doctor's final checks and attached their monitoring equipment. The Doctor barely responded, now too tired and in pain to do more than quiet one-word responses. Finally, it was time to put him under. 

'Induction of anaesthesia, intubation to occur only after unconsciousness is confirmed,' the second anaesthesiologist stated from the plan.

Jack didn't react outwardly. The Doctor hadn't explained to anyone why he insisted on being unconscious before intubation, but he knew all too well.

'Ready, Doctor?' the anaesthesiologist asked.

The Doctor just nodded again. The anaesthetist injected the carefully calculated dose through his IV. 

'Induction starting,' she announced. 

The Doctor's breathing slowed. The anaesthetist watched him carefully. 'Count back from ten, Doctor.'

The Doctor barely managed, 'Ten…' before his words slurred. 'Naine. Eigh'. Sheven...'

His eyelids fluttered.

'Pur… drau… oru…' 

Gallifreyan counting. And then he was gone.

The anaesthesiologist checked the monitors, nodding. 'He's under. Proceeding with intubation.'

Jack fixed his eyes on the Doctor's face for any sign of discomfort as the team inserted the breathing tube quickly and cleanly.

'Ready,' they confirmed when it was in place.

The doors to the operating theatre swung open, and the Doctor was rolled into position beneath the lights. Jack followed just to the threshold in scrubs, stopping at the designated observation zone. Martha stood at the bottom of the table, surgical plan in hand. 

Jack's eyes flicked to the Doctor's face. The artificial breathing and unnatural stillness were all too familiar from the last time.

Montgomery took his place. 'Alright. This is a standard nephrectomy with non-standard anatomy. But we know what to expect, and we follow the plan to the letter.' He glanced at Martha. 'You're my control.'

Martha nodded, flipping a page. 'Ensure the patient is deeply sedated and neuromuscular blockade is maintained. Unnecessary stimulation may wake him up even under anaesthesia.'

The anaesthesiologist nodded to confirm. 'He's under. No response.'

Montgomery turned to the scrub nurse. 'Right, let's extract an alien kidney. Scalpel, please.'

As the first incision was made, Montgomery immediately felt the resistance. 'He wasn't lying; this is like trying to cut through leather,' he murmured. He carefully deepened the incision. The first layer gave way, and the assistant surgeon used a retractor to hold it apart.

There was barely any bleeding. The Doctor's biology—self-repairing, highly efficient—had already started clotting around the edges of the wound almost instantly. This had to be extremely fast.

A nurse checked the monitors. 'Clotting response within expected parameters.'

Martha was reading ahead of them. 'Next layer: dual peritoneal membrane. Proceed carefully.'

Montgomery nodded. 'Ultrasonic separator.'

The nurse handed him the specialised device designed to break through the denser abdominal wall. A soft, high-frequency hum filled the air as he used it to gently part the thick membranes.

He worked his way down until, eventually, the Doctor's kidney was finally visible, and everyone took a moment just to marvel. It was very different from a human's. A normal human kidney was bean-shaped and smooth. The Doctor's was slightly larger and elongated, with deep, intricate vascular structures that branched into complex loops. It pulsed faintly, responding to the body's disruption, its adaptive structures deeply confused.

Jack had seen a lot of alien anatomy in his time, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not so accidentally. But seeing something this deeply a part of his best friend, something so undeniably not human felt strange.

Montgomery hummed in thought. 'Confirming alien vasculature matches pre-op scans. Clamping the renal artery.'

The scrub nurse handed him the specialised clamps, reinforced to hold against the higher blood pressure Gallifreyans maintained.

Martha double-checked. 'Flow response?'

Montgomery nodded. 'It's stable. Proceeding.'

He worked quickly, progressively clamping and cutting for a good ten minutes before a nearby monitor suddenly beeped a warning.

'What's that?' Montgomery asked.

The anaesthesiologist frowned, checking his instruments. 'BP fluctuation. He's dropping slightly.'

Martha immediately checked the plan. 'Could be metabolic compensation. He's not regulating like a human—check for a secondary response.'

Montgomery glanced at the kidney, and there it was. It had begun to contract slightly, the adaptive vascular structures tightening autonomously—a self-defence mechanism against perceived oxygen loss.

Martha pointed to the plan. 'He's compensating for something. Check systemic oxygen distribution.'

'Oxygen distribution is normal for him,' a nurse confirmed.

'What's causing it?' Montgomery asked.

'No idea,' Martha said honestly, scanning with increased urgency through the surgical plan.

Montgomery shook his head. 'I'll stabilise him manually.'

He carefully adjusted the vascular pressure, loosening the contraction in the kidney's structure and keeping it from trying to regulate itself into a crisis. The monitor evened out.

Martha rechecked the vitals. 'Better.'

Montgomery nodded, re-centering himself. They kept moving until, eventually, the kidney was separated, extracted, and placed immediately into preservation fluid.

He let out a breath. 'Donor organ secured. Let's close up.'

Montgomery worked quickly, ensuring the vascular structures were sealed correctly before beginning the closure. The Doctor's rapid healing response meant they had to be precise—if they left any tissue improperly aligned, it could start knitting together incorrectly.

'Metabolic response is increasing,' a nurse noted.

Montgomery nodded. 'We're on a clock. Let's move.'

He and his assistant worked together, using bio-adhesive sutures to reinforce the deeper layers before closing the peritoneal membrane. The ultrasonic separator was used again, but this time to stimulate proper reattachment of tissue structures—essentially guiding the Doctor's body into healing the right way.

'Closure complete.' He stepped back, checking the monitors one last time before he glanced at the clock. 'Fastest nephrectomy I've ever done.'

Martha flipped to the next section of the surgical plan. 'Remove the ventilator and wake him up.'

Jack leaned in slightly, eyes locked on the Doctor's face as the medics did precisely that. Martha gave it a few seconds before she spoke. 'Doctor. Time to wake up.'

No response.

She rechecked the monitors. Everything looked normal.

Jack frowned. 'Doctor.'

Still nothing.

Montgomery glanced at the anaesthesiologist. 'Check his responsiveness.'

She nodded, pressing her knuckles firmly against his sternum. No reaction.

Jack felt his stomach tighten. His gaze flicked to Martha, and he saw the momentary flicker of concern she tried to hide.

'Doctor. Doctor,' she pressed. Still nothing.

Jack stepped closer. 'Doctor, wake up.'

'Doctor,' Martha said more firmly. 'Wake up.'

No reaction.

Martha's jaw tightened. She rechecked the surgical plan. 'This—this shouldn't be happening.'

Jack stepped closer. 'Doctor, wake up.'

'Doctor. Doctor!' Martha said, nearly shouting now.

For a moment, nothing happened, and then there was a twitch. Barely anything. Just the slightest movement in his fingers.

Martha caught it immediately. 'Doctor?'

The Doctor's eyelids fluttered. His brow furrowed, a faint crease of confusion appearing on his face.

Martha leaned forward. 'Doctor. Open your eyes.'

Another twitch. Then his eyes cracked open.

Martha leaned in. 'You with us?'

The Doctor blinked slowly. His lips parted, but no sound came out at first. He swallowed and wet his lips. Then—finally—

'…Harkness.' His voice was barely a whisper. 'You were in my dream.'

Jack smirked instantly. 'Yeah? Was I good?'

The Doctor blinked once. Slowly. Then—his eyes rolled shut again. His body sank back, completely limp.

Martha's amusement flickered for half a second before she returned to the monitors, rechecked them, and flipped through the readings.

Jack exhaled sharply. 'That's not normal, is it?'

Martha didn't answer immediately. She pressed two fingers to the Doctor's neck, counting the pulses beneath her fingertips.

Montgomery spoke up. 'His vitals are steady, with no respiratory or cardiac distress.'

Martha bit her lip. 'He should be more responsive by now. He usually is. Get him to recovery and monitor him while we get Rose in here.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The Doctor's kidney showed signs of activity even before Montgomery placed it inside Rose's abdominal cavity.

'This thing's eager,' Montgomery murmured, watching as the kidney's pale pink hue deepened, taking on the slightly richer tone of human tissue as Rose's blood began circulating through it.

Martha, reading from the surgical plan, didn't look up. 'Expected. Gallifreyan tissue is highly adaptable. Keep monitoring perfusion and nerve response.'

'The flow rate is more than excellent,' one of the surgical assistants noted.

Montgomery nodded, already ready for the next stage. 'Removing the vascular clamps now.

The clamps were released, finally allowing Rose's entire circulatory system to connect to the new Time Lord kidney. For a moment, the whole team paused, just watching it. The kidney twitched slightly, and then it began working immediately.

The assistant surgeon let out a breath. 'Well, that's something.'

Montgomery exhaled slowly. 'Textbook.'

Martha checked her notes. 'Monitor urine output.'

One of the nurses confirmed, 'Collection started—yeah, it's working. Flow is high, but expected.'

Montgomery gestured to the team. 'Let's start closure.'

Relatively quickly, they sealed her back up with sutures. As Montgomery finished the last suture, he finally stepped back to survey his work.

'Transplant complete,' he announced. 'Well done, everyone. You've just made history.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The first thing Rose noticed was the lightness. Like her body had spent her whole life running uphill, and now, suddenly, the ground was flat. Her breath came easier. The ache she'd grown used to—the one that had settled into her bones, skin, and rhythm of her existence—was suddenly gone.

She blinked slowly, her eyes adjusting to the bright, sterile light of the recovery ward. Her mind was sharper than it had any right to be. She felt awake. Still exhausted, still sore, but very, very awake.

'Hey, beautiful.' 

Jack.

She turned her head a little too quickly, but her body adjusted almost instantly. The world tilted for a second, then righted itself. She saw Jack sitting beside her bed, holding his phone, watching her closely. 

Rose licked her dry lips, blinking at him. 'What time is it?' she rasped.

'Six o'clock in the evening,' he answered. 'How're you feeling?'

Rose focused inward, trying to pin down what felt different. It felt like her body was processing everything faster. The residual fatigue was there, but it wasn't dragging her down like before. And her blood. Her blood felt… warm , flowing, like it was working better than it ever had.

She inhaled slowly. It was somehow deeper. Easier.

Jack, still watching, leaned forward. 'Come on, spill the beans. What's it like having a Time Lord kidney?'

Rose swallowed, thinking about that seriously as she focused on the new rhythms of her body. 'It's… weird,' she concluded.

'Weird how? Like, I can see time weird? Or I suddenly have the urge to eat a banana weird?'

Rose grinned. 'Yeah, it's not like that.' She pressed a hand gently to the surgical site, testing it.

Jack watched her. 'Painful? I could get a nurse.'

She shook her head. 'No... Not as much as it probably should, anyway.'

He nodded. 'But do you feel different?'

'Yeah,' she admitted. 'I do.'

'Different how ?'

She hesitated, still trying to put it into words. 'It's like… my body's just better. I don't feel tired. Not properly. And my head. Jack, my mind's clear. Like, sharper than before.'

'Wow,' Jack muttered. 

'Where's the Doctor?' she asked next, looking around. She saw him immediately in the next bed, fast asleep and linked to several monitors.

'How is he?' she asked.

Jack pulled a face. 'He's really deeply asleep.'

She frowned. 'But he should be awake by now.'

'Yeah. We don't actually know why he's still asleep.'

Rose's eyes widened. 'What d'you mean, you don't know?'

'He took a while to come out of the anaesthesia after surgery, but he was okay. Then he went back to sleep and hasn't been awake since.'

'But…'

'His vitals are stable: he's physically fine. But it's not in the plan he wrote, so we've got no idea if this is normal.'

Rose tensed slightly, a million worries instantly flooding her mind.

Jack saw that. 'Martha's keeping an eye on him. She's not panicking yet.'

Rose scanned her husband. He wasn't visibly distressed; he was just asleep. In fact, he looked more peaceful than he had in a week. 

Jack nudged her lightly. 'Hey. Don't spiral. It's early days. The guy's just lost an organ. If something was seriously wrong, Martha'd be flipping tables by now. She's watching him like a hawk, and no one's gone running to Brax yet.'

Rose let out a slow breath, forcing herself to relax. 'Yeah.'

Jack tilted his head, studying her. 'Rest. We're looking after him.'

Chapter Text

Six hours later, Rose was fully awake and sitting up without feeling like she'd just been hit by a bus. That alone was bizarre.

Her new alien kidney was still in a bit of shock, throwing her body into overdrive. She had to use the toilet every ten minutes, watching in mild fascination—and occasional alarm—as colours she'd never seen before filtered out of her system. It was as if her body was finally clearing things it had never been able to, flushing out years of accumulated toxins.

She felt herself improving with every minute. The Doctor, meanwhile, was still asleep.

'How long's it been?' she asked eventually.

Jack checked the clock. 'Fifteen hours.'

Rose chewed her lip. 'That's—'

'Long,' Jack finished for her. 'Yeah. I know.'

The door swung open, and Martha entered, eyes on the sleeping Doctor immediately. 'Nothing yet?'

'Nope,' Jack told her.

Rose sat up straighter. 'Martha. What's goin' on?'

Martha looked puzzled. 'Not sure yet. His vitals are stable, and there are no major red flags. But he should be awake by now.'

'He's not even rolled over or anythin'?' Rose asked, almost fearing the answer.

'Nothing,' Jack confirmed.

'But …'

'I know,' Martha said. 'But this isn't an emergency. He's physically fine.'

'It's not a healing coma, is it?' Jack asked.

'No. It's not characteristic of one, anyway,' Martha replied. 'He's just... asleep. I'm going to have to talk to Brax.'

The door swung open again, and this time, it was Jackie. She bustled in, looking deeply unimpressed, her coat half off, Leah trailing behind her, and Theo toddling at her side. 

'I'm sorry, sweetheart, I couldn't get 'em to sleep!' Jackie huffed, pulling her coat off properly. 'Bloody midnight, and they wouldn't have it.'

'You promised me scars!' Leah stated as Theo immediately toddled straight to Rose's bed. Rose barely managed to brace herself before he climbed up to hug her.

'Ma!' Theo clung to her sleeve, then immediately wrinkled his nose. His little hands patted her arm, then her chest, before he sniffed dramatically. His whole face scrunched up in confusion.

Jack raised an eyebrow. 'What's up with him?'

Leah answered absently. 'Mum smells weird.'

'Oi,' Rose muttered.

'S'not bad!' Leah reassured her. 'You just smell different now.'

'Do I?'

'Yeah, you smell a bit like Dad. Not loads, just a bit.'

Jackie scoffed, dropping into a chair. 'That'll be the bloody kidney, won't it?'

Leah ignored her, scanning the room. She glanced from Rose to Jack to Martha, then over at the Doctor's bed. Somehow, she knew instantly. 'What's wrong with Daddy?'

'There's somethin' wrong with 'im?' Jackie asked immediately, alert.

'He's just takin' his time wakin' up,' Rose told them. 

'We're not sure why,' Martha added.

Leah's frown deepened. She looked at the machines, the monitors, and the chart Martha held. 'It's been too long,' she said thoughtfully.

'I know. But medically, he's fine,' Martha said. 'His vitals are stable, and everything checks out; he's just not waking up.'

'Fine? Fine!? He's been asleep for how long, and you're sat here sayin' he's fine?' Jackie demanded, launching into protective mother-in-law mode. 'What if he's got brain damage, or no oxygen, or…'

'Jackie,' Martha interrupted calmly. 'I'm about to call Brax.'

'Well bloody do that, then!' Jackie said firmly.

Martha concealed a sigh as she opened her laptop and launched a video call to Torchwood. It rang briefly, and then Brax's face appeared as composed and infuriatingly calm as ever. He glanced at the group, clocked Jackie's expression, and sighed. 'I assume you are calling me because my brother's being difficult.'

Martha didn't hesitate. 'Post-surgical recovery is normal. The transplant is fully functioning in Rose. But he hasn't woken up, and he's been under for fifteen hours. His vitals are fine, but we don't know why this is happening. It's not a healing coma and doesn't look like an infection.'

Brax hummed, thoughtful. 'Unusual. His metabolism should have corrected by now.'

'It's the anaesthesia,' Leah said suddenly.

Everyone turned to look at her as Martha frowned. 'What do you mean?'

Leah huffed in the exasperated way of a child who couldn't believe adults were this slow. 'He had two kidneys before. Now he's only got one. So if he's got less to process the anaesthesia, then—' she gestured at the Doctor again as if that explained everything.

Martha stared. Then, her brain caught up. '…Oh. That actually makes a lot of sense.'

'Yeah, obviously,' Leah said.

Still watching through the screen, Brax tilted his head slightly, considering. 'It's logical. Human anaesthesia is volatile for Gallifreyans at the best of times; the loss of his second kidney may be causing a more severe metabolic imbalance than could be predicted.'

'Is he in danger?' Jackie demanded to know.

'No, not unless his vitals change.'

' Is there anything we can do?' Martha wondered.

Brax was already calculating. 'You need to give him a stimulant to override the residual suppression.'

'Adrenaline?' Martha suggested.

'Too harsh, that could be very dangerous. We need something that can jumpstart metabolic clearance without causing distress. I would recommend a controlled dose of—'

'Tea,' Leah said.

Brax stopped. '…What?'

'Caffeine,' Leah clarified. 'He drinks tea all the time. His body already knows how to process it.'

'Martha?' Brax prompted.

Martha thought about that. 'Well, it's unconventional, but so is he.'

'I agree. Introduce some tea via IV infusion over twenty minutes, warmed to his current body temperature. Repeat up to three times if he doesn't wake up.'

Jack clapped his hands. 'Alright. Someone put the kettle on.'

~ ΘΣ ~

Eight hours later, it was morning. Despite Rose's tiredness, she hadn't really slept, just watching and monitoring her husband throughout the night with his back-to-back IV infusions of tea. Yet still, he remained utterly dead to the world.

She'd just finished a tiny, calculated breakfast when a low groan finally escaped his lips. Rose's heart fluttered with relief and surprise as she set her drink aside and sat up straighter.

His eyelids fluttered open. His pupils were unfocused and glassy, his gaze drifting, blinking slowly. '…Jjjibbershshh,' he mumbled as his gaze flickered vaguely towards her.

'Doctor?' Rose asked carefully.

'… Th'cats,' he slurred. 'Dunno. S'gone green. Don't—' He trailed off, blinking heavily.

Rose's brow furrowed. She fumbled for her call bell, pressing it. 'Doctor, it's me. It's Rose.'

His eyebrows lowered, confused, like he wasn't entirely sure who 'Rose' was. But something in him accepted it anyway. 'Oh,' he mumbled. Then, after a long pause— '… Y'not a noodle.'

Rose blinked. '…Um, what?'

The Doctor's face scrunched slightly as if this concept was profoundly mystifying. 'Ev'rything's noodles,' he slurred, words bleeding into each other, 'but y'r not. Y's'pposed to be, but… not.' He frowned. '… M'portant.'

Rose stared at him. 'Wow, you're totally off your head, aren't ya?' she muttered, unsure whether to be amused or worried. She pressed the call button again with more urgency. 'Can I get some help here?' she called towards the door.

Seconds later, a soft knock came from the door before it opened, revealing a nurse. She blinked at the sight of the Doctor's woozy stare. 'Well,' she said, 'someone's finally woken up.'

'He's not makin' much sense,' Rose told her.

'How so?' the nurse asked.

'Ah need a flargle now, m'pfft,' the Doctor supplied on cue.

The nurse stared at him briefly, bemused. 'Ah. I'll grab Dr. Jones.'

Rose nodded as she left, then looked back at the drowsy, confused Time Lord beside her. He was staring at her, still utterly perplexed.

'Doctor, d'you know where you are?' she asked.

He blinked very slowly and then frowned very deeply. '…Pizza?'

Rose exhaled. 'Right. Okay. Well, you're in a hospital on Earth. You had surgery, but you're alright, yeah?'

His forehead creased as his eyes darted around, taking in the IV in his arm, the blood pressure cuff, and the catheter still in him.

'Wha's all that?' he mumbled, suddenly shifting, uneasy.

'Hey, hey, it's alright,' Rose reassured him quickly, pushing through her soreness to get up and shuffle to his bedside, sitting beside him. He visibly tensed, clearly starting to panic.

'You're fine, I promise, yeah?' she soothed, cupping his cheek. 'It's just for monitorin'. You were unconscious for a while, that's all.'

That settled him slightly, and his muscles relaxed a little. 'Y'sure?' he murmured, still slurring.

'Positive,' she said, kissing his forehead and brushing back his hair.

'Mmmkay,' he grunted as Martha arrived, pulling on a pair of gloves as she took him in.

'Welcome back, Doctor,' she greeted. 'How are you feeling?'

The Doctor's eyes fluttered slightly, still unfocused. 'M'a noodle,' he slurred, then frowned. 'No, wait. Not a noodle. Noodles are noodles. I'm—' He paused. 'What am I again?'

Martha frowned, glancing at Rose.

'He's been sayin' weird stuff since he woke up,' she supplied. 'Like … even weirder than usual.'

Martha turned back to the Doctor. 'Can you tell me what year it is?'

'…Potato,' he responded, entirely serious.

Martha raised an eyebrow. 'Right. That's not a year, Doctor.' She pulled her stethoscope from around her neck, pressing it to his chest. 'Alright, deep breath for me.'

'What?' he asked, stupefied.

'Take a big deep breath,' Rose told him.

'Kay,' he murmured and tried. His inhale was shaky, and as he exhaled, his eyelids fluttered. Martha frowned.

Rose saw it instantly. 'What? What is it?'

'Hold on. Again, please, Doctor,' she said, moving her stethoscope over the other heart.

The Doctor looked vaguely at Rose as if waiting for her approval.

'Another big, deep breath,' she told him.

He obliged, and again, he seemed to react on his exhalation. Martha nodded as this confirmed something: 'His left heart is fluttering.'

'It's what?' Rose asked.

'Atrial flutter,' Martha clarified. 'It's a kind of arrhythmia—irregular rhythm. His hearts aren't quite syncing up the way they should.'

Rose blinked. 'Is that bad?'

'Not immediately, ' Martha assured. 'But it's unstable. His rhythm's intermittent—he's dipping out on certain beats.'

'What's causin' it? The anaesthetic?'

Martha sighed, pulling off her gloves. 'Could be, that would explain the confusion, too. But… I'm not sure yet.'

The Doctor, utterly oblivious to the concern surrounding him, was now blinking blearily at the ceiling.

'…Gotta tell th'cats,' he murmured, slurring again. 'It's all… green now.'

Rose kissed him again. 'What's all green?'

He waved a weak hand. 'Y'know. All of it. ' The Doctor blinked slowly and then narrowed his eyes at Martha. 'You're a noodle,' he observed.

Martha ignored him, stepping over to the nearby ECG machine to plug it in. 'We need to monitor the flutter more precisely,' she explained, mostly to Rose. 'I'll set up a human-standard unit on his left heart—it's not perfect, but it'll give us a decent enough read over the next twenty-four hours.'

'Do I need to be worried?' Rose asked, instinctively brushing her thumb over the Doctor's temple as he mumbled something about synchronised swimming.

'Not yet. He's stabilising, just… skewed.'

Rose nodded, still stroking his temple. He blinked up at her as Martha gently lowered the top of his gown to place the ECG pads.

'I have two hands,' he announced suddenly, lifting both hands like this was shocking new information. 'But only one head.'

'Shh,' Rose said, her tone half-laughing, half-soothing.

The ECG gave a quiet beep as it activated. The screen pulsed to life, jagged lines scrolling across it. For a moment, Martha and Rose both just watched it.

'What's it say?' Rose asked eventually.

'Hard to tell with the second heart interfering,' Martha replied, eyes flicking over the readout. 'But I can definitely see a fibrillation. About every seven seconds. Hold on, I'll just grab a pen for neuro obs.'

She briefly left the room as the Doctor opened his eyes again, blinking slowly at Rose.

'Rose?'

She leaned closer. 'Yeah. I'm right here.'

His gaze moved slowly across her face. 'You alright?'

'Yeah,' she said. 'I'm alright.'

'Did we win?'

'Win what?' she asked gently.

'…Dunno.' He blinked. 'What were we fighting?'

Rose smiled sadly but didn't answer, just cupping his face.

Martha returned, flipping open her folder, pen in hand. 'Alright, Doctor. Let's do some checks.'

He squinted at her. 'Am I being graded for this essay?'

'Something like that,' she said. 'Follow the light.'

She lifted her penlight and swept it from left to right. The Doctor followed—slowly, sluggishly—but stayed with it.

'Was that a firefly?' he asked, blinking.

'No, Doctor. Just me. Now squeeze my fingers.'

He grabbed her hand with both of his and patted it. 'You're doing very well, Martha,' he said, entirely seriously. 'You're brilliant.'

Martha snorted. 'Thank you. Lift your right arm, please.'

He managed it—slow, wobbly, but cooperative.

'Left arm?'

He mirrored the movement with more difficulty.

'Okay, now raise your right leg.'

He did so, barely.

'And the left?'

The Doctor grimaced. It took more effort. His thigh shook slightly, and the movement stopped halfway.

'That leg's still a mess,' Martha said, finishing her scrawled handwritten notes. 'Okay, I think Leah was right. We've still got lingering anaesthetic in his system. That's probably what's making him loopy—well, loopier —and affecting his cardiac function.'

Rose raised an eyebrow. 'So you're sayin'... he's high?'

'Basically, yes,' Martha said. 'And until his system clears it out properly, he's going to keep saying things like—'

'I have no knees,' the Doctor interrupted. 'Oh wait. There they are. Hello, knees.'

Rose laughed, brushing her hand across his hair again. 'So what do we do?' she asked.

'Keep him hydrated, keep the ECG running, give his body time. If he starts making more sense, we're heading in the right direction.'

'Rose,' the Doctor said suddenly, staring past her ear.

'What?' Rose asked.

'Public transport's awful when you're made of cutlery.'

Rose and Martha shared a look.

'Well,' Rose started, gazing at her husband. 'This is gonna be fun.'

~ ΘΣ ~

'Right, so basically what you're saying is we've got an incoherent, heart-fluttering, anaesthesia-poisoned alien to look after,' Jack surmised when he arrived with Jackie and the kids a few hours later at lunchtime, gazing at the Time Lord who was currently attempting to catch something invisible in front of him with his hands.

'Yes,' Martha confirmed.

'Tu as tué mon canard blanc,' the Doctor said suddenly, quite inexplicably in French.

'What he say? That didn't translate,' Rose said.

''You have killed my white duck',' Leah replied. Theo giggled.

'Interesting,' Brax mused from the laptop.

'Interesting!?' Jackie repeated, astounded. 'The man needs help! Can't you give him somethin' to stop this?'

'The problem is the human medicine, Jackie,' Brax said patiently.

'If we give him anything else, we could make it worse,' Martha added.

Jack nodded toward the bed. 'Well, we can't just leave him like this. He's trying to put his sock on his hand.'

Rose sighed. 'Doctor, stop.'

The Doctor froze, sock halfway up his wrist. He turned slowly to look at her, bleary-eyed and blinking like someone trying to focus through a kaleidoscope.

'…Hhhhello, Rose Tyler,' he slurred as if just noticing her. 'Didn't see you there.'

'I told you human anaesthesia is unpredictable at the best of times,' Brax said, adjusting his glasses. 'You are, unfortunately, witnessing the results of our biology being betrayed by human pharmaceutical optimism.'

The Doctor frowned suddenly, eyes shifting vaguely toward Rose. 'S'wrong,' he murmured.

'What's wrong?' Rose asked.

His brow creased. He squinted at her like she was a reflection in water. 'You look… all twisty. An' wobbly. An' there's—' He made a vague, looping gesture with his arm, which didn't quite obey. 'Bzzzzzt.'

Then, suddenly, he winced with his eyes briefly rolling back.

'Left heart still fluttering?' Brax supposed.

'Every seven seconds,' Martha confirmed.

'There is nothing you can do,' Brax said calmly, addressing them all. 'You can't flush the anaesthesia out faster without overloading his cardiovascular system. You'll have to manage the symptoms until it's out of his system naturally.'

'But he'll get better, right?' Jackie asked seriously.

'Undoubtedly. In the meantime, do not let him get up without supervision.'

'Ei fogzya nurim’kululi pin ca mewki,' the Doctor stated in Gallifreyan.

''I think cake is delicious for a cat',' Leah supplied without cue.

Jack sighed. 'All right. I'll be Doctor-sitter. I've had practice.'

'Good. Encourage fluids,' Brax said. 'Keep me updated.'

Chapter Text

Over the next forty-eight hours, the Doctor kept Jack very busy. 

'Okay, arms up,' Jack instructed before bedtime, holding a fresh gown.

The Doctor stared at him like he'd just asked him to return to the Time War.

'Arms, Doctor. Come on,' Jack prompted.

'...But the ducks ,' the Doctor said earnestly. 'The ducks were never supposed to enter the command chamber.'

Jack sighed and hoisted him upright with one arm. 

'Hey,' the Doctor said, disorientated by the movement. 'This room is buffeting.'

Across the room, Rose was improving very quickly. Martha and Montgomery checked her regularly, each time more baffled by her absurdly fast healing curve. The new kidney had settled into her system like it had been there all along, and she was up and walking by the second day with short trips around the ward.

'Still peein' like a fountain,' Rose complained to Martha on a check-up. 'And it came out blue earlier.'

Leah and Theo visited each afternoon. Theo climbed up beside the Doctor, laying out his toys. The Doctor responded by playing with them as if they were old friends.

Brax regularly checked in via laptop. 'How's his speech?' he asked Jack during one late-night call.

Jack turned the laptop so Brax could see the Doctor trying to feed a cup of tea to his IV drip. 'I'd say he's close,' Jack said. 'He's just invited his IV to be his companion.'

Brax sighed. 'How are his vitals?'

Jack flicked the tablet toward the monitor. 'Still fluttering. But stable.'

'Then keep him in bed. No walking until those rhythms smooth out.'

'Copy that.'

~ ΘΣ ~

That night, the ward had fallen quiet again. Jackie and the kids were back in the TARDIS, and Jack had left the room to take a quick urgent call from Zak. Rose was left to watch the Doctor to ensure he didn't try to get up. 

'You can't put jam in the core, Rose,' he mumbled. 'It's not ethical.'

Rose smiled tiredly. 'I won't,' she said.

Then suddenly, he blinked. Once. Then again, slower. 'Rose?'

She sat up. 'Yeah. I'm here.'

'I can't…' he frowned, eyes narrowing. 'I can't hold onto any thoughts.'

Her heart jumped at the sudden sound of clarity in his voice. 'That's okay,' she said keenly. 'It's just the anaesthetic. You're comin' through it.'

He closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again, pained. 'Please get me out of here. I hate this.'

She reached across the narrow gap between their beds and laced her fingers through his trembling hand.

'I will,' she promised. 'When it's safe. I swear, we're leavin'. You're not stayin' here any longer than you have to.'

He squeezed her hand once before his eyes drifted shut again.

~ ΘΣ ~

The next morning, Jack had left to take another urgent call from Zak. Rose was awake and watching the Doctor, sitting in bed and sipping tea. 

Whatever clarity had surfaced the night before had receded like a tide, leaving behind flotsam. He was fidgeting and talking in short, quick bursts. She didn't love how twitchy his right leg was under the blankets and how he kept squinting at the door like he was ready to bolt for it.

'Doctor?' she asked gently.

He glanced at her. 'That's an ecumenical matter.'

She set her cup down. 'Okay. Right. Stay put, yeah? Jack'll be back in a bit to help you with your breakfast.'

Two seconds later, he was pushing himself up.

'Doctor, stop,' she said quickly.

But he wasn't listening. 'I've got to check the frequency,' he mumbled, standing fully now, legs trembling. 'The room's wrong. There's too much jam.'

'Doctor, please stop,' Rose said urgently. 'Sit down!'

He took a step forward and instantly collapsed. A snap echoed through the room as the IV pole clattered to the ground beside him, and the Doctor crumpled in a tangle of limbs and wires.

' Doctor! ' Rose cried.

Jack burst in a second later, his phone still in hand. 'Whoa, whoa—Doctor!' he barked, crossing the room in a few strides and kneeling beside him. The Time Lord was unconscious, with his left foot twisted sideways.

Rose had already pulled the alarm. A siren began to pulse through the ward.

The Doctor stirred, groaning, then blinked up at Jack blearily. 'Oh no, Jack, are you okay?' he asked, genuinely concerned.

Jack let out an exhale. 'You really know how to ruin a morning, you know that?'

The door burst open as Martha stormed in with two nurses, scanning the scene instantly. 'What happened?'

'He fell,' Rose said quickly. 'He got up, I tried to stop him, but he just went down like a sack of potatoes. I heard somethin' snap, Martha.'

'Pretty sure it's his leg,' Jack supplied, pointing at the awkwardly bent area.

Martha nodded, clearly slightly annoyed but not entirely surprised. 'Alright. Let's get him onto a stretcher. Careful with the leg. I'll book a CT scan.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The fracture was clean—small, closed, but enough to make everyone wince when they saw the scan. Already weakened by atrophy from the medbed, his left tibia had snapped just above the ankle, exactly where it had broken originally.

They'd braced it and gotten him back to bed. He'd murmured nonsense through most of it. Still, he had eventually finally fallen into a proper, deep sleep once Martha had administered some Braxiatel-approved painkillers—just enough to take the edge off when it became clear he wasn't managing the pain on his own.

In the early evening, after Jack had changed his sheets and Rose had moved to his bedside, sitting in a chair with a blanket over her knees. She needed to be closer to him. Zainab brought her a cup of tea and some toast. Rose still didn't feel much like eating, but the tea helped.

Jack was in the corner, scrolling through his phone. He looked up after a minute. 'It's getting late. You want me to help you back into bed?'

'Nah, I'm fine,' she assured him without looking away from the Doctor. 'Rather be here.'

'You don't have to keep watch every second,' he offered. 'I'm here too.'

She shrugged, finally looking at him. 'I know. But I want to.'

He gave her a smile. 'Figured you'd say that.'

Just then, his phone buzzed again. He looked at the screen and hesitated, his thumb hovering over the call icon.

'You gonna be alright without me for a second?' he asked.

Rose nodded, eyes drifting back to the bed. 'Yeah.'

Jack slipped out of the room, the door softly closing behind him. Then, there was just the sound of the monitors and the faint rhythmic blip of his hearts. She sat there a while, holding her tea between her palms, staring at his face.

She couldn't help thinking about how he must've looked after the medbed. She'd seen flickers—brief, nightmarish glimpses through Lanwa—of his body half-broken and wired into a machine, twitching with pain. But she hadn't been there. Most of what she knew had come from Jack and the Doctor himself, telling her about it in low tones, like it was a state secret.

She understood that. She still found herself holding her breath during routine check-ups like the machines might somehow remember what she'd been. She and the Doctor were both still raw—different kinds of raw, but still raw.

As she gazed at him the Doctor stirred, his eyelids fluttering and opening slowly. For a moment, he just stared at the ceiling.

'Are we dead?' he rasped.

Rose grinned. 'Not yet.'

He turned his head toward her. 'Are you sure?'

'Very.'

'Oh,' he said. He blinked again, then frowned, clearly registering the low beeping of monitors, the sterile light, and the faint antiseptic scent in the air. She watched as his eyes tracked upward to the IV pump, then across to the ECG beside the bed.

She thought he might panic and braced herself for that. But he didn't. He just deflated.

'Hospital,' he concluded.

'Hospital,' Rose confirmed.

He grimaced. 'Urgh.' Adjusting himself slightly on the pillow, he flinched as a fresh jolt of pain pulsed through his leg—deep, throbbing, radiating upward. Then he looked at her properly for the first time.

'You look… better,' he said softly. 'Your skin. Colour's back.'

Rose smiled. 'Yeah. I'm doin' alright.'

He nodded slowly. 'How's the new bit?'

'Your kidney? I'm still peein' like mad, but otherwise fine.'

'No strange vibrations? Humming? Psychic bleeding?'

'None that I've noticed, whatever the hell that is.'

His eyes closed, concentrating. 'I think I can still feel it.'

Rose blinked. 'You what?'

'Not psychically,' he clarified. 'More like... biodata resonance. I can't track it, but I know it's there. Like an echo. Still part of me.'

She stared at him momentarily, then shook her head with a tired smile. 'You're such a weirdo.'

'Thanks.' 

'And you're actually makin’ sense,' she added.

'When was I not?' he asked, frowning slightly.

She paused. 'Um. You've been in a weird half-conscious delirium since surgery. Anaesthetic lingerin' in your system.'

'Have I?' he blinked.

'Yeah. You didn't come round properly, and then you couldn't metabolise the anaesthetic. So you've basically been baked for three days.'

'Wait… three days?' he asked, astonished.

'Yeah.'

He looked sheepish. 'Sorry.'

'Don't be. You've been really entertainin'. Except when you collapsed and rebroke your leg earlier. That part wasn't so funny.'

'Oh. That's why my leg hurts.' He looked down at it. 'I was wondering.'

'Please don't get up again. You'll give Mum and Martha another heart attack. Even Brax looked nervous, and he usually has the emotional range of a bucket.'

He snorted softly. He was about to say something else when the ECG spiked briefly. He flinched, with his hand going instinctively to his chest as his eyes fluttered.

'Well, that's not good,' he murmured, blinking to steady himself. His eyes flicked to the monitor. 'How long have I been in atrial flutter?'

'About a day now,' Rose said gently. 'Brax says it's the anaesthetic. Still wearin' off.'

'Good old Brax,' he muttered. He looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Then, after a moment, 'I hate hospitals.'

'I know,' she said softly. 'And I get it.'

The door creaked open, and Jack slipped inside, still holding his phone.

'Well,' he said, stopping at the foot of the bed. 'Look who's finally decided to rejoin the conscious. Morning, Doc.'

'Morning,' the Doctor replied.

Rose looked up at Jack. 'You've been on that phone all day. What's goin' on?'

Jack hesitated a second too long before flashing his usual grin. 'Nothing urgent. You don't want to know.'

She narrowed her eyes. 'Jack—'

He waved her off casually. 'Honestly. Nothing that can't wait.'

'What's happened?' the Doctor asked, watching him closely.

'I told you—nothing urgent.'

'Is it Torchwood?'

'No, and stop asking questions.' Jack folded his arms. 'Just concentrate on getting better.' Then he paused, blinking. 'Wait. You're actually holding a conversation with me.'

'Well observed,' the Doctor said dryly.

Rose grinned. 'I think the anaesthetic finally cleared.'

'Well, there's a mercy,' Jack muttered. 'Couldn't you have done that before you broke your leg again?'

The Doctor smiled a little before his gaze softened. 'Thank you.'

Jack blinked. 'For what?'

'Everything. Watching me. Watching her.'

Jack shrugged, but his smile turned genuine. 'It's what I do. Alright. I'll leave you two to it.' He gave Rose a parting wink. 'Shout if you need me.'

She smiled. 'Will do.'

The door clicked shut behind him. 

They sat silently for a moment, hospital sounds beeping away around them. Eventually, Rose shifted, nudging at the edge of his blanket until he lifted it in vague invitation. She climbed in beside him carefully, slow enough not to jostle the wires. She sighed as she settled beside him, tucking herself into the crook of his arm.

'I missed this,' he murmured.

She looked up. 'What?'

'You invading my personal space.'

'If you're gonna complain, I'll go back to my own bed.'

'Go on, then,' he said daringly.

She laughed and didn't move. Instead, she rested her hand over his hearts. She could feel the left one skipping occasionally, matching the ECG readout.

She closed her eyes for a moment, just listening. Not to the machines, but to him—to the quiet reassurance of breath and pulse.

'I missed this too,' she whispered.

The Doctor didn't answer. He was already asleep.

~ ΘΣ ~

Jack leaned against the far wall of the corridor, phone pressed to his ear.

'Yeah,' he said quietly, eyes on the floor. 'I know. I saw the report.'

A pause as the person on the phone replied. He rubbed a hand over his face.

'No, I don't think you're overreacting, Zak. Just… deep breaths, okay? You're not alone in this.'

Silence. Whatever Zak was saying, Jack was shaking his head.

'I told you—don't go near the capital sectors again without protection. If they're already posting your itinerary on open channels, you have to assume they're serious.'

Another pause. Jack glanced toward the ward door.

'They don't know,' he said. 'And we're not telling them. Not yet.'

He listened, mouth pulling.

'Zak. They're still recovering.'

The voice on the other end rose again.

'I know you're worried. So am I. But we've handled worse, remember? Let me work on the backchannels. We'll get ahead of it.'

Another beat of silence.

'Yeah,' he said softly. 'I miss you too.'

He lingered for a moment longer, listening. Then, finally: 

'Get some sleep. Don't do anything reckless.'

He hung up, exhaled slowly, and then pushed off the wall to return to the Doctor and Rose.

~ ΘΣ ~

The next day, the Doctor was still lucid.

He was able to manage the pain more consistently now using his own biology, so Martha had withdrawn the more potent analgesics to reduce the chemical load on his system. That alone lifted the fog behind his eyes. He spent the entire morning propped up against his pillows, watching Rose stroll slow circuits around the ward under Jackie's proud narration.

'She's a marvel,' Jackie declared to a passing orderly as though she'd performed the surgery herself. 'Healin' faster than any of you thought. That's my Rose!'

She was moving with purpose now—still sore but steady. Her colour was better. Her spark was back. And he was absolutely, visibly jealous. 

Surprisingly, he actually stayed in bed. He occupied himself with company: Leah and Theo arrived mid-afternoon. The kids sat cross-legged on the visitor chairs while the Doctor explained in graphic detail how his leg had refractured. Leah listened with morbid fascination, taking notes while Theo played with his toys.

Brax called in twice on Martha's laptop. 'Well, you're finally making sense,' Brax said to his brother, sounding a little suspicious. 'How are you feeling?'

'Fine. Couldn't be better,' the Doctor replied.

'Still fluttering?'

'You'd barely notice,' he deflected.

Brax arched an eyebrow and looked to Martha, who helpfully flicked the readouts into view. He scanned them, then sighed like it physically hurt him.

'Another twenty-four hours of monitoring,' he ordered.

The Doctor looked like he'd just been sentenced to death. 'But—'

'Be quiet, Theta,' Brax said smoothly. 'Rest.'

That was the final nail in the Doctor’s mood. He slumped further into the pillows, arms folded as he watched Rose wander the ward. When she returned, visibly exhausted but happy, Montgomery approached with a positive demeanour. 'Just to let you know, Rose, you've cleared all of our physical recovery markers, and we're considering discharge, possibly even tonight.'

That made the Doctor sit up. 'What?'

'If tonight's blood work looks good, she's ready to go,' Martha explained.

'But I'm the one with the alien biology,' the Doctor protested. 'Shouldn't I be leaving first?'

'You've refractured your leg and keep fainting,' Martha reminded him.

Rose returned to her bed. 'It's just a potential discharge,' she said lightly.

He looked petulant. 'I'm happy my kidney's working so well for you,' he mumbled.

'Told you you'd be like that,' Rose said, smirking. 

~ ΘΣ ~

He'd been quiet for nearly twenty minutes.

Martha glanced up from her notes. 'No, Doctor.'

'I didn't even say anything,' the Doctor said innocently from his bed.

'You're thinking about saying something, and the answer is still no.'

'But I just want to stand,' he insisted, giving up the pretence immediately. 'Briefly. Upright. Like a real boy.'

'It's still no,' she stated firmly.

He gave her the full force of his most charismatic smile. 'C'mon, Martha, I'm just asking to stand, not pole vault out the window. Besides, you can't assess if my vasovagal syncope is improving if you don't measure me both sitting and standing. Pleeease?'

Martha looked at him and his doe eyes for a very long moment before she sighed, defeated by sheer Doctor charisma. 'Okay, okay. We can try. But we do this on my terms. With the frame, two staff, and Jack. And just for the record, it's not going to work.'

The Doctor lit up like a Christmas tree. 'You're brilliant, Martha.'

She just sighed and rounded up some staff as Jack retrieved a frame. They then all took position, and with Jack braced like a goalkeeper, the Doctor swung his legs over the side of the bed as Rose watched from her bed, intrigued.

'Alright,' Martha said. 'Nice and slow.'

He pushed himself up onto his good leg. For one glorious second, he was vertical. Then he swayed.

'Oh—hang on—' he mumbled as the monitoring equipment blared a stream of alerts.

Jack lunged just as his knees buckled. The Doctor slumped against him, utterly boneless.

'I got him,' Jack called out as the support workers moved forward to help. Together, they lowered him back onto the bed. 'Well, that worked,' Jack muttered sarcastically.

'Told him,' Martha said seriously, jotting down a few notes as she checked the ECG and vitals monitor again. 'Wow, 80 over 40.'

'That's bad, yeah?' Rose asked Martha.

'I've never seen him so low,' Martha stated. 'Jack, raise his legs. Zainab, we'll start him on a fluid bolus of 250,' she said to the nurse, who nodded and disappeared to get the equipment. Martha moved forward to him, tapping his face lightly. 'Doctor, wake up.'

Seconds later, the Doctor blinked back into the world, groaning softly. 'Wha'?'

'You fainted again,' Martha said. 

'Oh, right,' he murmured, still looking pleased. 'Worth a go.'

~ ΘΣ ~

It was nearing evening when Martha returned with a discharge folder in hand.

'All clear,' she said to Rose. 'Vitals are good, bloodwork's fine, healing is frankly a bit freakish.'

The Doctor watched from his bed, braced leg elevated, an ECG still chirping steadily beside him as Martha left. He was quietly seething.

Rose looked at him sympathetically. 'I'll be back first thing.'

'I know,' he said. 

She leaned over and kissed him. 'One night,' she said. 'You'll survive, I promise. If you need anythin', you can call me.'

'I know,' he said again. 

Jack hovered by the door. 'I'll make sure she's tucked in, Doc.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Thanks.'

A nurse entered with a wheelchair. Jackie fussed over Rose like she was seven again, and Jack got busy transporting bags.

Then, they were gone, and the room was quiet. 

The Doctor lay still in the dim glow, eyes open, staring up at the ceiling tiles as he contemplated how unfair this was.

Then, he closed his eyes. 

~ ΘΣ ~

And suddenly, it feels so cold.

He lifts his head and opens his eyes again, immediately finding himself blinded by fluorescent lighting overhead. He winces and refocuses, looking down to find himself lying on a cold metal table in a dark room, completely naked.

Then he hears the click-whirr of the arms, and something metal glints in the low light. 

He abruptly realises he’s in the medbed, and it’s waking up.

He scrambles to his feet, body trembling, his left leg immediately collapsing under him with a wet pop. Pain lances up through bone. He yelps and staggers back up, limping as he tries to get as far away from the medbed as he can…

Tubes suddenly slither from every surface—the floor, ceiling, and air. They come out like a flurry of snakes focused on him, and him alone.

He tries desperately to avoid them, but one catches the foot of his bad leg, and he crashes to his knees, crying out in pain. As he tries to get up, one strikes from above and rams into his nostril hard. His head snaps back with a sickening crunch as it burrows deep into his throat and down into his stomach. He tries to scream, but the pressure crushes his breath. His spine arches.

Then it pumps. A thick, milky feeding fluid—ice-cold and caustic—floods his gut like wet cement. It boils inside him, bloating his stomach. He gags. Vomits. The acidic slurry splatters his chin, his chest, and the floor. He vomits again harder, and something cracks in his chest.

He claws at the tube with trembling hands, blood and vomit slicking his fingers. When it tears free, he screams with bright jets of red gushing from his nose.

He doesn't even get a breath before the ventilator comes.

Wider. Ribbed. It shoves past his teeth. His jaw cracks. Cracks again. Then, it snaps entirely.

It doesn't care. It keeps going, punching into his throat. A new fluid fills his lungs—some chemical slurry of oxygen and sedative, freezing and acidic. His chest inflates too far, and his right lung instantly ruptures.

He can't scream—only gurgle as the clamps stabs into his stomach next. Barbed prongs gouge through muscle and sinew, and he arches violently as they anchor themselves inside him.

Every breath pulls on torn tissue. Every heartsbeat sends lightning down his spine. He can't even scream. He just sobs uncontrollably, twitching.

Then comes the catheter, curling toward his groin. Something unseen yanks his legs apart so hard that both his hips nearly dislocate. Then it rams into him.

He howls, every muscle seizing. His vision whites out. Something inside tears. The catheter pulses, draining him—not just urine, but something more. His self . His existence . Pulled out drop by drop.

He sobs. Begs. Tears at it. The ventilator pumps again. The feeding tube returns to ram up his nose again. More clamps. More cables.

He’s crawling now. Broken and bleeding with wires and tubing trailed behind him, tangled around his legs, dragging like entrails.

He reaches a wall, and there’s no door. Nowhere to run. 

Then the medbed moves.

It slithers across the floor, suddenly alive. It rears, tubes snapping taut, then yanks him backwards across the blood and bile-slick floor, back to the chair.

Restraints slam down—metal bands crushing his limbs into place as the collar descends with a mechanical hum.

Click.

Compliance, says the medbed in a lifeless monotone and swiftly electrocutes him.

Time stops. Or stretches. Or shatters. He doesn't know.

He’s hanging in space—still strapped, still punctured, tubes feeding and draining and pulsing endlessly. 

At some point—he doesn't know when—he begins to beg.

Please. Stop. Please. Please.

No one answers. No one comes. The machine just continues its routine, pumping and sucking and breaking every bone and sinew in his body systematically until he’s just a piece of flesh.

He begs again.

Please let me die.

Compliance.

The collar powers up again, and everything goes white.

~ ΘΣ ~

He sat bolt upright with a scream.

Sweat clung to his skin, soaking the sheets beneath him. His chest heaved violently. His throat burned like he'd been breathing acid. The ECG monitor shrieked, lights flashing in alarm.

His hands flew to his face, clawing at his mouth, his nose, his throat—searching for tubes. For restraints. For the collar. His fingers found the ECG leads still stuck to his chest and the cannula in his arm.

He yanked at them instinctively. The ECG gave a protesting shriek as several of the stickers tore free, and blood welled from his cannula site as he ripped it out, running down his forearm and onto the white bedsheets. He barely noticed.

Then he gagged, twisting sideways and retching hard over the edge of the bed. Nothing came up—just bile and air and the taste of chemicals that weren't really there. His whole frame shook as a cold sweat slicked his skin.

Not real. You're not there. You're not there. You're not—

He gasped, hyperventilating. The air was too loud. The sheets were too tight. 

'It's a neural trace,' he stammered aloud. 'Old sensory imprint. Post-traumatic neural trigger—autonomic override—'

He couldn't finish the thought.

Think, think, THINK—

He was spiralling, and he couldn't stop. Almost without meaning to, his hand fumbled for the mobile Rose had left and called her. The line rang once.

'Doctor?' Rose's voice. 'What's wrong?'

'I'm—I think I had—just a nightmare,' he gasped. 'It's nothing, I'm fine, I just—' His voice cracked. It rose. Broke. 'I—I know it's late, I shouldn't have—shouldn't—'

Something tore loose inside him.

'Help me,' he whispered.

'I'm comin',' she said, audibly already moving. 'There in a minute.'

He dropped the phone, curling in on himself as he waited. A few minutes later, the door crashed open to reveal Rose, still in pyjamas with Jack behind her, already scanning the room.

'I'm sorry,' the Doctor sobbed. 'I didn't mean to—I shouldn't have called—'

'Don't,' Rose said, sharp. 'Don't say sorry. Not to me. Not for this.'

He was shaking, wild-eyed, barely able to focus. She climbed onto the bed with him, gathering him into her arms.

He gasped again. His lungs felt too tight. He couldn't draw in enough air. 

'I c-can't breathe,' he gasped.

'It's okay. Match me,' she ordered. 'In. Out,' she said, controlling her breathing so he could copy the pattern. He tried and failed, his breath hitching with stifled sobs.

'Again. Breathe with me. In… out,' she stated.

His chest heaved, still too fast, but he was still desperately trying to take control. As he fought, a nurse appeared outside, looking at the commotion. Jack shook his head once and left the room, closing the door behind him and immediately standing just outside the door like a statue.

The Doctor sobbed into Rose's shoulder, each gasp raw and uncontrollable.

'I can't—I can't get it off—I can still feel them —inside—' he wept. 'I couldn't stop it. I couldn't—'

'You're not there anymore,' Rose murmured. 'You're here. With me. I've got you.'

His fingers dug into the back of her shirt, grasping like a drowning man. She held him tighter.

'I've got you,' she repeated. 

'I thought I was past this,' he gasped. 'I thought—if I kept going—if I just kept moving—'

'Then what?' she said softly. 'You'd wake up, and it'd all be magically fixed?'

He nodded miserably. 'I… I wasn't supposed to fall apart.'

'You haven't fallen apart,' she said. 'We both survived somethin' mental . And I love you. And I'm not lettin' you go. Ever.'

He was still shaking, but the sound of her voice—her body, her breathing—started to ground him as the adrenaline wore off. He was still shaking, but the sobs had ebbed. Rose didn't move. She didn't speak. She simply held him with arms looped tight around his back, her cheek resting against his hair, anchoring him with every breath.

'I'm so tired,' he croaked eventually.

'You can go to sleep. I won't leave,' she told him.

'I can't sleep,' he murmured, hoarse.

Rose stroked the side of his face. 'Then don't close your eyes yet. Just lie here.'

The Doctor swallowed and closed his eyes for a second—just a second—but his body jolted as if electrocuted. He gritted his teeth, breathing faster again.

'Hey,' Rose said, firm but soft. 'You're not there. You're with me, yeah? Right here.'

'I just… I can’t…'

'I know,' she said. 'But you don't have to do anythin' right now except be . And let me hold you. That's it.'

He didn't answer. But his head dropped against her shoulder again, forehead pressing to the side of her neck. 

Over the next ten minutes, his body began to soften slowly against hers. The tension in his shoulders released, inch by inch. His breathing evened out—still shallow, but steady. With Rose's voice in his ear and Jack's quiet presence at the door, the warmth of their shared silence built something like a cocoon around him.

He didn't mean to fall asleep, but he did.

~ ΘΣ ~

Rose didn't move, not even when Jack re-entered the room a few minutes later, quiet as a ghost. He stood by the door for a long moment, looking at the Doctor.

'I've never seen him like that,' Jack said simply.

Rose nodded, her fingers moving gently through the Doctor's hair.

Jack stepped closer, his gaze falling on the tangled ECG leads and the dark smear of blood on the Doctor's arm and the bed from the cannula he'd ripped out. Silently, he cleaned it up.

When it was done, Jack gathered the bloodied gauze and crossed to the bin.

'I'll take the door,' he said.

'Thank you,' Rose said, still holding the Doctor.

Neither of them moved for the rest of the night.

Chapter Text

As morning broke, Rose opened her eyes.

The Doctor was still asleep, tucked close to her, one arm limp around her waist. She kept still, cradling him with his head in the crook of her arm as the memory of the night returned. 

She shifted gently, brushing her fingers through his hair affectionately. He stirred. 

'Mornin',' she said quietly. ‘Sorry I woke ya.’

He blinked blearily. 'Did I drool on you?'

'Yeah, just a bit,' she replied with a grin, watching him closely.

He smiled smally and sat up slightly, careful of his leg.

'Sleep alright?' she asked, already knowing the answer.

'Fine,' he said.

She gave him a look. 'Mm.'

'I'm alright now,' he added.

'Sure you are.'

He paused, eyes flicking to her. 'About last night—I'm sorry. I—' 

'Don't,' she cut in. 

He blinked. 'Don't what?' 

'Apologise for bein' scared.' 

He let out a breath. 'Well… ringing you in the middle of the night sobbing isn't exactly me.' 

Rose tilted her head. 'Why? 'Cause you're a mighty Time Lord who doesn't cry ever?' 

'Something like that,' he muttered, then winced faintly, hearing how stupid it sounded aloud. 

She grinned. 'It's alright, I won't tell Brax. Can't have your big brother finding out you've got actual feelings.' 

He smiled, sheepish. 'Yeah, that'd be humiliating.' 

'But on the off chance you ever accidentally feel an emotion again—even though we both know that's totally out of character—you call me. Like you did last night.' 

His smile softened. 'Yeah,' he murmured. 'I will.'

The door creaked open, Jack hovering just outside the threshold. 'You two decent?'

Rose smirked. 'Nope.'

Jack stepped in immediately, setting two cups of tea on the table. 'Don't tease me like that,' he joked and looked at the Doctor. 'You okay?'

The Doctor nodded. 'Thanks,' he said, meaning more than just the tea.

Jack didn't dwell. He nodded and pulled the chair back up near the window, where he immediately started a steady stream of light breakfast conversation.

They talked for twenty minutes about nothing in particular. Rose watched the Doctor carefully, joking and teasing Jack like usual. He was working so hard to seem fine. She obligingly played along. Jack, too.

It was 9 o'clock when Martha stepped in. She looked surprised to find the trio already assembled. 'Did I miss a meeting?' she asked.

'Only the exclusive breakfast club,' Jack said, raising his empty cup.

Rose grinned. 'Can't stay away from him for more than ten minutes.'

Martha approached the Doctor's bed. 'How are you feeling?'

'Spectacular,' he replied brightly. 'Got any good news for me?'

Martha set her laptop on the table and reached for her stethoscope. 'Let me do a quick check first.'

The Doctor rolled his eyes, theatrically long-suffering, but obediently pulled his gown aside to let her examine his chest. She rested the chest piece over each heart in turn, listening intently.

'Still irregular,' she concluded. 'Deep breath.'

He did. Martha moved the stethoscope to his back. He flinched—barely—but Rose saw it. Jack saw it.

'Any dizziness this morning?' Martha asked.

'I've been worse,' he replied, noncommittal. 

'Is that a yes or a no?' Martha wondered. 

He sighed as Rose shot him a look.  'A little.'

Martha straightened and reached for her laptop to make a note, then paused as the device pinged and a video call appeared on the screen. Braxiatel.

'Your brother's arrived,' she said and answered the call. As soon as Brax appeared on screen, he glanced around the room, immediately assessing everything.

'Good morning,' Brax said evenly. 'Theta. Martha. Rose. Jack.'

'Lord President,' the Doctor nodded, half-salute, half-smirk.

Brax ignored him. 'Martha, you have got his ECG?'

'Right here.' 

The Doctor sat a little straighter. 'Brax, I'm fine. One heart's fluttering, but it's nothing.'

'Until it becomes dangerous,' Brax replied. 'And I am not trusting your 'fine' as a clinical metric.'

'The flutter's persistent, but he's stable,' Martha said. 'Still, I was going to suggest we do a discharge and start telemetry in the Tardis.'

The Doctor's eyes widened. 'Now that's a brilliant idea.'

Brax shook his head once. 'Not yet. The anaesthetic residue we flagged could still be bound to his conduction system. If it's clinging to the neural junctions in both hearts, it could be causing signal scattering. We need a cardiac MRI to confirm,' Brax said. 'And we need it now before it escalates. Goodbye,' he said abruptly and ended the call.

The Doctor sighed. 'Lovely. More tests.'

'I'll talk to radiology,' Martha said. 'They might be able to get you in this morning. Hopefully, we can settle whatever Brax is worried about and get you out of here.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The thumping of the MRI was rhythmic, mechanical, and maddeningly dull, and the Doctor was deeply regretting not having accepted the headphones when they were offered. The noise was absolutely everything all at once— THUNK-clunk-CLANG , then a pause, and a high-pitched wheeeee-click-THUMP that rattled straight through him.

Gallifreyan physiology didn't love strong magnetic fields. His sensory nerves were fizzing. His fingers itched. His ribs felt somehow both squashed and too big at the same time. The air inside the machine had a faint, static-like taste. His skin prickled. None of it felt very nice, but he endured.

'Halfway through,' came the technician's voice through the tinny speaker after 45 long minutes. 'You're doing well. Try not to move.'

'Not moving,' the Doctor replied brightly.

THUNK. BANG. CRRK. A weird bass whomph that vibrated in his teeth. Then another round— CLICK-wheee-thud-CLICK —like the machine was trying to communicate. 

Human technology really was funny.

WHUMPF. BANG. CLICK.

He blinked hard. The moment he did, his stomach lurched sideways. Like the bed had shifted—though he knew it hadn't.

Wheeeee-click-THUMP .

In an effort to both distract himself from the noise and his own boredom, he started reciting the entire manuscripts of Shakespeare's plays in chronological order to keep himself occupied. He'd just reached the fourth act of Timon of Athens when the machine finally began to power down, and the world suddenly felt oddly flat. The table slid out of the scanner with a soft mechanical shudder. 

'All finished,' the technician said. 'You okay?'

'Oh, absolutely,' the Doctor replied without hesitating. He sat up slowly, rubbing the heel of his palm against his temple. His leg twinged, and his mouth tasted of magnetic aftertaste.

'You look a bit... spin-cycled,' Martha commented, appearing in the doorway.

'I feel spin cycled,' he said as she helped him slide into the waiting wheelchair. His skin was still buzzing, and the light overhead shimmered in a way it shouldn't. It felt like his brain was processing input from two slightly misaligned timelines.

It didn't improve as Martha wheeled him out of the MRI and back into the corridor. His hands were involuntarily flexing against the wheelchair arms, his feet constantly shifting.

'You alright?' Martha asked as they moved, brow furrowing. 'You're... twitchier than usual.'

He waved a hand loosely. 'Just the magnetics. I'm a bit sensitive.'

'Since when?' she asked seriously.

'Since always,' he insisted. 'Gallifreyan thing.'

'Oh,' she said, frowning a little before dismissing it and then grinning a little. 'Still, the MRI takes me back to when we met.'

'Back to what... oh!' he realised. 'The Royal Hope.'

She grinned. 'So what d'you prefer, having the MRI or getting your blood sucked out through a straw?'

' Definitely the blood thing,' the Doctor responded after some serious consideration. 'And I prefer a straw to vampire teeth, too.'

Martha rolled her eyes, exasperated at the detail she didn't ask for, as they continued down the corridor together, taking a shortcut through some closed wards.

'Is Rose done with her check-up yet?' he asked, trying not to sound too desperate. 

'Should be. She and Jack said they were going to meet you back in your room before—'

Martha was suddenly interrupted by her pager beeping insistently. She stopped and checked it, expression shifting instantly. 'There's a code in Paediatrics.'

He gestured with his head. 'Go.'

'I'll find someone to wheel you back—'

'Martha, just go; they need your help,' he insisted. 'I'll find my own way back. This isn't exactly Labirinto della Masone.'

Martha hesitated, then nodded. 'Okay. Don't get lost. Or go wandering. I know you.'

'Scout's honour,' he replied, giving the matching hand gesture.

She didn't look entirely convinced but turned and jogged off, her footsteps fading quickly to leave him sitting in the corridor alone.

He rubbed his temples. The static was easing a little, but his sense of reality still felt slightly off. He was about to move, when suddenly something seemed to flicker past his peripheral vision on his left. He looked up immediately but missed whatever it was, seeing an old abandoned ward instead. He dismissed it immediately as magnetic mind noise, taking hold of his wheels to push himself towards the lift.

Then—a bang. Close and sharp, like someone had dropped a bowling ball on a hard floor.

He stopped and immediately pivoted towards the abandoned ward, looking in for a moment. Silence. Darkness. Nothing.

'Scout's honour, Martha,' he repeated to himself, gently wheeling back and forth on the spot. 

Then he heard a crack, like wood splitting.

It took all of three seconds before he gave in to his curiosity and wheeled himself into the dark ward.

The lights inside were sensor-controlled, flickering to life one by one as he crossed the threshold. Each bulb buzzed faintly overhead—delayed, as though reluctant to illuminate what lay inside. Which was nothing, as far as he could see. Beds were stripped bare. Machines were unplugged and dusty or missing entirely. But he kept going.

The air changed halfway across the room—abruptly cold and unnaturally dense like he'd just stepped into a cellar no one had opened in years. 

He paused in the centre of the space, and then he smelt it.

Sandalwood.

His eyes widened as his hands suddenly gripped the wheels of his chair, getting ready to bolt. It couldn't be. It just couldn't be her. Lanwa.

Or, more accurately, it had been what Lanwa smelt like . That scent had filled his senses while she invaded his body and mind while wearing Rose's face. It was what he'd tasted when he was choking on the floor, bound, shattered, and her laughter echoing in his skull.

Was she back? His hearts stuttered in his chest at the thought, almost resuming a perfect rhythm by accident.

No. It wasn't her. It couldn't be her. But logic wasn't enough to override the visceral reaction. If it was her again—if she'd found a way back—he had to stop it. Rose. He wouldn't lose her to that thing. Not again. Not ever.

Then, the room seemed to come alive.

One of the bed curtains shifted, pulling an inch to the side, then dropped. A monitor on one of the unplugged machines flashed to life. It beeped once. From somewhere behind him came the sound of small footsteps.

He turned quickly, but there was nothing there. Just rows of beds and a hum that wasn't electricity.

And then a shape began to form. A shadow denser than the rest of the room, at the far end, near the windows.

He stared at it, and, impossibly, it seemed to stare back.

Then it was gone. A moment later, the scent of sandalwood vanished too. 

The ward was empty again.

He spun his chair and got out as fast as he could.

~ ΘΣ ~

By the time the Doctor reached his room, he'd decided that 1. he'd absolutely hallucinated the whole thing through a mixture of magnetic mind noise and anaesthetic, and 2. he wasn't going to tell anyone about it.

Far and apart from the impossibility of that being real, he had absolutely no desire to upset Rose. Lanwa was gone. It was over. And there was no point giving Rose any reason to worry.

'Ah! My favourite humans,' he declared as he rolled in, seeing Rose perched on his bed in a hoodie and joggers and Jack sitting on the corner chair scrolling through his phone. 'Miss me?'

Jack briefly looked up from his phone. 'You know you're literally all I think about, Doc.'

'How was the scan?' Rose asked.

'Loud. Boring. Magnetic. I was very brave,' he replied, waving a hand dismissively. 'How was your check-up?'

'Kidney's behavin',' Rose said. 'Blood work's still weird, but Martha says that's, umm, probably normal.'

'Still peeing a rainbow?' he asked cheerfully.

'Yeah,' she admitted, wrinkling her nose. 'That goes away, right?'

He smirked. Jack got up to help him transfer back into bed, but the Doctor stopped him, glancing toward the sunlit window. 'Any chance we can go out? Y'know. Trees? Bushes? The illusion of freedom?'

'There's a garden just down the hall,' Rose offered.

'Perfect,' the Doctor said, already turning his chair. 'Allons-y.'

~ ΘΣ ~

They took the lift down with Jack pushing his wheelchair and Rose walking beside them. The garden wasn't much: paved paths, a few benches, some Earth-compatible alien shade plants, and enough steel fencing to remind the Doctor that this wasn't an escape.

A dozen alien patients were scattered throughout the space. A silicate being reclined on a sun pad, soaking up solar particles. Nearby, a pale blue Vortari folded paper birds with seven hands.

They found a quiet spot in the shade. Jack handed him a snack bar.

'Eat,' he ordered. 'You haven't eaten since breakfast, and I'm not carrying your unconscious body again when you faint. You're heavier than you look.'

The Doctor took it with a half-hearted smirk. 'Really? I've had heavier bodies,' he muttered, chewing anyway.

They sat together for nearly an hour, talking about nothing of consequence. The state of UNIT's cafeteria coffee. The bizarre respiratory physiology of the Vortari. A string of even more grotesque species the Doctor described in vivid detail, just to see how many times he could make Rose pull that face.

Eventually, they circled around to the idea of his discharge as if it were a foregone conclusion. Rose suggested visiting Lix once he was out. They'd convalesced there once before after the incident with the Shadow Proclamation. The Doctor didn't argue. In fact, he quite liked the idea.

'First meal when you're out?' Jack asked.

The Doctor's eyes lit up. 'Spiced pravidi broth from the Delta markets. Boiled in antacid brine and served with raw tart root and fermented meat jelly.'

Jack made a sound of disgust deep in his throat. 'You kiss this man?' he asked Rose seriously.

'Not after that, I don't, she replied, pulling a face.

'Better than beef hash,' the Doctor said with a shrug.

Rose wrinkled her nose. 'They're servin' that again tonight?'

'And every other night,' Jack confirmed grimly. 'But lucky you—you're being discharged.'

It was then Martha arrived—tablet in hand, her expression a little too neutral. 'There you all are, I spent ages looking for you. Your MRI results are back, Doctor.'

The Doctor straightened slightly in his chair. He already didn't like how she said ' MRI results' instead of something he wanted to hear like 'get out of this hospital now' .

She turned the tablet around to face them. Brax's face blinked onto the screen—clean, sharp, and predictably displeased with something his little brother was doing.

'Theta,' Brax said without preamble. ' The arrhythmia isn't improving. In fact, it's slightly worse.'

'Still blaming the anaesthetic, I assume?' the Doctor muttered, his hearts already sinking at what that meant.

'We assumed it was just residual chemical load, yes,' Brax replied. 'But the scan shows persistent neural interference. The conduction pathways are still reacting. The anaesthetic hasn't just lingered—it's still active and embedded in your autonomic regulation. That shouldn't be possible.'

Rose blinked. 'Hang on—what does that mean?'

Martha looked sympathetic. 'It means his body's reacting like it's still under sedation. His nervous system's confused. Instead of flushing the drugs, it's fighting them. And that's making everything—especially his heart rate and blood pressure—go haywire.'

'It's neurotoxicity,' Brax said. 'Rare, but documented in Gallifreyans who use human drugs. It's creating a cascade failure across your autonomic nervous system. Hence the collapsing. And the hearts issues.'

'Wait—his hearts?' Rose asked sharply. 'Are they okay? Like, functionally?'

'There's no failure,' Martha assured her. 'They're pumping well enough, but his sympathetic and parasympathetic systems keep overcorrecting. He's swinging from too-slow to too-fast in seconds. That's why his blood pressure drops when he stands up.'

'Lovely,' the Doctor said flatly. 'So I'm assuming the word "discharge" isn't coming anywhere near me?'

'I am not taking chances, Theta,' Brax said, voice clipped. 'You are, clinically speaking, poisoned. You stay in hospital.'

Rose frowned. 'But we've got the TARDIS infirmary. With everythin' from Gallifrey. Proper equipment that knows him. Why can't we move him? She can look after him.'

'It's not about equipment, Rose,' Brax said sharply. 'It's about response time. If he experiences anything life-threatening as a result of this, this hospital will have more hands to help. I must go. Goodbye.'

The line cut without ceremony, and everyone looked at the Doctor.

He slouched back against the bench and gave a weary sigh. 'Well. Looks like it's beef hash for dinner again.'

~ ΘΣ ~

A few hours later, Martha had gone, and Jack had stepped away to take another phone call, leaving the Doctor and Rose in the garden.

It was 5 o'clock now, and the light had shifted. Shadows stretched longer across the tiled paths. A breeze had picked up, brushing the back of Rose's neck. The Vortari patient was quietly folding their last paper bird and tucking it into a lacquered box.

She watched the Doctor for a moment, then nudged him. 'Your face is doin' that thing again.'

He blinked, clearly drawn out of a very deep thought trail as she looked at her. 'What thing?'

'That thing where it looks like you're listenin' to a different song to the one playin' on the radio.'

He smiled a little, then looked away again. 'Yeah. Sorry.'

Rose tilted her head, studying him. 'Look, I know our bond's been a bit messed up lately, but I can still feel you. You're not exactly hidin' it. You've gone all… distant. And look, I know you wanna get out of here for loads of good reasons, but this ain't like before. It's just a stopgap.'

'I know. And it's not that, not really,' he said, and sighed. 'Just…'

He trailed off, frowning a little.

'What?' she insisted.

He didn't reply right away. Then: 'I thought I saw something earlier.'

She turned fully to him. 'Saw what?'

He glanced at her and then let his shoulders go. 'It doesn't matter. Probably just static. Probably from the MRI. And my brain's still swimming in anaesthetic, apparently.'

Rose slid her hand over his. 'Talk to me.'

He swallowed. 'I've been through worse. You know I have. But this time—' He broke off, jaw tightening. 'This time I feel… I don't know…'

'Tell me,' she said gently.

He looked at her then, eyes dark and distant. 'Haunted.'

She frowned. 'Is it the medbed?'

'I don't know.' His voice was quiet. Honest. 'Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it's all of it. Maybe it's something else.'

'That's alright,' she said. 'You don't have to sort it all out in one go. We've talked before—we can talk again. I'm not goin' anywhere.'

He looked at her. And for a second—just a second—there was nothing hidden. No filter. Just the Doctor. Her Doctor. Raw and exposed, deeply upset and confused.

A porter appeared at that exact moment with a tray of food. 'Martha said you'd be out here, so I brought your food out for you.'

The Doctor blinked, thrown, as Rose took the tray from her and gave a quick thank you before settling it onto the little garden table between them.

'Mmm,' she said, removing the plastic lid with fake enthusiasm.

He grimaced instantly at the sight. 'Is this a punishment for not being well enough to leave their hospital?'

'Eat,' she said firmly, handing him the fork. 'Or I'll feed it to you. '

He gave a long-suffering sigh and stabbed a forkful of the mush. 'My people wouldn't've even served this to prisoners.'

She rolled her eyes, grinning a little. 'Stop bein' such a baby. You're actually worse than Theo and cabbage.'

He obediently took a few mouthfuls, wincing with every chew. He was around halfway through when his eye caught something on the tray.

'Ooh. What's that? Pudding?' he asked eagerly.

'Um, semolina pudding, I think,' Rose said, peeling off the plastic lid and taking a sniff. 'Oh God, it reeks of primary school.'

He eyed it warily. 'That looks like something I saw come out of a squashed Dalek once.'

She tried to ignore that mental image and dipped the spoon, holding it up. 'Try it.'

'What's in it?'

Rose genuinely thought about that for a moment. 'Y'know what, I've got no idea. Rice?'

He gave her a long look.

She shrugged. 'Who cares? It's food. Come on.'

He sighed, then accepted her feeding him, eating it from the spoon she held. He marvelled that even after several hundred years on this planet, he still had a wide range of terrible foods to discover.

He paused the moment it hit his tongue.

Warm. Sludgy. Bland. The texture was everything wrong with food—cloying, thick, plasticky. The taste coated the back of his throat with a chalky, synthetic aftertaste.

And just like that, it wasn't semolina anymore. It was the feed slurry. The synthetic compound forced into him through the nasal tube. The medbed filled his mind in an instant: the distention in his gut, the unnatural pressure, the clamps pulling it all back out.

He gagged violently.

'Doctor?' Rose jolted upright. 'Hey—hey, are you—'

He doubled over with a dry, retching noise, then promptly vomited back up the undigested beef hash quietly onto the paving stones.

'Okay, okay, I've got you,' Rose said, shifting beside him with one hand bracing his back and the other snatching the cup of water from the tray, staying poised until he was done.

Once he finished after three productive retches, he didn't speak, just hunched there, eyes clamped shut.

'Here,' she said softly, pressing the cup of water into his hand. 'Rinse and spit.'

He did, carefully. His hands were shaking.

'What happened?' she asked.

He glanced at the dessert. '…Medbed,' he croaked.

Rose froze as she realised. 'Oh god, it's like the feeding tube stuff?'

He nodded miserably.

'Well, that's goin' right now,' she said, already up. She snatched the bowl from the tray with a grimace of disgust and stormed across the garden path. Without ceremony, she hurled the entire contents into the bin and returned, brushing her hands like they'd been contaminated.

When she got back to him, his hand was clutching at his lower belly where the digestive clamps had gone in, and his other hand was hovering at his nose as though the tube were still there.

'Hey,' she said gently, reaching for his wrists. 'That's not happenin' now. It's not real anymore. It's over.'

He didn't resist as she peeled his hands away and replaced them with hers.

'That's new,' he said quietly after a moment, voice rough. 'Didn't see that coming. Sorry.'

'Not your fault,' she murmured. 'Stupid pudding's fault. Never liked it anyway. We're bannin' semolina.'

He gave a weak huff of laughter and let her guide him back upright. She stayed beside him, one arm still draped protectively across his back.

Just then, Jack strolled up, phone in hand.

'Jack!' the Doctor croaked, still breathless. 'Tell me something completely inappropriate and distracting.'

Jack blinked—then smirked. 'Err... did I ever tell you I got banned from four countries for one nude karaoke performance?'

The Doctor let out a laugh that was a bit too loud. Rose didn't say anything. She kept her arm around him.

~ ΘΣ ~

He's already crying, knowing what's coming next.

The medbed is breathing, somehow. The Doctor knows instinctively that it's organic. It rises and falls beneath him like lungs, inhaling and exhaling at a steady, mechanical pace. His limbs won't move, and he knows it's because of the straps on his wrists and ankles. 

And he can't breathe. No, wait—he can, but only just. The air is thick and hot and filled with the scent of—

Sandalwood.

'Can I tell you a story?' asks a voice.

She steps into view—Lanwa. She's unclothed, her matted, dirty blonde hair tangled with her dark roots grown out. She smells like Lanwa, and she looks like Rose. But he somehow already knows she's neither.

She climbs onto the bed slowly and deliberately and straddles his abdomen. Her heat seeps through the thin fabric of his gown, soaking into him. The skin beneath it prickles. His stomach clenches. He knows this pattern. He knows what comes next.

She looks at him like she's concerned, her thumb brushing the side of his face, wiping away a tear. Her fingers are warm. Almost kind.

'There once was a little Time Lord, ' she says, soft and singsong, 'who grew up in the House of Lungbarrow, a place of wealth and privilege. He was destined to have the best education and be a leader for his people.'

Her nails slip into his hair, and she holds his head steady.

'Time to feed him.'

A thin, slick tube is lifted into view. She twirls it in her fingers briefly before reaching down to pull his nostril wide and immediately starts to push it in.

He whines a high, strangled sound. He tries to turn away, but her grip tightens. The tube slides in—wet and rubbery, grating against the cartilage, then down into his throat.

His gag reflex fires hard. His body convulses but nothing moves. The restraints bite into his wrists.

'Be good. Breathe through your mouth, Theta.'

He can't. He chokes. His chest rises sharply, gasping for air. The tube slithers deeper, hitting the back of his oesophagus, and keeps going. He whimpers. Then, his stomach jerks violently as the thick, warm liquid begins pumping into him. Bland. Metallic. Viscous. It spreads, coating the walls of his gut.

He gags. She presses a kiss to his forehead.

'But the little Time Lord was tormented,' she continues, tone amused. 'His cousins would bully him for bein' scared of the dark. Scared of his dreams. Bein' scared of pretty much everythin'.'

His abdomen growls. The liquid sloshes and bubbles, stretching him inside, making him feel too full. It aches under his skin. He can feel it pushing against his organs.

Lanwa—no, not Lanwa—smiles wider, lifting up another tube.

'This one's for the mess.'

She slides it into the left nostril. The tip bites as it enters, and the suction starts immediately.

He feels it tugging and pulling bile and mucus up from the back of his throat. It buzzes in his skull. Pressure builds behind his eyes, and his sinuses throb. The bridge of his nose aches like it's been hollowed out.

'When he finally escaped the House to go to the Academy, he was even scared of the Schism. He glanced at it briefly and then ran away. Since then, the little Time Lord hasn't stopped runnin'.'

His limbs tremble uncontrollably. He whimpers again. She strokes his cheek with the back of her fingers.

'The little Time Lord grew and had a lot of fun adventures, but he also faced a lot of heartaches and losses of people he loved,' she says, sliding her weight further down his body. The fabric over his abdomen peels back. Her nails skim the skin below his navel. His breath catches, and he whines—muffled, desperate.

She holds his gaze.

'Underneath the surface, the little Time Lord felt so much pain.'

She lifts the first clamp and plunges it into the left side of his belly, just above the hip. It crunches deep through flesh and muscle. The pain flares like a live wire. White-hot. Screaming down his spine.

The second clamp goes in a few inches to the right, punching through. Another pipe locks in with a mechanical click and starts draining him. He can feel the liquid being pulled from his gut, warmth being extracted. As if he's being scooped out from the inside.

He screams. His back arches involuntarily as his eyes roll, spasming in pain.

'But it's alright,' she says sweetly. 'The little Time Lord could take all this pain. He packed it all away into little boxes in his head and refused to let anyone open 'em.'

He sobs. Convulses. She rocks on top of him gently, like she's doing something comforting.

'But then one day, the little Time Lord got captured by a bad bounty hunter, and the poor little Time Lord found himself havin' lost control.'

Her fingers slide downward, and his eyes go wide. He shakes his head— please .

She takes hold of him with one hand, and he sobs harder as she lifts the catheter. 

'This bit of the story might feel uncomfortable,' she whispers.

The tip presses to the head of him. His hips jolt. And with slow, horrifying pressure, she pushes.

It burns immediately. A corrosive sting that lights up every nerve along the path of insertion. His body recoils, muscles clenching, but there's no escape. The tube snakes deeper. A slick glide followed by a jolt of pressure that makes his eyes water. Then deeper again, unrelenting.

He can feel it twist around, curve, and bend. His gut clenches, muscles spasming violently, as the catheter settles into place—anchored, stretching him in ways that feel wrong. 

It immediately starts to siphon, and he feels it. The liquid coming out of him.

'He escaped,' she says, 'but since then, the little Time Lord kept dreamin' of the medbed again and again and again. He couldn't understand it. Why couldn't he put it in a little box with the rest of the bad things?'

She shifts her weight on top of him again, with her bare thighs now pressing into his ribs, pinning him. Her skin is humid, and every part of her sticks to him. She's not heavy, but she's rooted, like she belongs there, like she's settled into her rightful place.

She runs her hand down his chest and back over his belly, pressing deliberately on the clamps. He whines at the renewed agony.

She leans in. 'Almost done,' she whispers. 'Last 323 words.'

She holds up the ventilator tube. Long, ridged. He shakes his head again, wildly, desperately. He tries to twist away. But her hand clamps over his jaw, her thumb resting against the hinge, firm.

She forces the tube into his mouth.

He gags. Chokes. His vocal cords seize, his eyes bulge, but the tube keeps sliding. It drives past his gag reflex, gouging down his throat. His neck tenses, resisting. It tears like sandpaper inside.

The ventilator clicks.

Cold air punches into him. The rhythm is wrong and out of sync with his lungs. He can feel the machine breathing for him, overriding him, denying his body's own rhythm. His hearts flutter, then stagger, with each beat misfiring. 

It hurts .

Her lips are against his ear now.

'And then the little Time Lord wondered,' she murmurs, warm breath ghosting his skin, 'what if all those little boxes he'd made to store all the bad things away had somehow been opened all at once?'

His eyes fly open wide, terrified. She kisses his temple.

'But that can't be it, surely, the little Time Lord thinks. Because that would make him mad, wouldn't it? And he's not mad.'

His hands clench. His wrists strain against the leather. He can feel everything. The feeding tube is still dripping into his gut—bloated and burning. The suction in his nose draining vomit, buzzing in his skull. The clamps in his abdomen chewing into him, draining in a slow, wet rhythm. The catheter blazing through his core. The ventilator dictating every breath he's not choosing. His skin slick, his body shaking. His limbs numb and his mind fracturing. And her—straddling him. Claiming him. A body made of love and memory and violation and comfort and torment all rolled into one.

And he realises abruptly that all of it— all of it —is him. 

The pain. The restraint. The violation. The voice. There was no Lanwa here.  

Just him turning on himself.

~ ΘΣ ~

He woke like he'd been shot .

One second, Rose was half-asleep beside him. The next, he arched up in the bed, coughing like he was choking on smoke. His whole body locked with his arms stiff, his fists clenched, and his chest bowing upward off the mattress.

'Doctor?' she gasped, jerking upright.

He clawed at his own throat—scraping, raking his nails down the skin like he was trying desperately to tear something out. Then he gagged hard , jolting his body. 

'No, no, no, Doctor!' she cried, grabbing at his hands.

His eyes were wide, glassy, and unfocused, and he didn't respond. His heel kicked the bedframe with a loud bang , and his whole body spasmed violently.

'JACK!' she screamed.

The door burst open. Jack was there in a second, taking in the scene. 'What—'

The Doctor snapped into a second phase, his whole body going rigid again. His arms locked out at his sides, fingers contorted in painful, claw-like curls. His back arched so hard the mattress actually shifted beneath him.

Then he collapsed flat, his eyes wide and rolling back in his skull. HIs limbs began to thrash with shoulders jerking, legs kicking, and his neck twisting violently from side to side.

'Oh my God, Jack—!'

'He's having a seizure!' Jack shouted over the wailing ECG. 'Hit the emergency button!'

Rose slammed her palm against the red panel. The alarm shrieked overhead as the Doctor's head thudded against the pillow again and then jerked sideways to slam against the bed rail, cutting his forehead. His jaw snapped shut, foam spilling from the corner of his mouth.

'Don't hold him down!' Jack barked. He was already moving, yanking the blankets away, wedging himself at the head of the bed. He cupped the Doctor's skull between his palms, shielding him from the metal rails as blood trickled from the fresh split near his temple.

His muscles continued to fire in brutal, uncontrolled bursts, like electricity coursing through his bones, with his teeth clenched so hard that his whole jaw trembled.

'Come on, Doc,' Jack whispered urgently. 'Come on, stop it now—'

But there was nothing behind his eyes. No recognition. Just locked pupils and a low, wet, gurgling sound from his throat.

The door burst open, and two UNIT medics swept in. A third followed close behind with a crash trolley.

'How long has he been seizing?' one of the nurses asked, already gloving up.

'Twenty seconds,' Jack said.

The lead nurse moved to his head, already pulling a piece of equipment from the crash cart. 'Prep OP airway—manual ventilation, please.'

'He's got trauma history,' Jack warned. 'No intubation. Seriously, trust me.'

'We're not intubating,' the nurse snapped back. 'But I'm not risking obstruction, either.'

She gently pried the Doctor's jaw open, careful of his rigid teeth. Blood pooled near the molars.

'He's bitten through,' she muttered, reaching for suction.

'Vitals?' another nurse called out.

'BP one-forty over eighty-five—that's low for him.'

'Resp is five, that's shallow. Can’t measure his sats.'

'Administering oxygen,' the nurse confirmed, inserting the oropharyngeal tube gently down his throat and positioning a bag valve mask over his nose and mouth. Jack took position, pressing the mask firmly to seal.

'Ready. Bagging now,' a second nurse said, beginning to rhythmically squeeze the bag. The Doctor's chest rose with each compression.

'Still clonic,' someone said. 'Get the lorazepam ready in case this goes past five.'

'Talk to him, Rose!' barked the lead nurse.

Rose moved instantly to his side.

'Doctor, it's me,' she said, fighting the panic in her throat. 'You're safe. You're not alone. They're here to help.'

His eyes didn't move. His limbs still jerked in hard, rattling bursts. 

'Three minutes,' a nurse called.

Jack kept his hand steady, breathing in sync with the bag compressions. 'Hold on, Doc. Come on…'

'Roll him lateral,' the nurse ordered.

They gently turned him on his side, padding his back. His body twitched, but the spasms had started to slow a little. The mask was slick with condensation and blood.

'Clonic phase easing a little but still going.'

'Blood glucose's within acceptable range for his species. Lactate elevated. Troponin marginally high—.'

'Five minutes,' someone reported.

'Lorazepam?' asked the lead nurse.

'Ready. 4mg IV push.'

'Administer.'

The nurse injected it slowly into the cannula in his forearm.

'Resps coming up.'

They watched as the Doctor sagged slowly into the mattress. The twitching subsided, and then he had another jerk, smaller. Then another. But they were fading. Shallow. Less violent.

'Seven minutes.'

'Pulse stabilising. BP rising back toward baseline—now one-seventy over ninety-five. Holding.'

The nurse who'd been bagging paused. 'Switching him to independent oxygen now.'

She removed the mask and pulled the tube from his mouth. He coughed weakly, breath catching, and she gently replaced it with a rebreather mask. He didn't wake.

Murmured orders filled the room—med chart updates, lead placement for continuous telemetry, notes on the neurologic response. One nurse performed a quick neuro check, flicking her penlight across his pupils. 'Sluggish. Eyes open but non-reactive.'

Rose reached for his hand. It was clammy and unresponsive.

'Martha,' she croaked. 'Can someone—can someone get Martha Jones?'

'She's already been paged,' the nurse confirmed.

Rose turned to Jack, whose hands were still hovering over the Doctor's head like he didn't dare move.

'Jack,' she whispered.

He looked at her and nodded. 'He's okay. It's over. He's okay.'

Rose let out a breath that nearly cracked into a sob.

Jack glanced at the door. 'I'll find your mum.'

He was gone before she could say thank you.

Monitoring leads now spidered across the Doctor's chest. The nurse continued calling out vitals. Another began cleaning the wounds. His orange-red blood had pooled beneath his chin. 

Rose leaned down and pressed her lips to his temple.

'I've got you,' she whispered again, forehead resting against his.

He didn't respond.

Chapter Text

Rose hadn't let go of him for twenty minutes.

He was lying limp against her now, his head resting on her shoulder, breathing shallowly through the oxygen mask. She sat against the head of the bed with him pulled tight against her chest, cradling him with both arms—one hand at the small of his back beneath the blanket, the other threaded through his hair, stroking slow, steady lines through the strands at his temple. She could feel the warmth of his scalp, the damp stick of sweat, the faint buzz of muscle tension still flickering under his skin.

'You're alright,' she kept whispering. 'You're okay. You're here. It's over.'

The nurses had been in and out adjusting monitors, checking leads, taking blood, testing his response. She'd thanked them absently, though she didn't look away from his face at any point. Her world had narrowed to him, hyperfocused on every movement he made. Every twitch sparked a micro panic in her chest. She was terrified it would happen again.

'You're alright,' she whispered again, brushing her lips over his skin. 'Just a blip.'

He didn't respond. Not really. But over the twenty minutes, his body had softened slightly, melting into her like it was instinct.

The door clicked open and Martha entered. She crossed the room briskly, eyes flicking to the monitors.

'Rose. You alright?'

Rose didn't look up. 'Yeah.'

'How are his vitals?'

'They said stable.'

Martha was already checking the cannula site and the cut on his eyebrow. 'Do you know how long the seizure lasted?'

'Seven minutes,' Rose murmured. 

Martha nodded. 'Has he come around at all?'

'Twitched a bit. Nothing really… him.'

Martha checked his pupils, one hand on his cheek. 'Any injuries?'

'Couple of bruises. Bit his tongue. Cut above his eye. The nurses already—' Rose's voice caught, her eyes finally looking at her. 'God, Martha. He just... went .'

Rose's arms tightened reflexively around him. She pressed her nose into his hair.

Martha met her gaze, steady. 'Sometimes it just happens. We'll figure out why. Brax is already looking at his bloods. Any triggers you can think of? Stress, lack of sleep, fever, dehydration? Has he got any history of seizures in this body we can remember?'

Rose hesitated. 'I've been wrackin' my brains. There's a few times, but they've always been for some outside reason, Martha, and never that long . And there's... well. There's definitely been stress.'

Martha didn't push, understanding the subtext. 'I've already arranged that he goes to acute care for a bit. Just while we figure out what happened. The porters should be here soon.'

'He's gonna love that,' Rose said, her voice laced with sarcasm.

'He's not really getting a choice in this,' Martha replied, not unkindly. 'I'm glad you were here and responded so quickly, but sometimes you might not be.'

Rose nodded. Her hand moved back to his hair. He shifted faintly.

The door opened again.

'Sweetheart,' said Jackie, breezing in without knocking. She took in the scene instantly—Rose curled on the bed, the Doctor half on her, pale and tangled in wires, the oxygen mask over his face. Jackie sighed. 'Oh, for God's sake,' she muttered, crossing to the bed. 'Daft git.'

Rose let out a sound between a laugh and a sob. 'Mum.'

Jackie leaned over and smoothed a hand gently over his fringe, thumb brushing just above the cut on his brow. 'Anything I can do, sweetheart?'

'We... we need to pack up his stuff for transfer,' Rose replied. 'He's going to the acute ward.'

'I'll do that. You stay there, sweetheart,' Jackie told her. She gave Rose's shoulder a light squeeze, then bustled around the room gathering the few things he had—the clothes he'd come in, an old book Rose had fetched from the TARDIS, and a small dinosaur Theo had left with him.

Martha rechecked her tablet. 'I'll go and check the room's ready upstairs. I'll meet you there.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The corridor felt too quiet as the porters pushed the Doctor to his new home.

Rose walked beside the trolley, one hand curled lightly around the Doctor's, her thumb brushing across his knuckles. He had barely reacted when they'd transferred him to the trolley and was now utterly motionless, with his skin pale and clammy and the oxygen hissing quietly, still pushing him air through the mask.

The eerie feeling started three doors down.

It wasn't anything overt; more, a sense that Rose began to feel they were being watched. She swore that every now and then, something moved just outside her line of sight.

She told herself it was just exhaustion. The adrenaline. The way her heart was still beating a little too fast, even though he was stable. Her new Gallifreyan kidney was tingling slightly, though that could have been her own heightened perception.

The younger porter glanced at her as they walked. 'You alright, ma'am?'

Rose nodded. 'Yeah. Just tired. Long night.'

The woman smiled at her kindly.

They turned the corner and approached the new ward. The door opened automatically, sliding aside with a polite beep. As they crossed the threshold, Rose thought she heard something behind them. A faint creak.

She turned slightly, but there was nothing there. Just the corridor they'd come from, silent and still.

The male porter glanced back too, then shrugged. 'Old place,' he said. 'Weird acoustics.'

They continued into the new private room and settled him in. Monitors clicked back into place. Oxygen rechecked. The nurse on duty greeted her kindly and made pains to ensure the Doctor was comfortable and had what he needed, then went to complete her handover with Martha.

Once everyone else was gone, Rose settled herself on his bed again and held him.

In the corridor, the overhead lights flickered once, very faintly.

No one noticed. But the Doctor twitched, a soft murmur escaping his lips.

Then, all was still again.

~ ΘΣ ~

The Doctor woke slowly.

For one brief, agonising second, he remembered the nightmare—the tubes, the restraints, the pressure in his throat, the breathing that wasn't his own. Her voice. Her weight. Her heat. Her smell.

Then, it all slipped away as reality came to him in slow, disjointed waves.

The first thing he became truly aware of was his body, aching with a deep muscle soreness, like he'd just run three marathons while being electrocuted. His tongue was throbbing a little. He had no idea why. He was also being cradled—propped upright against someone soft, warm, and familiar. A hand moved slowly through his hair in a rhythmic motion. 

Rose.

There was low conversation around him. Hushed. Gentle touches at both his arms with cool fingers rotating his wrist, checking pulse points. A blood pressure cuff hissed and released around his left bicep. 

He forced his eyes to open. Light stabbed and then faded. At the foot of the bed, Martha stood holding a tablet. On the screen was Braxiatel's face, looking every bit as serious as ever. Some medical personnel were flittering around him. And—hold on.

Was that Jackie Tyler clutching his hand?

He turned his head slightly, sluggishly. Yep. That was Jackie. 

That was when he knew something must have happened. His foggy brain struggled to assess who might be in trouble.

'Morning, sweetheart,' Jackie said in a light tone. She patted his hand like he was seven and had just wet the bed. 'Decided to give us all a bloody heart attack, did you?'

He tried to speak, but only a half-formed confused noise came out. 

Rose shifted under him. 'Hey, hey, easy. Don't push yourself.'

'You had a tonic-clonic seizure last night,' Martha said gently, stepping closer now, checking his pupils with a small penlight.

His brows crept faintly together. Seizure? He didn't remember anything.

'You're okay,' Martha added. 'Vitals are stabilising. We've ruled out stroke or clots. Hearts rhythm's still twitchy but manageable. No signs of oxygen deprivation or brain damage. That's the good news. But we don't know for sure what caused it.'

'It appears you have the survival instincts of a mayfly, Theta,' Brax's voice offered dryly from the tablet.

The Doctor slumped a little further into Rose's arms at that. Something warm pressed against his temple. Her lips. He exhaled against her shoulder. That was about all he could manage.

Jackie leaned in, smoothing the blanket over him. She fussed a bit, tucking it in. 'You ever scare my daughter like that again, you're in trouble,' she said, faux-casually. Then, quieter: 'But I'm glad you're alright, sweetheart.'

The Doctor shifted slightly in Rose's arms, trying to lift his head. His eyelids fluttered with the effort. 

'Hi,' he rasped. It was very weak.

Rose smiled in relief and kissed his forehead. 'Hi.'

He blinked up at her, eyes dazed. 'Where…?'

'You're in Acute now,' Rose said gently. 'They moved you after the seizure. Just a bit more monitoring, that's all.'

His face tightened faintly.

'You gave me the worst fright of my life,' she whispered, brushing his hair from his face. 'If you wanted me to cuddle you for four hours straight, you could've just asked , yeah?'

He gave a faint smile. 'S…sorry,' he croaked.

Rose shook her head instantly, holding him tighter. 'Don't be. You're not in trouble. I'm not mad at you.' She softened. 'Yet.'

Martha leaned in again, checking his pulses at the neck, and using a small device to check retinal responsiveness while she worked. 'He's still postictal. Could be drifting in and out for a while. Just keep talking to him, Rose.'

'I will,' Rose murmured and then said something else to him he didn't quite catch as the fog descended again, and his eyes slipped closed.

He heard them continue to chat, but the words didn't make much sense to him. Voices blurred together, syllables slipping sideways as though dipped in water, rippling.

That should've worried him, but it didn't. Nothing pierced the thick current of half-consciousness except Rose's hand in his hair, her fingertips tracing slow, grounding circles into his scalp, down his temple, along the line of his jaw.

He didn't sleep, exactly. Just drifted. His consciousness loosened, slipping sideways like he was floating in a warm current—weightless, suspended, safe.

Voices lapped at him in gentle bursts. Rose. Martha. Someone over comms. Footsteps on linoleum. Paper being shuffled. A quiet beep. Another. The hiss of oxygen cycling at his side. The soft splash of water soaking into cloth, then being wrung out.

It was peaceful.

And then his mind twisted.

At first, it was a shift in contact. Fingers on his wrist. They weren't Rose's. A nurse, maybe, checking his pulse. Then, a cloth touched his collarbone.

'Just getting him comfortable,' someone murmured in the aether.

But the words stretched inside his head—bent, echoed, warped like glass in heat.

Just getting him compliant.

Warm water hit his side, and his hearts lurched. Something in him flinched violently.

Compliance. Compliance.

His gown was moved aside. Air met his chest. A cloth passed beneath his ribs, up his spine.

His mind began screaming.

Compliance. Compliance. COMPLIANCE.

He couldn't move. Couldn't flinch. Couldn't even twitch.

Rose was still there, with her hand threading through his hair, whispering soft reassurances— you're doing really well —but now the hands were everywhere all at the same time. Lifting his limbs, sponging his abdomen, taking his pulse, rolling him slightly.

Somewhere, a voice asked if he'd be able to have dinner.

Time to feed him , said another.

Panic surged, and suddenly, it was all back. The medbed. The feeding tube slithering into his nose.

He gagged reflexively, feeling rubber against cartilage and wet plastic down his throat. His body convulsed as suddenly the oxygen mask changed, turning into rubber with straps, tubes, and feeding ports. Pressure filled his mouth, forcing it open.

Then—

Lanwa.

Her weight dropped onto him. Crushed him. Thighs against his hips. The scent of sandalwood hit him like a punch in the face.

Don't scream, Theta. Be good.

Respirations stable. Hearts rate within expected parameters.

Her nails grazed his ribs.

Breathe through your mouth, Theta, just like that. There's a good boy.

Vitals normal. Skin temp high. Response rate elevated.

He knew it wasn't real. But his body didn't.

Lanwa's weight slammed down, forcing him inside her. Then she moved, utterly mechanical, like a piston. Pain bloomed through his pelvis, his hips aching like the bones were cracking with every thrust.

A cuff inflated on his arm, squeezing in rhythm.

Hearts rate 176, Lanwa breathed into his ear. Like she was taking his vitals while raping him at the same time.

He wanted it to stop. He needed it to stop.

Her pelvis dropped again, and someone pressed something in his ear.

He knew it was just a thermometer, and the device took his reading with a polite beep. But then the beeping didn't stop. It became a shriek, then a child's scream piercing into his ears, repeating again and again in time with the motion of her hips.

Everything blurred. Lanwa's voice. The medbed's whine. The rape. The dead child. The grief. The blood. The loss. The pain.

It was suddenly flooding, and he was suddenly drowning .

Then Lanwa was finished with him, bleeding back into the darkness. The child's constant scream quieted, and the sandalwood diffused. But he was still shaking, with his skin tacky with sweat, his groin throbbing in pain, and the taste of bile burning on his tongue.

Then he felt another hand. Someone was wiping his head. He instinctively knew it wasn't Rose. Probably a nurse or a healthcare assistant. Probably someone who in no way, shape, or form wanted to cause him any pain.

It should've been fine. But it wasn't.

His body twitched. Real, this time. A spike spot down his thigh as his leg spasmed and his shoulder twitched violently.

'You're doin' really well.'  

Her voice sounded wrong. He didn't know if it was Rose or Lanwa. He didn't know what to do, nor could he even move if he decided. So, instead, he lay there screaming silently for help.

Then he came to, opening his eyes to the reality around him. Rose was still holding him.

'Hey,' she said softly, smiling.

He gazed at her for a moment and then immediately started to cry. Not sobbing. Not loud. Just tears sliding sideways across his temples into the pillow.

Rose's eyes widened as she instinctively wiped at the tears. 'Hey, hey,' she whispered. 'What is it? Why're you cryin’?'

He swallowed. 'I... I think I'm in trouble, Rose.'

She sat up a little straighter. 'How?'

'Why—' His voice broke. He tried again. 'Why is this happening?'

'What d'you mean?' she asked gently.

'I can't—can't separate it anymore.' His voice was hoarse. 'It's all bleeding together. Lanwa. The medbed…'

He turned to look at her, blinking through the sting in his eyes.

'I'm not mad.'

She shook her head, brushing her fingers across his cheek. 'No, you're not. You've been blinded, drugged, tortured, mutilated, enslaved, raped, chased, stabbed and beaten up. I think you've taken more crap in eight months than most people do in a thousand lifetimes. That's not madness. That's just a really bad year, yeah?'

He gave a soft, bitter little laugh as he shifted slightly, then winced. His hand went instinctively to his mouth. Rose caught it gently.

'Careful,' she said, brushing a thumb under his chin. 'You bit your tongue during the seizure.'

He blinked. 'Oh. That… explains the taste.'

'It bled a lot,' she said softly. 'You're alright.'

He nodded faintly, eyes drifting up toward the ceiling. 'So I had a seizure,' he muttered. ' Proper one?'

'Yeah.'

'How long?'

'Seven minutes.' She tried to smile. 'It was really dramatic. Proper Exorcist job. The whole bed shook. I nearly wet myself.'

He gave the smallest huff of laughter. 'How was Brax?'

'Oh, you know. That room stank of 'I told you so' even though he never actually said it.'

'And the kids?'

'They don't know. Brax took them for some extra lessons today; they're still in Torchwood with Jack.'

'Lucky them.'

'Yeah. Leah moaned a lot.'

He smiled a little, but it didn't last; his face fell. '... I'm... I'm so sorry, Rose.'

'Don't,' she said quickly. 'Don't apologise. You're not doin' this on purpose.'

'I don't know how to fix it,' he rasped. 'I don't even know how to stop it getting worse.'

'We can fix this,' she said, fierce and quiet. 'Trust me.'

She kissed him once, slow and sure. He was quiet for a moment, staring at nothing across the room.

'What?' she asked.

'...How are you doing this?' he asked.

She leaned back a little. 'Doin' what?'

'You were there, Rose. You saw—you felt what she did. To me. To you. To the baby. To the Universe. How are you not…’

He trailed off. 

‘Fallin’ apart?’ she suggested gently. 

He nodded miserably.

‘I dunno,’ she confessed. ‘I guess that right now… You're more important.’

He looked away from her. '...But all of it was my fault.'

She placed a hand on his cheek and tilted his head, forcing him to look at her.

'I love you,' she said, firm and warm and genuine. 'I loved you through it. And I love you now. What we went through wasn't you. It wasn't me. It wasn't our child. It was her . And none of it— none of it —was our fault. Y'hear me?'

He didn't answer, disconnecting his gaze.

'And I told you before,' she added, fiercer now, 'she was a fuckin' coward for what she did to you.'

That hung in the air for a moment.

'So what's next?' he asked.

'Pardon?'

'I take it I'm staying in hospital for another year.'

Rose heard him. That wasn't a joke, not anymore. It was bitter.

'We've been moved to an acute ward, just cos they can't figure out why you seized,' she told him.

He sighed. 'I'm so sick of hospitals.'

She kissed his forehead. 'I know. But if you're gonna keep beatin’ out of sync and havin’ massive seizures the medics can't explain, you're gonna make some people nervous. Me included.'

The Doctor didn't answer. Just blinked slowly up at the ceiling. Rose watched him a moment, still holding his hand, rubbing his knuckles gently, giving him space to think. 

'When I was in the Time War,' he suddenly said, voice distant, 'I got caught in a bioweapons field that had a kind of meshed neuro-virus. It was meant to flood your brain with hallucinations and project your worst fears until you begged someone to shoot you.' He paused briefly, looking at her. 'I got rid of it. Eventually. But this feels worse. Because it's not something else. Not some weapon or infection or outside... thing . It's me. It's inside me.'

He breathed out hard.

Rose closed her eyes, just for a second. Then she shifted closer, laying her forehead gently against his. 'It doesn't matter. Whatever this is—like your brain tryin' to eat itself or whatever—we're gonna sort it out.'

They stayed like that for a long moment, forehead to forehead, her thumb brushing softly along his cheekbone.

Eventually, his voice came again, low and small: 'I want to go home, Rose.'

'I know,' she whispered. 'I wanna go home too.'

She squeezed his hand, and he said nothing else.

~ ΘΣ ~

It was midnight now. The corridor was still and dark, the lights off.

Rose had asked a member of staff to stay with the Doctor as she went to the toilet and was now returning as quickly as she could. As she reached his corridor, Jack appeared, giving her a smile.

'Hey.'

She tried to respond in an upbeat, positive way, but she couldn't. She just looked at him, trying not to cry.

His smile dropped. 'What's wrong?'

Rose sniffed. 'God, Jack. He's not okay.'

Jack nodded. 'Yeah. When you don't know why a seizure happened, it's not great.'

'No, I mean…' She swallowed, staring ahead at the far wall. 'I've seen him grievin'. I've seen him after Volag Noc, after the Time War, after, well, everything. But this—' She shook her head. 'I've never seen him slip like this.'

Jack instinctively took hold of her shoulder. 'Yeah.'

Her throat tightened. 'I'm scared to leave him alone, Jack.'

That made him straighten up. 'What d'you mean?'

She swallowed. 'Every time I'm not in the room, I come back thinkin'... what if he's spiralled? What if he's gone somewhere I can't reach this time?'

Jack's voice dropped, 'do you think he'd hurt himself?'

Rose shook her head quickly. 'No. Not on purpose. But something's happenin' in his head. And if it gets worse—if he really believes something's wrong with him…' Her voice wavered. 'I don't know what that would do to him.'

Jack was quiet.

'He won't talk about it properly,' Rose said, hugging her arms around herself. 'But he told me he can't think straight. He said he couldn't separate anything. Like everything's bleedin' together. The medbed, Lanwa… all of it.'

'Is it mostly about the medbed?' he asked, tense.

She pulled a face. 'I dunno, it's like… that's the piece that broke him. Lanwa, the baby, the war—it's all horrible. But that room? That machine? It stayed in him. And now I think he's seein' things.'

Jack frowned. 'Seeing what?'

'I dunno. He won't say. But it's shaken him. He's not just scared. He's afraid he's—'

She didn't finish. She didn't need to.

Jack let out a long breath. 'Shit.'

They stood together in the corridor, silent, a shared heaviness between them.

'I wanna take him home,' Rose said at last. 'To the Tardis. He's beggin' to go back, and I keep thinkin' if I could just get him into our bed, back into something familiar… maybe he'd rest. Obviously, not perfectly, but she helps him, Jack.

Jack gazed at her, sympathetic. 'Y'know, I'd carry him there myself if I thought it'd help. But he's poisoned, having serious arrhythmias, and just had a massive seizure with no obvious cause. And believe me, I hate saying it, but Brax is right. If something really serious happened, then the Tardis isn't the best place to deal with that.'

'I know.' She wiped at her face with the edge of her sleeve. 'I just… I dunno how to help him when I can't even touch what's hurting him.'

Jack watched her closely, then said gently, 'Don't forget you're hurting too.'

She went still.

'You're trying to keep it together for him, I know. But you went through all of it, too. You're allowed not to be okay, too. Don't forget that.'

She let out a weak, humourless laugh. 'God, we're so messed up.'

Jack stepped forward and hugged her. Properly. She let herself lean into it, just taking a moment to breathe properly.

After a few moments, she pulled back, sniffing quietly, trying to re-centre herself. 'I need to get back to him. I… oh god.' She stopped. Blinked again. 'Are Leah and Theo okay?'

Jack gave her a gentle smile. 'They're fine. Asleep in the Tardis after a really boring day with Brax. I told them they can visit soon, maybe tomorrow.'

She nodded again just as the nurse she'd left with the Doctor opened the door, her voice low but urgent.

'Rose, I think you need to get in here.'

Rose didn't ask. She followed the nurse in immediately.

The room was dim—the monitors had settled into steadier rhythms, his ECG no longer blinking red. The oxygen hissed quietly. The machines, for once, weren't what caught her attention.

It was him. He was crying.

Not loud sobs. Nothing like that. Just soundless , broken half-sobs, half-whimpers. His body lay limp under the blankets, his head turned into the pillow like he could vanish if he just hid deep enough.

She crossed the room in three silent steps and climbed carefully onto the bed beside him, avoiding the IVs and monitor leads. She slid her arms around him from behind, pulling him gently into her. His body came easily, slack and pliant as if he didn't have the strength to resist.

He didn't speak or open his eyes, but he moved—just slightly—curling toward her, like instinct. Like somewhere, on a level deeper than thought, he knew it was her and that she was safe. She held him, kissing the top of his head as she pulled him tighter. She could feel him still shaking, little tremors passing through him like aftershocks.

'It's okay,' she whispered, her lips against his temple. 'I'm here. I've got you. I'm not goin' anywhere.'

Still no answer. Just another soft, wounded sound buried deep in his throat. She rocked him slightly, her chin resting against his crown. The machines beeped steadily, clinically, and utterly indifferent to it all.

'Just stop hurtin' him,' she whispered with her voice cracking. 'Please. Just stop. He doesn't deserve this.'

She didn't know who she was speaking to. The universe, maybe. Time. Some kind of God. The part of his brain that wouldn't let him rest.

'I'm beggin' you,' she said, and it came out broken. 'Leave him alone. Please.'

A long pause.

Then, quieter, almost to herself: 'You owe it to him.'

There was no response. No sudden appearance of some kind of God. No time vortex opening to undo what had been done in a swathe of ethereal light. Just him, in her arms, worn down to the bone.

Eventually, the tremors slowly faded, and his breath evened out.

Chapter Text

Rose blinked awake into a quiet room. The bed felt warm, and the blanket was tangled around her legs with her arms wrapped protectively around him. By all rights, waking up with him beside her should have felt comforting, but instead, this morning, it felt strangely hollow.

She moved slightly, suddenly instinctively worried, and quickly noticed he was already awake. His head was tilted to the window, his eyes fixed on the view beyond his four walls.

'Hey,' she whispered softly, reaching out to brush the hair from his head.

He didn't answer. Instead, he shifted away from her touch without a word.

It was the first morning since they'd found each other again that he hadn't said good morning.

Rose sat up fully, gazing at him. 'Doctor?'

He didn't look at her. 'You should get something to eat. You're still recovering from the transplant.'

She frowned, a little confused at his demeanour. 'Um, yeah, I will. D'you want anythin'?'

'No, thanks.'

'Okay,' she murmured, getting out of bed. She paused to look down at him. 'Are you okay?'

'Peachy,' he replied.

She kissed his forehead, hoping to coax some sort of reaction, but he gave her nothing. So she left, with something lingering in the pit of her stomach.

~ ΘΣ ~

An hour later, Rose sat tucked into the corner chair, knees drawn up slightly, watching him. The Doctor lay flat on the bed, eyes open and fixed, staring at the ceiling tiles.

Martha was at the foot of the bed, her tablet balanced on her arm, which displayed Braxiatel's face in another video call.

'Arrhythmias are still intermittent,' Martha was saying, checking his telemetry for the previous night. 'Couple of short runs overnight, but nothing sustained and no seizure activity in the last forty-eight hours. His standing pressures are still swinging, though.'

'Expected,' Brax replied. 'If the neurotoxin is embedded in autonomic regulation, the sympathetic overcorrection would produce that exact pattern. He'll drop like a stone until the system recalibrates.'

'Which it might not do spontaneously,' Martha agreed. 'We're balancing on the edge of hypotension every time he shifts position. It's a wonder he's not flatlining on standing.'

'Gallifreyan vasoconstriction is more resilient,' Brax stated. 'The danger isn't cardiac arrest, it's mechanical trauma from the collapses. Fracture, cranial bleed; that sort of thing.'

'Thanks for that image,' Martha muttered. 'I'd like to reduce ECG frequency if the next few hours are quiet. He's stable enough, even if the profile isn't pretty.'

'Agreed,' Brax said. 'But under no circumstances should he be mobilised unsupervised. Theta has never been sensible with convalescence.'

Rose glanced at the Doctor. His jaw had tightened.

'We'll have to review discharge against functional safety. If he can't maintain upright posture for more than thirty seconds without syncope, we're looking at another week minimum,' Brax finished, unblinking.

The Doctor exhaled once, slowly, and kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling.

'Theta. Input?' Brax said.

The Doctor didn't answer.

'Theta,' Brax repeated, tone flattening into that familiar brand of Brax-style condescension. 'I asked you a question.'

The Doctor turned his head just far enough to look at the screen. His eyes were flat, his voice even flatter. 'And I ignored it.'

Brax gave the faintest sigh. 'Okay, you're clearly upset by something.'

The Doctor gave a humourless laugh. 'Oh, what gave it away? The radiant optimism? The healthy glow?'

'You need to pull out of this, Theta,' Brax said, as if reciting a simple instruction to build a flat-pack wardrobe.

'Oh, is that what I need to do?' the Doctor snapped, voice rising. 'Pull out of it. That's the magic solution, is it? Brilliant. How simple. Thank you, Brax, for your unparalleled insight.'

Brax didn't flinch. 'Don't be childish.'

'Don't be a smug bastard,' the Doctor shot back.

'Doctor—' Rose started gently, but he cut her off with a shake of his head. His tone shifted, faster, clipped and bitter as he switched to Gallifreyan.

'Ei gofok eila’dushala. Braxiatel liwai choRoji,' he directed at his brother.

'Ei'nelda roya, Theta,' Brax said with patience.

'Napa, Maezol-Braxiatel, ei'nelsha-N wiGanza eon nori!' the Doctor snapped.

Brax let out a long breath. ‘Eon’rasgili klopa ca ligki.’

'Eifu-o roya qi. N-eon nori ei'arari bai ca rasuzpux.'

Brax groaned. ‘Ugh, Theta, N-ei’ca lirim-oxaki, eon wiLiwai qi.’

‘Eon liwaa je, Braxiatel, jhu nelsha-o eon hepss N-graxx?’ the Doctor spat.

Brax paused for a moment, clearly a little stunned, before his brow knotted and he gritted his teeth. ‘Novai ei joh eon wiAguzi-N, Theta.’

Rose blinked as the screen went black. Braxiatel had ended the call.

Martha didn't speak right away. Her eyes flicked to the ECG, where the lines still spiked erratically, then to the Doctor's clenched hands, before she set her tablet down.

'What was that about?' she asked quietly.

'Nothing,' the Doctor said, far too casually. 'Just the usual brotherly bonding.'

Martha raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. 'Doctor, are you—'

'I want to discharge myself,' he cut in, not looking at her.

'You're not medically cleared,' Martha replied, calm but firm.

'I don't care.'

'You had a seizure less than forty-eight hours ago. Your hearts are still unstable. You're fainting when you stand. You're not well. Let us look after you.'

'Oh, don't worry,' the Doctor said dryly, 'I'll try to schedule my next complete neurological collapse during your office hours so you can play doctor a bit more.'

Martha glanced briefly at Rose, then back to the Doctor. 'I'll come back later.'

She left, the soft click of the door closing punctuating the stillness that followed.

'That was rude,' Rose said seriously into the quiet.

'Tough,' was all the Doctor replied.

'Look, you're gettin' frustrated and scared. I understand. But they're genuinely tryin' to help.'

He sighed, but didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling.

'Talk to me,' Rose begged and stepped closer. 'Yell at me. I don't care what. Please just talk to me. What's happenin'?'

He swallowed, and for the first time, his gaze shifted to meet hers. His expression softened a little.

'I'm stalling.' The words came out flat. 'I'm broken, Rose. Glitching.'

'Don't say that.'

'Why? Because it scares you?' His eyes narrowed slightly. 'Because it scares me.'

Rose inhaled, forcing herself to steady. 'You're still you.'

He gave a soft, humourless scoff. 'Am I? I should be out there. I shouldn't be like this.'

'I know.'

'No, you don't,' he snapped, more sharply this time.

She held his gaze, refusing to back down. 'Hey. I know you're upset, but stop takin' it out on everyone else.'

'Upset,' he echoed bitterly. 'I'm not upset.'

'Then what? You're just determined to make everyone else miserable today?'

His mouth opened, ready to lash out, but he clearly thought better of it. He shut it again.

Rose moved in, her hand finding the curve of his back and rubbing gently. 'Hey. I love you,' she said, her voice firm but soft.

For a moment, he didn't respond. Then she leaned in, slow and careful, intending to kiss him.

His whole body recoiled like she'd touched a raw nerve.

'Please don't,' he croaked, voice breaking halfway through. 

Rose froze. She didn't move again. She just stood there, heart cracking quietly in her chest as she watched him fold further in on himself.

~ ΘΣ ~

The TARDIS was dim and hushed, settled into that half-awake lull she slipped into when her family was still sleeping inside.

In her room, Leah stirred under the duvet, blinking sleepily in the dark. Something had pulled her out of sleep.

She sat up slowly, frowning. The usual TARDIS hum was there, but there was something else, too. A high, soft sound, flute-like. Not loud, just enough to prod at the edge of her awareness.

It came again. A light trill, almost musical. Definitely not the TARDIS, she decided. It wasn't one of her songs.

For a fleeting second, Leah thought of her dad—maybe he was better and in the console room, playing some weird instrument. Her hearts lifted briefly, but then the sound came again, and she realised with a jolt it wasn't coming from the console room at all. It was in her room.

She slid out from under the covers and crouched beside her bed. The blue-coloured bird-shaped ocarina she'd picked up on Tuvala was buried beneath a pile of plush animals, exactly where she'd left it. She hadn't touched it since they'd come back.

Leah hesitated, her hand hovering. The air around it shimmered faintly—not hot or cold, just… tingling. Charged. The TARDIS walls seemed to lean in slightly, listening.

Then it went abruptly silent, and her bedroom door creaked open.

'Leah, wake up, sweetheart. It's late,' her gran called.

Leah turned, blinking against the sudden slice of light. Jackie was silhouetted in the doorway.

Leah sighed, flopping back onto her heels. Another boring day of Uncle Brax's lectures about some artist she'd never heard of.

'Brax is busy today,' her nan said, as if she'd read her mind. 'We're gonna go see your dad.'

Leah's hearts jumped into her throat. She scrambled up, the ocarina forgotten instantly, and got dressed.

By the time she skidded into the TARDIS kitchen, her gran was already ladling out porridge. Leah barely had time to sit before Theo came charging in, pyjamas skew-whiff, plastic stegosaurus clutched in one sticky hand.

'STEGGY GO SWIM!' he announced to the world, holding it upside down. 'STEGGY GO SPLASH SPLASH!' 

He tried to climb onto the table. Jackie caught him by the collar mid-transfer.

'Oi! Sit down and eat your porridge,' she said, forcing him into a chair.

'RAHH!' Theo shouted happily as he slammed the dinosaur repeatedly onto the table. ' RAHHHH !'

'Is Dad okay?' Leah asked somewhere under the commotion.

Her nan maintained her smile, although it felt a bit deliberate to Leah. 'He's okay, sweetheart. He just 'ad a bit of a funny turn yesterday.'

Leah's brow furrowed. 'What kind of funny turn?'

Her nan hesitated, glancing between her two grandchildren. Theo was happily stirring porridge with the stegosaurus' tail and talking to himself.

'A seizure,' her nan said.

Leah froze mid-spoonful, her mind instantly whirring. 'What kind of seizure? Was it sudden? Did he collapse? Was he conscious after? Was it focal or generalised? Tonic-clonic? Did they need an anticonvulsant, or was it self-limiting?'

'STEGGY EAT PWO-RIDGE,' Theo yelled, shoving the dinosaur face-first into his bowl.

Jackie blinked, trying to split her attention between porridge, stegosaurus, and the sudden intensity in Leah's voice. 'I don't know, sweetheart.'

Leah tilted her head, thinking hard. 'Could still be the anaesthetic. I told 'em it wasn't clearing right—if it's interrupting neuroelectrical feedback, that might explain the seizure. Unless his hearts—'

'Leah, sweetheart,' Jackie's voice cut in gently but firmly. 'I dunno. You'll have to ask 'im yourself. I'm just the porridge provider. Now eat up, and you can grill your dad when we get there. I'm sure he'll love that.'

Leah gave a reluctant nod and picked up her spoon again. But her mind was already racing.

Theo leaned across the table, eyes wide and face porridge-smeared. 'LEAH! STEGGY SAY RAWR.'

'Roar,' Leah said absently, already a million miles away.

~ ΘΣ ~

The hospital room's door suddenly banged open so hard it rattled against the stopper.

'DADDY!'

Theo shot into the room like a hurricane, nearly taking out the IV stand on his way past.

'Whoa!' Jackie grabbed at his jumper and missed by a mile.

'Theo—!' Rose half rose from the chair just as he barrelled straight into the side of the bed, bounced off, and made a grab for the control panel.

The bed shot up with a loud whirr, tipping the Doctor into an undignified sitting position.

'Oooh!' Theo squealed, delighted. He mashed another button, and the bed juddered back down again, then halfway, then up in a series of jerks.

'Theo, no—' Rose lunged, but he was already on the bed, giggling like a maniac.

The Doctor made a startled sound as the bed jolted. And then he laughed .

'Oi,' he said, reaching forward and hugging the boy up before he could hit another switch.

Theo wriggled, then flopped dramatically against his dad's chest. 'Steggy say RAWR ,' he informed him gravely.

'What kind of seizure was it?' Leah asked without preamble, climbing onto the chair next to the bed.

The Doctor blinked. 'Er, hi, Leah.'

'Gran said you had a seizure,' she pressed, ignoring the greeting. 'Was it focal or generalised? Did you bite your tongue? Was there an aura?'

'Hi, Leah,' he tried again, a little helplessly.

'Hi,' she said politely, before quickly resuming, 'was it tonic-clonic?'

Theo suddenly gasped, loud and scandalised. 'DADDY! LEAH STOLE CHAIR!'

'It's not your chair,' Leah said automatically, eyes still locked on her father.

'Is!' Theo declared. 'Daddy, Leah's bein' BOSSY.'

'Never heard of that before,' the Doctor muttered dryly, smirking.

'Daddy, Steggy's hungry ,' Theo announced, shoving the dinosaur at his face.

'Dad,' Leah cut in sharply, dragging him back. 'What kind was it?'

He sighed and adjusted Theo onto his hip. 'Generalised tonic-clonic. Seven minutes. They gave me an anticonvulsant. Postictal phase lasted… too long.'

'Did you bite your tongue?'

'Little bit.'

'Was there cyanosis?'

'Leah!' Theo interrupted, wriggling out of his dad's arms and onto the bed. 'LOOK! STEGGY JUMP!' He bounced the dinosaur on the Doctor's knee, then made it walk up Leah's arm. 'Steggy go climb climb climb !'

'Theo!' Leah swatted at the toy. 'Stop, I'm talking to Daddy!'

'Steggy talk to Daddy too!' Theo yelled.

'Dad!' Leah's voice snapped back. 'Did they sedate you?'

'No,' he said.

'Theo, stop touchin' that!' Rose yelped as he started crawling over the Doctor's lap toward the control panel again.

'NOOO! Steggy's drivin'!'

'You feelin' any better today, sweetheart?' Jackie asked the Doctor as Theo and Rose fought for the bed controls.

He hesitated, still watching Leah's serious little face. 'I'm… here,' he said eventually. 'Bit glitched.'

'You're not glitched,' Leah said. 'You're rebooting.'

He blinked at her, caught off guard. 'Is that what I'm doing?'

"Course,' Leah stated as if it was obvious.

'Daddy… Steggy say… RAWR ,' Theo whispered loudly, now wriggling in Rose's arms.

Leah was already leaning forward again. 'Did you have automatisms? Did you aspirate? What was your GCS score after?'

'LEAH!' Theo bellowed, wriggling free of Rose's grip like a greased eel and scuttling back onto the bed. 'LEAH, STEGGY'S A PILOT. SAY ZOOM ZOOM!'

'Theo, I'm talking to Daddy !' Leah snapped, attempting to bat the dinosaur away.

'STEGGY ZOOM,' Theo chanted at full volume, bouncing the dinosaur on the Doctor's chest.

'Dad, what anticonvulsant did they use?'

'Daddy, tell Leah Steggy's a pilot!'

'Dad, what was your blood pressure after?'

'Daddy, RAWR !'

'Dad, did they give you oxygen?'

Theo gasped mid-bounce. 'DADDY, STEGGY FLYIN' NOW! ZOOOOM!'

Leah threw her hands up. 'Dad, tell him to stop!'

The Doctor leaned back against the pillows, eyes flicking between them as they fought to talk over one another.

'Daddy, PLAY!' Theo squealed.

'Dad, what was your recovery time?' Leah insisted.

'RAWR!'

'Shut up, Theo!'

'Zoom!'

The Doctor closed his eyes briefly. 'Right,' he said eventually, glancing at Rose, who was smirking. 'Someone sedate me.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The family spent the whole day together, and twelve hours later, their energy finally ran out. They said good night with Theo already dozing in his gran's arms, before the door closed behind them, and the quiet finally rolled in.

Rose sank into the chair beside him, automatically tugging the blanket higher over his legs, careful of the brace on his left one. She caught the faint, irregular flutter from the monitor – his left heart still skipping every so often.

'God, it's quiet,' she said in the silence.

The Doctor let out a sound that might have been a laugh. 'Were they always like that?'

'Yep,' Rose confirmed, smirking.

'You must've been a terrible kid,' he mused.

'Oi, don't blame me,' she protested. 'That right there was 50 percent you.'

He smiled. '68 percent, actually.'

Rose grinned, watching him. His face was pale, worn thin, but not as grey as it had been that morning. His hair still bore the evidence of Theo's enthusiastic hugs. There were faint creases by his eyes where he'd smiled properly for the first time in days.

'You look… softer,' she said before she could stop herself.

His brow tilted. 'Do I?'

'Compared to this mornin', yeah.'

He let out a slow breath and looked at the ceiling. 'This morning was…' He paused. '...Sorry.'

Rose reached for his hand and laced their fingers together.

'It's okay,' she said quietly. 'You're here now.'

They stayed with their hands woven together for a moment, the steady beeping of the machines attached to him filling the silence.

And then it hit.

Not sudden or sharp, but deep. The bond—silent for months, cracked and tainted by Lanwa—abruptly shifted.

Rose gasped softly, and the Doctor tensed slightly as a surge of warmth flooded his chest.

Rose's eyes shone. 'Can you feel that?'

He nodded. The sensation was unmistakable. That old, golden thread, knotted and mended, now tightening between them. After everything, after the violence and the suffering, after watching her nearly break in two, after almost breaking himself in the process, he'd believed the bond would never recover. That it was too infected, and that they'd simply have to learn to live with the muted, damaged version of it.

But it had endured. And now it was back .

Rose emitted a guttural moan and suddenly lunged at him, launching her body across the hospital bed and into his arms, as if the tiny distance between them had become unbearable. Her hands fumbled, then found his jaw, gripping his face with more force than grace. She drew him to her, their noses collided, and her lips slammed into his with a feverish, almost violent insistence.

'Push me off, just tell me to stop, push me off,' she repeated a few times between kisses, at least attempting to give him the option to stop her before it started. But he didn't. Instead, he grasped her waist, his thumbs tracing the curve of her hips as he tried to steady her.

'I missed you. I missed you so fuckin' much,' Rose gasped.

He was going to say something—he had no idea what—but the words choked up in his throat, replaced by the sensation of the bond between them. It wasn't a thread anymore; it had become a live wire, a current that made his skin tingle and his teeth ache, a supernova detonating somewhere behind his sternum. He felt it manifest as a tingling in his fingertips, a prickling behind his eyes, a strange gravitational pull that yanked him forward into the field of her body. For a moment, he thought he might cry, but the feeling passed as quickly as it arrived, replaced by a rush of adrenaline that made everything sharp and bright and enormous. It was as if the bond suddenly recalled everything they'd been before and yearned to reclaim it all; it was all the moments she had watched him suffer and not been able to reach him; it was all the months he spent grieving her as if she were already dead.

From somewhere above or behind them, a machine screeched, registering what must have been a catastrophic spike in his hearts rate. Her hands found the hem of his hospital shirt and tugged it upward over his head, exposing the expanse of his torso and the scars that accompanied it. He caught a glimpse of her face as the fabric bunched between them—a wild grin, a snarl, and a gaze so fiercely intent he wondered for a split second if she might consume him alive.

He didn't remember reaching for her, but suddenly his hands were in her hair, then sliding down to the smooth arch of her spine, then lower as he found the backs of her thighs and hoisted her up so that her knees slotted perfectly on either side of his hips, and she let out a strangled yelp. She rocked forward, and his skull banged with surprising force into the headboard.

'Sorry,' she gasped and resumed kissing him. He heard her whimper against his mouth, a strange, broken cry of desperation. She grabbed his hand and pushed it under her bra, guiding it to cup her breast as she rocked again in just the right place, and he gasped into her mouth, the jolt of arousal so sudden and sharp it almost made him laugh. She found the waistband of his hospital trousers and yanked at the drawstring, fumbling it loose, and with a single, practised tug, dragged the thin cotton and his underwear down over his thighs and tangled them around his knees.

He almost lost himself in the speed of it. But before she could get rid of her pants, he found himself, from somewhere deep in his rational brain, slamming on the brakes. He barely managed to catch her wrist, gently but insistently pulling her hand away from his groin.

'Rose,' he gasped, his other hand still cradling her breast, 'we really can't do this here.'

She looked at him, lips parted and swollen, her cheeks damp, her hair sticking to her temples. For a moment, she seemed not to register the words at all, her body still vibrating. Then she glanced up, taking in the private hospital room with the thin curtain, the hard plastic chair, the glaring fluorescent light, the ECG leads still somehow attached to his chest. '…Oh. Right.'

She didn't move. Then: 'We did this in a prison once,' she muttered as if that was going to justify it.

He laughed, which made her laugh, and the stupidity of it all hit them both.

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to the corner of his jaw, then another to his temple, still giggling softly. Her forehead came to rest against his as their breaths mingled, warm and steady, both of them finally able to exhale.

Then Rose sat back slightly and looked down. She snorted. 'God, look at you.'

She swept her fringe out of her eyes, casting a pointed glance over him—shirt on the floor and underwear and trousers bunched around his knees. The ECG leads were still somehow inexplicably attached.

'Sorry,' she said, clearly not sorry in the slightest. 'Got a bit feral there.'

'You think?' he said dryly. He tried to sit up further and winced immediately.

'Oi—careful.' She leaned forward, already reaching for his trousers. 'Lift your bum a sec.'

He let her help him wrangle his trousers up over the leg brace and back onto his hips. She then untangled the monitor wires, tugging his shirt back down over his torso and fastening the top few buttons.

Her hand lingered at his collar. She brushed his hair back from where it had flattened in the heat of the moment, then cupped his cheek.

'Please get better,' she murmured, her thumb brushing softly along the hinge of his jaw.

He caught her gaze and held it. 'I will,' he said. 'I promise. I'll stay here. I'll rest.'

She smiled. 'Good. Hurry up. I'm sexually frustrated.'

He huffed out a laugh. 'You're unbelievable.'

'You love it,' she said, grinning.

And then she was curling up beside him again, pulling the blanket over them both and tucking herself into his side.

'So,' she said casually, head on his shoulder, 'what did you say to Brax earlier?'

He made a face. 'In Gallifreyan?'

'No, in semaphore. Of course in Gallifreyan.'

The Doctor winced. 'I… may have told him to… get… fucked.'

Rose pulled back, stared at him, stunned. And then she laughed so hard that it made the bed frame creak. 'Oh my god, you didn't!'

'Yep,' he confirmed sheepishly.

'You really lost it, didn't you,' she said, laughing. 'I hope you used formal phrasin'.'

'Not really,' he admitted. 'I'll say sorry.'

She snorted, still grinning, and curled closer.

Outside, the rain had started. The first since they'd arrived. But in the room, with her head on his shoulder and his arms around her, it didn't matter. For the first time in weeks, they both felt warm.

Chapter Text

It was mid-morning, and a thin stripe of sunlight was splitting through the blinds, cutting across the bed and catching on the edges of the plastic breakfast tray. To Rose's delight, the Doctor had already eaten most of it, including toast, scrambled egg, and a slightly sad-looking banana.

He was perkier this morning. More himself. Rose couldn't decide if it was the extra sleep, the sunlight after the rain, or just the fact that the bond was back after so long. But it felt like a brand new day.

'Martha's coming in a bit,' Rose announced as soon as she could, brushing a crumb of toast from his blanket.

He gave her a sheepish look. 'Oh.'

'Yeah. You'd better apologise.'

He winced. 'Yeah. I will.'

'Good.' She leaned in, grinning. 'D'you want a mirror? Practise a few "I'm sorry" s before she gets here?'

He rolled his eyes before the door opened suddenly, and Martha stepped in, stethoscope around her neck, tablet in hand.

'Morning,' she said.

'Martha,' the Doctor greeted quickly. 'Before you start poking me with anything — I was rude yesterday. I'm sorry. Properly sorry. Forgive me?'

She raised her eyebrows slightly, but she had a knowing smile. 'Apology accepted. Unbelievably, I've had worse patients than you. Besides, I know it's not easy for you being stuck in here.'

He gave a slight nod. 'I promise I'm here for the long haul, now. Stab me with needles, poke me in the eyes, tell me to recite the alphabet backwards. Anything you want.'

Martha smirked and set her tablet on the counter, moving to his side. 'Let's have a look, then. Vitals first.'

He completely resigned himself as she worked through his vital signs, then fiddled with the ECG machine.

'Skipped beats are less frequent than yesterday,' she said after a moment. 'Still not perfect, but you're going in the right direction. You're still doing a paso doble in there, though.'

The door opened and Jack strolled in, hands in his coat pockets. 'What'd I miss?'

'His hearts rhythm's getting better,' Martha said without looking up.

'About time,' Jack said, drifting closer to the bed. 'So when do we get him walking?'

Martha glanced between them, then back at the ECG readings on her tablet. 'Maybe now. Controlled attempt. Supported on both sides, walker ready, and you stop the second you feel light-headed. What d'you think?'

A slow, genuine smile broke over the Doctor's face, and Rose felt the pulse of joy through the bond so sharply it almost made her laugh. 'Deal,' he said, voice fiercely sincere.

Martha arched an eyebrow, then nodded once toward Jack, who gave a little salute and went to haul the squat aluminium walker from the corner.

'Alright,' Martha said, stepping to his right side. 'We're going slow. No heroics.'

'Me? Heroics? Never,' he said, all mock innocence.

'Jack, you take his left,' Martha continued. 'He's probably going to fall that way.'

'With pleasure.' Jack moved in, bracing as though he was expecting to catch someone twice the Doctor's size. 'I'll catch you.'

'And Rose—' Martha started.

'I've got the walker,' Rose said, already reaching for the handles and manoeuvring it into place, before looking at the Doctor. 'You just concentrate on not faceplantin'. Remember to fall left.'

'You're all making me feel so positive about this,' the Doctor muttered facetiously.

Martha's hand rested lightly against his shoulder. 'Ready?'

'Yep.' He adjusted his grip on the bed and drew in a breath. 'One… two… three.'

He pushed up, the weight going through his good leg first, with Jack steadying him from the left. The fractured leg came down tentatively. His arms locked on the walker's handles, knuckles whitening.

For a moment, the world seemed to pivot around him; the room tilted—not dangerously, but enough to fuzz the edges and force him to blink several times. He fixed his gaze on the far wall and didn't waver until the vertigo settled.

'Dizzy?' Martha asked gently.

'A bit,' he admitted. 'But it's getting better.'

'Good. Hold it there… and breathe.'

'I am breathing,' he insisted. 'Promise.'

Rose steadied the walker, moving it forward just enough to invite him into the first step. 'Alright, big man. Show us what you've got.'

He took one step—slow, awkward, with Jack's hand solid under his arm. His balance shifted and held.

'That's it,' Jack said. 'See? Still got it.'

'Course I have,' the Doctor replied, sliding the walker forward. 'I've been walking for centuries. It's one of my better skills.'

They inched their way across the room, each step deliberate. His breathing deepened, the faint strain audible now. Jack matched his pace, while Martha shadowed them. Rose kept the walker just ahead, offering the occasional quiet word—half encouragement, half dare.

By the time they reached the chair by the window, there was a faint sheen of sweat across his forehead.

'And sit,' Martha said, easing him down.

He lowered himself carefully, letting the weight off his legs with a sigh. 'Well, that was terrible.'

'That was excellent,' Martha corrected warmly, crouching to meet his eye level. 'I'm proud of you.'

'Hear that?' Rose said, crouching on his other side. 'You've made the doctor proud. Miracles happen.'

Martha straightened, smiling. 'We'll do it again later. A bit further next time. For now, rest. Don't undo it all in the next five minutes.'

'What am I going to do? Run laps around the ward?' he wondered, leaning back into the chair as Rose stayed beside him.

Martha was about to answer when a voice interrupted from the doorway.

'Theo, watch it!' Jackie cried as Theo shot in the door like a launched missile.

'DADDY!'

He didn't slow down until he spotted his father not in the bed but in the chair by the window. He skidded to a stop, eyes going wide. 'You're UP! I had cereal!'

The Doctor grinned and held out his arms. 'C'mere.'

Theo barrelled forward and launched himself into his dad's lap. The Doctor caught him with an 'oof' and wrapped him in a careful hug.

Leah hovered in the doorway next, eyes flicking from the bed to the chair. 'Did you walk?'

'Six whole steps,' the Doctor confirmed.

'I'm proud of you,' she said simply, crossing the room to jump onto the chair too, looping her arms around his neck.

Rose, still standing beside the walker, smiled at the three of them. 'Dad did brilliant. Looked a bit like Bambi on ice, but still brilliant.'

'Oi,' he said, mock-affronted.

Jackie bustled in then, a Sainsbury's bag for life hooked over her arm. 'Right, sweetheart.' She suddenly started unloading Tupperware boxes onto his table, filled with food. 'Spaghetti bolognese, shepherd's pie, chicken casserole, lasagne, sweet and sour, a mini roast—oh, and that stew you like. Then there's chicken curry, some paninis that just need to be warmed up, and I've made a bread-and-butter puddin' for afters, and there's cake in the tin foil.'

The Doctor stared at the mountain of food piling up in plastic tubs. 'How long do you think I'm going to be here, exactly?'

Jackie sighed. 'What you don't 'ave you can save for later. Aliens' ave freezers, right?'

He snorted with laughter as Jackie leant down to hug him. 'Thanks,' he said.

'You're welcome, sweetheart,' she replied, straightening and looking sharply around the room like a general assessing her troops. 'Now, Jack, you can make yourself useful. Find me a proper shop, not one of these hospital cafés. I want a load of pies with a couple of steak and ale, two packs of custard creams, a carton of apple juice, and somethin' green so they don't moan I'm not feedin' 'im healthy.'

'Yes, Ms Tyler,' Jack replied automatically, already backing toward the door.

'Martha,' Jackie continued, turning to the doctor with a look that brokered no argument. 'You said the physio team might 'ave one of those fancy footstool things for his leg? Go and get it.'

Martha gave a slight, amused shake of her head but complied. 'Alright, I'll see what I can do.'

'Rose—clothes.' Jackie pointed at the holdall she'd brought in. 'Get him out of that awful hospital pyjama thing and into somethin' that doesn't make him look like a scarecrow.'

'On it,' Rose said, already unzipping the bag and pulling out a soft jumper and loose trousers salvaged from their bedroom.

'Leah, Theo—' Jackie swung her gaze to the kids. 'Go and ask the nurses for a couple of fresh towels and some clean bed linen. Remember to say please or I'll clip your ears.'

'Yes, Nan,' Leah replied, already sliding off the arm of the chair. Theo scrambled down from his father's lap to follow her.

'And I'm gonna find a fridge for all this,' Jackie declared, scooping up the carrier bag full of food and stepping into the corridor. She flagged down a passing nurse before she was even halfway out. 'Excuse me, love…'

Within thirty seconds, the room had emptied nearly all its occupants, leaving the Doctor blinking at the sudden exodus.

'What just happened?' he asked.

Rose glanced up from unfolding the jumper. 'You got Tylers, that's what.'

He grinned before the door opened yet again. He expected to see Jackie issuing more orders, but instead, Braxiatel stepped inside.

The Doctor blinked, stunned. 'Brax?'

'Theta.' Brax closed the door behind him quietly. Rose glanced up from the bed, surprised, but quickly hid it.

'You're walking again,' Brax realised, noticing the walker.

'Six steps,' the Doctor replied. 'Didn't even faint.'

'An improvement.' Brax's tone was mild, but something in the pause that followed was not.

'You didn't say you were coming,' the Doctor said after a beat.

'I was in the area,' Brax replied easily, as if it were true.

The Doctor's brow lifted a little, but he let that go. Rose suppressed a smile as she turned back to the clothes.

'Look…' the Doctor began, leaning forward a little. 'About yesterday. I shouldn't have said—'

'You were unwell,' Brax interrupted, brushing the words aside. 'It's forgotten.'

The Doctor sat back, not entirely convinced, but let the matter drop.

Brax stepped closer, his gaze sweeping over his brother in that detached, assessing way of his. 'You appear to be tolerating upright posture better.'

'Perks of obstinacy,' the Doctor said lightly.

'Hm.' Brax's eyes flicked briefly to Rose, then back. 'I'm glad to see you making progress.'

'Yeah,' the Doctor said quietly. 'Me too.'

Rose set the last jumper down and moved to stand beside the Doctor's chair. 'It's good you're here. Makes a difference.'

Brax inclined his head as if she'd simply confirmed something he already knew. 'You're managing well?'

'We're managin',' Rose said. 'Bit easier now he's up and about.'

The Doctor made a face. 'I really wouldn't oversell it.'

'Given recent history,' Brax said, 'it's not an exaggeration.'

Rose glanced between them, catching the quiet weight behind the words, even if Brax didn't mean them as sentiment. She gave the Doctor's shoulder a small squeeze before letting go.

Brax's gaze softened almost imperceptibly. 'Well, this is all very good. I will go and check your latest readings. Don't get up.'

'No sir,' the Doctor replied with a mock salute as his brother left without another word. 

As the door closed Rose snorted with laughter. He looked at her.

'In the area?' she repeated, shaking her head. 'Subtle as a brick.'

She dropped herself without invitation onto his chair, holding him. He made a soft noise of protest at the sudden weight, though his arms wound around her automatically, keeping her there.

'Still,' she said, drawing back enough to study his face. 'He cares. Just his way of showin' it.'

The Doctor huffed, half amused, half sceptical. 'Well, I am tolerating upright posture better.'

Rose laughed again.

~ ΘΣ ~

Two days later, the Doctor progressed enough for them to move him off the acute ward.

It wasn't ceremonial—just a brisk half-hour of physio tests, a round of ECGs, and Martha and Brax nodding in satisfaction before a nurse trundled him along in a wheelchair. He'd walked part of the way under supervision, which apparently was all it took to be promoted.

While his new room was being set up, the nurse had left them in the communal lounge: a vast, sunlit space with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a sheltered courtyard. A mix of humans, aliens, and patients who didn't fit either category lounged in soft chairs or by the big windows. Somewhere across the room, an alien string instrument played quietly over a patient's lap.

The Doctor was on a corner sofa, his walking frame parked neatly at his side. Rose passed him a paper cup of tea, and he took it gratefully.

'Don't say I never get you anythin',' she joked.

He smiled. 'Thanks,' he said, taking a sip. 'Oh, not bad.'

Rose paused, just gazing at him for a moment. 'I'm really proud of you, you know,' she suddenly stated.

'What for?' he wondered. 'Being able to walk thirty feet without falling over?'

'Yeah, that, and everythin' else.'

He looked at her, already knowing what she meant. 'Yeah. It's… better.'

'I didn't notice you wakin' up last night,' she said. 'You didn't have a nightmare?'

He tilted his head. 'I did. But they're… not as strong. I keep thinking one day they'll get boring. You know, "ah, yes, the bit where my lungs burst, fascinating".'

Rose huffed a laugh. Her hand found its way to his side, fingers tracing idly along the fabric until they caught on the faint ridges of the scars low on his abdomen. The skin there was warmer than the rest of him, the lines slightly raised under her fingertips.

'What about when you're awake?' she asked quietly.

He glanced at her hand, then back to her eyes.

'I get flashbacks,' he admitted. 'Less now, but I'll be sitting somewhere and I'm back there in the medbed. Or it's Lanwa. Not remembering it— being in it. The whole thing feels real.'

Rose's stomach twisted. She already knew every ugly detail of what Lanwa had done to him wearing her face, but hearing him describe it made her chest ache with anger. Her jaw tightened, a low, protective burn crawling up her spine. She swallowed the urge to spit another curse and kept her voice level.

'She'd better be glad she's dead,' she grated.

He only nodded.

'What do you do when it hits?' she asked after a moment.

'Breathe. Remind myself it's now. And… wait it out.'

'And it passes?'

'Yeah. Less each time. It used to feel like hours. Now… a few minutes.' He shifted the paper cup in his hands, studying the swirl of steam. 'Look at me, making progress.'

'Are you separatin' it a bit better now?'

He nodded. 'Medbed in one box, Lanwa in another. With her, I was still me — trapped, but me. The medbed stripped that away. Made me part of it. Two different things.'

She hesitated then, because the question she wanted to ask had been with her for weeks, sitting in the back of her mind, unasked. 'Um… you never once confused her with me, did you? Even when she…'

'Never,' he interrupted without hesitation. 'She might've looked like you, but the way she touched me was… not you. She was rougher. More urgent and demanding. You've never been selfish like that.'

The knot in her chest loosened, and she let out a slow, deliberate breath, almost feeling her shoulders unlock.

'What about you?' he asked suddenly.

She shook her head. 'I'm fine.'

'Rose—'

'One thing at a time,' she said lightly, leaning into his shoulder. 'You remember that deal we made when I went into labour with Alex, yeah? You panic while I'm calm, I'll panic while you're calm, and we just take turns.'

'Oh, is that how mental trauma works?' he asked facetiously, smiling a little.

'Is for us,' she replied, and kissed his cheek. 'Hey. Thank you for bein' honest.'

The bond between them hummed, warm and steady, for a few precious moments.

And then suddenly Rose caught it. A scent, faint but distinct, curling in from nowhere.

Sandalwood.

She froze.' Can you smell that?' she asked the Doctor, her eyes scanning the room.

'Yeah,' he croaked.

'No,' she muttered, voice dropping to a low, vicious growl. 'No, no, no. Fuck off. You're dead.' Her hand shot to his thigh, as if she could physically bar the way.

He glanced at her, catching the tension in her grip. 'Rose—'

'She doesn't get near you again,' she said, eyes sweeping the lounge. She quickly realised they weren't the only ones noticing the scent. Across the room, a middle-aged man in a wheelchair turned to his visitor. 'Smells like incense, d'you smell that?'

His companion — a blue-skinned woman with a sling — nodded slowly, nostrils flaring. 'Old temple smell.'

At a table near the windows, two young human nurses on their break sniffed the air in unison, exchanging a glance. One frowned, scanning the floor as if expecting to find the source under a chair. By the vending machine, a man in a pale green dressing gown tilted his head, frowning, then looked behind him as though expecting someone to be there.

The air thickened—not just in weight but in texture. The alien string instrument that had been playing wavered, its melody abruptly sagging out of tune.

From near the windows came a soft tap-tap-tap, as if fingernails were testing the pane. Several heads turned. A man stood, peered out, then sat quickly, shaking his head. Near the coffee station, a paper cup tipped from the stack and rolled in a slow arc across the counter before dropping to the floor.

Somewhere behind them, a door handle clicked before falling still. The smell of sandalwood thickened, clinging in Rose's throat. She shifted closer to him without thinking, and then—

'Doctor?'

They jolted. A nurse stood beside them, holding a blood pressure cuff. 'Routine obs,' she said apologetically.

Rose glanced back at the room. The air was ordinary again. Someone laughed. The stringed instrument picked up exactly where it had left off, perfectly in tune. The sandalwood smell was gone.

The nurse crouched to fit the cuff around the Doctor's arm. 'You alright? Both of you look like you've seen a ghost.'

Rose didn't answer. Her eyes locked with the Doctor's, and in them she saw the same grim recognition.

She's here.

~ ΘΣ ~

Jackie's shepherd's pie was still steaming, and the Doctor was making short work of it from the chair by the bed, like he hadn't eaten for days. Rose sat cross-legged on the mattress, her own portion balanced in her lap.

They'd already swapped their stories before he'd even picked up his fork—the abandoned ward he'd found after his MRI, and the feeling she'd had during his transfer after the seizure.

'So,' she said now, chewing thoughtfully, 'that's three times in just a few days. Different places. Different times, different people.'

'Mm.' He swallowed a mouthful. 'Which means either it's a shared hallucination—'

'It's not,' she cut in.

'—or it's deliberate.' He set the fork down and leaned back. 'And deliberate worries me more.'

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. 'You're still thinkin' it's not her?'

He hesitated. 'I want to think that. But…’ He shook his head. 'Sandalwood. Why sandalwood? Of all the scents in the universe, why the one that's—' He stopped himself. 'If it's not her, it's something mimicking her. That's not a good sign.'

Rose's jaw tightened. 'Or it's her.'

He didn't answer immediately. 'If it is… she'd have to get here somehow.'

'She was a psychic parasite,' Rose reminded him. 'You've told me before—they don't always need to be somewhere to affect it.'

'True.' He rubbed the back of his neck. 'She could be projecting. Or…’ He trailed off, a frown pulling at his brow.

'Or?'

'Or she's piggybacked on something else. Another consciousness. A physical object. If she's attached herself to someone here—'

Rose gave a short, humourless laugh. 'Great. Just what this place needs.'

He leaned forward. 'It could also be residual psychic residue from when she was alive, like an echo. A strong enough impression can imprint itself on the fabric of a place. But that wouldn't explain the movement. Or the fact that more than one person smelt it today.'

Rose studied him for a moment. 'You really don't know, do you?'

He shook his head, honest. 'No. I don't.'

The door clicked open.

'Hey, kids,' Jack strolled in, perfectly-timed.

'Jack, need a favour,' the Doctor said without preamble.

'Hello to you too,' Jack said, sauntering over.

'We've both seen something,' the Doctor said. 'Separately. And today together. Same… phenomena. Movement, sounds, environmental shift—'

'Sandalwood,' Rose supplied.

The casual ease dropped from Jack's face. 'You're not serious.'

'I wish I wasn't,' Rose said.

Jack looked back at the Doctor. 'You told me she was gone. Gone gone.'

'I did,' the Doctor said quietly. 'And I meant it. But… there's no reason for that smell to be here otherwise.'

Jack crossed his arms. 'Could someone be messing with you? Playing with your heads?'

'Possible,' the Doctor said. 'But that doesn't explain why other people smelled it too. And reacted.'

'Or why it feels like her,' Rose added.

Jack's gaze sharpened. 'Feels like her, how?'

The Doctor's expression didn't change. 'Not as strong. Not… threaded through me like before. But close enough.'

Jack exhaled slowly, looking between them again. 'Okay. So, it could be her. It could be something pretending to be her. It could be an echo of her. Could be… what, a psychic relative?'

'Don't even joke,' Rose muttered.

'I'm not,' Jack said seriously. 'What do we do?'

The Doctor straightened. 'We need the TARDIS to run a deep-spectrum scan of the hospital—environmental, temporal, psionic, olfactory. Everything. Looking for her specific profile.'

Jack gave a short nod. 'And if you find her?'

'We deal with it,' Rose said before the Doctor could answer.

'Define "deal with it",' Jack said.

Rose's tone was deadly calm. 'Ghost, parasite, whatever—if she touches the Doctor again, I'll exorcise the bitch with my bare hands.'

Jack blinked, then glanced at the Doctor. '… She's serious, isn't she?'

'Oh, completely,' the Doctor said.

Jack shook his head, bemused. 'If this is her, Lanwa's got no idea what she's in for.'

'Nope,' Rose said firmly, her brow creased. 'If she thinks she's gonna do it all again, she's in for a nasty fuckin' shock.'

Chapter Text

While the Doctor and Rose waited for Jack to return with the scan results, she'd already tidied the room twice, folded and refolded his clothes, and made a comprehensive job of reorganising the little bedside cabinet. Now she was prowling the space like a cat that hadn't decided whether it wanted to go out or not.

The Doctor watched her from the bed, one eyebrow raised. 'If you clean that cabinet again, you'll polish right through it.'

'Might do,' she muttered, straightening the water jug for the ninth time.

He knew exactly what she was doing: keeping her hands busy so her mind didn't start gnawing on things they didn't understand yet.

'You could sit down and wait for Jack,' he suggested mildly.

'Or,' she countered, eyes narrowing in thought, 'I could get you cleaned up.'

His brows went up. 'I am clean.'

'C'mon, you'll feel better. And I'll stop pacin'.'

'Is this for me or for you?'

'Yes,' she said flatly, already moving to the pile of towels.

~ ΘΣ ~

Ten minutes later, Rose had him standing under the warm spray in the little ensuite bathroom, a shower chair waiting just behind him. He was shuffling a little, still wary of his left leg.

'You're wobblin',' she said. 'Sit, cos I'm not catchin' you.'

'I'm fine,' he replied predictably.

'Right. Lucky we're in a shower, then, cos when you fall and crack your head open at least it's a quick clean-up of all your alien blood.'

He huffed but sat. 'You're enjoying this.'

'Bit, yeah.' She smirked, taking the shampoo from his hands.

Foam lathered through his hair and over his scalp under her fingers, the scent of lavender filling the small room.

'Why do you keep using lavender shampoo on me?' he grumbled as she worked the suds into his hair. 'I smell like an old lady's front room.'

'It's calming and makes everyone feel relaxed,' she said, massaging his scalp with deft fingers. 'Now shut up and tilt your bloody head back.'

He grinned and obliged. He couldn't help but compare this experience to the last time he'd been in hospital. After the medbed, he'd been so severely damaged he hadn't even been able to lift a cup without help, having to rely on the assistance of the staff at the Neo Proclamation. They'd all been professional and gentle and kind and he'd appreciated everything they'd done, but they weren't Rose Tyler. They didn't know—how could they?—about the exact temperature of the water he preferred, about how he always started with his left arm, about the little nerve ganglion in his left shoulder that fizzed a bit if it was pressed too hard. Rose did.

She passed him the sponge to finish off while she stayed leaning in the doorway, chatting idly about nothing important. When his hand couldn't quite reach his back, she stepped in without a comment, running the sponge over the places he couldn't get to.

Once he was clean, she towelled him off before easing him into a soft, fresh t-shirt and trousers. Fresh sheets were already on the bed—he hadn't noticed her changing them—and she helped him settle back against the pillows with the sort of efficiency that came from knowing exactly how he liked the blankets tucked and which pillow supported his neck just right.

'Better?' she asked.

'Better,' he admitted, and meant it.

She smiled and took her usual place on the bed next to him, curling her fingers in his.

It lasted all of thirty seconds. Rose's eyes started scanning him. Hair, shirt, even the way his sleeve was sitting.

'No,' he said immediately, narrowing his eyes.

'What?' she asked, all innocence.

'Whatever you're about to do, no.'

'I wasn't—'

'You were.'

'Maybe I was,' she admitted, leaning forward. 'Your cover's crooked—'

'It's fine.'

'You've got fluff in your hair, I—'

'Rose.'

She stilled. Then before he could say anything, she leaned in and wrapped both arms around him. It wasn't gentle. She clung to him, her face buried in the crook of his neck, like she could anchor him in place with sheer force.

'I hate her,' she said into his skin quietly.

'I know,' he replied softly.

He kept his arms around her until her breathing evened again. She kissed his temple, slow, deliberate, then stayed there a moment longer, breathing him in. When she finally pulled back, she smoothed his hair unnecessarily and wiped at a spot on his cheek that almost certainly wasn't there.

'Yeah,' she said, wrinkling her nose, 'you're right. That's way too much lavender.'

He snorted with laughter as finally the door swung open to reveal Jack. He advanced without greeting, holding a printout from the TARDIS with his expression unreadable. 'You're both gonna want to hear this.'

~ ΘΣ ~

10,000 light-years away, the Neo Proclamation chamber was in chaos.

The Grand Assembly chamber had been designed by Zak and Leya to accommodate as many people as possible without folding dimensions, ensuring that all voices were equal and heard. It was a vast, tiered amphitheatre ringed in polished alloy and embedded with holo-feeds from every corner of the galaxy. Usually, the feeds displayed placid planetary vistas or the delegates' homeworlds in real-time. Tonight, they were a wall of noise. Protests, crowds, and angry voices.

Zak stood at the central rostrum, voice projecting clearly through the reverb of the room, even though most of the delegates were too busy shouting to hear him.

'I'm saying this for the last time. The Doctor and Rose Tyler are not guilty of anything. You've all seen the testimony from Lanwa's own guards. You've seen the footage of when we extracted them. He was in chains, stabbed, underweight, bleeding, and unconscious. That's not complicity, that's survival.'

'Survival at her side,' a voice from the Orbanic Bloc called out.

'At her side, yes,' Zak shot back, 'because she chained him there. Because Lanwa stuck a crown on his head and told the galaxy he was hers.'

Leya stood just off the floor, leaning against one of the side railings, eyes sweeping the room. The mood wasn't a clean split. Most of the Proclamation's official delegates backed Zak. But dotted among them, like oil in water, were the voices he couldn't quite drown out: the new rebel blocs, the ones who'd been muttering for months and now had something to rally around.

A representative from the Rheyan Enclave spoke. 'You built this Neo Proclamation on the ruins of the old corrupted Shadow Proclamation, Zak. You and your… daughter there—' a pointed glance to Leya '—swore to rebuild trust. Now we see the truth: protect your own, and damn the rest.'

'You think tearing this place down again is going to make anything better?' Zak asked seriously. 'You want the Shadow Proclamation back, wiping out planets and imprisoning innocent people? Because trust me, there are still plenty of people out there who'd love to pick up where they left off.'

A voice from the Ravn System rose. 'We on Ravn hear the voices of the bereaved. They want justice. And if the Neo Proclamation won't give it to them—'

'You'll take it yourselves,' Zak finished for them. He leaned forward on the podium. 'We can't deliver justice, because there's no one to deliver it to. Lanwa is dead. She caused this. All of this.'

A murmur rolled through the tiers. Someone from the Corviss Accord stood up. 'Could we speak about the Doctor for a moment? This is not an isolated pattern for him. Look at his history. Everywhere he goes, catastrophe follows. Planets burn; regimes fall; bodies pile up—’

'And he also saves people,' Leya snapped from the side gallery before Zak could speak. 

'Spare us the hagiography, Echo ,' the Corviss delegate shot back. 'You toppled the Shadow Proclamation one bullet at a time and now expect us to bow for your reform .'

Leya didn't blink. 'I stopped murderers. If you want them back, say it right now.'

The Speaker hammered the gavel. 'Order—'

A Charrin councillor leaned in. 'You want us to swallow that Rose Tyler is simply… redeemed? Returned to herself, and all is forgiven? Tell that to the families on Charrin.'

Zak planted his hands on the rostrum. 'I'm going to say this in small words so there's no misunderstanding. Rose Tyler was possessed. Just like everyone else that Lanwa infected. Every single one of you saw it happen to people you knew. Family. Friends. Delegates in this very chamber. You didn't shoot them when they came back to themselves, so stop pretending it's different for her.'

That actually bought him half a beat. Then a Karamite boomed over it. 'And what of Lanwa's child?'

The chamber shifted, a collective intake of breath.

'There is no child,' Zak said, softer. 'What happened in that throne room is not public record because it shouldn't be. A baby died. That's all I'm going to say.'

'Convenient,' someone muttered. 'How tidy for your narrative.'

Something in Zak's face tightened. 'Nothing about any of this is tidy.'

A delegate from the Corviss Accord rose to speak. 'Entire worlds burned under Lanwa's disease. Entire populations lost. And yet the two people most closely associated with her reign vanish off the grid to a safe, untouchable planet while the rest of us bury our dead.'

'"Untouchable" has never meant "unreachable" for anyone determined enough,' someone muttered from the upper tiers, earning a murmur of agreement.

'Earth is out of everyone's reach,' Zak snapped. 'That's the point of Level 5. They're not hiding; they're healing .'

The Corviss delegate laughed once, sharply. 'And there it is. The empathy play. "Feel sorry for the Doctor and his wife." Meanwhile, trade lanes choke, border worlds burn, and your Neo Proclamation dithers.'

'We're not dithering,' Zak said. 'We're trying to triage a galaxy. We're processing amnesty claims from a hundred worlds. We're crediting hazard pay for crews who flew through quarantine. We're auditing a century of legal rot left by the old regime while you lot play with conspiracy feeds.'

A hiss of static as half the upper displays briefly glitched—a chant from a protest outside another outpost cut through: NO MORE LIES. NO MORE LIES.

The Speaker stood, gave up on the gavel, and started shouting. 'This session will come to order, or it will be suspended .'

'Suspend it,' someone shouted back. 'See how that plays on the feeds.'

'Fine,' Zak said. 'Answers. You want them? Here's what I've got. Most planets were hit by Lanwa's disease. Most people have lost someone. Everyone saw her wearing Rose's face and the Doctor at her side. You also saw them dragged out, bleeding and broken. You saw that the guards have testified to what she did to him. It's on record. We cleared them because they were victims. That's not favouritism. That's law . If you want to tear that down because it's emotionally satisfying today, then be honest about what you're building in its place.'

'We'll build something that answers to us!' the Ravn delegate yelled.

The roar that followed wasn't just sound; it was momentum. Delegates stood in clusters, turning their backs on the rostrum; others shouted. The Judoon Security started to move. The Speaker's voice vanished under the tide. Somewhere above, a chant began and caught on.

Zak stepped back from the podium, the public face slipping for a breath. 'We're not enemies,' he called into the chaos. 'Please. Don't make us enemies.'

No one was listening anymore.

~ ΘΣ ~

'I asked the Tardis to do a deep-spectrum sweep: environmental, temporal, psionic, olfactory—the lot,' Jack began. 'She didn't find molecules, but she found a signature. Low amplitude, intermittent, and it's been drifting around like a ghost.'

'Driftin' where?' Rose asked, wary.

'Across the hospital,' Jack said. 'Four areas are hotspots. One's in an abandoned ward by radiology, another's outside the acute ward, another in a communal lounge… and one other place it keeps coming back to.'

'Where?' the Doctor pressed.

'The chapel.'

'Temple smell,' Rose murmured, recalling the woman's comment.

'It's not random,' Jack continued. 'It's circling the same path, like it's going round and round.'

The Doctor scratched his ear, thinking. 'So it's not following anyone; we're accidentally crossing its path. What does the signature read like?'

'It's a psi-trace,' Jack told him.

Rose stiffened. 'Like her.'

Jack shook his head. 'No. The TARDIS says the signature is close to Lanwa, but it's not hers. Not fully, anyway. Like it's an echo pretending to be her, or something just carrying a bit of her signature.'

'Object or host,' the Doctor said quietly. 'Bound imprint riding on a carrier.'

Jack nodded. 

'Where's next on the ghost's route?' the Doctor asked. 

'If the pattern holds, it'll hit the chapel just after midnight,' Jack replied.

Rose checked the clock. 'That's in an hour.'

The Doctor nodded. 'Then we go to the chapel and find out how malevolent it is. If it's an echo or some sort of trace, I can ground it.'

'And if it's an object?' Rose asked.

'We isolate it,' the Doctor said. 'Seal, quarantine, and into the Tardis.'

'And if it's Lanwa?' Jack wondered.

'Then it's a reunion,' the Doctor said, deadpan. 'Meet back here in fifty minutes.'

~ ΘΣ ~

The chapel was tucked away in a side corridor most people only found when they needed it the most. Jack pushed the Doctor's wheelchair through the door first, with Rose following. 

'Window's now,' Jack said softly, checking his manipulator. 'Five minutes either side.'

The Doctor drew a careful breath. 'Alright. We're here. We don't mean any harm. If you can hear me… we're listening.'

At first, nothing. Then the air thickened. Candle flames trembled without a draught. The coloured glass seemed to lean for a brief second. The Book of Remembrance turned a single page by itself. A kneeler shifted a fraction. Someone had left a lily in a plastic cone on the sill; it rolled, bumped the glass, and stopped.

'EM trace is climbing,' Jack said, eyes on his manipulator.

A shape began to cohere in the window—not within it, but laid over it. A face, blurry and indistinct. The smell of sandalwood wafted.

'Can you talk?' the Doctor asked the ghost, voice pitched like he was calming a spooked horse. 'Can we help?'

The hymn-board numbers clicked with an old mechanical sound. 1—then 4—then 7—then 3. And stopped.

'Ward number?' Jack murmured.

'Could be,' Rose said. 'Or a date.'

Tap-tap-tap.

This time from the inside of the door. The lily rolled back across the sill as if nudged. The Book of Remembrance lifted another page. Soft, deliberate.

'We can help you,' the Doctor tried again. 'If you're on something—or in something—we can find it. If you're tied to a name, we can say it. If you're lost, we can get you home.'

The face in the glass smudged as if a hand had smeared it. The sandalwood thinned.

And then it was just a room again.

Jack watched the trace roll down to baseline. 'Strongest yet.'

All three looked at each other.

'We're keeping this a secret, right?' Jack said.

The Doctor and Rose both nodded.

~ ΘΣ ~

Morning brought weak sunshine across the blinds and the smell of toast from the ward kitchen. Someone had abandoned two cups of tea on the trolley; Rose swapped them around so the Doctor got the one with actual colour in it.

'So. Last night,' she said, voice low. 'Not random.'

'Not random,' he agreed, stirring the tea pointlessly. 'Actual communication, not just noise.'

'And sandalwood,' she added. 'Close enough, but… not her.'

He nodded once. 'Echo of her. Something to do with her.'

'You're talking about the ghost, aren't you?' Leah said, already inside, already perched on the windowsill, holding a battered notebook. 'I worked it out. It's not trying to scare us; it's pointing you at context, Daddy.'

The Doctor blinked. 'Good morning to you too. How do you know about the ghost?'

'Uncle Jack is terrible at keeping secrets,' she informed them, then flipped her notebook open. 'Four hotspots: the chapel, the communal lounge, the corridor outside Acute, and that abandoned ward by MRI. They're not random rooms, they've all got somethin' about 'em. A chapel in a hospital is grief and hope, a communal day area is where people meet their loved ones, so it's all sort of squishy and nice, outside Acute is a kind of tension, MRI is… well, magnets and really uncomfortable people.'

Rose and the Doctor shared a glance. 'Go on,' the Doctor invited.

Leah tapped a pencilled loop on her rough hospital plan. Arrows linked the four points along service corridors. 'It's pacing a route staff use, not visitors. And the numbers last night, I thought, could be a psalm. Psalm 147:3. I checked already this morning, and it says, "He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds." That's communication, that's not just a number, mmkay?'

The Doctor glanced at Rose. 'We… didn't think of the psalm.'

'That's why you've got me,' Leah said matter-of-factly.

'Hold on,' the Doctor said suddenly, stroking his chin. 'Maybe other triggers are happening here, too.'

Leah's eyes widened. 'Like what?' she asked, pencil at the ready to take notes.

'Well, when I had the MRI, I was definitely already feeling uncomfortable when I saw the abandoned ward,' he stated.

Rose clocked immediately. 'Yeah, and when they transferred your dad after the seizure, I was properly tense,' she said, subconsciously taking hold of his arm.

'And the day area we were, um, "squishy and nice",' he said.

'And last night in the chapel we were… well, it fits,' Rose muttered, not wanting to finish that sentence as her gaze passed over Leah.

Leah nodded briskly. 'So it's not just place , it's load. Emotional signal boosts the route.' She flicked to a fresh page. 'Okay, so if we're gonna help the ghost, then we need to summon it. Not just by standing where it's gonna be, but also in how we feel.'

'Where's it due next?' Rose asked.

'Abandoned ward,' the Doctor and Leah said together.

'Has it gotta be Dad?' Rose checked.

'Probably not,' Leah said, 'but it worked with him last time. We'll have to make him feel uncomfortable somehow.'

Rose smirked. 'Give Gran five minutes.'

The Doctor winced. 'Poke me with sticks?' he suggested, far too cheerfully.

'Yeah!' Leah said brightly.

'No one is pokin' your dad with sticks,' Rose told her. 'We're not that sort of family.'

Leah thought some more. 'Could you have another MRI?'

He pulled a face like he'd bitten a lemon. 'I'd rather gargle arsenic.'

'Which is why it'd be perfect!' Leah insisted.

The door nudged open, and Martha slipped in with her tablet. 'Morning, team—'

'Martha,' Leah blurted, swivelling on the sill, 'can Dad have another MRI?'

Martha stopped dead, blinked once, then smiled in pure confusion. 'Why? He doesn't need one.'

Leah flushed. 'Yeah. Thought experiment. I'll… come up with something else.' She hopped down and made for the door just as Jack came in.

'Hibye!' Leah chirped in a single breath, dodging past him.

'Hibye,' Jack said, amused, before aiming a grin at the room. 'Morning.'

'Just the man,' Martha said, then looked to the Doctor. 'If you're up for it, I want to push you a bit today. Physio and I agreed last night—one lap of the ward with two rests. No frame. Jack spots. Brax agreed to it.'

'Oh, well, only if Brax agrees,' the Doctor said somewhat flippantly. Rose smirked.

Martha rolled her eyes. 'First, let me do your MOT,' she said, eyeing him up on the bed. 'I need to feed back to Harry and the Brigadier.'

The Doctor perked up. 'Oh. Are they here?'

'No, they're on ops, but the Brigadier's keeping an eye on you,' she said, smiling a little. 'Okay to lift your shirt?'

He nodded. Martha warmed her hands out of habit, then eased his top up. The long incision across his flank was now a fine, pale line.

'Right,' she murmured, pleased. 'Kidney donation site looks brilliant. Edges flat, no heat, no discharge. Bloods say your remaining kidney's quite happy carrying the load; output's steady. According to your normal, anyway.'

'Saves on loo breaks,' he said cheerfully.

'Hearts next.' She slipped her stethoscope in, listening with her head tilted. 'Conduction's much tidier. Still a bit odd on the right, but nothing sustained.' She peeled off the ECG stickers one by one and flicked them into a tray. 'I'm taking you off permanent telemetry. Spot checks only. If you feel strange, you tell me.'

'Will do,' he said, looking delighted as she got rid of the last pad.

Martha checked his wrists almost without thinking, where the old restraint marks were long gone, then her gaze dropped, inevitably, to the two L-shaped scars low on his abdomen.

'I've noticed when I've helped you get cleaned up…' Rose began, hesitant. 'It doesn't matter, but do these look better, or is it in my head?'

Martha had already clocked the change. 'Hmm. They are a bit better, aren't they?' She looked at the Doctor. 'Is it possible they'll go?'

He shook his head. 'Nope. My artron levels hit the floor, and my immune system crashed; they became infected, I think. I wasn't really conscious. Jack?'

Jack shifted, for once looking a bit uncomfortable. 'Yeah. They went necrotic, the medics had to debride them.'

'Then it's amazing they've settled this well,' Martha said, impressed.

'Superior plasticity of an alien species,' the Doctor said, pleased with himself. No one had the heart to tell him off. Rose just squeezed his hand.

'Seizure,' Martha went on, straightening. 'Still no recurrence. Probably a cocktail of anaesthetic neurotoxicity and autonomic chaos—either way, you're not giving me a reason to panic. Stab wound has vanished to the naked eye.'

She moved down to his left leg, Velcro rasping as she loosened the brace. 'And our favourite tibia. Clean, closed fracture managed conservatively. Eight days in and you're weight-bearing as tolerated; the medbed atrophy is the limiter.' She palpated gently around the fracture site, watching his face. 'Any sharp pain?'

'Dull ache,' he said.

'Good. I'm downgrading the brace to lighter support.' Swap of padding, angle reset, straps snugged. 'Short steps, no jumping or twisting, and absolutely no running. Understood, Mister?'

'Yep. No ballet,' the Doctor confirmed.

'Music to my ears.' She gave him a once-over. 'So: incision healed, solo kidney happy, hearts improved, so monitor off, seizure remains a one-off, leg healing nicely, but we respect the weakness. You're getting better very fast.'

'Does that mean discharge?' he asked hopefully.

She smiled. 'Not quite yet, but we're not far off. Show me you can walk properly first. Alright, can you sit on the edge of the bed for me?'

He shuffled forward; Rose was there already, steadying a shoulder, tugging his grip socks straight, then catching herself being overly attentive and stepping back as Martha opened a drawer and drew out a handling belt—sturdy canvas with soft grab loops stitched round.

'Now you're going further, we use these for safe mobility. It goes around your waist over your clothes, so Jack's got something proper to hold onto if you wobble. It's not a restraint; if it feels too close to anything it shouldn't, we stop. Alright?'

He held her gaze, heard everything she wasn't saying, and nodded. 'Fine.'

She wrapped it low and snug, checked the fit with two fingers. 'How's that?'

He glanced down. 'Very haute couture.'

'Jack, stay left, hand through the back loop, stay close to his middle. If he dips, you follow the belt down—guide him to the chair or the floor, don't try to keep him upright. Rose, you're on the right, just off his shoulder. Keep talking to him, check for any colour changes in his skin. Keep watch for trip hazards. I'll trail with a chair for rests.'

'Yes, ma'am,' Jack confirmed with a mock salute.

Martha gave the belt one last check. 'Route is left out of this door, round to the staff room, then rest. On to the stock cupboard, then rest. Then back. If your vision tunnels or you feel floaty, you say.'

'Absolutely,' the Doctor confirmed.

'Good. When you're ready, slowly stand up with your head up. We're not lifting you; we're just keeping you safe while you do the work.'

He blew out a breath. 'Here goes.' He planted his feet, set his hands, and stood up.

~ ΘΣ ~

By late afternoon, he'd ticked off every box Martha had set and then a few more she hadn't. One complete lap became two, then three; by early evening, he'd managed seven circuits of the ward without the frame. He only wobbled twice, and both times he corrected himself. Martha pretended not to look proud. Jack and Rose didn't bother pretending at all, both fighting to be the one to kiss him first.

Between his triumphs, Leah ran in and out, firing random technical questions at her dad and then vanishing again without explanation when she had her answer. Theo kept trying to race him down the corridor. Jackie heated up a Tupperware lasagne in the ward kitchen and all but spoon-fed him while telling him he was a marvel. Brax pinged Martha twice for numbers, and she sent him everything.

By evening, the Doctor was visibly exhausted, but it was the good kind. He'd actually stopped talking for once, mumbling a good night to everyone as they peeled away. After Rose said goodbye to her mum and the kids for the night, she stepped back inside the room to find him asleep in the chair, head tipped.

'No, can't sleep there,' Rose said immediately, crossing to him and touching his shoulder.

'Rose,' he muttered, eyes still shut. 'No sex tonight, I'm too tired.'

She snorted. 'Get over yourself. C'mon—don't add neck pain to the massive list.'

He grumbled but let her bring him round. 'Up we get,' she murmured, steering him the three steps to the bed. She sat him, braced his knee with her hip so he didn't over-twist, and helped him pivot his legs up. 'Still comfy?'

'Mm.'

'That's really eloquent,' she teased, easing his t-shirt over his head. 'You're very chatty tonight.'

'Mm,' he said again. His eyes were half-closed, hands loose and obedient as Rose threaded clean sleeves up his arms and smoothed the fabric down over his ribs. It was like dressing a large, lanky Ken doll.

She tugged his blankets straight, tucked them just so under his left ankle, swung the spare pillow into the exact spot under his neck that he always liked.

'You've done brilliant today,' she said honestly.

He smiled. 'Mm.'

'That's "thank you, Rose, you're the best nurse I've ever had",' she translated.

'Mm.'

She laughed under her breath and combed his hair back with her fingers. His breathing had already settled. Within a minute, he'd slipped under, utterly gone.

Rose stayed perched on the edge of the mattress, watching the slow rise and fall of his chest for a few minutes before she glanced at the clock. 21:00. She pressed a kiss to the Doctor's temple and slipped off the bed to make some tea.

~ ΘΣ ~

The ward was quiet, and the kitchen four doors down was empty. Facilities staff had gone home for the evening, and the only sign that anyone was around was the half-heartedly washed mug of one of the night nurses, upside-down on the draining board.

Rose filled the kettle and set it on, and reached up to the cupboard to pick a mug. She opted for a blue one with white spots that didn't look too used. She plopped in a teabag and added milk from the little fridge, the way she'd always done at home.

Home. She let the word float in her mind for a moment as she waited for the kettle to boil, leaning against the counter. Not the Powell Estate; that had its place in her memory, but it was no longer home. Home was the humming heart of the TARDIS; it was the kitchen at stupid o'clock; it was the Doctor—her Doctor—in pyjama bottoms and hair in eighty directions and arms loose around her waist; it was the kids doing laps around the breakfast table; it was everyone talking over each other; and it was the toast always, always burning, with the Doctor's absolute refusal to get a new toaster because he'd 'already fixed it, Rose, it's supposed to do that.'

She even remembered the exact sound of the TARDIS kettle. A blissfully human kettle that the Doctor had clearly deliberately gone to a human shop for, even if he would never admit it. She suspected Argos, and laughed a little at the idea of the Doctor trying to navigate Argos in some previous body.

The kettle began to hum louder, getting there.

She was worried, she knew. She was worried about the next scan; about what Martha and Brax might find to keep him here even longer. She worried about Leah and whether the ghost was keeping her up or if something else was. She worried about her mum, who pretended not to worry. She worried—always—about him: what he was feeling, what he was remembering, and what he might never say out loud.

She watched the coil inside begin to glow, the water trembling to a boil, and she let herself imagine a future where they made it out. Where he got better. Where they went back to the TARDIS and, after a few weeks of resting and re-acclimating, fell straight back into old rhythms. She imagined a morning, two months from now: Leah bickering with Theo over cereal, the Doctor accidentally electrocuting himself while working on the TARDIS again. It had been such a long time since she'd felt that normality. She wanted it so badly it hurt. But maybe, even after everything that had happened, it really was that easy.

The steam thickened. Rose checked her phone. No new messages. She considered sending Jack a text, but knew he'd either not read it till the morning or answer with a gif of a cat.

The kettle clicked, finally done, and suddenly the room temperature dropped, going from warm to bone-cold in the space of a heartbeat.

Frowning, she was about to dismiss it and pour the water from the kettle when sandalwood abruptly hit the back of her throat. Before she could comprehend that, the cupboard at her elbow snapped open and then slammed back into its stopper.

'What the…' Rose muttered as the cutlery drawer rattled, then shot out, flying across the room and crashing into the far wall, making her jump. Then the light flickered. Once. Twice. Then began to strobe—on–off–on–off—turning the room into a sequence of still frames.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

From the counter. From the wall. From inside her skull.

Sensing danger, she made for the door, but before she could reach it, the drawer beside her shot out, thumping her hip, blocking her path.

'Get out of my way,' she snapped, heart punching at her ribs. She shoved the drawer back. It screamed on its runners and slammed shut, then screamed open again, harder.

She was about to run around it when something took a fistful of her hair and yanked hard. Pain flared across her scalp and neck as her head jerked sideways, and she just about caught herself on a counter. She gasped, spun, hand up, but there was no one there.

A force hit her shoulder, and she staggered into the worktop as three thin lines suddenly scored across her forearm as if scratched by invisible nails. White, then red, then beading with bright dots of blood.

'You absolute—' She snatched her arm close and lunged for the door again. She grabbed the handle but hissed and pulled back on instinct—it was ice-cold .

The sandalwood swelled until it was all she could taste. The light went from strobing to a complete blackout. The emergency exit sign failed, leaving her in almost complete darkness. The kettle, dead seconds ago, shrieked back to life, boiling again. Steam blasted out and rolled down the walls like fog.

Metal skittered. A spoon pinged off the cupboard. A fork clattered at her toes. A knife flashed and slammed point-first into the lino by her foot, quivering.

'No—' She ducked hard as something else scythed past her ear, the air screaming along its path. She bolted left, and a cupboard door snapped open, hitting her forearm and bouncing her back. She went right; another door banged out and trapped her.

The ghost, she realised. And it was trying to kill her.

'Why?' she shouted. 'What do you want? We're tryin' to help!'

Tap-tap-tap-tap!

Cutlery launched. A hail of metal clattered off cupboards and skipped off the floor. A knife zipped past her cheek and shaved a line of heat there; she felt the blood bloom.

She threw an arm over her face and went for the door a third time, shoulder down, committing—

— BANG —the door yanked outward, hard , as if something on the other side had decided to drag her through. The sudden give pulled her forward off balance. Her heel slid on a spoon. Her ribs crashed into the jamb; she twisted for the corridor and the door smashed back on the rebound, catching her across the temple with a hot, bright crack that detonated light behind her eyes.

Sound went woolly. Metallic tang flooded her mouth. The room lurched left. Somewhere behind, the drawer emptied itself in a rain of steel; at her shoulder, another knife buried itself in the wooden frame with a vicious thock , inches from her face.

'Doc—' she managed, before everything went black.

Chapter Text

The Doctor woke like he'd been punched in the chest.

One second, he was asleep; the next, he was bolt upright, gasping, skull ringing. Pain seared through his sternum. The bond.

'Rose,' he croaked, flinging the sheet aside and swinging his feet to the floor. The lino was freezing, his bad leg flared, but he pushed upright anyway. The world tilted, then steadied as the bond tugged hard, insistent, like a fist on his shirt that was dragging him down the corridor.

He followed it, one hand skimming the wall rail, the other out for balance, moving faster than his body wanted.

The smell hit him first. Sandalwood.

He turned the corner into the ward kitchen. The door hung half off its hinges, handle smeared with red. The air was cold. Cutlery glittered across the lino; a knife stood point-down in a tile.

And Rose was sprawled across the threshold, one arm curled under her, scratches livid on the other, blood streaking her temple.

Something old and territorial flared in him. Mine.

He strangled it back at once and dropped to his knees, fingers steadying her jaw. Warm breath brushed his thumb, and relief staggered through him. Pulse: strong, fast. Pupils equal. Bleeding, but no fracture he could see.

'Alright,' he murmured, voice low. 'You're okay.' He slammed the staff-assist button on the wall. 'I need help in the kitchen! Now!'

Footsteps thundered towards him as the alarm blared. A healthcare assistant skidded into the doorway, froze, then bolted for the crash bag. A nurse was next through, already gloving, gauze pressed to Rose's head. Questions came fast—what happened, was she attacked, did you see anyone?—and he answered: 'Don't know. Found her like this. Head injury, vitals stable.'

A collar slid on, straps clicked, and the board thumped down. In seconds, Rose was transferred, with gurney wheels screeching as they rushed her toward Emergency.

And then he was left kneeling in the wreckage, hands suddenly empty, surrounded by glittering shards of cutlery. Slowly, he pushed himself up. His bad leg wobbled, and a nurse caught his elbow without asking.

'Easy, Doctor. Sit for a second. Can I get you something to drink?'

'No,' he said, eyes fixed on the doors Rose had gone through. 'I want to stay with her.'

The nurse nodded. 'We'll get you a wheelchair.'

~ ΘΣ ~

Rose woke to artificial light and beeping and the low thrum of people moving around on the other side of thin curtains. A cuff squeezed her arm, then hissed as it released.

'This makes a change,' the Doctor's voice said from her left. 'Usually it's me in the bed and you sitting here.'

She turned her head. He was in a chair tucked against the trolley, still in his nightclothes, with his hair sticking in every direction and his eyes scanning her.

'Hey,' she rasped.

'Hey,' he echoed softly. His hand was already around hers. 'You're in Emergency. You've got a spectacular lump on your head and some scratches, but you're fine.'

Rose's memory immediately flickered. 'Kitchen,' she whispered, eyes squeezing shut.

He nodded. 'Tell me what you remember.'

She talked him through it—the temperature drop, the cupboards banging, the yank at her hair, the scratches across her arm.

He nodded as she finished. 'Unit think someone assaulted you,' he said.

'Well,' Rose muttered, mouth dry, 'someone kinda did.'

'I mean a person,' he clarified, then pulled a face. 'I would've explained, but I didn't think “it was a ghost” would go down well.'

She smirked. 'You're not sendin' me to the Tardis,' she said suddenly.

His brows lifted. 'I hadn't—'

'You were about to.' She fixed him with the stubborn look he knew too well. 'And I'm not goin'.'

He studied her, weighing the bond that was humming low between them. Then he sighed. 'I wasn't going to win that argument, was I?'

'Not a chance, mate,' she said, squeezing his hand.

The curtain shifted, and Jack ducked inside with a tablet tucked under one arm and Braxiatel following, hands folded behind his back with the air of someone who had never hurried anywhere in his life.

'You're awake,' Jack said, sounding relieved. He set the tablet against the trolley rail so everyone could see it. 'Good. You'll want to see this. CCTV caught the whole thing.'

Brax's eyebrows lifted. 'CCTV caught what?'

'We've had some… activity,' the Doctor told his brother. 'Psi-energy moving around four points in the hospital. Patterns, not random. But last night it escalated. Rose was attacked.'

Brax stilled, then stepped closer to the bed. 'Attacked?'

Jack tapped the screen. The feed flickered to life: the ward kitchen, timestamp glowing in the corner. They all watched as drawers rattled, cupboards slammed, and metal clattered across the lino. The kettle hissed, the lights strobed, and then Rose's CCTV-self was yanked sideways, struck, and crumpled by the doorframe.

Jack paused the video before it could loop.

The Doctor's eyes didn't move from the frozen image. 'That was malevolent,' he murmured.

'Indeed,' Brax stated, tilting his head as if the footage were some obscure artwork he was considering for his collection. 'That is no mere echo. A psychic imprint manifesting with this level of kinetic force in a sterile environment… rare.'

'Yeah,' Rose muttered. 'Rare's one word for the lump on my head.'

'It appears,' Brax went on smoothly, 'to have abandoned its established path. Theta, Rose—you must consider the possibility that this was deliberate.'

Rose blinked. 'Deliberate? You think it actually came for me?' she asked, glancing between the two Time Lords.

The Doctor winced. 'That's the question I've been wondering. Were you just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or were you the target? If it's not just you, then everyone in the hospital's at risk.'

Jack tucked the tablet back under his arm. 'Doesn't matter which. If it can do that to her, I don't wanna see what happens when it wanders into Paediatrics. I'll have to let Unit know.'

Brax straightened as Jack left. 'It must be contained before it escalates further. Do you have a plan, Theta?'

The Doctor looked at Rose. 'Maybe. Leah's had a few ideas.'

'Then I suggest she refines them, quickly,' Brax said. 'And in the meantime, Rose, I think you should go back to—'

'Nope,' she interupted swiftly. 'Not a chance.'

'But it's—'

'I told you, not a chance,' she stated firmly. 'Not when things just got really interestin'.'

The Doctor smirked. Brax looked between them and heaved a sigh. 'You two are ridiculous,' he muttered. 'Try and get some sleep.'

~ ΘΣ ~

'Rose!' Jackie's voice rang through the Emergency bay the next morning, sharp enough to jolt both Rose and the Doctor out of their doze. She, Theo, and Leah came barrelling round the corner like racecars vying for first place. Rose barely had time to get an arm up before Jackie crushed her against her chest in a suffocating hug.

'Mum, m'fine,' Rose tried, muffled into her mum's jacket.

'You are not fine, look at you, you're as white as a sheet!' Jackie pulled back, framing Rose's face in both hands. 'Who attacked you? I'll give 'em a bloody chimney, I'll—' She broke off, swivelling to the Doctor, who was still blinking blearily in the chair. 'And you! Why aren't you in bed, sweetheart? You can't sleep in a chair, you'll get your neck all crooked!'

'Gran,' Leah tried diplomatically.

Jackie barrelled on. 'Have they found the person who did it yet? Why aren't there security guards swarmin' this place?'

'It… wasn't a person, Mum,' Rose said.

Jackie froze mid-rant. 'What the hell does that mean?' she demanded, voice rising three semitones. 'It's not soddin' aliens again, is it?' She stabbed a finger at the Doctor, who, to his credit, only flinched a little. 'Aren't you supposed to stop those from assaultin' my daughter?'

'It wasn't an alien, and it's not his fault, Mum,' Rose said quickly.

'If it's not a person, and it's not an alien, what the hell was it, then? Some sort of, what, a werewolf again? A robot? Oh, I know, maybe it was an alternate universe version of you, poppin' in for tea!'

The Doctor cleared his throat, deciding to take over. 'Jackie, it was a ghost.'

Silence. Jackie stared at him like he'd just announced he was allergic to oxygen. Finally: '…Are you mad?'

'Oh, so you've seen aliens, parallel worlds, me regenerating into a new face, but ghosts are where you draw the line?' the Doctor asked dryly.

'You're tellin' me my daughter was attacked by a ghost?'

'Pretty much,' the Doctor said. 'But we're working on it.'

Jackie's voice went up an octave. 'Workin' on it? What about the kids, eh? What if that thing—' Her hands trembled now, the anger shading into fear. 'I'm not havin' this, Rose.'

The Doctor opened his mouth, then hesitated, glancing at Rose as if asking permission to push back. Rose gave the tiniest nod, and he straightened. 'Jackie, listen. I'm not going to let anything happen to Rose. Or you. Or the kids.'

Theo, orbiting the bed like a small planet, gripped the frame with both hands and leaned in. His expression was suddenly solemn. 'She remembers your face,' he said matter-of-factly to his mother. 'Before she went in the water.'

The air seemed to thin.

'What?' Rose whispered, her blood running cold.

But Theo had already bounced back, arms raised like a cartoon ghoul, wobbling around the bed. 'WoooOOOOooo!' he howled, dissolving into giggles.

Jackie sighed heavily. 'This ain't normal. Rose, you're comin' back to the Tardis with us.'

'For the third time, not happenin',' Rose said firmly.

Jackie groaned. 'Rose—'

Rose fixed her mum with a stare. 'Mum, I'm not... I'm not leavin' him. Not after… not after everythin'.'

Jackie paused. Usually, this was the point she'd bring out the Big Mother Guns—guilt, tears, the lot. But she just looked at her daughter, looked at the Doctor, and huffed a sigh. 'Fine. But if you get one more bruise, I'll be back here to sort this bloody ghost out myself.'

The curtain twitched, and Braxiatel appeared, perfectly composed as always. 'Apologies for interrupting the domestic theatre,' he said mildly. 'But Rose, you're being discharged now.'

The Doctor's head snapped round. 'She's being discharged before me? She's been discharged twice before me?'

'Yes,' Brax confirmed blandly.

'Brilliant,' the Doctor muttered, slumping in his chair.

Rose squeezed his fingers, suppressing a smile. 'Don't be jealous.'

'I'm not jealous,' he lied, sulking.

~ ΘΣ ~

By evening, there wasn't much left on Martha's checklist to tick for the Doctor. His transplant incision had almost disappeared. His kidney function was steady. His leg brace was down to minimal support, and his gait had lengthened into something that looked nearly natural again. He'd clocked ten complete laps of the ward that day, only flagging near the end.

If it had been up to him, he'd have discharged himself by now. But the arrhythmia still ghosted, and his latest blood panel showed anomalies Brax refused to ignore. So in the spirit of his new promise to co-operate, the Doctor had resigned himself to another night.

Rose had stayed, as she always did. She'd fetched him tea, tucked his blankets, and finally watched him drift off around eleven. For an hour, the room was quiet.

Then the air shifted.

Not just colder this time. A low, vibrating hum threaded into the walls, prickling against Rose's skin, setting her teeth on edge.

She sat straighter. 'No,' she whispered. 'Not here.'

The light above the bed flickered once, then twice, and then steadied. The sandalwood smell washed over her.

Rose pushed to her feet, pulse climbing. 'Not here,' she repeated, louder this time. 'Not with him asleep.'

The chair in the corner scraped an inch across the floor. A locker door banged open. The curtain rings clattered violently along the rail. The Doctor's finished mug of tea shot across the room and exploded against the far wall, causing him to jolt awake with a gasp, clutching his temples. 'Psionic spike,' he hissed.

The hair on her arms rose with a static crackle, and a primal, animal panic rose in her gut. She barely had time to brace before the Doctor was up, leaping from the bed with an agility that seemed to defy both logic and his recent medical history.

'Down!' he shouted as he tackled Rose, and she hit the floor with a yelp. His weight landed over, his body cocooning hers protectively.

Then the world went utterly mad.

The metal drawers in the wall unit yanked open in a chorus of shrieks. The lockers flung themselves open, and a swarm of hospital detritus—gauze, syringes, pill cups, entire reams of printer paper—exploded outward in all directions. The curtains snapped and billowed in a wind that Rose couldn't feel on her skin, but she saw it in the way the fabric twisted, as if each pleat was being yanked by a thousand angry hands. The fluorescent light overhead stuttered, and then, within seconds, the temperature plummeted. Breath steamed in front of her face, as the air itself seemed to thin, thinning until the simple act of inhaling made her chest burn. Every gasp was like swallowing sleet. All the warmth in her body pooled wherever the Doctor touched her, and everywhere else, she was submerged in cold.

A plastic tray whirled past over their heads, a blur so fast and close Rose thought she heard the whistle of it. The Doctor only yanked her closer, curling his spine even tighter as the next barrage shot overhead—a rain of tongue depressors, a whirlwind of paperwork, and then a mug, still half-full of cold tea, which shattered directly above them. The mug exploded like a grenade, sending brown liquid and ceramic shrapnel in every direction.

A fraction of a second later, the entire wall cabinet above the sink began to move. At first, it just trembled, but then it groaned, tore away from the wall, and came free.

'Shit!' Rose cried.

The cabinet crashed down, clipping the Doctor's shoulder and then slamming directly onto his lower back. The impact drove the air out of his lungs with a grunt.

Dust rained down, and the cabinet skidded sideways, pinning the Doctor's legs against the bed, then rocked as if something inside it was fighting to get out. At once, the Doctor shifted his weight off her, using the bed's metal slats as leverage, and shoved the cabinet aside with a force that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than adrenaline.

'Get out—now!' he barked.

Rose didn't argue. She crabbed sideways, dragging herself out from under the tangle of bed and debris, then scrambled to her feet. The Doctor followed, hunched and breathing hard.

The room was a battlefield. Every surface was covered in debris. A rolling IV pole had snapped off at the base, the metal pipe buckled neatly in half. The curtain track hung lopsided, and most of the curtain rings were ripped away and scattered around the room. A notebook struck the Doctor's neck with a dull thud, and he flinched but didn't slow.

As they stumbled to the centre of the room, a roar, not physical but psychic, built and built until Rose thought she would black out from the pressure of it. The air around her seemed to harden; it restrained her, squeezed her, made her sense of self fold up like origami. The electromagnetic buzz in her teeth got so loud she wanted to scream, but her voice was swallowed by the next wave: a whole stack of meal trays, fired like clay pigeons.

The Doctor tried to shield her again, but this time the onslaught came from three directions. He caught the first tray with his shoulder, the second with his ribs. In the instant he buckled, Rose saw a chair float up behind him, hover for a moment as if savouring the anticipation, then fire itself point-blank at her head. He turned, took the blow with his arm, and went down hard, dragging Rose with him. Her knees skidded out from under her, and she hit the floor again, protected from the impact by the Doctor's arm and his relentless refusal to let anything hit her.

'Stay down!' he ordered.

Anything that could be lifted, thrown, or weaponised against them was. A clinical thermometer embedded itself in the wall inches from Rose's ear, quivering. A plastic jug detonated against the floor, shards skidding everywhere. A tray like a discus whipped past, and for a moment, Rose was convinced it had taken the top of the Doctor's head off when she saw the blood appear.

Then, just as suddenly, it stopped.

Rose froze. The temperature snapped back, the static charge bled away, and the torrent of projectiles stopped. She blinked up at the Doctor. Blood streamed from a cut above his eyebrow. His hair was wild, dusted with plaster and blood, and his eyes were wide open, black and furious and terrified.

'That's it,' the Doctor said. 'Back to the Tardis, now.'

'No,' Rose started, but he cut her off.

'Not a debate, Rose. It's escalating, and it's absolutely targeting you. You're not staying here.'

She thought about objecting, but the look on his face, the tone—it had been a very long time since she'd heard him like this. It was the voice of a man whose command had sent ships into battle, toppled dictators, and brought Gods to their knees.

He wasn't asking anymore.

~ ΘΣ ~

The Manchester Arndale shopping centre was, on a Saturday at peak hour, a microcosm of everything Rose had ever both loved and hated about Earth simultaneously.

It was absolutely heaving, with parents corralling strollers and wayward toddlers, teenagers in athleisure gear pushing each other around playfully, staff driving around in flashing carts, representatives standing outside shops trying to force people in to see their wares. The shops were a parade of the ridiculous and the desperate: phone repair kiosks, shoe emporiums, pop-up makeup counters. Overhead, fluorescent tubes flickered with electricity that felt barely contained.

Jackie Tyler was a force of nature, ploughing ahead through the thickest knots of shoppers as if the entire concourse was her living room and everyone else unwanted guests. She already had a shopping bag in each hand, ready to whack anyone who got in her way.

Rose's left hand was locked with Theo's, whose new trainers squeaked on the tile with every step. He was in a state of perpetual motion, swinging her arm, bouncing on his toes, craning to see over and under things. He pointed at everything: trains, lollipops, a dog on a lead, a giant poster of a footballer with a mohawk. Sometimes his grip would loosen unexpectedly, and she'd have to yank him back from the edge of a bench or the path of a retail worker.

The noise was overwhelming. Every inch of air seemed packed with sound: chart hits thumping from speakers, the inescapable PA system announcing 'Attention shoppers: savings at Debenhams!' at thirty-second intervals, the background static of thousands of conversations, laughter, crying, someone nearby sneezing so loud it made Rose flinch. For all that, she couldn't quite hear her own thoughts. She moved on autopilot, aware of her own body as if watching it perform from some great distance, limbs articulated by memory rather than intention.

She couldn't shake the sense that she was a ghost haunting her own past life.

'Ooo, look, they're doin' three-for-one at Claire's!' Jackie exclaimed as they passed the shop.

Rose managed half a smile. 'You hate Claire's.'

'Doesn't matter, does it? That's a proper bargain,' Jackie replied.

Theo, meanwhile, had already shifted his attention from a stray bird above to the scent of sausages wafting over from the food court. He tried to make a run for it, pulling Rose off balance, and she nearly stumbled before planting her feet and hauling him back.

'Food!' he told her, like she was committing some crime by refusing to immediately let him have a sausage bap.

'Are you hungry, sweetheart?' Jackie asked.

'Yeah!' Theo told her firmly. Then suddenly his little face crumpled and he unleashed a sneeze of biblical proportions, jets of snot flying out. His eyes went wide with shock, clearly having completely surprised himself. For an instant, he was silent, and then began to giggle at the strings of mucus now webbing the lower half of his face.

'Oh god,' Jackie groaned. 'Right, I've got some wet wipes… somewhere in this lot—'

They decamped to a bench by a fake tree. Rose let Theo scramble onto the seat, where he immediately set to swinging his legs and scanning the movements of shoppers in the queue for the food stand.

Jackie sat next to him and started her rummage, elbow-deep in her bag. Rose remained standing, hands in the pockets of her denim jacket, scanning the crowd. She found herself checking and re-checking: was anyone watching them? Was there some pattern in the movement of the crowd? Was a mannequin about to step off its plinth and follow them?

She tried to shake it off.

'Aha!' Jackie declared, triumphantly producing a travel-sized packet of wet wipes. She unsheathed one and efficiently tackled the disaster of Theo's face, using a practised hand to pin his head steady and sweep away the snot.

'Thanks,' Theo said politely when she'd finished.

'You're welcome, sweetheart,' Jackie said, inspecting her handiwork. 'Right, shall we get you a sausage bap, then?'

Theo didn't look at her, but responded instantly: 'Nunions too? Please?'

'Nunion? What's a—oh, onion,' Jackie corrected herself, laughing and ruffling his hair. 'Of course you can have onions, sweetheart. Whatever you want.'

'Yay,' Theo crowed in a tone that made Rose laugh, but it startled her how quickly it almost became a sob. It was almost as if her chest had simply reversed polarity, and the emotion that came out bore no resemblance to the one she'd felt going in. She stiffened and tried to hide it, turning her head away under the pretence of watching the crowds. She didn't want Theo to see. She didn't want Jackie to see, either, but her mother's gaze was uncanny.

Jackie looked up at her, eyes soft with concern. 'You alright, love?' she asked.

Rose bit down on whatever had tried to rise in her throat. She nodded. She was fine. She was always fine. She had to be, because if she wasn't, the fragile, stitched-together reality of her little family might disintegrate all over again.

Jackie seemed to read her mind. 'You've not had five minutes to breathe since all that business with Lanwa. You've been sitting at his bedside like some Florence Nightingale for weeks. You need air. And Theo needs a toy dinosaur, don't you, love?'

Theo, who had been briefly distracted by a girl in a giant penguin costume advertising a new phone plan, snapped his head around. 'T-Rex!' he declared at full volume, then gave a roar noisy enough to startle a nearby pensioner.

'I'll go get us some baps, then, you two stay here,' Jackie said, and left to join the queue.

Theo stayed put and started to point out absolutely everything he could see again. Her mind, for a few moments, was entirely occupied with Theo's world— an endless loop of faces and colours and sounds, all processed at the speed of a two-year-old discovering everything for the first time.

When her phone vibrated in her pocket, Rose almost didn't notice. She fished it out. The message was waiting for her, as if he'd known exactly when she'd check.

All good here. Got Leah. Making plans. Brax annoying. Are you okay?

She stared at the screen, trying to decode the non-existent subtext. She typed back: shopping with mum and Theo. Gonna get some sausage baps. Want one?

The response came so fast it felt like a reflex. YES + onions.

She giggled as Jackie returned with the food. Theo finally stopped talking and ate happily as Jackie tucked into hers, slurping at some lemonade through a straw. Rose's hand drifted to her phone again, thumb hovering over the Doctor's name. She wanted to call, to hear his voice, to be assured that everything really was okay. But that was pathetic.

'You not eatin', sweetheart?' her mum asked her.

She shook her head. 'I'll save it for him.'

She stuffed her bap into her bag to give to him later.

~ ΘΣ ~

'Absolutely not,' Braxiatel said, standing stiffly at the foot of the Doctor's bed. 'Whatever nonsense you and Harkness are scheming, leave me out of it.'

'Not nonsense,' Jack countered, leaning against the lockers with his arms folded. 'We've got a hostile psychic imprint, and it's targeting Rose. We can't wait until it kills her to act.'

'She's not even here,' Brax replied flatly. 'For good reason.'

'Which is why we need to do it now,' Leah piped up from her perch on the windowsill, notebook open across her knees. 'Route, load, emotional signal. I've got it all worked out. If we don't summon, it'll keep escalating. And next time—'

'Next time it won't stop,' the Doctor finished. He sat upright, leg stiff, bandage peeking at his hairline where Martha had stitched him. His eyes were fixed on Brax. 'We're doing this. The question is whether you'll help or whether you'll stand there pretending nothing's happening.'

Brax's mouth flattened. He glanced at his brother, then at Leah—seven years old, legs swinging, utterly serious. 'This is absurd. You want to poke a hornet's nest.'

'It's already poked,' Jack said. 'We're just choosing the ground.'

The silence stretched. Brax finally sighed and folded his arms. 'Fine. But when it all goes wrong, I will be saying “I told you so.”'

Leah grinned. 'Good. You can help with the maths bit.'

The plan was set.

~ ΘΣ ~

Theo's bedroom in the TARDIS looked like a bomb had gone off. Plastic dinosaurs, wooden blocks, half a train set, and one pair of pyjamas he'd flat-out refused to wear were scattered across the floor. Rose was kneeling with a blanket in her hands, trying to corral him towards the bed as he galloped past with a triceratops in one fist.

'Bedtime!' she called, not for the first time.

'RAAAWR!' Theo yelled, crashing the dinosaur into the wall, then dashing out of reach again.

Rose sighed, but she was smiling. She'd missed this. Missed being mum. Missed ordinary battles like convincing a two-year-old to go to bed.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She snatched it up. 'Hey.'

'Hi,' came the Doctor's voice, warm and a little crackly. 'I've got one. You've got the other?'

Rose glanced at Theo, who was now climbing onto the bed backwards. 'Yep. He's still alive. Yours?'

'Alive too,' the Doctor confirmed.

Theo froze at the sound. 'Da?'

'That's right,' Rose said, putting the phone on speaker.

'Hey. Are you being good for Mum?' the Doctor asked.

'No,' Theo replied cheerfully.

Rose giggled. 'Honest.'

'That's my boy,' the Doctor said.

Theo, already bored with the phone, launched himself under the duvet. Rose tucked the blanket around him, smoothing his hair back. 'What's up?'

There was a pause. 'We're going with Leah's plan. The summoning.'

Rose's hand stilled for a second on Theo's hair. 'Tonight?'

'Midnight,' he confirmed. 'I’ll need you. Jack'll walk you in. Don't tell your mum.'

'Yeah, that'd go down well,' Rose muttered, glancing at the closed door as if Jackie could sense her plotting from a distance.

'It's a bit dangerous,' he admitted, 'but that's just fun, isn't it?'

She could hear the grin in his voice, and it made her chest tighten with something like relief. For the first time in months, they sounded like them again.

'Try not to get yourself killed before I get there,' she said.

'I'll try,' he said lightly. 'See you later. G'night, Theo.'

'Night!' the boy yelled, his eyes still closed.

She tucked Theo in properly, kissed his forehead, and whispered, 'Love you.' His eyes were already drifting shut.

Rose stayed on the edge of the bed for a moment longer, phone warm in her hand, heart thumping with equal parts dread and anticipation. Then she got up, stuffing her phone into her pocket as she went to the living room to wait for Jack.

Chapter Text

It was ten minutes to midnight when Jack’s head finally popped through the TARDIS doors, and he flashed Rose a thumbs-up.

She followed him out, careful to close the door softly, though it was pointless—her mother was sleeping three miles away in the folds of a dimensionally transcendental ship. Besides, it was by no means the first time Rose had successfully sneaked out in the middle of the night to meet a boy.

'Evening,’ Jack greeted, falling into step with her as they crossed the car park.

'S’pose we’re hopin’ nothing’s gonna maul me on the way there,’ Rose said.

Jack grinned. 'That’s the hope. But if it does, I’m here.’

'Is there actually a proper plan, or are we just wingin’ it?’

He shrugged nonchalantly. 'Couldn’t say. I’m here to hold your hand and make sure nobody gets killed. Beyond that, it’s up to the talent. That’s you and the Doctor.’

'Great,’ she said.

They entered through the outpatients’ entrance, which was deserted save for a single UNIT soldier on security detail. The man barely glanced up as they breezed past the desk, acknowledging them with a nod. They reached the lifts and stepped inside, Jack hitting the button.

'So,’ Rose said. 'How’s he really doin’? Cos I’ve had twenty-four hours of “I’m fine” texts, and with him that could mean anythin’ from “this is the happiest I’ve ever been” to “I’m regeneratin’.”’

Jack laughed. 'He really is fine. Actually, better than fine.’

'Yeah?’

'Yeah,’ Jack confirmed. 'Not just the physical stuff. Tonight feels… good for him.’

Rose understood immediately. The Doctor always needed something to fix, some puzzle to gnaw at. Pin him down in a hospital bed with nothing but his own thoughts for company, and of course his mind would start eating itself alive. She’d previously joked about what would happen if he had nothing to do before, but these last weeks had shown her just how unfunny that could be.

Martha and Brax had been calm through all of it, but Rose wasn’t stupid. She knew there’d been moments worse than they’d let on, moments they’d kept from her. She still didn’t know if she appreciated that or resented it.

She exhaled hard. 'Yeah. The Doctor's not good at doin’ nothin’.’

'Nope,’ Jack agreed.

She bit her lip. She’d been there through all of it: washing the Doctor, steadying him, coaxing him to talk. Holding him while he shook with nightmares. Nagging him through physio. Loving him so desperately, it sometimes felt like it might split her in two. And now—for the first time in weeks—things felt almost normal. Just the Doctor and Rose ghost hunting in a hospital.

The lift pinged, doors opening onto a darkened corridor. The MRI suite lay ahead, silent and deserted. Jack led the way, and as they rounded the corner, Rose spotted them instantly: Braxiatel, poised; Leah, perched on a chair, scribbling in her notebook, and the Doctor leaning against the wall in his nightclothes, hair a mess.

Rose stopped dead. For a heartbeat, all she could hear was that voice in her head screaming: he could have died. And then, equally loud: he didn’t. He’s here. You only saw him yesterday, you pathetic idiot.

She covered the short distance in three strides and threw her arms around his neck. He staggered a little, but his hands wrapped around her waist instinctively, and they stood locked together for a few moments.

'Miss me?’ the Doctor said, voice muffled by her hair.

'No,’ she replied, her arms tightening.

He laughed, a sound that vibrated through her whole ribcage. Then he shifted, trying to see her face without breaking the embrace.

'Are you alright?’ he asked.

Rose considered. Still alive, still herself, still absolutely terrified of losing this stupid, reckless alien, but for the moment, better than alright. 'Yeah,’ she said, finally. 'Better now.’

Jack made a show of clearing his throat. 'Heartwarming as this is, we do have a violent ghost about to manifest in two minutes.’

'Yeah, sorry,’ Rose said, grinning up at the Doctor, who grinned back.

Leah jumped upright from her chair, bouncing once on her toes. 'Okay, so. Only Mum and Dad are allowed in the ward. Everyone else is out here. We only go in if something bad happens. Got it?’

Everyone nodded.

The Doctor straightened and looked at Rose. 'Ready?’

She smiled. 'No idea what we’re supposed to do, but yeah. Let’s go.’

Braxiatel murmured something to the Doctor in rapid, clipped Gallifreyan. Rose caught only a word or two, but the tone was a warning, or maybe just a reminder. The Doctor nodded, then pushed open the doors to the abandoned ward. They stepped through, and the doors swung shut behind them.

Rose took it in as the strip lights buzzed reluctantly to life. The beds were stripped bare, curtains hanging loose, machines unplugged and pushed against the walls.

She shivered. 'It’s really cold.’

The Doctor walked a few steps in. 'It’s the perfect venue for ghosting, really,’ he said lightly, scanning the empty beds. 'Good acoustics for wooing. Plenty of room to throw things around. Slightly sinister disused look.’

'You’re jokin’,’ Rose muttered.

'Little bit,’ he admitted. He stopped in the centre of the room, head tilting as though listening to something only he could hear.

Rose stayed a pace back, her eyes darting to every flicker of shadow. She could almost feel the walls breathing around them. 'So what happens now?’

The Doctor half-turned to her. 'Now we make it come to us. It needs emotions for potency, so we need to… well.’

Before she could ask what he meant, his hand suddenly jerked to his chest, and his face contorted in sudden pain.

'Doctor?’ she asked quickly, shocked.

He staggered, gasping, his knees buckling before he caught himself on the frame of a bed.

Rose’s stomach dropped like a stone. 'No. Not now!’

He doubled over with a strangled sound. She lunged forward, grabbing his arms, trying to steady him. 'Sit down. C’mon, sit...’

'Left heart,’ he rasped. 'Out of rhythm. Can’t—’

Her chest seized. 'No, no, no, don’t you dare. Don’t you bloody dare!’ she yelped. 'You were gettin’ better, you were—’

The bond surged, suddenly vibrating. The air pressure in the ward shifted, dropping hard, and Rose felt it press against her eardrums. Then the lights snapped once, then twice, then stuttered into a manic strobe.

A cold front swept across the room, so sharp her skin prickled. The metal curtain rails rattled, lockers slammed open, and somewhere behind them a chair skittered six feet across the lino.

'Doctor—’ Rose started, but the rest of her words were drowned by the smell of sandalwood flooding the air, much worse than ever before. This was choking, invasive, shoving itself into her throat and lungs until she coughed.

The Doctor straightened, suddenly perfectly fine. 'Got it,’ he said under his breath.

Rose blinked, realisation dawning. 'You tricked me, you—’

'Later!’ He wrapped himself bodily around her, bracing himself against the whirlwind as drawers ripped themselves open and the air became a tornado of paper and metal. A pen shot across the room like a dart. He ducked it, twisting so his shoulder covered Rose’s head.

'Show yourself!’ he barked, as something made of glass shattered somewhere near the windows.

Rose’s heart thundered as a shape began to form at the far end of the ward: a dense shadow, coalescing into something humanoid in shape. Her breath caught as the features blurred into place, jagged and shifting, but recognisable. It was a face.

She stared as she realised. 'Oh my God. I know you.’

~ ΘΣ ~

Lanwa stood on the windblasted shoreline of a world she’d never asked the name of. The sky overhead glared raw, streaked with black and bloody red. A frozen, sulfurous wind came in off the water, and the sea heaved in dirty waves that slapped against the shore. The sand was green, granular as sugar, dusting the boots and bare feet of those who stood upon it: one hundred people, standing in a dead straight line, waiting to die.

They’d come from a settlement a few miles inland, plucked from their ordinary lives. Lanwa hadn’t troubled herself with picking and choosing, nor had she cared whether those chosen were young or old, strong or frail. She had simply extended her will, and a hundred minds had buckled, their bodies lurching up from beds or shop counters or dinner tables, caught in the invisible, irresistible hook of her and marched two miles to this beach. Now they stood, motionless, their backs rigid, lips sealed, eyes fixed on the ocean before them.

Rose felt every one of them. She felt them as if each mind was a splinter of glass inside her own: one hundred fragments, jagged and bleeding, jabbed into the softest parts of her psyche. She could sense their terror. She could feel the nerves in their fingers, the desperate clutch of toes trying to grip the sand, the agony in those forced to walk on torn-up feet.

Rose tried everything. She tried to drag Lanwa’s hand away from her side, to twitch a finger or blink or even just grit her teeth. She sent instructions down her own nerves, flung every ounce of will she had into the act of rebellion. Sometimes, for a microsecond, she thought she felt her own little finger tremble out of Lanwa’s control, but the hope guttered out as quickly as it sparked. Lanwa’s grip on her was perfect. Rose howled inside her own skull, silent and as powerless as the hundred strangers before her.

Please, she begged, to no avail. Please, Lanwa, stop.

But Lanwa had stopped listening months ago. Maybe she could no longer even hear the voice of the original mind trapped inside her skull.

The tide crept in, lapping at the toes of the captives as Rose’s gaze snagged, unaccountably, on one woman in the row. She was young, lavender-skinned in the way of her species, with long dark hair. Her jaw was set, her eyes full of fear, and her body trembled slightly. There was a spark there. She hadn’t given up, not yet. Rose could feel the woman’s mind: terror, yes, but also a desperate, animal defiance. She was fighting, if only by refusing to let her mind go blank before the end came.

The red horizon paled, and Lanwa raised Rose’s hand high overhead, palm outstretched. 'Look,’ she said. She did not speak to the crowd, but to herself. 'Look at what I can do.’

The hand came down, and the entire line of prisoners stepped forward as one. Perfect synchrony in one clean motion.

One step.

Not a single voice rose in protest, not a shriek or a whimper, because Lanwa had control of every tongue. The only sound was the synchronised thuds of bare feet and shoe soles on the sand. Rose felt the physicality of it, the tendon-snapping tension of bodies forced to obey.

Two steps.

Here and there, a body twitched in microscopic rebellion: a flinch of the hand or a clench of teeth. But every act of resistance was instantly choked off, overridden by the cold command that radiated out from Lanwa.

Three steps.

Cold water enveloped their feet, then shins, then knees. The lavender-skinned woman who’d caught Rose’s attention faltered, her knees buckling when the water bit at her calves. In that split second, Rose felt her own heart hammer in her chest. Maybe, just maybe, the will to survive could break the grip.

Four steps.

Now the water was at their thighs. Faces contorted in shock at the cold, and a few heads whipped back as if to look for escape, but there was none. The woman’s jaw clenched and unclenched, and Rose felt the way that jaw actually hurt.

Five steps.

Now the water came up past their waists, clothing ballooning and billowing in the tide. The force of the sea was almost enough to stop them, but Lanwa’s power was relentless and absolute. The lavender-skinned woman hunched her shoulders low, bracing herself for the inevitable, her eyes squeezed shut.

Six steps.

The water reached their chests, and the first true tremors of hysteria rippled through the line. Even Lanwa, for all her detachment, seemed to glow with excitement; the sensation made Rose want to vomit. The woman tried to lift her chin out of the water, tried to arch her back, but the forward march was relentless. Each step now was a battle of physics versus nightmare: some feet lost purchase, legs buckling, but muscles spasmed and righted themselves without pause. Every sense was overloaded—Rose’s ears rang with the slap of water against flesh, her own heart threatened to seize. She thought she could hear, beneath the wind and surf, a mass of voices screaming from inside their own skulls.

Seven steps.

The tide reached their necks. Several bodies went under as the waves crested, then re-emerged, gasping, only to be swallowed again by the next cold slap. The lavender-skinned woman’s breath came fast and ragged, shoulders shaking. But Lanwa’s control kept her in the same mechanical cadence: forward, forward, forward. Rose felt the scream building in the woman’s chest, the last plea for help, for mercy, for anyone to intervene. She felt her own mind echo it, a psychic resonance of pure, unfiltered terror.

Eight steps.

The water closed over their mouths and noses. For one brief instant, the lavender-skinned woman’s head broke the surface, and she managed a gasp. Then the next wave came and forced her under. Around her, the rest of the line went under as well: a ripple of bodies bobbing in the waves, all vanishing into the thick, roiling surf. Rose wanted to shut her eyes, but her eyes were not hers to close anymore.

Nine steps.

Now the entire line was submerged. Rose felt her own mind fragmenting under the strain, the agony of witnessing every death as if it were her own family, the guilt of complicity, the shame of helplessness.

Then there was nothing. The sea closed over the line, erasing every sign of struggle and every mark of existence of one hundred innocent people, including the woman.

Rose broke. She screamed inside her own head, a soundless, rending wail, until she thought her mind would burst from the pressure. She screamed for the woman, for every soul drowned in the march, for watching and being unable to stop it. She screamed because she herself was just as trapped. The scream echoed through the root of her being, reverberated through nerve and bone, until everything went white and silent and hollow.

She screamed, but no sound left her lips.

~ ΘΣ ~

The present snapped back. Rose’s heart stuttered, and she could do nothing except stand there, clutching the Doctor’s sleeve. The lights overhead juddered, then locked into a full, relentless strobe. The face in the chaos was unmistakable. Lavender skin, dark hair streaming.

Rose’s throat closed. She tasted sandalwood so thick she almost gagged. The ghost looked at her, not through her, and Rose felt every drop of the woman’s old pain as if it were her own.

'You—’ Her voice broke. 'I saw you—’

Glass imploded behind her, scattering across the linoleum. Beds levitated, slammed down, the rails shrieking. The Doctor pressed in closer, but all she could see was the woman who had been forced to drown herself, standing silent and unblinking, not angry but so, so lost.

'I saw you die,’ Rose choked out. 'I watched you die!’

A locker door ripped off its hinges and pinwheeled through the air, missing her head by inches. For a moment, she thought she saw the ghost’s lips move, soundless, the shape of a word. But maybe that was just the lights.

'I’m sorry!’ she yelled, voice strangled. 'I’m so fuckin’ sorry!’

The storm redoubled, the beds crashing and twisting on their wheels, curtains billowing, but the ghost did not approach. She only stood there, her hands at her sides, her eyes never leaving Rose’s.

'I wanted—’ The words tangled. Rose’s vision doubled, the world flickering between the hospital and the alien shore, between the room and the sea. 'I wanted to save you! I tried to stop her! She was too strong! I’m sorry!’

The ghost’s mouth parted. For a second, Rose thought she would speak, thought she would scream or curse or demand justice. But the only sound was the whirl of chaos as a tray whirred past them, edge-first. The Doctor shielded her with his body as the edge grazed his side and clanged against the wall.

She met the ghost’s eyes. 'I’m sorry you died!’ she screamed, desperate. 'I’m sorry the last thing you saw was me! But it wasn’t me! It was her! I tried so hard to stop her, but I couldn’t!’

The woman’s stare didn’t soften, but it did change. Something in her expression shimmered just beneath the surface. She did not forgive. But she understood.

The wind, which had howled around the room, fell away so suddenly that the silence thudded in Rose’s ears. Beds crashed to the floor. Curtains fell in limp tangles. The lights, which had been strobed to a seizure-inducing blur, slowed, steadied, and flickered. All the debris that had been spinning through the air drifted downwards to the floor.

Rose felt the pressure in her skull recede, then vanish. She realised, with sudden surprise, that she could breathe again.

The dead woman stood amid the devastation. Her face twisted, wet with spectral tears. Her jaw trembled. Her hands clenched into small, helpless fists. Rose was staring at the memory of all the drowning, and for a second, she forgot how to stand. She then felt the Doctor’s hand on her back, steadying, and only then realised she’d been swaying.

He loosened his grip, his palm warm and gentle against her neck. Rose hardly noticed. She stepped forward and faced the ghost. She didn’t know what else to say, but the words came anyway, raw and unfiltered.

'I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. 'I wish I could go back. I wish I could fix it. I wish I could stop her. I wish it hadn’t been you.’

The woman’s eyes squeezed shut; in that gesture, Rose saw the ripple of sadness, a wave so deep it nearly buckled her knees. She heard it, the silent, strangled sound of 'why me,’ of 'please.’

The Doctor, holding her protectively, spoke quietly: 'She’s not angry at you, Rose. She just wants to be seen.’

'I see you,’ Rose said instantly and stepped forward. 'I remember you. I won’t forget.’

The dead woman’s outline flickered, her form suddenly so clear that Rose could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the dimple in her chin, the way her hair stuck in wet strands to her jaw. The light around her surged, then dimmed, then steadied. She looked at Rose.

'Maeyena,’ the ghost said. Her voice was so faint.

Rose nodded, swallowing hard. 'Is that your name? Maeyena, I remember you. I’ll always remember you. Please, I’m so, so sorry for how you died.’

Something changed then. The anger in the air folded up, collapsed in on itself, and was replaced by a kind of peace. Maeyena’s form grew less distinct, the edges diffusing into mist, the wetness of her face replaced by a calm resignation. For a moment, the ghost hovered there, as if she wanted to reach out, to touch Rose. But she didn’t. She only smiled—small, sad—and then faded.

Rose’s knees gave out. She collapsed onto the floor, hands over her face, and began to sob. The Doctor was beside her instantly, dropping to his knees and gathering her into his arms.

Her whole body shook. She clung to the Doctor, clutching fistfuls of his shirt, pressing her face into his shoulder.

'I couldn’t save her,’ she choked out. 'I saw her die and I couldn’t—’ She couldn’t finish.

The Doctor kissed her forehead, shaking his head. 'You did everything you could, Rose. And we’ll remember her.’

Rose nodded. She curled in tighter, wanting to disappear, wanting to be held forever.

She just cried.

~ ΘΣ ~

Nine hours later, a sun pooled through the window of the Doctor’s room, warm and gentle. The Doctor sat on the edge of the mattress, finally fully dressed in his blue suit, lacing his Converse while Rose folded the last of his clothes into a bag.

Jackie was in her element, bustling and issuing orders to absolutely everyone and no one simultaneously. Martha was at the far end of the room, consulting her datapad. Braxiatel, who had arrived a half hour earlier, stood by the window with his hands folded behind his back, looking at the view.

'Actual discharge,’ Rose said, closing the zipper on the bag with a defiant little flourish. 'Thought you were payin’ rent here.’

The Doctor grinned as Jackie rounded on him. 'Remember, just cos you’re discharged don’t mean you can go somersaultin’ around on Mars.’

'So Venus is all right?’ the Doctor asked facetiously. Rose elbowed him lightly, and both of them laughed up at the same time.

'Don’t think I won’t clip you both round the ear,’ Jackie warned seriously. 'Now come on, Dr Jones, tell him his privileges. Set down the law, nice and clear.’

Martha nodded, hiding a smirk. 'Here’s the deal, Doctor: you follow your discharge physio, you keep things low key for a while, and—' she paused, checking Rose—'and you stay with someone responsible.’

'That’s me,’ Rose said, grinning with her tongue between her teeth.

'I was afraid of that,’ Martha joked. 'But seriously, Rose, if he so much as blinks oddly, ring me.’

Braxiatel, who had until now been a fixture in the background, finally turned from the window. 'If I may,’ he said, 'I think you should rescan every week until everything is completely healed. I would be interested to see the results.’

'Absolutely,’ the Doctor said, in a tone Rose already knew meant he probably wasn't going to do that.

He finished his laces and pushed himself to stand up. The dizziness was still there, but it stopped very quickly. His left leg, still braced, was noticeably weaker than his right, but he could bear weight.

'Alright, sweetheart?’ Jackie checked.

'Never better,’ the Doctor replied, and looked at Martha and Brax. 'Need a lift?’

'Don't worry, Mickey's taking us back to London,’ Martha told him. 'You go and relax a while.’

'A whole car journey with him? Lucky you,’ he said with a grin, inclining his head at his brother, who just sighed.

He hugged Martha, then shook Braxiatel's hand. Jackie held the door and herded the Doctor and Rose out into the corridor with a sweep of her arm.

They passed the nurses’ station at the end of the ward, where Zainab was holding a cup of coffee. Gathered around her were three other nurses, all off-shift. As Rose, Jackie, and the Doctor neared, they could hear the tail end of an animated story.

'…And then when I was wheeling the trolley into bed five, the curtain snapped back on its own—like, properly yanked itself open—so I could get through. I thought it was static, but it was, like, deliberate, you know?' The paediatric nurse pantomimed the motion. 'Later, little Reynax was crying, right? I go to grab him a toy, and when I get back, he’s just giggling. Says 'the wet lady’ was pulling funny faces at him from behind the monitor.”

Another nurse nodded, eyes wide. 'I had something weird in surgery, too,' she said. 'Routine calliectomy for a Veshallan. The trolley with the instruments gets knocked, but then it just… popped back up onto its wheels, everything still in place. Didn’t spill a thing. I swear, it was like someone caught it mid-fall and balanced it for me.'

All four nurses turned to look at the Doctor, who’d slowed, curious. 'Sounds a bit haunted around here,' he commented brazenly.

Zainab grinned. 'I'll say. Do you know something about this?’

The Doctor exchanged a look with Rose. 'Nope, nothing. Bye, Zainab.’

Zainab rolled her eyes, clearly knowing better. 'Goodbye, Doctor.’

They moved on, Jackie nudging them toward the hospital’s main exit. Together they emerged into the bright, warm morning.

'Oh, the outside,’ the Doctor realised, taking it in before the UNIT gates opened, and the Doctor stopped dead.

The TARDIS stood waiting just beyond the perimeter.

Rose squeezed his hand. 'Go on, then,' she murmured.

He barely heard her. His feet carried him forward until he reached the doors, and he pressed his palms flat against the wood.

'Hello, old girl,' he whispered.

The TARDIS answered instantly. The lamp pulsed with light, soft and slow, and the ground underfoot vibrated. That familiar hum poured straight through his bones.

He closed his eyes as he leaned his forehead against the wood. 'I’ve missed you,' he breathed.

Jackie made a face. 'Honestly. It’s like watchin’ a man kiss a lamp post.'

Rose laughed, but her gaze never left him. She saw the way his fingers curled into the grain of the wood, how his whole body seemed to loosen as if he could finally, finally relax.

The doors swung open. The Doctor stepped inside, and the golden light washed over him. He stopped on the grating, eyes closing again, and just stood there, breathing it in.

The hum deepened, running up through the soles of his feet into his spine, threading into the bond until Rose felt it too. The coral struts seemed to lean closer, the rotor glowing brighter, every system alive.

He laughed and spread his arms wide like he might embrace the room. 'Oh, you beautiful girl,' he said, his voice breaking on the words. 'I've been a bit sick. Sorry I left for so long. Thank you for looking after them, as usual.’

The console lights rippled in response, soft waves of colour rolling over the panels.

Jackie hefted their bag just inside the threshold, as Rose kept watching him. There was a warmth in the air, a sense of electric anticipation she’d never quite noticed before. 'She missed you,' Rose said.

The Doctor didn’t even seem to hear, at first. He just stepped in closer and reached out as though to shake hands with an old friend, then changed his mind, instead pressing his palm flat to the console. The ship answered immediately, her glow intensifying in a slow pulse. The lights on the console danced, and even to Rose, who’d spent the last few years learning the quirks of this impossible ship, the TARDIS’s noise hit a new register: a musical squeal of delight.

The Doctor circled the console, hands running delicately over the toggles and readouts. At every touch, the ship responded. Rose watched him check the monitor, tap a few keys, and then lean in to listen as the TARDIS produced a whistling, bubbling trill that was unmistakably pleased.

Rose’s throat felt tight, and she realised, with a sudden jealousy, that she’d never fully understand the bond between the Doctor and the TARDIS—not really. But as she watched, the Doctor glanced up at her, and she saw that it wasn’t only the ship he needed. It was her, as well.

He beckoned her, and Rose joined him at the console. The TARDIS’s hum shifted, deeper and more enveloping, as if the ship was drawing them both into herself. The Doctor’s hand found hers over the navigation lever, their fingers threading together. 'I told you years ago she likes you more than she likes me.'

'Don’t be thick,' Rose replied, grinning. 'She knows we go together.'

~ ΘΣ ~

At the same time, the endless wastes of Eternity stretched out in every direction, pale, shifting ground beneath a sky that didn't appear to be any particular colour. Here, there was no sun, but light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

And one by one, the Eternals arrived.

Fate was first in her cat form, padding into view with her black-and-white fur groomed to perfection. She leapt onto a flat shard of crystallised rock, tail curling around her paws. 

From above, Hope descended in a slow, silent glide, landing on the jagged spine of another rock. Her sharp owl eyes blinked once, twice. 

'This had betterrr be imporrrtant,' Fate mewed.

'I agree,' Hope said. 'We don't often meet like this. Hoot.'

'We do not,' said Death, wings folding tight against her bat form as she clung to the edge of an obsidian spire. Click. 'But this is necessary.' Tick.

A distortion in the air shimmered into shape, and Time stepped forward in a body that seemed to shift with every glance — now tall and angular, now short and round, never settling. 'Go on, then,' she said.

A sound like splintering bone slid through the stillness as Pain arrived, its form not quite aligning with itself, all edges and sinew.

Death waited for them all to settle. 'Life is missing,' she announced. Click.

'Missing?' Hope echoed. 'Hoo is certain?'

'Gone,' Death confirmed. 'Vanished with no trace.' Tick.

'How long?' Time asked.

'Long enough,' Death said simply.

Fate licked a paw. 'She will rrrreturn when she wishes.'

'Hoo thinks not,' Hope replied. 'Life does not simply… vanish.'

'Not… without… help,' Pain said, its voice jagged and clipped, struggling to get out every word. 'Or… harm.'

Time's gaze narrowed. 'And when was she last seen?'

'With the Ephemeral,' Death said. Click. 'And the Kin.'

'Purrrhaps,' Fate drawled, 'she simply tirrred of his endless sulking.'

'Hoo remembers you antagonising him beyond reason,' Hope said. 'He hates you.' 

'He hates all of us,' Death put in, without a hint of concern. Tick.

'Yes, but you didn't make him relive a fortnight of torture for your own amusement,' Time pointed out.

Fate's whiskers twitched. 'Perrrhaps he should be grateful. I made him betterrr.'

Pain let out a noise like the scrape of metal on stone. 'You... are… delusional.'

'Enough,' Time said. 'If anyone knows where she is, it's the Ephemeral.'

'Then we ask him, hoot,' Hope said.

'Ask?' Fate's ears went back. 'We do not ask ephemerrrals for help.'

'Then we leave a trail,' Time suggested. 'Something he'll follow. Let him think it's his idea.'

'Manipurrrlation,' Fate purred approvingly.

'Hoo remembers how well that went last time?' Hope said.

'He... will... say... no,' Pain added.

'Then we make him say yes,' Death said. Click.

'And if he refuses?' Hope asked.

Tick. 'We take his Kin.'

'No,' Time snapped. 'Do that, and you lose him forever.'

'Hoo says we haven't already?' Hope muttered.

A long pause.

'So, hoo's going to do the asking?' Hope said finally.

'Not me,' Fate said. 'Cleverrr Doctorrr does not listen to fate.'

'I'm not doing it,' Time said flatly.

'No chance, hoot,' Hope stated.

Death spread her wings. Click. 'Not me.'

Pain grinned—or at least exposed something that looked like teeth. 'I… volunteer. Not.'

They all stared at each other.

'Well,' Time sighed. 'That's settled. We need him. No one will talk to him. And Life is still missing.'

'Purrrhaps,' Fate said, washing her paw, 'we wait. Sooner or laterrr, the Ephemeral will come to us.'