Worth A Thousand Words

Chapter One

Though he feigned annoyance about it with her, inwardly he was glad. Being the last of his kind made it far too tempting to bend or break rules now that there was no one left to stop him.

In a few short days, Rose had become the voice of reason in his distressingly empty mind. While a relief, it was also mildly terrifying because for the first time in his life, his well-being – if only the mental aspect – depended wholly on someone else.

The whole situation made him anxious, which in itself was yet another terrifying new sentiment.

'You sure about this?' he asked, hiding that anxiety in resignation and the slightest note of disdain.

''Course I'm sure. I wouldn't've asked if I wasn't.'

'All of time and space...' he cajoled. 'Or if you're so set on a breather, didn't you say you wanted to explore the TARDIS a bit more? That sounds loads more interesting than Earth.'

'Doctor...'

'Just checking to make sure.'

'I promised. I don't want Mum to worry.'

'Then call her. I topped up your phone for a reason.'

'Yeah, and when I gave her a ring, it was a week before I left so she still figured I'd been murdered in the end,' Rose quipped. 'Besides – you said you'd make it up to me for last time.'

He suspected she was referring to skipping out on her mother during their last stopover in twenty-first century London. In his defence, he'd still been working off the adrenaline of preventing yet another alien invasion of Earth. How could anyone have expected him to sit still and chit-chat about new boyfriends and the newest fruit burst muffins at Costa?

Then there had been the dressing down Rose had given him after escaping a holding cell on an alien satellite station in the Horsehead Nebula.

'There's making it up to you, and then there's domestic,' the Doctor protested half-heartedly.

'An apology for being twelve months isn't so much domestic as deserved.'

'I apologised!'

'To me – not to my mum. You were too busy whinging about her slapping you.'

'Nine hundred years –!'

'Yeah, yeah,' she waved her hand dismissively and headed for the door, and then paused. 'You could, er, come up too...?'

'No.'

'So you're just going to stay parked here 'til I get back? Mum'll probably ask me to stay the night.'

'You go ahead. I'll be fine here.'

'You sure? I wouldn't want you to get too lonely without me,' she told him with a smile. Her tone was two-thirds joking, and one third serious.

Rose possessed instincts about people. She sensed when they were hurting and something in her basic genetic make-up made her want to fix them.

'Doubt it'll come to that,' he muttered. 'Got some repairs to do on the TARDIS. And it might do to follow up with whatever poor sod stepped in over at UNIT.'

Since a delegation of their experts had been executed during the Slitheen invasion, he was sure they'd be scrambling to stretch their numbers for a while. They might even haul poor Alistair out of retirement.

'Worse comes to worse I can leave you here for a bit and go tie up a few loose ends.'

During a brief trip to the top of Mount Everest, Rose had told the Doctor about how she researched him after their first meeting. Apparently she had seen evidence of him on at least three separate occasions; not his previous incarnations, but this him.