Title: Just Another Case of History Repeating

Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel

Story Summary: While using the Dimension Cannon, Rose finds a familiar blue box standing on an empty Scottish moor.

Setting: Before 'Turn Left' and 'The Stolen Earth', series four.

PART ONE OF FOUR

It was a quiet, peaceful day. The sky was mildly overcast, the sunlight struggling weakly through to the earth below. The wind blew, sharp and cold. There was no human around for miles.

The quiet was broken by a strange, semi-mechanical groaning sound and a flash of light, and when it stopped a young woman in a blue leather jacket stood there, her hair flowing loose in the wind.

She looked around, taking in the rolling empty moors stretching out as far as she could see, the heather growing wild and strong like a deep purple carpet. In the distance she could just make out what looked like a sheep, chewing on a clump of grass. It looked like…

"Scotland?" Rose Tyler asked aloud, frowning to herself. She'd been in Scotland a few times, but this was the first time the Dimension Cannon project had dumped her in the middle of a Scottish moor.

"Well, that's fantastic," she muttered to herself, a little disgruntled. "Still, might as well take a quick look around, make sure there's nothing here." She paused to consider her own words. "Right, I'm talking to myself. Slowly going mad, here."

Shaking her head, Rose began to walk across the moors.

She'd been walking for perhaps fifteen minutes when she crested a small hill. She glanced down, and her eyes widened in shock.

At the bottom of the hill the heather abruptly gave way to a patch of land that was blackened and charred. There was a small shallow crater in front of her, approximately fifteen metres or so across, and from the looks of it everything in the crater had burned. The ground was charcoal, suggesting that fire had burned here briefly but at a great heat.

What really held Rose's attention, though, was the battered looking police public call box sitting in the middle of the crater.

Rose realised that at some point she must have started running, but the realisation only made her move faster as she scrabbled her way down the hill, tripping slightly as her ankle caught in a tangle of plant roots. Rose cursed, hopping slightly to keep her balance as she kicked her foot free.

Rose turned and continued back down the hill, more slowly this time. Up until this point her eyes had been fixed firmly on the blue box to the exclusion of everything else, but now she took a closer look at her surroundings, and her breath caught a little as she realised for the first time that there was a huddle of something half-buried in the heather just beyond the crater.

Cautiously Rose made her way closer. It was a person, curled in the foetal position. Rose could make out dirty green velvet and an ear, sticking out from the curve of the back of the person's head.

As she closed the distance between them Rose realised that actually the ear was rather familiar, with a distinctive shape, and by the time she reached the unconscious figure a moment later her heart was pounding so hard that it felt almost as though it would burst out of her chest. Rose dropped to her knees by the unconscious man and gently rolled him over, exposing an angular face with a large nose, big ears, a straight mouth, and a tall forehead. His hair was brownish, and close-cropped.

Rose fought to breathe.

For a moment she thought that she was about to pass out, and there'd be two unconscious people lying in the heather, but suddenly her breathe came in great gasps, and her fit of light-headedness passed.

Rose took a deep, slow breath, trying to calm down, and began checking her first Doctor for injuries. He didn't seem to have any as far as she could see, but his pulse was faster than she liked and his skin was clammy even for him.

Rose had no idea how long he'd been lying there before she came along; for all she knew, he could have been lying out in the cold for days, and she wouldn't be surprised if turned out to be sick.

With a sigh, part of her unable to believe that she was dealing with this Doctor again so long after she'd accepted she'd never see him again, Rose prepared to lift the Doctor onto her shoulder so that she could try to half-carry him to the TARDIS.

Tucking the green coat around him more securely, she frowned at his outfit; dirty green velvet frock coat, delicately-patterned golden-khaki waistcoat fraying at the edges, a pair of breeches as dirty as the coat, and a tattered pair of men's leather dress shoes.

It was nothing like the leather jacket-jumper-trousers-boots combo she was used to seeing on him, and it didn't quite make sense.

At the corners of her mind, little trickling bits of information were beginning to gather together, as though she ought to know the answer to the mystery. It hadn't quite formed in her conscious mind yet, though.

Just as Rose began to lift the Doctor up there was a sudden glimmer of gold beneath his skin, making her start. She's seen that before, in her second Doctor, when he was recovering from regeneration. An instant later and the glimmer was gone again, but it was enough for her to put the pieces together.

"Oh my God," Rose breathed in aghast, horrified wonder, staring at the familiar Doctor with new eyes. "I bet you've just come out of the Time War, haven't you?"

There was another flicker of gold beneath his skin, fainter this time. Rose kicked her brain into gear yet again, and this time hauled the Doctor onto one shoulder, grappling with his tall, muscular form.

"God, you're heavy," Rose groaned, trying not to collapse under his weight or drop him. Neither would be good. "You been lining your pockets with bricks, or something?"

Rose slowly made her way across to the TARDIS, bringing the Doctor with her. The charcoal crackled under feet. Twice she had to lower the Doctor to the ground for a moment, making his clothes even more filthy, but after several strained minutes Rose was standing in front of the TARDIS.

If the circumstances had been different, Rose probably would have just stood there and stared at it for a few minutes, marvelling, but she had an ill Doctor to take care of and she needed to get him inside as soon as possible, so instead Rose fished under the neck of her shirt for the chain that held her TARDIS key, lifted the chain over her head, and stuck the key in the lock.

It stuck a little, but turned.

Rose pushed open the door to see that the inside of the TARDIS was dark, and looked as though an explosion had hit it. Debris was scattered across the room, and part of the TARDIS console was missing. Another part of the console looked as though it had been on fire at some point.

Rose gaped in dismay, but dragged the Doctor inside all the same. She laid him out on the floor, very carefully, before picking her way across the room towards the console.

Normally Rose could feel the TARDIS in her head, like a quiet sea of awareness, but right now her head felt empty, silent.

"What happened to you?" Rose murmured sadly, and patted one of the panels gently.

The moment her hand came in contact with the metal, there was a flash of something in her head, like a breath of song, and a searing warmth.

Rose staggered as though she'd been struck, but the TARDIS lights began to glow dimly red, and there was a sudden jolt in her mind.

For a moment Rose stood there feeling confused and dizzy, not at all sure what was going on, but the backup TARDIS systems were turning themselves on, and there was a faint, pained presence in her mind that hadn't been there before.

Somewhere, a great bell began tolling, as though from very far away.

Rose couldn't help the grin that broke out over her face as she realised that the TARDIS was still hanging on, somehow. She laid her palm flat against the panel again, closing her eyes and willing the TARDIS to find strength.

From the bottom of Rose's mind something stirred, vaguely, and began to drift upwards. Rose let it, clearing her mind of everything but her desire for the TARDIS and the Doctor to be healthy and safe. Song swelled into being, growing stronger as it curled through her mind until Rose could almost hear it in her ears, drowning out every other sound, flowing with her heartbeat and the rate of airflow in her lungs, golden and bright and beautiful.

Just when Rose thought she couldn't stand it any more, the song quietened down, gentling itself until it was only a current at the bottom of her mind, wisps of it occasionally drifting upwards until she could almost hear it, but dispersing before she could grasp more than a fleeting impression of the song's nature.

When Rose opened her eyes again, all of the lights in the console room were on. They weren't very bright, and they were still red, but all the TARDIS systems seemed to be online again and when Rose glanced over at the console she found that it was repaired and whole.

The bell still tolled, loudly now, and Rose was pretty certain that could get annoying quickly, but it'd all do for now.

"I'm glad you're alright," Rose told the TARDIS gratefully. For some reason she felt tired, as though she'd done a lot more than simply carry the Doctor a few metres. "Listen, don't s'pose you've got a stretcher, or something, around, do you? So that I can take him to the med bay? Coz he's a bit heavy for me to get him in there on my own."

Hoping that the TARDIS was listening, and able to help, Rose walked into the hallway and opened the first door she saw there. It turned out to be some sort of storeroom, filled with medical supplies, including a stretcher.

"Thanks, girl," Rose said aloud, and rolled the stretcher back into the console room. It took her a few minutes to work out how to lower the thing so that she could lift the Doctor onto it, but eventually she had him settled on it, and was able to push the stretcher back into the hallway to the door marked with a squiggly mauve symbol that even as Rose watched rearranged itself into the word 'MEDICAL.'

Rose opened the door and pushed the Doctor through into the room, hoping that she knew and remembered enough about how the medical equipment worked to help him.

She ran her eyes over the half-remembered objects, before picking up what she knew to be a medical scanner.

"Let's hope this works," she muttered, half to the Doctor, half to herself.

Switching it on, she ran in over the Doctor, listening to the beeps and soft whistles it made before squinting at the display.

Again, the lines of symbols rearranged themselves in front of her eyes until she could read them in English.

Rose read through the results carefully, before sighing in relief.

"Post-regeneration sickness," she announced to the Doctor, unable to help her relieved smile. "Well, I've dealt with that once, shouldn't be too hard to look after you again. Bit of bed rest and tea and stuff should do it."

Rose frowned as she looked again at the Doctor's dirty clothes and the smudges of dirt and charcoal against his skin, and frowned consideringly.

"First, though; think you need a bath."

END PART ONE