Hitchcock Bottle Blonde, a doctor who fanfic

Title: Hitchcock Bottle Blonde
Summary: Romana sets out to reunite the Doctor with Rose.
Rated: PG-13
Characters/ships: Ten/Rose, Romana, Martha, Donna
Spoilers: Seasons two and three, casting for season four.

Hitchcock Bottle Blonde
by LizBee

At twelve past four on a Wednesday afternoon, Romana came to a realisation.

She was running for her life at that moment, so she wasn't able to give her new thought much analysis, but it lingered in her mind long after she had finished running, narrowly avoided being sacrificed to an alien posing as a neo-pagan god and yelled at the Doctor for his extremely messy last-minute rescue.

The realisation was this: she was going to have to kill the Doctor. Either that, or break open the walls between dimensions and retrieve Rose Tyler from alternate universe oblivion. But in the short term, killing the Doctor was going to be easier.

The thing was, he'd seemed so normal when they'd been reunited. Well, for a given value of normal. Okay, so he'd talked incessantly, spouted a whole lot of nonsense about the Master and the Toclafane and chameleon arches and bananas, followed her around the TARDIS as if afraid to let her out of his sight, casually mentioned that he might have committed genocide a couple of times and he hoped she wasn't too attached to that system out near the Horsehead Nebula, because he'd sort of made its sun go nova while trying to communicate across the void with his best friend Rose, oh, it was a shame Rose was gone; she would have loved Romana so much, and she was so very human and she was gone forever but he didn't miss her (much) because that's what happened, humans moved on and got old and died, not like Time Lords, you're not planning to leave any time soon, are you, Romana?

And Romana had promised him that no, she wasn't going anywhere for the time being (and if, privately, she had crossed her fingers and descended into the deepest levels of the TARDIS to find out if it was still possible to grow her own time capsule, well, she was a free spirited sort of a Time Lady and if he thought she was going to stick around forever -- a Time Lord forever, which was longer and more tedious than the human kind -- well, he could just think again).

Oh, the Doctor said a few months later, had he told her about Martha? Martha had travelled with him for a while too. Oh, after Rose. Yes, and then there was Donna. Donna was great, she did this thing at parties -- no, she'd come along after Rose as well. Had he told her about Rose's family? She had this boyfriend, well, sort of a boyfriend--

By this time, Romana could recite Rose's family tree back to the fifth generation. Not to mention names of boyfriends, celebrity crushes, teachers (most loved and hated), significant co-workers and neighbours.

And all Romana's clothes had disappeared. Not all at once. It started with a pair of stockings, then a couple of hats. She looked up one day and realised that she hadn't seen her favourite skirt for ages, and why did she only have one little red Victorian boot, when she quite distinctly remembered owning two?

And the TARDIS wardrobe was somehow ... emptier than she remembered. All that remained were an assortment of jeans, t-shirts, hoodies and denim skirts. And one Victorian dress, which Romana figured would come in handy if aliens ever invaded a Regent Street brothel in 1860.

And then there was the eyeliner.

And the earrings.

And the recurring nightmares about mascara wands.

"Doctor," she said one day, "don't you ever get tired of early twenty-first century Earth?"

"Tired?" He looked startled. "But there's so much to do! Seething masses of humanity to watch and mock and save from their own stupidity. And new episodes of Desperate Housewives to download!"

"Right," said Romana. She selected a chip from the container in front of her. She was quite sure she'd ordered a salad, but as always, chips had appeared. She toyed absently with one of the chunky rings on her fingers -- and where in Rassilon's name had that come from, when she'd taken an instant dislike to the thing and left it in her room? She ate a chip and said, "Do you ever wonder if the universe is out to get you?"

"Isn't that a bit paranoid?"

"Not if the universe really is out to get you."

She left the Doctor alone with his chips and found a public phone box. A real, actual public phone box. That didn't travel in time. The words Bad Wolf were spraypainted across one side, and you couldn't get much less time travelly than that.

Which was to say, Romana thought irritably, that it was a temporally stable, non-anachronistic communications device.

Martha Jones answered her phone on the third ring.

"Travelling with the Doctor," said Romana without preamble, "did you ever get the feeling that you were being scrutinised, criticised and otherwise groomed for a role you didn't necessarily want? Like being in your final decade at the Academy and realising that your tutors expect you to go into temporal field management, when your passion is for xeno-sociology?"

There was a moment of silence.

"Yes," said Martha eventually. "I really wanted to specialise in podiatry, but I seem to spend most of my time dissecting aliens for Torchwood."

"Podiatry?"

"I like feet," said Martha. "What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. I suppose. Well, thank you. That's cleared something up."

Romana had to call twice before Donna picked up the phone, and when she finally answered, she was drunk.

"Martian bastard," she slurred in response to Romana's question, "kept telling me I should lose a couple of pounds and dye my hair blonde. Like that was ever going to happen while we were on the high-fat-high-carb-all-chip alien diet. Punch him in the face and get out while you still can."

"Problems?" said the Doctor when she rejoined him in the cafe.

"Other than time and space rearranging itself to conform to someone's idea of reality? No."

"Good," said the Doctor, getting up. "Come on, Rose. If we hurry, we can start the download for Heroes."

And then the neo-pagan alien deities turned up, and the running happened, and Romana came to her realisation.

The thing was, if murdering the Doctor was easy, he wouldn't have lived long enough to leave Gallifrey, interfere in a whole lot of history and set in motion a chain of events that would lead to the ultimate destruction of his planet and (most of) his species.

"So how'd you come to regenerate?" she asked casually over dinner.

"It was brilliant," he said, waving a chip around enthusiastically, "well, I say brilliant, actually it was a bit of a mess. There I was, faced with a terrible choice, double genocide or a Dalek victory. Naturally, I chose the Dalek victory. But then Rose turned up."

"Right," said Romana.

"She'd looked into the Time Vortex."

"I did that when I was eight," said Romana. "So did you."

"Yeah, but she was so human. Filled with light and energy, and there was a wind machine, and she was trying to do a posh accent. Wiped out the Daleks, she did." He swallowed a chip. "It was the best genocide ever."

"So ... you gave up on the hard choice and left your human to take care of it?" Romana said.

"Pretty much. Then, of course, she was dying, what with being human and all, so I kissed her. Real fairytale stuff. Absorbed the Vortex energy into myself, died in a shiny explosion of light, and here I am!"

"That's a beautiful story," said Romana.

"I know! I know!"

Romana was full of plans. The problem was that none of them actually worked. She couldn't kick him out of the TARDIS into a scrum of angry Yeti. She couldn't drop the sonic screwdriver into his bathwater. She couldn't accidentally dose his dinner with poisons from eight different worlds. She couldn't sell him. She couldn't even give him away.

"Please," she begged Dalek Caan, "it's the perfect solution. You exterminate the Doctor, I make some sad noises, you head off to ... wherever it is you go when you're making a last minute temporal shift -- and everyone's happy."

"It! Seems! Too! Easy!" said Caan. His eyestalk narrowed. "Didn't! You! Destroy! Our! Emperor! That! One! Time!?"

"No," said Romana wearily, "that was the other girl."

"All! You! Bipeds! Look! The! Same! To! Me!"

It came to her while she was applying her eye make-up one morning.

"You," she said out loud, putting down the eyeliner pencil. "This is all your fault, isn't it?"

The TARDIS said nothing, it just hummed a bit more smugly than usual.

Romana went back to putting on make-up. "There's nothing sadder than a Type 40 gone senile," she said. "And you do get attached, don't you? Out here, all alone ... and then along came Rose. She opened you up. Made you feel young again. Am I right?"

A pair of hoop earrings fell off the jewellery stand.

"I'll take that as a yes. But I draw the line at the peroxide."

She put her hair up into a high ponytail, put on a red hoodie and went out to see what she could do about opening up the universes.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked, "or more precisely, what are you doing to my TARDIS?"

"Taking down the walls between realities," Romana said. "Hand me my sonic screwdriver, would you?"

"Isn't that a bit ... impossible?"

"You use that word a great deal, usually in regards to things which are entirely possible." Romana reversed the dimensional anchors. "This is just difficult. Although it's turning out a lot easier than trying to break a dangerous feedback loop between a Time Lord and his TARDIS."

"No, no, that's easy," said the Doctor, "you just have to trigger a regeneration." He paused. "Romana, have you by any chance been trying to kill me?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's just bang out of order. I mean, Rose never tried to murder me."

"Which is why I'm going to turn the entire universe upside-down to bring her back to you." Romana stepped back to admire her handiwork. She realised she was licking her teeth, and stopped. "Just watch me," she said, and flipped the final switch.

"Rose Tyler?"

The woman standing in the doorway frowned.

"Is that my shirt?" she asked.

"So you are Rose Tyler."

"I got married a month ago. It's Milligan, now. Rose Milligan." She pushed her dark hair out of her face. "But seriously, though, why are you wearing my clothes? I thought I'd left that shirt on the--" She paused, eyes opening in understanding. "Oh," she said.

"Right."

"You're not the Doctor, are you? You didn't, like, change bodies again? 'Cos if so," Rose looked Romana up and down, "this is really weird."

"My name's Romana. The Doctor's waiting by the TARDIS."

"Don't tell me he's gone all shy?"

"I think it's more of an avoidance tactic, really."

"What," there was a gleam in Rose's eyes, "did he think we were going to have some pathetic catfight over him? I'd have thought he'd want to stick around for the ego boost."

"You can have him," Romana said. "No, really, you have him."

"Come inside," said Rose, "and tell me everything."

So Rose made tea, and Romana had to concede she made a decent cup of tea, and there was cake, and absolutely no chips. Rose listened while Romana explained about the TARDIS, the missing clothes, the sudden appearance of eye make-up and cheap jewellery and everything else.

"I feel bad for the TARDIS," said Rose when she'd finished. "I didn't realise it would get so ... attached. That was years ago. I'm not sorry for what I did, but I just wasn't thinking. And here you are, getting the single white female treatment. Well, sort of." She licked a cake crumb off her finger. "What should we do?" she asked, "and don't tell me to go off with the Doctor, because I've got a husband and a job, and my mother would hunt me down through time and space to kill me."

"Maybe we should just try talking to them," said Romana. "The TARDIS and the Doctor."

"You know," said Rose as they walked back to the TARDIS, "you should seriously think of cutting back on your eye make-up."

"The TARDIS hid the make-up remover," said Romana sadly.

"I want that hoodie back, though," Rose added.

The Doctor's reunion with Rose went like this:

- Gaping
- Sputtering
- Hugging
- Long, incoherent strings of words
- More hugging
- More talking

Romana left them to it while she slipped into the TARDIS.

"Happy now?" she muttered.

The console hummed discontentedly.

"People move on," she said. "Get older. Get married. Change. You should be used to it by now."

The TARDIS said nothing.

"There's nothing sadder than a sulky time capsule."

The time rotor gave a little sigh, and the lights grew a fraction brighter. Romana patted the console.

"It's all right," she said, "I'm sure it will get easier with time."

She'd give it a week, she decided, before she demanded the return of her clothes.

Outside, the Doctor was still talking.

"...And then Martha's mother slapped me, but not as well as your mum, and your mum never tried to sell me out to my worst enemy, so Jackie's winning all around, although later, when we spent a year as prisoners together, Francine used to sneak me cups of tea, and she didn't let it stew like your mum does, does she still do that? And did I mention how Jack can't die because of what you did--"

"Twice," said Rose. "Tell him sorry for me."

"You can tell him yourself when we go back."

"Doctor..."

"And I'll take you to meet Martha, she'll be so excited to finally meet you, she's always going on, Rose this, Rose that--"

"Doctor!" said Rose sharply. "I'm not coming with you."

"...And Donna, you'll like Donna -- wait, what?"

"I'm not coming with you," said Rose. "I'm sorry, but I have a life here, and a husband, and I'm really happy."

The Doctor stopped. "Really happy?"

"Yeah." Rose crossed her arms. "And I'm not going to be sorry about that, either. I still love you, but I'm not leaving everything behind again."

"Oh," said the Doctor. He put his hands in his pockets and paced aimlessly. "Really?"

"Really."

"I could take you to--"

"Really," said Rose.

"Come on, Doctor," said Romana, taking him by the arm, "begging won't change her mind." He still looked terribly deflated, so she added, "we'll go back to our universe, and we can have some form of high-fat potato product, and watch telly. And later, if you like, we can go to Los Angeles and sort out for once and for all whether or not Teri Hatcher's native to this planet."

"She's not," said Rose, "we had a bit of trouble with her last year. Watch out. She bites."

"See? That will be fun."

The Doctor nodded morosely and let Romana guide him into the TARDIS. He hugged Rose goodbye, and then Rose hugged Romana, and hoodies were returned to their proper owners and a few whispers were exchanged about looking after lovelorn Time Lords, and said Time Lords being perfectly capable of looking after themselves if they made up their minds and Romana wasn't his nursemaid, so there.

And they were gone.

"This is nice," said the Doctor, as they walked through the streets of Los Angeles.

"If by 'nice' you mean 'crowded, noisy and highly polluted', then yes, I suppose it is." Romana gave him a sidelong glance. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Fine," he said, a little too quickly. "Only I took a bit of a bite off the Mantis-Queen, and it's a bit ... oozy. No, you don't need to -- ow!"

Romana had pushed his coat aside and peeled the bloody shirt away from his skin. The wound was still bleeding, and there was a sickly green tinge to his skin.

"Did I mention that your Desperate Housewives obsession would get you in trouble one day?" she asked. "Because if I didn't, I should have."

"It's nothing. Just a bite." He paused and added, "it's funny, though, but I can't feel my arm."

"That would be the necrotising venom."

"I don't think I've ever necrotised before. Died a few times, yes, but never actually started rotting."

Romana wrapped her arm around his shoulders. "Let's get you into the TARDIS," she said.

The Doctor kissed her temple. "You're not going to leave me any time soon, are you, Romana?"

"Oh no," she said, and decided not to mention the very nice one-person timeship she'd bought on eBay last week. "Not right away."

The Doctor collapsed as they entered the TARDIS. Romana closed the doors and knelt by his side, waiting for the regeneration to begin.

"You know," he said as the first spasms of cellular change began, "I really wish Martha was here. She'd know exactly what to do." He smiled distantly. "Good old Martha ... did I ever tell you about her mum?"

"Bugger," said Romana.

end