Chapter Six: Amnesia Isn't Contagious

Rose looked over at the stray. He was still for the first time since she had run into him. He was sitting on the couch, leaning forward with his elbows perched on his knees. His expression was serious, another first. His lips were pressed together in a small, involuntary pout, caused by the shape of his lips, and his brown eyes were wide and sad. She was struck with his sudden vulnerability. There was a seriousness about him, now that he wasn't projecting that comic cheerfulness.

"You alright?" Rose asked.

"What?" he asked.

"You look sad. I asked if you were alright," Rose said.

"Sad? No, I'm fine," he said, looking genuinely confused. "There's no one happier than a man with no bad memories." He flashed her his infectious grin, but this time she could see that it was forced. She knew what it was like to be the odd person out in a sea of strange faces, sights, and experiences. Usually, she had the Doctor to stand beside her, to hold her hand. Charles must feel like she had on that first day on Platform One when everyone around her had been an alien, including the man who had brought her there.

Rose smiled softly at him. "Come on, let's get you a cuppa."

Rose went out the next day and the day after that to look for the Doctor. Charles went with her each time, ostensibly to look for a job. He was sleeping on their couch for now and Rose suspected that he was just as afraid of her mother as the Doctor seemed to be. Mickey had given up, claiming work as his excuse.

Charles seemed to mellow out as time passed, but only a little. Rose was fairly sure that his cheerfulness was becoming less genuine as time passed. It was like he was coming down off of some emotional high. He was getting quieter. His gob was still as unstoppable as ever, but his enthusiasm was slowly waning the longer Rose knew him. Maybe he'd been on narcotics while in hospital or maybe he'd been in shock and it was all hitting him now. No one seemed to be missing him.

He didn't seem to be making any effort to find out who he was. Although, Rose didn't have any idea where he would start. After five days, Charles and Rose seemed to have fallen into a holding pattern, doing the same thing every day and coming home with the same results. Tired and frustrated, Rose caught Charles' wrist to stop him.

"Come on, I need a break. Let's get some chips," she suggested.

"Chips?" he echoed, confusion in his tone.

"Yeah, chips."

"What are they?" Charles asked curiously.

"You've never had chips? Blimey, where did you live? Mars?" Rose exclaimed.

"I wouldn't know, remember?" Charles returned with a grin.

"Come on, you. You've got to live a little, mate," Rose said, dragging him toward the nearest chip shop. She bought two batches for them to share; one with vinegar, one without.

Charles sat down on the wall Rose had found as a perch and slowly tasted each, rolling them around in his mouth to get the full experience.

"So, these are chips," he said as if he had made the most incredible discovery. "They're absolutely brilliant!" he declared enthusiastically.

Rose laughed. She shook her head. "I can't believe you've never had chips before."

"Well, they do seem familiar. But…not ringing any bells. Not church bells or door bells or those little bells on bicycles," he chattered.

Rose grinned at him and he grinned back. They went back to their chips, watching passersby and enjoying a companionable silence.

"You know," Charles said thoughtfully, "the more I know you, the more familiar you seem."

Rose laughed. "Of course I do. That's what happens when you get to know someone."

Charles laughed, too. "Right. Of course. Still…I feel as if I've always known you. Strange."

Rose looked at him seriously. "Well, we hadn't met before a few days ago. I'm sorry. I wish I had known you. Then I could help you find your family or your home."

Charles looked straight ahead, staring into space. "Something tells me I have neither."

Rose's chest tightened at his words. "Don't say that. You can't know that."

"Sometimes…" he said, his eyes intense as if he saw something invisible to Rose, "I wish the world would stop turning."

A shiver ran down her spine as Rose was reminded of the Doctor's words.

"I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go..."

"Rose? Rose?" a different voice broke through the memory, slightly higher in pitch, less northern in inflection.

"What?" She blinked, startled by the brown eyes looking back at her.

"You're ringing," Charles said.

"Sorry, what?" Rose repeated.

"Your phone?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." She scrambled for her mobile. "'ello?" It was her mother, asking when they'd be home for dinner. It was later than Rose had thought. She promised Jackie they were headed back and failed to mention the chips they still had to finish. She hung up and relayed the conversation to Charles. He sprang up, his morose mood vanishing like lightning.

"Let's not be late. I'd rather not get an earful," he said.

She watched him walk away for a moment. Another man had once spoke to her of the spinning Earth and then walked away. "That's who I am. Now, forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home."

She hadn't been able to forget him then and she wasn't going to forget him now. The TARDIS still sat in the alley behind Bucknell House. The Doctor had to be somewhere on Earth, if not still in London.

Running to catch up with Charles' long strides, Rose tried to be cheery. They couldn't go out again tonight so she might as well try to relax.

Two weeks was both a very long time and a very short time to not know who you were. Time was incredibly relative. Especially when you could see beyond the present to glimpses of the past and a possible future; what is, what was, what could be, what must not. How frustrating to see so much and yet to be so blind to his own life. But at least it made sense. Rose's friend, the Doctor—a man who was almost as familiar to him as Rose herself though he knew only what she had told him which was very little—was just as invisible to him and he didn't know why.

Mickey's timeline was stunted by his infatuation with Rose. If he stayed on the non-path he was on now, he would never be anything more than a lonely mechanic forever longing for the girl who had once loved him. Rose's was full of possibilities, swirling and spinning in a vortex of colors and planets and moments and danger, making it impossible for him to pin a single one down. But why the Doctor was out of sight was a mystery.

Watching television with Rose and her mother at night before they went to bed made Charles wonder if not everyone could see what he could. He wanted to ask Rose; wanted to tell her how restless the whirlwind of timelines made him, but he was afraid of what they might do if he was right and this time sense was not normal for them. Something—some distant memory, perhaps, pressing through just enough for him to get an impression of it—told him that it was normal for him, whoever he was, but that, at the same time, it was not the norm for the inhabitants of this little world.

The more time passed the stronger the conviction that not only was this not his home planet, but that he had no home. It was a belief founded purely on a feeling, a deep seated, pounding in his head whenever he tried to remember. He saw orange when he thought of home; bright, flame-like colors glinting off silver. He had a sinking suspicion that he didn't want to acknowledge that some memory of home had caused his breakdown in the store.

The only thing that kept him from despairing was Rose. She was so full of life. Even constantly worrying about the Doctor, she always had a smile for him. Her laugh was addictive and he found himself spending hours trying to come up with ways to cause it. His hearts were certain that he knew her even though he trusted that if they had met before she would have remembered and told him. He was terribly and foolishly jealous of the Doctor for having such a wonderful woman as a friend for longer than Charles had known her and for the time she spent thinking about him and searching for him now that he was lost.

There was no one looking for Charles. He was sure about that now. His head was empty of more than just memories. There should be something in the great void in his mind. The why's and the how's that his shattered memories hinted at were too horrible to think about.

"I don't like that you've given up," Rose said once again pulling him from his morose thoughts.

"I see a lot of things, Rose. Faces of friends and…companions that I know have all left or…were lost, but a home…a family, I haven't see that," Charles said with a shake of his head. "I'll stay until you find the Doctor and if no one has found me by then, I'll go." He didn't know where he would go, but he knew that he couldn't stay here as much as he desperately wanted to stay with Rose. Maybe it was because she was the only familiar thing on this world or maybe because she was quickly becoming his best friend—not that there was anyone else clambering for the position.

"Do you think that I should give up on London? Not on the Doctor. Just on his being in London?" Rose asked, tentatively. She sat beside him on her mother's couch. "He should have come back by now."

"With the wounds you said he had, in all likelihood, he has amnesia like I do. If you stray too far, he may come back and you'll miss him," Charles said.

Rose nodded as if that was what she'd needed to hear. He didn't point out the possibility that the Doctor was dead; a possibility that Rose was obviously ignoring. She got enough of that from her nagging mother and he knew that she understood that it was a distinct chance.

Rose settled against the back of the couch and directed her attention to the telly. Charles took a moment to watch her. He'd been having dreams about her. He could only assume they were dreams since they couldn't be memories. They were nothing concrete, just flashes like his memories. Sometimes it was just a phrase, some nonsensical sentence that would have made sense in context. Or he would see her smile. Or her eyes lit up in wonder at something; something he had shown her. How could these simply be memories? It was possible that they were moments of possible futures, but he knew what that felt like and this wasn't it. He didn't know. All he did know was that he dreaded a time when all she would be was a memory.

Rose was in a rut and she didn't like it. The heart pounding worry had faded to a distant ache over the three weeks since the Doctor had disappeared and she was terribly guilty about it. How could she just go on living when the Doctor was lost? Her mother didn't call it living. Jackie just didn't understand how Rose could still be looking. Charles did. Charles had faithfully gone out with her each day for the six weeks, ignoring Jackie's rants at Rose, that he could always hear, about how he was sponging off them, incapable of finding a job. Rose always countered that she didn't have a job either, but that just sent Jackie into an entirely different rant. Rose knew she couldn't keep living off her mother's hard work, but she couldn't give up on the Doctor.

Charles had come with her today as he always did. They did make a half-hearted effort to find him a job, but never put much work into it.

"You know you don't have to help me find the Doctor. He's not your problem," Rose said, leaning against the rail. They stood on London bridge as they once more rested from they're search. Rose liked it here because it reminded her of the Doctor and was a spot that he might know to look for her.

"I know, but he's obviously someone important to you. And besides, you helped me find my way again. Least I could do is return the favor," Charles said.

"That was nothing. I was just being friendly," Rose said humbly. "Anyone would have done it."

"You're wrong about that, Rose. People aren't nice people collectively, it's only individually that people are nice. It's the persons that are nice. I hate people, but I love persons," he said vehemently.

"That didn't make any sense," Rose said, laughing.

"I know!" He laughed with her.

"I think I get what you mean, though," Rose said, sobering. "Charles, where are you going to go when all this is over?"

"I don't know, really. I could go anywhere. Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France…I've always wanted to go to Naples—or at least I think I have," Charles said. "It's a bit of a bother having no memory."

Rose nodded, looking down at her hands. "You could stay here, yeah? If you wanted…"

"Here as in on this bridge or here in this city?"

"Here in London…"

"I don't know, Rose. I feel…trapped here. Like the borders are closing in and if I don't get out now…" he trailed off.

"Oh. Never mind then. It was just a suggestion," she said, brushing it off with a nervous laugh.

He looked down at her with his big, brown eyes. "On the other hand, there is a lot here that I would miss."

She looked up, wide-eyed. "Like what?" she breathed.

"The chips, for example," he murmured, leaning over her.

"Oh?"

"The chips are good here. I love chips. Chips should be a staple," he continued softly. His eyes roamed over her face, dwindling on her lips for a long moment. "And you, Rose Tyler…" He cut himself off by pressing his lips gently to hers. She inhaled sharply in surprise. He took that for an invitation and kissed her again, cradling the back of her neck in one hand. Charles tilted his head down to get a better angle and Rose stood up on her toes to meet him halfway as she kissed him back. He smelled, of all things, like oregano and autumn and something intangible and tasted like nothing she had ever experienced before. She slid her hand up his arm, he cupped her cheek with his other hand, and—

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean what I said…I am glad it's just you and me again."

Rose jerked in shock and pushed him away. She'd heard the Doctor's voice in her head just as if he were standing right there. Charles looked at her, hurt shining in his brown eyes.

"Rose…?" he asked.

"So, where'd you pick this one up, then? He's a bit pretty."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't do this," she cried, backing away.

"I don't understand."

"I-I'm sorry, Charles, but…I can't."

"It's the Doctor, isn't it?" he asked. She expected him to say the Doctor's name with disgust like Mickey always did when he was angry, but Charles spoke gently as if he was simply trying to understand. There was sadness in his voice, but he didn't hate her for rejecting him.

"I…yes. I feel like I've betrayed him. It's not your fault. I shouldn't have—"

"I shouldn't have kissed you," Charles countered. "No, that's not true. I should have known how you felt about the Doctor. But in my ignorance, I should have kissed you, feeling the way I do."

Rose looked at him in surprise. "I—"

He put his fingers to her lips. "Shh. Don't say anything. We're still mates, aren't we?"

She nodded mutely.

He smiled, if a little sadly. "See, no harm done. How 'bout some chips?"

Rose stared after him as he started to walk away. "Charles?"

"Yes?"

"That's it?"

"What else do you want me to say?"

"I…I don't know."

"You've been dating Mickey Smith too long, Rose. Unless your feelings change, nothing's going to happen between us. No reason why we can't be mates, eh?"

Rose shook her head.

"Chips it is then," he said cheerfully.