| Date: 21 December 2007
Characters: Adam Mitchell, Rose Tyler Location: hotel lobby, hotel bar Link to IJ: thread #17359 |
 Adam slammed the door to his room behind him, gasping for breath as he leaned back against the door, closing his eyes and letting his head thump back against the wood. Whenever his mother came to, she'd definitely demand answers, answers that he couldn't give her. Damn the Doctor. Damn him. The least he could have done was take him to get the implant removed. The least he could have done... Adam cursed under his breath. If he hadn't been so stupid, so selfish and determined to bring back that information, he wouldn't be locked in his room right now. Instead, he'd be...wherever the Doctor and Rose had gone next. Lifting his head, Adam thumped it back repetitively against the door.
"Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid," Adam muttered to himself, opening his eyes with a heavy sigh. Only to find that he was standing in the lobby of a hotel instead of his room. "...what in the world?" |
 Rose spotted the young man as he slammed the door behind him, and frowned, trying to place him. She knew him... Her frown deepened when she remembered where she'd seen that face. Adam Mitchell.
"Adam?" She walked closer, tempted to snap her fingers to see if this was Adam after he'd screwed up and the Doctor had taken him home. |
| That was the last voice he had expected to hear, especially after watching her disappear with the Doctor not more than a minute before. "Rose?" Adam asked, turning his attention to her, the surprise clear on his face. "Bloody hell, Rose. What just happened?" |
| "You stepped through a door." Rose studied his face a moment. "This is someplace out of time, as far as I can tell, or find out from others. What happened before you stepped through that door?" |
| "Mum..." Adam started, a frown spreading across his face as he shifted and crossed his arms over his chest. "You lot left me behind. And then Mum came home and felt the need to snap her bloody fingers. I came in here to avoid the questions, and... Wait. Out of time?" |
| Rose nodded. "When you go back, when you find a way back, you go back to the same time and place you left." She quirked one corner of her mouth up in a half-smile. "You botched your chance to travel with the Doctor, Adam, trying to change history. I'd leave you behind in a heartbeat if you did that if you traveled wth me now." She had left people stranded in time for that, when she'd misjudged someone's ability to cope with time-travel. |
| "I was only trying to help," Adam said, his defenses going up instantly. He'd known he'd screwed up. He'd known. But that didn't mean that he was going to easily admit it. "How was I supposed to know... It wasn't like he was exactly thrilled to have me along in the first place." |
| "No he wasn't," Rose said bluntly. "And if I hadn't insisted he take you along, none of that would have happened." She shrugged. "I'm sure he's made mistakes in choosing companions before, and possibly since." She sighed, and gestured back the way she'd come.
"Want to get a drink?" It was something that she was sure she needed at this point. Just a little, to relax. This was getting more stressful with each person out of her past she ran into . People she hadn't seen in seven centuries or more, and hadn't thought she'd ever see again. Not really. |
| "It's not like all of that was my fault," Adam protested. Sure, he'd tried to knick a bit of technological information. Sure, he'd gotten something implanted into his head that made him a walking science experiment. But those screw-ups were all on himself. It wasn't like he'd killed someone or something like that.
"A drink...sounds good right about now," Adam said, raising a hand to rub at the back of his neck. |
| Rose smiled, heading towards the bar, already contemplating what she'd order. "I think this is the first drink I'll have had in years. Not a whole lot of opportunity when I'm traveling." She watched Adam out of the corner of her eye. "And you might want to keep your eyes open. The Doctor's here too. More than one of him."
More than one of herself, as well, but she didn't mention that, or that there appared to be others who were here at more than one point on their timeline, or maybe from different universes altogether. She'd leave Adam to find that out on his own, along with who was safe to get near, and who wasn't. |
| "More than one?" Adam asked, frowning as he stepped in next to Rose, studying her with a curious gaze. Years? She didn't look much older than she had been when he saw her last. In fact, she didn't look older at all. And she was talking oddly. It was more...detected and stoic than Adam remembered her being.
"You all right?" |
| "Yeah. Said so, didn't I?" Rose slid a sideways look at Adam when he asked if she was all right, worrying the tip of her tongue between her teeth a moment. "I'm still in one piece, and I'm not running for my life at the moment. I'm fine." |
| "You're different," Adam said after a moment, narrowing his eyes at her slightly. "And not a good kind of different... It's almost like all the life has been sucked out of you." |
| Rose smiled wryly, her eyes dark with laughter at the irony of his words. "Life. I've rather a bit much of it at the moment; haven't a clue how to die. Takes more effort to be enchanted by the wonder of life. Particularly when you're not in the middle of trouble." Her smile faded into something more genuine, shrugging one shoulder. "Makes me wonder sometimes why the Doctor isn't more of a trouble-magnet than he is." |
| Can't die? Adam wasn't sure how to respond to that statement. The mix of concern and skepticism that rose in his gut gave him conflicting reactions to go by. And in the end, skepticism won out.
"So, the great Rose Tyler has become jaded, then?" Adam asked, his tone a lot harsher than he really felt right now. |
| Rose shot Adam a sharp look, annoyance glinting in her eyes a moment. "When you've seen eight centuries, come back and ask me that question. I spend day after day traveling, and looking, searching, for something new, something I've never seen. Or that my companion hasn't seen. And there's always something to find. Most of it just happens to involve trouble."
She turned away, shaking her head. "And when was I ever the 'Great Rose Tyler'? I'm just the girl who can't keep up." She knew how deep that last statement could cut, throwing it out like a gauntlet, daring Adam to rise to the bait. |
| Girl who can't keep up. Was that how she thought he'd thought of her? Sure, he hadn't exactly been very happy when they parted company, but still...
"I wouldn't have left you down there if I could have helped it," Adam snapped, annoyance settling into his tone. Hell, he'd tried to find some way to reopen the bulkheads after they'd closed completely. But with all of controls down except the main one, he hadn't had much choice in the matter. "And besides, if you think that's what my opinion of you was... You're wrong." |
| "You could have helped it. You could have thought to reach back, to grab my hand. I know now I could have run faster, but I didn't then, and a little encouragement, a connection, would have helped."
Rose stepped into the bar, spotting a small table out of the way, where it should be quiet enough. She headed for it, snagging the chair that looked out over the bar for herself. "You hadn't thought about that, had you?" she asked, looking up at Adam, her voice gentler than she'd intended. |
| Adam glanced over at Rose with the sudden desire for something to bang his head against. He'd thought about that...before they'd rounded the corner, and he'd realized the door was already halfway to the ground. And then his only thought was to get to it as quickly as he could.
"I tried to get it back open..." Adam said as he settled down in the chair across from her, his eyes going down to the table top before glancing back up at her. "It wasn't like I left you behind on purpose." |
| "If I really thought you had, I wouldn't have asked the Doctor to take you with us." Rose held Adam's gaze. "You can do better, though. I thought you would, and I didn't like being disappointed. Being wrong, and looking bad in front of the Doctor for it. 'S why I don't take on more than one companion m'self." She gave him a little grin. "That, and I don't have anything as fancy as the TARDIS." |
| "I screwed up," Adam said after a moment. "I should have just left things well enough alone. But I didn't think it would hurt anything, taking just a few things back with me. It would have been nonsense to anyone else, anyway, the way that I sent it. I would have just..." Adam started before stopping himself, shaking out his head.
"Guess it doesn't matter," Adam said before looking up at her questioningly. "So, you're the traveler now, then?" He asked with a slight smile. "How do you manage it, then, if you don't have any fancy blue box?" |
| Rose lifted her left wrist, displaying the broad leather band and the computer it bound to her wrist. "Teleporter with features to take you through time as well as space. Gift of the Time Agency for helping them sort out a particularly nasty snarl of time. The ride's rougher, but it gets me where I want to go with a bit more reliability."
She frowned at it, dropping her hand back to the table. "Until it brought me here instead of where I was planning on going, but one hiccup after four hundred years is pretty decent." |
| If Adam could have looked more enraptured, his eyes would have popped out of his head. His head tilted slightly to the side as his focus trained on the computer screen in the wristband. "Hell, something that can still work after four hundred years is light years ahead of most things...well...back in our day."
Scooting his chair a bit closer to her, Adam couldn't help but show his super geek side, "How's it work...exactly?" |
| Rose laughed, shaking her head. "I'm not telling you exactly how it works, Adam." She paused. "Though when you go back, you might look up a Captain Jack Harkness, if he's around. He had one a lot like this, and he's still in your universe."
She opened the battered cover, showing the small screens of the computer. "It's a computer with address book, life-sign tracker, teleport, and other features which I'm not going into." She looked over at him, a half-smile on her face. "Takes too long." |
| "Harkness. Got it," Adam said with a nod, still absolutely transfixed on the computer screens. At least, until he felt her gaze drift back to him. Adam glanced back over at her, offering her smile in return. "I can imagine," He said before glancing back at the table.
"Rose," Adam started before turning back to her, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do anything that would have gotten either of you in trouble." |
| "You didn't, in the end. Doctor destroyed the message you sent yourself before you could do any damage." Rose reached out her right hand to touch his. "You just got to remember to be careful when you're traveling in time. And if you get a chance to travel again, with anyone, you'll do better than you did that trip." She put certainty into her tone, a confidence in Adam that she doubted she'd have felt before. When she could only see he'd messed up, and made her look foolish in front of the Doctor. |
| "I wish I could take it back," Adam said with a soft frown, peering down at Rose's hand and gently moving his other hand to cover hers. "There was just so much there. I guess... I figured if Van Statten was using alien technology to augment things...it wouldn't hurt things if I implemented just a bit of the information."
He'd been wrong, obviously. But there was only so much temptation that could be placed in front of someone before they cracked. |
| "You wanted to make things better. Good intentions, just..." Rose shrugged one shoulder. "You learn something new every time you travel. And sometimes you screw up. A lot of times you screw up," she amended, a wry smile on her face. "Can't learn if you don't make mistakes." |
| "And I guess sometimes you've got to leave with the mistakes you make," Adam said, raising a hand to rub at his forehead, wrinkling it slightly. He really, really didn't like the sound of that. He couldn't for the life of him figure out how he was going to get through his life with this...thing. |