#notice how I keep changing Oswald’s clothes like every other comic

[aliakim-the-artist]

It’s ok Felix. Just be patient.

[chasingthecosmos]

Call Me But Love

Fandom: Doctor Who Rating: T Pairing: The Doctor/Rose Tyler, Twelfth Doctor/Rose Tyler (The Doctor/Clara Oswald, Twelfth Doctor/Clara Oswald) Chapters: 2/40 Read on AO3 here.

“‘Oh, dear. Looks like we might have picked up an extra passenger,’ the Doctor grumbled to himself. His gaze raised to Rose’s once more and she was struck by the sheer intensity of it and the way that he managed to look at once so familiar, and yet so different from what she was used to. 'Best find something to hold on to,’ he warned her ominously.”

A Season 8 & 9 AU centering around Rose Tyler and her newly-regenerated Doctor as they both struggle to maintain their relationship in the face of some unknown force that seems to be drawing them together. Will they be able to solve the mystery of who is pulling the strings before it’s too late?

This is a direct sequel to “By Any Other Name” and might be a bit confusing if you haven’t read that first. Tags will be updated as I go.

For once, Rose was glad for the TARDIS's meddling with her plans, as she was immensely grateful for the help that Jenny, Vastra, and Strax posed for her. Without them, she wasn't entirely sure if she would have been able to look after the Doctor all on her own while he was in such a state. It certainly took effort on all four of their parts to get his unconscious body back to Madame Vastra's estate, and it took all of Rose's considerable strength and patience to get him changed out of his old jacket and bowtie that no longer fit him quite right and into something a bit more comfortable when he finally came back to consciousness a short while later.

She had never thought that she would find herself actually missing the hologram projectors that he had insisted they use not so very long ago, but then again, life with the Doctor was nothing if not unpredictable.

"It's simply ... misunderstandable to be ..." the Doctor growled as Rose forced him to stop wriggling long enough to slide a clean, cotton night shirt over his head. "I don't know what it is. Who invented this room?"

He glared down at her as she finally settled his new clothes over his shoulders and Rose met his unfamiliar gaze warily. He was breathing heavily, as though the very act of changing his clothes had drained him of what little energy he had left, and his new blue eyes were still hazy and unfocused as he stared down hard at her.

"Doctor, please," she whispered quietly as she met his gaze with an earnest expression and attempted to reach into his scattered, broken thoughts to try and calm him, "won't you lie down? You need to rest ..."

"But it doesn't make any sense ..." he insisted as he turned and swept on of his arms out across the small bedroom that they stood in. "Look, it's only got a bed in it. Why is there only a bed in it?"

"Because it's a bedroom," Rose sighed exasperatedly, rolling her eyes at him and fighting the urge to shove him down onto the mattress by force, just to get him to be quiet. "It's for sleeping in."

The Doctor eyes widened to comical proportions as he glanced in horror from Rose, to the bed, and back again. "Okay ... so you've got a whole room ... for not being awake in. But what's the point? You're just missing the room! And don't look in that mirror!" He was scowling again as he brushed past Rose and pointed a finger angrily at the large glass mirror that was hanging on the wall behind them. "It's absolutely furious!" he exclaimed as he met his own gaze and glared.

"Doctor, please!" Rose insisted, stepping between him and his reflection and forcing him to meet her steady gaze once more. Please, love, please calm down ... she begged him silently as she fought to make sense of his frazzled thoughts. She could feel a crushing hopelessness weighing down on her as she stared up at him and fought to find even the slightest hint of familiarity or recognition.

The Doctor was still staring down at her with those thick, furrowed brows, his face leaning in close while his mind trailed away and spun off in a million different directions that Rose simply couldn't follow. "Wait a minute, why do you keep talking like that?" he demanded suddenly, his gaze narrowing on her suspiciously. "What's gone wrong with your accent?"

"Sorry?" Rose asked in confusion as she watched him stumble away from her with a look of apprehension on his face.

"You sound all ... English!" he insisted, throwing his arms out dramatically as he passed a helpless look around the small room. "Now you've developed a fault!"

Rose sighed in frustration and gritted her teeth together as she propped her hands on her hips and quietly regarded him. It seemed that no matter how many times she called out to him, she simply couldn't get him to focus - his mind was still far too discordant and disconnected after being scrambled by the regeneration energy that had swept through his entire being. She knew that she had one last resort, but she was hesitant to use it.

After a few moments of consternation, Rose finally opened her mouth and whispered the Doctor's true name into the quiet of the room around them. It was a risk that she normally wouldn't have taken in the middle of a strange house and in an unfamiliar time-period, but they were in the midst of some very dire circumstances, and that called for drastic actions to be taken. She knew that using the Doctor's name was the one, true way to guarantee that she would have his full attention, and it worked almost immediately as the Doctor seemed to freeze in place and turn on her with an expression of wide-eyed shock.

The name on her lips, which was normally only ever spoken with an air of reverent, loving devotion, was now whispered as a quiet, desperate plea, and it felt so horribly wrong that it made Rose want to cry.

"Doctor, I know that this is confusing for you ..." she murmured as gently as possible. "Believe me, it's hard for me, too. But right now, you need to calm down and rest, or else you're just going to make the process that much harder."

The Doctor's features fell back into his new, severe-looking scowl once more as he silently regarded her, but he still allowed her to take him by the hands and lead him slowly towards the bed without complaint, for once. Rose, however, could still feel his thoughts racing haphazardly around them in dizzying, incomplete circles as she forced his long limbs under the sheets and directed his head towards the pillow.

"I remember the last time you regenerated, you know," Rose murmured with a rueful smile as she slowly tucked him into the newly-made med. Memories of that life from so long ago made Rose nostalgic for a time when she had had a family and friends to fall back on whenever things like this happened. She wondered what her mother and Mickey would say if they could both see her now. "Back then it seemed that we couldn't wake you up for anything. Now it's like I can't get you to sit still."

"Had to go into a healing coma," the Doctor agreed, his voice coming out rough and distant-sounding as he gazed wearily up at her. "Taking the entire time vortex into your head will really take it out of you."

"Yeah, you're telling me," Rose teased gently.

The light-hearted banter seemed to raise the Doctor's spirits somewhat and the edge of his lips lifted ever-so-slightly as he gazed up at her. "You should sleep, too. It's past your bedtime, Amelia," he muttered, shifting the covers around himself and lifting them as though to invite her into the bed with him.

"Doctor ... it's Rose, remember?" she reminded him nervously, not liking the feverish look that was now in his eye and the way that his mind seemed to be tripping over his various thoughts and memories, unable to find sense in the patterns and faces of his past twelve lifetimes.

"Come along, Pond," he insisted, attempting to sit up once more and struggling against Rose's hand as she urged him back down to the bed.

"Ssh, sleep now, love," she whispered softly, placing her index finger against his lips to stop the rest of his frenzied words. She flashed him a small, sad smile as she quietly projected the sensation of unconsciousness into his thoughts and the Doctor finally let out a long, shaky sigh, his eyelids drooping wearily as the tension in his bone seemed to slacken. He still hadn't fallen completely asleep yet, but at least he had come to a halt at long last and his hallucinations seemed to have subsided for the time being.

Rose gazed down at him in pensive concentration as she studied his new features and attempted to sort out the frazzled, tangled consciousness in the back of her mind. Even now, it seemed that the Doctor's thoughts were running off without him, attempting to find sense in the mess that his regeneration had left behind.

Alone, alone, so alone ... he seemed to moan frantically.

You're not alone. I'm here, Rose assured him, her own thoughts trailing against the rough, unfocused edges of his mind.

He immediately grasped onto her presence as though she were a lifeline, his grip on her mind almost painful as he desperately tried to right himself and regain his bearings. Don't go, don't leave, please stay ... he begged.

Terror gripped Rose's heart in that moment, but she wasn't entirely sure if it was his or her own as he helplessly drug her down with him into the sea of chaos that was raging within him.

I'm not going anywhere, Rose assured him as confidently as possible as she fought to steady her breathing and remain within her right mind. Stay with me, come back to me, she coaxed him gently.

A pitiful, moaning sound escaped from the back of the Doctor's throat that broke Rose's heart and made her chest swell with a sharp stab of protectiveness. She moved further onto the bed beside him and took one of his hands in both of hers, noticing that his skin felt even cooler than normal as she held it close to her chest and tried to ignore the odd new shape of his fingers.

Rose had seen so many different versions of the Doctor, and she had loved every single one of them. She knew that this one would be no different, and that in time, she would find her hands fitting into his as easily as they always did, no matter what shape either of them took. She simply had to believe that that was true. The alternative was ... simply unthinkable.

"Please come back," she whispered as she pressed her lips to his knuckles and sent a wave of peace throughout his mind that seemed to calm the turbulent waters of his thoughts for a moment. "Please don't leave me ..."

"Rose ..." His voice was no more than a rough, muttered whisper, but it was the first time that she had heard her true name on this new man's lips, and it gave her the small spark of hope that she knew she had been looking for ever since he had changed. It also gave her the confidence that she needed to pull up the edge of the sheets of the bed and slip into the small space at the Doctor's side, her arms going around his middle as she settled in as close as she dared and desperately attempted to transmit some of her warmth into his chilled skin.

Rose closed her eyes and moved the palm of her hand over his chest so that she could count his heartsbeats and use their steady rhythm to slow the pace of both of their thoughts. She felt the Doctor shift slightly, as though he were turning his head closer towards her familiar presence, but she didn't both to open her eyes and look as she quickly drifted off into unconsciousness with him, her mind joining his as they fell into a deep, restless sleep.

-------------------

Rose's dreams were filled with memories and equations and emotions that she knew were not her own. When she was finally startled awake once more by a loud, pained roaring, she felt somehow even less rested than she had been before she had drifted off to sleep.

When she felt the cold, empty space beside her in the bed and realized that the Doctor had somehow managed to disappear into the night, she reached out over their bond on instinct in an attempt to find him. However, she was met with nothing more than a flurry of panic and a thick mental barrier that kept her firmly separated from the rest of the Doctor's thoughts. It seemed that he was slowly coming back to himself, but he was determined to keep her shielded from the tangled, chaotic mess that he had accidentally pulled her into before.

This was further proven to be true when she quickly joined Jenny, Vastra, and Strax and came upon the Doctor standing on an old stone railing and looking down at the flaming remnants of the dinosaur that they had accidentally time traveled into Victorian London.

"Doctor, what are you doing?" Rose called up to him in quiet concern. She silently begged for him to come down and talk to her, or at least share with her what it was that was currently troubling his thoughts so much, but she was met with nothing more than silence as he refused to even turn around and meet her gaze.

"She was scared," he breathed quietly as if to himself. "She was scared and alone. I brought her here, and look what they did ..."

Jenny, Vastra, and Strax all attempted to help the Doctor to see reason, but he seemed determined to be obstinate as he growled down at all of them, pointedly ignoring Rose the entire time as she silently felt out the edges of his silent, closed-off mind.

"Why can't I meet a decent species?" he groaned in frustration. "Planet of the pudding brains!"

"Doctor ..." Rose piped up gently, refusing to let his biting words get to her as they once might have done, "I know you're upset, but you need to calm down and talk to us. What is the question?"

"A dinosaur is burning in the heart of London," he growled, finally turning to meet her gaze with a carefully blank expression that did nothing to disguise the anger glowing in his eyes, "nothing left but smoke and flame! The question is ... have there been any similar murders?"

Jenny, Vastra, and Strax all exchanged a weighted look between themselves before Madame Vastra replied gravely, "Yes. Yes, there have."