Lostwolf Fiction

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

Chapter 7.  The Disappeared

The manager of the Estoria was out, enabling the Doctor, with a casual flick of his sonic screwdriver, uninterrupted access to the man’s communication network.  Unlike the facilities in the hotel rooms, the device in the manager’s office responded to the Doctor’s aggressive ministrations and before long he had hacked into the secure communication channels utilised by the planetary police and government.  His Time Lord superiority reasserted by the relative ease of his invasion of their systems, he accessed all available data about the Judoon operation.  Unfortunately, all available data amounted to lamentably little; the Judoon weren’t big on interpersonal skills and, as far as he could judge, were providing the government with only enough information to keep them moderately contented.  They were, in actuality, being kept almost entirely in the dark and that meant that he was in the dark too.  All he knew for certain was that the second circle had almost been cleared and the force field had, with the event of dawn, inched that little closer to the centre, pushing the fugitives that little closer to Rose and him and placing Rose that little more at risk.  Of the fugitives themselves there had been no reported sign.  They appeared to have gone to ground far more effectively than either he or the Judoon had expected.  On a planet, in a city, as monitored and secure as this one their continued liberty was both surprising and disturbing. 

Slowly, as the data spooled before his eyes, the angry fog that had swamped his senses began to lift and he felt the first prickles of alarm for having let Rose go off on her own.  With pained sparks his taxed synapses processed the ridiculous and demeaning demand he had made of her, the foolishly, irrationally jealous petulance of his behaviour towards her.  He recalled how, through the glass façade of the hotel, her hair had shone in a halo of gold, vibrant as a sun, before she’d slipped from his view.  She’d walked away and it had felt like the colour and warmth had been stripped from his soul. He shivered as he realised that he’d permitted his irritation at her pet and his need to rest over ride his normally instinctive protectiveness.  He might be incautious when it came to his own safety, but when it came to his companions, to Rose, he was never intentionally careless.  Until today.  Today he had snapped and badgered and sulked and positively pushed her towards peril.  And he called Mickey the idiot!  With a guilty, nervous start, he pushed to his feet and headed for the foyer; he had to find Rose and he had to find her now.  He needed her safe and, once she was safe and secure in his arms, maybe he could start to undo the appalling mess he seemed to be making of their relationship.


Rose stalked away from the hotel, Sniff trotting by her side, and tried not to be bothered by the Doctor’s irrational and hurtful behaviour.  He’d been attentive since Phoses, constantly and somewhat annoyingly checking she was okay.  The return to his prickly, erratic and irascible self had come as something of a surprise and she’d been unprepared for his reaction to Sniff.  If it was Mickey she would understand it.  Mickey had been jealous of the time she spent playing with her Barbie when she was little and the time she’d looked after the class hamster during the school holidays he’d nearly combusted with the strength of his sulk.  She just hadn’t expected the Doctor to be so … territorial.  Mickey had fancied her.  He’d always fancied her and hated anything that threatened his position of best friend and sort of boyfriend in her life.  The Doctor had no such excuse. He’d let her bring Adam on board, for heavens sake, and had helped her impress him.  Adam hadn’t bothered him so what on Earth was his reaction to Sniff all about? Sniff was a dog.  Cute, fluffy, adorable and she was completely in love with him, but he was a dog! Honestly, men, even Time Lords, could be so sodding stupid sometimes.  She huffed and cast her eyes about the square.  While she gave the Doctor time to untwist his knickers she might as well investigate.  And she knew exactly where to start; in her experience nothing happened in a city that shop girls didn’t know about.  With a confident step she headed towards a large multi-levelled shop that reminded her strongly of Henricks.  Time to show that pig-headed Doctor that she could do very well without him. 

It took Rose five minutes to find out something important, and a little over ten for her to know that what she had found out was significant.  She’d barely made it three foot inside the shop before she found the perfect mark; the makeup counter.  They were doing demonstrations, providing her with the ideal excuse for a prolonged chat with the gossiping seller of alien cosmetics.  She plonked herself on a stool and permitted her face to be transformed into the epitome of the latest style.  Inevitably, conversation strayed to the Judoon embargo and speculation as to the reasons behind it.

‘I hear it’s murderers,’ Rose confided melodramatically. The small lilac alien who was currently painting a thick layer of blue eye shadow below Rose’s eyebrow gasped and leant closer.

‘Do you think that it is? Would not that be positively awful?’ The girl’s tone suggested that it was, in fact, the very opposite of awful; the salacious possibility of rampant murderers in their midst was clearly extremely exciting.

‘Oh, it’s probably not true,’ said Rose sagely, ‘I mean, absolutely nothing has happened, has it?  Murderers would have done something by now, instead, the only reason we know there are criminals about is because of the Judoon.  I reckon they’ve just made a mistake.’

‘Oh, but things have occurred,’ gushed the girl, plucking at Rose’s eyebrow with enthusiasm, ‘people have been disappearing!’

Rose felt a flutter of excitement, but kept her reply carefully sceptical, ‘Oh, you’re having me on!’

‘No, upon my life, truly! I swear! I heard my supervisor talking about it this morning.  Lariff, the honourable lady of the perfume counter, failed to arrive for work this morning. Her husband did not return to the family home last night.  His work colleagues say that he left as was his routine, but he did not arrive home.  He has disappeared!’

Rose struggled to conceal her excitement, ‘I’m sure that it is not related.  Unless there have been other disappearances I doubt that this is related to the fugitives.’

‘But he is not the only soul to go missing.  There are rumours of others.  Men that have left their place of work only to vanish.’  Suddenly the severity of what she was implying occurred to the girl, ‘Oh, my! Do you think they have been killed? Lariff’s husband is nice.  I have met him.  He was kind.’

‘I’m sure he is fine,’ Rose reassured her. ‘Gosh, is that the time?  I’m afraid I have to meet my friend.’  She slid off the stool on which she had been perched. 

‘Oh, but I have not completed you,’ exclaimed the girl. Rose smiled, glad that she could not see how bizarre the one-sided decoration of her face looked.

‘Never mind,’ she gushed, as she moved rapidly towards the doors, ‘thank you so much,’ she added as she fled the department store.  She had to find the Doctor.


Luckily, travel with the Doctor and the unsanitary places they invariably visited meant that she always carried a small pack of wet-wipes in her pocket.  As she rushed back towards the hotel she scrubbed at her face vigorously, appalled by the gaudy colours that appeared on the moist towel’s surface.  Only when the second wipe came away clean did she stop scrubbing; lurid turquoise makeup really wasn’t her thing.   It was only as she was nearing the edge of the second circle that it occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea where the Doctor was.  She’d just told him she’d see him later, but hadn’t said when, nor had she asked him what he was going to do while she explored; really, rows could be very inconvenient when it came to information sharing.  She huffed, reaching down to pet a panting Sniff, and considered her next move.   He’d shown no interest in investigating the shops, which meant he was probably grilling the manager again, or trying to hack into the Judoon’s computer network.  Both those things suggested the hotel.  Her stomach rumbled and she realised that, even if he wasn’t there, she might as well wait for him in the Estoria; at least she could grab something to eat and wait for his grumpy self in comfort.  Standing up, she gave Sniff’s lead a tug and hurried them back towards the hotel.

As it turned out, the Doctor was waiting for her in the hotel foyer, not that he would admit that he was waiting for her.  Still, it was pretty obvious; the Doctor was never really idle, yet there he was, slumped in one of the hotel’s plush chairs, picking morosely at an ornate coaster.  Rose wandered over to him and sat in the chair at his side, deciding he looked too bleak to tease, even if he deserved it.

The Doctor had been waiting in the hotel foyer for one hundred and eleven minutes. Not that he’d been counting.  If he’d been counting he would have known the length of time down to the nearest nano-second.  Which was five.  Not that he’d counted.  He’d realised, as the red fog that seemed to descend all too readily where Rose was concerned had dissipated, that he had no idea where she was going or when she would be back.  He’d intended not to let her out of his sight and mere hours later he’d positively driven her from him, all because he was jealous of a dog.  Not even an evil, body snatching canine from Fqualwel Four, but a simple, stupid, ordinary dog.  Okay, a simple but pretty dog.  Maybe it was because it was pretty?  Rose liked pretty things.  But the point was, he’d let her out of his sight.  Which was dangerous.  And he had no idea where she was.  The technology in the hotel was not sufficient to permit him to access the higher-level security scans, so he couldn’t find her that way, and without the TARDIS he had only the option of searching on foot.  And Babel was huge.  He could miss her. So he’d waited, trying not to imagine all the things that could have happened to her. 

He felt her before he saw her.  The air shifted, the foyer seemed to brighten and the scent of her drifted through the warm air, and then she was beside him, curling into an armchair, gathering Sniff onto her lap and gazing at him steadily.  He drew in a slow breath.  He wouldn’t shout.

‘You shouldn’t have gone off on your own.  It isn’t safe.’ There, that definitely hadn’t been shouting.  That had been really quite quiet.

Rose frowned, ‘You said there was no risk from the Judoon during the day.’

He counted to five before he responded, his response terse but still not shouting, ‘This is a city, Rose, the Judoon aren’t the only threat!’

Rose snorted, ‘I grew up in the East End, Doctor.  I can handle myself.’

‘That’s not the point …’ He paused, noting the inadvertent climb in volume. Swallowing hard, he moderated his annoyance and allowed a little of his real anxiety to bleed through, ‘I didn’t know where you were.  I was worried.’

Rose stilled, her mouth closing around the protest she had been going to make.  He really had been worried.  This wasn’t him being stubborn and annoying and superior; he’d been scared.  She couldn’t really even remember why she’d been so angry with him, why stalking off had seemed like a good idea.  Contrite, she reached out and squeezed the fingers that lay, tense, against his knee.

‘I’m here now.’

He looked up, tortured blue eyes meeting her hazel ones.  ‘I wouldn’t really have made you leave the dog behind, not if you… I’m sorry.’

Rose’s eyes widened in surprise; she must really have scared him if he felt the need to apologise. ‘I know.’  She smiled at him, relieved when he smiled back.   Now a long moment of silence stretched between them, each unsure how to move forwards, until, with a shrug, the Doctor straightened up, the pall of misery that had seemed to lay over him falling away in the instant.

‘So, find anything useful, apart from this season’s must have nail colour?’

Rose started guiltily; realising that he had somehow spotted the pretty pink nail varnish the sales assistant had painted her nails with. Still, he could be as flippant as he liked, he’d have to climb off his high horse when she told him what she knew.

‘Actually,’ she said, smiling smugly, ‘I did.’


Chapter 8