Ties Between Freedom and Love

✦11✦ - Aliens of London

Chapter Eleven
Aliens Of London

*---*---*---*---*---*

"How long have we been gone?" Emma asked, stepping out of the TARDIS and looking around with a smile. Modern London, what a weird feeling it was after being in the future and going back to the past.

"About twelve hours," the Doctor replied, leaning his back against the TARDIS doorway.

Emma and Rose giggled gleefully, and the Doctor smiled in amusement at them.

"Right, we won't be long," Emma reassured and Rose nodded.

"Yeah, just want to see my mum."

"What are you going to tell her?" the Doctor questioned curiously.

"I don't know," Emma teased, "we've been to the year five billion and we've only been gone what, twelve hours?"

"God, no," Rose laughed, "Emma will tell her nothing because that's normal and I will tell her that I just spent the night at Shareen's."

"Bye," Emma waved at him as Rose started to drag her along, "oh, don't you disappear," she said wagging a finger at him.

He looked slightly offended but smiled nonetheless and she grinned.

The two jogged across two streets before coming up to the Tyler's apartment, they ran up the stairs and Rose unlocked the front door.

"We're back!" Emma called out.

"I was with Shareen," Rose lied as she set her keys down on the table, "she was upset again. You in?"

Jackie came through the door, she looked startled and in shock.

"So, what's been happening? How you been?" Rose asked, smiling.

Emma frowned, "What? What's that face for? It's not the first time we've stayed out all night on the same night."

Jackie dropped her cup and it shattered at her feet.

"It's you," she said, "it's both of you!"

"Of course it's us."

"Oh, my God!" Jackie cried, "you're here," she lunged forward pulling them in for a desperate hug.

Rose and Emma both shared a confused and concerned look over her shoulder but then everything became clear once they saw the missing posters spread out across the coffee table.

They've been missing? For how long?

The Doctor rushed through the door with a truly apologetic look plastered across his face, "Um... it's not twelve hours. It's twelve months," he explained. "You've been gone a whole year, sorry."

Rose and Emma looked back at Jackie and she started crying all over again as she hugged them even tighter than before.

*---*---*---*---*---*

Family And Aliens

*---*---*---*---*---*

"The hours I've sat here, days and weeks and months, all on my own. I thought you two were dead. And where were you? Traveling! What the hell does that mean, traveling? That's no sort of answer," Jackie ranted off angrily, then turned to the London cop, that was sat in the living room. "You ask them. They won't tell me. That's all they say traveling."

"That's what we were doing," Rose argued pathetically. She and Emma were sat on the couch, Rose in a comfortable ball and Emma crossed-legged her knees tucked into her chest, the guilt crushing her for how much they seemed to have hurt Jackie.