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sapphire_childTo the fans of AoBH,
I am truly, truly sorry for not getting this chapter out sooner but this story has turned out to be even LONGER than I thought it would be and I've been agonising over the end of it for several months now (damn my OCD!) because so many people have invested so much time in this fic (a fact that continues to humble and amaze me) and I don't now want to rush the end and do a half arsed job because you all deserve so much more! (So much more...!)
So thank you for your amazing and ongoing patience (and the gentle, ongoing digs at me on totally unrelated journal posts to write more of this XD). You guys are all so incredible and I've been enjoying all of your comments so very much. This whole fic has been a massive labour of love and I'm going to be very sad when it's all over and posted :( but in the meantime, have a new chapter (FINALLY) of The Art of Being Human.
xx sapph
~*~
The Art of Being Human – Chapter 10/11 PG-13, Ten/Rose, John Smith/Rose
AU. With John Smith gone and the Family defeated, Rose returns to life on the TARDIS with the Doctor. But things aren’t like they were before and it seems like the Doctor might not be able to help Rose heal after the loss of John...
Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Epilogue
This chapter is dedicated to Missy the cat, whose recent and untimely death reminded me exactly what grieving felt like.
Previously...
“Rose.” John whispered against her lips, a tender hand against her cheek, stroking her hair. “Oh my Rose...”
She held his hand close to her cheek, lip trembling uncontrollably, and then kissed him again. “Don’t go.” She begged.
John turned his hand in hers to twine their fingers. “I’m sorry.” He whispered. Swallowed. “You know I must.”
Drawing himself up, John readjusted himself where he sat and Rose held his hand a moment longer as he considered the fob watch. With a deft flick of his thumb, the lid opened and the face glowed with an otherworldly light. Rose gripped his hand tighter as tendrils of gold unfurled towards him and he almost seemed to breathe them in.
And then at the last moment he turned to her, his face awash with golden light and Rose saw that he was crying.
“I don’t want to go!” he blurted, his hand clutching hers with all the desperation of a dying man.
Her heart broke for him so completely in that moment that she felt it almost as a physical manifestation. But it was too late for him – far too late. Barely had he finished speaking when the light dissipated and he let out a pained gasp, eyes slamming shut and the glow faded away entirely.
The silence that followed was finally punctuated by a pained groan from between clenched teeth as his body was wracked by several painful looking spasms. His hand gripped hers tighter with each one but Rose did nothing, said nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not even as he stood, his hand slipping from hers. He shut the watch again with a resounding click and then opened his eyes, tears still wet on his cheeks and jaw tense.
He didn’t say a word to her, didn’t look at her, merely stumbled to the door and when he reached it he paused for a moment with his head bowed and a hand on the frame to steady himself before stepping out into the night.
And once John Smith was gone, truly gone, Rose buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
~*~
It wasn’t far past dawn when the door to the cottage creaked open and Rose was startled out of a restless doze by the arrival of a pinstriped suit and achingly familiar tan overcoat all topped off with a cloud of unruly brown hair. She said nothing, too jolted by his sudden appearance and her own rude awakening. For his part the Doctor paused in the doorway only a moment before coming inside properly, gently shutting the door behind him and coming to stand – just so – by the dining table
He put his hands into his coat pockets when he reached it and Rose took in a sharp breath. The gesture, the stance – everything about him was so achingly Doctor. But his silence was unnervingly out of character. Normally he would have rattled off half a monologue by now, or at least asked her if she was alright. Not that she could talk. Under normal circumstances she would have thrown herself into his arms by now for a celebratory hug. Instead, Rose stayed frozen where she sat, fingers twisting around each other in her lap.
“Is it...” she cleared her throat when her voice rasped, then tried again. “Is it all over?”
“It’s over,” he confirmed and she felt a rush of emotion at the sound of his voice after so long – the Doctor. Not John, her John. “I took care of the Family. They won’t be bothering us again.”
“What’d you...?”
“I took care of them,” he repeated, a little sharper. Rose stiffened and her eyes flew back to where her hands were busily strangling each other in her lap. She was still wearing her dress from the night before and the fake wedding ring. It was odd, to still be Rose Smith with the Doctor standing in the room with her. Like something out of a dream.
“What d’you...I mean, d’you...d’you...um...” her sentence stumbled to an ungainly halt and before she realised he’d even moved the Doctor was beside her, his hand alighting cool and unfamiliar on her shoulder. Rose couldn’t stop herself from flinching slightly at his touch but his grip merely became firmer, grounding her and bringing her back to her question.
“Rose?” he pressed softly, bending a little to peer at her. She ducked her head even lower in response.
“How much do you remember?” she asked in a tiny voice, biting down hard on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting out into sobs. Tears trembled over the edge of her lower lids, threatening to spill into her lap. “Do you remember being John, or...?”
“A bit.” the Doctor admitted, barely pausing before continuing with, “Wellll I say a bit, I mean most of it. Not clearly mind, it’s all a bit fuzzy around the edges but...bit like remembering a dream really I suppose. Not that I-well.” he stopped abruptly, his hand gesticulating on a moment longer before falling limply to his side. “You know. Sleep. Much. Or dream.”
Rose nodded in understanding. “A dream.” she echoed.
“‘No more yielding than a dream’.” The Doctor said quixotically, hand alighting back on her shoulder. Rose shivered, both with the chill of his skin and also with the knowledge that he knew – he remembered. Everything.
“M’sorry,” she choked out suddenly, twisting the wedding band around her finger as she finally began to cry in earnest. “For...you know. With him.”
She glanced up to gauge his reaction but the Doctor’s face was inscrutable and he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes. “You did what you had to. To keep me safe.” He added. But even though his voice was quiet and mild and indifferent Rose felt worse than if he’d reacted with anger or disgust. “To keep up the...the pretence of...”
“Yeah.” she interrupted him shortly, swallowing back her remaining sobs. “Yeah.”
She didn’t dare tell him that by the end she hadn’t been pretending at all.
“Well come on then,” the Doctor said, his voice still uncharacteristically quiet. His hand hovered at the small of her back as she stood, the whalebone in her corset creaking ominously. Silently they made their way out of the cottage, his hand still lingering as he gently closed the door behind them. “Best get back to the TARDIS before someone comes looking for us.”
“What about all our stuff back at the school?” Rose sniffed, wiping tears away with the heels of her palms.
“Doesn’t matter.” the Doctor said dismissively. “The TARDIS will replace whatever you need. Come on.”
He strode on ahead but Rose stopped short, feeling like she’d just been sucker-punched right in the gut. She was thinking about all of John’s sketches. Her writing set. The silver hair comb he’d bought as an early Christmas present for her. The detritus of a life unlived and now left behind.
How was the TARDIS supposed to replace them?
“Rose?”
She refocused on the path ahead and saw the Doctor waiting for her, a half dozen steps away.
“Coming?” he asked, holding out a long, thin hand towards her.
Rose hesitated only a moment longer before she stepped forward to catch him up. As she came alongside, Rose hesitantly took his outstretched hand and his fingers tightened immediately; tugging lightly but impatiently, ready to move on.
“Let’s go.” he said calmly. His eyes were bright with promises and his first smile (as himself) in months touched the corners of his mouth with endearing crookedness.
Rose nodded and offered him a small smile in return but she couldn’t quite bring herself to squeeze his hand back as he led her to the TARDIS.
~*~
Timothy Lattimer barely managed to catch up with them before they left. Having just finished slogging up the hill, Rose was too exhausted to even argue against the kid’s sudden epiphany that he should suck it up and prepare himself for the impending war. The Doctor, as usual, had enough words for both of them anyway.
“Brave words,” he told the boy approvingly. “Not that I like the thought of you fighting...” averting his gaze for a moment, he sniffed abruptly and turned back with something close to cheer on his face. “Still. You’re a braver man than I am.”
“I doubt that.” Timothy said uneasily before turning his attention to Rose, waiting patiently until she met his gaze before speaking. “Rose. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” His dark eyes were sad, and older than they had any right to be. “I wish there’d been another way.”
Rose nodded and then, feeling very brave herself, she reached out to him. “Nah,” she said lightly as she hugged him. “You were right. My head was too stupid to do what I was supposed to...” Pulling back abruptly before she started blubbing all over him, she offered him a quick, grateful smile. “Anyway! Thanks for helping me do right yeah?”
Timothy nodded, smiled, and then watched silently as the two of them clambered inside the TARDIS and disappeared forever.
“You alright?” the Doctor asked with a surprising amount of gentleness once they were spinning safely in the Vortex. He’d been obviously worried about her all the way to the TARDIS, even offering to piggyback her up the steeper hills so she wouldn’t have to climb them. But Rose wasn’t used to be being fussed over by anyone, least of all the Doctor, so she waved off his concern with as much glibness as she could muster.
“M’fine.” She smiled tiredly and then hesitantly countered with, “You?”
He managed a thin smile. “Always. S’pose you’ll need a hand getting out of...” he gestured towards her. “All that then?”
Rose glanced down at her outfit in dismay, only just remembering how many layers of underthings she had to dispense of before she could even think about showering or sleeping. The thought alone made her want to cry with frustration. “God. Can’t I just cut myself out of it?” she despaired, already tugging at the neckline.
“And ruin a perfectly good dress? And corset?” the Doctor spent a moment looking mortified before gesturing for her to turn around. A moment later she felt a soft nudge in her lower back and a firm command of, “Wardrobe. Now.”
Rose was so tired she simply allowed herself to be steered to their destination and once there she didn’t protest when the Doctor deftly set to the row of buttons at her back – the ones that John had done up for her the night before because she couldn’t reach. Once that was done the dress was easy enough to dispose of, but getting the corset unlaced was another story altogether.
“Stupid thing.” she tried for a devil-may-care laugh but was so exhausted that it turned into more of a hysterical cackle. “Can’t believe I wore ‘em so long!”
“The things we do...” the Doctor mumbled in agreement, his long fingers fumbling at her back and then tugging experimentally at the stiffly boned garment. “That enough?”
“Maybe.” Rose wriggled and pulled and then wriggled some more. It was still a little tight across her hips but with a bit of help and an extra set of hands she might be able to get it off without having to loosen it anymore. “Can you try pulling it from the bottom? If you pull...I push...”
At her words the Doctor’s hands obediently moved to her hips and Rose, quite suddenly, forgot how to breathe.
She stood there frozen, the cool touch of breath against the back of her neck and the pressure of his hands through the thin fabric of her drawers. After a moment her lungs started working again and her respiration went from non-existent to shallow and uneven. But then the Doctor grasped the hem of her corset and began tugging it about – jerking it really – to try and get it over her hips.
Rose fought down a wave of crushing disappointment.
Of course he wasn’t teasing her. He was just helping her to get out of this stupid thing and here she was expecting him to start...well. She’d grown too used to John, she chastised herself. She couldn’t expect the same from the Doctor – he probably didn’t even want her like that or he’d have said something when she’d apologised for...
She shook her head slightly to dispel the thought and then startled when the Doctor leant over her shoulder to address her. “Reckon you can take over from here?” his voice was pointed and Rose, embarrassed, realised that he had tugged the worst of it down over her hips without her even lifting a finger.
“Yeah.” she managed to stutter as he made his way out. “Thanks. Sorry.”
As much as she had appreciated his help, Rose was glad for the solitude as she peeled off the remaining layers of her alter ego and (after a brief wash) replaced them with her customary jeans and t-shirt instead – helpfully laid out by the TARDIS. With her face made up for the first time in months and her hair brushed out of the elaborate up-do she’d worn the night before, Rose almost felt like herself again.
Indeed, one last look over in the mirror revealed that the only thing left that didn’t belong was the silver wedding band, still resting innocuously on her left hand. She quickly slid it off and, on a whim, put it on the chain she wore around her neck – right next to her TARDIS key. Finally content, she straightened her clothes, smudged her eyeliner a little more and set off to find the Doctor. Not a difficult task really, all things considered. He’d obviously missed the TARDIS and was busily reacquainting himself with his time ship through the ancient art of tinkering and talking.
“There y’are old girl,” he was crooning from beneath the console when she came in. “Does that feel better? Eh? Oh I bet it does...”
“D’you two wanna be alone?” Rose offered dryly and a moment later the Doctor was scrambling out from underneath the console to greet her, accidentally banging his head rather badly on the way out in his haste.
“Gngh!” He managed through gritted teeth as he staggered upright, the heel of his palm flying to his forehead. “Blimey that hurt!”
Rose stepped forward in concern, instantly going into nurse-mode. “Let me see.”
The Doctor bowed his head obediently enough but it didn’t take two seconds before he began fidgeting, eyes darting around the console room and his head inevitably following. “Hold still would you?” Rose said irritably, all but shoving his head back to where she wanted it. “You’re more fidgety than John wa-was.”
They both froze at the same time, Rose with her hands in his hair and he in the act of swinging his arms about like the hands off a deranged clock face. After a pregnant pause, she shut her mouth and resumed her examination as if she hadn’t said anything at all. The Doctor meanwhile, shoved his hands so deeply into his trouser pockets it was like he was trying to root himself to the floor.
Ignoring his overly theatrical winces, Rose tilted his head forward again and gently pushed his hair back so that she could examine where he’d bumped himself. Luckily the skin hadn’t even broken and she knew that he would heal from such a minor knock much quicker than a human would. It probably wouldn’t even bruise.
It was then, as she sighed her relief, that she was overwhelmed by the dizzying scent of him – all time and space dust and ohgodhairgel. It was such a departure from the mixture of aftershave and tea leaves that John had always seemed to carry with him. The dust was a constant she wouldn’t have expected them to share though...
“S’fine!” she said, much too loudly, and then winced. Not quite able to bring herself to take her hands away just yet, she set to carefully rearranging the section of hair she had disturbed during her examination with matter of fact intent. “Probably won’t even bruise.”
“You’ve picked up a few new tricks haven’t you?” the Doctor said, his tone admiring.
“S’pose so.” Rose mumbled, pleased but mostly embarrassed, before hastily tipping his chin back up to its rightful place. It was only then that she caught his gaze properly for the first time since he’d changed back, and she was struck dumb by the look in his eyes. It was only there for a moment, and the second she moved to capture the expression between her hands it flickered and was gone.
Feebly, she dropped her hands to his lapels, but despite the Doctor’s now guarded appearance she couldn’t help but ask the burning question.
“Is he still in there?” she wondered aloud, morbidly curious. “John?”
The Doctor looked surprised. “Why would you think that?” he asked and Rose immediately felt stupid for suggesting it in the first place.
“Dunno,” she said evasively, her hands faltering and falling away from him only to burrow into her jean pockets. “Just wondering. I mean, some of him must’ve come from you. Right?”
“Yes. Well. I’m sure he’s still...in here.” The Doctor gestured vaguely to himself and then began to pace his way around the console, surreptitiously mussing his hair back to the way he liked it. “You know. Somewhere. So! You look ready for an adventure – where to first? Or did you want to go and see your mum?”
The request was innocent enough, and after a hard adventure he had often given her the option to go home for a quick visit. She normally took him up on the offer without question. Now however, Rose felt her insides go cold, like a wash of ice chips had slid down her oesophagus and come to rest in her belly.
“No,” she blurted and he actually stopped and looked at her with real concern. “I mean,” she backtracked, trying not to show how terrified she was. “I can see mum anytime. Or Earth. I’d rather go somewhere else.”
The Doctor, seemingly satisfied with this, began rattling off names and places. Rose crossed her arms around the ice in her gut as she tailed him, worry still twisting her intestines into loops and knots.
The truth of it was that the nonchalance of his offer to take her home had sparked off an instant, terrified suspicion that if he took her home he might just land on the Estate, tip her out and fly off. After the way she’d behaved with John she wouldn’t blame him. And it was obvious he was tense – for all of his bravado she could plainly see the strain around his mouth and across his shoulders...
But if he was going to pretend that everything was fine then she could too. If it meant that she got to stay with him a little longer then she wasn’t going to mess things up if she could help it. Well, at least no more than she already had. Pulling herself up onto the jump seat, Rose stayed silent as the Doctor chattered his way through another dozen sights they could go and see before...
“Oh!” he spun towards her and exclaimed so loudly that Rose nearly fell off her perch in alarm. “I’ve just thought of the best place to go!”
He attacked the console with vigour and after landing the TARDIS with the familiar grind-creak-dong he invited her to join him with a gallant sweep of his arm. “Shall we?” he smiled and she smiled back with as much enthusiasm as she could muster (which admittedly was not much between her bone aching weariness and the awful hollow sensation that had settled in her belly).
To her credit, Rose didn’t even bat an eyelid when the Doctor grasped her hand and pulled her down from the jump seat, bounding to the door with her in tow.
“Ready?” he beamed at her, his hand on the doorknob and Rose willed that old familiar spark to flare up in her, the excitement bubbling up inside as she prepared to share something new and spectacular with this fantastic, alien man.
To her mixed confusion and consternation, it didn’t come.
Once again, the Doctor’s expression flickered. And once again, before Rose could catalogue it, his usual manic grin burst onto his face full force and he threw open the door...
And the two of them stepped out into the middle of a political uprising on a planet two galaxies and a full three hundred thousand years out of the time period he’d been aiming for.
~*~
She made excuses for her behaviour of course – they both did. She was tired, she’d been through so much in the last few days, she hadn’t slept well... To try and help, the Doctor took her to a planet where they used devices called ‘Dream Pods’ to coax insomniacs into a controlled slumber.
After they’d stopped a crazy scientist from doing unauthorised experiments on his patients using the devices, Rose was given a free session under the watchful eye of the Doctor and she slept dreamlessly for close to eighteen hours. She woke feeling utterly refreshed and all but skipped off onto her next adventure with the Doctor, her tiredness completely gone.
The hollow feeling however, lingered, and it wasn’t until she fell asleep naturally for the first time that Rose began to realise why.
~*~
Her eyes opened to a familiar roof above her head.
“Oh.” She breathed, transfixed by the familiarity of the tiny spider web cracks spreading from one corner of the ceiling plaster. She’d grown intimately acquainted with that crack as she lay in bed with John over her months at Farringham. A brief shuffling sound alerted her to another presence in the room and she looked up to see the Doctor moving towards her, carefully unbuttoning his jacket.
“This is a dream.” She realised, with some disappointment. The Doctor nodded mutely, peeling off his jacket to reveal a second one beneath it.
Tweed.
Rose caught her breath, watching in breathless anticipation as he slowly stripped away layers of pinstripes. For a moment John stood before her and she ached with the want to touch him. But he didn’t stop undressing, methodically removing jacket, vest, tie, shirt...until he stood fully nude before her with an alarming amount of candour.
It was this more than anything else that convinced Rose that this was merely her subconscious playing tricks on her. John had always been quite shy with his body – even with her. He didn’t like being looked at when he was so exposed. He had however liked pressing her down into the bed by covering her with his own body – just as he was doing now.
“Rose...” he whispered, one hand on her cheek and the other at her bare hip. Her eyes fluttered shut as the latter began to drift and she reached for him without thinking, hands pressing into his slender waist, heels pressing down into the bed for more purchase.
His skin was hot against her palms, her thighs. She gasped soundlessly at his first touch and tightened her hold, pulling him down towards her. There was a moment where he held steady and then she felt him relinquish control. The moment his body was pressed fully flush against hers he shifted his weight back so that he could tenderly rock against...
“John!”
Her voice fell flat in the darkness and for a moment Rose was wild, unseeing and lost. As the adrenaline kick began to fade she became aware of the TARDIS, humming familiarly around her. But even the presence of the time ship couldn’t warm the cold spot beside Rose in the bed or ease the hold of the hormones that were pumping through her bloodstream.
She brought herself off quickly and desperately with her own hands (something she had never done with John) and by the time she’d finished she was crying hot, shameful tears. Miserable and missing the warmth of him beside her more than she could possibly articulate, Rose curled up in her bed and let the TARDIS sing her back to sleep.
~*~
The dreams didn’t stop. And they only grew more varied the longer they went on. Reading on the couch, picnics in the woods – she even had one about going to the stupid village church that had her mumbling hymns under her breath for two days straight afterwards. What she once might have called dreams quickly became recurring nightmares that she just couldn’t seem to break free from.
She was soon jolting awake up to three of four times in a night, quite often going into a panic until she could calm herself down enough to realise that she was back on the TARDIS and not in bed with John as she had grown accustomed to. And after another restless night’s sleep she would get up and go about her normal routine like nothing was wrong.
She and the Doctor travelled to far off planets and space stations and moons. They got tangled up in political uprisings and religious coups. Myths and legends, conspiracy theories, plots and plans and disasters...and afterwards she held his hand as they ran back to the TARDIS because that was what Rose Tyler did.
That was what she did.
Until they visited Neridia.
She’d had a particularly vivid dream before they’d set out that day – another one where the Doctor had stripped out of his pinstripes only to reveal a layer of tweed underneath. The fact that it had finished with her being kissed so senseless that when he pulled away she hadn’t even been surprised that John (the Doctor?) was back in his pinstripes again hadn’t helped her concentration much during endless political briefings. It also hadn’t helped quell her sneaky suspicion that there had been more to his transformation into John than the Doctor was admitting to her.
“You know it’s a lot nicer once all the politics die down...” he was busily defending the little green planet they’d just left with a surprising amount of loyalty considering its inhabitants had originally tried to execute them both as spies. “...its sister planet though – lovely. Aidrien it’s called (that’s an anagram of Neridia you know) and they’re peaceful to the point of pacifism the Aidrienae...Aidrieni? Anyway! Just my kind of place – no wars or fighting, just loads of fountains and shops and museums...oh and they’ve got these spectacular stretches of violet grass in the cities so the locals can feed their...”
“You could change back,” Rose blurted suddenly and the Doctor faltered. “If you wanted.”
“Change...back?” he echoed dumbly.
“Into John.” Rose clarified and his eyes lit up with comprehension before darkening into something else altogether.
“Technically...” he began cautiously. “I could. Yes.”
“But you won’t.”
The Doctor’s lips thinned ever so slightly. “No.”
“Didn’t think so...” Rose muttered to herself but the Doctor had turned indignant.
“Why would I want to go back to being human again?” he demanded. “Really, look at me!” he straightened his tie cockily before leaping into his new dissertation, circumnavigating the console as he did so, so that he could accentuate certain words with dial turning and button smashing. “I really love this me you know – clever, skinny, lucky, freckly old Time Lordly me! I tell you what, I really, really missed being me when I was him – I mean no offence human beings are pretty brilliant but seriously? One heart? Six senses? He was clever enough I s’pose. You know, for a human. He definitely wasn’t...Rose?”
“Shut up.” she managed, fairly shaking with anger and gripping the edge of the console with white-knuckled fingers. “Just...shut up.”
The Doctor, who had stopped and poked his head around the time rotor at her, looked honestly bewildered by her. “What? What’d I say?”
“What didn’t you say!” Rose fumed. “Talking about John like he’s some sort of...of idiot who didn’t deserve the...supreme...privilege of bein’ you.”
She fair spat out her final words and the Doctor was shocked speechless for a long moment before he fired back at her, stuttering a little in his astonishment.
“Well that’s not really fair!” he argued, more upset than angry. “Keeping in mind that it was my body he took over. I was trapped inside my own head – inside a dream, Rose! – for close to three months. Three months!” He shook his head at her in a despairing sort of way. “That’s time I’ll never get back. Time I could’ve done so much more with...”
“Three months out of how many years?” Rose threw back at him. “All John had was those three months!”
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer but then, with a seemingly Herculean effort, stopped himself and seemed to take a mental step backwards. If Rose hadn’t been so furious she might have been impressed with the unusual show of restraint.
Once he’d composed himself, the Doctor took a careful step forward with his hands held out. Kind of like how you might approach a snarling dog that’s just gotten loose from its choke chain. Or a small child with a loaded gun.
“Rose,” he said, very gently and calmly. “I’m sorry but...John wasn’t real-”
She instantly exploded. “Don’t you dare tell me that-”
The Doctor cut smoothly across her. “-and you need to understand that. He was just a construct, a creation. John Smith was a story – nothing more.”
“-he wasn’t real! How can you, of all people, decide-no he wasn’t just a story! You might think...”
“You’re acting like he’s gone away on holiday or something!” the Doctor continued loudly, clearly exasperated. “He’s gone! He’s dead! No, not even dead,” he realised, almost as an afterthought. “He wasn’t even alive to begin with...”
“Don’t say that!” Rose jabbed a finger at him in warning. “Just because he was made up instead of born doesn’t make him any less real than you! It doesn’t make him any less important! He might be gone now but he was. Real. For three whole months a man called John Smith lived an’-an’loved and was loved back by the people around him! He had a job, and a wife, an’ dreams an’ hopes an’ fears an’ everything. So don’t you try telling me he wasn’t real!”
She punctuated her argument with a dry sob and then stormed out of the console room, leaving the Doctor spluttering behind her.
~*~
As with all of her moods, Rose’s anger with the Doctor didn’t last. She’d never been one to hold a grudge, especially with him, so when he appeared sometime later with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits she couldn’t help but forgive him a little. Even if he had eaten most of the biscuits before he’d made it to her room. She even apologised for yelling at him and he smiled and took that as his cue to quietly snaffle the last biscuit.
That stunt earned him a rather spectacular glare but soon enough they were both laughing about it and as Rose blew across the surface of her tea the Doctor carefully licked a fingertip so that he could pick up the crumbs from the plate.
“I’ve been thinking...about taking you to this one planet.” he offered tentatively between bouts of crumb hunting. “This whole planet just covered in spas and beauty treatment...place...things. Apparently they do a brilliant mud something-or-other. You could do with a bit of R and R couldn’t you? Or – ooh what about a beach? X’horian’s always nice this time of year. Wellll, I mean, the time of year I’ll take us to’ll be nice. Bondi’s pretty decent too if you’d prefer something, I dunno, closer to home? You know I haven’t been to Sydney in a few regenerations actually! What d’you think?”
He was so earnest in his wheedling that they ended up going to at least a half dozen other planets before they managed to get back to Earth, and to Bondi. To Rose’s intense surprise, it was there (of all places) that they finally encountered the disaster she had been holding her breath for. Even then it was only a Croatian tourist who got caught in a riptide – a close runner up going to the Doctor’s unfortunate combination of Australian flag board shorts with his customary Oxford and tie.
Luckily the TARDIS translation circuits allowed them to help the poor man out of his predicament before he drowned, but no amount of coaxing from Rose would see the Doctor change into something more suitable (or even just lose the tie and untuck his shirt). In the end she just gave up on him completely and simply suffered the strange looks passersby kept shooting them as they walked through the city. Especially when they reached Woolloomooloo and he spent a good five minutes loudly making up limericks about it.
As the sun slowly disappeared behind the city, the two of them found themselves slowly making their way around Circular Quay, each of them picking up a cone of ridiculously priced gelato along the way. They walked until they ran out of boardwalk and then they paused to look over at the Opera House, washed all over with orange light from the sun.
Rose grinned a little as she recalled the trouble they’d gotten into only an hour or so before just over there. The Opera House security had grimly escorted them off the premises after the Doctor scrambled halfway up the side of one of the famous sails in an effort to get a good close up look at the tiling. It turned out that Australians didn’t like people climbing all over one of their biggest national icons. Go figure. Then again, Rose reckoned that if some ‘yobbo’ (a piece of Australian slang the Doctor was still delighting over) had decided to go abseiling down Big Ben or something then she wouldn’t’ve been all that thrilled either.
“You’re a bit burnt,” the Doctor said suddenly and Rose realised that he’d been eyeing off her bare shoulders as she reminisced. She examined herself with mild interest, careful not to let her remaining ice cream drip while her attention was distracted. The skin across her shoulders was hot to the touch but she couldn’t tell how badly burned she was in the dim lighting.
When she looked up so she could ask him though, she was distracted by the discovery that the Doctor hadn’t been immune to the glaring sun that day either. She grinned, tongue pressed between her teeth and when she teasingly told him, “Well you’ve got two times as many freckles as you did this morning!” he grinned back just as wide, teeth startlingly white against his sun darkened skin.
“Do I?” he went a little cross-eyed trying to get a look at his own nose and Rose laughed, tucking herself into his side so they could finish slurping and chomping up their ice creams and watch the Opera House across the darkening water. As they stood there lights began to spring on all around them and the Doctor gingerly put his arm around her shoulders – although whether it was because of her sunburn or just plain awkwardness she couldn’t tell.
For her part it was actually the most comfortable she’d felt with him since he’d come back. They’d had their share of awkwardness – mainly due to the inability of Rose’s body to properly distinguish the difference between the Doctor and John. She had recoiled from him more than once since he’d come back, and although the Doctor was obviously confused by her sudden need for physical space he had taken her lead and restricted their physical contact only to what she felt comfortable with at any given time.
It was a maddening dance made all the more awkward by his obvious and ongoing concern for her wellbeing. He was still asking her, intermittently, if she was alright but Rose wasn’t sure if he was being completely sincere or just asking out of force of habit. Either way she was always quick to assure him that she was fine, still terrified that he would drop her off at home if she admitted how she really felt.
Right now though, between the days adventures, their easy banter and that cosy spot in his side where she seemed to fit perfectly, Rose couldn’t help but feel content as she crunched up the bottom of her waffle cone and then began working the crumbs of it out of her molars with the tip of her tongue.
It was familiar, it was them. It was...
“S’lovely.” Rose whispered, leaning her head back against his shoulder with a small sigh.
“Knew you’d like it!” the Doctor said, somewhat smugly, before shifting almost nervously against her. “Rose?”
“Mmmn?” she rolled her neck so she could look up at him and was completely struck by the expression on his face – like he was trying to figure her out, like he was holding back from saying (or doing) well...something.
Hope blossomed in her chest and she stood up straighter, suddenly and quite irrationally wanting to kiss the ever living daylights out of him, propriety and boundaries be damned. Surely she wasn’t imaging the fact that he looked just like she felt, looked like he was thinking exactly the same thing that she was?
He looked just like John always had before he kissed her.
“Rose...” he said again and her eyes dropped to his mouth as his lips rolled around her name. She watched them, watched as his tongue curled behind his teeth and then withdrew again. Her pulse already quickening (and oh who cared anymore. She was going to bloody well kiss him) Rose rolled her weight forward onto the balls of her feet and was just about to rise up on tiptoe when...
The Doctor beamed so brilliantly that it was like a star bursting in front of her nose.
Rose blinked, jerking back a little in shock as his smile grew sheepish and he gave a nervous little chuckle. “You know I don’t think I ever said thank you.”
For a desperate millisecond, she thought he might still kiss her, but then he folded her up into an embrace and squeezed so tight that her feet lifted off the ground. She could feel him smiling against her temple, could feel his gratefulness in the press of his body against hers.
But nothing else.
“What?” she squeaked, so dazed she barely remembered to hug him back.
“Thank you.” he repeated, his voice a little breathy in her ear. He set her back on her feet after a moment but didn’t release his hold on her. In fact he seemed to be snuggling in even closer... “For looking after me when I was human.”
The penny dropped. Rose stilled. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice.
“I know it can’t’ve been easy for you,” he continued, mumbling against her cheek. “Having to pretend to be something you’re not – especially so far out of your time like you were. And it’s not like it’s in your nature to lie and keep secrets, you’re far too honest for that. But I never would’ve asked unless I had to – unless I had no other choice. You know that don’t you?”
Rose’s throat felt strangely constricted as she rasped out a, “Yeah.” His grip was just that little bit too tight across her sunburnt shoulders and she gave him one final squeeze before relaxing her hold and wriggling a little, hoping he would get the hint. Thankfully he did and once she was free of his embrace, she crammed her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “I know. S’fine yeah?”
The two of them fell silent, the Doctor still clutching the remaining crumbs of his waffle cone and Rose toeing the ground with her cheap sandals.
“Well,” he said finally, a little perplexed by her reaction but obviously hopeful. “Back to the TARDIS then? We’ve got a fair walk...”
He tried for a smile but Rose merely nodded. Most of the long, long walk back was taken in uncomfortable silence, Rose deliberately pushing her hands deeper into her short pockets so that when the Doctor reached for her hand it merely skimmed her wrist and then fell dejectedly away.
She felt horrible for rejecting him but Rose couldn’t help but feel a little bit upset that he clearly had no idea as to why she’d been so off lately. And in true Doctor fashion he didn’t even try getting to the bottom of it either. Obviously hoping everything would all blow over now that he’d apologised for what he thought was wrong, he attacked the console the minute they stepped in, flipping buttons and levers and babbling his head off about where they should go next.
At least he’d been right about one thing though, Rose thought as she followed him grimly into the console room. If she was one thing, Rose Tyler was honest. And maybe, she thought, it was about time she used that to her advantage and consequences be damned.
“I wasn’t pretending.” she blurted right into the middle of his ramble. The Doctor merely looked at her blankly.
“Wasn’t-?” he trailed off, one hand swinging uselessly where it had been about to grasp the monitor and swing it towards him.
“You said I was pretending,” she reminded him. “Back in 1913. I mean, yeah at first I probably was but...” lowering her head briefly she bit her lip and then just blurted it all out. “I really did feel something for John. I...l-loved him. In the end. Not that I didn’t want you to come back!” she added hastily. “Cos I did, I just...I didn’t want him to...”
She trailed off, lost, but to her surprise the Doctor was nodding thoughtfully. God, did he actually understand? Did he already know? For a moment his jaw worked from side to side as though he were literally chewing over his next words and then he swallowed and cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said with finality, but then he began to stammer and Rose’s heart sank. “That’s...fine. I guess. I mean, I’m fine with you...” he paused, waving a hand at her vaguely. “You know.”
“You’re not angry?” she said, more than a little incredulous. “That I had feelings for him?”
The Doctor’s face scrunched. “Should I be?”
That stung a little (of course he bloody well should be) but Rose was not deterred. “Well yeah,” she continued on. “Cos I was gonna let him stay! I wasn’t even gonna open the watch – least ‘til after Christmas. I might’ve let him stay forever given half a chance...”
The Doctor didn’t even look surprised by her admission and was quick to dismiss it. “You wouldn’t’ve,” he said easily. “You’re a woman of your word whether you like it or not. And you know as well as I do that eventually you would’ve done the right thing and let me out.”
He smiled at her and Rose had just begun to protest again when he interrupted her smoothly. “And in any case the watch was set on a timed release. Once the three months were up it would’ve opened itself anyway. So! No harm done. Eh?”
Rose felt herself deflate slightly. So even if she’d tried to keep John around for Christmas...
“Yeah.” She said flatly.
“Yes.” The Doctor said, swinging his arms awkwardly. “Right. Well.” Abruptly he made as if to go in for a hug and then changed his mind and crossed his arms instead. “So you weren’t angry that I hadn’t said thank you?”
Rose shook her head at him in disbelief. “Why would you even think that?”
“Oh I just thought that might’ve been why...you were...” the Doctor mumbled, trailing off vaguely though she managed to catch a few scattered words, “drawing...oblique comparisons...thought maybe...doesn’t really matter what...now I obviously know why...”
“I wasn’t expecting you to say thank you.” Rose mumbled once he had tapered off into something close to silence. “I thought you’d be angry at me.”
“Nothing to be angry for,” the Doctor said breezily, circling the console again. “Not really. Is there? I mean you looked after me, made sure the Family didn’t get their hands on the watch...”
“Shagged you without permission...” Rose added under her breath but he either didn’t hear her or he was just choosing to ignore her. He continued to pace around the time rotor and Rose grew impatient. “Can we go to London?” she finally asked, leaning entreatingly against the console. “So I can see my mum?”
If the Doctor was startled by the sudden shift in her conversation he didn’t show it, merely resumed his earlier mumbling in something that sounded like an agreement and several minutes later he was parking the TARDIS in its usual spot just outside her mother’s flat.
She had been putting this trip off for weeks, that nagging suspicion still in the back of her brain that the Doctor was just waiting for an opportunity to toss her out back home. But she was reaching the end of her tether now, so far gone that she didn’t even care if he did leave her at home so long as she got to see her mum and actually talk to someone properly about everything that had happened.
It was a relief to feel the TARDIS land on familiar soil – or concrete as it were. A quick fiddle with the monitor revealed the Powell Estate in all its shabby splendour on the external camera and Rose immediately bounded towards the ramp, slightly shamed when she realised (already halfway to the door) that she should probably ask the Doctor if he wanted to accompany her.
“D’you...wanna come up too?” she asked, picking at the fraying hem of her shorts. The Doctor however was busying himself with the console in a way that was altogether too focused to be entirely earnest and when she spoke he made a great show of glancing up at her in surprise.
“Hmmn? Oh. Nahhhh.” He tried his best to sound casual but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You’ve probably got loads to talk to her about. Don’t need me hanging around butting in where I’m not wanted. Besides,” his hand jumped towards his hair and he looked faintly embarrassed. “I get the feeling I might be in line for another slap after...recent events.”
“I won’t let her slap you.” Rose assured him but the Doctor remained steadfast. “You’re sure?” she pressed, just in case.
“Absolutely!” He smiled, faux cheerful before turning his back on her. “I’ll be here when you’re ready. Take your time!”
Not believing his act for a second but wanting more than ever to see her mum, Rose pushed open the door of the TARDIS only to be met by a bitingly cold evening wind that instantly puckered her bared skin into gooseflesh.
“Might want to take a coat with you by the way,” the Doctor added negligently, not even looking up from the monitor. “Mine’s by the door. If you want it.”
Normally she would have been touched by the gesture, excited by the opportunity to snuggle into the divine warmth and Doctor-y smell of his overcoat. Instead, Rose just felt a wave of irritation as she bundled it off the coral strut he always threw it over. He could’ve picked a warmer day couldn’t he? she thought sourly as she shucked it on.
She trudged out into the night without saying goodbye and then made her way up the stairs to her mums flat, the satin lining of the coat smooth against her sun-damaged skin. On the way she catalogued the familiar sounds of her old neighbours moving about behind closed doors. Cooking dinner or watching telly. Laughing over something inane that happened at work or school. A babies cries breaking out over an argument...
Rose sped up without even noticing, nearly tripping over the Doctor’s coat in her haste to get to her mother’s door. She was quite suddenly and irrationally desperate to get back, to get away from the TARDIS and the Doctor and just everything.
It had never been so easy to leave the TARDIS – to leave the Doctor – behind before. But she needed something human. Something the Doctor couldn’t give to her because he just didn’t understand. It was so clear to her now. Even though he had so obviously been trying to help, it just wasn’t enough.
He wasn’t enough.
She reached the door breathless and was still banging on it when Jackie opened it, resplendent in faux silk dressing gown and absently toting the TV remote.
“Rose?” she said in some surprise before glancing over her daughters shoulder and adding, “Where’s the Doctor?”
Rose’s face crumbled and Jackie, well schooled in the art of her daughter’s body language, wasted no time in pulling her into her arms and letting her fall apart. Rose gave one stubborn hiccup, then another, before finally giving in to the onslaught of tears she’d been holding in for weeks.
“Oh Rose,” Jackie said softly, beginning to rub her back in slow circles. “Oh sweetheart...”
Rose’s fingers clenched spasmodically around fistfuls of pink satin as she sobbed helplessly, her cheek pressed against the warmth and soft weight of her mother and the grief crashing down upon her in waves.
“What’s he done to you?” Jackie murmured, rocking her gently on her feet. “Oh love, what’s he done to you now?”
->
I am truly, truly sorry for not getting this chapter out sooner but this story has turned out to be even LONGER than I thought it would be and I've been agonising over the end of it for several months now (damn my OCD!) because so many people have invested so much time in this fic (a fact that continues to humble and amaze me) and I don't now want to rush the end and do a half arsed job because you all deserve so much more! (So much more...!)
So thank you for your amazing and ongoing patience (and the gentle, ongoing digs at me on totally unrelated journal posts to write more of this XD). You guys are all so incredible and I've been enjoying all of your comments so very much. This whole fic has been a massive labour of love and I'm going to be very sad when it's all over and posted :( but in the meantime, have a new chapter (FINALLY) of The Art of Being Human.
xx sapph
The Art of Being Human – Chapter 10/11 PG-13, Ten/Rose, John Smith/Rose
AU. With John Smith gone and the Family defeated, Rose returns to life on the TARDIS with the Doctor. But things aren’t like they were before and it seems like the Doctor might not be able to help Rose heal after the loss of John...
This chapter is dedicated to Missy the cat, whose recent and untimely death reminded me exactly what grieving felt like.
Previously...
“Rose.” John whispered against her lips, a tender hand against her cheek, stroking her hair. “Oh my Rose...”
She held his hand close to her cheek, lip trembling uncontrollably, and then kissed him again. “Don’t go.” She begged.
John turned his hand in hers to twine their fingers. “I’m sorry.” He whispered. Swallowed. “You know I must.”
Drawing himself up, John readjusted himself where he sat and Rose held his hand a moment longer as he considered the fob watch. With a deft flick of his thumb, the lid opened and the face glowed with an otherworldly light. Rose gripped his hand tighter as tendrils of gold unfurled towards him and he almost seemed to breathe them in.
And then at the last moment he turned to her, his face awash with golden light and Rose saw that he was crying.
“I don’t want to go!” he blurted, his hand clutching hers with all the desperation of a dying man.
Her heart broke for him so completely in that moment that she felt it almost as a physical manifestation. But it was too late for him – far too late. Barely had he finished speaking when the light dissipated and he let out a pained gasp, eyes slamming shut and the glow faded away entirely.
The silence that followed was finally punctuated by a pained groan from between clenched teeth as his body was wracked by several painful looking spasms. His hand gripped hers tighter with each one but Rose did nothing, said nothing. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Not even as he stood, his hand slipping from hers. He shut the watch again with a resounding click and then opened his eyes, tears still wet on his cheeks and jaw tense.
He didn’t say a word to her, didn’t look at her, merely stumbled to the door and when he reached it he paused for a moment with his head bowed and a hand on the frame to steady himself before stepping out into the night.
And once John Smith was gone, truly gone, Rose buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
It wasn’t far past dawn when the door to the cottage creaked open and Rose was startled out of a restless doze by the arrival of a pinstriped suit and achingly familiar tan overcoat all topped off with a cloud of unruly brown hair. She said nothing, too jolted by his sudden appearance and her own rude awakening. For his part the Doctor paused in the doorway only a moment before coming inside properly, gently shutting the door behind him and coming to stand – just so – by the dining table
He put his hands into his coat pockets when he reached it and Rose took in a sharp breath. The gesture, the stance – everything about him was so achingly Doctor. But his silence was unnervingly out of character. Normally he would have rattled off half a monologue by now, or at least asked her if she was alright. Not that she could talk. Under normal circumstances she would have thrown herself into his arms by now for a celebratory hug. Instead, Rose stayed frozen where she sat, fingers twisting around each other in her lap.
“Is it...” she cleared her throat when her voice rasped, then tried again. “Is it all over?”
“It’s over,” he confirmed and she felt a rush of emotion at the sound of his voice after so long – the Doctor. Not John, her John. “I took care of the Family. They won’t be bothering us again.”
“What’d you...?”
“I took care of them,” he repeated, a little sharper. Rose stiffened and her eyes flew back to where her hands were busily strangling each other in her lap. She was still wearing her dress from the night before and the fake wedding ring. It was odd, to still be Rose Smith with the Doctor standing in the room with her. Like something out of a dream.
“What d’you...I mean, d’you...d’you...um...” her sentence stumbled to an ungainly halt and before she realised he’d even moved the Doctor was beside her, his hand alighting cool and unfamiliar on her shoulder. Rose couldn’t stop herself from flinching slightly at his touch but his grip merely became firmer, grounding her and bringing her back to her question.
“Rose?” he pressed softly, bending a little to peer at her. She ducked her head even lower in response.
“How much do you remember?” she asked in a tiny voice, biting down hard on her lower lip to stop herself from bursting out into sobs. Tears trembled over the edge of her lower lids, threatening to spill into her lap. “Do you remember being John, or...?”
“A bit.” the Doctor admitted, barely pausing before continuing with, “Wellll I say a bit, I mean most of it. Not clearly mind, it’s all a bit fuzzy around the edges but...bit like remembering a dream really I suppose. Not that I-well.” he stopped abruptly, his hand gesticulating on a moment longer before falling limply to his side. “You know. Sleep. Much. Or dream.”
Rose nodded in understanding. “A dream.” she echoed.
“‘No more yielding than a dream’.” The Doctor said quixotically, hand alighting back on her shoulder. Rose shivered, both with the chill of his skin and also with the knowledge that he knew – he remembered. Everything.
“M’sorry,” she choked out suddenly, twisting the wedding band around her finger as she finally began to cry in earnest. “For...you know. With him.”
She glanced up to gauge his reaction but the Doctor’s face was inscrutable and he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes. “You did what you had to. To keep me safe.” He added. But even though his voice was quiet and mild and indifferent Rose felt worse than if he’d reacted with anger or disgust. “To keep up the...the pretence of...”
“Yeah.” she interrupted him shortly, swallowing back her remaining sobs. “Yeah.”
She didn’t dare tell him that by the end she hadn’t been pretending at all.
“Well come on then,” the Doctor said, his voice still uncharacteristically quiet. His hand hovered at the small of her back as she stood, the whalebone in her corset creaking ominously. Silently they made their way out of the cottage, his hand still lingering as he gently closed the door behind them. “Best get back to the TARDIS before someone comes looking for us.”
“What about all our stuff back at the school?” Rose sniffed, wiping tears away with the heels of her palms.
“Doesn’t matter.” the Doctor said dismissively. “The TARDIS will replace whatever you need. Come on.”
He strode on ahead but Rose stopped short, feeling like she’d just been sucker-punched right in the gut. She was thinking about all of John’s sketches. Her writing set. The silver hair comb he’d bought as an early Christmas present for her. The detritus of a life unlived and now left behind.
How was the TARDIS supposed to replace them?
“Rose?”
She refocused on the path ahead and saw the Doctor waiting for her, a half dozen steps away.
“Coming?” he asked, holding out a long, thin hand towards her.
Rose hesitated only a moment longer before she stepped forward to catch him up. As she came alongside, Rose hesitantly took his outstretched hand and his fingers tightened immediately; tugging lightly but impatiently, ready to move on.
“Let’s go.” he said calmly. His eyes were bright with promises and his first smile (as himself) in months touched the corners of his mouth with endearing crookedness.
Rose nodded and offered him a small smile in return but she couldn’t quite bring herself to squeeze his hand back as he led her to the TARDIS.
Timothy Lattimer barely managed to catch up with them before they left. Having just finished slogging up the hill, Rose was too exhausted to even argue against the kid’s sudden epiphany that he should suck it up and prepare himself for the impending war. The Doctor, as usual, had enough words for both of them anyway.
“Brave words,” he told the boy approvingly. “Not that I like the thought of you fighting...” averting his gaze for a moment, he sniffed abruptly and turned back with something close to cheer on his face. “Still. You’re a braver man than I am.”
“I doubt that.” Timothy said uneasily before turning his attention to Rose, waiting patiently until she met his gaze before speaking. “Rose. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” His dark eyes were sad, and older than they had any right to be. “I wish there’d been another way.”
Rose nodded and then, feeling very brave herself, she reached out to him. “Nah,” she said lightly as she hugged him. “You were right. My head was too stupid to do what I was supposed to...” Pulling back abruptly before she started blubbing all over him, she offered him a quick, grateful smile. “Anyway! Thanks for helping me do right yeah?”
Timothy nodded, smiled, and then watched silently as the two of them clambered inside the TARDIS and disappeared forever.
“You alright?” the Doctor asked with a surprising amount of gentleness once they were spinning safely in the Vortex. He’d been obviously worried about her all the way to the TARDIS, even offering to piggyback her up the steeper hills so she wouldn’t have to climb them. But Rose wasn’t used to be being fussed over by anyone, least of all the Doctor, so she waved off his concern with as much glibness as she could muster.
“M’fine.” She smiled tiredly and then hesitantly countered with, “You?”
He managed a thin smile. “Always. S’pose you’ll need a hand getting out of...” he gestured towards her. “All that then?”
Rose glanced down at her outfit in dismay, only just remembering how many layers of underthings she had to dispense of before she could even think about showering or sleeping. The thought alone made her want to cry with frustration. “God. Can’t I just cut myself out of it?” she despaired, already tugging at the neckline.
“And ruin a perfectly good dress? And corset?” the Doctor spent a moment looking mortified before gesturing for her to turn around. A moment later she felt a soft nudge in her lower back and a firm command of, “Wardrobe. Now.”
Rose was so tired she simply allowed herself to be steered to their destination and once there she didn’t protest when the Doctor deftly set to the row of buttons at her back – the ones that John had done up for her the night before because she couldn’t reach. Once that was done the dress was easy enough to dispose of, but getting the corset unlaced was another story altogether.
“Stupid thing.” she tried for a devil-may-care laugh but was so exhausted that it turned into more of a hysterical cackle. “Can’t believe I wore ‘em so long!”
“The things we do...” the Doctor mumbled in agreement, his long fingers fumbling at her back and then tugging experimentally at the stiffly boned garment. “That enough?”
“Maybe.” Rose wriggled and pulled and then wriggled some more. It was still a little tight across her hips but with a bit of help and an extra set of hands she might be able to get it off without having to loosen it anymore. “Can you try pulling it from the bottom? If you pull...I push...”
At her words the Doctor’s hands obediently moved to her hips and Rose, quite suddenly, forgot how to breathe.
She stood there frozen, the cool touch of breath against the back of her neck and the pressure of his hands through the thin fabric of her drawers. After a moment her lungs started working again and her respiration went from non-existent to shallow and uneven. But then the Doctor grasped the hem of her corset and began tugging it about – jerking it really – to try and get it over her hips.
Rose fought down a wave of crushing disappointment.
Of course he wasn’t teasing her. He was just helping her to get out of this stupid thing and here she was expecting him to start...well. She’d grown too used to John, she chastised herself. She couldn’t expect the same from the Doctor – he probably didn’t even want her like that or he’d have said something when she’d apologised for...
She shook her head slightly to dispel the thought and then startled when the Doctor leant over her shoulder to address her. “Reckon you can take over from here?” his voice was pointed and Rose, embarrassed, realised that he had tugged the worst of it down over her hips without her even lifting a finger.
“Yeah.” she managed to stutter as he made his way out. “Thanks. Sorry.”
As much as she had appreciated his help, Rose was glad for the solitude as she peeled off the remaining layers of her alter ego and (after a brief wash) replaced them with her customary jeans and t-shirt instead – helpfully laid out by the TARDIS. With her face made up for the first time in months and her hair brushed out of the elaborate up-do she’d worn the night before, Rose almost felt like herself again.
Indeed, one last look over in the mirror revealed that the only thing left that didn’t belong was the silver wedding band, still resting innocuously on her left hand. She quickly slid it off and, on a whim, put it on the chain she wore around her neck – right next to her TARDIS key. Finally content, she straightened her clothes, smudged her eyeliner a little more and set off to find the Doctor. Not a difficult task really, all things considered. He’d obviously missed the TARDIS and was busily reacquainting himself with his time ship through the ancient art of tinkering and talking.
“There y’are old girl,” he was crooning from beneath the console when she came in. “Does that feel better? Eh? Oh I bet it does...”
“D’you two wanna be alone?” Rose offered dryly and a moment later the Doctor was scrambling out from underneath the console to greet her, accidentally banging his head rather badly on the way out in his haste.
“Gngh!” He managed through gritted teeth as he staggered upright, the heel of his palm flying to his forehead. “Blimey that hurt!”
Rose stepped forward in concern, instantly going into nurse-mode. “Let me see.”
The Doctor bowed his head obediently enough but it didn’t take two seconds before he began fidgeting, eyes darting around the console room and his head inevitably following. “Hold still would you?” Rose said irritably, all but shoving his head back to where she wanted it. “You’re more fidgety than John wa-was.”
They both froze at the same time, Rose with her hands in his hair and he in the act of swinging his arms about like the hands off a deranged clock face. After a pregnant pause, she shut her mouth and resumed her examination as if she hadn’t said anything at all. The Doctor meanwhile, shoved his hands so deeply into his trouser pockets it was like he was trying to root himself to the floor.
Ignoring his overly theatrical winces, Rose tilted his head forward again and gently pushed his hair back so that she could examine where he’d bumped himself. Luckily the skin hadn’t even broken and she knew that he would heal from such a minor knock much quicker than a human would. It probably wouldn’t even bruise.
It was then, as she sighed her relief, that she was overwhelmed by the dizzying scent of him – all time and space dust and ohgodhairgel. It was such a departure from the mixture of aftershave and tea leaves that John had always seemed to carry with him. The dust was a constant she wouldn’t have expected them to share though...
“S’fine!” she said, much too loudly, and then winced. Not quite able to bring herself to take her hands away just yet, she set to carefully rearranging the section of hair she had disturbed during her examination with matter of fact intent. “Probably won’t even bruise.”
“You’ve picked up a few new tricks haven’t you?” the Doctor said, his tone admiring.
“S’pose so.” Rose mumbled, pleased but mostly embarrassed, before hastily tipping his chin back up to its rightful place. It was only then that she caught his gaze properly for the first time since he’d changed back, and she was struck dumb by the look in his eyes. It was only there for a moment, and the second she moved to capture the expression between her hands it flickered and was gone.
Feebly, she dropped her hands to his lapels, but despite the Doctor’s now guarded appearance she couldn’t help but ask the burning question.
“Is he still in there?” she wondered aloud, morbidly curious. “John?”
The Doctor looked surprised. “Why would you think that?” he asked and Rose immediately felt stupid for suggesting it in the first place.
“Dunno,” she said evasively, her hands faltering and falling away from him only to burrow into her jean pockets. “Just wondering. I mean, some of him must’ve come from you. Right?”
“Yes. Well. I’m sure he’s still...in here.” The Doctor gestured vaguely to himself and then began to pace his way around the console, surreptitiously mussing his hair back to the way he liked it. “You know. Somewhere. So! You look ready for an adventure – where to first? Or did you want to go and see your mum?”
The request was innocent enough, and after a hard adventure he had often given her the option to go home for a quick visit. She normally took him up on the offer without question. Now however, Rose felt her insides go cold, like a wash of ice chips had slid down her oesophagus and come to rest in her belly.
“No,” she blurted and he actually stopped and looked at her with real concern. “I mean,” she backtracked, trying not to show how terrified she was. “I can see mum anytime. Or Earth. I’d rather go somewhere else.”
The Doctor, seemingly satisfied with this, began rattling off names and places. Rose crossed her arms around the ice in her gut as she tailed him, worry still twisting her intestines into loops and knots.
The truth of it was that the nonchalance of his offer to take her home had sparked off an instant, terrified suspicion that if he took her home he might just land on the Estate, tip her out and fly off. After the way she’d behaved with John she wouldn’t blame him. And it was obvious he was tense – for all of his bravado she could plainly see the strain around his mouth and across his shoulders...
But if he was going to pretend that everything was fine then she could too. If it meant that she got to stay with him a little longer then she wasn’t going to mess things up if she could help it. Well, at least no more than she already had. Pulling herself up onto the jump seat, Rose stayed silent as the Doctor chattered his way through another dozen sights they could go and see before...
“Oh!” he spun towards her and exclaimed so loudly that Rose nearly fell off her perch in alarm. “I’ve just thought of the best place to go!”
He attacked the console with vigour and after landing the TARDIS with the familiar grind-creak-dong he invited her to join him with a gallant sweep of his arm. “Shall we?” he smiled and she smiled back with as much enthusiasm as she could muster (which admittedly was not much between her bone aching weariness and the awful hollow sensation that had settled in her belly).
To her credit, Rose didn’t even bat an eyelid when the Doctor grasped her hand and pulled her down from the jump seat, bounding to the door with her in tow.
“Ready?” he beamed at her, his hand on the doorknob and Rose willed that old familiar spark to flare up in her, the excitement bubbling up inside as she prepared to share something new and spectacular with this fantastic, alien man.
To her mixed confusion and consternation, it didn’t come.
Once again, the Doctor’s expression flickered. And once again, before Rose could catalogue it, his usual manic grin burst onto his face full force and he threw open the door...
And the two of them stepped out into the middle of a political uprising on a planet two galaxies and a full three hundred thousand years out of the time period he’d been aiming for.
She made excuses for her behaviour of course – they both did. She was tired, she’d been through so much in the last few days, she hadn’t slept well... To try and help, the Doctor took her to a planet where they used devices called ‘Dream Pods’ to coax insomniacs into a controlled slumber.
After they’d stopped a crazy scientist from doing unauthorised experiments on his patients using the devices, Rose was given a free session under the watchful eye of the Doctor and she slept dreamlessly for close to eighteen hours. She woke feeling utterly refreshed and all but skipped off onto her next adventure with the Doctor, her tiredness completely gone.
The hollow feeling however, lingered, and it wasn’t until she fell asleep naturally for the first time that Rose began to realise why.
Her eyes opened to a familiar roof above her head.
“Oh.” She breathed, transfixed by the familiarity of the tiny spider web cracks spreading from one corner of the ceiling plaster. She’d grown intimately acquainted with that crack as she lay in bed with John over her months at Farringham. A brief shuffling sound alerted her to another presence in the room and she looked up to see the Doctor moving towards her, carefully unbuttoning his jacket.
“This is a dream.” She realised, with some disappointment. The Doctor nodded mutely, peeling off his jacket to reveal a second one beneath it.
Tweed.
Rose caught her breath, watching in breathless anticipation as he slowly stripped away layers of pinstripes. For a moment John stood before her and she ached with the want to touch him. But he didn’t stop undressing, methodically removing jacket, vest, tie, shirt...until he stood fully nude before her with an alarming amount of candour.
It was this more than anything else that convinced Rose that this was merely her subconscious playing tricks on her. John had always been quite shy with his body – even with her. He didn’t like being looked at when he was so exposed. He had however liked pressing her down into the bed by covering her with his own body – just as he was doing now.
“Rose...” he whispered, one hand on her cheek and the other at her bare hip. Her eyes fluttered shut as the latter began to drift and she reached for him without thinking, hands pressing into his slender waist, heels pressing down into the bed for more purchase.
His skin was hot against her palms, her thighs. She gasped soundlessly at his first touch and tightened her hold, pulling him down towards her. There was a moment where he held steady and then she felt him relinquish control. The moment his body was pressed fully flush against hers he shifted his weight back so that he could tenderly rock against...
“John!”
Her voice fell flat in the darkness and for a moment Rose was wild, unseeing and lost. As the adrenaline kick began to fade she became aware of the TARDIS, humming familiarly around her. But even the presence of the time ship couldn’t warm the cold spot beside Rose in the bed or ease the hold of the hormones that were pumping through her bloodstream.
She brought herself off quickly and desperately with her own hands (something she had never done with John) and by the time she’d finished she was crying hot, shameful tears. Miserable and missing the warmth of him beside her more than she could possibly articulate, Rose curled up in her bed and let the TARDIS sing her back to sleep.
The dreams didn’t stop. And they only grew more varied the longer they went on. Reading on the couch, picnics in the woods – she even had one about going to the stupid village church that had her mumbling hymns under her breath for two days straight afterwards. What she once might have called dreams quickly became recurring nightmares that she just couldn’t seem to break free from.
She was soon jolting awake up to three of four times in a night, quite often going into a panic until she could calm herself down enough to realise that she was back on the TARDIS and not in bed with John as she had grown accustomed to. And after another restless night’s sleep she would get up and go about her normal routine like nothing was wrong.
She and the Doctor travelled to far off planets and space stations and moons. They got tangled up in political uprisings and religious coups. Myths and legends, conspiracy theories, plots and plans and disasters...and afterwards she held his hand as they ran back to the TARDIS because that was what Rose Tyler did.
That was what she did.
Until they visited Neridia.
She’d had a particularly vivid dream before they’d set out that day – another one where the Doctor had stripped out of his pinstripes only to reveal a layer of tweed underneath. The fact that it had finished with her being kissed so senseless that when he pulled away she hadn’t even been surprised that John (the Doctor?) was back in his pinstripes again hadn’t helped her concentration much during endless political briefings. It also hadn’t helped quell her sneaky suspicion that there had been more to his transformation into John than the Doctor was admitting to her.
“You know it’s a lot nicer once all the politics die down...” he was busily defending the little green planet they’d just left with a surprising amount of loyalty considering its inhabitants had originally tried to execute them both as spies. “...its sister planet though – lovely. Aidrien it’s called (that’s an anagram of Neridia you know) and they’re peaceful to the point of pacifism the Aidrienae...Aidrieni? Anyway! Just my kind of place – no wars or fighting, just loads of fountains and shops and museums...oh and they’ve got these spectacular stretches of violet grass in the cities so the locals can feed their...”
“You could change back,” Rose blurted suddenly and the Doctor faltered. “If you wanted.”
“Change...back?” he echoed dumbly.
“Into John.” Rose clarified and his eyes lit up with comprehension before darkening into something else altogether.
“Technically...” he began cautiously. “I could. Yes.”
“But you won’t.”
The Doctor’s lips thinned ever so slightly. “No.”
“Didn’t think so...” Rose muttered to herself but the Doctor had turned indignant.
“Why would I want to go back to being human again?” he demanded. “Really, look at me!” he straightened his tie cockily before leaping into his new dissertation, circumnavigating the console as he did so, so that he could accentuate certain words with dial turning and button smashing. “I really love this me you know – clever, skinny, lucky, freckly old Time Lordly me! I tell you what, I really, really missed being me when I was him – I mean no offence human beings are pretty brilliant but seriously? One heart? Six senses? He was clever enough I s’pose. You know, for a human. He definitely wasn’t...Rose?”
“Shut up.” she managed, fairly shaking with anger and gripping the edge of the console with white-knuckled fingers. “Just...shut up.”
The Doctor, who had stopped and poked his head around the time rotor at her, looked honestly bewildered by her. “What? What’d I say?”
“What didn’t you say!” Rose fumed. “Talking about John like he’s some sort of...of idiot who didn’t deserve the...supreme...privilege of bein’ you.”
She fair spat out her final words and the Doctor was shocked speechless for a long moment before he fired back at her, stuttering a little in his astonishment.
“Well that’s not really fair!” he argued, more upset than angry. “Keeping in mind that it was my body he took over. I was trapped inside my own head – inside a dream, Rose! – for close to three months. Three months!” He shook his head at her in a despairing sort of way. “That’s time I’ll never get back. Time I could’ve done so much more with...”
“Three months out of how many years?” Rose threw back at him. “All John had was those three months!”
The Doctor opened his mouth to answer but then, with a seemingly Herculean effort, stopped himself and seemed to take a mental step backwards. If Rose hadn’t been so furious she might have been impressed with the unusual show of restraint.
Once he’d composed himself, the Doctor took a careful step forward with his hands held out. Kind of like how you might approach a snarling dog that’s just gotten loose from its choke chain. Or a small child with a loaded gun.
“Rose,” he said, very gently and calmly. “I’m sorry but...John wasn’t real-”
She instantly exploded. “Don’t you dare tell me that-”
The Doctor cut smoothly across her. “-and you need to understand that. He was just a construct, a creation. John Smith was a story – nothing more.”
“-he wasn’t real! How can you, of all people, decide-no he wasn’t just a story! You might think...”
“You’re acting like he’s gone away on holiday or something!” the Doctor continued loudly, clearly exasperated. “He’s gone! He’s dead! No, not even dead,” he realised, almost as an afterthought. “He wasn’t even alive to begin with...”
“Don’t say that!” Rose jabbed a finger at him in warning. “Just because he was made up instead of born doesn’t make him any less real than you! It doesn’t make him any less important! He might be gone now but he was. Real. For three whole months a man called John Smith lived an’-an’loved and was loved back by the people around him! He had a job, and a wife, an’ dreams an’ hopes an’ fears an’ everything. So don’t you try telling me he wasn’t real!”
She punctuated her argument with a dry sob and then stormed out of the console room, leaving the Doctor spluttering behind her.
As with all of her moods, Rose’s anger with the Doctor didn’t last. She’d never been one to hold a grudge, especially with him, so when he appeared sometime later with a cup of tea and a plate of biscuits she couldn’t help but forgive him a little. Even if he had eaten most of the biscuits before he’d made it to her room. She even apologised for yelling at him and he smiled and took that as his cue to quietly snaffle the last biscuit.
That stunt earned him a rather spectacular glare but soon enough they were both laughing about it and as Rose blew across the surface of her tea the Doctor carefully licked a fingertip so that he could pick up the crumbs from the plate.
“I’ve been thinking...about taking you to this one planet.” he offered tentatively between bouts of crumb hunting. “This whole planet just covered in spas and beauty treatment...place...things. Apparently they do a brilliant mud something-or-other. You could do with a bit of R and R couldn’t you? Or – ooh what about a beach? X’horian’s always nice this time of year. Wellll, I mean, the time of year I’ll take us to’ll be nice. Bondi’s pretty decent too if you’d prefer something, I dunno, closer to home? You know I haven’t been to Sydney in a few regenerations actually! What d’you think?”
He was so earnest in his wheedling that they ended up going to at least a half dozen other planets before they managed to get back to Earth, and to Bondi. To Rose’s intense surprise, it was there (of all places) that they finally encountered the disaster she had been holding her breath for. Even then it was only a Croatian tourist who got caught in a riptide – a close runner up going to the Doctor’s unfortunate combination of Australian flag board shorts with his customary Oxford and tie.
Luckily the TARDIS translation circuits allowed them to help the poor man out of his predicament before he drowned, but no amount of coaxing from Rose would see the Doctor change into something more suitable (or even just lose the tie and untuck his shirt). In the end she just gave up on him completely and simply suffered the strange looks passersby kept shooting them as they walked through the city. Especially when they reached Woolloomooloo and he spent a good five minutes loudly making up limericks about it.
As the sun slowly disappeared behind the city, the two of them found themselves slowly making their way around Circular Quay, each of them picking up a cone of ridiculously priced gelato along the way. They walked until they ran out of boardwalk and then they paused to look over at the Opera House, washed all over with orange light from the sun.
Rose grinned a little as she recalled the trouble they’d gotten into only an hour or so before just over there. The Opera House security had grimly escorted them off the premises after the Doctor scrambled halfway up the side of one of the famous sails in an effort to get a good close up look at the tiling. It turned out that Australians didn’t like people climbing all over one of their biggest national icons. Go figure. Then again, Rose reckoned that if some ‘yobbo’ (a piece of Australian slang the Doctor was still delighting over) had decided to go abseiling down Big Ben or something then she wouldn’t’ve been all that thrilled either.
“You’re a bit burnt,” the Doctor said suddenly and Rose realised that he’d been eyeing off her bare shoulders as she reminisced. She examined herself with mild interest, careful not to let her remaining ice cream drip while her attention was distracted. The skin across her shoulders was hot to the touch but she couldn’t tell how badly burned she was in the dim lighting.
When she looked up so she could ask him though, she was distracted by the discovery that the Doctor hadn’t been immune to the glaring sun that day either. She grinned, tongue pressed between her teeth and when she teasingly told him, “Well you’ve got two times as many freckles as you did this morning!” he grinned back just as wide, teeth startlingly white against his sun darkened skin.
“Do I?” he went a little cross-eyed trying to get a look at his own nose and Rose laughed, tucking herself into his side so they could finish slurping and chomping up their ice creams and watch the Opera House across the darkening water. As they stood there lights began to spring on all around them and the Doctor gingerly put his arm around her shoulders – although whether it was because of her sunburn or just plain awkwardness she couldn’t tell.
For her part it was actually the most comfortable she’d felt with him since he’d come back. They’d had their share of awkwardness – mainly due to the inability of Rose’s body to properly distinguish the difference between the Doctor and John. She had recoiled from him more than once since he’d come back, and although the Doctor was obviously confused by her sudden need for physical space he had taken her lead and restricted their physical contact only to what she felt comfortable with at any given time.
It was a maddening dance made all the more awkward by his obvious and ongoing concern for her wellbeing. He was still asking her, intermittently, if she was alright but Rose wasn’t sure if he was being completely sincere or just asking out of force of habit. Either way she was always quick to assure him that she was fine, still terrified that he would drop her off at home if she admitted how she really felt.
Right now though, between the days adventures, their easy banter and that cosy spot in his side where she seemed to fit perfectly, Rose couldn’t help but feel content as she crunched up the bottom of her waffle cone and then began working the crumbs of it out of her molars with the tip of her tongue.
It was familiar, it was them. It was...
“S’lovely.” Rose whispered, leaning her head back against his shoulder with a small sigh.
“Knew you’d like it!” the Doctor said, somewhat smugly, before shifting almost nervously against her. “Rose?”
“Mmmn?” she rolled her neck so she could look up at him and was completely struck by the expression on his face – like he was trying to figure her out, like he was holding back from saying (or doing) well...something.
Hope blossomed in her chest and she stood up straighter, suddenly and quite irrationally wanting to kiss the ever living daylights out of him, propriety and boundaries be damned. Surely she wasn’t imaging the fact that he looked just like she felt, looked like he was thinking exactly the same thing that she was?
He looked just like John always had before he kissed her.
“Rose...” he said again and her eyes dropped to his mouth as his lips rolled around her name. She watched them, watched as his tongue curled behind his teeth and then withdrew again. Her pulse already quickening (and oh who cared anymore. She was going to bloody well kiss him) Rose rolled her weight forward onto the balls of her feet and was just about to rise up on tiptoe when...
The Doctor beamed so brilliantly that it was like a star bursting in front of her nose.
Rose blinked, jerking back a little in shock as his smile grew sheepish and he gave a nervous little chuckle. “You know I don’t think I ever said thank you.”
For a desperate millisecond, she thought he might still kiss her, but then he folded her up into an embrace and squeezed so tight that her feet lifted off the ground. She could feel him smiling against her temple, could feel his gratefulness in the press of his body against hers.
But nothing else.
“What?” she squeaked, so dazed she barely remembered to hug him back.
“Thank you.” he repeated, his voice a little breathy in her ear. He set her back on her feet after a moment but didn’t release his hold on her. In fact he seemed to be snuggling in even closer... “For looking after me when I was human.”
The penny dropped. Rose stilled. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice.
“I know it can’t’ve been easy for you,” he continued, mumbling against her cheek. “Having to pretend to be something you’re not – especially so far out of your time like you were. And it’s not like it’s in your nature to lie and keep secrets, you’re far too honest for that. But I never would’ve asked unless I had to – unless I had no other choice. You know that don’t you?”
Rose’s throat felt strangely constricted as she rasped out a, “Yeah.” His grip was just that little bit too tight across her sunburnt shoulders and she gave him one final squeeze before relaxing her hold and wriggling a little, hoping he would get the hint. Thankfully he did and once she was free of his embrace, she crammed her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “I know. S’fine yeah?”
The two of them fell silent, the Doctor still clutching the remaining crumbs of his waffle cone and Rose toeing the ground with her cheap sandals.
“Well,” he said finally, a little perplexed by her reaction but obviously hopeful. “Back to the TARDIS then? We’ve got a fair walk...”
He tried for a smile but Rose merely nodded. Most of the long, long walk back was taken in uncomfortable silence, Rose deliberately pushing her hands deeper into her short pockets so that when the Doctor reached for her hand it merely skimmed her wrist and then fell dejectedly away.
She felt horrible for rejecting him but Rose couldn’t help but feel a little bit upset that he clearly had no idea as to why she’d been so off lately. And in true Doctor fashion he didn’t even try getting to the bottom of it either. Obviously hoping everything would all blow over now that he’d apologised for what he thought was wrong, he attacked the console the minute they stepped in, flipping buttons and levers and babbling his head off about where they should go next.
At least he’d been right about one thing though, Rose thought as she followed him grimly into the console room. If she was one thing, Rose Tyler was honest. And maybe, she thought, it was about time she used that to her advantage and consequences be damned.
“I wasn’t pretending.” she blurted right into the middle of his ramble. The Doctor merely looked at her blankly.
“Wasn’t-?” he trailed off, one hand swinging uselessly where it had been about to grasp the monitor and swing it towards him.
“You said I was pretending,” she reminded him. “Back in 1913. I mean, yeah at first I probably was but...” lowering her head briefly she bit her lip and then just blurted it all out. “I really did feel something for John. I...l-loved him. In the end. Not that I didn’t want you to come back!” she added hastily. “Cos I did, I just...I didn’t want him to...”
She trailed off, lost, but to her surprise the Doctor was nodding thoughtfully. God, did he actually understand? Did he already know? For a moment his jaw worked from side to side as though he were literally chewing over his next words and then he swallowed and cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said with finality, but then he began to stammer and Rose’s heart sank. “That’s...fine. I guess. I mean, I’m fine with you...” he paused, waving a hand at her vaguely. “You know.”
“You’re not angry?” she said, more than a little incredulous. “That I had feelings for him?”
The Doctor’s face scrunched. “Should I be?”
That stung a little (of course he bloody well should be) but Rose was not deterred. “Well yeah,” she continued on. “Cos I was gonna let him stay! I wasn’t even gonna open the watch – least ‘til after Christmas. I might’ve let him stay forever given half a chance...”
The Doctor didn’t even look surprised by her admission and was quick to dismiss it. “You wouldn’t’ve,” he said easily. “You’re a woman of your word whether you like it or not. And you know as well as I do that eventually you would’ve done the right thing and let me out.”
He smiled at her and Rose had just begun to protest again when he interrupted her smoothly. “And in any case the watch was set on a timed release. Once the three months were up it would’ve opened itself anyway. So! No harm done. Eh?”
Rose felt herself deflate slightly. So even if she’d tried to keep John around for Christmas...
“Yeah.” She said flatly.
“Yes.” The Doctor said, swinging his arms awkwardly. “Right. Well.” Abruptly he made as if to go in for a hug and then changed his mind and crossed his arms instead. “So you weren’t angry that I hadn’t said thank you?”
Rose shook her head at him in disbelief. “Why would you even think that?”
“Oh I just thought that might’ve been why...you were...” the Doctor mumbled, trailing off vaguely though she managed to catch a few scattered words, “drawing...oblique comparisons...thought maybe...doesn’t really matter what...now I obviously know why...”
“I wasn’t expecting you to say thank you.” Rose mumbled once he had tapered off into something close to silence. “I thought you’d be angry at me.”
“Nothing to be angry for,” the Doctor said breezily, circling the console again. “Not really. Is there? I mean you looked after me, made sure the Family didn’t get their hands on the watch...”
“Shagged you without permission...” Rose added under her breath but he either didn’t hear her or he was just choosing to ignore her. He continued to pace around the time rotor and Rose grew impatient. “Can we go to London?” she finally asked, leaning entreatingly against the console. “So I can see my mum?”
If the Doctor was startled by the sudden shift in her conversation he didn’t show it, merely resumed his earlier mumbling in something that sounded like an agreement and several minutes later he was parking the TARDIS in its usual spot just outside her mother’s flat.
She had been putting this trip off for weeks, that nagging suspicion still in the back of her brain that the Doctor was just waiting for an opportunity to toss her out back home. But she was reaching the end of her tether now, so far gone that she didn’t even care if he did leave her at home so long as she got to see her mum and actually talk to someone properly about everything that had happened.
It was a relief to feel the TARDIS land on familiar soil – or concrete as it were. A quick fiddle with the monitor revealed the Powell Estate in all its shabby splendour on the external camera and Rose immediately bounded towards the ramp, slightly shamed when she realised (already halfway to the door) that she should probably ask the Doctor if he wanted to accompany her.
“D’you...wanna come up too?” she asked, picking at the fraying hem of her shorts. The Doctor however was busying himself with the console in a way that was altogether too focused to be entirely earnest and when she spoke he made a great show of glancing up at her in surprise.
“Hmmn? Oh. Nahhhh.” He tried his best to sound casual but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “You’ve probably got loads to talk to her about. Don’t need me hanging around butting in where I’m not wanted. Besides,” his hand jumped towards his hair and he looked faintly embarrassed. “I get the feeling I might be in line for another slap after...recent events.”
“I won’t let her slap you.” Rose assured him but the Doctor remained steadfast. “You’re sure?” she pressed, just in case.
“Absolutely!” He smiled, faux cheerful before turning his back on her. “I’ll be here when you’re ready. Take your time!”
Not believing his act for a second but wanting more than ever to see her mum, Rose pushed open the door of the TARDIS only to be met by a bitingly cold evening wind that instantly puckered her bared skin into gooseflesh.
“Might want to take a coat with you by the way,” the Doctor added negligently, not even looking up from the monitor. “Mine’s by the door. If you want it.”
Normally she would have been touched by the gesture, excited by the opportunity to snuggle into the divine warmth and Doctor-y smell of his overcoat. Instead, Rose just felt a wave of irritation as she bundled it off the coral strut he always threw it over. He could’ve picked a warmer day couldn’t he? she thought sourly as she shucked it on.
She trudged out into the night without saying goodbye and then made her way up the stairs to her mums flat, the satin lining of the coat smooth against her sun-damaged skin. On the way she catalogued the familiar sounds of her old neighbours moving about behind closed doors. Cooking dinner or watching telly. Laughing over something inane that happened at work or school. A babies cries breaking out over an argument...
Rose sped up without even noticing, nearly tripping over the Doctor’s coat in her haste to get to her mother’s door. She was quite suddenly and irrationally desperate to get back, to get away from the TARDIS and the Doctor and just everything.
It had never been so easy to leave the TARDIS – to leave the Doctor – behind before. But she needed something human. Something the Doctor couldn’t give to her because he just didn’t understand. It was so clear to her now. Even though he had so obviously been trying to help, it just wasn’t enough.
He wasn’t enough.
She reached the door breathless and was still banging on it when Jackie opened it, resplendent in faux silk dressing gown and absently toting the TV remote.
“Rose?” she said in some surprise before glancing over her daughters shoulder and adding, “Where’s the Doctor?”
Rose’s face crumbled and Jackie, well schooled in the art of her daughter’s body language, wasted no time in pulling her into her arms and letting her fall apart. Rose gave one stubborn hiccup, then another, before finally giving in to the onslaught of tears she’d been holding in for weeks.
“Oh Rose,” Jackie said softly, beginning to rub her back in slow circles. “Oh sweetheart...”
Rose’s fingers clenched spasmodically around fistfuls of pink satin as she sobbed helplessly, her cheek pressed against the warmth and soft weight of her mother and the grief crashing down upon her in waves.
“What’s he done to you?” Jackie murmured, rocking her gently on her feet. “Oh love, what’s he done to you now?”
->
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Date: 2011-01-16 05:02 pm (UTC)Haha, yes. Not finished yet but it will be! Life has just been...well, ridiculous really. Glad you liked though and looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the end ^_^