My Lover's Gone, Doctor/Rose Ficlet (1/1)
Title: The Hearts and Minds Collection: My Lover's Gone
Author: angelofprey (it's unbeta-ed so mistakes are my own)
Character/Pairing: Rose/Doctor (Ten, TenII, hint of Nine)
Rating: PG/PG-13 (for mentions of adult situations)
Summary: Rose finds herself standing on a certain beach more times than she would like.
Disclaimer: I don't Own Doctor Who or the BBC. They own me...
Author's Notes: Best read after listening to this for some reason this song just reminds me of Rose, which inspired me to write this. This was originally going to be filled with much more angst than it does, but I sorta like how it came out... meh, review and tell me what you think. Again for anyone who cares, Snow Queen will be out sometime soon, and Amelia should be making an appearance again eventually. The Gwen icon was used because I like it and I don't have anything else that works.
My Lover’s Gone
His boots no longer by my door
He left at dawn
And as I slept I felt him go
Returns no more
I will not watch the ocean
My lovers gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
Rose stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. She had followed the Doctor’s voice almost seven hundred miles to Norway, only to be cut off before he could return her feelings. She was sure he was going to say it, absolutely positive, but then the star had run out it seemed and Rose had been left hanging.
He would be back. She kept on saying. He’ll be back. To Mum. He’ll be back. To Mickey. He’ll be back. To Pete. He’ll be back. To Herself.
“He’ll be back.” She whispered to the wind this time, and the wind carried the whisper out to sea. “He’ll be back for me.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Rose stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. This was her eighth trip to the beach in three months. One of the perks of having a rich almost-father was that you could take as many vacations as you wanted. But these were hardly vacations.
Jackie had tried to keep her from going on this trip but Rose had insisted, promising that this would be the last one she took to Norway before, and she swore, she would try and move on, try and make a life here. She can’t remember how many times she’d promised that now.
It was cold on the beach; it was late summer and this far north the arctic winds were already blowing steadily. Winter would soon be upon these lands, but to Rose it already felt like they were here. It felt like they were already here and they were never going to turn back. How could this world ever feel warm when there was no Doctor here to warm it for her?
This universe was wrong, everything about it felt wrong. She shouldn’t be here; she should be with him, with the Doctor, keeping him company throughout all of time and space. Rose’s mind wouldn’t stop repeating this mantra of discontent. She was beginning to sound like a bratty twelve-year-old even to herself.
It was time. Time to leave, time to move on, time to give up.
But then, if she gave up, she wouldn’t be Rose Tyler anymore would she?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My lover’s gone
I know that kiss will be my last
No more his song
The June upon his lips has past
I sing alone
While I watch the ocean
My lover’s gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
The Torchwood Institute, Canary Warf, London, England, United Kingdom, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky way Galaxy. It sounded like as good a place to work as any, even if it was the wrong universe.
Rose had just caught the 7:30 a.m. train into London from the Tyler Estate with Pete on a non-descript Monday morning for her first day as an official Torchwood employee. Rose had been somewhere between horrified and intrigued when Pete had offered to get her a high-ranking position in the Institute as an alternative to working in a shop again. Rose had declined the high-ranking position in favor of an entry level job so she could work her way up without raising any eyebrows, or coming out of the woodwork any more so than she already had.
She’d been in this universe for a little over three months now, it was a week since her last visit to Dalig Ulv Stranden and Rose was missing the Doctor no less than before. Jackie had continued to be the concerned mother and told her daughter that she promised it would get easier with time. Rose lost her temper saying that Jackie had no idea what she was going through. Jackie had remained calm, and quietly pointed out that she did indeed know at least vaguely what Rose was going through. After all, Jackie hadn’t always been married to her dead-husband’s doppelganger. Rose, then feeling like a right git flew into her mother’s arms with apologies on her lips and fresh tears in her eyes.
That had been the day that Rose Tyler had finally gotten her act together, and decided to make a solid effort of having a life here.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The last strains of the song “Happy Birthday to you” had just faded into the cavernous space of the Torchwood office building. This was when Mickey had decided to give Rose her birthday present.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.” He said with a wink and a smile. Rose sighed, rolled her eyes, but followed him anyway.
In the basement of the Torchwood building Mickey led her into a room in which Jackie, Pete, Jake and few of her other work friends were standing. They all smiled at her knowingly and Rose began to feel a bit uneasy.
“What’s all this then?” she asked, shifting from one foot to the other, and sticking her hands in the back pockets.
A Dimension Cannon is what Mickey called it. To be perfectly honest it looked a bit like one of those star-gates from that American Sci-Fi show she watched on the telly on Saturdays.
“What’s it do?” she asked.
“What you think it does? “ Mickey replied a little bit shocked she hadn’t worked it out yet. “That thing’ll rip a hole in the barrier between universes big enough for you or me or anyone to step through.”
He then moved around her to pick up one of a series of great-big-yellow-buttons that looked suspiciously like the ones that had brought her here.
“And these…” Mickey continued, “will bring you anywhere in that universe that you could possibly want to go. At least, they will… once we get ‘em working properly…”
Rose was finally beginning to suss it all out.
“You mean, these’ll… this is for… I can go and find the Doctor?” Rose searched the faces around the room hopefully.
“That’s exactly what we mean.” Jake said with a grin.
Rose turned to her mum. “But I thought…”
“Rose, sweetheart, I know what I said.” Jackie began. “But that was when you were just looking for a way that just didn’t exist. Now, there might be a way for you to get back to your Doctor, and I know that once you heard that, that there’d be no stopping you so I might as well give you my blessing now.”
Rose smiled brightly, but then she remembered.
“But, won’t this be threatening to collapse two universes?”
“Well, yeah, but we figured that one or two people wouldn’t be quite as dangerous as five million Cybermen and a big ball full of Daleks…” Mickey said wrinkling up his nose.
“To be perfectly honest Rose, we’re not just doing this for you.” Pete said stepping forward. “The stars are going out and the cannon has started working as if by magic… We need you to find to Doctor so he can find out what’s going on and put an end to it. We figured he’d respond best to us sending you rather than someone else. Besides we all think you deserve it, given all you’ve done for the planet…”
“And the universes.” Mickey added.
Rose couldn’t stop smiling. “I don’t know what to say.” She gushed through the tears of joy on her cheeks.
“You’ll take the mission then?” Pete asked.
“Hell yes!” she replied.
“Good. Mickey, I want you to accompany her. Rose, you two start in the morning.”
And just like that, Rose didn’t need to give up anymore.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My lover’s gone
His boots no longer by my door
He left a dawn
And as I slept I felt him go
Returns no more
I will not watch the ocean
My lover’s gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
Rose Tyler stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. This was her first visit to the beach in at least a year, and to be perfectly honest she’d never expected to be standing on it ever again.
This time Jackie was with her, and was busy calling up Rose’s almost-father, to send some sort of transportation to get them back to England… back home.
It was cold on the beach; it was late summer and this far north the arctic winds were already blowing steadily. Winter would soon be upon these lands, but to Rose it already felt like they were here. The Doctor had just left her standing on the beach with someone she wasn’t sure even who he was. But he had said “I love you” with the Doctor’s voice and in that one moment where a decision had been made, it had been enough.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck… is it really a duck?
That’s what she was thinking when he took her hand into his painfully familiar one, and they looked at each other.
It took her a while to realize that he too was looking at her with the same analytical gaze. He was trying to figure out how much she had changed from the Rose he remembered, among other things.
This intense analysis was finally broken when Jackie announced that a zeppelin would be to the nearest airport in a few hours, and that they’d better start hoofing it if they expected to get there on time.
Conclusions would have to be made another time.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the first few months, fights were had, things were thrown, feelings were hurt, doors were slammed, tears were shed, and people moved out.
The Doctor moved out first, and until Pete found him at a soup-kitchen one day, they had lost track of him entirely. Pete had then offered the Doctor a position with Torchwood that he really couldn’t refuse, it included lodgings until he could find his own, and a check each month that would keep him warm, comfortable, and fed.
Rose moved out of her parent’s house shortly after the Doctor did. She found her own apartment in the middle of London, paid for by her promotion to field team leader. She hadn’t known that her almost-father had hired the Doctor until she’d crashed into him in the lunch queue one day. She had been talking to a friend and not looking where she was going and he had been standing to grab some sort of utensil for whatever he was eating and her food when flying all over his new suit. They both bent down to clean up her tray and when they straightened both had paled considerably and scurried off to opposite ends of the cafeteria.
Her mother wasn’t helping any, well, she was trying. At her Christmas party she had ushered Rose into the kitchens telling her that she had to show her something in the pantry, and at the same time Pete had shoved the Doctor into the room as well. They had remained locked in the room until they made a solid effort at apologizing which deteriorated into an argument which deteriorated into a food fight in which hors d'oeuvres served as projectiles and the platters they were on served as shields. The caterer, Jackie, and Pete finally stepped in when they heard glasses breaking.
Rose groaned when she learned that Jackie had talked Pete into putting the Doctor as the tech-specialist on Rose’s team for one mission. This mission had also found them knocked out, tied to chairs and hand-cuffed together. The hand-cuffs had to be removed three-days later back at head-quarters after the mission was over because the Doctor’s newly finished sonic screwdriver was broken, and because nothing else they brought was working to undo the bio-signature shackles. However, there was no food-fight or any arguing, primarily due to the fact that the handcuffs were counting down to the time when they would explode and ultimately kill both wearers, which could be set off early with too much struggling. They had also learned how to live within three feet of each other at all times, this included showering and other daily necessities.
Three months, and an alien invasion later, in which this clone of the Doctor saved the universe using nothing but a kettle and some string and oddly while wearing a vegetable… Rose ran up to him only to hug him enthusiastically, kiss all of his cuts and bruises, and chastise him for scaring the hell out of her. It was only when she noticed this Doctor staring at her like he thought she was completely bonkers and told her so, and she noticed several other people she worked with staring, that she bolted back to her flat and did an altogether stellar job of avoiding him again. This was after a few weeks of some sort of physical or verbal acknowledgement of the other’s presence when one passed the other in the hall, or cafeteria, or car park.
Later that week, flowers were bought, tea was drunk, conversations had, apologies and explanations given and accepted, love was made, and suddenly, this universe didn’t seem quite as wrong or as lonely as it always had, because suddenly Rose knew there was someone just as lonely and just as confused as she was, and he was currently lying naked next to her on her bed, in her apartment, in this different London, in this different England, in this different United Kingdom, on this different Earth, in this different Solar System, in this different Milky way Galaxy, in this different universe. But the most amazing thing was that all of this, was okay, because he was still saying he loved her, with a voice that was just as much the Doctor’s as it has always been, and when she thought about it, she could honestly say that she was beginning to love this new new new Doctor back, because he was still the same deep down, underneath all of the new mannerisms like, reading the tabloids and grinning at some of the stories and pictures posted about “Rose Tyler: Vitex Heiress,” and whomever they posted as her newest “boy-toy,” and all of his new phrases like, “wizard,” “Earth-girl,” or “oi!”
“So, you’re still you?” she asked one night after a rather spectacular shag. “Despite…” she waved her hand around her head. “All of this?”
“I’m still me.” He said giving her a slow grin that never failed to melt her insides or make her knees wobble ever so slightly.
“And…” she paused nervously, “all of this,” she gestured with her hand again, “Are you okay with all of this, with us, with all this domestic… with me?”
“It takes some getting used to, after… well, all of time and space at my disposal, but I’m getting there. But I am definitely fine with one bit.” He said, nodding.
“What’s that?” she asked. She wasn’t disappointed by his answer, not really, it was more than she had ever hoped for, and like he said, it took some getting used to.
The Doctor grinned before answering her, “Being stuck here with you, that’s not so bad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” But then he asked, “And are you okay with…” he mimicked her hand waving. “All of this?”
Rose paused before answering, and really thought about it. “Yeah, I think I am.” She said, nodding definitively.
“Yeah?” he confirmed, looking like the cat with both the canary and the cream.
“Yeah.” She replied.
“Wizard.” He says with a smile which until very recently always followed the word, “Brilliant,” or until not so recently, “Fantastic.”
And she really was okay with it, all of it. He might not have been her original Doctor, but he was her Doctor, and for Rose Tyler that was enough.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A/N: I wrote this over the course of one day, and I’m rather happy with it. It tends to ramble, and go in no direction but all the same; I think this is one of my favorite little bits of fluff I’ve written… After writing it, I feel a bit like a chef who made a rather lovely cake but is covered in flour for their trouble. Anyway, this is really apropos of nothing, and tries to explain way too much with way too little. The relationship between Rose and the Doctor is so very complicated but I did my best to show it how I did. And I do think that Rose and TenII really do get their sort of fairy-tale ending… meaning a lifetime of running and getting into all sorts of trouble, but I also feel that it takes them a lot of talking and arguing and tears and breaking up before they can get there. He’s a human with the mind of an alien, and she had a lot of doubts and questions, they have some serious angst to work through, this fic just covers it as best it can in one go.
As always, reviews are lovely…
Author: angelofprey (it's unbeta-ed so mistakes are my own)
Character/Pairing: Rose/Doctor (Ten, TenII, hint of Nine)
Rating: PG/PG-13 (for mentions of adult situations)
Summary: Rose finds herself standing on a certain beach more times than she would like.
Disclaimer: I don't Own Doctor Who or the BBC. They own me...
Author's Notes: Best read after listening to this for some reason this song just reminds me of Rose, which inspired me to write this. This was originally going to be filled with much more angst than it does, but I sorta like how it came out... meh, review and tell me what you think. Again for anyone who cares, Snow Queen will be out sometime soon, and Amelia should be making an appearance again eventually. The Gwen icon was used because I like it and I don't have anything else that works.
My Lover’s Gone
His boots no longer by my door
He left at dawn
And as I slept I felt him go
Returns no more
I will not watch the ocean
My lovers gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
Rose stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. She had followed the Doctor’s voice almost seven hundred miles to Norway, only to be cut off before he could return her feelings. She was sure he was going to say it, absolutely positive, but then the star had run out it seemed and Rose had been left hanging.
He would be back. She kept on saying. He’ll be back. To Mum. He’ll be back. To Mickey. He’ll be back. To Pete. He’ll be back. To Herself.
“He’ll be back.” She whispered to the wind this time, and the wind carried the whisper out to sea. “He’ll be back for me.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Rose stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. This was her eighth trip to the beach in three months. One of the perks of having a rich almost-father was that you could take as many vacations as you wanted. But these were hardly vacations.
Jackie had tried to keep her from going on this trip but Rose had insisted, promising that this would be the last one she took to Norway before, and she swore, she would try and move on, try and make a life here. She can’t remember how many times she’d promised that now.
It was cold on the beach; it was late summer and this far north the arctic winds were already blowing steadily. Winter would soon be upon these lands, but to Rose it already felt like they were here. It felt like they were already here and they were never going to turn back. How could this world ever feel warm when there was no Doctor here to warm it for her?
This universe was wrong, everything about it felt wrong. She shouldn’t be here; she should be with him, with the Doctor, keeping him company throughout all of time and space. Rose’s mind wouldn’t stop repeating this mantra of discontent. She was beginning to sound like a bratty twelve-year-old even to herself.
It was time. Time to leave, time to move on, time to give up.
But then, if she gave up, she wouldn’t be Rose Tyler anymore would she?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My lover’s gone
I know that kiss will be my last
No more his song
The June upon his lips has past
I sing alone
While I watch the ocean
My lover’s gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
The Torchwood Institute, Canary Warf, London, England, United Kingdom, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky way Galaxy. It sounded like as good a place to work as any, even if it was the wrong universe.
Rose had just caught the 7:30 a.m. train into London from the Tyler Estate with Pete on a non-descript Monday morning for her first day as an official Torchwood employee. Rose had been somewhere between horrified and intrigued when Pete had offered to get her a high-ranking position in the Institute as an alternative to working in a shop again. Rose had declined the high-ranking position in favor of an entry level job so she could work her way up without raising any eyebrows, or coming out of the woodwork any more so than she already had.
She’d been in this universe for a little over three months now, it was a week since her last visit to Dalig Ulv Stranden and Rose was missing the Doctor no less than before. Jackie had continued to be the concerned mother and told her daughter that she promised it would get easier with time. Rose lost her temper saying that Jackie had no idea what she was going through. Jackie had remained calm, and quietly pointed out that she did indeed know at least vaguely what Rose was going through. After all, Jackie hadn’t always been married to her dead-husband’s doppelganger. Rose, then feeling like a right git flew into her mother’s arms with apologies on her lips and fresh tears in her eyes.
That had been the day that Rose Tyler had finally gotten her act together, and decided to make a solid effort of having a life here.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The last strains of the song “Happy Birthday to you” had just faded into the cavernous space of the Torchwood office building. This was when Mickey had decided to give Rose her birthday present.
“I’ve got a surprise for you.” He said with a wink and a smile. Rose sighed, rolled her eyes, but followed him anyway.
In the basement of the Torchwood building Mickey led her into a room in which Jackie, Pete, Jake and few of her other work friends were standing. They all smiled at her knowingly and Rose began to feel a bit uneasy.
“What’s all this then?” she asked, shifting from one foot to the other, and sticking her hands in the back pockets.
A Dimension Cannon is what Mickey called it. To be perfectly honest it looked a bit like one of those star-gates from that American Sci-Fi show she watched on the telly on Saturdays.
“What’s it do?” she asked.
“What you think it does? “ Mickey replied a little bit shocked she hadn’t worked it out yet. “That thing’ll rip a hole in the barrier between universes big enough for you or me or anyone to step through.”
He then moved around her to pick up one of a series of great-big-yellow-buttons that looked suspiciously like the ones that had brought her here.
“And these…” Mickey continued, “will bring you anywhere in that universe that you could possibly want to go. At least, they will… once we get ‘em working properly…”
Rose was finally beginning to suss it all out.
“You mean, these’ll… this is for… I can go and find the Doctor?” Rose searched the faces around the room hopefully.
“That’s exactly what we mean.” Jake said with a grin.
Rose turned to her mum. “But I thought…”
“Rose, sweetheart, I know what I said.” Jackie began. “But that was when you were just looking for a way that just didn’t exist. Now, there might be a way for you to get back to your Doctor, and I know that once you heard that, that there’d be no stopping you so I might as well give you my blessing now.”
Rose smiled brightly, but then she remembered.
“But, won’t this be threatening to collapse two universes?”
“Well, yeah, but we figured that one or two people wouldn’t be quite as dangerous as five million Cybermen and a big ball full of Daleks…” Mickey said wrinkling up his nose.
“To be perfectly honest Rose, we’re not just doing this for you.” Pete said stepping forward. “The stars are going out and the cannon has started working as if by magic… We need you to find to Doctor so he can find out what’s going on and put an end to it. We figured he’d respond best to us sending you rather than someone else. Besides we all think you deserve it, given all you’ve done for the planet…”
“And the universes.” Mickey added.
Rose couldn’t stop smiling. “I don’t know what to say.” She gushed through the tears of joy on her cheeks.
“You’ll take the mission then?” Pete asked.
“Hell yes!” she replied.
“Good. Mickey, I want you to accompany her. Rose, you two start in the morning.”
And just like that, Rose didn’t need to give up anymore.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
My lover’s gone
His boots no longer by my door
He left a dawn
And as I slept I felt him go
Returns no more
I will not watch the ocean
My lover’s gone
No earthly ships will ever
Bring him home again
Bring him home again
Rose Tyler stood on the beach of Dalig Ulv Stranden. This was her first visit to the beach in at least a year, and to be perfectly honest she’d never expected to be standing on it ever again.
This time Jackie was with her, and was busy calling up Rose’s almost-father, to send some sort of transportation to get them back to England… back home.
It was cold on the beach; it was late summer and this far north the arctic winds were already blowing steadily. Winter would soon be upon these lands, but to Rose it already felt like they were here. The Doctor had just left her standing on the beach with someone she wasn’t sure even who he was. But he had said “I love you” with the Doctor’s voice and in that one moment where a decision had been made, it had been enough.
Now she wasn’t so sure.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck… is it really a duck?
That’s what she was thinking when he took her hand into his painfully familiar one, and they looked at each other.
It took her a while to realize that he too was looking at her with the same analytical gaze. He was trying to figure out how much she had changed from the Rose he remembered, among other things.
This intense analysis was finally broken when Jackie announced that a zeppelin would be to the nearest airport in a few hours, and that they’d better start hoofing it if they expected to get there on time.
Conclusions would have to be made another time.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the first few months, fights were had, things were thrown, feelings were hurt, doors were slammed, tears were shed, and people moved out.
The Doctor moved out first, and until Pete found him at a soup-kitchen one day, they had lost track of him entirely. Pete had then offered the Doctor a position with Torchwood that he really couldn’t refuse, it included lodgings until he could find his own, and a check each month that would keep him warm, comfortable, and fed.
Rose moved out of her parent’s house shortly after the Doctor did. She found her own apartment in the middle of London, paid for by her promotion to field team leader. She hadn’t known that her almost-father had hired the Doctor until she’d crashed into him in the lunch queue one day. She had been talking to a friend and not looking where she was going and he had been standing to grab some sort of utensil for whatever he was eating and her food when flying all over his new suit. They both bent down to clean up her tray and when they straightened both had paled considerably and scurried off to opposite ends of the cafeteria.
Her mother wasn’t helping any, well, she was trying. At her Christmas party she had ushered Rose into the kitchens telling her that she had to show her something in the pantry, and at the same time Pete had shoved the Doctor into the room as well. They had remained locked in the room until they made a solid effort at apologizing which deteriorated into an argument which deteriorated into a food fight in which hors d'oeuvres served as projectiles and the platters they were on served as shields. The caterer, Jackie, and Pete finally stepped in when they heard glasses breaking.
Rose groaned when she learned that Jackie had talked Pete into putting the Doctor as the tech-specialist on Rose’s team for one mission. This mission had also found them knocked out, tied to chairs and hand-cuffed together. The hand-cuffs had to be removed three-days later back at head-quarters after the mission was over because the Doctor’s newly finished sonic screwdriver was broken, and because nothing else they brought was working to undo the bio-signature shackles. However, there was no food-fight or any arguing, primarily due to the fact that the handcuffs were counting down to the time when they would explode and ultimately kill both wearers, which could be set off early with too much struggling. They had also learned how to live within three feet of each other at all times, this included showering and other daily necessities.
Three months, and an alien invasion later, in which this clone of the Doctor saved the universe using nothing but a kettle and some string and oddly while wearing a vegetable… Rose ran up to him only to hug him enthusiastically, kiss all of his cuts and bruises, and chastise him for scaring the hell out of her. It was only when she noticed this Doctor staring at her like he thought she was completely bonkers and told her so, and she noticed several other people she worked with staring, that she bolted back to her flat and did an altogether stellar job of avoiding him again. This was after a few weeks of some sort of physical or verbal acknowledgement of the other’s presence when one passed the other in the hall, or cafeteria, or car park.
Later that week, flowers were bought, tea was drunk, conversations had, apologies and explanations given and accepted, love was made, and suddenly, this universe didn’t seem quite as wrong or as lonely as it always had, because suddenly Rose knew there was someone just as lonely and just as confused as she was, and he was currently lying naked next to her on her bed, in her apartment, in this different London, in this different England, in this different United Kingdom, on this different Earth, in this different Solar System, in this different Milky way Galaxy, in this different universe. But the most amazing thing was that all of this, was okay, because he was still saying he loved her, with a voice that was just as much the Doctor’s as it has always been, and when she thought about it, she could honestly say that she was beginning to love this new new new Doctor back, because he was still the same deep down, underneath all of the new mannerisms like, reading the tabloids and grinning at some of the stories and pictures posted about “Rose Tyler: Vitex Heiress,” and whomever they posted as her newest “boy-toy,” and all of his new phrases like, “wizard,” “Earth-girl,” or “oi!”
“So, you’re still you?” she asked one night after a rather spectacular shag. “Despite…” she waved her hand around her head. “All of this?”
“I’m still me.” He said giving her a slow grin that never failed to melt her insides or make her knees wobble ever so slightly.
“And…” she paused nervously, “all of this,” she gestured with her hand again, “Are you okay with all of this, with us, with all this domestic… with me?”
“It takes some getting used to, after… well, all of time and space at my disposal, but I’m getting there. But I am definitely fine with one bit.” He said, nodding.
“What’s that?” she asked. She wasn’t disappointed by his answer, not really, it was more than she had ever hoped for, and like he said, it took some getting used to.
The Doctor grinned before answering her, “Being stuck here with you, that’s not so bad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.” But then he asked, “And are you okay with…” he mimicked her hand waving. “All of this?”
Rose paused before answering, and really thought about it. “Yeah, I think I am.” She said, nodding definitively.
“Yeah?” he confirmed, looking like the cat with both the canary and the cream.
“Yeah.” She replied.
“Wizard.” He says with a smile which until very recently always followed the word, “Brilliant,” or until not so recently, “Fantastic.”
And she really was okay with it, all of it. He might not have been her original Doctor, but he was her Doctor, and for Rose Tyler that was enough.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
A/N: I wrote this over the course of one day, and I’m rather happy with it. It tends to ramble, and go in no direction but all the same; I think this is one of my favorite little bits of fluff I’ve written… After writing it, I feel a bit like a chef who made a rather lovely cake but is covered in flour for their trouble. Anyway, this is really apropos of nothing, and tries to explain way too much with way too little. The relationship between Rose and the Doctor is so very complicated but I did my best to show it how I did. And I do think that Rose and TenII really do get their sort of fairy-tale ending… meaning a lifetime of running and getting into all sorts of trouble, but I also feel that it takes them a lot of talking and arguing and tears and breaking up before they can get there. He’s a human with the mind of an alien, and she had a lot of doubts and questions, they have some serious angst to work through, this fic just covers it as best it can in one go.
As always, reviews are lovely…