The Doctor's Diary - Part 15
AUTHOR : Sensible Cat
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Romana, Martha, Mickey
RATING: FRC
Usual disclaimers apply. Thanks to
swankkat
as always for the illustration
While Rose waits for the TARDIS to call, she passes the time by writing to ...... guess who?
Crossposted to
time_and_chips
Dear Mickey,
I ought to be writing to Mum really, but I’ll phone instead, tomorrow - yeah, I know I promised every day but I really need a break from all her fussing. I just don’t feel I can tell her what things are really like, the good bits or the bad ones. And to be honest there’s a lot of both right now.
Had a long session IM’ing the Doctor this morning. Think we gave him a bit of a hard time really. Remember Sarah Jane in that school, and how we ended up having a good bitch? Trouble is, he’s still a pompous git, even though I love him to bits, and seeing him up against a Time Lord who knew him when he was a little kid is just so bloody funny. Remember Reinette - Mickey, that was Romana doing a psychic link on him. That’s how she knew all that stuff. She is just so clever. But I think the thing he’s really struggling with is just how much she cared about him. She went on looking for him, keeping an eye on him, all the time after the War, and he thought he was such a loner. He went very quiet when she told him that. I’m not sure how he feels about it to be honest. Probably doesn’t know himself.
I’m not sure how I feel about it either. The idea that Romana might have been there in the TARDIS setting us up - I always rather hoped he was - well, it’s probably a bit mean to be saying this to you, but you know. That he had his own mind, and he made it up when I walked in. Of all the TARDISes in all the universe, you had to walk into mine….you know. Romana says all she could do was kind of pick up on what was going on in his head (or his hearts, maybe) and give him a little nudge, she couldn’t actually make things happen, but you do wonder. I’m not sure I’ll ever get all this sentient TARDIS stuff, but at least she’s teaching me to drive, so if we ever do get back together and he goes off chasing French skirt again, I can get home. If he ever lets his bloody TARDIS let me get anywhere near her, that is. Here I am feeling guilty about ganging up on him and giving him a rough ride, and he did it to me for years. Still love him, of course. I’m daft like that.
It’s very different travelling with Romana. I shouldn’t compare them all the time, but I do. To start with, her TARDIS is totally different. It’s like staying in a backstreet B&B when you’re used to the Paris Hilton, to be honest. It works, just about, but everything is worn out and a bit rusty, and a lot of the time it’s cold. And it’s small - just the control room, her room, mine, the kitchen, that’s more or less it. Like being back on the Powell estate again, and if we’d had that much green mould around, we’d have been onto the Housing people like a shot. The weird thing is, I still quite like it, even if the interior chameleon circuit is jammed in the 1970s and my room looks like Sam’s out of “Life on Mars”. Just imagine what the Doctor would think about that series. The way they happily lock people up so they can’t kill somebody in the future - he’d throw something through the telly, wouldn’t he?
Romana hasn’t even got a telly. We talk, a lot of the time. Just talk. She doesn’t have any problem discussing Gallifrey. I’ve learnt more about the place in the last two weeks with her than I did in two years with him. I didn’t even dare mention it. It was like Harry Potter, only with You-Know-Where rather than You-Know-Who.
You asked what Romana was like. When you first meet her she seems really stuffy, and as for the Romanadvoratrelundor, President of the Council bit, God she’s worse than Harriet Jones, Prime Minister. I think it’s all she’s got left to be honest, poor woman. She takes it all terribly seriously and tries to do everything by the book. She even told the Doctor off for driving an uninsured TARDIS - can you imagine? I nearly pissed myself laughing.
She always wears the same suit (who does that remind you of?) but she doesn’t quite get the geek chic thing. I think she could probably live for a week on the price of a pair of Converses. The navy suit looks like she picked it up at Oxfam and she has these two awful polyester frilly blouses she wears alternate days with it - she washes one through in the kitchen sink every evening. There’s no washing machine. The only jewellery I’ve ever seen her wear is her Seal of Rassilon brooch, though she does have pierced ears and I get the feeling she used to have a lot of really nice stuff but somehow it didn’t make it through the war. Sad really.
Between you and me, I think she’s quite hard up. In a terribly brave, posh way, of course, like that book “Ballet Shoes” I had when I was little (“They’re not going to feel sorry for us, they shan’t! Pauline has to have a new frock!”). I even caught her darning her stockings once (she wears thick black ones, but that makes sense because she wouldn’t be seen dead in trousers and it gets bloody draughty in here). But honestly, can you imagine the Doctor doing something like that? I mean, he might actually mend something if it fell apart while he was wearing it, but he’d do it with the sonic screwdriver and it’d look rubbish.
I never really thought about money when I was with him. Always assumed he was rolling in it, or he’d have said. There was one time the accounts software crashed on the TARDIS and we had to live on chips for a week. He didn’t notice until the teabags ran out, and then he just went and hacked a cashpoint with the screwdriver until he’d sorted it. Seemed to think he’d a perfect right to any cash he could work out how to get at. But this woman sits up at night doing the accounts - I assume that’s what she’s up to, she always seems to be working out sums and looking worried about them. Maybe it’s the fabric of space-time and nothing to do with money at all. Nobody tells me anything.
I’ve been thinking about that, you know. Not being told things. Use to think it was just a Time Lord thing, but Romana isn’t like that. And all the times he said he couldn’t do emotion because of his people - it’s not that simple. Nowhere near. I’m sure Romana has a pretty good idea what was going on with the two of us. She’s not exactly overwhelmed, but she isn’t squicked out by it either, far as I can see. Used to think the only thing that’d ever make me happy would be getting back with him. For ever. Love of my life, amen. Still do, but it’s not all I want. I want to know what really happened on the Gamestation. I want to know how he knew Jack hadn’t died. Want him to apologise for a couple of things, dammit. Like Reinette. Sorry, I know I keep going on about her, but it matters. I’m giving up everything if I go back. I want him to be straight with me.
I just realised I wrote “if” I go back. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I forgot to put my phone on charge when he was trying to call me. I can’t believe whole days - well, hours, go by without me thinking about him. I can’t believe it’s been a year since Bad Wolf Bay and I’m still here, and if Romana came in right now and said I couldn’t go back to him, I’d bawl my eyes out, but I’d handle it. I can’t believe I’m actually hoping he’ll be a bit too busy to phone every single day.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love him. But what bothers me isn’t so much him as the companion thing. I want to be something in my own right. I’ve only been here a few weeks but I don’t think of myself as the person who hides behind Romana when the monsters come out. I didn’t always hide behind him - remember the Daleks at Canary Wharf? But he treated me as if I always did. That’s what gets me.
D’you think he can change, Mickey? I don’t just mean his body, I mean change because he wants to. Sometimes he says he’s different now, but he’s so good at saying things. I need to sort all this out now in my head ‘cos as soon as he phones me and I hear that voice I’ll just melt. I know I will.
I still want to go to college. Not Peterborough, that was just something I had to prove to myself, but one of these alien colleges he’s told me about where you can learn about all the different planets and species. He says that’s all right by him, but I wonder if he just wants to leave me there while he goes off and saves people, or whatever? And what if something happens to him? What if he gets put in prison or gets his memories wiped so he doesn’t even know me any more? Or meets another Reinette? I don’t want to be in the middle of my exams or whatever, and have to go and sort it all out. God, I must be a selfish bitch. But then, he soon sent me out of the way when he was too busy to look after me. And he didn’t ask me first.
Trouble is, it’s a one way ticket. At least Jack’s there now, I know I can count on him to give me a job if I need it, or just be a good mate and tell the Doctor what he thinks of him if he’s being a right git. But I keep thinking about Romana, and wondering if I should be getting her to do this for me if I’m not sure it’s the right thing. I know it’s dangerous and I’ve heard her arguing with other Time Lords about doing it. And I don’t want her doing it for the Doctor without asking me.
I really quite like Romana. I wouldn’t mind staying around and learning a bit more from her. ‘Cos in the end, there’s more to life than just swanning about on your tod. Or with just one other person. She’s part of something bigger. And if we get over there and he starts having a go about her old rust bucket of a TARDIS or her thick black stockings, I’ll tell him he’s the person who thinks a tee shirt with a suit means casual, and he wasn’t the only one who had a bad war.
Oh God, the phone just rang. It’s him.
Bye,
Rose
************
Hi Rose,
So what else is new? You e-mail me until he calls. Meet the old tin dog.
Nah, it’s still cool to hear you’re okay. Not dying of some disease or other. Hope she’s feeding you up a bit. These Time Lords can go for days on next to nothing, can’t they?
Whatever you’re gonna say to him, you’ll’ve said it now, so I dunno if it’s worth me sticking in my 1p worth. But you know, it’s still like it always was with you - Doctor this, Doctor that. You’ve got to go back to him, least for a while, ‘cos there’s just so much unfinished business between you. Weird, really. All we’ve been through and I still don’t feel I’ve ever had a proper conversation with the bloke.
And that’s it really - he knows so much about how to talk the back leg off a donkey and not say anything, he ought to have a degree in it. Verbal jiggery-pokery. So, you get those answers, Rose. He’s nuts about you, you can tell. Don’t take shit from him. The women he’s got on with best in his life, seems to me, are the ones who didn’t. Including your mum, funnily enough. He was all right with her by the end. Took long enough, but he got there. So there’s your answer to one question. Yeah, he can change. But he’s a bloke, and a lazy sod, and he won’t if you don’t make him.
Get your exams passed. Make him sweat. He’s gonna live for hundreds of years, he can wait a bit. You too. You don’t have to apologise for enjoying yourself with someone else. You’re talking about spending your life with this bloke, and he still won’t talk about who he really is or where he comes from. You don’t even know his real name. Nothing wrong with wanting answers, Rose.
Maybe you could get Romana to stop over a while on the other side? Look up some old mates? Even take him back to where Gallifrey was. Closure. He can’t avoid it for ever. Well, he can, but if he does he’ll be screwed up, and you don’t want a screwed up bloke in your life. Remember what that Donna woman said, that she wouldn’t go with him because he wiped out that spider race and seemed to be getting off on it. He’s got anger management issues at the very least. I think you know what I’m saying, or you wouldn’t be getting that close to thinking it yourself.
Thing with the Doctor is, yeah, he does make you live a better life an’ all that. But people seem to do that better without him around than when they’re with him. Well, I did. I din’t have no dignity when I was with the two of you, know what I mean? Still glad I tried it, ‘cos I’d’ve always wondered if I could handle it. He made me do stuff I’d’ve thought I never could. And Rose, I have to say, a lot of the time it was like you were on a planet with just the two of you. Wasn’t just me felt that. Jackie said it too. She went through a lot while you were away with him so much. I know she still wants you to get back together, and to be honest, I think you’ll make a go of it. But on your terms, Rose. Trust me on this. You’ve got him by the short and curlies. Make the most of it.
See ya. Jake says Hi,
Mickey
CHARACTERS: Ten/Rose, Romana, Martha, Mickey
RATING: FRC
Usual disclaimers apply. Thanks to
swankkat
as always for the illustration
While Rose waits for the TARDIS to call, she passes the time by writing to ...... guess who?
Crossposted to
time_and_chips
Dear Mickey,
I ought to be writing to Mum really, but I’ll phone instead, tomorrow - yeah, I know I promised every day but I really need a break from all her fussing. I just don’t feel I can tell her what things are really like, the good bits or the bad ones. And to be honest there’s a lot of both right now.
Had a long session IM’ing the Doctor this morning. Think we gave him a bit of a hard time really. Remember Sarah Jane in that school, and how we ended up having a good bitch? Trouble is, he’s still a pompous git, even though I love him to bits, and seeing him up against a Time Lord who knew him when he was a little kid is just so bloody funny. Remember Reinette - Mickey, that was Romana doing a psychic link on him. That’s how she knew all that stuff. She is just so clever. But I think the thing he’s really struggling with is just how much she cared about him. She went on looking for him, keeping an eye on him, all the time after the War, and he thought he was such a loner. He went very quiet when she told him that. I’m not sure how he feels about it to be honest. Probably doesn’t know himself.
I’m not sure how I feel about it either. The idea that Romana might have been there in the TARDIS setting us up - I always rather hoped he was - well, it’s probably a bit mean to be saying this to you, but you know. That he had his own mind, and he made it up when I walked in. Of all the TARDISes in all the universe, you had to walk into mine….you know. Romana says all she could do was kind of pick up on what was going on in his head (or his hearts, maybe) and give him a little nudge, she couldn’t actually make things happen, but you do wonder. I’m not sure I’ll ever get all this sentient TARDIS stuff, but at least she’s teaching me to drive, so if we ever do get back together and he goes off chasing French skirt again, I can get home. If he ever lets his bloody TARDIS let me get anywhere near her, that is. Here I am feeling guilty about ganging up on him and giving him a rough ride, and he did it to me for years. Still love him, of course. I’m daft like that.
It’s very different travelling with Romana. I shouldn’t compare them all the time, but I do. To start with, her TARDIS is totally different. It’s like staying in a backstreet B&B when you’re used to the Paris Hilton, to be honest. It works, just about, but everything is worn out and a bit rusty, and a lot of the time it’s cold. And it’s small - just the control room, her room, mine, the kitchen, that’s more or less it. Like being back on the Powell estate again, and if we’d had that much green mould around, we’d have been onto the Housing people like a shot. The weird thing is, I still quite like it, even if the interior chameleon circuit is jammed in the 1970s and my room looks like Sam’s out of “Life on Mars”. Just imagine what the Doctor would think about that series. The way they happily lock people up so they can’t kill somebody in the future - he’d throw something through the telly, wouldn’t he?
Romana hasn’t even got a telly. We talk, a lot of the time. Just talk. She doesn’t have any problem discussing Gallifrey. I’ve learnt more about the place in the last two weeks with her than I did in two years with him. I didn’t even dare mention it. It was like Harry Potter, only with You-Know-Where rather than You-Know-Who.
You asked what Romana was like. When you first meet her she seems really stuffy, and as for the Romanadvoratrelundor, President of the Council bit, God she’s worse than Harriet Jones, Prime Minister. I think it’s all she’s got left to be honest, poor woman. She takes it all terribly seriously and tries to do everything by the book. She even told the Doctor off for driving an uninsured TARDIS - can you imagine? I nearly pissed myself laughing.
She always wears the same suit (who does that remind you of?) but she doesn’t quite get the geek chic thing. I think she could probably live for a week on the price of a pair of Converses. The navy suit looks like she picked it up at Oxfam and she has these two awful polyester frilly blouses she wears alternate days with it - she washes one through in the kitchen sink every evening. There’s no washing machine. The only jewellery I’ve ever seen her wear is her Seal of Rassilon brooch, though she does have pierced ears and I get the feeling she used to have a lot of really nice stuff but somehow it didn’t make it through the war. Sad really.
Between you and me, I think she’s quite hard up. In a terribly brave, posh way, of course, like that book “Ballet Shoes” I had when I was little (“They’re not going to feel sorry for us, they shan’t! Pauline has to have a new frock!”). I even caught her darning her stockings once (she wears thick black ones, but that makes sense because she wouldn’t be seen dead in trousers and it gets bloody draughty in here). But honestly, can you imagine the Doctor doing something like that? I mean, he might actually mend something if it fell apart while he was wearing it, but he’d do it with the sonic screwdriver and it’d look rubbish.
I never really thought about money when I was with him. Always assumed he was rolling in it, or he’d have said. There was one time the accounts software crashed on the TARDIS and we had to live on chips for a week. He didn’t notice until the teabags ran out, and then he just went and hacked a cashpoint with the screwdriver until he’d sorted it. Seemed to think he’d a perfect right to any cash he could work out how to get at. But this woman sits up at night doing the accounts - I assume that’s what she’s up to, she always seems to be working out sums and looking worried about them. Maybe it’s the fabric of space-time and nothing to do with money at all. Nobody tells me anything.
I’ve been thinking about that, you know. Not being told things. Use to think it was just a Time Lord thing, but Romana isn’t like that. And all the times he said he couldn’t do emotion because of his people - it’s not that simple. Nowhere near. I’m sure Romana has a pretty good idea what was going on with the two of us. She’s not exactly overwhelmed, but she isn’t squicked out by it either, far as I can see. Used to think the only thing that’d ever make me happy would be getting back with him. For ever. Love of my life, amen. Still do, but it’s not all I want. I want to know what really happened on the Gamestation. I want to know how he knew Jack hadn’t died. Want him to apologise for a couple of things, dammit. Like Reinette. Sorry, I know I keep going on about her, but it matters. I’m giving up everything if I go back. I want him to be straight with me.
I just realised I wrote “if” I go back. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I forgot to put my phone on charge when he was trying to call me. I can’t believe whole days - well, hours, go by without me thinking about him. I can’t believe it’s been a year since Bad Wolf Bay and I’m still here, and if Romana came in right now and said I couldn’t go back to him, I’d bawl my eyes out, but I’d handle it. I can’t believe I’m actually hoping he’ll be a bit too busy to phone every single day.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love him. But what bothers me isn’t so much him as the companion thing. I want to be something in my own right. I’ve only been here a few weeks but I don’t think of myself as the person who hides behind Romana when the monsters come out. I didn’t always hide behind him - remember the Daleks at Canary Wharf? But he treated me as if I always did. That’s what gets me.
D’you think he can change, Mickey? I don’t just mean his body, I mean change because he wants to. Sometimes he says he’s different now, but he’s so good at saying things. I need to sort all this out now in my head ‘cos as soon as he phones me and I hear that voice I’ll just melt. I know I will.
I still want to go to college. Not Peterborough, that was just something I had to prove to myself, but one of these alien colleges he’s told me about where you can learn about all the different planets and species. He says that’s all right by him, but I wonder if he just wants to leave me there while he goes off and saves people, or whatever? And what if something happens to him? What if he gets put in prison or gets his memories wiped so he doesn’t even know me any more? Or meets another Reinette? I don’t want to be in the middle of my exams or whatever, and have to go and sort it all out. God, I must be a selfish bitch. But then, he soon sent me out of the way when he was too busy to look after me. And he didn’t ask me first.
Trouble is, it’s a one way ticket. At least Jack’s there now, I know I can count on him to give me a job if I need it, or just be a good mate and tell the Doctor what he thinks of him if he’s being a right git. But I keep thinking about Romana, and wondering if I should be getting her to do this for me if I’m not sure it’s the right thing. I know it’s dangerous and I’ve heard her arguing with other Time Lords about doing it. And I don’t want her doing it for the Doctor without asking me.
I really quite like Romana. I wouldn’t mind staying around and learning a bit more from her. ‘Cos in the end, there’s more to life than just swanning about on your tod. Or with just one other person. She’s part of something bigger. And if we get over there and he starts having a go about her old rust bucket of a TARDIS or her thick black stockings, I’ll tell him he’s the person who thinks a tee shirt with a suit means casual, and he wasn’t the only one who had a bad war.
Oh God, the phone just rang. It’s him.
Bye,
Rose
************
Hi Rose,
So what else is new? You e-mail me until he calls. Meet the old tin dog.
Nah, it’s still cool to hear you’re okay. Not dying of some disease or other. Hope she’s feeding you up a bit. These Time Lords can go for days on next to nothing, can’t they?
Whatever you’re gonna say to him, you’ll’ve said it now, so I dunno if it’s worth me sticking in my 1p worth. But you know, it’s still like it always was with you - Doctor this, Doctor that. You’ve got to go back to him, least for a while, ‘cos there’s just so much unfinished business between you. Weird, really. All we’ve been through and I still don’t feel I’ve ever had a proper conversation with the bloke.
And that’s it really - he knows so much about how to talk the back leg off a donkey and not say anything, he ought to have a degree in it. Verbal jiggery-pokery. So, you get those answers, Rose. He’s nuts about you, you can tell. Don’t take shit from him. The women he’s got on with best in his life, seems to me, are the ones who didn’t. Including your mum, funnily enough. He was all right with her by the end. Took long enough, but he got there. So there’s your answer to one question. Yeah, he can change. But he’s a bloke, and a lazy sod, and he won’t if you don’t make him.
Get your exams passed. Make him sweat. He’s gonna live for hundreds of years, he can wait a bit. You too. You don’t have to apologise for enjoying yourself with someone else. You’re talking about spending your life with this bloke, and he still won’t talk about who he really is or where he comes from. You don’t even know his real name. Nothing wrong with wanting answers, Rose.
Maybe you could get Romana to stop over a while on the other side? Look up some old mates? Even take him back to where Gallifrey was. Closure. He can’t avoid it for ever. Well, he can, but if he does he’ll be screwed up, and you don’t want a screwed up bloke in your life. Remember what that Donna woman said, that she wouldn’t go with him because he wiped out that spider race and seemed to be getting off on it. He’s got anger management issues at the very least. I think you know what I’m saying, or you wouldn’t be getting that close to thinking it yourself.
Thing with the Doctor is, yeah, he does make you live a better life an’ all that. But people seem to do that better without him around than when they’re with him. Well, I did. I din’t have no dignity when I was with the two of you, know what I mean? Still glad I tried it, ‘cos I’d’ve always wondered if I could handle it. He made me do stuff I’d’ve thought I never could. And Rose, I have to say, a lot of the time it was like you were on a planet with just the two of you. Wasn’t just me felt that. Jackie said it too. She went through a lot while you were away with him so much. I know she still wants you to get back together, and to be honest, I think you’ll make a go of it. But on your terms, Rose. Trust me on this. You’ve got him by the short and curlies. Make the most of it.
See ya. Jake says Hi,
Mickey