FIC: Que Sera, Sera
Title: Que Sera, Sera
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005 series)
Pairing: Doctor (Ten)/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: Sadness doesn't mean protection from harm, from the end of the world, from being left in Cardiff one day with a one way train ticket.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Spoilers all the way through the entire series, including The Girl in the Fireplace. Seriously, I'm not kidding. If you haven't seen everything, read at your own risk. 2,967 words. Quick wash beta, so all mistakes are mine. Unlocked at the present, so feel free to spread the news. :)
Rose?
Yes, Doctor?
I'm coming to get you.
***
It's not like she's avoiding him. Not exactly.
They still take breakfast in the TARDIS, Mickey fooling around with eggs at the cooker because he insists, though the Doctor has said numerous times Really? From a chicken? Of all the creatures in the universe the same way Rose and Mickey might say Really? From the elbow of a Grantenwhimer? Of all the creatures in the universe. Mickey burns the eggs more often than not, but he eats them anyway. Rose still takes far too much sugar with her tea for her mum's liking. The Doctor still outright slathers strawberry jam onto his toast; it's disgusting, that is, and Rose thinks How many strawberries had to sacrifice themselves for that one bit of jam? a few too many times before she starts taking breakfast in her room, such as it is, practically living off of protein energy bars.
The Doctor must notice, Rose reckons, because he notices everything, but he doesn't comment on her absence. He just keeps on using the strawberry jam.
***
More and more now, Rose and Mickey are on their own as far as adventures go. Sure, it had never been uncommon for Rose and the Doctor to get separated before. Sometimes they had to split up for reconnaissance purposes, or as a plan of attack. Sometimes Rose just up and wandered off, and got a bit of a scolding for it.
Now she thinks on her feet, almost ahead of the Doctor but not quite, always ready to volunteer to do the dirty work while the Doctor interrogates the Chief Matador of Sector 26, or his equivalent. The first time Mickey goes off with the Doctor and she gets left behind, Rose is startled, but not surprised.
She merely slides the key to the TARDIS into her jeans pocket and walks off in the opposite direction.
***
Sometimes Rose thinks she should just say she wants to go home. Make up some excuse. She misses her mum (even though she isn't four years old anymore). Her mum needs her. She's tired of risking her life; the galaxy, the Doctor, isn't worth that anymore. She wants to have a go at school again.
Anything that will make the Doctor take her back to Earth and leave her there. Alone.
She's not sure if she doesn't ask because she doesn't want to go back, or because she doesn't want to hear the Doctor say yes.
***
I know how sad you are! You'll be back in a minute!
Lies, Rose thinks now.
The Doctor has always been sad, for as long as Rose has known him. If anything, he's sadder still. Sadness doesn't mean protection from harm, from the end of the world, from being left in Cardiff one day with a one way train ticket.
The Doctor is always alright.
Rose isn't.
***
She finally asks him on the day they take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. November, 1991. It's surprisingly cold out on the water, and the Doctor made her get a scarf before they got on board; she bought one from a street vendor downtown, a large, knitted striped monstrosity of various colors that she picked out because it had made the Doctor smile. The vendor asked for ten dollars, and the Doctor insisted on bargaining the man down. Rose would have gladly paid the man ten, but the Doctor had apparently wanted to show off his incredible galactic range of negotiating skills. Rose could have told him that in her experience negotiation didn't seem to be one of his best points, a fact borne out when the Doctor managed to talk the guy into eight dollars, a whopping two dollar discount for Rose.
Rose had received the bounty of her new scarf, and the Doctor had happily wound it about her neck, smiling and babbling on the entire time, mostly about the extreme importance of outerwear. Rose had smiled.
The Doctor had taken her hand as they walked toward the ferry. "Best boat ride in the States. Until they build that hover boat on the Mississippi in 3120. But that's not for awhile," he had said, then grinned at her. "Besides, this one is free!"
They'd climbed on board, still hand in hand, the Doctor weaving in and out of the crowd, leading Rose across the floor and up the stairs to the upper deck, where they found a secluded spot at the railing.
It's a grey, misty day, and almost no one else is on the outside part of the deck.
Now the Doctor is going on about the Statue of Liberty, which they can see in the not-too-far distance.
"Nice bit of Qarif technology that is. Too bad it turned that funny green color. But who knew that would happen?"
Rose rolls her eyes. "You're saying the Statue of Liberty is alien tech?"
"Ever seen a homing beacon that big?" the Doctor replies.
"That's not a homing beacon."
"Who says? You? Why do you think she has a torch? That thing is supposed to light right up." He turns to her, grinning.
"But it was a gift to America from the French," Rose protests.
"Ah, nice history, Rose." Rose doesn't take the bait, just waits. "Actually, I rather think the French just didn't want it on their hands. Too afraid a Qarif ship would end up in the middle of Versailles, or something. Fobbed it off on the unsuspecting Americans. The French always did like to return gifts."
Rose is only half listening by that point, her arms tucked across her chest, her gaze fixed on the railing.
The Doctor turns around, puts his back to the railing and his face towards Rose. There's a furrow of concern there, right between his eyebrows, but he leans casually against the railing as if he's been on a boat his entire life. Maybe he has.
"Something wrong, Rose? Aren't seasick, are you? You've ridden in the TARDIS, and this is such a short trip - "
"Why her?" Rose interrupts.
The Doctor blinks. He takes his glasses from the pocket of his coat and puts them on, as if to see Rose better. It's unsettling.
She can't unsay it now, so she tries again. "Why her, why Madame De Pompadour?"
"Oh. Speaking of the French." The Doctor leans back even further, puts his hands in his pockets. "I suppose we'll never know why the droids wanted her in particular; not everything gets tied up all neatly in the end, you know. Maybe -"
Rose shakes her head, and the Doctor stops. She catches his frown as she looks up at him, away from the railing. "That's not what I meant. I mean - why her? Why would you . . . you went to her."
"Ah," the Doctor says. "I went to you, too. And Mickey. And Nancy. And the Torchwoods. And . . . so very many others. That's what I do."
"That's not what I." Rose stops, frustrated, keeps from stamping her foot like a child, even though she really, really wants to. "Forget it."
But the Doctor's caught something on the wind now, and he won't let it go, she knows, even before he opens his mouth again. "So what do you mean?"
She's angry now; she can't decide if he's being deliberately thick or if he really is that oblivious. "I mean, you just left me. Us. Me and Mickey. For the Madame."
The Doctor almost shrugs, and it makes Rose want to slap him. "I didn't think about it."
"No, you didn't think about it, did ya? That's the whole point, isn't it?"
"They would have killed her, Rose," the Doctor says quietly.
"You could have killed us." The softer the Doctor's voice gets, the louder Rose's goes. A few people from inside the ferry have turned to look at her; she looks at the ground, a slight blush on her cheeks.
"I didn't . . . you would have been fine. Someone would have found you, gotten you to safety, or I would have found you again."
"3000 years later. As if we'd be alive."
"Not 3000 years later. Sooner. Somehow. I know what I'm doing, Rose."
"Do you?"
His voice is firm, hard. "I do."
Rose pauses; she can hear the waves beating up against the bottom of the boat. She blinks once, twice, three times, and swallows hard. "She was special." Rose looks up so she can see the Doctor's reaction.
"She was special," the Doctor says, affirming or repeating, Rose isn't sure.
"Not just another stupid ape then, yeah?"
The Doctor leans forward then, off the railing, toward her. But Rose steps back.
"You know, forget I asked," she says.
"Rose." Her name, just her name.
"Forget it," she says, for the third time.
The Doctor doesn't say anything more, but he doesn't stop looking at her, not until they are back in the TARDIS and Rose shuts herself in her room, peeling the scarf from around her neck.
***
Not you.
Except that he has. Not just over Madame de Pompadour, either. He sent her home in the TARDIS. He'd meant to die, and keep her away forever. At first she had thought that it was the new new Doctor who would leave her, but then she realized that the old Doctor had left her as well. In more ways than one.
Loneliness isn't the same as love, Rose decides, staring up at the ceiling of the TARDIS, which has gone from yellow to blue to green in the view from her bed.
***
She can't hide forever, and more to the point, she won't hide forever, just refuses. So she goes to the kitchen to get a spot of tea. Mickey must have been there recently, because there are dishes arranged haphazardly in the sink; even when traveling through space and time Mickey puts off the washing up for as long as possible.
A cup of tea and a scan of Wazeflitgyhia's World Wide Daily News later, Rose lets herself wander into the main room of the TARDIS, where the Doctor is half-hidden under the console, making minor adjustments, as he says, or tinkering, as Rose calls it. He knows she's there, of course, probably knew the moment she left her room, but he doesn't say anything. Rose sits down on the grate next to his knees, crossing her legs.
Two minutes, five minutes, ten, she's not sure how long it takes until the Doctor speaks. Quite possibly it could have been any number of years on any number of planets near any number of stars. All he says is, "Can you hand me that wrench?"
"What about the sonic screwdriver? I thought it was the ultimate multi-tool," she says.
"Cheeky. I need the wrench, if you don't mind." He holds out his hand, waiting for Rose to hand him the tool. She leans over into what she has come to understand is the Doctor's toolbox. It's an amalgamation of wires, disks, chips and other tools she doesn't recognize, and a few she does - like the rusty old wrench. She slaps the wrench into the Doctor's hand, no harder than necessary, mind, and both hand and wrench disappear back underneath the console.
A few moments and a loud clank later and the Doctor emerges from underneath the console. He sits up, hands the wrench back to her, and pockets the sonic screwdriver.
"Sorry. About before. I shouldn't have said anything," Rose says before the Doctor can speak.
"No, you should have said something long ago. Not eating breakfast, spending all that time in your room . . ."
"I don't eat breakfast with you because you use too much jam."
"I do not."
"It's obscene."
"I like it! It's tasty."
"It's a waste of innocent strawberries, that's what it is."
"Innocent strawberries? I don't think there is such a thing as an innocent strawberry."
"What, did they once bring about the end of the world, or something?"
"Not that I know of, but that plum riot on Ritoch 4, on the other hand . . ." the Doctor trails off. Rose thinks, for just a split second, that she might learn more of the plum riot on Ritoch 4, before the Doctor speaks again.
"I didn't mean to leave you and Mickey. Maybe I shouldn't have. But I had to do what I had to do." His voice is gentle, but there's no mistaking the authority behind it.
"Great. Fantastic," Rose says. "Glad we got that cleared up."
The Doctor's eyes narrow at the same time his eyebrows move closer together. "Besides, it all worked out in the end, didn't it?"
"Not for you." Rose means to be gentle, but she just sounds angry.
"What'dya mean not for me?" The Doctor sounds both confused and irritated at the same time.
Bubbles rise up in Rose's throat: anger, sadness, disappointment. And then they break, pop, pop, pop. "I'm not stupid. I saw the way you looked at her. At the Madam. I saw it. I saw how sad you were after we left. I saw your grief. I know exactly why you left to save her. I'm not stupid."
The Doctor reaches out to take her hand, but Rose jerks away. "What do you want me to say, Rose? That I didn't care about her? That I wasn't sad that she died waiting for me, that she died before I could see her again, because I was too late, because -"
"Because you were checkin' on us. On me."
"Yes," the Doctor says simply.
This makes Rose bite her lip, and look down at the ground before he can see her eyes, and what's in them.
"And that was my choice to make," the Doctor says. "I made it. I could have taken the slow path; I could have left you - "
"You did leave."
The Doctor pauses. "I left her, too."
"Is that what you do? Leave people?"
For a long moment, the Doctor looks pensive. "Maybe."
"Well, then, maybe this whole seeing the universe and having adventures thing isn't for me. Maybe I should just go home," Rose is surprised she gets the words out, but she does.
"Rose Tyler, leaving before you get left is only about one thing: fear. Are you really that afraid?"
Rose looks up, blinks hard. "Maybe."
She doesn't expect that to soften the Doctor, but it does. He reaches to take her hand again, and this time she lets him.
"Oh, Rose. My brave, fearless Rose. Of all the things in the galaxy to be afraid of, you pick me."
Rose sniffs, giving up the pretense that she's not teary. "I'm not afraid of you," she says. The Doctor squeezes her hand. "I'm afraid of being without you. Because - I'm not clever enough, or rich enough, or beautiful enough. That I'm - not enough, and once you find someone who is, that'll be it for stupid, silly Rose, London shopgirl."
The Doctor takes a breath, but a squeeze from Rose's fingers stop his words. "Please don't say you wouldn't do that. Please. You already have."
The Doctor closes his eyes. "It wasn't you . . . it wasn't about you. She saw . . . she knew me. Knew things about me . . ."
"I could know those things about you," Rose tries tentatively.
"I'm not sure you could."
"See? Not one for sharin' are you? Unless I'm too thick to understand, that's different."
Suddenly the Doctor's hands are firmly on her face, one palm on each cheek, focusing her gaze directly on his own. The change is so sudden, and the fierceness in his eyes so strong, that Rose gasps.
"Stop that. Just stop it. Right this instant. If you were thick, or stupid, or half the things you keep saying you are, I never would have picked you. You never would have stepped foot on this ship. And I don't want you to say those things, ever again. Not ever. You are clever and quick and brave and you never shy away from what has to be done, and that makes you brilliant. Fantastic. I don't share those things with you because I'm afraid if you knew . . . if you saw . . . you might not . . ."
"Of all the things in the galaxy to be afraid of, Doctor, you pick me," Rose says softly.
"I have every reason in the universe to be afraid of you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor whispers. "The biggest reason of all."
"And what would that be?"
"I think you know."
Rose catches her bottom lip between her teeth. "Pretend I don't," she says.
He doesn't even answer, just moves a hand to tangle in her hair, palm gently pushing her head forward. When his breath ghosts across her cheek, she can't help but shiver, just a bit, and when his lips touch hers they begin to tingle instantly, as if they are exchanging energy back and forth between them.
The Doctor finally breaks the kiss, but doesn't move far, merely touching his forehead to hers.
"Do you see now?" the Doctor asks. Rose nods slightly, moves her head just enough to the side to kiss his cheekbone.
Rose feels her mouth curve into a rather wicked grin. "What if I need another demonstration?"
The Doctor's grin matches her own. "Well, the Doctor is in."
And for the first time in days, weeks it seems, Rose laughs.
***
Feels like I haven't seen you in years.
I said I'd come and get you.
Never doubted it.
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005 series)
Pairing: Doctor (Ten)/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: Sadness doesn't mean protection from harm, from the end of the world, from being left in Cardiff one day with a one way train ticket.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Author's Notes/Warnings: Spoilers all the way through the entire series, including The Girl in the Fireplace. Seriously, I'm not kidding. If you haven't seen everything, read at your own risk. 2,967 words. Quick wash beta, so all mistakes are mine. Unlocked at the present, so feel free to spread the news. :)
Rose?
Yes, Doctor?
I'm coming to get you.
***
It's not like she's avoiding him. Not exactly.
They still take breakfast in the TARDIS, Mickey fooling around with eggs at the cooker because he insists, though the Doctor has said numerous times Really? From a chicken? Of all the creatures in the universe the same way Rose and Mickey might say Really? From the elbow of a Grantenwhimer? Of all the creatures in the universe. Mickey burns the eggs more often than not, but he eats them anyway. Rose still takes far too much sugar with her tea for her mum's liking. The Doctor still outright slathers strawberry jam onto his toast; it's disgusting, that is, and Rose thinks How many strawberries had to sacrifice themselves for that one bit of jam? a few too many times before she starts taking breakfast in her room, such as it is, practically living off of protein energy bars.
The Doctor must notice, Rose reckons, because he notices everything, but he doesn't comment on her absence. He just keeps on using the strawberry jam.
***
More and more now, Rose and Mickey are on their own as far as adventures go. Sure, it had never been uncommon for Rose and the Doctor to get separated before. Sometimes they had to split up for reconnaissance purposes, or as a plan of attack. Sometimes Rose just up and wandered off, and got a bit of a scolding for it.
Now she thinks on her feet, almost ahead of the Doctor but not quite, always ready to volunteer to do the dirty work while the Doctor interrogates the Chief Matador of Sector 26, or his equivalent. The first time Mickey goes off with the Doctor and she gets left behind, Rose is startled, but not surprised.
She merely slides the key to the TARDIS into her jeans pocket and walks off in the opposite direction.
***
Sometimes Rose thinks she should just say she wants to go home. Make up some excuse. She misses her mum (even though she isn't four years old anymore). Her mum needs her. She's tired of risking her life; the galaxy, the Doctor, isn't worth that anymore. She wants to have a go at school again.
Anything that will make the Doctor take her back to Earth and leave her there. Alone.
She's not sure if she doesn't ask because she doesn't want to go back, or because she doesn't want to hear the Doctor say yes.
***
I know how sad you are! You'll be back in a minute!
Lies, Rose thinks now.
The Doctor has always been sad, for as long as Rose has known him. If anything, he's sadder still. Sadness doesn't mean protection from harm, from the end of the world, from being left in Cardiff one day with a one way train ticket.
The Doctor is always alright.
Rose isn't.
***
She finally asks him on the day they take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry. November, 1991. It's surprisingly cold out on the water, and the Doctor made her get a scarf before they got on board; she bought one from a street vendor downtown, a large, knitted striped monstrosity of various colors that she picked out because it had made the Doctor smile. The vendor asked for ten dollars, and the Doctor insisted on bargaining the man down. Rose would have gladly paid the man ten, but the Doctor had apparently wanted to show off his incredible galactic range of negotiating skills. Rose could have told him that in her experience negotiation didn't seem to be one of his best points, a fact borne out when the Doctor managed to talk the guy into eight dollars, a whopping two dollar discount for Rose.
Rose had received the bounty of her new scarf, and the Doctor had happily wound it about her neck, smiling and babbling on the entire time, mostly about the extreme importance of outerwear. Rose had smiled.
The Doctor had taken her hand as they walked toward the ferry. "Best boat ride in the States. Until they build that hover boat on the Mississippi in 3120. But that's not for awhile," he had said, then grinned at her. "Besides, this one is free!"
They'd climbed on board, still hand in hand, the Doctor weaving in and out of the crowd, leading Rose across the floor and up the stairs to the upper deck, where they found a secluded spot at the railing.
It's a grey, misty day, and almost no one else is on the outside part of the deck.
Now the Doctor is going on about the Statue of Liberty, which they can see in the not-too-far distance.
"Nice bit of Qarif technology that is. Too bad it turned that funny green color. But who knew that would happen?"
Rose rolls her eyes. "You're saying the Statue of Liberty is alien tech?"
"Ever seen a homing beacon that big?" the Doctor replies.
"That's not a homing beacon."
"Who says? You? Why do you think she has a torch? That thing is supposed to light right up." He turns to her, grinning.
"But it was a gift to America from the French," Rose protests.
"Ah, nice history, Rose." Rose doesn't take the bait, just waits. "Actually, I rather think the French just didn't want it on their hands. Too afraid a Qarif ship would end up in the middle of Versailles, or something. Fobbed it off on the unsuspecting Americans. The French always did like to return gifts."
Rose is only half listening by that point, her arms tucked across her chest, her gaze fixed on the railing.
The Doctor turns around, puts his back to the railing and his face towards Rose. There's a furrow of concern there, right between his eyebrows, but he leans casually against the railing as if he's been on a boat his entire life. Maybe he has.
"Something wrong, Rose? Aren't seasick, are you? You've ridden in the TARDIS, and this is such a short trip - "
"Why her?" Rose interrupts.
The Doctor blinks. He takes his glasses from the pocket of his coat and puts them on, as if to see Rose better. It's unsettling.
She can't unsay it now, so she tries again. "Why her, why Madame De Pompadour?"
"Oh. Speaking of the French." The Doctor leans back even further, puts his hands in his pockets. "I suppose we'll never know why the droids wanted her in particular; not everything gets tied up all neatly in the end, you know. Maybe -"
Rose shakes her head, and the Doctor stops. She catches his frown as she looks up at him, away from the railing. "That's not what I meant. I mean - why her? Why would you . . . you went to her."
"Ah," the Doctor says. "I went to you, too. And Mickey. And Nancy. And the Torchwoods. And . . . so very many others. That's what I do."
"That's not what I." Rose stops, frustrated, keeps from stamping her foot like a child, even though she really, really wants to. "Forget it."
But the Doctor's caught something on the wind now, and he won't let it go, she knows, even before he opens his mouth again. "So what do you mean?"
She's angry now; she can't decide if he's being deliberately thick or if he really is that oblivious. "I mean, you just left me. Us. Me and Mickey. For the Madame."
The Doctor almost shrugs, and it makes Rose want to slap him. "I didn't think about it."
"No, you didn't think about it, did ya? That's the whole point, isn't it?"
"They would have killed her, Rose," the Doctor says quietly.
"You could have killed us." The softer the Doctor's voice gets, the louder Rose's goes. A few people from inside the ferry have turned to look at her; she looks at the ground, a slight blush on her cheeks.
"I didn't . . . you would have been fine. Someone would have found you, gotten you to safety, or I would have found you again."
"3000 years later. As if we'd be alive."
"Not 3000 years later. Sooner. Somehow. I know what I'm doing, Rose."
"Do you?"
His voice is firm, hard. "I do."
Rose pauses; she can hear the waves beating up against the bottom of the boat. She blinks once, twice, three times, and swallows hard. "She was special." Rose looks up so she can see the Doctor's reaction.
"She was special," the Doctor says, affirming or repeating, Rose isn't sure.
"Not just another stupid ape then, yeah?"
The Doctor leans forward then, off the railing, toward her. But Rose steps back.
"You know, forget I asked," she says.
"Rose." Her name, just her name.
"Forget it," she says, for the third time.
The Doctor doesn't say anything more, but he doesn't stop looking at her, not until they are back in the TARDIS and Rose shuts herself in her room, peeling the scarf from around her neck.
***
Not you.
Except that he has. Not just over Madame de Pompadour, either. He sent her home in the TARDIS. He'd meant to die, and keep her away forever. At first she had thought that it was the new new Doctor who would leave her, but then she realized that the old Doctor had left her as well. In more ways than one.
Loneliness isn't the same as love, Rose decides, staring up at the ceiling of the TARDIS, which has gone from yellow to blue to green in the view from her bed.
***
She can't hide forever, and more to the point, she won't hide forever, just refuses. So she goes to the kitchen to get a spot of tea. Mickey must have been there recently, because there are dishes arranged haphazardly in the sink; even when traveling through space and time Mickey puts off the washing up for as long as possible.
A cup of tea and a scan of Wazeflitgyhia's World Wide Daily News later, Rose lets herself wander into the main room of the TARDIS, where the Doctor is half-hidden under the console, making minor adjustments, as he says, or tinkering, as Rose calls it. He knows she's there, of course, probably knew the moment she left her room, but he doesn't say anything. Rose sits down on the grate next to his knees, crossing her legs.
Two minutes, five minutes, ten, she's not sure how long it takes until the Doctor speaks. Quite possibly it could have been any number of years on any number of planets near any number of stars. All he says is, "Can you hand me that wrench?"
"What about the sonic screwdriver? I thought it was the ultimate multi-tool," she says.
"Cheeky. I need the wrench, if you don't mind." He holds out his hand, waiting for Rose to hand him the tool. She leans over into what she has come to understand is the Doctor's toolbox. It's an amalgamation of wires, disks, chips and other tools she doesn't recognize, and a few she does - like the rusty old wrench. She slaps the wrench into the Doctor's hand, no harder than necessary, mind, and both hand and wrench disappear back underneath the console.
A few moments and a loud clank later and the Doctor emerges from underneath the console. He sits up, hands the wrench back to her, and pockets the sonic screwdriver.
"Sorry. About before. I shouldn't have said anything," Rose says before the Doctor can speak.
"No, you should have said something long ago. Not eating breakfast, spending all that time in your room . . ."
"I don't eat breakfast with you because you use too much jam."
"I do not."
"It's obscene."
"I like it! It's tasty."
"It's a waste of innocent strawberries, that's what it is."
"Innocent strawberries? I don't think there is such a thing as an innocent strawberry."
"What, did they once bring about the end of the world, or something?"
"Not that I know of, but that plum riot on Ritoch 4, on the other hand . . ." the Doctor trails off. Rose thinks, for just a split second, that she might learn more of the plum riot on Ritoch 4, before the Doctor speaks again.
"I didn't mean to leave you and Mickey. Maybe I shouldn't have. But I had to do what I had to do." His voice is gentle, but there's no mistaking the authority behind it.
"Great. Fantastic," Rose says. "Glad we got that cleared up."
The Doctor's eyes narrow at the same time his eyebrows move closer together. "Besides, it all worked out in the end, didn't it?"
"Not for you." Rose means to be gentle, but she just sounds angry.
"What'dya mean not for me?" The Doctor sounds both confused and irritated at the same time.
Bubbles rise up in Rose's throat: anger, sadness, disappointment. And then they break, pop, pop, pop. "I'm not stupid. I saw the way you looked at her. At the Madam. I saw it. I saw how sad you were after we left. I saw your grief. I know exactly why you left to save her. I'm not stupid."
The Doctor reaches out to take her hand, but Rose jerks away. "What do you want me to say, Rose? That I didn't care about her? That I wasn't sad that she died waiting for me, that she died before I could see her again, because I was too late, because -"
"Because you were checkin' on us. On me."
"Yes," the Doctor says simply.
This makes Rose bite her lip, and look down at the ground before he can see her eyes, and what's in them.
"And that was my choice to make," the Doctor says. "I made it. I could have taken the slow path; I could have left you - "
"You did leave."
The Doctor pauses. "I left her, too."
"Is that what you do? Leave people?"
For a long moment, the Doctor looks pensive. "Maybe."
"Well, then, maybe this whole seeing the universe and having adventures thing isn't for me. Maybe I should just go home," Rose is surprised she gets the words out, but she does.
"Rose Tyler, leaving before you get left is only about one thing: fear. Are you really that afraid?"
Rose looks up, blinks hard. "Maybe."
She doesn't expect that to soften the Doctor, but it does. He reaches to take her hand again, and this time she lets him.
"Oh, Rose. My brave, fearless Rose. Of all the things in the galaxy to be afraid of, you pick me."
Rose sniffs, giving up the pretense that she's not teary. "I'm not afraid of you," she says. The Doctor squeezes her hand. "I'm afraid of being without you. Because - I'm not clever enough, or rich enough, or beautiful enough. That I'm - not enough, and once you find someone who is, that'll be it for stupid, silly Rose, London shopgirl."
The Doctor takes a breath, but a squeeze from Rose's fingers stop his words. "Please don't say you wouldn't do that. Please. You already have."
The Doctor closes his eyes. "It wasn't you . . . it wasn't about you. She saw . . . she knew me. Knew things about me . . ."
"I could know those things about you," Rose tries tentatively.
"I'm not sure you could."
"See? Not one for sharin' are you? Unless I'm too thick to understand, that's different."
Suddenly the Doctor's hands are firmly on her face, one palm on each cheek, focusing her gaze directly on his own. The change is so sudden, and the fierceness in his eyes so strong, that Rose gasps.
"Stop that. Just stop it. Right this instant. If you were thick, or stupid, or half the things you keep saying you are, I never would have picked you. You never would have stepped foot on this ship. And I don't want you to say those things, ever again. Not ever. You are clever and quick and brave and you never shy away from what has to be done, and that makes you brilliant. Fantastic. I don't share those things with you because I'm afraid if you knew . . . if you saw . . . you might not . . ."
"Of all the things in the galaxy to be afraid of, Doctor, you pick me," Rose says softly.
"I have every reason in the universe to be afraid of you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor whispers. "The biggest reason of all."
"And what would that be?"
"I think you know."
Rose catches her bottom lip between her teeth. "Pretend I don't," she says.
He doesn't even answer, just moves a hand to tangle in her hair, palm gently pushing her head forward. When his breath ghosts across her cheek, she can't help but shiver, just a bit, and when his lips touch hers they begin to tingle instantly, as if they are exchanging energy back and forth between them.
The Doctor finally breaks the kiss, but doesn't move far, merely touching his forehead to hers.
"Do you see now?" the Doctor asks. Rose nods slightly, moves her head just enough to the side to kiss his cheekbone.
Rose feels her mouth curve into a rather wicked grin. "What if I need another demonstration?"
The Doctor's grin matches her own. "Well, the Doctor is in."
And for the first time in days, weeks it seems, Rose laughs.
***
Feels like I haven't seen you in years.
I said I'd come and get you.
Never doubted it.