{Theta'Amor} Wedding Plans
Title - {Theta'Amor}
Characters - Nine/Rose
Summary - Months after Rose was left in a parallel universe with her mum and dad, Rose has finally in some capacity moved on from the Doctor. Now, as the winter months roll into the British countryside where her new home resides, Rose and her family celebrate their first Christmas and New Years together. Through times great design, something has been set into motion that will once again test Rose's heart. All of it happens on a fateful New Years Day...
Genre - Romance - Drama - AU - Angst - Fluff
Rated - T
"Marriage?!" Jackie rushed off the leather sofa, nearly wiping out the expensive vase that rested on the glass coffee table in her excitement. Pete shook his head in silence, suffering second hand embarrassment from his wife's actions. In the back of her head, Rose was prepared to suffer from her mum's disapproval of the Doctor asking her to marry her. In spite of that, Rose wished with everything that she had that her mum would approve of her marriage with her Doctor. Jackie, with her eyes locked onto the Doctor like a sniper who had just found her target gave him a most judgemental look. And the first words out of his mouth were
"Please, whatever you do, don't slap me again!" The Doctor said. The Doctor's face screwed itself up tight preparing for the sting that her wrath filled hand brought. Instead of having his bell rung once again, his pristine blue eyes loosened open to find Rose's mum smiling from ear to ear with tears misting up in her eyes. The Doctor looked towards Rose and mouthed the words "what in the world" as Jackie proceeded to grab him by the shoulders and place him a very unexpected embrace of approval.
"Mum, are you seriously alright with this? I mean, I'd thought you'd be entirely against it. I mean, after all we've been through these past few years..." Rose said. Rose begun to drift away into her less desirable memories, which included her being ditched for a shinier new "toy" and left scrambling on a space ship. Never mind the fact that she pried her heart open and let it bleed out for a man who responded with a egotistical "quite right to", being treated like that made her feel more like his pet and not his partner. The man standing right in front of her however, with his eyes transfixed on her as if she was the answer to any and all questions ever pondered, loved her with every inch of his beautifully aged soul.
"If you would have asked me that question a few months ago I would have told you to reconsider, but this bloke has proven time and time again how much he loves you. Besides, it looks like he's got a pretty firm grip on you already and nothing I could do would seperate the two of you. I've seen the way he looks at you, he goes staggering around drunk on love whenever you enter the room. He gets all sweet and he's practically reduced to a lovestruck, hormonal teenager. Plus he's very protective and devoted, like a real man should be. He's pretty much crossed everything off my list when it comes to what I want your husband to be. I guess this is my longwinded way of saying...You have my blessing Rose. He's gone above and beyond to get back here and all for you, so I don't think I'll be able to stop him. I wish you both happiness."
Tears of absolute joy welled up in Rose's eyes, blurring her vision. Rose met her mum's embrace with a tearful "thank you so much", holding onto her mum with her heart burning with a warm fire that stoked in her chest. Rose wiped her tears with the back of her hand, well, that was one parent's approval. It was time to gain her father's approval next, this more than anything else was the thing that really intimidated her.
After all, Pete just got his little girl back, how would it feel for him to have to give her away so soon? And something that resembled submissiveness creeped into her Doctor's body language, for his shoulders hunched forward making it look like he had begun to withdraw into a shell. He focused much harder than he should on his black dress shoes, he didn't want to meet Pete's eyes in case he found resistance there.
Sure Rose and him for all intents and purposes had gotten married already with him giving her his wristwatch, but he still felt a deep obligation to serve Rose's family right with giving Rose her dream wedding. There was a part of him that couldn't help but want to show and to give only the best to her, for the best was the only thing that suited Rose. She deserved happiness, and if giving her a lavish wedding with all the bells and whistles would be the thing to place that radiant and glowing smile on her face than so be it. Cost would be no object, for he was more than willing to shill out whatever was needed for whatever Rose set her heart out on.
Sometimes this deep dive into full fledged domestics almost made him stop dead in his tracks, but from the length of time he spent waiting in the wings he had drawn up some major revelations about himself. Life...Life was good, no, life was absolutely wonderfully fantastic when Rose was with him. When he had thought she had died, that hour felt like he was wading deep in the trenches of hell. Without her, he could barely function. He watched Rose's heart wane and crumble into a frightening stillness, powerless to step in to help ease her pain. He screamed out to her, pleading that his time in purgatory would come to an end so that he could once again reunite with his lost love.
He watched Rose's terrible mood swings, watched her struggling to cope with the fact that she had been ripped away from the very world itself from whence she came. To see such pain, to see such misery and to see her lose the life in her eyes was too much to bear. For there is no greater pain than to see the person you love the most suffering from duress while you're powerless to do anything about it. To watch the same horror show for the past few months made him all the more resolved in his decision to ask for her hand. He knew right from the word 'run' that he had found someone unlike any other, it was like his sight had returned to him after decades of fumbling around blind.
His love for Rose Marion Tyler had completely snuck up on him, and for a man who has touched almost every celestial object in the observable sky and parts of the universe that have yet to be touched by humanity, is a far greater feat that any cataclysmic astronomical event. This woman, this maiden from a blue and green pearl floating in a luminescant solar sytem that made up only a fraction of a fragment of the milky way. The poets from the days of old were right, love is the last remaining mystery and the one thing that defies all definition and classification. And he would be damned to hell if he were to let it slip through his fingers again, nothing was going to take him away from his Rose.
The Doctor finally looked up finding an approving grin on Pete's face, and with his fears of opposition from Pete vanishing into thin air he gladly shook Pete's hand. Jackie pulled Pete away from Rose and her Doctor, exclaiming that the two of them should go about their day while they prepare the invite list. It's at this point where Rose raised her voice in protest with a large "stop", which ceased her mums frenzied namedropping. Rose's hands dragged through her golden locks in exasperation, there was no way she was going to let her mum invite all the people that she just listed. They had no business being at her wedding, given the fact that they were just business associates and not really friends or relatives of her family.
Rose felt sick to her stomach with the prospect of her mum using her marriage as an event just to talk shop with dad's business partners, it would cheapen the whole meaning behind the reception and she wasn't going to stand for it.
"Mum! There is no way that my wedding is going to be turned into some kind of network day for Dad! I want close friends and family members only, that's who matters the most to me and in case you haven't noticed," Rose grabbed ahold of her Doctor's arm and locked her gaze onto her mum with a hard look filled with authority
"This is OUR wedding, we can make the invite list ourselves and if you want to help you can do one thing..."
"And that one thing would be?" Jackie asked.
"You can let us handle the wedding the way we want it, that would be the best thing you could ever do. And that's the end of it mum, I'm not going to budge so you're going to have to live with it." Rose explained. She couldn't deny it that laying down the law like that made her squirm inside, she would hate it for her mum to be upset with her. No matter how old she got, she dreaded her mum's reaction whenever she ground her heels down in the dirt whenever they came at an impass. Jackie's expression fell, but thankfully didn't sour too badly. Pete placed two strong and supportive hands on Jackie's shoulder. This was just one more chapter in motherhood that she had to journey through, for watching Rose getting married was one of the biggest life changes that was headed her way.
{To be Continued}