[ role play for rude_not_ginger; breaking her heart into two. ]

[roseoflegend]

Rose had been certain she was losing her mind. There was no other logical explanation that her mind was willing to come up with, no rationality that would break itself through the unrelenting, dense clouds of disbelief and prove a reasonable enough result as to how he had come. Had she not known him implicitly, without needing so much as a second

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[rude_not_ginger]

John Smith, the man who was the Doctor but wasn't, had eighty-five pages to correct for the class he taught at the local university, three suits to iron, and at some point he needed to get a haircut. Right now, however, he was really, really concerned about this frozen pizza he'd attempted to make in the oven.

Donna had been no good at cooking and neither had the Doctor, so John should've been really unsurprised at the half-burned, half-undone mess lying on the plate. It was his real last-ditch effort before he gave up to call Indian food. He lit a candle on the middle of the table and tried to cut away the burned and gooey bits on the pizza before tossing it onto the table as well just as he heard Rose enter.

He grinned.

"Hello!" he called. "Made dinner."

[roseoflegend]

Made dinner. Even before the smell could reach her, Rose knew that somewhere along the line of trying to cook, there had to have been a take out menu involved. She wasn't the best at whipping up anything edible - Jackie hadn't passed on the best culinary skills in her genetic pattern to her daughter - and so more than once there had been a rather frightening endeavor of a meal which had gone unconsumed for fear of illness while they had all but fallen against each other in fits of laughter and gone out for dinner. But he had tried, consistently, to cook and while there was still a ways to go for either of them, his effort made a pang of aching tenderness flare slightly to the side of her breastbone.

I don't know how I'm going to do this.

"Yeah?" she managed before her voice flickered, wavering around the end of the single word, and she shoved her hands into her pockets as if to find runaway courage there. All she found was fourteen cents in change and a gum wrapper.

"I.."

[rude_not_ginger]

"Well, I suppose made is really subjective. But that little pizza in the center, that's all my doing. I wouldn't reccomend eating it unless you really like carbon or dough, though."

He grinned again, then moved back into the kitchen to grab a bottle of wine. John was a lot more adept to feeling out others' emotions than the Doctor was, and for some reason Rose was unhappy. Or at the very least somewhat upset. He could tell. He'd find out sooner or later, he knew.

"It's been a year since we got back here," he said, coming back into the room with the wine. "Well, it was a year a few days ago, but you know how bad I've always been with timing. Figured it was worth it to celebrate."

[roseoflegend]

The pain in her chest was tightening and Rose was beginning to truly wonder if she was going to be able to breathe again. Her heart was ripping itself into two pieces, and she didn't know if they were equal halves or completely uneven, but it didn't seem to matter because it was still hurting. And the hurting wasn't going to go away.

When he came back she was waiting, closer now to where he had been standing, and Rose lifted her hands to take the wine bottle from him. Her hand stopped, lightly, on his wrist and she was struck again by the warmth of his skin and how, almost impossibly, that same warmth seemed to transfer into his eyes. He never looked at her in any other way.

But I have to go."You are so.." It wasn't what she had meant to say initially at all, but it was all that came out and Rose couldn't take it any longer. She set the wine bottle down and threw her arms around his neck. Her nose was squashed against his shoulder and she didn't care, and when she shut her eyes she could feel the hot burn of tears in the corners

[rude_not_ginger]

John started, not really quite sure a) where that came from, or b) what he should do next. The logical thing---the thing the Donna part of his mind told him---was to reach out and hold her. The Doctor part of his mind decided that Donna was probably right, and he did.

He smiled, a little worriedly. "Well, I try. I'll end up being terrible later when I grade the papers I've got to later tonight. But for now I'll do my best on 'wonderful'."

More seriously, he added. "I know the pizza's awful, Rose, but...nothing to be upset about."

[roseoflegend]

She laughed again, almost helplessly, and let herself bury her face into the warmth and smell of him for a few seconds longer. Just a little bit longer, that was okay to take, because once she let go there wouldn't be any going back. Because she couldn't take him with her.

"No, it's not that." Rose turned her head and pressed her cheek against his, warm and smooth and sure, then let her shoulders tremble with a ragged inhale of a breath.

"It's not that." A pause. "He's back. He's come back."

[rude_not_ginger]

A lot of things made up the metacrysis that was John. A little naievite, a little foolishness. Stupidity, however, wasn't one of those things. When she said 'he', John immediately knew that it was 'He' with a capital H, the way one talks about God or their creator. The Doctor.

Something small and terrified curled up in John's stomach. He hadn't seen the Doctor since he was left on Bad Wolf Bay with Rose. He hadn't thought what he might say to the other man. Still, he couldn't let it eat at him.

"Another disaster, then? Universes crumbling? Well, I wasn't really looking forward to grading those papers anyway. I'll get my coat---"

[roseoflegend]

"No.." Oh, God, it was going to be more hard than she had thought, trying to say this and somehow have it be all right. Because it wasn't going to be all right, not now or any other time, not completely. As much as she knew the Doctor needed her, didn't John, too? Wasn't that what he had asked her to do?

Nothing made sense anymore.

"No, it's not that." Her hands lifted and found either side of his face, out of a gesture that had become characteristic for them over the course of the year they had spent together. His skin was warm, alive beneath her hands and she knew with sudden certainty she would miss that feeling.

"It's not a disaster. It's nothing like that. He's just come back, because.."

Say it, Rose, not saying it won't make it any easier.

"...because he's come back to get me."

[rude_not_ginger]

"Because the disaster is on his universe and only you can stop it?" John offered, almost desperate for that to be what she meant, even though he knew in his heart that it wasn't.

He took a step back, feeling at once Donna's feelings of rejection and the Doctor's need to run away.

"And that's that, then? Easy peasy, leaves you here and goes off to his universe, changes his mind and comes back to get you. And you're going to go." The last sentence wasn't a question. Because, John imagined, it wasn't a question to her.

[roseoflegend]

The tightness in her chest was abruptly painful, moreso than before, and Rose couldn't take in a full breath again. It hurt too much to do so, and so she was having to settle for little, inhaled gasps that were coming too quick to give her any real gratification or intake of air. Her head shook once, wanting desperately to negate what he was saying while knowing, somehow, in the back of her mind that he was telling her the whole, absolute truth and it was uglier than any sin she had ever seen.

"No, it's not..." Her voice broke somewhere in the middle and she tried to mend it together again. "It's not like that at all. I.."

[rude_not_ginger]

John crossed his arms and took a step back.

"Don't cry," he said, and he was surprised by the venom in his voice. "You picked him, right? Made your own decision. Just don't cry."

He couldn't cry, that wasn't what the Doctor would do, but in that moment he had a sharp flashback of Donna crying over Lance. It felt the same, the same sort of painful heartbreak. Not a lot of things were stable or felt right in John's world, but Rose was one of them and now she was leaving.

"Go on, then. You need to pack, right?"

[roseoflegend]

The anger in his voice was a cold shock to her senses and Rose had to bite back a shiver, a tightness in her throat that wanted to close off and keep her from being able to breathe. It was the first fight she could remember they had, because up until now everything had been fine. It had been perfect, and they had been happy.

How could she change all of that now?

"No, I.." Her voice shook and she swallowed the tension back to stop it from happening again. "I don't."

[rude_not_ginger]

"Right then, see you later." He paused, then let out a half-laugh. "No, suppose I won't, then."

He looked at the table of food and sniffed, and yes, he most certainly felt like Donna did with Lance. Or when Romana left for E-Space. But he wouldn't cry. Not now, at least.

He shook his head. "I'll package half this up for later. Go on. Life waiting. Better life, right?"

[roseoflegend]

The tears blurred over and smeared their unrelenting tracks down her face, stifling away the facade she had told herself she would uphold. Rose could never lock away her emotions, it was on her sleeve and always had been.

But he was telling her to go. She took a step back.

"I love you," she said quietly. "I know that you don't believe me, but I do."

And then she had to make herself leave.

[rude_not_ginger]

"Yeah, say that often enough it becomes hollow, am I right?" John snapped. "Like tears. They don't mean anything when you cry so often." He wanted to hurt her, because this hurt. It was juvenile, maybe, but he didn't want her to hurt because she was guilty. He wanted her to hurt because he hurt. It was a very Donna way to feel, like slapping someone because they mocked her.

"But it isn't about love, is it? No, it's about getting out, making a break for it. You and Him, you're really perfect for each other. Only thinking about yourselves."

He snatched up the tzaiki sauce from the table. He didn't like it, but he always ordered some for Rose. With the same sort of anger, he threw the bowl at the wall behind Rose, where it shattered, spilling the white mess on the dark walls.

"Go!"

[roseoflegend]

There was nothing else she could do. Rose couldn't find any way to make it better, to save this, any of this, and while she didn't know if going was the right decision anymore there didn't seem to be any way to change it. She'd broken his heart and her own in the process, and there was no going back now.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice broken on the edge, because arguing wasn't going to help anymore. It was only going to make it worse, and her vision blurred, her hand slapping against the wall as she tried to steady herself. The tzaiki sauce smeared across her fingertips and it was like another blow to the chest.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

And then she left because there was nothing else left to do.