Doctor Who | Fanfic - Anywhere But Here - Ten/Rose - PG - (1/1)
anywhere but here
After the events of 'The Age of Steel', the Doctor returns Rose to her mum. A short interlude piece set at that time.
«¤»
PG
Ten/Rose, Jackie
3,019 words
Not my characters. Not even close.
I wrote this about a year ago under a different name, but decided to archive it here as I liked it so much.
“I’m not made for houses, Rose. I’m not made for this life.”
«¤»
Anywhere But Here
Stifling. That was what the flat was - it was stifling. Not just from the summer heat, which hung in the rooms like a stale smell, but from the entire atmosphere that had been there since they had arrived. Every moment was like being in a room short of oxygen, making the Doctor’s chest tight and his breathing sparse. It might have been the accusatory glares Jackie shot his way whenever she entered a room, or it might have been how unusually quiet and out of it Rose was. Either way, he didn’t like it one bit.
He was sitting in the kitchen, giving a hard stare to a manual for some part of the TARDIS he’d never figured out how to work properly, when suddenly the temperature in the room plummeted and he felt his skin begin to tingle. He looked up. Standing in the doorway and giving him the mother of stony expressions was Jackie.
She stood there for a long moment, unmoving and silent, until the Doctor’s gaze fell back to his book. Though he stared at the words, they wouldn’t go in, leaving him with empty thoughts echoing around in his mind.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said after a long moment, and the entire room bristled.
“You don’t have to say anything, Doctor.” Jackie’s voice was hard, that of a protective mother when she has little else to do. “She won’t be travelling with you any more.”
He looked up sharply. “I think that’s a decision best left to her, don’t you?”
“I can see it in her eyes even if you can’t,” Jackie spat, her eyes cold. “I told you this would happen. I always told you. My Rose would get hurt and then she’d be lost. How can you put her through this, time and time again? I thought you… ”
She trailed off, shaking her head. The Doctor snapped his book shut, lifting his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. “I don’t mean for her to get hurt,” he said in a hollow voice.
“No. You never do. Still happens though, doesn’t it?”
Upstairs, in the bathroom, he could hear the water pulse in the shower as Rose tried to relieve herself from some of the tension of the past few days. It was one of the few moments where Jackie and the Doctor were actually left alone - the rest of the time, they were tending to her, trying not to crowd her space but at the same time wanting to protect her from the hurt that was settling in her chest.
“Mickey only left because of you,” Jackie threw in cruelly, interrupting the Doctor’s thoughts.
“I’m sorry?”
“You. You, coming in here, whisking her off her feet and into the middle of God knows what. The things you show her - the things she talks about… It’s not natural. It was only a matter of time before Mickey realised his Rose didn’t need him any more. And what’s here for him then, eh?”
The Doctor leant back in the chair, folding his arms. “The Rose that Mickey loved no longer existed,” he said in an even voice, struggling with the want to bolt from the room. “It had nothing to do with - ”
“Don’t you come in here pretending like you know everything!” Jackie was at his side in an instant, her eyes flashing and her fingers dangerously close to his face. He couldn’t remember seeing such anger in her before, and that included the year of worry he’d put her through when he accidentally brought Rose back twelve months too late. “Aliens, the planet, all that … nonsense, fine. But don’t you come in here pretending like you’re the only one who knows my daughter.” She looked him up and down as though he were someone she’d dragged in from the street. “She was gonna marry that man. She was gonna be happy. Do you think she’s happy now, Doctor? Do you really think she could ever be happy with you?”
The words, poison tipped, were meant to cut him and they did. The truth was, that ever since Mickey had decided to stay behind in the parallel universe, the Doctor couldn’t help but wonder when Rose would be next. It must have hurt, his decision. He basically chose a new life over his old one: a life that didn’t contain her. She might have done the same back with him when she’d decided to travel, but Rose had never truly let go of Mickey.
And every single night the Doctor spent curled up on Jackie’s uncomfortable sofa in the living room had been spent wondering if Rose’s room was yet another he’d just have to lock up for all eternity. After all, why would she travel with him after this? Maybe the pain of loss was just too much.
“No,” he admitted, his voice hoarse, and by the expression of surprise that crossed Jackie’s face she clearly hadn’t been expecting it. “No, I don’t.”
“Then you’re selfish for taking her with you.” Jackie stood back victoriously, but there was no victory in her eyes.
He blinked slowly, trying to recollect his thoughts before the water turned off and Rose came back downstairs.
“I’m not the Pied Piper of Hamilton,” he said weakly, knowing that whatever he had to say probably wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference when it came to Jackie’s point of view. “I’m not leading Rose astray. Like it or not, Jackie, she chooses to come with me. And - though I’d be very sad if she decided to leave - I wouldn’t stop her if she changed her mind.” He dropped his gaze. “I also wouldn’t blame her.”
“Well, that’s very honourable of you Doctor,” retorted Jackie coldly, crossing the room again. “But you’re not getting my sympathy from me. You should have grown up a long time ago.”
She left the room with a sting and the Doctor leant his head in his hand. This was becoming too much.
I don’t do domestic, Rose. Never have, never will. You want to go home and visit your family? That’s fine - but don’t expect me to come with you. I don’t do that.
He’d said that to her way back in his ninth form, back when she’d asked him to take her home the very first time. He could still remember the expression on her face, someone who was hurt but trying not to be. At the time, he didn’t let himself notice.
How things change, he mused idly to himself, and had a moment of irritation at what he had become. He was the Doctor: he didn’t sit around in humans’ houses being ridiculed for hurting people. He could do enough of that by himself.
He got to his feet, his fists firms like steel at his sides; he wasn’t going to let himself be mowed over by Jackie Tyler.
But then Rose appeared in the doorway, loose clothes over her freshly cleaned skin and a pink towel wrapped around her hair. She gave him a weak smile then, checking around, reached to close the door behind her. Where with Jackie the room’s temperature became so chilly that icicles might well have started forming on the ceiling, with Rose it was an entirely different story. The Doctor loosened his tie.
“Nice shower?” he asked, nonchalant as he let his finger slide over the cover of his book.
“Heard you and Mum talking.”
“Oh.” He looked up, guilt twisting in his gut. “What… did you hear?”
“Not much.” She shrugged, coming forward into the room. “Just voices really, can’t hear much up in that bathroom. And I wasn’t listening in or anything.”
She held his gaze for a moment before moving past him, going for the kettle. Why did things have to be so awkward between them now? Did she, too, blame him for Mickey’s departure?
“I thought, after this,” he started hurriedly, looking at his shoes, “that we could go to Cira. Lovely planet, quite out of the way. Might be nice to just relax for a while. They’re very friendly. Like humans a lot. Well, not a lot, just the average amount that’s... ” He cleared his throat when Rose looked at him from across the room. “Well, yes. Just thought it might be nice. If you want.”
In truth, being there for longer than the week he intended to stay was beginning to strain on his already fraught nerves. There was no way Jackie would have let Rose out of her sight after their initial touchdown, and after he’d moved the TARDIS the Doctor agreed that maybe some time alone with her family was just what she needed.
But she’d wanted him to stay, even though she didn’t know how long for - and he had agreed to a week, because a week would only seem like an extended visit, not settling down for any length of time. Nine days, however, was beginning to take its toll.
“Sounds great,” said an enthusiastic Rose and the Doctor felt the hair on his arms begin to prickle. She opened the cupboard above the sink, then frowned. “We need to go to the supermarket today. Getting low on teabags. I don’t supposed you’d fancy - ”
“Rose.”
He said it gently, the way he always did when he needed to calm her, but it still stung to watch her tense at the way he said it. Coming forward, he put a hand to her shoulder.
“I’m all right,” she said instantly, but he shook his head slowly as she turned.
“It’s not that. I understand that you need time. Time to be here, time to sort out everything you need to. But I can’t stay.”
“It’s ‘cause you’re bored, yeah?” She shrugged out of his grip, moving from him once again. “I get it, I know, there’s not much to do around here. That’s why I thought maybe today we’d tried to - ”
“I’m not made for houses, Rose. I’m not made for this life.”
The expression in her eyes when he caught her gaze flashed through him, like an electric shock, but he knew he had to stand his ground. He could be there for her as much as she needed, but… not here. Anywhere but here.
She opened her mouth, then closed it, swallowed, and started again. “Fine. Off you go, then.” She stepped aside, signalling behind her, towards the front door.
“I didn’t mean… ” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence: what did he mean? He walked towards her, sweeping her hands up in his and trying to pretend it didn’t hurt when she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Come with me,” he murmured quietly. “Please?”
“I… ”
“I know you’re hurting,” he tried quietly, tugging on her fingers. She looked up at him, her eyes wide as saucers. “What do you want, Rose? What can I do? Because staying around here - trapping yourself in this world of loneliness - isn’t going to do much good for either of us.”
“She wants to stay here.”
The voice, like a shard of ice between them, broke them apart from each other. The Doctor couldn’t remember moving faster and he was on the other side of the kitchen before he had even clocked that Jackie was there.
Rose heaved a sigh, pulling the towel from her hair and ruffling it in her damp strands.
“No I don’t, Mum,” she said in a tired voice. “I don’t know what I want; but I can’t stay here.”
Jackie approached her tenderly. “Sweetheart, this is your home. If you can’t stay here - then where?”
As Rose looked across the room, meeting his eye meaningfully, the Doctor felt his breath hitch.
“Oh, I see. So it’s always gonna be him, then?” Jackie was speaking as though he wasn’t even in the room - not that he particularly wanted to be, but that was beside the point. “Over your own family, you’re always going to choose him?”
Rose didn’t answer, but the Doctor suspected he knew what she was thinking, and that in itself was like a punch to the gut.
“I can back in five minutes,” she said instead, taking her mum by the shoulders and giving her a wide, if unfelt, smile. “Time machine, remember? You wouldn’t even know I’d be gone. And then… things would be all right again.”
“Last time you said that, you was gone for a whole year.”
“That… won’t… happen again,” the Doctor interjected, stepping forward. Jackie shot him daggers. “Sorry. It’s just, I’m a lot more careful now.”
“He’s right, he is.”
“Oh yeah? And what if you end up stuck on some parallel earth forever? Then what?” Jackie rounded back to the Doctor, her eyes aflame. “Would you be the one to come and tell me?”
“Mum, you’re overreacting. Mickey - he chose to stay there, didn’t he? I mean, I miss him, of course I miss him, and I always will; but he is some place good now.” Rose dropped her gaze, wandering back over to the kettle, where she ran a finger over its handle. “Better than waiting around for me to come back, anyway. Least now he can move on.”
Jackie leant against the doorway, closing her eyes. “That’s my life now, I suppose. Waiting for you to come back.”
“Mum… ”
“No, you don’t have to say it.” Strong as she was, the Doctor could tell that Jackie was trying to hold back tears. In that moment, he felt for her - it must be difficult, being perpetually abandoned by your daughter. “Just go.”
The heavy silence that sank on the room dispelled when, wordlessly, Rose moved past both of them and slammed out of the house. The Doctor winced with the noise and glanced across to her mother, who looked on the edge of shattering.
After a long moment, he reached for his book. “Right. I’ll just be - ”
“Let me tell you something, Doctor,” Jackie said, looking at him with such severe honesty he felt he might just tremble. “I put up with a lot of crap from you, and Rose, because deep down I believe her to be happy. If I have to watch her cry one more time because of you and the life you lead… so help me God I will make you pay. She might have left me behind - she might have chosen me over you. But I’m still her mother. And when the time comes, it’ll be you who’s left out in the cold. Now get out of my sight.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. He might have stayed to argue or he might have tried to make amends, but he knew his presence in that tiny flat was starting to get to all of them and it was probably best to just leave well enough alone.
As he trotted down the steps from the Powell Estates, however, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat bitter at the reception and goodbye he had received. Perhaps they would leave it awhile before visiting again.
Rose was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, and she shared her mother’s wounded look.
“Do you understand, now, why I don’t do families, Rose?”
He knew that a lecture was the last thing she needed, but his own frustration had been building for days and he didn’t have much other place to put it.
“Mum’ll get over it,” she muttered, walking away from him.
“No, she won’t. This’ll stay with her, just like everything else, and every time she thinks of you she’ll be reminded of the kind of person you became because of me.”
“Yeah, Doctor.” Rose rolled her eyes. “This is all about you.” Then she softened, something in her complexion becoming gentler as his irritation obviously increased. “I think we need a holiday,” she said smoothly. “You and me, somewhere… nice. No monsters, no danger. Just - just us.”
He let his eyes trail her profile before coming to a stop at her gaze. “Don’t we always do that?” he asked through a wry chuckle. “Believe it or not, I don’t actually look for trouble. Well, not often.”
Rose’s smile faltered. “I wish… I hadn’t taken him for granted.”
“You’re always going to wish that,” he replied, reaching to take her hand. “After the date, you always do. There are so many people I took for granted when they were in my life, sitting around for me. It hurts most when they don’t want or need you any more.”
She looked at him as though she were seeing him for the first time. “It’s happened to you a lot, hasn’t it?”
“More than I would care to say.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, stepping away from the flats. “The only thing you can do for me is… stay.”
“Even when things get bad?”
“Especially when things get bad.” He squeezed her hand and whispered, “That’s when I need you the most.”
They walked back to the TARDIS in silence, but her proud standing was such a relief to both of them that by the time they got to her doors, they were smiling again. Things might be difficult for a while, yes. Rose would need to mourn Mickey properly and the Doctor would need to patient for that. But they still had each other - and while they still had that, nothing else in the universe could stop them.
La fin.
After the events of 'The Age of Steel', the Doctor returns Rose to her mum. A short interlude piece set at that time.
«¤»
PG
Ten/Rose, Jackie
3,019 words
Not my characters. Not even close.
I wrote this about a year ago under a different name, but decided to archive it here as I liked it so much.
“I’m not made for houses, Rose. I’m not made for this life.”
«¤»
Anywhere But Here
Stifling. That was what the flat was - it was stifling. Not just from the summer heat, which hung in the rooms like a stale smell, but from the entire atmosphere that had been there since they had arrived. Every moment was like being in a room short of oxygen, making the Doctor’s chest tight and his breathing sparse. It might have been the accusatory glares Jackie shot his way whenever she entered a room, or it might have been how unusually quiet and out of it Rose was. Either way, he didn’t like it one bit.
He was sitting in the kitchen, giving a hard stare to a manual for some part of the TARDIS he’d never figured out how to work properly, when suddenly the temperature in the room plummeted and he felt his skin begin to tingle. He looked up. Standing in the doorway and giving him the mother of stony expressions was Jackie.
She stood there for a long moment, unmoving and silent, until the Doctor’s gaze fell back to his book. Though he stared at the words, they wouldn’t go in, leaving him with empty thoughts echoing around in his mind.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said after a long moment, and the entire room bristled.
“You don’t have to say anything, Doctor.” Jackie’s voice was hard, that of a protective mother when she has little else to do. “She won’t be travelling with you any more.”
He looked up sharply. “I think that’s a decision best left to her, don’t you?”
“I can see it in her eyes even if you can’t,” Jackie spat, her eyes cold. “I told you this would happen. I always told you. My Rose would get hurt and then she’d be lost. How can you put her through this, time and time again? I thought you… ”
She trailed off, shaking her head. The Doctor snapped his book shut, lifting his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. “I don’t mean for her to get hurt,” he said in a hollow voice.
“No. You never do. Still happens though, doesn’t it?”
Upstairs, in the bathroom, he could hear the water pulse in the shower as Rose tried to relieve herself from some of the tension of the past few days. It was one of the few moments where Jackie and the Doctor were actually left alone - the rest of the time, they were tending to her, trying not to crowd her space but at the same time wanting to protect her from the hurt that was settling in her chest.
“Mickey only left because of you,” Jackie threw in cruelly, interrupting the Doctor’s thoughts.
“I’m sorry?”
“You. You, coming in here, whisking her off her feet and into the middle of God knows what. The things you show her - the things she talks about… It’s not natural. It was only a matter of time before Mickey realised his Rose didn’t need him any more. And what’s here for him then, eh?”
The Doctor leant back in the chair, folding his arms. “The Rose that Mickey loved no longer existed,” he said in an even voice, struggling with the want to bolt from the room. “It had nothing to do with - ”
“Don’t you come in here pretending like you know everything!” Jackie was at his side in an instant, her eyes flashing and her fingers dangerously close to his face. He couldn’t remember seeing such anger in her before, and that included the year of worry he’d put her through when he accidentally brought Rose back twelve months too late. “Aliens, the planet, all that … nonsense, fine. But don’t you come in here pretending like you’re the only one who knows my daughter.” She looked him up and down as though he were someone she’d dragged in from the street. “She was gonna marry that man. She was gonna be happy. Do you think she’s happy now, Doctor? Do you really think she could ever be happy with you?”
The words, poison tipped, were meant to cut him and they did. The truth was, that ever since Mickey had decided to stay behind in the parallel universe, the Doctor couldn’t help but wonder when Rose would be next. It must have hurt, his decision. He basically chose a new life over his old one: a life that didn’t contain her. She might have done the same back with him when she’d decided to travel, but Rose had never truly let go of Mickey.
And every single night the Doctor spent curled up on Jackie’s uncomfortable sofa in the living room had been spent wondering if Rose’s room was yet another he’d just have to lock up for all eternity. After all, why would she travel with him after this? Maybe the pain of loss was just too much.
“No,” he admitted, his voice hoarse, and by the expression of surprise that crossed Jackie’s face she clearly hadn’t been expecting it. “No, I don’t.”
“Then you’re selfish for taking her with you.” Jackie stood back victoriously, but there was no victory in her eyes.
He blinked slowly, trying to recollect his thoughts before the water turned off and Rose came back downstairs.
“I’m not the Pied Piper of Hamilton,” he said weakly, knowing that whatever he had to say probably wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference when it came to Jackie’s point of view. “I’m not leading Rose astray. Like it or not, Jackie, she chooses to come with me. And - though I’d be very sad if she decided to leave - I wouldn’t stop her if she changed her mind.” He dropped his gaze. “I also wouldn’t blame her.”
“Well, that’s very honourable of you Doctor,” retorted Jackie coldly, crossing the room again. “But you’re not getting my sympathy from me. You should have grown up a long time ago.”
She left the room with a sting and the Doctor leant his head in his hand. This was becoming too much.
I don’t do domestic, Rose. Never have, never will. You want to go home and visit your family? That’s fine - but don’t expect me to come with you. I don’t do that.
He’d said that to her way back in his ninth form, back when she’d asked him to take her home the very first time. He could still remember the expression on her face, someone who was hurt but trying not to be. At the time, he didn’t let himself notice.
How things change, he mused idly to himself, and had a moment of irritation at what he had become. He was the Doctor: he didn’t sit around in humans’ houses being ridiculed for hurting people. He could do enough of that by himself.
He got to his feet, his fists firms like steel at his sides; he wasn’t going to let himself be mowed over by Jackie Tyler.
But then Rose appeared in the doorway, loose clothes over her freshly cleaned skin and a pink towel wrapped around her hair. She gave him a weak smile then, checking around, reached to close the door behind her. Where with Jackie the room’s temperature became so chilly that icicles might well have started forming on the ceiling, with Rose it was an entirely different story. The Doctor loosened his tie.
“Nice shower?” he asked, nonchalant as he let his finger slide over the cover of his book.
“Heard you and Mum talking.”
“Oh.” He looked up, guilt twisting in his gut. “What… did you hear?”
“Not much.” She shrugged, coming forward into the room. “Just voices really, can’t hear much up in that bathroom. And I wasn’t listening in or anything.”
She held his gaze for a moment before moving past him, going for the kettle. Why did things have to be so awkward between them now? Did she, too, blame him for Mickey’s departure?
“I thought, after this,” he started hurriedly, looking at his shoes, “that we could go to Cira. Lovely planet, quite out of the way. Might be nice to just relax for a while. They’re very friendly. Like humans a lot. Well, not a lot, just the average amount that’s... ” He cleared his throat when Rose looked at him from across the room. “Well, yes. Just thought it might be nice. If you want.”
In truth, being there for longer than the week he intended to stay was beginning to strain on his already fraught nerves. There was no way Jackie would have let Rose out of her sight after their initial touchdown, and after he’d moved the TARDIS the Doctor agreed that maybe some time alone with her family was just what she needed.
But she’d wanted him to stay, even though she didn’t know how long for - and he had agreed to a week, because a week would only seem like an extended visit, not settling down for any length of time. Nine days, however, was beginning to take its toll.
“Sounds great,” said an enthusiastic Rose and the Doctor felt the hair on his arms begin to prickle. She opened the cupboard above the sink, then frowned. “We need to go to the supermarket today. Getting low on teabags. I don’t supposed you’d fancy - ”
“Rose.”
He said it gently, the way he always did when he needed to calm her, but it still stung to watch her tense at the way he said it. Coming forward, he put a hand to her shoulder.
“I’m all right,” she said instantly, but he shook his head slowly as she turned.
“It’s not that. I understand that you need time. Time to be here, time to sort out everything you need to. But I can’t stay.”
“It’s ‘cause you’re bored, yeah?” She shrugged out of his grip, moving from him once again. “I get it, I know, there’s not much to do around here. That’s why I thought maybe today we’d tried to - ”
“I’m not made for houses, Rose. I’m not made for this life.”
The expression in her eyes when he caught her gaze flashed through him, like an electric shock, but he knew he had to stand his ground. He could be there for her as much as she needed, but… not here. Anywhere but here.
She opened her mouth, then closed it, swallowed, and started again. “Fine. Off you go, then.” She stepped aside, signalling behind her, towards the front door.
“I didn’t mean… ” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence: what did he mean? He walked towards her, sweeping her hands up in his and trying to pretend it didn’t hurt when she wouldn’t look him in the eye. “Come with me,” he murmured quietly. “Please?”
“I… ”
“I know you’re hurting,” he tried quietly, tugging on her fingers. She looked up at him, her eyes wide as saucers. “What do you want, Rose? What can I do? Because staying around here - trapping yourself in this world of loneliness - isn’t going to do much good for either of us.”
“She wants to stay here.”
The voice, like a shard of ice between them, broke them apart from each other. The Doctor couldn’t remember moving faster and he was on the other side of the kitchen before he had even clocked that Jackie was there.
Rose heaved a sigh, pulling the towel from her hair and ruffling it in her damp strands.
“No I don’t, Mum,” she said in a tired voice. “I don’t know what I want; but I can’t stay here.”
Jackie approached her tenderly. “Sweetheart, this is your home. If you can’t stay here - then where?”
As Rose looked across the room, meeting his eye meaningfully, the Doctor felt his breath hitch.
“Oh, I see. So it’s always gonna be him, then?” Jackie was speaking as though he wasn’t even in the room - not that he particularly wanted to be, but that was beside the point. “Over your own family, you’re always going to choose him?”
Rose didn’t answer, but the Doctor suspected he knew what she was thinking, and that in itself was like a punch to the gut.
“I can back in five minutes,” she said instead, taking her mum by the shoulders and giving her a wide, if unfelt, smile. “Time machine, remember? You wouldn’t even know I’d be gone. And then… things would be all right again.”
“Last time you said that, you was gone for a whole year.”
“That… won’t… happen again,” the Doctor interjected, stepping forward. Jackie shot him daggers. “Sorry. It’s just, I’m a lot more careful now.”
“He’s right, he is.”
“Oh yeah? And what if you end up stuck on some parallel earth forever? Then what?” Jackie rounded back to the Doctor, her eyes aflame. “Would you be the one to come and tell me?”
“Mum, you’re overreacting. Mickey - he chose to stay there, didn’t he? I mean, I miss him, of course I miss him, and I always will; but he is some place good now.” Rose dropped her gaze, wandering back over to the kettle, where she ran a finger over its handle. “Better than waiting around for me to come back, anyway. Least now he can move on.”
Jackie leant against the doorway, closing her eyes. “That’s my life now, I suppose. Waiting for you to come back.”
“Mum… ”
“No, you don’t have to say it.” Strong as she was, the Doctor could tell that Jackie was trying to hold back tears. In that moment, he felt for her - it must be difficult, being perpetually abandoned by your daughter. “Just go.”
The heavy silence that sank on the room dispelled when, wordlessly, Rose moved past both of them and slammed out of the house. The Doctor winced with the noise and glanced across to her mother, who looked on the edge of shattering.
After a long moment, he reached for his book. “Right. I’ll just be - ”
“Let me tell you something, Doctor,” Jackie said, looking at him with such severe honesty he felt he might just tremble. “I put up with a lot of crap from you, and Rose, because deep down I believe her to be happy. If I have to watch her cry one more time because of you and the life you lead… so help me God I will make you pay. She might have left me behind - she might have chosen me over you. But I’m still her mother. And when the time comes, it’ll be you who’s left out in the cold. Now get out of my sight.”
He didn’t have to be told twice. He might have stayed to argue or he might have tried to make amends, but he knew his presence in that tiny flat was starting to get to all of them and it was probably best to just leave well enough alone.
As he trotted down the steps from the Powell Estates, however, he couldn’t help but feel somewhat bitter at the reception and goodbye he had received. Perhaps they would leave it awhile before visiting again.
Rose was waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, and she shared her mother’s wounded look.
“Do you understand, now, why I don’t do families, Rose?”
He knew that a lecture was the last thing she needed, but his own frustration had been building for days and he didn’t have much other place to put it.
“Mum’ll get over it,” she muttered, walking away from him.
“No, she won’t. This’ll stay with her, just like everything else, and every time she thinks of you she’ll be reminded of the kind of person you became because of me.”
“Yeah, Doctor.” Rose rolled her eyes. “This is all about you.” Then she softened, something in her complexion becoming gentler as his irritation obviously increased. “I think we need a holiday,” she said smoothly. “You and me, somewhere… nice. No monsters, no danger. Just - just us.”
He let his eyes trail her profile before coming to a stop at her gaze. “Don’t we always do that?” he asked through a wry chuckle. “Believe it or not, I don’t actually look for trouble. Well, not often.”
Rose’s smile faltered. “I wish… I hadn’t taken him for granted.”
“You’re always going to wish that,” he replied, reaching to take her hand. “After the date, you always do. There are so many people I took for granted when they were in my life, sitting around for me. It hurts most when they don’t want or need you any more.”
She looked at him as though she were seeing him for the first time. “It’s happened to you a lot, hasn’t it?”
“More than I would care to say.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, stepping away from the flats. “The only thing you can do for me is… stay.”
“Even when things get bad?”
“Especially when things get bad.” He squeezed her hand and whispered, “That’s when I need you the most.”
They walked back to the TARDIS in silence, but her proud standing was such a relief to both of them that by the time they got to her doors, they were smiling again. Things might be difficult for a while, yes. Rose would need to mourn Mickey properly and the Doctor would need to patient for that. But they still had each other - and while they still had that, nothing else in the universe could stop them.
La fin.