Who Fic - Sign Your Life Away
Title: Sign Your Life Away
Fandom: Doctor Who
Rating/warnings: PG
Genre: hurt/comfort, angst
Character/s: Rose/10.5
Spoilers: up to JE
Summary: You’d have to get a mortgage! No. Oh yes. I am dying - that’s it. I am dying, it is all over... A moment of uncertainty is all it takes for them to remember their life together before and to be thankful for what they have now, together.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all it’s associated characters/situations etc do not belong to me, I’m just borrowing them for now.
~*~
“Now John if you’ll just sign on the dotted line there…”
John Smith retrieved a pen from his breast pocket and scrawled his signature with a hand that shook only slightly. His handwriting, he thought as he surveyed the ink scratching he had learnt off by heart, left much to desired in the way of legibility but at least the loops and curlicues he favoured made it look aesthetically pleasing. Pretty, Donna would have said.
“And now you Rose. On the space next to Johns please.”
John helpfully pushed the paper towards her, pen and all. Taking up the writing implement she surveyed the blank spot where she was to write her name for just a moment too long and John tensed immediately.
Something was wrong - he knew her far too well to be incorrect in his assumption. This notion was only reinforced when she began to idly tap the end of the pen against the desk and then her fingers went limp. The pen fell with a dull plink but Rose merely stared at it as though she was somehow uncertain as to how it had gotten there.
“Rose?” John pressed gently, reaching out to touch her hand. The cheap chair creaked alarmingly beneath even his slight frame. “Are you alright?”
“I need some air.” she said abruptly, pushing her chair back and all but charging out of the room stomach first.
There was silence as the door clicked shut behind her and then the mortgage broker cleared his throat slightly.
“Is she er, not feeling well?”
His eyes still fixed on the door that Rose had disappeared through, John frowned. “Must be.”
“It’s not morning sickness is it? I remember my wife had it all the way up to her third trimester with...”
Completely ignoring him, John pushed back his own chair and stood up. He was halfway to the door before he realised that he was actually being quite rude. He turned back to apologise. “Look, sorry. We’ll be back in...well. We’ll be back. Maybe you should just...do whatever it is that mortgage brokers...do when they’re not...broking mortgages. Until we get back.”
He was met with a blank stare.
“Oh hell.” he said quite eloquently before exiting the room.
~*~
The Doctor discovered Rose easily. She had made her way down the other end of the hallway so that she could stand in the late afternoon sunlight from the large window. It had been raining most of the day but some of the cloud had cleared now - just enough to stain the sky orange.
Leaning against the frame and silhouetted in light as she supported her swollen belly with small hands, Rose could have been the ethereal subject of a Da Vinci painting. The Doctor stopped to soak in the image of her, capturing it for some later unknown date. But his clumsy human footfalls had alerted her to his presence and she turned to him, long blonde hair swinging, and the classical beauty of her pose was gone.
“I don’t think I can do this.” Her voice was strained and he came to her side without even thinking. He hadn’t been expecting her to voice what was wrong without careful prompting on his behalf - she had just as many walls nowadays as he used to have back in the day.
“I don’t understand.” he replied honestly and she frowned as she searched to find the right words.
“S’like...how can this be happening you know? It’s scary.”
“You saved dozens of planets - the whole flipping universe more times than I can count and this - this scares you? It’s a mortgage Rose, it’s not like it’s life and death or...”
“Exactly!” she said, swiping angrily at the tears that trembled in her eyes. “That’s what makes it so stupid. It’s not important at all! It’s probably the least important thing in the whole universe. God. It’s so boringly normal it makes me want to put a bullet in my head and I’m bloody scared of it!”
“You didn’t used to be.” at Rose’s frown he elaborated slightly. “You remember Krop Tor?”
Rose laughed humourlessly. “God, that was a long time ago. I’ve changed a bit since then. But you...” she looked at him almost accusingly. “You’re so excited. You want this.”
“Oh yes.” He said simply. “More than anything else I want this.”
“A normal life.”
She almost sounds disgusted at the idea. Once upon a time he would have been too. Then again...
“Welll...as normal as life can be for me.” he conceded. “It’s never going to be completely...well you know what it’s like with me. Even a half human me. But then I’d probably go mad if life wasn’t at least a little bit strange. Odd. Bizarre. Perturbing. Ooh I do like that word - perturbing. Oh you’re staring at me again - am I babbling?”
Rose smiled faintly at him and ran an absent hand over her stomach. “That’s just the thing though.” she confessed softly. “I want it too but I can’t help but be...I mean I’d rather be doing this with you than with anybody else but...”
“Big step?” he guessed and Rose nodded gratefully.
“Really big step. God - I can’t believe I used to think you were a commitment phobe. Just look at me...” She looked terrified and once again close to tears. Carefully, deliberately, the Doctor took her hand and placed his other palm flat against her belly.
“Rose do you remember when we first got stuck here?” he questioned softly, eyes on the warm swell of flesh beneath his hand. “After he left us here together I kept thinking that somehow, together, we’d be able to find a way to travel again. I’ve always been very lucky - luckier than him in the end. I s’pose I thought that I might get lucky again, find a spaceship I could repair, get to see the stars again with you the way it used to be. But the longer I’ve been here...I don’t feel like I need it so much. Not anymore. Well, not when I’ve got you.”
There was an expectant pause. She knew all of this already.
“I missed it at first. God I missed it - all of it. Sometimes I felt like it was all too much - I honestly didn’t know if I could cope with it - standing still but moving so fast. Too fast. And then there was you. You made everything slow down - just like you always have and I needed that so badly. I needed to slow down for once and now...now I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is my life and this is our life and it’s brilliant Rose - so amazingly brilliant that I still can’t believe how luck-luck-lucky I am to have it. Every second with you is worth everything I’ve had to learn to do without. A hundred times over. A thousand. A mill-”
She kissed him suddenly and softly, cutting off a no doubt lengthy numerical monologue and then in true Rose fashion, she pulled back and bit her lip nervously and she was nineteen again and he’d just blasted her for spilling nail polish on the jump seat.
“This wasn’t what I ever imagined my life’d be like with you.” she admitted. “Not when we were travelling together. Definitely not when I was stuck here building the dimension cannon. No way I ever thought I’d be doing all of...” she gestured at her belly and then towards him with a shaky laugh. “Well all of this. Not with you.”
“Not with him.” the Doctor corrected her and Rose nodded.
“Yeah.” She admitted softly. “Not with him.”
They stood there a long moment and then the Doctor kissed her on impulse. “Ah we can come back another day.” he offered. “Or in ten years time! Twenty even. D’you think they can suspend mortgages that long?”
With a sudden rattle the rain began to tumble against the window pane and they both glanced at it, startled. Rose stared absently at the rain for a moment and then turned back to the Doctor.
“Dunno.” she admitted. “Probably not. What do I know though? Never had a mortgage before.”
“Me either.”
“S’pose we should do it today.” she said with a touch of consternation. “With us sort of being on a time schedule and all.”
The Doctor scoffed. “Ah - schedule schmedule.”
Rose laughed. “Shut up. That’s not even a word.”
“It does rhyme.”
“Like that time you tried to find something that rhymed with purple?”
The Doctor looked indignant. “What do you mean tried?”
Rose rolled her eyes heavenward. “ ‘Yurple’ is not a word.”
“Not yet.” the Doctor said slyly then swung her hand back and forth a little, abruptly changing the subject. “So are you ready to sign your life away then?”
Rose considered a moment longer and then she nodded, a smile working its way onto her face.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah?” the Doctor affirmed.
“Yep.”
~*~
When Rose and John re-entered the office together hand in hand the mortgage broker rose eagerly to greet them, rearranging his suit jacket around himself.
“Ah you’re back!” he said before addressing Rose directly. “Feeling better I hope?”
“I’m alright. Thanks.” Rose took up the pen and hesitated only briefly before scrawling her name. Once she was done John launched himself at her and kissed her soundly. Rose laughed and swatted him away. “You’re lucky I love you.”
“Yes I am.” he said and then leant a long arm across the table to shake the broker’s hand. “Thank you. For all your help. It’s very much appreciated.”
“No troubles John.” the broker said, trying not to fall flat on his face. John had an exuberant handshake, almost as though he hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the gesture yet. “Congratulations though. Both of you. Big step you’re taking.”
Rose and John glanced at each other, startled, and then aburptly they began laughing. They were still laughing as John stooped to collect Rose’s purse and by the time they got to the door the mortgage broker was full of consternation.
“Something I said?” he asked bemusedly as they wiped their tears away.
“Oh,” John said, grinning as Rose’s hand slid into his. “You have no idea.”