Fic: To Bring You Back (Prologue/?)
Title: To Bring You Back
Characters/Pairing: 10/Rose, Mickey, Reinette
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, but hoping someone I know will give me 10 for my birthday… I’d settle for 10.5 ^-^
Spoilers: Only for GitF and before
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Sci-fi
Summary: The Doctor, Rose and Mickey visit a desert planet and discover a thing or two about the resourcefulness of the Manima… though with an addition to their group - Madam de Pompadour.
Rose may have waited five-and-a-half hours but that was nothing; when her life is in danger can she hold out? Can she hold on to life? “Delay them a bit, until the Doctor can get there”? Or, this time, will he be too late…
Post GitF
Author's Notes: My first Doctor Who fic... I would really love feedback and to be told if... you know, I suck ^-^
Prologue
"Pick a star, any star."
The words echoed tantalisingly in Reinette's head as she ran back to the window, her skirts bunched in her hands as the excitement coursing through her demanded she run there. Even as she leant forward, knuckles white on the window sill and selected the bright spot in the sky that she wished to go to, still disbelieving and overwhelmed that her lonely angel was really taking her back with him to see the stars; he stood on a space ship thousands of years later holding his companion tightly, disbelieving himself because he was still able to.
"How long did you wait." How close had he come to losing her? How much longer would she have waited before getting in the TARDIS and getting it to send her home?
"Five and a half hours." Was Rose's reply and he could hear the relieved smile in her voice. He was so grateful to have found her, this human girl who would wait over five hours in the cold solitude of space, so far from home, just for him to come back to her, even knowing it was a very real possibility that he wouldn’t. He felt a little guilty for having left her to wait for so long, though she wasn’t alone. Looking over her shoulder as he held her he saw Mickey and wondered if that was a good or a bad thing.
Knowing he may never have seen her again if it weren’t for Reinette he abruptly pulled away from Rose, angling her towards the TARDIS even as he turned away from her. He had promised Reinette a star (any star) and he knew he was indebted to her for getting him back to the TARDIS and Rose. He needed to thank her for his freedom which he had given up on impulse to save her and which she had just given him back, despite her obvious disappointment. He knew she couldn’t travel with them permanently, she was too important, too many events in history revolved around her to simply remove her from the time lines, but he could do this one thing for her, show her his life as she had so willingly let him into hers. Racing back to the fireplace and banging a solid fist on it, he missed Rose staring after him and the glisten on her cheeks that hadn’t entirely faded.
-~-
She should be happy. And she was, she really was. She had waited for him; counting every second even though it didn’t really matter to her how long it had been. It would never have been long enough for her to be able to justify leaving without him. She would have waited forever. Seeing him turn and bolt from her like he had had made her eyes sting a little but then she smiled. It didn’t matter if Reinette was more important to him, or even if she were to start traveling with them, because he was back. Worth the monsters and the heartbreak, that was him.
It really didn’t matter all that much that he had chosen Reinette, that he had left her and Mickey standing on a space ship to watch as he flew through the time window, smashing it and leaving it in so many pieces on the ground, imitating the way her chest had felt in that moment. It didn’t matter that one of those shards of broken glass had flown in her direction. She hadn’t felt it anyway so it didn’t really matter that she now had a long red line slicing just below her shoulder, hidden (barely) beneath her blue t-shirt. The blood had dried, the cut numb and the waiting was over; he was back with them again, so she smiled. So she turned towards the TARDIS and stepped through the blue doors smiling. So she ignored the stab in her chest when seconds later the Doctor reappeared with the beautiful French courtesan right behind him.
~
For all his earlier jibes at Rose - that he had to admit was partly simple fun at her expense like they had always done with each other, and part jealousy and sadness because he was clearly only ever going to be a friend to her now and nothing more - Mickey never thought the (real) idiot would bring the pretty French one along. When they stepped through those doors together, the Doctor looking extremely happy to see his home and extremely smug because he could now show it off to someone new; and Reinette looking dazed, overwhelmed and extremely happy (if the delighted grin was anything to go by), Mickey's eyes widened. Shooting a quick glance at Rose he could immediately tell that she had expected this. The frozen smile on her face, the very faint shimmer of pain in her eyes that he knew only he could see; would ever see. For all his time lordliness, he very much doubted the Doctor knew her well enough to recognize the look she wore only very rarely. But he had been there. Mickey had been there, when Jimmy had.
So he knew. He also knew that Rose was oblivious that this look existed. When she wore it she was hardly in any position to look in a mirror, nor was she in a state of mind that allowed her to completely hide her emotions. She didn’t only look this way when she was in love and the one she was in love with didn’t want her. She looked like this when she thought she deserved it (or didn’t in this case). She had worn this look for so long after Jimmy; she had loved him and he had used that to manipulate her because underneath it all, he hadn’t and had showed it in the end; in the worst way. And Mickey had given him a black eye for it (it wasn’t just his closeness to Rose that had made him a suspect in her disappearance, he had previous - though Jackie hadn’t exactly been complaining when news of Jimmy's shiner had spread).
Mickey knew how strong Rose could be, and he wasn’t an idiot (contrary to popular belief), he could see that being with the Doctor had made her even stronger, but she still had a vulnerable side. She was still a twenty year old human girl and she had insecurities like everyone else. Last Christmas had surely been testament to that. She accepted this Doctor as her Doctor, but he could tell at the time that she felt like she was betraying the first one, all leather jacket and big ears. She had absorbed a whole heap of powerful energy for that guy and had come back, devastated, with a new one. Mickey could see though, how their relationship had strengthened again. Watching them today had shown him just how little a chance he still had with Rose.
Ever since he helped the Doctor launch a missile at her in Downing Street the year before, Mickey had known they loved each other, although he didn’t think they knew it yet (or they just didn’t want to stop and examine those feelings which, in the Doctor’s case was a definite probability). He had gotten over it. Ok, not very well and definitely not easily - he still had feelings for Rose - but before that they had been friends, such good friends. Best friends. And looking at her now it seemed like that was exactly what she needed. Closing the short distance between them and grabbing her hand in his, he waited the extra moment she took to look at him before speaking.
"So, gonna show me 'round here or what? Or do we sleep on the grating at night." For a fleeting moment, despite the situation this was supposed to be a distraction from, Mickey looked down and fervently hoped that that wasn’t the case, though he wouldn’t have put it past the Doctor to make him. Seeing Rose's lips twitch at his reaction elated Mickey. He was right, she needed a friend, and that's exactly what he was, her best friend.
Squeezing her hand he pulled slightly, turning them away from a very animated Doctor and what looked to Mickey to be a very very overwhelmed Madam de Pompadour. They disappeared down a corridor and Reinette's tinkling laugh followed.
-~-
"Jelly babies?" She said delightedly, still laughing. "I would have said that was quite a funny story if I knew what they were. Am I right in thinking you eat jellied infants for fun?"
At the Doctor's baffled look of incredulity she laughed again. Joining her he asked through a grin,
"How can you not know what jelly babies are! Right, soon as i find some that aren’t being used you are going to taste the best thing in this universe... besides bananas... and marmalade..." Tugging his left ear, he grinned again when her tinkling laugh filled the console room. He noticed the absence of other conversation and, now that he was concentrating, other life signs. Turning his head to look for his other two companions who had disappeared without a trace he heard Reinette's question, faint through her continuing laughter,
"What, besides food do you use them for? They certainly sound versatile." Turning back to her with a little less enthusiasm than he had possessed earlier he smiled, though his answer came distractedly as he fruitlessly looked around the room again as though he might have missed Rose and Mickey the first time.
"Oh, you wouldn’t believe the things you can do with jelly babies. At the moment there are seven holding bits of circuitry together in the main console alone. Wonderful things. Adds colour to the wiring."
Reinette noticed his distraction, and though she was curious as to what exactly "circuitry", "wiring" and a "main console" were, she instead asked the more important, though infinitely more obvious question,
"You really care about her don’t you?"
Startled enough to focus on her properly, the Doctor turned to her again, unsure of how to answer.
"Rose? Well, of course, I care about both of them, they're my friends."
"That’s not what I meant." And he knew it. They both knew he did. But she let the matter drop for once. She may have pushed him for answers before but she hadn’t had time then. Her life and those of her family and friends were in danger and he had disappeared after visits of a few minutes for years on end. Compared to that she now had all the time in the world to get answers from him. Not that she needed them.
She was so grateful to Rose. Reinette had been inside the Doctor's head just as he had been in hers. She knew he had been a different man before, felt things differently, from an entirely different perspective. She knew of his loneliness. She knew how much the war had affected him. And she knew how Rose Tyler had healed him afterwards. She had only experienced the things in his head briefly - strange, disjointed and entirely too short flashes of emotion and memory - but this young human girl had had such a huge impact on his life that her face was forever imprinted in his mind, branded into his thoughts and yet soothing to him like a balm. She had changed him so deeply that Reinette couldn’t help but feel grateful to her for beginning to heal the excruciating pain the Doctor was forever in.
It wasn’t gone but Reinette knew that Rose made it bearable for him to be alive. It was because of Rose that her lonely angel had been able to save her life and had been such a huge part of it. She owed Rose just as much as she owed the Doctor.
Though Reinette couldn’t deny she had feelings for the Time Lord, she suspected her's didn’t compare to the depth of emotion Rose had for the Doctor and having now been around both of them together she could see who the Doctor felt more deeply for as well. She had seen the way the Doctor saw her, all gold light and innocence and laughter, had seen how forlorn the Doctor was when facing the prospect of life without her. She had also heard the tone of Rose's query, "Why her?".
Reinette may have been blunt when addressing Rose earlier that day, but her words had been true, she was a child. Compared to the Time Lord surely most of the universe would appear as children but even in comparison to Reinette herself, Rose was a young girl. Reinette had had thirty seven years to become the accomplished woman she was, and more than that, she knew who she was. She was sure of herself and knew it; how else could she have had even a single conversation with the Doctor, the man who knew all the stars by name and had seen his race destroyed by his own hand.
She was hardly on the same level in any respect as the Time Lord and to have one full conversation with him - to be inside his mind, to stay grounded amidst that - had taken every ounce of self-confidence she'd had; she wondered how Rose could stand to live and travel with him. Remarkable human being in her own right but she was still so young; Reinette was sure that if she was out of her teens it was only just.
Earlier that day Rose had seemed threatened but now she simply seemed defeated. The Doctor was clearly oblivious; for all his remarkable perceptiveness, he seemed to be able to overlook the most basic and important of emotions, no matter how obvious. Possibly, she thought, because he assumes that everyone speaks their minds the way she knows he likes to on occasion. Considering her way of life, many of her friends had been in a similar situation Rose found herself in now - unable or unwilling to admit to love or to see if it is requited - which meant that Reinette had noticed the slump to the other girl's shoulders and could understand why.
Whilst the Doctor had been a part of her life since she was a child, Reinette could see now that though he saved her repeatedly throughout her life, he was not meant to be in it any more than that. She remembered her own words as they echoed full of truth through her mind.
‘So here you are, my lonely angel, stuck on the slow path with me’. And it had been wrong. He was not made for the slow path. He looked like the lost little boy he was on the inside when he had his freedom taken from him and she realised then and there that their lives were too different. They weren’t the same and they’re lives weren’t able to harmoniously coexist. Looking at Rose though, out of her time and plucked from her world the same way she herself had been; for all her teenage insecurities, Rose belonged here. With him, on this strange vessel of his. She just hoped that he realised this as well.
Though they had not discussed it, whether the Doctor wanted her to travel with him indefinitely or not mattered very little to her. Reinette knew this would be a single trip, simply to show her something she's always wanted to see and then return to where she belonged, because ultimately she didn’t belong here. She smiled. And her lover was waiting.
Brushing her wayward thoughts aside for the continuing excitement of the moment and the dizzying displacement she was feeling, she felt almost breathless as she spoke.
"So, where would one sleep on this ship of yours?"
Having been completely distracted, the Doctor turned back to her. Her presence on the TARDIS was so new and strange to him that it took him a moment to remember that he wasn’t alone the way he would have been the day before, had Rose and Mickey gone missing. He remembered calling for Rose earlier that day, feeling despondent in his loneliness in her absence and being followed by a horse. He smiled. He was a bit lost without her.
"Oh, bedroom. You'll need a bedroom. You humans do like your sleep." He added with a grin, coming back to himself fully as he pushed aside his memories and worry and held out his arm for Reinette to take, "I'll show you the wardrobe room first, cant sleep in that," eyeing her voluminous skirts he added, "Cant do much of anything in that I would think, How do you manage not to fall over when you walk?" He asked, curiosity getting the better of him.
Chuckling she told him as they entered the corridor, "It’s an art."
-~-
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Thanks for reading
Chapter 1 >