Couples Therapy: On Holiday
Title: Couples Therapy: On Holiday
Rating: All Ages
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Genre: Just a wee bit of introspection
Spoilers: Goes AU after Army of Ghosts
Disclaimer: I don't make any money off of these characters, I don't own them, but the auction this fic was written for raised $4000!!!
Summary: Even the most passionate and harmonious of human marriages have a natural shelf life reckoned in decades. There's a reason that the most poignant part of any love story is the ending. A successful partnership lasting centuries, while perhaps not unheard-of among some species, differs in several key ways from the human unions that Rose Tyler had grown up observing. Sometimes a little couples therapy is required.
A/N: My first crack at a truly AU fic. Rose Tyler was granted a greatly prolonged life through the Bad Wolf, Doomsday never happened, and Rose and the Doctor have been travelling together for quite some time indeed now. Every now and then, they need to spice things up a bit.
It usually took about a week for something to remind her of the Doctor. Six days would pass in a blessed silence, not a small amount of blatant slothfulness, and the luxury of simply being unashamedly a human being (albeit a human being granted preternatural long life through the intercession a dimensionally transcending semi-sentient time and space ship). Six days and she wouldn't even think of him, not even in the context of being glad he wasn't around to bug her while she ploughed through the stack of books picked up during their last visit to some outpost of the human empire.
On the seventh day, she would become aware of not missing him. She'd find herself absently noting that she was glad he was not around for this or that reason (generally connected to his heroic capacity to be a pest when she was least disposed to be bothered in any way), and that she did not miss him in the slightest. This would be followed by guilt, doubt, and whatever mind-altering substance was in social vogue on whichever planet or space station she was on, whereupon she would forget him again for a short time.
But then perhaps she would be on a beach, and would be reminded of his sandy complexion, and the way freckles were scattered across his face like pebbles brought up by the surf. Or, she'd overlook a mountain vista and see in the stone the same hard, ancient wisdom that resided in his eyes. Sometimes she would be mingling at a party and some other guest would touch her in a way that made her wish that it was him instead of a stranger. Every now and then, some other being would enquire after her mating status (which ceased to be shocking after the first fifteen times it happened), and it was bittersweet to say, "No, thank you, I'm spoken for."
So many times on these trips she would consciously try to break out of the pattern. She lived with a timeless man in a timeless machine, but had a heart which one could apparently set one's watch to. No matter where she was, or how relative local time was reckoned, she would find herself sitting to write the first letter with the regularity of a metronome.
"My dearest love," she would write, and then feel absolutely silly for such a flowery greeting--though not silly enough to scratch it out. She would tell him about what she'd been doing, the minute details about the other beings that she met, which she knew he loved to hear, and she'd try to make it sound fun, but not too fun. "I attended the Captain's Ball last night, and danced with a splendid chap from some planet that I can't remember the name of. He literally had two left feet! And two right as well, but that doesn't make the joke as funny." She'd tell him that she missed him, leaving out the details regarding when she'd begun to, and that she loved him, and that she looked forward to seeing him again.
No matter whether the letter contained tales of gratefully baking under the rays of twin desert suns, or swimming among the intelligent sea-dwelling creatures of an ocean planet, she always signed off the same way before seeking out the best method by which to post a letter to a time machine:
"If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life."1
(1) Oscar Wilde "The Importance of being Earnest" Act IV