Fic: Looking In (1/1)
Title: Looking In
Author: karenor
Pairings/Characters: Ten/Rose, Ten II/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose, Donna, Jackie.
Rating: PG
Summary: Oh she felt like a proud mama bear…
Disclaimer: BBC owns all. Including my soul. I'd like it back one day, please. Maybe.
Beta: My darling requialexa.
Author's Notes: Written for the goin_my_way Summer Fun Ficathon, as a gift for hippiebanana132, for prompt #2: The Doctor and Rose through the eyes of another character. With apologies as I meant to write fluff in keeping with the “fun” theme of the ficathon, but what came out was angst, and it’s through the eyes of not one, but two other characters. Spoilers through S4.
__Donna__
It was shortly after they’d left the Planet of the Ood when Donna asked the Doctor about Rose again. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she’d sensed that his previous experience with these gentle, if oddly shaped, aliens had involved her. Something in the timbre of his voice in those brief moments that he talked about the past, the past he’d shared with her.
She hadn’t known him too long by this point, of course, but she knew enough to recognize a bloke sick with longing when she saw it. The time between the first time she’d met him and the second had only slightly dulled that razor sharp hurt she could see behind his eyes.
She hadn’t minced words either. She figured they’d bonded some by now, what with the near death scrapes they’d been in already, blowing up a volcano together, helping to liberate an enslaved people, and all.
> > >
“Tell me about Rose,” she said, over morning tea in the TARDIS kitchen.
He looked up, startled. “What?”
“Come on, out with it. Something about those Ood’s got you thinking about her. More than usual, I mean.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Donna.”
“Yes, you do. You’re moping into your tea.” He gave her a silent look of warning, as if that would deter her. Silly alien. But softer, she continued, “It would help if you talked about it, you know, Doctor.” She placed a hand over one of his that was clutching at his mug.
He seemed like he was going to hold out and not say a word, then he heaved a big sigh. “Rose was brilliant. Now she’s gone. There isn’t anything else to say about it, Donna.”
“She was there? Last time? With the Devil?” She made inverted commas in the air. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes.” His look became far away and his voice took on that Rose-tone. “She had that same sympathy you did for them. You’re really a lot alike in some ways, you know, you and Rose. Except I don’t want to-” he cut himself off, right before he said too much.
“Mate with me?” she offered.
He gave her a small smile of non-denial.
She could already tell that he wasn’t planning to open up more about the former Ood incident, so instead of pressing him on it, she pushed in a different direction.
“Doctor, when I first met you…”
“Burst uninvited into my TARDIS you mean?” he said with a proper smile.
“Got sucked into a great big alien spaceship because my fiancé poisoned me, yeah.”
His smile faded and he swallowed. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Oh I don’t care about that. I mean, ‘s not what I’m asking is it?”
“What are you asking, Donna?”
“You were crying.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, no doubt wondering at her game. “You remember that, in the middle of all the… shouting? And slapping? And misattributing my planetary origins?”
“Doctor… why were you crying?” she gently prodded.
He swallowed heavily and stood, still clutching his mug. He paced back and forth across the small kitchen a couple times before he answered, like he was speaking into the air. “I’d just lost her. Rose. Well, again. I’d just lost her again. Just seen her for the last time. For weeks I’d fiddled with the TARDIS and worked out equations, just so I could see her again.” He sniffed, put down the mug, thumbed his nose and then leaned against the countertop with his arms folded across his chest.
“What happened?”
“We only had a couple minutes to talk. The connection gave out before I could… before I… There wasn’t enough time,” he concluded.
“To tell her you loved her?”
He looked up at her sharply. “Stop that.”
“What, spaceman? It’s not like I’m reading your mind. You’re just so flippin’ obvious.”
“I’m what?”
“What, you think you’re the only one who’s ever lost someone they loved? It happens to everyone, Doctor.”
“Really? Everyone gets their companion nearly sucked into the Void, rescued at the last minute by a parallel world’s version of her father and stuck in that parallel word forever because the walls between dimensions have permanently closed?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Doctor, but yeah, if you like… metaphorically, at least.”
“I told you Donna. She isn’t dead, she’s gone, lost. It wasn’t her choice and it wasn’t mine. Well, not really, anyway. Well, a little. But never mind! Talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”
> > >
It did though. Oh he’d stormed out of the kitchen that day, but after that morning’s tea, he occasionally opened up more with enough of her (usually gentle) prodding. Maybe she’d missed her calling. Never mind temping, she shoulda been an alien psychoanalyst.
In any case, after that, she’d found out a lot more about Rose and felt like she knew the Doctor so much better for understanding a bit of his past. She got why he did what he did, travelling through time, making those big decisions for everyone else: because he couldn’t control the things that mattered most in his own life. He was always losing people. And losing Rose had done him in in a way he’d never expected-because he never expected to love her as much as he did or for her to be ripped from him so suddenly.
Near as she could figure, Martha had done him a world of good. Been a good friend to him when he needed it and had helped distract him from the ache, gave him someone to care about and protect again. But she’d been swayed by… whatever it is these women saw in him (maybe it was the hair?), which lead to trouble.
By the time she’d met Rose, in that parallel world of her own created by that beetle thing on her back, she’d been convinced that never did two people belong together as much as did the Doctor and Rose. There she was, risking her life, hopping across universes, looking for him, but saving those universes as she went along, just like he’d taught her.
And just that look on his face, oh she’d felt like a proud mama bear, when he realized Rose was behind him. And the look on Rose’s face, all the way up that street, seemed it made all the pain those two had suffered worth it.
But then everything went pear-shaped. Which confirmed that one lesson she’d been learning over and over while travelling: that things never go quite according to plan. Especially when you’re dealing with the Doctor.
__Jackie__
There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for her daughter. Following her back into their original parallel world, well… maybe she’d been a little rash. Rose got that from her. But if Rose was successful, she’d no doubt never see her again. And if Rose wasn’t successful… she’d never see her again. So if her last chance to see her only daughter also helped her save the universe-no the multiverse-all’s the better.
She trusted Rose and knew she was doing the right thing. She didn’t kid herself that Rose needed her, but she wanted to help anyway. Just like when she’d brought Rose that big yellow truck; once she realized how dire the situation was, she couldn’t stand by and do nothing while her daughter risked her life for the world and for the man she loved.
So when she realised what the Doctor in brown meant to do, that he was going to leave Rose, she almost spoke up in her defence. After everything Rose had done for him, had gone through to get to him, he had a hell of a lot of nerve. How dare he just drop her, again? But then she realised something else. That it meant Rose would stay here, in this world, with her family. And what’s more she’d have the love of her life with her. Only in not quite the way she expected. Not the way any of them had expected.
So she snapped her mouth shut on the verbal hiding she’d been about to lash him with and, as inconspicuously as possible, watched the scene play out on the beach. And instead she praised him silently, this selfless, wonderful man who cared so much more for Rose’s happiness than his own. He’d given her back her daughter and gave Rose a man she could live and grow old and die with.
After the TARDIS disappeared, those two he’d left behind clung to each other like breathing depended on it, like the touch of palm to palm was a lifeline, even if they weren’t saying much of anything.
And they never let go. Not on the car ride to the zeppelin that was marked with a few hushed whispers she tried not to listen to, not on the zeppelin ride home, not on the silent procession up the mansion’s stairs when they did get home.
She caught the elbow of Rose’s free arm as they all wearily mounted the stairs and Rose and the Doctor stopped in sync.
“Rose?” she asked, wondering at the simple questions: Where was the Doctor going to sleep? What did they want for breakfast? Wondering at the complicated questions: Was her girl all right? What the hell was going to happen tomorrow?
Rose gave her a soft half-smile, “We’ll be all right, Mum.”
She nodded, still, surprisingly at a loss for words. She bid them goodnight, trusting Rose to sort what needed to be sorted, kissed her sleeping son and then fell, exhausted, into bed with her husband.
The next morning saw Tony off to school and Pete off to work, and the two she was most worried about at the moment still not come down from upstairs. She sat in the kitchen, sipping tea and pretending to peruse a magazine, waiting, tapping her nails on the glossy pages, debating whether or not a wake up call was in order.
At half past 10, Rose wandered in to the kitchen, showered but in lounge clothes, still looking drained and a bit dazed.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she greeted in her ‘everything is just fine’ voice and got up to fix Rose some tea.
“Hey, Mum.” She sat at the table and grabbed the magazine, but didn’t bother opening it.
“Where’s himself, then?”
“Sleeping still.”
A question hung on her tongue, but Rose needed comfort now more than a meddling mum and she didn’t voice it. Rose seemed to read her mind anyway.
“We didn’t shag, Mum.”
She blew out a breath in relief, which made Rose turn a piercing glare at her.
“What, love? It’s… too soon for that, isn’t it?”
“That’s…” Rose began, but then any argument seemed to deflate and she simply agreed, “Yeah. It wasn’t really a question,” she continued softly. “He just held me, all night, even when I snivelled on him. Dunno when we fell asleep.”
This time her sigh of relief was mental as she pictured the image Rose described. Not too long ago, thinking about a bloke in bed with her daughter would have made her reach for the nearest blunt object, but now all she felt was an extreme sense of gratitude. Because Rose wasn’t alone right now.
She knew a thing or two about finding yourself with another version of the man you loved (and how many people in the world could say that?). But this was completely different. Her first Pete was long, long gone when the Doctor played matchmaker and set her up with her current Pete. Rose’s Doctor was… out there, on the other side. Just like he’d been for years. And she had this new man who was and wasn’t him, who loved her fiercely, and could give her things the first couldn’t. But also couldn’t give her things the first could. Oh, her head was beginning to hurt, and this wasn’t even happening to her.
Setting the prepared cuppa in front of Rose, she opened her mouth to voice some of her thoughts out loud when another voice broke through the silence that had fallen over the kitchen. A hoarse shout, the Doctor’s, calling out Rose’s name.
She met her daughter’s eyes in alarm and then both of them flew at a run to the source of the sound. In seconds they’d arrived at Rose’s bedroom door and Rose threw it open in a panic.
The Doctor was sat up in bed, hair all kinds of askew, the white of the duvet cutting his long frame in half where it met his burgundy t-shirt. His eyes were briefly wild and unfocused, but were tamed quite suddenly when they settled on Rose. He attempted then to regain some dignity.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he stammered out, rubbing a hand over his face then scrubbing it through his hair. “Nightmare. Must have been.”
Rose was already going to him, having quickly recovered from her initial shock.
She, on the other hand, was still shaken. Not even when he’d been laid up in Rose’s bed back on the estate suffering that alien sickness, had she ever seen the Doctor seem so helpless, so… human. And then it clicked in her mind. Something she was surprised she hadn’t given much thought to earlier. It wasn’t just Rose who was going to have a hell of a hard time adjusting to this life. It wasn’t just Rose that had something ripped away, who was thrust unprepared into a completely unexpected new and different life and relationship.
She should have realised when she watched them kiss on that beach, when he’d taken her hand, that the other Doctor’s words to Rose were so very true, He needs you.
As Rose crawled onto the bed and into his grateful arms, holding him like he must have held her the night before, it was her eyes, those of his almost instant mother-in-law, that he met across the room. His gaze held worry, embarrassment, and the ever-present apology. She could almost hear him speak the words: I’m so sorry.
She wondered if there was really anything he needed to be apologizing for, this time. Because he’d killed the damn Daleks? Well someone bloody well had to, didn’t they? Or could he think he was responsible for Rose losing her true love? Was the poor bastard going to live out the rest of his one life thinking he wasn’t good enough? She had half a mind to go hug him.
She had a feeling that her wave of sympathy for him wouldn’t last long. Soon enough he’d be blowing up the toaster or something, driving her spare. Ingrained in his DNA, that was, human or not. That was just his way. And she’d give him a good slap then.
But for now, she tried to convey with just a look that for once she wasn’t judging him, that she understood; that everything, somehow, was going to be okay. That, as Rose had said last night, they would be all right, and that she’d be here to help along the way, if she could.
She wondered if he still had any of that alien telepathic stuff in his head because in only a few seconds, she somehow felt that they’d sort of reached a silent understanding. She nodded briefly and turned away to give them their privacy, closing the door quietly behind her.
FIN
Author: karenor
Pairings/Characters: Ten/Rose, Ten II/Rose, hints of Nine/Rose, Donna, Jackie.
Rating: PG
Summary: Oh she felt like a proud mama bear…
Disclaimer: BBC owns all. Including my soul. I'd like it back one day, please. Maybe.
Beta: My darling requialexa.
Author's Notes: Written for the goin_my_way Summer Fun Ficathon, as a gift for hippiebanana132, for prompt #2: The Doctor and Rose through the eyes of another character. With apologies as I meant to write fluff in keeping with the “fun” theme of the ficathon, but what came out was angst, and it’s through the eyes of not one, but two other characters. Spoilers through S4.
__Donna__
It was shortly after they’d left the Planet of the Ood when Donna asked the Doctor about Rose again. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she’d sensed that his previous experience with these gentle, if oddly shaped, aliens had involved her. Something in the timbre of his voice in those brief moments that he talked about the past, the past he’d shared with her.
She hadn’t known him too long by this point, of course, but she knew enough to recognize a bloke sick with longing when she saw it. The time between the first time she’d met him and the second had only slightly dulled that razor sharp hurt she could see behind his eyes.
She hadn’t minced words either. She figured they’d bonded some by now, what with the near death scrapes they’d been in already, blowing up a volcano together, helping to liberate an enslaved people, and all.
> > >
“Tell me about Rose,” she said, over morning tea in the TARDIS kitchen.
He looked up, startled. “What?”
“Come on, out with it. Something about those Ood’s got you thinking about her. More than usual, I mean.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Donna.”
“Yes, you do. You’re moping into your tea.” He gave her a silent look of warning, as if that would deter her. Silly alien. But softer, she continued, “It would help if you talked about it, you know, Doctor.” She placed a hand over one of his that was clutching at his mug.
He seemed like he was going to hold out and not say a word, then he heaved a big sigh. “Rose was brilliant. Now she’s gone. There isn’t anything else to say about it, Donna.”
“She was there? Last time? With the Devil?” She made inverted commas in the air. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes.” His look became far away and his voice took on that Rose-tone. “She had that same sympathy you did for them. You’re really a lot alike in some ways, you know, you and Rose. Except I don’t want to-” he cut himself off, right before he said too much.
“Mate with me?” she offered.
He gave her a small smile of non-denial.
She could already tell that he wasn’t planning to open up more about the former Ood incident, so instead of pressing him on it, she pushed in a different direction.
“Doctor, when I first met you…”
“Burst uninvited into my TARDIS you mean?” he said with a proper smile.
“Got sucked into a great big alien spaceship because my fiancé poisoned me, yeah.”
His smile faded and he swallowed. “Yeah, sorry.”
“Oh I don’t care about that. I mean, ‘s not what I’m asking is it?”
“What are you asking, Donna?”
“You were crying.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, no doubt wondering at her game. “You remember that, in the middle of all the… shouting? And slapping? And misattributing my planetary origins?”
“Doctor… why were you crying?” she gently prodded.
He swallowed heavily and stood, still clutching his mug. He paced back and forth across the small kitchen a couple times before he answered, like he was speaking into the air. “I’d just lost her. Rose. Well, again. I’d just lost her again. Just seen her for the last time. For weeks I’d fiddled with the TARDIS and worked out equations, just so I could see her again.” He sniffed, put down the mug, thumbed his nose and then leaned against the countertop with his arms folded across his chest.
“What happened?”
“We only had a couple minutes to talk. The connection gave out before I could… before I… There wasn’t enough time,” he concluded.
“To tell her you loved her?”
He looked up at her sharply. “Stop that.”
“What, spaceman? It’s not like I’m reading your mind. You’re just so flippin’ obvious.”
“I’m what?”
“What, you think you’re the only one who’s ever lost someone they loved? It happens to everyone, Doctor.”
“Really? Everyone gets their companion nearly sucked into the Void, rescued at the last minute by a parallel world’s version of her father and stuck in that parallel word forever because the walls between dimensions have permanently closed?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Doctor, but yeah, if you like… metaphorically, at least.”
“I told you Donna. She isn’t dead, she’s gone, lost. It wasn’t her choice and it wasn’t mine. Well, not really, anyway. Well, a little. But never mind! Talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”
> > >
It did though. Oh he’d stormed out of the kitchen that day, but after that morning’s tea, he occasionally opened up more with enough of her (usually gentle) prodding. Maybe she’d missed her calling. Never mind temping, she shoulda been an alien psychoanalyst.
In any case, after that, she’d found out a lot more about Rose and felt like she knew the Doctor so much better for understanding a bit of his past. She got why he did what he did, travelling through time, making those big decisions for everyone else: because he couldn’t control the things that mattered most in his own life. He was always losing people. And losing Rose had done him in in a way he’d never expected-because he never expected to love her as much as he did or for her to be ripped from him so suddenly.
Near as she could figure, Martha had done him a world of good. Been a good friend to him when he needed it and had helped distract him from the ache, gave him someone to care about and protect again. But she’d been swayed by… whatever it is these women saw in him (maybe it was the hair?), which lead to trouble.
By the time she’d met Rose, in that parallel world of her own created by that beetle thing on her back, she’d been convinced that never did two people belong together as much as did the Doctor and Rose. There she was, risking her life, hopping across universes, looking for him, but saving those universes as she went along, just like he’d taught her.
And just that look on his face, oh she’d felt like a proud mama bear, when he realized Rose was behind him. And the look on Rose’s face, all the way up that street, seemed it made all the pain those two had suffered worth it.
But then everything went pear-shaped. Which confirmed that one lesson she’d been learning over and over while travelling: that things never go quite according to plan. Especially when you’re dealing with the Doctor.
__Jackie__
There wasn’t much she wouldn’t do for her daughter. Following her back into their original parallel world, well… maybe she’d been a little rash. Rose got that from her. But if Rose was successful, she’d no doubt never see her again. And if Rose wasn’t successful… she’d never see her again. So if her last chance to see her only daughter also helped her save the universe-no the multiverse-all’s the better.
She trusted Rose and knew she was doing the right thing. She didn’t kid herself that Rose needed her, but she wanted to help anyway. Just like when she’d brought Rose that big yellow truck; once she realized how dire the situation was, she couldn’t stand by and do nothing while her daughter risked her life for the world and for the man she loved.
So when she realised what the Doctor in brown meant to do, that he was going to leave Rose, she almost spoke up in her defence. After everything Rose had done for him, had gone through to get to him, he had a hell of a lot of nerve. How dare he just drop her, again? But then she realised something else. That it meant Rose would stay here, in this world, with her family. And what’s more she’d have the love of her life with her. Only in not quite the way she expected. Not the way any of them had expected.
So she snapped her mouth shut on the verbal hiding she’d been about to lash him with and, as inconspicuously as possible, watched the scene play out on the beach. And instead she praised him silently, this selfless, wonderful man who cared so much more for Rose’s happiness than his own. He’d given her back her daughter and gave Rose a man she could live and grow old and die with.
After the TARDIS disappeared, those two he’d left behind clung to each other like breathing depended on it, like the touch of palm to palm was a lifeline, even if they weren’t saying much of anything.
And they never let go. Not on the car ride to the zeppelin that was marked with a few hushed whispers she tried not to listen to, not on the zeppelin ride home, not on the silent procession up the mansion’s stairs when they did get home.
She caught the elbow of Rose’s free arm as they all wearily mounted the stairs and Rose and the Doctor stopped in sync.
“Rose?” she asked, wondering at the simple questions: Where was the Doctor going to sleep? What did they want for breakfast? Wondering at the complicated questions: Was her girl all right? What the hell was going to happen tomorrow?
Rose gave her a soft half-smile, “We’ll be all right, Mum.”
She nodded, still, surprisingly at a loss for words. She bid them goodnight, trusting Rose to sort what needed to be sorted, kissed her sleeping son and then fell, exhausted, into bed with her husband.
The next morning saw Tony off to school and Pete off to work, and the two she was most worried about at the moment still not come down from upstairs. She sat in the kitchen, sipping tea and pretending to peruse a magazine, waiting, tapping her nails on the glossy pages, debating whether or not a wake up call was in order.
At half past 10, Rose wandered in to the kitchen, showered but in lounge clothes, still looking drained and a bit dazed.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” she greeted in her ‘everything is just fine’ voice and got up to fix Rose some tea.
“Hey, Mum.” She sat at the table and grabbed the magazine, but didn’t bother opening it.
“Where’s himself, then?”
“Sleeping still.”
A question hung on her tongue, but Rose needed comfort now more than a meddling mum and she didn’t voice it. Rose seemed to read her mind anyway.
“We didn’t shag, Mum.”
She blew out a breath in relief, which made Rose turn a piercing glare at her.
“What, love? It’s… too soon for that, isn’t it?”
“That’s…” Rose began, but then any argument seemed to deflate and she simply agreed, “Yeah. It wasn’t really a question,” she continued softly. “He just held me, all night, even when I snivelled on him. Dunno when we fell asleep.”
This time her sigh of relief was mental as she pictured the image Rose described. Not too long ago, thinking about a bloke in bed with her daughter would have made her reach for the nearest blunt object, but now all she felt was an extreme sense of gratitude. Because Rose wasn’t alone right now.
She knew a thing or two about finding yourself with another version of the man you loved (and how many people in the world could say that?). But this was completely different. Her first Pete was long, long gone when the Doctor played matchmaker and set her up with her current Pete. Rose’s Doctor was… out there, on the other side. Just like he’d been for years. And she had this new man who was and wasn’t him, who loved her fiercely, and could give her things the first couldn’t. But also couldn’t give her things the first could. Oh, her head was beginning to hurt, and this wasn’t even happening to her.
Setting the prepared cuppa in front of Rose, she opened her mouth to voice some of her thoughts out loud when another voice broke through the silence that had fallen over the kitchen. A hoarse shout, the Doctor’s, calling out Rose’s name.
She met her daughter’s eyes in alarm and then both of them flew at a run to the source of the sound. In seconds they’d arrived at Rose’s bedroom door and Rose threw it open in a panic.
The Doctor was sat up in bed, hair all kinds of askew, the white of the duvet cutting his long frame in half where it met his burgundy t-shirt. His eyes were briefly wild and unfocused, but were tamed quite suddenly when they settled on Rose. He attempted then to regain some dignity.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he stammered out, rubbing a hand over his face then scrubbing it through his hair. “Nightmare. Must have been.”
Rose was already going to him, having quickly recovered from her initial shock.
She, on the other hand, was still shaken. Not even when he’d been laid up in Rose’s bed back on the estate suffering that alien sickness, had she ever seen the Doctor seem so helpless, so… human. And then it clicked in her mind. Something she was surprised she hadn’t given much thought to earlier. It wasn’t just Rose who was going to have a hell of a hard time adjusting to this life. It wasn’t just Rose that had something ripped away, who was thrust unprepared into a completely unexpected new and different life and relationship.
She should have realised when she watched them kiss on that beach, when he’d taken her hand, that the other Doctor’s words to Rose were so very true, He needs you.
As Rose crawled onto the bed and into his grateful arms, holding him like he must have held her the night before, it was her eyes, those of his almost instant mother-in-law, that he met across the room. His gaze held worry, embarrassment, and the ever-present apology. She could almost hear him speak the words: I’m so sorry.
She wondered if there was really anything he needed to be apologizing for, this time. Because he’d killed the damn Daleks? Well someone bloody well had to, didn’t they? Or could he think he was responsible for Rose losing her true love? Was the poor bastard going to live out the rest of his one life thinking he wasn’t good enough? She had half a mind to go hug him.
She had a feeling that her wave of sympathy for him wouldn’t last long. Soon enough he’d be blowing up the toaster or something, driving her spare. Ingrained in his DNA, that was, human or not. That was just his way. And she’d give him a good slap then.
But for now, she tried to convey with just a look that for once she wasn’t judging him, that she understood; that everything, somehow, was going to be okay. That, as Rose had said last night, they would be all right, and that she’d be here to help along the way, if she could.
She wondered if he still had any of that alien telepathic stuff in his head because in only a few seconds, she somehow felt that they’d sort of reached a silent understanding. She nodded briefly and turned away to give them their privacy, closing the door quietly behind her.
FIN