Fic: To Bring You Back (1/?)
Title: To Bring You Back
Characters/Pairing: 10/Rose, Mickey, Reinette
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, just playing ^-^
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: Updates will be weekly... and already I'm two days late... this will be fun ^-^ - oh and sorry for mislabelling the prologue as chapter one... has been fixed but no doubt will have confused and annoyed someone... besides myself ^-^
Prologue,
Chapter 1
Rose had long since shown Mickey around the TARDIS, (he hardly needed to know more than the essentials; bedroom, wardrobe, bathrooms and the bins, which for some reason were suspiciously close to where he would be sleeping. She wondered if that was due to the Doctor's influence on the TARDIS), and they now sat in the kitchen, the last stop on their tour, where Mickey had decided they both needed tea. He would have suggested something stronger but there was no pub down the road and no game on so he had to admit that tea might actually be the better (and only) option; Rose needed to lose the stress that had made her so tense. He could see it in the way she moved, the way she held herself, her fixed expression of utter blankness, the hint of a fake-calm smile and the pain burning behind her eyes.
So they sat at the kitchen table of the TARDIS and while Mickey watched her over the lip of his mug, Rose sat and contemplated what would happen next. With both hands wrapped around her mug, her palms to its smooth sides for warmth, she watched the wafting steam, its whirls and eddies as it wound upwards towards her face and she remembered her mum and her other home and her exploding job in the familiar smell.
She remembered when she had first seen the Doctor. Not the old Doctor ('the proper Doctor'), but the one he had so recently changed into. She had asked him, almost immediately after he changed, while she was still trying to understand that it was the same man with a new face (‘new everything’); she'd asked him if he wanted her to go home. She had wondered if he still wanted her, sure that he wouldn’t. She had asked him if he wanted her to go and he had said 'no' so fast and forcefully it had made her jump. She had heard the note of panic in his voice and, at the time, she had been reassured, if only a little. He had changed completely but he still wanted her, if nothing else he was the same in that respect at least.
It had gotten her through their first few adventures together. She had grown to lo- ... she liked this Doctor immensely, both her Doctors, but she wasn’t so sure things were the same for him anymore. He had been panicked when he thought she might leave him, but now she knew why.
It wasn’t because he had feelings for her. It was because she was his old companion. She was like... she blew steam from the surface of her tea and considered thoughtfully. She was his training wheels. She was the practice companion for this version of himself. Meeting Sarah Jane had reinforced that idea - the woman had been the companion to a different self as well and he had left her behind, never mentioning her again... and now he had a new one.
He had told Rose, so fervently, that he wouldn’t leave her behind like that and he hadn’t lied, he just hadn’t finished that sentence; he hadn’t added the word that changed his meaning altogether - yet. On New Earth there had been no room for old humans. She supposed it was the same for him. New new Doctor, no room for old companions. But he was lonely and she knew it. If she had left him then he would have been alone. So he had kept her for as long as he had needed to, and now the new new Doctor had his new new companion. Her heart hurt and her head pounded.
She was terrified to ask him that question again. "Do you want me to go?" It hung in the air inside her mind as she knew it would if she said it aloud and it scared her, because this time she thought she knew the answer. And just as he himself had that day, the answer had changed completely. The training wheels were ready to be discarded.
She shook, not knowing which of the many feelings, physical or emotional had caused it - there were just too many. Mickey looked on in concern and when Rose looked up she realised how withdrawn she had become in such a small amount of time and how somber the mood must seem to Mickey. She hoped he knew it wasn’t always like this. Not sure what else to say she simply muttered,
"Sorry."
Surprised he blinked. "Why?"
"You just seem worried, if it’s 'cause of me then I'm sorry."
"Are you ok?" He asked quietly after a moment. She looked at him before standing and putting her mug in the sink, washing away the undrunk tea.
"'m always ok." She said with a half smile that was gone by the time she turned around. "I might go to bed, do you need anything else?"
"No. Just..." She turned to look at him when he didn’t continue.
"What?'
"Just, don’t worry 'k? Things will work out." He finished a little lamely. She smiled, though it didn’t reassure either of them.
"Yeah, course they will. G’night Mickey."
"Yeah, night." He muttered to her back.
-~-
Mickey wasn’t sure how long he sat and stared into his tea but eventually he looked up to see the Doctor, hands in his coat pockets, leaning against the doorframe across the room. He wasn’t looking at him so much as through him, and Mickey wondered how long he'd been there for. It puzzled him further when it took a solid few minutes for the normally chatty Doctor to speak, and when he did it was rather seriously.
"Where'd you guys run off to before?" He said it fairly lightly, though the gravity of the question was implied by his expression and Mickey wondered if he and Rose practiced their blank, mask-like faces together in the mirror, though the Doctor's was only uselessly covering what was obvious. He wondered why the Time Lord felt the need to hide his feelings for Rose and the worry he had clearly felt at discovering their absence. Mickey knew that to just show Rose that side of him would take away the pain in her eyes that he was sure the Doctor was still blissfully unaware of.
"Rose took me on the grand tour. Love where the bins are by the way." The Doctor noticed his irritation and smiled slightly.
"Yeah, me too." The smile turned into a grin when Mickey shot him a glare, but it was gone a second later.
"You been showing her 'round too then?" Mickey asked with no obvious inflection to his tone. The Doctor couldn’t read him and it unnerved him a little. Mickey was always so open, so obvious in his emotions and objectives that not being able to read him felt like losing one of his senses, leaving him slightly off-balance.
"Yeah..." Unsure of what else to say the Doctor simply stopped. He wasn’t sure of what Rose and Mickey thought of Reinette. He didn’t know if they knew that he only intended to take her on one trip before returning her to France, nor what they thought of the situation. He hadn’t thought to ask, he simply assumed it would be ok. 'If you don’t like it go home'. His previous self's words echoed in his head for a moment but he knew they no longer applied. Especially not to Rose, this was her home now, she had admitted it more than once and it went without saying regardless. She could stay with him until she died if that’s what she wanted, he would never go back on that. He didn’t think he could.
The Doctor was hesitant to ask Mickey the question he so badly wanted to. He didn’t know where things stood anymore and not knowing things irritated him enough without the addition of these new and strange dynamics. He hadn’t anticipated that the addition to the TARDIS would upset the balance as much as it seemed to. So he pushed aside his pride for once, he would need to know what was happening before he could fix any of it.
"Are you ok?" He asked.
Just because he was going to have to ask the hard questions didn’t mean he couldn’t do it in a round about kind of way.
Mickey looked surprised before a knowing expression crossed his face and the Doctor found he hated that look on Mickey.
"Yup, I'm fine." He said, emphasizing his point and irritating the Doctor, the latter’s face scrunching ever so slightly in annoyance which made Mickey's smirk grow.
"Good," the Doctor replied, clearly thinking it was anything but at that particular moment, "and, um, Rose? How's she?"
Mickey noticed his sudden, if slight, hesitance and he sobered a little. This was why Mickey hated the Doctor calling him an idiot so much. Pot. Kettle. Black.
"She's gone to bed."
The Doctor's brow furrowed, both at his tone and because it was not the answer he was looking for; not an answer to the question he had asked at all actually, he’d said How not Where. What an idiot, did he have to spell it out?
"So, she's... ok then?" He ventured.
Honestly, Mickey thought, how thick could he get? There were all kinds of things he wanted to say to him then, especially as Rose's friend, but being her friend he knew what she wanted him to say. And what she wanted in this instance came first. Glaring more than a little at the Time Lord, Mickey replied rather grudgingly,
"Yeah. Yeah she’s... fine. I'm gonna go to bed. Big day tomorrow no doubt." He got up and dumped his mug in the sink with a clatter of porcelain on metal, before making his way to his room.
-~-
The Doctor stood in the doorway a moment longer, hands in his pockets and mind elsewhere, before silently making his way down the corridor.
Being a permanent resident of the TARDIS meant that Rose's bedroom was on the hall leading directly from the console room, unlike Mickey's or Reinette's which were on the other side of the kitchen and, in Mickey's case, closer to the wardrobe by the bins. The Doctor smirked inwardly for a moment. As it was the third door down the hall, one couldn’t reach the console room without walking past Rose's first (though this changed occasionally when she wanted privacy or the TARDIS was feeling cheeky).
Tonight however, her bedroom was where it usually was and the Doctor stopped outside her door for a moment. He even went so far as to put his hand on the doorknob, wondering whether he dared to check on her, to see if she was sleeping yet and to find out whether it was just him or the TARDIS had made the metal in his hand particularly cold for a reason.
Eventually he thought better of it and after a moment let the hand drop again before continuing on down the hall to the console room to fiddle with wires and tweak circuits for the remainder of what passed as night on his (frankly magnificent) space ship.
-~-
Rose walked into the console room the next morning feeling a lot less than rested and more than a little depressed. She reasoned that it must have been the not knowing - would the Doctor ask her to leave? Would he kick her out? Or would he just wait until she realised she wasn’t welcome anymore and hope she left when she got the message?
She thought it might have been the not knowing, but she knew that once she had her answer and there was nothing to be done she would feel a whole lot worse. For some reason that seemed to give her the strength to get up and dressed and to the console room as though everything was normal. She didn’t cry. She had done so a little last night as she fell asleep listening to the comforting hum of the TARDIS. She would miss this place when she did have to go, and her misery had led her mind to wander the already worn paths of her memories with the Doctor; everything they'd done and seen together, with the backdrop of the slightest pain, golden light and singing that wasn’t quite singing. She knew she would probably soon feel a whole lot worse so she pushed herself to be normal until then.
It made no difference in the end. She could have been sobbing uncontrollably when she walked into the console room and she doubted the Doctor would have noticed, whereas no matter how normal she acted or tried to appear Mickey noticed everything. Reinette, perched on the edge of the jump seat and looking strangely normal though very self conscious and slightly awkward in the way she held herself in a pair of jeans and a nondescript, pale green T-shirt, was the middle ground in emotion.
Somewhere between Mickey's close observation and concern-creased brow and the Doctor's vague "morning" from under the console, Reinette looked at her and, though the French woman clearly also saw something was wrong in Rose’s tired eyes and blank expression, she didn’t comment and Rose saw only the faint reflection of Mickey's concern in her eyes before she turned back to the Doctor who had just told her something about jelly babies in the wiring.
Rose wondered briefly why she wasn’t overly jealous of Reinette. She was of course envious that she had the Doctor's complete attention and that he really seemed to be in love with her, but aside from that, she was also fairly certain that she could have as good a friendship with her as she had managed to create with Sarah Jane. Both women were impressive in their own rights - strong, smart, independent. Meeting her had put a lot into perspective and so the twinge of jealousy she felt now didn’t really register.
Although upon reflection she realised that may have been due to the crushing hopelessness that had settled over her at the prospect of the Doctor not wanting her - it didn’t matter who it was because of - and facing the prospect of having to leave him and the TARDIS. The Doctor suddenly poked his grinning head up from under the grating and hauled himself out quickly before spinning maniacally around the controls, setting their destination as soon as it occurred to him. Rose shuddered. She suddenly had the horrible feeling that this would be her last trip in the TARDIS, bar the one that would take her home.
-~-
Mickey looked from Reinette to Rose when the latter walked in looking disheveled, tired and thoroughly miserable. She was wearing a pair of dark jeans and a black hoody with her hair surrounding her head in a lovely blonde mess, all of which only served to emphasize her pale features though she was clearly making an effort, no matter how fruitless, to hide how she looked and felt. Glancing back at Reinette he noticed that, like him, she seemed concerned.
He hadn’t really judged her in the first place but he still felt the need now to reassess the situation, realising that though these two women were in varying degrees of love with the Doctor, Rose really was the more important to him. Now that they were both here Mickey could see that so clearly for it to be blindingly obvious. It was a 'duh' moment. Sure, when the Doctor had been on his own with Reinette in France she had occupied his attention implicitly, but then Rose did much the same when they were together and Mickey knew that their relationship went deeper than that. Somehow, Rose understood the Time Lord, and occasionally the Doctor had shown insight when it came to her as well, though he was doing a brilliant job of not doing so this minute; when it counted.
When these two women were in the same room, in neutral territory so to speak, it was clear which one the Doctor was in love with and which one he was using this trip to proffer his gratitude to. Looking at the Doctor, Mickey knew, he had crashed through a time window to save one woman from immediate danger as he would do with anyone, giving everything that was important to him impulsively so that she might live; but he had come back having had time to consider a whole other way of life, a more relaxed kind of life with a woman who loved him, before turning it down, for the other.
Looking at Rose though, Mickey could tell that these conclusions hadn’t occurred to her. That the considerations leading to these conclusions hadn’t even entered her head. Rose was thinking down a different path entirely and looking at her now, Mickey knew it was one he needed to pull her off of, if only for her health. She seemed completely despondent and the dark smudges under her eyes complimented the sag to her shoulders. She clearly hadn’t slept well, if at all, and she didn’t look like she wanted to cry, she looked like she was beyond that.
Before he had even taken one step towards her however, the Doctor had sprung up from his hole like an over-zealous weasel and had started taking them somewhere new.
As the Doctor threw the last lever - with more enthusiasm that was strictly called for - he braced himself around Reinette, holding her against the jump seat knowing that she wouldn’t have expected the resulting turbulence. At the sudden rocking she screamed in shock, albeit in a quiet, dainty sort of way and gasped before laughing once it was over.
After making sure she was ok (and receiving a shocked and very elated look from Reinette which made him grin) he turned to check Rose and Mickey, his grin faltering when he found Mickey holding Rose against one of the support columns of the room much like he had held Reinette, and speaking to her very softly.
Mickey of course had seen the manic grin that had taken over his face as the Doctor had grabbed that last lever, knowing it would send both himself and Rose to the ground even as he saw the Doctor move towards Reinette. He wasn’t an idiot, he knew he was smart… could be smart - but he was startled afterwards by how fast he had thought through the next few seconds as he instinctively threw himself towards Rose and pushed her back into a support column, holding himself and her steady against it. When he looked down at her face just beneath his he saw the bewilderment underneath the blank look she was wearing that told him he had done the right thing. She hadn’t seen the sudden turbulence coming and even after it had ended she looked as though she still wasn’t expecting it to begin. She would have been thrown around the room had he not acted so quickly.
"You ok?" he asked very softly, not wanting to startle her anymore than she seemed to be. He was worried in the sudden still of the room that he had been too forceful in pushing her back and bracing her and himself against the coral-like strut.
"That... we just..." she shook her head slightly, blonde hair falling everywhere, and looked up at him, a little more recognition in her eyes now, "yeah, yeah fine, sorry."
He smiled slightly, fondly. "Stop apologizin'" His gaze was still concerned as it rested on her face and didn’t budge, he was assessing her and she felt a sudden rush of gratitude that caused tears to spring up in her eyes and prompted him to ask her again, "You sure? You’re really ok? Not hurt or anythin'?" She smiled, nodding in small, slightly jerky movements and he smiled again.
-~-
From across the room the Doctor watched the small whispered exchange, wanting to go over and check Rose himself as there was clearly something wrong, but when she smiled and nodded he knew she was ok for the moment. Still, it didn’t stop the slightest twinge of jealousy to spark through his chest. Why had Mickey felt the need to push Rose into one of the columns and hold her there against himself through the turbulence? Rogue thoughts of ex-s getting back together and a shared past bit at him but he brushed those aside. He felt like he was missing something huge about this situation, something that Mickey had felt the need to keep from him last night and that had simultaneously made the guy look like he wanted to deck him; though to be fair he always seemed to want to do that a little bit anyway, so that may have nothing to do with it.
Groaning ever so slightly in frustration, the Doctor forced himself to focus on what he was doing. Rose and Mickey would be here tomorrow but today was about thanking Reinette, he could sort the rest later.
He turned to Reinette and held out his arm;
"So, shall we see the magnificent place I have brought us to?" She laughed and put her hand on the proffered appendage, letting him lead her to the doors and gasping when he opened them with a flourish.
-~-
Adventure is about to ensue I promise ^-^
I love reviews... I do, really I do ^-^
Chapter 2