DW Fic: Pausing at the Crossroads 1/1 PG
Title: Pausing at the Crossroads
Written for the Oh She Knows Summer Lovin' Ficathon, as a gift for: missperkigoth
Pairing: Ten/Rose (with references to Nine/Rose)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through S2's Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel.
Beta: Eternal thanks for the beta work are due to dynapink. Any mistakes are mine, mine, mine.
Summary: The events of Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel bring a few old issues to the surface for Rose.
A/N: This is set immediately following the Age of Steel.
"Are you all right?" he asked, throwing the question over his shoulder as they reentered the control room.
Rose turned her head, not wanting the Doctor to see she'd begun to cry again. She hadn't spoken to him since she'd asked to see her mum, then left him in the control room to navigate across universes without an audience.
She'd run to her room and changed her clothes, hoping she could shrug off her memories of the alternate world with them. She'd hoped to cry herself out when she saw her mum, but the memory of her father turning away from her, of her mum being cut up and stuck in a Cyberman suit, and the terrible reality of Mickey staying behind was all still too new.
It didn't matter to Rose that it had all happened in another universe. She could still feel the loss, no matter how many times the Doctor reminded her that those people weren't really her parents and that Mickey had finally found a place where he felt he belonged.
"Yeah," she choked out. "S'fine," she added. She started to walk away, though what she wanted to do was run. She needed to get away from him and his need to explain, to have everything make sense, and just let the feelings he was trying to deny her wash over her until they were finally gone.
"Rose," he began, sounding more like a warning than her name. "You are all right, aren't you?"
"I don't want to talk about this with you," she said, the words rushing together in her haste to get them out before she began to cry. She heard footsteps behind her, sounding cold and hard against the metal grates that made up the floor.
"Who would you like to talk about it with, then?"
She stopped, but didn't turn around, feeling her temper beginning to flare. It felt irrational, and she knew there was no real reason to be so angry with him. It felt good, though. Satisfying, in a horrible way, to have something to channel her energy into. She whirled around as soon as her anger was strong enough to drive the tears back. "Said I was fine."
"You saw your mother trapped in a Cyberman suit, Rose. Your father denied you. Mickey just left you, forever. You can't just take that off the way you did that maid's costume. How, exactly, are you fine?"
"Well, you didn't really want to hear, did you?" she said, finding all the hurt and confusion of the last few days more than adequate to add fuel to her anger. "Kept tellin' me they weren't really my parents, that's all you did."
"They aren't, Rose," he said, as though he was attempting to kindly explain something simple to a very small child.
"But they meant something to me!" she yelled. She saw he was about to speak again, and decided to cut him off. "An' Mickey. You didn't even try to stop him, did you? Just let him go."
"Rose, he's an adult. It was his choice. It was what he wanted. They need him. He has a purpose."
"I told you I didn't want to talk about this," she said, turning away from him. She gasped as he reached out and took her by the wrist, forcing her to turn around again. She made a noise of protest, though he was being careful enough with his grip that it didn't really hurt.
"But why, Rose? That's the real question, isn't it? I thought you were used to this face and this body, but I suppose it's just not good enough for you, is it?"
"What are you talking about? I-"
"New, new Doctor," he said, a caricature of the way he'd said it back on New Earth. "Maybe you'd rather have the old one back."
She stared at him, open-mouthed and completely gobsmacked, wondering what he could possibly have meant by what he'd just said.
"Hardly knew me at all when you talked me into taking you to your father, that first time. That went as horribly wrong as it could possibly go, and most of that your fault, I might add, but you still cried on my shoulder. His shoulder. What's different this time?"
"No, not his shoulder. He's you. You're him." She shook her head, wondering if he was trying to deliberately confuse her.
"Oh, am I? Am I really, to you?"
"Yes."
"Then why are you running away from me? No Mickey to run off and confide in. No Jack around to laugh it off with. Didn't even talk to Jackie about it just now. Aren't I what you've got left?"
She wanted so much to smack him across the face that her hand fairly itched with the desire. She didn't know where this had come from, what exactly had made him go completely 'round the bend, but she was considering the possibility that perhaps their trip across universes had thrown him a bit off kilter.
"Listen, Doctor. I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm going to my room, and I'm going to hope it's all cleared up by the time I come out." She wrenched her arm away from him and began to walk away from him again.
"All right, Rose. Leave me to go lick your wounds. Alone."
She whirled around, advancing on him so quickly that he actually took a step back. "Do you want to know? Do you really want to know?"
"Want to know what?"
"Why I'm not falling apart, crying on your shoulder?"
"Yes, I would like to know that," he said, acting indignant, for reasons she couldn't begin to guess.
"It's been made pretty clear that shoulder doesn't belong to me. Not anymore, if it ever did."
"Is that what you-" he began, cutting himself off and then beginning to laugh. "Rose Tyler, you're jealous."
"Don't be daft," she told him, trying to think of a way, any way, to change the subject.
"Sarah Jane?" he asked, but when she tried to answer him, he stopped her. "No, I think you understand that one well enough, after getting to know her."
"This doesn't have anything to do with-"
"Reinette," he said, voicing his realization in the awed tone of voice he usually reserved for talking about the most wonderful secrets the universe had to offer.
The seconds ticked by while Rose tried to think of something to say. As they passed, she knew it was more and more obvious to him just how much he'd hurt her when he'd left her on that ship for another woman.
"Rose, they were going to kill her," he explained, as though that was all there was to it. "It was a subversion of history. It could have sent a shockwave through all of time if they'd succeeded."
"And that's why you went? It wasn't because you-" she yelled, stopping herself before she said it out loud and made it real.
"It was the right thing to do, Rose. It was the only thing to do."
"And leaving Mickey and me behind? That was the only thing to do?"
"You weren't alone. You had each other. You and Mickey can handle yourselves, and you had the TARDIS there. You know how to activate the emergency programme to get yourself home."
"Right. I could have got us home," Rose agreed sarcastically. He didn't seem to understand that she wouldn't have cared where she was, knowing that he was gone and that he had deliberately chosen to leave her.
Sarah Jane's words came back to her. Some things are worth getting your heart broken for. Rose wasn't so sure anymore. Hadn't been ever since Reinette. She'd just been too terrified to think about it too much.
"I had to do what was best for the timeline. You might have never existed if that timeline had been broken. It could have affected the whole of Earth's history."
"That never used to bother you before. You used to at least try to protect me, even if it might mean the destruction of whatever planet we were on."
"Oh, you mean with my old face, is that right?"
"Maybe, yeah," she said, unsure why he was so obsessed with his previous self all of a sudden, but willing to play along to find out.
"Ah-ha!" he yelled, as if he'd just proved a point, but Rose had no idea what he was talking about. "You really don't see us as the same person, do you?"
"What d'you mean? Of course you're-"
"Picture the man who let the Dalek loose to save you down in Van Statten's bunker, Rose. That's me. Picture the man who tried to let you have your father back even though it goes against everything I've fought to protect. That's me, too. At 10 Downing Street, when I didn't want to save the world because I might lose you? That was me as well."
"I know that," Rose angrily protested, still not understanding what he was talking about.
"No, you don't. From the moment I regenerated you've been treating me differently. I don't know what you need from me. I tried to give you Mickey to keep around, and that still didn't work."
"You thought I wanted Mickey? Here? An' I didn't need Adam, either. As nice as Jack was to have around, I never needed him the way I-" She stopped, her pride making her unwilling to admit how much she needed the Doctor. "You're blind, Doctor. You're blind, and I can't make you see. I never abandoned you for anyone the way you left me for her."
"Really? You didn't just nearly leave me in favor of your father? What if he hadn't walked away from you?"
"I wouldn't leave you, Doctor," Rose said, her voice suddenly much more quiet. "Did you really think I would?"
And there it was, in a nutshell. Things between them had always been unequal, and Rose wasn't surprised to find herself in familiar territory. He knew things, much more than she did. He'd seen everything there was to see, and she was still, and would always be, a wide-eyed tourist. Why shouldn't he be more willing to leave her behind than she was to leave him?
"Rose," he whispered, still breathing hard from their abandoned argument. "I thought you needed him."
"Who? My dad?"
"Your dad, Mickey, Jack...someone," he said, his voice halting at each word as though he was finding it difficult to speak.
"I need you," she admitted, ashamed that she'd held back these words moments ago, the ones he seemed to need to hear. "I need this. I don't care which face you're wearing."
The Doctor studied the floor beneath his feet. "It's only natural for you to be upset, given what's just happened."
"I'm never gonna see either of them again. I should have just said that. I didn't mean to hurt you, Doctor. I was just so-" she said, incapable of defining exactly what she was feeling.
"I know. I should have...well...I shouldn't have pushed you."
Rose laughed softly. "Wouldn't be you if you didn't."
"No," he said, laughing as well. "I suppose I wouldn't, would I?"
"Doctor?" she said, her voice sounding much more hesitant than she was hoping it would. "Why did you think I wasn't as happy with you since you changed? Because I am."
He looked at her a long while, long enough to make her quite uncomfortable. She was afraid he was sizing her up, trying to see what sort of answer she would understand.
"Before I changed, Rose, I don't ever remember wondering if you were about to leave me. Not seriously, anyway. But after Satellite Five..."
He stopped talking, as though his point had been made. Rose wasn't about to let him off quite that easily.
"When?"
"Other than just a minute ago, do you mean? Well, just after I changed, I thought you might-"
"But I didn't," she interrupted.
"No, you didn't. But then you met Sarah Jane, and I thought you might have got the impression that I...well, that I might abandon you."
"D'you think I'd leave you to take that dinner lady job?" she said, trying to lighten the mood, but failing miserably.
"You might well have wondered if I'd abandon you, Rose. That's what I nearly did, isn't it, when I jumped through time on that horse," he whispered seriously.
"You-Doctor, you were doing what you had to do. That's what you do, even when it's hard. I understand that," she said, although she was still wondering if she truly did.
"There just wasn't time to discuss it, Rose. There's no one else to look after things. To look after time itself, how things are meant to be. It's-I'm not supposed to be the only one."
"I know," she told him, moving one step closer to him and running her hand through his hair. She could see that all-too-familiar pain in his eyes, and she hated that this row had brought it out. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. This whole ridiculous thing was just a big misunderstanding. You are important to me, Rose. You know that. I understand that you're upset, but if you don't want to talk about it-"
"No, it's all right. I was being...well, I don't know what I was being. Jus', losing Mickey like that. It's going to be hard, knowing he's not there. Bad as that'll be, though, it would hurt worse to lose you. Guess that's what got me thinking about that spaceship and the clockwork robot things."
"So! That's sorted, then," he said, rubbing his hands together. She blinked confusedly at him, stunned with the abruptness of his change of mood. "Except...Rose Tyler," he said, smiling just a bit and looking awkward as he raised his hand to where hers was still tangled in his hair. "I...well, I do think I'm going to..."
"Going to what?" she asked, waiting for him to leap away to enter a new heading, whisking her away to another adventure.
"Well, if you don't mind...that is to say, if you think you might consent to...well..." he stammered, and she wasn't sure what he could possibly be getting at.
"Doctor?"
"Ah. I suppose I shouldn't ask, should I? No guts, no glory, all of that?"
"Ask what?"
"This," he said, and he seemed decided. He moved toward her in that way he sometimes did, with a deceptive quickness that reminded her that they weren't from the same planet. Her first instinct was that he was about to hug her, realizing only in the last second that he meant to kiss her.
"Oh!" she gasped, just before the moment that their lips would have touched. It seemed to startle him and he pulled away, bumping their noses together quite hard. Rose's hands flew up to cover her nose as a sharp pain forced her eyes shut, but it was quickly gone. When she realized what had just happened, she began to shake with silent laughter, her face covered by her hands.
"Rose! Are you all right?"
"Yeah," she managed to say, pushing the one syllable out between giggles. "M'fine."
"Really, Rose. I should have a look at that. I can't believe-"
"No, it's really fine," she interrupted, pulling her hands away from her face as she tried desperately to stop laughing. "Didn't hurt that much."
"Are you...are you laughing?" he said, pulling away from her a bit. "Are you laughing at me?"
"No, I'm not," she said, giggling helplessly now. "I'm laughing at us."
"Well, that's much better then, isn't it?" he said, putting on an air of being put out, but she could see the smile beginning at the corners of his mouth.
The only response Rose could manage was to burst out in uncontrollable laughter, clutching at her stomach and doubling over. She honestly believed she was about to laugh herself sick, but it felt wonderful after the tortured parade of emotions she'd just been through in the past couple of days.
"You're right, then," he continued, shouting a little over the sound of her laughter. "Better we didn't...you know...lest we lose sight of...well, things," the Doctor said, though she could still barely hear him.
"No!" she said, trying yet again to gain some control over herself. "You're being daft. We're both being daft. And you're changing the subject."
He looked around, at anywhere but at her. "What subject? I don't remember any subject changing, and if there's one thing I know about, Rose, it's changing the subject. Honestly, you really do go blathering on sometimes, and it's down to me to set us right again. Really, I don't know how I-"
His eyes widened and locked on hers as she grabbed his jacket by the lapels and pulled him to her.
"All kidding aside, Doctor," she whispered, her lips just an inch from his, "I think we both know where we were."
He'd wiped the surprised look off of his face, and his features now gave away nothing of what was going on inside his mind. "As much as I'd like to kiss you-not Cassandra in your body, not to save your life-it might not be a good idea, Rose. Mind you, it's quite odd that I've kissed you twice, but you haven't really kissed me even once. Can't believe you don't properly remember either of them. Shame, really-"
"Doctor!" she said, and he blessedly stopped talking. "You're babbling. And since when did you ever play it safe?"
He seemed to take that as a challenge, moving in to kiss her before either of them could change their minds again. Her hands threaded through his hair, then down to caress the back of his neck. He shivered against her, pulling her body tight against his.
She pulled away from his mouth and he pursued her, stealing one more kiss before he let her lips wander the features of his face. She kissed her way over to his jaw and up to his ear, where she sucked his earlobe into her mouth.
"It's a good job I did regenerate, Rose. If I was my previous self, you'd never finish examining those ears I used to have."
She giggled. "I liked those."
"Did you? Did you prefer anything else I used to have?" he asked, and she could nearly hear him pouting.
"I like these, as well. I can like both sets of ears, can't I?"
"Oh, all right," he said. "I like all of your bits, as well."
She laughed again. "Dead romantic, you are."
"See there? You even sound like the previous me."
"Guess you taught me a thing or two."
"Could teach you more than that," he said, his voice lowering an octave as he whispered the words in her ear.
"Well, I could use a little help. Don't really like this blue shirt I threw on, for example," she said, backing away from him and toward her room.
"I would let you go and change on your own, Rose, I really would. It's just that I'm not certain you were taught the proper way to do it. Still perfecting the art of undressing in your time period, if I'm not mistaken."
"Oh, are we?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him as she continued to walk backward. He began to walk as well, stalking toward her at the same slow pace.
"Oh, yes. If there's one thing the Time Lords kept diligent track of, it was the dressing and undressing habits of all the cultures around the galaxy. I'm almost certain...wait," he said, looking upward as though he was working hard to remember something, "yes...humans were cocking that up well into the 24th century."
"Really?" she asked, pulling the shirt up and over her head. "Do go on."
"Hard to explain, really. Much easier to just show you what I mean. From a strictly scientific, practical, undressing-y point of view, of course."
"Of course."
He was the first to break, a mad grin replacing the serious looks they'd both plastered onto their faces. Rose turned and ran, hearing his footsteps falling on the metallic floor just behind her.
The End
Written for the Oh She Knows Summer Lovin' Ficathon, as a gift for: missperkigoth
Pairing: Ten/Rose (with references to Nine/Rose)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through S2's Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel.
Beta: Eternal thanks for the beta work are due to dynapink. Any mistakes are mine, mine, mine.
Summary: The events of Rise of the Cybermen/Age of Steel bring a few old issues to the surface for Rose.
A/N: This is set immediately following the Age of Steel.
"Are you all right?" he asked, throwing the question over his shoulder as they reentered the control room.
Rose turned her head, not wanting the Doctor to see she'd begun to cry again. She hadn't spoken to him since she'd asked to see her mum, then left him in the control room to navigate across universes without an audience.
She'd run to her room and changed her clothes, hoping she could shrug off her memories of the alternate world with them. She'd hoped to cry herself out when she saw her mum, but the memory of her father turning away from her, of her mum being cut up and stuck in a Cyberman suit, and the terrible reality of Mickey staying behind was all still too new.
It didn't matter to Rose that it had all happened in another universe. She could still feel the loss, no matter how many times the Doctor reminded her that those people weren't really her parents and that Mickey had finally found a place where he felt he belonged.
"Yeah," she choked out. "S'fine," she added. She started to walk away, though what she wanted to do was run. She needed to get away from him and his need to explain, to have everything make sense, and just let the feelings he was trying to deny her wash over her until they were finally gone.
"Rose," he began, sounding more like a warning than her name. "You are all right, aren't you?"
"I don't want to talk about this with you," she said, the words rushing together in her haste to get them out before she began to cry. She heard footsteps behind her, sounding cold and hard against the metal grates that made up the floor.
"Who would you like to talk about it with, then?"
She stopped, but didn't turn around, feeling her temper beginning to flare. It felt irrational, and she knew there was no real reason to be so angry with him. It felt good, though. Satisfying, in a horrible way, to have something to channel her energy into. She whirled around as soon as her anger was strong enough to drive the tears back. "Said I was fine."
"You saw your mother trapped in a Cyberman suit, Rose. Your father denied you. Mickey just left you, forever. You can't just take that off the way you did that maid's costume. How, exactly, are you fine?"
"Well, you didn't really want to hear, did you?" she said, finding all the hurt and confusion of the last few days more than adequate to add fuel to her anger. "Kept tellin' me they weren't really my parents, that's all you did."
"They aren't, Rose," he said, as though he was attempting to kindly explain something simple to a very small child.
"But they meant something to me!" she yelled. She saw he was about to speak again, and decided to cut him off. "An' Mickey. You didn't even try to stop him, did you? Just let him go."
"Rose, he's an adult. It was his choice. It was what he wanted. They need him. He has a purpose."
"I told you I didn't want to talk about this," she said, turning away from him. She gasped as he reached out and took her by the wrist, forcing her to turn around again. She made a noise of protest, though he was being careful enough with his grip that it didn't really hurt.
"But why, Rose? That's the real question, isn't it? I thought you were used to this face and this body, but I suppose it's just not good enough for you, is it?"
"What are you talking about? I-"
"New, new Doctor," he said, a caricature of the way he'd said it back on New Earth. "Maybe you'd rather have the old one back."
She stared at him, open-mouthed and completely gobsmacked, wondering what he could possibly have meant by what he'd just said.
"Hardly knew me at all when you talked me into taking you to your father, that first time. That went as horribly wrong as it could possibly go, and most of that your fault, I might add, but you still cried on my shoulder. His shoulder. What's different this time?"
"No, not his shoulder. He's you. You're him." She shook her head, wondering if he was trying to deliberately confuse her.
"Oh, am I? Am I really, to you?"
"Yes."
"Then why are you running away from me? No Mickey to run off and confide in. No Jack around to laugh it off with. Didn't even talk to Jackie about it just now. Aren't I what you've got left?"
She wanted so much to smack him across the face that her hand fairly itched with the desire. She didn't know where this had come from, what exactly had made him go completely 'round the bend, but she was considering the possibility that perhaps their trip across universes had thrown him a bit off kilter.
"Listen, Doctor. I don't know what's wrong with you. I'm going to my room, and I'm going to hope it's all cleared up by the time I come out." She wrenched her arm away from him and began to walk away from him again.
"All right, Rose. Leave me to go lick your wounds. Alone."
She whirled around, advancing on him so quickly that he actually took a step back. "Do you want to know? Do you really want to know?"
"Want to know what?"
"Why I'm not falling apart, crying on your shoulder?"
"Yes, I would like to know that," he said, acting indignant, for reasons she couldn't begin to guess.
"It's been made pretty clear that shoulder doesn't belong to me. Not anymore, if it ever did."
"Is that what you-" he began, cutting himself off and then beginning to laugh. "Rose Tyler, you're jealous."
"Don't be daft," she told him, trying to think of a way, any way, to change the subject.
"Sarah Jane?" he asked, but when she tried to answer him, he stopped her. "No, I think you understand that one well enough, after getting to know her."
"This doesn't have anything to do with-"
"Reinette," he said, voicing his realization in the awed tone of voice he usually reserved for talking about the most wonderful secrets the universe had to offer.
The seconds ticked by while Rose tried to think of something to say. As they passed, she knew it was more and more obvious to him just how much he'd hurt her when he'd left her on that ship for another woman.
"Rose, they were going to kill her," he explained, as though that was all there was to it. "It was a subversion of history. It could have sent a shockwave through all of time if they'd succeeded."
"And that's why you went? It wasn't because you-" she yelled, stopping herself before she said it out loud and made it real.
"It was the right thing to do, Rose. It was the only thing to do."
"And leaving Mickey and me behind? That was the only thing to do?"
"You weren't alone. You had each other. You and Mickey can handle yourselves, and you had the TARDIS there. You know how to activate the emergency programme to get yourself home."
"Right. I could have got us home," Rose agreed sarcastically. He didn't seem to understand that she wouldn't have cared where she was, knowing that he was gone and that he had deliberately chosen to leave her.
Sarah Jane's words came back to her. Some things are worth getting your heart broken for. Rose wasn't so sure anymore. Hadn't been ever since Reinette. She'd just been too terrified to think about it too much.
"I had to do what was best for the timeline. You might have never existed if that timeline had been broken. It could have affected the whole of Earth's history."
"That never used to bother you before. You used to at least try to protect me, even if it might mean the destruction of whatever planet we were on."
"Oh, you mean with my old face, is that right?"
"Maybe, yeah," she said, unsure why he was so obsessed with his previous self all of a sudden, but willing to play along to find out.
"Ah-ha!" he yelled, as if he'd just proved a point, but Rose had no idea what he was talking about. "You really don't see us as the same person, do you?"
"What d'you mean? Of course you're-"
"Picture the man who let the Dalek loose to save you down in Van Statten's bunker, Rose. That's me. Picture the man who tried to let you have your father back even though it goes against everything I've fought to protect. That's me, too. At 10 Downing Street, when I didn't want to save the world because I might lose you? That was me as well."
"I know that," Rose angrily protested, still not understanding what he was talking about.
"No, you don't. From the moment I regenerated you've been treating me differently. I don't know what you need from me. I tried to give you Mickey to keep around, and that still didn't work."
"You thought I wanted Mickey? Here? An' I didn't need Adam, either. As nice as Jack was to have around, I never needed him the way I-" She stopped, her pride making her unwilling to admit how much she needed the Doctor. "You're blind, Doctor. You're blind, and I can't make you see. I never abandoned you for anyone the way you left me for her."
"Really? You didn't just nearly leave me in favor of your father? What if he hadn't walked away from you?"
"I wouldn't leave you, Doctor," Rose said, her voice suddenly much more quiet. "Did you really think I would?"
And there it was, in a nutshell. Things between them had always been unequal, and Rose wasn't surprised to find herself in familiar territory. He knew things, much more than she did. He'd seen everything there was to see, and she was still, and would always be, a wide-eyed tourist. Why shouldn't he be more willing to leave her behind than she was to leave him?
"Rose," he whispered, still breathing hard from their abandoned argument. "I thought you needed him."
"Who? My dad?"
"Your dad, Mickey, Jack...someone," he said, his voice halting at each word as though he was finding it difficult to speak.
"I need you," she admitted, ashamed that she'd held back these words moments ago, the ones he seemed to need to hear. "I need this. I don't care which face you're wearing."
The Doctor studied the floor beneath his feet. "It's only natural for you to be upset, given what's just happened."
"I'm never gonna see either of them again. I should have just said that. I didn't mean to hurt you, Doctor. I was just so-" she said, incapable of defining exactly what she was feeling.
"I know. I should have...well...I shouldn't have pushed you."
Rose laughed softly. "Wouldn't be you if you didn't."
"No," he said, laughing as well. "I suppose I wouldn't, would I?"
"Doctor?" she said, her voice sounding much more hesitant than she was hoping it would. "Why did you think I wasn't as happy with you since you changed? Because I am."
He looked at her a long while, long enough to make her quite uncomfortable. She was afraid he was sizing her up, trying to see what sort of answer she would understand.
"Before I changed, Rose, I don't ever remember wondering if you were about to leave me. Not seriously, anyway. But after Satellite Five..."
He stopped talking, as though his point had been made. Rose wasn't about to let him off quite that easily.
"When?"
"Other than just a minute ago, do you mean? Well, just after I changed, I thought you might-"
"But I didn't," she interrupted.
"No, you didn't. But then you met Sarah Jane, and I thought you might have got the impression that I...well, that I might abandon you."
"D'you think I'd leave you to take that dinner lady job?" she said, trying to lighten the mood, but failing miserably.
"You might well have wondered if I'd abandon you, Rose. That's what I nearly did, isn't it, when I jumped through time on that horse," he whispered seriously.
"You-Doctor, you were doing what you had to do. That's what you do, even when it's hard. I understand that," she said, although she was still wondering if she truly did.
"There just wasn't time to discuss it, Rose. There's no one else to look after things. To look after time itself, how things are meant to be. It's-I'm not supposed to be the only one."
"I know," she told him, moving one step closer to him and running her hand through his hair. She could see that all-too-familiar pain in his eyes, and she hated that this row had brought it out. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. This whole ridiculous thing was just a big misunderstanding. You are important to me, Rose. You know that. I understand that you're upset, but if you don't want to talk about it-"
"No, it's all right. I was being...well, I don't know what I was being. Jus', losing Mickey like that. It's going to be hard, knowing he's not there. Bad as that'll be, though, it would hurt worse to lose you. Guess that's what got me thinking about that spaceship and the clockwork robot things."
"So! That's sorted, then," he said, rubbing his hands together. She blinked confusedly at him, stunned with the abruptness of his change of mood. "Except...Rose Tyler," he said, smiling just a bit and looking awkward as he raised his hand to where hers was still tangled in his hair. "I...well, I do think I'm going to..."
"Going to what?" she asked, waiting for him to leap away to enter a new heading, whisking her away to another adventure.
"Well, if you don't mind...that is to say, if you think you might consent to...well..." he stammered, and she wasn't sure what he could possibly be getting at.
"Doctor?"
"Ah. I suppose I shouldn't ask, should I? No guts, no glory, all of that?"
"Ask what?"
"This," he said, and he seemed decided. He moved toward her in that way he sometimes did, with a deceptive quickness that reminded her that they weren't from the same planet. Her first instinct was that he was about to hug her, realizing only in the last second that he meant to kiss her.
"Oh!" she gasped, just before the moment that their lips would have touched. It seemed to startle him and he pulled away, bumping their noses together quite hard. Rose's hands flew up to cover her nose as a sharp pain forced her eyes shut, but it was quickly gone. When she realized what had just happened, she began to shake with silent laughter, her face covered by her hands.
"Rose! Are you all right?"
"Yeah," she managed to say, pushing the one syllable out between giggles. "M'fine."
"Really, Rose. I should have a look at that. I can't believe-"
"No, it's really fine," she interrupted, pulling her hands away from her face as she tried desperately to stop laughing. "Didn't hurt that much."
"Are you...are you laughing?" he said, pulling away from her a bit. "Are you laughing at me?"
"No, I'm not," she said, giggling helplessly now. "I'm laughing at us."
"Well, that's much better then, isn't it?" he said, putting on an air of being put out, but she could see the smile beginning at the corners of his mouth.
The only response Rose could manage was to burst out in uncontrollable laughter, clutching at her stomach and doubling over. She honestly believed she was about to laugh herself sick, but it felt wonderful after the tortured parade of emotions she'd just been through in the past couple of days.
"You're right, then," he continued, shouting a little over the sound of her laughter. "Better we didn't...you know...lest we lose sight of...well, things," the Doctor said, though she could still barely hear him.
"No!" she said, trying yet again to gain some control over herself. "You're being daft. We're both being daft. And you're changing the subject."
He looked around, at anywhere but at her. "What subject? I don't remember any subject changing, and if there's one thing I know about, Rose, it's changing the subject. Honestly, you really do go blathering on sometimes, and it's down to me to set us right again. Really, I don't know how I-"
His eyes widened and locked on hers as she grabbed his jacket by the lapels and pulled him to her.
"All kidding aside, Doctor," she whispered, her lips just an inch from his, "I think we both know where we were."
He'd wiped the surprised look off of his face, and his features now gave away nothing of what was going on inside his mind. "As much as I'd like to kiss you-not Cassandra in your body, not to save your life-it might not be a good idea, Rose. Mind you, it's quite odd that I've kissed you twice, but you haven't really kissed me even once. Can't believe you don't properly remember either of them. Shame, really-"
"Doctor!" she said, and he blessedly stopped talking. "You're babbling. And since when did you ever play it safe?"
He seemed to take that as a challenge, moving in to kiss her before either of them could change their minds again. Her hands threaded through his hair, then down to caress the back of his neck. He shivered against her, pulling her body tight against his.
She pulled away from his mouth and he pursued her, stealing one more kiss before he let her lips wander the features of his face. She kissed her way over to his jaw and up to his ear, where she sucked his earlobe into her mouth.
"It's a good job I did regenerate, Rose. If I was my previous self, you'd never finish examining those ears I used to have."
She giggled. "I liked those."
"Did you? Did you prefer anything else I used to have?" he asked, and she could nearly hear him pouting.
"I like these, as well. I can like both sets of ears, can't I?"
"Oh, all right," he said. "I like all of your bits, as well."
She laughed again. "Dead romantic, you are."
"See there? You even sound like the previous me."
"Guess you taught me a thing or two."
"Could teach you more than that," he said, his voice lowering an octave as he whispered the words in her ear.
"Well, I could use a little help. Don't really like this blue shirt I threw on, for example," she said, backing away from him and toward her room.
"I would let you go and change on your own, Rose, I really would. It's just that I'm not certain you were taught the proper way to do it. Still perfecting the art of undressing in your time period, if I'm not mistaken."
"Oh, are we?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at him as she continued to walk backward. He began to walk as well, stalking toward her at the same slow pace.
"Oh, yes. If there's one thing the Time Lords kept diligent track of, it was the dressing and undressing habits of all the cultures around the galaxy. I'm almost certain...wait," he said, looking upward as though he was working hard to remember something, "yes...humans were cocking that up well into the 24th century."
"Really?" she asked, pulling the shirt up and over her head. "Do go on."
"Hard to explain, really. Much easier to just show you what I mean. From a strictly scientific, practical, undressing-y point of view, of course."
"Of course."
He was the first to break, a mad grin replacing the serious looks they'd both plastered onto their faces. Rose turned and ran, hearing his footsteps falling on the metallic floor just behind her.
The End