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Rose laughed as she leaned onto the Doctor’s shoulder. She still had to be taller than Rose, didn’t she? “I can’t believe you just shoved us all in the TARDIS and found a tractor beam!” They were now at Christmas dinner at Jackie’s flat. The pair of them were standing over the old Christmas tree that Jackie brought back out.
“Well, I think it was much easier than the alternative. I’m not sure I like fighting very much this time around. Done too much of that in my past two lives. I’m not a warrior, I’m just a nutty woman in a box.” Rose stopped leaning on the Doctor. She turned her head and parted her mouth in confusion.
“Just you?”
The Doctor’s eyes widened and she blushed. “Well I hope not, I’d love for you to come along again, but I thought because I changed,” into a woman was left unspoken in the air. Rose heard what she was trying to say. “That you wouldn’t want me anymore.” Rose swallowed a breath and licked her lips.
“Doctor, I never planned to admit this, but I guess I should. I was in love with you, like arse over kettle in love with you.” The Doctor turned her head and she looked down at Rose, who simply shrugged in return. “Thing is, I’m straight, least I think I am.”
“I’m the same person,” The Doctor interjected, suddenly very scared at where the conversation was going.
“I know that! I saw you change right in front of me. The thing is, you might be the exact same person you were, but I don’t know how I feel right now, or what I feel. It's all so confusing and jumbled up in my head. I've never been in this situation before. Who knows, not like you’re a human anyway, might fall in love all over again, might even be attracted again.” The tips of Rose’s ears reddened slightly thinking of the Doctor earlier. "I don't know anything yet, but I do know this." The Doctor looked down at her with wide eyes. She swallowed a breath and was about to speak when Rose moved her finger up to stop her. “I don’t want to stop traveling with you, Doctor.”
The Doctor sighed in relief. “That’s good, after your confession I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to let you go.”
“I didn’t start traveling with you because I fancied you and I’m certainly not going to stop now that you’ve become a woman. I belong in the TARDIS with you and I don’t care if we’re just friends.”
“Well,” the Doctor said, rocking on her feet lightly. “I’d love for you to come, that didn’t change. I feel the–” Rose shushed her.
“I’m sorry, but I just can’t handle hearing those words coming from another person’s lips. It may be you in there, but it’s not you,” Rose motioned to her body. “Out here.”
“I see,” the Doctor said with a nod. She pressed her tongue to the inside of her bottom lip. That wasn't what the Doctor was expecting, but her admission earlier was more than enough to inspire her to try. She hoped Rose would be able to come to the conclusion that she was still in love with her. The Doctor wanted that so desperately. After all she had lost, she needed something and that something was Rose. She loved her so much she turned into a woman. She hoped the universe had some sort of plan for them, why turn her into a woman if the pair had loved each other when they were opposite genders? Rassilon, the Doctor hoped this was a test Rose could pass.
“Rose! Doctor! Come over here!”
“In a minute, Mum!” Rose called. She looked over to the Doctor with a bit of fondness. “I know you hate domestics,” Rose said with a sigh.
“After the past couple days we’ve had, I’m happy for these moments, really. It means we’re alive. I haven’t regenerated like that before. I mean, I’ve had some rough regenerations in the past, my fourth go at it comes to mind. Oh, I was blonde then too.” She laughed lightly and wrapped her arm around Rose’s shoulder. “Do you know why I regenerated into a woman?” Rose shook her head. “Regeneration can be random, like from my first to my second, and by first to second, I mean second body to third body. Other times, my body is based on things I thought while regenerating, or what I wanted to do in my previous body that I didn’t get to do. Sometimes I’ve even regenerated into people I’ve met before. Like Maxil, this bloke shot me, and then later in life, I regenerated to look like him!”
“Did you meet someone who looked like this?” Rose asked. The Doctor shook her head. “Then why are you a woman if you were a man all those times?”
“Well, when I was regenerating, I was thinking about your hair,” more than just your hair, was what the Doctor left out. “And how I might like to be blonde like you.” The Doctor looked to her shoulder-length blonde hair. “I guess I took it too far.” Rose let out a shocked laugh.
“So you became a woman,” she paused, clicking her tongue. “Because you wanted to look like me?”
The Doctor blushed and looked away. She nodded slowly. “Yeah, I did. A lot of this is because of you. Though, mind you, I’m an alien. I don’t really have the same binary feelings towards gender and sex. I mean, I guess I’m a woman now, but Time Lords were above that stuff. We had biological sex and we used the pronouns of the bodies we were in, but it could change. Knew this one Time Lord, called himself the Corsair, but he regenerated into a woman a few times.” The Doctor pinked even more. “She could be rather naughty sometimes. I don’t think that’s me. I don’t really know me yet, but I’m pretty sure of that. We’ll find out together though, won’t we?”
“Yeah, we will.” Rose and the Doctor shared a smile. Rose knew how the Doctor felt, her admission of how she became a woman was enough. Rose could already feel something in her having some fondness for her. After all, it was pointed out to her twice. That the Doctor wasn’t even human. What did it matter if she was a woman now? Rose felt that intellectually at least. She was going to have to sort out her feelings and it would take some getting used to, being with this Doctor, but Rose had no doubt that it would be fantastic.