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“We’re lost. Just admit it, Doctor.”
He expelled a huffy breath, his hands on his hips, looking around at the darkening forest as if he expected it to answer for him.
“Doctor?”
The Doctor ran his hand through his hair, styling it into the spikes of a terrified hedgehog. Rose didn’t need spoken confirmation once she’d witnessed that. She sank down onto a tree stump and pulled off her trainer. There was an impressive blister forming on her ankle and she winced.
That caught the Doctor’s attention. He plopped down next to her. “You’re hurt. Here, let me see that…”
“Just a blister.”
“Well, you’re in pain. Can’t have that. Let’s see…” He fiddled with the settings on the sonic and waved the blue light over the injured skin. “It’s not quite as effective as the dermal regenerator but it’ll do at a pinch, I suppose.”
Rose gazed at the newly-healed skin in surprise. “Didn’t know you had that setting on there.”
The Doctor smirked, glancing at her. “It’s my new ‘jeopardy friendly Rose’ setting.”
“Shut up!” she laughed.
“Weeeellll,” he drawled, chuckling. He sobered quickly. “I’m so, so sorry I got you into this.”
“What do you have to apologize for? As adventures go, this one’s pretty tame. We just got turned around, s’all.”
“I swear I remember that clearing with the pine trees! I know that’s where we landed!” he protested.
Rose took his hand. She didn’t want to admit it to him, but his burgeoning panic was worrisome. SHe took a deep breath, reminding herself to remain calm. “Doctor, whatever happened… The TARDIS can’t be missin’. We must have taken a wrong turn. But...it’s gettin’ dark. We need to be ready to spend the night here. Wouldn’t happen to have a tent in your coat pocket, wouldja?”
The Doctor raised his eyebrow incredulously and opened his mouth to speak. Rose was sure he was going chide her for a silly idea, or just flat out laugh, but then he touched his tongue to his teeth in concentration. He plunged his hand into the coat pocket, nearly to his elbow. “I don’t think I have a tent, but I do have a… Oh, brilliant!”
Rose stared, astonished, as he pulled out a large blanket.
“We can sleep on top of it, or…” The Doctor dove into the pocket again, pulling out a ball of rope. “Yes! We’ll have to rough it, but here’s our tent!” Rose raised a skeptical eyebrow. “This is called rolling with it, Rose Tyler! We need 3 big branches…” He stood up and paced around the stump. “We’ll lash them together with the rope, cover it with this blanket, Bob’s your uncle, one perfectly good tent!” He grinned widely, and Rose could see he was trying.
“I guess we should search for the TARDIS some more first. Don’tcha think?” she suggested. He sighed, his shoulders drooping. “S’ definitely somethin’, though. Good idea.”
“It’s a rubbish idea,” he muttered.
“S’ not rubbish at all,” Rose told him.
He shook his head in dismissal, and walked away. Before he got a few steps away, Rose caught up to him. She reached out to him, and he took her hand. “Allons-y, Rose Tyler,” he said with a heavy sigh.
***
The Doctor fell silent for the next leg of their hike, and Rose wasn’t sure what to do. She’d tried to keep the conversation light, tried to cheer him up, but he was deep into a mood she hadn’t seen since he was blue-eyed. After a while, Rose also stopped talking since he simply wasn’t answering her. The lack of conversation was unnerving, and she found herself squeezing his hand reassuringly, as she used to when he wore leather.
Rose also couldn’t help noticing the way the shadows lengthened. It was nearly full dark, with a three-quarters moon providing a bit of faded dappled light. Every so often a breeze would kick up, causing her to shiver. They were now crossing a field of wildflowers that would have been gorgeous in the daylight, but she barely noticed them.
The Doctor waved the sonic around, scanning for their lost time ship, but there was no sign of her. He let fly a string of words in what Rose had to assume was Gallifreyan. From his tone, they definitely sounded as though he was swearing very colorfully. This time when he grabbed her hand again and strode purposely out of the flowers, he was pulling her. His grip was almost painfully tight “Ow, slow down, Doctor! I can tell you’re freakin’ out! It’s okay! We’ll be fine. We’ll find her.”
The Doctor let go of her hand and spun around with his arms wide open. “Oh, we will? I’m so glad you’re so sure about this, because I’m not. I have absolutely no idea what to do, and this isn’t somethin’ I’m used to! I can’t even feel the TARDIS in my head!” Her heart jolted at this revelation. He scrubbed his hand through his hair again, then whipped out the sonic. Rose watched helplessly as the Doctor, apparently in panic mode, stomped away from her.
And then suddenly he wasn’t there at all. Rose heard him cry out, saw him fall. She ran in his direction as quickly as she could.
There was a large rock, half buried in the ground. Beyond that was a gully. The Doctor was sitting up as Rose dashed down to him. “Doctor, are you okay? Oh, your cheek is bleedin’! Where’s the sonic?”
The Doctor panted, “Don’t know… dropped it when I fell…”
Rose crawled around him, feeling for the dropped sonic. “Do you think you broke anything?”
“No… just had the wind knocked out of me.”
“Aha!” She crowed as she felt the wayward screwdriver under her hand. “Got it. Okay…” She made her way back to him, still on her knees. “What’s that setting you used on me?”
“126-slash-12 B-delta.”
“Easy for you to say…” Rose set the controls. “Did I get it right?”
“Looks like it,” he sighed wearily.
“Well, I don’t wanna make your head explode by accident or anythin’,” she chuckled.
He snorted laughter. “The head exploding setting is gamma, not delta.”
Rose grinned. “I’ll keep that in mind.” The sonic hummed as she gently applied it to the cut on his face. “I guess we need to call this the jeopardy friendly Rose and Doctor setting.”
“Oi,” he protested, laughing.
“You’re just as bad as I am.” From what she could see in the blue light, his wound was healed. “Good as new.”
“Doctor Rose,” he declared, smiling. Rose gazed at him. His smile was fond, but his eyes were intense. His mood changes were mercurial, so she wasn’t surprised when his expression fell. “I’m sorry I got you into this. I’m so sorry.”
She slid her hand into his, entwining their fingers. “You need to stop apologizin’. We’re just a bit lost. And there’s no point in panickin’. An’ by the way, I’m tryin’ to remind myself of that, not just you.”
He averted his eyes. “Sometimes I’m surprised you put up with all this. Not that you’re not brilliant at it… you always know what to say, what to do. But sometimes I think, one of these days, she’s gonna have enough of this.”
Rose cupped his cheek, locking eyes with him. “I’m never gonna get tired of this. I’m never gonna leave you. Thought you’ve figured that out by now.”
“One of these days, you won’t have a choice and you’ll…”
Rose shook her head. She wanted to stop his words with her mouth, to show him just how much she loved him, but she held back. So she told him, “Doctor, it’s gonna be a long time before that ever happens. You’re stuck with me.”
“Oh, Rose,” he breathed. “I want you to stay with me forever. I do. But you won’t, whether it’s by your choice or not.”
The air felt heavy and electric. It seemed as though they were on the edge of a precipice. Staying at the edge meant they kept on as they were, never acknowledging the feelings between them because of their fear. Or she could leap, and face those fears head on, for both of them.
Rose chose to leap.
She took a deep breath and then began to speak. “I know what you told me outside that chip shop. But I don’t agree with you. I think you’ll have more regrets if we don’t say how we feel about each other. I know I don’t wanna have any regrets, not when it comes to you. Doctor, I love you.” She wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten to this point, confessing her feelings while lost in some random forest on earth two hundred years ago. From the look of shock on the Doctor’s face, she reckoned he couldn’t quite figure it out either. However, Rose forged on. “And if you can’t say it back, that’s okay… if all you ever want is to be best mates, that’s okay too. M’really never gonna leave you.”
The Time Lord gazed at her, wide-eyed. His mouth was slightly agape. After a long moment, in which she wondered if he’d ever speak again, he murmured, “Oh, Rose Tyler, you are my everything.” He leaned in, and she met him in the middle, and she finally captured that luscious lower lip of his between her own. He groaned as her hands slid into his hair, and that spurred Rose on. Her tongue darted out, and he opened to her, an invitation accepted. Her stomach swooped with joy.
When they finally broke apart so they both could breathe (Rose was slightly pleased that the snog seemed to have rendered his respiratory bypass ineffective), the Doctor pressed his forehead against hers. “You okay?” she chuckled.
He nodded emphatically, bumping their heads together, causing them both to laugh. “More than.” He stole a brief kiss and then asked in a shaky voice, “What do we do now?”
Rose beamed. “We stargaze on this blanket.” She hopped up out of his reach, snickering at his small groan of protest. Spreading out the blanket, Rose looked over her shoulder at her still-amazed Doctor. “Will this be a good spot?”
“That’ll do,” the Doctor assured her. “Oh! Wait! Hang on!” He stood quickly and ran around the perimeter of the blanket, sonicing the air. Just as Rose was about to inquire about a possible head injury, he announced, “Setting up a perception filter so we can gaze without being bothered by any animals that might be lurking about.”
“Ah,” Rose said. She was glad he’d thought of that particular need, since the whole love confession had driven the thought of their personal safety out of her mind. “Good call.” She crawled to the middle of the blanket.
He nodded enthusiastically, then stood there, staring at her.
“Stargaze with me?” Rose prompted.
“Ah! Quite right.” He hesitated, and for a millisecond she thought he’d run from what had just transpired between them. He didn’t have to literally run to put distance between them. But then he stepped across the blanket to join her in the middle. He sighed heavily as she took his hand.
“S’okay. If I was gonna bite, I’d’ve done it already,” she said with a smirk.
He laughed, wrapping his arms around her, pressing their foreheads together. “I don’t know that I’d object…” His face flushed, as he realized what he’d just admitted. “Blimey, I’m rubbish at this.”
“We’ll figure it out together. I mean, we already had our first real snog, and that was good.”
He beamed. “That was brilliant.”
Rose matched his smile, but with her tongue poking out. She didn’t miss his eyes flicking down to glance at it. She fell back onto the blanket, taking a surprised Doctor with her.
She ended up on her back with him half hovering over her. Rose grabbed his tie and pulled his mouth to hers. For several moments they were lost in each other, and it felt as though she was being sweetly devoured. Eventually she had to breathe, and they separated only slightly. She could feel his panting breaths on her lips. Another surge of pride (accompanied by a surge of arousal) rushed through her at the thought that she could bring him to this.
He finally murmured, “Think I might be blockin’ your view of the stars.”
“Oh, I’m seein’ stars, don’t worry.”
The Doctor chuckled, burying his face in her neck. She felt his lips brush against her pulse point and couldn’t quite stifle her low moan. “Oh, Rose,” he whispered. When he spoke again, it was directly in her ear, a secret only they shared. She imagined his words were not for the universe to hear. “I love you.”
Heart racing with joy over words she hadn’t expected him to say out loud, she pulled him over her fully.
Neither of them noticed when the TARDIS rematerialized fifty feet away. In fact, they were busy for a good hour thereafter. When they finally gathered scattered clothes and reboarded, the Doctor had some words with his time ship. But ultimately, they couldn’t be angry with the TARDIS for her disappearance, because in becoming lost in a forest, the Doctor and Rose had managed to find each other.