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Rose sees the giant creature speeding towards her, wings extended and fangs bared. The sky darkens and she turns to run, knowing she has little chance to make an escape if the cannon doesn’t come through and pull her back home.
She frantically pushes the button, and it does nothing but omit a faint beep, barely audible against the roar of the pitch-black waves lapping at her feet. The creature dives, and before she knows what’s happening, it collides with her and she crashes to the glass-ridden ground.
Pain sears through her wrist, and her skin burns with the force of the impact. She makes a mental note to get her jacket checked out by Op Tech once she gets back to headquarters, wondering why it didn’t deploy and cushion her fall.
She flexes her fingers, testing her ability to move them and realizes that there’s no leather against her skin, no shards of glass beneath her body. Just the silk of her nightgown and the soft, plush carpet beneath her.
"Rose?!"
She hears a pattering of feet hurtling towards her and she squints as light floods the room and she struggles to sit up.
"Rose! I heard a sound! What happened?! Are you ill? Injured?"
The Doctor is at her side before he even finishes his inquiries and brushes his fingers against her forehead, pushing a strand of hair behind her ears.
Her heart rate slows at his touch, and she blinks, taking in her surroundings. She croaks out something about a dream and falling out of bed. Her throat scratches as she speaks, but she disregards the pain as she turns to meet his eyes.
Brown swirls with black as his gaze softens and worry replaces fear. He nods slowly. "Do you want to talk about it?"
She bites down on her lower lip, worrying it between her teeth, and closes her eyes for a moment. The images of her dream wash over her, pulling her back to the giant, featherless wings and the menacing silver fangs, and she snaps her eyes back open again, wider than before.
She shakes her head. "I will, but not yet." She swallows and the burning proves to be too much to ignore. "I think I want tea first?"
The Doctor jumps to his feet, extending an arm to help her up. "Of course. Just the thing.” He gives her a small smile and gestures towards their bed. “I can bring it to you if you want -"
"No, don't be silly," she cuts him off and reaches for the dressing gown she'd carelessly thrown to the foot of the bed. "'m coming with you. Don't really want to be alone."
The Doctor nods and reaches for her hand, gently threading their fingers together.
She smiles, tugging on his arm, and leads them through the narrow hallway of their flat.
The tiles of the kitchen floor feel like ice against her bare skin, but the shivers they provoke pull her fully back to reality, and she moves closer to the Doctor. He places a kiss to the top of her head before moving to put water in the kettle and place tea bags in mugs.
Wrapping her dressing gown more tightly around herself, she hops onto the counter beside the kettle.
“What were you doing up?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Again?”
“Nothing wrong. I still don’t need as much sleep as you, you know. Superior physiology and all.”
“Oi! Weren’t so superior when you were sick last week, were you?”
The Doctor pouts. “That isn’t fair. I didn’t know what to expect!”
“Suppose not. Still never thought the first time I'd see you cry would be over a cold."
He sniffs. "It isn't easy to deal with congestion when you don't have a respiratory bypass. I couldn't breathe, Rose."
She rolls her eyes. "Like I've never had a cold without a respiratory bypass before."
The Doctor pouts, and she smiles at him, causing his expression to soften. All desire to tease him disappears, and she reaches up to stroke his cheek with her free hand. She trails her fingers over his skin, taking her time, and the Doctor closes his eyes and presses a kiss to the palm of her hand.
He steps closer and parts her knees, placing his arms on her shoulders, when the water gurgles to a boil. She gives him a crooked smile and hops off the counter as the Doctor reaches for the mugs.
"Back to bed or living room?"
"Up to you."
Rose weighs their options and leads the way to their new sofa. She had let the Doctor pick it out the weekend before, and the slightly mismatched piece turned out to be the comfiest thing in the flat.
Snuggling into a corner pillow, she reaches for the woolly blanket the Doctor had strewn aside and takes in the pile of books on the floor, smiling at the open copy of Great Expectations. The Doctor had picked up on tiny differences in classic texts while going through her library during their first few days in the flat and had taken to rereading all of his favourites.
She spots the notebook he’d been jotting down all of his notes in on the cushion beside her. His pen lies beside it, capless, and there’s a smudge of ink at the bottom of the page. He must have been writing when she’d fallen out of bed. She flushes just as the Doctor hands her her tea and sits down beside her, putting his own on the coffee table to cool.
He looks at her, frowning at her tinted cheeks. “You okay?”
She gives him a close-mouthed smile and hums, moving to hook her legs over his knees without jostling her tea.
Taking a careful sip, she closes her eyes as the perfectly blended beverage soothes her parched throat.
“Good?”
“Yeah, ta.”
The Doctor looks pleased and grins. “I do make a brilliant cuppa.”
She’s tempted to roll her eyes at his smug expression, but his joy at his achievement is so intense that she smiles instead. “That you do.”
She sighs and leans back to burrow into the cushions, savouring the warmth.
The Doctor places a hand just above her knee and tugs on his ear with the other. “Ready to tell me about your dream now?”
“Suppose so. Really, it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory.”
She feels the Doctor tense beside her, and he turns to look at her with a frown.
“What did you see?”
“I had this really bad mission early on in the dimension cannon days… maybe two weeks after we got it working? Got sucked on to a planet that was made of glass and inhabited only by these giant, bird-like creatures. They had these huge fangs.” She holds up her arms to demonstrate. “And anyway, the cannon failed to pull me back through on time and one of the birds attacked me. I was running along the edge of the sea when it lunged at me, and I fell. ‘s how I got these.” She pulls the hem of her nightgown aside and shows the Doctor the smattering of almost translucent scars on her upper thigh.
The Doctor takes a deep breath and Rose thinks he’s going to speak, but he trails his hand up her leg, softly tracing over the marks. She watches his movements for a moment, sees his brow crease and quiet wash over him, and goes on with her story, wanting it to be over.
“Thankfully it got bored and the cannon pulled me back before it could do more damage. We never figured out what the planet or the creature were called. There was something in its fangs though, or in the shards of glass, that made me sick. I was burning up by the time I got back and they had to keep me in the medical ward for over a week ‘cause they couldn’t identify what it was. Mum was a wreck.”
The Doctor lets out a puff of air, somewhere between a sigh and a sardonic laugh. “She would have been.” He stares at his fingers, continuing to trail them over her leg, and his voice is gruff when he speaks, “And you kept traveling after that?”
He phrases it as a question, but there’s no inflection at the end of the sentence, and she knows he knows there was no way she would have given up her mission over an injury, no matter how serious.
“‘course I did,” she murmurs, and his fingers still. She reaches over to put her cup down beside his and turns to face him more fully. “Someone had to, and besides, wasn’t so bad.”
His eyes darken and he continues to fixate on her leg as he speaks, “You could have died, Rose. That planet sounds like Zatymir, and everything there is laced with venom… the fangs, the glass… it’s a miracle,” he pauses, tightening his grip on her leg a little, and breathes deeply. “It isn’t often that anyone gets infected by Zatymirian venom and survives. Human or not.”
He looks up to meet her eyes, and she sees the fear mixed in with the anger and places a hand over his. He immediately flips his palm over and grasps her hand.
“Well, I did.”
“Yeah.” The corner of his mouth quirks up, but his smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Rose recognizes a trace of the looks he’d given her when she’d come too close to harm in the past.
“What is it?”
“It’s just...” The Doctor fiddles with their hands, “You could have died. You could have died so many times, and yet you kept going and going and you-“
“I had to, Doctor.”
“But you didn’t. You could have sent someone else on those trips.”
“Suppose I could have, yeah, but I didn’t. I wanted to go. I had to be the one to go and see it through.” Rose sighs. “Is this another one of those ‘keep Rose out of trouble’ things, then?”
The Doctor smiles at that. “No. I learned a long time ago that we’re all much better off with Rose Tyler out there to save the day.”
“That so?”
He hums, drawing her closer to him, and she scoots over to rest her head against his shoulder.
“I’m in awe of you, Rose. All of this, and you still put yourself out there every day and make the lives of everybody you touch better. You have these nightmares, and you’re out here making me feel better about your pain.”
She smiles into his chest and squeezes his hand. “They’re just nightmares, Doctor. They’re memories, and they belong in the past. They’re horrid, yeah, and I wish I didn’t have them, but you know what? They’re still memories of things that were worth the pain. That trip through the cannon to Zat… Zatymir?”
She turns her head to look at him for confirmation, and he blinks with the slightest inclination of his head, and she goes on, “It was hell and the injuries were awful, but I got better, and I got even more determined to make the dimension cannon better and continue travelling. And I did and I found you and we put a stop to the Daleks and we’re here now. It was worth it, Doctor. All of it.”
He presses a kiss to the top of her head. “You still dream of it though.”
“Yeah, and I’m probably going to for a long time, but you know what? I used to have nightmares just about every night and then it slowly got better, and I’ve only had two since you got here.”
“Yeah?”
“Mhm. I sleep much better with you around.” She waits a few seconds, feeling him smile into her hair, and adds, “Must be all the snoring.”
“Oi! I do not snore.”
She sits back up and gives him a knowing look.
“I do not!”
"Mm, must just be you adjusting to not having a respiratory bypass then."
"Rude."
"Don't worry, Doctor. It's a cute snore."
He sniffs, and she settles back into his side.
“I mean it though. Having you here like this has made everything so much better, Doctor.”
“Yeah?” His voice comes out in a murmur as he gives her waist a minute squeeze.
She presses a kiss to his chest and nuzzles the material of his pyjamas. “Yeah.”
They stay quiet, content to bask in each other’s company until Rose begins to drift off. Her thoughts begin to blend together, warmth and belonging and the weight of the Doctor's hands against her as he shifts them and stands to offer her his hand.
“Bed?”
Bleary eyed, she accepts and barely makes it back to her pillow before falling asleep, the Doctor’s arms around her and alien beaches far from her mind.