Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Even at an early age, living on the Powell Estate meant that Rose Tyler had certainly had her fair share of run-ins with the homeless people that often scattered around the surrounding neighbourhood. Regardless of what everyone else told her, for the most part she’d always thought they seemed fairly harmless; generally they tended to act more lonely than dangerous.

She’d assumed the widespread misconception that they were bad people was why they weren’t provided with the option of cheap housing like she and her Mum were, and she couldn’t help but be annoyed on their behalf because of that. She’d even marched right up to a passing police officer to complain about just that, but he’d merely smiled indulgently at her and told her the police service wasn’t in charge of that sort of thing. Rose had huffed all the way up the stairs to their flat, figuring that he was obviously just fobbing her off because he thought she was nothing more than some silly kid who didn’t deserve a straight answer. After all, pretty much all of the older kids and adults she knew always seemed so sure that everything bad that happened in the world came down to the police. And someone named John Major, apparently, though Rose didn’t know who that was.

Well, she figured, even if neither the police nor the people living comfortably around them seemed to care, she was still going to be nice to those unfortunate enough not to have a place in the world. Shareen once hadn’t talked to her for a whole week, so she knew what it was like to have no friends. No one should have to go through that purely by virtue of their circumstances.

Unfortunately, one day after school Rose’s Mum caught her sitting cross-legged on the footpath just a little ways down from the Estate’s main courtyard. She was sharing the remainder of her packed lunch and chatting happily away with a scruffy man who looked (to her young eyes at least) like he must have been at least a hundred years old, and who even Rose had to admit smelled about five times worse than their full dirty laundry basket at home. She’d had to suffer through quite the screaming session from her Mum about that, as if she’d actually done something wrong by helping someone who needed it. Though Rose really didn’t get what the big deal was, she had been forced to weigh up whether continuing to go out of her way to be friendly to what her Mum called ‘those weirdo drifters’ was worth a repeat of the unleashing of the wrath of Jackie Tyler. Her Mum could be seriously scary, after all.

She hated that the idea of being so easily beaten; she was stubborn that way. She also couldn’t stand the thought that she might not ever get to satisfy her curiosity about what it was like to have a bus stop as a house, or whether you could actually make enough money by begging or illegal busking to be able to eat three square meals a day (plus dessert, since Rose couldn’t conceive of anyone being able to survive if they missed out on that with any regularity), or where someone without a roof stashed their Christmas tree and presents when December rolled around.

So Rose would have, in pointed defiance of her mother, sought out old Jim or one of the others that hung out on her street the very next day to tell them she’d still hang out with him as much as she liked no matter what anyone said. Only her mother had insisted on picking her up directly from school rather than letting her walk that few hundred feet home on her own. And she’d done the same the next day, and the next. Rose had been well aware of the reason for this sudden change in their schedule, of course, and she’d made sure to bestow foul glares and the silent treatment on her Mum for quite some time before she got bored and forgot what she was supposed to be doing.

Being only eight years old, she was easily bored, and out of sight tended to mean out of mind. So, without being reminded by exposure to any of the homeless people lurking outside the Estate for the next week or two, she promptly deserted her spirited campaign in favour of taking up her new impossible task of the moment: convincing her Mum to buy her a kitten for her upcoming birthday.

She never did notice her mother’s palpable relief over what she’d clearly considered to be a potential disaster being averted.

* * *

Wake up. Bolt down a bowl of cereal for breakfast. Have a shower and get dressed. Jump on the bus to work. Put up with hours of customers and managers ranting about stupid things like how the hanger on this top claimed it was a size 8 but the swing tag clearly said it was a size 10. Cross the street to knock back a relatively quick lunch at Barty’s Fish ’n Chips. Come back for more abuse from the customers and managers until that blessed announcement that the store was closing in five minutes sounded. Head home for a bit of telly, or maybe head back out to grab a pint down at the pub with Mickey, before going to bed, either hers or his depending on whether she was in the mood. Lather, rinse and repeat.

It was a truly mind-numbing routine for the most part. For a while after she’d made the decision not to go back to school because she needed the money from full time work to pay off her debts, she’d been hoping that something else – anything, really – would come along to whisk her out of that life. However, long enough had passed by now that she’d almost forgotten that dream. Though she still found that, as dull as the life she’d mostly settled into was, she didn’t like to focus on the idea that it really might be all there was out there for her. She couldn’t help but want so much more.

It was little wonder, then, that Rose strolled through a good portion of her day with her head in the clouds, thinking of bigger things that she was sure she’d never get to personally experience. It never occurred to her that consistently having her mind elsewhere meant that it wasn’t focused on smaller but still important things.

Like, just for example, the car that clearly was going far too fast to be intending to stop at the well-displayed zebra crossing she and several other oblivious pedestrians were in the process of stepping onto.

A hand grabbed hers and yanked her backwards. A scream caught in her throat before it could ever be heard as she saw the couple who’d been walking barely two feet in front of her leap forward and just barely avoid being run down. She wouldn’t have made that jump even if she’d seen the car coming, she realised. She’d have been directly in the car’s path.

She squeezed the hand that was still holding onto her as if seeking some kind of support or confirmation. She barely heard it when some concerned passer-by asked her if she was all right, simply nodding absently and thanking her for asking. She finally blinked and was able to look away from that spot where she would have been standing right as the collision took place, turning instead to scrutinise the person who’d prevented that from happening.

“Hello,” he said cheerfully, shaking the hand that he was still holding as if nothing strange had taken place and they just happened to be meeting casually.

“Um... Hi?” she replied uncertainly. “I’m Rose Tyler.”

“Rose,” he repeated definitively, as if committing the name to memory, or maybe just feeling it out in his mouth to figure out if he liked it or not. “Nice to finally meet you. You work in the shop just over there, don’t you, Rose? I see you around here a lot. I’ve noticed that you don’t usually use the designated crossing to get to the other side of the street, though, which is really a bit foolhardy of you. Although it’s funny that one of the only times you do happens to be the time that you encounter a serious traffic violation, isn’t it?” he remarked.

Somehow his peculiar behaviour had her feeling almost more shaken than the near miss itself. “Funny?” echoed Rose. “I... You just saved my life,” she said slowly, spelling it out for him. “You know that, right? That you just did somethin’ heroic? You get that I’d be all dead and splattered on the road if not for you, yeah?”

“Oh, that,” he said dismissively. “It’s what I do. Well, what I try to do. Except when I can’t. Can’t save everyone all the time, though there really should be more days like that.”

“Um,” Rose said, feeling increasingly more bewildered by the second. “I’m sorry about that.”

“Me too,” he replied. “So sorry.”

He frowned down suddenly at their still-joined hands as if he couldn’t remember grabbing onto her, though regardless he didn’t seem like he particularly intended to drop that contact between them any time soon.

“Are you okay?” she asked, well aware of the irony of her having to be the one to pose that question given the situation.

He looked up and gave her just about the saddest smile she’d ever seen in her life. Her chest felt strangely compressed at the sight of it, as if the car had hit her after all and her lungs were now crushed and useless. “Oh, I’m always all right,” he assured her. “I’m not the one who’s going about skipping across busy streets without looking both ways.”

“Yeah, guess not. And oh,” Rose realised suddenly, “I haven’t even actually said ‘thank you’ for that yet! I’m sorry. My head’s all sort of wobbly after nearly bein’ knocked clean off my shoulders. Thank you. Really. Can I buy you lunch or somethin’? To say thank you properly, I mean? How d’you feel about chips?”

The man seemed to think quite hard about that. “You know,” he concluded, “I’m actually not sure how I feel about them, now that you’ve brought it up. Is there I certain way I should feel? Only chips have never really been the kind of thing to evoke any emotional response for me personally.”

Rose laughed, which instantaneously sent an answering smile across the man’s face like some kind of chain reaction. “I actually meant whether you liked eatin’ them,” she said, snickering.

“Ah. Right. Well that makes a lot more sense,” the man said, not looking embarrassed in the slightest. “Yes, I’m fairly sure I do. Though it’s been a while, I think. When you’ve been alive as long as I have, it’s difficult to keep track of little things like what you’ve eaten recently and such.”

Rose decided that he couldn’t have been older than mid-thirties, and he looked younger still when he smiled. That made him older than her, sure, but still hardly ancient. “So how old are you, exactly?”

“Nine hundred and...” He looked off into the distance, seeming to be in the middle of some complicated calculation. “... three,” he finished. “Relatively speaking, of course. It really depends on what part of the universe or what timeframe I’m in at any given moment, since most planets have completely different cycle lengths. You should see how long it takes the planet Gofflop to revolve around its sun! I still wouldn’t even be a whole year old there.”

“Sorry, Gofflop? I don’t think I’ve heard of that one. I guess it’s out somewhere past Pluto?” Rose asked, unsure how else to respond since she honestly had no idea whether he was joking around with her.

“A very long way past it. And I wouldn’t have expected you to have heard of it,” he said, nodding sagely. “It won’t actually being to form for another several billion years.”

Rose couldn’t stop her disbelieving laugh, though she quickly attempted to cover it by asking, “So you’re a psychic, then?”

He looked at her like she was being purposely stupid. “Come on, really? A psychic? Of course not!” he laughed, and Rose joined in. “No,” he added seriously. “I don’t do shoddy guesswork for money. I just know what’s going to happen because I’m a time travelling alien and I’ve seen it. But, then, I probably shouldn’t have told you that. You can’t tell anyone!”

Rose nodded slowly. “Oh. Right... Yeah, trust me, I don’t think I’ll be spreadin’ that one around any time soon. Wouldn’t want anyone from the government comin’ and takin’ you off to do weird experiments on you or anythin’, would we?”

He nodded earnestly. “Thankfully there are only certain things that humans can do to permanently hurt me without me just regenerating, but it’s still definitely annoying when they get it in their heads to prod at me like I’m an animal. Yet every couple of decades, there they go again, as if their predecessors hadn’t already learned that lesson.” He sighed. “You lot just can’t seem to help yourselves.”

“Hey, not my lot!” Rose protested. “Don’t lump me into some big conspiracy group or somethin’. Personally, I’m all for... um, alien rights.” She felt stupid just saying those words, but he seemed pleased by it, so she supposed it was worth playing along.

“Good! Great! Brilliant!” he exclaimed. “You know, I always did think you looked like the kind to be accepting, but it’s hard to tell that for sure about people who you’ve never actually spoken to. I’ve been caught out before.”

Rose narrowed her eyes at him. “Look, you keep talkin’ like you know me, but I don’t remember you. D’you shop at Henrik's a lot or somethin’?”

“Oh, never. This regeneration really doesn’t do department stores and shopping. It’s all so boring! But I park my vehicle out on this street every day. That’s how I see you going for lunch. Fish and chips every day.”

“Every day? Seriously? So I’m guessin’ you don’t have a job you need to be at,” Rose speculated. “What, d’you work nights or somethin’?”

“Sometimes,” he said. “My job’s not the kind to keep to certain hours.”

“Oh, so you’re on call? Doin’ what?”

“I told you already, Rose. My job is saving people.”

“Right... guess that’s kind of a full time occupation?” Rose said.

He grinned. “You have no idea. You humans can’t seem to stop getting yourselves in trouble, and then there’s the rest of the universe besides! If I didn’t come here to take a bit of a time-out every day, I’d never stop!”

“And how is it that you manage to be here at the same time every day, then?” asked Rose sceptically. “Surely there must be all kinds of savin’-people emergencies that come up at short notice.”

“Oh, that’s the beauty of time travel,” he explained simply, as if it should be obvious. “I can fly around time and space for years and be back here just five seconds after I left. You should come with me. I could show all kinds of brilliant things.”

“Nah,” Rose said, smiling. “Not today, anyway. My lunch break’s about to run out, and you can just bet my boss won’t take the trauma of nearly gettin’ hit by a car as an excuse for comin’ back to work late.”

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’ll be here tomorrow, if you change your mind.”

“S’pose I’ll see have to wait until then to see you again, won’t I?” Rose said.

She briefly eyed the shop across the street for a moment, wondering whether she still had time to race across there and grab something to go before she was firmly into the being-taken-out-back-and-yelled-at territory of lateness, but she decided against it. Better not to tempt fate by crossing that street again so soon after attempting to do so had nearly put her in the hospital, or worse. She figured she could make it until dinner without dying of hunger.

Before she turned to head back to the store, though, she said to the man, “Hang on there, I never did get your name. Though I s’pose it could be cool to tell people I was saved from death by some nameless man. I could even tell them you were wearin’ a mask and a cape!”

“All that does sort of suit me, I’ll give you that,” the man agreed. “But in case you really do want my name, I’m the Doctor,” he said.

“The doctor,” Rose repeated. “The doctor of what, exactly?”

“Of everything,” he said cheekily. “I’m not a medical doctor or anything, if that’s what you mean, though I’m smarter than most of them put together. It’s my name, Rose. Just ‘the Doctor’. That’s me.”

“Seriously? ‘The doctor’ is an actual name now? Let me guess, it’s with a capital ‘the’?”

“No,” he scoffed. “That’d be a bit pretentious, don’t you think? A whole capitalised word as part of my name? Imagine how it would look in writing. Though it does have a capital ‘d’, in case you were wondering.”

“’Course it does,” she muttered.

“Weren’t you running late?” he reminded her. “Not that I’m trying to get rid of you or anything. I’m really not. At all. You can feel free to stay! I mean, if you liked. And if you wanted to lose your job, I suppose.”

“Yeah, better not,” she said. “I’m broke enough as it is.”

“Mmm, I know how that is,” he said cryptically.

“S’pose that means the chips’ll be on me tomorrow, then,” Rose said. She poked her tongue out at him as she turned away.

To be honest, she thought as she practically ran back into the store, slinking around the backs of the taller displays until she arrived back in her designated section so that no one would see her coming back in late, she really didn’t expect him to be there tomorrow at all. He’d obviously been feeding her crazy stories so that he didn’t have to tell her anything real. She’d done that sort of thing with guys in the pub who wouldn’t take a hint, so she knew it meant he couldn’t actually be interested in seeing her again. It had just been a fun way to spend her lunch time, and a way to calm her down after something crazy had nearly happened. She’d be stupid to expect anything more to come of it.

But still, she couldn’t help but kind of hope she was wrong.

* * *

As Rose emerged from the relatively dim interior of Henrik’s, for once she didn’t head straight across the street for lunch. Instead, she paused midway across the footpath, squinting against the sunlight and peering around to see if the Doctor actually was there, as he’d promised he would be.

At first she didn’t see any sign of him. She had to admit that she was strangely disappointed even though she’d predicted as much. He might have been a bit weird – practically incomprehensible in a lot of ways, to be honest – but he was definitely interesting. She couldn’t say that about many other things in her life at the moment.

Besides, if nothing else, he was certainly nice to look at. She might have Mickey, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to spend her lunchtime somewhere with a pleasant view after a hard morning’s work. It was just like art; look but don’t touch.

She pointedly didn’t think about the very specific touch of his hand in hers. Given the expedient circumstances, she really didn’t think that should count against her. No matter how nice it had felt.

Finally, when she’d been just about to give up on him completely, she caught a glimpse of a familiar brown-and-blue out of the corner of her eye. Her heart rate increased when she saw that he was there after all.

The Doctor was sprawled across the blue wooden public bench just up the street. He had his feet kicked up with a light brown coat and a flimsy-looking old plastic bag rolled up underneath his legs. She thought he looked strangely at home, sitting there like that, and she was no longer surprised that he’d seen her in passing any number of times before yesterday. He clearly spent a lot of time hanging out right there on that bench.

“Hello again, stranger,” she greeted loudly as she approached him. His gaze shot up to meet hers and he grinned, seeming about equally as relieved to see her again as she was that he’d also returned. “I owe you chips, don’t I?”

“Absolutely! I’ve been looking forward to trying them out,” he admitted. “I’ve decided that they must be brilliant chips to have you coming back for more every single day.”

“Trust me, you’ll end up beggin’ to have lunch with me every day so’s you can get more of them as well,” Rose teased, offering him a hand up and waiting for a moment as he slung his long coat over his shoulder before leading him across the street (this time being certain to look both ways twice).

For the following twenty minutes or so he barely stopped chattering away faster than she’d suspected any human being could actually talk, except when he was quickly shovelling chips into his mouth as if he hadn’t eaten in days.

In that time, Rose learned a lot more than she’d ever known could exist in one man’s head about logic-defying planets that were supposedly halfway across the universe from Earth, and about spatio-temporal anomalies, and even about why, precisely, giraffes were the only animal to occur in every life-supporting galaxy across the universe at some point in history or another (though he was very careful to point out that they weren’t always specifically called ‘giraffes’, and proceeded to go through a rather hilarious list of their alternate names that made Rose decide that she was, in the future, simply going to have to insist on calling them ‘neffleplonks’, if only to see other people’s reactions when she explained why).

More importantly, though, Rose learned a little something about the man behind the myth that – contrary to what Rose had previously assumed about him intending to just joke around with her – even he himself somehow seemed to actually believe in.

She’d certainly seen enough to know that she wanted to know more.

With a few minutes to spare before her break ended, she’d happily followed him right back to the same blue bench that he’d left behind, slightly surprised to find that no one had taken up sitting on it in his absence. Almost as if it was waiting for him, she thought, especially when she saw how he just seemed to inherently belong when he sat back down on it.

Seeing him settle into place once more, almost seeming to become an established part of the chair, something made Rose take a mental step back so that she could really see the situation.

Oh, she thought. Oh.

No longer being completely rattled from having kamikaze cars target her like yesterday, she found that she could actually think, and that everything made a little more sense and fit together more obviously. She finally took in the Doctor’s whole appearance, from the worn plimsolls to the seriously rumpled suit and the hair that didn’t look like it had been brushed in a very long time. It really wasn’t a bad look, Rose had to admit – quite the opposite. That was obviously part of the reason why, until that very moment, she hadn’t put it together with his disconnection with reality, his apparent lack of any kind of real job, and his unfailing presence in the same place every day, to come to the obvious conclusion.

He was homeless.

She didn’t even realise she’d spoken the word aloud until he nodded and said, “You could say that. It’s been a while since I’ve had a planet to call my own.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said, suddenly flustered. “I didn’t mean to... I dunno, rub it in, or make it out to be somethin’ terrible, or whatever. I just didn’t realise before, is all.”

“It’s all right,” the Doctor said with a forgiving smile. “I’ve had a lot of time to get used to it.”

Rose frowned. “But why? I can tell you’re a smart guy. Crazy smart. You’ve said it yourself, even. You could easily do any kind of job you liked. So is just gettin’ used to things bein’ like this really the best thing, when you could obviously do so much better?”

“Why is different automatically better?” the Doctor asked, posing it more like a philosophical question than something that had actual bearing on his situation.

“What, you think this here is the best you can do?” Rose asked, looking around the street with obvious derision. “Look, c’mon, you could find somewhere just to try things out to see if you do wanna go for a change,” Rose offered. “No harm in that. I think there’s even a YMCA just a few streets down that way. I could show you. I’m not a hundred percent certain how it works, exactly, so you’d have to ask, but I think they’d give you a bed for a bit while they helped you get yourself set up somewhere more permanent. If that was what you decided you wanted, obviously.”

“Oh no, I don’t think so,” he said quickly. “Not me. Especially since other people need those beds.”

“Don’t you as well, though?”

“Of course not,” the Doctor said. “I do have a place, you see. You might not think so, but it’s really much better than some tiny set of closed-in rooms with walls and doors and carpets! I don’t really like houses,” he summed up with a shiver.

Rose shook her head. “Why not? What’s wrong with them?”

He was silent for quite a while, as if he was considering whether to actually answer her or not. When he finally whispered, “They burn,” a shiver ran down Rose’s back despite the warmth of the day.

Rose didn’t know what to say to that. The conversation suddenly felt completely out of place in the middle of a day that was remarkably sunny for this time of year while they were surrounded by hundreds of relatively carefree chattering shoppers.

Whatever Rose had been thinking in the back of her mind about his mad stories, or upon figuring out the truth about his homelessness – whatever she might possibly have retained in the back of her mind from the many things her Mum had drilled into her head over the years, supposedly to keep her safe – all flew out the window then. He’d clearly been through something truly terrible. If he had to sleep on a bench and come up with wild tales of adventure where he was a time-travelling alien who could save all kinds of people who needed his help in order to cope with whatever it was that he’d hadn’t been able to save himself from... well, she could hardly fault him for that.

She wished she could apologise again and again for prompting that heartbreaking tone in his voice, but she somehow doubted that it would help him for her to dwell on it.

“Anyway,” the Doctor said in a rush, obviously eager to change the topic, “I don’t need a permanent home, so that’s that. Unless...” He squinted at her thoughtfully. “Unless you have a problem with spending time with someone like me? I know that some humans have strange hang-ups that way. Is that it?”

Rose, as a young girl, had never been one of those people. She’d always just wanted to be friends with everyone, and insisted that being homeless or poor (she certainly knew what the latter was like) didn’t stop someone from being a good person, or mean that they should be avoided or mocked. She’d certainly grown up a lot since then, but there were some things that she didn’t think she’d ever grow out of. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to, in this case.

The last thing she wished to do was stop spending time with the Doctor now, having only just barely scratched the surface of how easily he could take her out of her otherwise dull life and show her amazing, practically magical things. Just like he’d promised her he could do the day before, she realised, though perhaps it wasn’t quite in the far more literal way he’d obviously meant it.

She smiled and said. “Of course not. No problems here. In fact, I think we should make this whole lunch business a regular thing.”

“Every day?” the Doctor asked hopefully.

“I’m only at work on the weekdays,” Rose reminded.

“Oh, right, of course,” the Doctor agreed swiftly. “Just as well. Sundays are rubbish.”

“Yeah,” Rose said. “So I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”

He reached out and briefly squeezed her hand. “Definitely,” he promised.

Though she wrote it off as her imagination, she couldn’t help but notice later that her right hand, where their skin had touched, seemed to tingle warmly for the remainder of the work day.

* * *

It took no time at all for Rose to get used to now having a bright spot in the middle of her day that didn’t feel at all like part of a routine, for all that it happened the same time every day. Suddenly even the parts of her day that were still monotonous didn’t seem quite so bad, as he pried stories about angry customers and even slow nights at the pub out of her and created strange and often hilarious commentary on it all.

“Who’s Mickey?” he asked when she mentioned him thoughtlessly when telling the Doctor her plans for that night.

“Oh, you know,” she said a little too carelessly to be quite believable. “Just a bloke. Um, my bloke, I guess.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said. For the first time since their daily tradition of going for chips together had first kicked off, there was a long, awkward silence between them. The Doctor pulled his hand away from hers under the table and used it to forcefully spear a chip into a small mountain of sauce, practically obliterating it into unrecognisable potato chunks as he did so.

She had no idea why she should feel so embarrassed suddenly. It wasn’t wrong for her to have a boyfriend, after all, or to talk casually about him with a friend. That knowledge, however, did nothing to make the feeling disappear.

Rose found she heavily anticipated seeing him again the following day to make sure that things between them hadn’t been somehow ruined. Thankfully, by then he was back to being all toothy smiles and overactive tongue, as if nothing weird had ever happened.

Unfortunately, her focus on seeing the Doctor meant that she’d forgotten completely about meeting Mickey at Trafalgar Square for lunch on Thursdays, just as they’d done for months and months since Mickey first started working at the garage. She’d had to tell him later, when he’d asked where she’d been, that her manager had switched around her lunch hour that day with another of the girl’s without telling her in advance.

“What a cow. You should really tell her what’s what,” Mickey advised.

“Yeah, I guess I should,” Rose said half-heartedly.

She hated lying, honestly she did, but she really didn’t think that Mickey would understand if she told him she’d just plain forgotten about him, blowing him off so that she could have lunch with some other man instead.

She told the Doctor the next day about breaking her plans with Mickey and thought, for just a second, that she might have caught the slightest look of satisfaction passing over his face. Of course, it was gone in the very next moment, if it had ever been there in the first place, so Rose figured that she was probably just imagining things. Maybe the Doctor was a bit catching that way. If so, she didn’t particularly mind.

She found that she missed him on the weekend. It hadn’t been as noticeable when those two days had passed without his presence a week ago, but she’d been still getting used to their new daily meetings then. Now she really felt those two whole days where she wasn’t able to not-so-covertly snag his chips from across the table and claim that it was because food had no calories when it was someone else’s (and hear him say, each and every time, that that wasn’t something that she really had to worry about).

She spent the middle of Sunday – trying not to think to herself that ‘Sundays are rubbish’ – with Mickey instead, and they ate pub food instead of chips so that she could enjoy it with some slight chance of not making comparisons. When Mickey reached for her hand under the table, though, Rose quickly pulled it away and brought it up to her mouth, faking a cough to wordlessly explain her action.

She didn’t want to think too hard about the real reason, after all.

* * *

“Miss me?” Rose asked as she bounded over to the Doctor at the start of her lunch break on Monday.

“Well, yes,” he admitted, “but no more than an any other day. I mean, obviously I just skipped past the weekend. I only stick around for the good bits, you see. That’s one of the many perks of being me.”

“Right,” Rose said. “You jumped time. In your time machine. And... so you don’t remember any of the weekend? At all? Not even vague flashes or anythin’?”

He looked bemused. “What’s to remember? I wasn’t actually here for it.”

“Yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Obviously. What was I thinkin’? Silly me.”

She didn’t bring up his lost time again, and he was too busy regaling her with tales of his recent daring defeat of some alien race with a name she couldn’t even pronounce to really remember her even asking about it in the first place.

But that night Rose stared through the window into the darkness and worried about what might be happening to him out there in the night while he was lying on his bench, all spaced out and too caught up in his own overwhelming imagination to take proper notice of any real dangers lurking nearby. Anything could happen to him in that state. Anything.

“All right there, sweetheart?” her Mum asked her when she walked past Rose’s doorway quite late in the night only to see her daughter still wide awake and staring sightlessly out into nothingness. She didn’t look quite as worried as Rose felt, but it was a close thing.

“I’m fine,” Rose said half-heartedly.

“Oh, I know that look. Man troubles. What’s himself done now?”

Rose sighed. “Nothin’, Mum. Really nothin’. Mickey’s been good. Like I said, everythin’s just fine.”

Her Mum didn’t look convinced by that in the slightest, but she did leave Rose alone to stress in solitude for the rest of the night.

She took an earlier bus than usual so that she could stop and check on the Doctor before work, knowing that this was likely to be yet another permanent change to her daily line-up; now that she’d realised just how serious the danger might be, she was just as likely to worry about him the next night, and the next.

When the Doctor commented on how lucky it was that he happened to land the TARDIS earlier that morning than he usually did, for otherwise he would have missed her surprise visit, Rose just answered, “Yeah. Unbelievably lucky.”

She eventually forced herself to walk away from him towards the side door employees had to use to get into Henrik’s prior to the store opening. But even knowing that she’d see him again in just a few hours for lunch, she found that she wanted to leave his side even less than usual.

* * *

Rose was the last one out the front door of Henrik’s on Friday evening, having been forced to run back and grab her forgotten mobile phone at the last second. She sighed at the sight of the sky above her growing dark, knowing that she’d just missed the bus she usually caught home on Friday nights and was therefore going to have to wait around for a while before another one came past.

She decided it was probably a good thing, really, because it meant that she could at least see the Doctor one last time before their big break over the weekend. The only problem with that was that, even in the minimal light, she could tell that the Doctor wasn’t sitting on his blue bench for once.

She looked around, wondering where he could have shuffled off to and why, not to mention worrying that maybe it hadn’t been completely his choice to leave; the police or even some thug looking for a bit of trouble and a laugh could easily have ‘moved him along’ without his consent, even forcefully. Hoping he was all right, she turned to go wait at the bus stop instead, but she was promptly caught around the waist and yanked back into a large body that was obviously not the Doctor’s.

“Rosey! Been waitin’ for you, baby.”

Great. Rose didn’t even have to twist around to recognise that voice.

“Oi, get off, Jimmy.”

He laughed hard enough that he swayed and nearly fell over, though at least he let go of Rose in the process. “’S’exactly why I’m ’ere Rosey! C’mon back t’ mine with me. I can show you a rrreeeaal good time, ’member?”

“Ugh, are you seriously this drunk already?” Rose said, disgusted. “What is it? Five after eight?”

“Late ’nough to start havin’ a li’l fun,” Jimmy said, grabbing for her again.

“Not a chance. Hey, stop that!”

Rose struggled with him, having spent enough time looking after him when he was drunk to know that if she could only manage dump him unceremoniously onto the ground, he’d probably be stunned enough to wake up to himself a little and would end up deciding it was too much effort and wander off. He could be a mean drunk, but at least he was quickly distracted.

In this case, it wasn’t quite quickly enough for her tastes, though. Rose shoved at him as he groped her chest. Seconds later – and clearly not because of anything to do with her own relatively weak shoves – Jimmy was propelled clear across into the front of the Henrik’s building, making the glass he landed against shake heavily in its place. Having lost contact with the body she’d been thrashing against, Rose staggered backwards slightly, but her elbow was caught lightly in a familiar grip and she was able to steady herself.

The Doctor practically loomed over her with a thunderous expression on his face. She was unbelievably thankful that it was directed at Jimmy rather than at her, because frankly... it was terrifying. Rose remembered a long-since forgotten rant from her mother about how dangerously unstable people who lived under park benches or in gutters or the like could be. For the first time, she really thought there might be a chance that her Mum could’ve had a point about that after all.

The Doctor had always seemed innocuous, but appearances could obviously be deceiving. He’d certainly looked far too skinny to possibly have enough upper body strength to have just tossed a much larger man like that, Rose thought. Sure, Jimmy had far too many beers soaking his decidedly minimal brain matter right then to have been able to stand against even a medium push – Rose thought she could certainly have taken him herself if only she’d been able to get a bit of leverage – but that window had nearly broken. Rose knew from being forced to spend a whole day washing the inside of the Henrik’s display windows once that that glass was thick.

“Imma getchoo for tha’,” Jimmy slurred as he picked himself up again. He staggered, not looking entirely sure where the intended victim of his threats was even located.

“If facing down the assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn’t intimidate me,” the Doctor rumbled in a barely recognisable voice, “then I doubt some drunk delinquent whose biggest claim to fame is probably receiving an ASBO is going to be able to manage it. You could try it if you think that what you really want to do, but I really wouldn’t. I’ll warn you, I’ve killed before.”

Rose shivered. For once in this kind of situation, she wasn’t particularly worried about Jimmy’s tendency to beat people into a pulp when he’d had a few. She was at that stage far more concerned that the Doctor was obviously not in the right frame of mind to prevent himself from doing something he’d regret if Jimmy pushed him.

“Go home, Jimmy,” Rose ordered, pointedly stepping in between the two of them. “Go sleep it off before you get yourself into way more trouble than you can handle.”

Jimmy hissed something to himself, but he did thankfully slowly drag himself off to lick his wounds.

“Are you all right?” the Doctor asked her, now sounding much more like his usual self. He reached for her, but Rose subtly ducked away.

“I... yeah,” she said, trying to disguise the tremor of her voice. “I’m fine. That was just my ex, is all. He’s a bit of an idiot, but he’s never actually hurt me. No problem.”

The Doctor pointedly stepped forward and touched a tender spot on her wrist where Jimmy had been holding it too tight. “Never hurt you, eh?”

“Not really.”

“Funny, I’m having trouble believing you?”

Rose looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Fine, yeah, I’ll fess up to bein’ an idiot when I was with him, but not that much of an idiot. I wasn’t about to go in for domestic violence without somethin’ to say about it. He did hurt other people, though, so I eventually figured out that he was all kinds of rubbish and I dropped him. I’ve hardly even seen him around since. All right?”

“Oh really?” the Doctor asked. “It was all that simply? Then why make excuses for him? And what about that ‘Rickey’ you mentioned the other day? Let me guess: he’s never hurt you either.”

“Oi, his name’s Mickey,” Rose spat, “and where’re you even gettin’ that from? That’s crazy. He’s nothin’ like Jimmy. He’s always been a good bloke.”

The Doctor scoffed, “I’m sure. And I bet you’d just come right out and say if he was knocking you around, wouldn’t you? Obviously I’m going to have to have a bit of a talk with Mickey the Idiot –”

“No you won’t!” Rose interrupted. “You can’t just muck about with my boyfriend, or my ex-boyfriend for that matter, like you’re some over-protective mob boss father or somethin’. Hey, seein’ as how you seem to be the one goin’ around more or less threatenin’ people, maybe I should be more worried about gettin’ that kind of treatment from you, huh?”

“I don’t go out of my way to hurt people, but I’ll do what I have to so I can be sure you’re safe!”

“Stop it!” Rose shouted over the top of his last few words, not wanting to hear any more of it. Her voice echoed around the street, and she saw two women walking a little further down turn and look inquisitively at her. She waved tiredly at them to signal that she was fine and they didn’t need to worry. Then she lowered her voice as she ordered, “Stop actin’ like this. It’s not you.”

Rose remembered the chilling way he’d said ‘I’ve killed before’, though, and had to wonder whether this really was him after all. How the hell did she know whether he meant he’d killed people in his delusions, where it had never really happened, or whether he’d done it right here, in reality? And did it really matter either way, when he obviously believed he’d done it? She’d known he had a seriously troubled past, but she’d always presumed he was as much a victim as whoever he’d clearly lost along the way because that was how he’d acted. Clearly there was more to him than that.

“That guy was threatening you,” the Doctor said, now much more calmly, “and I’m protecting you. Did you actually expect me to do anything else when you were being hurt like that?”

Rose shot back, “Oh, who honestly knows? Maybe I’m just now figurin’ out that I haven’t got the first clue what to expect from you. I don’t even know you, really.”

“Of course you do,” he responded, suddenly no longer appearing dangerous in the slightest, not even quietly so. Instead, he just looked hurt. “I’ve told you more about myself than I have anyone else I’ve met in years.”

Rose laughed bitterly. “Yeah? Is that really right? Because I dunno anymore. You’ve told me crazy alien theories that I don’t even know for absolute certain whether you truly believe or not, and then there’s you goin’ all Incredible Hulk on Jimmy... Are you on drugs? I’ve heard angel dust can do that sort of thing. I mean, I didn’t think you were the type, when you’ve always acted like this nice guy, but how’m I honestly s’posed to know what of everythin’ I’ve seen is real here? Or if any of it’s real, even?”

“Rose...”

“I have to go,” she said, seeing her bus approaching in the distance. She’d call the timing convenient, except that she’d have much preferred it to have arrived a good fifteen minutes or so earlier and allowed her to avoid having a reason to flee in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” the Doctor said. “I’m so sorry. I only wanted to help.”

“I know,” Rose agreed. “I do. I just... I can’t be here right now, all right? I have to think. And be elsewhere while I do that,” she added pointedly.

She could feel him watching her climb onto the bus after it came to a stop, and she just knew that there wasn’t a trace of that prior darkness in his eyes now. It had been fully replaced with that expression that made him look like a sad little puppy, and seeing that right now would undoubtedly make Rose feel like she was the one who’d kicked him and made him that way.

She supposed she was, at that. She’d never seen anyone else make him look sad. But then, it occurred to her that she’d never seen anyone else make him look particularly happy, either.

She shook her head and slumped into a seat, pointedly not looking out the window as the bus pulled away.

She distantly remembered a time not so long ago when her life had just been boring, before she’d had to worry about whether something terrible was happening to someone she cared about because he was alone on the streets in the middle of the night or, now, whether he was possibly doing something terrible himself. She almost wished she could go back to that time.

Almost.

At least then she thought she wouldn’t feel this painful indecision.

Chapter Text

Though she hardly ever worked Saturdays, and certainly wasn’t working that day in particular, Rose still caught the bus to Henrik’s, though it was a little later in the morning than she usually did on weekdays.

Having worried herself sick over the whole thing the night before, she felt too guilty to wait the whole weekend. If she’d explained any of it to her Mum or Mickey or Shareen or anyone else in her life, she knew they’d have jumped to tell her she’d done the right thing (and probably would have told her that she should never have befriended someone as emotionally ephemeral and in such a volatile situation as the Doctor was in the first place). But that didn’t matter, because regardless of any objective logic, she knew that she should never have said any of it. She’d been shocked, and she should have just shut up until she had time to get over that and properly process things. She’d never been particularly good about not letting her mouth get away from her, though.

That hurt expression on the Doctor’s face when she’d claimed not to know him at all was still bouncing insistently around in her brain, even half a day later.

She remembered with perfect clarity that moment weeks ago when he’d said those telling words about his past: “They burn.” She knew that whatever other facets there were to his personality and whatever peculiar quirks he had that she hadn’t yet seen, in that moment she’d known something truly vital about him, without question. To say otherwise was to pretend that it hadn’t clearly been difficult for him to share that part of himself with her when he’d obviously kept it shielded from most everyone else he encountered. That man that she’d seen then wasn’t someone she could, or wanted to, just discard. She owed him better than that.

When she arrived to find him and tell him exactly that, however, not to mention to potentially beg his forgiveness if he required her to, he was nowhere to be found.

Rose looked around as if he might suddenly appear from thin air. She knew that she looked horribly bereft standing in front of that empty bench. She had no idea where else he got off to, though she supposed he must duck away sometimes to eat and wash and whatever else he needed to do occasionally. He didn’t seem to be wasting away or giving off body odour or whatever, after all.

But even knowing that there were probably any number of good reasons for him not being there at that particular moment, Rose had a strange underlying sense that his sudden absence wasn’t due to anything quite that simple or temporary.

All she could think was that when she came back on Monday, he’d be there, just as he always was. He had claimed that he went elsewhere during the weekends, after all. It was her own fault that she hadn’t legitimately believed him, presuming that every aspect of his experiences except those for which she was present must be taking place entirely inside his head. It was perfectly likely that he might physically travel even while he dreamed. Maybe it was like sleepwalking... no, actually, that didn’t help at all, she quickly decided. All it did was give her mental images of him sleepwalking right in front of a car, not completely unlike what she’d nearly done the first day they’d met.

Monday, she swore. Monday. He’d be fine until then. He had to be.

Except that he wasn’t there on Monday, either, and Rose barely managed to talk herself out of a panic that would have caused herself to say ‘to hell with it’ and walk out of work well before the end of her shift so that she could go and search for him. As if she actually had any chance of finding him, when he could possibly be anywhere in London. Or anywhere in the world, she supposed, given that he’d had two days to travel (though she had to admit that she had no idea where he’d get the money for a plane or train ticket).

She would have stayed camped out on his bench all night just waiting, and hoping, for his return, except that she was just as afraid for herself alone out there in the middle of the night as she always was for him.

Besides, he was far more likely to show up during the day than in the middle of the night, given that that was when he at least had a reason to return there. He was supposed to meet her in the mornings and at lunchtime, and she doubted he’d forgotten that. Regardless of what had happened between them on Friday, she thought that he’d surely eventually try to see her again in an attempt to patch things up. Or, at minimum, come back for a few minutes just to tell her that he wouldn’t be meeting her anymore.

Except, of course, that she already knew that the Doctor was the type of man who would, in certain situations, run away instead of facing a problem head-on. She hoped that she wasn’t now one of those things he thought he had to flee from and forget all about. At the very least, she wanted him to remember her.

Oh, who did she think she was kidding? She wanted more than that. She wanted lunch every day, and warm greetings before work in the morning, and at least catching a glimpse of him at the end of the day. And maybe, just maybe, a lot more than that.

If only he would show up – he didn’t on Tuesday, or Wednesday either – and actually give her back the possibility of ever having any of that again.

Thursday lunch this week was spent with Mickey, as had been their custom, and as should have really happened the last two weeks. She’d made plans with him first, after all, and he was the one who was her boyfriend, and so he probably had more of a right than anyone else to expect her to actually show up when she said she would instead of all-too-willingly spending her time elsewhere.

Only today, when she was actually there, where she was supposedly meant to be, it just felt plain wrong.

“It’s not workin’,” she announced. “This. Us.”

The announcement came out of nowhere, on the heels of Mickey complaining avidly about cigarette smokers who seemed to purposely direct their exhales straight at him when he glared at them. And yet, in a much more important way, it didn’t come out of nowhere at all. It had been coming for ages, really.

Mickey looked a little upset, certainly. He even looked just ever so slightly hopeful that she might change her mind. But he didn’t look surprised in the slightest. He’d known something was off just as surely as she had. He’d have been blind not to when it was so obvious. And even if the Doctor never returned and she didn’t so much as see him in passing again, that didn’t matter when it came to this, because whatever the heck she had with him wasn’t really the root of her issues with Mickey.

They just weren’t meant to be together. Not long-term, anyway, though it had been a good time while it lasted.

“Is there someone else?” Mickey asked.

“I dunno,” Rose said. “There might be. It’s a bit hard to say. But that’s not really why, you know.”

“Yeah, didn’t think so.” Mickey shrugged. “I always knew you wanted somethin’ bigger, I guess. But I still hoped. Bit of an idiot that way, me.”

“Not an idiot,” Rose insisted.

“Just a bit,” Mickey insisted with a grin.

“Oh, all right then,” Rose teased. “Maybe a little. At least as much as I am.”

“At least.”

Rose had no idea what would have happened in different circumstances, had their relationship not died a fairly natural death. She hated to think that Mickey might have walked away and never looked back at her. As it stood, it seemed clear that they weren’t going to stop being friends any time soon, though Rose fully expected Mickey to embark on some fairly extensive vetoing of any of her prospective boyfriends (she tried not to picture the expression the Doctor would wear while being picked on by Mickey, of all people, as she thought that).

Rose was glad. She didn’t want to lose him completely, and they’d actually always been better as friends, anyway.

She left Mickey with tentative plans for them to go to the pub together (some things never changed) on Saturday. When she returned to work, she tried not to notice the still-empty bench or feel that sight stab deep into her chest.

She emerged from work hours later and very nearly headed straight for the bus stop without even looking, not wanting to have her vague hopes snuffed out yet again. But, in the end, she couldn’t quite help herself. She had to know.

It was just as well she’d forced herself to look, though, because the Doctor was sitting up on that bench of his staring straight at her. He didn’t say a word, looking as if he wasn’t entirely sure that it would be welcome.

Rose stormed right up to him, then, and slapped him on the arm, and he looked at her with an almost betrayed look despite it being a fairly light swat (at least as far as her inherited slapping abilities went). “I’ve been goin’ totally mad with worry,” she said. “Where’d you go?”

The Doctor looked confused. “I... don’t really know. What’s today?”

“Thursday,” Rose answered. She cleared her throat, trying to rid herself of that annoying little wobble that she could feel making its way up her throat as she spoke. If she was going to be in any way emotional just now, she’d really rather be just plain angry, thanks. “You’ve been missin’ for almost a week!”

“Oh. That’s odd.”

“‘Odd’?” Rose asked. “That’s all you’re gonna say about it?”

“Um... yes?” the Doctor suggested tentatively. At Rose’s glare he quickly corrected, “No. No, of course not. That would be... No, what I meant to say was... I’m sorry.”

He very nearly seemed to phrase that as a question as well, but Rose decided to let that slide. Given that it was the Doctor, she should probably have just been glad it had taken him so few tries to realise that might need saying.

Sighing, her annoyance mostly escaping along with her breath, Rose said ruefully, “Only you could manage to lose a whole week, just like that.”

“I didn’t lose it, precisely,” the Doctor said. “I remember bits of it. I wandered around the Horsehead Nebula for a while – beautiful place – and I think I remember drinking quite a few banana daiquiris – probably why my memory’s all hazy, come to think of it – and I think maybe... there was something about a pool? And singing ‘Hey Jude’ at the top of my lungs. The Beatles. Now there were some men who knew how to party. Maybe I took a trip back to the 1960s? That would explain a lot.”

“By the sounds of it, what you probably did was take a trip to the police station, where you likely spent half the week in a cell for public nuisance and any number of other charges,” Rose said.

“Hmm, I seem to remember there were metal bars at some stage,” the Doctor agreed pensively.

Rose laughed – it was better than crying, after all – and seriously contemplated pulling out her hair. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s my fault you went anywhere in the first place. I shouldn’t have run off without sortin’ things out with you first. Look at what happened because of me.”

“No,” the Doctor said firmly. “That’s not true. And you were right last week. I’m far more dangerous than you know. And you’d definitely be better off without me. If I was a better man, I wouldn’t have just left; I’d have stayed gone.”

“I don’t need you to make my decisions for me,” Rose told him, incensed once again. “I’ve already got enough people willin’ to jump in and do that. I can think for myself. And I did think. I had a whole week to do that. Doctor, I want you to stick around, I do, but I sure as hell can’t keep doin’ what I’ve been doin’, ridin’ the emotional rollercoaster from hell, not to mention stayin’ up all hours of the night worrin’ about whether you’re all right.”

“I’m fine, Rose,” assured the Doctor. “I’m always fine. I’ve survived all kinds of things with no trouble. Well, not much trouble. Well...”

“Look, I know you wanna be all self-sufficient, and you’ve got your TARDIS or whatever,” Rose said softly. “And maybe I’m bein’ selfish here, but I need to know that you’ve got somewhere you’re goin’ home to every night. I can’t do this otherwise.”

“I already do. This is my home.” He pointed downwards.

“Sorry, but a bench really isn’t a home. Not in the ways that matter.”

“Of course it is!” the Doctor insisted. “You know it’s not really a bench; I’m sure I’ve explained this already. It’s only disguised by the chameleon circuit to look that way so it blends in. It’s supposed to change appearances wherever I go to best match its surroundings so that no one notices it. Very clever design... well, except that it doesn’t really work how it’s supposed to anymore. It’s been stuck looking like a bench for years now. Which isn’t too bad, considering. Most places have benches, even if they aren’t always blue and made of wood.”

“Look, either way, it’s still only just a place to stay,” Rose said. “‘Home’ is about more than that. C’mon, grab your coat and let me show you. Please.”

He seemed sceptical. When she held out her hand, though, as always he didn’t hesitate to take it.

* * *

“This is the sort of place you could easily be livin’,” Rose said as they ascended. “It’s Council-subsidised and everythin’, so it doesn’t matter that you don’t have a lot of money.”

“It’s got too many walls,” the Doctor protested. He stopped halfway up on the way to Rose’s floor to duck around and peer curiously into someone else’s window. “And curtains! I hate those.” He shook his head and added much more quietly, “Really, really hate them.”

In her mind’s eye Rose could picture long drapes going up in flames. She wondered whether he was thinking of the same thing. She wondered whether he could hear screaming in the background and, if so, how many voices. He never had told her the details. All she knew was what she’d been able to infer.

“I know it’s got a lot of things you don’t like,” Rose said patiently, “and I’m sorry about that, but what’s more important is that it’s also got a roof. And locks on the doors.”

“The TARDIS has a lock,” the Doctor contended somewhat petulantly. “How else do you think I keep all the people across the universe that are out for my blood away? I’ve got to have a safe place to retreat to.”

Rose sighed. “Just... let me show you somethin’, all right? Then I won’t keep you here if you really don’t want to stay.”

The Doctor looked highly put upon, but he continued to follow her up the stairs regardless.

When pushed open her front door, she was glad to find the lights all turned off, signalling that her Mum wasn’t home yet. “This is my flat. My Mum’s and mine, I mean,” Rose said.

“It’s small,” he remarked as he stepped through the door and turned on the spot.

“As compared to, say, your bench?” Rose asked pointedly. She gave him a gentle push in the direction she wanted to take him, and he (mostly) willingly let himself be guided.

“The TARDIS is bigger on the inside, of course,” he jibed.

“’Course it is,” she murmured under her breath. “Because that makes loads of logical sense. Here,” she added more loudly, reaching through the doorway and flicking the light switch. “This is my bedroom. This is what I wanted you to see.”

The Doctor’s mouth was hanging open, stunned. “It’s... pink. Very, very pink. In fact, I didn’t actually know there was this much pink in the whole universe, and I’ve seen a lot of this universe of ours in my time.”

“Oh hush,” Rose reproved. “Obviously the pink’s not what I brought you here for. Here.”

“Oh, photos!” the Doctor said, sounding considerably more excited, as Rose gestured at the pictures in question.

“Yeah, but they’re more than just that. They’re an entire life so far. My life. Almost everythin’ important that’s ever happened to me happened in this house, and even for those things that went down elsewhere, most of the fallout afterwards was here. My parents – my Dad initially, then my Mum took over when he died – took photos of pretty much everythin’. All my firsts: first words, first steps, when I learned to ride a bike, when I left for the start of school, all of that. There’s even a picture hidden away somewhere of me goin’ on my first official date, though I was completely mortified that my Mum made Roger Steinwick actually stand there, out beside where the telly is now, and pose with me for that, like we were headed out to our Leaver’s Ball or somethin’. Not that I ever got to go to my actual Leaver’s Ball, mind, what with leavin’ school before I could.”

“Oh, I bet you didn’t miss a thing,” the Doctor was quick to assure her. “Schools never get those sorts of things right. The First Night of Saint Verilis in the 79th century – now that was a proper ball!”

“You’ll have to take me there someday,” Rose said, wishing he actually could. “You know, though, silly missed dances that don’t really mean anythin’ aside, there are some less than happy memories in this house, and I wouldn’t wanna leave them behind either. They’re the kinds of things that the camera didn’t get pulled out for, but they still left their mark. Like that cushion over there in the corner: it has streaks of mascara on the back of it from where I cried my eyes out when I finally left Jimmy Stone and moved back in here. Although I s’pose that’s as much a happy memory as a sad one, really, come to think of it.”

“Why would you ever want to hold onto something like that?” the Doctor asked. “Why would you choose to remember things that hurt you?”

Rose drew in a deep breath, realising that this was probably the most important thing he’d ever asked her, so damn it she’d better get the answer right.

“Because,” she said, “it’s all important, even the bits that are painful – maybe especially them. They’re what make us who we are. And holdin’ onto the pain is better than losin’ ourselves tryin’ to forget, right?”

The Doctor shook his head, clearly not understanding how she could think that, but at least she knew he’d heard her words, and that they were probably even now lingering somewhere in the back of his mind.

“Even if I moved away from this place physically – if I found my own flat or whatever – it would still be my anchor,” Rose explained. “It’d still be the place where all my memories have roots. And it’s where my family lives. That’s what makes it a home, not just a house, get me?”

“My TARDIS contains a lot of memories,” the Doctor said, but she didn’t think it was just her imagination telling her that he seemed slightly more unsure now than he had when she’d started talking. “The things I’ve seen and done in it are just as important as what you have here. I can’t just leave those behind.”

Rose frowned. “I... No,” she said, a slight sinking feeling of realisation forming in her gut. “I guess maybe you can’t at that. They’re what make you you.”

It wasn’t that she didn’t actually quite like that the Doctor had all these mad stories and fantastic dreams about being more or less the most amazing person in the universe, or that she wanted to take those away from him. But, for his own sake, she wanted to help him grab onto the opportunity to heal, if she possibly could. And, like it or not, these hallucinations of his were keeping him from being able to deal with other things. If he couldn’t move on from them...

“Doesn’t mean you can’t make your new memories elsewhere, though,” Rose finally added hopefully, an idea occurring to her.

“Or that you can’t,” he countered.

“Yeah, maybe.” Then Rose started laughing, finally breaking the tension between them. “We should just both run away and spend the rest of our days livin’ just off some beach somewhere. I hear Barcelona’s nice. That’d solve everythin’, don’t you think?”

“With you? Sounds brilliant.”

Rose only wished she had enough money (or that he had a real, working TARDIS) to actually make something like that happen.

The sound of the front door opening and her mother calling out her name prevented her from launching fully into a daydream about lying on the sand with the Doctor rubbing sunscreen into her back... which was just as well, she supposed, since the Doctor wouldn’t necessarily be entirely comfortable hearing the pleased little sounds that a vivid fantasy about that kind of thing would inevitably make her emit.

Her Mum appeared abruptly in Rose’s doorway and paused, her eyes zooming in almost like a magnet onto the unexpected male presence in the corner of Rose’s room.

“Oi, so who’s this, then?” her Mum asked.

The Doctor, who had stood up to a drunken and enraged Jimmy Stone without a single sign of hesitation, practically cowered as Jackie Tyler’s levelled her glare on him.

“Mum, this is the Doctor.”

Her mother looked the Doctor up and down, taking in the sight of his heavily creased suit, and asked doubtfully, “What kind of doctor’s he s’posed to be, exactly?”

Before the Doctor could jump in with some kind of smart remark, or the truth (Rose wasn’t sure which would be worse in this case), Rose quickly said, “He has a Ph.D. in physics.”

Jackie looked as though she might be persuaded to believe that given time, at least, but she still didn’t appear particularly mollified.

“And what’s he doin’ here?”

“He’s, um... stayin’. Here. For the night. On the couch.” Rose wanted to bury her face in her hands and never pull it back out right about then. Could it have been made any more clear that there was potential romantic tension there for her mother to viciously pry into until she learned every little detail?

“Obviously,” the Doctor affirmed, clearly nervous. “There are only two beds in this place, so where else would I possibly sleep?”

Well, that answered that.

The Doctor was quelled back to silence – a monumental task, Rose had to say – by Jackie’s stare whipping back around to effectively pin him.

Her Mum nodded slowly. Dangerously slowly, Rose thought. “Stayin’ the night. Is he now?” she asked darkly.

Rose gritted her teeth stubbornly. “Yeah. Just for the one night,” she stressed. “Since he’s got nowhere else to go and all.”

The Doctor looked like he was about to protest that last claim, but Rose shook her head slightly to stop him from saying anything about his bench. The last thing she needed was to give her mother any more reason to suspect that the Doctor was unwanted trouble.

“Excuse us,” her Mum demanded of the Doctor. “I have to talk to my daughter.”

Rose sighed and silently mouthed a ‘sorry’ at the Doctor, closing the door to her room after her and leaving him alone in there after she followed her mother out.

“What about Mickey?” Jackie immediately demanded.

“I dunno. What about him? We broke up. Besides, the Doctor and I aren’t a couple or anythin’.”

Her Mum snorted disbelievingly. “And why d’you call him that anyway? ‘The Doctor’. Hasn’t he even deigned to tell you his real name?”

“It’s just what everyone calls him, all right?” Rose said. “Just leave it, will you?”

“Right, I’m s’posed to just accept that I’m suddenly sharin’ a roof with some weirdo cradle-robbin’ bloke who doesn’t even have a proper name or place of his own to go home to. Fat chance of that. Is he married? Is that it? Has the wife chucked him because she found out about you two?”

Rose didn’t think that telling her Mum that she thought the Doctor might actually have been married once upon a time and that he refused to talk about it was the best way to get her on board, so she simply shook her head. “He’s not married. His lease ran out and he’s still lookin’ for a place, that’s all.”

“And he can’t stay in a hotel because...”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Because he’s not made of money, maybe? You and I couldn’t afford to live in a hotel for more than a day or two at a time either, probably. Aren’t you the one who’s all worried about me gettin’ airs and thinkin’ I’m above myself? Well look, here’s someone who’s from a similar situation. You should be happy, don’t you think?”

“Mickey’s from the Estate as well,” her Mum reminded her. “And he’s more your age.”

Rose also imagined telling her mother that the Doctor was – or at least believed himself to be – about nine hundred years older than her. That would go over well.

“And Mickey’s always been –”

“Maybe, much as I like him, I just don’t really wanna spend the rest of my life with Mickey Smith!” Rose exclaimed, then realised that she was loud enough that the Doctor could probably hear her. She lowered her voice again. “Don’t you think that should be my decision to make?”

“Like with Jimmy Stone? Because that was such a good choice you made all on your lonesome there,” her Mum sniped.

Rose made a noise of frustration. “I was a stupid kid then, and I admit that I was wrong. But I’m twenty now. I’m smarter and I know what I want.”

“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” her Mum remarked. “Just a few minutes ago you were claimin’ full out that you weren’t even datin’. Now you’re actin’ like I’ve just turned him down for permission to marry you or somethin’.”

“All right, fine. You’re right,” Rose admitted grudgingly. “Is that what you wanna hear? I don’t know, Mum! I don’t know how he feels, or even really how I feel for sure. Not entirely. But I do know that the Doctor’s a good man, and he’s a friend, and needs me right now, so either he’s stayin’ here tonight or I guess I’m leavin’.”

Jackie’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. It’d serve you right if I kicked you out for a bit so you can appreciate what you have here, missy, but then I’d probably never see you again because you’ll run off with him out of spite.”

Rose thought longingly of Barcelona once again, hoping nothing of that wish showed on her face. “You know I wouldn’t really. I told you, I’ve grown up since those days.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” her Mum said doubtingly. “And you’re not foolin’ me in the slightest, by the way. I called it what it was weeks ago, before I even met him: man trouble. I wish for your sake that I could say otherwise, but any idiot could see how different you’ve been actin’, and the only thing that I’ve ever seen that does somethin’ like that is love. So puttin’ all your unconvincin’ ‘just for tonight’s aside, I just bet that I’ll be seein’ him still here tomorrow night, won’t I? And the next, and the next, for the foreseeable future?”

Rose just shrugged, not wanting to be actively caught in a lie, as her mother always seemed so capable of doing. After all, if Rose could convince the Doctor, that was exactly what she was hoping for, at least for the time being.

“Right. I don’t know why I even try,” Jackie moaned. “You’ll do just as you like, I s’pose. Just don’t come cryin’ to me when it’s Jimmy all over again.”

When Rose returned to her room, she found the Doctor flipping idly through one of her old photo albums, not seeming to be aware that that could potentially be considered a breach of privacy. Although, Rose supposed, considering that she’d brought him back to the flat precisely because she wanted to show him her photos (among other things), maybe that wasn’t quite true in this case.

“You know, you were a really beautiful child, for a human,” the Doctor commented casually. “Not much has changed in that respect.”

Rose felt like she’d just walked into some strange parallel universe where the Doctor was actually capable of being that remarkably open about saying things like that. It was weird.

She had to admit that she kind of liked it, though.

“Um, thanks,” she said.

The Doctor looked like he was hovering, getting ready to make a break for the doorway now that she’d moved clear of it. Apparently he had one last thing to say before going, though, because he asked, “Did you mean what you said? About you and Mickey? Sorry,” he quickly added, “I didn’t mean to listen in, but I couldn’t really help it. Time Lord hearing.”

Ah, Rose thought, that might go a good way towards explaining his sudden change in attitude. She supposed that hearing that she had left her boyfriend and was – at least according to her own mother – probably in love with him likely did wonders to answer any questions he might have had and to boost his confidence on that score.

“That’s all right,” Rose said. “I s’pose I wasn’t exactly bein’ very discrete, was I? I... yeah. I did mean it. Mickey and I aren’t about to grow old together as anythin’ other than just friends. And as for the anythin’ else you might have heard...” Rose shrugged, trying to be flip, but unknowingly smiling broadly as she did so.

The Doctor nodded as he leaned in and pressed a brief, unexpected but undeniably sweet kiss against her lips. “Good,” was all he said before leaving the room for the night.

Rose was left with her eyes closed and her mouth slightly parted, still tingling from the kiss, as the door fell shut.

Well, she decided. That certainly answered that question.

Though it still didn’t give her any real answers about what to actually do about it.

* * *

“I should go back,” the Doctor announced brusquely in the morning when Rose was getting ready for work. He was clearly trying not to, but Rose thought he sounded almost panicked, and he kept glancing around like the walls were closing in on him. “I can’t stay in here.”

“All right,” Rose said quickly. “You need to get out for a bit. I get that. You could meet me for lunch like usual, but then you could come home with me again when I finish work. That’d be great. We could cook a completely non-chips-related meal when we get back, and maybe even wash your suit. I really have no idea how you manage to stay smellin’ like a man with average hygiene – above average, really – when you’re spendin’ all your time out on the streets, but a handy shower and private washin’ machine have still gotta be better than whatever system you’ve got rigged up.”

The Doctor huffed. “Rose, the TARDIS does have a bathroom, you know. And I dare say it’s more sophisticated and technologically advanced than anything your mother might have picked out. Also, Time Lords simply don’t sweat as much as humans.”

“Yeah, all right, I’m sure that’s true,” Rose said coaxingly. “But humour me anyway?”

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably in place, and Rose smiled, knowing he was going to cave.

“I bought banana-scented shower gel a week ago, by the way, just in case,” Rose added.

Suddenly the Doctor didn’t seem to be so completely opposed to the idea, though he did still appear highly suspicious of her. “You’re just trying to make me stay here longer so I’ll end up not wanting to leave at all, aren’t you?”

“And what, there’d be somethin’ wrong with that?” Rose asked innocently.

She practically skipped out the door to the accompaniment of the Doctor muttering about being manipulated, though she honestly didn’t think he actually seemed all that irritated.

It probably helped that he left the small flat with her, getting out into the open air and slowly dispelling his sudden claustrophobia or whatever it was.

Rose hoped it also helped that they walked to the bus stop together hand-in-hand.

* * *

He did show up to meet her for lunch. Despite having spent that small amount of time with him in the interim, she was undeniably pleased by finally being able to have lunch with him again for the first time in nearly a week. And she was even more pleased that, whatever subtle and not-so-subtle shifts were clearly going on between them, things were as completely at ease as ever when they were laughing over servings of chips.

When she left work at the end of the day, he was still there, right back on his bench, where she’d always known she could find him before but now kind of wished he would abandon (as long as it meant joining her instead, obviously).

“Come home with me.” She didn’t make it into an order, although she almost wanted to, knowing he’d probably go along with it to try to please her if she insisted that strongly... at least he probably would this time. Not forever, she thought, since he did certainly have a mind and a stubbornness all of his own. And that was what she really wanted from him. A choice of his own, and forever, all in one.

So it was merely phrased as a request. And, as such, he looked like he had no idea whether he wanted to comply with it.

“I don’t know how to do this,” he told her. “To do what I know you want for me. To go back to a house every day and pretend like I belong in a place like that anymore.”

“I know it’s hard for you. But please, try. Just try. If it really doesn’t work, we’ll find another way. But right now, this is all I can see.”

The Doctor sighed, but he nodded. “All right,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”

Rose smiled, and the Doctor mirrored it despite his apprehension, and Rose thought she had at least a fleeting chance that things were going to work out just fine after all.

* * *

“Your mother’s going to be annoyed to see me here again,” the Doctor said as he stepped into Rose’s room.

“Oh, she expects it,” Rose said, rolling her eyes. “And she’ll just have to live with it, anyway, seein’ as how it’s important to me.”

The Doctor frowned. “You do seem set on it. And why is that, again?”

“Lots of reasons. Mainly, I hate only seein’ you for an hour or two a day, and I hate even more not knowin’ where you are and whether you’re all right,” Rose said. “You’re so busy dashin’ off to other worlds that I’m just left behind wonderin’.”

“Oh, is that all you’re worried about?” the Doctor asked, suddenly seeming oddly cheerful at the prospect. “But that’s easy to fix! Really very easy, honestly. You can come with me,” he offered. “No, it’ll be perfect,” he continued when Rose started to protest. “No more job that you don’t even like at the shop to worry about, no,” he gulped, “mother to report home to. And remember when I told you about the third moon of Garek Foosh? You could actually see places like that for yourself. Doesn’t that sound better than what things are like now?”

She idly wondered what would happen if she actually said yes to his proposal; if she claimed that she would go off flying into time and space with him, never to have to come back here if they didn’t want to. Would he lose himself entirely in the fantasy without his daily ‘returns’ to Earth – to her – to ground him somewhat? Or would the illusion fall down around his ears when he discovered that, no matter how hard he tried and how much he wanted it, that blue wooden bench of his was just never going to be able to really take the two of them on trips across time and space after all.

Either way, she suspected that the ultimate outcome was that he’d be left a very different man. Though she did have to wonder whether it was selfish of her to want him remain the same man she’d... that she’d fallen in love with, she couldn’t help but think that there had to be a real reason that his mind had resorted to fantasies to escape from the far harsher realities. Was it really likely that he’d be any more able to cope if the world as he knew it was torn away now than he had been then? Surely taking it all away completely wouldn’t just leave him different, but also broken.

She didn’t want that for him. Never.

Hopefully it didn’t have to come down to that choice, though. Hopefully there was another way.

“I wanna be with you,” she told him seriously, “always. Wherever you go. But you know how crazy Mum would go if she didn’t even know what year or which part of the universe I was in at any given moment? I can’t do that to her.” The Doctor’s face started to fall, but Rose quickly pressed her palm to his cheek. “But we could still be together. You could stay here instead. Here with me. We could have a different kind of adventure.”

“The one adventure I can never have,” he said quietly.

“Yeah? Says who?” she asked.

“Rose, I had a family once,” he said. The pain he felt in talking about this topic was tangible. “I lost them. How can I do that all over again?”

Rose grasped his hand, bringing his knuckles up to her lips for a moment. “I know it hurts. But what’s it matter whether or not you can regenerate and exist for a thousand years or more if you don’t take risks and actually live durin’ that time? You know that’s true already. You’ve told me so before. It’s the same reason you travel the universe even though it’s dangerous, right? But life right here on Earth could be just as excitin’. It’s what we make of it. And you and me? We could make it fantastic.”

She could tell he was struggling with it, but there was no way to ease his path. She couldn’t force him to live in her reality every day without hurting him, probably irreparably. He had to make the decision himself.

“If I stayed...” he began, and Rose’s hopes soared. “If I did, then how long would you stay with me?”

“Forever,” she promised. “Haven’t I already made that clear enough? Idiot.”

The Doctor took both of her hands in his as he leaned forward and kissed her. When he pulled back, grinning, Rose was left with a piece of cool metal in her hands. She held up the shiny Yale key and looked questioningly at him.

“It’s my key to the TARDIS,” he said. “It’s yours now. You can do whatever you like with it. I won’t need it anymore.”

He reached out and wiped away a tear that Rose hadn’t even realised was rolling slowly down her cheek. “I really hope that’s not sad crying,” he said.

Rose shook her head at him. “Really, really not even a little bit,” she said.

She threaded her fingers loosely into his wild hair and pulled him with her as she fell backwards onto the bed.

* * *

Rose hummed cheerfully as she put the kettle on. Her Mum took one look at her expression and sighed, walking away muttering.

The Doctor, either seeing or just sensing that the coast was now clear, popped his head into the kitchen to check on her.

“You’re wearing it!” the Doctor exclaimed, walking up and tugging at the key now hanging around Rose’s neck.

“Yeah, well, be a bit silly not to,” Rose said. “Your TARDIS is what brought you to me, after all. I wouldn’t even still be here if you hadn’t been on that street that first day we met. But I’ve gotta say, it took me ages to actually find where the damn key disappeared to. Turns out it got all caught up in the sheets when we...”

“Tangled them?” The Doctor sounded vaguely shy about it, though Rose could also see the tiniest of suggestive grins pushing its way slowly into existence on his face. She laughed.

“That’s one way of puttin’ it,” she agreed. “You know, I think you’re a little bit giddy this mornin’. I dunno that I’ve ever seen you like that before.”

“I doubt it. I haven’t... you know... since... before.” The Doctor shared a wry smile with her. “Probably, now I think of it, telling you that beforehand would have been a smarter idea. But it’s not just that in itself, it’s... for the first time in a very long time, I don’t feel guilty about wanting something that’s good.”

“You can, you know. Want things for yourself,” Rose told him.

“Well, in that case, what I really very badly want is not to have to live with your mother,” the Doctor said, pulling a face.

“Ugh, yes. Trust me, the way you two act around each other, I don’t want that either. Not for long, at least,” Rose said. “Though I guess I’m gonna need a bit of time to get some money together to move out.”

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully, then seemed to sort of steel himself as if to say something difficult. “I might... that is... I don’t normally find it this difficult to find the right words.”

“You’re tellin’ me!” Rose joked, but shut up again quickly, seeing his continued seriousness.

“What I’m trying to say is that there might be a way I could help. With that. The money situation, I mean. I never wanted to... but it might be time to at least think about it.”

The Doctor walked over to where his coat was draped and pulled out of one of the pockets that plastic bag of his that made its way in and out of sight semi-frequently, as if he kept pulling it out to get something from it, or maybe just to contemplate its existence. He held it out to her like an offering.

“Here,” he said. “I’ve been carrying these with me for too long. I can’t... I can’t look at them myself, but maybe I should at least stop dragging them around like a ball and chain.”

Rose took the bag and he gestured at it encouragingly before turning away and leaving the room. Rose untied the plastic and looked inside.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting to find in there, but it hadn’t been a rusty old screwdriver, a completely empty dark leather wallet, and three envelopes. She felt as though she was invading his privacy as she pulled the envelopes out of the bag and slipped their contents free, but he’d wanted her to see.

The first one was a home and contents insurance payout. The second (Rose clenched her eyes shut in empathy upon seeing it) was a life insurance payout. The last was a letter from someone named Alistair telling him, at great length, that he shouldn’t blame himself for what had happened just because he hadn’t died as well. Rose wondered whether Alistair was still around somewhere, and whether he had any idea what had become of the Doctor. Or rather, of John Smith, she realised, noting how each letter was addressed.

But no, birth name or not, that didn’t seem right to her at all. He was still the Doctor. Just the Doctor. Given that he clearly had enough wherewithal to know at least the general nature of what was inside the bag, she wasn’t sure just how solid the illusions of his past had remained for him when he’d chosen to give that life up – whether he had some inkling exactly what was hidden beneath the lies he’d told himself – but he obviously still did remember those strange and wonderful things more or less as if he’d lived them. He was still that man just as much as – or perhaps more than – he was the man who’d obviously chosen to remember better things and to go homeless despite having ample funds because he couldn’t bare living on money that was saturated in death and destruction.

“Do you think all the insane brushes with death are over now?” the Doctor asked her from where he was now leaning once more in the kitchen doorway. She hadn’t even heard him reappear. “Now that I’ve hung it up and decided to stay here with you, I mean.”

Rose snorted. “Seriously? Knowin’ you? I just bet you’re always gonna be a magnet for excitement and danger. Just look at how you take your life in your hands every time you’re in the same room with my Mum.”

The Doctor shuddered dramatically.

“It’s a wonder you haven’t got yourself killed a hundred times over already,” Rose noted.

“Well, to be fair, I kind of have,” the Doctor corrected. “Regeneration, remember? I haven’t done it a hundred times, though, mind. Just nine. I’ve got two hearts, and a respiratory bypass, so the whole shebang of making myself up a whole new body doesn’t become necessary as often as you might think, given some of what I’ve got myself into over the years. Way more resilient than humans, Time Lords.”

Rose smiled and stepped forward into his arms, resting her head on his chest. “Just as well,” she said, her voice slightly muffled against his jacket. “I like you too much to lose you to the angry aliens that’ll inevitably come after us and start invadin’ Earth now that you’ve gone and settled down here. Thanks for that, by the way.”

The Doctor chuckled. “Don’t worry, Rose Tyler, I’ll save the day when they do. I’m not going anywhere.”

She sighed happily and was sent slowly drifting off into daydreams of the future by the soothingly repetitive sounds of his deep breathing and his single heartbeat.

~FIN~