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As she collapses on her bed upon returning from yet another exhausting excursion, Rose happens to glance over at her calendar and is startled at the date.
October 31st.
When you live on a ship that never anchors, that travels through space at a thousand years per second, time becomes relative.
Outside the solar system, where the turn of the Earth and the orbit of the moon dictate years and months and hours, the definition of a day can change from six hours to two weeks, watches and Gregorian calendars become irrelevant. When you can land on three Saturdays in a week and go a year and a half without a frigid winter day, the concept of time as something fixed that progresses from dawn to dusk and through seasonal changes becomes warped.
She learned this lesson he hard way very early on in her travels with the Doctor.
This customized, digital timekeeping calendar on her nightstand that keeps in perfect sync with her original Earth timeline, the one the Time Lord himself crafted for her before his hair had a mind of its own, is often the only thing that keeps her tethered to home. Tells her how long since she’s seen her mum and Mickey, when major holidays are coming up and when she’s getting another year older.
They’d been on a sunny, humid planet all day, and on Earth during spring the day before, white and pink blossoms, green trees, and blue skies. No red or orange leaves, costume stores, or chocolates and sweets with pumpkins and ghosts on the labels in the market had hinted at or hyped Halloween's arrival in the preceding weeks.
She runs out of her room to fetch the Doctor before he’s wandered too far from the console. She knows better than to skip over the important days, and he knows better than to deny her a contemporary trip when she asks.
---
Though he always gives in to her travel requests, he doesn’t normally partake in the festivities that prompted them. He’s above that. To Rose, it makes sense: someone whose very genetic makeup enables him to control and manipulate time refusing to be chained by it. He’ll celebrate what he wants when he wants to, or else acquiesce when the TARDIS decides enough trips have passed that chance allows him a holiday. Regardless, today is no exception to the rule.
He indulges the trip to the pumpkin patch, loiters patiently several feet behind her while she picks out the ones she wants, hands in his pockets and eyes on the kids running through the dirt rows.
“Do you really need all these?” he asks, grappling for hold on another heavy one as she shoves it into his chest.
“Yep.”
He lets out a great, big sigh but doesn’t question her further.
---
He shows her the way to the TARDIS’s stockpile of sweets, says she can help herself, and promptly clears his throat and excuses himself to take care of some routine maintenance. It’s no less than what she expected; typical Doctor behavior.
Sitting at the kitchen table sharing a pile of chocolates and carving pumpkins is too messy and intimate.
She’s free to bake biscuits in the kitchen and design and decorate her room how she wants, but he won’t be eating the dough from her fingers or helping her repaint the walls of her room; he’s made it painfully clear the he cannot and will not be domesticated. The TARDIS isn’t their home, though they both live here; it’s his. And she’s an eternal guest in it because he’ll never stop seeing her presence in his life as temporary. Ever since Sarah Jane he’s been careful to enforce those implicit boundaries.
---
The TARDIS pilfers her desire for appropriate music from her mind, and a harrowing orchestral number commences from invisible speakers at the same moment the lights dim to a soft orange glow. A wide smile stretches across her face. The ship’s always been accommodating to her mood whenever the Doctor gets skittish with emotions.
She’s not really thinking about him, really, because she’s rather enjoying herself without him. There’s milk chocolate coating her tongue and she’s got her arms elbow-deep in pumpkin flesh, scraping at the seeds and pulp and dropping handfuls with wet slaps onto the table. She picks another morsel of chocolate from her stash with her teeth, not wanting to muck up the taste with the pumpkin juice dripping down her fingers and forearm.
The insides cleaned out, she washes her arms before grabbing an appropriate knife from the drawer. Dipping her face inside the opening she made in the top, she takes one last good whiff of the damp, starchy melon smell before she gets to work.
She’s only halfway through the cute ghost design she decided on, however, when the Doctor’s voice calls from the doorway, an octave higher than usual.
“What a mess!”
She jumps in her seat, her hands slipping from their grip on the shiny surface of the pumpkin as she jumps, and the knife slices through the pad of her left thumb.
“AH!” she yelps, dropping the knife with a clang.
“Blimey, Rose!” His trainers leaves skid marks on the floor in his haste to come to her aid.
“You all right!?” He takes her arm in both of his, cradling her wrist so he can examine the injury, but he can’t possibly see it through the quick trails of blood flowing down her thumb and over her palm.
It’s all she can do not to pass out from the searing pain and the sight of so much red, so she just lets out a small whimper.
Without another word, he scoops her up in his arms and runs down the corridor for the infirmary.
---
It would’ve needed stitches, in her time, but the Doctor, of course, with his arsenal of medical technology has the wound disinfected and closed up with the sonic in less than twenty minutes. Dosed up with pain medication and her thumb wrapped in a fat, fluffy white wrap, she’s sitting back in front of her pumpkin, the Doctor in the chair next to her fiddling with the sonic.
“Much safer, eh?” he insists, placing it in her good hand after adjusting it to the right setting. He’s still wearing those damned glasses he put on to (supposedly) see her injury better, and frankly with all the brown in his suit and his hair he looks as edible as the chocolates still sprawled across the table. She stares back down at her unfinished carving and flicks on the sonic until the buzzing that fills the room (the music has long since stopped) drowns out the fantasies.
He stays with her until she finishes up, rambling on about pumpkins and chocolate and knives and safety. Leaning back dangerously far in his chair, propping his feet up on the table, and periodically tossing chocolates in the air and catching them in his mouth.
He says her ghost is brilliant, with one of those smiles that takes her breath away.
She accidentally yawns instead of smiling back, and he insists on walking her to her room.
“I’m sorry.” He brings her injured hand to his lips as he says goodnight, placing a soft kiss on her palm and an even lighter one over the bandage.
---
She wakes with a parched tongue a few hours later, and meanders back to the kitchen for a glass of water with the assistance of the TARDIS’s nocturnal lighting.
Two pumpkins are perched on the table, hers with the friendly ghost is still there but next to it is a second, decorated with the ornate circular script she recognizes from several places on the TARDIS. Both are flickering with yellow and orange from the hollowed interior, the light of the flames through the carvings dancing through the shadows on the table, illuminating the otherwise near-blackness of the kitchen.
She steps closer, hand automatically reaching for the intricate calligraphy, desperate to decipher it. The TARDIS, however, is of no assistance.
“You should be asleep.”
She jumps in the air, a hand over her heart as she whirls around.
“I needed…” she gasps, “a drink, how did you know I was in ‘ere?”
“I heard you.” He’s leaning against the door frame, one leg crossed over the other. Still in his suit, hair still pristine.
“Right. Super senses.” She shakes her head.
He smirks with an exhale that’s almost a chuckle.
“What’s it say?” She turns back to his carving, marveling at the intricacy of the elaborate, interconnected circles, the trembling glow of the cryptic writing making tiny hairs prick up on the back of her neck.
He’s silent for so many aching seconds that she starts to wonder if he’s gone, fled from the room to avoid the question.
But suddenly he’s right behind her, his arms wrapping around her waist to take her left arm in both his hands and gently lift it to eye level.
“How’s the thumb?”
“S’okay.” She shrugs.
With only a hum of acknowledgement, he releases her hand. He doesn’t quite embrace her, just rests his hands on her hips and his chin on her shoulder as he watches the frolic of orange lights with her.
Several long moments pass to the rhythm of their slow, quiet breaths before he finally murmurs an answer just beneath her ear.
“There’s no English translation.”