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Rose stood and stared unblinking at the metal wall. The shards of glass from the shattered mirror scattered the floor, and the quiet hum of the warp engines filled the background. A tear slipped down her cheek as the Doctor’s words, spoken so recently in a tense moment between them, filtered unwittingly through her mind and only served to emphasize the Doctor’s sudden departure.
“I thought you and me were. I obviously got it wrong. I've been to the year five billion, right, but this? Now this is really seeing the future. You just leave us behind. Is that what you're going to do to me?”
“No. Not to you.”
“But Sarah Jane? You were that close to her once, and now you never even mention her. Why not?”
“I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay. You wither and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone who you–”
“What, Doctor?”
“You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lords.”
She’d believed him at the time, his words about not leaving her. What a joke. Another empty promise from someone she thought she lov– No, no thinking about that right now. Not when the one person she trusted more than anyone in the universe just jumped through a one-way window on a horse to save some blonde French bint.
Bile filled her throat, and she forced it down along with a flash of rage, unwilling to let those kinds of visceral reactions take over.
“Rose? Rose, are you alright?” Mickey asked from behind her shoulder. She ignored him and continued to stand still, staring at the wall, willing it to send the Doctor back through, ignoring the deep, churning reality in her stomach that he wasn’t going to return. No, he had to come back. He had to. He was the Doctor, and he’d always found a way out of any situation they’d been in.
Five and a half hours later, Rose heard a click and the unmistakable tenor of the Doctor’s voice in the distance. She knew Mickey had heard as well when he dropped the wrench he’d been tossing in the air. They looked at each other in shock as the Doctor bounded into the engine room.
“Rose!” He called out. “There you are!” He strode over and enveloped her in his arms, and she ignored the agonizing relief she felt when his arms wrapped around her. “How long did you wait?”
“Five and a half hours,” she answered with a relieved laugh.
“Great! Always wait five and a half hours.”
She swatted his arm as he shook Mickey’s hand. “Where’ve you been?”
“Explain later. Into the TARDIS. Be with you in a sec.” He dashed off again, back to the fireplace without bothering to explain what had happened or what he was up to now.
Rose watched the Doctor and heard Mickey enter the TARDIS. Her heart sank as she heard him call out Reinette’s name, and dread spread through her body when she saw the Doctor once again step onto the fireplace and disappear into France. Did he actually plan to invite Reinette onto the TARDIS? To bring this French aristocrat so clearly infatuated with him along as a companion? Rose swallowed down the lump in her throat and willed herself not to cry. No, she would be strong. And if the Doctor decided to profess his love to this woman, well, that was his decision, even if she didn’t understand it. Even if it felt like someone stabbed her heart repeatedly with a blunt knife.
After several minutes, Rose decided to wait for the Doctor on the TARDIS. Mickey slouched on the jump seat, but Rose refused to settle in one place and paced around the console. Too much anxious energy strummed through her veins, and she wouldn’t be able to rest until the Doctor returned.
The door finally opened, and the Doctor closed it quietly behind him before walking dejectedly up the ramp. Reinette’s absence surprised Rose, and his heavy gait suggested something unexpected had happened.
“Why her?” she asked, and the Doctor looked up. “Why did they think they could repair the ship with the head of Madame de Pompadour?”
“We'll probably never know. There was massive damage in the computer memory banks. It probably got confused. The TARDIS can close down the time windows now the droids are gone. Should stop it causing any more trouble.”
Rose watched the Doctor wander around the console and tinker distractedly with the instruments without looking up. “Are you alright?” After his behavior that day, part of her cursed the part of her that allowed herself to be concerned about his well-being.
The Doctor briefly raised his head and gave her a weak grin. “I'm always alright.”
Rose’s heart sank as she heard the Doctor’s catchphrase for being very much not alright. But then again, neither was she. Not even a little bit. Head cocked to the side, she stared at the Doctor, willing him to respond, as he determinedly fiddled with the console without looking up.
Mickey grabbed her hand and gave it a light tug. “Come on, Rose. It's time you showed me around the rest of this place.”
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but when she failed to form any kind of coherent thought in her mind, she sighed and allowed Mickey to lead her out of the console room.
Rose tossed and turned in her bed. Sleep evaded her, as she’d come to expect in the days since Reinette and the clockwork droids, and she punched her pillow for the three hundredth time that night as she tried to get comfortable. The problem wasn’t her pillow, nor was it her bed. The TARDIS had long ago provided her with the most comfortable accommodations, and she’d never experienced such a string of insomnia-ridden nights. Until now, that is.
In the days since the space station, the Doctor had popped in the kitchen every morning, all smiles and laughs, full of vivacious words and enthusiastic conversation, pretending as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He’d offered no words of explanation about what had transpired with Reinette, and Rose herself hadn’t found the courage to ask.
When the Doctor wasn’t taking them on a whirlwind tour of the universe (“Who wants to see another dusty space station when there are planets to explore and civilizations to save?”), he hid himself in the unexplored depths of his ship, leaving Rose and Mickey to fend for themselves.
Mickey had tried, multiple times, to ask her about what had happened, but Rose had shrugged him off, said everything was fine, and offered her own brand of deflection by offering to explore the TARDIS with him. Mickey simply rolled his eyes and wandered off to the entertainment room where he’d been provided with any and all varieties of gaming systems, courtesy of the TARDIS. Rose, quickly bored with the endless electronics and games, tried to find distractions elsewhere on the ship. Despite the TARDIS’s best efforts, Rose restlessly moved from one room to another, unable to focus.
As Rose lay in bed, she contemplated the things she’d repeatedly told Mickey over the last few days. She knew her friend doubted the truthfulness of her words, but she was thankful he hadn’t pushed her for more answers. Truth was, she didn’t really want to look at the changes between her and the Doctor since Reinette, but the ache in her heart and unfamiliar loneliness made the issue increasingly harder to ignore.
Rose missed the closeness they once shared, and she didn’t understand why it had changed so suddenly. When they’d helped Sarah Jane and Mickey at Deffry Vale, her eyes had been opened wide to the reality of the Doctor’s past and the fact that he’d traveled with many people before her. But aside from the admittedly eye-opening and somewhat hopeful discussion they’d had outside of the chippie, they hadn’t had the chance to talk about things between them since then. Mickey had come on board, and they’d barely had a spare moment alone together. They’d gone from “might as well be a couple” to “barely just friends” in the blink of an eye. Rose craved his touch, the quiet moments they used to spend together in the library reading and talking, the way they danced effortlessly around each other, and the way she felt complete in his presence.
The ease of friendship and undeniable pull of attraction between them was gone, and she feared they’d never be able to get it back. The realization hit Rose like a ton of bricks, and she curled up into a ball as tears trickled onto her pillow.
Sobs inevitably racked her body as she remembered the Doctor’s uncharacteristic behavior on the space station. He’d been unquestionably curious about Reinette, but that was nothing new. The Doctor had an almost childlike fascination with the universe and all the questions it held, and Reinette and the clockwork droids had presented an intriguing mystery. But then, he’d rudely disregarded her and Mickey’s safety, and he’d always, always guarded her safety more than his own, even if it meant sending her away, back to his disillusioned concept of what was best for her. And given that he’d just expressed concern over their different lifespans, she’d expected more of his “Oncoming Storm” while coming to her aid.
And perhaps even more importantly, for the first time, the Doctor had made her feel lesser, like she was just a nagging nuisance, an insignificant human along for the ride. To top it off, his cocky swagger during his return when she and Mickey were tied to the table at the metaphorical hands of the droids suggested he’d danced with Reinette, but surely he wouldn’t do such a thing. Would he?
Hurt, anger, disbelief, and a whole cocktail of other emotions surged inside her, and Rose struggled to make sense of it all. One moment she was simply hurt, but the next moment a spark of anger would blaze through her body, leaving her breathless and disoriented.
Rose flopped on her back and pushed the palms of her hands into her eyes to stop the tears. Taking deep breaths, she tried to calm her racing heart, to shove away the panic trying to claw its way out of her. The TARDIS hummed gently in the back of her mind, and Rose reached a hand out to touch the wall, feeling a soothing pulse of life radiate down her arm. At least the ship cared.
Giving up on the pretense of sleep, she decided to go to the kitchen to find some tea and maybe work up the nerve to confront the Doctor. She couldn’t live in this excruciating emotional limbo anymore. Whether he wanted to or not, it was time to talk, time to figure out what the hell happened in France.
She stopped in her en suite to wash her face before throwing on her dressing gown and leaving for the kitchen.
The kitchen was unsurprisingly empty when Rose arrived, and she busied herself with the kettle and preparing her tea. She leaned against the counter and blew on her tea to cool it, letting her mind wander aimlessly.
A flash of brown caught her eye, and Rose zeroed in on the Doctor’s brown jacket draped carelessly on the back of a chair at the table. She frowned at his uncharacteristic sloppiness before sipping her tea. She’d rarely seen this Doctor remove his outer layers and wondered if he’d intentionally left in here. The lights flickered briefly, and Rose looked up at the ceiling.
“What’s that mean?” Rose asked the TARDIS.
In response, a light over his jacket momentarily brightened, and Rose took the hint. She placed her mug on the counter and walked over to the Doctor’s jacket. For a moment, she let her hands simply rest on the soft wool, and her thumbs brushed absentmindedly against the material. Rose hesitated a moment before lifting the jacket off the chair, and she took a moment to bury her face inside the lapels. Tears sprang to her eyes as she breathed in the indefinable scent of the Doctor, something sort of minty, mixed with the slightly earthy smell of the TARDIS and something she inexplicably knew as Time. God, she missed the Doctor.
And he wasn’t even gone.
Rose shifted his jacket to drape over her left arm and decided to find the Doctor to return it. During the movement, a folded piece of paper fluttered out of a pocket and down to the floor and lay open, gracefully flowing script clearly visible on the paper.
Rose stared down at the words, momentarily seeing French before they shifted to English in her mind. Oh god, what was this? Rose’s pulse quickened as she looked from the letter to the door. Dare she read it? She had to at least pick it up, but as “good” as she was, Rose wasn’t sure if she’d be able to avoid reading it once the letter was in her hands. The lights in the kitchen flashed once more, and Rose exhaled deeply, certain the TARDIS was telling her to read it.
Rose snatched the letter off the floor and moved to sit at the table. She distractedly placed the Doctor’s jacket on the table and turned to the letter, eyes narrowing and heart constricting as she read the words.
My dear Doctor. The path has never seemed more slow, and yet I fear I am nearing its end. Reason tells me that you and I are unlikely to meet again, but I think I shall not listen to reason. I have seen the world inside your head, and know that all things are possible. Hurry though, my love. My days grow shorter now, and I am so very weak. God speed, my Lonely Angel.
The lights turned off suddenly in the Doctor’s workshop, and he growled at his ship. “Turn them on.” He remained enshrouded in darkness, and despite his superior eyesight, his ship had dimmed the lights to a level darker than what he was capable of seeing.
The Doctor sighed as he felt his ship’s stubborn mental push to extract him from the room, so he felt blindly along the countertops as he cautiously made his way toward the door. Once in the corridor, the door slammed loudly behind him with a bang, and he scowled at the ceiling. Bloody ship.
He felt a smug sort of gloating in the back of his mind and followed the lit corridor before him in resignation. The Doctor had an uncomfortable suspicion his ship had a specific reason for pulling him out of his hiding place. If he was honest with himself, he knew it was past time deal with the fallout of the disaster on the spaceship, but he was a coward, and when they weren’t in the middle of an adventure, it was far easier to hide away and pretend nothing was wrong.
A few memories of that particular adventure flitted through his mind, and he cringed. Superior of a species though he may be, he was still a bloody idiot, and Rose deserved someone better than him. The problem was, however, that he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to let Rose go. He’d missed her hand in his in the last week, and the obvious distance between them since… well, since Reinette, was troubling, though he was certain his actions were at the root of the problem.
After a few minutes, the Doctor found himself in front of the kitchen door. He hesitantly entered the room and blinked at the sudden brightness. On the counter sat a forgotten cup of tea, and to his right, oh– Oh.
Rose sat at the table, and her hands lay limply in her lap. She gazed blankly and unseeing into space with a heartbreakingly broken expression covered in dried rivulets of tears. The Doctor’s hearts clenched in response from seeing Rose so clearly traumatized from some unknown…
His thoughts trailed off as he saw what lay on the table, the likely source of her current state. An unfolded letter with the unmistakable handwriting of Reinette. Oh no. The Doctor briefly wondered how she’d found the letter, but his missing jacket lay in a heap on the table, and the pieces of the puzzle started to fall into place. A week of tip-toeing around each other, the TARDIS drawing him out of his workshop and leading him here, his missing jacket somewhere where he definitely hadn’t left it, the letter somehow finding its way out of his transdimensional pockets when he knew good and well Rose would never look through his things without his permission… He really needed to have a chat with his ship about meddling in affairs she had no right to meddle in.
“Rose,” he whispered hoarsely, reaching back to scratch the back of his neck. He cleared his throat. “Rose.”
She sighed, the faintest huff of which was picked up by his ears, and finally looked at the Doctor. He took a step back at the look in her eyes. They were devoid of emotion, flat, dead. The sparkle and spirit that usually danced in her golden brown eyes had disappeared and was replaced by something lifeless he hoped never to see again.
He tried again, though not quite sure what he planned to say. “Rose, I–”
“Don’t bother, Doctor. There’s nothing you can say anymore. Nothing that can– ” She spoke the words in monotone, dull, as if she had no care for the words falling from her lips. “Take me home.” Rose briefly flicked her eyes to his, as if assessing his reaction, assessing but not caring. She sat forward in her chair before abruptly standing up and refolding the letter. Walking to him but avoiding his shocked expression, she pushed the letter into his chest, and he reflexively grabbed it.
“Take me home, now,” she said blandly before walking out of the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, the Doctor anxiously paced the grating around the console, running his hands through his hair every so often in agitation. Rose’s words had caused an icy panic to course through his veins, and after crushing the letter in his fist, he’d roughly binned it before rushing to the console room to wait for Rose and attempt to talk her out of this… this madness.
He didn’t know if she planned to leave him for good or if she just wanted a few days with Jackie. The contents of the letter flashed like an obnoxious billboard in his mind, and he winced, imagining how Rose had interpreted the words. How she’d interpreted the entirety of his interactions with the French aristocrat. Blimey, he’d mucked up. The Doctor ran his hands roughly down his face. He’d made a royal mess of things, literally, a royal mess, and he had no idea if his relationship with Rose was reparable. Some mistakes caused wounds too deep to heal, this he knew quite well. The very idea… No, she had to stay. They had to work through this. He couldn’t bear the alternative.
As his thoughts churned violently in his mind, a noise on the grating alerted him to another person in the console room. The Doctor spun around, and his hearts plummeted to his feet when he saw Rose’s backpack stuffed full, more packed than he’d ever seen it since she first started traveling with him. She wore trainers, jeans, and a dark blue leather jacket over a hoodie, as if she’d run out of room while packing and simply wore the clothes she couldn’t fit. One hand clutched the pack strap slung over one shoulder and the other was clenched around something in her hand.
Rose dropped her pack near the jump seat and took a few steps toward the Doctor. Holding his breath, he tried to get her attention as her gaze drifted off to the side, resolutely avoiding his pleading eyes.
She held out her hand and said in a wooden voice, “Take it. I’m done, Doctor. I can’t do this anymore.” The Doctor opened his hand to catch the object as it fell from her hand, and his breath caught in his throat when he realized what it was. Her key.
Her TARDIS key.
No. No, no, no, no, no. No. He couldn’t let this happen. Throughout his long lives, he had always eventually expected them all to say this. To ask to leave, to tell them they were done, that the last adventure had finally been too much. And while he, with all his hearts, knew Rose deserved far more than what he could ever give her, he also knew he couldn’t let her go. It was Rose. Rose. The fearless woman who had saved him from the darkness after the Time War, the woman who had forgiven him with her compassion and grace, the woman who had come back after he’d sent her away, one with the TARDIS, a golden goddess of Time.
The TARDIS clamored obnoxiously in his mind, reminding him that while he’d admitted all these things to himself many times over, he’d never told these truths to Rose. Oh, he was so stupid!
Filled with a sudden resolve, the Doctor pulled his eyes from the key and turned to Rose. “Please don’t go,” the Doctor begged quietly, cautiously reaching out a hand for hers.
She pulled back as if he’d burned her, and a sharp sob barked out of her throat. It was if his touch had broken her from the protective barrier she’d hidden herself behind. Rose turned from him as her impassive facade began to crack further, and he eyed her warily as she straightened suddenly, pushing her shoulders back and clenching her fists. Turning to the Doctor, she finally, finally looked him straight in the eyes, and this time, to his great relief, she let him see every emotion fighting to explode out of her. Anger, rage, hurt, grief, denial, and still, somehow, love, as the depths of her feelings for him and toward him in this moment could not be hidden any longer.
Gripping her TARDIS key tightly in his hand, he took a chance and repeated his earlier statement, letting his unmasked vulnerability show. “Please don’t go, Rose. Please.”
Rose leveled him with a steely gaze, one frighteningly reminiscent of those he used to give her in his last body. “Give me a reason to stay, Doctor.”
“I need you,” he started, but Rose interrupted with a harsh laugh.
“Right, yeah, you really showed me how much ya needed me back on that space station while you courted a French prossie. Shoved me an’ Mickey off to the side, an’ we almost got chopped to pieces while you danced with bloody Reinette.” Rose hissed the woman’s name, venom dripping off every word.
The Doctor waited patiently until she finished and tried again. “I can’t give you a reason to stay, Rose, really, I can’t. Especially after... that,” he finished lamely. “I don’t deserve you after the things I did, and you deserve better, far more than me.”
Rose eyed him speculatively for a moment before he murmured, almost as a subconscious response to her words, “And I didn’t dance with Reinette, Rose. I couldn’t… I don’t see anyone like that, except for…” He trailed off, hesitant to voice the truth.
“Enough leaving out the important words, Doctor. If you don’t want me to go, then you have to talk to me. Tell me why,” Rose demanded.
“You, except for you. You’re the only one I see, always. I can’t just,” he waved one hand around helplessly. “Be like I am with you with just anyone. You’re a part of me, Rose, written into my DNA. It’s why I am who I am, this me.” The Doctor gestured to his body.
Rose stared in disbelief at the Doctor as two unwelcome tears trailed down her cheeks. “Then why the bloody hell…” She stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath before continuing. “She called you her love! She saw inside your head, Doctor! When...how can she do that?” Tears coursed freely down her face now, and Rose wiped them away in frustration. “Reinette called you hers, Doctor, and I- I wanted to call you mine. An’ then you jus’, you just left me. And Mickey,” she added as an afterthought.
The Doctor gaped at Rose, his mind struggling to comprehend the meaning of her words. She wanted to call him hers? But didn’t she know? He was hers. The TARDIS nudged his mind again, urging him to understand, and he sagged back, falling into the jumpseat when he bumped into it with his legs.
Wearily, he looked at Rose. “I never loved Reinette. She was a curiosity, a mystery. I was her childhood hero, and in some strange way, she romanticized that, put me on a pedestal. And she kissed me, Rose!” He smacked his lips distastefully at that, but quickly continued when Rose glared mutinously at him. “I had to go inside her head using touch telepathy. I tried to find what the droids were looking for, that’s all. But then she…” The Doctor trailed off and shuddered, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Doctor, what did she do?” Rose prompted.
“She got past my shields, inside my head. She didn’t see much, just a few errant memories, but it was enough for her to feel like she had some kind of empathic connection with me. Lonely childhoods, stuff like that. But what she did, going into my mind without permission, that’s a huge violation for a telepath.”
Rose’s face hardened. “Sort of like mind rape?”
“Well, had it been intentional, something like that, yes. But Reinette had some latent psychic abilities that allowed her to unexpectedly –” He shook his head. “Mind you, very unexpectedly, go into my mind. I’d been lazy with my shields, now that I’m the... last one,” he said quietly.
Rose moved to the jumpseat and sat a few feet away from the Doctor, chewing on her thumbnail, deep in thought.
With a sigh, Rose spoke, and the Doctor turned to face her, wishing she’d look at him but still relieved she was at least talking, perhaps giving him a chance. “For the first time, you made me feel like I wasn’t good enough for you. That compared to Reinette, I’m just some cheap chav from the Estates, uneducated and uncultured. I haven’t felt like that since…” she trailed off. “Not since Jimmy, this bloke I went with for a while. But never mind him.”
The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but Rose held up her hand. “I’m not done yet. That’s not you, Doctor. From the moment I met you, you’ve always seen how important people are, how everyone has something to offer. You told me once it’s why you travel. An’ then you just shoved us off and claimed that you couldn’t take the TARDIS back to France to save Reinette. You even left your ship behind, Doctor! I just don’t understand.”
Swallowing thickly, the truth of Rose’s words filled him with shame. He had no real reason for his actions on the space station, for the motives behind the decisions he’d made. And the fact that he’d made Rose feel less than the simply astounding and remarkable human that she was made him nauseated with remorse.
Before the Doctor could say anything, Rose continued, almost as an afterthought. “It’s funny, cos, I thought you and me were, I dunno, something. It doesn’t need to have a name, but you an’ me, we’re more than just mates. Everywhere we go, everyone knows. Except us. I jus’... I just want to know, need to know, that I’m yours and you’re mine.” She stopped for a moment to collect her thoughts. “An’ outside that chippie you said– You said you wouldn’t leave me behind. And then you talked about us humans growing old and dyin’ and how–” Rose broke off suddenly and looked at the Doctor, and he was relieved to see her gaze softening for the first time since she’d demanded he take her home.
The Doctor waited for Rose, forcing himself to keep his tendency to ramble in uncomfortable situations under wraps. She surprised him with her next question. “She died when you went back, didn’t she? Reinette?” He confirmed her suspicions with a nod. “An’ that’s why you couldn’t go back for her, for a trip. Because in her letter, she said you never came.” The Doctor nodded again, proud of Rose for making that connection, proud of her understanding of Time and their lives as time travelers.
“Reinette had things to do,” he said. “She accomplished many things in her life, and her place was on Earth, in France. Not in the stars.”
They sat in silence for several minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. The Doctor hardly dared to hope that Rose might stay, that she’d take her key back and that they could move past this, together. He knew there was one last thing he had to say. Well, two. Okay, several things. And he needed to do it now before he lost his nerve. He almost laughed at that. Him, the last Lord of Time, getting nerves over a domestic situation.
“Rose, look at me?” He waited, tugging anxiously on his ear as Rose sighed and shifted her body to face his. “I have some things to say, and I hope you’ll listen.” The ghost of a smirk played around her lips. “First of all, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I know they may be empty words, may be of no comfort, but there are no excuses for the way I acted, and it’s all I can give you.”
He sighed in relief when Rose nodded. “Maybe it’s too late, and blimey, I hope it’s not, but I do want it, to be something more with you. And part of me is scared, accepting what we are, and I don’t know how to do it.” Deep down, it terrified him, accepting the progression of their relationship and what it really meant, to share this part of himself with a human, but somehow, knowing it was with Rose gave him the courage to try.
The Doctor’s hearts raced as Rose processed his words. She sat still as a statue for a few minutes and scrutinized him, hopefully finding what she was looking for in her inspection. His hands fiddled with her key. Finally, Rose moved and reached across the jumpseat, to the hands playing with her key, and she lightly prompted him to give it up. He held the key out in the palm of his hand, and the surface reflected the green glow of the rotor. When she picked up the chain, the Doctor held his breath as she undid the clasp and fixed it back around her neck.
Tears pricked at the Doctor’s eyes as Rose laced her fingers with his and gently pulled him to his feet. The Doctor wrapped his arms around Rose, a tentative embrace full of nerves and hope, and he sighed in relief when she returned the action.
“We can figure it out together, yeah? It’s not just you, an’ it’s not just me. It’s us, together. But Doctor?” He hummed in acknowledgement. “Don’t ever do that again. Promise me that. It’s together or not at all, you hear me?” Her voice muffled in his jacket, but he heard her loud and clear.
“Does that mean…?” The open hope in his voice was impossible to miss.
“Yes, I’m stayin’, but Doctor. Promise me.”
The Doctor pulled Rose closer and kissed the top of her head, simply breathing her in a moment before answering. “I promise, Rose. My Rose.”
Rose squeezed him back. “My Doctor.”