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The coughing fit is sudden, painful and intense. It has the Doctor doubled over, using one hand to support himself against the railing while he covers his mouth with the other.
He retches as his body rebels at the discomfort of a foreign body making its way up his pulmonary tract. For a panicked moment, the Doctor can't breathe. Then mercifully, with a final rattling cough, something dislodges from his throat and falls straight into his waiting hand.
The Doctor clenches his fist over it instinctively, still leaning over and attempting to regain his bearings. Only after about a dozen deep breaths which don't reactivate his coughing fit does he get the courage to cautiously straighten his posture.
That done, slowly, he unclenches his hand and forces himself to look at its contents. The sight causes the Doctor to lose the breath he's only just regained.
He was expecting to see a rose petal. More specifically a slightly crumpled, pink and yellow one. Well, the colour of those rose petals is caused by a mixture of yellow and red pigment, but it looks perfectly pink and yellow. (That colourway of rose even has a special name, too, doesn't it? It'll come to him later.) And if not one of those than maybe a wild rose, yes, that would work too.
Either way, it seemed obvious to the Doctor that Rose should have roses. Pink and yellow roses. The sort he'd happily snap the thorns off of with his bare hands to tuck safely behind her ear because they suit her so well.
The two petals resting way too innocently in the Doctor's cupped palm are neither from a rose nor pink and yellow. If anything he'd describe the colour as lavender. And as for the shape...
The Doctor would recognise that shape anywhere. Almost conical with their meaty base and slender tip, but distinctly feathered along the edges. Unmistakably, unforgivably Gallifreyan.
Perhaps it makes no difference. The Doctor could never have given these flowers to Rose either way, not even if they were the most beautiful of pink-yellow roses. It's too gross that they came from his lungs, for one. (That is the least important of all the reasons. The Doctor refuses to contend with any of the other ones.)
Idly, he wonders what they mean. He's seen them thousands of times, in the wild and in shops and in gardens, but he's never bothered to learn their meaning. He's never bothered to learn the symbology of any Gallifreyan flowers, to be fair. In all the time he's spent on Gallifrey, he'd thought it a bunch of methaphorical, sentimental tripe. Useless information. If he liked some flower especially, he'd learn its name, but that was that.
The Can't Remember Their Own Name him somehow managed to memorise a substantial amount of the Victorian Language of Flowers, the ridiculous hopeless romantic (like he can talk; the Embroidered Waistcoat him may have been a sap in many ways, but at least he never ended up with flowers in his lungs. And he did have ample opportunity, between Grace and Charley and Fitz. Stars.) but only the earth one, really. He didn't see the point in troubling himself with Gallifreyan anything. Even when going back was an option, he never thought he would willingly take it.
Maybe the TARDIS has a book on Gallifreyan flower meanings. Surely she would, the brilliant Old Girl. The Doctor should check.
♡
"You're my home" is the meaning. Of course. Of course, what else could it possibly be. Well, it could probably also be "you saved me". Or "I need you to function". Or "nothing in the universe matters to me as much as you do". Or "in spacetime's most beautiful places I'd still only be looking at you". Or "I would try anything for hope of being worthy of your love". Or "I would happily die a thousands fiery deaths if that was the price to keep you safe". Or something else along those lines and equally humiliating in its blunt truthfulness.
Oh, Rose can never find out.
The elaboration, "Commonly planted around homesteads or kept in pots, this plant was once believed to inspire tranquility," just sounds like a cruel joke when the Doctor is seeing it covered in his own blood.
♡
Every breath is painful by now. Even air pushes too roughly past airways torn up by the plethora of foreign objects dragged through them. His lungs feel like open wounds and in fact they probably are. His abdominal muscles are so sore from the force with which every new cough bends him in half it feels like he did a thousand sit ups without a warm up. His back is somehow faring even worse. Everything hurts and every movement burns.
The world is starting to spin. The Doctor doesn't even know what did it. He could, in theory, parse it out, but that would require paying attention to his body and he's actually fighting to do as little of that as possible at the moment, ta. So instead he ponders the matter idly.
Is it the blood loss making him dizzy? Or the creeping begginings of panic? Insufficient oxygen caused by the lowered functionality of his lungs? The sleep deprivation of being kept awake by cough after cough?
Or maybe it's the lack of nutrition because how is he to eat when his mouth permanently tastes like a combination of blood and a flower the petals of which his people used to make confiture out of, so sweet and flavourful, in tea, on cakes, smeared on his cheeks and fingers in fuzzy memories and now everyone who ever made it is dead, and the plant is extinct, and no copy of the recipe remains and he did this. This and a million other tragedies like it which he can never undo, no one can ever undo, and it's gone forever and it's all his fault he spilt the blood over everything beautiful-delicious-sacred he's the reason why it's ruined-
Another coughing fit wracks him, white hot agony like a lightning strike to the chest, spreading its electric shocks of pain all through the rest of his body. It pushes everything else out. The Doctor's never been more grateful to lose the ability to think.
♡
Perhaps it was foolish of him to expect Rose not to find out just because he's refusing to tell her.
Rose finds the Doctor collapsed and surrounded by bloodied alien-to-her flowers. Even discounting the fact she was never meant to know at all, this seems like a suboptimal way for her to find out. He'd try to talk his way out of it, find a convincing excuse, but his brain doesn't seem to work quite right.
"Rose, this is not what it looks like," is the best he can manage. The wrecked raspiness and pathetically low volume of his voice serve to discredit his claim. It can't be helping his case, either, that he's pretty sure he looks just about as pained and panicked as he feels.
Rose crouches down to inspect the flowers. There's nothing he can do to stop her.
The flower she reaches for disintegrates at the first brush of her fingers, turned to sparkling, golden dust and then nothing, nothing. Gone. Rose's eyes widen with realisation. The Doctor whimpers. Unheeding, Rose moves her hand towards another one and it too is gone as soon as she touches it.
Gone, gone, gone, the last Gallifreyan plants the Doctor will ever see. He will never see the red grass again, nor the silver-leaved trees. And now he's losing these flowers as well. For all the pain their coming into existence caused him, he can't bear to watch them disappear.
"No, Rose, please, don't."
Rose does stop, almost as if startled. She turns to look at him questioningly, but the Doctor doesn't know how to even begin to explain it. Apparently though, the look on his face is explanation enough because realisation spreads inside Rose's eyes once again.
"Then give one to me."
The Doctor hesitates. He knows exactly the consequences it would have. He's never wanted anything more, of course, but he can't take it for himself. He can't. He's in this whole mess because he shouldn't.
"Now, Doctor," Rose's tone brokers no argument and he has always been a weak being. Also, if there is a way to refuse Rose Tyler, the Doctor hasn't found it yet.
So he picks up the nearest flower he can reach, beyond trying to find one covered in the least amount of blood. And then, with his eyes closed, he offers it to her.
Rose takes it, her fingers brushing his boldly as they close around it. There's no need to be coy. He lets go and the flower stays solid in her hand. And then, it's sprouting and growing and sprawling a root system in tandem with its parents' roots retreating from his lungs, stems and leaves and petals disintegrating until finally he can breathe unimpeded by anything but the lingering pain of torn flesh.
Sweeter than the relief, he can feel the bond settle between them, wrapping his hearts in gentle warmth. The Doctor understands the meaning of the word home for the first time.