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The Doctor finally stopped at the very top of the hill. “Here it is.”
Rose puffed as she came up beside him. It had been a long forty minutes climbing the steep hill- almost like climbing a very small mountain. “Here’s what? I still don’t know why we had to climb all the way up- OH!”
Before them was a bright, grassy field covered with a carpet of bright flowers in every colour she’d ever imagined and even some she hadn’t. Their collective scent was heavenly.
“S’gorgeous,” she breathed. “What is this place?”
The Doctor stood with his arms folded, looking at the flowers in all their glory. “This is Lisathia, a small moon orbiting the planet Karadonia. The planet was a trading outpost during the twelfth Polakitan Empire and was abandoned during the third uprising.”
“What?” She stared at the gorgeous colours in front of her. “How could anyone abandon a place like this?”
The Doctor shrugged. “Karedonia isn’t anything like this. It’s all sand and dust and rocks- almost nothing there, really. Lisathia’s always been a bit of a misfit, considering the planet it orbits.”
Rose was amazed that such a barren-sounding place could be so close to something so beautiful. “So this isn’t some famous retreat planet or something then?”
“Nope. Just a small moon orbiting a planet no one remembers anymore. Nowhere special.”
“An’ there’s no aliens we need to stop from takin’ over the neighbouring solar system or something?”
“Nope.”
She frowned. “So what we doin’ here then?”
The Doctor looked surprised. “You don’t like it?”
“Course I do! It’s amazin’, Doctor, but it’s a bit quiet for you, innit?”
He shrugged. “Sometimes you need a bit of hush in between.”
Slipping her hand into his, she leaned her head against his shoulder. “A beautiful bit of hush, at that.”
“Sometimes that’s all it takes- that little bit of beauty in between the ugliness and dust and violence. It keeps you goin’, reminds you of what you’re fightin’ for.”
Oh.
This small paradise was his getaway, where he went when it was all too much. And he was sharing it with her.
She tightened her fingers in his.
“S amazin’ how something beautiful like flowers can make all the difference in the world. S’just…they’re so small, so simple, they don’t last long most of the time, but they make such a difference. What they do for you lasts a lot longer than they do, I think. Givin’ someone something so beautiful…says a lot about what you think of that person.”
He turned to look at her. “Sounds like you’re talkin’ from experience.”
“Yeah. Mum gave me flowers once- when I won the bronze in the under sevens gymnastics competition and it felt...amazin’. They were beautiful and smelled good but how they made me feel? That stayed with me. Made me feel like I was special, for a little while.”
He smiled gently at her and turned back to look at the flowers. “You are special, Rose Tyler. There’s not many that would come swinging across a plasma pool to rescue a broken old Time Lord on the day they met.”
She smiled and laid her head on his shoulder. She couldn’t tell him but she’d felt special ever since she met him. He made her feel as though she were important, that she was worth something, that she could do great things. No one had ever really looked at her that way before. And she’d never felt about anyone what she felt for this man- this broken, grieving man who bore the universe on his shoulders. This life with him in the TARDIS…it was worth more than any flowers.
“S funny,” he said suddenly. “The comfort that something beautiful can give you. And how suddenly it can appear, when you need it most. Even when you don’t deserve it. Suddenly, everything looks brighter.”
She turned her head to find him looking right at her, and she almost shuddered. His blue eyes pierced her soul with their intensity and she knew that he wasn’t talking about the flowers anymore.
She swallowed, unable to break free from his gaze, and terrified that he’d see right through her, that he’d know how she felt about him.
Instead, he looked at her a while, before gently caressing her cheek and turning back the field of flowers in front of them.
Rose turned with him, her mind buzzing with what his actions, his words, might mean, and buried her face in his shoulder for a moment.
“I’m so glad I met you,” he said quietly, echoing the words he’d spoken in a dank basement in Cardiff.
She smiled then, and reaching up, pressed a careful kiss to his cheek. “Better with two,” was all she said.
+++++++++
The next morning, she awoke to find a beautiful bouquet of Lisathian wildflowers on her bed.