Glass, once shattered, cannot be put back together.
Logically, the Doctor, John Noble, Time-Lord-Human-meta-crisis, whoever he is, knows this. But he still tries. Still tries to fix her. Tries to be the one for her.
She fought so hard for the grand prize, and now all she gets is the consolation.
It's a struggle for her, knowing he's there but not.
There's no TARDIS now. No adventures. No aliens. Just a human Doctor and a human Rose, trying to work it out.
"But he's not you."
He loves Rose so much it hurts and he wishes he could say she feels the same but he watches her staring out the window and he knows she's still waiting for the Doctor.
"He needs you. That's very me."
"Rose?"
Rose turns at the Doctor—John's voice.
He seems to hesitate—a first—before he continues. "I know you love the Doctor, but if you could find a place for me in your heart...I could be him."
Rose turns back to stare out the window silently. She doesn't want to admit that he's like the Doctor because he's not.
But is it so different? So different from his first regeneration when he left a different Doctor standing in front of her?
The Doctor, but not.
But it's two completely different things to know this, and to believe it.
"You're stuck with me."
They're out one day just walking down the streets when he takes her hand. It's unconscious, but Rose freezes when she realizes it and she pulls back.
John realizes what he's done a moment too late. "Oh, Rose, I'm sorry. So, so, sorry."
"Just go. Please."
He looks at her in surprise, but he nods and leaves and she can see the pain in his eyes but all she can think of is her Doctor and herself walking down the street with smiles that could light up the sky.
She tries to ignore the fact that their hands fit together perfectly.
Sometimes, every once in a long while, John wants to scream and shout about how it just isn't fair.
But he knows that isn't something he gets to do, so instead he just sits and waits and lets her know "I'll love you, no matter what."
Relationships take work. And he's not sure she's sure of this. Of them. And it hurts more than he cares to admit.
"You may have his memories, and you may have his face, but you're not him. You will never be him!"
John—not the Doctor, she reminds herself—looks at her with wide eyes. "So is that it then? No more trying; Rose Tyler has given up."
With that, he turns and leaves. It isn't until the door is closed and his footsteps have faded away that she breaks down.
She locks the door with shaky fingers and leans her head against the door, eyes closed and silent tears running down her cheeks until they grow louder until she is sobbing and clutching her knees, banging her head again and again against the door.
I want Mickey, she thinks numbly. I want the Doctor.
It isn't until 3 a.m. that Rose falls asleep, now just shaking and letting tears quietly slip down her cheeks.
He doesn't come by the next day. Or the next. Or the next.
She has finally done it. She faces the reality that she has finally chased away the last fantastic thing in her life. Her last connection to the Doctor.
"Have a fantastic life."
She misses his smile. Him. The Time-lord-human-meta-crisis' smile.
The quirk of his lips as he tells her with glee, "I can do domestic."
"You'll have to get a mortgage."
"Rose? Rose?" Rose closes her eyes at her Mum's voice. "Rose I'm coming in." Her mother unlocks the door and comes in uninvited to see Rose, lying there despondently. "Oh, Rose."
She wants...she wants...she doesn't know what she wants.
"Why don't you go out for the night, hmm? Forget about all this." Rose's only response is to roll over and away from her Mum.
She feels her mum petting her hair like when she was a little girl. "I'll go now, yeah? I love you, Rose."
"Rose Tyler—"
Rose squeezes her eyes shut.
"Why can't you go back there? Why can't you help her? You're the Doctor!"
Seeing Jackie Tyler like this, upset and pounding her fists against his chest, is probably worse than having her slap him. "No, Jackie, I'm not," he tells her, taking her hands in his. "And she has to decide to accept me on her own. I can't just sweep in and hold her until she's better, no matter how much I want to. She has to do this one thing on her own."
Jackie wraps her arms around him in a hug and mumbles something into his chest.
"What?"
She pulls away and looks him in the eye. "You talk like him. You look like him. You love her like him. So why do you say you're not him?"
"That was our first date."
"Because, Jackie," he finally says softly. "Because some things just are."
"We had chips."
She stares at him, down the street and staring right back at her.
And when her first thought is John and not Doctor, she knows. She breaks into a wide grin and his eyes widen before he's grinning back.
And then he's running and she's running and they're hugging and she knows.
Things will be alright.
"John?"
He still has to get used to it. Legally, he is now John Noble ("a little bit of Donna, and a little bit of the Doctor," she said). Whatever his name, he's no longer the Doctor.
But just hearing her voice means at that moment he wouldn't care what she calls him.
"Rose."
"C-can you come over?"
Maybe things will be alright.
Glass will never look the same after it's shattered, but sometimes, if you try real hard, you can piece it back together. And it may not be perfect; it may not be exactly the same as it was. But it's close enough.
"How long are you going to stay with me?"
"Forever."
My first attempt at the Whoniverse, what do you think? I was inspired by Seduff over at YouTube (namely the video 'Nobody Sees'), of just a human Doctor and Rose trying to work it out. Because I think even though they're the same (but not), Rose would have trouble accepting him at first, and this is just about the beginning when she was still unsure.
Not too sure about the genres, any opinions?
And then I read a story on here about Rose and the human Doctor growing the coral that the Doctor gave them into the TARDIS (which I just found out about from the same story) and I got to thinking and H!Doctor could probably build his own sonic screwdriver and in the end it would all work out :) But this is supposed to be, as I said, the 'what if the Doctor hadn't given them the coral? What if they were stuck on earth?'
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who (unfortunately; but I do have a cool poster of David and Matt on my wall!) Italicized quotes came straight from the episodes.