"I'm only human, you can't expect me to be perfect all the time!" she yells, but it's apparent that she's not angry.
He's silent for a moment. He looks like he's going to explode with everything that he could be saying but isn't and she's honestly scared. "You're right." The want to make things right disappears from her face and it's just sadness and disappointment and the embodied look of feeling worthless. "You're right. You're only human. Well," he takes a deep breath. "Since you're 'only human,' I might as well take you home then, yeah?" And still he hasn't said any of the things he wanted to. He's just given up and he doesn't do that. He doesn't just let things go.
"If you want," her voice is small but it's there and it's shaking. She tries to blink away the fact that he's really truly done putting up with her, that he can't stand being around her and that the very presence of her frustrates him to no end. "Yeah," she nods as the only proof of her internal dialogues slides down her cheek. "That might be best. Because you'll have a nicer, prettier girl here in no time who won't ruin everything for you and I'll go back to normal, right? You can run away with somebody who doesn't make you angry just by existing and I'll inhabit my mother's couch for a couple more months. She won't mind, I think."
He opens his mouth like he's going to say something but what can you say to that? "Great." And he doesn't know why he says that but it seems like the most dramatic thing and it works.
She looks at him and she wants him to look back and she wills him to with every fiber of her being because she doesn't want to be some lame movie-goer with an mildly unpopular blog anymore. She doesn't want to go to the grocery store every Thursday just because that's what you're supposed to do or do chores when she hears somebody is planning on visiting in a month. She doesn't want to pretend she hasn't had the most amazing time and that she hasn't seen the death of Earth and the birth of a star and all of the wonderful things she's seen and done because of him. She doesn't want to be normal anymore, because of him.
Twelve years earlier
She watched the lights and the shadows fall on her bedroom wall from headlights and wondered about the people controlling them, hoping they'd stop at her house. They never did. She would stare at her wall every night, willing a car to stop and come rescue her as she listened to the sounds of her parents arguing and things and fists being thrown. Every six year old girl dreams about her prince charming, except her. As much as she wanted to slip away into a world of her own whenever she closed her eyes, she couldn't. Blinking was blinking and sleeping was sleeping and nothing changed. She was still stuck in the same place.
She knew by then that she would always be stuck in that same place. There would be no sweet escape for her. No fairy tail romance to take her away from all the nonsense that reality was for her. Reality for her was violent and rude and unavoidable and she was only six.
She lay in her bed breathing deeply, watching the cars pass and waiting for something to happen. And then it did.
A noise she'd never heard before scraped against the confines of her walls so that it was a deafening roar and somehow went unheard by the couple just outside her door in the sitting room. A large blue thing faded its way into her room and a man in a suit poked his head out the door. He saw her and smiled, doing a little wave as he stepped outside of his weird little box.
"Hello there," he said. "I'm the Doctor." She stared at him with wide eyes, seeming relatively afraid and somewhat angry. "Well, this can't be right. You're a little young. What's your name?"
It took her a few seconds to process that she was being asked a question, but she answered eventually. "It's CJ," she uttered quietly, shifting in her place.
He looked frustrated for a moment before giving her a slight wave and telling her he'd be back in a couple of years, hoping to avoid having to explain why.
A/N: This is my first Who fic and I'm relatively new to the fandom (I'm all caught up but only started watching the new series a few months ago) so if this really sucks, I'm super sorry. I'd love some constructive criticism though, if you've got any. Thanks for reading sweeties!