Mickey needs some love! Or at least some sympathy. So here's a little fic from his point of view during the events of "Rose."
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It's not that I'm slow. I think the world just moves faster than I do. Sixteen hundred seventy kilometers per hour rotating, one hundred seventy thousand kilometers per hour through space—and what's the rush, anyway? But the way people scramble about, you'd think we had to stay ahead of the earth, even. On to the next thing, get ahead, move on, move on. Doesn't anyone stop to enjoy anything?
I think the first time I realized I marched to a different drum was when I got held back a year in primary school. "It's not that Mickey's stupid… exactly…" Miss Waldorf told my mother, trying very hard not to look her in the eye. "I just think he would be more comfortable staying behind." And I was. I had just gotten comfortable with this new structure for my life, and I wanted to make sense of it and enjoy it a bit before I moved on. Meanwhile, all my other classmates craved the changes ahead of them. They advanced without me.
Afterward, everyone seemed so different. My best friend John still spent time with me, but it was like we didn't even speak the same language anymore. He would go on about things I couldn't even imagine. One day we were playing on the swings, and he stared at me. "Mickey, you don't get it, do you?"
"Get what?" I asked.
"Never mind," John said. He jumped off the swings and left me there, rocking back and forth, back and forth. I wondered what it was that made everyone change so much, and whether it lay ahead for me as well.
I remember John now, and that old familiar feeling wraps itself around me as Rose stares at the Doctor and his police box, trying to decide. "Someone's got to look after this big lug," she says finally, patting me affectionately.
I know she doesn't really want to stay. Rose moves at the speed of light; she always has—or would, if she would let herself. I think sometimes she holds back on my account. Even then, I can't keep up. This world will be too slow for her, in the end.
The police box—or TARDIS, or whatever it is—vanishes and reappears half a block down the street. "Did I mention it could travel in time?" the Doctor shouts.
Rose's face breaks into a smile. She turns to me. "Thank you."
"For what?" I ask.
"Exactly," she says, and runs toward the Doctor.
The TARDIS disappears with her inside. I hang around in the alley for about half an hour, waiting to see if she'll come back, but I know deep down that she won't. In fact, I don't know when I will see her again, or if I ever will. All I know is that at this time and this place, the Rose Tyler who could have been content with me has been left behind.
