Series: Fourth in my 'Before, After and In-Between' series. The series is as follows:
Kissing Complete Strangers and Clinging On For Life
Cannon Fire
Never Too Late To Save Herself
***Posing For Pictures As the World Explodes
Before She Sleeps
Knowing Too Much to Stay
"Oh, well it would be you, wouldn't it?"
Rose whirled around to face the Doctor just moments after she'd stumbled to a stop from her latest jump with the Dimension Cannon.
Her face broke into a smile. It had been too long since she'd seen him, and she'd seen far too many other less welcome things since then.
He didn't return her smile. In fact, he looked exactly the opposite of impressed to see her.
"You know, I'm starting to think you're stalking me just so you can rub it in," he commented. "Also, nice trick, appearing out of nowhere like that. What have you got," the Doctor asked, "a Vortex Manipulator? Is that it? Did some Time Agent run into you after I left and sweep you off your feet or something?"
Rose thought of Jack briefly and decided not to make the comment that's on the tip of her tongue that that did actually happen to her once, literally. She could tell the Doctor clearly wouldn't appreciate that just then, and she was somehow getting the feeling he hadn't met Jack yet.
"What d'you mean?" she asked instead.
"Don't play with me," the Doctor snapped. "You've done enough of that, don't you think? Acting like you've known me for years instead of just long enough for me to save your life and for you to learn a few things before prancing back to your dull little human life."
"Oh," Rose said, suddenly understanding. "I take it you've been to London in 2005, huh?"
"Don't act like you didn't already know. Very nice timing, by the way. I just shut the door on you there, and I get here and there you are still on the other side of it anyway, as if I haven't travelled centuries and half a world in the meantime. If that's not enough distance to get rid of you, I'd love to know what is."
Rose frowned at him. "Yeah, I don't buy it. That's not what you want. You're just hurt because you wanted me to come along."
"Don't flatter yourself," the Doctor muttered irritably. "I only invited you because I thought I already must have, for you to be here now. I didn't want to cause a paradox. Can't have the whole universe implode. Who's left to clean that up?"
It figured Rose had managed to undercut herself and shove his loneliness right to front of his mind even before she'd ever heard the words 'Time War'. It was made worse by the fact that she'd basically assured him that they had some kind of future together (in his personal subjective future at least, though she hoped they did in hers as well). Of course he'd think she'd been lying about that now.
He didn't seem to be in much of a mood to go back and collect her from that place just a few seconds after he'd left her, as a result. If he didn't ask her to come with him a second time, Rose wondered with a feeling of rising dread what would happen to her. Would she just fade away? Would she find herself suddenly some different woman still working in a dead-end job and living on the Estate? Would the Doctor be right in that that time together she'd been hinting about hadn't happened after all?
The thought made her sick.
Rose distracted herself (and hopefully him as well, at least for now) by asking, "So where are we, anyways?"
The Doctor looked around, as if he too was only just then noticing that there was something outside the drama between the two of them. Then he rolled his eyes. "Again, figures," he said. "It's all one disaster after another when you're around. This is late 19th century Indonesia, and that big smoking mountain over there would be Krakatoa. Never a good sign when it's all boiling hot like that. I've seen it blow once before; I should already be around here somewhere, actually. I remember it well enough to know that we don't want to be standing just here when it goes off."
Rose almost told him that she knew he'd seen it before, because she'd seen it with him. That, however, hadn't happened to him yet. Just how many versions of the Doctor were hanging around near this island right now, anyway? Rose thought that this was like the Doctor's version of watching a rerun. Or, more likely, it was his way of torturing himself.
"A lot of people die tonight," Rose remarked sadly. "It'd be nice if it didn't have to be that way."
"You going to say I should jump in and save them?" the Doctor asked, peering at her distrustfully.
Rose shook her head. "I still don't always completely get time travel, and maybe I didn't pay all that much attention in history class sometimes, but I know that this happened. I know it was important. And I know you well enough to know that if this was one of those things it was safe to change, you wouldn't need me eggin' you on. You'd already be jumpin' into the volcano itself if that's what it took."
The Doctor nodded curtly in acknowledgement. "You know, considering how much you apparently know about the laws of time, you still manage to break them often enough."
"Yeah, well, I had a bad influence when it came to learnin' to follow the rules," Rose said pointedly.
The Doctor's confidence looked shaken, as if he was uncertain whether to believe the implication behind her words. It would mean accepting that he'd been wrong, and that Rose actually had travelled with him or at least spent a lot of time with him after all. It took a lot to get the Doctor to admit he was mistaken.
Rose stared unflinchingly back at him, and apparently he saw something in her that made him relax slightly.
"Right," he said. "Bad idea, that, lettin' some mad bloke teach you how these things work. You should get your money back for that course."
"I would, but see, he never carries any money." Rose sighed theatrically. "Bad luck for me, yeah?"
The Doctor finally grinned, seemingly glad to have his suspicions confirmed. Rose's heart lifted along with his lips. "Yeah. Worse luck getting stuck with a man like that in the first place."
"If only I'd known how bad he was at it when he offered to show me time travel," Rose said.
Rose could see him thinking 'I didn't offer that'. She could also see a moment later when that quick-processing brain of his figured out, 'but obviously I should have'.
"Suppose that means someone needs to give you some remedial lessons," the Doctor said.
"S'pose so. I wouldn't run off just yet, though," Rose added quickly. "I've noticed there's a guy over there who seems real interested in drawin' a picture of the volcano. You might want to stick around and let him draw you at the same time."
"Hang on, you want me to stand here and wait for someone to make me into a pretty picture when the mountain could go off at any moment?" the Doctor asked incredulously.
Rose sighed. "Why can't you just trust me on this?"
"Well, if I was looking for reasons, there's the fact that you wouldn't even tell me your name until I finally met you when you were young and impressionable and didn't know who I was either," the Doctor pointed out.
Rose looked seriously at him. "Yeah, well, we've always been on even footin' there, haven't you? I've always trusted you even though you still haven't told me your name, Doctor."
The Doctor grimaced, looking truly aggrieved for some reason Rose couldn't quite understand. "You can't tell me these things," he said.
Rose frowned. "What, that I don't know your real name? I didn't figure that was a secret, seein' as how you never tell anyone, ever."
The Doctor shook his head sadly at her, but didn't reply.
Uncomfortable, Rose quickly changed the topic back. "Look, it's important that that guy sketch you now. It doesn't matter why, does it?"
She could see the hesitancy still in him, but it was clear he'd decided to trust her after all. That trust was all she needed to see to know he was going to go back and ask her again. There was no threat of a paradox after all.
Of course, that was all well and good for him, but for Rose this might still be the last time she ever saw this version of him, with the too-large ears and leather jacket and tendency to insult other species to make himself feel superior; the man she'd first fallen for.
The last time she'd thought that he was gone forever, he'd left her just moments after kissing her for the first time. She never could remember that kiss properly through the hazed confusion brought on by the Time Vortex overwhelming her. That had always seemed seriously unfair.
She'd make sure she committed every detail of this time to memory. She grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him into her, determined to make the most of it.
She was half-tempted to keep kissing him until they were both weak in the knees and too distracted to care about the volcano. Rose was well aware, though, that the two of them in a clinch wasn't what the artist across the way had sketched. She wondered with distant amusement how she might have reacted to seeing a picture of herself with the Doctor like that in Clive's shed when she first went looking for answers. Things might have turned out a lot different, and she didn't think she'd have objected to the change. It wasn't the way it was supposed to be, though.
She made herself step back away from him, determined to look anywhere but at either his lips or his eyes for fear she'd launch herself at him again.
"Be seein' you then, Doctor," she said quietly, wishing it was true but fearing that even if she managed to find the Doctor again it wouldn't be him.
It wasn't that she didn't madly love that man he'd regenerated into. That was more universes away from being anything like true than Rose could count, and she'd seen a lot of them. It was just that she'd almost managed to forget how much she'd missed this man until she'd seen him again, and been able to actually do the things she'd imagined for them in those last days before he'd changed.
She hit the button on the Dimension Cannon. She finally met his eyes in the last second before she disappeared, when it was too late for her to change her mind and stay.
His eyes were so blue, and were looking at her with so much more open affection than when they'd initially run into each other here.
I love you, she thought, but couldn't say, even if she had the time before she was pulled away.
The next part of the series is 'Before She Sleeps'.