I've wanted to write a post GITF fic for ages, but I wanted to leave it and make sure that it was what I thought would happen. So here you are - enjoy!
"Doctor?" Rose was standing there again, thumbs hooked in her jeans pockets and head tilted slightly to the side. She was in the exact same place she had stood when they had come back to the TARDIS earlier, only without Mickey the idiot standing with her. If he was calling him Mickey the idiot again, the Doctor knew he must be in a really bad mood.
"Yep."
"You OK?"
The Doctor sighed, aware that he was acting like a prat but somehow unable to care. "Rose, I told you earlier, I'm fine. Just doing some repairs, nothing interesting, why don't you get some sleep?"
This was different than normal. Rose wasn't acting as she usually did, using sarcasm and laughing at him and arguing back. She looked open and serious and sad. He saw pain in her face as he brushed off her attempts to talk to him, but also resignation. She had known that this was going to happen. The Doctor cursed himself for not being able to talk to her properly.
"Were you coming back or weren't you?"
"What?" It was sharp, that word, clipped and short and sounding much too infuriated and not calm enough for his liking. His emotions were slipping, he didn't mean to snap but he couldn't stop himself.
"Doctor, were you planning on coming back right away, or were you just going to keep living there in the knowledge that someday you would be able to get back here." Rose sounded uncomfortable, her arms were by her sides, held unnaturally still lest she begin to twist her fingers or bite her nails. The never usually fought, and when they did it was angry and filled with shouting and glaring and them standing too close, each trying to read the other's expression. This was new, and the Doctor didn't like it.
"What if you'd have had to wait for years? Not just years, decades. Hundreds of years, even?" She was getting frustrated now, her voice rising and becoming higher in pitch. The Doctor could feel his own annoyance rising, the Time Lord in him threatening to completely take over and not take her emotions into account. He forced it down, his love for Rose (platonic love, friend love, thank-goodness-you're-alive love, nothing else) keeping him grounded, helping him to think of her, what he had done, what his actions had done to her. He might be at his most human in this regeneration, but that didn't mean he wasn't still a Time Lord, one of the most pompous and condescending races in the universe. He wasn't good at this stuff.
Rose continued slowly, words floating across the console room and reaching him one by one, each one sinking in before the next one hit him. "What if you had finally arrived back, 300 years older, tired and lonely and sick of everything. It would've only been 5 and a half hours for us, but it could have been centuries for you. You might even have regenerated again. What then?"
His temper flared."Rose, it didn't happen. I came back, didn't I? Why are you worrying about something that didn't happen, why aren't you just happy we're here?"
He could tell instantly that this was the worst thing he could have said. The Doctor was too stubborn and angry to back down, but a part of him was internally punching himself in the stomach for being so insensitive.
Rose clenched her fists in anger at how unfair he was being. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? You know what, you're right, I should just be happy that we're here together, I shouldn't think about the fact that I spent five and a half hours thinking that you were going to turn up on some spaceship, 300 years older and a completely different man. Why should I be worried about that? It's not like I have any reason to worry about you regenerating, not like I should be scared of what you might do if you're left alone for that long, think about what good shape you were in when we first met!" Her tone was sarcastic and bitter and furious, everything that the Doctor never wanted her to have to be, especially towards him. He stood his ground, moving neither away from her harsh words nor towards her to offer comfort. He kept his hands in his pockets and just looked at her. "Of course I shouldn't have worried that you might not ever come back."
Her last words hit him like lead weights. He felt the force of them, as though they had actually smacked into his stomach. She had thought that? His brilliant Rose Tyler had actually thought that he might not bother to come back for her? He shook his head a little, not sure if he was answering her or just clearing his mind.
Rose stayed silent, teeth gritted, eyes hard. The Doctor realised that he had not said anything for a while, that it was his turn to speak, to defend himself. He opened his mouth, not sure what was going to come out – he felt angry words on the tip of his tongue, barbed and ready to hurt, but he stopped himself. What was losing his temper going to accomplish? He took a breath and calmed himself down before trying again. "I was going to make my way back to you, of course I was. I don't know why you ever doubted that." Rose winced, and the Doctor cursed himself – insensitive again.
"No, wait, I mean...there was never any doubt in my mind that I was going to come back for you, that I was going to fight to get back here, no matter what it took. It was so obvious to me; it didn't occur to me that you might doubt me."
Rose's head snapped up. "Don't go guilting me, Doctor, I did nothing wrong. Even someone who trusts a person completely can doubt them. You run off without looking back – actions speak louder than words." She shrugged, and it was this small gesture that finally pierced his shell. She had accepted that he wanted to leave her. And he didn't. He never would.
She was turning; ready to go back to her room, to leave it like this. The Doctor had to stop her. If she was thinking that he didn't care about her and that he wanted to leave her, then he needed to change her mind.
"Rose." He called after her, and for a heart-stopping second he was certain she was just going to keep walking. Thankfully she stopped, spinning back to face him.
"What?" she said, and the Doctor winced inwardly. So that was what it felt like when he did that. It wasn't fun.
"Rose, please don't think I would ever leave you because I wouldn't." Rose opened her mouth to speak but the Doctor cut her off, words tumbling out of his mouth in an effort to make his feelings known. The sooner he said it, the sooner they could get back to how they were before he had made a mess of things. "No, please Rose, you've got to believe me. I know I actually did just leave you, but I'll swear on anything you like that I would never have rested until I found you again. I don't want to leave you, I will never want to, and I never will."
The Doctor paused, aware that his expression was probably one that more resembled pleading than anything else. He had cracked and allowed Rose to see more of his emotions than normal. He only hoped she wouldn't throw what he said back in his face.
He would deserve it if she did.
When she didn't answer he began to talk again. "I am so, so sorry for what I did to you, Rose."
He watched as she squeezed her eyes shut, mouth pressing into a thin line. The Doctor wasn't exactly sure what she was going to do next, but when she opened her eyes they were wet with tears. He felt something constrict in his chest, the urge to leap across the console room and hug her almost too much to bear. He also had a very un-Doctorish yearning to punch out the thing that had made her cry. Then he remembered that the thing that had made her cry was him, and the feeling of guilt worsened.
"So you should be." She was talking, actually talking to him, she was talking and smiling and the Doctor was frozen with happiness at the realisation that, even if Rose had not forgiven him, she had at least accepted that he was sorry. There was a chance they could get back to normal, that Rose wouldn't leave because he had done something unforgivable.
He took a step forward and stopped, confused slightly by his own movements – normally he was so sure in what he did, and yet he didn't know whether it would be best to hug Rose or to leave her alone. The Doctor was still not convinced that he had forgiven him. Would hugging her just make it worse?
His mind was made up when he saw Rose take a half step towards him, biting her lip. He bounded across the room, closing the space between them in a flash, scooping Rose into a hug and reflecting on the fact that it felt like years since they had done this.
And there it was, that wonderful moment when everything fell into place. Rose's smell, the feel of her arms and her body against him, her hair tickling his face and the way he could tell that she was smiling even though he couldn't see her face. It all hit him at once, in that moment when they both came together, hugging each other fiercely as he lifted her off her feet.
Eventually the hug ended, and they both stepped backwards, still looking into each other's eyes with giddy grins etched onto their faces.
"There's no way I'm going back to bed now, I'm not letting you out of my sight."
"Fine by me," said the Doctor, watching Rose's face lift even further at the obvious happiness in his voice. He really needed to rein in the emotions before he did something stupid, like grabbing Rose and kissing her. He stopped that seed of thought before it managed to plant itself in his brain, bowing and gesturing towards the jumpseat. Rose curtseyed before sitting down, pulling one knee up to her chest and resting her chin on it as the Doctor began to hit buttons on the console with unnatural enthusiasm.
They were happy in comfortable silence for a while, before the Doctor heard Rose ask him a question from where she sat.
"Did you love her?"
He froze, blurting out the answer before he could find some way to skirt around the question. "No. No I didn't." He avoided Rose's eyes, twisting a dial on the TARDIS console around and around in an effort to appear nonchalant. "Time Lords don't fall in love, Rose."
The Doctor heard a snort of laughter and leaned around the central column to see Rose laughing at him. "I bet you 5 quid you're wrong," she told him, before standing up and walking off down the corridor, stretching and yawning as she went, waving her fingers at him as a goodnight.
The Doctor stared after her, mouth slightly open in an almost exact replica of the face he had made when Rose (well, Cassandra in Rose's body to be precise) had kissed him on New Earth – a mix of shock and confusion.
How does being wrong feel, Doctor? You'd better just go and give her that fiver now, the TARDIS told him, her voice unbearably smug inside his head.
"Shut up," the Doctor muttered crossly.
He hated being wrong.
Hope you enjoyed, review if you want to - my tumblr url is greatbigouterspacedunce, just in case you wanted to know :P