Title: Do You Love Me?
Author: Gillian Taylor
Rating: PG
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose
Summary: Love can mean so many things.
Spoilers: All of series one, really
Disclaimer: Don't own them. I just like playing with them...a lot.
Archive: Sure, just let me know.

A/N: This was inspired by Saganamidreams' thoughts on the Doctor Who shipping debate. Thanks, as always, to my lovely beta WMR for the laughs and just for being herself.

"Do You Love Me?"
by Gillian Taylor

"Do you love me?" Her voice filtered through the whirrs and low hum of the TARDIS.

"What brought this on?" he asked. He changed the setting on his sonic screwdriver and forced it between the capacitors underneath the main console.

"Jus' curious, I guess. I mean, after what you said. In the morgue. 'Bout being glad that you met me. So, do you? Love me?"

"Depends on what you mean." He shrugged, pulling down wires. Trust a human to ask uncomfortable questions when one was trying to work. Jiggery-pokery was a difficult skill to master, even if one was a genius – which he was. "Best mates? Pals? Buddies? Love is such a tricky word to understand. Some species have over fifty different words for the one you English-speakers make do with."

"I mean, do you love me," Rose asked and he could see just a hint of her blonde hair as she leaned over the console above him. "Love me, love me. Romantic, I guess."

His hands stilled on the wires. How many times had he had this particular conversation? He could remember half a dozen at the least, but regeneration tended to make one's memories fade after a time. Nine hundred years of experience, but not all of those memories were readily accessible. "No," he replied.

He didn't love her, couldn't love her. She was a tiny human, so fragile, so inexperienced. He was a Time Lord, he knew the threads of the time-space continuum, he could travel them, control them. How could he love her? They had only met such a short, yet long, time ago. The peculiarities of time travel in a second's thought – a moment could stretch to infinity.

"Oh." Her voice sounded disappointed.

He fought back the urge to take it back, to lie, just to make her feel better.

"But as best mates?" she asked, and now he could hear that hope had returned.

"Yup." No question. She was his friend. His companion.

"Good." Rose sounded satisfied and he listened to her start to walk away. She paused and he could almost imagine her looking at him, half-buried beneath the console. "Me too."

At least that was settled.

The second time she asked the question, he had saved the world but hadn't lost her. He had manipulated her into coming with him, teased her with the image of a plasma storm in the Horsehead Nebula, and she had come.

He had always known how to play a human.

"Do you love me?" she asked, leaning against the console. She brushed her hair back in a deliberate move, calling his attention to the line of her neck, the curve of her cheek, the colour of her hair.

He looked at her, though he still twisted the knobs and pulled the levers that would keep them on course. "'Course I do. Love the human race, I do. Must be why I keep saving it." He favoured her with a cheeky grin, as he moved around the console.

"You know what I mean," she replied, glaring at him in exasperation.

Sure he did. That didn't mean he had to answer. Love was such a strange subject. It encompassed so much and so little at the same time. Did he love her? He spared a second to consider the question before deciding that he did. He loved her as a friend, a companion who helped to stave off the loneliness that always threatened to overwhelm him.

But that wasn't what she meant. Not what she wanted. Such a human, she was. The last time she had asked that question, he knew what she had truly wanted. He had known what she meant. She had thought him to be another notch on her belt, another man fallen for her not-so-inconsiderate charms.

It would be, he suspected, not that difficult to fall in love with her.

However, he didn't. Love her in the 'till the end of time, happily ever after' way of her people's writers. There were no happily ever afters. Not for the Time Lords and certainly not for him.

"Yeah," he replied, stilling his movements to stare at her. "I do."

"And?"

It was time for her to hear the truth. This particular truth had held for hundreds of years, and would until the end of his last regeneration. "My love's for the universe, Rose. Love it all, I do. Little tiny apes, made of clay. Monsters, and aliens, and good guys, an' bad guys. Love 'em all."

"Oh," she said and stared at her knuckles. "But that includes me, yeah?"

He smiled faintly. "Yeah."

"'Kay." She smiled brightly at him and left the room, leaving behind the faintest scent of her perfume.

Yes, he thought, it would not be that difficult to fall in love with her.

But he wouldn't.

The third time she asked the question, he had almost killed her. He had listened to what he had thought was her death and realised that some truths transcended the convictions laid down by his past eight lives.

What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?

He hadn't saved her, couldn't save her. Not then. Not now. Was this what she had meant by her question? Would he do anything to save her? Would he change the world? Would he do it for her?

He stared at his hands as they curled around the lever. Did he love her?

Of course he did.

Did he need her?

Yes.

But was he in love with her?

What use are emotions if you will not save the woman you love?

He pulled the lever with more force than strictly necessary. Her words played in his head, echoing and fighting against the Dalek's. Love. Such a fragile word to mean so much, and yet mean so little.

"The universe, tea and scones, adventures, running? Love it all, me. Love to see it, eat it, and do it with you? Yup." He grinned brightly at her, deliberately misunderstanding the question.

"Doctor..." So much disappointment and aggravation in one word.

He met her gaze with his own and his expression sobered. "You already know the answer to that question."

"Yeah," she agreed softly. "I do."

No, he corrected her in his mind, she only thought she did.

"G'night, Doctor," she said, and headed for the door that led deeper into the TARDIS.

"Rose, check on Adam for me, would you? Make sure he hasn't broken anything yet?" He could hide so much in so few words. Love. What had he done to deserve this?

She smiled sadly and nodded. A moment later, she was gone.

Yes, he thought to himself, it was easy to fall in love with her.

And he had.

The fourth time she asked was after a dance. They had saved the world and, for the first time, everyone had lived. Rose, himself, Jack, the entire human race. Everyone had lived.

And it was fantastic.

Yet she had to ask. It had become something of a tradition, he realised. In the way that some humans collected salt and pepper shakers shaped like flowers, or some collected magazines or comics. She collected his answers.

He wondered if she realised how different each of them had been. Love had many layers, he had long ago realised. Friendship was but one. Caring was another. Romantic love was yet another. There were shades of each, but she still saw the word in black and white.

He either loved her, or he did not. There were no shades. Not for Rose.

He smiled at her, keeping his arms loosely around her torso as they danced to another song. Jack had long ago departed for a bedroom, leaving them alone. Which was, he realised, what she had intended all along.

"I love experience, the universe, the rain. I love a tear, the sun, the moon, the TARDIS. I love Earth, humans, dogs, cats, and rabbits. I love London, England, the continents, the planets. I love the solar system, stars, pulsars, quasars, singularities, and black holes. I love atoms, electrons, protons, photons, and quarks. I love the elements, molecules, theories, and facts. I love saving the day, saving the world, or saving a person. I love life." He grinned at her as he finished.

She smiled and touched his cheek with her hand in a brief caress. "Yeah, you do." The moment was broken as she lifted her hand to her mouth to belatedly cover a yawn.

"Bed," he told her.

A wicked smile crossed her lips. "Better with two?"

"You -" He laughed, shaking his head. "- have been spending too much time with Jack Flash."

"Night, Doctor." She leaned up to kiss his cheek and with a blur of blonde hair, she was gone.

He touched his cheek where his skin burned from the remembered kiss.

Some things were better with two.

Love, he realised, was one of them.

The last time she asked was not so much in words, but in deeds. Surrounded by golden light, she had destroyed the Daleks and ended the Time War.

For him. All for him.

She had asked if he loved her.

And, as his lips touched hers in their first and last kiss, he whispered his answer.

"Yes."

FIN