Echoing footsteps and the never ending hum of the TARDIS engines were the only things that broke the silence as Rose walked slowly down one of the corridors, stopping and turning every time that she came close to the central control room. She couldn't go near it, she knew that he would be there and she couldn't stand to be with him. Not this time.
Frowning, she looked back at the last week, the last, silent week that they had spent inside their time machine, both of them too stubborn, too upset with the other to say anything. She knew she had reasons. He could say what he wanted to her, but no one hurts her Mickey, or her mother, and no one, no one hurts her Doctor. And that's what he had done.
Letting himself absorb everything, taking it all and absorbing everything to the point where he exploded, the point where the emotional and physical buildup had almost killed him. She knew that the crown couldn't touch the ground, or anything but a time traveller's head, she knew, but she also knew that it slowly peeled away at your worst nightmares, your worst memories, and took it and slowly started to pull every molecule from your body…she knew this and she knew that she had to get it on her head because he had lived for over 900 years, he had seen some awful things, done some awful things, and she knew that it was going to kill him.
He was such a masochist! He thought he deserved it! He thought he deserved the pain and all she wanted was to give him a break, take it from him and he wouldn't let her. He had almost died!
She never would have been able to live with herself.
But he didn't.
That little thought hovered in the back of her mind, but she pushed it down because Rose Tyler is stubborn and doesn't listen to anyone, especially not the Doctor, especially when it was his voice in the back of her own mind.
She kept wandering around the TARDIS, discovering rooms that she had never known existed. She found a room that was round and had an aquarium all the way around, holding fish that she wasn't even sure could be considered fish, one of which, a little green thing striped with purple looked at her – right at her. His eyes seemed to be able to move from the sides of its face to the front when it wanted.
She found another room that was just full of tuxedos, which she exited quickly.
Yet another room just held doors, a circle of doors. It gave her a weird vibe, and she backed out the door she came in and ran about ten metres away before she stopped to catch her breath.
Reaching out to open a door, she heard a click as the TARDIS unlocked a door behind her.
What's going on in there, old girl? She wondered. Usually she only did things for the Doctor.
She hesitated before touching the doorknob, and then, in a bout of her natural Rose-Tyler-recklessness, she opened the door wide and walked right in without looking. The door clicked shut behind her as she looked around. The room was full of guitars. Beautiful, beautiful guitars from every century, all of them in perfect or damn well near perfect condition. Almost all of them were acoustic, with the occasional fancy electric guitar. This room felt really, really private. She didn't know what the Doctor would want with so many guitars, but something about it felt really, amazingly private.
She couldn't stop herself from wandering through it. She wandered up and down some corridors, noticing the little plaques hanging right below each guitar on the walls, telling when he got it and who he got it from. This was incredible.
Slowly, as she got deeper and deeper into this room, to the point where she was sure that it couldn't have fit in the space in the hallways…oh yeah, bigger on the inside, duh…and she walked into guitars that looked older…not older as the year that they were made, but older as to when he acquired them. They weren't dusty in the least but something told her that these guitars were a couple hundred years old, even though some of them had been bought a few years before she was born.
Slowly, starting so quietly she didn't know if she could trust her ears, she heard playing. Somewhere, guitar music was being played. She wandered in closer and closer, following the sound, her curiosity taking over and sending her forward. The music gradually got louder and louder, and she could hear the player occasionally messing up chords, changing, and then pausing as if to write something down, until finally she peered around a corner and found a little alcove, like just a little room surrounded by guitars and the Doctor sitting on a stool with the most beat up guitar in the room on his lap with a little ledge beside him holding a little notebook and a pencil.
He leaned over and seemed to cross something out and rewriting, before putting the pencil in his mouth and playing a series of three chords, holding the last one. It sounded good to Rose, but he shook his head and crossed it out again, before repeating the process one last time.
Finally he seemed happy and he played a little bit, plucking the strings. Rose couldn't tear her eyes away. This was incredible. She never thought that he could do something like this…900 years was a long time, was her rationale…and so she watched his deft fingers, so skilled at fixing the TARDIS, so often run through his gorgeous hair, plucking at the strings like a pro. She felt her heart melt a little bit. This was even before he opened his mouth and started to sing.
"Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry…you don't know how lovely you are…oh Rose…" He sighed, and she felt her heart jump. "I had to find you, tell you I need you, tell you I set you apart…"
Something in his voice was breaking and it hurt her. "Tell me your secrets, ask me your questions, oh, let's go back to the start…running in circles, coming up tails, heads on a science apart. Nobody said it was easy, it's such a shame for us to part. Nobody said it was easy, no one ever said it would be this hard. Oh, take me back to the start. I can't…oh Rose…I didn't think this could even happen, I mean were different species and just…I've never had a problem with being this…attached, this…emotionally involved with a companion before."
Her eyes went wide. He didn't know she was there, he was confessing these things to his sanctuary and…and he meant them. This song…he had written it…for…for her.
"I was just guessing at numbers and figures, pulling the puzzles apart. I said it all for you, I made it all up for you. Questions of science, science and progress, do not speak as loud as my heart…." He held the note for a long time but didn't say a word. He was thinking through so many things, eyes closed, mind racing at a million miles an hour.
"But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me, oh, and I rush to the start. Running in circles, chasing our tails, coming back as we are."
In the next moment, Rose did something so reckless that she even surprised herself.
The Doctor sang, "Nobody said it was easy…"
And Rose, on the next line, harmonized like she had learned in school in year 10, and stepped out, singing, "Oh, it's such a shame for us to part."
The Doctor's eyes widened , but as if automatically, he kept going, and because of that, so did she. "No one ever said it would be so hard. I'm going back to the start."
The Doctor, still not taking his eyes off of her, sang, "Oh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh, ah ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh. Oh ooh, ooh ooh ooh ooh, oh ooh, ooh ooh ooh." He strummed the last chord but instead of returning to normal, his eyes seemed to stay vulnerable, stay the way they were before she showed herself. "I haven't written words for the end yet." He told her.
Still too nervous to smile but happy that she was still alive and her hadn't sonic-ed her brain or anything, she let herself talk. "I kind of like it like that."
"Do you?" The honest happiness in his face was so beautiful she couldn't help smiling a little bit.
"I really do. I promise."
She looked at his face and he looked at hers and something there connected, something clicked. His face flushed a little bit and she knew that he felt it too.
"Look, Rose, I…"
She shut him up by kissing him gently.
He froze a little bit and then kissed her back and in that moment, she knew that they would be okay. Everything would be okay.
"Just okay?" He asked, pulling back.
She must have said that out loud. "Oh Doctor…okay is perfect."
He smiled and he kissed her again.