Disclaimer: Doctor Who and its accoutrements are the property of the BBC and copyright of Russel T. Davies and Steven Moffat. This is a work of fanfiction. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: I've seen Rose take a lot of flack for the way she abandoned Mickey in Rose, but it always puzzled me, because I thought it had been fairly obvious that while she wasn't that wonderful of a girlfriend, he wasn't all that great of a boyfriend, either. I think they both had their faults and flaws, and thought it obvious that they were going to grow apart, with or without the Doctor turning up.

Manning Up

"Thanks."

"Thanks for what?"

"Exactly.

He just sort of stood there incredulously as he watched her go running off to join that… thing in that awful box.

It wasn't until he'd wandered home around five in the morning that he'd started thinking clearly again.

She'd actually done it. She'd actually been right. There had been something going on, and she'd helped save London from being devoured by plastic bins and shot by shop dummies.

And then she'd gone and left with an alien, after calling attention to his occasional helpless inaptitude.

Rose Tyler was clearly not the ideal girlfriend.

He'd known Rose for nearly his entire life. He remembered, vaguely, the day her father had died, when she'd just been a baby. He'd watched her grow up around the estates, even played with her both before he'd been too cool to play with a little girl and after when hanging with an attractive teenage girl was acceptable. (The period between when he hadn't given her the time of day he didn't dwell on… he'd been a boy… there were rules.)

He knew Rose Tyler pretty well.

Rose could be thoughtless and she could be selfish. Sometimes she wanted too hard, too much. He wondered if it had anything to with the years that Jackie had struggled to pay bills, managing the occasional trip to a well-established clothing store, and bringing along a string of men that never seemed to work out for more than three months.

He knew that sometimes Rose's resentment would get the better of her and when that happened he would usually find her on her roof, angrily wiping away tears and berating herself for not being more understanding.

Because, for all Rose could be thoughtless and selfish, she was also uncommonly kind… too kind, at times. She was trusting and compassionate and if someone around the estates was in trouble, it wasn't a matter of if Rose would help them, it was a matter of how fast she'd be able to get to them. And it never had mattered if Rose had known the person or not. Even after the time a homeless bum had nicked her purse (with a whopping 5 pounds, a tube of lip balm, and a cracked compact mirror), she'd still managed to see the good in others.

He was angry with her. She'd left him. She'd actually left him. Alone. For an alien. Even hearing it from the thing's mouth that his life was dangerous, she'd left and had done so happily.

He knew that he'd been useless, that he'd panicked. He'd never been the go-to man in a crisis. He'd never had to man up before.

If he were really honest with himself, he'd admit that he wondered what it would be like to be able to just up and leave, with no thought to the world he'd be leaving behind. Would it be liberating? Would he ever have that sense of adventure?

Still, she'd left him.

He knew that she had issues with relationships. For one, she was young. He was five years older than her, 24 to her 19. For another, her fling with Jimmy Stone had done a real number on her, and it had been a few months before he'd even felt comfortable making a move. He'd never tried to push her and on the whole they'd been relatively happy. Safe and content, that was them.

But he'd known, she'd known, that wouldn't be a long-term thing. They'd both known that, even if they'd never spoken it aloud, because being together was safer than facing happiness alone. Rose had sometimes felt as though she'd owed him for being around to pick up the pieces after Jimmy had shattered her teenaged illusions about men. He'd long since stopped trying for romantic gestures (and had learned quick that presenting Rose with roses was a tried-and-true way to earn a disgusted look) and had easily settled into a mundane, complacent sort of companionship with her. Not that they didn't have fun and joke around — they did that plenty — but the spark wasn't there, hadn't been there for a long time.

For all that Rose Tyler was not the world's best girlfriend…

Mickey Smith wouldn't be winning any awards for the world's best boyfriend. He guiltily thought of the e-mails he'd not only not blocked from Tricia Delaney, but had kept and gone through whenever Rose was particularly busy. He thought of how he always told her not to check his e-mails, even when she'd never shown any interest at all in snooping into his life (Which had stung a bit — was he so boring that she didn't think he could mysterious?). He thought of how he could turn anything into an excuse to go to the pub and watch the match, even when he knew that Rose wasn't a big sports fan and that she hadn't cared for pubs after sneaking into them so many times when she'd dated Jimmy, and even when he knew that she was lucky to be alive after that explosion at Henricks and probably just needed to stay home and rest and give her mind a chance to settle down.

They were always going to grow apart, he knew. It didn't stop his affection for her, he knew it wouldn't even help him move on from her. He had a feeling that it would be a long time, if ever, before he got over Rose. He didn't even know if she'd ever come back. But the way she'd left had stung and had forced him to start thinking about where his life was going. Maybe it was time that he manned up, that he really started looking to his future, and not expecting that Rose was always going to be around. (Really, hadn't she just proved that?)

His gran had once said that it sometimes took a hard kick in the arse to get you up and running and on the right track.

Mickey just wished that his hard kick in the arse hadn't come the way it had, and from Rose Tyler, in what could be the last conversation they'd ever have.

Questions, comments, and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated.