Just hours after an encounter with homicidal robots on a 51st-century spaceship, Rose Tyler lay in her bed, staring at the ceiling, fidgeting and sleepless as she battled demons of an entirely different sort.
One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.
Ugh. Even steeped in misery, Rose managed to muster the energy for rolling her eyes at that syrupy-sweet sentiment. The Doctor was no angel, not by a long shot, not unless one's definition of "angel" was "someone who thinks that re-using dead bodies is the same thing as recycling" or "someone who neglects to mention that occasionally the artificial gravity goes out on the TARDIS during repairs but don't worry, Rose, the nausea will fade after a few minutes—a couple hours—a day or so, tops." Reinette would have discovered that on her own soon enough, had she come with them.
Rose grimaced. She didn't want to think about that, about Reinette left waiting and wanting. Something about it made her feel sick and a little guilty, and she didn't want to know why.
But you and I both know, don't we, Rose, that the Doctor is worth the monsters.
Of course, she was right. The Doctor was worth the monsters, and the demons, and the paradoxes and the danger and the homesickness and the fear, not to mention the sleeplessly late nights and far-too-early mornings, the days spent in odd prison cells and dank caves and dark, twisty space stations, and the outrageous amounts of running resulting in even more outrageous amounts of bruises and blisters. Of course the Doctor was worth all of that. Even Mickey—who would never, ever, absolutely-not-in-million-years ever say it—even he knew this was true. But surely it wasn't acceptable for Reinette to say those things if she hadn't experienced any of it for herself. Surely she hadn't earned the right, the privilege.
(How could you fall in love with someone you'd only known for a day?)
With a frustrated sigh, Rose sat up in bed, catching sight of herself in her bedroom mirror. She frowned at her reflection. Her eyes traveled over mirror-Rose's too-bright blonde hair and its tellingly dark roots, her sun-kissed skin, her small breasts framed by broad shoulders. A square chin, big mouth, and prominent teeth drew her eyes upward; no matter how she painted her lashes, no matter how dark or bold, she would never be able to draw attention away from that overbite and sharp jawline. The lips that she used to take pride in, all pink and plump and sweetheart-shaped, now seemed almost comically oversized, practically garish compared to other smaller, more delicate mouths. She pulled her hair into a loose pile atop her head and quickly dropped it. No gentle golden curls or fair porcelain skin or dainty features graced this body. There was no comparison, not really; if she was a bloke, Rose knew which woman she would choose.
But that wasn't exactly fair, was it? Reinette was so much more than a pretty face. Accomplished, the Doctor had dubbed her. Her own rooms at the palace, even her own title. The Uncrowned Queen, he'd said. Important, he'd practically shouted. Rose, on the other hand, was occasionally charming and sometimes clever and, if she was lucky, beautiful—for a human.
Rose plucked morosely at her cuticles, sighing at the rough and ragged edges that would surely catch and pull on anything finer than her cheap cotton tee shirt and jeans from the discount bin. Probably Reinette's cuticles were flawless, just like the rest of her, all soft and delicately translucent. But why wouldn't they be? She was so perfect, she almost could have been written that way, her every glance, touch, and velvet-voiced word artfully crafted to send hearts all a-flutter. Could Rose really blame anyone for chasing after her, could she really fault anyone who drew toward her like a moth to a flame?
(Only that wasn't quite right either, was it? Because the Doctor was a fire all on his own, offering warmth and light and heat and hurt in equal measure. Perhaps he sought the company of someone more like himself; maybe he was tired of creatures that so easily burned. And in that way, wasn't Reinette an ideal companion, didn't that make her a perfect match?)
Groaning loudly, Rose buried her head in her hands, hating the deluge of self-pity and reveling in its delicious awfulness all at once. It was like a picking at a scab. She knew she should slap on some antiseptic and a bandage and let the wound heal, but it was ever so much more satisfying to just sit there and rip at the wound over and over and over again, savoring the pinch of pain as flesh separated from flesh, relishing the sting of air on raw skin, watching the pink shiny edges pucker and bleed. After all, scabs and blisters and feelings rubbed raw—she could deal with those. The Doctor was always a terrible flirt, and years with Jimmy Stone had taught Rose to harden her heart against the fickle nature of men.
But something was different this time around, and it had slowly crept through the background noise of Rose's mind, needling its way into her thoughts the moment the Doctor jumped through that time window. It was a thought smaller and darker and more painful than all its other nasty fellows, a tiny sharp-toothed parasite burrowing deep into her chest.
He had abandoned her today. He did it once. He could do it again.
Eyes cinched shut, Rose shook her head sharply. No. Maybe she wasn't the most important woman in France, but she wasn't bloody expendable, like so much cheap luggage or a forgotten pet. She was so much more than the girl she was when she left behind Jimmy and the Estate, and Mickey was so much more than just the tin dog.
The Doctor wouldn't desert them again. Rose wouldn't give him the chance.
Rose stopped fidgeting. She swung her legs over the side of the bed. She stood up. She drank in a deep, deep breath.
Well, she thought. Here goes nothing.
The Doctor's ears perked up at the sound of Rose entering the console room, her bare feet pat-pat-pattering softly over the metal grating.
"You're up early!" he said, tearing his attention away from the diagnostic screen to shoot Rose one of his trademark smiles. He tilted his head to the side, taking in her clothes, the same she had worn the day before. "Or perhaps you're up late. Bit difficult to tell in a TARDIS, especially when her internal quantum barometer's been off for a while. Well, maybe a few years. Well, maybe a couple of centuries. No more than a millennia, at least.
"So are you up for another trip already?" he asked.
Rose fiddled with the hem of her top. "Sort of."
"Excellent!" the Doctor beamed. He stepped slowly in her direction, edging round the console. "What's your pleasure?" he asked, flipping a switch. "The infinite beaches of Kabos Prime?"
He pushed a button. "The singing forests of Tharvis?"
He pulled a lever. "The pirate court of Madame Ching Shih?"
The Doctor leaned forward, bridging much of the distance between their bodies, to conspiratorially whisper, "Or maybe the bioluminescent oceans of Astrion? Ooh, now that's a good one. Go back about, oh, eighty-thousand years, there's not another living soul in sight, just millions upon millions of tiny glowing jellyfish floating about in the deep, black sea, like stars against a midnight sky."
Rose stared up at him with round, dark eyes, but didn't say anything. Unusual, that, but perhaps she was still a bit sleepy. The Doctor, however, was not sleepy, and longed for a distraction of some kind. Any kind. He wasn't particularly picky. He just didn't want to be left alone with only his thoughts for company. That sounded absolutely horrendous.
"What do you think?" he prompted with another mischievous grin—it was, he'd quickly learned, the fastest way to win Rose over in this new body of his.
"I think…"
Rose exhaled loudly. "I think I'd like to go home."
The Doctor blinked. "You are home," he said, frowning. "The TARDIS is your home."
"Yeah, but for how much longer?"
Scratching the back of his neck, the Doctor averted his gaze. "I don't see any reason to put a label on such things."
"Why not? Seems like a useful thing for an expiration date."
"That's a rather macabre way to look at it," the Doctor said slowly.
Rose laughed. "But all good things, eh?"
The Doctor frowned at her again. "Is it just me, or are we having two completely separate conversations? Not that I mind, only it isn't typically human custom." His face brightened. "Now, if you'd like to take a trip to Pyrethea, we could meet the two-headed Pyretheans and have ourselves some very interesting two, three, and four-way chats—"
"No. I want to go home," said Rose.
Something about the look on her face, the pinch of her mouth and set of her jaw, filled the Doctor with unease. He felt certain he was missing something here, a nasty little pesky thing nagging just beneath the surface, but he couldn't think of what it might be. Nor, really, did he care to examine it all that much.
The Doctor masked his sudden discomfit by turning away, fiddling with a dial on the console, pretending to adjust this and that. "Got it," he replied. "Home. Where the heart is. Where you hang your hat. No place like it."
Drawing in a deep breath, he shot Rose a tight smile. "Threw me a bit off guard, I suppose, but it's not entirely unexpected. Though I'll admit, I figured you would want to wait a little longer between visits. Seems like the last one wasn't all that long ago. But the TARDIS could probably stand to be refueled anyway.
"All right," he continued, clapping his hands together. "A brief shore visit, it is!"
"No," Rose said, and, faltering, she shifted her gaze to the floor, where her toes were turning pink with cold. "I don't mean it like that," she said, to her feet more than anyone else. "I mean…"
She visibly braced herself, her eyes shuttering closed. "I mean I need to go home."
Oh, the Doctor didn't like the sound of that. It made his throat clench uncomfortably, set tiny alarm bells ringing in his head and squeezed something in his chest, maybe twisting a bit for good measure.
(Did she really have to do this now? Especially after…)
"For good?" he asked lightly.
"I don't know. Maybe? I hope not. I just need to go and think for a while, get my head on straight."
"Well, I don't know if you need to home for little old that. Lots of places to go thinking on the TARDIS, aren't there? Library, drawing room, garden, pool—or if you're feeling overly literal, we could even go watch Rodin work on his most famous sculpture—"
"No," Rose said again, sharper this time. "I don't want to see any sculptures, I don't want to see any pirates, and I don't want to hole up and hide on the TARDIS. I need to go home, Doctor."
Dumbfounded, the Doctor fell quiet. Tense silence hung in the air between them, thick and impossibly opaque. The Doctor wondered how this conversation had got so far away from him, what on earth Rose could be on about. She had seemed perfectly fine earlier in the day. And surely nothing significant had happened just in the last few hours. But she didn't seem eager to explain, so he shouldn't ask. Right? If she wanted to talk about it, she would say something. She usually did. Didn't she?
"Okay, then," the Doctor said, nonplussed. He shoved his hands in his pockets.
"Okay," Rose agreed.
The Doctor cast about for anything else he could say, but the nets came back empty. And Rose didn't offer anything either. She was, once again, unusually quiet.
He did not care for this turn of events. Did not care for them one whit. The Doctor had no desire to be alone again. He especially did not wish to be alone after everything that had happened in—after everything that had just happened. And no, Mickey the Idiot did not, in any way, count as adequate company. He would certainly be no replacement for Rose Tyler.
The Doctor briefly entertained the notion of refusing, of chit-chattering until he wore her out, or taking a page out of his previous incarnation's book and just putting his foot down. He could do it. It was his ship, for goodness' sake. He could bloody well take it wherever he wanted. But something in his gut told him that was the wrong approach here, that the determination hiding behind the tiredness in Rose's eyes wouldn't be so easily swayed. He knew that stubbornness all too well. And worse, he knew he wouldn't win against it. Didn't even have a fighting chance.
(Daleks, Autons, even mad Time Lords hardly presented a challenge, but one look at that face—right, that one, with the furrowed brow and slight pout—and he crumpled. It was ridiculous, honestly. Inexcusable.
Unless…)
"Very well," the Doctor said. "If that's what you want, I'll make it happen. I'll take you to home first thing in the morning."
Rose hesitated, as if she might say something else, but she closed her mouth and simply issued a tight nod.
The moment she turned to leave, the Doctor indulged in a sly little smile.