Telly
Rose wandered round the TARDIS console, her finger idly tracing the instruments. She had a rough idea of what most of them did, by now. Most, not all. Even the Doctor didn't know what all of them did. There must be loads of Great Big Threatening Buttons on this thing that he doesn't even know about.
The Doctor watched the smile spread across her pretty face. He'd come so close to never seeing it again.
"Take a good look. See what you can deduce."
He thought back to that horrible moment in the DI's office, the moment when they'd brought her in. He'd gone numb when he'd seen the skirt and shoes, but clung to the hope that it was some other girl, any person in the world other than his Rose. Then they'd pulled off the blanket and his world had gone cold.
"Rose..."
Even without its vivid features, he'd know that face anywhere. How many times had he studied its shape, in times of danger when every detail of his surroundings was burned into his mind?
"You know her?"
"Know her? She-"
The world around him melted into triviality. His eyes, mind, everything was locked onto that blank face. What could he even have said? There was no word, in any language, to define exactly how he felt about Rose Tyler. 'Love' was far too ambiguous. People applied it to cats, for god's sake. 'She means the world to me'? Too cliché, and what does that even mean?
"We found her in the street..."
"Found? That's unusual, that's the first one out in the open..."
He felt an overwhelming sense of failure. He hadn't waited. If he'd stayed outside that house just another ten seconds then she would have been safe, standing beside him, helping him as always. She knew something, he realised. That's why they did this to her. She can't have been an accident like the rest. The policemen's words swum around him until finally something clicked home.
"They did what? They left her where?"
"Just... in a street."
"The street? They left her in the street? They took her face, and just chucked her out and left her in the street? And as a result that makes things... simple, very very simple. D'you know why?"
"No."
"Because NOW, Detective Inspector Bishop, there is no power on this Earth that can stop me."
And then they'd been in Magpie's shop. He'd found her face and it was as though an iron fist had seized both of his hearts. Small and alone in grainy blue and white that could never do it justice, he thought. And calling one word, just one word. It had destroyed him, for a moment.
She was barely 20 years old, still old enough to want her mother, or her oldest friend, or any combination of people who'd ever been able to help her over the years. But she wasn't mouthing 'Mum' or 'Mickey' or even 'Jack'. She was calling for him, over and over, unfailingly.
It made his heart leap to think that she trusted him so implicitly; it broke it to even imagine letting her down. She was so sure he'd come through. She believed that all needed to do was call, just as she had at Christmas.
"What're you smiling about?" she asked.
"Hm? Oh, nothing. Just thinking about something I saw on the telly."
Rose slipped her arm round him. "Ooh, don't talk to me about telly. I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime."
"So!" The Doctor clapped his hands. "Shall we go and find Elvis after all or look for something a bit different?"
"Aren't you forgetting something?" Rose lifted the cassette tape out of his coat pocket and waved it in front of him.
"Oh. Oh yeah. Right. Home it is then."
She pressed his nose affectionately. "You'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on." She flounced off to get changed, leaving the Doctor to his thoughts.
As you can probably tell, I don't often do drabbles or one-shots, but the Doctor's reactions in The Idiot's Lantern were a bit irresistible. R&R.