Title: Sitting on a Park Bench
Pairing: Doctor & Rose
Rating: K
Summary: Reunion fic. "He finds her in the park. "
Disclaimer: Not mine, never in a million years. I wish.
Author's Notes: A little one shot that happened upon me when I was meant to be revising and did not go away. Reviews are extremely welcome.
He finds her in the park.
He's changed of course. He's finally become ginger, a fact that made him miss her even more, after all this time. He wanted her to be around so she could share in his excitement, run her hands through it and call him "carrot top."
Maybe it's him, getting stuck in his old age, but his regenerations seem to be affecting him less and less. Despite developing a strange penchant for pears he still feels like the same man. He doesn't wear blue anymore, that was a statement, a sign of mourning, an attempt to get away. He's gone back to his brown suit and white converses, in remembrance. But he still runs his hands through his hair manically when his brain is going haywire with problem solving. He can still talk until the cows come home. He still has glasses in his shirt pocket and he still loves Rose Tyler completely.
She hasn't changed in the slightest.
Her hair is the blonde of when he first met her, she wears less make-up by the look of things and she's the head of Alien Resources in the London Torchwood branch.
But she's still Rose.
He can tell. He's been sat on the park bench ( iron, painted black ) watching her for a good half hour.
She has a dog now, a big golden lab that bounds up to her cheerfully, tongue lolling out the side of it's mouth.
"Barcelona - not the city Barcelona, the planet. You'd love it. Fantastic place - they've got dogs with no noses! "
The Doctor smiles to himself. Rose is a definitely a dog person. Cats are too untrustworthy. Especially ones in wimples.
It is a Wednesday afternoon, the most mundane sort of day and the November weather ensures none of the passing pedestrians stop to pause, they're in too much of a hurry to get out of the cold. ( Global warming it seems is less of a problem in this Universe. )
Rose is different than them. Situating herself in the middle of the grass she is dressed down and wrapped up warm in a pair of jeans, purple hoodie and a pair of green converses. When he spotted them the Doctor smiled so hard the corner of his eyes wrinkled. She had always insisted that they were too flat, that they made you look like you had duck's feet. But there they are.
As he watches her Rose laughs clearly, her tone ringing out against the distant rush of cars. The lab has returned to her, proudly wagging his tail, the thrown stick still 50 feet off in the distance. Rose leans down to ruffle the dog's hair, then picks up a gentle jog across the lawn to where the stick has fallen, bringing her a little closer to where he is sitting beneath the bare oak trees.
The trees are all bare this time of year, their silvery, naked branches spiking out indistinctly against the grey and cloudy skies. Besides Rose, the stretched green that she runs lightly across is the only colour to be seen on this monochrome afternoon.
As she nears the bench his toes clench in his shoes. But he does not look away, how would she recognise him after all? He wants just this one chance to watch her, to reacquaint himself with her before she has to do the same thing with him all over again. And the closer she is the more he notices. The rosy red placed in her cheeks by the cold, and the outline of her mobile in her jeans pocket. He can even the see the exhaled puffs of air coming out of her mouth as she comes to a halt, bending down to pick up the stick.
He remembers her telling him that when she was little, on especially cold days, she used to stick her pen in her mouth and breathe out to pretend that she was smoking. He remembers laughing when she told him the story of how she stuck the wrong end of the pen in her mouth once, and when she sucked in instead of breathing out she ended up with ink splattered all over her mouth and Jackie had a fit. As he laughed she had grinned at him and at herself, as they sat together on the console seat with their cups of tea.
Since those distant, rose tinted days the Doctor has travelled infinite miles and billions of years. But today is the first time since Canary Wharf that he has travelled between parallel universes. How he got here hardly matters ( in the end, ironically, it was a matter of time; new inventions and discoveries culminating in an impossible feat ), it was the gap in between. 20 years. A century ago that amount of time would have seemed to him, as 365 days seemed to a human. But after the loss of his people, after the loss of Rose, loneliness, never eased by anyone the way it had been by her, stretched days and months into immeasurable gulfs of hours and seconds, sped up and slowed down with every adventure.
He only takes people's hands to run now, never to hold.
" Hello."
He breaks out of his reverie. Somehow without his noticing - implausible as he has been watching her the entire time - Rose has come to stand before him.
She smiles kindly down at him, still seated on the bench. Her brown eyes bore into him with the unabashed acknowledgement a stranger never receives.
" H -hi. " he hears himself answering.
" Is it time then?"
" What?"
Rose laughs happily. A knowing smile plays across her face.
" I guess it is then. "
She couldn't …
" Rose?"
" Hello Doctor. "
The wind is completely knocked out of his sails. He blinks, once, twice. He opens his eyes and she is still standing there, smiling at him. The whole meeting feels surreal, as if snuck up on him too quickly and he has yet to catch up.
" You know who I am?"
" You came back and introduced yourself to me a few weeks back. Gave me a shock I can tell you."
Rose tilts her head to the side, noting him, then laughs, nodding her head in recognition. Of what he has no idea.
" Yeah he said your expression would be priceless. "
He can't do anything but stare at her.
She laughs again, delighting in his confusion.
" Wh - why do I come back?"
Rose shrugs as she smiles down at him, enjoying being the one to dumbfound this time.
" Because otherwise we wouldn't be having this conversation we're supposed to have and that would break apart the space time continuum. Because the rift's closing tomorrow and I needed to know to come to the park so you could find me today, before it's too late. And because this is quite funny. "
Rose pokes her tongue out of the corner of her mouth, and that familiar memory is all it takes to bring about a rush of realization. This is really her. It is all he can do to stand and pull her into an embrace. He doesn't know what it's like to hug her in these arms yet.
And he won't for a while, as the lab runs between his mistress and the stranger and yaps loudly and protectively.
" Sssh, Jack. Down boy."
Rose stills the dog with a hand on his head.
The Doctor doesn't take his eyes off her.
" Jack?"
" As in Captain yeah. The first time I met him he tried to hump my leg so I thought it was fitting. "
Somewhere in the back of his brain, the Doctor knows that that is funny. But he can't laugh, he can only smile, an astonished smile, a disbelieving, exhilarated smile.
Rose continues to talk, as if she doesn't know what to do next. It reminds him of himself, of his previous incarnation. She looks down at the dog.
" I was going to name him after you but "Doctor" is a bit too pompous for a dog, and "Doc" makes me sound like I'm Bugs Bunny or something. Hey, did you know that the Looney Tunes don't exist in this world?"
She looks back up again and the expectation of an answer dies at the manic, overawed grin on his face.
And then her watch starts to bleep.
She glances down at it and frowns.
" Ah. Apparently we're supposed to have left by now to meet Mum."
Rose meets his eyes mischievously.
" You're scheduled for another slapping mister."
As if he can understand, the lab - Jack - runs off, leaving the two of them behind.
" Come on then carrot top." instructs Rose, winking at him.
She holds out her hand, wiggling her fingers as he did to her all those years ago.
" That hand of yours still gives me the creeps. "
As the Doctor takes her hand, his eyes flutter shut voluntarily. A part of him that he didn't even realise was empty swells beneath his chest. Opening them again, the Doctor meets Rose's eyes, and they are brimming with as much understanding and love as ever. He squeezes her hand and he's home.
" You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold. "
Fin.