A/N: beta job by the fabulous Yamx (on Live Journal).
The Doctor: I'll have to settle down. With a house or something - a proper house with... with, with doors and things - carpets! Me! Living in a house!... Now that, that - that is terrifying.
Rose: You'd have to get a mortgage!
The Doctor: No!
Rose: Oh yes!
The Doctor: No, I'm dying, that's it, it is all over.
Rose: What about me? I'd have to get one too!
The ride back to Zach's command center is quiet and very tense.
"The TARDIS..." Rose finally asks.
"She's gone." The Doctor sighs, rubs his hands across his tired face. "Went into the black hole, pop! That's that, then."
"Doctor..." she says. She doesn't know what to say, what to do.
"Rose," he says, and that's enough.
The Doctor still has his screwdriver and his psychic paper and his enormous brain, and so as soon as they get dropped off at a spaceport they have as much money as they like- and Rose does like it, being rich. They're in the future, so very far from home that it doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like a regular kind of rich: there's no diamonds to wear or fancy cars to drive or little dogs to carry around in designer handbags. Instead it feels like being inside some strange and marvelous game, where she can ask for anything she wants.
"Hold this," the Doctor says, holding out something that looks like the skeleton of an ipod. There's something strange in his eyes, but Rose reaches her hand out right away. At the last moment, the Doctor hesitates, draws the object back.
"You didn't even ask," he accuses.
"Sorry," she says, confused, "would I have broken it?"
"No, that's not-" the Doctor sputters, "but- I mean- it's just- you didn't even ask why!"
"Why should I hold it?"
"Yes!"
"Well? Why should I?"
The Doctor only stares at her for a long moment, then stuffs the little thing in his pocket and strides away.
He looks so very alone.
After a few months of jetting around from one star system to the next, they decide to settle down for a while. Not forever, the Doctor says. Of course not, Rose agrees. Just till they get bored.
There's no mortgage: they pay for everything up front. It's easier, the Doctor says. It's funnier, Rose says, as she watches nine real estate agents trying to figure out how to count the wheelbarrow full of cash they'd payed for the little space-ship house that had caught their eye.
They turn their little space-ship house into a really big space-ship house, a mansion, a crazy sprawling rambling sort of place that drifts ponderously all over charted space, racking up extravagant parking violations. The only plan they have is to have fun, but it works well enough. They make friends with architects and mechanics and real-estate agents and gardeners and chefs and interior decorators and furniture-makers and pool-boys and plumbers and consignment-shop owners and inventors and junk-yard dogs and musicians. It's great fun. Even the Doctor thinks so- or at least, he smiles more than he frowns, laughs more than he hides. Her superphone keeps her connected with her mum, across the centuries, and she promises her that they'll find a way back home some day, that this is just a... a long vacation. The Doctor promises too, says he's working on it. So they're happy, they're both happy.
"If I did something terrible," the Doctor says one night, "could you forgive me?"
"You'd never," Rose says.
"Yes, but if I did? If I hurt you?"
"You'd never," Rose says, more firmly.
"But-"
"Then yes, I would, of course I would. But you'd never."
"I might," the Doctor says, and his eyes are bright in the darkness.
The House, as they end up calling it, grows and grows. It has lots of rooms, kitchens and parlors, arboretums and laboratories, dining rooms and dancing rooms and sitting rooms and bath rooms. It's got almost as many rooms as the TARDIS, or at least the Doctor says so, and they make sure to always be adding more on. It's wonderful, and it's even nicer when some of their friends stay with them.
At first it's just someone to keep the cleaning robots on track because wouldn't it be nice to get them to function at top efficiency, and then it's a live-in chef (and they have to build him his own set of rooms) and then it's a gardener, to convert the arboretum to a little farm because you can't make really good food without fresh veg, and then a quintuplet of botanists because Rose misses the flowers, and then a jazz musician because he's dating the quintuplets and loves the view, and then an air traffic controller, to help them know who to bribe when they want to park over Woman Wept for a month or two. And so on.
The Doctor is always happiest when he's got a gang of people he can show up to, coo over, impress and/or annoy, and then run away from when things start to get serious. Rose watches him repeat this cycle half a dozen times a month, and it never gets old. She thinks, sometimes, he's going to run out of place to run away to, but then again that could be why they keep building new rooms.
"Should we charge rent, do you think?" she asks the Doctor.
"Why?"
"Oh, I dunno. If people paid for themselves 'round here they might stop leaving their dirty knickers lying all over. The cleaning robots keep getting jammed, which was funny enough the first five times but now-"
"Hold this for me, will you?"
"Why?"
"Because I want you to."
"Right, then. So anyway Mitch- you remember Mitch, he's the skinny bloke, the acrobat- he keeps inviting his friends up, and none of them ever leave and it's not like we don't have the room for them but some of 'em are really shifty types and they're creeping poor Charlene right out..."
There's a rhythm to this new life, windows and carpets and friends and dogs and children and space-cats, all leaving and arriving, coming and going, fighting and making up again. It's domestic, but it's domestic to a fast and furious and exhilarating beat, a dance with the music turned up to eleven. There's always something to do! There's a song in her head that goes with it, these days, in her head everywhere she goes, and it makes her feel happy and impatient all at once. She would dance to it but she doesn't quite know the steps, she would sing to it but she doesn't know the words. It sounds like the Doctor, and like space, and like the wild joy of being who she is and doing what she does. She works to it as she sorts arguments, plays games, makes new friends, lives her life in their big funny House. She's never been so happy.
"How long've we been here, then?"
"Hmm? A while."
"Not very specific, that. A while. Only, it feels like a long time but my roots-"
"What?"
"My hair, Doctor. I don't think it's growing. If we've been here even a while my roots should be showing, but they're not, my hair's still blonde."
"What's wrong with that? I love your hair. It's lovely. You're lovely."
"I- what, really?"
"Would I lie to you, Rose Tyler?"
"You'd better not."
She learns things and teaches things, she makes things and breaks things apart. She hangs around the musicians more and more, trying to learn to play that song, looking for just the right noise but nothing's close enough. So she hums it in the shower, taps it out against her cereal bowl, wiggles to it through the air ducts. She learns to weed and to samba, to keep 5/6 time and what a 3/4 hydro-spanner is. She teaches Charlene how to say no like she means it, Jeordie how to bake a birthday cake, Michael how to weave a friendship bracelet, Tina how to apply mascara. She hangs pictures, sweeps floors, polishes windows, paints walls pink and blue and brown and orange, nails together an ivy trellis. The Doctor leaves, comes back, leaves again.
"Oh good, you're here, hold this."
"What's this?"
"It's a T-43 hyperwidget, I'm gonna need it in a second. Tasha's mucked up the water pressure with her bloody robots again, I gotta change this valve right now or Sandra's tomatoes are going to get watered with chicken noodle soup and then none of us'll ever hear the end of it..."
"Look at you, Rose Tyler! With this whole life and all, changing valves! It's almost like you don't need me!"
"Don't be silly."
It's a great life, the best life. And then one day it all just finishes. She gets up that morning, puts some clothes on, does her face up, and wanders into her favorite kitchen. Mimimi trots in with a sheaf of new blueprints (a spatial observatory, with lots of hyperglass windows) and they are just getting into it when the Doctor rushes into the room, his trainers squeaking across the marble.
"Everyone needs to get out," he gasps, his eyes a little frantic, his hair a riot. Half his suit is burnt black, and he flakes ash into Rose's cereal.
"What?" she asks.
"Out!" the Doctor barks, waving his arms wildly at Mimimi. "Show's over, nothing more to see, go home! Everybody move, move, move!"
Mimimi lays her ears back and moves, her tail bristled up half again as large as the rest of her.
"Do you have to be scaring the help?" Rose grumps.
"Rose, this place is about to become dimensionally transcendent. Very dimensionally transcendent, very quickly. If anyone stays inside during that transcendency they are going to be lost in the fifth dimension forever, and that is not good."
"Oh, well if you put it like that." Rose pushes her chair back, drops her bowl in the sink. "Come on, let's get to the intercoms."
They get everyone clear just in time. They themselves are just cramming into the last exoshuttle when the House gives a monstrous shutter and turns blue all over. Then it folds up like origami, the dimensions of it tucking and twisting in mind-boggling directions as it collapses in, in, in, into a little wood-paneled box with windows all around the top. After a moment, it grows a letters: Police Public Call Box. After another few moments, like an afterthought, it adds two doors on one side.
Then goes still, and just hangs there in front of them.
"The TARDIS," Rose says.
"Not quite," the Doctor says, almost accusingly. "It doesn't have the blinky light on top!"
The blue box grows a light on top, blinks it a few times, then waggles a door at them in shy invitation.
"But- I don't get it." Rose presses her face up against the front screen of their shuttle. "Is it the House? Or the TARDIS?"
"It's both and it's more and it's better, Rose," the Doctor say, right behind her. "It's you."
"Me?"
The Doctor looks serious and sad and elated, all at once, and takes Rose's hand. Pilots the shuttle with the other, in through the open blue door. It shouldn't work, but it does, and when they're in and the lights come on Rose gasps.
It's the console room, copper roundels and grating and all, but the console looks different, all pink and yellow like an exotic, mechanical six-sided flower. Inside the rotor is a golden shining figure, suspended inside the translucent column. As they watch the figure dims, the bright gold light fading to a cool, steady blue glow. The Doctor sets the shuttle down on the grating and then sighs deeply.
"The thing is, Rose," the Doctor says, "I saved your life once. I saved you from the vortex but I only ever really borrowed you back. It might have been enough, you might have been just fine... if we hadn't lost the TARDIS, if I hadn't tried to call it back to me. But we did. And then I did. I had to."
He looks at her hopefully.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she says.
He sighs, and points at the console. "That's you in there, that is," he says gently, "you're the heart of the TARDIS."
"I don't feel like a- a heart of the TARDIS," Rose says.
"Ah, well," the Doctor says.
"No, really, I don't, " Rose says. "How'm I in there and over here?"
The Doctor puts his hand against her chest, and pushes. His hand goes right through, and the substance of her being swirls outward from his touch in golden spirals.
"You're a projection, Rose. A ghost. A memory. As the Vortex energy absorbs your mind you - this you, here - will lose coherency." And he looks so sad about it.
"I- wow," Rose says. "Wow. So like, I'm dead? You killed me? All that bit about me taking stuff without askin' why, that wasn't just your little talk about stranger danger, that was you turning me into a bleedin' space ship."
The Doctor looks deeply uncomfortable. "Wellll-"
"And you didn't even ask me?"
"Well..."
She slaps him across the face. "You wanker! If you'd asked I would've- I might've- I would have known, but you didn't even ask me!"
"I did!" the Doctor protests, holding his cheek. "I asked, 'how long are you going to be with me', and you said-"
"Oh, God. Forever. I did." She stares out the window, feeling blank with confusion and horror. "I thought maybe you were going to marry me," she says, "I thought maybe you were working up the nerve to pop the question, not to turn me into a bloody time-traveling police bloody call-box!"
"I thought..." he says, and trails off when she glares. Shifts around in his seat uncomfortably.
"You didn't even ask," she repeats.
"Would you have said no?"
"Would you have done it anyway, if I had?"
He doesn't say anything, but the look on his face is answer enough. Oh, God.
"How much choice have I even had?" she asks. "Have I ever had?"
"Rose-"
"When you asked me to come along with you, at the very beginning of- of us. This. Could I have even said no?"
"You did say no."
"No- yes, I mean, but I said yes after that- you came back and asked again. Would I ever have been able to mean no?"
He doesn't answer that one, either, just squeezes her hands and won't meet her eyes.
She sighs.
"I forgive you, I guess," she says. Her hands are glowing from the inside, and she watches the light flicker through their joined fingers. It's scary, but beautiful.
"Aren't you angry?"
"Oh, yes I am! I mean, I hate you a bit, but I love you. I really do love you, you know. And so I forgive you."
"That's why I did this," the Doctor admits. He smiles, and it is so, so sad. "I knew you would. Oh, Rose."
He wraps his arms around her, and she's still solid enough to feel his tears against her forehead.
"I wasn't very good for you," he says into her hair.
"You made me happy," she says. "That was good."
"You made me happy too," he says.
"And- and you'll always have me now, won't you?" she asks. "This way, with me being the TARDIS. I'll be with you forever, yeah? Like I said."
"Like you promised."
"'M glad," she says, and sniffles into his jacket. "Is that crazy? This is awful, but I'm glad."
"Me too," he says, "I'm so sorry."
"Tell my mum," she says. "You gotta tell my mum I said goodbye."
"I promise."
"And all my friends."
"Them, too."
She closes her eyes. The song in her head is calling to her, and she can feel herself folding outwards, transcending reality.
"Rose," he says, from far away.
"Is it going to hurt? Being a TARDIS?"
"Does it hurt now?"
"No."
"It shouldn't."
"Oh, that's reassuring."
"Rose..."
"My Doctor," she says firmly, and that's the end of it.
He kisses her. It's too late to matter, one way or another, but the last part of her left appreciates it. Inside their heads, between their lips, the song is calling, strong and pure and wonderful. She knew this once before, but she'd forgotten: all of space and time and the bits in between, singing just for her. She kisses back, coming apart all around him.
The song is calling, and she knows how to dance to it now.