TITLE: Forgiven
CHARACTERS: Tenth, Rose, Reinette
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Belongs to the BBC
SUMMARY: Is he forgiven?
RATING: G but with major angst.
The sun was sinking low on the horizon. The young woman stood hand in hand with the man she had spent the past several months traveling with. She was happy.
He was content. He knew that this young lady loved him and wouldn't leave him the minute his back was turned. It wasn't Reinette's fault that she died. Not anymore than it was his fault for being late. He couldn't have known the scale of time in the fifty-first century compared to the eighteenth.
'I didn't even think about the fact that five minutes in one place would be five years in the other. I should have known. I should have thought about that.'
"Doctor?" The young woman squeezed his hand for a moment and looked up at him. "She wouldn't have blamed you. She knew that the chances were that you wouldn't make it back as quickly as you promised."
"Would you have forgiven me?"
"Do you really need to ask that?" The look on her face told him that she had already forgiven him for every slight or insult he'd ever flung her way. "I always forgive you. Even before you hurt me."
That simple statement was every thing he'd needed to hear. He smiled at her. They walked back to the TARDIS hand in hand as if that was all that mattered.