Title: Piece Me Back Together
Author: Angel Leviathan
Spoilers: Anything, everything is fair game.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, characters, concept, etc, aren't mine.
Notes: Set some weeks after Fathers Day, but before The Empty Child. Thanks to Tash for helping and listening to my wailing that this fic had run away and gone somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
She stood on the open rooftop of her block of flats, almost at the edge, just staring out across the city, arms folded and jaw tightly clenched. Rose sighed again and reminded herself to blink after so long staring, annoyed that such a simple movement broke the expression on her face, the one that danced somewhere between furious and utterly depressed. She'd been standing there for a good hour or so, strangely numb, though whether it was because of her blind anger or the disappointment in herself, she didn't know. Rose sighed, only to tense when she heard footsteps behind her. Footsteps she knew belonged to him.
"Its more dangerous to be here than anywhere else, you know."
She didn't look back at him, "No, it isn't. I didn't come home. I ran to Shireen's and stayed there until Mum appeared. Nearly broke the bloody door down, she did," a bark of a laugh escaped her.
"What if she sees you now?" the Doctor questioned.
"She won't. She'll be at work. She had a job then."
"Fair enough."
Rose heard a brief scramble and presumed he was sitting on the ledge in the centre of the roof. She frowned; the sky had got progressively dark through the afternoon, as had her thoughts. She still refused to look back. She was still waiting for the rest of the argument, the rest of the rant he had begun, to start up again. She would have preferred that; the prolonged silence unnerved her. She knew she was in the wrong. It had been an honest mistake, but a mistake based on a lie.
She had asked if he didn't mind doing something terribly human and utterly pointless, going to see a few movies, back a few years when she had been underage and couldn't get in to see them. She was all too amused that she would be able to honestly say she had seen them in the year they were released. She had said it had been a good year for movies, he might even be impressed. Rose hadn't expected him to say they could go. Expecting him to say 'no' had geared her up for an argument she intended to lose all too easily. The response of 'yes' had totally thrown her, and by the time she had formed any sort of statement that said she had changed her mind and didn't look suspicious, they were already there, back in 1999, and he was at the door to the TARDIS waiting for her. She had requested that they go back to the day The Matrix was released in the UK, even specified a time, cinema and location. Maybe he had known she was up to something.
She was more angry at herself than at him. She had betrayed his trust and she had known what she was doing; he had every right to be absolutely furious with her. Throw her out of the TARDIS and not look back. But he'd never do that and even knowing that made her feel worse.
"Why did you do it?" the Doctor asked, voice almost toneless.
Rose had already screamed a brief explanation at him, whilst they had both been shouting and cursing each other, in public, on the streets of London. She ran a hand through her hair, but stubbornly folded her arms again and remained silent.
Okay, so it hadn't exactly been a lie. But the intent had been there and the whole movie thing had been an excuse. She had honestly been interested in seeing the movies, doing something normal, wondering how he'd react to sitting in a cinema whilst she pelted him with popcorn, but that hadn't been the reason she had wanted to go back to 1999. She had been thirteen years old back then. Thirteen and naïve and a little too innocent for her own good. She mentally sighed; how that had changed in a few short years. The Rose of 1999 had been walking back through London, back from school, when a hand had reached out from nowhere and quickly dragged her into a dark alleyway. Looking back, she now supposed she was lucky the bloke who'd grabbed her had wanted nothing more than her money and jewellery (that her mother had always warned her not to wear as it was against the school dress code). The situation could have been a lot worse. But she remembered a young woman, hair dyed blonde, around the height she was now, causing such a scene, shouting and punching the guy away from her before she could hand over her purse, a terrified kid complying and not daring to ask questions.
"…I thought I was doing the right thing," Rose finally stated.
"You could've asked. Could've talked about it. Could've been honest," he replied, all the fight gone from his voice, only quiet and cold acceptance, disappointment, lacing his words.
The anger flared up again, forcing her to fight to suppress it. She had thought the woman who had helped her was herself. It made perfect sense. Looked similar, somehow knew she was in trouble when nobody else had noticed. Almost perfect timing. How else could she explain it? She cursed, mentally calling herself every name under the sun for being so stupid. She had already seen what meddling with her past did. Had caused her more pain than she had thought possible, almost destroyed her soulmate forever, all because she was too curious and too desperate to change things. Impulsive. That's what people always called her.
She was wrong. The girl hadn't been herself. Checking her watch, ambling along the pavement beside the Doctor, supposedly heading for the cinema, she had watched herself walking along several metres ahead of them, watched her suddenly vanish and pretended she saw nothing. The street was crowded, the Doctor hadn't noticed either. Only when they crossed the alleyway had she slowed and wandered a couple of paces down it, stunned by his sudden shout of her name and the sight of the thief on the floor, herself shaking and backed against the wall, a blonde woman shaking her head in dismay, checking she was alright. She had run back out onto the street to be met with his then curious, worried, gaze, hoping her younger self hadn't seen her. Too shocked, she hadn't even been able to form one line of a lie, she had snapped at him until he refused to walk another step until she explained just what was going on.
"Last time I was honest, you accused me of lying from the start," Rose said softly, "that thought has to always be in the back of your mind now, right? So what would I have gained from being honest?"
"My respect?"
"If I didn't have it to start with, one incident wasn't gonna earn it," she muttered. She twitched, hearing a sudden rumble of thunder overhead, "You know, we go back and we pretend everything's fine," Rose turned round, "You hold me when I cry and I sleep in your bed more often than not, but we don't make any progress. We don't really talk. Ever."
"Rose, you don't mess with time like this. You don't go with your hunches and just throw yourself into it. I might make it look like I run headlong into things without a second thought, but I do actually think these things through…" he began.
"That's not the issue here. Alright, I screwed up. I screwed up big time. Nothing new there. I lied. But I didn't plan this. I didn't do it to have some fun. If I wanted to have fun, I'd 'ave got there beforehand and smashed that bloke into the wall. But I couldn't talk to you about this. If I thought I could, then maybe we wouldn't be here right now. You don't ever talk to me, not properly."
"Oh, so this is all about me now? We apparently go back to try stop you getting mugged, realise that, oops, no, it wasn't you saving your own skin, and now its all about me not sharing every thought with you? That that gives you the right to lie and hope I won't notice when you make a mistake?" the Doctor hopped down from the ledge and advanced toward her.
"No!" she yelled, "Its not all about you! Its about you and me and how we think we're so close and how we think we love each other so much but we don't really know each other at all!"
"Really?"
"Like this! This now! How I can only ever get you to really talk, say what you're really thinking, what you really feel, when we're screamin' at each other and it just comes out! I can't jus' ask a gentle question and expect an answer, that'd be too easy!"
"And you're so easy to talk to!" he snapped.
"No! But it shouldn't be this hard!" she shouted.
He was standing over her then, face set in stern lines, eyes beyond the blazing anger she knew he felt, glaring icily down at her, so cold she couldn't read him, "Life isn't that simple, Rose."
She glared back up at him, "Maybe it ain't that simple. But it ain't this difficult either. I'm not asking for a lot. I thought it was a pretty simple request."
"You call that a request?"
"I call that getting through the only way I've learnt."
The Doctor's voice was still deadly even, "Well, tough. I'm not gonna just lose it one day and its not all gonna suddenly come tumbling out for you to pick up the pieces."
"I don't want to pick up the pieces!" she shouted, taking steps backward, away from him, "I just wanna know what goes on in that head of yours when we're havin' to leg it again, when you're up all hours pretending to fix the TARDIS when she's perfectly fine! Just something! Anything!"
He took another step toward her, suddenly angry again, "More than you could imagine," he tried to sound almost threatening, not enough to hide the pain hidden beneath.
Rose sighed and tried to relax herself from attack mode, "I don't want to have to imagine. I don't wanna be fooled into thinking I know someone completely enough to love them knowing so little."
"What, so you want childhood stories and amusing anecdotes?"
She noticed he was physically shaking and instantly regretted every word she'd uttered. But she'd come too far to back down, "No. I just want you. All of you, not what you decide to put on show."
"And all the times you laugh yourself sick so you think I won't see what you're hiding? You think I don't hear you crying?" he questioned.
She shook her head, staring at the ground for a long moment before she looked back up, shoulders slumped, "…Everyone has defences…you should know that…"
"Some can't be broken down," the Doctor muttered.
"Coward," she taunted.
"Alright for you to run and hide when it gets tough, isn't it?" he shot back.
Rose laughed harshly, "Yeah, back when it was so much easier to just forget, go out and get pissed out of my mind and move on. Can't do that anymore. Oh no. 'Cause this life's better with two and you ain't getting away this easily. We spend enough time runnin' as it is. But its safe with you and I wanna know why the hell I can't walk away from you even when you're being a stubborn git."
He was silent as she turned away to look back at the skyline. He glanced upward, sensing the change in atmosphere that was swiftly followed by a heavy downpour of rain. For a moment, he expected her to dash for shelter, and was more than worried when she didn't even twitch, just stood there, getting absolutely soaked, "Rose," he called out to her.
She ignored him, caught between the need to keep her anger fired up and the desire to just let go. Rose heard him call her name again and folded her arms. She wasn't moving. He'd have to drag her from the roof, she told herself. And realised he might do just that. Cursing under her breath, she didn't look across as he walked to stand beside her.
"You ever hear the phrase 'if it aint broke, don't fix it'?" the Doctor began.
"But we are broke," she insisted.
"No we aren't. We're just cracked around the edges. If we were broken, you'd be gone by now. And I wouldn't be here pretending it isn't raining and we aren't soaked to the skin."
She tried to look at him without moving her head, "…Is this you trying?"
"…This is me saying I promise nothing. I could never promise you anything, you knew that from the start. I'll defend you to the death, keep you safe, from the outside world. I can't protect you from what we do to each other."
"I don't want you to."
"And when you don't like what you hear?" the Doctor asked, voice quiet.
"…Then I get over it," she replied, "Just talk to me."
"When…?"
"All the time," Rose finally looked up at him, "All the time. All of time," she slipped her hand into his and looked back at the sky, blinking the raindrops from her eyelashes.
He twined his fingers with hers, "This works both ways, you know."
"Can't promise I'll sob my heart out…"
"I don't expect you to. But if you have to, at least let me try to fix it."
She nodded several times, more to herself than him, "…'Kay…"
The Doctor was content to be quiet only for a matter of seconds. He nudged her gently, "Got any poly-filler? I think some of the cracks can be fixed."
She smiled and laughed despite herself, "I thought you didn't do domestic. Could take you down to B&Q if you want, not as fun as time and space, but depends what you're into…"
He tugged on her hand to gently guide her away from the edge of the roof, "You're not domestic."
"I'm not?" Rose looked up at him, pausing, quizzical expression on her face, trying to focus on his features through the pouring rain.
"No," the Doctor pulled her closer again, no more contact than through their linked hands, "You're mine."
Fin