My Alternatives fic for the episode Rise of the Cybermen. Tame compared to some.
A Story Told
She shouldn't be telling him all this. Especially in the way she was.
Two seconds ago, she had been mad that he was making fun of Mickey. Saying that there was nowhere he'd want to go. Well, three seconds ago, she had been too busy trying to run after her not-dad to care what Mickey was doing.
It wasn't until he had followed her instead of him that she decided to tell him about Mickey.
Everything she said was personal. Deeply personal to Mickey. It was the kind of information you don't spout off to others, even if they are asking for it. Especially if that person is liable to use some of that information against that person.
It was the type of information where the only person who should say it is the person it had happened to.
And here she was, telling him about how his mother practically went nuts and couldn't deal with everything in her life. That his father left him as a boy in the hands of his grandmother. That the grandmother was blind and given this boy to look after. That she was tough, and had hit him quite a bit for, as far as he got out of the tale, absolutely no reason.
And that part had Rose smiling. She actually said that it made her laugh. Made everyone laugh.
What kind of sick world is the Powell Estate if everyone laughed at a young boy getting hit by his Gran? He didn't peg Jackie as the type to have laughed over it. She'd be more the type to hug him and take him in for the rest of the day and feed him.
Unless, by everyone, Rose meant herself. It was likely, given everything he had learnt of her and her way of thinking through the past year of her company. She could be extremely self centred and caring of only one person. Herself.
Was she telling him this to get him to feel sorry for Mickey? If anything, he now felt more in sync with the boy. Was she telling him this to prove that Mickey is known to her in a very intimate fashion in a way, once again, to make him jealous?
Was she telling him this to make herself feel superior to Mickey?
It could be none of them. Yet again, it could quite possibly be a strange mix of all of them.
Still, he did not think Mickey would be too happy with what Rose had just told him. And he couldn't tell Rose that it had been bad and wrong, because she'd not listen to him, or she'd think he was just telling her that to make her feel bad.
Rose was failing, completely, to realise how Mickey would feel if knowledge of his early life got out, especially to him. It was no secret that he and Mickey didn't exactly get along, and one of the points was that Rose had dumped one of them for the other.
He wished, so hard right in that moment, that somehow he could undo the hurt he had made Mickey feel. Not because of this new knowledge of his life, but because maybe he'd have someone to talk to about Rose's ever erratically out of control behaviour if he had been more friendly with him. As they stood at the moment, Mickey wasn't too happy with him.
Still, nothing to do about that now, except move on and hope that Mickey knew that he was now a companion and could do what he liked...as long as it wasn't too dangerous or almost got them killed.
That was a lesson Rose was quickly losing her grip on. She seemed to be running towards trouble instead of trying to keep out of it. He'd had some jeopardy friendly people travel with him before, but Rose...Rose seemed to almost like running into danger just so he could go rescue her from it.
Not good. Not good at all.
Well, this time he would make sure she didn't get into too much trouble on her own.
Mickey, he was fast finding out and Rose had never learnt, can take care of himself.
How he sometimes wished all his companions were like that...