The Doctor and Rose arrive in Kendal and find a place to stay. Predictably, the Doctor is none too thrilled about all this, but in his usual manner is keeping it locked inside beneath his "I'm always alright" exterior.
Thank you so much to everyone who has alerted, favorited and reviewed so far! It gives me such encouragement! :)
Roughly three hours after disembarking on their northward journey, the Doctor and Rose arrived in Kendal. Fortunately, it didn't take long to locate a flat for rent close to the town center, and shortly after, arranged to meet the agent at the property. It was a small, plainly furnished, two bedroom one bath flat. Modest but functional. They agreed to take the place. It wasn't that either of them was thrilled with the apartment considering it wasn't blue on the outside and bigger on the inside, but with night quickly falling and nowhere else to stay, they weren't exactly in the position to be choosy and shop around. It didn't escape Rose's attention how the Doctor eyed the doors and carpets with obvious disdain, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. Rose understood how he felt. A Time Lord confined to four walls and a roof just felt universally wrong.
With the lease signed and the first month's rent paid in advance (Rose didn't even want to know how much money the Doctor had 'soniced'), they were left standing in their new, and decidedly NOT bigger-on-the-inside home. That's when the reality of the entire situation began to fully sink in. For the next four months, this was it.
They both turned to look at each other, neither one knowing quite what to do next. The Doctor stood there with his hands buried deep in his pockets, his face an unreadable mask. It was Rose who finally broke the awkward silence.
She took a deep breath. "I suppose next we'll need food," she said, considering the practicalities. Then she wrinkled her brow as she began to ponder all of the necessities they would need, considering they quite literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever the Doctor had stuffed in his dimensionally transcendent pockets – which could be quite substantial, actually. "And clothes. All we have is what we're wearing. And we're gonna have to think about jobs, I suppose. And –"
The Doctor, looking more distraught by the minute, cut her off. "Rose, let's just…take it one thing at a time. Okay?" he said, his tone and his wide eyes slightly pleading.
She closed her mouth and just nodded. "Are you hungry?" he asked, rubbing the back of his neck as he often did whenever he was feeling nervous, awkward or uncomfortable, which encompassed pretty much everything he was feeling at the moment. He glanced towards the empty kitchen. "We could go out and get something."
Rose shook her head. She seemed to have a tense knot in her stomach and food was the last thing on her mind. "No, not really. You?" He shook his head. "I'm just tired," she said with a weary exhale, the events of the day catching up with her.
His expression softened. "Why don't you get some rest? We'll start sorting everything out in the morning."
"Yeah," she agreed, then glanced down the short hallway of the flat. "Which room do you want?" she asked.
He gave a half smile. "It really doesn't matter. Take your pick."
Rose nodded and began to head for one of the bedrooms, then a thought suddenly struck her as she abruptly stopped and turned back, rummaging through the pocket of her hoodie before finally producing her mobile. "I didn't think of this before, but…I can still call Mum, Right?" she asked, her expression hopeful. "This always rings me through to her in my correct timeline."
Admittedly, Rose didn't always call her mum as often as Jackie would like, but knowing that she now couldn't see her made Rose miss her already. She hoped she would be able to at least talk to her mum during the next four months.
The Doctor's face was once again apologetic. "The signal is routed through the Time Vortex. That's how it was always able to ring through to the correct timeline. But without the TARDIS…"
"So I can't call her, then," Rose finished for him as she slipped the phone back in her pocket.
The Doctor dropped his eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry." He spoke the two words with heaviness.
Rose realized the totality of what he was apologizing for. He felt he was responsible for the entire situation. The words, I've trapped you here hung in the air between them, his voice not needing to say it because his eyes already had.
Rose took a step towards him. "Doctor, this isn't your fault," she said firmly.
He opened his mouth to disagree, but she raised her hand and cut him off. "I've always known the risks that come with all of this. Things might not always go to plan, but this is the life I've chosen, and I wouldn't change it for the world."
The Doctor remained silent. Rose never ceased to amaze him. She said much the same thing to him once when she was about to be exterminated by a Dalek. Whatever mess they found themselves in, Rose had never once blamed him for it.
"I'll miss Mum," she continued, her voice a little quieter, "but it's not like this is permanent. And a normal life on Earth isn't exactly unfamiliar territory for me." She glanced down for a moment before continuing, then looked back up at him. "I just…I worry about you, though. I mean…are you gonna be okay with this – without the TARDIS?"
The Doctor forced a quick smile to his face that didn't seem to be able to stay in place. "Oh, it's not the first time I've been exiled on Earth," he said vaguely, and Rose knew she shouldn't take it personally that he compared this situation with her to exile. "I think I'll manage."
He paused, the memory of a past conversation coming to his mind as he then gave her a genuine, slow smile. "Besides, stuck with you, that's not so bad."
A smile crept across Rose's face. "Yeah?"
"Yes."
She took a few more steps closer and reached her arms out to give him a hug, which he returned, both feeling just a little bit of the tension ease. Rose pulled back and let out a deep breath. "Well…I'll see you in the morning." He nodded as she turned and made her way to one of the two bedrooms down the hall.
Rose closed the door behind her and leaned heavily on it for a moment. She straightened back up and surveyed the room. Streetlights filtered in through the single window on the far wall which was draped in a thin, white curtain. The bed was to the right, centered on the wall with a closet to the left. She walked over to the bed and sat down, bouncing slightly to test the mattress. It felt decently comfortable, but she was too tired at the moment to care either way. She stood and pealed back the plain, tan colored duvet, then kicked off her shoes, pulled off her hoodie, and shimmied out of her jeans. Not having any nightclothes to change into, she climbed into bed wearing just her t-shirt and knickers. She pulled the covers up to her chest and let out a long, deep breath as she closed her eyes and began processing the events of the day.
As she had told the Doctor, living an ordinary life on Earth wasn't unusual or unfamiliar for her. That is, after all, how she'd spent the first nineteen years of her life. She hadn't exactly been planning to return to this kind of a life, but she could certainly manage. What she was concerned about was the Doctor. Oh, he said he was alright. But when the Doctor said he was alright, it almost always meant just the opposite. She worried how he would cope without the TARDIS. Temporary as it might be, the man who never stopped and never stayed had suddenly been pulled from orbit.
Yet there was a bigger issue here that went unspoken between them, and it had been at the back of Rose's mind since this began. How would this affect their relationship? They were now suddenly living together in a tiny flat. This conjured up the same awkwardness between them that was there on Krop Tor when she had suggested they could share a place together if it came to that. Technically, they'd been living together for just over two years, but it was different on the TARDIS. The ship was massive. They weren't exactly living in close quarters. The Doctor was able to maintain some distance – she'd never even seen his bedroom. The Doctor could quite literally disappear into the bowels of the ship if he so chose. And it wasn't like they had settled down together in the two years they'd been traveling because they were constantly on the move. But this was altogether different.
They never had to stop and face their feelings for each other because the Doctor would just grab her hand and run head-long into the next adventure, never stopping to confront this thing between them. When Rose stopped to consider the nature of her relationship with the Doctor, she realized she couldn't really define it. They were friends, yes. Best friends. But there was so much more to their relationship, and frustratingly, so much less. Their feelings for each other was the proverbial nine-hundred pound gorilla in the room. It was undeniably there, but they both pretended to ignore it.
Rose knew without a trace of doubt what her feelings were for the Doctor. She had known that before he had regenerated into the man he was now. And since then, her feelings had only grown stronger. But she wasn't entirely sure what his feelings were towards her. He could be so alien sometimes and keep his feelings closely guarded. But then again, maybe he wasn't being alien but just a typical male when it came to expressing his feelings, she thought dryly. Rose knew he cared deeply for her – maybe it even went beyond that. But what was undeniably clear was that he wasn't acting upon it, and maybe he never would.
And Rose knew the reason. She knew it all too well. She was human. Her lifespan was a fraction of his. She would eventually wither and die, as he had so delicately put it, while he would not age. She could spend the rest of her life with him, but he couldn't spend the rest of his life with her. He would have to live on. Alone. And so, they kept a safe distance between them and never crossed that line.
That line between them, however, now felt decidedly thinner within the walls of this tiny flat. Rose released a sigh as she turned on her side and closed her eyes. This was going to be an interesting four months.
-:-
The Doctor paced around the small flat feeling more and more like a caged animal. He preferred his place of residence to be bigger on the inside, and this place most definitely was not. He had told Rose he would be fine without the TARDIS, but the truth if it was the loss of his ship felt like a physical ache. Like he had lost a part of himself. It hurt. And he was so tired of hurting. Even with the loss of everything else in his life, the one constant had always been the TARDIS. He remembered telling the crew of Sanctuary Base Six that his ship was all he had. Literally the only thing.
But that wasn't entirely true, was it? He had Rose.
Rose.
That single thought had the power to stir up a whirlwind of emotions – guilt being one of them. Rose told him she didn't blame him for this, but that didn't change the fact that he still felt responsible. He wanted to show her the majesty and splendor of the universe and let her run through all of time and space. Instead, he's trapped her here for the next four months, cut off from even talking to her mum.
But a feeling of guilt about this situation wasn't the only thing niggling at him. Actually, it was more like gnawing at his insides. He was feeling more than a little unnerved at the prospect of being in such close quarters with Rose in such a domestic situation. He had once told her the thought of settling down and getting a mortgage was terrifying, but that wasn't specifically what had terrified him. What terrified him was allowing himself to get too close, too emotionally attached to Rose. He had dodged the issue of sharing a place with her when the subject came up on Krop Tor. Now that it was a reality, though, he wasn't just going to abandon her and leave Rose on her own. He just hoped, however, that she didn't get used to the idea of him doing domestic. That, for many reasons, just wasn't possible. Could never be possible. He had lost everyone he ever cared about. Even though Rose had promised him forever, her forever was heartbreakingly brief compared to his. Her eventually loss was an inevitable fact.
The Doctor had other deep-seated reasons as well for denying himself of any stronger feelings for Rose. But he didn't want to even think about those reasons because they hurt, too. It was a pain that already served as his constant companion, ever lingering in the depths of his soul without needing to bring it to the forefront of his mind.
The Doctor looked over to the door leading to Rose's room and felt that piercing pain in his chest. He had become skilled in the art of pushing such thoughts aside, running with Rose from one adventure to the next, never slowing down long enough to let those thoughts and feelings overtake him.
Now that he had been forced to a stop, they were creeping up on him once more. He shoved aside those thoughts of yearnful longing mingled with pain and pushed them firmly down, erecting yet another wall between Rose and his true feelings.
"Coward. Every time," he murmured bitterly as he turned from her door. This was the point when he would usually plot a course and run to escape these feelings, but he was now left with nowhere to run. With time and space now out of his reach, he did the only other thing he could do.
The Doctor pulled on his long brown coat, opened the door to the flat and slipped through, closing it silently behind him. He then set out into the dark and restless night to walk the streets of Kendal.