A/N: Still Nine/Rose in this part.
~ 2. And so I cannot help but tell you about myself, though I fear you will turn and leave ~
It's there that he spills his secrets.
It becomes a regular trip. Often they go there after the most difficult days, when they need some peace and quiet, some recuperation time. Sometimes they go on a whim, when she wakes up in the morning and decides it's a day for a picnic in the sunshine on their favourite world. He doesn't mind – in fact, he cherishes these moments, and actually cherishes them even more when their frequency increases, because it means more moments to spend staying still for once, which he is surprisingly quite happy to do when it means Rose Tyler is lying beside him with her hand in his, staring up at the purple sky.
And she makes him tell her things. She doesn't pressure him or anything, it's just, she asks a question or two and looks at him with those eyelashes and that bottom lip and he sort of divulges things he doesn't mean to. It's like she compels him to talk without even saying something herself. How does she do that? He does not know. But he speaks, and she listens, and he realises that it's good to share the weight of the world, the burden of the universe, with someone who actually cares.
He doesn't tell her everything, of course. He makes the fatal mistake of forgoing informing her about regeneration, for instance, because he doesn't expect that she'll ever have to see him change. He's not long had this big-eared, leather-jacket-wearing body, after all.
And it's not like he expects her to understand it enough to stay with him if he did. Others have, of course – others have stayed with him after he regenerated during his travels with them. But he feels how different things are between him and Rose, different from anything he's ever had with another friend. She just gets him, so completely, and he thinks that the unbreakable bond between them would become severed should he ruin that well-established trust by changing into a new man. He's not sure if Rose would be able to let this him go, if he became someone else. He's not sure she'd stay.
He's wrong, though, because he often always is nowadays. He cannot yet quite grasp the fact that someone, least of all someone as wonderful as Rose, could love him like she does. He does not deserve it.
He is a man who has killed millions upon millions. Time-locked the Time War and burnt Gallifrey out of existence. A Time Lord, a soldier, a killer. He cannot forgive himself. He cannot deserve love.
He does not deserve it.
(Rose Tyler disagrees, and silently loves him so much that she can hardly breathe half the time, let alone voice it. After all, she doubts it is possible for the Doctor, the greatest, most courageous man she has ever known, to fall for a silly, insignificant little human girl like her.)
"What's this, Doctor?" she asks one day, lying next to him on the grass, holding up a strawberry-shaped but peach-coloured fruit from their picnic basket.
He opens his eyes, turns his head towards her and does not look at the fruit at first, just stares at her. Then she brings the fruit to her lips, thus it is within his field of vision, so he sees it, sees her bite into it, sees the orange juice drip drip drip down her chin, and he fights against the overwhelming urge he has to reach out with his thumb or with his tongue and swipe the juice away.
It's okay though, then, because she wipes at her mouth with the back of her hand and takes the temptation away herself. Or maybe enhances it, for of course, he still wants to kiss her, perhaps even more so now than just a second ago. He gets the feeling that as more and more seconds go by in Rose Tyler's company, he will desire a kiss from those lips at an exponential rate.
"Doctor?" she prompts, before taking another bite. A bigger bite this time. His hand clenches around the grass.
Drip drip drip. The orange juice on her lips reminds him of the skies of Gallifrey.
Without meaning to, he tells her this, and the look she gives him, and that kind smile she sends in his direction, warm his soul. How does she do that?
(He does not ever tell her the name of the fruit. In her head, she simply associates it with an orange coloured sky and says no more about it.)
She notices the tension in his shoulders, the intensity in his blue eyes, and moves the picnic basket out of the way. She moves closer, and holds out the rest of the fruit to him, offering him a taste. He nods briefly and lets her when she feeds it to him herself. He chews slowly, eyes on hers the entire time.
His hand unclenches from the grass and the tension in his shoulders dissipates and all at once it seems so very simple, and he reaches his arm out to her and very nearly pulls her down for a kiss. But she thinks he's just offering a hug, so she snuggles into him, burying her face into his green jumper. His arm closes around her shoulders and he holds her to him, and sighs into her hair, thinking that this will always be enough. And it very nearly is.
