Curtains
by ErtheChilde
'I'm not a miracle worker.'
FOUR
The Doctor marched away with the robes clenched in his hands, not even paying attention to where he was going. His chest heaved as he tried to get himself under control, the cold rage that had so quickly washed over him still simmering in his blood.
It was as if the faster he moved, the better he was able to escape it.
Slowly he became aware of the TARDIS directing a long, angry diatribe at him for treating Rose as he had with no explanation. As the angry fog began to dissipate, he became more certain he didn't want to hear it.
The door of his room appeared around the next corner and he wasted no time locking himself into it, relishing for one rare moment the total silence that meant the TARDIS wasn't in his head.
She might be angry with him, but she would respect his space unless the universe was in danger.
He stared down at the silken robes in his hands, trying to figure out how they could have made him snap so badly. Become upset, yes, but to reach the point where even a few words had felt like an effort?
And Rose…
His thoughts stuttered a bit at the memory of how she'd looked in them.
She hadn't been wearing them properly, of course, but her frame in the Elizabethan dress and the colours with her complexion…she had looked beautiful.
No, breath-taking.
A hundred times more stunning than he had told her when he saw her dressed for Naples-but-really-Cardiff. She might well have been dressed for mourning compared to the scarlet and gold of his Chapter. She'd looked so very much like –
No.
He had no intention of thinking of people long dead, of friends and family whose deaths he was responsible for. If he did, he would begin to think of the inevitable moment when he lead Rose to her death or damaged her in some way.
An irrational thought – the same, recurring one about bringing her home that he thought about a hundred times each day but ignored – made its presence known once more. Just as often, he came up with every other thing he would rather do than bring her home and lose her for good.
He shook his head and folded the robes and headdress away, relegating them to the farthest part of his closet as he could and making a not to remind the TARDIS not to bring them out again.
He was too cowardly and selfish to bring Rose home. But if she decided one day that he was too much trouble to be around…if she decided to leave…
Well, she'd tell him.
Until then, he had repairs to see to.
He needed to get them out of the Vortex. For a massive time ship where a body could easily get lost, living in such close quarters was beginning to get more personal than he was ready to deal with.
Rose might know him better than anyone anymore, but he wasn't ready for her to know everything.
·ΘΣ·
When the Doctor left, he took all of Rose's previous enthusiasm for trying on costumes with him.
Feeling rather like all of the air had just been sucked out of the room, Rose slowly got back into her jeans and shuffled out of the wardrobe.
She wasn't exactly sure just what she had done, but it was clearly something to do with the robe. It must have had something to do with his past, because he only ever go that upset – and to that extent – when there was something to do with the Time War.
Had it belonged to someone he cared about and had lost? She would never have guessed it from the way it had been thrown among the rather rubbish clothing.
Maybe that's exactly why, she thought, and was immediately overwhelmed with the need to apologize. She hadn't known, but that didn't stop it from having hurt him.
She trailed down the hallways, poking her head through doors that led to his usual haunts in an effort to locate him. The console room was empty – apparently he hadn't decided to go back to his repairs – as was the library, the kitchen and the multimedia room.
Eventually she clued into the pointlessness of searching an endlessly large ship for one man, and hesitantly spoke to the ceiling, 'Can you help me find him? I just want to say I'm sorry.'
And just as quickly she found herself standing in front of a plain, unassuming looking door that she instinctively knew would lead her to the Doctor's bedroom.
She'd always wondered where it was, but had never asked. It didn't seem appropriate for some reason, and besides, the Doctor usually seemed to find her if she needed him. Maybe that TARDIS let him know.
She raised her hand to knock on the aged looking wood, intending to coax him out, when she paused.
She knew what she was like after a row with a friend, even an unintentional one. She never liked to talk or be annoyed by them afterward, and it had always bothered her how when she and her mother or her and Shareen would row, and then the other would be hovering over her or outside her room. It made her feel forced to forgive them for whatever they did, and in some cases she'd never get over it.
She didn't really want the Doctor to forgive her because he felt obligated or because he was trying to get her to leave him alone. She wanted him to actually understand how sorry she was about the whole thing and be in the right frame of mind where he could tell her what she had done wrong. That way she'd know what not to do again.
Slowly, she let her hand rest back by her side and backed away from the door.
'Thanks,' she said to the TARDIS, 'but in his own time, yeah?'
Either way, she was glad that she now knew where the Doctor resided in case of an emergency. Exactly what kind of emergency would require her knowing where his bedroom is, she didn't know, but was glad all the same.
She ended up eating supper all alone, because even hours later the Doctor didn't make an appearance. Despite her resolution to let him come to her in his own time, she felt a bit dejected as she cleaned up the remains of her dinner.
Had what she'd done really upset him that much?
Maybe the robe really had belonged to someone important to him, like a wife or something.
She paused on her way back to her bedroom, realizing she had never asked if he'd been married or had a family. Abstractly she had thought he might have, but she never asked.
'God, what if he had kids once,' she realized out loud, and then promised herself never to bring up the question. That was definitely one that he would have to bring up himself.
She'd done enough today to hurt him, and could only hope that the next day would be better.
·ΘΣ·
He'd spent an hour in his room forcing himself under control before returning to the console room, where he'd decided to make yet another ultimately futile attempt to fix the chameleon circuit.
It was a task he only ever busied himself with when his mind was too preoccupied to be let near any of the TARDIS's more vital controls. Or when he felt like wasting time.
He wasn't completely sure which one it was at this point, but judging from the way the TARDIS was alternating between humming indignantly and shocking him, she obviously thought it was both.
The whole situation was absolutely laughable. If his people could see him now, an emotional wreck because one girl – the primary example of a species they considered barely past the troglodyte state of evolution – had seen something he hadn't wanted her to see?
Madness.
Rose probably didn't even know what she'd done to upset him in the first place. After all, he'd told her to go exploring. But how was he to have known she was going to find the blasted robes? He'd completely forgotten they were even in there, it had been so long since he'd had to wear them. Otherwise he'd have told the TARDIS to hide them.
He continued to pick apart his reaction, trying to find the logic behind his reaction so that he could combat it the next time he felt it surge to the surface.
Only a few weeks since his regeneration and he was already growing weary of this temper of his. Once upon a time he could hide his anger, let it simmer beneath a veneer of composure and use the rest of his energy to bend circumstances to his will. Now, though, he felt like a lit fuse.
What was Rose even doing with him?
Considering the things he'd gleaned about her past, and that one relationship that had been at least verbally abusive, if not physical…
Was being around him really the best thing for her? Never mind the danger of his every day life, but his mental problems alone might put her in danger.
She had been lucky enough to grow up normal – despite her mother – and now she was shacking up with him, with his hot-and-cold moods and inexplicable rages? They exhausted him and he lived them on an hourly basis – she must think he was some sort of mental case.
He had to clear the air with her.
Mind made up, he put down the tools and headed out of the console room – he thought he heard the TARDIS let out chime of exasperated relief, but he could have imagined it – to explain things to her.
Possibly he might apologize, but he hadn't quite decided yet. The concept of a Time Lord apologizing to a human was still a foreign enough concept to him that he had to think it through.
Rose's door appeared several yards ahead of him, and without thought he turned the handle and headed right in.
·ΘΣ·
'Rose?'
She let out a wordless shriek as the door to her room was suddenly thrown open without warning, causing her to knock over the pile of magazines she'd been reading on her bed.
'What the hell?' she yelped, immediately very conscious of the fact she was lounging on her bed in nothing but her knickers and a tank-top.
In the doorway, the Doctor let out a shocked curse and jumped back, but didn't leave.
'Never heard of knocking?' she demanded, stumbling to her feet and grabbing for the terrycloth dressing gown the TARDIS had provided with her.
The Doctor didn't answer, and when she looked up she saw that he was very pointedly not looking at her body. In fact, his gaze was riveted on her face with a hint of distaste, like she'd just climbed out of a Slitheen's skin suit.
'What the hell've you got on your face?' he demanded.
'Anti-acne treatment!' she snapped. 'What the hell are you doing, barging in without bothering to knock?'
'It's my ship, why would I knock?'
'I dunno, maybe cos I might be getting changed in here and not have any clothes on?' she snapped, grabbing a pair of her pajamas and heading into the ensuite.
'Or be painting yourself up like a Ramurran cannibal?'
'Whatever that means – if you'd've knocked I wouldn't've scared you.'
'Oi! Who said I was scared? Faced down entire civilizations more terrifying than you look with that muck all over you,' he boasted. 'Just…wasn't expecting that.'
Rose's annoyance over the fact that he didn't knock briefly distracted her from her surprise that he had come to find her at all. She wondered for a second if he had come to tell her she had to leave the TARDIS, but then decided he wouldn't be so distracted by her face mask if that was it.
She came out of the bathroom, now clad in pajamas but with the face mask still on. He'd just have to deal with it. 'What'd you want?'
'You know, there are more effective treatments than whatever slop you've got on. Probably cheaper, too.'
'Doctor, either get to the point, or get out,' she told him crossly. 'I need to finish getting ready for dead. Inferior human physiology, remember?'
'I'm sorry,' he blurted out. He paused to consider that, then added. 'Not for the other thing, but in the wardrobe. Those robes…'
'It's to do with your people, yeah?' she interrupted quietly. 'It's alright, Doctor, you don't need to explain, I sort of figured it out.'
He cast her a look like admiration, and then shook his head. 'Doesn't matter, I shouldn't've…reacted that way. Those robes, they were for ceremonial purposes. I never expected to see them again, let alone have someone wearing them.'
Rose knew what it had cost him to tell her this – to show her the vulnerable part of him.
'I'm the one who's sorry,' she told him. 'I didn't know.'
He scoffed. 'And how were you supposed to know? I but the in the corner I was least likely to notice 'em.' His lips quirked. 'Though, I suppose that sort of guaranteed you'd find it. You've a knack for finding your way into things you shouldn't.'
'Still. I'm sorry,' she said, and then hesitated for a moment. Should she prompt him for more now that he seemed in an open mood? Or should she let it lie? Considering his expression, she chose the middle ground of making light of it. 'I mean, I just can't picture you wearing those things.'
The Doctor's ears turned pink, but thankfully his shaken expression disappeared. It morphed into the familiar over-the-top man-hurt one she'd come to associate with him pretending offense at her teasing.
'On that note,' he told her, turning to leave, 'I've got to get back to work. Think if I work through the night I can get everything done tonight. Maybe stop for dinner somewhere with chips?'
It was an olive branch and she accepted it gladly.
'Sounds great,' she grinned. 'Let's just hope nothing else goes wrong before we get them, yeah?'
'Well don't jinx it,' he complained as he left the room.