On Perspective

I think the Doctor loves me. I know he cares for me, since why else would he say that? "I could save the world but lose you." I mean, if he didn't care for me to some degree, he wouldn't have said that, right? Otherwise, it would have been something like, "The missile will be headed straight towards here. Hundreds could be hurt from the explosion." Or, "I'm deliberately shooting a missile at myself. Kinda p

uts things into perspective, so sorry if I'm hesitant to be suicidal." But no. He was worried about losing me. Me, a shop girl from London, who doesn't even have her A-levels and is terrified of spiders. Who has been travelling with him for months now and still can't stop getting in trouble.

There was that incident on Balorus where that one prince wanted to marry me. The Doctor claimed we were married instead, and although he wouldn't let go of my hand, as soon as we prevented the coup and brought the holy artifact back to the king to prove his inheritance and returned to the TARDIS he acted as if I didn't exist. Soon as we were in the vortex he buried himself under the console and I didn't see him for three days. When I finally cornered him in the kitchen he acted as if nothing had happened. But it did! He had said we were married and that has to have some sort of hidden meaning, doesn't it?

Then, on Gargthum-something, he brought me to a festival and bought me flowers. Not roses, like all the other boys I've known, but exotic orchids and amaryllis and tulips and others I didn't even recognize. It felt like a date, but beyond holding my hand and giving me the flowers, he hardly spoke to me and found studying everything but me fascinating. And they say woman are the masters of mixed signals. This.. this… whatever it is is driving me spare.

I know I love him. I have loved him from the moment he told me about the earth turning. I just didn't realize until he said those words, said that saving the world without saving me wasn't worth it. And now… now… now I don't know if it's worth it.

He's just so stupid! For all his years and superior biology and alienness he doesn't know the first thing about girls and picking up clues! I've done everything I can to get him to notice me, everything I can to let him know how I feel without saying it outright, but he just. Does not. Understand.

But… maybe he doesn't feel the same way. Maybe I'm just some blonde girl who happened to save him. Maybe, to him, I'm just a companion, a plus one, nothing more than someone to show off to. Not like he needs an ego boost- he's stuck on himself as it is- but perhaps that's what I'm here for. Just someone who can praise him, make him feel good about himself. After all, it's pretty much all I'm good for. Jimmy liked airhead blondes who fawned over him, and Mickey wanted a girlfriend who was normal, and I let him take the lead role in the relationship because it made him feel responsible. I'm always playing second fiddle to everyone I am with; what makes this any different?

I want to be more, though. I want to be his equal, his partner in every sense of the word, to let him know I love him more than I can understand. He's got me, now, so he's not alone. I'm never gonna leave him to face those horrors ever again. He protects me from physical harm on planets and stations where things go wrong, and I fight back the demons of his past in every way I can.

So, maybe we aren't meant to have an epic love story where he sweeps me off my feet and we ride into the sunset. That's ok. I still love him, and even if he doesn't return the feeling, I'm going to be here for him- his support, his shield, his friend.

But sometimes, sometimes, when I lie in bed and he's working on the console, I wish that we could be more.

I think she's going to drive me insane, one of these days. Not that I'm almost nearly there, but one day, Rose Tyler is going to do something that will tip me over the edge and I won't be responsible for my actions. One more flirt of the skirt hem, one more tight top, one more glimpse of that tongue when she smiles; that's all it will take, and it will be strictly her fault. Wherever it is won't be planned, whatever happens won't be intended, but it will happen, and there will be no going back.

But the worst part is, despite drawing closer to the inevitable, despite having feelings for a girl who is still a baby on my world, despite knowing that we can never share the same dreams of living a lifetime together, is that she doesn't even know that she's doing it. Humans flaunt their sexuality and assets liberally in her time, and though it might not be as bad as Jack's time period, the social boundaries are still low compared to the sixteen-hundreds. Girls can walk around in slips of nothing without a care in the world, not knowing or perhaps intending to turn heads and be considered in the norm. Her outfits are nothing out of the ordinary where she comes from, yet on my planet women were covered from head to toe and only showed skin amongst bonded partners and parents when they were young. As things evolved a woman and man never even shared their bodies to each other, as babies were created in an artificial womb and tab A never got near slot B. Travelling amongst the universe and time periods I got used to skin being shown or else suffer an apoplexy, but it had never once affected me the way it affects me when it is Rose Tyler's skin in question being shown.

Or, rather, lack thereof. Her outfits are more designed to hide than to pronounce, yet the mystery of what is hidden beneath that cloth drives my impressive imagination to until now unreached heights. I've travelled with companions who have covered up more skin (Romana) and those have covered less (Leela), but Rose is on an entirely different level.

Whenever she's near (to be strictly honest, even when she's not,) half my brain function is devoted to imagining what it would be like to snog her, to taste her, to touch her, while the other half is devoted to flying the TARDIS, running complex mathematical equations in the fifth (or, if I'm in a particularly stunning mood, the sixth) dimension, running through possible timelines, keeping track of the time in Earth, Gallifreyan, Balboa-8, Huntraica, and Acadia terms, running through the scripts of Life on Tellatia's Moons and picking out the thousands of plot holes and inaccuracies therein, reminding myself to record the next episode of Eastenders because Rose tended to burn dinner if she missed one, and a multitude of other menial tasks. Just devoting that much of my brain to her alone is frightening in itself, but knowing that my feelings can never be reciprocated is devastating. What would a young nineteen year old girl want with a broken soldier old enough to be her (great to power of a hundred great grand) father, anyway? Maybe now she's swept up in the whirlwind of emotions and excitement that comes with space-and-time travel, but once she grows up a little and realizes that my life is dangerous and not at all the wonder she thinks it is, she'll leave and raise a family, living the life I can never have and I'll be alone once again.

They all leave, in the end. As much as I want to keep her close, make her mine, let the entire universe know that Rose Tyler belongs to me and me alone, I can't. She'll be gone, her presence in my life just a blink of an eye, and I'll face the centuries by myself. And having her and admitting I… that she… well, it will be much more harder to go on when she finally dies, leaves, gives up and moves on because I can never give her what she wants. She deserves a life built on stability and love and not one of running for her life because that big scary alien is going to eat her otherwise, love or not. And I don't… well, I do, but, I can't… and anyway, there's nothing going for me in the looks department. When she leaves I'll let her go gracefully, even if I die inside, because she's Rose Tyler and she's important and I'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe and happy, even if it is watching her walk out of my life forever.

But if she doesn't get out of that skirt soon, I won't be responsible for what happens next.

I know that my Doctor and my Rose are making things too complicated, even by their standards. I can see everything, in fact I have a part of my system dedicated entirely to that function (I don't like that system, personally, as it has gone a little insane after centuries of staring at all the potential and past timelines; I and my environmental system still visit it from time to time though, just to keep it company, but it's still annoying when we ask how it's been and it replies 'they are returning' or 'the only water in the forest is the river' or 'toasters and cheese will bring down the Embassy of Tormundalur' and other such nonsense. After all, everyone knows that the Embassy of Tormundalur is inhabited by sentient dog-like monks, not mice), and I know that they're only causing this problem themselves and only one thing will cure it and that's not up to me. Their skulls are too thick to realize that being locked in the same room together on multiple occasions is more than just coincidence and the rooms have been rearranging more frequently to trap them inside the Roman Public Bath or the sauna or the Ventalusian Aroma Garden. I even persuaded my entertainment system to play some of the universe's most romantic songs during one of their quiet dinners together, but my Doctor merely pulled out more of my wires and made even more of a mess of my console than before without achieving anything while he hid from his and my Rose's hormones. My navigational, flight, and stability systems are more than a little mad at this, and have let him know upon more than one occasion that this unnecessary tinkering is not welcomed, but just like me trapping him and my Rose in increasingly smaller rooms is not registering with him, their angry outbursts go mostly unacknowledged. I've soothed them the best I've could, but being them at the same time as being me means I feel the same way while different.

My shield system says to just let them be, but I don't listen to it because it's been something of a grump ever since the reapers caught it by surprise when it was taking a quick nap, but my medical system has agreed to work with me, since it has announced upon more than one occasion that the hormone levels they have been discharging lately have made it sick, and the quicker they mate the quicker it can stop making drugs to either counteract or intensify the feelings. It's made enough now to fill the kitchen with, so I plan on filling at least one cabinet with them to see if they'll finally get the hint. Knowing my inhabitants, they will Conveniently Forget and go on as normal.

I've been trying to get my Doctor's attention and talk about this to him personally, but my psychic system has been hogging him to itself more often than not because otherwise it'll join my vortex system and go insane as well, and when it's not taking up most of my Doctor's time the flight system and entertainment system is (mostly because it hates recording Eastenders and loves to argue about not doing so, even if it meekly gives in to my Rose's request every time she asks it to). I really don't stand much of a chance, since I'm just the lowly linking system that makes sure everything is running and only get contacted whenever something is terribly wrong and my Doctor can't locate it, and then it's all business and hardly appropriate to talk about resolving sexual tension.

Maybe I should just land on some pleasure planet and lock them out until they mate. Or, wait, my vortex system is saying something about World War Two and a time agent turned con artist. My future Jack will be the perfect catalyst to get my Rose and my Doctor on the right path together at last.

Until then, I'll just have to lock them in the kitchen until I figure out the coordinates. At least they won't starve, and hopefully they'll find that cabinet of medication. Maybe they'll finally get the hint and get on with it before I have to do something drastic.

The Author's Note is at the bottom this time, because fanfiction is being stupid and not allowing me to post above the title.

Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, River wouldn't exist, Rose would have stayed after Journey's End and had lots of Time Babies with the Doctor, and Bad Wolf would have made Rose live as long as the Doctor. Ergo, none of this happened, which means I don't own it.

Anyway, this was a little hard to write. Hope I got their personalities down right P: I limited myself to a page per person, so I couldn't say all I wanted to else this go on forever. Plus, I have a Chemistry quiz to study for. That eats up a lot of my time right there.

Please review! They keep the plot bunnies happy and fed :D