Was thinking about stupid silly things and I guess it produced a stupid and silly scene.
Disclaimer: see first part
She threw down the paper in front of him accusingly. "Now what?"
"I didn't think it was an issue, though those claims the German duke made about people coming in and rearranging his garden maze somehow might be worth looking in to, now that I see it again…"
"We're on the COVER of the TABLOIDS!"
"Yes, and a very fetching picture of you if I may say, though I can't say I like those sunglasses on me. They don't go with the suit at all, and you promised me! Rose, I simply can't trust you with my long term eyewear choices in the future."
The urge to tear her hair out right in front of him was so strong, and it was only the fact that they were at a tiny café in an open air plaza that kept her from throwing an all out tantrum. There were too many people who could see, and apparently at least one or two who might secretly photo or video it.
"I don't think you understand, Doctor." Breath in. Breath out. Let him know the full extent of the problem and then maybe he would be reasonable about this. "We are, uh." She searched for something that would actually seem like a downside to him. "Conspicuous!"
Something about the way his mouth screwed up under the sunglasses made her think that he was a bit disappointed in her. "And I suppose you consider saving the world multiple times low profile? Really, Rose, think about these things clearly. Also, they have no idea who I am because they put me in the background, a little blurry to be honest. I'm amused by the speculations."
He pointed to a little bubble that listed his possible identities. "I'll admit 'oil tycoon' sounds like it has panache, though 'zepplin mechanic' is actually probably as close as they got to the truth."
Rose had taken a deep and steadying pull from her lukewarm macchiato. It seemed the Doctor was not aware of some things that had happened here before he arrived, and it actually surprised her to have to inform him of something that was common knowledge. He had even known about the tabloid thing before she did, but that didn't mean he had memorized this reality's world events yet. Or however it was he came by the uncanny things he knew.
"There was a couple years there that I was here with my mum and dad." She wasn't calling him Pete any more, but that had taken a number of months and the P still formed in her mouth before she got out dad sometimes. "You remember why I was so upset by this place in the beginning?"
There it was, the slightly condescending look. Of course he remembered. Finding a dad who was not her dad. In his 9th regeneration they had spent a significant amount of time with her actual father, and his noble sacrifice had saved them all from being wiped out of reality. (Only after Rose's interference had put them all in danger in the first place.) When Rose found him again only to be rejected, it had crushed a part of her. It had been a slow climb to where they were now.
"Well, Pete Tyler was a very wealthy and famous man. Another Jackie taking the place of the dead one wasn't too hard to smooth over, but what about the introduction of a fully grown daughter?"
The Doctor actually started. "Oh."
"Yeah. If dad had been some nobody from the Powell Estates it wouldn't have mattered, but here? Months of articles! People trying to sneak hair out of my brushes and steal my toothbrushes to get DNA samples. Other women coming forward as 'love children' or long missing brothers and sisters." Torchwood had been her only haven in those first dark months when she was barely functional from grief and totally adrift emotionally and spiritually.
"Every public appearance I made people would analyze my outfits, my hair, my facial expressions and I have to say even I was sick of me after a few weeks. Took quite a few bribes to the right people to get me out of the public eye, not that I was clubbing every night… some movie star had a drunken brawl with a supermodel and I was forgotten." She needed to stop waving her arms around. The volume of her voice was too variable and her feeling too manic, but she just couldn't halt once she went down this particular memory lane.
Her hand came down on the magazine like a hammer. "Until now!"
Birds chirped, wind moved her hair around her shoulders, and chairs scraped as an older couple sat down and began conversing loudly in French. With nothing else to feed on, Rose found her temper waning, and the Doctor's long pause after her little screed made apprehension take the place of anger.
"As arguably onc of the most famous beings in the cosmos, barring a few religious figures and military leaders, all I can tell you is that people's memories are very long however their attention spans are exceptionally short. Particularly humans." No egotism here, oh no. He was just the most famous thing in the multiverse. Rose tried not to huff sarcastically at him and instead settled for extremely closed body language and she folded her arms and brought her lips so tightly together they almost disappeared.
"And I'd like to point out that gossip is the social currency on most every planet, except Fredran III where it's illegal and punishable by public amputation of ganglia, but they aren't exactly a welcoming bunch of insectoids." The Doctor stretched his long limbs, either pretending nonchalance or affecting it as he finished with, "So truly Rose, unless you've never spread a piece of gossip yourself or enjoyed an odd magazine I'd just learn to live with it."
In that moment she wasn't entirely sure that she could refrain from giving him a second black eye to match his first one. She clenched the edge of the chair so hard she was sure she'd have fancy curly vine patterns tattooed into her fingers. It just was so unfair! How relaxed he could be when he delivered lines like that. How expectant his look was behind those stupid sunglasses that she would see how reasonable he was being.
"You're angry with me?"
Rose didn't think she could respond to that without venom so she took a bite from her pastry.
"You're angry with me." The Doctor said it with wonder, as if a miracle had just taken place at their tiny slightly lopsided table.
Wishing she could take a bite out of that picture of them instead of her buttery roll, she was just deciding whether or not to storm off when he said something that floored her.
"So this is what Mickey meant. Remarkable!"
"What?" She couldn't help the overwhelming curiosity, which, while it didn't cancel out the anger certainly sidetracked it.
The Doctor, who seemed to have no idea of self-preservation when it came to his interactions with her, actually went on. Pushing up the sunglasses with one finger to block the sudden burst of sunlight through the clouds, he explained how sometimes when they were fiddling with the maintenance on the TARDIS (something she'd never been much interested in) sometimes Rose would come up in conversation.
"He just so happened to mention how you were just as scary as your mother when you got mad. That you gave off this jaggidy pokity aura thingy and there was simply no talking to you until you decided to calm down." Rose thought of how Mickey was so lucky he was in another plane of reality right then. "And something about how he was always the one to apologize in the end, but he didn't seem too upset about that part now that I think back on it."
The blush started at Rose's face and spread down through her limbs like a tingling wave. The Doctor couldn't be that naïve could he? From the way his head was tilted quizzically to one side, palms supporting his chin, she thought he just might be. Of course Mickey never minded apologizing, even when he wasn't the one who was wrong, because after he showed up with the bag of fresh chips and possibly a flower or two they would have the most fantastic makeup sex.
"I'd just as soon get to the part where we see that this whole thing is rather silly and make up. Although, this being our first fight and all, I have to say I'm enjoying it just a bit."
"Our first fight?"
"Since we became a-" he looked down at the magazine, still positioned between them like an accusation in the air. "hmm 'sizzling item' it would seem, though that word only really reminds me of bacon and I have no clue what would be so provocative about pork."
Unable to process any more of this nonsense or reconcile that fact that she was still quite peeved, Rose did the only sensible thing.
"I'm going shopping. I'll meet you back at the hotel tonight."
Retail therapy always worked wonders for Tyler women.
