A/N: Finally, an update! Wow, I am so sorry this took so long... In exchange, have this apology chapter that is extra long and extra fluffy.
He was leaning on the console too heavily, and she had to help him pull the switches that were too far, that were out of his reach, that he could not get to without straining. She saw in his face the hurt he would not admit to, and so she piloted the TARDIS as best as she could in response to his silent gestures and wordless pleas.
They landed at Jackie's flat, which surprised Rose. But the TARDIS was telepathic, so maybe it had picked up on her desperation to go home, to get someplace familiar and safe where they could wait and recover.
"Doctor?" Rose grabbed his arm and he turned to look at her. "We're here. Let's go, let's get you looked at, hmm?"
"Don't need to be looked at," he protested, but it was feeble, lacking his usual spiritedness fierceness. "Meant to go to New Earth, remember that? The hospital there, now that would do nicely. Dunno how we ended up here instead."
He scowled at the monitor, but Rose thought she knew better. He was only pretending to be upset with the TARDIS; he knew full well he had brought them here deliberately. Or so she thought. Maybe he'd done it subconsciously? Or had she interfered? Maybe the TARDIS's consciousness had done it on its own? It was alive; maybe it knew what Rose knew: the Doctor needed help from his family, not those cat people with questionable morals.
"Come inside," she urged him. "Mum'll know what to do."
The longer the Doctor spent away from that place and in Rose's company, the stronger he became. He was able, by now, to stand and walk on his own. He picked up his discarded clothing and opened the TARDIS doors himself. He tried not to let Rose see how badly his back and shoulders ached at the movement.
He doubted he was fooling her, but he was too tired to care. She could think anything of him and it wouldn't matter nearly as much as the fact that she was alive.
Alive!
He beamed even as his legs burned from disuse after so long in captivity. His trousers were stiff with dried blood and his cheeks stung from the unfamiliar expression. He was in pain and he was overwhelmingly happy. Rose Tyler, his Rose, Rose was alive and she was with him. Nothing could possibly take that knowledge, that joy, from him.
Then he tripped on the top step on the way to the flat, and his elation leaked away slowly. She was with him now, but would she stay? Could he expect her to stay with him now, when he was in this state?
"Doctor? You alright there?" Rose was right behind him, and the worry in her voice soothed the worries in his mind.
"Course I am, I'm always alright, me," he said, with an attempt at a grin. He knew it fell flat, but he needed the normalcy. He needed things to go back to what they had been before. He was supposed to be strong and brave; he was supposed to be able to save her. He was supposed to be there for her.
"Lean on me," she commanded him, and he obeyed with secret relief. Rose led him to her mum's door and knocked sharply. Bam bam bam bam!
The door swung open and Jackie's smile faltered when she saw the look on Rose's face. "What's wrong, sweetheart? Doctor, what's the matter with you?"
"Mum, would you just let us in before you start interrogating us?" Rose said bitingly, but the Doctor knew he was starting to lean a little more heavily on her and it couldn't be very comfortable for Rose.
"Well alright then, no hello," Jackie grumbled, yet the Doctor noticed she let the two of them enter very quickly and rushed to make them comfortable. "Not like you two go gallivanting off and only pop in when you need me, oh no, not you. That's not how it goes-"
Jackie cut off when she saw the Doctor stumble toward the couch. He needed to sit down, right now, before he could fall over and embarrass himself in front of- before he could embarrass himself. She looked to Rose, who was biting her lip.
"Rose? Sweetheart, what's happened? What's wrong, where did you go this time? Is everyone alright?" Jackie swept toward Rose, who fell into her mother's arms.
"Mum," Rose whispered, and the Doctor looked away to give them a moment to themselves. But he had to look back when he heard something that tore him to pieces worse than what had been done to him in that cell. Rose's voice was hitching and then it cracked and broke as she said again, "Mum. Oh god, Mum."
Jackie held Rose tightly, like he wished he could, held her and whispered meaningless comforting noises to her as Rose cried into Jackie's shoulder. The Doctor saw this, and he watched from the couch, and he hated himself for not being able to be the one to help her. He hated his helplessness, and he hated his cowardice, and he hated his intrusion into this scene and into her life.
He'd always felt out of place here, just a bit, in this flat that was such a solid reminder of all he had stolen her from or stolen from her. This room and everything in it was evidence of the aspects of her life he didn't generally care to consider, the domestic side, the part of Rose's life he could never share. Jackie's flat was proof that Rose was more than her travels with him, whereas he was nothing more than his travels with or without her.
The Doctor had only Rose and the TARDIS, and while he was with the Learners he had had neither, and that had destroyed him. Now he allowed himself a moment to soak in the fact that he had both back. The TARDIS was outside, and Rose was here, and everything was okay.
Except that Rose was crying, and that every molecule in his body was screaming that he had suppressed a regeneration and should really be resting.
At the thought, his body spasmed and the Tyler women broke apart to see him gasping for breath. "Doctor!" Rose yelled. "Mum, help me get him to bed!"
He wanted to argue that he could get there on his own, but he tried to stand and found all of his muscles seized up at once and he absolutely could not. He let Rose and Jackie take him into the room where he had recovered from regenerating into this form. It seemed only fitting.
As soon as he was under the covers, he fell asleep. It wasn't in his control. He could tell Rose wanted to examine his injuries, check how badly he was hurt, but he was losing consciousness and he couldn't stop it, couldn't keep his eyes open, couldn't stay with her…
Rose watched the Doctor's eyes slide shut, and she was hoping to see his forehead unclench, but no such luck. His face remained tense and pained, and then Jackie was there to urge her into the other room to sit with her.
"D'you want to talk about it?" Jackie asked softly, careful not to wake the Doctor in the next room. "What's the matter with him? Where were you?"
"We were in the TARDIS at first, 'bout a month ago," Rose began. She kept her voice down as well, mostly because she was scared that if she tried to speak normally her voice would break and she didn't want to worry her mum any more than she already had. "And there was this signal, a distress call or something, and you know how the Doctor is with those…"
"So you went after it," Jackie finished. "But…"
She trailed off and let Rose pick up the story. "It was a trap, and we walked right into it, Mum, they'd been waiting for him. I was… I was useless, I was just collateral. They barely acknowledged me at all, I was just stuck in this room on my own, and I could hear him. He was screaming, he-"
Here her voice did break, but she couldn't stop. "He was screaming, they were torturing him, Mum. I don't even know what they were doing in there, he wouldn't say, but he was crying when I found him. What… what could make the Doctor cry?"
Rose wasn't sure when she'd started crying, but her cheeks were wet and her nose was running. She swiped at her face halfheartedly and looked at her mother desperately. "What did they do?" she whispered, in whatever strangled voice she could manage.
Jackie scooped her daughter into a hug, and they clung to each other tightly. "You're okay," she said into Rose's hair. "You got away. I've got you. You're okay."
Rose melted into her mother's arms for a moment, but then she pulled away. "But what about the Doctor? What about him? Is he okay? There's so much I don't know about him... I don't even know if he'll survive this. I don't know if he can change his face again. I don't know what happened to him in there, and I- I can't-"
She burst into sobs and this time she let Jackie hold her. She cried in fear and relief and sheer overwhelmed emotional overload. She was home. She had the Doctor. She had her mum. Rose finally let herself think the one thing she'd been terrified to let herself consider during her time with the Learners: Everything would be fine.
But how could it, with the Doctor unconscious and bloody and broken? She didn't want to think it, but it could not be avoided. He could barely walk himself to the door. Rose had gotten the two of them away from that awful place, but he could still die here. She did not want him to die, to regenerate again and leave her to get used to another one. She wanted him.
Rose stood, disentangling herself from Jackie's embrace. She ignored the look Jackie gave her, one loaded with meaning and maternal concern, and she went back to the Doctor's side. She sat on the bed next to him and took his hand gently. She didn't want to wake him; she was certain he needed the sleep, but it was terrible to see him like this again. The last time he'd been passed out in this bed, it had been after he had absorbed the entire Time Vortex from her.
He had died for her. And that was how he had become this face, her Doctor. He had laid in this spot and woken to save her from a Christmas tree. Rose would not be the reason he interrupted his healing sleep again. So she was very careful not to disturb him as she laced her fingers through his.
Rose looked at their hands, clasped as they often were on their travels, and tears welled up in her eyes again. She had taken so long to adjust to the feel of different hands in hers. She didn't want him to change again. Not when it felt like they were so close to something now.
She lifted his hand to her mouth. "Please," she whispered against his fingers. "Stay with me."
The Doctor was dreaming, but he didn't know it yet.
This time, he was in Rose's place, and she was in his. Or so he assumed. He wasn't sure of the details of his surroundings. The only thing that mattered was that Rose was out there, and something was making her scream, and he had to get to her-
And then the scene changed, and he was back in his chains. Rose was dead, they told him, and it was true. She never came, he was alone, she was dead and gone and it was his fault. He would be there until he died and it didn't matter at all, nothing did, because Rose wasn't there. There was no chance of saving her, no way to fix this, no possibility of making this right, she was gone forever-
The room dissolved and reformed, and now the Doctor was in his TARDIS but on his own. Somehow, he had gotten free from the Learners, but Rose was gone, and so what was the point? He landed it in a random location and sat at the console for hours, motionless.
But his subconscious would not let him rest. He was at Jackie's flat now, like he had been after regenerating, and Rose herself was sitting beside him. She looked like she had not slept nearly enough for days, but she was as beautiful as he had ever seen her. He was afraid to say anything lest he shatter the illusion and break the dream's spell. Rose's eyes were on his hands, and it was then that he realized she was holding onto his hand.
He smelled Jackie's cooking coming from somewhere in the flat. A car honked outside. The sheets were soft and the pillow was fluffy. This was an incredibly detailed dream, unless…
"Rose?" he croaked.
"Doctor!" Her face lit up. "You're awake, you're alive, Doctor, you're back!"
"Think so. Yeah." He cracked a smile and realized how dry his mouth was. "Don't suppose there's any chance your favorite Time Lord could get a bit of a drink round here, is there?"
"Mum!" Rose hollered. "Doctor's-"
"I heard him, I heard him," Jackie said, bustling in with a glass of water. "Wakes up, this one, scaring us all half to death with that nonsense, and what's he do? First thing out of his mouth, he's making demands Oi, all right, then."
"Thanks," he said, downing it with his free hand. He would not let go of Rose's hand. He swallowed the water like he had not had a drink in years, and he wondered how much time he'd spent unconscious. "How long…"
"Four days," Rose said, and it sounded like every minute had been a year. "You've been lying here, sleeping, for four days. We thought you were-"
She swallowed the rest of the sentence. He knew what she had been about to say.
"I'm fine, Rose, really."
"Don't tell me that!" she snapped, and it was suddenly very obvious that she was Jackie's daughter. "Don't you dare tell me that, Doctor. Because I know how I found you, and I don't know how you got that way. But that was not fine, and you're not fine now."
He stared at Rose, and she stared him down. He submitted. "Okay."
"Okay? What part of this-" She stopped and took a deep breath. "I have one question."
"Only one?" The feeble joke died on his lips. "What is it?"
"Are you going to regenerate?" she asked, the words jumbling together in her rush to get them out. She hurried on before he could answer. "Because if you are then that's okay, I'll still travel with you, you know, it's just I'd like some advance warning this time before you blow up the flat and run off to-"
"No," he said over her rambling. "I'll still be me."
Rose deflated. "Oh. Okay. Good. That's good."
"Need anything?" Jackie asked in the silence that followed. "Tea? Sandwich? Coffee? I think I've got some leftover pudding somewhere, you missed Guy Fawkes, y'know, that'd be a treat… Nice reward for not dying…"
The Doctor was strongly reminded of his last time recuperating here. He wondered if he'd find an orange in his pocket next. "Tea'd be lovely, yeah. Good old tea. Remember last time? Cup of tea at the right moment, just what's needed."
"For an alien, you really are remarkably British, anyone ever tell you that?" Jackie said as she left the room to go put up the tea.
"It's been said, yeah." He cleared his throat and looked at Rose. "I'm sorry."
"What've you got to be sorry for?" She was perplexed, and he could tell, but he needed to apologize.
"All of this, it's my fault. If I hadn't responded to that signal-"
"Then you wouldn't be the Doctor," she interrupted. "You had to go after it, 'course you did. That's part of who you are, it's as simple as that. You can't blame yourself for wanting to help someone, Doctor."
"But-"
"No." Her voice was firm, leaving no room to argue with her. Clearly, Rose had thought about this. She had expected this conversation and prepared for it. He felt out-maneuvered, and he liked it. Someone knew him well enough to anticipate his worries. It was strange to feel so cared for. "This isn't your fault. You can't blame yourself for any of this."
He smiled at her, and her expression softened. He was lost for words, but he hoped some of what he was feeling would somehow make itself known to Rose. She was so good, much too good for him.
"So… back there," Rose started hesitantly, and he tensed. She hated to press him, but she pushed on anyway. "Do you… d'you want to talk about it? 'Bout what they'd been doing to you? Doctor, I could hear you. I…"
He closed his eyes. Rose winced. He didn't want to talk about it, obviously, and she could hardly blame him. The idea of discussing what they'd just escaped was making her stomach turn, and she had only been cooped in a room for a month while somewhere he was screaming.
The Doctor did not seem to be in the mood to talk, and so she let him sip his tea in silence. Rose watched as he tried not to flinch every time he lifted his hand to his face. She'd seen his torn-up back, and she wished she knew how to help. Instead she was sitting there, useless, letting him pull at broken skin and strained muscles so he could have a drink and pretend everything was fine. It was awful.
"Mum, have you still got that sewing kit from Shareen?" Rose asked suddenly.
Jackie frowned. "I dunno, I might've dumped that ages back, you know you never liked it much."
"Well, could you check?" Rose snapped, and then bit her lip. "Sorry. Please."
Jackie bustled off to dig through the flat. The sewing kit had been a birthday gift from Shareen for Rose's eleventh birthday, a little set for little fingers, containing a few spools of thread and a needle Jackie immediately declared too sharp and dangerous for her. By the time Rose was allowed to use it, she'd lost interest in it, and so it had probably remained collecting dust somewhere at the back of a closet. Or so Rose hoped. It was entirely possible that Jackie had tossed the entire thing in a bin years ago.
Rose would have gone to help Jackie search for the kit, but she refused to consider leaving the Doctor alone. She would have to wait for her mum to find it on her own.
The Doctor finished his tea and set the mug down on the bedside table. He settled into his pillows, but he couldn't hold back a grimace of pain. Rose saw it, and it made her wince in sympathy, but she couldn't do anything about it until Jackie announced, "Found it!" a few minutes later.
"Great, bring it in here," Rose said, perking up and turning toward the door. Jackie entered, triumphantly brandishing the long-lost gift.
"What d'you need a sewing kit for?" Jackie said, suddenly concerned. "Not…?"
"Probably, yeah," Rose muttered as she accepted the kit from Jackie. "C'mon, please be strong enough…"
She fumbled with the packaging for a moment before she got it open.
"Rose…" the Doctor began protestingly, but she silenced him with a look.
"Look, I know we can't take you to an Earth hospital, but we've got to get you taken care of. And if no one else is going to do it, I will. Now let me see."
Reluctantly, he shrugged out of his shirt and rolled over to expose his back. Jackie gasped, and Rose's stomach plummeted. It was worse than she had thought. She hadn't really gotten a proper look at him while they were running for their lives.
Rose swallowed hard. "S'not that bad," she lied. "Shouldn't take too long. D'you want anything, aspirin or something? I know it's not much, but I think we're out of ibuprofen and-"
"Human aspirin could kill me," he said. "Just do it."
She breathed deeply and took out the needle. It was absurdly small, meant for child-size fingers and child-scale projects. It was a sewing kit meant for dolls' dresses, not surgical stitches. It took her ages to thread the needle because her hands started shaking.
How could she expect to help anyone while wielding a sharp object in unsteady hands? Rose put the needle down and tried not to cry. Jackie put a hand on her shoulder.
"I could do it," Jackie volunteered. "Let me have that, I'll do a proper job of it."
But Rose refused. She felt somehow that she needed to be the one to do this. If she had gotten to him sooner, he wouldn't be in this state now, and so it was her fault. She had to fix her own mistake. She just had to stop trembling first.
Jackie sighed. "Sweetie, honestly, you're not helping him by insisting on sewing up his back when you can't control your hands. Please just let me do this one thing for you."
Rose wiped at her eyes, probably smearing her makeup all over her face in the process. Wordlessly, she handed the sewing kit to her mother, because she was completely right, and Rose was useless. Helpless and unhelpful.
"Thanks, Mum," she whispered. "Doctor? You alright?"
"Just peachy," he mumbled, face half-buried in the bedsheets. "The woman who slapped me when we first met is now being set loose on me with a sharp object and I can't see what she's doing. Yeah, everything's great."
Rose smiled faintly. "Play nice, you two." If he could tease Jackie, he must be feeling a bit better. Things couldn't be that bad.
Things were that bad. The Doctor's torso felt like it was freezing and burning at the same time, probably a side effect of the suppressed regeneration. The thought of getting stitches now made him want to scream, but he couldn't do that to Rose.
Especially now that he knew she could hear him back there. Had he known then that Rose was being subjected to the sound of him in pain, he could have kept it inside. The Doctor saw in Rose's face what it had been like for her, hearing him scream. He couldn't believe the Learners had been that cruel to their hostage. Would it have been so hard for them to keep her out of earshot, or soundproof their doors, or something? Why put Rose through that? He was the subject of their sick experiment, not her.
As soon as he was able, he vowed, he would make the Learners regret hurting Rose.
For now, though, he was stuck here until his back healed, and for that he needed stitches, and for that he needed Jackie. "Ready," she said behind him.
The next thirty-four minutes and twenty-seven seconds were tremendously uncomfortable. He clenched his jaw and held in a scream. His hands were curled into fists so tightly that his nails were creating marks.
"Take my hand," Rose said after a minute or two of this. He grabbed at the offer and held her hand tightly, squeezing when he felt the need to cry out. Jackie did her work carefully and steadily. She was doing a good job, but stitches without anesthetic was not fun and he'd very much prefer to never need to do this again.
When it was over, the Doctor dropped Rose's hand and saw her wince as she flexed her fingers. His grip had left her fingers bloodless and stiff. He'd been holding on much too hard without realizing it. He had hurt Rose. The blood drained out of his face.
"Oh no," he said, devastated. "I'm so sorry."
"S'alright." Rose shrugged. "How's your back?"
The Doctor tried to shrug, but he couldn't bring himself to lest he tear his new stitches. "Oh, you know me. Fit as a fiddle."
Jackie shook her head. "You two are ridiculous. Rose, come on, he needs to sleep this off and he'll never go to sleep if you keep hovering over him."
Rose gave him a final look before she left the room with Jackie. He didn't want to see her go; he was terrified of waking up without her by his side. But he was already falling asleep again.
"So… how've you been?" Rose asked Jackie as they sat together in the kitchen, drinking their own mugs of tea and trying not to remember what they had just seen and done. "Enjoying the quiet life? Meet anyone nice?"
"Oh, you know, same old," Jackie said dismissively. She lifted her cup to her lips and then set it down quickly to try to disguise the fact that it was shaking in her hands. "Sorry, love, 'scuse me."
She hurried off to wash her hands again. It was the third time in as many minutes that Jackie had disappeared to scrub at her fingers. Rose imagined her mother was still feeling the Doctor's blood on her fingers, and she wondered if Jackie would bother washing the sheets he was lying on or if they would be tossed.
Jackie returned with chapped and reddened fingers. "Really must drop by and get more lotion soon," she mused. "No hope of sending you lot down with your spaceship, I suppose. Fat lot of good it is to have a teleport machine when you won't even run errands."
"The TARDIS isn't a lift, Mum, she's not meant for popping out to the shop. She wants to explore the stars," Rose explained.
"Like you," Jackie pointed out. Rose looked at her. "You and the Doctor, you're just the same. Too good for the ordinary life now, you are. You'd rather race around the universe than spend a week with the normal people back home. But then what, Rose? What happens when it goes wrong? What if you disappear into the sky and this time you don't come back to me?"
"Mum, I'm fine. We're both fine. This was just a… a sort of accident," said Rose, trying to reassure her but knowing that Jackie made a good point. What if she hadn't gotten away from Meg, if she hadn't found the Doctor and the TARDIS, if she'd been stuck there? What then?
"An accident," Jackie repeated scornfully. "Some accident. Tripping on the stairs, that's an accident. Kidnapped by aliens and held hostage for some, some… torture experiment thing- that's not an accident, Rose, that's a tragedy. I just want you safe. I just want you home with me, and happy, and not constantly in danger."
"It's not all like this, though," said Rose. Her voice took on a dreamy quality. "You should see what's out there, it's beautiful. There was this one planet, way out near Altair or something…"
For the rest of the evening, Jackie let Rose regale her with tales of her time in the TARDIS. It took their minds off the sleeping Time Lord in the other room.
The Doctor was reliving it all over again. Rose Tyler is deceased. Rose Tyler is deceased. Rose Tyler is deceased.
"NO!" he yelled, and he woke up, gasping for air like the protagonist in a cheesy horror movie.
She wasn't there. Panic flooded his mind and hearts. She was gone. It was true, it was real, it wasn't just a dream. Rose was dead. No.
His breaths came quicker and his heart rate sped up. No no no. It could not be that Rose was really dead, not after they had escaped. Hadn't they gotten to the TARDIS? She'd saved him. They had gotten away. How could she be dead?
But she wasn't there.
He was about to begin a proper meltdown when suddenly there she was. Rose. Alive and well, almost certainly doing better than he was at the moment. Rose.
"Rose," he whimpered, and he hated how pitiful he sounded but had no control over it. "Rose."
"Doctor?" He heard the concern in her voice as she rushed to the bed. "Doctor, s'alright, I'm here."
"You're here," the Doctor mumbled. He looked around, as the adrenaline rush faded, and realized where he was. Of course she was here. How could he have gotten to this place without Rose?
"I'm here," she repeated. "Right here. I'm not going anywhere."
She took his hand, and they clung to each other. "Go back to sleep, Doctor," she told him.
"Promise you'll stay?" It was selfish, but he felt he was probably entitled to a little selfishness by now.
"Forever," said Rose.
Rose kept her word as long as she was able. She stayed with him while he slept, determined to not leave before he woke up. But eventually she found herself unable to keep her eyes open.
She couldn't leave the Doctor. Still, she needed to sleep. The solution was obvious. Rose settled gingerly into the bed beside him, careful not to jostle him awake.
"Just for a minute," she told herself, and closed her eyes.
The Doctor opened his eyes. The bed felt different than it had when he'd fallen asleep. He rolled over, careful not to pull at his stitches.
Rose lay next to him, sleeping and peaceful. Her hair had fallen over her face and her breath was disturbing it, back and forth in a soothing rhythm. The Doctor realized he was staring and hurriedly looked away.
But he couldn't keep his eyes off of her. He reached out and smoothed the hair out of her face. She looked so calm in sleep, so unlike the worried expression he'd seen while she was tending to him. He wished he could stop worrying her. He wished he could keep her safe and content and happy with him.
"I love you," he whispered, as softly as he could. But she opened her eyes sleepily anyway.
"You say something?" Rose murmured, still half-asleep. It didn't seem like she would remember any of this later.
"Shh," he said, pressing a light kiss to her forehead. "Everything is fine. Sleep. I have you."
And he did.
A/N: Please review... I'd love any feedback. I know this story took a long time to finish, but I would love it if you could let me know what you thought! :)
