Author's Note: So what do you get when I take too long a hiatus from fanfic writing?
Um... Nine/Rose fluff?
This might seem a bit rushed, but that seemed like a good place to close...
I haven't written the Ninth Doctor before. This should be interesting. Please tell me if I got it right!
Overturn
2012. The Mitchell household.
Or it had been a second ago.
Now it was the Time Vortex instead.
The fashion of justice they attempted had been served, and Rose felt drained. The Doctor was silent.
Rose left the console room, throwing herself down on the couch in the first room she came to. She closed her eyes, rubbing them in frustration.
It was her fault that Adam had fallen. It was her idea to bring him along. She should have told him no. What would the Doctor think? Was he angry with her as well? Was that why he was so quiet? But if that was the case, then why had he said "I've got Rose"?
A quiet voice at the back of her mind said she was overthinking this, that she was panicking for no reason.
This life was sometimes beautifully simple, but often it was so very complex, even bewildering. What was she, not more than a human child, wandering the universe but not quite understanding it?
"Rose? Are you in there?" the Doctor's voice called, muffled, through the door. "The TARDIS won't let me in. Are you all right in there?"
"Yeah," Rose wiped her watery eyes with her sleeve, erasing the exhausted tears, and ran a hand through her hair. "You can come in if you want."
The door cracked open and the Doctor peered in. "Rose?"
"I made a mistake," Rose said in a small voice. "I shouldn't have let Adam come along."
"Rose," the Doctor sat down next to her, "people like Adam choose their own path. By the time he sat down in that chair, he wasn't the Adam you invited to come along. He wasn't the Adam who wanted to walk among the stars. Maybe that Adam never even existed, but that's not on you, Rose. Adam fell to his own greed. I've seen it thousands of times, I should have recognized what was happening."
"But you said 'on your head be it,'" Rose said. The Doctor's eyes widened and a small laugh burst from his lips.
"I was talking about getting your heart broken," he said. "There's a reason for the no-boyfriends rule. Though, I suppose that this is a different kind of heartbreak. No, if anyone's responsible, it's me. And now it's been dealt with. Rose, if he ever said he liked you, he didn't deserve you." There was a strange kind of urgency in his voice as he said that. Rose laughed sadly and lifted her head high.
"I know he didn't," she said, with an attempt at sass. The Doctor smiled, seemingly relieved.
"Good. Now, before we go any further, let's get this straight. I do not expect you to know everything. I don't expect you to know who's going to betray us. Sometimes you just trust the wrong person, it's impossible to live life without making a few mistakes and a few betrayals of your trust. It's better to just respond to these things when they happen, accept them and then move on. No regrets. I don't expect you to be anything other than you, Rose, because you are perfect exactly as you are."
"You think so?" Rose asked. The Doctor huffed.
"I said it, so it must be true," he said. Rose shoved him.
"You think you're so impressive," she teased.
"I am so impressive!" The Doctor managed, even after all this time, to still sound offended. Rose wiped her itchy eyes again and half-smiled.
"Where shall we go next?"
"Anywhere," the Doctor replied.