A/N: Damn this one got away from me...
This is mainly a Ten and Rose bit. The two of them hashing it out, and Rose simply becoming more and more confused about things, while Ten just gets more frustrated.
I do hope that you enjoy this bit. It is long, and it's yelly and angry and sad and whatever... I hope I can take you on a bit of a rollercoaster with it. :)
Thanks again for your comments. They keep me going!
~~oooOOOOooo~~
The one thing that Rose Tyler was not really well known for was squealing. Oh, maybe back at primary school, when she carried a little bit too much of that pre-adolescent weight on her bones, she might've been called "piggy" by the other kids and had it spread around school that she did squeal and snort-grunt while she wallowed in mud…
…Such were the teases and taunts of young bullies in the school yard…
But as an adult, no. Squealing wasn't really part of her repertoire. She actually found the notion of a squeal quite repugnant, really. Well, that was unless she was on the run from a playfully growling fully grown – and apparently mature - Time Lord, who had somehow managed to regress into a child because he wanted to do adult things.
…Figure that one out and please provide a powerpoint presentation or box of crayons to help explain it. She couldn't work it out. Oncoming Storm, indeed.
And so, on this day in March, 1992, inside a TARDIS inside a steel shed inside a High school in Western Australia, Rose Tyler fled through the corridors of said TARDIS, squealing like the little piggy that her primary classmates – classenemies – accused her of being so many years ago. She burst into the expansive console room of the TARDIS she shared with her Doctor and immediately fled down the tall staircase and across the floor toward the centre console. Knowing he was very likely only a second or two behind her, she ran to the other side of the console and stopped. She pressed her hands onto the console counter and leaned around the centre column. Her eyes lifted to watch the top of the staircase, and her mouth was parted just slightly, and expression of cautious individual on watch.
She didn't have to wait an incredibly long moment to see him quickly round the corner and then pause at the top of the stairs. Her cautious, curious expression shifted into a smile of tease.
"Getting a bit slow in your old age, eh, Doctor?" she gloated. "I got a whole five seconds on you."
"You had a forty five-second head start on me," he said with a shrug as he made a slow walk down the stairs. "Which you wouldn't have had if my trousers hadn't somehow ended up in the corridor, rather than on the back of the chair where I'd actually put them."
She let out a thoughtful humph and pursed her lips as she looked off to one side as though in thought. "Well," she drawled out. "This leads me to believe that your intentions for chasing me through the TARDIS aren't quite as … well ..." she flicked her eyes to him as he reached the bottom of the stairs. "That you weren't actually interested in …ehm …"
"What makes you think that?" he asked, knowing exactly what she was alluding to. He walked around the console with a smile, not too surprised that she was walking around it as well, keeping their distance the full diameter of the console apart.
"Well, if you were, then you mightn't have bothered with the trousers at all."
He smirked and gave a shrug. "As you are well aware, they are very easily dropped with a flick of my wrist," he told her with a wink. "But regardless of my intentions when I finally found you, I didn't think it quite appropriate for me to run around my TARDIS without my pants and a pair of trousers on."
"I dunno,' Jack called with humor from an armchair beside the large wall of bookcases. "I think it very appropriate given the circumstance, Doctor, and now I'm actually really disappointed that you didn't run in here pantsless."
Rose yelped with surprise and spun around to press her back into the console edge. "Jesus, Jack!" Her eyes widened to see not only Jack seated by the book case, but Tom and Martha as well – sharing a small loveseat that had mysteriously appeared in the room. Her face reddened with horrific speed. "How embarrassing."
The Doctor walked around the console to finally meet her and thread his arm across her shoulder. He put his other hand in his pocket and crossed his legs at the ankle. It was a lazy lean, but it adequately allowed him the means by which to settle himself without too much further embarrassment.
"Aren't there two other TARDISes that you could have waited in instead of mine?" he chipped out rudely. He didn't oomph or even show any reaction when Rose slapped lightly at his chest and told him to be more polite.
Jack stretched up his arms, and then his legs, and gave a long groan. He then shuddered as he pulled himself back together and stood up from the chair. "This is the only one of them that's in any way comfortable for more than one person to wait in," he admitted with a shrug. He grinned. "And, what, with the possibility that we may just witness a frisky pantsless Time Lord running around the console room after his mate? The decision was easy…"
"Speak for yourself," Tom muttered with a wince.
"And speaking of pantsless," Jack continued. He pointed toward the Doctor's crotch. "Am I to understand that you're all commando underneath all that wool and cashmere?" There were a round of pained groans from all present excluding Jack and the Doctor himself. He looked around. "Well? Aren't you the least bit curious to know?"
Tom shook his head. "Absolutely not," he ground out as he tightened the hold of his arm across Martha's shoulder, and shifted the seat of his chin atop her head. "And so if you don't mind…"
"Just what is going on here?" the Doctor growled out with a point toward the loveseat. "Why is there non-approved snuggling and cuddling happening onboard my TARDIS?"
Martha's eyes widened and she let out a peep as she hurriedly pulled herself out of her lazy relaxed cuddle with the Cerulean Time Lord. She dropped her forehead into her palm and gave her head a shake. "Here we go."
"I thought I warned you," the Doctor growled. "The both of you." He glared toward Tom. "And especially you. Hands off my companions, wasn't that my warning?"
"Well not exactly," he countered with a shrug. "Your exact instruction were…"
"I know what I said," he snapped. "And I was very specific in not providing consent…"
"It's not your consent I need!"
Martha let out a groan. She shook her head and stood up, walking the short distance between the chair and the console. "Looks like we have a situation in need of diffusing."
"Need me to help?" Rose asked.
Martha shook her head. "Nah," she drawled. "This one is all mine, and not for you to worry about." She jutted her chin to the doorway. "You do, however, need to worry about what's beyond those doors and diffusing the confusion and hurt of that man out there."
"He's waiting for me?"
She nodded. "Yes, but not in the TARDIS. He's outside, on the picnic bench in the play yard."
"Been there long?"
"About a half hour," she answered. "No doubt stewing away and making himself more miserable by the second."
She put her hand on Martha's shoulder as she pulled off the console. "Thanks, Martha." She looked toward the feuding Time Lords at the book case. "Good luck with them."
"I'm a big girl," she said with a sigh. "I make my own decisions. Despite what he thinks, I don't need the Doctor to make them for me."
Rose nodded and walked to the doorway. She could hear the angry sounds of an argument behind her and did her best not to focus on that too much as she opened the doors and stepped into the shed. She kicked at the red dust at her feet and drew in a sigh as she walked through the second doorway into the school, and to the play area that lay beyond it.
The Doctor was waiting as Martha had told her he was. He sat on the seat of the bench, facing opposite her, leaning his back against the table. He wasn't wearing his coat, but was in his brown pinstriped suit, and his eyes were lifted to the night sky above. Lit by the orange lights of the buildings, yet still hidden in shadow, he looked to her like a proud statue of a man, unmoving, perfectly still … and absolutely beautiful.
She walked around the bench and stood ahead of him for a short moment. He didn't shift or really acknowledge her presence, and so she walked to his side, stepped onto the bench beside him to lift herself up to sit on the tabletop. She exhaled a sigh as she lifted her head to look at the same stars he was watching.
"It's beautiful," she breathed out appreciatively. "Isn't it?"
"It's certainly a different sky to what you're used to," he answered softly. "Different constellations here than in the skies over London."
"Not that you can see them all that well," she said with a chuckle. "What with all the light pollution and cloudy skies an' all."
He leaned back a little further, lifting an arm to pointing to a set of four bright stars above them in a kite-like formation. "The Southern Cross," he lectured gently. "Visible from the Southern Hemisphere throughout the entire year. It holds great importance to the people of Australia and New Zealand, with both countries including it on their national flags." He pursed his lips. "Well, it has significance to many nations, really. But really none so much as the people of this land."
"It's part of their national anthem," she added softly. "Beneath our radiant Southern Cross, we toil with hearts and hands" she sang softly.
He shifted his head to look up and toward her. She was still looking upward, and he held onto the gasp of reverence to the beauty of her over him. "That's from the second verse of the song," he half whispered. "Most Australians don't know that part of it. How do you?"
She smiled and finally lowered her head to look down at him. "Had an Australian for a teacher in the fourth grade. She taught it to us, along with Waltzing Matilda and Click go the Shears." A smile spread across her cheeks. "I never forgot it, and even used to sing along with the anthem singer before the rugby games on telly."
"Never guessed you were a rugby fan," he admitted with a wide expression.
"I'm not," she drawled with a shrug and a smile. "But when you've got a boyfriend whose life revolves around the next game on telly, you get caught up in it, I guess."
"Ahhh," he breathed out through an open mouth. "Mickey. Right."
"Actually, Jimmy," she corrected softly. "Micks watched soccer." She let out a huff and held herself as she looked around the field. "Seems that my choice in men seem to include a love of sports."
"Not me," he said softly. "Well, I'll watch it here and there if I've got nothing better to do, but it's not something I plan my week around."
"Well," she countered slowly, with a smile. "You do, it's just not sports as in what humans watch. You're more into Athletics than team sorts, I s'pose. Gaol escapes, running from the bad guys, hop, skip, jump and all that."
He chuckled. "I suppose you're right," he admitted. "If you really squint hard…"
"You've been teaching Mark how to play Zero-Grav Hyperball," she mused out loud. "Brax told me you used to play back at the academy and were known to be pretty sneaky in devising some inventive ways of keeping the ball stuck in your team's racquets."
The Doctor's smile fell and he repeated his brother's name along a sad breath.
She petted the table beside her with a light slap of her palm. "Join me?"
"Why did you leave me?" he asked instead of accepting her invitation. He remained seated on the bench's seat with his shoulder against her knee rather than up beside her.
"Doctor…"
"I need to know," he asked without raising his voice higher than a hoarse whisper. He lifted his head to look up at her. "What did I do to you that was so bad that you took off without so much as saying goodbye?"
She considered arguing that her leaving him wasn't as simple as he was making out that it was; that she had no intention of running away like she did; that she had really just ended up in the wrong TARDIS that flew to the other side of the universe and she wasn't allowed to leave. Instead she simply sighed a sound as sad as his was. "You broke my heart."
An argument to that formed in his mind, but this conversation wouldn't end all that well if he took that route. He merely lowered his head and looked into his hands. "What happened on Crandinia, Rose, it wasn't what you think."
"If that had been the only time, Doctor, then I might believe you." She closed her eyes and tried to shake the images of everything from her head. "But it wasn't." She drew in a wet sniff. "An' I get it, Doctor. When you changed, you changed more than just your physical appearance. Your feeling's changed, too." She blew out a breath. "You fell out of love with me…" She stopped with a sharp inhale when he shot to a stand and quickly spun in the dirt to face her. He stepped in between her thighs, slamming his hands down onto the tabletop beside her hips. There was fury in his eyes.
"How can you think that about me?" he growled. "How can you possibly believe that my entire universe didn't revolve around you?"
She didn't shrink under his glare. She'd become quite immune to his glares of fury over the years, and so now if anything merely found that glare adorable rather than intimidating. She leaned forward just slightly, showing him she was unaffected. "Because it stopped revolving around me the day you exploded into flame and changed from the man who loved me into the man who loved everything else but me."
"That's ridiculous," he snapped. "I never stopped…"
"Never stopped what?" she asked him sharply. She wasn't letting him get away with it this time. Too many times she'd let him let her assume the end to any of his sentences that alluded to rather than confirmed how he felt about her. When he stared at her, she offered him a glare of her own. "Well? Go on. Never stopped what, Doctor?" She folded her arms across her chest, holding herself firm within the arc of his chest and arms that surrounded without touching her at all. "There are plenty of ways that sentence could end, and quite frankly, I'm tired of you expectin' me to work it out."
His fury fell and his shoulders relaxed enough that he could lower his head. "You were always my first priority, Rose. That never changed."
She belched out a laugh to that statement, not surprised at all when his head shot up to look at her with an expression of shock. "Oh. Please, Doctor. If that was what you call being your first priority, then I'd hate to think of how you'd treat someone you could barely stand to be around." Her finger shot up with warning when he inhaled a breath in preparation to argue. "And you just remember, Doctor. I not only had the man before you prove to me I had worth, but I'm also with another who makes damn sure that I never have any doubt at all as to how much he loves me."
"Yeah, convenient that, isn't it?" he snarled petulantly.
Her eye twitched. "What is?"
He leaned slightly forward to give himself the momentum to push himself off the bench and away from her. "Never mind. Anything I had to end that thought with wasn't exactly complimentary."
"To you or me?" she asked with a huff. She lifted her hand and shook her head. "Don't answer that. I'm pretty sure I have a fair idea of what you were thinkin', Doctor." She shook her head and leaned the fold of her arms down onto her knees. "B'cause I've thought the same thing myself more'n once." She lowered her head. "But it was actually you – and I mean younger you – that gave me the clarity on it to make me feel more comfortable with how I've ended up, and who I ended up with."
"Oh, I bet he did."
"He says that it proves to him that no matter his body, his mind, or where he is – I'm going to be in love with him." She watched him lose the furious rigidity of his posture. "And I will, too. With him, with old you, and with you." She sighed. "I've fallen in love with each version of you I've ever met, and reckon I'll love any more of you I meet."
He turned his head to look at her but didn't walk her way. He remained in place. "And three versions of me have felt that way for you as well." He blinked, emotion clear on his face even though he was mostly in shadow. "I thought you knew," he said with a croak in his voice. "How can you not have known how I felt?"
"Because it needs to be said," she answered simply. "It needs to be shown, and you, unfortunately, aren't very good at doing either." She let out a breath and what followed was barely audible. "At least not to me."
He walked slowly toward her now, confusion across his brow. "I don't understand," he said quietly. "Especially when you make that distinction."
She looked up at his approach, not surprised when he stopped a few feet from her. "You forgot about me on New Earth," she answered softly. "Didn't even bother to hold the elevator, which left me alone, and let Cassandra take control of my mind. In Scotland, you were so occupied by something else, that I ended up in a dungeon with a dangerous being. I nearly died…"
"I came for you," he managed meekly.
"Almost before it was too late," she said with a sad look in her eye. "When we met Sarah-Jane…" She let out a shaking breath. "You ignored me completely in favour of her…"
"She's a very old friend."
"And I get that," she said with a flick of her eyes to him. "I do. But in that moment – after all that you and I had already been through to that point. The love we'd made. The fact that you'd died for me … you couldn't have made me feel less worthy of you."
"You picked on her," he barked. "From the moment you met. All territorial and … and … and you were mean."
"She started it," Rose said with a petulant sniff. "I just followed along with her attitude." She flicked her hand at him. "And you were no help at all. So eager to let her know that you didn't fancy your younger assistant, that you ignored me completely." She lowered her chest to hug her knees. "And then, when I came to you looking for some reassurance, you just got all irritated with me."
"I was irritated with myself," he admitted through gritted teeth. "Not with you." He took a step forward. "I told you that night, Rose. I told you that you could spend the rest of your life with me."
"As am analogy, maybe," she corrected. "Not in any way that made me feel all that confident. You had the perfect opening at that moment to affirm that you felt for me as strongly as you did in your previous body. Hell, I honestly believed you were going to…" She let out a breath. "But then, of course, you left off the end of that sentence not confirming nothing."
"I did, though," he confirmed. "Rassilon, Rose. I still do! More than I did when I was him."
"Still do what, Doctor?" she asked him with a lift of her head and her eyes.
He didn't answer, instead just offered her a look to tell her she should already know.
Rose rolled her eyes and looked away from him. "I was pretty down by that point, I have to admit. Then you let Micks come on board to travel with us … the ex-boyfriend." She lifted her eyes to him. "And on his first trip … Madame du Pompadour…"
He winced at that name.
"Yeah, it still hurts that you lost her, doesn't it, Doctor?" she caught the snap of his eyes toward her and shrugged at him. "You loved her more in a few short hours than you ever did me ... in that body, anyway."
"I didn't love her," he argued softly.
She actually laughed at that. "Yeah, you did, Doctor. You gave it all up for her: the TARDIS, your life of travelling the universe." She gulped. "Left me an' Micks all alone 5,000 years out of our own time with no idea how to get home just to be with her."
"To save her life," he corrected with a downward punch of his hand into a fist at his side. "Like I did with you when we were on the gamestation. Remember that? Do you? I gave you my TARDIS to send you home, safe. Gave it all up to keep you alive."
"And with that comment, you really expect me to believe you didn't love her, Doctor?" She slid off the table, pushing at the edge with her hands so as not to scrape her back on it. "I just hope you got to tell her how you felt," she said with a sigh. "Like you never did with me."
"I'm not going to tell her what wasn't true," he answered. "Not when it wasn't her that I…" His voice fell away.
Rose didn't even bother to acknowledge that he'd left off the ending of a sentence yet again. She kept her head low and set her hands lightly on her hips. "Anyway," she huffed out. "I really don't know why you're asking me all this, anyway." She lifted her head. "Me and you – the you I'm with now – he knows all this. He's the one who found me in his library with my heart shattered all 'round me." Emotion crept into her voice as she remembered that day. "I was destroyed. So heart bro-ken." The last word broke as the emotion inside the memory became too much for her to suppress. She was surprised to feel his pinstriped arms move around her, then, underneath her arms, but she didn't fight him. She lifted her arms to circle around his neck, rising onto her toes to bury her face into the crook of his neck. His arms tightened around her, pulling her in tightly enough that she could feel his hearts beating against her breasts. It was then that she felt the shudder inside him. His sniff was wet and his exhales shaking out his mouth.
"I'm sorry, Rose.' He finished that vow with a further tightening of his arms and a falter where he stood. "I'm so sorry." He hiccupped. "To both of us."
Rose sensed a breaking point for him and quickly slid her arms from around his neck to cup his face. She pulled back as far as his hold would allow and looked into his face. His cheeks were as wet as she had expected them to be given the shudder of his frame and the wetness of his sniffs, but she didn't expect to see the level of heartbreak inside his red-rimmed eyes. She fought against her own sympathetic response to his devastation, which was tough considering she'd been suppressing her own pain for the last few minutes, and ran her thumbs along his bottom lip. "Maybe I should have pushed you harder," she whispered.
He kissed her thumbs as his eyes closed and fell into a frown. "You wouldn't have everything you do now," he whispered after a moment. He lowered his forehead to hold it against hers. "Marriage, a child… I expect a home as well on Gallifrey."
"Children," she corrected softly.
His eyes opened to give her a soft gaze. "You're not …?"
"Working on it," she said with a smile. "You're pretty confident you've been successful, but I guess time will tell."
"Congratulations," he said with a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "I'm glad you're happy, Rose. It should be with me, I mean this me, but I suppose…" he tried to chuckle, but it came out rather pitiful. "But at least one of me is making you happy and giving you everything you desire."
A thought came over her at that moment, one that should have made this entire discussion pretty much moot. She kept her hold on his face and looked toward him with curiosity. "Shouldn't you already know all this, Doctor? I mean, you've lived it all already. The Doctor – I mean the one I'm with – he's younger than you are."
He didn't release his hold on her at all. He pressed his lips together and shook his head with such small movements that it was almost undetectable. "I don't," he whispered. "And that's what makes all this so incredibly painful for me. You're with me, Rose, but you aren't." His eyes shifted away from her, looking across the darkness. "I have truly lost you." His eyes levered downward. "I don't even have the memories of us to get me through."
She tried to back off at that point, to step back in shock, but his hold was still tight around her back, which meant she could only draw his chest away from him. There was panic in her eyes as she tried to bring his focus back on her. "Doctor. Doctor, look at me," she demanded.
His eyes moved to hers.
"How can you tell me that you don't remember us?" she asked urgently
"Because I don't," he answered simply as though the answer was simple. It wasn't though, and he didn't know if he'd even be able to attempt to answer it if she asked.
She tried pulling from him again, this time patting hard at his shoulders in a request for freedom. She didn't quite know just why it was so urgent that she tore from his embrace, she just knew she had to get freedom right now. "How can you not remember any of it? We've been together more than seven years, Doctor. Seven years living together on Gallifrey: marriage, children, pets, a home. My God, you've been working as the lead surgeon in Arcadia for six of those years!"
He finally released her, and she staggered backward. "Do you despise the idea of domestication so much that you'd just forget it all?"
His eyes flashed. "You think I despise the idea?"
"Well you made that pretty clear on Krop Tor, Doctor. Couldn't think of anything worse than being tied to a house." She scratched her hair and then clutched fistfuls of it when she looked at him. "Terrifying, you described it as. Said you'd rather die."
"Probably because you aren't part of it," he snapped. "Look, I don't know why I don't remember a single thing from the timeline where you and I were in a happy marriage, and if I'm being honest, if I had the chance to have that with you, right now. If you told me you wanted to leave him and take up again with me, I'd take that opportunity without a second thought, fuck the timelines..."
"Doctor!" she yelled out with her eyed blown wide. She'd never heard him swear in actual English before. "Language!"
"Oh it isn't like you haven't heard me drop a curse before now," he countered with frustration. "And I know you understand Gallifreyan, so don't pretend that you don't."
He raked a hand through his hair and let out a frustrated growl. "The only thing I can think of, Rose. The only thing, is that somehow, I knew … knew .., that you were part of my earlier timeline, and in order to keep the timelines intact, I had to give you enough reason to run from me." He looked past the arm over his face, the one clutching at his hair, to see her. "I left myself only enough to know that I would have to love you … and then lose you."
"You wouldn't have to forget me and everything we are to know that," she countered with a pinch in her eye. "You could just go ahead and do it."
He gave her a tired look. "Just how strong do you think I am?" His eyes pinched and the corner of his lips dropped into a grimace. "Do you honestly think that if I had that knowledge I'd be capable of willingly hurting you enough that you'd run, just so I can save a damn time line?" He stepped toward her, lowering his voice. "Remember, I'm the last of the Time Police, Rose. There's no one left to stop me…"
"Don't pretend to be such a moron," she growled. "You can be a git, sometimes, Doctor. But not even you would be so foolish as to change your own personal history for something like that … for me."
"Don't be so fast to make that assumption, Rose," he challenged. "I'm perfectly capable of it."
"No you're not," she snapped in reply. She stalked toward him and poked his finger into his chest, pleased at the wince he gave. "Puff your chest and tell me you're a bad boy all you want. I know you better than that. You're the Doctor. Time's Champion. The last of the Time Lords…" Her eyes narrowed to match the petulant look in his. "The only one left who can keep time in her place and protect all of reality." She softened her voice and walked toward him. "You would never step away from that responsibility, and you wouldn't do it for me, because you know I'd never let you."
He let out a growl. "Why, Rose? Why do you have to remind me like this just why it is that I need you so damn much?" He stepped away from her and lifted an arm to point at her. "This. This is what I was telling Martha about. No matter what, you always know what to say, how to give me a sense of reason…"
"Be nicer to her, eh?"
"We're not switching topics to Martha, Rose," he grumbled. He walked over to the picnic table and spun to drop hard onto the bench. He dropped his head to bury it in his hands, pressing his elbows hard into his knees. "I just don't know," he breathed out. "And I want to remember, Rose. I want to know why. And I really need you to know just how deeply I feel for you, how much .. how much I…" he let out a huff. "But I can't say it. I don't know why. I just can't. But I feel it, Rose, I feel it so much."
She walked to him, settling herself in between his knees. She was unsurprised when he looped his arms around her waist and buried his forehead into the soft valley between her breasts. She looped her arms around his head. "Then there has to be a reason," she offered softly. "Something we don't know. Something that will upset all of reality if you knew."
"Is our love that important?" he mused more to himself than to her. He exhaled and gave a nod. "I'd like to think it is." He drew his nose up along her breastbone, sighing at her scent as he lifted his head to look up into her face. "You do know, right?"
She traced her fingertips along his temple, drawing a line down along his sideburn. She nodded slowly. "I do."
"And if for any reason you find yourself alone, and you need me. This me..."
"I'll find you," she whispered.
"Promise me that," he pleaded.
She smiled and lowered her head to his. She spoke softly against his mouth, her lips gliding against his with every word she spoke. Her words were in his tongue, and not translated by any of the three TARDISes waiting beyond the shed door. She didn't stop speaking until he hiccupped a painful sound and tightened his hold around her back.
"I love you, Doctor," she vowed. "All of you. And I always will."
"And I you," he replied softly, knowing it was the only way he could tell her. "Always."
She looked up and saw her husband waiting just outside the door. She gave him a nod that she was done and then lowered her gaze to the man currently wrapped around her. "It's time to go," she warned him gently.
"Already?"
"Yeah, and I think someone wants to have a chat with you before he head back to Gallifrey." She kissed the top of his head. "Good bye, Doctor," she breathed against his hair.
"It's never good bye," he said to her with a smile. "Don't say Good bye. I don't like good byes."
She stepped out of his hold, taking his hands and holding onto them as long as she could while stepping back from him. "Then how this, then: If you want to see me from time to time, Doctor, just close your eyes, and I'll be there…"
"Corny," he admitted with a smile, an honest smile. "But I'll accept that."
"Good," she sang. She tucked her hair behind her ear and gave him a wide smile. "Do me a favour, Thete…" she winked at his smile. "Move on. Find someone brilliant and move on. Do it. Do it for me. Have a fantastic life."
"I'll do my best," he said with a smile as she walked away. His smile fell when he watched her pass her husband, who touched her hand and kissed her temple before moving toward him. He sighed at his approach and looked away from him. "What do you want?"
