A/N:
I'll be switching to posting chapters every Monday and Friday as of this chapter. This is just so I don't catch up with myself too fast. It'll leave me some chapters in hand and when I reach the end of the rewrite and move into fresh, new content, it'll let me continue the story without too much of a time pressure. Thank you all for sticking with the rewrite, I'm thrilled you're all enjoying the journey thus far! xx
There was a long moment, when the Tardis rotor stopped whirring and they were calmly parked inside the vortex, where none of them spoke, and no one moved.
As the delight and excitement began to wane, it was replaced with an energy that bordered on anticipation but was quickly edging towards awkwardness.
Rose took a deep breath, drawing Martha's gaze, and stepped away from the railing she'd been leaning against and towards the door that led deeper into the ship.
"Well I don't know about you, Martha, but I plan on stealing some pyjamas from the Tardis wardrobe and getting something for dinner," the blonde said, lifting the skirt of her long black dress.
She seemed to be waiting for an answer, but Martha just blinked in surprise, and glanced at the Doctor, before turning back to Rose.
"The Tardis has a wardrobe?" she asked and Rose immediately turned a glare on the Doctor, who quickly ducked his head and moved around the console to stare intently at the monitor.
"When Jack got lost for two days, you promised you were always going to give new companions a tour of the essentials," Rose scolded, her eyes narrowed and arms crossed, and Martha watched, awed, as the Doctor wilted under her gentle rebuke.
He coughed softly, shifted his weight, and rubbed at the back of his neck, before lifting his eyes away from the screen.
"I did," he defended himself, voice weak, "bedroom, kitchen, console room. The wardrobe's not an essential..." his voice trailed off as Rose shook her head.
"Says the alien who only wears two suits," she shot back, before turning her attention back to Martha. "All right then, wardrobe room, kitchen for dinner, and a proper tour," Rose declared, but Martha could only offer a weak laugh, still stunned at the changes she'd seen in the Doctor since he'd laid eyes on Rose in Lazarus Labs.
"Actually, I'm pretty tired. Rain-check on the tour until tomorrow?" She asked, biting her lip nervously.
Rose's smile, that had waned when she'd said she was tired, returned full force when she asked for a rain-check, and Martha found herself smiling back at the blonde as Rose nodded.
"Absolutely, we can do it after breakfast, but before this one has us running for our lives somewhere," she said quickly, and Martha nodded.
She glanced at the Doctor, watching him watch Rose for a moment before she cleared her throat and headed for the door that led to the rest of the ship.
"Right, well... goodnight," she offered, escaping the console room quickly, not wanting to intrude on whatever discussion the pair of them were planning on having.
As she wandered through the halls, heading to her room for the night, she let her mind turn over thoughts of Rose Tyler. The prodigal companion returned.
She didn't want to like Rose, she admitted to herself.
Martha had been living in this woman's shadow since she first met the Doctor, and now all Rose really seemed to be was some girl from the East End of London.
Bleached blonde hair and fairly pretty, but, ultimately, ordinary. Martha really wished she could resent the devotion that the Doctor had shown her memory, but she couldn't.
The instant that the Doctor had laid eyes on Rose again, Martha had seen an easy lightness in him that had been missing until that moment.
It would have been easy for Rose's presence to make her feel like second best, but nothing about the way the Doctor behaved around Rose had made Martha feel like she was no longer important or needed, or that she might be superfluous to requirements.
On top of that, the blonde was kind and funny. She could think on her feet, and if her behaviour towards Lazarus told Martha anything it was that she was a sublime actress.
'Or an accomplished liar,' whispered the jealousy in her mind.
Rose also seemed absolutely at ease with the running and the dangers that the Doctor faced all the time. Rose had even gone and trusted Martha with the sonic screwdriver without a moment's hesitation, and the way she'd just scolded the Time Lord for not showing Martha around the Tardis properly, effectively siding with her against the alien, was encouraging Martha to relax.
It lessened that ever-present fear that she would be pushed aside or left behind now that Rose was back on board, and Martha realised that Rose's behaviour had been more reassuring than any verbal affirmation of the Doctor's.
She really wished she could dislike Rose, but there had been a spark in the blonde's delighted grin when Martha had asked to have the tour the following day instead of just refusing her invitation that had made Martha smile back. She suspected, contrary to everything she had expected earlier that night, that she was going to end up very good friends with the woman.
Once Martha had left the console room for her bedroom, silence descended once more, and when Rose glanced at the Doctor she found him already watching her.
"Tea?" he asked softly, and Rose smiled.
"Please. Just let me get changed, meet you in the kitchen?" she asked, and the Doctor nodded but neither of them moved.
They stood, staring at each other across the console before Rose suddenly laughed, her nerves finally bubbling up beyond her control, and pulling a sheepish looking grin from the Doctor in turn.
"I feel like if I leave the room I'll wake up, and this'll all be some crazy dream," she admitted, stepping forward to lean her hands against the console, the hum of the Tardis grounding her.
Three long strides and the Doctor was beside her, arms curling around her waist and she turned in his grasp, her hands rising to cling onto the back of his tuxedo.
The brief hug when they'd tested Lazarus' DNA had been from shock and disbelief and to confirm that neither of them had been hallucinating.
The hug in Southwark Cathedral had been from relief. The traditional end-of-a-disaster celebration, and thank-god-you're-alive.
This hug was firm and gentle, all-encompassing, and home .
She could feel the Doctor's hands shaking just slightly against her back, and Rose turned her head until her face was pressed against his neck, and the two of them simply stood in the console room, bathed in the Tardis light, soaking in each other's presence.
The thrumming of the Doctor's double heartsbeat soothed Rose. The pain in her chest, that she'd grown so used to that she no longer noticed it, lessened just slightly, and she took a deep breath, releasing it in a contented sigh.
She absorbed the slightly spicy scent of the Doctor, the smell of something sparkling that she associated with time, the cold crispness of London's night air, and she felt at peace for the first time in years.
Eventually, they slowly released each other, and Rose felt calmer for the contact, steadier, and she noticed as he released her that his hands were no longer shaking and she shot him her tongue-in-teeth smile.
"Tea, in the kitchen. I'll be five minutes," she promised and the Doctor nodded, stepping back and slipping his hands into his trousers.
She mimicked him, stepping back once, and then a second time, before turning and walking away to find out where the Tardis had hidden the wardrobe room.
The Doctor watched Rose leave the console room and kept his hands in his pockets, fingers curled into fists to stop himself from reaching out and pulling her back into his arms.
The instant that she disappeared around the corner, deeper into the Tardis, panic gripped his hearts.
What if it really had been nothing more than a hallucination? The Tardis hummed reassuringly inside his mind, and he sighed in relief, scrubbing his hands across his face and dragging in a steadying breath.
One last check of the console to make sure that they were drifting safely, a moment to throw the black tuxedo jacket onto the jumpseat, and the Doctor made his way towards the galley.
He remembered how Rose liked her tea. It had only been about three months for him.
'Three months of hell' , he thought before a wave of pain washed over his mind.
Three months versus Rose's four years. Humans were such a short-lived species, that was not a small portion of her life. She'd been trapped in the parallel world for longer than she'd travelled with him, and doubts began gnawing at his mind.
Why had she come back? Did she truly want to travel with him again? Or would she want to be dropped off somewhere? Live her life with someone back on Earth? A house, husband, kids, a dog?
She'd been back for eight months, Rose must have been staying with someone during that time. She had no name, or money of her own, since she'd been declared dead. Had she been homeless? Living on the streets? Starving— No. She'd bought that dress. She'd had a car, and she'd had an ironclad alias to get into Lazarus Labs.
The Doctor only realised that he was stirring the spoon in an already made cup of tea when Rose cleared her throat beside him. Her eyes were sparkling with mirth and the Doctor flushed, dropping the spoon onto the counter and handing her the tea before scooping up his own and gulping down a mouthful to cover his embarrassment.
Rose moved to sit in her spot at the kitchen table as though it had only been yesterday that she'd last drunk tea there, with him, and the Doctor forced himself to look for the changes that time had wrought over her.
The blonde of her hair was a more natural honey colour now. The set of her shoulders, bared by the camisole pyjama top that she'd chosen, showed confidence in herself that had been lacking the last time she'd been standing in the galley.
From what he could make out beneath her clothes, her body was strong too. Toned muscles, not just from running, made her movements smooth and graceful. Almost feline, like a predator in the forest.
The Doctor could easily see the balance that her childhood gymnastics had instilled in her had been honed to a fine point and he frowned, wondering over what had brought about these changes, but her soft sigh drew his attention back up to her suddenly sad eyes.
"Instead of tying yourself up in knots, you could always just ask," she offered quietly, and the Doctor offered her a sheepish grin at being caught staring.
"Honestly?" he asked, moving to sit opposite her, pushing back against the memories flooding his mind of mornings over toast and throwing flecks of jam at one another, "I don't know where to start," he admitted and she offered a small smile.
"Well, let me start with, arguably, the most important part; I did not shatter the multiverse returning," she promised, and the Doctor blinked, having almost forgotten the potential danger that her presence could have heralded.
"How do you know?" he asked. He trusted her, and would check with the Tardis later to be absolutely sure, but he was still curious to know how Rose was so confident.
"Because the parallel world's version of the Shadow Proclamation sent me back," she told him simply. He stared at her, jaw slack and his mind spinning as he tried to absorb what he was sure was only the first of many shocking revelations about her return.
It was only when her lips twitched up into an amused smirk that he was able to shake his head and force his mouth to do something other than hang open uselessly.
"What—? What—? How—?"
She took pity on his spluttered questions and grinned at him as she explained further.
"Apparently, because there had never been a Rose Tyler in that world for me to replace, the void dust that I soaked up had no hole to plug. No 'Rose Tyler' shaped gap to fill, so to speak, so it was extra. More than that universe could hold, and me being there—"
"Could have done irreparable damage," the Doctor completed with a groan as his mind raced ahead, considering all the complications and implications that her presence there, long term, could have caused.
A gingerbread house and shoving her inside it had been like turning up the oven, the whole parallel could have burnt up, and the Doctor let loose a string of curses that the Tardis refused to translate.
It could have burnt up, exploded, imploded. Flash floods, an ice age. It could have wiped the whole realm from existence or erased Rose's timeline altogether, and he ran his hands through his hair in frustration.
"I'm so sorry," he muttered, but the hard thunk of her mug against the table snapped his head up and she shook her head firmly.
"No. You've nothing to be sorry for. It's all worked out, and better than the void, yeah?" she prompted, reminding him in the way she always did that the universe didn't revolve around him, and the Doctor blew out a soft breath, nodding.
"Yeah," he agreed softly, "but I still don't see how it was possible for them to send you back. The walls were closed..."
Her soft laugh interrupted him, and the Doctor let his train of thought trail off, tilted his head as he watched her chuckle, waiting for an explanation with more patience than he thought he had left.
"I can't be sure, but I suspect it was your fault," she teased, "any chance that, somewhere in your journey's, I was named by a Carrionite, Doctor?" Rose asked, and his eyes widened in shock once more, mouth falling open again as the second shocking revelation struck.
"What—? But— How—? Are you—? Did you get hurt?" he spluttered again, eyes running over her form again automatically. There would be no visible wound from a Carrionite's naming, but he couldn't stop himself from checking even as Rose shook her head.
Only when she'd pushed his tea back into his hands, and the Doctor had taken a deep, soothing, gulp of the warm liquid, did she finish telling him her story.
She explained about the Shadow Architect contacting her and how, with Deathswing's magic, they had been able to send her through the void.
She told him that she'd been found by a still active branch of Torchwood and how they'd given her a job, an identity, and a place to live, and while he still didn't trust the organization, this particular branch certainly sounded like they weren't complete morons, unlike their Canary Wharf colleagues.
She explained how all her senses had gradually changed from painfully high to optionally enhanced after her return from the void. She explained how she could sharpen her hearing or focus on individual flavours and ingredients in food if she really concentrated.
The Doctor was torn between being terrified about what else her exposure to the void could have done and fascinated by the possibilities it had unlocked, and he made a mental note to talk the woman into letting him perform some tests in the med bay the first chance they got.
She told him about her time with Torchwood since she'd been back in the correct universe. She told him about a partially converted cyberman, about diverting an Arkan leisure crawler out of Earths atmosphere, and about creating the alias, Mal Lupin.
Most of the time the Doctor just let her talk, listening quietly and letting the sound of her voice soothe the jagged parts of his mind, only occasionally interrupting to pepper her with questions. For the most part, he simply let her speak uninterrupted.
It was only as she told him about the village of cannibals, and getting shot, that the Doctor stopped her. He rose from his seat so fast that the chair he'd been sitting on clattered against the floor, almost tipping over entirely as he stepped around the table to crouch beside her and Rose quickly fell silent.
The camisole pyjama top she'd put on did nothing to cover the scattered scars from the shotgun pellets on her left arm but he'd not been looking for scars or injuries as she walked from the counter to the table, and since then he'd mostly been focussed on her words.
Watching the expressions paint their way across her beautiful face and the whirling emotions that radiated out of her golden-brown eyes as she told her stories.
He lifted her arm, examining the scars, and he could feel her watching him in turn, staring down at the top of his head as his fingers traced over the marks. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought they were scattered freckles, and the Doctor swallowed hard, releasing her arm and letting his fingers drop to the hem of her shirt, trailing along the edge of the fabric nervously, hesitating.
He lifted his eyes to her, the question on the tip of his tongue, but before he could summon the strength to ask it, Rose had nodded, and he huffed out a soft sound full of relief and frustration that she'd trusted him, that she'd pre-empted his request, that she knew him that well.
He tore his eyes away from hers and focussed on her torso. Cautiously, the Doctor lifted the soft cotton shirt just enough to see the light pink scars that decorated her ribs. He moved slowly and gently like the scars were still open wounds, only hours old.
He knew they were all but healed, that he couldn't cause her pain, but the echo of how it must have felt made his hands shake and he gently ran the pads of his fingers over the marks, pulling back only when Rose shivered, and he swallowed hard.
"This is why I hate guns," he forced out, his voice barely more than a whisper, and he could feel her eyes resting on the top of his bowed head once more.
"People who are scared, or hurt... they panic. A gun goes off far faster than it takes to think through a decision. The trigger has been pulled and the damage has been done before the person behind it has even realised that they thought about pulling the trigger in the first place. But then, it's too late. The projectile has flow, and it's hit its target, and it's over," he hissed.
Having taken a gun from her only a few hours ago, he half expected her to argue, but she stayed silent, letting him observe the injuries she'd procured in his absence, and the Doctor felt the armour around his hearts crack beneath her patience.
As he stared at the buckshot scars, another discolouration on her skin caught his eye and he frowned, lifting the shift slightly higher and leaning forward, pressing his fingers against her back over one of her ribs where a puckered pattern marred her creamy skin.
"That was a Caxtar blaster," she offered easily, a huff of laughter in her words that made him want to cry.
"My second field mission for the parallel Torchwood." He lifted his eyes up to meet hers again, and whatever she saw there had her laughter dying quickly, and Rose pressed her lips together.
"I've gained a lot of scars in four years, Doctor," she whispered gently, and he released her shirt, rose up onto his knees and pulled her into another hug, one arm curled around her waist, and the other sliding into her hair and cradling the back of her head as though he could cushion her from all the harms in the universe.
"Oh Rose, I'm so sorry," he breathed against her neck, and he felt her frame shudder against him.
Her breath hitched, and he thought it was surprise until it happened again, and then he could smell her tears.
He didn't shush her, just tightened his hold around her waist, let his fingers stroke soothingly through the soft curls she'd formed her hair into for Lazarus Labs, and Rose shattered. Her hands clutched at his back, her fingers fisted into his shirt, and she buried her face against his shoulder, sobbing quietly.
Rose was strong. She'd always been strong, from the first moment he'd met her, facing down Autons and barely flinching, even when they'd been about to kill her.
Growing up where she had, the way she had, it had taught her how to be strong, and she'd proven it every day of her life. Proven it when she'd swung out above a vat of living plastic to save his life. Proven it when she'd absorbed the heart of the Tardis to destroy the Daleks. She'd proven it in the face of a werewolf, finding a way to escape capture instead of succumbing to panic.
In the countless dangerous situations she'd found herself in throughout her life, and especially since stepping aboard the Tardis with him, Rose had proven over and over again that she was strong. Amazing, incredible, and so, so strong, but everyone had a breaking point and if the Doctor knew Rose Tyler, and he did, she'd not let herself break in a very long time.
Every tear, every sob, cut deep against his hearts, but he let her cry. Let her split apart while he held her together, patiently waiting for her emotions to run their course as he rocked her gently. He drew his own, unsteady breaths against the curve of her shoulder, and continued to trail his fingers through her hair, stroking gently down the back of her neck as she curled against him.
Slowly she calmed, the tension leaked from her frame and her tears slowed to a stop. Slowly, her hands released the twisted fistfuls of his shirt against his back, her palms pressing the fabric flat, and stroking down his spine, smoothing the creases out without ever lifting her head from his shoulder.
It was a silent cue to part, but the Doctor allowed himself one last stroke through her hair before he gently loosened his hold around her waist and leant back, letting her lift her tear-reddened eyes to his cautiously.
She heaved a tired sigh and offered a sheepish looking smile, but he gently cupped her face with one hand and ran his thumb across her cheek, swiping away the last of the tear stains and offering her the best smile he could summon with his hearts aching in his chest.
"So much for having dinner," she muttered, "I'm exhausted now," she complained, and the Doctor laughed softly, pulling his hand away when she forced a smile onto her lips.
"I'm sure the Tardis will spoil you at breakfast," he teased, and her eyes moved to the ceiling automatically, shooting a pleased look around the room as the Tardis flickered her lights gently.
"It's been permanently difficult to fall asleep without her hum in the background," Rose admitted, "I never really stopped missing it. Even after four years..."
In an instant, he'd fallen in love with her all over again. Her heart, her compassion, her emotions for the sentient spaceship that most humans struggled to even understand, let alone accept.
When she lowered her gaze from the ceiling back to him, still crouched beside her chair, she froze for a moment, and the Doctor knew that his hearts were in his eyes. Knew he'd been caught, seen, observed, and he pushed the emotions back.
He couldn't. And even if he could, now wasn't the time.
"Bedtime for the human," he teased instead, rising to his feet and offering her his hand as she moved to stand, smothering a small yawn with the back of one hand.
"Will she have had time to make me a room?" Rose asked as she took his hand, patting the wall of the Tardis with her other as they moved into the corridor, and the Doctor fought back a flush that wanted to rise in his cheeks.
"Your rooms' still here," he muttered, embarrassed, and Rose stopped walking, freezing in place, her grip on his hand forcing him to still and turn towards her with a sigh.
"What?" she asked, eyes fixed on his face and the Doctor sighed, running the hand not clasped against hers through his hair.
"Your room. It's still here. I...We never removed it," he repeated, avoiding her gaze as he glanced around the empty hallway, but he could still see the flood of emotion on her face from the corner of his eye, forcing him to drop his gaze to his scuffed converse.
"How long?" she asked, her voice choked with tears, and his eyes snapped up instantly, desperate to do anything to stop her from bursting into tears for the second time in one night.
He knew what she was asking, and pressed his lips together for a moment, considering, before he gave her the truth.
"Three months," he confessed. "Three months since—"
Since Bad Wolf bay. Since you told me you loved me. Since I missed my chance to tell you. Since one of the top ten worst days of my life...
"—Since I burnt up that star," he finally finished, voice weak and a slightly self-deprecating smile twisting against his lips and Rose swallowed.
He didn't doubt for a moment that she'd heard all the unspoken endings to his sentence, but she'd always known him better than he knew himself, it seemed.
She didn't press him for the end of his sentence at Bad Wolf Bay and, he realised, she hadn't acted on her own admission.
Part of him, the part that always demanded he run, run, run, had been terrified at her confession of love. That tiny terrified part of him had almost been glad she was stuck a dimension away so that he could avoid the domestics of the emotion. Not that he'd not known she loved him, just as he was almost sure Rose knew how he felt, but admitting to that and saying it aloud implied having to do something about it.
Settle down, start a family, get a house with carpets and doors...
His mind rebelled at the thought.
Ever since he'd found out she was back, that tiny part of him had been whispering that things would be different now that she'd said the words. That she would demand a response. That she would hope for reciprocation. That she would treat him differently, act differently, be different. Expect him to behave and act differently... but she hadn't, his mind supplied, and he wondered why.
Human emotions were as fleeting as their lives. Perhaps she had simply moved on. It had been four years for her, and she'd believed their separation to be permanent. After all, he'd told her that it was impossible to get back...
"Doctor!?" she called, and he realised that she'd been speaking as he got lost in his thoughts, and had called his name at least twice based on the frustration laced through her words.
"I'm sorry," he said again, and this time Rose tilted her head in open confusion.
"What for?"
"For what you must have left behind," he told her, face twisted into a mask of imagined pain as the new thoughts swirled through his mind.
"Your mum, dad... your mum was pregnant, so... a younger sibling? Your job. Four years is a long time, you'd built a life, I just... I'm sorry you were forced to walk away from that," he repeated, frowning as he built the world around her. Happy, laughing, a boyfriend... fiance?
"Stop it," Rose demanded, her voice darkening enough that the growl of it snapped him from his thoughts and his eyes returned to her features, a hint of anger there now and an awful lot of frustration, but it was the flash of pain that made him blink at her, surprised.
"Don't do that," she told him, pulling her hand back from his and crossing her arms over her chest defensively as he stared at her in shock, his own hand flexing in the air, his empty grasp feeling so very wrong.
"Did you think I'd forgotten about the way you seem to think the universe revolves around you?" she asked, the barest hint of playful teasing cutting through her flash of anger, and he knew she was trying to lighten her tone for his sake.
"You feel guilty that I had to come back, as if it were your fault I was stuck there in the first place. It wasn't your fault, and it wasn't your fault I had to leave," she told him firmly, and the Doctor shook his head.
"But your mother, your sibling... friends—"
"It felt wrong there," Rose interrupted softly, "I felt wrong there. Even if I'd never found you or you didn't want me to travel with you anymore... Doctor I was never going to stay on the other side of the void," she swore, her voice quiet but determined, and after a long moment of silence where he studied her face and she tried to hold his gaze, she eventually dropped her eyes to the grating and the Doctor smiled.
"All right," he whispered softly, and Rose frowned, glancing up at him cautiously, an eyebrow raised in silent question.
"All right?" she asked, and the Doctor nodded.
"All right. I'll try to stop feeling quite so guilty about it," he promised, and Rose offered him a weary smile.
"Thank you," she offered, softening in the face of his surrender. "I managed a lot in four years, Doctor," she said with a sigh, "there's so much to tell you... but I do need to sleep."
She smothered another yawn, and a familiar door materialised out of the wall beside them, making the Doctor chuckle softly as the ship took care of their favourite human. They'd never moved further than the hallway outside the galley, and Rose laughed softly as she placed her hand on the smooth, wooden handle.
"Good night, Doctor," she offered, flashing him a tired grin as she pushed open the bedroom door, and he smiled at her gently, sliding his hands into his trousers to stop himself from grabbing her up into another hug to see him through the night.
"Sweet dreams," he offered instead and forced himself to ignore the iron band clenching around his hearts as her bedroom door clicked closed behind her, blocking his pink and yellow human from sight.
His eyes closed heavily, and he sighed, before turning on his heel and forcing himself to walk away from her door and back towards the console room to tinker on the Tardis while he let his mind absorb the many new things he'd learnt from Rose.