The first thing Rose hears upon setting foot in the TARDIS is the sound of her own name, nearly lost amidst the full solid weight of Mickey barreling into her like a freight train.
"Oh my god, I can't believe it, I thought you'd never make it back!" Mickey half-laughs, half-shouts into her ear. His arms wind snugly around her, a pair of friendly boa constrictors squeezing her in happiness. Rose hugs him back just as tightly, barely managing to blink back tears; she didn't expect to cry right now, but god, it just feels so comfortable and warm, and it's been so long since anyone hugged her.
"The Doctor said all the links were severed when you when through the mirror," Mickey continues. "He said it was impossible, he said—"
Suddenly Mickey steps back, his nose scrunched in confusion. "Hang on," he says, holding Rose at arms' length while he looks her up and down, eyes traveling over her coiffed hair, her heavy silken gown. "Wow. You look different."
"Wow," Rose teases. "You don't."
"Well, it's only been a few hours for me—what about you?"
"About six months."
Mickey's face darkens, his eyes flickering over to the Doctor. "Six months?"
"Yep, looks like my calculations were a bit off," the Doctor says, his voice tight as he breezes past them up the ramp. He rounds the console, tossing a switch here, a lever there. "Well, to be fair, it's less to do with my calculations, more to do with an unstable time window—difficult to predict, those, especially when they're in such a sad state of disrepair. But luckily for us," he says, and his gaze very carefully avoids Rose at that last word, "there was a loose connection."
The TARDIS shudders around them as it dematerializes, and Rose closes her eyes at the sound of the time rotor grinding, the still-familiar vworp-vworp noise and the soft and gentle buzz-hum underneath. She places a hand against a coral strut, relishing the sandpaper-roughness beneath her fingers, and this time she doesn't fight the tear that trickles down her cheek. It's as if a hole was gnawing away in her chest over the last half-year, no matter how she tried to ignore it, but now it's filling in again. Good grief, but she's missed these sounds, this place.
"So that's that," the Doctor says, as if it's final, somehow. Rose opens her eyes to find him galloping down the ramp, striding out of the console room. "End of one chapter, beginning of another. Welcome back to the TARDIS!" the Doctor shouts over his shoulder.
And just like that, he's gone.
"Huh," says Mickey, watching the Doctor's retreating form. "That's weird."
"What's weird?"
"I dunno. I guess I expected him to, like, run in here holding your hand and babbling about all your adventures or professing his eternal love or something."
Rose laughs, and it's only a little sarcastic. "Yeah, right. Me too."
"I'm serious." Mickey glances both ways before leaning in closer, his voice lower now, as if he fears being overheard. "He wasn't half-mad while you were gone. He was downright manic. It was all sonic this and reverse the polarity that and maybe I'll check some timey-wimey-whosie-whatsit and what if I could punch a hole in the local space-time continuum without compromising the fabric of reality and blah blah blah, just a bunch of muttering to himself while he ran around the TARDIS and pulled at his hair."
Running a hand over his own hair, Mickey shudders. "It's a wonder he didn't yank it all out."
"Yeah, well," Rose replies, fidgeting uncomfortably. "Maintaining the timelines and all that's sort of stressful, I guess."
"It was almost scary, the look in his eyes," Mickey continues, crossing his arms over his chest, protecting himself against the memory. "Like he was a wounded animal or something—you know how they get in the movies, like when they're cornered, but they've got nothing to lose, nothing left in 'em but the fight, and then everything goes to hell? It was just like that. He couldn't see or hear anything in front of him, couldn't think about anything that wasn't you."
Something sickly bubbles up in Rose's stomach, weighing heavily at the pit of it, and she has a sinking suspicion it's got nothing to do with the corset cinched around her waist. She can picture the Doctor just as Mickey described him, stalking about the console room, alternately muttering under his breath and shouting at the top of his lungs, his frame shaking with the effort to contain the desperate energy inside. She imagines the way his hands would fist in his hair and his mouth would contort in a grimace, his eyes scanning frantically over everything while his mind raced through nearly a thousand years' worth of memories and facts and tricks and hints. Rose has seen it all before, when they're trapped at the end of the line, no way out, the fate of a life or a town or a planet or a galaxy weighing on the Doctor's shoulders.
(She has never seen him act this way because of her.)
"Anyway," says Mickey, snapping out of his reverie, "Glad that's done with. Bloody terrifying, that was. Not to mention exhausting. Feels like I haven't slept in days."
He punches Rose lightly in the arm. "What about you, though? How've you been? Six months, that's impressive. Probably got a whole truckload of new stories to tell, yeah?"
Distantly, Rose hears everything coming out of Mickey's mouth, but for some reason, she can't seem to focus on it, much less discern any meaning. She can't stop her gaze from wandering over to the corridor where the Doctor disappeared, twisting her hands together while her teeth sink into her lower lip.
"So, you gonna go after him, or what?"
Rose blinks. "Sorry?"
Mickey offers her a wistful grin. "You waited for him all that time, didn't even know if he'd find you again—but you still love him, don't you?"
Rose can't find the words to reply, but really, she doesn't need to; her silence seems to tell Mickey everything he needs to know.
"You know he's not good enough for you, right?" Mickey chuckles. "You deserve better."
Smiling, Rose wraps her arms around Mickey in a tight hug, pecking a kiss on his cheek afterward for good measure. "So do you."
"Don't I know it. Now run your arse over there so I can go get some sleep!"
Rose doesn't try to find the Doctor straightaway. Instead, she takes her time, wandering through the halls of the TARDIS. She kicks off her heels and sighs in relief, delights in the coolness of the floor beneath her aching feet, one hand running along the wall as she walks. Its pebbly surface rasps against her fingertips until they're pleasantly numb—she imagines it's like a series of little kisses from the TARDIS, welcoming her back.
"Glad to have your wolf again, hmm?" she asks quietly, and maybe she's just imagining things again, but she can almost feel the hum shifting in the back of her head, its pitch changing ever-so-briefly, like a little flash of golden happiness in her skull. Grinning, Rose pats the wall. "Missed you too," she whispers.
She thinks of stopping by her room. This dress isn't getting any more comfortable, after all, and a hot shower or relaxing bubble bath sounds absolutely divine. But that sick feeling still burbles in her stomach, and Rose knows that no amount of scalding water or fruity soaps will drive it away.
Rose could play dumb, if she wanted, checking the garden or the pool or the galley or any other room first, to buy herself some time, to rehearse her words in her head, but she knows exactly where the Doctor is, and she allows her feet to carry her there.
She finds him, of course, in the library.
Evidence strewn about the coffee table in front of the settee suggests that the Doctor must have been tinkering, books and papers and tools and sonic screwdriver all piled atop each other in a miniature mountainous landscape. Amidst everything else is a small globe of some sort—astrolabe is the word that comes to Rose's mind, except that she doesn't actually have a clue what an astrolabe is, or even how she heard of it in the first place—but it has been long-since abandoned, its mechanical guts spilled and forgotten. As for the Doctor, he leans back on the settee, his hands clenched over his face, pushing his specs up into his hair.
He doesn't move when Rose steps into the room. She tries to remember the last time she was able to sneak up on him like this. She can't.
Rose clears her throat and the Doctor snaps to, slipping his specs back down and reaching for the globe and the sonic as if he never let them go.
"Did you need something?" the Doctor asks. Rose can't help but notice how tired he looks; she swears the lines around his eyes run deeper than they used to.
"Yeah," she says. "I…"
She hesitates. Silently, she berates herself for her cowardice. Why can't she just talk to him—why can't she just say what's on her mind? She's never had this problem with anyone else, not ever, never had to stopper her words or tiptoe on a thousand invisible eggshell-thin rules the way she does around him. Squirming in her gown (god, but it's absolutely murdering her ribcage), Rose casts about for the best words to open this discussion, because she absolutely is going to initiate this discussion, she's not going to let him squirm away from her this time, she spent more than enough time putting up with pinching shoes and heavy underskirts and beyond-stupid 18th-century customs and she's had enough of the bloody damn rules. She's not going to let him close around her like a corset, cinching her closer and closer only to push her away when things get too tight; she's going to put her foot down and they're going to have a bloody talk because it's ridiculous for them to keep brushing everything under the rug, and this dress is hot and scratchy, and he's infuriating, and why didn't she just go take her dress off before this, and wouldn't it be so much better to have things out in the open instead?
Yes, she decides; yes, it would. Rose steels herself.
"I need help taking my dress off," she blurts out.
The Doctor's eyes raise a little in surprise, and Rose furiously fights the blush rising in her cheeks—of all possible things, why, why was that the one that popped out of her mouth?
"It's just, back in France, there were people to help with this sort of thing," she rushes, stumbling over her words. "And Mickey's already gone to bed, and, you know, it sort of seems like a bad idea to show up on the Estate wearing something out of the 1700's."
"The Estate?" the Doctor asks, frowning.
"Yeah." She swallows. "You said you were gonna take me home, remember?"
"Right," says the Doctor, diverting his attention back to the instruments in his hands.
Rose waits for him to speak again, but he's strangely quiet. "You are still planning to take me home, right?"
"Well." The Doctor fiddles with the globe, tapping the sonic against it in a rat-a-tat-tat. "Certainly, yes, I did say that. And. And I meant it. That was indeed a valid threat. No, not a threat—a promise. I am absolutely, positively, definitely taking you home."
He sneaks a glance up at her. "Unless. You know. You're not ready to go home yet."
Relief washing over her, Rose hides a smile. "I think I can wait a bit."
"Good," replies the Doctor just a little too quickly. When Rose can no longer hide her smile, he points an accusatory finger at her. "I did mean it, though," he insists.
"Sure."
"I am taking you home. Just not right this instant."
"Got it."
"It wasn't a bluff."
"'Course not."
"Just…no reason to rush, right?"
Rose beams at him. "No reason at all."
"Excellent." The Doctor brushes some nonexistent dirt off his trousers before standing up from the settee, placing his instruments back down on the table. "Glad that's sorted. So, I'll see you tomorrow bright and early, then? Tomorrow and early being relative terms, of course."
"Sure, but, erm…"
The Doctor watches her expectantly, and Rose's cheeks grow warm beneath his gaze again. "I still need help," she admits, gesturing over her shoulder, to the laces on the back of her dress.
Eyes following the line of her hand, the Doctor's face goes blank. Rose thinks she can pinpoint the very moment realization dawns on him, his eyebrows arching once again in surprise.
"Right," he says, shaking his head. "Yes, of course." Wordlessly, he spins his finger in a circle, a silent suggestion that Rose should do the same. Rose turns away, forces herself not to twitch at the coolness of his hand on her neck as he brushes a tendril of hair out of the way.
They both fall quiet, the silence only interrupted by the soft sounds of silk and linen whispering against each other while the Doctor works, deftly untying knots and unlacing laces. But for all that his fingers are talented, the Doctor isn't quite as adept at this as the women at court, and more than once, Rose's breath hitches as the corset tightens before loosening.
Rose stifles a laugh. She'd be lying if she said she had never fantasized about this at least a little bit, the Doctor slowly peeling a gorgeous gown off her body, unwrapping her like a delectably rich gift. But between the pinch at her waist and the anxiety in her tummy and the ache in her ribs, this just might be one of the single unsexiest things she has ever experienced.
"So, what did you two get up to while I was away?" Rose asks—she tells herself it's an attempt at playfulness, just a distraction, and not related in any way to what Mickey told her in the console room. (It's certainly not a quiet way to test him, definitely not a subtle way to see how far she can push.)
The Doctor pulls a lace a little too tight and Rose bites her tongue to stop herself from grunting. "Not much," the Doctor replies, and Rose could almost believe him. "We mostly just did a bit of research, poked around until I figured out how to get back to y—how to sort things out."
"Yeah, Mickey said it was only a few hours here."
"Yeah," the Doctor echoes, but something about the way he says it is flat, empty.
His fingers still at her back. "Rose, I'm sorry."
Rose shrugs, squirming in her half-done corset. "Eh, you're doing your best. Eighteenth-century underwear's a right bitch."
"I'm sorry I didn't come back sooner."
Rose's lips part in surprise. "Ah," she says, softly.
The Doctor resumes his task, pulling at the laces once again. "It shouldn't have taken me so long to figure it out, the loose connection in the fireplace," he continues. "It's ridiculous, really. I don't know what came over me."
At that, Mickey's words resound in her ears. He wasn't half-mad while you were gone.
"Don't worry, it won't happen again," says the Doctor. "But still: I apologize. Six months is a long period for a human to be stranded anywhere, especially three hundred years out of their own time."
"It was only five and a half months," Rose mumbles halfheartedly.
"Still. I should have done better."
"Eh," says Rose. "It's all right. I knew what I was getting into, crashing through that mirror. I mean, you were pretty explicit about what would happen."
She drinks in a deep breath now that her ribcage has the room to expand. She can tell by the position of the Doctor's hands at the small of her back that he'll be done loosening the corset soon; she tells herself that if she's going to talk to the Doctor, really properly talk to him, she needs to do it now, while neither of them can see the other's face. She tells herself it will be easier that way, even if she can imagine exactly expression his eyes and mouth will make.
"I'm actually more upset about how you treated me afterward," she admits, her pulse thundering at the confession.
The Doctor falls silent once again—doesn't even emit an irritated sigh or let loose an explanatory bit of babble. He just works on pulling the last of the laces loose, his pace steady and never-changing. Lightheadedness suffuses Rose's head, filling it like a dull fog, and she knows this time it's got nothing to do with the corset.
"Look, I know you were just frustrated, and concerned about the timelines, and—and maybe a little worried about me, too," Rose rushes. (A wounded animal, she remembers Mickey saying; Couldn't see or hear anything in front of him.) God, she hopes the Doctor doesn't notice the way the back of her neck flushes. "But you can talk to me about it, yeah? Just let me know those things are going through your head, instead of being all mean and angry at me."
"I was never angry with you," the Doctor murmurs.
Brow wrinkling in confusion, Rose glances over her shoulder. "What?"
At last, the gown and corset completely loosen around Rose, enough that she has to clutch her arms to herself to keep the garments from slumping to the floor. "All done," says the Doctor, and Rose hears him step back, step away. "You're good to go."
Pulling together the last threads of her courage, Rose whirls around to face him.
"Doctor—"
He stops, hands shoved in pockets, mouth stretched thin. He waits.
"Just please tell me what's going on," Rose says, pushing the words out before she has a chance to overthink them.
Glancing around the room—at the books on the shelves, the other books scattered on the floor, the faded rugs and comfortable old afghans, the imitation Tiffany lamp (or a genuine Tiffany lamp, one never knows)—the Doctor plays for time. "I'm sorry I was so unpleasant to you earlier," he tells her slowly. Carefully. "You're right. It was unnecessary. I let my frustration get the better of me. And you didn't deserve that. You…you only did what I would have done, after all."
Shaking her head, Rose allows her corset and gown to fall to the floor, leaving her in nothing but a thin white shift. She steps out of the garments, toward him, watching him as he watches her. If the Doctor registers how bare she suddenly is, he doesn't show it; somehow, despite being fully-clothed, despite the gates shuttering his face, he seems more naked than she does.
Rose approaches him slowly (gently, so she doesn't scare him off). "Please."
"What more could you possibly want from me?" the Doctor pleads tiredly.
"Doctor," Rose breathes, her stocking-feet padding silently over the wood-paneled floor until they come to a stop opposite his plimsolls. She stands very close to him, now, close enough to count every single one of his eyelashes, chart a starfield out of his freckles.
(Rose wonders if Reinette noticed any of these things. Did she admire the shape of his mouth when he spoke excitedly of science and adventure and awe at the majesty of the universe and the turn of the earth—did she feel a warm glow in her chest when his eyes landed on her face, did she sense his double-heartsbeat when they drew close for a kiss?)
"When everything's said and done, what do you think you'll regret more?" Rose asks, her voice gone quiet and soft, and maybe just a little sad. "Everything you said and did—or everything you didn't?"
The Doctor's hands ball into fists in his pockets, and Rose fully expects him to turn and flee. But before Rose has a chance to react, his hands are no longer in his pockets—instead they're cupping around her jaw, shocking her with their coolness as he draws her face upward for a harsh and bruising kiss.
A strange buzzing fills Rose's head and her mind goes completely blank.
For a moment that stretches into eternity, she can't hear anything but her pulse rushing and roaring in her ears, can't feel anything but the cool pressure of the Doctor's hands framing her face and the warmth of his breath on her lips. She stiffens, mouth parting in surprise as her brain races to catch up with everything that's happening. She half-expects the Doctor to take advantage of the opening, invade her mouth with his tongue like any other bloke would do, pushing past the swell of her lower lip and tasting her like she's a whole new world for him to explore, but he doesn't; for all that the kiss is frantic and she can feel his teeth in it, it's surprisingly chaste.
It's still too much.
Overwhelmed by the intensity of it all, by the Doctor's closeness and the way he trembles as he clutches her, by the hormones fizzing up drunkenly in her head, raging a fierce battle with everything else crowding in there—the confusion, the hurt, the shock, and yes, the want, of course the want, the want that kept her going in France, kept her awake more nights on the TARDIS than she'd ever admit, the want that had burned so hot and so shamefully and so deep in her gut that it was easier to pretend it wasn't there than to acknowledge its scorching existence, always the want—
(But the look on his face when he talked about Reinette, but the things she'd heard and seen back on that spaceship—)
Couldn't think about anything that wasn't you
—Rose shoves at the Doctor's chest, pushing hard so she can break away with a ragged gasp. The Doctor staggers backward, panting a bit himself, his eyes blown as wide as Rose has ever seen them.
Chest heaving, Rose stammers incoherently, steadying herself against a bookshelf. Her mind fishes about for something to say (absolutely anything will do, anything, anything please), but her heart flutters madly in her chest and she can't think of anything else but that and the taste of the Doctor on her lips.
The Doctor blinks the shock out of his eyes and pushes a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry," he blurts out.
Rose knows she should reply, but her vocal chords don't seem to work at the moment.
"I'm so sorry," the Doctor repeats breathlessly as he pushes past her out of the room.
Rose doesn't turn to watch him leave; she's stuck in place, her feet frozen and unmoving as if they were glued to the floor. The only thing she can do is shiver, and whether she should blame the cold or something else entirely is anyone's guess.
Rose gulps.