This story is set after the episode Father's Day, and so has spoilers for up till then. I haven't really thought about writing any Doctor Who stuff up till now… because the brilliant writers usually fill in every question for me wonderfully! This is just something I was wondering, and a few things I thought Rose might ask the Doctor if she really wanted to.
I would love feedback. Tell me if you like it. If you hate it, let me down easy, 'k?
BTW: I do not own anything to do with Doctor Who. Wish I did, though. I mean, who wouldn't want a TARDIS?
All the Time in the World
Rose had a problem.
It wasn't so much that fact that she couldn't sleep. She didn't mind that part. Somehow she'd gotten used to catching sleep wherever she could, whenever she could, as there wasn't much of a schedule on the TARDIS. When Rose couldn't sleep, she knew she'd only have to hop to the console room and there'd be the Doctor, waiting for another adventure. Did Timelords ever sleep? She supposed they had to, eventually. As for her, sleep would come when she was dead tired.
But now she was dead tired, and she couldn't catch a wink.
It must have been the tears trickling down her cheeks, as she swallowed and rolled over onto other side so that her pillow wouldn't drown. Yes, she thought, it must have been the tears. She couldn't understand why they hadn't stopped yet.
Well, it wasn't the entire truth. She did know why, she just didn't understand. And she couldn't bring herself tell the Doctor. It was funny, really. He'd watched her cry all day, but she couldn't bring herself to find him and sit down and just talk it over like she often wished they had more time to do – because she felt childish. Domestic. Like a stupid, emotional Ape. Petty humans and their petty emotions. It was silly, really.
But it was times like these when she wished the most that she had a dad.
Rose shifted onto her back, staring straight upwards through the darkness to where the ceiling was supposed to be. The tears trickled slowly down either side of her face. Why couldn't they just stop? For goodness sake, she should be completely dried out. On top of that she felt dead tired, and it seemed like cruel irony that the one thing that would allow her to escape from the world, sleep, was avoiding her. Rose sniffled, as she shuffled around again to face one side.
There was a man on her mind. Every second, every way she turned and every time she closed her eyes. And the bad part, she couldn't seem to figure out just which one it was.
She'd missed having a father figure for all of her life. Somehow, she'd managed alright. She'd had her mum. Despite the tears, Rose managed a small smile, thinking of her mother nattering on while doing the laundry or something so ordinary like that. She'd had her friends. She'd had her boyfriends. Stupid Jimmy Stone, good old Micky… only they hadn't really replaced anyone, not the way she secretly hoped they might. She was always sure there was a space missing, somewhere, that she was trying to fill. Maybe a Dad-shaped space. And so far, no one had really filled it. So far.
Then she'd gone and done something completely crazy. In the spur of the moment, she'd hopped into a time machine with a man she'd just met, and turned her life completely head over heels. Perhaps she'd hoped that it might have filled that space. And these days, despite coming close to death about as often and as easily as she tied her shoelaces, she was starting to think that maybe it had.
Then, for barely a few hours, she'd had her own dad. She'd had him, all to herself… he'd held her so tightly, she could still feel the warmth of him and of his strong arms around her shoulders, holding his little girl tight, just where she belonged. Just like she'd always imagined it would feel like every night before falling asleep. She belonged there. Didn't she?
That was just her problem. She couldn't figure out where she belonged. And she was scared of trying to.
Rose hugged her own arms around herself and pressed a muffled little whimper into her shoulder.
But he'd been taken away. He was her dad, and he'd been taken away. She'd thought that maybe after nineteen years of not knowing him, she'd have gotten over any prospect of missing him, but not true – she'd seen him once, and realised that she missed him like crazy. Missed him so much it hurt. The hot, salty tears were killing her, every time one managed to slip past her tightly shut eyelids. But she'd done what she'd set out to do. Hadn't she? He hadn't died alone.
But he had died.
The thought rolled around in the back of her mind as Rose pressed her face into her pillow and choked on another sob, desperately hoping the Doctor couldn't hear her. Petty emotions. Stupid ape.
Goodness it was so easy to mess up the entire universe. No wonder he was so fussy about it all. One wrong move, and boom…
Rose rolled flat onto her stomach and cried quietly into her pillow. She didn't know how long she lay that way, but it seemed like forever. Eventually, though, she had to come up for air, and she watched as a few fat tears trickled down her chin and plonked right onto the bright pink pillowslip. Well, there went the prospect of not drowning it. She remembered fetching it from her room the night she'd left her mum behind. It wasn't much, but it reminded her of home. It made her think about her mum, sometimes, about what she'd be saying if she were here… Rose could imagine. Right now, there'd be a hand on her back giving her a makeshift massage, another one holding a cup of tea under her nose and a voice saying, "Don't you worry, Rose. You can tell me everything, you know. It isn't Micky, is it? You shouldn't bother yourself about men, you know. God, I knew he wasn't good for much from the start. Should've seen you two when you were kids…"
Between erratic breaths of air, Rose was suddenly very sure that she could hear footsteps. For a moment she wondered what her mum was doing, then remembered again exactly where she was. Then perhaps it was her imagination, but she was sure the footsteps grew quieter as they neared her door, maybe even stopped completely. She even imagined an ear pressed against the door, listening, and a hand slowly rising to knock … then as soon as they'd come the footsteps were leaving, trailing away down the corridor.
Well, there was only one other person on the TARDIS.
One other person who happened to be an alien, Rose reminded herself, and couldn't be badgered with the problems of a nineteen year old shop girl from London. He had two hearts, came from an extinct race and flew around space and time in a big blue box, for goodness sake. If that wasn't alien, Rose didn't know what was. No, she was going to have to ride this one out on her own.
Yet he was an alien who'd taken her, measly little her back through time to let her meet her father and screw up the world and then try and fix it around her in a way so that she could keep her daddy. And she'd watched him die. And it had all been her fault. He was an alien who, at many times, had struck her as more human than many human beings she'd met.
Maybe, just maybe…
Quietly, Rose untwisted her limbs from bed sheets and blankets and coverlets and hoisted herself into a standing position. She was still in the clothes she'd hopped into bed with, but what did it matter? The Doctor had seen her in every possible situation. Moments from inescapable death, in heights of adrenaline induced frenzy, and every so called morning when she was nowhere near her best. Why should she care if he saw her in the same outfit twice?
Stumbling through the darkness in the general direction where she knew her bathroom to be, she felt a small pang of relief as her hand closed on a doorknob. She turned it, and the door immediately swung open onto a spacious bathroom, complete with a very large shower, a pale blue washbasin and a pentagonal bathtub. She hadn't even had her own bathroom living with her mum, so with such a large one to call her own, normally she would have felt like she was in heaven. But she felt like hell, and it was the washbasin she was after on this occasion. Rose fixed her eyes on the blue porcelain and stumbled across to it, checking her reflection in the mirror. Fantastic. Her eyes were puffy and red, nose shiny and pink and her blotchy cheeks stained with tears.
Rose sniffled, wiping away a stray tear, and turned the water on. It was a vintage washbasin, apparently. Still hand operated and a little unhygienic, but sufficient for the purpose. Unhygienic? Rose had just held her tongue – she was getting used to expecting anything, especially the unexpected, with the Doctor. She prided herself on the thought she was getting rather good at it, too. Rose held her hands under the cold, running water, and sloshed it across her face. There. It wasn't perfect, but it would have to do. She wiped away the little tell-tale black trails of mascara and turned the water off. Petty emotions. Hopefully he wouldn't notice anything.
Rose shut the bathroom door behind her and slipped out of her bedroom, following the direction she'd heard the feet disappear in. She didn't entirely trust the inner workings of the TARDIS, better to trust her hearing than her sense of direction – she ambled on, knowing exactly where he'd be headed, if she could find it. The console room.
Eventually Rose found it, at the end of a particularly long corridor. Sure enough, there he was, completely at home with himself – pulling a few wires here, twiddling a few knobs and dials there, flashing the sonic screwdriver out for a spin somewhere else… Rose almost hated to disturb him. She knew how much he loved to 'fix' the TARDIS, but this time, she felt like she was the one that needed fixing.
"Doctor?" Rose tried to keep her voice sounding casual as she clanked across the grate to stand a little way behind him. He didn't turn around, and to all appearances he hadn't even heard her, but Rose knew better. She waited, and sure enough, without so much as a pause in his tinkering, he said "What is it, Rose?"
"Well…"
"Well what?"
"What?"
"Well, what?" The Doctor spoke quickly, jumping back a little as a spark flew out from the console. A quick mumble, "Hmm, that wasn't supposed to do that…" then, "Well, Rose? Haven't got all day, you know."
Rose brought her hand to her forehead and despite herself, gave a little chuckle.
"What' you talking about, Doctor? We got the TARDIS. Got all the time in the universe, don't we?"
"S'pose you could say that. Well, what is it, then? Come on, out with it. Remember, It's my turn to choose where we're going, so the shop is now officially closed to requests. But where were we? Oh yes, 'Well, what?' So… well, what?"
Rose walked across to the console and leaned against it, making sure the Doctor couldn't see her face.
"Just… couldn't sleep, that's all."
"Oh, that's all, is it? I'm not surprised. I s'pose we haven't been doin' much of that on a regular basis, but frankly, why bother?"
"Doctor-"
"If sleep's what you really want, I'm sure I could find something to fix you up, somewhere. Still, I used to know a woman once – when she couldn't sleep, would stand on her head and try to crack peanuts with nothin' but the power of her mind. Never so much as split a shell, but she always did fall asleep. Funny, that…"
Rose frowned, forgetting he couldn't see her face. "Doctor-"
"Still, didn't have an awful lot of power upstairs, if you know what I mean."
"Doctor! There's a reason. It's… It's something else." Rose said, frustrated yet vaguely amused. Was he just trying to cheer her up? Or trying to brush it all over? Maybe he didn't want to chat about it. Well, tough. She was going to, anyway.
"Oh it is, is it? Well come on, Rose, out with it. I'm all ears."
From the corner of her eye, Rose spied The Doctor sticking his index finger straight into the middle of an impossibly large bunch of wires and for a second was afraid he would electrocute himself. "Blimey… what's that doin' there?" he muttered, then "Anyway, you were saying?"
"It's just… lots of things, really."
"Oh yeah? Like what?"
"Just… lots of things. Like, 'bout my Dad."
"Oh." The Doctor replied, and for a second he was quiet. Rose wondered if the subject was still too touchy, but she heard the buzzing of the sonic screwdriver and took it as a signal to continue.
"I mean…" She stared into space, somewhere past the wall of the console room, and fiddled with the belt loop of her jeans. "…I'm sorry for what happened."
"I know that, Rose."
"And I think I know what you meant, now. I mean, 'playin' round with time'. Wasn't the brightest thing I ever did!" Rose ended with a little forced laugh, but died away when she noticed the Doctor didn't join in.
"It's just that…"
"Just what, Rose?"
And suddenly, he was standing in front of her, his serious blue eyes staring down into hers and making sure that she couldn't look anywhere else but his face. Rose swallowed. Did she really want to do this? She was sure he could see that she'd been crying. He'd have to be blind if he didn't. She fought to keep the tears from coming back again. Maybe it was too soon to be talking about any of this. Maybe she should have stayed where she was. She'd probably only imagined that his feet had stopped outside her doorway. She'd probably only imagined even hearing them in the first place.
"Just what, Rose?" The Doctor repeated quietly, his eyes peering straight into hers and unnerving her. He was a bit like that, always getting her to tell the truth. She didn't know wether she loved him or hated him for it.
Well, she thought, here goes nothing.
"Why didn't you drop me off?"
There was silence for a bit, and the Doctor's confused expression was bordering on the unreadable. For a second, Rose almost lost her nerve, but gathered herself heroically.
"Rose-" The Doctor started, but she cut him off. She'd only just begun.
"Why didn't you drop me out of an airlock?" She went on, voice rising. "Ship me off home? Send me packin'? It's not like I didn't deserve it. I mean, look what you did with Adam, after that thing with his head. Why not me? I messed up. I almost destroyed the universe, and why didn't you leave me behind?"
"Oh Rose," The Doctor murmured, his face twisting into a pained expression. Rose felt a hot tear slide down her face, but she didn't stop it. She was gathering momentum, now, it would take a hell of a lot to stop her.
"Why didn't you, Doctor? Why did you forgive me, just like that? I didn't deserve it, did I?"
The Doctor was silent, and Rose felt her heart skip a beat. She could tell that she'd hit a nerve. The pain on the Doctor's face told her so. Still, she knew she had a point. He'd given her a second chance that she didn't deserve. Why her? If Adam hadn't gotten one, why should she?
"Rose…" The Doctor said for a third time, almost stumbling over his own words. "Rose… you know why."
"No I don't Doctor," She trembled, sniffling as a fresh stream of tears leaked down her face. "I don't know why. I don't know why I'm still on this thing, when I can't even tell you what the hell the capital of Spain is. I can't pass highschool, I can't ask to go backwards without screwin' everything up, and I got you killed! I just-"
Rose's chest heaved as she felt sobs wrack her body. She felt just about ready to explode. Why wasn't the Doctor saying anything? Why wasn't he doing anything? She must be right. She had to be right. But why was he just standing there? She couldn't take anymore of this. Rose tried to shove past him, but at that very moment her movement seemed to bring the Doctor back to life, and he gabbed her forcefully by the arms.
"No Rose, don't ever say that, you hear me? You did not get me killed. It wasn't like that!"
"But I watched you die, Doctor, I watched you die!" Rose cried.
"Rose," the Doctor said, voice straining almost to the edge of breaking point. "How do you think I felt when I thought that thing had killed you?"
"The Dalek?" She sobbed.
"Yes, the Dalek, Rose, Yes! How do you think I felt? That was the day I killed you. I couldn't watch it happen again. I was the oldest thing in that church, It was my own fault, Rose. You know it."
Rose gulped, and sniffed. Did she know?
"Adam was selfish, and stupid. He was only thinking of himself. He could have destroyed the entire human race, Rose!"
"So could I have…" Rose whimpered, wiping the tears away on the corner of her shaking jacket sleeve.
"But you didn't Rose, you didn't."
"But I'm just a stupid ape. You said it, Just a stupid girl from London who doesn't have a job, who didn't get her A-levels and couldn't even-" Rose paused, chest heaving with emotion. "-couldn't even fix it!"
The Doctor suddenly tightened his grip, forcing her to look at him.
"You listen to me, Rose. There's no one else I'd rather see the universe with, alright? No one. I said, I only take the best, and it's true. I meant it, every word."
Rose blinked.
"What?"
"You heard me, I only take the best, Rose Tyler."
Rose choked on a sob.
"No, before that… you said… no one else…"
The Doctor sighed, looking past her, somewhere over her shoulder.
"Yes, Rose. I said there's no one else I'd rather see the universe with. Look-" He turned to face her again, stooping slightly so he could see at her eye level, and speaking almost fondly. "You said you were sorry, Rose. That's enough for me."
"But-"
"Rose – it's alright. You wanted to have something that's been taken away from you. Trust me, I know what it feels like. You never started out with plans to come on top of the world. You were thinking of one other person beside yourself… so that's why I forgave you. And that's why I still forgive you. And I'm sorry I couldn't save him Rose, I'm so sorry…"
Rose looked up, through big, brown, glistening eyes. For a second, the Doctor was deeply afraid that she was either going to keel over right in front of him, or that she was going to hit him. Despite nine centuries of travelling and exploring his favourite planet, and his favourite species, he still couldn't seem to predict the way their emotions worked. Particularly this one. But Rose just whimpered, half leaned and half fell forward, pressing herself against his leather jacket and sobbing for all she was worth.
Well, It wasn't quite what he'd expected.
"I'm sorry!" She managed to get out between gasps, her fingers clinging to the edges of his jacket for dear life. "I just wanted…"
The Doctor was more than a little taken aback. He staggered backwards, eyes widening as he hoped he didn't drop the both of them. Out of every companion he'd ever travelled with, alien or human, he'd never met anyone quite like Rose Tyler. Emotional, erratic at times, completely unafraid to tell him exactly what she thought, perhaps a little too compassionate for strays, and so… domestic… but so very, very human. The Doctor felt a strange ache in his hearts as he regained his balance, but one glance downward at the sobbing nineteen-year old drenching his jacket, and he saw nothing but a girl who'd seen her father die. And he knew something of what she was feeling.
"It's okay," He murmured, as he reached his arms around her back and locked them in place. "It's okay…"
"I'm sorry…" She mumbled again, shivering against the black leather.
"Yes, I know," He said over the top of her head, patting her gently on the back for good measure. He meant well, but it only seemed to make her cry harder.
"It's okay, Rose," The Doctor said hurriedly, cradling her gently.
"I…"
"What is it?"
Rose's tear streaked face gazed up, and he watched her lips quiver and she said, "I miss him…"
"I know. I know." He said, pressing her head back against jacket and patting it fondly with one hand. "It's okay. I shouldn't have taken you there in the first place."
"No, I wanted to go." Came the muffled response, and despite himself, the Doctor couldn't help but give a small smile.
"Oh Rose…"
The pair stood beside the console, the only sound filling the room being Rose's irregular sobs. After being silent for what seemed like a very long time, the Doctor said "You were crying before, weren't you. In your room." It wasn't an accusation, it was more of a statement. He looked down as Rose looked up, confusion on her teary face.
"How did you-"
"I heard you. On the way here."
"Oh." Rose nodded, voice thick with tears. "TARDIS walls aren't as thick as I thought."
"Nope." The Doctor agreed, smiling softly down.
"But you didn't-."
"Didn't what?"
"Didn't stop."
"No, I guess I not."
"Why?"
The Doctor's smile faded as he looked down at her, and for a few moments, he seemed to be somewhere far away.
"Well," he said eventually, "I don't like to disturb."
"I wouldn't have minded."
"Okay, then. Remind me to disturb you more often."
"Doctor…"
Rose felt for a second like she could formulate some sort of droll response, but her mind gave way and instead she put her head back down and sniffled. She was just too tired to hit the Doctor back with his own words.
"I'm scared of missin' him…" she finally whispered into the Doctor's jacket, not sure wether he heard her or not. He was silent for what seemed like ages, but eventually he spoke up.
"It doesn't stop, Rose."
So he hadheard her. Rose listened quietly, giving only the occasional, stilted sob.
"It doesn't stop. But sometimes, it's not as bad."
Without asking, Rose understood. When you were this close to somebody else, it couldn't possibly hurt so much. And she understood something else, now. Maybe, just maybe, that space had finally been filled in, in a way she could never possibly imagine.
It hurt like hell to miss her dad. His face, his touch, everything about him. But Rose couldn't possibly begin to imagine what it felt like to miss your entire family, your entire race. She huddled a little closer to the Doctor.
"It's just… so easy, isn't it?" Rose whispered, half to herself. "To change it all. Just like that. I mean, when you've got all the time in the world… It's kinda hard to know what to do with it. To do something good with it."
"Yep." Said the Doctor. "Know what you mean."
"Yeah…" Said Rose, wriggling a hand to wipe away a last tear. "I s'pose… I…"
"What?"
"I'll try not to mess around. 'K? Don't want to… waste it, you know."
"Nope. Wouldn't want to do that."
"Listen…" she said, wiping her face and looking up to meet his eyes, "I… I'm sorry 'bout your jacket." Her eyes glanced over the dark leather. "Really."
The Doctor looked down at her, and grinned.